CHAPTER II
A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells,
and did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish. Addressing that
gentleman, to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of his
visit.
'Sir, and my very good friend,' he said, 'first let me beg you to abate
the severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of your
prohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it. I could
indeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectually
cured me. I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of no
interval for a man to make his vow to recover!'
'The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend,' Mr. Beamish remarked.
'Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter.
It is now'--the duke fetched a tender groan--'three years ago that I had
a caprice to marry a grandchild!'
'Of Adam's,' Mr. Beamish said cheerfully. 'There was no legitimate bar
to the union.'
'Unhappily none. Yet you are not to suppose I regret it. A most
admirable creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity! And the better known,
the more adored. There is the misfortune. At my season of life, when
the greater and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I am
mortal, the passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though one
would not be free of it for the renewal of youth. You are to understand,
that with a little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the most
innocent of angels.
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