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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's
+Troubles, and Other Stories, by Ouida
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories
+
+Author: Ouida
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2011 [EBook #37178]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Katherine Becker and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE,
+
+    LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES,
+
+    AND
+
+    OTHER STORIES.
+
+    BY "OUIDA,"
+
+    AUTHOR OF "IDALIA," "STRATHMORE," "CHANDOS,"
+    "GRANVILLE DE VIGNE," ETC.
+
+
+    PHILADELPHIA:
+    J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
+    1900.
+
+
+
+
+    CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE,
+
+    AND OTHER STORIES.
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT.
+
+
+The Publishers have the pleasure of offering to the many admirers of the
+writings of "Ouida," the present volume of Contributions, which have
+appeared from time to time in the leading Journals of Europe, and which
+have recently been collected and revised by the author, for publication
+in book-form.
+
+They have also in press, to be speedily published, another similar
+volume of tales, from the same pen, together with an unpublished romance
+entitled "UNDER TWO FLAGS."
+
+Our editions of Ouida's Works are published by express arrangement with
+the author; and any other editions that may appear in the American
+market will be issued in violation of the courtesies usually extended
+both to authors and publishers.
+
+PHILADELPHIA, MAY, 1867.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+  CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE; OR, THE STORY OF A BROIDERED SHIELD     11
+
+  LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS; OR, OUR MALTESE PEERAGE         37
+
+  LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES; OR, THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.--
+  _In Three Seasons_:--
+    Season the First.--The Eligible                                 84
+    Season the Second.--The Ogre                                   121
+    Season the Third.--The Climax                                  164
+
+  A STUDY À LA LOUIS QUINZE; OR, PENDANT TO A PASTEL BY LA TOUR    211
+    I. The First Morning                                           212
+    II. The Second Morning                                         218
+    III. Midnight                                                  227
+
+  "DEADLY DASH." A STORY TOLD ON THE OFF DAY.                      235
+
+  THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING; OR, COACHES AND COUSINSHIP           265
+
+  THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD; OR, A DOUBLED-DOWN LEAF IN A MAN'S
+  LIFE                                                             306
+
+  THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR; OR, NOT AT ALL A PROPER PERSON        339
+
+  A STUDY À LA LOUIS QUATORZE: PENDANT TO A PORTRAIT BY MIGNARD    368
+
+
+
+
+CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE;
+
+OR,
+
+THE STORY OF A BROIDERED SHIELD.
+
+
+Cecil Castlemaine was the beauty of her county and her line, the
+handsomest of all the handsome women that had graced her race, when she
+moved, a century and a half ago, down the stately staircase, and through
+the gilded and tapestried halls of Lilliesford. The Town had run mad
+after her, and her face levelled politics, and was cited as admiringly
+by the Whigs at St. James's as by the Tories at the Cocoa-tree, by the
+beaux and Mohocks at Garraway's as by the alumni at the Grecian, by the
+wits at Will's as by the fops at Ozinda's.
+
+Wherever she went, whether to the Haymarket or the Opera, to the 'Change
+for a fan or the palace for a state ball, to Drury Lane to see Pastoral
+Philips's dreary dilution of Racine, or to some fair chief of her
+faction for basset and ombre, she was surrounded by the best men of her
+time, and hated by Whig beauties with virulent wrath, for she was a Tory
+to the backbone, indeed a Jacobite at heart; worshipped Bolingbroke,
+detested Marlborough and Eugene, believed in all the horrors of the
+programme said to have been plotted by the Whigs for the anniversary
+show of 1711, and was thought to have prompted the satire on those fair
+politicians who are disguised as _Rosalinda_ and _Nigranilla_ in the
+81st paper of the _Spectator_.
+
+Cecil Castlemaine was the greatest beauty of her day, lovelier still at
+four-and-twenty than she had been at seventeen, unwedded, though the
+highest coronets in the land had been offered to her; far above the
+coquetteries and minauderies of her friends, far above imitation of the
+affectations of "Lady Betty Modley's skuttle," or need of practising the
+Fan exercise; haughty, peerless, radiant, unwon--nay, more--untouched;
+for the finest gentleman on the town could not flatter himself that he
+had ever stirred the slightest trace of interest in her, nor boast, as
+he stood in the inner circle at the Chocolate-house (unless, indeed, he
+lied more impudently than Tom Wharton himself), that he had ever been
+honored by a glance of encouragement from the Earl's daughter. She was
+too proud to cheapen herself with coquetry, too fastidious to care for
+her conquests over those who whispered to her through Nicolini's song,
+vied to have the privilege of carrying her fan, drove past her windows
+in Soho Square, crowded about her in St. James's Park, paid court even
+to her little spaniel Indamara, and, to catch but a glimpse of her
+brocaded train as it swept a ball-room floor, would leave even their
+play at the Groom Porter's, Mrs. Oldfield in the green-room, a night
+hunt with Mohun and their brother Mohocks, a circle of wits gathered
+"within the steam of the coffeepot" at Will's, a dinner at Halifax's, a
+supper at Bolingbroke's,--whatever, according to their several tastes,
+made their best entertainment and was hardest to quit.
+
+The highest suitors of the day sought her smile and sued for her hand;
+men left the Court and the Mall to join the Flanders army before the
+lines at Bouchain less for loyal love of England than hopeless love of
+Cecil Castlemaine. Her father vainly urged her not to fling away offers
+that all the women at St. James's envied her. She was untouched and
+unwon, and when her friends, the court beauties, the fine ladies, the
+coquettes of quality, rallied her on her coldness (envying her her
+conquests), she would smile her slight proud smile and bow her stately
+head. "Perhaps she was cold; she might be; they were personnable men? Oh
+yes! she had nothing to say against them. His Grace of Belamour?--A
+pretty wit, without doubt. Lord Millamont?--Diverting, but a coxcomb. He
+had beautiful hands; it was a pity he was always thinking of them! Sir
+Gage Rivers?--As obsequious a lover as the man in the 'Way of the
+World,' but she had heard he was very boastful and facetious at women
+over his chocolate at Ozinda's. The Earl of Argent?--A gallant soldier,
+surely, but whatever he might protest, no mistress would ever rival with
+him the dice at the Groom Porter's. Lord Philip Bellairs?--A proper
+gentleman; no fault in him; a bel esprit and an elegant courtier;
+pleased many, no doubt, but he did not please her overmuch. Perhaps her
+taste was too finical, or her character too cold, as they said. She
+preferred it should be so. When you were content it were folly to seek a
+change. For her part, she failed to comprehend how women could stoop to
+flutter their fans and choose their ribbons, and rack their tirewomen's
+brains for new pulvillios, and lappets, and devices, and practise their
+curtsy and recovery before their pier-glass, for no better aim or stake
+than to draw the glance and win the praise of men for whom they cared
+nothing. A woman who had the eloquence of beauty and a true pride should
+be above heed for such affectations, pleasure in such applause!"
+
+So she would put them all aside and turn the tables on her friends, and
+go on her own way, proud, peerless, Cecil Castlemaine, conquering and
+unconquered; and Steele must have had her name in his thoughts, and
+honored it heartily and sincerely, when he wrote one Tuesday, on the
+21st of October, under the domino of his Church Coquette, "I say I do
+honor to those who _can be coquettes and are not such_, but I despise
+all who would be so, and, in despair of arriving at it themselves, hate
+and vilify all those who can." A definition justly drawn by his keen,
+quick graver, though doubtless it only excited the ire of, and was
+entirely lost upon, those who read the paper over their dish of bohea,
+or over their toilette, while they shifted a patch for an hour before
+they could determine it, or regretted the loss of ten guineas at crimp.
+
+Cecil Castlemaine was the beauty of the Town: when she sat at Drury Lane
+on the Tory side of the house, the devoutest admirer of Oldfield or Mrs.
+Porter scarcely heard a word of the _Heroic Daughter_, or the _Amorous
+Widow_, and the "beau fullest of his own dear self" forgot his
+silver-fringed gloves, his medallion snuff-box, his knotted cravat, his
+clouded cane, the slaughter that he planned to do, from gazing at her
+where she sat as though she were reigning sovereign at St. James's, the
+Castlemaine diamond's flashing crescent-like above her brow. At church
+and court, at park and assembly, there were none who could eclipse that
+haughty gentlewoman; therefore her fond women friends who had caressed
+her so warmly and so gracefully, and pulled her to pieces behind her
+back, if they could, so eagerly over their dainty cups of tea in an
+afternoon visit, were glad, one and all, when on "Barnabybright,"
+Anglicè, the 22d (then the 11th) of June, the great Castlemaine chariot,
+with its three herons blazoned on its coroneted panels, its laced
+liveries and gilded harness, rolled over the heavy, ill-made roads down
+into the country in almost princely pomp, the peasants pouring out from
+the wayside cottages to stare at my lord's coach.
+
+It was said in the town that a portly divine, who wore his scarf as one
+of the chaplains to the Earl of Castlemaine, had prattled somewhat
+indiscreetly at Child's of his patron's politics; that certain cipher
+letters had passed the Channel enclosed in chocolate-cakes as soon as
+French goods were again imported after the peace of Utrecht; that
+gentlemen in high places were strongly suspected of mischievous designs
+against the tranquillity of the country and government; that the Earl
+had, among others, received a friendly hint from a relative in power to
+absent himself for a while from the court where he was not best trusted,
+and the town where an incautious word might be picked up and lead to
+Tower Hill, and amuse himself at his goodly castle of Lilliesford, where
+the red deer would not spy upon him, and the dark beech-woods would tell
+no tales. And the ladies of quality, her dear friends and sisters, were
+glad when they heard it as they punted at basset and fluttered their
+fans complacently. They would have the field for themselves, for a
+season, while Cecil Castlemaine was immured in her manor of Lilliesford;
+would be free of her beauty to eclipse them at the next birthday, be
+quit of their most dreaded rival, their most omnipotent leader of
+fashion; and they rejoiced at the whisper of the cipher letter, the
+damaging gossipry of the Whig coffee-houses, the bad repute into which
+my Lord Earl had grown at St. James's, at the misfortune of their
+friend, in a word, as human nature, masculine or feminine, will ever
+do--to its shame be it spoken--unless the _fomes peccati_ be more
+completely wrung out of it than it ever has been since the angel Gabriel
+performed that work of purification on the infant Mahomet.
+
+It was the June of the year '15, and the coming disaffection was
+seething and boiling secretly among the Tories; the impeachment of
+Ormond and Bolingbroke had strengthened the distaste to the new-come
+Hanoverian pack, their attainder had been the blast of air needed to
+excite the smouldering wood to flame, the gentlemen of that party in the
+South began to grow impatient of the intrusion of the distant German
+branch, to think lovingly of the old legitimate line, and to feel
+something of the chafing irritation of the gentlemen of the North, who
+were fretting like stag-hounds held in leash.
+
+Envoys passed to and fro between St. Germain, and Jacobite nobles,
+priests of the church that had fallen out of favor and was typified as
+the Scarlet Woman by a rival who, though successful, was still bitter,
+plotted with ecclesiastical relish in the task; letters were conveyed in
+rolls of innocent lace, plans were forwarded in frosted confections,
+messages were passed in invisible cipher that defied investigation. The
+times were dangerous; full of plot and counterplot, of risk and danger,
+of fomenting projects and hidden disaffection--times in which men,
+living habitually over mines, learned to like the uncertainty, and to
+think life flavorless without the chance of losing it any hour; and
+things being in this state, the Earl of Castlemaine deemed it prudent to
+take the counsel of his friend in power, and retire from London for a
+while, perhaps for the safety of his own person, perhaps for the
+advancement of his cause, either of which were easier insured at his
+seat in the western counties than amidst the Whigs of the capital.
+
+The castle of Lilliesford was bowered in the thick woods of the western
+counties, a giant pile built by Norman masons. Troops of deer herded
+under the gold-green beechen boughs, the sunlight glistened through the
+aisles of the trees, and quivered down on to the thick moss, and ferns,
+and tangled grass that grew under the park woodlands; the water-lilies
+clustered on the river, and the swans "floated double, swan and shadow,"
+under the leaves that swept into the water; then, when Cecil Castlemaine
+came down to share her father's retirement, as now, when her name and
+titles on the gold plate of a coffin that lies with others of her race
+in the mausoleum across the park, where winter snows and sumer sun-rays
+are alike to those who sleep within, is all that tells at Lilliesford
+of the loveliest woman of her time who once reigned there as mistress.
+
+The country was in its glad green midsummer beauty, and the
+musk-rosebuds bloomed in profuse luxuriance over the chill marble of the
+terraces, and scattered their delicate odorous petals in fragrant
+showers on the sward of the lawns, when Cecil Castlemaine came down to
+what she termed her exile. The morning was fair and cloudless, its
+sunbeams piercing through the darkest glades in the woodlands, the
+thickest shroud of the ivy, the deepest-hued pane of the mullioned
+windows, as she passed down the great staircase where lords and
+gentlewomen of her race gazed on her from the canvas of Lely and
+Jamesone, Bourdain and Vandyke, crossed the hall with her dainty step,
+so stately yet so light, and standing by the window of her own
+bower-room, was lured out on to the terrace overlooking the west side of
+the park.
+
+She made such a picture as Vandyke would have liked to paint, with her
+golden glow upon her, and the musk-roses clustering about her round the
+pilasters of marble--the white chill marble to which Belamour and many
+other of her lovers of the court and town had often likened her. Vandyke
+would have lingered lovingly on the hand that rested on her stag-hound's
+head, would have caught her air of court-like grace and dignity, would
+have painted with delighted fidelity her deep azure eyes, her proud
+brow, her delicate lips arched haughtily like a cupid's bow, would have
+picked out every fold of her sweeping train, every play of light on her
+silken skirts, every dainty tracery of her point-lace. Yet even painted
+by Sir Anthony, that perfect master of art and of elegance, though more
+finished it could have hardly been more faithful, more instinct with
+grace, and life, and dignity, than a sketch drawn of her shortly after
+that time by one who loved her well, which is still hanging in the
+gallery at Lilliesford, lighted up by the afternoon sun when it streams
+in through the western windows.
+
+Cecil Castlemaine stood on the terrace looking over the lawns and
+gardens through the opening vistas of meeting boughs and interlaced
+leaves to the woods and hills beyond, fused in a soft mist of green and
+purple, with her hand lying carelessly on her hound's broad head. She
+was a zealous Tory, a skilled politician, and her thoughts were busy
+with the hopes and fears, the chances for and against, of a cause that
+lay near her heart, but whose plans were yet immature, whose first blow
+was yet unstruck, and whose well-wishers were sanguine of a success they
+had not yet hazarded, though they hardly ventured to whisper to each
+other their previous designs and desires. Her thoughts were far away,
+and she hardly heeded the beauty round her, musing on schemes and
+projects dear to her party, that would imperil the Castlemaine coronet
+but would serve the only royal house the Castlemaine line had ever in
+their hearts acknowledged.
+
+She had regretted leaving the Town, moreover; a leader of the mode, a
+wit, a woman of the world, she missed her accustomed sphere; she was no
+pastoral Phyllis, no country-born Mistress Fiddy, to pass her time in
+provincial pleasures, in making cordial waters, in tending her
+beau-pots, in preserving her fallen rose-leaves, in inspecting the
+confections in the still-room; as little was she able, like many fine
+ladies when in similar exile, to while it away by scolding her
+tirewomen, and sorting a suit of ribbons, in ordering a set of gilded
+leather hangings from Chelsea for the state chambers, and yawning over
+chocolate in her bed till mid-day. She regretted leaving the Town, not
+for Belamour, nor Argent, nor any, of those who vainly hoped, as they
+glanced at the little mirror in the lids of their snuff-boxes, that they
+might have graven themselves, were it ever so faintly, in her thoughts;
+but for the wits, the pleasures, the choice clique, the accustomed
+circle to which she was so used, the courtly, brilliant town-life where
+she was wont to reign.
+
+So she stood on the terrace the first morning of her exile, her thoughts
+far away, with the loyal gentlemen of the North, and the banished court
+at St. Germain, the lids drooping proudly over her haughty eyes, and her
+lips half parted with a faint smile of triumph in the visions limned by
+ambition and imagination, while the wind softly stirred the rich lace of
+her bodice, and her fingers lay lightly, yet firmly, on the head of her
+stag-hound. She looked up at last as she heard the ring of a horse's
+hoofs, and saw a sorrel, covered with dust and foam, spurred up the
+avenue, which, rounding past the terrace, swept on to the front
+entrance; the sorrel looked wellnigh spent, and his rider somewhat worn
+and languid, as a man might do with justice who had been in boot and
+saddle twenty-four hours at the stretch, scarce stopping for a stoup of
+wine; but he lifted his hat, and bowed down to his saddle-bow as he
+passed her.
+
+"Was it the long-looked-for messenger with definite news from St.
+Germain?" wondered Lady Cecil, as her hound gave out a deep-tongued bay
+of anger at the stranger. She went back into her bower-room, and toyed
+absently with her flowered handkerchief, broidering a stalk to a
+violet-leaf, and wondering what additional hope the horseman might have
+brought to strengthen the good Cause, till her servants brought word
+that his Lordship prayed the pleasure of her presence in the
+octagon-room. Whereat she rose, and swept through the long corridors,
+entered the octagon-room, the sunbeams gathering about her rich dress as
+they passed through the stained-glass oriels, and saluted the new-comer,
+when her father presented him to her as their trusty and welcome friend
+and envoy, Sir Fulke Ravensworth, with her careless dignity and queenly
+grace, that nameless air which was too highly bred to be condescension,
+but markedly and proudly repelled familiarity, and signed a pale of
+distance beyond which none must intrude.
+
+The new-comer was a tall and handsome man, of noble presence, bronzed by
+foreign suns, pale and jaded just now with hard riding, while his dark
+silver-laced suit was splashed and covered with dust; but as he bowed
+low to her, critical Cecil Castlemaine saw that not Belamour himself
+could have better grace, not my Lord Millamont courtlier mien nor whiter
+hands, and listened with gracious air to what her father unfolded to her
+of his mission from St. Germain, whither he had come, at great personal
+risk, in many disguises, and at breathless speed, to place in their
+hands a precious letter in cipher from James Stuart to his well-beloved
+and loyal subject Herbert George, Earl of Castlemaine. A letter spoken
+of with closed doors and in low whispers, loyal as was the household,
+supreme as the Earl ruled over his domains of Lilliesford, for these
+were times when men mistrusted those of their own blood, and when the
+very figure on the tapestry seemed instinct with life to spy and
+betray--when they almost feared the silk that tied a missive should
+babble of its contents, and the hound that slept beside them should read
+and tell their thoughts.
+
+To leave Lilliesford would be danger to the Envoy and danger to the
+Cause; to stay as guest was to disarm suspicion. The messenger who had
+brought such priceless news must rest within the shelter of his roof;
+too much were risked by returning to the French coast yet awhile, or
+even by joining Mar or Derwentwater, so the Earl enforced his will upon
+the Envoy, and the Envoy thanked him and accepted.
+
+Perchance the beauty, whose eyes he had seen lighten and proud brow
+flush as she read the royal greeting and injunction, made a sojourn near
+her presence not distasteful; perchance he cared little where he stayed
+till the dawning time of action and of rising should arrive, when he
+should take the field and fight till life or death for the "White Rose
+and the long heads of hair." He was a soldier of fortune, a poor
+gentleman with no patrimony but his name, no chance of distinction save
+by his sword; sworn to a cause whose star was set forever; for many
+years his life had been of changing adventure and shifting chances, now
+fighting with Berwick at Almanza, now risking his life in some delicate
+and dangerous errand for James Stuart that could not have been trusted
+so well to any other officer about St. Germain; gallant to rashness, yet
+with much of the acumen of the diplomatist, he was invaluable to his
+Court and Cause, but, Stuart-like, men-like, they hastened to employ,
+but ever forgot to reward!
+
+Lady Cecil missed her town-life, and did not over-favor her exile in the
+western counties. To note down on her Mather's tablets the drowsy
+homilies droned out by the chaplain on a Sabbath noon, to play at
+crambo, to talk with her tirewomen of new washes for the skin, to pass
+her hours away in knotting?--she, whom Steele might have writ of when he
+drew his character of _Eudoxia_, could wile her exile with none of these
+inanities; neither could she consort with gentry who seemed to her
+little better than the boors of a country wake, who had never heard of
+Mr. Spectator and knew nothing of Mr. Cowley, countrywomen whose
+ambition was in their cowslip wines, fox-hunters more ignorant and
+uncouth than the dumb brutes they followed.
+
+Who was there for miles around with whom she could stoop to associate,
+with whom she cared to exchange a word? Madam from the vicarage, in her
+grogram, learned in syrups, salves, and possets? Country Lady
+Bountifuls, with gossip of the village and the poultry-yard? Provincial
+Peeresses, who had never been to London since Queen Anne's coronation? A
+squirearchy, who knew of no music save the concert of their stop-hounds,
+no court save the court of the county assize, no literature unless by
+miracle 't were Tarleton's Jests? None such as these could cross the
+inlaid oak parquet of Lilliesford, and be ushered into the presence of
+Cecil Castlemaine.
+
+So the presence of the Chevalier's messenger was not altogether
+unwelcome and distasteful to her. She saw him but little, merely
+conversing at table with him with that distant and dignified courtesy
+which marked her out from the light, free, inconsequent manners in vogue
+with other women of quality of her time; the air which had chilled half
+the softest things even on Belamour's lips, and kept the vainest coxcomb
+hesitating and abashed.
+
+But by degrees she observed that the Envoy was a man who had lived in
+many countries and in many courts, was well versed in the tongues of
+France and Italy and Spain--in their belles-lettres too, moreover--and
+had served his apprenticeship to good company in the salons of
+Versailles, in the audience-room of the Vatican, at the receptions of
+the Duchess du Maine, and with the banished family at St. Germain. He
+spoke with a high and sanguine spirit of the troublous times approaching
+and the beloved Cause whose crisis was at hand, which chimed in with her
+humor better than the flippancies of Belamour, the airy nothings of
+Millamont. He was but a soldier of fortune, a poor gentleman who, named
+to her in the town, would have had never a word, and would have been
+unnoted amidst the crowding beaux who clustered round to hold her fan
+and hear how she had been pleasured with the drolleries of _Grief à la
+Mode_. But down in the western counties she deigned to listen to the
+Prince's officer, to smile--a smile beautiful when it came on her proud
+lips, as the play of light on the opals of her jewelled stomacher--nay,
+even to be amused when he spoke of the women of foreign courts, to be
+interested when he told, which was but reluctantly, of his own perils,
+escapes, and adventures, to discourse with him, riding home under the
+beech avenues from hawking, or standing on the western terrace at curfew
+to watch the sunset, of many things on which the nobles of the Mall and
+the gentlemen about St. James's had never been allowed to share her
+opinions. For Lady Cecil was deeply read (unusually deeply for her day,
+since fine ladies of her rank and fashion mostly contented themselves
+with skimming a romance of Scuderi's, or an act of _Aurungzebe_); but
+she rarely spoke of those things, save perchance now and then to Mr.
+Addison.
+
+Fulke Ravensworth never flattered her, moreover, and flattery was a
+honeyed confection of which she had long been cloyed; he even praised
+boldly before her other women of beauty and grace whom he had seen at
+Versailles, at Sceaux, and at St. Germain; neither did he defer to her
+perpetually, but where he differed would combat her sentiments
+courteously but firmly. Though a soldier and a man of action, he had an
+admirable skill at the limner's art; could read to her the Divina
+Commedia, or the comedies of Lope da' Vega, and transfer crabbed Latin
+and abstruse Greek into elegant English for her pleasures and though a
+beggared gentleman of most precarious fortunes, he would speak of life
+and its chances, of the Cause and its perils, with a daring which she
+found preferable to the lisped languor of the men of the town, who had
+no better campaigns than laying siege to a prude, cared for no other
+weapons than their toilettes and snuff-boxes, and sought no other
+excitement than a _coup d'éclat_ with the lion-tumblers.
+
+On the whole, through these long midsummer days, Lady Cecil found the
+Envoy from St. Germain a companion that did not suit her ill, sought
+less the solitude of her bower-room, and listened graciously to him in
+the long twilight hours, while the evening dews gathered in the cups of
+the musk-roses, and the star-rays began to quiver on the water-lilies
+floating on the river below, that murmured along, with endless song,
+under the beechen-boughs. A certain softness stole over her, relaxing
+the cold hauteur of which Belamour had so often complained, giving a
+nameless charm, supplying a nameless something, lacking before, in the
+beauty of The Castlemaine.
+
+She would stroke, half sadly, the smooth feathers of her tartaret falcon
+Gabrielle when Fulke Ravensworth brought her the bird from the
+ostreger's wrist, with its azure velvet hood, and silver bells and
+jesses. She would wonder, as she glanced through Corneille or Congreve,
+Philips or Petrarca, what it was, this passion of love, of which they
+all treated, on which they all turned, no matter how different their
+strain. And now and then would come over her cheek and brow a faint
+fitful wavering flush, delicate and changing as the flush from the
+rose-hued reflexions of western clouds on a statue of Pharos marble, and
+then she would start and rouse herself, and wonder what she ailed, and
+grow once more haughty, calm, stately, dazzling, but chill as the
+Castlemaine diamonds that she wore.
