Mr. Lumley was by this time out of breath; but I could not have answered him to save my life. Like one of his own favourite house-spiders, I had been unconsciously spinning a web of delightful self-delusion, and here came the ruthless housemaid and swept it all away. How blind I must have been not to see it long ago! John might be very fond of pheasant-shooting, and I believe, when the game is plentiful and the thing well managed, that sport is fascinating enough; but people don't travel night and day into such a country as Wales, where there are no railroads, merely for the purpose of standing in a ride and knocking over a certain quantity of half-tame fowls. No, no; I ought to have seen it long ago. I had lost him now, and _now_ I knew his value when it was too late. Too late!--the knell that tolls over half the hopes and half the visions of life.
Too late!--the one bitter drop that poisons the whole cup of success. Too late! The golden fruit has long hung temptingly just above your grasp; you have laboured and striven and persevered, and you seize it at last and press it to your thirsty lips. Dust and ashes are your reward. The fruit is still the same, but it is too late: your desire for it is gone, or your power of enjoying it has failed you at the very moment of fruition; all that remains to you is the keen pang of disappointment, or, worse still, the apathy of disgust. I might have made John my slave a few weeks ago, and _now_--it was too provoking, and for that Welsh girl too! How I hated everything Welsh! Not Ancient Pistol, eating his enforced leek with its accompanying sauce, could have entertained a greater aversion for the Principality than I did at that moment.
Presently we were joined by Lady Scapegrace. She too had got something pleasant to say to me.
"I told you so, Kate," she observed, taking my arm, and leading me down one of those secluded walks--"I told you so all along. Your friend Captain Lovell proposed to Miss Molasses yesterday. Don't blame him too much, Kate; if he's not married within three weeks, he'll be in the Bench. Never mind how I know, but I _do_ know. I think he has behaved infamously to you, I confess; but take comfort, my dear--you are not the first by a good many."