"Indeed! Are you so vastly rich from other resources?"
"I have two hundred a year in India stock—my Uncle Matthew's bequest, and Lucy's good management promises to make this income enough for our home—a cottage near Richmond, where we have a garden and all the rustic things my Lucy loves."
"Having been reared in an alley near Moorfields! I wonder how long her love of the country will endure wet days and dark nights, and remoteness from shops and market? Oh, you are still in your honeymoon, sir, and your sky is all blue. You must wait a month or two before you will discover how much you are to be pitied, and that I was your true friend when I cautioned you against this madness. Good day to you, Mr. Stobart, and be good enough to forget that we have ever called each other cousins."
George rose, and bowed his farewell. The porter was in the hall ready to open the door for him. He looked round the great gloomy hall with a contemptuous smile as he passed out.
"John Wesley's house at the Foundery is more cheerful than this," he thought.
Kilrush sat with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped above his head in a melancholy silence.
"Which is the madman, he or I?" he asked himself.
The preparation for his continental journey occupied Lord Kilrush for a fortnight, during which time he waited with a passionate longing for some sign of relenting from Antonia; and in all those empty days his mind was torn by the strife between inclination and a stubborn resolve.
There were moments in which he asked himself why he did not make this woman his wife; that unfrocked priest, that tippling bookseller's hack, his father-in-law? Did anything in this world matter to a man so much as the joy of this present life, his instant happiness? In the hideous uncertainty of fate, were it not best to snatch the hour's gladness?