'
'Caroline!'
'And I don't want to. We're all wrapped up in cotton-wool nowadays. I
ought to have lived in another century. I, too, would have adorned a
court, and kept it lively! There's no wit left in the world, and
there's no wickedness of the right kind. We might as well be
Nonconformists at once.'
'Certainly not,' Sophia said firmly. 'Certainly not that.'
'But as you so cleverly remind me, there are no kings in Radstowe.
There's not even,' she added with a mocking smile which made her face
gay in a ghastly way, 'not even a foreign Count who would turn out an
impostor. Rose would do very well there, too. An imitation foreign
Count with a black moustache and no money! She would be magnificent
and tragic. Imagine them at Monte Carlo, keeping it up! She would hate
him, grandly; she would hate herself for being deceived; she would
never lose her dignity. You can't picture Rose with a droop or a tear.
They'd trail about the Continent and she would never come back.'
'But we don't want her to go away at all,' Sophia cried.
'And when she came to the point of being afraid of murdering him, she
would leave him without any fuss and live alone and mysterious
somewhere in the South of France, or Italy, or Spain. Yes, Spain.
There must be real Counts there and she would get her love affair at
last.'
'But she would still be married.'
'Of course!' Caroline, looking roguish, was terrible. 'That is
necessary for a love affair, _ma chere_.
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