"'Tis Italy I long for, sir."
"Paris for style and fashion is of more importance. We would move to Italy in the spring. Indeed, my love, you make no sacrifice in leaving Kilrush, for Goodwin assures me we should all be murdered here before Christmas."
"Mr. Goodwin hates the Irish. My heart goes out to my husband's people."
"You can engage your chairmen from this neighbourhood by-and-by, and even your running-footmen. There are fine-looking fellows among them that might take kindly to civilization; and they have admirable legs."
Having gained his point, Mr. Thornton did not rest till he carried his daughter back to London, where there was much to be done with the late lord's lawyers, who were surprised to discover a fine business capacity in this beautiful young woman whose marriage had so romantic a flavour.
"Whether she has dropped from the skies or risen from the gutter, she is the cleverest wench of her years I ever met with, as well as the handsomest," said the senior partner in the old-established firm of Hanfield and Bonham, conveyancers and attorneys. "The way in which she puts a question and grasps the particulars of her estate would do credit to a king's counsel."
Everything was settled before November, and good Mrs. Potter endowed with a pension which would enable her to live comfortably in the cottage at Putney without the labour of letting lodgings. Sophy was still to be Antonia's "woman;" but Mr. Thornton advised his daughter while in Paris to engage an accomplished Parisienne for the duties of the toilet.
"Sophy is well enough to fetch and carry for you," he said, "and as you have known her so long 'tis like enough you relish her company; but to dress your head and look after your gowns you need the skill and experience of a trained lady's-maid."
Thornton was enchanted at the idea of a winter in Paris. He had seen much of that gay city when he was a travelling tutor, and had loved all its works and ways. His sanguine mind had not considered the difference between twenty-five and the wrong side of fifty, and he hoped to taste all the pleasures of his youth with an unabated gusto. Alas! he found after a week in the Rue St. Honoré that the only pleasures which retained all their flavour—which had, indeed, gained by the passage of years—were the pleasures of the table. He could still enjoy a hand at faro or lansquenet; but he could no longer sit at cards half the night and grow more excited and intent as darkness drew nearer dawn. He could still admire a slim waist and a neat ankle, a mignonne frimousse under a black silk hood; but his heart beat no faster at the sight of joyous living beauty than at a picture by Greuze. In a word, he discovered that there is one thing wealth cannot buy for man or woman: the freshness of youth.
His daughter allowed him to draw upon her fortune with unquestioning liberality. It was a delight to her to think that he need toil no more, forgetting how much of their literary labours of late years had been performed by her, and how self-indulgent a life the easy-going Bill Thornton had led between Putney and St. Martin's Lane.