I can't have my career disregarded, covered up with awkward silences, alluded to as a painful subject; and, as I say, even Aunt Barbara seemed to take it for granted that if I became Lady Comber I should cease to be Miss Falbe.

Well, there she's wrong, my dear; I shall continue to be Miss Falbe whether I'm Lady Comber, or Lady Ashbridge, or the Duchess of anything you please.

And--here the difficulty really comes in--they must all see how right I am.

Difficulty, did I say?
It's more like an impossibility." Hermann threw the end of his cigarette into the ashes of the dying fire.
"It's clear, then," he said, "you have made up your mind not to marry him." She shook her head.
"Oh, Hermann, you fail me," she said.

"If I had made up my mind not to I shouldn't have kept you up an hour talking about it." He stretched his hands out towards the embers already coated with grey ash.
"Then it's like that with you," he said, pointing.