+
+So the summer-time passed, and the autumn came, the corn-lands brown
+with harvest, the hazel-copses strewn with fallen nuts, the beech-leaves
+turning into reddened gold. As the wheat ripened but to meet the sickle,
+as the nuts grew but to fall, as the leaves turned to gold but to
+wither, so the sanguine hopes, the fond ambitions of men, strengthened
+and matured only to fade into disappointment and destruction! Four
+months had sped by since the Prince's messenger had come to
+Lilliesford--months that had gone swiftly with him as some sweet
+delicious dream; and the time had come when he had orders to ride north,
+secretly and swiftly, speak with Mr. Forster and other gentlemen
+concerned in the meditated rising, and convey despatches and
+instructions to the Earl of Mar; for Prince James was projecting soon to
+join his loyal adherents in Scotland, and the critical moment was close
+at hand, the moment when, to Fulke Ravensworth's high and sanguine
+courage, victory seemed certain; failure, if no treachery marred, no
+dissension weakened, impossible; the moment to which he looked for
+honor, success, distinction, that should give him claim and title to
+aspire--_where_? Strong man, cool soldier though he was, he shrank from
+drawing his fancied future out from the golden haze of immature hope,
+lest he should see it wither upon closer sight. He was but a landless
+adventurer, with nothing but his sword and his honor, and kings he knew
+were slow to pay back benefits, or recollect the hands that hewed them
+free passage to their thrones.
+
+Cecil Castlemaine stood within the window of her bower-room, the red
+light of the October sun glittering on her gold-broidered skirt and her
+corsage sewn with opals and emeralds; her hand was pressed lightly on
+her bosom, as though some pain were throbbing there; it was new this
+unrest, this weariness, this vague weight that hung upon her; it was the
+perils of their Cause, she told herself; the risks her father ran: it
+was weak, childish, unworthy a Castlemaine! Still the pain throbbed
+there.
+
+Her hound, asleep beside her, raised his head with a low growl as a step
+intruded on the sanctity of the bower-room, then composed himself again
+to slumber, satisfied it was no foe. His mistress turned slowly; she
+knew the horses waited; she had shunned this ceremony of farewell, and
+never thought any would be bold enough to venture here without
+permission sought and gained.
+
+"Lady Cecil, I could not go upon my way without one word of parting.
+Pardon me if I have been too rash to seek it here."
+
+Why was it that his brief frank words ever pleased her better than
+Belamour's most honeyed phrases, Millamont's suavest periods? She
+scarcely could have told, save that there were in them an earnestness
+and truth new and rare to her ear and to her heart.
+
+She pressed her hand closer on the opals--the jewels of calamity--and
+smiled:
+
+"Assuredly I wish you God speed, Sir Fulke, and safe issue from all
+perils."
+
+He bowed low; then raised himself to his fullest height, and stood
+beside her, watching the light play upon the opals:
+
+"That is all you vouchsafe me?"
+
+"_All?_ It is as much as you would claim, sir, is it not? It is more
+than I would say to many."
+
+"Your pardon--it _is_ more than I should claim if prudence were ever by,
+if reason always ruled! I have no right to ask for, seek for, even wish
+for, more; such petitions may only be addressed by men of wealth and of
+high title; a landless soldier should have no pride to sting, no heart
+to wound; they are the prerogative of a happier fortune."
+
+Her lips turned white, but she answered haughtily; the crimson light
+flashing in her jewels, heirlooms priceless and hereditary, like her
+beauty and her pride:
+
+"This is strange language, sir! I fail to apprehend you."
+
+"You have never thought that I ran a danger deadlier than that which I
+have ever risked on any field? You have never guessed that I have had
+the madness, the presumption, the crime--it may be in your eyes--to love
+you."
+
+The color flushed to her face, crimsoning even her brow, and then fled
+back. Her first instinct was insulted pride--a beggared gentleman, a
+landless soldier, spoke to her of love!--of love!--which Belamour had
+barely had courage to whisper of; which none had dared to sue of her in
+return. He had ventured to feel this for her! he had ventured to speak
+of this to her!
+
+The Envoy saw the rising resentment, the pride spoken in every line of
+her delicate face, and stopped her as she would have spoken.
+
+"Wait! I know all you would reply. You think it infinite daring,
+presumption that merits highest reproof----"
+
+"Since you divined so justly, it were pity you subjected yourself and me
+to this most useless, most unexpected interview. Why----"
+
+"_Why?_ Because, perchance, in this life you will see my face no more,
+and you will think gently, mercifully of my offence (if offence it be to
+love you more than life, and only less than honor), when you know that I
+have fallen for the Cause, with your name in my heart, held only the
+dearer because never on my lips! Sincere love can be no insult to
+whomsoever proffered; Elizabeth Stuart saw no shame to her in the
+devotion of William Craven!"
+
+Cecil Castlemaine stood in the crimson glory of the autumn sunset, her
+head erect, her pride unshaken, but her heart stirred strangely and
+unwontedly. It smote the one with bitter pain, to think a penniless
+exile should thus dare to speak of what princes and dukes had almost
+feared to whisper; what had she done--what had she said, to give him
+license for such liberty? It stirred the other with a tremulous warmth,
+a vague, sweet pleasure, that were never visitants there before; but
+that she scouted instantly as weakness, folly, debasement, in the Last
+of the Castlemaines.
+
+He saw well enough what passed within her, what made her eyes so
+troubled, yet her brow and lips so proudly set, and he bent nearer
+towards her, the great love that was in him trembling in his voice:
+
+"Lady Cecil, hear me! If in the coming struggle I win distinction,
+honor, rank--if victory come to us, and the King we serve remember me in
+his prosperity as he does now in his adversity--if I can meet you
+hereafter with tidings of triumph and success, my name made one which
+England breathes with praise and pride, honors gained such as even you
+will deem worthy of your line--then--then--will you let me speak of
+what you refuse to hearken to now--then may I come to you, and seek a
+gentler answer?"
+
+She looked for a moment upon his face, as it bent towards her in the
+radiance of the sunset light, the hope that hopes all things glistening
+in his eyes, the high-souled daring of a gallant and sanguine spirit
+flushing his forehead, the loud throbs of his heart audible in the
+stillness around; and her proud eyes grew softer, her lips quivered for
+an instant.
+
+Then she turned towards him with queenly grace:
+
+"_Yes!_"
+
+It was spoken with stately dignity, though scarce above her breath; but
+the hue that wavered in her cheek was but the lovelier, for the pride
+that would not let her eyes droop nor her tears rise, would not let her
+utter one softer word. That one word cost her much. That single
+utterance was much from Cecil Castlemaine.
+
+Her handkerchief lay at her feet, a delicate, costly toy of lace,
+embroidered with her shield and chiffre; he stooped and raised it, and
+thrust it in his breast to treasure it there.
+
+"If I fail, I send this back in token that I renounce all hope; if I can
+come to you with honor and with fame, this shall be my gage that I may
+speak, that you will listen?"
+
+She bowed her noble head, ever held haughtily, as though every crown of
+Europe had a right to circle it; his hot lips lingered for a moment on
+her hand; then Cecil Castlemaine stood alone in the window of her
+bower-room, her hand pressed again upon the opals under which her heart
+was beating with a dull, weary pain, looking out over the landscape,
+where the golden leaves were falling fast, and the river, tossing sadly
+dead branches on its waves, was bemoaning in plaintive language the
+summer days gone by.
+
+Two months came and went, the beech-boughs, black and sear, creaked in
+the bleak December winds that sighed through frozen ferns and over the
+couches of shivering deer, the snow drifted up on the marble terrace,
+and icedrops clung where the warm rosy petals of the musk-rosebuds had
+nestled. Across the country came terrible whispers that struck the
+hearts of men of loyal faith to the White Rose with a bolt of ice-cold
+terror and despair. Messengers riding in hot haste, open-mouthed
+peasants gossiping by the village forge, horsemen who tarried for a
+breathless rest at alehouse-doors, Whig divines who returned thanks for
+God's most gracious mercy in vouchsafing victory to the strong, all told
+the tale, all spread the news of the drawn battle of Sheriff-Muir, of
+the surrender under Preston walls, of the flight of Prince James. The
+tidings came one by one to Lilliesford, where my Lord Earl was holding
+himself in readiness to co-operate with the gentlemen of the North to
+set up the royal standard, broidered by his daughter's hands, in the
+western counties, and proclaim James III. "sovereign lord and king of
+the realms of Great Britain and Ireland." The tidings came to
+Lilliesford, and Cecil Castlemaine clenched her white jewelled hands in
+passionate anguish that a Stuart should have fled before the traitor of
+Argyll, instead of dying with his face towards the rebel crew; that men
+had lived who could choose surrender instead of heroic death; that _she_
+had not been there, at Preston, to shame them with a woman's reading of
+courage and of loyalty, and show them how to fall with a doomed city
+rather than yield captive to a foe!
+
+Perhaps amidst her grief for her Prince and for his Cause mingled--as
+the deadliest thought of all--a memory of a bright proud face, that had
+bent towards her with tender love and touching grace a month before, and
+that might now be lying pale and cold, turned upwards to the winter
+stars, on the field of Sheriff-Muir.
+
+A year rolled by. Twelve months had fled since the gilded carriage of
+the Castlemaines, with the lordly blazonment upon its panels, its
+princely retinue and stately pomp, had come down into the western
+counties. The bones were crumbling white in the coffins in the Tower,
+and the skulls over Temple-bar had bleached white in winter snows and
+spring-tide suns; Kenmuir had gone to a sleep that knew no wakening, and
+Derwentwater had laid his fair young head down for a thankless cause;
+the heather bloomed over the mounds of dead on the plains of
+Sheriff-Muir, and the yellow gorse blossomed under the city walls of
+Preston.
+
+Another summer had dawned, bright and laughing, over England; none the
+less fair for human lives laid down, for human hopes crushed out;
+daisies powdering the turf sodden with human blood, birds carolling
+their song over graves of heaped-up dead. The musk-roses tossed their
+delicate heads again amidst the marble pilasters, and the
+hawthorn-boughs shook their fragrant buds into the river at Lilliesford,
+the purple hills lay wrapped in sunny mist, and hyacinth-bells mingled
+with the tangled grass and fern under the woodland shades, where the red
+deer nestled happily. Herons plumed their silvery wings down by the
+water-side, swallows circled in sultry air above the great bell-tower,
+and wood-pigeons cooed with soft love-notes among the leafy branches.
+Yet the Countess of Castlemaine, last of her race, sole owner of the
+lands that spread around her, stood on the rose-terrace, finding no joy
+in the sunlight about her, no melody in the song of the birds.
+
+She was the last of her name; her father, broken-hearted at the news
+from Dumblain and Preston, had died the very day after his lodgment in
+the Tower. There was no heir male of his line, and the title had passed
+to his daughter; there had been thoughts of confiscation and attainder,
+but others, unknown to her, solicited what she scorned to ask for
+herself, and the greed of the hungry "Hanoverian pack" spared the lands
+and the revenues of Lilliesford. In haughty pride, in lonely mourning,
+the fairest beauty of the Court and Town withdrew again to the solitude
+of her western counties, and tarried there, dwelling amidst her women
+and her almost regal household, in the sacred solitude of grief, wherein
+none might intrude. Proud Cecil Castlemaine was yet prouder than of
+yore; alone, sorrowing for her ruined Cause and exiled King, she would
+hold converse with none of those who had had a hand in drawing down the
+disastrous fate she mourned, and only her staghound could have seen the
+weariness upon her face when she bent down to him, or Gabrielle the
+falcon felt her hand tremble when it stroked her folded wings. She stood
+on the terrace, looking over her spreading lands, not the water-lilies
+on the river below whiter than her lips, pressed painfully together.
+Perhaps she repented of certain words, spoken to one whom now she would
+never again behold--perhaps she thought of that delicate toy that was to
+have been brought back in victory and hope, that now might lie stained
+and stiffened with blood next a lifeless heart, for never a word in the
+twelve months gone by had there come to Lilliesford as tidings of Fulke
+Ravensworth.
+
+Her pride was dear to her, dearer than aught else; she had spoken as was
+her right to speak, she had done what became a Castlemaine; it would
+have been weakness to have acted otherwise; what was he--a landless
+soldier--that he should have dared as he had dared? Yet the sables she
+wore were not solely for the dead Earl, not solely for the lost Stuarts
+the hot mist that would blind the eyes of Cecil Castlemaine, as hours
+swelled to days, and days to months, and she--the flattered beauty of
+the Court and Town--stayed in self-chosen solitude in her halls of
+Lilliesford, still unwedded and unwon.
+
+The noon-hours chimed from the bell-tower, and the sunny beauty of the
+morning but weighed with heavier sadness on her heart; the song of the
+birds, the busy hum of the gnats, the joyous ring of the silver bell
+round her pet fawn's neck, as it darted from her side under the drooping
+boughs--none touched an answering chord of gladness in her. She stood
+looking over her stretching woodlands in deep thought, so deep that she
+heard no step over the lawn beneath, nor saw the frightened rush of the
+deer, as a boy, crouching among the tangled ferns, sprang up from his
+hiding-place under the beechen branches, and stood on the terrace before
+her, craving her pardon in childish, yet fearless tones. She turned,
+bending on him that glance which had made the over-bold glance of
+princes fall abashed. The boy was but a little tatterdemalion to have
+ventured thus abruptly into the presence of the Countess of Castlemaine;
+still it was with some touch of a page's grace that he bowed before her.
+
+"Lady, I crave your pardon, but my master bade me watch for you, though
+I watched till midnight."
+
+"Your master?"
+
+A flush, warm as that on the leaves of the musk-roses, rose to her face
+for an instant, then faded as suddenly. The boy did not notice her
+words, but went on in an eager whisper, glancing anxiously round, as a
+hare would glance fearing the hunters.
+
+"And told me when I saw you not to speak his name, but only to give you
+this as his gage, that though all else is lost he has not forgot _his_
+honor nor _your_ will."
+
+Cecil Castlemaine spoke no word, but she stretched out her hand and took
+it--her own costly toy of cambric and lace, with her broidered shield
+and coronet.
+
+"Your master! Then--he lives?"
+
+"Lady, he bade me say no more. You have his message; I must tell no
+further."
+
+She laid her hand upon his shoulder, a light, snow-white hand, yet one
+that held him now in a clasp of steel.
+
+"Child! answer me at your peril! Tell me of him whom you call your
+master. Tell me all--quick--quick!"
+
+"You are his friend?"
+
+"His friend? My Heaven! Speak on!"
+
+"He bade me tell no more on peril of his heaviest anger; but if you
+_are_ his friend, I sure may speak what you should know without me. It
+is a poor friend, lady, who has need to ask whether another be dead or
+living!"
+
+The scarlet blood flamed in the Countess's blanched face, she signed him
+on with impetuous command; she was unused to disobedience, and the
+child's words cut her to the quick.
+
+"Sir Fulke sails for the French coast to-morrow night," the boy went on,
+in tremulous haste. "He was left for dead--our men ran one way, and
+Argyll's men the other--on the field of Sheriff-Muir; and sure if he had
+not been strong indeed, he would have died that awful night, untended,
+on the bleak moor, with the winds roaring round him, and his life ebbing
+away. He was not one of those who _fled_; you know that of him if you
+know aught. We got him away before dawn, Donald and I, and hid him in a
+shieling; he was in the fever then, and knew nothing that was done to
+him, only he kept that bit of lace in his hand for weeks and weeks, and
+would not let us stir it from his grasp. What magic there was in it we
+wondered often, but 'twas a magic, mayhap, that got him well at last; it
+was an even chance but that he'd died, God bless him! though we did what
+best we could. We've been wandering in the Highlands all the year,
+hiding here and tarrying there. Sir Fulke sets no count upon his life.
+Sure I think he thanks us little for getting him through the fever of
+the wounds, but he could not have borne to be pinioned, you know, lady,
+like a thief, and hung up by the brutes of Whigs, as a butcher hangs
+sheep in the shambles! The worst of the danger's over--they've had
+their fill of the slaughter; but we sail to-morrow night for the French
+coast--England's no place for my master."
+
+Cecil Castlemaine let go her hold upon the boy, and her hand closed
+convulsively upon the dainty handkerchief--her gage sent so faithfully
+back to her!
+
+The child looked upon her face; perchance, in his master's delirium, he
+had caught some knowledge of the story that hung to that broidered toy.
+
+"If you _are_ his friend, madame, doubtless you have some last word to
+send him?"
+
+Cecil Castlemaine, whom nothing moved, whom nothing softened, bowed her
+head at the simple question, her heart wrestling sorely, her lips set
+together in unswerving pride, a mist before her haughty eyes, the
+broidered shield upon her handkerchief--the shield of her stately and
+unyielding race--pressed close against her breast.
+
+"You have no word for him, lady?"
+
+Her lips parted; she signed him away. Was this child to see her yielding
+to such weakness? Had she, Countess of Castlemaine, no better pride, no
+better strength, no better power of resolve, than this?
+
+The boy lingered.
+
+"I will tell Sir Fulke then, lady, that the ruined have no friends?"
+
+Whiter and prouder still grew the delicate beauty of her face; she
+raised her stately head, haughtily as she had used to glance over a
+glittering Court, where each voice murmured praise of her loveliness and
+reproach of her coldness; and placed the fragile toy of lace back in the
+boy's hands.
+
+"Go, seek your master, and give him this in gage that their calamity
+makes friends more dear to us than their success. Go, he will know its
+meaning!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In place of the noon chimes the curfew was ringing from the bell-tower,
+the swallows were gone to roost amidst the ivy, and the herons slept
+with their heads under their silvery wings among the rushes by the
+riverside, the ferns and wild hyacinths were damp with evening dew, and
+the summer starlight glistened amidst the quivering woodland leaves.
+There was the silence of coming night over the vast forest glades, and
+no sound broke the stillness, save the song of the grasshopper stirring
+the tangled grasses, or the sweet low sigh of the west wind fanning the
+bells of the flowers. Cecil Castlemaine stood once more on the
+rose-terrace, shrouded in the dense twilight shade flung from above by
+the beech-boughs, waiting, listening, catching every rustle of the
+leaves, every tremor of the heads of the roses, yet hearing nothing in
+the stillness around but the quick, uncertain throbs of her heart
+beating like the wing of a caged bird under its costly lace. Pride was
+forgotten at length, and she only remembered--fear and love.
+
+In the silence and the solitude came a step that she knew, came a
+presence that she felt. She bowed her head upon her hands; it was new to
+her this weakness, this terror, this anguish of joy; she sought to calm
+herself, to steel herself, to summon back her pride, her strength; she
+scorned herself for it all!
+
+His hand touched her, his voice fell on her ear once more, eager,
+breathless, broken.
+
+"Cecil! Cecil! is this true? Is my ruin thrice blessed, or am I mad, and
+dream of heaven?"
+
+She lifted her head and looked at him with her old proud glance, her
+lips trembling with words that all her pride could not summon into
+speech; then her eyes filled with warm, blinding tears, and softened to
+new beauty;--scarce louder than the sigh of the wind among the
+flower-bells came her words to Fulke Ravensworth's ear, as her royal
+head bowed on his breast.
+
+"Stay, stay! Or, if you fly, your exile shall be my exile, your danger
+my danger!"
+
+The kerchief is a treasured heirloom to her descendants now, and fair
+women of her race, who inherit from her her azure eyes and her queenly
+grace, will recall how the proudest Countess of their Line loved a
+ruined gentleman so well that she was wedded to him at even, in her
+private chapel, at the hour of his greatest peril, his lowest fortune,
+and went with him across the seas till friendly intercession in high
+places gained them royal permission to dwell again at Lilliesford
+unmolested. And how it was ever noticeable to those who murmured at her
+coldness and her pride, that Cecil Castlemaine, cold and negligent as of
+yore to all the world beside, would seek her husband's smile, and love
+to meet his eyes, and cherish her beauty for his sake, and be restless
+in his absence, even for the short span of a day, with a softer and more
+clinging tenderness than was found in many weaker, many humbler women.
+
+They are gone now the men and women of that generation, and their voices
+come only to us through the faint echo of their written words. In summer
+nights the old beech-trees toss their leaves in the silvery light of the
+stars, and the river flows on unchanged, with the ceaseless, mournful
+burden of its mystic song, the same now as in the midsummer of a century
+and a half ago. The cobweb handkerchief lies before me with its
+broidered shield; the same now as long years since, when it was
+treasured close in a soldier's breast, and held by him dearer than all
+save his honor and his word. So, things pulseless and passionless
+endure, and human life passes away as swiftly as a song dies off from
+the air--as quickly succeeded, and as quickly forgot! Ronsard's refrain
+is the refrain of our lives:
+
+    Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame!
+    Las! le temps, non; mais _nous_ nous, en allons!
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS;
+
+OR,
+
+OUR MALTESE PEERAGE.
+
+
+All first things are voted the best: first kisses, first _toga virilis_,
+first hair of the first whisker; first speeches are often so superior
+that members subside after making them, fearful of eclipsing themselves;
+first money won at play must always be best, as always the dearest
+bought; and first wives are always so super-excellent, that, if a man
+lose one, he is generally as fearful of hazarding a second as a trout of
+biting twice.
+
+But of all first things commend me to one's first uniform. No matter
+that we get sick of harness, and get into mufti as soon as we can now;
+there is no more exquisite pleasure than the first sight of one's self
+in shako and sabretasche. How we survey ourselves in the glass, and ring
+for hot water, that the handsome housemaid may see us in all our glory,
+and lounge accidentally into our sisters' schoolroom, that the
+governess, who is nice looking and rather flirty, may go down on the
+spot before us and our scarlet and gold, chains and buttons! One's first
+uniform! Oh! the exquisite sensation locked up for us in that first box
+from Sagnarelli, or Bond Street!
+
+I remember _my_ first uniform. I was eighteen--as raw a young cub as you
+could want to see. I had not been licked into shape by a public school,
+whose tongue may be rough, but cleans off grievances and nonsense better
+than anything else. I had been in that hotbed of effeminacy, Church
+principles and weak tea, a Private Tutor's, where mamma's darlings are
+wrapped up, and stuffed with a little Terence and Horace to show grand
+at home; and upon my life I do believe my sister Julia, aged thirteen,
+was more wide awake and up to life than I was, when the governor, an old
+rector, who always put me in mind of the Vicar of Wakefield, got me
+gazetted to as crack a corps as any in the Line.
+
+The ----th (familiarly known in the Service as the "Dare Devils," from
+old Peninsular deeds) were just then at Malta, and with, among other
+trifles, a chest protector from my father, and a recipe for
+milk-arrowroot from my Aunt Matilda who lived in a constant state of
+catarrh and of cure for the same, tumbled across the Bay of Biscay, and
+found myself in Byron's confounded "little military hot-house," where
+most military men, some time or other, have roasted themselves to death,
+climbing its hilly streets, flirting with its Valetta belles, drinking
+Bass in its hot verandas, yawning with ennui in its palace, cursing its
+sirocco, and being done by its Jew sharpers.
+
+From a private tutor's to a crack mess at Malta!--from a convent to a
+casino could hardly be a greater change. Just at first I was as much
+astray as a young pup taken into a stubble-field, and wondering what the
+deuce he is to do there; but as it is a pup's nature to sniff at birds
+and start them, so is it a boy's nature to snatch at the champagne of
+life as soon as he catches sight of it, though you may have brought him
+up on water from his cradle. I took to it, at least, like a retriever to
+water-ducks, though I was green enough to be a first-rate butt for many
+a day, and the practical jokes I had passed on me would have furnished
+the _Times_ with food for crushers on "The Shocking State of the Army"
+for a twelvemonth. My chief friend and ally, tormentor and initiator,
+was a little fellow, Cosmo Grandison; in Ours he was "Little Grand" to
+everybody, from the Colonel to the baggage-women. He was seventeen, and
+had joined about a year. What a pretty boy he was, too! All the fair
+ones in Valetta, from his Excellency's wife to our washerwomen, admired
+that boy, and spoilt him and petted him, and I do not believe there was
+a man of Ours who would have had heart to sit in court-martial on Little
+Grand if he had broken every one of the Queen's regulations, and set
+every General Order at defiance. I think I see him now--he was new to
+Malta as I, having just landed with the Dare Devils, _en route_ from
+India to Portsmouth--as he sat one day on the table in the mess-room as
+cool as a cucumber, in spite of the broiling sun, smoking, and swinging
+his legs, and settling his forage-cap on one side of his head, as
+pretty-looking, plucky, impudent a young monkey as ever piqued himself
+on being an old hand, and a knowing bird not to be caught by any chaff
+however ingeniously prepared.
+
+"Simon," began Little Grand (my "St. John," first barbarized by Mr. Pope
+for the convenience of his dactyles and hexameters into Sinjin, being
+further barbarized by this little imp into Simon)--"Simon, do you want
+to see the finest woman in this confounded little pepper-box? You're no
+judge of a woman, though, you muff--taste been warped, perhaps, by
+constant contemplation of that virgin Aunt Minerva--Matilda, is it? all
+the same."
+
+"Hang your chaff," said I; "you'd make one out a fool."
+
+"Precisely, my dear Simon; just what you are!" responded Little Grand,
+pleasantly, "Bless your heart, I've been engaged to half a dozen women
+since I joined. A man can hardly help it, you see; they've such a way of
+drawing you on, you don't like to disappoint them, poor little dears,
+and so you compromise yourself out of sheer benevolence. There's such a
+run on a handsome man--it's a great bore. Sometimes I think I shall
+shave my head, or do something to disfigure myself, as Spurina did. Poor
+fellow, I feel for him! Well, Simon, you don't seem curious to know who
+my beauty is?"
+
+"One of those Mitchell girls of the Twenty-first? You waltzed with 'em
+all night; but they're too tall for you, Grand."
