His Grace — page 271: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HIS GRACE. 265 ing off, side by side, in the sunshine, having to all ap- pearance composed or forgotten their difference. Well, there was perhaps no great harm, if there was no great good, in their holding a farewell conversation. Inone sense the whole thing was a pity; still the pity of it might have been even more conspicuous if things had gone moderately straight with them, instead of im- moderately crooked—if he had not chanced to come across Miss St. George and she had not learnt to ap- praise him at a value considerably lower than that which she had placed upon him in the earlier stages of their intimacy. The old aristocratic notions of what constitutes a misalliance have, it is true, passed out of date; yet there remains a difference between espousing an American heiress, whose relations reside on the other side of the Atlantic, and making a duchess out ofa British orphan, whose father was engaged in com- merce and whose commercial undertakings ended dis- astrously into the bargain. I did not regard it as by any means proved that Nora would have been a happy woman, had the Fates permitted of her becoming Duch- ess of Hurstbourne. In some degree soothed by these philosophic cogi- tations, I returned to my figures; and if ever I was amazed in my life, I was amazed when Hurstbourne burst in upon me, towards evening ina state of insane jubilation, exclaiming : “Tt’s all right, oll man, and you may congratulate me if youlike. She’ll marry me, inspite of everything.” “Well, then,” I returned, “all I can say is that you may eliminate the one exception which you and I agreed to make from our estimate of the female sex at large the other day. How is a reasonable male creature to ac- Gomicboo t =» \ “S (E(@) m a)