She shook her head, with such a sad, sad doubt of it, that the tears came into my eyes. I gave her a last kiss—and hurried away.
My route was to Newhaven, and then across the Channel to Dieppe. I don't think I really knew how fond I had grown of Lucilla, until I lost sight of the rectory at the turn in the road to Brighton. My natural firmness deserted me; I felt torturing presentiments that some great misfortune would happen in my absence; I astonished myself—I, the widow of the Spartan Pratolungo!—by having a good cry, like any other woman.
Sooner or later, we susceptible people pay with the heartache for the privilege of loving. No matter: heartache or not, one must have something to love in this world as long as one lives in it. I have lived in it—never mind how many years—and I have got Lucilla. Before Lucilla I had the Doctor. Before the Doctor—ah, my friends, we won't look back beyond the Doctor!
CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH
Second Result of the Robbery
THE history of my proceedings in Paris can be dismissed in a very few words. It is only necessary to dwell in detail on one among the many particulars which connect themselves in my memory with the rescue of good Papa.
The affair, this time, assumed the gravest possible aspect. The venerable victim had gone the length of renewing his youth, in respect of his teeth, his hair, his complexion, and his figure (this last involving the purchase of a pair of stays). I declare I hardly knew him again, he was so outrageously and unnaturally young. The utmost stretch of my influence was exerted over him in vain. He embraced me with the most touching fervour; he expressed the noblest sentiments—but in the matter of his contemplated marriage, he was immovable. Life was only tolerable to him on one condition. The beloved object, or death—such was the programme of this volcanic old man.
To make the prospect more hopeless still, the beloved object proved, on this occasion, to be a bold enough woman to play her trump card at starting.
I give the jade her due. She assumed a perfectly unassailable attitude: we had her full permission to break off the match—if we could. "I refer you to your father. Pray understand that I don't wish to marry him, if his daughters object to it. He has only to say, 'Release me.' From that moment he is free." There was no contending against such a system of defence as this. We knew as well as she did that our fascinated parent would not say the word. Our one chance was to spend money in investigating the antecedent indiscretions of the lady's life, and to produce against her proof so indisputable that not even an old man's infatuation could say, This is a lie.