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Robert laughed; his laugh was short, though, and bitter. He had taken keen pleasure in the cynical worldly wisdom and unsentimental judgment of this man.

“If you can’t afford the wife, then let the wife afford you,” began Frost’s logical reasoning. “You have brain, muscle and youth. Marry them to that necessary adjunct which you do not possess, and which the government refuses to supply. This is perfectly practical. The whole question of marriage is too much a matter of sentiment; too little a matter of judgment. Now, the son of a millionaire without an idea above his raiment and his club, devoid of morals and of brains, marries the daughter of a silver king. What is the result? A race of vulgar imbeciles.”

Here Frost, more wickedly practical, continued: “Now, you are of gentle blood, being fitted out by nature with the most unfortunate combination of attributes. Nature has given you much more than your share of intelligence and manly beauty, together with most refined and sympathetic sensibilities and luxurious tastes, and then has placed you in an orbit representing intelligence, aristocracy and wealth. Here she has left you to revolve with the greater and lesser luminaries, and that with the slenderest of incomes, which is not as yet greatly increased by your profession. You doubtless find that it requires considerable financiering to do these things deemed necessary to maintain your position in the constellation.”