it was merely necessary to ascertain how the balance between these conflicting interests lay. As practically applied to the case in hand, she was aware that Lord Harlow bored her, though not badly, and that his nose irritated her. That she would almost certainly get used to, while on the other side of the scale were quantities of things she liked. She liked immense wealth, position, and the liberty she would undoubtedly enjoy if she married this amiable man, whom so many had tried to capture. That in itself was an incentive to her pride, and, without being a snob, she saw no objection to being a Marchioness.
But here the simplification ended, and a complication intruded itself. It was not so long ago that she had sat under the stone-pine with Archie, and seen his face glow in the darkness as he drew on his cigarette. In point of attractiveness there was naturally no comparison between her cousin and this amiable middle-aged man; but, owing to the impossibility of even the most limited polyandry, it was clearly no use to think of marrying them both, and all that was left was to choose between them, supposing, as she most sincerely did, that it was, or soon would be, for her to choose. Certainly she was not in love with Archie, if she took as an example of that the ridiculous symptoms exhibited by Daisy Hollinger, who by some strange freak was in love with Lord Harlow. Helena had behaved very wisely over that, for she had instantly seen the advantage of becoming great friends, in her sense of the word, with poor Daisy, who poured out to her a farrago of amorous imbecility, and Helena was sure that she was not in love with Archie like that. Anything so insane seemed incomprehensible to her (and was).
But Archie was a dear—she had quite wished he would kiss her that night, of course in a cousinly fashion, which she would have scorned to be offended with, whereas she did not in the least look forward to
