Beatrice was most emphatic in declaring that "a horrid little
island" had no charms for her, and that she would never set foot
in it. This declaration was rather annoying, because I had imagined
myself spending my honeymoon with Beatrice on the island; but life is
not all honeymoon, and I decided to have the island none the less.
In the first place, I was not to be married for a year. Mrs. Kennett
Hipgrave had insisted on this delay in order that we might be sure
that we knew our own hearts. And as I may say without unfairness
that Mrs. Hipgrave was to a considerable degree responsible for the
engagement--she asserted the fact herself with much pride--I thought
that she had a right to some voice in the date of the marriage.
Moreover, the postponement gave me exactly time to go over and settle
affairs in the island.
For I had bought it. It cost me seven thousand five hundred and fifty
pounds--rather a fancy price, but I could not haggle with the old
lord--half to be paid to the lord's bankers in London, and the second
half to him in Neopalia, when he delivered possession to me. The
Turkish government had sanctioned the sale, and I had agreed to pay
a hundred pounds yearly as tribute. This sum, I was entitled, in my
turn, to levy on the inhabitants.
"In fact, my dear lord," said old Mason to me when I called on him in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, "the whole affair is settled.
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