"Well, I shall be delighted to see him--but I don't know what I shall have to say to him about that Mummy." Nitocris turned away towards her chair with a faint smile on her lips.
With a woman's rapid intuition, she had seen a glimmer of hope in the conjunction of these two announcements.

Although Professor van Huysman's personal fortune was not as great as his attainments or his fame, Brenda would be very rich, for her mother was the only sister of a widower whose sole interest and occupation in life was piling up dollars.

He had dollars in everything, from pork and lumber to canned goods, and her own father's scientific inventions, and Brenda was the bright particular star of his affections.
On the other hand, Lord Leighton, son and heir of the invalid Earl of Kyneston, was a fairly well-to-do young nobleman, good-looking, a scholar, and a good sportsman, who had done brilliantly at Cambridge, and then devoted himself to Egyptian exploration with a whole-souled ardour which had quickly won Professor Marmion's heart, and a ready consent to his "trying his luck" with his daughter to boot.

This had not a little to do with the present unfortunate condition of her own love affairs.
She had already refused Lord Leighton, letting him down, of course, as gently as possible, but withal firmly and uncompromisingly.

Who could better console him than this beautiful and brilliant American girl, and what would better suit that lovely head of hers than an English coronet which was bright with the untarnished traditions of five hundred years?
Wherefore, then and there, Miss Nitocris Marmion, Bachelor of Science, Licentiate of Literature and Art, and Gold-Medallist in Higher Mathematics at the University of London, decided upon her first experiment in match-making.
When the Professor got into his study and shut the door, there was a curious smiling expression upon his refined, intellectual features.
Instead of sitting down to his desk, he lit a pipe and began walking up and down the room, communing with his own soul in isolated sentences, as was his wont when he was trying to arrive at any difficult decision.
In order to appreciate his deliberations and their result, it will be necessary to say that Professor Hoskins van Huysman was one of the most distinguished physicists in America, and he had also gained distinction in applied mathematics.