So it might be; but what if he had no child! The marriage amazing
everybody scarcely promised fruit, it was thought. Countess Livia, much
besought for her opinion, scouted the possibility. And Carinthia Jane
was proclaimed by John Rose Mackrell (to his dying day the poor gentleman
tried vainly to get the second syllable of his name accentuated) a young
woman who would outlive twice over the husband she had. He said of his
name, it was destined to pass him down a dead fish in the nose of
posterity, and would affect his best jokes; which something has done, or
the present generation has lost the sense of genuine humour.

Thanks to him, the talk of the Whitechapel Countess again sprang up,
merrily as ever; and after her having become, as he said, 'a desiccated
celebrity,' she outdid cabinet ministers and naughty wives for a living
morsel in the world's mouth. She was denounced by the patriotic party as
the cause of the earl's dalliance with Rome.

The earl, you are to know, was then coasting along the Mediterranean, on
board his beautiful schooner yacht, with his Lord Feltre, bound to make
an inspection of Syrian monasteries, and forget, if he could, the face of
all faces, another's possession by the law.

Those two lords, shut up together in a yacht, were advised by their
situation to be bosom friends, and they quarrelled violently, and were
reconciled, and they quarrelled again; they were explosive chemicals;
until the touch of dry land relieved them of what they really fancied the
spell of the Fiend. For their argumentative topic during confinement was
Woman, when it was not Theology; and even off a yacht, those are subjects
to kindle the utmost hatred of dissension, if men are not perfectly
concordant. They agreed upon land to banish any talk of Women or
Theology, where it would have been comparatively innocent; so they both