’It is impossible you can think of going so far away!  Oh, Lucy! you should not have consented.’

‘I could not help it,’ said Lucy, sobbing.  ’I could not bear to contradict him, but please, mamma, let papa settle it for me.  I don’t want to go away; I told him I never would, I told him I had promised never to leave dear grandmamma; but you see he is so resolute, and he cannot bear to be without me.  Oh! do get him to put it off—­only if he is angry and goes to Italy without me, I know I shall die!’

’We will take care of you, my dear.  I am sure we shall be able to show him how impossible a gay wedding would be at present; and I do not think he can press it,’ said Albinia, moved into soothing the present distress, and relieved to find that there was no heartlessness on Lucy’s side.

What a grand power is sheer obstinacy!  It has all the momentum of a stone, or cannon-ball, or any other object set in motion without inconvenient sensations to obstruct its course!

Algernon Dusautoy had decided on being married in August, and taking his obedient pupil-wife through a course of lectures on the continental galleries of art; and his determined singleness of aim prevailed against the united objections and opposition of four people, each of double or quadruple his wisdom and weight.

His first great advantage was, that, as Albinia surmised, Mr. Kendal could not recal the finale of their interview, and having lost the thread of the rigmarole, did not know to what his silence had been supposed to assent.  Next, Algernon conquered his uncle by representing Lucy as on the road to an atrophy, and persuading him that he should be much safer on the Continent with a wife than without one:  and though the two ladies were harder to deal with in themselves, they were obliged to stand by the decision of their lords.  Above all, he made way by his sincere habit of taking for granted whatever he wished, and by his magnanimous oblivion of remonstrance and denial; so that every day one party or the other found that assumed, as fixed in his favour, which had the day before been most strenuously refused.

‘If you consented to this, I thought I could not refuse that.’

‘I consent!  I told him it was the last thing I could think of.’

’Well, I own I was surprised, but he told me you had readily come into his views.’

Such was the usual tenor of consultations between the authorities, until their marvel at themselves and each other came to a height when they found themselves preparing for the wedding on the very day originally chosen by Algernon.