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"Of two profligate brothers I prefer the bolder sinner," said Fareham. "Bigotry and debauchery are an ill mixture." "I doubt if his Majesty frets for the want of an heir," remarked De Malfort. "He is not a family man." "He is not a one family man, Count," answered Fareham. Fareham and De Malfort were both away on this January evening.
"Then I am no nearer winning this dear hand than I was at Fareham House?" he said heartbrokenly, for he had built high hopes upon her kindness and willing companionship in that Arcadian valley. "I told you then that I should never marry. I have not changed my mind. I never can change. I am to be Henriette's spinster aunt." "And Fareham's spinster sister?" said Denzil. "I understand.
"But, indeed, Lady Sarah, it is we of the old faith who have most need to complain," said Lady Fareham, "since these wretches make us pay a double poll-tax; and all our foreign friends are being driven away for the same reason just because the foolish and the ignorant must needs put down the fire to the Catholics."
"We had best levant, Fareham," muttered Dangerfield, and drew away his principal, who went with him, silent and unresisting, having no more to do there; not to fly the country, however, but to walk quietly home to Fareham House, and to let himself in at the garden door, known to the household as his lordship's.
The coach was sent over to fetch Mistress Anne to Fareham, and the invalid was left, comfortably installed in her easy-chair by the parlour fire, with a little table by her side, holding a hand-bell, a divided orange, a glass of toast and water, and the Bible and Prayer-book, wherein lay her chief studies, together with a little needlework, which still amused her feeble hands.
"Oh, for a wedding or a christening one must have a crowd of fine people. It would go about that Lady Fareham was quite out of fashion if I were content to see only ploughmen and dairy-maids, and a petty gentleman or two with their ill-dressed wives, at my sister's marriage. London is the only decent place after Paris to live in; but the country is a peacefuller place in which to die."
"The exchequer Rowley draws upon should be as deep and wide as the river Pactolus; for he is a spendthrift by instinct," said Fareham. "Yet his largest expenditure can hardly equal his cousin's drain upon the revenue. Mansart is spending millions on Versailles, with his bastard Italian architecture, his bloated garlands and festoons, his stone lilies and pomegranates.
A lady to whom we had letters, who is half English, the Vicomtesse de Bellaise, was so good as to go to the convent at Poissy and discover for us from some of the suite where you were." "My uncle my dear uncle is he well?" "Quite well, when last we heard," said Charles. "That was at Florence, nearly a month ago." "And all at Fareham, are they well?"
"Well, there will be a better chance of seeing her at the Manor than in London," Fareham thought; "he cannot keep so close a watch upon her there as in the narrow space of town lodgings."
A violent access of gout was followed by an affection of the chest which proved fatal. His sick-room was crowded with courtiers and sycophants, and he was selling sinecures up to the day of his death. Fareham says his death-bed was like a money-changer's counter. He was passionately fond of hocca, the Italian game which he brought into fashion, and which ruined half the young men about the Court.
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