caution. “If I confess that I am not disinterested, as you call it? What then? Say that I love your niece, and I suppose it is right that you should know that. My love for Jacqueline is great enough not to grudge her happiness, even if that happiness is to be with another man. But to see her persuaded into a marriage that every instinct tells me is wrong, that I know must prove unhappy–I can not allow that to be done without a protest, though in making that protest I have betrayed my own love for her. Mrs. Gordon, if I know nothing of Duke da Sestos, I do know something of his class. Can I say nothing that will influence you?”

She gathered her shawl about her, and looked 121at me with stony indifference. I might as well have appealed to the little waves that lapped the shore. But I continued desperately:

121

“I can not help it that you misjudge me. I must speak. I must plead Jacqueline’s cause for her, even though she should resent my doing that, for I am pleading for her happiness. You lay emphasis on the rank of this Duke da Sestos. He is a duke. But, Mrs. Gordon, there are seventy ducal houses in Sicily alone. There is no law of primogeniture in Italy. Titles carry no distinction with them. Princes, dukes, marquises, counts, they are infinitely more numerous in Italy than decent men.

“As to the character of this aristocracy–you ask me of the duke’s, I will tell you the characteristics of most. He is an officer in the cavalry, therefore he lives beyond his pay. He is a gambler, a spendthrift. His property is mortgaged to the hilt. A rich marriage is his only hope. He hunts, shoots, wears English clothes, and that is as far as he approximates the manly habits of the Englishman. The Italian’s idea of a sportsman is to ride to the meet in a dog-cart with a fat poodle at his side. The smaller the pony, the fatter the poodle, the more of a sportsman he is. Cards, gossip, his mistress–they make up his life, his real life.”

122“And supposing that all this is true, I do not forget that you are speaking of a class and not of an individual, Mr. Hume.”

122

“I am only imploring you to be very careful.”

“After you have refused to make inquiries? You are inconsistent.”

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