“I beg pardon. Don’t singe me with that blue-fire of yours, and I won’t call him names. But you took me by surprise. I thought you had forgotten all about him.”
“Why, you know I correspond with him.”
“Do you still—really? I don’t know that I am surprised, however: you are the kindest and most unselfish of girls, and Englishmen have a stolid fashion of plugging away at anything that has become a habit.”
“Cecil is not stolid. He has changed his mind fifty times about other things. You can read his letters if you like.”
“God forbid! I know of nothing in life so objectionable as the Oxford prig. But you don’t mean to tell me, my dearest girl, that you consider yourself engaged to him?”
“Of course I do!”
“But, Lee, the thing is a farce. You were children. And you have not seen each other for seven years. When you meet again you will be two different beings; if you don’t detest each other it will be a miracle.”
“We shall find each other the more interesting; and people don’t change so much as all that.”
“Am I what I was at sixteen? Well, let that point go. You haven’t reflected, perhaps, that there would be enormous opposition on the part of his family. The Maundrells are paupers. Old Lord Barnstaple left the greater part of his private fortune to his young wife, and the present earl soon made ducks and drakes of the rest. Cecil must marry a fortune, and yours is entirely too small; they want millions over there. Lady Barnstaple has cut into her capital trying to keep up with smart London. She is simply mad to be known as one of the three or four smartest women in society, and the smartest American; and her case is hopeless. She hasn’t money enough, she never was a beauty, and now is nothing but an anxious-eyed faded pretty woman; and she hasn’t an atom of personality. I was in the same house with her for a week.”
“What is she like?” Curiosity routed her irritation.