"You break hearts as a pastime, grandfather. Poor woman. I'm sorry for her."
"As to that, it wasn't a love match entirely either. She was fairly cute. I rather hoodwinked the girl, perhaps; but all's fair in love. I--well--I pulled, the long bow, certainly."
"You disguised your true condition?"
"More than that. I hinted at twenty thousand a year and a park."
"You will kill me, grandpapa!"
"And I also told her I was a Viscount, Viscount Dolphin, heir to the titles and estates of the Duke of Cornwall."
"Good heavens! The Prince of Wales is the Duke of Cornwall!"
"Is he, begad? I'd forgotten that," said grandpapa, with a painful, cunning look on his face, "then she can go and worry 'em at Marlborough House. She won't get any information about me there. Don't you bother. We'll smash her if she makes a row. I'll say she's a Russian spy or something. Anyhow the simplest way will be for us to clear out of town altogether. I'm sick of the wickedness of London. Every second man you meet's a swindler or a rogue. Give me the peaceful country--a bottle of port at the squire's mahogany, the Field newspaper, a decent mount, and pleasant feminine society. That's good enough for me. I'm a hundred and six in three days' time; forty by the New Scheme. Yes, let me go and dwindle from forty to thirty amidst quiet, rural, agricultural surroundings."
I was delighted at this resolution. Grandpapa henceforth appeared as my son, made me wear a wedding-ring, and carried me away to a little honeysuckle-covered cottage near Salisbury.
CHAPTER XII.