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He grasped the fact that the disaster had happened the night before he had left Venice and that, as the result of a fog in the Solent, their old friend Strefford was now Earl of Altringham, and possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England. It was vertiginous to think of their old impecunious Streff as the hero of such an adventure.
"It wouldn't do, Streff. I'm not a bit the kind of person to make you happy." "Oh, leave that to me, please, won't you?" "No, I can't. Because I should be unhappy too." He clicked at the leaves as they whirled past. "You've taken a rather long time to find it out."
"Have I?" she wondered, jerked back into grim reality from the soothing interlude of their hour together. "You can't drift indefinitely, can you? Unless you mean to go back to the old sort of life once for all." She reddened and her eyes filled. "I can't do that, Streff I know I can't!" "Then what ?" She hesitated, and brought out with lowered head: "Nick said he would write again in a few days.
But she still continued to treat him as she had always treated the Strefford of old, Charlie Strefford, dear old negligible impecunious Streff; and he wanted to show her, ever so casually and adroitly, that the man who had asked her to marry him was no longer Strefford, but Lord Altringham.
She abandoned herself to the feeling, forgetting the abysmal interval of his caress, or at least saying to herself that in time she would forget it, that really there was nothing to make a fuss about in being kissed by anyone she liked as much as Streff.... She had guessed at once why he was taking her to see the Reynoldses.
Ellie and Bockheimer! How she hated the conjunction of the names! Their case always seemed to her like a caricature of her own, and she felt an unreasoning resentment against Ellie for having selected the same season for her unmating and re-mating. "I wish you wouldn't speak of them, Streff... as if they were like us! I can hardly bear to sit in the same room with Ellie Vanderlyn." "Hullo?
"No," he said, "I don't suppose that's ever likely to happen to me again." "Oh, Streff " she faltered with compunction.
Streff might, for the time, escape marriage; though she could guess the power of persuasion, family pressure, all the converging traditional influences he had so often ridiculed, yet, as she knew, had never completely thrown off.... Yes, those quiet invisible women at Altringham-his uncle's widow, his mother, the spinster sisters it was not impossible that, with tact and patience and the stupidest women could be tactful and patient on such occasions they might eventually persuade him that it was his duty, they might put just the right young loveliness in his way.... But meanwhile, now, at once, there were the married women.
And it was then that Susy, for the first time, had pronounced the name of Lord Altringham. "Streff Streff? Our dear old Streff, You mean to say he wants to marry you?" As the news took possession of her mind Ellie became dithyrambic. "But, my dearest, what a miracle of luck!
Through her tears she gasped out: "That's what I felt... that's what I said to Streff...." He was upon her with a great embrace. "My darling! My darling! You have told him?" "Yes," she panted. "That's why I'm living here." She paused. "And you've told Coral?" She felt his embrace relax. He drew away a little, still holding her, but with lowered head. "No... I... haven't." "Oh, Nick! But then ?"
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