"Perhaps, after all, it will be
the best thing for us," said Mr. Green Walker, who felt himself to be
tolerably safe at Crewe Junction.
"I regard it as a most wicked attempt," said Harold Smith, who was
not equally secure in his own borough, and to whom the expense of
an election was disagreeable. "It is done in order that they may
get time to tide over the autumn. They won't gain ten votes by a
dissolution, and less than forty would hardly give them a majority.
But they have no sense of public duty--none whatever. Indeed, I don't
know who has."
"No, by Jove; that's just it. That's what my aunt Lady Hartletop
says; there is no sense of duty left in the world. By the by, what an
uncommon fool Dumbello is making himself!" And then the conversation
went off to that other topic.
Lord Lufton's joke against himself about the willow branches was all
very well, and nobody dreamed that his heart was sore in that matter.
The world was laughing at Lord Dumbello for what it chose to call
a foolish match, and Lord Lufton's friends talked to him about it
as though they had never suspected that he could have made an ass
of himself in the same direction; but, nevertheless, he was not
altogether contented. He by no means wished to marry Griselda; he
had declared to himself a dozen times since he had first suspected
his mother's manoeuvres that no consideration on earth should
induce him to do so; he had pronounced her to be cold, insipid, and
unattractive in spite of her beauty: and yet he felt almost angry
that Lord Dumbello should have been successful.
Pages:
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553