"I have no pleasure but to escape from this herd."
Lucy saw that something had vexed him, and went hungry to bed, having been too much embarrassed by the unaccustomed attentions of splendid beings in livery to eat a good dinner.
There was nobody in the dining-room when Mr. and Mrs. Stobart went to breakfast at nine o'clock next morning. George, who had slept little, had been steeping himself in a grey fog in St. James's Park since eight; but Lucy had found it more difficult to dress herself, encumbered by the officious assistance of one of Antonia's women, than unaided in her own little bedchamber at Sheen.
"Her ladyship takes her chocolate in her dressing-room," the butler informed Mr. Stobart, "and desires that you and your lady will breakfast at your own hour," whereupon George and his wife seated themselves in the magnificent solitude of the dining-room, and ate moderately of a meal almost as abundant as the previous day's dinner, for what was less of substance upon the table was balanced by the cold joints, pies, and poultry of the "regalia," or sideboard display.
Lucy returned to her room directly after breakfast to pack her trunk, or rather to look on ruefully while her ladyship's woman packed it. Happily, all her garments were neat and in good condition, although of a quaker-like plainness.
George sat in the library, waiting till his wife should be ready for departure, and opened one book after another in a strange inability to fix his attention upon anything. How well he remembered that room, and his last interview with his cousin! This was the table on which Kilrush had struck his clenched fist, when he swore that not to secure a life of bliss would he marry beneath his rank. The mystery of his passionate words, his violent gesture, was clear enough now. To his pride of birth, to a foolish reverence for trivial things, he had sacrificed his earthly happiness. To the man who esteemed all things small in comparison with life eternal it seemed a paltry renunciation; yet there had been a kind of grandeur in it, a Roman stoicism that could suffer for an idea. And now that George Stobart knew the woman his cousin had loved, her charm, her beauty, he could better understand the pangs of unsatisfied love, the conflict between passion and pride.
There were hot-house flowers in a Nankin bowl on the table, and a fire of coal and logs burnt merrily in the wide basket grate. The room had a far more cheerful aspect on this November morning than on that sultry summer day, four years ago.
On a side table by the fireplace Stobart noticed a pile of books richly bound in crimson morocco—the newest edition of Voltaire.
"She reads and loves that arch mocker still, cherishes a writer who would laugh away her hope of heaven, her belief in the Physician of souls. Beset with temptation, the cynosure of profligates, she rejects the only rock that stands firm and high, a sure refuge when the waves of passion sweep over the drowning soul."