“Oh, as for keeping your secret—but from whom are you to know your fate, if I may ask?” Lady Germaine said.
Reginald blushed like a girl all over his face—or rather he reddened like a man, duskily, half angrily, while his eyes grew more like illuminations than ever. He drew a long breath, making a distinct pause, as a devout Catholic would do to cross himself, before he replied, “From whom? from her; who else?” with a glow of excitement and hope.
Lady Germaine shook her head. “Oh, you innocent!” she cried; “oh, you baby! If there is any other word that expresses utter simplicity and foolishness, let me call you that. Her! that is all very well, that is easy enough. But what are you to say to her father?—oh, you simpleton!—her father,—that is the question.”
“I presume, Lady Germaine,” said the lover, assuming an air of superior knowledge and lofty sentiment—“I presume that if I am so fortunate as to persuade her to listen to me—which, heaven knows, I am doubtful enough of!—that in that case her father——”
“Would be easy to manage, you think?” she said, with scornful toleration of his folly.
The young man looked at her with that ineffable air of imbecility and vanity which no man can escape at such a crisis, and made her a little bow of acquiescence. Her tone, her air, made him aware that she had no doubt of his success in the first instance, and this gave him a sudden intoxication. A father! What was a father? If she once gave him authority to speak to her father, would not all be said?
“Oh, you goose!” said Lady Germaine again; “oh, you ignoramus! You are so silly that I am obliged to call you names. Do you know who the Duke of Billingsgate is? Simply the proudest man in England. He thinks there is nobody under the blood royal that is good enough for his child.”
“And he is quite right! I am of the same opinion,” said Winton; then he paused and gave her a look in which, notwithstanding his gravity and enthusiasm, there was something comic. “But then,” he added, “the blood royal, that is not always the symbol of perfection, and then——”
“And then——? You think, of course, that you have something to offer which a royal duke might not possess?”
“Perhaps,” said Winton, looking at her again with a sort of friendly defiance; and then his eyes softened with that in which he felt himself superior to any royal duke or potentate; the something which was worthy of Lady Jane, let all the noble fathers in the world do their worst against him. He was not alarmed by all that Lady Germaine had said. Most likely he did not realise it. His mind went away even while she was speaking. She had heart enough to approve of this, and to perceive that Winton felt as a true lover ought to feel, but she was half provoked all the same, and anxious how it was all to turn out.