“I’ll do what I can for the pair of you,” said Miss Winwood to Paul.  “But it’s the most delightfully mad and impossible thing I’ve ever put my hand to.”

Accepting the fact of their romance, however, she could not but approve Paul’s attitude.  It was the proud attitude of the boy who nearly six years ago was going, without a word, penniless and debonair out of her house.  All the woman in her glowed over him.

“I’m not going to be called an adventurer,” he had declared.  “I shall not submit Sophie to the indignity of trailing a despised husband after her.  I’m not going to use her rank and wealth as a stepping-stone to my ambitions.  Let me first attain an unassailable position.  I shall have owed it to you, to myself, to anybody you like—­but not to my marriage.  I shall be somebody.  The rest won’t matter.  The marriage will then be a romantic affair, and romantic affairs are not unpopular dans le monde ou l’on s’ennuie.”

This declaration was all very well; the former part all very noble, the latter exhibiting a knowledge of the world rather shrewd for one so young.  But when would he be able to attain his unassailable position?  Some years hence.  Would Sophie Zobraska, who was only a few months younger than he, be content to sacrifice these splendid and irretrievable years of her youth?  Ursula Winwood looked into the immediate future, and did not see it rosy.  The first step toward an unassailable position was flight from the nest.  This presupposed an income.  If the party had been in power it would not have been difficult to find him a post.  She worried herself exceedingly, for in her sweet and unreprehensible way she was more than ever in love with Paul.  Meeting Frank Ayres one night at a large reception, she sought his advice.

“Do you mind a wrench?” he asked.  “No?  Well, then—­you and Colonel Winwood send him about his business and get another secretary.  Let Savelli give all his time to his Young England League.  Making him mug up material for Winwood’s speeches and write letters to constituents about football clubs is using a razor to cut butter.  His League’s the thing.  It can surely afford to pay him a decent salary.  If it can’t I’ll see to a guarantee.”

“The last thing we see, my dear Frank,” she said after she had thanked him, “is that which is right under our noses.”

The next day she went to Paul full of the scheme.  Had he ever thought of it?  He took her hands and smiled in his gay, irresistible way.  “Of course, dearest lady,” he said frankly.  “But I would have cut out my tongue sooner than suggest it.”

“I know that, my dear boy.”

“And yet,” said he, “I can’t bear the idea of tearing myself away from you.  It seems like black ingratitude.”