"I will go alone; and if occasion offers I will make fresh acquaintances. I will begin another life which shall have no connection with the old one,—except that which will be continued by the thread of my own memory. No one shall be near me who may even think of her name when my own ways and manners are called in question." He went on to explain that he would set himself to work at once. The ship must be built, and the crew collected, and the stores prepared. He thought that in this way he might find employment for himself till the spring. In the spring, if all was ready, he would start. Till that time came he would live at Hendon Hall,—still alone. He so far relented, however, as to say that if his sister was married before he began his wanderings he would be present at her marriage.
Early in the course of the evening he had explained to Roden that his father and he had conjointly arranged to give Lady Frances £40,000 on her wedding. "Can that be necessary?" asked Roden.
"You must live; and as you have gone into a nest with the drones, you must live in some sort as the drones do."
"I hope I shall never be a drone."
"You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. You'll be expected to wear gloves and drink fine wine,—or, at any rate, to give it to your friends. Your wife will have to ride in a coach. If she don't people will point at her, and think she's a pauper, because she has a handle to her name. They talk of the upper ten thousand. It is as hard to get out from among them as it is to get in among them. Though you have been wonderfully stout about the Italian title, you'll find that it will stick to you." Then it was explained that the money, which was to be given, would in no wise interfere with the "darlings." Whatever was to be added to the fortune which would naturally have belonged to Lady Frances, would come not from her father but from her brother.
When Roden arrived at Castle Hautboy Lord Persiflage was there, though he remained but for a day. He was due to be with the Queen for a month,—a duty which was evidently much to his taste, though he affected to frown over it as a hardship. "I am sorry, Roden," he said, "that I should be obliged to leave you and everybody else;—but a Government hack, you know, has to be a Government hack." This was rather strong from a Secretary of State to a Clerk in the Post Office; but Roden had to let it pass lest he should give an opening to some remark on his own repudiated rank. "I shall be back before you are gone, I hope, and then perhaps we may arrange something." The only thing that Roden wished to arrange was a day for his own wedding, as to which, as far as he knew, Lord Persiflage could have nothing to say.
"I don't think you ought to be sorry," Lady Frances said to her lover as they were wandering about on the mountains. He had endeavoured to explain to her that this large income which was now promised to him rather impeded than assisted the scheme of life which he had suggested to himself.
"Not sorry,—but disappointed, if you know the difference."
"Not exactly."
"I had wanted to feel that I should earn my wife's bread."