Not the least strange part of the whole procedure was that no one could tell where or how or with whom it originated. It was like one of those movements which are occasionally seen in political life, where, without the direct intervention of any precise agent, a sort of diffused atmosphere of public opinion suffices to produce results and effect changes that all are ready to disavow but to accept.
The mere fact of the pleasure the prospect afforded to Miss Betty prevented Kate from offering opposition to what she felt to be both bad in taste and ridiculous.
‘That old lady imagines, I believe, that I am to come down like a prétendu in a French vaudeville—dressed in a tail-coat, with a white tie and white gloves, and perhaps receive her benediction. She mistakes herself, she mistakes us. If there was a casket of uncouth old diamonds, or some marvellous old point lace to grace the occasion, we might play our parts with a certain decorous hypocrisy; but to be stared at through a double eye-glass by a snuffy old woman in black mittens, is more than one is called on to endure—eh, Lockwood?’
‘I don’t know. I think I’d go through it all gladly to have the occasion.’
‘Have a little patience, old fellow, it will all come right. My worthy relatives—for I suppose I can call them so now—are too shrewd people to refuse the offer of such a fellow as you. They have that native pride that demands a certain amount of etiquette and deference. They must not seem to rise too eagerly to the fly; but only give them time—give them time, Lockwood.’
‘Ay, but the waiting in this uncertainty is terrible to me.’
‘Let it be certainty, then, and for very little I’ll ensure you! Bear this in mind, my dear fellow, and you’ll see how little need there is for apprehension. You—and the men like you—snug fellows with comfortable estates and no mortgages, unhampered by ties and uninfluenced by connections, are a species of plant that is rare everywhere, but actually never grew at all in Ireland, where every one spent double his income, and seldom dared to move a step without a committee of relations. Old Kearney has gone through that fat volume of the gentry and squirearchy of England last night, and from Sir Simon de Lockwood, who was killed at Creçy, down to a certain major in the Carbineers, he knows you all.’
‘I’ll bet you a thousand they say No.’
‘I’ve not got a thousand to pay if I should lose, but I’ll lay a pony—two, if you like—that you are an accepted man this day—ay, before dinner.’
‘If I only thought so!’