“Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer was calculated to relieve your fears.”
He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way:
“I don’t see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world. I didn’t see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don’t seem to see far.”
The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again.
“An Earl’s son! Do earls’ sons go about working in lowly callings for their bread and butter?”
“God knows they don’t! I have wished they did.”
“Do earls’ sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and choice of the millionaires’ daughters of America? You an earl’s son! Show me the signs.”
“I thank God I am not able—if those are the signs. But yet I am an earl’s son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me, but you will not. I know no way to persuade you.”