Lord Cashel firmly believed, when he left the room,
that he had shown great tact in discovering Frank’s
mercenary schemes, and in laying them open before
Fanny; and that she had firmly and finally made up
her mind to have nothing more to do with him.
He had not long been re-seated in his customary chair
in the book-room, before he began to feel a certain
degree of horror at the young lord’s baseness,
and to think how worthily he had executed his duty
as a guardian, in saving Miss Wyndham from so sordid
a suitor. From thinking of his duties as a guardian,
his mind, not unnaturally, recurred to those which
were incumbent on him as a father, and here nothing
disturbed his serenity. It is true that, from
an appreciation of the lustre which would reflect back
upon himself from allowing his son to become a decidedly
fashionable young man, he had encouraged him in extravagance,
dissipation, and heartless worldliness; he had brought
him up to be supercilious, expensive, unprincipled,
and useless. But then, he was gentlemanlike, dignified,
and sought after; and now, the father reflected, with
satisfaction, that, if he could accomplish his well-conceived
scheme, he would pay his son’s debts with his
ward’s fortune, and, at the same time, tie him
down to some degree of propriety and decorum, by a
wife. Lord Kilcullen, when about to marry, would
be obliged to cashier his opera-dancers and their
expensive crews; and, though he might not leave the
turf altogether, when married he would gradually be
drawn out of turf society, and would doubtless become
a good steady family nobleman, like his father.
Why, he—Lord Cashel himself—wise,
prudent, and respectable as he was—example
as he knew himself to be to all peers, English, Irish,
and Scotch,—had had his horses, and his
indiscretions, when he was young. And then he
stroked the calves of his legs, and smiled grimly;
for the memory of his juvenile vices was pleasant to
him.
Lord Cashel thought, as he continued to reflect on
the matter, that Lord Ballindine was certainly a sordid
schemer; but that his son was a young man of whom
he had just reason to be proud, and who was worthy
of a wife in the shape of a hundred thousand pounds.
And then, he congratulated himself on being the most
anxious of guardians and the best of fathers; and,
with these comfortable reflections, the worthy peer
strutted off, through his ample doors, up his lofty
stairs, and away through his long corridors, to dress
for dinner. You might have heard his boots creaking
till he got inside his dressing-room, but you must
have owned that they did so with a most dignified cadence.
