The Marquis of Twickenham was a frost. The accidents of his position only made that fact the more notorious. Though he had a million in ready money, so huge a rent roll, lands and houses, decent folks would have none of him. It was not necessary for me to have become such a mangy knave if I desired to hobnob with the other sort. Not a clean-smelling soul came near. But I had visits from various representatives of the scum of the earth, who thought, even after fifteen years, that they had a pull on me. Lord! how I enlightened them. They all, with one accord, were struck by certain developments in his lordship's character.
But I hadn't done this thing to convert the riff-raff, nor with any intention of conveying to their benighted intelligence the elementary fact that there's no fool like a certain kind of knave. I wasn't happy.
Better Mary, and the kids, and Little Olive Street, a hundred thousand times than this. The joke was when Foster, who saw how the shoe pinched, suggested I should marry. I thanked him kindly, and asked him, since he had gone so far, if he'd go a little further and name a lady.
'For instance, have you a daughter of your own?'
'Then who has a daughter, or a sister, who you think would suit?'
'Meaning that the good women of my own degree would probably decline.'
'My lord, if you will allow me to say so, I think you take too pessimistic a view of your own position. At first I thought your point of view too optimistic. Now you appear to have gone to the other extreme.'
'Possibly not. You think me too pessimistic. Go on.'
'For one who has lived such a youth as your lordship it seems to me that one very desirable course is open.'
'Murder? To be of the slightest service it would have to be on a wholesale scale.'
'The course I would advise would be a new environment.'
'Let the past be past. Treat it as a closed book not to be reopened. Cut it adrift. And let your lordship seek fresh acquaintances, and fresh associations.'
'Without, I presume, making any reference to the contents of that Bluebeard's Chamber, and hoping to goodness that no one else will either.'
'There are, I am thankful to know, a large number of excellent people--excellent in every sense--who, whatever your past may have been, perceiving that it is your present intention to become a worthy member of society----'