+
+"The Mitchell girls!" ejaculated he, with supreme scorn. "Great
+maypoles! they go about with the Fusiliers like a pair of colors. On
+every ball-room battlefield one's safe to see _them_ flaunting away, and
+as everybody has a shot at 'em, their hearts must be pretty well riddled
+into holes by this time. No, mine's rather higher game than that. My
+mother's brother-in-law's aunt's sister's cousin's cousin once removed
+was Viscount Twaddle, and I don't go anything lower than the Peerage."
+
+"What, is it somebody you've met at his Excellency's?"
+
+"Wrong again, beloved Simon. It's nobody I've met at old Stars and
+Garters', though his lady-wife could no more do without me than without
+her sal volatile and flirtations. No, _she_ don't go there; she's too
+high for that sort of thing--sick of it. After all the European Courts,
+Malta must be rather small and slow. I was introduced to her yesterday,
+and," continued Little Grand, more solemnly than was his wont, "I do
+assure you she's superb, divine; and I'm not very easy to please."
+
+"What's her name?" I asked, rather impressed with this view of a lady
+too high for old Stars and Garters, as we irreverently termed her
+Majesty's representative in her island of Malta.
+
+Little Grand took his pipe out of his lips to correct me with more
+dignity.
+
+"Her _title_, my dear Simon, is the Marchioness St. Julian."
+
+"Is that an English peerage, Grand?"
+
+"Hum! What! Oh yes, of course! What else should it be, you owl!"
+
+Not being in a condition to decide this point, I was silent, and he went
+on, growing more impressive at each phrase:
+
+"She is splendid, really! And I'm a very _difficile_ fellow, you know;
+but such hair, such eyes, one doesn't see every day in those sun-dried
+Mitchells or those little pink Bovilliers. Well, yesterday, after that
+confounded luncheon (how I hate all those complimentary affairs!--one
+can't enjoy the truffles for talking to the ladies, nor enjoy the ladies
+for discussing the truffles), I went for a ride with Conran out to Villa
+Neponte. I left him there, and went down to see the overland steamers
+come in. While I was waiting, I got into talk, somehow or other, with a
+very agreeable, gentleman-like fellow, who asked me if I'd only just
+come to Malta, and all that sort of thing--you know the introductory
+style of action--till we got quite good friends, and he told me he was
+living outside this wretched little hole at the Casa di Fiori, and
+said--wasn't it civil of him?--said he should be very happy to see me if
+I'd call any time. He gave me his card--Lord Adolphus Fitzhervey--and a
+man with him called him 'Dolph.' As good luck had it, my weed went out
+just while we were talking, and Fitzhervey was monstrously pleasant,
+searched all over him for a fusee, couldn't find one, and asked me to go
+up with him to the Casa di Fiori and get a light. Of course I did, and
+he and I and Guatamara had some sherbet and a smoke together, and then
+he introduced me to the Marchioness St. Julian, his sister--by Jove!
+such a magnificent woman, Simon, _you_ never saw one like her, I'll
+wager. She was uncommonly agreeable, too, and _such_ a smile, my boy!
+She seemed to like me wonderfully--not rare that, though, you'll
+say--and asked me to go and take coffee there to-night after mess, and
+bring one of my chums with me; and as I like to show you life, young
+one, and your taste wants improving after Aunt Minerva, you may come, if
+you like. Hallo! there's Conran. I say, don't tell _him_. I don't want
+any poaching on my manor."
+
+Conran came in at that minute; he was then a Brevet-Major and Captain in
+Ours, and one of the older men who spoilt Little Grand in one way, as
+much as the women did in another. He was a fine, powerful fellow, with
+eyes like an eagle's, and pluck like a lion's; he had a grave look, and
+had been of late more silent and self-reticent than the other
+roistering, débonnair, light-hearted "Dare Devils;" but though, perhaps,
+tired of the wild escapades which reputation had once attributed to him,
+was always the most lenient to the boy's monkey tricks, and always the
+one to whom he went if his larks had cost him too dear, or if he was in
+a scrape from which he saw no exit. Conran had recently come in for a
+good deal of money, and there were few bright eyes in Malta that would
+not have smiled kindly on him; but he did not care much for any of them.
+There was some talk of a love-affair before he went to India, that was
+the cause of his hard-heartedness, though I must say he did not look
+much like a victim to the _grande passion_, in my ideas, which were
+drawn from valentines and odes in the "Woman, thou fond and fair
+deceiver" style; in love that turned its collars down and let its hair
+go uncut and refused to eat, and recovered with a rapidity proportionate
+to its ostentation; and I did not know that, if a man has lost his
+treasure, he _may_ mourn it so deeply that he may refuse to run about
+like Harpagon, crying for his _cassette_ to an audience that only laughs
+at his miseries.
+
+"Well, young ones," said Conran, as he came in and threw down his cap
+and whip, "here you are, spending your hours in pipes and bad wine. What
+a blessing it is to have a palate that isn't blasé, and that will
+swallow all wine just because it _is_ wine! That South African goes
+down with better relish, Little Grand, than you'll find in Château
+Margaux ten years hence. As soon as one begins to want touching up with
+olives, one's real gusto is gone."
+
+"Hang olives, sir! they're beastly," said Little Grand; "and I don't
+care who pretends they're not. Olives are like sermons and wives,
+everybody makes a wry face, and would rather be excused 'em, Major; but
+it's the custom to call 'em good things, and so men bolt 'em in
+complaisance, and while they hate the salt-water flavor, descant on the
+delicious rose taste!"
+
+"Quite true, Little Grand! but one takes olives to enhance the wine; and
+so, perhaps, other men's sermons make one enjoy one's racier novel, and
+other men's wives make one appreciate one's liberty still better. Don't
+abuse olives; you'll want them figuratively and literally before you've
+done either drinking or living!"
+
+"Oh! confound it, Major," cried Little Grand, "I do hope and trust a
+spent ball may have the kindness to double me up and finish me off
+before then."
+
+"You're not philosophic, my boy."
+
+"Thank Heaven, no!" ejaculated Little Grand, piously. "I've an uncle, a
+very great philosopher, beats all the sages hollow, from Bion to Buckle,
+and writes in the Metaphysical Quarterly, but I'll be shot if he don't
+spend so much time in trying to puzzle out what life is, that all his
+has slipped away without his having _lived_ one bit. When I was staying
+with him one Christmas, he began boring me with a frightful theory on
+the non-existence of matter. I couldn't stand that, so I cut him short,
+and set him down to the luncheon-table; and while he was full swing with
+a Strasbourg pâté and Comet hock, I stopped him and asked him if, with
+them in his mouth, he believed in matter or not? He was shut up, of
+course; bless your soul, those theorists always are, if you're down upon
+'em with a little fact!"
+
+"Such as a Strasbourg pâté?--that _is_ an unanswerable argument with
+most men, I believe," said Conran, who liked to hear the boy chatter.
+"What are you going to do with yourself to-night, Grand?"
+
+"I am going to--ar--hum--to a friend of mine," said Little Grand, less
+glibly than usual.
+
+"Very well; I only asked, because I would have taken you to Mrs.
+Fortescue's with me; they're having some acting proverbs (horrible
+exertion in this oven of a place, with the thermometer at a hundred and
+twenty degrees); but if you've better sport it's no matter. Take care
+what friends you make, though, Grand; you'll find some Maltese
+acquaintances very costly."
+
+"Thank you. I should say I can take care of myself," replied Little
+Grand, with immeasurable scorn and dignity.
+
+Conran laughed, struck him across the shoulders with his whip, stroked
+his own moustaches, and went out again, whistling one of Verdi's airs.
+
+"I don't want him bothering, you know," explained Little Grand; "she's
+such a deuced magnificent woman!"
+
+She was a magnificent woman, this Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St.
+Julian; and proud enough Little Grand and I felt when we had that soft,
+jewelled hand held out to us, and that bewitching smile beamed upon us,
+and that joyous presence dazzling in our eyes, as we sat in the
+drawing-room of that Casa di Fiori. She was about thirty-five, I should
+say (boys always worship those who might have been schoolfellows of
+their mothers), tall and stately, and imposing, with the most beautiful
+pink and white skin, with a fine set of teeth, raven hair, and eyes
+tinted most exquisitely. Oh! she was magnificent, our Marchioness St.
+Julian! Into what unutterable insignificance, what miserable, washed-out
+shadows sank Stars and Garters' lady, and the Mitchell girls, and all
+the belles of La Valetta, whom we hadn't thought so very bad-looking
+before.
+
+There was a young creature sitting a little out of the radiance of
+light, reading; but we had no eyes for anybody except the Marchioness
+St. Julian. We were in such high society, too; there was her brother,
+Lord Adolphus, and his bosom Pylades, the Baron Guatamara; and there was
+a big fellow, with hooked nose and very curly hair, who was introduced
+to us as the Prince of Orangia Magnolia; and a little wiry fellow, with
+bits of red and blue ribbon, and a star or two in his button-hole, who
+was M. le Due de Saint-Jeu. We were quite dazzled with the coruscations
+of so much aristocracy, especially when they talked across to each
+other--so familiarly, too--of Johnnie (that we Lord Russell), and Pam,
+and "old Buck" (my godfather Buckingham, Lord Adolphus explained to us),
+and Montpensier and old Joinville; and chatted of when they dined at the
+Tuileries, and stayed at Compiègne, and hunted at Belvoir, and spent
+Christmas at Holcombe or Longleat. We were in such high society! How
+contemptible appeared Mrs. Maberly's and the Fortescue soirées; how
+infinitesimally small grew Charlie Ruthven, and Harry Villiers, and Grey
+and Albany, and all the other young fellows who thought it such great
+guns to be _au mieux_ with little Graziella, or invited to Sir George
+Dashaway's. _We_ were a cut above those things now--rather!
+
+That splendid Marchioness! There was a head for a coronet, if you like!
+And how benign she was! Grand sat on the couch beside her, and I on an
+ottoman on her left, and she leaned back in her magnificent toilette,
+flirting her fan like a Castilian, and flashing upon us her superb eyes
+from behind it; not speaking very much, but showing her white teeth in
+scores of heavenly smiles, till Little Grand, the _blasé_ man of
+seventeen, and I the raw Moses of private tutelage, both felt that we
+had never come across anything like this; never, in fact, seen a woman
+worth a glance before.
+
+She listened to us--or rather to him; I was too awestruck to advance
+much beyond monosyllables--and laughed at him, and smiled encouragingly
+on my _gaucherie_ (and when a boy is _gauche_, how ready he is to
+worship such a helping hand!), and beamed upon us both with an
+effulgence compared with which the radiance of Helen, Galatea, Oenone,
+Messalina, Laïs, and all the legendary beauties one reads about, must
+have been what the railway night-lamps that _never_ burn are to the
+prismatic luminaries of Cremorne. They were all uncommonly pleasant, all
+except the girl who was reading, whom they introduced as the Signorina
+da' Guari, a Tuscan, and daughter to Orangia Magnolia, with one of those
+marvellously beautiful faces that one sees in the most splendid
+painters' models of the Campagna, who never lifted her head scarcely,
+though Guatamara and Saint-Jeu did their best to make her. But all the
+others were wonderfully agreeable, and quite _fête'd_ Little Grand and
+me, at which, they, being more than double our age, and seemingly at
+home alike with Belgravia and Newmarket, the Faubourg and the Pytchley,
+we felt to grow at least a foot each in the aroma of this Casa di Fiori.
+
+"This is rather stupid, Doxie," began Lord Adolphus, addressing his
+sister; "not much entertainment for our guests. What do you say to a
+game of vingt-et-un, eh, Mr. Grandison?"
+
+Little Grand fixed his blue eyes on the Marchioness, and said he should
+be very happy, but, as for entertainment--_he_ wanted no other.
+
+"No compliments, _petit ami_," laughed the Marchioness, with a dainty
+blow of her fan. "Yes, Dolph, have vingt-et-un, or music, or anything
+you like. Sing us something, Lucrezia."
+
+The Italian girl thus addressed looked up with a passionate, haughty
+flush, and answered, with wonderfully little courtesy I considered, "I
+shall not sing to-night."
+
+"Are you unwell, fairest friend?" asked the Duc de Saint-Jeu, bending
+his little wiry figure over her.
+
+She shrank away from him, and drew back, a hot color in her cheeks.
+
+"Signore, I did not address _you_."
+
+The Marchioness looked angry, if those divine eyes could look anything
+so mortal. However, she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Well, my dear Lucrezia, we can't make you sing, of course, if you
+won't. I, for my part, always do any little thing I can to amuse
+anybody; if I fail, I fail; I have done my best, and my friends will
+appreciate the effort, if not the result. No, my dear Prince, do not
+tease her," said the Marchioness to Orangia Magnolia, who was arguing, I
+thought, somewhat imperatively for such a well-bred and courtly man,
+with Lucrezia; "we will have vingt-et-un, and Lucrezia will give us the
+delight of her voice some other evening, I dare say."
+
+We had vingt-et-un; the Marchioness would not play, but she sat in her
+rose velvet arm-chair, just behind Little Grand, putting in pretty
+little speeches, and questions, and bagatelles, and calling attention to
+the gambols of her darling greyhound Cupidon, and tapping Little Grand
+with her fan, till, I believe, he neither knew how the game went, nor
+what money he lost; and I, gazing at her, and cursing him for his facile
+tongue, never noticed my naturels, couldn't have said what the maximum
+was if you had paid me for it, and might, for anything I knew to the
+contrary, have been seeing my life slip away with each card as Balzac's
+hero with the Peau de Chagrin. Then we had sherbet, and wine, and cognac
+for those who preferred it; and the Marchioness gave us permission to
+smoke, and took a dainty hookah with an amber mouthpiece for her own use
+(divine she did look, too, with that hookah between her ruby lips!); and
+the smoke, and the cognac, and the smiles, unloosed our tongues, and we
+spake like very great donkeys, I dare say, but I'm sure with not a tenth
+part the wisdom that Balaam's ass developed in his brief and pithy
+conversation.
+
+However great the bosh we talked, though, we found very lenient
+auditors. Fitzhervey and Guatamara laughed at all our witticisms; the
+Prince of Orangia Magnolia joined in with a "Per Baccho!" and a "Bravo!"
+and little Saint-Jeu wheezed, and gave a faint echo of "Mon Dieu!" and
+"Très bien, très bien, vraiment!" and the Marchioness St. Julian laughed
+too, and joined in our nonsense, and, what was much more, bent a willing
+ear to our compliments, no matter how florid; and Saint-Jeu told us a
+story or two, more amusing than _comme il faut_, at which the
+Marchioness tried to look grave, and _did_ look shocked, but laughed for
+all that behind her fan; and Lucrezia da' Guari sat in shadow, as still
+and as silent as the Parian Euphrosyne on the console, though her
+passionate eyes and expressive face looked the very antipodes of silence
+and statuetteism, as she flashed half-shy, half-scornful, looks upon us.
+
+If the first part of the evening had been delightful, this was something
+like Paradise! It was such high society! and with just dash enough of
+Mabille and coulisses laisseraller to give it piquancy. How different
+was the pleasantry and freedom of these _real_ aristos, after the
+humdrum dinners and horrid bores of dances that those snobs of Maberlys,
+and Fortescues, and Mitchells, made believe to call Society!
+
+What with the wine, and the smoke, and the smiles, I wasn't quite clear
+as to whether I saw twenty horses' heads or one when I was fairly into
+saddle, and riding back to the town, just as the first dawn was rising,
+Aphrodite-like, from the far blue waves of the Mediterranean. Little
+Grand was better seasoned, but even he was dizzy with the parting words
+of the Marchioness, which had softly breathed the delicious passport,
+"Come to-morrow."
+
+"By Jupiter!" swore Little Grand, obliged to give relief to his
+feelings--"by Jupiter, Simon! did you ever see such a glorious,
+enchanting, divine, delicious, adorable creature? Faugh! who could look
+at those Mitchell girls after her? Such eyes! such a smile! such a
+figure! Talk of a coronet! no imperial crown would be half good enough
+for her! And how pleasant those fellows are! I like that little chaffy
+chap, the Duke; what a slap-up story that was about the bal de l'Opéra.
+And Fitzhervey, too; there's something uncommonly thorough-bred about
+him, ain't there? And Guatamara's an immensely jolly fellow. Ah, myboy!
+that's something like society; all the ease and freedom of real rank; no
+nonsense about them, as there is about snobs. I say, what wouldn't the
+other fellows give to be in our luck? I think even Conran would warm up
+about her. But, Simon, she's deucedly taken with me--she is, upon my
+word; and she knows how to show it you, too! By George! one could die
+for a woman like that--eh?"
+
+"Die!" I echoed, while my horse stumbled along up the hilly road, and I
+swayed forward, pretty nearly over his head, while poetry rushed to my
+lips, and electric sparks danced before my eyes:
+
+    "To die for those we love! oh, there is power
+    In the true heart, and pride, and joy, for this
+    It is to live without the vanished light
+    That strength is needed!"
+
+"But I'll be shot if it shall be vanished light," returned Little Grand;
+"it don't look much like it yet. The light's only just lit, 'tisn't
+likely it's going out again directly; but she is a stunner! and----"
+
+"A stunner!" I shouted; "she's much more than that--she's an angel, and
+I'll be much obliged to you to call her by her right name, sir. She's a
+beautiful, noble, loving woman; the most perfect of all Nature's
+masterworks. She is divine, sir, and you and I are not worthy merely to
+kiss the hem of her garment."
+
+"Ain't we, though? I don't care much about kissing her dress; it's silk,
+and I don't know that I should derive much pleasure from pressing my
+lips on its texture; but her cheek----"
+
+    "Her cheek is like the Catherine pear,
+    The side that's next the sun!"
+
+I shouted, as my horse went down in a rut. "She's like Venus rising from
+the sea-shell; she's like Aurora, when she came down on the first ray of
+the dawn to Tithonus; she's like Briseis----"
+
+"Bother classics! she's like herself, and beats 'em all hollow. She's
+the finest creature ever seen on earth, and I should like to see the man
+who'd dare to say she wasn't. And--I say, Simon--_how much did you lose
+to-night_?"
+
+From sublimest heights I tumbled straight to bathos. The cold water of
+Grand's query quenched my poetry, extinguished my electric lights, and
+sobered me like a douche bath.
+
+"I don't know," I answered, with a sense of awe and horror stealing over
+me; "but I had a pony in my waistcoat-pocket that the governor had just
+sent me; Guatamara changed it for me, and--_I've only sixpence left_!"
+
+"Old boy," said Little Grand to me, the next morning, after early
+parade, "come in my room, and let's make up some despatches to the
+governors. You see," he continued, five minutes after,--"you see, we're
+both of us pretty well cleared out; I've only got half a pony, and you
+haven't a couple of fivers left. Now you know they evidently play rather
+high at the Casa di Fiori; do everything _en prince_, like nobs who've
+Barclays at their back; and one mustn't hang fire; horrid shabby that
+would look. Besides, fancy seeming mean before _her_! So I've been
+thinking that, though governors are a screwy lot generally, if we put it
+to 'em clearly the sort of set we've got into, and show 'em that we
+can't help, now that we are at Rome, doing as the Romans do, I should
+say they could hardly help bleeding a little--eh? Now, listen how I've
+put it. My old boy has a weakness for titles; he married my mother on
+the relationship to Viscount Twaddles (who doesn't know of her
+existence; but who does to talk about as 'our cousin'), and he'd eat up
+miles of dirt for a chance of coming to a strawberry-leaf; so I think
+this will touch him up beautifully. Listen! ain't I sublimely
+respectful? 'I'm sure, my dear father, you wilt be delighted to learn,
+that by wonderful luck, or rather I ought to say Providence, I have
+fallen on my feet in Malta, and got introduced to the very highest'
+(wait! let me stick a dash under very)--'the _very_ highest society
+here. They are quite tip-top. To show you what style, I need only
+mention Lord A. Fitzhervey, the Baron Guatamara, and the Marchioness St.
+Julian, as among my kindest friends. They have been yachting in the
+Levant, and are now staying in Malta: they are all most kind to me; and
+I know you will appreciate the intellectual advantages that such contact
+must afford me; at the same time you will understand that I can hardly
+enter such circles as a snob, and you will wish your son to comport
+himself as a gentleman; but gentlemanizing comes uncommon dear, I can
+tell you, with all the care in the world: and if you _could_ let me have
+another couple of hundred, I should vote you'--a what, Simon?--'an
+out-and-out brick' is the sensible style, but I suppose 'the best and
+kindest of parents' is the filial dodge, eh? There! 'With fond love to
+mamma and Florie, ever your affectionate son, COSMO GRANDISON.' Bravo!
+that's prime; that'll bring the yellows down, I take it. Here, old
+fellow, copy it to your governor; you couldn't have a more stunning
+effusion--short, and to the purpose, as cabinet councils ought to be,
+and ain't. Fire away, my juvenile."
+
+I did fire away; only I, of a more impressionable and poetic nature than
+Little Grand, gave a certain vent to my feelings in expatiating on the
+beauty, grace, condescension, &c., &c., of the Marchioness to my mother;
+I did _not_ mention the grivois stories, the brandy, and the hookah: I
+was quite sure they were the sign of that delirious ease and disregard
+of snobbish etiquette and convenances peculiar to the "Upper Ten," but I
+thought the poor people at home, in vicarage seclusion, would be too out
+of the world to fully appreciate such revelations of our _crême de la
+crême_; besides, my governor had James's own detestation of the divine
+weed, and considered that men who "made chimneys of their mouths" might
+just as well have the mark of the Beast at once.
+
+Little Grand and I were hard-up for cash, and _en attendant_ the
+governors' replies and remittances, we had recourse to the tender
+mercies and leather bags of napoleons, ducats, florins, and doubloons of
+a certain Spanish Jew, one Balthazar Miraflores, a shrivelled-skinned,
+weezing old cove, who was "most happy to lent anytink to his tear young
+shentlesmen, but, by Got! he was as poor as Job, he was indeed!" Whether
+Job ever lent money out on interest or not, I can't say; perhaps he did,
+as in the finish he ended with having quadrupled his cattle and lands,
+and all his goods--a knack usurers preserve in full force to this day;
+but all I can say is, that if he was not poorer than Mr. Miraflores, he
+was not much to be pitied, for he, miserly old shark, lived in his dark,
+dirty hole, like a crocodile embedded in Nile mud, and crushed the bones
+of all unwary adventurers who came within range of his great bristling
+jaws.
+
+Money, however, Little Grand and I got out of him in plenty, only for a
+little bit of paper in exchange; and at that time we didn't know that
+though the paper tax would be repealed at last, there would remain, as
+long as youths are green and old birds cunning, a heavy and a bitter tax
+on certain bits of paper to which one's hand is put, which Mr.
+Gladstone, though he achieve the herculean task of making draymen take
+kindly to vin ordinaire, and the popping of champagne corks a familiar
+sound by cottage-hearths, will never be able to include in his budgets,
+to come among the Taxes that are Repealed!
+
+Well, we had our money from old Balthazar that morning, and we played
+with it again that night up at the Casa di Fiori. Loo this time, by way
+of change. Saint-Jeu said he always thought it well to change your game
+as you change your loves: constancy, whether to cards or women, was most
+fatiguing. We liked Saint-Jeu very much, we thought him such a funny
+fellow. They said they did not care to play much--of course they didn't,
+when Guatamara had had écarté with the Grand-Duke of Chaffsandlarkstein
+at half a million a side, and Lord Dolph had broken the bank at Homburg
+"just for fun--no fun to old Blanc, who farms it, though, you know." But
+the Marchioness, who was doubly gracious that night, told them they must
+play, because it amused her _chers petits amis_. Besides, she said, in
+her pretty, imperious way, she liked to see it--it amused her. After
+that, of course, there was no more hesitation; down we sat, and young
+Heavystone with us.
+
+The evening before we had happened to mention him, said he was a fellow
+of no end of tin, though as stupid an owl as ever spelt his own name
+wrong when he passed a military examination, and the Marchioness,
+recalling the name, said she remembered his father, and asked us to
+bring him to see her; which we did, fearing no rival in "old Heavy."
+
+So down we three sat, and had the evening before over again, with the
+cards, and the smiles, and wiles of our divinity, and Saint-Jeu's
+stories and Fitzhervey's cognac and cigars; with this difference, that
+we found loo more exciting than vingt-et-un. They played it so fast,
+too, it was like a breathless heat for the Goodwood Cup, and the
+Marchioness watched it, leaning alternately over Grand's, and Heavy's,
+and my chair, and saying, with such naïve delight, "Oh, do take miss,
+Cosmo; I would risk it if I were you, Mr. Heavystone; _pray_ don't let
+my naughty brother win everything," that I'd have defied the stiffest of
+the Stagyrites or the chilliest of Calvinists to have kept their head
+cool with that syren voice in their ear.
+
+And La Lucrezia sat, as she had sat the night before, by the open
+window, still and silent, the Cape jasmines and Southern creepers
+framing her in a soft moonlight picture, contrast enough to the
+brilliantly lighted room, echoing with laughter at Saint-Jeu's stories,
+perfumed with Cubas and narghilés, and shrining the magnificent,
+full-blown, jewelled beauty of our Marchioness St. Julian, with which we
+were as rapidly, as madly, as unreasoningly, and as sentimentally in
+love as any boys of seventeen or eighteen ever could be. What greater
+latitude, you will exclaim, recalling certain buried-away episodes of
+_your_ hobbedehoyism, when you addressed Latin distichs to that
+hazel-eyed Hebe who presided over oyster patties and water ices at the
+pastrycook's in Eton; or ruined your governor's young plantations
+cutting the name of Adeliza Mary, your cousin, at this day a portly
+person in velvet and point, whom you can now call, with a thanksgiving
+in the stead of the olden tremor, Mrs. Hector M'Cutchin? Yes, we were in
+love in a couple of evenings, Little Grand vehemently and unpoetically,
+I shyly and sentimentally, according to our temperament, and as the fair
+Emily stirred feud between the two Noble Kinsmen, so the Marchioness St.
