aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there's nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn't be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess's idea, at any rate, if I've followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition———"
Lord John was already all there. "Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace."
"And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?"
"Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve."
"And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?"
Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend's general resources, to consider that question seriously. "Surely you can have no difficulty whatever———!"
"Why not? when you can see for yourself that I've had this year to let poor dear old
