“Thousands!” says he with a harsh laugh.
“No—no. I meant not so. But a good woman, beautiful and kind, who might mend the sore place in your heart and give you at least some sort of a home? You’re thirty-two now—Four years older than me,—and even I don’t always feel young whatever way my looks may lie. You need a home. ’Tis a thing often done, Bolton. Yourself knows that I could run off a list this minute of half a hundred men that have done this and who thinks the worse?”
“I’ll ruin no woman’s life!” says he, with his dark sad eyes upon the ground.
“There’s many would think it promotion, not ruin.”
“What! To live with a soured disappointed man, fettered hand and foot, sick of life at times, distrustful of all women except his friend—the lovely Kitty? Unable to love any woman however he may amuse himself in passing. No Madam! What has any poor fool done that I should expose her to a life like this? I can be cheated with good humour, but I will not cheat. Say no more. I have my amusements like other men and I value them as little as the cards and horses and other follies that make our days and nights. You have a soul above them—I also. See, I’ll tell you a secret, I have a dream—a vision——”
“Of the inexpressible She?” cries Kitty, suspending her needle in air.
“Yes and no, Madam. An inexpressible She indeed—but one of the Muses. I think to write a book. I have a story in my head, and as yet no words to tell it, but some day——”
He paused, and again said bitterly:
“But what use? The town would laugh itself sick over the foolish nobleman who aspired to author. Rank, Madam, is a fetter as well as marriage. It galls me sometimes. What if I run off one day to Baltimore’s American colony, and renounce all this glitter for my cousin the heir? ’Twill be his indeed, for heir of my own I shall never have.”
“Never is a long day!” says her Grace, re-threading her needle. “ ’Tis my eternal aversion to hear you despond. ’Tis true your wife pinches you execrably. But ’tis true also that she may run off with her physician as Lady Selby did but last week.”