[What Will He Do With It Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link bookWhat Will He Do With It Complete CHAPTER XIX 11/12
Shake hands, and Heaven speed you.
But, ah! now you have paid your moiety of the bill, have you enough left for the train ?" "Oh, yes, the fare is but a few shillings; but, to be sure, a fly to Fawley? I ought not to go on foot" (proudly); "and, too, supposing he affronts me, and I have to leave his house suddenly? May I borrow a sovereign? My mother will call and repay it." VANCE (magnificently).--"There it is, and not much more left in my purse,--that cursed Star and Garter! and those three pounds!" LIONEL (sighing).--"Which were so well spent! Before you sell that picture, do let me make a copy." VANCE.--"Better take a model of your own.
Village full of them; you could bargain with a porpoise for half the money which I was duped into squandering away on a chit! But don't look so grave; you may copy me if you can!" "Time to start, and must walk brisk, sir," said the jolly landlord, looking in. "Good-by, good-by." And so departed Lionel Haughton upon an emprise as momentous to that youth-errant as Perilous Bridge or Dragon's Cave could have been to knight-errant of old. "Before we decide on having done with each other, a short visit,"-- so ran the challenge from him who had everything to give unto him who had everything to gain.
And how did Lionel Haughton, the ambitious and aspiring, contemplate the venture in which success would admit him within the gates of the golden Carduel an equal in the lists with the sons of paladins, or throw him back to the arms of the widow who let a first floor in the back streets of Pimlico? Truth to say, as he strode musingly towards the station for starting, where the smoke-cloud now curled from the wheel-track of iron, truth to say, the anxious doubt which disturbed him was not that which his friends might have felt on his behalf.
In words, it would have shaped itself thus,--"Where is that poor little Sophy! and what will become of her--what ?" But when, launched on the journey, hurried on to its goal, the thought of the ordeal before him forced itself on his mind, he muttered inly to himself, "Done with each other; let it be as he pleases, so that I do not fawn on his pleasure.
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