Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/39

32 as to their object which would almost stagger the manager of a Bureau de Mariage.

Many and various were the gold-laden damsels of the West, who were offered, or offered themselves, to him. But he could not induce himself;—his pride, or his taste, or his hereditary instincts, were too strong for him to be able to ally himself with rag and bone merchants from New York, or oil-strikers from Pennsylvania, or speculators from Wall Street.

No doubt it was very weak of him; a dozen men of the great old races of Europe married thus every year, but Paolo della Rocca loved his name, as a soldier does his flag, and he could not brave the idea of possibly transmitting to his children traits and taints of untraceable or ignoble inherited influences.

Over and over again he allowed himself to be the subject of discussion amongst those ladies whose especial pleasure it is to arrange this sort of matters; but when from discussion it had been ready to pass into action, he had always murmured to his match-making friend—

"A little more time!—next year."