+Julian began to sow seeds of jealousy and detestation between us, sworn
+allies as we were. But "_le véritable amant ne connaît point_
+_d'amis_," and as soon as we began to grow jealous of each other, Little
+Grand could have kicked me to the devil, and I could have kicked _him_
+with the greatest pleasure in life.
+
+But I was shy, Little Grand was blessed with all the audacity
+imaginable; the consequence was, that when our horses came round, and
+the Maltese who acted as cherub was going to close the gates of Paradise
+upon us, he managed to slip into the Marchioness's boudoir to get a
+tête-à-tête farewell, while I strode up and down the veranda, not
+heeding Saint-Jeu, who was telling me a tale, to which, in any other
+saner moments, I should have listened greedily, but longing to execute
+on Little Grand some fierce and terrible vengeance, to which the
+vendetta should be baby's play. Saint-Jeu left me to put his arm over
+Heavy's shoulder, and tell him if ever he came to Paris he should be
+transported to receive him at the Hôtel de Millefleurs, and present him
+at the Tuileries; and I stood swearing to myself, and breaking off
+sprays of the veranda creepers, when I heard somebody say, very softly
+and low,--
+
+"Signore, come here a moment."
+
+It was that sweetly pretty mute whom we had barely noticed, absorbed as
+we were in the worship of our maturer idol, leaning out of the window,
+her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, her eyes sad and anxious. Of course
+I went to her, surprised at her waking up so suddenly to any interest in
+me. She put her hand on my coat-sleeve, and drew me down towards her.
+
+"Listen to me a moment. I hardly know how to warn you, and yet I must. I
+cannot sit quietly by and see you and your young friends being deceived
+as so many have been before you. Do not come here again---do not----"
+
+"Figlia mia! are you not afraid of the night-air?" said the Prince of
+Orangia Magnolia, just behind us.
+
+His words were kind, but there was a nasty glitter in his eyes.
+Lucrezia answered him in passionate Italian--of which I had no
+knowledge--with such fire in her eyes, such haughty gesticulation, and
+such a torrent of words, that I really began to think, pretty soft
+little dear as she looked, that she must positively be a trifle out of
+her mind, her silence before, and her queer speech to me, seemed such
+odd behavior for a young lady in such high society. She was turning to
+me again when Little Grand came out into the veranda, looking flushed,
+proud, and self-complaisant, as such a winner and slayer of women would
+do. My hand clenched on the jasmine, I thirsted to spring on him as he
+stood there with his provoking, self-contented smile, and his confounded
+coxcombical air, and his cursed fair curls--_my_ hair was dust-colored
+and as rebellious as porcupine-quills--and wash out in his blood or
+mine----A touch of a soft hand thrilled through my every nerve and
+fibre: the Marchioness was there, and signed me to her. Lucrezia, Little
+Grand, and all the rest of the universe vanished from my mind at the
+lightning of that angel smile and the rustle of that moire-antique
+dress. She beckoned me to her into the empty drawing-room.
+
+"Augustus" (I never thought my name could sound so sweet before), "tell
+me, what was my niece Lucrezia saying to you just now?"
+
+Now I had a sad habit of telling the truth; it was an out-of-the-world
+custom taught me, among other old-fashioned things, at home, though I
+soon found how inconvenient a _bêtise_ modern society considers it; and
+I blurted the truth out here, not distinctly or gracefully, though, as
+Little Grand would have done, for I was in that state of exaltation
+ordinarily expressed as not knowing whether one is standing in one's
+Wellingtons or not.
+
+The Marchioness sighed.
+
+"Ah, did she say that? Poor dear girl! She dislikes me so much, it is
+quite an hallucination, and yet, O Augustus, I have been to her like an
+elder sister, like a mother. Imagine how it grieves me," and the
+Marchioness shed some tears--pearls of price, thought I, worthy to drop
+from angel eyes--"it is a bitter sorrow to me, but, poor darling! she is
+not responsible."
+
+She touched her veiny temple significantly as she spoke, and I
+understood, and felt tremendously shocked at it, that the young, fair
+Italian girl was a fierce and cruel maniac, who had the heart (oh! most
+extraordinary madness did it seem to me; if _I_ had lost my senses I
+could never have harmed _her_!) to hate, absolutely hate, the noblest,
+tenderest, most beautiful of women!
+
+"I never alluded to it to any one," continued the Marchioness.
+"Guatamara and Saint-Jeu, though such intimate friends, are ignorant of
+it. I would rather have any one think ever so badly of me, than reveal
+to them the cruel misfortune of my sweet Lucrezia----"
+
+How noble she looked as she spoke!
+
+"But you, Augustus, you," and she smiled upon me till I grew as dizzy as
+after my first taste of milk-punch, "I have not the courage to let _you_
+go off with any bad impression of me. I have known you a very little
+while, it is true--but a few hours, indeed--yet there are affinities of
+heart and soul which overstep the bounds of time, and, laughing at the
+chill ties of ordinary custom, make strangers dearer than old
+friends----"
+
+The room revolved round me, the lights danced up and down, my heart beat
+like Thor's hammer, and my pulse went as fast as a favorite saving the
+distance. _She_ speaking so to me! My senses whirled round and round
+like fifty thousand witches on a Walpurgis Night, and down I went on my
+knees before my magnificent idol, raving away I couldn't tell you what
+now--the essence of everything I'd ever read, from Ovid to Alexander
+Smith. It must have been something frightful to hear, though Heaven
+knows I meant it earnestly enough. Suddenly I was pulled up with a
+jerk, as one throws an unbroken colt back on his haunches in the middle
+of his first start. _I thought I heard a laugh._
+
+She started up too. "Hush! another time! We may be overheard." And
+drawing her dress from my hands, which grasped it as agonisingly as a
+cockney grasps his saddle-bow, holding on for dear life over the Burton
+or Tedworth country, she stooped kindly over me, and floated away before
+_I_ was recovered from the exquisite delirium of my ecstatic trance.
+
+She loved me! This superb creature loved me! There was not a doubt of
+it; and how I got back to the barracks that night in my heavenly state
+of mind I could never have told. All I know is, that Grand and I never
+spoke a word, by tacit consent, all the way back; that I felt a fiendish
+delight when I saw his proud triumphant air, and thought how little he
+guessed, poor fellow!----And that Dream of One Fair Woman was as
+superior in rapture to the "Dream of Fair Women" as Tokay to the "Fine
+Fruity Port" that results from damsons and a decoction of sloes!
+
+The next day there was a grand affair in Malta to receive some foreign
+Prince, whose name I do not remember now, who called on us _en route_ to
+England. Of course all the troops turned out, and there was an
+inspection of us, and a grand luncheon and dinner, and ball, and all
+that sort of thing, which a month before I should have considered prime
+fun, but which now, as it kept me out of my paradise, I thought the most
+miserable bore that could possibly have chanced.
+
+"I say," said Heavy to me as I was getting into harness--"I say, don't
+you wonder Fitzhervey and the Marchioness ain't coming to the palace
+to-day? One would have thought Old Stars and Garters would have been
+sure to ask them."
+
+"Ask them? I should say so," I returned, with immeasurable disdain. "Of
+course he asked them; but she told me she shouldn't come, last night.
+She is so tired of such things. She came yachting with Fitzhervey solely
+to try and have a little quiet. She says people never give her a
+moment's rest when she is in Paris or London. She was sorry to
+disappoint Stars and Garters, but I don't think she likes his wife much:
+she don't consider her good ton."
+
+On which information Heavy lapsed into a state of profoundest awe and
+wonderment, it having been one of his articles of faith, for the month
+that we had been in Malta, that the palace people were exalted demigods,
+whom it was only permissible to worship from a distance, and a very
+respectful distance too. Heavy had lost some twenty odd pounds the night
+before--of course we lost, young hands as we were, unaccustomed to the
+society of that entertaining gentleman, Pam--and had grumbled not a
+little at the loss of his gold bobs. But now I could see that such a
+contemptibly pecuniary matter was clean gone from his memory, and that
+he would have thought the world well lost for the honor of playing cards
+with people who could afford to disappoint Old Stars and Garters.
+
+The inspection was over at last; and if any other than Conran had been
+my senior officer, I should have come off badly, in all probability, for
+the abominable manner in which I went through my evolutions. The day
+came to an end somehow or other, though I began to think it never would,
+the luncheon was ended, the bigwigs were taking their sieste, or
+otherwise occupied, and I, trusting to my absence not being noticed,
+tore off as hard as man can who has Cupid for his Pegasus. With a
+bouquet as large as a drum-head, clasped round with a bracelet, about
+which I had many doubts as to the propriety of offering to the possessor
+of such jewelry as the Marchioness must have, yet on which I thought I
+might venture after the scene of last night, I was soon on the veranda
+of the Casa di Fiori, and my natural shyness being stimulated into a
+distant resemblance of Little Grand's enviable brass, seeing the windows
+of the drawing-room open, I pushed aside the green venetians and entered
+noiselessly. The room did not look a quarter so inviting as the night
+before, though it was left in precisely a similar state. I do not know
+how it was, but those cards lying about on the floor, those sconces with
+the wax run down and dripping over them, those emptied caraffes that had
+diffused an odor not yet dissipated, those tables and velvet couches all
+_à tort et à travers_, did not look so very inviting after all, and even
+to my unsophisticated senses, scarcely seemed fit for a Peeress.
+
+There was nobody in the room, and I walked through it towards the
+boudoir; from the open door I saw Fitzhervey, Guatamara, and my
+Marchioness--but oh! what horror unutterable! doing--_que pensez-vous?_
+Drinking bottled porter!--and drinking bottled porter in a _peignoir_
+not of the cleanliest, and with raven tresses not of the neatest!
+
+Only fancy! she, that divine, _spirituelle_ creature, who had talked but
+a few hours before of the affinity of souls, to have come down, like any
+ordinary woman, to Guinness's stout, and a checked dressing-gown and
+unbrushed locks! To find your prophet without his silver veil, or your
+Leila dead drowned in a sack, or your Guinevere flown over with Sir
+Lancelot to Boulogne, or your long-esteemed Griselda gone off with your
+cockaded Jeames, is nothing to the torture, the unutterable anguish, of
+seeing your angel, your divinity, your bright particular star, your
+hallowed Arabian rose, come down to--Bottled Porter! Do not talk to me
+of Doré, sir, or Mr. Martin's pictures; their horrors dwindle into
+insignificance compared with the horror of finding an intimate liaison
+between one's first love and Bottled Porter!
+
+In my first dim, unutterable anguish, I should have turned and fled; but
+my syren's voice had not lost all its power, despite the stout and dirty
+dressing-gown, for she was a very handsome woman, and could stand such
+things as well as anybody. She came towards me, with her softest smile,
+glancing at the bracelet on the bouquet, apologizing slightly for her
+négligé:--"I am so indolent. I only dress for those I care to
+please--and I never hoped to see _you_ to-day." In short, magnetizing me
+over again, and smoothing down my outraged sensibilities, till I ended
+by becoming almost blind (_quite_ I could not manage) to the checked
+_robe de chambre_ and the unbrushed bandeaux, by offering her my
+braceleted bouquet, which was very graciously accepted, and even by
+sharing the atrocious London porter, "that horrid stuff," she called it,
+"how I hate it! but it is the only thing Sir Benjamin Brodie allows me,
+I am so very delicate, you know, my sensibilities so frightfully acute!"
+
+I had not twenty minutes to stay, having to be back at the barracks, or
+risk a reprimand, which, happily, the checked _peignoir_ had cooled me
+sufficiently to enable me to recollect. So I took my farewell--one not
+unlike Medora's and Conrad's, Fitzhervey and Guatamara having kindly
+withdrawn as soon as the bottled porter was finished--and I went out of
+the house in a very blissful state, despite Guinness and the unwelcome
+demi-toilette, which did not accord with Eugène Sue's and the Parlor
+Library's description of the general getting-up and stunning appearance
+of heroines and peeresses, "reclining, in robes of cloud-like tissue and
+folds of the richest lace, on a cabriole couch of amber velvet, while
+the air was filled with the voluptuous perfume of the flower-children of
+the South, and music from unseen choristers lulled the senses with its
+divinest harmony," &c., &c., &c.
+
+Bottled porter and a checked dressing-gown! Say what you like, sirs, it
+takes a very strong passion to overcome _those_. I have heard men
+ascribe the waning of their affections after the honeymoon to the
+constant sight of their wives--whom before they had only seen making
+papa's coffee with an angelic air and a toilette _tirée à quatre
+épingles_--everlastingly coming down too late for breakfast in a
+dressing-gown; and, upon my soul, if ever I marry, which Heaven in
+pitiful mercy forfend! and my wife make her appearance in one of those
+confounded _peignoirs_, I will give that much-run-after and
+deeply-to-be-pitied public character, the Divorce Judge, some more work
+to do--I will, upon my honor.
+
+However, the _peignoir_ had not iced me enough that time to prevent my
+tumbling out of the house in as delicious an ecstasy as if I had been
+eating some of Monte Cristo's "hatchis." As I went out, not looking
+before me, I came bang against the chest of somebody else, who, not
+admiring the rencontre, hit my cap over my eyes, and exclaimed, in not
+the most courtly manner you will acknowledge, "You cursed owl, take
+that, then! What are you doing here, I should like to know?"
+
+"Confound your impudence!" I retorted, as soon as my ocular powers were
+restored, and I saw the blue eyes, fair curls, and smart figure of my
+ancient Iolaüs, now my bitterest foe--"confound your impertinence! what
+are _you_ doing here? you mean."
+
+"Take care, and don't ask questions about what doesn't concern you,"
+returned Little Grand, with a laugh--a most irritating laugh. There are
+times when such cachinnations sting one's ears more than a volley of
+oaths. "Go home and mind your own business, my chicken. You are a green
+bird, and nobody minds you, but still you'll find it as well not to come
+poaching on other men's manors."
+
+"Other men's manors! Mine, if you please," I shouted, so mad with him I
+could have floored him where he stood.
+
+"Phew!" laughed Little Grand, screwing up his lips into a contemptuous
+whistle, "you've been drinking too much Bass, my daisy; 'tis n't good
+for young heads--can't stand it. Go home, innocent."
+
+The insult, the disdainful tone, froze my blood. My heart swelled with a
+sense of outraged dignity and injured manhood. With a conviction of my
+immeasurable superiority of position, as the beloved of that divine
+creature, I emancipated myself from the certain sort of slavery I was
+generally in to Little Grand, and spoke as I conceived it to be the
+habit of gentlemen whose honor had been wounded to speak.
+
+"Mr. Grandison, you will pay for this insult. I shall expect
+satisfaction."
+
+Little Grand laughed again--absolutely grinned, the audacious young
+imp--and he twelve months younger than I, too!
+
+"Certainly, sir. If you wish to be made a target of, I shall be
+delighted to oblige you. I can't keep ladies waiting. It is always Place
+aux dames! with me; so, for the present, good morning!"
+
+And off went the young coxcomb into the Casa di Fiori, and I, only
+consoled by the reflection of the different reception he would receive
+to what mine had been (_he_ had a braceleted bouquet, too, the young
+pretentious puppy!), started off again, assuaging my lacerated feelings
+with the delicious word of Satisfaction. I felt myself immeasurably
+raised above the heads of every other man in Malta--a perfect hero of
+romance; in fact, fit to figure in my beloved Alexandre's most
+highly-wrought yellow-papered _roman_, with a duel on my hands, and the
+love of a magnificent creature like my Eudoxia Adelaida. She had become
+Eudoxia Adelaida to me now, and I had forgiven, if not forgotten, the
+dirty dressing-gown: the bottled porter lay, of course, at Brodie's
+door. If he would condemn spiritual forms of life and light to the
+common realistic aliments of horrible barmaids and draymen, she could
+not help it, nor I either. If angels come down to earth, and are
+separated from their natural nourishment of manna and nectar, they must
+take what they can get, even though it be so coarse and sublunary a
+thing as Guinness's XXX, must they not, sir? Yes, I felt very _exalté_
+with my affair of honor and my affair of the heart, Little Grand for my
+foe, and my Marchioness, for a love. I never stopped to remember that I
+might be smashing with frightful recklessness the Sixth and the Seventh
+Commandments. If Little Grand got shot, he must thank himself; he should
+not have insulted me; and if there was a Marquis St. Julian, why--I
+pitied him, poor fellow! that was all.
+
+Full of these sublime sensations--grown at least three feet in my
+varnished boots--I lounged into the ball-room, feeling supreme pity for
+ensigns who were chattering round the door, admiring those poor, pale
+garrison girls. _They_ had not a duel and a Marchioness; _they_ did not
+know what beauty meant--what life was!
+
+I did not dance--I was above that sort of thing now--there was not a
+woman worth the trouble in the room; and about the second waltz I saw my
+would-be rival talking to Ruthven, a fellow in Ours. Little Grand did
+not look glum or dispirited, as he ought to have done after the
+interview he must have had; but probably that was the boy's brass. He
+would never look beaten if you had hit him till he was black and blue.
+Presently Ruthven came up to me. He was not over-used to his business,
+for he began the opening chapter in rather school-boy fashion.
+
+"Hallo, Gus! so you and Little Grand have been falling out. Why don't
+you settle it with a little mill? A vast deal better than pistols. Duels
+always seem to me no fun. Two men stand up like fools, and----"
+
+"Mr. Ruthven," said I, very haughtily, "if your principal desires to
+apologize----"
+
+"Apologize! Bless your soul, no! But----"
+
+"Then," said I, cutting him uncommonly short indeed, "you can have no
+necessity to address yourself to me, and I beg to refer you to my friend
+and second, Mr. Heavystone."
+
+Wherewith I bowed, turned on my heel, and left him.
+
+I did not sleep that night, though I tried hard, because I thought it
+the correct thing for heroes to sleep sweetly till the clock strikes the
+hour of their duel, execution, &c., or whatever it may hap. Egmont
+slept, Argyle slept, Philippe Egalité, scores of them, but I could not.
+Not that I funked it, thank Heaven--I never had a touch of that--but
+because I was in such a delicious state of excitement, self-admiration,
+and heroism, which had not cooled when I found myself walking down to
+the appointed place by the beach with poor old Heavy, who was intensely
+impressed by being charged with about five quires of the best
+cream-laid, to be given to the Marchioness in case I fell. Little Grand
+and Ruthven came on the ground at almost the same moment, Little Grand
+eminently jaunty and most _confoundedly_ handsome. We took off our caps
+with distant ceremony; the Castilian hidalgos were never more stately;
+but, then, what Knights of the Round Table ever splintered spears for
+such a woman?
+
+The paces were measured, the pistols taken out of their case. We were
+just placed, and Ruthven, with a handkerchief in his hand, had just
+enumerated, in awful accents, "One! two!"--the "three!" yet hovered on
+his lips, when we heard a laugh--the third laugh that had chilled my
+blood in twenty-four hours. Somebody's hand was laid on Little Grand's
+shoulder, and Conran's voice interrupted the whole thing.
+
+"Hallo, young ones! what farce is this?"
+
+"Farce, sir!" retorted Little Grand, hotly--"farce! It is no farce. It
+is an affair of honor, and----"
+
+"Don't make me laugh, my dear boy," smiled Conran; "it is so much too
+warm for such an exertion. Pray, why are you and your once sworn friend
+making popinjays of each other?"
+
+"Mr. Grandison has grossly insulted me," I began, "and I demand
+satisfaction. I will not stir from the ground without it, and----"
+
+"You _sha'n't_," shouted Little Grand. "Do you dare to pretend I want to
+funk, you little contemptible----"
+
+Though it was too warm, Conran went off into a fit of laughter.
+
+I dare say our sublimity had a comic touch in it of which we never
+dreamt. "My dear boys, pray don't, it is too fatiguing. Come, Grand,
+what is it all about?"
+
+"I deny your right to question me, Major," retorted Little Grand, in a
+fury. "What have you to do with it? I mean to punish that young owl
+yonder--who didn't know how to drink anything but milk-and-water, didn't
+know how to say bo! to a goose, till I taught him--for very abominable
+impertinence, and I'll----"
+
+"My impertinence! I like that!" I shouted. "It is your unwarrantable,
+overbearing self-conceit, that makes you the laughing-stock of all the
+mess, which----"
+
+"Silence!" said Conran's still stern voice, which subdued us into
+involuntary respect. "No more of this nonsense! Put up those pistols,
+Ruthven. You are two hot-headed, silly boys, who don't know for what you
+are quarrelling. Live a few years longer, and you won't be so eager to
+get into hot water, and put cartridges into your best friends. No, I
+shall not hear any more about it. If you do not instantly give me your
+words of honor not to attempt to repeat this folly, as your senior
+officer I shall put you under arrest for six weeks."
+
+O Alexandra Dumas!--O Monte Cristo!--O heroes of yellow paper and pluck
+invincible! I ask pardon of your shades; I must record the fact,
+lowering and melancholy as it is, that before our senior officer our
+heroism melted like Vanille ice in the sun, our glories tumbled to the
+ground like twelfth-cake ornaments under children's fingers, and before
+the threat of arrest the lions lay down like lambs.
+
+Conran sent us back, humbled, sulky, and crestfallen, and resumed his
+solitary patrol upon the beach, where, before the sun was fairly up, he
+was having a shot at curlews. But if he was a little stern, he was no
+less kind-hearted; and in the afternoon of that day, while he lay, after
+his siesta, smoking on his little bed, I unburdened myself to him. He
+did not laugh at me, though I saw a quizzical smile under his black
+moustaches.
+
+"What is your divinity's name?" he asked, when I had finished.
+
+"Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St. Julian."
+
+"The Marchioness St. Julian! Oh!"
+
+"Do you know her?" I inquired, somewhat perplexed by his tone.
+
+He smiled straight out this time.
+
+"I don't know _her_, but there are a good many Peeresses in Malta and
+Gibraltar, and along the line of the Pacific, as my brother Ned, in the
+_Belisarius_, will tell you. I could count two score such of my
+acquaintance off at this minute."
+
+I wondered what he meant. I dare say he knew all the Peerage; but that
+had nothing to do with me, and I thought it strange that all the
+Duchesses, and Countesses, and Baronesses should quit their
+country-seats and town-houses to locate themselves along the line of the
+Pacific.
+
+"She's a fine woman, St. John?" he went on.
+
+"Fine!" I reiterated, bursting into a panegyric, with which I won't bore
+you as I bored him.
+
+"Well, you're going there to-night, you say; take me with you, and we'll
+see what I think of your Marchioness."
+
+I looked at his fine figure and features, recalled certain tales of his
+conquests, remembered that he knew French, Italian, German, and Spanish,
+but, not being very able to refuse, acquiesced with a reluctance I could
+not entirely conceal. Conran, however, did not perceive it, and after
+mess took his cap, and went with me to the Casa di Fiori.
+
+The rooms were all right again, my Marchioness was _en grande tenue_,
+amber silk, black lace, diamonds, and all that sort of style. Fitzhervey
+and the other men were in evening dress, drinking coffee; there was not
+a trace of bottled porter anywhere, and it was all very brilliant and
+presentable. The Marchioness St. Julian rose with the warmest effusion,
+her dazzling white teeth showing in the sunniest of smiles, and both
+hands outstretched.
+
+"Augustus, _bien aimé_, you are rather----"
+
+"Late," I suppose she was going to say, but she stopped dead short, her
+teeth remained parted in a stereotyped smile, a blankness of dismay came
+over her luminous eyes. She caught sight of Conran, and I imagined I
+heard a very low-breathed "Curse the fellow!" from courteous Lord Dolph.
+Conran came forward, however, as if he did not notice it; there was only
+that queer smile lurking under his moustaches. I introduced him to them,
+and the Marchioness smiled again, and Fitzhervey almost resumed his
+wonted extreme urbanity. But they were somehow or other wonderfully ill
+at ease--wonderfully, for people in such high society; and I was ill at
+ease too, from being only able to attribute Eudoxia Adelaida's evident
+consternation at the sight of Conran to his having been some time or
+other an old love of hers. "Ah!" thought I, grinding my teeth, "that
+comes of loving a woman older than one's self."
+
+The Major, however, seemed the only one who enjoyed himself. The
+Marchioness was beaming on him graciously, though her ruffled feathers
+were not quite smoothed down, and he was sitting by her with an intense
+amusement in his eyes, alternately talking to her about Stars and
+Garters, whom, by her answers, she did not seem to know so very
+intimately after all, and chatting with Fitzhervey about hunting, who,
+for a man that had hunted over every country, according to his own
+account, seemed to confuse Tom Edge with Tom Smith, the Burton with the
+Tedworth, a bullfinch with an ox-rail, in queer style, under Conran's
+cross-questioning. We had been in the room about ten minutes, when a
+voice, rich, low, sweet, rang out from some inner room, singing the
+glorious "Inflammatus." How strange it sounded in the Casa di Fiori!
+
+Conran started, the dark blood rose over the clear bronze of his cheek.
+He turned sharply on to the Marchioness. "Good Heaven! whose voice is
+that?"
+
+"My niece's," she answered, staring at him, and touching a hand-bell. "I
+will ask her to come and sing to us nearer. She has really a lovely
+voice."
