She had said, with a laugh, that he couldn't marry her unless he gave up his claim of succession to a certain reigning house; and she wouldn't accept him WITHOUT IT. Those were her words, sir, and he could only say that the prince left a few days afterwards, and they had never seen him since. As to the princelings and counts and barons, she knew to a day the date of their patents of nobility, and what privileges they were entitled to; she could tell to a dot the value of their estates, the amount of their debts, and, by Jove! sir, the amount of mortgages she was expected to pay off before she married them. She knew the amount of income she had to bring to the Prussian Army, from the general to the lieutenant.
She understood her own value and her rights. There was a young English lordling she met on the Rhine, whose boyish ways and simplicity seemed to please her. They were great friends; but he wanted him--the colonel--to induce her to accept an invitation for both to visit his mother's home in England, that his people might see her. But she declined, sir! She declined to pass in review before his mother. She said it was for HIM to pass in review before HER mother.
"Did she say that?" interrupted Paul, fixing his bright eyes upon the colonel.
"If she had one, if she had one," corrected the colonel, hastily.
"Of course it was only an illustration. That she is an orphan is generally known, sir."There was a dead silence for a few moments. The colonel leaned back in his chair and pulled his moustache. Paul turned away his eyes, and seemed absorbed in reflection. After a moment the colonel coughed, pushed aside his glass, and, leaning across the table, said, "I have a favor to ask of you, Mr. Hathaway."There was such a singular change in the tone of his voice, an unexpected relaxation of some artificial tension,--a relaxation which struck Paul so pathetically as being as much physical as mental, as if he had suddenly been overtaken in some exertion by the weakness of age,--that he looked up quickly. Certainly, although still erect and lightly grasping his moustache, the colonel looked older.