Theodore is not often seen in Oldchester now. The place is full of disagreeable associations for him. His political candidature was a failure: the Castlecombe influence on his behalf having been suddenly withdrawn after his lordship's marriage—greatly to the perplexity of his lordship's agent!
Nevertheless, Mr. Theodore Bransby by no means despairs of being able to write M.P. after his name at some future time. But if he ever does enter Parliament, it will probably be on what our Continental neighbours term "the extreme Left of the Chamber." For Theodore's political opinions have undergone a great revulsion, and he is now loftily contemptuous of the territorial aristocracy. In fact, he has been heard to support advanced theories of an almost Communistic complexion—stopping short, however, at the confiscation of other people's property, and maintaining the inviolability of Government Stock, of which he is a large holder. This sort of theory he finds to be quite compatible with the pursuit of fashionable society.
Although surrounded by every luxury which can minister to his personal comfort, he is not at all extravagant, and, indeed, saves more than half his annual income. This he does, not from positive avarice, but because he feels ever more and more strongly that money is power. Moreover, it will be well to have a handsome sum in hand whenever he marries: for he is still firmly minded to find a wife who will devote herself to taking care of him. Quite recently a paragraph has appeared in the Oldchester newspaper announcing the probability of a marriage between "our distinguished townsman, Mr. Theodore Bransby, whose career at the Bar is being watched with pride and pleasure in his native city, and the Lady Euphemia Haggistown, daughter of the Earl of Cauldkail, etc., etc., etc."
Lady Euphemia is a faded, timid, gentlewoman of some five or six-and-thirty years of age, with neither money nor beauty. She is sometimes haunted by the ghost of a romantic attachment to a penniless young navy officer lost at sea hard upon twenty years ago. But she has a soft, submissive desire to win the kindly regard of the remarkably stiff and cold young gentleman whom her father has decided she is to marry whenever he shall see fit to ask her. But poor Lady Effie does not succeed in softening the implacable correctness of her suitor's demeanour into anything very humanly sympathetic. Theodore is quite certain to make the most of his wife's title and social standing in dealing with the world in general, but it is to be feared that he may think fit to balance matters by tyrannizing over her in private with some rigour.
Mrs. Dormer-Smith often moralizes her family history, entangling herself in many metaphysical knots in the course of her cogitations as to what would have happened if something else had happened which never did happen!
Of course, if poor dear Augustus had not thrown himself away on Susan Dobbs things would have been very different. But even in spite of that, much might have been retrieved had he not made a second and still more shocking mésalliance with a strolling Italian singer; because, probably, if Augustus had come home after the death of his cousin Lucius in a proper spirit, and under not discreditable circumstances, and had conducted himself so as to conciliate his uncle, the old man would never have thought of marrying again. Constance Hadlow would never have become Viscountess Castlecombe, and no heir would have appeared to thrust Augustus from his inheritance.
There was an ever-recurring difficulty in fixing the exact point at which "poor dear Augustus's misfortunes" had become irretrievable. So that, although Pauline was on perfectly civil terms with the Castlecombes, and although Frederick was asked down to Combe Park for the shooting every season, and although my lady was happy to receive the Dormer-Smiths (with the least little indefinable touch of condescension) whenever she was at her house in town; yet, in her confidential moments, Pauline's intimate friends were never quite sure to which of the three momentous alliances she was alluding, when she talked plaintively of "That Unfortunate Marriage."