Now what was going to happen? In this game which I was starting on, where did she come in?
If I'd laid myself out to play it on different lines from the first, she might have been the Marchioness of Twickenham. Jimmy, when his turn came, might have been a peer of the realm. And yet I didn't know. That would have been to have smirched her with my brush. If I ever was bowled out, which was a prospect I always had to face, they'd possibly try to make out, and would certainly think, that she'd been in the know with me. That would be as death to Mary.
The more I thought it over the more it seemed to me that that cock wouldn't fight. Apart from the fact that I meant, as the Marquis of Twickenham, to disavow all connection with Mr. Montagu Babbacombe, who had behaved so basely in deluding Mr. Howarth, it was obvious to me that it would still be the better policy to keep Mary out of my ditches, and without the knowledge of their existence. I always had lived, as all men do, and, I suppose, most women, a double, treble, or quadruple life, as circumstances required. For a little arrangement of that sort, in the future, I should be better placed than ever. I only had to remove the lady from Little Olive Street, and ask her to acquaint no one with her new address. She need never know me as anything but James. As the Marquis I should be entitled to my little eccentricities; his lordship always had indulged in them. And after an absence of fifteen years, no one could cavil if I still continued to disappear whenever the humour took me. Mr. and Mrs. Merrett would have a better time together than they had ever had before.
Since the Marquis of Twickenham was alive I thought it would be just as well to announce the fact in the grand style. So one morning, having arrived at the conclusion that it was about time that the announcement should be made, I paid up what was owing for those rooms in Clifford Street, Dalston, had my portmanteau put on the top of a cab, and having put myself inside, drove off to Twickenham House in St. James's Square. It was a good horse, and as it took me along as a horse ought to, from the tingle at the tips of my fingers, and the tickle at the balls of my feet, which made me feel I'd like to do something high-toned in the way of fancy dancing, I knew that I was going to enjoy myself.