“Ah,” she exclaimed, with a touch of passion, “you have no ambition; you don’t even know what the word means! Look at the men in the Commons, who have worked themselves up from nothing to be powers in the land, whose influence is far-reaching, whose voices are heard at the ends of the earth. What would be your ambition, come now?” and she surveyed him with sparkling eyes.
“Certainly not to go into Parliament,” he answered, “and sit in the worst atmosphere in London for eight months of the year.”
“Well, at least it’s an electrical atmosphere, charged with vitality! And your ambition?” she persisted.
“To win the Grand National, riding my own horse, since you must know.”
“Pooh!” she exclaimed, snapping her fingers with a gesture of scorn, “and what a paltry aim!—the yells of a raving mob, a ‘para’ in the papers, and the chance of breaking your neck.”
“Better than breaking something else! I’m told that a political career, with its incessant work, crushing disappointments, worry, and fag, has broken many a fellow’s heart.”
“Heart! Nonsense; I don’t believe you have one. Well, now, as we are dining early, you had better see about your things from Ryder Street, and I will go and ’phone for stalls for The Giddy Girl.”
CHAPTER III
THE LAST WORD GOES BEGGING
Sir Richard Wynyard, aged fifty-six, was a little, grey, square-shouldered man, with a good heart and bad temper. His father, the notorious Sir Fulke, had put his two sons into the army, given them small and irregularly paid allowances, and then abandoned them to their own devices, whilst he squandered the family patrimony on horses and cards. When Richard, his heir, was quartered in Dublin, he fell desperately in love with a beautiful Irish girl; but, painfully aware of his own empty purse, he was too prudent to marry—unlike his reckless younger brother, who adventured a runaway match on a captain’s pay and debts. Major Wynyard made no sign, much as this silence cost him, and when, after his father’s death, he had at last a roof to offer—Wynyard, a stately old place, although somewhat dismantled—he sought his lady-love in haste, but, alas! he was months too late; she had already been summoned to another home,—the beautiful Rose O’Hara, his heart’s desire, was dead.
This was said to have been Sir Richard’s sole love-affair, and the one grief of his life. The late baronet’s reckless extravagance had shattered the fortunes of his descendants; his heir found himself compelled to let the land, close the Hall, sell off the horses, and take up his abode with his mother in the town house in Queen’s Gate; where he lived and how, was indifferent to him, he seemed to have no heart for anything. This was attributed to his supreme disgust at inheriting such a legacy of debt; but the real truth was that the loss of the beautiful Rose had temporarily stunned her lover.