DARRELL.—“I grant that the choice seems involved in perplexity. How can it be otherwise if one’s self is perplexed? And yet, Alban, I am serious; and I do not presume to be so exacting as my words have implied. I ask not fortune, nor rank beyond gentle blood, nor youth nor beauty nor accomplishments nor fashion, but I do ask one thing, and one thing only.”
COLONEL MORLEY.—“What is that? you have left nothing worth the having to ask for.”
DARRELL.—“Nothing! I have left all! I ask some one whom I can love; love better than all the world,—not the mariage de convenance, not the mariage de raison, but the mariage d’amour. All other marriage, with vows of love so solemn, with intimacy of commune so close,—all other marriage, in my eyes, is an acted falsehood, a varnished sin. Ah, if I had thought so always! But away regret and repentance! The future alone is now before me! Alban Morley! I would sign away all I have in the world (save the old house at Fawley), ay, and after signing, cut off to boot this right hand, could I but once fall in love; love, and be loved again, as any two of Heaven’s simplest human creatures may love each other while life is fresh! Strange! strange! look out into the world; mark the man of our years who shall be most courted, most adulated, or admired. Give him all the attributes of power, wealth, royalty, genius, fame. See all the younger generation bow before him with hope or awe: his word can make their fortune; at his smile a reputation dawns. Well; now let that man say to the young, ‘Room amongst yourselves: all that wins me this homage I would lay at the feet of Beauty. I enter the lists of love,’ and straightway his power vanishes, the poorest booby of twenty-four can jostle him aside; before, the object of reverence, he is now the butt of ridicule. The instant he asks right to win the heart of a woman, a boy whom in all else he could rule as a lackey cries, ‘Off, Graybeard, that realm at least is mine!’”
COLONEL MORLEY.—“This were but eloquent extravagance, even if your beard were gray. Men older than you, and with half your pretensions, even of outward form, have carried away hearts from boys like Adonis. Only choose well: that’s the difficulty; if it was not difficult, who would be a bachelor?”
DARRELL.—“Guide my choice. Pilot me to the haven.”
COLONEL MORLEY.—“Accepted! But you must remount a suitable establishment; reopen your way to the great world, and penetrate those sacred recesses where awaiting spinsters weave the fatal web. Leave all to me. Let Mills (I see you have him still) call on me to-morrow about your menage. You will give dinners, of course?”
DARRELL.—“Oh, of course; must I dine at them myself?”
Morley laughed softly, and took up his hat.
“So soon!” cried Darrell. “If I fatigue you already, what chance shall I have with new friends?”
“So soon! it is past eleven. And it is you who must be fatigued.”