CHAPTER VI.
Dr. Staines and Mrs. Staines visited France, Switzerland, and the Rhine,
and passed a month of Elysium before they came to London to face their
real destiny and fight the battle of life.
And here, methinks, a reader of novels may perhaps cry out and say,
"What manner of man is this, who marries his hero and heroine, and then,
instead of leaving them happy for life, and at rest from his uneasy pen
and all their other troubles, flows coolly on with their adventures?"
To this I can only reply that the old English novel is no rule to me,
and life is; and I respectfully propose an experiment. Catch eight old
married people, four of each sex, and say unto them, "Sir," or "Madam,
did the more remarkable events of your life come to you before marriage
or after?" Most of them will say "after," and let that be my excuse for
treating the marriage of Christopher Staines and Rosa Lusignan as merely
one incident in their lives; an incident which, so far from ending their
story, led by degrees to more striking events than any that occurred to
them before they were man and wife.
They returned, then, from their honey tour, and Staines, who was
methodical and kept a diary, made the following entry therein:--
"We have now a life of endurance, and self-denial, and economy, before
us; we have to rent a house, and furnish it, and live in it, until
professional income shall flow in and make all things easy: and we have
two thousand five hundred pounds left to do it with.
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