u're a radical. I never will believe that kings
are so much worse than other people. As for Charles the First, he was
about the best man in history."

This was an old subject of dispute; but Lily on the present occasion
was allowed her own way,--as being an invalid.

CHAPTER XLV

Valentine's Day in London

The fourteenth of February in London was quite as black, and cold,
and as wintersome as it was at Allington, and was, perhaps, somewhat
more melancholy in its coldness. Nevertheless Lady Alexandrina de
Courcy looked as bright as bridal finery could make her, when she
got out of her carriage and walked into St. James's church at eleven
o'clock on that morning.

It had been finally arranged that the marriage should take place in
London. There were certainly many reasons which would have made a
marriage from Courcy Castle more convenient. The de Courcy family
were all assembled at their country family residence, and could
therefore have been present at the ceremony without cost or trouble.
The castle too was warm with the warmth of life, and the pleasantness
of home would have lent a grace to the departure of one of the
daughters of the house. The retainers and servants were there, and
something of the rich mellowness of a noble alliance might have been
felt, at any rate by Crosbie, at a marriage so celebrated. And it
must have been acknowledged, even by Lady de Courcy, that the house
in Portman Square was very cold--that a marriage from thence would
be cold,--that there could be no hope of attaching to it any honour
and glory, or of making it resound with fashionable _eclat_ in the
columns of the _Morning Post_. But then, had they been married in
the country, the earl would have been there; whereas there was no
probability of his travelling up to London for the purpose of being
present on such an occasion.

The earl was very terrible in these days, and Alexandrina, as she
became confidential in her communications with her future husband,
spoke of him as of an ogre, who could not by any means be avoided
in all the concerns of life, but whom one might shun now and
again by some subtle device and careful arrangement of favourable
circumstances. Crosbie had more than once taken upon himself to hint
that he did not specially regard the ogre, seeing that for the future
he could keep himself altogether apart from the malicious monster's
dominions.

"He will not come to me in our new home," he had said to his