'No—he never asked. Englishmen don't ask ladies to marry them any more.'
'Let Madame Variani prove her point,' said the Ambassador, raising one white hand above the hubbub, while he hollowed the other round his deaf ear. 'This is a most interesting discussion.'
'But it is known to all that Englishmen don't get married any more!' cried Madame Variani. 'I read in an English novel the other day that it is spoiling your English society, that the charming girls wait and wait—and nobody marries them.'
'Well, there are no English young ladies present,' said the Ambassador, looking round the table; 'so we may proceed. How do you account for this phenomenon, Madame?'
'Oh! you have now too many French cooks in England!' said Madame Variani, shrugging her plump shoulders.
'What in the world has that got to do with it?' cried the Ambassador.
'Your young men are too comfortable,' said the lady, with a calm wave of the hand towards Reggie Brooklyn. 'That's what I am told. I ask an English lady, who knows both France and England—and she tells me—your young men get now such good cooking at their clubs, and at the messes of their regiments—and their sports amuse them so well, and cost so much money—they don't want any wives!—they are not interested any more in the girls. That is the difference between them and the Frenchman. The Frenchman is still interested in the ladies. After dinner the Frenchman wants to go and sit with the ladies—the Englishman, no! That is why the French are still agreeable.'
The small black eyes of the speaker sparkled, but otherwise she looked round with challenging serenity on the English and Americans around her. Madame Variani—stout, clever, middle-aged, and disinterested—had a position of her own in Rome. She was the correspondent of a leading French paper; she had many English friends; and she and the Marchesa Fazzoleni, at the Ambassador's right hand, had just been doing wonders for the relief of the Italian sick and wounded after the miserable campaign of Adowa.
'Oh! I hide my diminished head!' said the old Ambassador, taking his white locks in both hands. 'All I know is, I have sent twenty wedding presents already this year—and that the state of my banking account is wholly inconsistent with these theories.'
'Ah! you are exceptional,' said the lady. 'Only this morning I get an account of an English gentleman of my acquaintance. He is nearly forty—he possesses a large estate—his mother and sisters are on their knees to him to marry—it will all go to a cousin, and the cousin has forged—or something. And he—not he! He don't care what happens to the estate. He has only got the one life, he says—and he won't spoil it. And of course it does your women harm! Women are always dull when the men don't court them!'