She invited Frothingham to come to her at Boston in the second week in January--and he accepted. She had said never a word to him about her niece, Cecilia Allerton, and for that very reason he knew that she was revolving some plan for bringing them together. He also knew that Cecilia Allerton’s father, head of the great Boston banking house of Allerton Brothers & Monson, was rich enough to give his daughter the dower necessary to admission into the Gordon-Beauvais family. In the two weeks between Mrs. Staunton’s departure and his engagement to follow her he did not neglect his business. But his assiduity was wasted. He saw chances to marry, and marry well--but no dowers worth his while. Many mothers beamed on him, and their daughters brightened at his approach; but not one of the families that might have had him for the faintest hinting showed any matrimonial interest in him. One mother, Mrs. Brandon, actually snubbed him as if he were a mere vulgar, poor, and untitled fortune-hunter--and the snub was unprovoked, as he was only courteous to Miss Brandon. When Frothingham laughed over this incident to Honoria she said: “Mrs. Brandon purposes to marry Estelle to Walter Summit.” “That chuckle-head? Why, I found him in the cloak-room at the Merivale dance the other night sitting with his big damp hands in his lap, and his mouth hanging open. And he wasn’t screwed, either.” “But Estelle isn’t marrying _him_. She’s marrying his forty millions. With what she’ll inherit from her father and her uncle that will make her the third richest woman in New York. The fact that Walter is slightly imbecile is rather in his favour--she’ll have a free hand, and that’s everything where a woman’s ambitious. If you Englishmen hadn’t the reputation of being masterful in your own households you’d have less difficulty in marrying here. It was a bad day for English marriages when the American woman learned that England is a man’s country. A girl brought up as are the girls here nowadays hates to abdicate--and she don’t have to if she marries an American.” “I’ve heard that all women like a master,” suggested Frothingham. “So do men. Everyone likes to bow to real superiority and serve it, when he or she finds it. But the difficulty comes in trying to convince a man or a woman that he or she has met a superior.” “Well, then--perhaps women are more easily convinced than men.” Honoria smiled satirically. “They _seem_ to be,” she replied, “because they are prudent. But if some husbands only knew what their wives really thought, they might be less easy in their vanity than they are.” “That ain’t true of our English women,” said Frothingham. “No--and why? Because, milord, they don’t think.” “Well--_my_ wife can do as she jolly well pleases if she’ll only let me alone.” “If she’s an American you may be sure she _will_ do as she jolly well pleases--and you may also be sure that it won’t please you to be jolly as she does it.”