CHAPTER VIII.
AT THE CASTLE.
The Haggards were heartily glad to leave town. The nasty scandal at the Pandemonium had been particularly irritating to Haggard personally. "Thank God," he said to himself, "the head of the family will probably never hear of it, unless Hetton should go out of his way to tell him; but I don't think he'd do that, he's not too particular himself, so it would be only a case of the pot calling the kettle, after all. It wasn't my fault. How could I know the young idiot was drugging himself with Chartreuse? I was too much interested in the game. Besides, some one was bound to have his money sooner or later; in fact," pondered the big man, "I've been rather ill-used, when I come to think of it. It's just my luck."
Just his luck! Yes, it was just his luck; just his luck to squander every farthing he possessed, and to be pitied by everybody when deported to do the best he could for himself. Just his luck to have what the Americans call a "high-old time" in Mexico, to hunt, to shoot, to enjoy the free wild life and absence of restraint in America. Just his luck to thoroughly clear out that wealthy gambler Don Emanuel Garcia, at poker; but then Haggard had all the qualifications for a poker player: he had the very luck which he grumbled at; good temper, for your thoroughly selfish man is far too fond of himself ever to be other than good-tempered; his "cheek" was unlimited, and in the big "flutter" with the Mexican, he had also had good cards. Given good luck, good temper, good "cheek," and good cards, a poker player is always invincible; so the Americans say, and they ought to know. Just his luck to become the possessor of a large sum of ready cash, when valuable land was going a-begging; just his luck at that precise moment to invest his easily-got winnings in the Mexican ranches and pastures, now worth ten times what they cost him. Just his luck to come home at the right moment to be accepted by the loveliest girl in Essex, a girl whose beauty had now even received the imprimatur of so fastidious a judge as his Royal Highness. Just his luck to be adored by his young wife, and looked upon by her as a king of men; to be clothed in purple and fine raiment, with the possibility of a peerage and the possession of immense wealth in the future. But he was quite right in carping at her, for fortune, like other fickle jades, is more likely to be true if steadily abused.
The two girls, his wife and her cousin, interrupted his soliloquy. The gaieties of the season had, if possible, rendered Georgie's beauty still more perfect. A succession of recherché entertainments, of concerts, balls and routs, and their attendant late hours and excitement, had given the young wife that almost indefinable stamp of delicate refinement for which we have no word, which is so seldom seen in England, and which the Italians call morbidezza.
But there was no morbidezza about Lucy; she, too, had shone, perhaps with a certain amount of reflected lustre; but she had shone, she had dazzled. When a very young woman is exceedingly good-looking, no prude, and prepared to go any lengths, being at the same time perfectly heartless, she is bound to be a success, and Lucy had been a great success. The Duc de la Houspignolle, the French Ambassador in London, that duke who was so much missed from the cotillions at the Tuileries of his imperial mistress, had pronounced Lucy pétillante. M. Barbiche, his second secretary, the best valseur of the season, had declared that Miss Warrender was the lightest stepper in town. "She make my heart to beat as it never beat before," said the young diplomatist to his chief; "but she is not distinguished like her cousin, she is a woman. I think her cousin is only a goddess after all. They are cold, these married English. I suppose it is the 'spleen.'"
"You'll get back your roses, old woman, at the Castle," said Haggard to his wife. "I think we've both had about enough of it," said he, as he poured out a brandy and soda. "I'm getting rather sick of seeing my wife twirled round like a teetotum by a succession of well-dressed idiots, while twenty more noodles round me are all saying how very charming she is, and consequently hating and envying me. It's all devilish fine for you girls, but I really think I shall enjoy a fortnight's dulness and the counting of possible chickens which may never be hatched at Walls End. Anyhow, one will get one's rubber."