"They wouldn't know it. Did _you_ know that you were being forced to marry that poor young prince of yours?"
"We won't argue the point! Anyhow, the subject doesn't press. The scheme I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea (the _sea_ in every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by) can't come off till you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of goods to begin on than the Fane-Leigh business if you agree to take up Brightening. The question is, _do_ you agree?"
"I do," I said more earnestly than I had said "I will" as I stood at Paolo's side in church. For life hadn't been very earnest then. Now it was.
"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "Then that's _that_! The next thing is to furnish you a charming flat in the same house with us. You must have a background of your own."
"You forget--I haven't a farthing!" I fiercely reminded her. "But Mr. Carstairs won't forget! I've made him too much trouble. The best Brightening won't run to _half_ a Background in Berkeley Square."
"Wait," Mrs. Carstairs calmed me. "I haven't finished the whole proposition yet. In America, when we run up a sky-scraper, we don't begin at the bottom, in any old, commonplace way. We stick a few steel girders into the earth; then we start at the top and work down. That's what I've been doing with my plan. It's perfect. Only you've got to support it with something."
"What is it you're trying to break to me?" I demanded.
The dear old lady swallowed heavily. (It must be something pretty awful if it daunted _her_!)
"Yes, I admire him. He's handsome and interesting, though a little too mysterious and tragic to live with for my taste."
"He's not mysterious at all!" she defended Fane. "His tragedy--for there _was_ a tragedy!--is no secret in America. I often met him before the war, when I ran over to pay visits in New York, though he was far from being in the Four Hundred. But at the moment I've no more to say about Roger Fane. I've been using him for a handle to brandish a friend of his in front of your eyes."
My blood grew hot. "_Not_ the ex-cowboy?"
"That's no way to speak of Sir James Courtenaye."
"Then _he's_ what you want to break to me?"
"I want--I mean, I'm _requested_!--to inform you of a way he proposes out of the woods for you--at least, the darkest part of the woods."