"No, it's a little more subtle than that, Shelmerdene, although as a fact I do see a water rat not a yard from you on the bank.... I merely wanted to know how it was that, since you had a perfectly good father alive in England, you were allowed to go gadding about in France with a guardian, soi-disant----" "We will ignore your soi-disant, young man. But I'll allow your interruption, for it may seem a bit complicated.... It was like this: as the fortunes of our family had run rather to seed through generations of fast women and slow horses, my father who was utterly a pet, succumbed to politics for an honest living, or, if you pull a face like that about it, for a dishonest living. For up to that time, in spite of having exactly the figure for it, he had always refused to enter Parliament, because his idea was that the House was just a club, and one already belonged to so many better clubs. But once there nothing could stop him, and when he entered for the Cabinet stakes he simply romped home with a soft job and a fat income.... But all that is really beside the point, for between politics and guineas father and I had had a slight disagreement about a certain young man whom I was inclined to marry offhand, being only sixteen, you know, and liking the young man--and, of course, my father did the correct thing, as he always did, gave the young man a glass of port and told him not to be an ass, and shipped me off to Paris to his very old friend. You see, he knew about that old Marquis, and how I'd be quite safe in his care, for any young man who as much as looked at me would have a pair of gimlet eyes asking him who the devil he might be and why he chose to desecrate a young lady's virginal beauty by his so fatuous gaze.