He would have given all that he had in the world, three times told, if he could have blotted out that visit to Courcy Castle from the past facts of his existence.

CHAPTER XXV

Adolphus Crosbie Spends an Evening at His Club

Crosbie, as he was being driven from the castle to the nearest station, in a dog-cart hired from the hotel, could not keep himself from thinking of that other morning, not yet a fortnight past, on which he had left Allington; and as he thought of it he knew that he was a villain.  On this morning Alexandrina had not come out from the house to watch his departure, and catch the last glance of his receding figure.  As he had not started very early she had sat with him at the breakfast-table; but others also had sat there, and when he got up to go, she did no more than smile softly and give him her hand.  It had been already settled that he was to spend his Christmas at Courcy; as it had been also settled that he was to spend it at Allington.

Lady Amelia was, of all the family, the most affectionate to him, and perhaps of them all she was the one whose affection was worth the most.  She was not a woman endowed with a very high mind or with very noble feelings.  She had begun life trusting to the nobility of her blood for everything, and declaring somewhat loudly among her friends that her father’s rank and her mother’s birth imposed on her the duty of standing closely by her own order.  Nevertheless, at the age of thirty-three she had married her father’s man of business, under circumstances which were not altogether creditable to her.  But she had done her duty in her new sphere of life with some constancy and a fixed purpose; and now that her sister was going to marry, as she had done, a man much below herself in social standing, she was prepared to do her duty as a sister and a sister-in-law.

“We shall be up in town in November, and of course you’ll come to us at once.  Albert Villa, you know, in Hamilton Terrace, St. John’s Wood.  We dine at seven, and on Sundays at two; and you’ll always find a place.  Mind you come to us, and make yourself quite at home.  I do so hope you and Mortimer will get on well together.”

“I’m sure we shall,” said Crosbie.  But he had had higher hopes in marrying into this noble family than that of becoming intimate with Mortimer Gazebee.  What those hopes were he could hardly define to himself now that he had brought himself so near to the fruition of them.  Lady de Courcy had certainly promised to write to her first cousin who was Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to that secretaryship at the General Committee Office; but Crosbie, when he came to weigh in his mind what good might result to him from this, was disposed to think that his chance of obtaining the promotion would be quite as good without the interest of the Under-Secretary of State for India as with it.  Now that he belonged, as we may say, to this noble family, he could hardly discern what were the advantages which he had expected from this alliance.  He had said to himself that it would be much to have a countess for a mother-in-law; but now, even already, although the possession to which he had looked was not yet garnered, he was beginning to tell himself that the thing was not worth possessing.