Phroso: A Romance

Phroso A Romance BY ANTHONY HOPE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR Mr Witt’s Widow Sport Royal A Change of Air Half a Hero The Prisoner of Zenda Father Stafford The God in the Car Comedies of Courtship The Heart of the Princess Osra
A SHOT WHISTLED BY ME.
BY ANTHONY HOPE
Let the winged Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR
METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. LONDON 1897

PHROSO
‘Quot homines tot sententiæ;’ so many men, so many fancies. My fancy was for an island. Perhaps boyhood’s glamour hung yet round sea-girt rocks, and ‘faery lands forlorn,’ still beckoned me; perhaps I felt that London was too full, the Highlands rather fuller, the Swiss mountains most insufferably crowded of them all. Money can buy company, and it can buy retirement. The latter service I asked now of the moderate wealth with which my poor cousin Tom’s death had endowed me. Everybody was good enough to suppose that I rejoiced at Tom’s death, whereas I was particularly sorry for it, and was not consoled even by the prospect of the island. My friends understood this wish for an island as little as they appreciated my feelings about poor Tom. Beatrice was most emphatic in declaring that ‘a horrid little island’ had no charms for her, and that she would never set foot in it. This declaration was rather annoying, because I had imagined myself, spending my honeymoon with Beatrice on the island; but life is not all honeymoon, and I decided to have the island none the less. Besides I was not to be married for a year. Mrs Kennett Hipgrave had insisted on this delay in order that we might be sure that we knew our own hearts. And as I may say without unfairness that Mrs Hipgrave was to a considerable degree responsible for the engagement—she asserted the fact herself with much pride—I thought that she had a right to some voice in the date of the marriage. Moreover the postponement just gave me the time to go over and settle affairs in the island.