"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next drive may be in a different kind of vehicle—the last journey I shall ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age."
"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M.
Lenoble said you were better."
"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. That is not the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him, and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go."
"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help."
"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a quarter—the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from the workhouse."
"There is M. Lenoble."
"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my old age: he told me so to-day—a home fit for a gentleman—for the position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard—I saw it in his face. You—a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife—you must needs give yourself grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets, like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their backs, asking to be eaten?"
The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the present was the Horatio Paget of the past.
"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe that I have done my duty."
"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?"