“You mean the Second Secretary at our Embassy?”
“Yes. He said to me only last night: ‘America has an aristocracy just as we have, but gets from it all the evils and none of the good, all the pettiness, none of the dignity and sense of responsibility.’”
“But they tell me it’s different--out West.”
“I don’t know. I can only speak of the East--especially of Washington. There isn’t a capital in Europe or Asia, the diplomats say, with so elaborate a system of rank and precedence as we have. Why, do you know, it’s so bad that the fifteen-hundred-dollar-a-year clerks and their families have a society of their own between the circles of those who get eighteen hundred and those who get twelve hundred. And they’d rather die than mix with those who get less than they do.”
“And anything like a good time is almost impossible. It’s precedence, precedence everywhere, always. You can’t entertain informally.”
“It must be as if one were laced in a straight jacket.”
“I’m going abroad next year and am never coming back, if I can help it. I’m going where at least there’s real rank to get excited about. I’ll go with Ysobel and her mother--unless Ysobel decides to marry on this side.”
Frothingham was internally agitated, but gave no sign of it.
“She’s marrying either Mr. Boughton or that handsome Italian sitting next to Mrs. Ballantyne--the Prince di Rontivogli.”
“Ah,” said Frothingham. And to himself, “Just my rotten luck!”
“She makes no secret of it,” continued Miss Pope, “so I’m not violating her confidence. She says she’s determined to marry higher than her sister did. She likes Mr. Boughton better, though I should think she’d prefer the Prince--his face is ideal, and such manners! But, while Mr. Boughton is his granduncle’s heir and his granduncle is old and a widower--still--well, the dukedom might slip away from him. For instance, he might die before his granduncle.”
“That would be ghastly for her, wouldn’t it, now?” said Frothingham.
“It would kill poor Ysobel. She’s _so_ proud and ambitious! And that’s why she has an eye for the Prince--he’s of a frightfully old family, you know. One of his ancestors tried to poison Cesare Borgia and did succeed in getting himself poisoned or smothered or something thrilling. And they were an old, old family then. Oh, Ysobel is flying high. If her father would give her mother and her a free hand, I think she’d land a prince of some royal family.”