"
"I did not wonder that he should be in a hurry, but that you should
submit."
"I told you that I should do just what the wise people told me. I
asked papa, and he said that it would be better. So the lawyers were
driven out of their minds, and the milliners out of their bodies, and
the thing was done."
"Who was there at the marriage?"
"Oswald was not there. That I know is what you mean to ask. Papa said
that he might come if he pleased. Oswald stipulated that he should be
received as a son. Then my father spoke the hardest word that ever
fell from his mouth."
"What did he say?"
"I will not repeat it,--not altogether. But he said that Oswald was
not entitled to a son's treatment. He was very sore about my money,
because Robert was so generous as to his settlement. So the breach
between them is as wide as ever."
"And where is Chiltern now?" said Phineas.
"Down in Northamptonshire, staying at some inn from whence he hunts.
He tells me that he is quite alone,--that he never dines out, never
has any one to dine with him, that he hunts five or six days a
week,--and reads at night."
"That is not a bad sort of life."
"Not if the reading is any good. But I cannot bear that he should be
so solitary. And if he breaks down in it, then his companions will
not be fit for him.
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