held him, looking in his eyes. "Marry Lady Clara. You are worthy of a princess, my son. You can afford to be ambitious. The day may come when you can entertain the king."
"Now really, mother; I'll entertain the king with pleasure. He's a fine old chap. A little gay, you know, but quite the right sort. But Lady Clara is a step too high. She'd rub it into me some day that I'd married above my station, you know. Good night. Dream of the king, mother, but not of Lady Clara."
He sought his bed, and was soon soundly sleeping, content with the thought that next week he would sail for America and have Laura's coming out postponed. The family festivity was following too closely on the year of mourning, at any rate. The announcement that he already had a penniless American wife would naturally be a blow to them, all the more so if his mother was seriously cherishing such hopes as she had expressed; but he couldn't be a cad. His conscience smote him that his conduct already bordered closely on the caddish, but to be an out and out cad,—no, no.
When he awoke,—late, as he had said, but refreshed and jubilant,—the revelation he must make seemed to him less formidable, and he was minded to make it with no more delay as he tossed over his mail, while breakfasting in his room.
"Ah, what is this?" A letter in his wife's hand, bearing the Liverpool postmark! Was she on her way to him, then? "Good God!" He tore off the cover hastily, but sat a moment with bowed head, his hand over his eyes, before reading it.