The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope

sitting one evening with his cousin in the drawing-room in Queen Anne Street, waiting for Kate, who was to join him there before going to some party. I wonder whether Kate had had a hint from her brother to be late! At any rate, the two were together for an hour, and the talk had been all about himself. He had congratulated her on her engagement with Mr Grey, which had just become known to him, and had then spoken of his own last intended marriage.
    “I grieved for her,” he said, “greatly.”
    “I’m sure you did, George.”
    “Yes, I did; — for her, herself. Of course the world has given me credit for lamenting the loss of her money. But the truth is, that as regards both herself and her money, it is much better for me that we were never married.”
    “Do you mean even though she should have lived?”
    “Yes; — even had she lived.”
    “And why so? If you liked her, her money was surely no drawback.”
    “No; not if I had liked her.”
    “And did you not like her?”
    “No.”
    “Oh, George!”
    “I did not love her as a man should love his wife, if you mean that. As for my liking her, I did like her. I liked her very much.”
    “But you would have loved her?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t find that task of loving so very easy. It might have been that I should have learned to hate her.”
    “If so, it is better for you, and better for her, that she has gone.”
    “It is better. I am sure of it. And yet I grieve for her, and in thinking of her I almost feel as though I were guilty of her death.”
    “But she never suspected that you did not love her?”
    “Oh no. But she was not given to think much of such things. She took all that for granted. Poor girl! she is at rest now, and her money has gone, where it should go, among her own relatives.”
    “Yes; with such feelings as yours are about her, her money would have been a burden to you.”
    “I would not have taken it. I hope, at least, that I would not have taken it. Money is a sore temptation, especially to a poor man like me. It is well for me that the trial did not come in my way.”
    “But you are not such a very poor man now, are you, George? I thought your business was a good one.”
    “It is, and I have no right to be a poor man. But a man will be poor who does such mad things as I do. I had three or four thousand pounds clear, and I spent every shilling of it on the Chelsea election. Goodness knows whether I shall have a shilling at all when another chance comes round; but if I have I shall certainly spend it, and if I have not, I shall go in debt wherever I can raise a hundred pounds.”
    “I hope you will be successful at last.”
    “I feel sure that I shall. But, in the mean time, I cannot but know that my career is perfectly reckless. No woman ought to join her lot to mine unless she has within her courage to be as reckless as I am. You know what men do when they toss up for shillings?”
    “Yes, I suppose I do.”
    “I am tossing up every day of my life for every shilling that I have.”
    “Do you mean that you’re — gambling?”
    “No. I have given that up altogether. I used to gamble, but I never do that now, and never shall again. What I mean is this, — that I hold myself in readiness to risk everything at any moment, in order to gain any object that may serve my turn. I am always ready to lead a forlorn hope. That’s what I mean by tossing up every day for every shilling that I have.”
    Alice did not quite understand him, and perhaps he did not intend that she should. Perhaps his object was to mystify her imagination. She did not understand him, but I fear that she admired the kind of courage which he professed. And he had not only professed it: in that matter of the past election he had certainly practised it.
    In talking of beauty to his sister he had spoken of himself as being ugly. He would not generally have been called ugly by women, had not one side of his face been dreadfully scarred by a cicatrice, which