The Marchesa had not removed her eyes from the girl.
"I wish rather," she said, "that he could see you now."
"Oh, Marchesa!" cried the girl, fleeing back to her chair and the protection of her dressing gown. She huddled in it and drew it about her. She looked around at the door, at the window, she caught her breath. "How you frightened me!" she said.
"Forgive me, my dear child," said the Marchesa. "I did not mean to speak that way. I meant only to regret that the Duke of Dorset can never know how wonderful you are."
"Perhaps he doesn't care a fig how wonderful I am," said the girl, now safely hidden in the exquisite silk gown.
The Marchesa did not reply. Instead she asked a question. "Tell me what he said."
"Oh, Marchesa, I led him into terribly deep water. I made him tell me how an English marriage is gone about. Dear me, what a fuss they make over it, and what a solemn, ponderous, life-and-death thing it becomes when the sturdy Briton gets at it."
She put out her hands with an immense gravity.
"'It is the administration for life of a great trust in perpetuity.'"
She rolled the words with a delicious intonation. "All the wiseacres in the family eat and smoke over it. They hold councils on it. They trudge around it, and they discuss it with a lawyer, just as one would do if one were making his will. They brush every little vestige of romance out of it. They make it safe."