“What are you thinking of?” said Randolph abruptly.
“I want more than that. I don’t care for enormous wealth, and I haven’t any great ambition to dazzle the world—I suppose I am not a very good American.”
“What do you want?”
She turned very pink, shook her head shyly and looked down.
“You fancy you will find it with an Englishman, I suppose—with whom you would be a sort of necessary virtue, and who would have forgotten after three months of matrimony whether you were beautiful or not.”
“It is too bad of you to have such a poor opinion of Englishmen when Tiny is going to marry one.”
“I wish she were not, although Arrowmount is a first-rate fellow, and I like him. Besides, it is quite another matter for Tiny to marry an Englishman: she has the adaptability of indifference, and she is a born diplomatist and manager. Southern girls are not American in the modern sense, and when they are educated in Europe they practically revert to the conditions out of which their ancestors came. My mother has seen to it that Tiny is as Southern as if she had never set foot in this extraordinary chaos called California. She tried it on me, and it worked until I had to go out in the world and hustle. She tried it on you, and you are a magnificent compound of the South, California, and yourself. Before you have been out a year you will have an individuality as pronounced as Helena Belmont’s; and no woman with individuality can get along with an Englishman. For the American, she can’t have too much.”
“Three of Tiny’s friends are married to Englishmen, and they get on.”
“Which is another point: when an Englishman settles down in California he sheds a part of his national individuality into the surroundings he loves. A Californian wife is part of the scheme. He loves the country first, and the woman as a natural sequence. You are not Tiny, and it is not in the least likely that Cecil Maundrell will settle down in California. I repeat what I said a moment ago, and I should like to have you think it over: as my wife you would be a queen; as his wife you would be a mere annex until you ceased to be on speaking terms——”
“Oh, bother! I like to believe that everything in the world is beautiful, and I’m going to as long as I can. Go and get the plans for the hotel, and don’t talk another word of nonsense to me to-day.”