"Well, well," sighed Bradstock, "what is the use of talking to her, Titania? Pen is Pen, and there's an end of it."
"I wish there was," cried the duchess. "But she rails against marriage. And she's only twenty-one. Dear, dear me!"
"She pays too much attention to you married women," said Bradstock. "How's the duke, by the way?"
As the duke was engaged in running two theatres at the same time, not wholly in the interests of art or finance, Bradstock might have asked after his health at some other juncture. Titania ignored him.
"She rails against marriage," lamented Titania.
"I don't," said Penelope.
"You do," said her aunt.
"It's only the horrible publicity," said Penelope, "and the way things are done, and the ghastly presents and the bishops and the newspaper men and the horrible crowd outside and the worse crowd inside, and all the horrid fluff and flummery of it. If I'm ever married, I'll get it done in a registrar's office."
"Oh, Penelope," wailed Ethel.
But Titania became terrible.