‘If we can’t have it in any other way we might at least marry it’, she said to her husband. ‘If Will got it in the end it would not be altogether lost.’ And this was how it happened that the gay Guardsman, cursing his luck, was sent down again to Watcham to pay a visit ‘at that hole of an old Hall, with that dreadful witch of an old woman,’ as he expressed it to his friends, in the first burst of the opening season, when everything had a special zest, and all was delightful, fresh, and new. Lord Will’s petition to be received so soon again was the first thing which revealed, to the Swinfords at least, that against Lady William there was now no further word to say.
‘Why don’t you come up to town?’ that young gentleman said at dinner, where Mrs. Swinford was not present. ‘What good can it do, Swinford, to bury yourself down here? Why, man alive! it’s not even the country; it’s not much better than a suburban villa. Fine place, I allow, and all that; curious old relic of grandpapa, don’t you know; but grandpapa is such a very recent relation, it is not much worth your while keeping this up.’
‘Thanks for your kindness,’ said Leo; ‘I may say, also, if that is not too much, that, had I not been here, it would, my dear Will, have been less convenient for you.’
‘Ah yes,’ said the young man, ‘less convenient, but much nicer, if the truth must be told; for to come down here a-fortune-hunting, don’t you know, is about the last thing in the world to please me.’
‘Oh, that is it!’ said Leo.
‘That’s it, to be sure,’ said the other. ‘A cousin, too; and it is not such a heavy price to put oneself up for. There’s half-a-dozen little Americans about town, or Australians, or whatever you like to call them, that are much better worth than that, if a man is to make a sacrifice of himself,’ said poor Lord Will.
‘But so long as your brother Pontoon is well and strong, the Americans don’t care much, do they, for a courtesy title?’
‘They’re getting awfully well up,’ confessed the other in a doleful tone, ‘got their peerage at their fingers’ ends, and care nothing for younger brothers, that’s the truth; and I’m sure I don’t want to marry any of them, nor any girl that I know of. I say, Swinford, you don’t know how well off you are, you lucky beggar, to be all there is of your family. I don’t mean to say that I’m not a bore to Pontoon, and all that, having to be provided for somehow—as much as he is to me, standing in my way.’
‘You think it would be a better arrangement having only one son?’
‘One child, that’s what I should recommend; like the French do,’ said this victim of English prejudices. He was not aware that his grammar was bad, and would not have cared had he known. There are some people who are above grammar, just as there are many who are below it. He sighed, and added, as if that was a dreadful fact that needed no comment: ‘There are four girls, and none of them married.’ A second sigh after he had made this announcement was something like a groan.