'The young lady is not of age,' interposed my aunt.
'Eh? An infernal elopement, then. It's clear the girl's mad-head's cracked as a cocoa-nut bowled by a monkey, brains nowhere. Harry, you're not a greenhorn; you don't suspect you're called down there to stop it, do you? You jump plump into a furious lot of the girl's relatives; you might as well take a header into a leech-pond. Come! you're a man; think for yourself. Don't have this affair on your conscience, boy. I tell you, Harry Richmond, I'm against your going. You go against my will; you offend me, sir; you drag my name and blood into the mire. She's Welsh, is she? Those Welsh are addle-pated, every one. Poor girl!'
He threw a horrible tremour into his accent of pity.
My aunt expressed her view mildly, that I was sent for to help cure the young lady of her delusion.
'And take her himself!' cried the squire. 'Harry, you wouldn't go and do that? Why, the law, man, the law—the whole country ’d be up about it. You'll be stuck in a coloured caricature!'
He was really alarmed lest this should be one of the consequences of my going, and described some of the scourging caricatures of his day with an intense appreciation of their awfulness as engines of the moral sense of the public. I went nevertheless.
CHAPTER XXI.
A PROMENADE IN BATH
I found my father at his hotel, sitting with his friend Jorian DeWitt, whom I had met once before, and thought clever. He was an ex-captain of dragoons, a martyr to gout, and addicted to Burgundy, which necessitated his resorting to the waters, causing him, as he said, between his appetites and the penance he paid for them, to lead the life of a pendulum. My father was in a tempered gay mood, examining a couple of the county newspapers. One abused him virulently; he was supported by the other. After embracing me, he desired me to listen while he read out opposing sentences from the columns of these eminent journals:
'The person calling himself “Roy,” whose monstrously absurd pretensions are supposed to be embodied in this self-dubbed surname...'
'—The celebrated and courtly Mr. Richmond Roy, known no less by the fascination of his manners than by his romantic history...'