Bear that situation in your mind. . . .
Providence dropped me a hundred pounds out of the sky. Properly
speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I reaped it, you may say,
from a relative's grave. Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and
you're poor; and you may be happy though you're poor; but where there are
many poor young women, lots of rich men are a terrible temptation to
them. That's my dear good wife speaking, and had she been spared to me
I never should have come back to Old England, and heart's delight and
heartache I should not have known. She was my backbone, she was my
breast-comforter too. Why did she stick to me? Because I had faith in
her when appearances were against her. But she never forgave this
country the hurt to her woman's pride. You'll have noticed a squarish
jaw in Netty. That's her mother. And I shall have to encounter it,
supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false. I'm blown on
somehow. I'll think of what course I'll take 'twixt now and morning.
Good night, young gentleman."
"Good night; sir," said Herbert, adding, "I will get information from the
Horse Guards; as for the people knowing it about here, you're not living
much in society--"
"It's not other people's feelings, it's my own," Van Diemen silenced him.
"I feel it, if it's in the wind; ever since Mart Tinman spoke the thing
out, I've felt on my skin cold and hot."
He flourished his lighted candle and went to bed, manifestly solaced by
the idea that he was the victim of his own feelings.
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