those
various conversations within his own bosom, he was as loud in Lucy's
favour as he was in dispraise of Griselda.

"Your hero, then," I hear some well-balanced critic say, "is not
worth very much." In the first place Lord Lufton is not my hero; and
in the next place, a man may be very imperfect and yet worth a great
deal. A man may be as imperfect as Lord Lufton, and yet worthy of a
good mother and a good wife. If not, how many of us are unworthy of
the mothers and wives we have! It is my belief that few young men
settle themselves down to the work of the world, to the begetting of
children, and carving and paying and struggling and fretting for the
same, without having first been in love with four or five possible
mothers for them, and probably with two or three at the same time.
And yet these men are, as a rule, worthy of the excellent wives that
ultimately fall to their lot. In this way Lord Lufton had, to a
certain extent, been in love with Griselda. There had been one moment
in his life in which he would have offered her his hand, had not her
discretion been so excellent; and though that moment never returned,
still he suffered from some feeling akin to disappointment when he
learned that Griselda had been won and was to be worn. He was, then,
a dog in the manger, you will say. Well; and are we not all dogs in
the manger more or less actively? Is not that manger-doggishness one
of the most common phases of the human heart? But not the less was
Lord Lufton truly in love with Lucy Robarts. Had he fancied that any
Dumbello was carrying on a siege before that fortress, his vexation
would have manifested itself in a very different manner. He could
joke about Griselda Grantly with a frank face and a happy tone of
voice; but had he heard of any tidings of a similar import with
reference to Lucy, he would have been past all joking, and I much
doubt whether it would not even have affected his appetite. "Mother,"
he said to Lady Lufton, a day or two after the declaration of
Griselda's engagement, "I am going to Norway to fish."

"To Norway,--to fish!"

"Yes. We've got rather a nice party. Clontarf is going, and
Culpepper--"

"What--that horrid man!"

"He's an excellent hand at fishing; and Haddington Peebles,
and--and--there'll be six of us altogether; and we start this day
week."

"That's rather sudden, Ludovic."

"Yes, it is sudden; but we're sick of London. I should not care to
go so soon myself, but Clonta