Lady Bridgminster rose, and, sweeping over to her son’s side (she never merely walked), laid her hand on his shoulder. Her face was flushed and there were tears in her voice.
“My son,” she said solemnly, “let these people alone. Their ways are not our ways. They never make themselves really like us. It was only my desire to see you care-free in your youth that made me consider Mabel Cutting for a time. I have always disapproved of these international marriages. Americans are a thin, passionless, hybrid race, and, I am sure, vulgar at the core, no matter how deep the veneer. How could it be otherwise? Marry a woman of your own class and race—”
“Not Rosamond Hayle.”
“Don’t be tiresome.” She almost shook him. “No man knows how his wife looks six months after he has married her.”
“Think of those six months.”
“And a plain wife is so safe. In a diplomatic career, of all things, you want no scandals. How should you like being married to a professional beauty?”
“I should not mind a bit. I should find it insufferable to be the husband of a wife that every other man rejoiced was not his.”
“No man ever rejoiced that a woman with forty thousand pounds a year was not his wife.”
“I should if she were ugly.”
“Are you going to Grosvenor Square?”