Twining had entered into the project most eagerly. One of the most marked traits of his singular mind was not merely to enjoy his own pre-eminence in wealth over so many others, but to chuckle over all the possible mistakes which he had escaped and they had fallen into. To know that there was a speculation whose temptation he had resisted and which had engulfed all who engaged in it; to see the bank fail whose directorship he had refused, or the railroad smashed whose preference shares he had rejected,—this was an intense delight to him; and on such occasions was it that he slapped his lean legs most enthusiastically, and exclaimed, “What fun!” with the true zest of enjoyment.
To plant a man of O'Reilly's stamp in such a soil seemed, therefore, about the best practical joke he had ever heard of; and so he walked him over the villa, discoursing eloquently on all the advantages of the project,—the great social position it would confer, the place he would occupy in the country, the soundness of the investment, the certainty of securing great matches for the girls. What a view that window opened of the Splugen Alps! What a delicious spot, this little room, to sip one's claret of an autumn evening! Think of the dessert growing almost into the very dining-room, and your trout leaping within a yard of the breakfast-table! Austrians charmed to have you—make you a count—a Hof something or other, at once—give you a cross—great fun, eh?—Graf O'Reilly—sound admirably—do it, by all means!
While Twining's attack was being conducted in this fashion, Lord Lackington was not less industriously pursuing his plan of campaign elsewhere. He had sauntered with Molly into the garden and a little pavilion at the end of it, where the lake was seen in one of its most picturesque aspects. It was a well-known spot to him; he had passed many an evening on that low window-seat, half dreamingly forgetting himself in the peaceful scene, half consciously recalling pleasant nights at Brookes's and gay dinners at Carlton House. Here was it that he first grew hipped with matrimony, and so sated with its happiness that he actually began to long for any little disaster that might dash the smooth monotony of his life; and yet now, by one of those strange tricks memory plays us, he fancied that the moments he had once passed here had never been equalled in all his after-life.
“I'm certain, though you won't confess,” said she, after one of his most eloquent bursts of remembered enjoyment,—“I 'm certain you were very much in love those days.”
“An ideal passion, perhaps, a poetized vision of that bright creature who should, one day or other, sway this poor heart;” and he flattened the creases of his spotless white waistcoat; “but if you mean that I knew of any, had ever seen any, until now, this very moment—”
“Stop! remember your promise,” said she, laughing.
“But, charmante Molly, I 'm only mortal,” said he, with an air of such superb humility that made her at once remember it was a peer who said it.
“Mortals must keep their words,” said she, pertly. “The condition on which I consented to accept your companionship was—But I need n't remind you.”
“No, do not, dear Molly, for I shall be delighted to forget it. You are aware that no law ever obliged a man to do what was impossible; and that to exact any pledge from him to such an end is in itself an illegality. You little suspected, therefore, that it was you, not I, was the delinquent.”
“'All I know is, that you assured me you 'd not—you 'd not talk nonsense,” said she, blushing deeply, half angry, half ashamed.