e party should sleep at Carlisle. It
consisted of Lord George, the three ladies, the tall man servant,
Lord George's own man, and the two maids. Miss Macnulty, with the
heir and the nurses, were to remain at Portray for yet a while
longer. The iron box was again put into the carriage, and was used by
Lizzie as a footstool. This might have been very well, had there been
no necessity for changing their train. At Troon the porter behaved
well, and did not struggle much as he carried it from the carriage
on to the platform. But at Kilmarnock, where they met the train
from Glasgow, the big footman interfered again, and the scene was
performed under the eyes of a crowd of people. It seemed to Lizzie
that Lord George almost encouraged the struggling, as though he were
in league with the footman to annoy her. But there was no further
change between Kilmarnock and Carlisle, and they managed to make
themselves very comfortable. Lunch had been provided;--for Mrs.
Carbuncle was a woman who cared for such things, and Lord George also
liked a glass of champagne in the middle of the day. Lizzie professed
to be perfectly indifferent on such matters; but nevertheless she
enjoyed her lunch, and allowed Lord George to press upon her a
second, and perhaps a portion of a third glass of wine. Even Lucinda
was roused up from her general state of apathy, and permitted herself
to forget Sir Griffin for a while.

During this journey to Carlisle Lizzie Eustace almost made up her
mind that Lord George was the very Corsair she had been expecting
ever since she had mastered Lord Byron's great poem. He had a way
of doing things and of saying things, of proclaiming himself to be
master, and at the same time of making himself thoroughly agreeable
to his dependants,--and especially to the one dependant whom he most
honoured at the time,--which exactly suited Lizzie's ideas of what a
man should be. And then he possessed that utter indifference to all
conventions and laws, which is the great prerogative of Corsairs. He
had no reverence for aught divine or human,--which is a great thing.
The Queen and Parliament, the bench of bishops, and even the police,
were to him just so many fungi and parasites, and noxious vapours,
and false hypocrites. Such were the names by which he ventured to
call these bugbears of the world. It was so delightful to live with a
man who himself had a title of his own, but who could speak of dukes
and marquises as being quite desp