“Why?”
“From motives of delicacy. Henry Marshire is a man of the nicest feeling. He is never guilty of the least mistake.”
Sara smiled, and so disguised a blush.
“I did not mean Marshire,” she said. “I was thinking then of Robert Orange.”
“Robert Orange,” exclaimed Lord Garrow in astonishment.
“Yes, dear papa. Is he not sometimes at the Carlton with Lord Wight? He seems to me a coming man; and so good-looking. We must really ask him to dinner.”
Some minutes elapsed before the Earl could utter any comment on a suggestion so surprising, and at that particular moment so inconsequent. Was his daughter not weighing—with prayer, he hoped, and certainly with all her senses—the prospect of an alliance with the Duke of Marshire? How, then, could she pause in a meditation of such vital interest to make capricious remarks about a mere acquaintance?
“Does Marshire know him?” he asked at last.
“I hope so. He is a remarkable person. But the party is blind.”
“My dear, the English are an aristocratic people. They do not forgive mysterious blood and ungentle origins. While we have our Howards, our Talbots, and our Poulets—to say nothing of the De Courcys and Cliftons—it would surely seem excessively absurd to endure the intrusion of French émigrés into our midst.”