"I intended to live and die with you," said Roden.
"We don't have dukes; or at any rate we don't keep them. Like to like is a motto which I always find true. When I heard that you were living with a young lord, and were going to marry the daughter of a marquis, and had a title of your own which you could use as soon as you pleased, I knew that I should lose you." Then he added in a little whisper, "You couldn't get Crocker made a duke, could you,—or a Registrar of Records?"
Mr. Jerningham was full of smiles and bows, pervaded thoroughly by a feeling that he was bidding farewell to an august nobleman, though, for negative reasons, he was not to be allowed to gratify his tongue by naming the august name. Crocker was a little shy;—but he plucked up his courage at last. "I shall always know what I know, you know," he said, as he shook hands with the friend to whom he had been so much attached. Bobbin and Geraghty made no allusions to the title, but they, too, as they were severally greeted, were evidently under the influence of the nobility of their late brother clerk.
The marriage was duly solemnized when March came in the parish church of Trafford. There was nothing grand,—no even distant imitation of Lady Amaldina's glorious cavalcade. Hampstead did come down, and endeavoured for the occasion to fit himself for the joy of the day. His ship was ready for him, and he intended to start now in a week or two. As it happened that the House was not sitting, Lord Llwddythlw, at the instigation of his wife, was present. "One good turn deserves another," Lady Llwddythlw had said to him. And the darlings were there in all their glory, loud, beautiful, and unruly. Lady Kingsbury was of course present; but was too much in abeyance to be able to arouse even a sign of displeasure. Since that reference to the "stumbling blocks" had reached her husband, and since those fears with which Mr. Greenwood had filled her, she had been awed into quiescence.
The bridegroom was of course married under the simple name of George Roden,—and we must part with him under that name; but it is the belief of the present chronicler that the aristocratic element will prevail, and that the time will come soon in which the Registrar of State Records to the Foreign Office will be known in the purlieus of Downing Street as the Duca di Crinola.
Transcriber's note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Volume I, Chapter I, paragraph 9. Trollope refers here and elsewhere to Lord Hampstead as Lady Kingsbury's son-in-law, although he is actually her stepson. This is not a example of carelessness by the author but an archaic use of "son-in-law" which persisted into the mid-nineteenth century.
Volume I, Chapter XIX, paragraph 1. The astute reader might wonder how a two-day visit can last from Wednesday to the following Tuesday, as stated in the sentence: Lady Amaldina and he were both to arrive there on Wednesday, December 3rd, and remain till the Tuesday morning.