'You take it too seriously,' said Helena sweetly. She adored him for his generous anger, but she only wanted to bring him back to calmness. 'In London we are used to all that. Why, Mr. Ericson, I have been married in the newspapers over and over again—I mean I have been engaged to be married. I don't believe the wedding ceremonial has ever been described, but I have been engaged times out of mind. Why, I don't believe papa and I ever have gone abroad, since I came out, without some paragraph appearing in the society papers announcing my engagement to some foreign Duke or Count or Marquis. I have been engaged to men I never saw.'
'How does your father like that sort of thing?' the Dictator asked fiercely.
'My father? Oh, well, of course he doesn't quite like it.'
'I should think not,' Ericson growled—and he made a flourish of his cane as if he meant to illustrate the sort of action he should like to take with the publishers of these paragraphs, if he only knew them and had an opportunity of arguing out the case with them.
'But, then, I think he has got used to it; and of course as a public man he is helpless, and he can't resent it.' She said this with obvious reference to the flourish of the Dictator's cane; and it must be owned that a very pretty flash of light came into her eyes which signified that if she had quite her own way the offence might be resented after all.
'No, of course he can't resent it,' the Dictator said, in a tone which unmistakably conveyed the idea, 'and more's the pity.'
'Then what is the good of thinking about it?' Helena pleaded. 'Please, Mr. Ericson, don't trouble yourself in the least about it. These things will appear in those papers. If it were not you it would be somebody else. After all we must remember that there are two sides to this question as well as to others. I do not owe my publicity in the society papers to any merits or even to any demerits of my own. I am known to be the heiress to a large fortune, and the daughter of a Secretary of State.'
'That is no reason why you should be insulted.'
'No, certainly. But do you not think that in this over-worked and over-miserable England of ours there are thousands and thousands of poor girls ever so much better than I, who would be only too delighted to exchange with me—to put up with the paragraphs in the society papers for the sake of the riches and the father—and to abandon to me without a sigh the thimble and the sewing machine, and the daily slavery in the factory or behind the counter? Why, Mr. Ericson, only think of it. I can sit down whenever I like, and there are thousands and thousands of poor girls in England who dare not sit down during all their working hours.'
She spoke with increasing animation.