"If it had been worth while," he ventured.
"You know nothing about it. I could have done it if my niece had put out just one little finger--when I'd got everything ready for her to do it. Yes, I'd got everything ready--and yet she refused him. She refused him after I'd seen them all--his mother, his sisters, his two uncles--one of them in waiting on the Duc d'Orléans--Philippe V., as we call him--all of them the purest old noblesse d'epée in Normandy."
Her agitation expressed itself again in little dartings to and fro. "I went begging to them, as you might say. I took all their snubs--and oh! so fine some of them were!--more delicate than the point of a needle! I took them because I could see just how I should pay them back. I needn't explain to you how that would be, because you couldn't understand. It would be out of the question for an American."
"I don't think we _are_ good at returning snubs, madame. That's a fact."
"You're not good at anything but making money; and you make that blatantly, as if you were the first people in the world to do it. Why, France and England could buy and sell you, and most of you don't know it. Mais, n'importe. I went begging to them, as I've told you. At first they wouldn't hear of her at any price--didn't want an American. That was bluff, to get a bigger _dot_. I had counted on it in advance. I knew well enough that they'd take a Hottentot if there was money enough. For the matter of that, Hottentot and American are much the same to them. But I made it bluff for bluff. Oh, I'm sharp. I manage all my own affairs in America--with advice. I've speculated a little in your markets quite successfully. I know how I stand to within a few thousand dollars of your money. I offered half a million of francs. They laughed at it. I knew they would, but it's as much as they'd get with a French girl. I went to a million--to a million and a half--to two millions. At two millions--that would be--let me see--five into twenty makes four--about four hundred thousand dollars of your money--they gave in. Yes, they gave in. I expected them to hold out for it, and they did. But at that figure they made all the concessions and gave in."
"And did he give in?" Davenant asked, with naïve curiosity.