+
+Conran grew pale again, and sat watching the door with the most
+extraordinary anxiety. Some minutes went by; then Lucrezia entered, with
+the same haughty reserve which her soft young face always wore when with
+her aunt. It changed, though, when her glance fell on Conran, into the
+wildest rapture I ever saw on any countenance. He fixed his eyes on her
+with the look Little Grand says he's seen him wear in battle--a
+contemptuous smile quivering on his face.
+
+"Sing us something, Lucrezia dear," began the Marchioness. "You
+shouldn't be like the nightingales, and give your music only to night
+and solitude."
+
+Lucrezia seemed not to hear her. She had never taken her eyes off
+Conran, and she went, as dreamily as that dear little _Amina_ in the
+"Sonnambula," to her seat under the jasmines in the window. For a few
+minutes Conran, who didn't seem to care two straws what the society in
+general thought of him, took his leave, to the relief, apparently, of
+Fitzhervey and Guatamara.
+
+As he went across the veranda--that memorable veranda!--I sitting in
+dudgeon near the other window, while Fitzhervey was proposing écarté to
+Heavy, whom we had found there on our entrance, and the Marchioness had
+vanished into her boudoir for a moment, I saw the Roman girl spring out
+after him, and catch hold of his arm:
+
+"Victor! Victor! for pity's sake!--I never thought we should meet like
+this!"
+
+"Nor did I."
+
+"Hush! hush! you will kill me. In mercy, say some kinder words!"
+
+"I can say nothing that it would be courteous to you to say."
+
+I couldn't have been as inflexible, whatever her sins might have been,
+with her hands clasped on me, and her face raised so close to mine.
+Lucrezia's voice changed to a piteous wail:
+
+"You love me no longer, then?"
+
+"Love!" said Conran, fiercely--"love! How dare you speak to me of love?
+I held you to be fond, innocent, true as Heaven; as such, you were
+dearer to me than life--as dear as honor. I loved you with as deep a
+passion as ever a man knew--Heaven help me! I love you now! How am I
+rewarded? By finding you the companion of blackguards, the associate of
+swindlers, one of the arch-intrigantes who lead on youths to ruin with
+base smiles and devilish arts. Then you dare talk to me of love!"
+
+With those passionate words he threw her off him. She fell at his feet
+with a low moan. He either did not hear, or did not heed it; and I,
+bewildered by what I heard, mechanically went and lifted her from the
+ground. Lucrezia had not fainted, but she looked so wild, that I
+believed the Marchioness, and set her down as mad; but then Conran must
+be mad as well, which seemed too incredible a thing for me to
+swallow--our cool Major mad!
+
+"Where does he live?" asked Lucrezia of me, in a breathless whisper.
+
+"He? Who?"
+
+"Victor--your officer--Signor Conran."
+
+"Why, he lives in Valetta, of course."
+
+"Can I find him there?"
+
+"I dare say, if you want him."
+
+"Want him! Oh, Santa Maria! is not his absence death? Can I find him?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I dare say. Anybody will show you Conran's rooms."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+With that, this mysterious young lady left me, and I turned in through
+the window again. Heavy and the men were playing at lansquenet, that
+most perilous, rapid, and bewitching of all the resistless Card Circes.
+There was no Marchioness, and having done it once with impunity, I
+thought I might do it again, and lifted the amber curtain that divided
+the boudoir from the drawing-room. What did I behold? Oh! torture
+unexampled! Oh! fiendish agony! There was Little Grand--self-conceited,
+insulting, impertinent, abominable, unendurable Little Grand--on the
+amber satin couch, with the Marchioness leaning her head on his
+shoulder, and looking up in his thrice-confounded face with her most
+adorable smile, _my_ smile, that had beamed, and, as I thought, beamed
+only upon me!
+
+If Mephistopheles had been by to tempt me, I would have sold my soul to
+have wreaked vengeance on them both. Neither saw me, thank Heaven! and I
+had self-possession enough not to give them the cruel triumph of
+witnessing my anguish. I withdrew in silence, dropped the curtain, and
+rushed to bury my wrongs and sorrows in the friendly bosom of the gentle
+night. It was my first love, and I had made a fool of myself. The two
+are synonymous.
+
+How I reached the barracks I never knew. All the night long I sat
+watching the stars out, raving to them of Eudoxia Adelaida, and cursing
+in plentiful anathemas my late Orestes. How should I bear his impudent
+grin every mortal night of my life across the mess-table? I tore up into
+shreds about a ream of paper, inscribed with tender sonnets to my
+faithless idol. I trampled into fifty thousand shreds a rosette off her
+dress, for which, fool-like, I had begged the day before. I smashed the
+looking-glass, which could only show me the image of a pitiful donkey. I
+called on Heaven to redress my wrongs. Oh! curse it! never was a fellow
+at once so utterly done for and so utterly done brown!
+
+And in the vicarage, as I learnt afterwards, when my letter was received
+at home, there was great glorification and pleasure. My mother and the
+girls were enraptured at the high society darling Gussy was moving in;
+"but then, you know, mamma, dear Gussy's manners are so gentle, so
+gentleman-like, they are sure to please wherever he goes!" Wherewith my
+mother cried, and dried her eyes, and cried again, over that abominable
+letter copied from Little Grand's, and smelling of vilest tobacco.
+
+Then entered a rectoress of a neighboring parish, to whom my mother and
+the girls related with innocent exultation of my grand friends at Malta;
+how Lord A. Fitzhervey was my sworn ally, and the Marchioness St. Julian
+had quite taken me under her wing. And the rectoress, having a son of
+her own, who was not doing anything so grand at Cambridge, but
+principally sotting beer at a Cherryhinton public, smiled and was
+wrathful, and said to her lord at dinner:
+
+"My dear, did you ever hear of a Marchioness St. Julian?"
+
+"No, my love, I believe not--never."
+
+"Is there one in the peerage?"
+
+"Can't say, my dear. Look in Burke."
+
+So the rectoress got Burke and closed it, after deliberate inspection,
+with malignant satisfaction.
+
+"I thought not. How ridiculous those St. Johns are about that ugly boy
+Augustus. As if Tom were not worth a hundred of him!"
+
+I was too occupied with my own miseries then to think about Conran and
+Lucrezia, though some time after I heard all about it. It seems, that, a
+year before, Conran was on leave in Rome, and at Rome, loitering about
+the Campagna one day, he made a chance acquaintance with an Italian
+girl, by getting some flowers for her she had tried to reach and could
+not. She was young, enthusiastic, intensely interesting, and had only an
+old Roman nurse, deaf as a post and purblind, with her. The girl was
+Lucrezia da Guari, and Lucrezia was lovely as one of her own myrtle or
+orange flowers. Somehow or other Conran went there the next day, and the
+next, and the next, and so on for a good many days, and always found
+Lucrezia. Now, Conran had at bottom a touch of unstirred romance, and,
+moreover, his own idea of what sort of woman he could love. Something in
+this untrained yet winning Campagna flower answered to both. He was old
+to trust his own discernment, and, after a month or two's walks and
+talks, Conran, one of the proudest men going, offered himself and his
+name to a Roman girl of whom he knew nothing, except that she seemed to
+care for him as he had had a fancy to be cared for all his life. It was
+a deucedly romantic thing--however, he did it! Lucrezia had told him her
+father was a military officer, but somehow or other this father never
+came to light, and when he called at their house--or rather
+rooms--Conran always found him out, which he thought queer, but, on the
+whole, rather providential, and he set the accident down to a
+foreigner's roaming habits.
+
+The day Conran had really gone the length of offering to make an unknown
+Italian his wife, he went, for the first time in the evening, to Da
+Guari's house. The servant showed him in unannounced to a
+brightly-lighted chamber, reeking with wine and smoke, where a dozen men
+were playing trente et quarante at an amateur bank, and two or three
+others were gathered round what he had believed his own fair and pure
+Campagna flower. He understood it all; he turned away with a curse upon
+him. He wanted love and innocence; adventuresses he could have by the
+score, and he was sick to death of them. From that hour he never saw her
+again till he met her at the Casa di Fiori.
+
+The next day I went to Conran while he was breakfasting, and unburdened
+my mind to him. He looked ill and haggard, but he listened to me very
+kindly, though he spoke of the people at the Casa di Fiori in a hard,
+brief, curious manner.
+
+"Plenty have been taken in like you, Gus," he said "I was, years ago, in
+my youth, when I joined the Army. There are scores of such women, as I
+told you, down the line of the Pacific, and about here; anywhere, in
+fact, where the army and navy give them fresh pigeons to be gulled. They
+take titles that sound grand in boys' ears, and fascinate them till
+they've won all their money, and then--send them to the dogs. Your
+Marchioness St. Julian's real name is Sarah Briggs."
+
+I gave an involuntary shriek. Sarah Briggs finished me. It was the
+death-stroke, that could never be got over.
+
+"She was a ballet-girl in London," continued Conran; "then, when she was
+sixteen, married that Fitzhervey, _alias_ Briggs, _alias_ Smith, _alias_
+what you please, and set up in her present more lucrative employment
+with her three or four confederates. Saint-Jeu was expelled from Paris
+for keeping a hell in the Chaussée d'Antin, Fitzhervey was a leg at
+Newmarket, Orangia Magnolia a lawyer's clerk, who was had up for
+forgery, Guatamara is--by another name--a scoundrel of Rome. There is
+the history of your Maltese Peerage, Gussy. Well, you'll be wider awake
+next time. Wait, there is somebody at my door. Stay here a moment, I'll
+come back to you."
+
+Accordingly, I stayed in his bedroom, where I had found him writing, and
+he went into his sitting-room, of which, from the diminutiveness of his
+domicile, I commanded a full view, sit where I would. What was my
+astonishment to see Lucrezia! I went to his bedroom door; it was locked
+from the outside, so I perforce remained where I was, to, _nolens
+volens_, witness the finish of last night's interview.
+
+Stern to the last extent and deadly pale, Conran stood, too surprised to
+speak, and most probably at a loss for words.
+
+Lucrezia came up to him nevertheless with the abandonment of youth and
+southern blood.
+
+"Victor! Victor! let me speak to you. You shall listen; you shall not
+judge me unheard."
+
+"Signorina, I have judged you by only too ample evidence."
+
+He had recovered himself now, and was as cool as needs be.
+
+"I deny it. But you love me still?"
+
+"Love you? More shame on me! A laugh, a compliment, a caress, a
+cashmere, is as much as such women as you are worth. Love becomes
+ridiculous named in the same breath with you."
+
+She caught hold of his hand and crushed it in both her own.
+
+"Kill me you will. Death would have no sting from your hand, but never
+speak such words to _me_."
+
+His voice trembled.
+
+"How can I choose but speak them? You know that I believed you in Italy,
+and how on that belief I offered you my name--a name never yet stained,
+never yet held unworthy. I lost you, to find you in society which
+stamped you for ever. A lovely fiend, holding raw boys enchained, that
+your associates might rifle their purses with marked cards and cogged
+dice. I hoped to have found a diamond, without spot or flaw. I
+discovered my error too late; it was only glass, which all men were free
+to pick up and trample on at their pleasure."
+
+He tried to wrench his hand away, but she would not let it go.
+
+"Hush! hush! listen to me first. If you once thought me worthy of your
+love, you may, surely, now accord me pity. I shall not trouble you long.
+After this, you need see me no more. I am going back to my old convent.
+You and the world will soon forget me, but I shall remember you, and
+pray for you, as dearer than my own soul."
+
+Conran's head was bent down now, and his voice was thick, as he answered
+briefly,
+
+"Go on."
+
+This scene half consoled me for Eudoxia Adelaida--(I mean, O Heavens,
+Sarah Briggs!)--it was so exquisitely romantic, and Conran and Lucrezia
+wouldn't have done at all badly for Monte Cristo and that dear little
+Haidee. I was fearfully poetic in those days.
+
+"When I met you in Rome," Lucrezia went on, in obedience to his
+injunction, "two years ago, you remember I had only left my convent and
+lived with my father but a month or two. I told you he was an officer. I
+only said what I had been told, and I knew no more than you that he was
+the keeper of a gambling house."
+
+She shuddered as she paused, and leaned her forehead on Conran's hand.
+He did not repulse her, and she continued, in her broken, simple
+English:
+
+"The evening you promised me what I should have needed to have been an
+angel to be worthy of--your love and your name--that very evening, when
+I reached home, my father bade me dress for a soirée he was going to
+give. I obeyed him, of course. I knew nothing but what he told me, and I
+went down, to find a dozen young nobles and a few Englishmen drinking
+and playing on a table covered with green cloth. Some few of them came
+up to me, but I felt frightened; their looks, their tones, their florid
+compliments, were so different to yours. But my father kept his eye on
+me, and would not let me leave. While they were leaning over my chair,
+and whispering in my ear, _you_ came to the door of the salon, and I
+went towards you, and you looked cold, and harsh, as I had never seen
+you before, and put me aside, and turned away without a word. Oh,
+Victor! why did you not kill me then? Death would have been kindness.
+Your Othello was kinder to Desdemona; he slew her--he did not _leave_
+her. From that hour I never saw you, and from that hour my father
+persecuted me because I would never join in his schemes, nor enter his
+vile gaming-rooms. Yet I have lived with him, because I could not get
+away. I have been too carefully watched. We Italians are not free, like
+your happy English girls. A few weeks ago we were compelled to leave
+Rome, the young Contino di Firenze had been stilettoed leaving my
+father's rooms, and he could stay in Italy no longer. We came here, and
+joined that hateful woman, who calls herself Marchioness St. Julian;
+and, because she could not bend me to her will, gives out that I am her
+niece, and mad! I wonder I am _not_ mad, Victor. I wish hearts would
+break, as the romancers make them; but how long one suffers and lives
+on! Oh, my love, my soul, my life, only say that you believe me, and
+look kindly at me once again, then I will never trouble you again, I
+will only pray for you. But believe me, Victor. The Mother Superior of
+my convent will tell you it is the truth that I speak. Oh, for the love
+of Heaven, believe me! Believe me or I shall die!"
+
+It was not in the nature of man to resist her; there was truth in the
+girl's voice and face, if ever truth walked abroad on earth. And Conran
+did believe her, and told her so in a few unconnected words, lifting her
+up in his arms, and vowing, with most unrighteous oaths, that her father
+should never have power to persecute her again as long as he himself
+lived to shelter and take care of her.
+
+I was so interested in my Monte Cristo and Haidee (it was so like a
+chapter out of a book), that I entirely forgot my durance vile, and my
+novel and excessively disgraceful, though enforced, occupation of spy;
+and there I stayed, alternating between my interest in them and my
+agonies at the revelations concerning my Eudoxia Adelaida--oh, hang it!
+I mean Sarah Briggs--till, after a most confounded long time, Conran saw
+fit to take Lucrezia off, to get asylum for her with the Colonel's wife
+for a day or two, that "those fools might not misconstrue her." By which
+comprehensive epithet he, I suppose, politely designated "Ours."
+
+Then I went my ways to my own room, and there I found a scented,
+mauve-hued, creamy billet-doux, in uncommon bad handwriting, though,
+from my miserable Eudoxia Adelaida to the "friend and lover of her
+soul." Confound the woman!--how I swore at that daintily-perfumed and
+most vilely-scrawled letter. To think that where that beautiful
+signature stretched from one side to the other--"Eudoxia Adelaida St.
+Julian"--there _ought_ to have been that short, vile, low-bred, hideous,
+Billingsgate cognomen of "Sarah Briggs!"
+
+In the note she reproached me--the wretched hypocrite!--for my departure
+the previous night, "without one farewell to your Eudoxia, O cruel
+Augustus!" and asked me to give her a rendezvous at some vineyards lying
+a little way off the Casa di Fiori, on the road to Melita. Now, being a
+foolish boy, and regarding myself as having been loved and wronged,
+whereas I had only been playing the very common _rôle_ of pigeon, I
+could not resist the temptation of going, just to take one last look of
+that fair, cruel face, and upbraid her with being the first to sow the
+fatal seeds of lifelong mistrust and misery in my only too fond and
+faithful, &c. &c. &c.
+
+So, at the appointed hour, just when the sun was setting over the
+far-away Spanish shore, and the hush of night was sinking over the
+little, rocky, peppery, military-thick, Mediterranean isle, I found
+myself _en route_ to the vineyards; which, till I came to Malta, had
+been one of my delusions, Idea picturing them in wreaths and avenues,
+Reality proving them hop-sticks and parched earth. I drew near; it was
+quite dark now, the sun had gone to sleep under the blue waves, and the
+moon was not yet up. Though I knew she was Sarah Briggs, and an
+adventuress who had made game of me, two facts that one would fancy
+might chill the passion out of anybody, so mad was I about that woman,
+that, if I had met her then and there, I should have let her wheedle me
+over, and gone back to the Casa di Fiori with her and been fleeced
+again: I am sure I should, sir, and so would you, if, at eighteen, new
+to life, you had fallen in with Eudox----pshaw!--with Sarah Briggs, my
+Marchioness St Julian.
+
+I drew near the vineyards: my heart beat thick, I could not see, but I
+was certain I heard the rustle of her dress, caught the perfume of her
+hair. All her sins vanished: how could I upbraid her, though she were
+three times over Sarah Briggs? Yes, she was coming; I _felt_ her near;
+an electric thrill rushed through me as soul met soul. I heard a
+murmured "Dearest, sweetest!" I felt the warm clasp of two arms, but--a
+cold row of undress waistcoat-buttons came against my face, and a voice
+I knew too well cried out, as I rebounded from him, impelled thereto by
+a not gentle kick,--
+
+"The devil! get out! Who the deuce are you?"
+
+We both stopped for breath. At that minute up rose the silver moon, and
+in its tell-tale rays we glared on one another, I and Little Grand.
+
+That silence was sublime: the pause between Beethoven's andante
+allegro--the second before the Spanish bull rushes upon the torreador.
+
+"You little miserable wretch!" burst out Grand, slowly and terribly;
+"you little, mean, sneaking, spying, contemptible milksop! I should like
+to know what you mean by bringing out your ugly phiz at this hour, when
+you used to be afraid of stirring out for fear of nurse's bogies? And to
+dare to come lurking after me!"
+
+"After you, Mr. Grandison!" I repeated, with grandiloquence. "Really you
+put too much importance on your own movements. I came by appointment to
+meet the Marchioness St. Julian, whom, I presume, as you are well
+acquainted with her, you know in her real name of Sarah Briggs, and
+to----"
+
+"Sarah Briggs!--_you_ come by appointment?" stammered Little Grand.
+
+"Yes, sir; if you disbelieve my word of honor, I will condescend to show
+you my invitation."
+
+"You little ape!" swore Grand, coming back to his previous wrath; "it is
+a lie, a most abominable, unwarrantable lie! _I_ came by appointment,
+sir; you did no such thing. Look there!"
+
+And he flaunted before my eyes in the moonlight the fac-simile of my
+letter, verbatim copy, save that in his Cosmo was put in the stead of
+Augustus.
+
+"Look there!" said I, giving him mine.
+
+Little Grand snatched it, read it over once, twice, thrice, then drooped
+his head, with a burning color in his face, and was silent.
+
+The "knowing hand" was done!
+
+We were both of us uncommonly quiet for ten minutes, neither of us liked
+to be the first to give in.
+
+At last Little Grand looked up and held out his hand, no more nonsense
+about him now.
+
+"Simon, you and I have been two great fools; we can't chaff one another.
+She's a cursed actress, and--let's make it up, old boy."
+
+We made it up accordingly--when Little Grand was not conceited he was a
+very jolly fellow--and then I gave him my whole key to the mysteries,
+intricacies, and charms of our Casa di Fiori. We could not chaff one
+another, but poor Little Grand was pitiably sore then, and for long
+afterwards. He, the "old bird," the cool hand, the sharp one of Ours, to
+have been done brown, to be the joke of the mess, the laugh of all the
+men, down to the weest drummer-boy! Poor Little Grand! He was too done
+up to swagger, too thoroughly angry with himself to swear at anybody
+else. He only whispered to me, "Why the dickens could she want you and
+me to meet our selves?"
+
+"To give us a finishing hoax, I suppose," I suggested.
+
+Little Grand drew his cap over his eyes, and hung his head down in
+abject humiliation.
+
+"I suppose so. What fools we have been, Simon! And, I say, I've borrowed
+three hundred of old Miraflores, and it's all gone up at that devilish
+Casa; and how I shall get it from the governor, Heaven knows, for _I_
+don't."
+
+"I'm in the same pickle, Grand," I groaned. "I've given that old rascal
+notes of hand for two hundred pounds, and, if it don't drop from the
+clouds, I shall never pay it. Oh, I say, Grand, love comes deucedly
+expensive."
+
+"Ah!" said he, with a sympathetic shiver, "think what a pair of hunters
+we might have had for the money!" With which dismal and remorseful
+remembrance the old bird, who had been trapped like a young pigeon,
+swore mightily, and withdrew into humbled and disgusted silence.
+
+Next morning we heard, to our comfort--what lots of people there always
+are to tell us how to lock our stable-door when our solitary mare has
+been stolen--that, with a gentle hint from the police, the Marchioness
+St. Julian, with her _confrères_, had taken wing to the Ionian Isles,
+where, at Corfu or Cephalonia, they will re-erect the Casa di Fiori, and
+glide gently on again from vingt-et-un to loo, and from loo to
+lansquenet, under eyes as young and blinded as our own. They went
+without Lucrezia. Conran took her into his own hands. Any other man in
+the regiment would have been pretty well ridiculed at taking a bride out
+of the Casa di Fiori; but the statements made by the high-born Abbess of
+her Roman convert were so clear, and so to the girl's honor, and he had
+such a way of holding his own, of keeping off liberties from himself and
+anything belonging to him, and was, moreover, known to be of such
+fastidious honor, that his young wife was received as if she had been a
+Princess in her own right. With her respected parent Conran had a brief
+interview previous to his flight from Malta, in which, with a few gentle
+hints, he showed that worthy it would be wiser to leave his daughter
+unmolested for the future, and I doubt if Mr. Orangia Magnolia, _alias_
+Pepe Guari, would know his own child in the joyous, graceful,
+daintily-dressed mistress of Conran's handsome Parisian establishment.
+
+Little Grand and I suffered cruelly. We were the butts of the mess for
+many a long month afterwards, when every idiot's tongue asked us on
+every side after the health of the Marchioness St. Julian? when we were
+going to teach them lansquenet? how often we heard from the aristocratic
+members of the Maltese Peerage? with like delightful pleasantries, which
+the questioners deemed high wit. We paid for it, too, to that arch old
+screw Balthazar; but I doubt very much if the money were not well lost,
+and the experience well gained. It cured me of my rawness and Little
+Grand of his self-conceit, the only thing that had before spoilt that
+good-hearted, quick-tempered, and clever-brained little fellow. Oh,
+Pater and Materfamilias, disturb not yourselves so unnecessarily about
+the crop of wild oats which your young ones are sowing broadcast. Those
+wild oats often spring from a good field of high spirit, hot courage,
+and thoughtless generosity, that are the sign and basis of nobler
+virtues to come, and from them very often rise two goodly
+plants--Experience and Discernment.
+
+
+
+
+LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES:
+
+OR,
+
+THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.
+
+IN THREE SEASONS.
+
+
+SEASON THE FIRST.--THE ELIGIBLE.
+
+One of the kindest-natured persons that I ever knew on this earth, where
+kind people are as rare as black eagles or red deer, is Helena, Countess
+of Marabout, _née_ De Boncoeur. She has foibles, she has weaknesses--who
+amongst us has not?--she will wear her dresses _décolletées_, though
+she's sixty, if Burke tells us truth; she will rouge and practise a
+thousand other little toilette tricks, but they are surely innocent,
+since they deceive nobody; and if you wait for a woman who is no
+artifices, I am afraid you shall have to forswear the sex _in toto_, my
+friends, and come growling back to your Diogenes' tub in the Albany,
+with your lantern still lit every day of your lives.
+
+Lady Marabout is a very charming person. As for her weaknesses, she is
+all the nicer for them, to my taste. I like people with weaknesses
+myself; those without them do look so dreadfully scornfully and
+unsympathizingly upon one from the altitude of their superiority, _de
+toute la hauteur de sa bêtise_, as a witty Frenchman says. Humanity was
+born with weaknesses. If I were a beggar, I might hope for a coin from
+a man with some; a man without any, I know, would shut up his
+porte-monnaie, with an intensified click, to make me feel trebly
+envious, and consign me to D 15 and his truncheon, on the score of
+vagrancy.
+
+Lady Marabout is a very charming person, despite her little foibles, and
+she gives very pleasant little dinners, both at her house in Lowndes
+Square and in her jointure villa at Twickenham, where the bad odors of
+Thames are drowned in the fragrance of the geraniums, piled in great
+heaps of red, white, and variegated blossom in the flowerbeds on the
+lawn. She has been married twice, but has only one son, by her first
+union--Carruthers, of the Guards--a very good fellow, whom his mother
+thinks perfection, though if she _did_ know certain scenes in her adored
+Philip's life, the good lady might hesitate before she endowed her son
+with all the cardinal virtues as she does at the present moment. She has
+no daughters, therefore you will wonder to hear that the prime misery,
+burden, discomfort, and worry of her life is chaperonage. But so it is.
