Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/81

Rh About half an hour later she came to my bedside, her dark hair hanging over her white gown, her eyes still bright.

"Penelope," she said softly, "I did not dare tell Salemina, and I should not confess it to you save that I am afraid Lady Baird will complain of me; but I was dreadfully rude to the Reverend Ronald! I couldn't help it; he roused my worst passions. It all began with his saying he thought international marriages presented even more difficulties to the imagination than the other kind. I hadn't said anything about marriages nor thought anything about marriages of any sort, but I told him instantly I considered that every international marriage involved two national suicides. He said that he shouldn't have put it quite so forcibly, but that he hadn't given much thought to the subject. I said that I had, and I thought we had gone on long enough filling the coffers of the British nobility with American gold."

"Frances!" I interrupted. "Don't tell me that you made that vulgar, cheap newspaper assertion!" "I did," she replied stoutly, "and at the moment I only wished I could make it stronger. If there had been anything cheaper or more vulgar, I should have said it, but of course there isn't. Then he remarked that the British nobility merited and needed all the support it could get in these hard times, and asked if we had not