It was no wonder, then, that when Sidonia had come to him, on the day of the wedding, where he sat glowering over his wine-cup and the remains of the feast, and had told him how she and her new husband had parted for ever, the relief should have been so unexpected and so great as completely to sober him.
In a spasm of paternal affection he had assured her that such a ceremony could not count, and that it would be the easiest thing in the world to release her, since she wished it.
She had looked at him stonily over her bridal white. Was that indeed the case? she had asked. She had thought marriages were for ever.
And he had laughed at her joyously. "Na, na, little dove—a marriage of this kind, if one wishes it, was as good as no marriage at all!"
"Then see to it, please," she had said steadily, avoiding his embrace.
There was horror in the look she cast upon him as she turned to leave the room; but he was too completely absorbed in his joy to see anything but the deliverance before him. He never even paused to wonder, to inquire the reason of the breach—and this, doubtless, had been well for Betty.
The connubial migration to Cassel, consent to which had been wrung from him at the expense of so much mental agony, now became a project which could not be soon enough, to please him, put into execution. For would it not mean the prompt legal annulment of Sidonia's most inopportune alliance? His original jealousy of Beau Cousin would seem to have been the one thing really murdered in the oubliette; yet, perhaps, somewhere deep down in his consciousness, there faintly stirred, beneath all the other reasons for relief, a satisfaction at the thought that Cousin Kielmansegg could never again be made welcome to the house that had sheltered his divorced wife.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE WAYS OF LITTLE COURTS
"Thinkest thou there is no tyranny but that
Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice—
The weakness and the wickedness of luxury—
Of sensual sloth—produce ten thousand tyrants."
BYRON.