ALINE. [_Fiercely._] Not a word of my father!
CROCKSTEAD. Your father is a gentleman. The breed is rare, and very fine
when you get it. But he is exceedingly poor. People marry for money
nowadays; and your mother will be very unhappy if this marriage of ours
falls through.
ALINE. [_Moving a step towards him._] Is it to oblige my mother, then,
that you desire to marry me?
CROCKSTEAD. Well, no. But you see I must marry some one, in mere
self-defence; and honestly, I think you will do at least as well as any
one else. [ALINE _bursts out laughing._] That strikes you as funny?
ALINE. If you had the least grain of chivalrous feeling, you would realise
that the man who could speak to a woman as you have spoken to me--
[_She pauses._
CROCKSTEAD. Yes?
ALINE. I leave you to finish the sentence.
CROCKSTEAD. Thank you. I will finish it my own way. I will say that when a
woman deliberately tries to wring an offer of marriage from a man whom
she does not love, she deserves to be spoken to as I have spoken to you,
Lady Aline.
ALINE. [_Scornfully._] Love! What has love to do with marriage?
CROCKSTEAD. That remark rings hollow. You have been good enough to tell me
of your cousin, whom you did love--
ALINE. Well?
CROCKSTEAD. And with whom you would have eloped, had your mother not
prevented you.
ALINE. I most certainly should.
CROCKSTEAD. So you see that at one period of your life you thought
differently.--You were very fond of him?
ALINE. I have told you.
CROCKSTEAD. [_Meditatively._] If I had been he, mother or no mother, money
or no money, I would have carried you off. I fancy it must be pleasant to
be loved by you, Lady Aline.
ALINE. [_Dropping a mock curtsey, as she sits on the sofa._] You do me too
much honour.
CROCKSTEAD. [_Still thoughtful, moving about the room._] Next to being
king, it is good to be maker of kings. Where is this cousin now?
ALINE. In America. But might I suggest that we have exhausted the subject?
CROCKSTEAD. Do you remember your "Arabian Nights," Lady Aline?
ALINE. Vaguely.
CROCKSTEAD. You have at least not forgotten that sublime Caliph, Haroun
Al-Raschid?
ALINE. Oh, no--but why?
CROCKSTEAD. We millionaires are the Caliphs to-day; and we command more
faithful than ever bowed to them. And, like that old scoundrel Haroun, we
may at times permit ourselves a respectable impulse. What is your cousin's
address?
ALINE. Again I ask--why?
CROCKSTEAD. I will put him in a position to marry you.