Lord Kilgobbin | Page 7

had himself been struck by her good looks and her
stylish air, and learning that there could be no doubt about her fortune,
he lost no time in making his advances. Before the end of the first week

of their acquaintance he proposed. She referred him to her brother
before she could consent; and though, when Kostalergi inquired
amongst her English friends, none had ever heard of a Lord Kilgobbin,
the fact of his being Irish explained their ignorance, not to say that
Kearney's reply, being a positive refusal of consent, so fully satisfied
the Greek that it was 'a good thing,' he pressed his suit with a most
passionate ardour: threatened to kill himself if she persisted in rejecting
him, and so worked upon her heart by his devotion, or on her pride by
the thought of his position, that she yielded, and within three weeks
from the day they first met, she became the Princess of Delos.
When a Greek, holding any public employ, marries money, his
Government is usually prudent enough to promote him. It is a
recognition of the merit that others have discovered, and a wise
administration marches with the inventions of the age it lives in.
Kostalergi's chief was consequently recalled, suffered to fall back upon
his previous obscurity--he had been a commission-agent for a house in
the Greek trade--and the Prince of Delos gazetted as Minister
Plenipotentiary of Greece, with the first class of St. Salvador, in
recognition of his services to the state; no one being indiscreet enough
to add that the aforesaid services were comprised in marrying an
Irishwoman with a dowry of--to quote the Athenian Hemera--'three
hundred and fifty thousand drachmas.'
For a while--it was a very brief while--the romantic mind of the Irish
girl was raised to a sort of transport of enjoyment. Here was
everything--more than everything--her most glowing imagination had
ever conceived. Love, ambition, station all gratified, though, to be sure,
she had quarrelled with her brother, who had returned her last letters
unopened. Mathew, she thought, was too good-hearted to bear a long
grudge: he would see her happiness, he would hear what a devoted and
good husband her dear Spiridion had proved himself, and he would
forgive her at last.
Though, as was well known, the Greek envoy received but a very
moderate salary from his Government, and even that not paid with a
strict punctuality, the legation was maintained with a splendour that

rivalled, if it did not surpass, those of France, England, or Russia. The
Prince of Delos led the fashion in equipage, as did the Princess in toilet;
their dinners, their balls, their fêtes attracted the curiosity of even the
highest to witness them; and to such a degree of notoriety had the
Greek hospitality attained, that Naples at last admitted that without the
Palazzo Kostalergi there would be nothing to attract strangers to the
capital.
Play, so invariably excluded from the habits of an embassy, was carried
on at this legation to such an excess that the clubs were completely
deserted, and all the young men of gambling tastes flocked here each
night, sure to find lansquenet or faro, and for stakes which no public
table could possibly supply. It was not alone that this life of a gambler
estranged Kostalergi from his wife, but that the scandal of his
infidelities had reached her also, just at the time when some vague
glimmering suspicions of his utter worthlessness were breaking on her
mind. The birth of a little girl did not seem in the slightest degree to
renew the ties between them; on the contrary, the embarrassment of a
baby, and the cost it must entail, were the only considerations he would
entertain, and it was a constant question of his--uttered, too, with a tone
of sarcasm that cut her to the heart: 'Would not her brother--the Lord
Irlandais--like to have that baby? Would she not write and ask him?'
Unpleasant stories had long been rife about the play at the Greek
legation, when a young Russian secretary, of high family and influence,
lost an immense sum under circumstances which determined him to
refuse payment. Kostalergi, who had been the chief winner, refused
everything like inquiry or examination; in fact, he made investigation
impossible, for the cards, which the Russian had declared to be marked,
the Greek gathered up slowly from the table and threw into the fire,
pressing his foot upon them in the flames, and then calmly returning to
where the other stood, he struck him across the face with his open hand,
saying, as he did it: 'Here is another debt to repudiate, and before the
same witnesses also!'
The outrage did not admit of delay. The arrangements were made in an
instant, and within half an hour--merely time enough