And I could supply those
wants. . . .
She wanted to marry a gentleman of leisure; she wanted a
European establishment. She wanted her husband to have an
English accent, an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from
real estate and no ambitions to increase that income. And--she
faintly hinted--she did not want much physical passion in the
affair. Americans, you know, can envisage such unions without
blinking.
She gave cut this information in floods of bright talk--she would
pop a little bit of it into comments over a view of the Rialto,
Venice, and, whilst she was brightly describing Balmoral Castle,
she would say that her ideal husband would he one who could get
her received at the British Court. She had spent, it seemed, two
months in Great Britain--seven weeks in touring from Stratford to
Strathpeffer, and one as paying guest in an old English family near
Ledbury, an impoverished, but still stately family, called
Bagshawe. They were to have spent two months more in that
tranquil bosom, but inopportune events, apparently in her uncle's
business, had caused their rather hurried return to Stamford. The
young man called Jimmy had remained in Europe to perfect his
knowledge of that continent.
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