was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had
rejected excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith,
freshness, and all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the
last fortnight from the facts of his existence! But fortnights such
as those are not to be wiped out,--not even with many sorrowful years
of tedious scrubbing.

And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments
which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale
were withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or
eight hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or
thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this
promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been
declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle? He
even said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before
Pratt had seen Mr Dale, he would have sent a different message to the
squire, and would have braved the anger of all the race of the de
Courcys. But in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so.
An earl, in his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that
his treason towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what
it would. It had been considered but little by him, when the project
first offered itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural
squire; but it was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess.

That house full of babies in St. John's Wood appeared to him now
under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his
room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such
an establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as
though he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of
his reach, he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he
considered what sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for
him. It was astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old,
how graceless, how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the
spectacles which he wore at the present moment.

During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the
younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He
was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion.
Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated
with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff
old gentleman. "My time