“Oh?” was all she could find to say.

“She wants to marry him.”

Not for years had Billie Dore felt embarrassed, but she felt so now.  She judged herself unworthy to be the recipient of these very private confidences.

“Oh?” she said again.

“He’s a good fellow.  I like him.  I liked him the moment we met.  He knew it, too.  And I knew he liked me.”

A group of men and girls from a neighbouring table passed on their way to the door.  One of the girls nodded to Billie.  She returned the nod absently.  The party moved on.  Billie frowned down at the tablecloth and drew a pattern on it with a fork.

“Why don’t you let George marry your daughter, Lord Marshmoreton?”

The earl drew at his cigar in silence.

“I know it’s not my business,” said Billie apologetically, interpreting the silence as a rebuff.

“Because I’m the Earl of Marshmoreton.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t,” snapped the earl.  “You think I mean by that that I think your friend isn’t good enough to marry my daughter.  You think that I’m an incurable snob.  And I’ve no doubt he thinks so, too, though I took the trouble to explain my attitude to him when we last met.  You’re wrong.  It isn’t that at all.  When I say ’I’m the Earl of Marshmoreton’, I mean that I’m a poor spineless fool who’s afraid to do the right thing because he daren’t go in the teeth of the family.”

“I don’t understand.  What have your family got to do with it?”

“They’d worry the life out of me.  I wish you could meet my sister Caroline!  That’s what they’ve got to do with it.  Girls in my daughter’s unfortunate position have got to marry position or money.”

“Well, I don’t know about position, but when it comes to money—­why, George is the fellow that made the dollar-bill famous.  He and Rockefeller have got all there is, except the little bit they have let Andy Carnegie have for car-fare.”

“What do you mean?  He told me he worked for a living.”  Billie was becoming herself again.  Embarrassment had fled.

“If you call it work.  He’s a composer.”

“I know.  Writes tunes and things.”

Billie regarded him compassionately.

“And I suppose, living out in the woods the way that you do that you haven’t a notion that they pay him for it.”

“Pay him?  Yes, but how much?  Composers were not rich men in my day.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk of ‘your day’ as if you telling the boys down at the corner store about the good times they all had before the Flood.  You’re one of the Younger Set and don’t let me have to tell you again.  Say, listen!  You know that show you saw last night.  The one where I was supported by a few underlings.  Well, George wrote the music for that.”

“I know.  He told me so.”