not often in London. He is seldom here, you know. Really, he is quite a charming fellow.”
“Yes,” laconically. “Are Italian princes as cheap as they used to be? Mary Carrolton got that nasty little one of hers for two hundred thousand, didn't she? This one looks as though he might come a little higher. He's good-looking enough.”
“Oh, Ugo is not like the Carrolton investment. You see, this one is vastly rich, and he's no end of a swell in sunny Italy. Really, the match is the best an American girl has made over here in—oh, in centuries, I may say.”
“Pocahontas made a fairly decent one, I believe, and so did Frances Thornow; but, to my limited knowledge, I think they are the only satisfactory matches that have been pulled off in the last few centuries. Strange, they both married Englishmen.”
“Thank you. You don't like Italian princes, then?”
“Oh, if I could buy a steady, well-broken, tractable one, I'd take him as an investment, perhaps, but I believe, on the whole, I'd rather put the money into a general menagerie like Barnum's or Forepaugh's. You get such a variety of beasts that way, you know.”
“Come, now, Phil, your sarcasm is unjust. Prince Ugo is very much of a gentleman, and Bob says he is very clever, too. Did you see much of him last night?”
“I saw him at the club and talked a bit with him. Then I saw him while I slept. He is much better in the club than he is in a dream.”
“You dreamed of him last night? He certainly made an impression, then,” she said.
“I dreamed I saw him abusing a harmless, overworked and underfed little monkey on the streets of New York.”
“How absurd!”
“The monkey wouldn't climb up to the window of my apartment to collect nickels for the vilest hand-organ music a man ever heard, even in a nightmare.”
“Phil Quentin, you are manufacturing that dream as you sit here. Wait till you know him better and you will like him.”
“His friends, too? One of those
Prev.
Back
Top