+
+Lady Marabout is the essence of good nature; she can't say No: that
+unpleasant negative monosyllable was never heard to issue from her full,
+smiling, kind-looking lips: she is in a high position, she has an
+extensive circle, thanks to her own family and those of the baronet and
+peer she successively espoused; and some sister, or cousin, or friend,
+is incessantly hunting her up to bring out their girls, and sell them
+well off out of hand; young ladies being goods extremely likely to hang
+_on_ hand nowadays.
+
+"Of all troubles, the troubles of a chaperone are the greatest," said
+Lady Marabout to me at the wedding déjeûner of one of her protegées. "In
+the first place, one looks on at others' campaigns instead of conducting
+them one's self; secondly, it brings back one's own bright days to see
+the young things' smiles and blushes, like that girl's just now (I do
+hope she'll be happy!); and thirdly, one has all the responsibility, and
+gets all the blame if anything goes wrong. I'll never chaperone anybody
+again now I have got rid of Leila."
+
+So does Lady Marabout say twenty times; yet has she invariably some
+young lady under her wing, whose relatives are defunct, or invalided, or
+in India, or out of society somehow; and we all of us call her house The
+Yard, and her (among ourselves) not Lady Marabout but Lady Tattersall.
+The worries she has in her chaperone's office would fill a folio,
+specially as her heart inclines to the encouragement of romance, but her
+reason to the banishment thereof; and while her tenderness suffers if
+she thwarts her protégées' leanings, her conscience gives her neuralgic
+twinges if she abets them to unwise matches while under her dragonnage.
+
+"What's the matter, mother?" asked Carruthers, one morning. He's very
+fond of his mother, and will never let any one laugh at her in his
+hearing.
+
+"Matter? Everything!" replied Lady Marabout, concisely and
+comprehensively, as she sat on the sofa in her boudoir, with her white
+ringed hands and her _bien conservé_ look, and her kindly pleasant eyes
+and her rich dress; one could see what a pretty woman she has been, and
+that Carruthers may thank her for his good looks. "To begin with,
+Félicie has been so stupid as to marry; married the greengrocer (whom
+she will ruin in a week!), and has left me to the mercies of a stupid
+woman who puts pink with cerise, mauve with magenta, and sky-blue with
+azureline, and has no recommendation except that she is as ugly as the
+Medusa, and so will not tempt you to----"
+
+"Make love to her, as I did to Marie," laughed Carruthers. "Marie was a
+pretty little dear; it was very severe in you to send her away."
+
+Lady Marabout tried hard to look severe and condemnatory, but failed
+signally, nature had formed the smooth brow and the kindly eyes in far
+too soft a mould.
+
+"Don't jest about it, Philip; you know it was a great pain, annoyance,
+and scandal to me. Well! Félicie is gone, and Oakes was seen pawning
+some of my Mechlin the other day, so I have been obliged to discharge
+_her_; and they both of them suited me so well! Then Bijou is ill, poor
+little pet----"
+
+"With repletion of chicken panada?"
+
+"No; Bijou isn't such a gourmet. You judge him by yourself, I suppose;
+men always do! Then Lady Hautton told me last night that you were the
+wildest man on town, and at forty----"
+
+"You think I ought to _ranger_? So I will, my dear mother, some day; but
+at present I am--so very comfortable; it would be a pity to alter! What
+pains one's friends are always at to tell unpalatable things; if they
+would but be only half so eager to tell us the pleasant ones! I shall
+expect you to cut Lady Hautton if she speak badly of me, I can't afford
+to lose your worship, mother!"
+
+"My worship? How conceited you are, Philip! As for Lady Hautton, I
+believe she does dislike you, because you did not engage yourself to
+Adelina, and were selected aide-de-camp to her Majesty, instead of
+Hautton; still, I am afraid she spoke too nearly the truth."
+
+"Perhaps Marie has entered her service and told tales."
+
+But Lady Marabout wouldn't laugh, she always looks very grave about
+Marie.
+
+"My worst trouble," she began hastily, "is that your aunt Honiton is too
+ill to come to town; no chance of her being well enough to come at all
+this season; and of course the charge of Valencia has devolved on me.
+You know how I hate chaperoning, and I did _so_ hope I should be free
+this year; besides, Valencia is a great responsibility, very great; a
+girl of so much beauty always is; there will be sure to be so many men
+about her at once, and your aunt will expect me to marry her so very
+well. It is excessively annoying."
+
+"My poor dear mother!" cried Carruthers. "I grant you _are_ an object of
+pity. You are everlastingly having young fillies sent you to break in,
+and they want such a tight hand on the ribbons."
+
+"And a tight hand, as you call it, I never had, and never shall have,"
+sighed Lady Marabout. "Valencia will be no trouble to me on that score,
+however; she has been admirably educated, knows all that is due to her
+position, and will never give me a moment's anxiety by any imprudence or
+inadvertence. But she is excessively handsome, and a beauty is a great
+responsibility when she first comes out."
+
+"Val was always a handsome child, if I remember. I dare say she is a
+beauty now. When is she coming up? because I'll tell the men to mark the
+house and keep clear of it," laughed Carruthers. "You're a dreadfully
+dangerous person, mother; you have always the best-looking girl in town
+with you. Fulke Nugent says if he should ever want such a thing as a
+wife when he comes into the title, he shall take a look at the Marabout
+Yearlings Sale."
+
+"Abominably rude of you and your friends to talk me over in your turf
+slang! I wish _you_ would come and bid at the sale, Philip; I should
+like to see you married--well married, of course."
+
+"My beloved mother!" cried Carruthers. "Leave me in peace, if you
+please, and catch the others if you can. There's Goodey, now; every
+chaperone and débutante in London has set traps for him for the last I
+don't know how many years; wouldn't he do for Valencia?"
+
+"Goodwood? Of course he would; he would do for any one; the Dukedom's
+the oldest in the peerage. Goodwood is highly eligible. Thank you for
+reminding me, Philip. Since Valencia is coming, I must do my best for
+her." Which phrase meant with Lady Marabout that she must be very
+lynx-eyed as to settlements, and a perfect dragon to all detrimental
+connections, must frown with Medusa severity on all horrors of younger
+sons, and advocate with all the weight of personal experience the
+advantage and agrémens of a good position, in all of which
+practicalities she generally broke down, with humiliation unspeakable,
+immediately her heart was enlisted and her sympathies appealed to on the
+enemy's side. She sighed, played with her bracelets thoughtfully, and
+then, heroically resigning herself to her impending fate, brightened up
+a little, and asked her son to go and choose a new pair of
+carriage-horses for her.
+
+To look at Lady Marabout as she sat in her amber satin couch that
+morning, pleasant, smiling, well-dressed, well-looking, with the grace
+of good birth and the sunniness of good nature plainly written on her
+smooth brow and her kindly eyes, and wealth--delicious little
+god!--stamping itself all about her, from the diamond rings on her soft
+white fingers to the broidered shoe on the feet, of whose smallness she
+was still proud, one might have ignorantly imagined her to be the most
+happy, enviable, well-conditioned, easy-going dowager in the United
+Kingdom. But appearances are deceptive, and if we believe what she
+constantly asserted, Lady Marabout was very nearly worn into her grave
+by a thousand troubles; her almshouses, whose roofs would eternally blow
+off with each high wind; her dogs, whom she would overfeed; her ladies'
+maids, who were only hired to steal, tease, or scandalize her; the
+begging letter-writers, who distilled tears from her eyes and sovereigns
+from her purse, let Carruthers disclose their hypocrisies as he might;
+the bolder begging-letters, written by hon. secs., and headed by names
+with long handles, belonging to Pillars of the State and Lights of the
+Church, which compelled her to make a miserable choice between a
+straitened income or a remorseful conscience--tormented, in fine, with
+worries small and large, from her ferns, on which she spent a large
+fortune, and who drooped maliciously in their glass cases, with an
+ill-natured obstinacy characteristic of desperately-courted individuals,
+whether of the floral or the human world, to those marriageable young
+ladies whom she took under her wing to usher into the great world, and
+who were certain to run counter to her wishes and overthrow her plans,
+to marry ill, or not marry at all, or do something or other to throw
+discredit on her chaperoning abilities. She was, she assured us,
+_pétrie_ with worries, small and large, specially as she was so
+eminently sunny, affable, and radiant a looking person, that all the
+world took their troubles to her, selected her as their confidante, and
+made her the repository of their annoyances; but her climax of misery
+was to be compelled to chaperone, and as a petition for some débutante
+to be intrusted to her care was invariably made each season, and "No"
+was a monosyllable into which her lips utterly refused to form
+themselves, each season did her life become a burden to her. There was
+never any rest for the soul of Helena, Countess of Marabout, till her
+house in Lowndes Square was shut up, and her charges off her hand, and
+she could return in peace to her jointure-villa at Twickenham, or to
+Carruthers' old Hall of Deepdene, and among her flowers, her birds, and
+her hobbies, throw off for a while the weary burden of her worries as a
+chaperone.
+
+"Valencia will give me little trouble, I hope. So admirably brought-up a
+girl, and so handsome as she is, will be sure to marry soon, and marry
+well," thought Lady Marabout, self-congratulatorily, as she dressed for
+dinner the day of her niece's arrival in town, running over mentally the
+qualifications and attractions of Valencia Valletort, while Félicie's
+successor, Mademoiselle Despréaux, whose crime was then to put pink
+with cerise, mauve with magenta, and sky-blue with azureline, gave the
+finishing touches to her toilette--"Valencia will give me no trouble;
+she has all the De Boncoeur beauty, with the Valletort dignity. Who
+would do for her? Let me see; eligible men are not abundant, and those
+that are eligible are shy of being marked as Philip would say--perhaps
+from being hunted so much, poor things! There is Fulke Nugent, heir to a
+barony, and his father is ninety--very rich, too--he would do; and
+Philip's friend, Caradoc, poor, I know, but their Earldom's the oldest
+peerage patent. There is Eyre Lee, too; I don't much like the man,
+supercilious and empty-headed; still he's an unobjectionable alliance.
+And there is Goodwood. Every one has tried for Goodwood, and failed. I
+should like Valencia to win him; he is decidedly the most eligible man
+in town. I will invite him to dinner. If he is not attracted by
+Valencia's beauty, nothing can attract him----_Despréaux! comme vous
+êtes bête! Otez ces panaches, de grace!_"
+
+"Valencia will give me no trouble; she will marry at once," thought Lady
+Marabout again, looking across the dinner-table at her niece.
+
+If any young patrician might be likely to marry at once, it was the Hon.
+Valencia Valletort; she was, to the most critical, a beauty: her figure
+was perfect, her features were perfect, and if you complained that her
+large glorious eyes were a trifle too changeless in expression, that her
+cheek, exquisitely independent of Maréchale powder, Blanc de Perle, and
+liquid rouge, though it was, rarely varied with her thoughts and
+feelings, why, you were very exacting, my good fellow, and should
+remember that nothing is quite perfect on the face of the earth--not
+even a racer or a woman--and that whether you bid at the Marabout
+yearling sales or the Rawcliffe, if you wish to be pleased you'd better
+leave a hypercritical spirit behind you, and not expect to get _all_
+points to your liking. The best filly will have something faulty in
+temper or breeding, symmetry or pace, for your friend Jack Martingale to
+have the fun of pointing out to you when your money is paid and the
+filly in your stall; and your wife will have the same, only Martingale
+will point _her_ flaws out behind your back, and only hint them to you
+with an all-expressive "Not allowed to smoke in the dining-room _now_!"
+"A little bit of a flirt, madame--n'est-ce pas, Charlie?" "Reins kept
+rather tight, eh, old fellow?" or something equally ambiguous,
+significant, and unpleasant.
+
+"I must consider, Philip, I have brought out the beauty of the season,"
+said Lady Marabout to Carruthers, eying her niece as she danced at her
+first ball at the Dowager-Duchess of Amandine's, and beginning to
+brighten up a little under the weight of her responsibilities.
+
+"I think you have, mother. Val's indisputably handsome. You must tell
+her to make play with Goodwood or Nugent."
+
+Lady Marabout unfurled her fan, and indignantly interrupted him:
+
+"My dear Philip! do you suppose I would teach Valencia, or any girl
+under my charge, to lay herself out for any man, whoever or whatever it
+might be? I trust your cousin would not stoop to use such manoeuvres,
+did I even stoop to counsel them. Depend upon it, Philip, it is
+precisely those women who try to 'make play,' as you call it, with your
+sex that fail most to charm them. It is abominable the way in which you
+men talk, as if we all hunted you down, and would drive you to St.
+George's _nolens volens_!"
+
+"So you would, mother," laughed Carruthers. "We 'eligible men' have a
+harder life of it than rabbits in a warren, with a dozen beagles after
+them. From the minute we're of age we're beset with traps for the
+unwary, and the spring-guns are so dexterously covered, with an
+inviting, innocent-looking turf of courtesies and hospitalities that
+it's next to a mural impossibility to escape them, let one retire into
+one's self, keep to monosyllables through all the courses of all the
+dinners and all the turns of all the valses, and avoid everything
+'compromising,' as one may. I've suffered, and can tell you. I suffer
+still, though I believe and hope they are beginning to look on me as an
+incurable, given over to the clubs, the coulisses, and the cover-side.
+There's a fellow that's known still more of the _peines fortes et dures_
+than I. Goodwood's coming to ask for an introduction to Val, I would
+bet."
+
+He was coming for that purpose, and, though Lady Marabout had so
+scornfully and sincerely repudiated her son's counsel relative to making
+play with Goodwood, blandly ignorant of her own weaknesses like a good
+many other people, Lady Marabout was not above a glow of chaperone
+gratification when she saw the glance of admiration which the Pet
+Eligible of the season bestowed on Valencia Valletort. Goodwood was a
+good-looking fellow--a clever fellow--though possibly he shone best
+alone at a mess luncheon, in a chat driving to Hornsey Wood, round the
+fire in a smoking-room, on a yacht deck, or anywhere where ladies of the
+titled world were not encountered, he having become afraid of them by
+dint of much persecution, as any October partridge of a setter's nose.
+He was passably good-looking, ordinarily clever, a very good fellow as I
+say, and--he was elder son of his Grace of Doncaster, which fact would
+have made him the desired of every unit of the _beau sexe_, had he been
+hideous as the Veiled Prophet or Brutal Gilles de Rayes. The Beauty
+often loves the Beast in our day, as in the days of fairy lore. We see
+that beloved story of our petticoat days not seldom acted out, and when
+there is no possibility of personal transmogrification and amelioration
+for the Beast moreover; only--the Beauty has always had whispered in
+her little ear the title she will win, and the revenues she will gain,
+and the cloth of gold she will wear, if she caresses Bruin the
+enamoured, swears his ugly head is god-like, and vows fidelity
+unswerving!
+
+Goodwood was no uncouth Bruin, and he had strawberry-leaves in his gift;
+none of your lacquered, or ormolu, or silver-gilt coronets, such as are
+cast about nowadays with a liberality that reminds one of flinging a
+handful of halfpence from a balcony, where the nimblest beggar is first
+to get the prize; but of the purest and best gold; and Goodwood had been
+tried for accordingly by every woman he came across for the last dozen
+years. Women of every style and every order had primed all their rifles,
+and had their shot at him, and done their best to make a centre and
+score themselves as winner: belles and bas bleus, bewitching widows and
+budding débutantes, fast young ladies who tried to capture him in the
+hunting-field by clearing a bullfinch; saintly young ladies, who
+illuminated missals, and hinted they would like to take his conversion
+in hand; brilliant women, who talked at him all through a long rainy
+day, when Perthshire was flooded, and the black-fowl unattainable; showy
+women, who _posê'd_ for him whole evenings in their opera-boxes, whole
+mornings in their boudoir--all styles and orders had set at him, till he
+had sometimes sworn in his haste that all women were man-traps, and that
+he wished to Heaven he were a younger son in the Foreign Office, or a
+poor devil in the Line, or anything, rather than what he was; the Pet
+Eligible of his day.
+
+"Goodwood is certainly struck with her," thought Lady Marabout, as
+Despréaux disrobed her that night, running over with a retrogressive
+glance Valencia Valletort's successes at her first ball. "Very much
+struck, indeed, I should say. I will issue cards for another 'At Home.'
+As for 'making play' with him, as Philip terms it, of course that is
+only a man's nonsense. Valencia will need none of those trickeries, I
+trust; still, it is any one's duty to make the best alliance possible
+for such a girl, and--dear Adeliza would be very pleased."
+
+With which amiable remembrance of her sister (whom, conceiving it her
+duty to love, Lady Marabout persuaded herself that she _did_ love, from
+a common feminine opticism that there's an eleventh commandment which
+makes it compulsory to be attached to relatives _n'importe_ of whatever
+degree of disagreeability, though Lady Honiton was about the most odious
+hypochondriac going, in a perpetual state of unremitting battle with the
+whole outer world in general, and allopathists, homoeopathists, and
+hydropathists in especial), the most amiable lady in all Christendom
+bade Despréaux bring up her cup of coffee an hour earlier in the
+morning, she had so much to do! asked if Bijou had had some panada set
+down by his basket in case he wanted something to take in the night;
+wished her maid good night, and laid her head on her pillow as the dawn
+streamed through the shutters, already settling what bridal presents she
+should give her niece Valencia, when she became present Marchioness of
+Goodwood and prospective Duchess of Doncaster before the altar rails of
+St. George's.
+
+"That's a decidedly handsome girl, that cousin of yours, Phil," said
+Goodwood, on the pavement before her Grace of Amandine's, in Grosvenor
+Place, at the same hour that night.
+
+"I think she _is_ counted like me!" said Carruthers. "Of course she's
+handsome; hasn't she De Boncoeur blood in her, my good fellow? We're all
+of us good-looking, always have been, thank God! If you're inclined to
+sacrifice, Goodwood, now's your time, and my mother'll be delighted.
+She's brought out about half a million of débutantes, I should say, in
+her time, and all of 'em have gone wrong, somehow; wouldn't go off at
+all, like damp gunpowder, or would go off too quick in the wrong
+direction, like a volunteer's rifle charge; married ignominiously, or
+married obstinately, or never excited pity in the breast of any man, but
+had to retire to single-blessedness in the country, console themselves
+with piety and an harmonium, and spread nets for young clerical victims.
+Give her a triumph at last, and let her have glory for once, as a
+chaperone, in catching _you_!"
+
+Goodwood gave a little shiver, and tried to light a Manilla, which
+utterly refused to take light, for the twelfth time in half a minute.
+
+"Hold your tongue! If the Templars' Order were extant, wouldn't I take
+the vows and bless them! What an unspeakable comfort and protection that
+white cross would be to us, Phil, if we could stick it on our coats, and
+know it would say to every woman that looked at us, 'No go, my pretty
+little dears--not to be caught!' Marriage! I can't remember any time
+that that word wasn't my bugbear. When I was but a little chicken, some
+four years old, I distinctly remember, when I was playing with little
+Ida Keane on the terrace, hearing her mother simper to mine, 'Perhaps
+darling Goodwood may marry my little Ida some day, who knows?' I never
+would play with Ida afterwards; instinct preserved me; she's six or
+seven-and thirty now, and weighs ten stone, I'm positive. Why _won't_
+they let us alone? The way journalists and dowagers, the fellows who
+want to write a taking article, and the women who want to get rid of a
+taking daughter, all badger us, in public and private, about marriage
+just now, is abominable, on my life; the affair's _ours_, I should say,
+not theirs, and to marry isn't the ultimatum of a man's existence, nor
+anything like it."
+
+"I hope not! It's more like the extinguisher. Good night, old fellow."
+And Carruthers drove away in his hansom, while Goodwood got into his
+night-brougham, thinking that for the sake of the title, the evil
+(nuptial) day _must_ come, sooner or later, but dashed off to forget
+the disagreeable obligation over the supper-table of the most sparkling
+empress of the demi-monde.
+
+Lady Marabout had her wish; she brought out the belle of the season, and
+when a little time had slipped by, when the Hon. Val had been presented
+at the first Drawing-room, and shone there despite the worry, muddle,
+and squeeze incidental to that royal and fashionable ceremony, and she
+had gathered second-hand from her son what was said in the clubs
+relative to this new specimen of the Valletort beauty, she began to be
+happier under her duties than she had ever been before, and wrote
+letters to "dearest Adeliza," brimful of superlative adjectives and
+genuine warmth.
+
+"Valencia will do me credit: I shall see her engaged before the end of
+June; she will have only to choose," Lady Marabout would say to herself
+some twenty times in the pauses of the morning concerts, the morning
+parties, the bazaar committees, the toilette consultations, the
+audiences to religious beggars, whose name was Legion and rapacity
+unmeasured, the mass of unanswered correspondence whose debt lay as
+heavily on Lady Marabout as his chains on a convict, and were about as
+little likely to be knocked off, and all the other things innumerable
+that made her life in the season one teetotum whirl of small worries and
+sunshiny cares, from the moment she began her day, with her earliest cup
+of Mocha softened with cream from that pet dairy of hers at Fernditton,
+where, according to Lady Marabout, the cows were constantly _in articulo
+mortis_, but the milk invariably richer than anywhere else, an
+agricultural anomaly which presented no difficulties to _her_ reason.
+Like all women, she loved paradoxes, defied logic recklessly, and would
+clear at a bound a chasm of solecisms that would have kept Plato in
+difficulties about crossing it, and in doubt about the strength of his
+jumping-pole, all his life long.
+
+"She will do me great credit," the semi-consoled chaperone would say to
+herself with self-congratulatory relief; and if Lady Marabout thought
+now and then, "I wish she were a trifle--a trifle more--demonstrative,"
+she instantly checked such an ungrateful and hypercritical wish, and
+remembered that a heart is a highly treacherous and unadvisable
+possession for any young lady, and a most happy omission in her anatomy,
+though Lady Marabout had, she would confess to herself on occasions with
+great self-reproach, an unworthy and lingering weakness for that
+contraband article, for which she scorned and scolded herself with the
+very worst success.
+
+Lady Marabout _had_ a heart herself; to it she had had to date the
+greatest worries, troubles, imprudences, and vexations of her life; she
+had had to thank it for nothing, and to dislike it for much; it had made
+her grieve most absurdly for other people's griefs; it had given her a
+hundred unphilosophical pangs at philosophic ingratitude from people who
+wanted her no longer; it had teased, worried, and plagued her all her
+life long, had often interfered in the most meddling and inconvenient
+manner between her and her reason, her comfort and her prudence; and yet
+she had a weakness for the same detrimental organ in other people--a
+weakness of which she could no more have cured herself than of her
+belief in the detection-defying powers of liquid rouge, the potentiality
+of a Liliputian night-bolt against an army of burglars, the miraculous
+properties of sal volatile, the efficacy of sermons, and such-like
+articles of faith common to feminine orthodoxy. A weakness of which she
+never felt more ignominiously convicted and more secretly ashamed than
+in the presence of Miss Valletort, that young lady having a lofty and
+magnificent disdain for all such follies, quite unattainable to ordinary
+mortals, which oppressed Lady Marabout with a humiliating sense of
+inferiority to her niece of eighteen summers. "So admirably educated! so
+admirably brought up!" she would say to herself over and over again,
+and if heretic suggestions that the stiffest trained flowers are not
+always the best, that the upright and spotless arum-lily isn't so
+fragrant as the careless, brilliant, tangled clematis; that rose-boughs,
+tossing free in sunshine and liberty, beat hollow the most
+carefully-pruned standard that ever won a medal at Regent's Park, with
+such-like allegories, arising from contemplation of her conservatory or
+her balcony flowers, _would_ present themselves, Lady Marabout repressed
+them dutifully, and gratefully thought how many pounds' weight lighter
+became the weary burden of a chaperone's responsibilities when the
+onerous charge had been educated "on the best system."
+
+"Goodwood's attentions _are_ serious, Philip, say what you like," said
+the Countess to her son, as determinedly as a theologian states his pet
+points with wool in his ears, that he may not hear any Satan-inspired,
+rational, and mathematical disproval of them, with which you may rashly
+seek to soil his tympana and smash his arguments--"Goodwood's attentions
+_are_ serious, Philip, say what you like," said her ladyship, at a
+morning party at Kew, eating her Neapolitan ice, complacently glancing
+at the "most eligible alliance of the season," who was throwing the
+balls at lawn-billiards, and talking between whiles to the Hon. Val with
+praiseworthy and promising animation.
+
+"Serious indeed, mother, if they tend matrimony-wards!" smiled
+Carruthers. "It's a very serious time indeed for unwary sparrows when
+they lend an ear to the call-bird, and think about hopping on to the
+lime-twigs. I should think it's from a sense of compunction for the net
+you've led us into, that you all particularize our attentions, whenever
+they point near St. George's, by that very suggestive little adjective
+'serious!' Yes, I am half afraid poor Goodey is a little touched. He
+threw over our Derby sweepstakes up at Hornsey Wood yesterday to go and
+stifle himself in Willis's rooms at your bazaar, and buy a guinea cup
+of Souchong from Valencia; and, considering he's one of the best shots
+in England, I don't think you could have a more conclusive, if you could
+have a more poetic, proof of devoted renunciation. _I_'d fifty times
+rather get a spear in my side, à la Ivanhoe, for a woman than give up a
+Pigeon-match, a Cup-day, or a Field-night!"
+
+"You'll never do either!" laughed Lady Marabout, who made it one of her
+chief troubles that her son would not marry, chiefly, probably, because
+if he _had_ married she would have been miserable, and thought no woman
+good enough for him, would have been jealous of his wife's share of his
+heart, and supremely wretched, I have no doubt, at his throwing himself
+away, as she would have thought it, had his handkerchief lighted on a
+Princess born, lovely as Galatea, and blessed with Venus's cestus.
