LORD ALFRED.

Read this, if you doubt, and decide.

COUSIN JOHN (reading the letter).

'I hear from Bigorre you are there. I am told 'You are going to marry Miss Darcy. Of old —' What is this?

LORD ALFRED.

Read it on to the end, and you'll know.

COUSIN JOHN (continues reading).

"When we parted, your last words recorded a vow— 'What you will'

Hang it! this smells all over, I swear, Of adventures and violets. Was it your hair You promised a lock of?

LORD ALFRED.

Read on. You'll discern.

COUSIN JOHN (continues).

'Those letters I ask you, my lord, to return.'

Humph! . . . Letters!

than I guess'd.

...

the matter is worse

I have my misgivings

Miss Darcy perchance

'Will forego one brief page from the summer romance

Of her courtship.'

13

Egad! a romance, for my part, I'd forego every page of, and not break my heart!

Continue!

LORD ALFRED.

COUSIN JOHN (reading).

And spare you one day from your place

'At her feet?

...

Pray forgive me the passing grimace.

I wish you had MY place!

LORD ALFRED.

You ask me, just what I would rather ask you.

COUSIN JOHN.

You can't go.

COUSIN JOHN.

Must I? I decline it, though, flat.

In an hour the horses will be at the door,
And Matilda is now in her habit. Before
I have finish'd my breakfast, of course I receive
A message for dear Cousin John!"

leave

I must

At the jeweller's the bracelet which you broke last night;

I must call for the music. 'Dear Alfred is right: 'The black shawl looks best: will I change it? of

course

'I can just stop, in passing, to order the horse. 'Then Beau has the mumps, or St. Hubert knows what;

• Will I see the dog-doctor?' Hang Beau! I will

Oh, tell

Mrs. Darcy that . . . lend me your wits, Jack!...

the deuce!

Can you not stretch your genius to fit a friend's

use ?

Excuses are clothes which, when ask'd unawares,

Good Breeding to naked Necessity spares.
You must have a whole wardrobe, no doubt.

COUSIN JOHN.

My dear fellow,

Matilda is jealous, you know, as Othello.

You joke.

LORD ALFRED.

COUSIN JOHN.

I am serious. Why go to Serchon?

Don't ask me.

John.

LORD ALFRED.

I have not a choice, my dear

Besides, shall I own a strange sort of desire,
Before I extinguish for ever the fire

Of youth and romance, in whose shadowy light
Hope whisper'd her first fairy tales, to excite
The last spark, till it rise, and fade far in that dawn
Of my days where the twilights of life were first

drawn

By the rosy, reluctant auroras of Love:

In short, from the dead Past the grave-stone to

move;

Of the years long departed for ever to take
One last look, one final farewell; to awake
The Heroic of youth from the Hades of joy,
And once more be, though but for an hour, Jack —
a boy!

No! were it but

To make sure that the Past from the Future is

shut,

It were worth the step back. Do you think we

should live

With the living so lightly, and learn to survive That wild moment in which to the grave and its gloom

We consign'd our heart's best, if the doors of the

tomb

Were not lock'd with a key which Fate keeps for our sake?

If the dead could return, or the corpses awake?

COUSIN JOHN.

Nonsense! nonsense!

LORD ALFRed.

Not wholly. The man who gets up A fill❜d guest from the banquet, and drains off his

cup,

Sees the last lamp extinguish'd with cheerfulness,

goes

Well contented to bed, and enjoys its repose.
But he who hath supp'd at the tables of kings,
And yet starved in the sight of luxurious things;
Who hath watch'd the wine flow, by himself but
half tasted,

Heard the music, and yet miss'd the tune; who hath wasted

One part of life's grand possibilities; — friend,
That man will bear with him, be sure, to the end,
A blighted experience, a rancour within :
You may call it a virtue, I call it a sin.

COUSIN JOHN.

I see you remember that cynical story
Of the wicked old profligate fellow a hoary
Lothario, whom dying, the priest by his bed
(Knowing well the unprincipled life he had led,
And observing, with no small amount of surprise,
Resignation and calm in the old sinner's eyes)