“But she shall, and you must help me. Will you?”
“If you will swear to take me away and find me a husband as perfectly fascinating as yourself.”
“Good lord!” Tay almost blushed. Then he looked at her suspiciously. Was the little devil as innocent as she pretended, or was this merely the instinct of the born coquette, crudely expressing itself? “Oh, you’ll meet a hundred far better worth your while than I am.”
“I don’t believe it,” announced Fanny, who had never removed her eyes from his face. (“What’s an aunt?” she was thinking, “especially when she’s old enough to be your mother?”) “And have they all got as much money?” she added aloud.
This certainly was ingenuousness! “Oh, I’m a pauper compared with several I could name. Any one of them will succumb at once.”
“Julia says she will take me back to London and ask a friend of hers, Lady Dark, to give me a gay season, but San Francisco sounds even more fascinating. Haven’t you any titles in America?”
“Oh, titles without number. Especially honorables. Every ex-official, if he’s bagged a big enough office, expects ‘honorable’ on his letters for the rest of his life. And once a judge always a judge. State senators are addressed as if they were old Romans, and the militia turns out even more life titles than the bench.”
But the American humor was beyond Fanny. She pouted. “Tell me something really interesting. Tell me about a whole day of life in San Francisco. Tell me everything you think and feel and do.”
“Great Scott!”
“Oh,” cried Fanny, throwing herself halfway across the little table. “If you only knew how I want to know—everything! everything!”