‘I don’t mean that they’ll be paupers

‘I don’t mean that they’ll be paupers; the old boy will always be good for an odd thirty thousand a year, but there’ll be a shakeup coming soon, and when the upper-classes get the wind up, their first idea is usually to cut down on the girls. I’d like to get the little matter of a marriage settlement through, before it comes.’ We had by no means reached the cognac, but here we were on the subject of himself. In twenty minutes I should have been ready for all he had to tell. I closed my mind to him as best I could and gave myself to the food before me, but sentences came breaking in on my happiness,Replica Designer Handbags, recalling me to the harsh, acquisitive world which Rex inhabited. He wanted a woman; he wanted the best on the market, and he wanted her at his own price; that was what it amounted to,LINK.
‘...Ma Marchmain doesn’t like me. Well, I’m not asking her to. It’s not her I want to marry. She hasn’t the guts to say openly: “You’re not a gentleman. You’re an adventurer from the Colonies.” She says we live in different atmospheres. That’s all right, but Julia happens to fancy my atmosphere...Then she brings up religion. I’ve nothing against her Church; we don’t take much account of Catholics in Canada, but that’s different; in Europe you’ve got some very posh Catholics. All right, Julia can go to church whenever she wants to. I shan’t try and stop her. It doesn’t mean two pins to her, as a matter of fact, but I like a girl to have religion. What’s more, she can bring the children up Catholic. I’ll make all the “promises” they want...Then there’s my past. “We know so little about you.” She knows a sight too much. You may know I’ve been tied up with someone else for a year or two.’
I knew; everyone who had ever met Rex knew of his affair with Brenda Champion; knew also that it was from this affair that he derived everything which distinguished him from every other stock-jobber; his golf with the Prince of Wales, his membership of Bratt’s,nike shox torch ii, even his smoking-room comradeship at the House of Commons, for, when he first appeared there, his party chiefs did not say of him, ‘Look, there is the promising young member for north Gridley who spoke so well on Rent Restrictions.’ They said:
‘There’s Brenda Champion’s latest’; it had done him a great deal of good with men; women he could usually charm.
‘Well, that’s all washed up. Ma Marchmain was too delicate to mention the subject; all she said was that I had “notoriety”. Well, what does she expect as a son-in-law - a sort of half-baked monk like Brideshead? Julia knows all about the other thing; if she doesn’t care, I don’t see it’s anyone else’s business.’
After the duck came a salad of watercress and chicory in a faint mist of chives. I tried to think only of the salad. I succeeded for a time in thinking only of the soufflé. Then came the cognac and the proper hour for these confidences. ‘...Julia’s just rising twenty. I don’t want to wait till she’s of age. Anyway, I don’t want to marry without doing the thing properly...nothing hole-in-corner...I have to see she isn’t jockeyed out of her proper settlement. So as the Marchioness won’t play ball I’m off to see the old man and square him. I gather he’s likely to agree to anything he knows will upset her. He’s at Monte Carlo at the moment. I’d planned to go there after dropping Sebastian off at Zurich,fake uggs online store. That’s why it’s such a bloody bore having lost him.’ The cognac was not to Rex’s taste. It was clear and pale and it came to us in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic cyphers. It was only a year or two older than Rex and lately bottled. They gave it to us in very thin tulip-shaped glasses of modest size. ‘Brandy’s one of the things I do know a bit about,’ said Rex. ‘This is a bad colour.