His arms were stretched along the top of the seat, and he was staring gloomily at the house. He did not look up.
“I told him I was married. He nearly bucked out of his chair, and looked as frightened as if he’d heard I was dead. So I said: ‘To an actress,’ and he put his face into his hands and cried.”
“What a soft!”
“Oh, anything you please! He said some other things that were a bit harder.”
“About me?”
“About the whole sickening concern. Said I might go to the deuce my own way, but it shouldn’t be through the Court; and that while he lived—which wouldn’t be for long—the old place should know only its own sort of people.”
“What sort is that?”
“People of birth and breeding, I suppose.”
“I see! Like Lord Egglesham, for instance, who shared the honeymoon with his fond parents; or Aubrey Beauthair, who gets fuzzy before ladies. Well, I’m going to show your father what a person is like who has been neither born nor bred; I dare say it will interest him. Shall I say that you’ll dine here?”