"I'm going to marry you," he said doggedly. "I never fail. Look at my life history and see where I have been beaten. I know you don't care for me yet. You'll have to later."
"My father doesn't care for you either."
Rudolph Castoon sniffed impatiently.
"His type is dying out. He still remains ignorant that money has displaced birth."
"It's the one thing money won't buy, though," she reminded him.
"Birth can't buy power," the financier said quickly, "and money means power. Your father has had both. It would have been easier for me to marry Daphne, daughter of the Earl of Rosecarrel, Viscount St. Just, Baron Wadebridge, Knight of the Garter, and Ambassador to Turkey, and all the rest of it, than it will be to marry you now your father has abandoned his career."
"That sounds merely silly to me," she exclaimed.
"Someday I will explain to you how very sensible it is. You will understand exactly."
"Do you mean you are so inordinately vain you would rather marry an ambassador's daughter than the daughter of a man who isn't a power politically any more?"
"At least I can say I don't mean that. I am vain, that's true, but I wish you were one of the daughters of a tenant farmer on these purple moors instead of being an earl's daughter." He sighed a little. Then the recollection of Anthony Trent came back. "Who is this man Trent?" he demanded.