But she intended him to marry her. She fancied he was weak and unintelligent; she thought she would do as she liked with him and the millions which were undoubtedly his. On his part he would benefit, for he wanted rousing and being reconciled to the world. What was the use of the millions if there were nobody to spend them? She knew that no one could distance her in the art of making money fly about and diffuse itself.
She would much sooner have married Wuffie.
Wuffie was His Serene Highness Prince Woffram of Karstein-Lowenthal; he was twenty-four years old, very good-looking, very mirthful and pleasure-loving, very popular and sociable; he was extremely in love with her, and would have given her all he possessed with rapture. But, alas! that all was represented by a rank which was negotiable in the marriage market, and bills which were not negotiable anywhere. He was a fourth son, and his parents were so poor that Daddy Gwyllian declared he knew for a fact that, when they were dining alone, they had the Volkzeitung outspread for a tablecloth to save their palatial damask. Wuffie was charming, but matrimonially he was impossible.
Wuffie was then at Cannes, floating himself in the best society, as penniless princes of his Fatherland alone can do. She liked him; she had even more than liking for him, but she kept him at a respectful distance, for he did not accord with the grave intentions with which she had swum toward the terraces of Les Mouettes. In racing parlance, she did not dare put her money on him for any big event.
“Why am I out in the cold, darling?” he asked sorrowfully of Boo, who was always consulted by her mother’s admirers as an unfailing aneroid.
Boo shook her head and pursed up her lips.
“Why?” insisted the poor prince. “You know everything, Boo.”
This appeal to her omniscience prevailed.
“You’re very pretty, Wuffie,” she said, caressing his golden hair, which was as bright as her own. “You’re very pretty, and you’re great fun. But you know, poor, poor Wuffie, you haven’t got a pfennig to spend.”
“Come and see, Boo,” said Wuffie, stung by such a statement into mad expenditure, which resulted in the purchase for Boo of a toy opera-house, with orchestra, costumes, and personages complete, which had, for three days, been the object of her ardent desires in a shop window in Nice.