“We now come to this idiotic Freddie-marriage business.  Your father has forced you into that.  It’s all very well to say that you are a free agent and that fathers don’t coerce their daughters nowadays.  The trouble is that your father does.  You let him do what he likes with you.  He has got you hypnotized; and you won’t break away from this Freddie foolishness because you can’t find the nerve.  I’m going to help you find the nerve.  I’m coming down to Blandings Castle when you go there on Friday.”

“Coming to Blandings!”

“Freddie invited me last night.  I think it was done by way of interest on the money he owed me; but he did it and I accepted.”

“But, George, my dear boy, do you never read the etiquette books and the hints in the Sunday papers on how to be the perfect gentleman?  Don’t you know you can’t be a man’s guest and take advantage of his hospitality to try to steal his fiancee away from him?”

“Watch me.”

A dreamy look came into Aline’s eyes.  “I wonder what it feels like, being a countess,” she said.

“You will never know.”  George looked at her pityingly.  “My poor girl,” he said, “have you been lured into this engagement in the belief that pop-eyed Frederick, the Idiot Child, is going to be an earl some day?  You have been stung!  Freddie is not the heir.  His older brother, Lord Bosham, is as fit as a prize-fighter and has three healthy sons.  Freddie has about as much chance of getting the title as I have.”

“George, your education has been sadly neglected.  Don’t you know that the heir to the title always goes on a yachting cruise, with his whole family, and gets drowned—­and the children too?  It happens in every English novel you read.”

“Listen, Aline!  Let us get this thing straight:  I have been in love with you since I wore knickerbockers.  I proposed to you at your first dance—­”

“Very clumsily.”

“But sincerely.  Last year, when I found that you had gone to England, I came on after you as soon as the firm could spare me.  And I found you engaged to this Freddie excrescence.”

“I like the way you stand up for Freddie.  So many men in your position might say horrid things about him.”

“Oh, I’ve nothing against Freddie.  He is practically an imbecile and I don’t like his face; outside of that he’s all right.  But you will be glad later that you did not marry him.  You are much too real a person.  What a wife you will make for a hard-working man!”

“What does Freddie work hard at?”

“I am alluding at the moment not to Freddie but to myself.  I shall come home tired out.  Maybe things will have gone wrong downtown.  I shall be fagged, disheartened.  And then you will come with your cool, white hands and, placing them gently on my forehead—­”

Aline shook her head.  “It’s no good, George.  Really, you had better realize it.  I’m very fond of you, but we are not suited!”