His heart leaps at the thought. Marry Leslie! He pictured her as a bride, drew delightful mental sketches of the time they would have. He would take her to the Continent for their wedding-trip, and then they'd settle down in a cottage. It would have to be a cottage.
"Love in a cottage!" Great goodness, how often he had laughed at the idea, how he had pitied the poor devils who had committed matrimony and gone out of the world to live in respectable poverty with cold mutton and cheap sherry for luncheon!
But cold mutton and cheap sherry didn't seem so bad with Leslie to share them.
He would have to give up a great deal of course, and live within the small income left of his mother's dower. What a fearful lot of money he had spent! He had never thought of it before, but now he went through a little mental arithmetic, and was quite startled. Would anybody believe that gloves, button-holes, stalls at the Diadem, cigars, dinners at Richmond, could run up to such a sum?
What would he give for some of the money now? He took out the duke's check and looked at it. It was a large sum; but he owed all that and a great deal more.
Then he put dull care behind him, and gave himself up to thinking of Leslie, her beautiful face ten times more lovely than when he had first seen it, how that her love for him was shining in her eyes. What eyes they were! Eleanor's were nice ones, Finetta's were handsome ones—but Leslie's!
And her voice, too! He could hear it now calling him, half-shyly, "Yorke!"
He reached town, and went to his rooms in Bury Street, and Fleming had got his London clothes, the well-fitting frock coat and flawless hat, all ready as if he had expected him. And Yorke's heart smote him as he thought that he would have to give that faithful servant notice.
Then he went out, still thinking of Leslie and the dark gray eyes which had grown moist and tender as she said "Good-by!" and then had come Finetta and Lady Eleanor!