“It’s her father I’m thinking of,” lamented Usk. “How can one go to a man and say, ‘Mr Steinherz, I love your daughter, and if you are prepared to hand her over rather more millions than I have hundreds a year, I daresay we shall get on very comfortably’?” Miss Steinherz’s prospective fortune was understood, be it remarked, to be of such satisfactory dimensions as to suffer no appreciable diminution even by reduction to English figures. “If that’s all,” was the dry reply, “you can just go right away to J. Bertram Steinherz, and say those identical words. Why, sir, your request is real moderate. I guess an ordinary French or German count would have his father-in-law hand over that same pile of dollars, and rebuild his family castle, and take his crown out of pawn as well, before he would conclude to make a trade. Then he would invite the bride to embrace his religion, and when everything was fixed up according to his notions, he would intimate to the father-in-law that, much as he respected him as a dollar-grinding machine, he guessed he would be conscious of more real, whole-souled pleasure in the partnership if he could regard him as a fixture in the States for the future.” “I can’t fancy Mr Steinherz standing that sort of thing. He’s not--not----” “Don’t quite look the part of the ordinary heavy father from the States?” said Mr Hicks quickly, as Usk hesitated. “That is so, sir. He doesn’t incline to play it, either.” He stopped abruptly. “That’s it. He is so awfully dignified and polite that I feel as if I should sink into the ground when I think of going to him with an offer that must strike him as such arrant cheek. Do you know, Hicks, that he and Miss Steinherz came to the Duchess of Old Sarum’s reception after all? I got them a card, but Mr Steinherz was so high and mighty about accepting that I felt horribly small.” “J. B. Steinherz was always real high-toned in his notions. At home he lays himself out to snub his fellow-citizens, and the smart set are ready to kiss his boots because he is ‘so charmingly exclusive.’ Here in England he doesn’t hold with thrusting himself into intimacy with the British nobility, so he puts in his time at a down-town hotel, and scorns ducal invitations.” “Well, I got him to Sarum House, at any rate, and every one was asking who he was. There was one very old lady there, Mrs Sadleir, a great friend of my people’s--knew my grandfather--who was quite smitten with him, and wanted me to tell her who was the elderly man with the _grand air_. When I said he was an American, she was really snappish, and said he reminded her of some one she had known long ago. I brought him up and introduced him, and they flirted solemnly for nearly an hour. Afterwards Mrs Sadleir said she couldn’t place him exactly, but she was pretty sure he must be a Southerner, for he had just the fine manners of the men who used to come over here before the war.”