Lady Evelyn — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

138 “A Marriage of Convenience.” week he paid his countess a ceremonious visit in her apartments, as a matter of domestic propriety; beyona that he rarely saw her, still less rarely thought of her. The one thing for which he lived now was political am- bition. The aim of his life was the advancement of his patty. Even his affection for his daughter was second- ary to that. He was proud of her and fond of-her. He wished her to marry the man of his choice, so that her. husband might plunge, soul and body, into the political vortex, and become.a leader in the land, and he himself the progenitor of a long line of brilliant statesmen. This was whv he looked so coolly on and saw her jilt his Grace of Amethyst. Politically, Amethyst was a brainless non- entity. ‘This was chiefly why, also, he so ardently desired her union with Vivian Trevannance. The lord of Royal Rest was brilliantly talented, clever, and subtle—of the stuff eminent politicians are made. With him for his son and successor, Lord Clontarf looked exultingly for- ward to a dazzling future and the highest honors of the kingdom. This windy November afternoon, as he sat alone brood- ing over his papers and his ambitious projects, he saw Trevannance join Lady Evelyn on the terrace. The ten- der passion was a very old memory now with Gerald, Earl of Clontarf. Women had never been his weakness. He looked upon the whole sex with cynical disdain. They were useful cools, sometimes, in the hands of clever “men. Woman's wit had been known ere now to further man’s bold ambition. But these were the exceptions— the Maria Theresas, the Queen Elizabeths, the Aspasias. As a whole, he regarded them with impatient, contemp- tuous disdain. But little as he knew how to fathom, with his political line and plummet, the sea of love, he could discern easily enough the devotion of Vivian Trevannance to his beau- tiful daughter. He would propose one of these days, and she would accept him, he thought, complacently; and then he would take Trevannance in hand, and send him forth into the arena of statecraft, the most talented young leader of the times. : _ Watching from his window this bleak afternoon, he saw the brief interview—saw its abrupt termimiticn-“sew: