“Certainly; it’s all you’re fit for,” replied his friend.
“Well, now to the point. I’ve not asked the girl yet, you know, but I don’t anticipate much difficulty there,” and the suitor smoothed his moustaches with a self-satisfied smile; “but, of course, the relations will make a bother about settlements, ‘love light as air,’ you know, and ‘human flies,’ and that; still we must provide for everything. Well, my lawyer informs me that I can’t settle anything during my brother’s lifetime, and he’s just a year older than myself—that’s what I call ‘a stopper.’ Now, Mount, you’re a sharp fellow—man of intellect, you know—’gad, I wouldn’t give a pin for a fellow without brains—what do you advise me to do?”
This was rather a poser, even for a gentleman of Lord Mount Helicon’s fertile resources; but he was never long at a loss, so as he took off his hat to a very pretty woman in a barouche, he replied, in his off-hand way, “Do? why, elope, my good fellow—run away with her—carry her off like a Sabine bride, only let her take all her clothes with her—save you a trousseau. Has she money?”
“Plenty, I fancy; from what I hear, I should think Miss Kettering can’t have less than——”
“The devil!” interrupted Lord Mount Helicon, in a tone that would have made most men start. “You don’t mean to say you want to marry Miss Kettering?”
“Well, I think she wants to marry me,” rejoined Lacquers, perfectly unmoved; “and you know one can’t refuse a lady; but it’s only fair to say she hasn’t actually asked me.”
Lord Mount Helicon felt for a moment intensely disgusted. Blanche’s beauty, and her simple, pretty manner, had touched him, as far as a man could be touched who had so many irons in the fire as his lordship, but the impulse for fun, the delight he experienced in quizzing his unsuspecting friend, soon overcame all other feelings, and he proceeded to egg Lacquers on, and assure him of his undoubted success, for the express purpose of amusing himself with the hussar’s method of courtship. “Besides,” thought he, “such a flat as this hanging about her will keep the other fellows off; and with a girl like her, I shall have little difficulty in ‘cutting him out.’” So he advised his friend to take time, and “allow her to get accustomed to his society, and gradually entangled in his fascinations; and then, my dear fellow,” he added, “when she finds she can’t live without you—when she has got used to your engaging ways, as she is to her poodle’s—when she can no more bear to be parted from you than from her bullfinch, then speak up like a man—bring all your science into play—come with a rush—and win cleverly at the finish!”
“Ay, that’s all very well,” mused the captain, “that’s just my idea; but in the meantime some fellow might cut me out. Now, there’s our Major—D’Orville, you know (’gad, how hot it is! let’s lean over the rails)—D’Orville seems to be always in Grosvenor Square. He’s an old fellow, too, but he has a deuced taking way with women. I don’t know what they see in him either. To be sure he was good-looking; but he’s a man of no education” (Lacquers himself could scarcely spell his own name), “and he must be forty, if he’s a day. Look at this fellow on the black cob. By Jove! it’s old Bounce, and talk of the devil—there’s D’Orville riding with Miss Kettering next the rails. This is a go.”
Now, the little guileless conversation we have here related was hardly more worthy of record than the hundred and one nothings by the interchange of which gentlemen of the present day veil their want of ideas from each other, save for the fact of its being overheard by ears into which it sank like molten lead, creating an effect far out of proportion to its own triviality. Frank Hardingstone was walking close behind the speakers, and unwittingly heard their whole dialogue, even to the concluding remark with which Lacquers, as he leaned his elbows on the rails, and passed the frequenters of “the Ride” in review before him, expressed his disapprobation of the terms on which Major D’Orville stood with Blanche Kettering. Poor Frank! How often a casual word, dropped perhaps in jest from a coxcomb’s lips, has power to wring an honest, manly heart to very agony! Our man of action had been endeavouring, ever since the Guyville ball, to drive Blanche’s image from his thoughts, with an energy worthy of better success than it obtained. He had busied himself at his country place with his farm and his library and his tenants and his poor, and had found it all in vain. The fact is, he was absurdly in love with Blanche—that was the long and short of it—and after months of self-restraint and self-denial and discomfort, he resolved to do what he had better have done at first, to go to London, mingle in society, and enter the lists for his lady-love on equal terms with his rivals. And this was the encouragement he received on his appearance in the metropolis. He had a great mind to go straight home again, so he resolved to call on the morrow in Grosvenor Square, to ascertain with his own eyes the utter hopelessness of his affection, and then—why, then make up his mind to the worst, and bear his destiny like a man, though the world would be a lonely world to him for evermore. Frank was still young, and would have repelled indignantly the consolation, had such been offered him, of brighter eyes and a happier future. No, at his age there is but one woman in the universe. Seared, callous hearts, that have sustained many a campaign, know better; but verily in this respect we hold that ignorance is bliss. Frank, too, leaned against the rails when Mount Helicon and Lacquers passed on, and gazed upon the sunshiny, gaudy scene around him with a wistful eye and an aching heart.