Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/119

 seconds; then she flashed at him, 'Pray, do you like the Princess's better?'

'If I did, there would be more of it,' he answered, quietly.

'How can she marry you? Hasn't she got a husband?' Rosy cried.

'Lord, how you give me away!' laughed her brother. 'Daughters of earls, wives of princes—I have only to pick.'

'I don't speak of the Princess, so long as there's a prince. But if you haven't seen that Lady Aurora is a beautiful, wonderful exception, and quite unlike any one else in all the wide world—well, all I can say is that I have.'

'I thought it was your opinion,' Paul objected, 'that the swells should remain swells, and the high ones keep their place.'

'And, pray, would she lose hers if she were to marry you?'

'Her place at Inglefield, certainly,' said Paul, as patiently as if his sister could never tire him with any insistence or any minuteness.

'Hasn't she lost that already? Does she ever go there?'

'Surely you appear to think so, from the way you always question her about it,' replied Paul.

'Well, they think her so mad already that they can't think her any madder,' his sister continued. 'They have given her up, and if she were to marry you'

'If she were to marry me, they wouldn't touch her with a ten-foot pole,' Paul broke in.