What a grand power is sheer obstinacy! It has all the momentum of a
stone, or cannon-ball, or any other object set in motion without
inconvenient sensations to obstruct its course!
Algernon Dusautoy had decided on being married in August, and taking
his obedient pupil-wife through a course of lectures on the
continental galleries of art; and his determined singleness of aim
prevailed against the united objections and opposition of four
people, each of double or quadruple his wisdom and weight.
His first great advantage was, that, as Albinia surmised, Mr. Kendal
could not recal the finale of their interview, and having lost the
thread of the rigmarole, did not know to what his silence had been
supposed to assent. Next, Algernon conquered his uncle by
representing Lucy as on the road to an atrophy, and persuading him
that he should be much safer on the Continent with a wife than
without one: and though the two ladies were harder to deal with in
themselves, they were obliged to stand by the decision of their
lords. Above all, he made way by his sincere habit of taking for
granted whatever he wished, and by his magnanimous oblivion of
remonstrance and denial; so that every day one party or the other
found that assumed, as fixed in his favour, which had the day before
been most strenuously refused.
'If you consented to this, I thought I could not refuse that.'
'I consent! I told him it was the last thing I could think of.
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