The Duke, when he left his house without telling his household whither he was going, did send his address to—the top brick of the chimney. His note, which was delivered at Madame Goesler’s house late on the Sunday evening, was as follows:—“I am to have your answer on Monday. I shall be at Brighton. Send it by a private messenger to the Bedford Hotel there. I need not tell you with what expectation, with what hope, with what fear I shall await it.—O.” Poor old man! He had run through all the pleasures of life too quickly, and had not much left with which to amuse himself. At length he had set his eyes on a top brick, and being tired of everything else, wanted it very sorely. Poor old man! How should it do him any good, even if he got it? Madame Goesler, when she received the note, sat with it in her hand, thinking of his great want. “And he would be tired of his new plaything after a month,” she said to herself. But she had given herself to the next morning, and she would not make up her mind that night. She would sleep once more with the coronet of a duchess within her reach. She did do so; and woke in the morning with her mind absolutely in doubt. When she walked down to breakfast, all doubt was at an end. The time had come when it was necessary that she should resolve, and while her maid was brushing her hair for her she did make her resolution.
“What a thing it is to be a great lady,” said the maid, who may probably have reflected that the Duke of Omnium did not come here so often for nothing.
“What do you mean by that, Lotta?”
“The women I know, madame, talk so much of their countesses, and ladyships, and duchesses. I would never rest till I had a title in this country, if I were a lady—and rich and beautiful.”
“And can the countesses, and the ladyships, and the duchesses do as they please?”
“Ah, madame;—I know not that.”
“But I know. That will do, Lotta. Now leave me.” Then Madame Goesler had made up her mind; but I do not know whether that doubt as to having her own way had much to do with it. As the wife of an old man she would probably have had much of her own way. Immediately after breakfast she wrote her answer to the Duke, which was as follows:—
Park Lane, Monday.
My dear Duke of Omnium,
I find so great a difficulty in expressing myself to your Grace in a written letter, that since you left me I have never ceased to wish that I had been less nervous, less doubting, and less foolish when you were present with me here in my room. I might then have said in one word what will take so many awkward words to explain.
Great as is the honour you propose to confer on me, rich as is the gift you offer me, I cannot accept it. I cannot be your Grace’s wife. I may almost say that I knew it was so when you parted from me; but the surprise of the situation took away from me a part of my judgment, and made me unable to answer you as I should have done. My lord, the truth is, that I am not fit to be the wife of the Duke of Omnium. I should injure you; and though I should raise myself in name, I should injure myself in character. But you must not think, because I say this, that there is any reason why I should not be an honest man’s wife. There is none. I have nothing on my conscience which I could not tell you—or to another man; nothing that I need fear to tell to all the world. Indeed, my lord, there is nothing to tell but this—that I am not fitted by birth and position to be the wife of the Duke of Omnium. You would have to blush for me, and that no man shall ever have to do on my account.
I will own that I have been ambitious, too ambitious, and have been pleased to think that one so exalted as you are, one whose high position is so rife in the eyes of all men, should have
