The Duke's Children. Anthony Trollope

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СКАЧАТЬ was the Earl's son;—and the Earl lived in Belgrave Square. All these are little bits of the horse.

      "Certainly not. In the first place, I am here."

      "That makes a difference, certainly."

      "Of course it makes a difference. They would be wanting to make love to me."

      "No doubt. I should, I know."

      "And therefore it wouldn't do for you to live here; and then papa is living here himself. And then the permission never has been given. I suppose Frank did not go there at first without the Duke knowing it."

      "I daresay that I had mentioned it."

      "You might as well tell me all about it. We are cousins, you know." Frank Tregear, through his mother's family, was second cousin to Lady Mabel; as was also Lord Silverbridge, one of the Grexes having, at some remote period, married a Palliser. This is another bit of the horse.

      "The governor merely seemed to think that he would like to have his own house to himself—like other people. What an ass Tregear was to say anything to you about it."

      "I don't think he was an ass at all. Of course he had to tell us that he was changing his residence. He says that he is going to take a back bedroom somewhere near the Seven Dials."

      "He has got very nice rooms in Duke Street."

      "Have you seen him, then?"

      "Of course I have."

      "Poor fellow! I wish he had a little money; he is so nice. And now, Lord Silverbridge, do you mean to say that there is not something in the wind about Lady Mary?"

      "If there were I should not talk about it," said Lord Silverbridge.

      "You are a very innocent young gentleman."

      "And you are a very interesting young lady."

      "You ought to think me so, for I interest myself very much about you. Was the Duke very angry about your not standing for the county?"

      "He was vexed."

      "I do think it is so odd that a man should be expected to be this or that in politics because his father happened to be so before him! I don't understand how he should expect that you should remain with a party so utterly snobbish and down in the world as the Radicals. Everybody that is worth anything is leaving them."

      "He has not left them."

      "No, I don't suppose he could; but you have."

      "I never belonged to them, Lady Mab."

      "And never will, I hope. I always told papa that you would certainly be one of us." All this took place in the drawing-room of Lord Grex's house. There was no Lady Grex alive, but there lived with the Earl a certain elderly lady, reported to be in some distant way a cousin of the family, named Miss Cassewary, who, in the matter of looking after Lady Mab, did what was supposed to be absolutely necessary. She now entered the room with her bonnet on, having just returned from church. "What was the text?" asked Lady Mab at once.

      "If you had gone to church, as you ought to have done, my dear, you would have heard it."

      "But as I didn't?"

      "I don't think the text alone will do you any good."

      "And probably you forget it."

      "No, I don't, my dear. How do you do, Lord Silverbridge?"

      "He is a Conservative, Miss Cass."

      "Of course he is. I am quite sure that a young nobleman of so much taste and intellect would take the better side."

      "You forget that all you are saying is against my father and my family, Miss Cassewary."

      "I dare say it was different when your father was a young man. And your father, too, was, not very long since, at the head of a government which contained many Conservatives. I don't look upon your father as a Radical, though perhaps I should not be justified in calling him a Conservative."

      "Well; certainly not, I think."

      "But now it is necessary that all noblemen in England should rally to the defence of their order." Miss Cassewary was a great politician, and was one of those who are always foreseeing the ruin of their country. "My dear, I will go and take my bonnet off. Perhaps you will have tea when I come down."

      "Don't you go," said Lady Mabel, when Silverbridge got up to take his departure.

      "I always do when tea comes."

      "But you are going to dine here?"

      "Not that I know of. In the first place, nobody has asked me. In the second place, I am engaged. Thirdly, I don't care about having to talk politics to Miss Cass; and fourthly, I hate family dinners on Sunday."

      "In the first place, I ask you. Secondly, I know you were going to dine with Frank Tregear, at the club. Thirdly, I want you to talk to me, and not to Miss Cass. And fourthly, you are an uncivil young—young—young—I should say cub if I dared, to tell me that you don't like dining with me any day of the week."

      "Of course you know what I mean is, that I don't like troubling your father."

      "Leave that to me. I shall tell him you are coming, and Frank too. Of course you can bring him. Then he can talk to me when papa goes down to his club, and you can arrange your politics with Miss Cass." So it was settled, and at eight o'clock Lord Silverbridge reappeared in Belgrave Square with Frank Tregear.

      Earl Grex was a nobleman of very ancient family, the Grexes having held the parish of Grex, in Yorkshire, from some time long prior to the Conquest. In saying all this, I am, I know, allowing the horse to appear wholesale;—but I find that he cannot be kept out. I may as well go on to say that the present Earl was better known at Newmarket and the Beaufort—where he spent a large part of his life in playing whist—than in the House of Lords. He was a grey-haired, handsome, worn-out old man, who through a long life of pleasure had greatly impaired a fortune which, for an earl, had never been magnificent, and who now strove hard, but not always successfully, to remedy that evil by gambling. As he could no longer eat and drink as he had used to do, and as he cared no longer for the light that lies in a lady's eye, there was not much left to him in the world but cards and racing. Nevertheless he was a handsome old man, of polished manners, when he chose to use them; a staunch Conservative and much regarded by his party, for whom in his early life he had done some work in the House of Commons.

      "Silverbridge is all very well," he had said; "but I don't see why that young Tregear is to dine here every night of his life."

      "This is the second time since he has been up in town, papa."

      "He was here last week, I know."

      "Silverbridge wouldn't come without him."

      "That's d–––– nonsense," said the Earl. Miss Cassewary gave a start—not, we may presume, because she was shocked, for she could not be much shocked, having heard the same word from the same lips very often; but she thought it right always to enter a protest. Then the two young men were announced.

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