“Yes, the Earl of Egham, sits as Viscount Alderly.”
“I see; and some day I might be a countess?”
“You might.”
“That’s a bribe; I like the word awfully; it sounds good; it’s like a stare to say it—the countess!—but I fancy it would be rather dreadful being one—that is, if you weren’t born to it—in the cast all along, don’t you know. Of course, then you could do what you liked; but if you’d only been made one, and made from a dancing girl, you’d have to be proper, just to show how easy it came! And I think it would be dull,” she drawled. “What do you say?”
“Nothing,” he affirmed.
“Not even to save poor Veynes from his fate? You could save him.”
He looked slowly across at her face, which lay back idly under the yellow light, and she held her eyes squarely to his, as a maid holds a mirror to her mistress. He might search them for reflections, but he would see nothing more. In point of fact, he looked for some time without troubling their surface.
“Marry him,” he said.
“And the earl?”
“Oh, you must treat him kindly, and show him what an excellent countess you can make.”