When he had finished, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, pointing downwards, as if there was to be the site of his doom if the curse that he had called down upon himself should ever come to pass; and then, waiting no further converse, he hobbled away, melancholy, to his deserted stables.
Oh, my friend! my poor lame friend! it will avail nothing to tell thee of Liverpool and Manchester; of the glories of Glasgow, with her flourishing banks; of London, with its third millions of inhabitants; of the great things which commerce is doing for this nation of thine! What is commerce to thee, unless it be commerce in posting on that worn-out, all but useless great western turnpike-road?
There is nothing left for thee but to be carted away as rubbish--for thee and for many of us in these now prosperous days; oh, my melancholy, care-ridden friend! Courcy Castle was certainly a dull place to look at, and Frank, in his former visits, had found that the appearance did not belie the reality.

He had been but little there when the earl had been at Courcy; and as he had always felt from his childhood a peculiar distaste to the governance of his aunt the countess, this perhaps may have added to his feeling of dislike.

Now, however, the castle was to be fuller than he had ever before known it; the earl was to be at home; there was some talk of the Duke of Omnium coming for a day or two, though that seemed doubtful; there was some faint doubt of Lord Porlock; Mr Moffat, intent on the coming election--and also, let us hope, on his coming bliss--was to be one of the guests; and there was also to be the great Miss Dunstable.
Frank, however, found that those grandees were not expected quite immediately.

"I might go back to Greshamsbury for three or four days as she is not to be here," he said naively to his aunt, expressing, with tolerable perspicuity, his feeling, that he regarded his visit to Courcy Castle quite as a matter of business.

But the countess would hear of no such arrangement.