“So my father thinks.” She looked at Frothingham with a mischievous, audacious smile. “He thinks I shall change immediately--and marry--you!”
“How funny and fishlike you look,” she said, laughing at him. “You are in no danger. Do you suppose I’d have said that if I’d had you on my list? No, I like you, _but--but_!”
“You may change your mind,” he recovered himself sufficiently to say.
“No--you’re safe. I spoke out because I wish to be friends with you. I don’t especially admire your purpose in going to America. But at least you’re frank about it.”
“I? Why, Miss Longview--I----” Frothingham began to protest, pushing at his dislodging eyeglass.
“Don’t prevaricate. You wouldn’t do it well. As I was about to say, I wish to be friends with you. And it’s impossible for a woman and a man to be friends when either is harbouring matrimonial designs against the other, or fancies the other is harbouring them.”
“I certainly have to marry somebody,” said Frothingham mournfully.
“Yes--I know. Father explained about you. He’s up on every titled family in England above the baronets. And he’s determined that I shall be a countess at the very least. He says he has the money to buy it--and possibly he has. But”--she was intent upon the blackness again--“I shall never go back to England. I shall stay in America--with a visit to Paris and the Riviera now and then.”
“That’ll cheer your father when he hears it,” drawled Frothingham. He coughed and stammered, and added in an embarrassed, apologetic tone, “And I don’t like to hear a girl as young and attractive as you are talk in that ghastly way.”
“You’ll make some woman a good husband,” she said. “Selfish and flighty, perhaps, but on the whole good. I’ll be glad to help you--with some other girl. In fact, I’ve one in mind--an acquaintance in New York--we call each the other friend, and I’m fond of her, as that sort of thing goes with women.”
He began to stammer again, and she saw that he was still hanging hopefully over her father’s plan. “If I were a marrying woman and ambitious,” she went on, “I’d think seriously of having a cast at you. But I’m neither, so I can appreciate your assets quite impartially.”
“I’ve got nothing,” he said, “nothing but debts.”