“There now, good night,” said Harcourt; “he's always the better for bitters, whether he gives or takes them.” And with a good-humored laugh he left the room.
Glencore's eyes followed him as he retired; and then, as they closed, an expression as of long-repressed suffering settled down on his features so marked that Upton hastily asked,—
“Are you ill, are you in pain, Glencore?”
“In pain? Yes,” said he, “these two hours back I have been suffering intensely; but there's no help for it! Must you really leave this to-morrow, Upton?”
“I must. This letter from the Foreign Office requires my immediate presence in London, with a very great likelihood of being obliged to start at once for the Continent.”
“And I had so much to say,—so many things to consult you on,” sighed the other.
“Are you equal to it now?” asked Upton.
“I must try, at all events. You shall learn my plan.” He was silent for some minutes, and sat with his head resting on his hand, in deep reflection. At last he said, “Has it ever occurred to you, Upton, that some incident of the past, some circumstance in itself insignificant, should rise up, as it were, in after life to suit an actual emergency, just as though fate had fashioned it for such a contingency?”
“I cannot say that I have experienced what you describe, if, indeed, I fully understand it.”
“I'll explain better by an instance. You know now,”—here his voice became slow, and the words fell with a marked distinctness,—“you know now what I intend by this woman. Well, just as if to make my plan more feasible, a circumstance intended for a very different object offers itself to my aid. When my uncle, Sir Miles Herrick, heard that I was about to marry a foreigner, he declared that he would never leave me a shilling of his fortune. I am not very sure that I cared much for the threat when it was uttered. My friends, however, thought differently; and though they did not attempt to dissuade me from my marriage, they suggested that I should try some means of overcoming this prejudice; at all events, that I should not hurry on the match without an effort to obtain his consent. I agreed,—not very willingly, indeed,—and so the matter remained. The circumstance was well known amongst my two or three most intimate friends, and constantly discussed by them. I need n't tell you that the tone in which such things are talked of as often partakes of levity as seriousness. They gave me all manner of absurd counsels, one more outrageously ridiculous than the other. At last, one day,—we were picnicking at Baia,—Old Clifford,—you remember that original who had the famous schooner-yacht 'The Breeze,'—well, he took me aside after dinner, and said, 'Glencore, I have it,—I have just hit upon the expedient. Your uncle and I were old chums at Christ Church fifty years ago. What if we were to tell him that you were going to marry a daughter of mine? I don't think he'd object. I 'm half certain he 'd not. I have been abroad these five-and-thirty years. Nobody in England knows much about me now. Old Herrick can't live forever; he is my senior by a good ten or twelve years; and if the delusion only lasts his time—'