India! In the first place, it was out of the world, and the ridicule attending his fiasco would not, in India, be so overwhelming; but at the same time, the world is a very small place, and news would travel faster than by telegraph to everybody who was anybody. In India the pay was double, which was a very great matter; but then, on the other hand, would not the expenses be greater too? Not, of course, in proportion to Cookesley Lodge and the hunters, which, alas! it was no use thinking any more about, but in proportion to the tiny _ménage_ which a young soldier with two hundred a-year, besides his pay, might venture on at home. And here, once more, Frank drew himself up, with a sensation of misery. Two hundred a-year and his pay barely sufficed for himself. To marry upon it would be simple madness, neither more nor less. And to wait seven years---- No! India was the only chance. It was the most usual thing in the world for a young fellow going out there to marry before he went;--therefore it must be practicable. There would be no society nor expensive habits,--as he supposed, in his ignorance,--and there was the chance of appointments, which was always worth taking into account. Frank contemplated the question all round, but it was a very dreary horizon which encircled him on every side. Poverty, the renunciation of most things which had made life agreeable--a struggle with care and the burdens of serious life,--instead of Cookesley and the hunters and terriers, and the country gentleman’s existence, for which he had evidently been created! There was so much good in the young man however, that though he could not but contrast the two existences which thus seemed to be set before him, he could not and did not contrast the two through whose hands their different threads must run. He made no comparison there. Nelly had been swept out of his sky the moment Alice appeared.
One thing was quite clear to him at this crisis of excitement and emotion, while the image of Alice still danced before his eyes with all her soft looks and words;--Cookesley and its delights,--meaning Nelly and her fortune,--were impossible,--quite impossible; altogether out of the question. He had been capable in the abstract of doing a duty to himself and the world, and securing,--in default of Laurie, for whom he always acknowledged the position would have been so much more suitable,--all those advantages which seemed to be held out to him in Nelly Rich’s hand. He liked her very well, and no doubt would have grown fond of her in time. That he could have done. His own interests, and the unanimous voice of his friends, and the appeal of the world in general, had all but decided the question. But Frank, notwithstanding the prudent and practical character of his understanding, was true and honest at bottom. And as soon as he discovered beyond question that he was in love with one woman, it became impossible for him to marry another, whatever the advantages might be which she brought with her. He was not capable of that. It was indispensable to him to be true, if not to Alice, who knew nothing about his sentiments, at least to Nelly. She had a right to it. He could have married her yesterday, but he could not deceive her to-day. What could he do? The clouds closed in upon him, swallowed him up, the more he thought it over. Do! Nothing but trudge forth to India, leaving his hopes of every description behind him,--a saddened and a solitary man. Neither one thing nor another, neither love nor wealth were practicable.