You
will do nothing extraordinary in the book. If you did do something
extraordinary you would cease to be a good chaperon, and from that
moment would be cast aside; but I--I am in a different position
altogether. I am a single woman, unsettled as yet, for whom this
author in his infinite wisdom deems it necessary to provide a lover
and husband; and in order that his narrative of how I get this person
he has selected--without consulting my tastes--may interest a lot of
other girls, who are expected to buy and read his book, he makes me
the object of an intriguing fortune-hunter from Italy. I am to
believe he is a real nobleman, and all that; and a stupid wiseacre
from the York University, who can't dance, and who thinks of nothing
but his books and his club, is to come in at the right moment and
expose the Count, and all such trash as that. I know at the outset
how it all is to be. You couldn't deceive a sensible girl five
minutes with Count Bonetti, any more than that Balderstone man, who
is now making a useless trip across the Atlantic with my aunt and her
twins, could have exerted a 'baleful influence' over me with his
diluted spiritualism.
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