'It is not a savoury subject, but is that not what happened? I am not aware that your lordship offered any contradiction at the time, although a signed statement of what occurred was posted on the notice board of the club in question. If your lordship will take my very serious advice, you will endeavour to live down the recollection of these things, and not, by legal or other action, drag them into the public eye.'
How I writhed when I left my counsellor's presence. This was indeed to be a whipping boy. Also this was the result of not being a student of the British peerage. If I had known what kind of an ornament to it his lordship really was, I rather fancy the Marquis would have stayed away. That I am a sinner, the saints know well. I'll not say that I'd be aught else if I had the choice. But this man appeared to have committed all the sins for which I've no stomach. He was, before all else, an unmanly man. Nothing mean, it seemed, he had left undone. In none of his misdoings had he shown a spark of courage. Nor, so far as I could learn, had he once remained to face the music. He had lied and cheated, in all sorts of dirty fashions, blubbered and run away.
That was a nice character for a man who ever from his youth upward had been a fighter to find himself possessed of. I did wish he had been a sinner on some other lines. There are offences which a man, having committed, may, as Foster suggested, live down. But none of them seemed to have come his lordship's way. He had done the unforgivable, and unforgettable, things--the things whose memory load a man with ignominy long after he has rotted in his grave. One might as well talk of flying as of living them down. Even though he attained to the years of Methuselah, to the last hour of his life he'd be a pariah. Perhaps, after all, his lordship had done the wisest thing in going away. It was I who had been a fool in coming back.
The Marquis of Twickenham was a frost. The accidents of his position only made that fact the more notorious. Though he had a million in ready money, so huge a rent roll, lands and houses, decent folks would have none of him. It was not necessary for me to have become such a mangy knave if I desired to hobnob with the other sort. Not a clean-smelling soul came near. But I had visits from various representatives of the scum of the earth, who thought, even after fifteen years, that they had a pull on me. Lord! how I enlightened them. They all, with one accord, were struck by certain developments in his lordship's character.
But I hadn't done this thing to convert the riff-raff, nor with any intention of conveying to their benighted intelligence the elementary fact that there's no fool like a certain kind of knave. I wasn't happy.
Better Mary, and the kids, and Little Olive Street, a hundred thousand times than this. The joke was when Foster, who saw how the shoe pinched, suggested I should marry. I thanked him kindly, and asked him, since he had gone so far, if he'd go a little further and name a lady.
'For instance, have you a daughter of your own?'
'My lord, I remain a bachelor.'
'Then who has a daughter, or a sister, who you think would suit?'
'Undoubtedly there are many such.'