“But my family is away better than Surrey’s.”
“Your family counts for nothing here. New York knows nothing and cares nothing about birth. Englishmen count by title only.”
“Then they ran after Surrey because he was a Duke?”
“Perhaps to a certain extent,” replied Honoria. “But I fancy the principal reason was that they wished to see what it was Helen had paid such a tall price for. If he had come here quietly to marry a poor girl there’d have been no stir.”
“Money--money--nothing but money--always money,” sneered Frothingham. He saw the twinkle in Honoria’s eyes. “But, I say,” he protested, “you know that we over there do care for other things, too.”
“So do they here, but what do they care for, first and most, in both countries?”
“It’s money first--there and here, and the world over,” she went on with bitterness under her raillery. “And among our kind of people everything else--sentiment, art, good taste even--is far behind it. How could it be otherwise? We’ve got to have money--lots of money--or we can’t have the things we most crave--luxury, deference, show. But--where are you dining to-night?”
“Excuse me a minute. I’ll just see if Mrs. Galloway will let me bring you. We’re going to the opera afterward.” She looked at him quizzically. “I think I’ll arrange to ship you off to Boston. A little vacation just now will do you no harm. And--Boston might interest you.”
When she returned from the telephone it was with a cordial invitation for him from Mrs. Galloway. He said: “I’ve a letter to a Mrs. Saalfield in Boston. Do you know her?”
“Yes--she’s here now, I think. But you would better keep away from her. She wouldn’t do you the least good.”
“Oh, no--she leads it there, I believe. But she wouldn’t let you look at a girl or a widow, or any woman but herself. She’s about forty years old--it used to be the woman of thirty, but it’s the woman of forty now. Everywhere she goes she trails a train of young men. They’re afraid to look away from her. They watch her like a pack of hungry collies, and she watches them like a hen-hawk.”
There was more than the spirit of friendly helpfulness in Honoria’s plan to send him away to Boston. The bottom fact--hidden even from herself--was that she was tired of him. He seemed to her helpless and incapable, worse in that respect than any but the very poorest specimens of men she had met in New York. She felt that he was looking to her to see him through an adventure of which she disapproved rather than approved. She had no intention of accepting such a burden, yet she was too good-natured and liked him too well to turn him abruptly adrift.