Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/21

 in another sense, I want to see him established. Exactly! That is just what I do mean. Thanks to the energy of a few pushful but not particularly well-connected people like my Lady Maitland, social distinctions have ceased to exist in London. I will be as democratic as you please: I swallowed the Americans, I swallowed the South Africans, I swallow the rastaquouères daily; I don’t mind sitting between a stockbroker and an actor, but it is a different thing altogether when you come to marriage. My boy has to be protected from the ordinary dangers and temptations; and, though I would do nothing to influence him, it would be highly satisfactory if he met some nice girl with a little money of her own. Naturally one would like to see the choice falling on some one in his own immediate world; but times are changing, and it would be regarded as old-fashioned prejudice if one made too strong a stand against the people who really are the only people with money; or against a foreigner. . . But this is all rather like crossing the bridge before one comes to the stream. . . Lying here, very much depressed, I wanted to make provision for the immediate future. Now, would you say I had taken leave of my senses if I suggested that I had some claim on Brackenbury and Spenworth? Does