After Mr. Pinsent had finished saying that the engagement was all nonsense and that he wouldn’t hear of it for a moment, she said he was perfectly right, but it wasn’t as if Léon was an Italian, was it? Paris was really not at all far from London when you came to think of it, and Léon was most obliging, and dressed quite like an Englishman, “and after all,” she finished, “we haven’t anything against him, have we? He told me himself he wasn’t a good Roman Catholic.” In the end Mr. Pinsent had to see Rose, and after this he agreed to a further interview with Léon. The interview was not, from Léon’s point of view, at all what it should have been. Mr. Pinsent had no sense of form. He hardly listened to Léon’s statement of his affairs, and he made no statement at all of his own intentions. He walked up and down the rather cold, deserted salon talking about Rose having had pneumonia when she was twelve, and how sensitive she was, and how much he would miss her. She was quite the best bridge player of the three girls, and her golf was coming on splendidly. He said he thought Paris hardly the kind of place for a real home life. He hadn’t seen any there, some years ago, when he and Mrs. Pinsent stayed in the Rue de Rivoli. He added that he couldn’t really feel as if Rose would like continually hearing French spoken all round her. It was quite different from being abroad for a time and coming home again afterwards. Mr. Pinsent laid his hand on Léon’s shoulder and sentimentalized the situation in a way that shocked Léon’s whole nature. Emotion should take place (enough of it, for a mere betrothal) between Léon and Rose; it shouldn’t take place between Rose’s father and Léon, and as for talking about the feeling of a man for a good woman, nothing could have been more out of place. You simply, of course, didn’t talk of it. Mr. Pinsent, however, did. “Of course we must go into everything very carefully later on,” Mr. Pinsent finished, rubbing the back of his head. “Rose seems to have set her heart on you--we must all hope you can make her happy.” Then Mr. Pinsent shook hands with Léon and seemed to think there was nothing more to be said. They never did go into anything later on. In the first place, Madame de Brenteuil refused point blank to meet Mrs. Pinsent. “If,” she said to Léon, “your mother sanctions your engagement, we have decided to permit ourselves to speak to the girl. Her family we will never accept. More you must not demand of us.”