The pride of the position stuck to him;--but it irked him to feel that the sacrifices necessary to support that pride should fall on his own shoulders.
One thing was impossible to him.

He would not desert his Kate.

But he wished to have his Kate, as a thing apart.

If he could have given six months of each year to his Kate, living that yacht-life of which he had spoken, visiting those strange sunny places which his imagination had pictured to him, unshackled by conventionalities, beyond the sound of church bells, unimpeded by any considerations of family,--and then have migrated for the other six months to his earldom and his estates, to his hunting and perhaps to Parliament, leaving his Kate behind him, that would have been perfect.

And why not?
In the days which must come so soon, he would be his own master.