“Of course the marriage would be a very good thing for Ronald,” said his sorceress, with her frankest accents—her frankness was one of her chief weapons—“but it would be good for you too, Billy. It would place you. There are people who jib at you still, you know; when once you were one of us, they wouldn’t dare.”
Mr. Massarene was silent. He thought if there were still people who jibbed at him, he had paid very dearly for the patronage of this fair sponsor. He was beginning to feel his feet a little on his new ground and to be a little less easily led about; but at the same time he was as much in love as a cold-blooded, circumspect, puritan-minded man could be, and she dazzled his sight and his senses and led him whither she would. He made a faint endeavor to assert his independence.
“Lord Hurstmanceaux has never even condescended to know me. It seems odd he should be anxious to enter my family.”
“Enter your family!” echoed Mouse, with a laugh of derision which brought the blood into his puffy pale cheeks. “Oh, my good Billy, don’t try on those grandiose phrases! I never said he wanted anything of the kind; I said I mean you to give him your daughter, and you know when I mean a thing I have it done.”
Mr. Massarene was cowed; he felt an awkward, ignorant, vulgar booby under the flashing fires of her contemptuous eyes. There was nothing left in him of the stolid self-assurance and self-admiration with which he had spoken at the public meeting a few days earlier. Before the mocking presence of his enchantress he felt only a stupid, illiterate, helpless booby and boor. He felt that men respected his riches; he felt that Mouse Kenilworth only meant to annex them.
“My daughter is not an easy person to control,” he said with hesitation, “and I think she and you don’t hit it off, my lady, do you?”
“No,” said his guest shortly; “but that don’t matter. There’s no law that I know of to love one’s brother’s wife. Anyhow, that’s what I mean you to do with her. Of course, my brother is a poor man, you know that; but that is no consequence to you. What you want is an assured position, and alliance with us will poser you. Ronnie’s word has great weight in society.”
“But Lord Hurstmanceaux have never given me even good day, not even when he’s seen me in your own house, my lady.”
“Don’t say ‘my lady.’ Can’t you break yourself of it? Of course, he’ll have to speak to you if he marries your daughter. I must get you all asked to some country house where he goes; the thing will come of itself. I’ll think it over and tell you where I send him.”
She spoke as if she were telling her major-domo how many people she expected to dinner.