“You won’t have her for me, or for any one, when she’s dead of a broken heart.”
“Dead of a broken tea-cup!” said the young man. “And, pray, what should we live on, when you had got us set up?—the three of us, without counting the kids.”
He evidently was arguing from pure good-nature, and not in the least from curiosity; but his sister replied as eagerly as if he would be floored by her answer: “Hasn’t she got two hundred a year of her own? Don’t I know every penny of her affairs?”
Paul Muniment gave no sign of any mental criticism he may have made on Rosy’s conception of the delicate course, or of a superior policy; perhaps, indeed, for it is perfectly possible, her inquiry did not strike him as having a mixture of motives. He only rejoined, with a little pleasant, patient sigh, “I don’t want the dear old girl’s money.”
His sister, in spite of her eagerness, waited twenty seconds; then she flashed at him, “Pray, do you like the Princess’s better?”
“If I did, there would be more of it,” he answered, quietly.
“How can she marry you? Hasn’t she got a husband?” Rosy cried.
“Lord, how you give me away!” laughed her brother. “Daughters of earls, wives of princes—I have only to pick.”
“I don’t speak of the Princess, so long as there’s a prince. But if you haven’t seen that Lady Aurora is a beautiful, wonderful exception, and quite unlike any one else in all the wide world—well, all I can say is that I have.”
“I thought it was your opinion,” Paul objected, “that the swells should remain swells, and the high ones keep their place.”