+
+"Never, _plaise à Dieu_!" responded her son, piously over his ice; "but
+if Goodwood's serious, what's Cardonnel? _He_'s lost his head, if you
+like, after the Valletort beauty."
+
+"Major Cardonnel!" said Lady Marabout, hastily. "Oh no, I don't think
+so. I hope not--I trust not."
+
+"Why so? He's one of the finest fellows in the Service."
+
+"I dare say; but you see, my dear Philip, he's not--not--desirable."
+
+Carruthers stroked his moustaches and laughed:
+
+"Fie, fie, mother! if all other Belgraviennes are Mammon-worshippers, I
+thought you kept clear of the paganism. I thought your freedom from it
+was the only touch by which you weren't 'purely feminine,' as the lady
+novelists say of their pet bits of chill propriety."
+
+"Worship Mammon! Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Lady Marabout. "But there
+are duties, you see, my dear; your friend is a very delightful man, to
+be sure; I like him excessively, and if Valencia felt any _great_
+preference for him----"
+
+"You'd feel it _your_ duty to counsel her to throw him over for
+Goodwood."
+
+"I never said so, Philip," interrupted Lady Marabout, with as near an
+approach to asperity as she could achieve, which approach was less like
+vinegar than most people's best honey.
+
+"But you implied it. What are 'duties' else, and why is poor Cardonnel
+'not desirable'?"
+
+Lady Marabout played a little tattoo with her spoon in perplexity.
+
+"My dear Philip, you know as well as I do what I mean. One might think
+you were a boy of twenty to hear you!"
+
+"My dear mother, like all disputants, when beaten in argument and driven
+into a corner, you resort to vituperation of your opponent!" laughed
+Carruthers, as he left her and lounged away to pick up the stick with
+which pretty Flora Elmers had just knocked the pipe out of Aunt Sally's
+head on to the velvet lawn of Lady George Frangipane's dower-house,
+leaving his mother by no means tranquillized by his suggestions.
+
+"Dear me!" thought Lady Marabout, uneasily, as she conversed with the
+Dowager-Countess of Patchouli on the respective beauties of two new
+pelargonium seedlings, the Leucadia and the Beatrice, for which her
+gardener had won prizes the day before at the Regent's Park Show--"dear
+me! why is there invariably this sort of cross-purposes in everything?
+It will be so grievous to lose Goodwood (and he _is_ decidedly struck
+with her; when he bought that rosebud yesterday of her at the bazaar,
+and put it in the breast of his waistcoat, I heard what he said, and it
+was no nonsense, no mere flirting complaisance either)--it would be so
+grievous to lose him; and yet if Valencia really care for Cardonnel--and
+sometimes I almost fancy she does--I shouldn't know which way to advise.
+I thought it would be odd if a season could pass quietly without my
+having some worry of this sort! With fifty men always about Valencia, as
+they are, how _can_ I be responsible for any mischief that may happen,
+though, to hear Philip talk, one would really imagine it was _my_ fault
+that they lost their heads, as he calls it! As if a forty-horse
+steam-power could stop a man when he's once off down the incline into
+love! The more you try to pull him back the more impetus you give him to
+go headlong down. I wish Goodwood would propose, and we could settle the
+affair definitively. It is singular, but she has had no offers hardly
+with all her beauty. It is very singular, in _my_ first season I had
+almost as many as I had names on my tablets at Almack's. But men don't
+marry now, they say. Perhaps 'tisn't to be wondered at, though I
+wouldn't allow it to Philip. Poor things! they lose a very great many
+pleasant things by it, and get nothing, I'm sure, nine times out of ten,
+except increased expenses and unwelcome worries. I don't think I would
+have married if I'd been a man, though I'd never admit it, of course, to
+one of them. There are plenty of women who know too much of their own
+sex ever to wonder that a man doesn't marry, though of course we don't
+say so; 'twouldn't be to our interest. Sculptors might as well preach
+iconoclasm, or wine-merchants tee-totalism, as women misoganism, however
+little in our hearts we may marvel at it. Oh, my dear Lady Patchouli!
+you praise the Leucadia too kindly--you do indeed--but if you really
+think so much of it, let me send you some slips. I shall be most happy,
+and Fenton will be only too proud; it is his favorite seedling."
+
+Carruthers was quite right. One fellow at least had lost his head after
+the beauty of the season, and he was Cardonnel, of the--Lancers, as fine
+a fellow, as Philip said, as any in the Queen's, but a dreadful
+detrimental in the eyes of all chaperones, because he was but the fourth
+son of one of the poorest peers in the United Kingdom, a fact which
+gave him an ægis from all assaults matrimonial, and a freedom from all
+smiles and wiles, traps and gins, which Goodwood was accustomed to tell
+him he bitterly envied him, and on which Cardonnel had fervently
+congratulated himself, till he came under the fire of the Hon. Val's
+large luminous eyes one night, when he was levelling his glass from his
+stall at Lady Marabout's box, to take a look at the new belle, as
+advised to do by that most fastidious female critic, Vane Steinberg.
+Valencia Valletort's luminous eyes had gleamed that night under their
+lashes, and pierced through the lenses of his lorgnon. He saw her, and
+saw nothing but her afterwards, as men looking on the sun keep it on
+their retina to the damage and exclusion of all other objects.
+
+Physical beauty, even when it is a little bit soulless, is an admirable
+weapon for instantaneous slaughter, and the trained and pruned standard
+roses show a very effective mass of bloom; though, as Lady Marabout's
+floral tastes and experiences told her, they don't give one the lasting
+pleasure that a careless bough of wild rose will do, with its untutored
+grace and its natural fragrance. With the standard you see we keep in
+the artificial air of the horticultural tent, and are never touched out
+of it for a second; its perfume seems akin to a bouquet, and its destiny
+is, we are sure, to a parterre. The wild-rose fragrance breathes of the
+hill-side and the woodlands, and brings back to us soft touches of
+memory, of youth, of a fairer life and a purer air than that in which we
+are living now.
+
+The Hon. Val did _not_ have as many offers as her aunt and chaperone had
+on the first flush of her pride in her anticipated. Young ladies,
+educated on the "best systems," are apt to be a trifle wearisome, and
+_don't_, somehow or other, take so well as the sedulous efforts of their
+pruners and trainers--the rarefied moral atmosphere of the
+conservatories, in which they are carefully screened from ordinary air,
+and the anxiety evinced lest the flower should ever forget itself, and
+sway naturally in the wind--deserve. But Cardonnel had gone mad after
+her, that perfect face of hers had done for him; and whatever Goodwood
+might be, _he_ was serious--he positively haunted the young beauty like
+her own shadow--he was leaning on the rails every morning of his life
+that she took her early ride--he sent her bouquets as lavishly as if
+he'd been a nursery gardener. By some species of private surveillance,
+or lover's clairvoyance, he knew beforehand where she would go, and was
+at the concert, fête, morning party, bazaar, or whatever it happened to
+be, as surely as was Lady Marabout herself. Poor Cardonnel was serious,
+and fiercely fearful of his all-powerful and entirely eligible rival;
+though greater friends than he and Goodwood had been, before this girl's
+face appeared on the world of Belgravia, never lounged arm-in-arm into
+Pratt's, or strolled down the "sweet shady side of Pall-Mall."
+
+Goodwood's attentions were very marked, too, even to eyes less willing
+to construe them so than Lady Marabout's. Goodwood himself, if chaffed
+on the subject, vouchsafed nothing; laughed, stroked his moustaches, or
+puffed his cigar, if he happened to have that blessed resource in all
+difficulties, and comforter under all embarrassments, between his lips
+at the moment; but decidedly he sought Valencia Valletort more, or, to
+speak more correctly, he shunned her less than he'd ever done any other
+young lady, and one or two Sunday mornings--_mirabile dictu!_--he was
+positively seen at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, in the seat behind Lady
+Marabout's sittings. A fact which, combining as it did a brace of
+miracles at once, of early rising and unusual piety, set every
+Belgravienne in that fashionable sanctuary watching over the top of her
+illuminated prayer-book, to the utter destruction of her hopes and
+interruption of her orisons.
+
+Dowagers began to tremble behind their fans, young ladies to quake over
+their bouquets; the topic was eagerly discussed by every woman from
+Clarges Street to Lowndes Square; their Graces of Doncaster smiled well
+pleased on Valencia--she was unquestionable blood, and they so wished
+dear Goodwood to settle! There was whispered an awful whisper to the
+whole female world; whispered over matutinal chocolate, and luncheon
+Strasbourg pâtés, ball-supper Moëts', and demi-monde-supper Silleri,
+over Vane Steinberg's cigar and Eulalie Rosière's cigarette, over the
+_Morning Post_ in the clubs, and _Le Follet_ in the boudoir, that--the
+Pet Eligible would--marry! That the Pet Prophecy of universal smash was
+going to be fulfilled could hardly have occasioned greater
+consternation.
+
+The soul of Lady Marabout had been disquieted ever since her son's
+suggestions at Lady George Frangipane's morning party, and she began to
+worry: for herself, for Valencia, for Goodwood, for Cardonnel, for her
+responsibilities in general, and for her "dearest Adeliza's" alternate
+opinions of her duenna qualifications in particular. Lady Marabout had
+an intense wish, an innocent wish enough, as innocent and very similar
+in its way to that of an Eton boy to make a centre at a rifle-contest,
+viz., to win the Marquis of Goodwood; innocent, surely, for though
+neither the rifle prize nor the Pet Eligible could be won without
+mortification unspeakable to a host of unsuccessful aspirants, if we
+decree that sort of thing sinful and selfish, as everything natural
+seems to me to get decreed nowadays, we may as well shut up at once; if
+we may not try for the top of the pole, why erect poles at all,
+monsieur? If we must not do our best to pass our friend and brother, we
+must give up climbing forever, and go on all fours placably with Don and
+Pontos.
+
+Everybody has his ambition: one sighs for the Woolsack, another for the
+Hunt Cup; somebody longs to be First Minister, somebody else pines to be
+first dancer; one man plumes himself on a new fish-sauce, another on a
+fresh reform bill; A. thirsts to get a single brief, B. for the time
+when he shall be worried with no briefs at all; C. sets his hopes on
+being the acrobat at Cremorne, D. on being the acrobat of the Tuileries;
+fat bacon is Hodge the hedger's _summum bonum_, and Johannisberg _pur_
+is mine; Empedocles thinks notoriety everything, and Diogenes thinks
+quiet everything--each has his own reading of ambition, and Lady
+Marabout had hers; the Duchess of Doncaster thirsted for the Garter for
+her husband, Lady Elmers's pride was to possess the smallest terrier
+that ever took daisy tea and was carried in a monkey-muff, her Grace of
+Amandine slaved night and day to bring her party in and throw the
+ministry out. Lady Marabout sighed but for one thing--to win the Pet
+Eligible of the season, and give éclat for once to one phase of her
+chaperone's existence.
+
+Things were nicely in train. Goodwood was beginning to bite at that very
+handsome fly the Hon. Val, and promised to be hooked and landed without
+much difficulty before long, and placed, hopelessly for him,
+triumphantly for her, in the lime-basket of matrimony. Things were
+beautifully in train, and Lady Marabout was for once flattering herself
+she should float pleasantly through an unruffled and successful season,
+when Carruthers poured the one drop of _amari aliquid_ into her
+champagne-cup by his suggestion of Cardonnel's doom. And then Lady
+Marabout begun to worry.
+
+She who could not endure to see a fly hurt or a flower pulled
+needlessly, had nothing for it but to worry for Cardonnel's destiny, and
+puzzle over the divided duties which Carruthers had hinted to her. To
+reject the one man because he was not well off did seem to her
+conscience, uncomfortably awakened by Phil's innuendoes, something more
+mercenary than she quite liked to look at; yet to throw over the other,
+future Duke of Doncaster, the eligible, the darling, the yearned-for of
+all May Fair and Belgravia, seemed nothing short of madness to inculcate
+to Valencia; a positive treason to that poor absent, trusting, "dearest
+Adeliza," who, after the visions epistolarily spread out before her,
+would utterly refuse to be comforted if Goodwood any way failed to
+become her son-in-law, and, moreover, the heaviest blow to Lady Marabout
+herself that the merciless axe of that brutal headsman Contretemps could
+deal her.
+
+"I do not know really what to do or what to advise," would Lady Marabout
+say to herself over and over again (so disturbed by her onerous burden
+of responsibilities that she would let Despréaux arrange the most
+outrageous coiffures, and, never noticing them, go out to dinner with
+emeralds on blue velvet, or something as shocking to feminine nerves in
+her temporary aberration), forgetting one very great point, which,
+remembered, would have saved her all trouble, that nobody asked her to
+do anything, and not a soul requested her advice. "But Goodwood is
+decidedly won, and Goodwood must not be lost; in our position we owe
+something to society," she would invariably conclude these mental
+debates; which last phase, being of a vagueness and obscure application
+that might have matched it with any Queen's speech or electional address
+upon record, was a mysterious balm to Lady Marabout's soul, and spoke
+volumes to _her_, if a trifle hazy to you and to me.
+
+But Lady Marabout, if she was a little bit of a sophist, had not worn
+her eye-glass all these years without being keen-sighted on some
+subjects, and, though perfectly satisfied with her niece's conduct with
+Goodwood, saw certain symptoms which made her tremble lest the
+detrimental Lancer should have won greater odds than the eligible
+Marquis.
+
+"Arthur Cardonnel is excessively handsome! Such very good style!
+Isn't it a pity they're all so poor! His father played away
+everything--literally everything. The sons have no more to marry upon,
+any one of them, than if they were three crossing-sweepers," said her
+ladyship, carelessly, driving home from St. Paul's one Sunday morning.
+
+And, watching the effect of her stray arrow, she had beheld an actual
+flush on the beauty's fair, impassive cheek, and had positively heard a
+smothered sigh from an admirably brought-up heart, no more given
+ordinarily to such weaknesses than the diamond-studded heart pendent
+from her bracelet, the belle's heart and the bracelet's heart being both
+formed alike, to fetch their price, and bid to do no more:--power of
+volition would have been as inconvenient in, and interfered as greatly
+with, the sale of one as of the other.
+
+"She does like him!" sighed Lady Marabout over that Sabbath's luncheon
+wines. "It's always my fate--always; and Goodwood, never won before,
+will be thrown--actually thrown--away, as if he were the younger son of
+a Nobody!" which horrible waste was so terrible to her imagination that
+Lady Marabout could positively have shed tears at the bare prospect, and
+might have shed them, too, if the Hon. Val, the butler, two footmen, and
+a page had not inconveniently happened to be in the room at the time, so
+that she was driven to restrain her feelings and drink some Amontillado
+instead. Lady Marabout is not the first person by a good many who has
+had to smile over sherry with a breaking heart. Ah! lips have quivered
+as they laughed over Chambertin, and trembled as they touched the bowl
+of a champagne-glass. Wine has assisted at many a joyous festa enough,
+but some that has been drunk in gayety has caught gleams, in the eyes of
+the drinkers, of salt water brighter than its brightest sparkles: water
+that no other eyes can see. Because we may drink Badminton laughingly
+when the gaze of Society the Non-Sympathetic is on us, do you think we
+must never have tasted any more bitter dregs? _Va-t'en, bécasse!_ where
+have you lived! Nero does not always fiddle while Rome is burning from
+utter heartlessness, believe me, but rather--sometimes,
+perhaps--because his heart is aching!
+
+"Goodwood will propose to-night, I fancy, he is so very attentive,"
+thought Lady Marabout, sitting with her sister chaperones on the cosy
+causeuses of a mansion in Carlton Terrace, at one of the last balls of
+the departing season. "I never saw dear Valencia look better, and
+certainly her waltzing is----Ah! good evening, Major Cardonnel! Very
+warm to-night, is it not? I shall be so glad when I am down again at
+Fernditton. Town, in the first week of July, is really not habitable."
+
+And she furled her fan, and smiled on him with her pleasant eyes, and
+couldn't help wishing he hadn't been on the Marchioness Rondeletia's
+visiting list, he _was_ such a detrimental, and he was ten times
+handsomer than Goodwood!
+
+"Will Miss Valletort leave you soon?" asked Cardonnel, sitting down by
+her.
+
+"_Ah! monsieur, vous êtes là!_" thought Lady Marabout, as she answered,
+like a guarded diplomatist as she was, that it was not all settled at
+present what her niece's post-season destiny would be, whether Devon or
+Fernditton, or the Spas, with her mother, Lady Honiton; and then
+unfurled her fan again, and chatted about Baden and her own indecision
+as to whether she should go there this September.
+
+"May I ask you a question, and will you pardon me for its plainness?"
+asked Cardonnel, when she'd exhausted Baden's desirable and
+non-desirable points.
+
+Lady Marabout shuddered as she bent her head, and thought, "The creature
+is never going to confide in me! He will win me over if he do, he looks
+so like his mother! And what shall I say to Adeliza!"
+
+"Is your niece engaged to Goodwood or not?"
+
+If ever a little fib was tempting to any lady, from Eve downward, it was
+tempting to Lady Marabout now! A falsehood would settle everything,
+send Cardonnel off the field, and clear all possibility of losing the
+"best match of the season." Besides, if not engaged to Goodwood actually
+to-night, Val would be, if she liked, to-morrow, or the next day, or
+before the week was over at the furthest--would it be such a falsehood
+after all? She colored, she fidgeted her fan, she longed for the little
+fib!--how terribly tempting it looked! But Lady Marabout is a bad hand
+at prevarication, and she hates a lie, and she answered bravely, with a
+regretful twinge, "Engaged? No; not----"
+
+"Not yet! Thank God!"
+
+Lady Marabout stared at him and at the words muttered under his
+moustaches:
+
+"Really, Major Cardonnel, I do not see why you----"
+
+"Should thank Heaven for it? Yet I do--it is a reprieve. Lady Marabout,
+you and my mother were close friends; will you listen to me for a
+second, while we are not overheard? That I have loved your niece--had
+the madness to love her, if you will--you cannot but have seen; that she
+has given me some reasonable encouragement it is no coxcombry to say,
+though I have known from the first what a powerful rival I had against
+me; but that Valencia loves me and does not love him, I believe--nay, I
+_know_. I have said nothing decided to her; when all hangs on a single
+die we shrink from hazarding the throw. But I must know my fate
+to-night. If she come to you--as girls will, I believe, sometimes--for
+countenance and counsel, will you stand my friend?--will you, for the
+sake of my friendship with your son, your friendship with my mother,
+support my cause, and uphold what I believe Valencia's heart will say in
+my favor?"
+
+Lady Marabout was silent: no Andalusian ever worried her fan more
+ceaselessly in coquetry than she did in perplexity. Her heart was
+appealed to, and when that was enlisted, Lady Marabout was lost!
+
+"But--but--my dear Major Cardonnel, you are aware----" she began, and
+stopped. I should suppose it may be a little awkward to tell a man to
+his face he is "not desirable!"
+
+"I am aware that I cannot match with Goodwood? I am; but I know, also,
+that Goodwood's love cannot match with mine, and that your niece's
+affection is not his. That he may win her I know women too well not to
+fear, therefore I ask _you_ to be my friend. If she refuse me, will you
+plead for me?--if she ask for counsel, will you give such as your own
+heart dictates (I ask no other)--and, will you remember that on
+Valencia's answer will rest the fate of a man's lifetime?"
+
+He rose and left her, but the sound of his voice rang in Lady Marabout's
+ears, and the tears welled into her eyes: "Dear, dear! how like he
+looked to his poor dear mother! But what a position to place me in! Am I
+_never_ to have any peace?"
+
+Not at this ball, at any rate. Of all the worried chaperones and
+distracted duennas who hid their anxieties under pleasant smiles or
+affable lethargy, none were a quarter so miserable as Helena, Lady
+Marabout. Her heart and her head were enlisted on opposite sides; her
+wishes pulled one way, her sympathies another; her sense of justice to
+Cardonnel urged her to one side, her sense of duty to "dearest Adeliza"
+urged her to the other; her pride longed for one alliance, her heart
+yearned for the other. Cardonnel had confided in her and appealed to
+her; _sequitur_, Lady Marabout's honor would not allow her to go against
+him: yet, it was nothing short of grossest treachery to poor Adeliza,
+down there in Devon, expecting every day to congratulate her daughter on
+a prospective duchy won, to counsel Valencia to take one of these
+beggared Cardonnels, and, besides--to lose all her own laurels, to lose
+the capture of Goodwood!
+
+No Guelphs and Ghibelins, no Royalists and Imperialists, ever fought so
+hard as Lady Marabout's divided duties.
+
+"Valencia, Major Cardonnel spoke to me to-night," began that
+best-hearted and most badgered of ladies, as she sat before her
+dressing-room fire that night, alone with her niece.
+
+Valencia smiled slightly, and a faint idea crossed Lady Marabout's mind
+that Valencia's smile was hardly a pleasant one, a trifle too much like
+the play of moonbeams on ice.
+
+"He spoke to me about you."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Perhaps you can guess, my dear, what he said?"
+
+"I am no clairvoyante, aunt;" and Miss Val yawned a little, and held out
+one of her long slender feet to admire it.
+
+"Every woman, my love, becomes half a clairvoyante when she is in love,"
+said Lady Marabout, a little bit impatiently; she hadn't been brought up
+on the best systems herself, and though she admired the refrigeration
+(on principle), it irritated her just a little now and then. "Did
+he--did he say anything to _you_ to-night?"
+
+"Oh yes!"
+
+"And what did you answer him, my love?"
+
+"What would you advise me?"
+
+Lady Marabout sighed, coughed, played nervously with the tassels of her
+peignoir, crumpled Bijou's ears with a reckless disregard to that
+priceless pet's feelings, and wished herself at the bottom of the
+Serpentine. Cardonnel had trusted her, she couldn't desert _him_; poor
+dear Adeliza had trusted her, she couldn't betray _her_; what was right
+to one would be wrong to the other, and to reconcile her divided duties
+was a Danaid's labor. For months she had worried her life out lest her
+advice should be asked, and now the climax was come, and asked it was.
+
+"What a horrible position!" thought Lady Marabout.
+
+She waited and hesitated till the pendule had ticked off sixty seconds,
+then she summoned her courage and spoke:
+
+"My dear, advice in such matters is often very harmful, and always very
+useless; plenty of people have asked my counsel, but I never knew any of
+them take it unless it chanced to chime in with their fancy. A woman's
+best adviser is her own heart, specially on such a subject as this. But
+before I give my opinion, may I ask if you have accepted him?"
+
+Lady Marabout's heart throbbed quick and fast as she put the momentous
+question, with an agitation for which she would have blushed before her
+admirably nonchalante niece; but the tug of war was coming, and if
+Goodwood should be lost!
+
+"You have accepted him?" she asked again.
+
+"No! I--refused him."
+
+The delicate rose went out of the Hon. Val's cheeks for once, and she
+breathed quickly and shortly.
+
+Goodwood was _not_ lost then!
+
+Was she sorry--was she glad? Lady Marabout hardly knew; like Wellington,
+she felt the next saddest thing after a defeat is a victory.
+
+"But you love him, Valencia?" she asked, half ashamed of suggesting such
+weakness, to this glorious beauty.
+
+The Hon. Val unclasped her necklet as if it were a chain, choking her,
+and her face grew white and set: the coldest will feel on occasion, and
+all have _some_ tender place that can wince at the touch.
+
+"Perhaps; but such folly is best put aside at once. Certainly I prefer
+him to others, but to accept him would have been madness, absurdity. I
+told him so!"
+
+"You told him so! If you had the heart to do so, Valencia, he has not
+lost much in losing you!" burst in Lady Marabout, her indignation
+getting the better of her judgment, and her heart, as usual, giving the
+coup de grace to her reason. "I am shocked at you! Every tender-hearted
+woman feels regret for affection she is obliged to repulse, even when
+she does not return it; and you, who love this man----"
+
+"Would you have had me accept him, aunt?"
+
+"Yes," cried Lady Marabout, firmly, forgetting every vestige of "duty,"
+and every possibility of dear Adeliza's vengeance, "if you love him, I
+would, decidedly. When I married my dear Philip's father, he was what
+Cardonnel is, a cavalry man, as far off his family title then as
+Cardonnel is off his now."
+
+"The more reason I should not imitate your imprudence, my dear aunt;
+death might not carry off the intermediate heirs quite so courteously in
+this case! No, I refused Major Cardonnel, and I did rightly; I should
+have repented it by now had I accepted him. There is nothing more silly
+than to be led away by romance. You De Boncoeurs _are_ romantic, you
+know; we Valletorts are happily free from the weakness. I am very tired,
+aunt, so good night."
+
+The Hon. Val went, the waxlight she carried shedding a paler shade on
+her handsome face, whiter and more set than usual, but held more
+proudly, as if it already wore the Doncaster coronet; and Lady Marabout
+sighed as she rang for her maid.
+
+"Of course she acted wisely, and I ought to be very pleased; but that
+poor dear fellow!--his eyes _are_ so like his mother's!"
+
+"I congratulate you, mother, on a clear field. You've sent poor Arthur
+off very nicely," said Carruthers, the next morning, paying his general
+visit in her boudoir before the day began, which is much the same time
+in Town as in Greenland, and commences, whatever almanacs may say,
+about two or half-past P.M. "Cardonnel left this morning for Heaven
+knows where, and is going to exchange, Shelleto tells me, into the
+----th, which is ordered to Bengal, so _he_ won't trouble you much more.
+When shall I be allowed to congratulate my cousin as the future Duchess
+of Doncaster?"
+
+"Pray, don't tease me, Philip. I've been vexed enough about your friend.
