“Then you must marry at once. Let us not beat about the bush.”
“I am not ready to marry. Please remember that I am barely twenty-four.”
“Fiddlesticks! You are forty. You are the sort in whom years count for next to nothing. Besides, your father was married at twenty-two, my father when he was six months younger. But that has little to do with it. There are certain times in life when opportunities seem fairly to fly at one. Ignore these caprices of Fortune, and you may spend the rest of your life chasing her. One of the greatest heiresses in England is dying to marry you. Not only have I carefully prepared her mind, but she has always been more or less in love with you, although she has not seen you now for five years.”
“Who can she be?”
“Manlike! Probably you will not even recall her when I tell you her name, for when she used to come to Ordham with her mother you were following the yellow curls of Jessie Middleton about her father’s park and never looked at poor Rosamond.”
A dark flush rose to Ordham’s very hair and he drew his brows together. “You surely do not mean Rosamond Hayle?”
“Ah! You do remember her?”
“Her front teeth stuck out. Her hair was like tow. Her pasty skin was covered with green freckles—”
“Oh, that was years ago. She has vastly improved.”
“Time cannot have altered the formation of her upper jaw. I doubt if it could put colour into her hair. You know quite well that I shall never marry an ugly woman. I even hate ugly men and children. I don’t set up to be an æsthetic ass, but beauty I will have if I can command it, and at least I need not fasten myself for life to a woman whose ugliness is not even distinguished. As I recall Rosamond Hayle she was the apotheosis of the commonplace—and that was only five years ago.”