"They are worth ever so much, ain't they?" he said to Mrs. Carbuncle, when
she first gave him the information.
"Ten thousand pounds," said Mrs. Carbuncle, almost with awe.
"I don't believe a word of it," said Lord George.
"She says that they've been valued at that, since she's had them."
Lord George owned to himself that such a necklace was worth having, as
also, no doubt, were Portray Castle and the income arising from the
estate, even though they could be held in possession only for a single
life. Hitherto in his very checkered career he had escaped the trammels of
matrimony, and among his many modes of life had hardly even suggested to
himself the expediency of taking a wife with a fortune, and then settling
down for the future, if submissively, still comfortably. To say that he
had never looked forward to such a marriage as a possible future
arrangement would probably be incorrect. To men such as Lord George it is
too easy a result of a career to be altogether banished from the mind. But
no attempt had ever yet been made, nor had any special lady ever been so
far honoured in his thoughts as to be connected in them with any vague
ideas which he might have formed on the subject.
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