But Bertram knitted his brows again. “How can such a thing be known?” he objected.
“At most, it can only be a suspicion or an inference. What makes you suspect it? What do you infer it from?”
“Why, from the patent facts,” said Mrs. Wilberton, giving an upward motion to her pretty little white-gloved hands. “They take her everywhere. They've presented her. They've introduced her to the best people. She's regularly lancée in their set. I myself was loth, loth to believe it. But the facts—they'll bear no other construction.”
Bertram smiled again. “Yes,” he said. “But why should you suppose that they do all this for money?”
His question appeared to take the lady's breath away. She sat up straight, lips parted, and gazed at him with something like stupefaction. “For what other earthly reason should they do it?” she was able, at last, in honest bewilderment, to gasp out.
“One has heard of such a motive-power as love,” Bertram, with deference, submitted. “Why shouldn't they do it because they like the girl—because she's their friend?”
Mrs. Wilberton breathed freely, and in her turn smiled. “Ah, my dear Prince,” she said, with a touch of pity, “you don't know our English world. People in the Pontycroft's position don't take up nameless young Americans for love. Their lives are too full, too complicated. And it means an immense amount of work, of bother—you can't get a new-comer accepted without bestirring yourself, without watching, scheming, soliciting, contriving. And what's your reward? Your friends find you a nuisance, and no one thanks you. There's only one reward that can meet the case—payment in pounds sterling from your client's purse.”
But Bertram's incredulity was great. “Harry Pontycroft is himself rich,” he said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Wilberton at once assented, “he's rich now. But he wasn't always rich. There were those lean years when he was merely his cousin's heir—and that's a whole chapter of the story. Besides, is his sister rich? Is Freddie Dor rich?”
“Ah, about that of course I know nothing,” Bertram had with humility to admit.