When the rumour of the marriage reached Lady
Glencora, Lady Glencora told her friend Madame Max Goesler that that young
man was going to blow his brains out. To her thinking the two actions were
equivalent. It is only when we read of such men that we feel that truth to
his sweetheart is the first duty of man. I am afraid that it is not the
advice which we give to our sons.
But it was the advice which Frank Greystock had most persistently given to
himself since he had first known Lucy Morris. Doubtless he had vacillated,
but on the balance of his convictions as to his own future conduct he had
been much nobler than his friends. He had never hesitated for a moment as
to the value of Lucy Morris. She was not beautiful. She had no wonderful
gifts of nature. There was nothing of a goddess about her. She was
absolutely penniless. She had never been what the world calls well-
dressed. And yet she had been everything to him. There had grown up a
sympathy between them quite as strong on his part as on hers, and he had
acknowledged it to himself. He had never doubted his own love, and when he
had been most near to convincing himself that in his peculiar position he
ought to marry his rich cousin because of her wealth, then, at those
moments, he had most strongly felt that to have Lucy Morris close to him
was the greatest charm in existence.
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