Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy.  Erelong he meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere.  He and Ralph and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical discussions on ladies’ hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from those of Cleopatra to the Borgia’s.  “Fair! fair! all of them fair!” sighs the melancholy curate, “as are those women formed for our perdition!  I think we have in this country what will match the Italian or the Greek.”  His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes before the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine’s hair is a dark luxuriance, dissents, and claims a noble share in the slaughter of men for dark-haired Wonders.  They have no mutual confidences, but they are singularly kind to each other, these three children of instinct.

CHAPTER XVI

Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not degrade his blood:  and over these names, secretly preserved on an open leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly dropped his eye.  There were names historic and names mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have called in his muster-roll; names that had been, clearly, tossed into the upper stratum of civilized lifer by a millwheel or a merchant-stool.  Against them the baronet had written M. or Po. or Pr.—­signifying, Money, Position, Principles, favouring the latter with special brackets.  The wisdom of a worldly man, which he could now and then adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round of visits, to consult and sound his solicitor and his physician thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the rats who know best the merits of a house, and on what sort of foundation it may be standing.

Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind.  The memory of his misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he had no wife and his son no mother.  He wandered on foot through the streets the first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and shows and bustle of the world from which he had divorced himself; feeling as destitute as the poorest vagrant.  He had almost forgotten how to find his way about, and came across his old mansion in his efforts to regain his hotel.  The windows were alight—­signs of merry life within.  He stared at it from the shadow of the opposite side.  It seemed to him he was a ghost gazing upon his living past.  And then the phantom which had stood there mocking while he felt as other men—­the phantom, now flesh and blood reality, seized and convulsed his heart, and filled its unforgiving crevices with bitter ironic venom.  He remembered by the time reflection returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the house at his disposal, probably giving a card-party, or something of the sort.  In the morning, too, he remembered that he had divorced the world to wed a System, and must be faithful to that exacting Spouse, who, now alone of things on earth, could fortify and recompense him.