V
“It was bound to happen,” said Lady Wargrave. “That young man has far too much time on his hands. A thousand pities he didn’t go into the army.”
“Too old, too old.” Her brother frowned portentously. “This promises to be a very tiresome business. Charlotte, I must really ask you to lose no time in seeing that the fellow marries.”
It was now Charlotte’s turn to frown. And this she did as a prelude to a frankness which verged upon the brutal.
“All very well, my friend, but perhaps you’ll tell me how it’s to be done. Neither Marjorie nor Blanche has the least power of attraction. They’re hopeless. And please remember this young man has been five years in America.”
“I would to God he had stayed there!”
The futile outburst of his Grace set Charlotte glowering like a sibyl. She was constrained to own that it was all intensely annoying. He was a common young man. He had none of the Dinneford feeling about things.
“Quite so, Charlotte.” The ducal irritation was growing steadily. “But don’t rub it in. That won’t help us. Let us think constructively. You see the trouble is that this fellow has a rather democratic outlook.”
“Then I’m afraid there’s no remedy,” said Charlotte, “unless the girls have the brains to help us, which, of course, they haven’t.”
His Grace became more thunderous. “Let us hope he’ll have the good feeling to try to look at things as we do,” he said after a rather arid pause.