"So you have travelled as far as that, have you?" I inquired. "I must say that you jump to conclusions very quickly. Because Glenbarth happens to have said in confidence to me (a confidence I am willing to admit I have shamefully abused) that he considers Gertrude Trevor a very charming girl, it does not follow that he has the very slightest intention of asking her to be his wife. Why should he?"
"If he doesn't he is not fit to sit in the House of Lords," she answered, as if that ought to clinch the argument. "Fancy a man posing as one of our hereditary legislators who doesn't know how to seize such a golden opportunity. As a good churchwoman I pray for the nobility every Sunday morning; and if not knowing where to look for the best wife in the world may be taken as a weakness, and it undoubtedly is, then all I can say is, that they require all the praying for they can get!"
"But I should like to know, how is he going to marry the best wife in the world?" I asked.
"By asking her," she retorted. "He doesn't surely suppose she is going to ask him?"
"If he values his life he'd better not do that!" I said savagely. "He will have to answer for it to me if he does!"
"Ah," she answered, her lips curling, "I thought as much. You are jealous of him. You don't want him to ask her because you fancy that if he does your reign will be over. A nice admission for a married man, I must say!"
"I presume you mean because I refuse to allow him to flirt with my wife?"
"I mean nothing of the kind, and you know it. How dare you say, Dick, that I flirt with the Duke?"
"Because you have confessed it," I answered with a grin of triumph, for I had got her cornered at last. "Did you not say, only a moment ago, that if he did not know where to find the best wife in the world he was unfit to sit in the House of Lords? Did you not say that he ought to be ashamed of himself if he did not ask her to be his wife? Answer that, my lady."
"I admit that I did say it; but you know very well that I referred to Gertrude Trevor!"