Page "Up at the Villa" Paragraph 4

During dinner at a restaurant together with some of her acquaintances — among them the old Princess San Ferdinando, an American who is said to have been quite a loose woman in her day — they listen to a young man playing the violin.

He is ridiculously dressed up in folkloristic clothes and not good at all at playing the instrument.

At the end of the evening, the Princess tries to set Mary up with Rowley Flint, a young Englishman of independent means whose reputation is very bad, by asking her to give him a lift back to the hotel where he is staying.

Flint actually makes a pass at her, but she rejects him and just laughs at him when he even proposes to her.

They both seem to know without speaking that this proposal of marriage could not be meant seriously.