"Victoria would positively dislike an heiress. Jolly easy to take that sort of line—on forty thousand a year! But as to birth, the family, in my opinion, has a right to be considered."
Delorme hesitated a moment, then threw a provocative look at his companion, the look of the alien to whom English assumptions are sometimes intolerable.
"Pretty mixed—your stocks—some of them—by now!"
"Not ours. You'd find, if you looked into it, that we've descended very straight. There's been no carelessness."
Delorme threw up his hands.
"Good heavens! Carelessness, as you call it, is the only hope for a family nowadays. A strong blood—that's what you want—a blood that will stand this modern life—and you'll never get that by mating in and in. Ah! here come the others."
They turned, and saw a stream of people coming round the corner of the house. The rector and Mrs. Deacon—the gold cross on the rector's waistcoat shining in the diffused light. Lady Barbara Woolson, the other uninvited guest, Victoria's first cousin; a young man in a dinner jacket and black tie walking with Lady Tatham; a Madonnalike woman in black, hand in hand with a tall schoolboy; and two elderly gentlemen.
But in front—some little way in front—there walked a pair for whom all the rest appeared to be mere escort and attendance; so vivid, so charged with meaning they seemed, among the summer flowers, and under the summer sky.
A slender girl in white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treading the grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, as though he led in the fairy queen. So delicate were her proportions, so bright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, that Delorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fell into his native tongue.
"Sapristi!—quelle petite fée avez-vous là?"