what it means for a healthy young girl to try and support life on nuts and grasses.'
'And why should you?' broke out Emerson. 'I'll tell you what it is, Aline--you are perfectly absurd about your father. I don't want to say anything against him to you, naturally; but--'
'Go ahead, George. Why this diffidence? Say what you like.'
'Very well, then, I will. I'll give it to you straight. You know quite well that you have let your father bully you since you were in short frocks. I don't say it is your fault or his fault, or anybody's fault; I just state it as a fact. It's temperament, I suppose. You are yielding and he is aggressive; and he has taken advantage of it.
'We now come to this idiotic Freddie-marriage business. Your father has forced you into that. It's all very well to say that you are a free agent and that fathers don't coerce their daughters nowadays. The trouble is that your father does. You let him do what he likes with you. He has got you hypnotized; and you won't break away from this Freddie foolishness because you can't find the nerve. I'm going to help you find the nerve. I'm coming down to Blandings Castle when you go there on Friday.'
'Coming to Blandings!'
'Freddie invited me last night. I think it was done by way of interest on the money he owed me; but he did it and I accepted.'
'But, George, my dear boy, do you never read the etiquette books and the hints in the Sunday papers on how to be the perfect gentleman? Don't you know you can't be a man's guest and take advantage of his hospitality to try to steal his fiancee away from him?'
'Watch me.'
A dreamy look came into Aline's eyes. 'I wonder what it feels like, being a countess,' she said.
'You will never know.' George looked at her pityingly. 'My poor girl,' he said, 'have you been lured into this engagement in the belief that pop-eyed Frederick, the Idiot Child, is going to be an earl some day? You have been stung! Freddie is not the heir. His older brother, Lord Bosham, is as fit as a prize-fighter and has three healthy sons. Freddie has about as much chance of getting the title as I have.'
'George, your education has been sadly neglected. Don't you know that the heir to the title always goes on a yachting cruise, with his whole family, and gets drowned--and the children too? It happens in every English novel you read.'
'Listen, Aline! Let us get this thing straight: I have been in love with you since I wore knickerbockers. I proposed to you at your first dance--'
'Very clumsily.'
'But sincerely. Last year, when I found that you had gone to England, I came on after you as soon as the firm could spare me. And I found you engaged to this Freddie excrescence.'
'I like the way you stand up for Freddie. So many men in your position might say horrid things about him.'
'Oh, I've nothing against Freddie. He is practically an imbecile and I don't like his face; outside of that he's all right. But you will be glad later that you did not marry him. You are much too real a person. What a wife you will make for a hard-working man!'
'What does Freddie work hard at?'
'I am alluding at the moment not to Freddie but to myself. I shall come home tired out. Maybe things will have gone wrong downtown. I shall be fagged, disheartened. And then you will come with your cool, white hands and, placing them gently on my forehead--'
Aline shook her head. 'It's no good, George. Really, you had better realize it. I'm very fond of you, but we are not suited!'
'Why not?'
'You are too overwhelming--too much like a bomb. I think you must be one of the supermen one reads about. You would want your own way and nothing but your own way. Now, Freddie will roll through hoops and sham dead, and we shall be the happiest pair in the world. I am much too placid and mild to make you happy. You want somebody who would stand up to you--somebody like Joan Valentine.'
'That's the second time you have mentioned this Joan Valentine. Who is she?'
'She is a girl who was at school with me. We were the greatest chums--at least, I worshiped her and would have done anything for her; and I think she liked me. Then we lost touch with one another and didn't meet for years. I met her on the street yesterday, and she is just the same. She has been through the most awful times. Her father was quite rich; he died suddenly while he and Joan were in Paris, and she found that he hadn't left a cent. He had been living right up to his income all the time. His life wasn't even insured. She came to London; and, so far as I could make out from the short talk we had, she has done pretty nearly everything since we last met. She worked in a shop and went on the stage, and all sorts of things. Isn't it awful, George!'
'Pretty tough,' said Emerson. He was but faintly interested in Miss Valentine.
'She is so plucky and full of life. She would stand up to you.'
'Thanks! My idea of marriage is not a perpetual scrap. My notion of a wife is something cozy and sympathetic and soothing. That is why I love you. We shall be the happiest--'
Aline laughed.
'Dear old George! Now pay the check and get me a taxi. I've endless things to do at home. If Freddie is in town I suppose he will be calling to see me. Who is Freddie, do you ask? Freddie is my fiance, George. My betrothed. My steady. The young man I'm going to marry.'
Emerson shook his head resignedly. 'Curious how you cling to that Freddie idea. Never mind! I'll come down to Blandings on Friday and we shall see what happens. Bear in mind the broad fact that you and I are going to be married, and that nothing on earth is going to stop us.'
...
It was Aline Peters who had to bear the brunt of her father's mental agony when he discovered, shortly after
