Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/17

 wonder Honoria Vipont fails to be appreciated. But Lady Selina has a maxim--the truth of which my experience attests--'the moment it comes to woman, the most sensible men are the'--"

"Oldest fools!" put in Darrell. "If Mark Antony made such a goose of himself for that painted harridan Cleopatra, what would he have done for a blooming Juliet! Youth and high spirit! Alas! why are these to be unsuitable companions for us, as we reach that climax in time and sorrow--when to the one we are grown the most indulgent, and of the other have the most need? Alban, that girl, if her heart were really won--her wild nature wisely mastered, gently guided--would make a true, prudent, loving, admirable wife--"

"Heavens!" cried Alban Morley.

"To such a husband," pursued Darrell, unheeding the ejaculation, "as--Lionel Haughton. What say you?" "Lionel--oh, I have no objection at all to that; but he's too young yet to think of marriage--a mere boy. Besides, if you yourself marry, Lionel could scarcely aspire to a girl of Miss Vyvyan's birth and fortune."

"Ho, not aspire! That boy at least shall not have to woo in vain from the want of fortune. The day I marry--if ever that day come--I settle on Lionel Haughton and his heirs five thousand a-year; and if, with gentle blood, youth, good looks, and a heart of gold, that fortune does not allow him to aspire to any girl whose hand he covets, I can double it, and still be rich enough to buy a superior companion in Honoria Vipont--"

MORLEY.--"Don't say buy--"

DARRELL.--"Ay, and still be young enough to catch a butterfly in Lady Adela--still be bold enough to chain a panther in Flora Vyvyan. Let the world know--your world in each nook of its gaudy auction-mart--that Lione: Haughton is no pauper cousin--no penniless fortune-hunter. I wish that world to be kind to him while he is yet young, and can enjoy it. Ah, Morley, Pleasure, like Punishment, hobbles after us, _pede claudo_. What would have delighted us yesterday does not catch us up till to-morrow, and yesterday's pleasure is not the morrow's. A pennyworth of sugar-plums would have made our eyes sparkle when we were scrawling pot-hooks at a preparatory school, but no one gave us sugar-plums then. Now every day at