The Romance of Gino
hand again. “Two thirds of the Roman aristocracy have married Americans, which is so much the worse—for the Americans. But they have their titles, poor things, and that is what they wanted. Why are your country people so fond of titles—the very things your republic stands for repudiating? And you can’t deny that you are fond of them, my dear, when you consider the number of your girls who marry worn-out English and continental aristocrats.”
“Our best people do not marry your English and continental aristocrats,” answered Anne, with a spirit that pleased the old Englishwoman and made her laugh.
“Whatever kind of people they are, they are foolish ones,” she said. “ Mixed marriages are rarely happy, especially when the mixture is Anglo-Saxon and Latin. I married an Italian myself, I don’t know why, though I seem to remember thinking myself in love with him, and I had a little money. He was no worse than the rest of them; but when I found he had no intention of being true to me, nor ever had, I went home, and took my own name, though as a Catholic I could not divorce him. People said, ‘Now it is your turn’; but I did not want my turn. I was tired of men; though if one had come that I liked, nobody knows what might23
