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Let her have this Degge! Let Marian have her chance of being happy, for a year or two...." But Lord Brudenel had paid very little attention. "I suppose so," he said, when the Duke had ended. "Oh, I suppose so. Jack, she was always kind and patient and gentle, you understand, but she used to shudder when I kissed her," he repeated, dully, "shudder, Jack."
When these two had gone the Duke flung out his hands in a comprehensive gesture of giving up the entire matter. "Well," said he, "you see how it is!" "I do," Lord Brudenel assented. "And if you intend to sit patient under it, I, at least, wear a sword. Confound it, Jack, do you suppose I am going to have promiscuous young men dropping out of the skies and embracing my daughter?"
And her parents did the sensible thing; but I think they killed her, Harry." "Killed her?" Lord Brudenel echoed, stupidly. Then on a sudden it was singular to see the glare in his eyes puffed out like a candle. "I killed her," he whispered; "why, I killed Alison, I!" He began to laugh. "Now that is amusing, because she was the one thing in the world I ever loved.
So, say we, let all sensible people marry for money, for then in any event you get what you marry for, a material benefit, a tangible good, which does no vanish when the first squabble, or perhaps the first gray hair, arrives. That is sensible; but women, Harry, are not always sensible " "Draw, you coward!" Lord Brudenel snarled at him.
"It appears to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable," said Lord Brudenel, with a change of tone; "yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a house-breaker ?"
From the vantage of the yew-hedge, "I would to Heaven I could think so, too," observed her father. The younger people had passed out of sight. But from the rear of the hedge came to the Duke and Lord Brudenel, staring blankly at each other across the paper-littered table, a sort of duet.
He sat staring at his sword lying there on the ground, as though it fascinated him. "Ah, but, old friend," the Duke cried, with his hand upon Lord Brudenel's shoulder, "forgive me! It was the only way." Lord Brudenel rose to his feet. "Oh, yes! why, yes, I forgive you, if that is any particular comfort to you. It scarcely seems of any importance, though.
For Lord Brudenel is really very good-natured," she argued, "and I did like him, and mother was so set upon it and he was rich and I honestly thought " "And now?" he said. "And now I know," she answered happily. They looked at each other for a little while. Then he took her hand, prepared in turn for self-denial.
Why, then remember, we are only hucksters, you and I, I will purchase it by a dishonorable action. I will show you a woman's letters, some letters I was going to burn romantically before I married Instead, I wish you to read them." He pushed the papers lying upon the table toward Lord Brudenel. Afterward Ormskirk turned away and stood looking over the ivy-covered balustrade into the gardens below.
"Harry Heleigh, Harry Heleigh!" he cried, as he strode across the terrace, and caught Lord Brudenel roughly by the shoulder, "are you not content to go to your grave without killing another woman? Oh, you dotard miser! you haberdasher! haven't I offered you money, an isn't money the only thing you are now capable of caring for? Give the girl to Degge, you huckster!"
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