Windsor Magazine/Volume 30/The Cousin from Canada

THE COUSIN FROM CANADA.
By ROBERT BARR.
THE Earl of Dunfor sat in a deep, leathern chair in that huge apartment which was comfortable rather than luxurious—the smoking-room of the Cadenabian Club. He had slipped forward until his neck rested on the back of the armchair; his hat was negligently tipped over his nose, so that an observer could not be sure whether he was asleep or awake; his legs were stretched out to their fullest extent, and looked unnecessarily long; his hands were thrust deep in his trousers pockets—so deep that they seemed to be reaching for unattainable knees. The whole tense yet slouch attitude of his youthful lordship might have appeared to an onlooker the result of being awake during the small hours of the night before, while another might have said that Dunfor had been looking upon the wine when it was red, or, more probably, when it sparkled in the goblet.
As a matter of fact, this negligent posture indicated a deep and withering despair over a situation from which there was but one way out, so far as Cassalis, seventeenth Earl of Dunfor, could discover. He must marry the girl, and it was useless to flinch from the inevitable. Even Cassalis's cold-hearted s

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