“But how can you possibly know, with such people,” Mme. de Brecourt demanded, “what you’ve got hold of?”
“By having a feeling for what’s really, what’s delicately good and charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you try to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for the girl’s an exquisite fact, she’ll PREVAIL, and it will be better to accept her than to let her accept you.”
Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said he knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he didn’t mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many examples. To this his sister had replied: “Papa will never listen to that.”
“Listen to what?”
“To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements—comme cela se fait.”
“Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he’ll know perfectly whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That’s the sort of thing he does know. And he knows quite as well that I’m very difficult to place.”
“You’ll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you,” Mme. de Brecourt laughed, “to replace!”
“Always at any rate to find a wife for. I’m neither fish nor flesh. I’ve no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What position under the sun do I confer? There’s a fatuity in our talking as if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui prend mari prend pays, and you’ve names about which your husbands take a great stand. But papa and I—I ask you!”
“As a family nous sommes tres-bien,” said Mme. de Brecourt. “You know what we are—it doesn’t need any explanation. We’re as good as anything there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you like.”
“Well, I shall never like to marry—when it comes to that—a Frenchwoman.”