"Oh, can it," sneered Judge Lawton's daughter. "You're all wrong, anyhow. Snobbery leads to the rocks much oftener than to high achievement. I've heard dad say so, and you won't venture to assert that _he_ doesn't know. It bears about the same relation to progress that grafting does to legitimate profits. Anyhow, it makes me sick, and I'm not going to have Alex falling in love with a poor fish--" "Fish?" Alexina's voice rose above a fresh detonation, "You dare--and you think I'm going to ask you whom I shall fall in love with? Fish? What do you call those other shrimps who don't think of anything but drinking and sport, whether they attend to business or not?--their fathers make them, anyhow. And you want to marry one of them! They're fish, if you like." The two girls were glaring at each other. Gray eyes were blazing, green eyes snapping. Two sets of white even teeth were bared. They looked like a couple of belligerent puppies. Another moment and they would have forgotten the sacred traditions of their class and flown at each other's hair. But Miss Bascom interposed. Even the loss of her uninsured million did not ruffle her, for she had another in Government and railroad bonds, and full confidence in her brother, who was an admirable business man, and not in the least dissipated. "Come, come," she said. "It's much too hot to fight. Dwight is not good enough for Alex--from a worldly point of view, I mean," as Alexina made a movement in her direction. "We should none of us marry out of our class. It never works, somehow. But Mr. Dwight is really quite all right otherwise. I like him very much, Alex darling, and I don't mind his being an outsider in the least--so long as he doesn't try to marry one of us. He's _too_ good-looking, and his heels are fairly inspired. No one questions the fact that he is an honorable and worthy young man, working like a real man to earn his living. It isn't at all as if he were an adventurer. He has never struck me as being more of a snob than most people, and I don't see why I haven't thought to ask him down to San Mateo for a week-end." "You'll certainly have a friend for life if you do," said Aileen satirically. "Fall in love with him yourself if you choose. You can afford it." "No fear. I've made up my mind. I'm going to marry a French marquis." "What?" Even Alexina forgot Mortimer Dwight. "Who is he? Where did you meet him?" "I haven't met him yet. But I shall. I'm going to Paris next winter to visit my aunt, and I'll find one. You get anything in this world you go for hard enough. To be a French marquise is the most romantic thing in the world." "Why not Elton Gwynne? It's an open secret that he's an English marquis. Or that young Gathbroke Lady Victoria brought last night?" "He's a younger son, and he never looked at any one but Alex. And Isabel Otis has preëmpted Mr. Gwynne. And I adore France and don't care about England."