+When he came to me this morning, and asked me if there was no hope, and
+I was obliged to tell him there was none, I felt wretched," said Lady
+Marabout, as nearly pettishly as she ever said anything; "but I am
+really not responsible, not in the least. Besides, even you must admit
+that Goodwood is a much more desirable alliance, and if Valencia had
+accepted Cardonnel, pray what would all Belgravia have said? Why, that,
+disappointed of Goodwood, she took the other out of pure pique! We owe
+something to society, Philip, and something to ourselves."
+
+Carruthers laughed:
+
+"Ah, my dear mother, you women will never be worth all you ought to be
+till you leave off kowtow-ing to 'what will be said,' and learn to defy
+that terrible oligarchy of the Qu'en dira-t-on?"
+
+"When will Goodwood propose?" wondered Lady Marabout, fifty times a day,
+and Valencia Valletort wondered too. Whitebait was being eaten, and
+yachts being fitted, manned, and victualled, outstanding Ascot debts
+were being settled, and outstanding bills were being passed hurriedly
+through St. Stephen's; all the clockwork of the season was being wound
+up for the last time previous to a long standstill, and going at a deuce
+of a pace, as if longing to run down, and give its million wheels and
+levers peace; while everybody who'd anything to settle, whether monetary
+or matrimonial, personal or political, was making up his mind about it
+and getting it off his hands, and some men were being pulled up by
+wide-awake Jews to see what they were "made of," while others were
+pulled up by adroit dowagers to know what they had "meant" before the
+accounts of the season were scored out and settled. "Had Goodwood
+proposed?" asked all Belgravia. "Why hadn't Goodwood proposed?" asked
+Lady Marabout and Valencia. Twenty most favorable opportunities for the
+performance of that ceremony had Lady Marabout made for him
+"accidentally on purpose" the last fortnight; each of those times she
+had fancied the precious fish hooked and landed, and each time she had
+seen him, free from the hook, floating on the surface of society.
+
+"He _must_ speak definitely to-morrow," thought Lady Marabout. But the
+larvæ of to-morrow burst into the butterfly of to-day, and to-day passed
+into the chrysalis of yesterday, and Goodwood was always very nearly
+caught, and never _quite_!
+
+"Come up-stairs, Philip; I want to show you a little Paul Potter I
+bought the other day," said Lady Marabout one morning, returning from a
+shopping expedition to Regent Street, meeting her son at her own door
+just descending from his tilbury. "Lord Goodwood calling, did you say,
+Soames? Oh, very well."
+
+And Lady Marabout floated up the staircase, but signed to her footman to
+open the door, not of the drawing-room, but of her own boudoir.
+
+"The Potter is in my own room, Philip; you must come in here if you wish
+to see it," said that adroit lady, for the benefit of Soames. But when
+the door was shut, Lady Marabout lowered her voice confidentially: "The
+Potter isn't here, dear; I had it hung in the little cabinet through the
+drawing-rooms, but I don't wish to go up there for a few moments--you
+understand."
+
+Carruthers threw himself in a chair, and laughed till the dogs Bijou,
+Bonbon, and Pandore all barked in a furious concert.
+
+"I understand! So Goody's positively coming to the point up there, is
+he?"
+
+"No doubt he is," said Lady Marabout, reprovingly. "Why else should he
+come in when I was not at home? There is nothing extraordinary in it.
+The only thing I have wondered at is his having delayed so long."
+
+"If a man had to hang himself, would you wonder he put off pulling the
+bolt?"
+
+"I don't see any point in your jests at all!" returned Lady Marabout.
+"There is nothing ridiculous in winning such a girl as Valencia."
+
+"No; but the question here is not of winning her, but of buying her. The
+price is a little high--a ducal coronet and splendid settlements, a
+wedding-ring and bondage for life; but he will buy her, nevertheless.
+Cardonnel couldn't pay the first half of the price, and so he was swept
+out of the auction-room. You are shocked, mother! Ah, truth _is_
+shocking sometimes, and always _maladroit_; one oughtn't to bring it
+into ladies' boudoirs."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Philip! I will not have you so satirical. Where do
+you take it from? Not from me, I am sure! Hark! there is Goodwood going!
+That is his step on the stairs, I think! Dear me, Philip, I wish you
+sympathized with me a little more, for I _do_ feel happy, and I can't
+help it; dear Adeliza will be so gratified."
+
+"My dear mother, I'll do my best to be sympathetic, I'll go and
+congratulate Goodwood as he gets in his cab, if you fancy I ought; but,
+you see, if I were in Dahomey beholding the head of my best friend
+coming off, I couldn't quite get up the amount of sympathy in their
+pleasure at the refreshing sight the Dahomites might expect from me, and
+so----"
+
+But Lady Marabout missed the comparison of herself to a Dahomite, for
+she had opened the door and was crossing to the drawing-rooms, her eyes
+bright, her step elastic, her heart exultant at the triumph of her
+manoeuvres. The Hon. Val was playing with some ferns in an étagère at
+the bottom of the farthest room, and responded to the kiss her aunt
+bestowed on her about as much as if she had been one of the statuettes
+on the consoles.
+
+"Well, love, _what did he say_?" asked Lady Marabout, breathlessly, with
+eager delight and confident anticipation.
+
+Like drops of ice on warm rose-leaves fell each word of the intensely
+chill and slightly sulky response on Lady Marabout's heart.
+
+"He said that he goes to Cowes to-morrow for the Royal Yacht Squadron
+dinner, and then on in the _Anadyomene_ to the Spitzbergen coast for
+walruses. He left a P. P. C. card for you."
+
+"_Walruses!_" shrieked Lady Marabout.
+
+"Walruses," responded the Hon. Val.
+
+"And said no more than that?"
+
+"No more than that!"
+
+The Pet Eligible had flown off uncaught after all! Lady Marabout needed
+no further explanation--_tout fut dit_. They were both silent and
+paralyzed. Do you suppose Pompey and Cornelia had much need of words
+when they met at Lesbos after the horrible déroute of Pharsalia?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I'm in your mother's blackest books for ever, Phil," said Goodwood to
+Carruthers in the express to Southampton for the R.Y.C. Squadron Regatta
+of that year, "but I can't help it. It's no good to badger us into
+marriage; it only makes us double, and run to earth. I _was_ near
+compromising myself with your cousin, I grant, but the thing that
+chilled me was, she's too _studied_. It's all got up beforehand, and
+goes upon clockwork, and it don't interest one accordingly; the
+mechanism's perfect, but we know when it will raise its hand, and move
+its eyes, and bow its head, and when we've looked at its beauty once we
+get tired of it. That's the fault in Valencia, and in scores of them,
+and as long as they _won't_ be natural, why, they can't have much chance
+with us!"
+
+Which piece of advice Carruthers, when he next saw his mother, repeated
+to her, for the edification of all future débutantes, adding a small
+sermon of his own:
+
+"My dear mother, I ask you, is it to be expected that we can marry just
+to oblige women and please the newspapers? Would you have me marched off
+to Hanover Square because it would be a kindness to take one of Lady
+Elmers' marriageable daughters, or because a leading journal fills up an
+empty column with farcical lamentation on our dislike to the bondage? Of
+course you wouldn't; yet, for no better reasons, you'd have chained poor
+Goodwood, if you could have caught him. Whether a man likes to marry or
+not is certainly his own private business, though just now it's made a
+popular public discussion. Do you wonder that we shirk the institution?
+If we have not fortune, marriage cramps our energies, our resources, our
+ambitions, loads us with petty cares, and trebles our anxieties. To one
+who rises with such a burden on his shoulders, how many sink down in
+obscurity, who, but for the leaden weight of pecuniary difficulties with
+which marriage has laden their feet, might have climbed the highest
+round in the social ladder? On the other side, if we have fortune, if we
+have the unhappy happiness to be eligible, is it wonderful that we are
+not flattered by the worship of young ladies who love us for what we
+shall give them, that we don't feel exactly honored by being courted for
+what we are worth, and that we're not over-willing to give up our
+liberty to oblige those who look on us only as good speculations? What
+think you, eh?"
+
+Lady Marabout looked up and shook her head mournfully:
+
+"My dear Philip, you are right. I see it--I don't dispute it; but when a
+thing becomes personal, you know philosophy becomes difficult. I have
+such letters from poor dear Adeliza--such letters! Of course she thinks
+it is all my fault, and I believe she will break entirely with me. It is
+so very shocking. You see all Belgravia coupled their names, and the
+very day that he went off to Cowes in that heartless, abominable manner,
+if an announcement of the alliance as arranged did not positively appear
+in the _Court Circular_! It did indeed! I am sure Anne Hautton was at
+the bottom of it; it would be just like her. Perhaps poor Valencia
+cannot be pitied after her treatment of Cardonnel, but it is very hard
+on _me_."
+
+Lady Marabout is right: when a thing becomes personal, philosophy
+becomes difficult. When your gun misses fire, and a fine cock bird
+whirrs up from the covert and takes wing unharmed, never to swell the
+number of your triumphs and the size of your game-bag, could you by any
+chance find it in your soul to sympathize with the bird's gratification
+at your mortification and its own good luck? I fancy not.
+
+
+
+
+LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES;
+
+OR
+
+THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.
+
+IN THREE SEASONS.
+
+
+SEASON THE SECOND--THE OGRE.
+
+"If there be one class I dislike more than another, it is that class;
+and if there be one person in town I utterly detest, it is that man!"
+said our friend Lady Marabout, with much unction, one morning, to an
+audience consisting of Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore, a cockatoo, an Angora
+cat, and a young lady sitting in a rocking-chair, reading the magazines
+of the month. The dogs barked, the cockatoo screamed, the cat purred a
+vehement affirmative, the human auditor looked up, and laughed:
+
+"What is the class, Lady Marabout, may I ask?"
+
+"Those clever, detestable, idle, good-for-nothing, fashionable,
+worthless men about town, who have not a penny to their fortune, and
+spend a thousand a year on gloves and scented tobacco--who are seen at
+everybody's house, and never at their own--who drive horses fit for a
+Duke's stud, and haven't money enough to keep a donkey on thistles--who
+have handsome faces and brazen consciences--who are positively leaders
+of ton, and yet are glad to write feuilletons before the world is up to
+pay their stall at the Opera--who give a guinea for a bouquet, and
+can't pay a shilling of their just debts,--I detest the class, my dear!"
+
+"So it seems, Lady Marabout. I never heard you so vehement. And who is
+the particular scapegoat of this type of sinners?"
+
+"Chandos Cheveley."
+
+"Chandos Cheveley? Isn't he that magnificent man Sir Philip introduced
+to me at the Amandines' breakfast yesterday? Why, Lady Marabout, his
+figure alone might outbalance a multitude of sins!"
+
+"He is handsome enough. _Did_ Philip introduce him to you, my dear? I
+wonder! It was very careless of him. But men _are_ so thoughtless; they
+will know anybody themselves, and they think we may do the same. The men
+called here while we were driving this morning. I am glad we were out:
+he very seldom comes to _my_ house."
+
+"But why is he so dreadful? The Amandines are tremendously exclusive, I
+thought."
+
+"Oh, he goes everywhere! No party is complete without Chandos Cheveley,
+and I have heard that at September or Christmas he has more invitations
+than he could possibly accept; but he is a most objectionable man, all
+the same--a man every one dreads to see come near her daughters. He has
+extreme fascination of manner, but he has not a farthing! How he lives,
+dresses, drives the horses he does, is one of those miracles of London
+men's lives which _we_ can never hope to puzzle out. Philip says he
+likes him, but Philip never speaks ill of anybody, except a woman now
+and then, who teases him; but the man is my detestation--has been for
+years. I was annoyed to see his card: it is the first time he has called
+this season. He knows I can't endure his class or him."
+
+With which Lady Marabout wound up a very unusually lengthy and
+uncharitable disquisition, length and uncharitableness being both out of
+her line; and Lady Cecil Ormsby rolled her handkerchief into a ball,
+threw it across the room for Bonbon, the spaniel puppy, and laughed till
+the cockatoo screamed with delight:
+
+"Dear Lady Marabout, do forgive me, but it is such fun to hear you
+positively, for once, malicious! Who is your Horror, genealogically
+speaking? this terrible--what's his name?--Chandos Cheveley?"
+
+"The younger son of a younger son of one of the Marquises of Danvers, I
+believe, my dear; an idle man about town, you know, with not a sou to be
+idle upon, who sets the fashion, but never pays his tailor. I am never
+malicious, I hope, but I do consider men of that stamp very
+objectionable."
+
+"But what is Sir Philip but a man about town?"
+
+"My son! Of course he is a man about town. My dear, what else should he
+be? But if Philip likes to lounge all his days away in a club-window, he
+has a perfect right; he has fortune. Chandos Cheveley is not worth a
+farthing, and yet yawns away his day in White's as if he were a
+millionnaire; the one can support his _far niente_, the other cannot.
+There are gradations in everything, my love, but in nothing more than
+among the men, of the same set and the same style, whom one sees in
+Pall-Mall."
+
+"There are chestnut horses and horse-chestnuts, chevaliers and
+chevaliers d'industrie, rois and rois d'Yvetot, Carrutherses and Chandos
+Cheveleys!" laughed Lady Cecil. "I understand, Lady Marabout. Il y a
+femmes et femmes--men about town and men about town, I shall learn all
+the classes and distinctions soon. But how is one to know the sheep that
+may be let into the fold from the wolves in sheep's clothing, that must
+be kept out of it? Your Ogre is really very distinguished-looking."
+
+"Distinguished? Oh yes, my love; but the most distinguished men are the
+most objectionable sometimes. I assure you, my dear Cecil, I have seen
+an elder son whom sometimes I could hardly have told from his own valet,
+and a younger of the same family with the style of a D'Orsay. Why, did I
+not this very winter, when I went to stay at Rochdale, take Fitzbreguet
+himself, whom I had not chanced to see since he was a child, for one of
+the men out of livery, and bid him bring Bijou's basket out of the
+carriage. I did indeed--_I_ who hate such mistakes more than any one!
+And Lionel, his second brother, has the beauty of an Apollo and the _air
+noble_ to perfection. One often sees it; it's through the doctrine of
+compensation, I suppose, but it's very perplexing, and causes endless
+_embrouillements_."
+
+"When the mammas fall in love with Lord Fitz's coronet, and the
+daughters with Lord Lionel's face, I suppose?" interpolated Lady Cecil.
+
+"Exactly so, dear. As for knowing the sheep from the wolves, as you call
+them," went on Lady Marabout, sorting her embroidery silks, "you may
+very soon know more of Chandos Cheveley's class--(this Magenta braid is
+good for nothing; it's a beautiful color, but it fades immediately)--you
+meet them in the country at all fast houses, as they call them nowadays,
+like the Amandines'; they are constantly invited, because they are so
+amusing, or so dead a shot, or so good a whip, and live on their
+invitations, because they have no _locale_ of their own. You see, all
+the women worth nothing admire, and all the women worth anything shun,
+them. They have a dozen accomplishments, and not a single reliable
+quality; a hundred houses open to them, and not a shooting-box of their
+own property or rental. You will meet this Chandos Cheveley everywhere,
+for instance, as though he were somebody desirable. You will see him in
+his club-window, as though he were born only to read the papers; in the
+Ride, mounted on a much better animal than Fitzbreguet, though the one
+pays treble the price he ought, and the other, I dare say, no price at
+all; at Ascot, on Amandine's or Goodwood's drag, made as much of among
+them all as if he were an heir-apparent to the throne; and yet, my love,
+that man hasn't a penny, lives Heaven knows where, and how he gets money
+to keep his cab and buy his gloves is, as I say, one of those mysteries
+of settling days, whist-tables, periodical writing, Baden _coups de
+bonheur_, and such-like fountains of such men's fortunes which we can
+never hope to penetrate--and very little we should benefit if we could!
+My dearest Cecil! if it is not ten minutes to five! We must go and drive
+at once."
+
+Lady Ormsby was a great pet of Lady Marabout's; she had been so from a
+child; so much so, that when, the year after Valencia Valletort's
+discomfiture (a discomfiture so heavy and so public, that that young
+beauty was seized with a fit of filial devotion, attended her mamma to
+Nice, and figured not in Belgravia the ensuing season, and even Lady
+Marabout's temper had been slightly soured by it, as you perceive),
+another terrible charge was shifted on her shoulders by an appeal from
+the guardians of the late Earl of Rosediamond's daughter for her to be
+brought out under the Marabout wing, she had consented, and surrendered
+herself to be again a martyr to responsibility for the sake of Cecil and
+Cecil's lost mother. The young lady was a beauty; she was worse, she was
+an heiress; she was worse still, she was saucy, wayward, and notable for
+a strong will of her own--a more dangerous young thorough-bred was never
+brought to a gentler Rarey; and yet she was the first charge of this
+nature that Lady Marabout had ever accepted in the whole course of her
+life with no misgivings and with absolute pleasure. First, she was very
+fond of Cecil Ormsby; secondly, she longed to efface her miserable
+failure with Valencia by a brilliant success, which should light up all
+the gloom of her past of chaperonage; thirdly, she had a sweet and
+long-cherished diplomacy nestling in her heart to throw her son and Lord
+Rosediamond's daughter together, for the eventual ensnaring and
+fettering of Carruthers, which policy nothing could favor so well as
+having the weapon for that deadly purpose in her own house through
+April, May, and June.
+
+Cecil Ormsby was a beauty and an heiress--spirited, sarcastic,
+brilliant, wilful, very proud; altogether, a more spirited young filly
+never needed a tight hand on the ribbons, a light but a firm seat, and a
+temperate though judicious use of the curb to make her endure being
+ridden at all, even over the most level grass countries of life. And
+yet, for the reasons just mentioned, Lady Marabout, who never had a
+tight hand upon anything, who is to be thrown in a moment by any wilful
+kick or determined plunge, who is utterly at the mercy of any filly that
+chooses to take the bit between her own teeth and bolt off, and is
+entirely incapable of using the curb, even to the most ill-natured and
+ill-trained Shetland that ever deserved to have its mouth sawed,--Lady
+Marabout undertook the jockeyship without fear.
+
+"I dare say you wonder, after my grief with Valencia, that I have
+consented to bring another girl out, but when I heard it was poor
+Rosediamond's wish--his dying wish, one may almost say--that Cecil
+should make her début with me, what _was_ I to do, my dear?" she
+explained, half apologetically, to Carruthers, when the question was
+first agitated. Perhaps, too, Lady Marabout had in her heart been
+slightly sickened of perfectly trained young ladies brought up on the
+best systems, and admitted to herself that the pets of the foreign
+houses may _not_ be the most attractive flowers after all.
+
+So Lady Cecil Ormsby was installed in Lowndes Square, and though she was
+the inheritor of her mother's wealth, which was considerable, and
+possessor of her own wit and beauty, which were not inconsiderable
+either, and therefore a prize to fortune-hunters and a lure to
+misogamists, as Lady Marabout knew very well how to keep the first off,
+and had her pet project of numbering her refractory son among the
+converted second, she rather congratulated herself than otherwise in
+having the pleasure and éclat of introducing her; and men voted the
+Marabout Yearlings Sale of that season, since it comprised Rosediamond's
+handsome daughter, as dangerous as a horse-dealer's auction to a young
+greenhorn, or a draper's "sale, without reserve, at enormous sacrifice,"
+to a lady with a soul on bargains bent.
+
+"How very odd! Just as we have been talking of him, there is that man
+again! I must bow to him, I suppose; though if there _be_ a person I
+dislike----" said Lady Marabout, giving a frigid little bend of her head
+as her barouche, with its dashing roans, rolled from her door, and a
+tilbury passed them, driving slowly through the square.
+
+Cecil Ormsby bowed to its occupant with less severity, and laughed under
+the sheltering shadow of her white parasol-fringe.
+
+"The Ogre has a very pretty trap, though, Lady Marabout, and the most
+delicious gray horse in it! Such good action!"
+
+"If its action is good, my love, I dare say it is more than could be
+said of its master's actions. He is going to call on that Mrs.
+Maréchale, very probably; he was always there last season."
+
+And Lady Marabout shook her head and looked grave, which, combined with
+the ever-damnatory demonstrative conjunction, blackened Mrs. Maréchale's
+moral character as much as Lady Marabout could blacken any one's, she
+loving as little to soil her own fingers and her neighbors' reputations
+with the indelible Italian chalk of scandal as any lady I know; being
+given, on the contrary, when compelled to draw any little social croquis
+of a back-biting nature, to sketch them in as lightly as she could, take
+out as many lights as possible, and rub in the shadows with a very
+chary and pitying hand, except, indeed, when she took the portrait of
+such an Ogre as Chandos Cheveley, when I can't say she was quite so
+merciful, specially when policy and prejudice combined to suggest that
+it would be best (and not unjust) to use the blackest Conté crayons
+obtainable.
+
+The subject of it would not have denied the correctness of the
+silhouette Lady Marabout had snipped out for the edification of Lady
+Cecil, had he caught a glimpse of it: he had no habitation, nor was ever
+likely to have any, save a bachelor's suite in a back street; he had
+been an idle man for the last twenty years, with not a sou to be idle
+upon; the springs of his very precarious fortunes, his pursuits, habits,
+reputation, ways and means, were all much what she had described them;
+yet he set the fashion much oftener than Goodwood, and dukes and
+millionnaires would follow the style of his tie, or the shape of his
+hat; he moved in the most brilliant circles as Court Circulars have it,
+and all the best houses were open to him. At his Grace of Amandine's,
+staying there for the shooting, he would alter the stud, find fault with
+the claret, arrange a Drive for deer in the forest, and flirt with her
+Grace herself, as though, as Lady Marabout averred, he had been
+Heir-apparent or Prince Regent, who honored the Castle by his mere
+presence, Amandine all the while swearing by every word he spoke,
+thinking nothing well done without Cheveley, and submitting to be set
+aside in his own Castle, with the greatest gratification at the
+extinction.
+
+But that Chandos Cheveley was not worth a farthing, that he was but a
+Bohemian on a brilliant scale, that any day he might disappear from that
+society where he now glittered, never to reappear, everybody knew; how
+he floated there as he did, kept his cab and his man, paid for his stall
+at the Opera, his club fees, and all the other trifles that won't wait,
+was an eternal puzzle to every one ignorant of how expensively one may
+live upon nothing if one just gets the knack, and of how far a
+fashionable reputation, like a cake of chocolate, will go to support
+life when nothing more substantial is obtainable. Lady Marabout had
+sketched him correctly enough, allowing for a little politic bitterness
+thrown in to counteract Carruthers's thoughtlessness in having
+introduced him to Rosediamond's daughter (that priceless treasure for
+whom Lady Marabout would fain have had a guard of Janissaries, if they
+would not have been likely to look singular and come expensive); and
+ladies of the Marabout class did look upon him as an Ogre, guarded their
+daughters from his approach at a ball as carefully, if not as
+demonstratively, as any duck its ducklings from the approach of a
+water-rat, did not ask him to their dinners, and bowed to him chillily
+in the Ring. Others regarded him as harmless, from his perfect
+pennilessness; what danger was there in the fascinations of a man whom
+all Belgravia knew hadn't money enough to buy dog-skin gloves, though he
+always wore the best Paris lavender kid? While others, the pretty
+married women chiefly, from her Grace of Amandine downwards to Mrs.
+Maréchale, of Lowndes Square, flirted with him, fearfully, and
+considered Chandos Cheveley what nobody ever succeeded in disproving
+him, the most agreeable man on town, with the finest figure, the best
+style, and the most perfect bow, to be seen in the Park any day between
+March and July. But then, as Lady Marabout remarked on a subsequent
+occasion, a figure, a style, and a bow are admirable and enviable
+things, but they're not among the cardinal virtues, and don't do to live
+upon; and though they're very good buoys to float one on the smooth
+sparkling sea of society, if there come a storm, one may go down,
+despite them, and become helpless prey to the sharks waiting below.
+
+"Philip certainly admires her very much; he said the other day there
+was something in her, and that means a great deal from him," thought
+Lady Marabout, complacently, as she and Cecil Ormsby were wending their
+way through some crowded rooms. "Of course I shall not influence Cecil
+towards him; it would not be honorable to do so, since she might look
+for a higher title than my son's; still, if it should so fall out,
+nothing would give me greater pleasure, and really nothing would seem
+more natural with a little judicious manage----"
+
+"May I have the honor of this valse with you?" was spoken in, though not
+to, Lady Marabout's ear. It was a soft, a rich, a melodious voice
+enough, and yet Lady Marabout would rather have heard the hiss of a
+Cobra Capella, for the footmen _might_ have caught the serpent and
+carried it off from Cecil Ormsby's vicinity, and she couldn't very well
+tell them to rid the reception-chambers of Chandos Cheveley.
+
+Lady Marabout vainly tried to catch Cecil's eye, and warn her of the
+propriety of an utter and entire repudiation of the valse in question,
+if there were no "engaged" producible to softly chill the hopes and
+repulse the advances of the aspirant; but Lady Cecil's soul was
+obstinately bent saltatory-wards; her chaperone's ocular telegram was
+lost upon her, and only caught by the last person who should have seen
+it, who read the message off the wires to his own amusement, but
+naturally was not magnanimous enough to pass it on.
+
+"I ought to have warned her never to dance with that detestable man. If
+I could but have caught her eye even now!" thought Lady Marabout,
+restlessly. The capella _would_ have been much the more endurable of the
+two; the serpent couldn't have passed its arm round Rosediamond's
+priceless daughter and whirled her down the ball-room to the music of
+Coote and Timney's band, as Chandos Cheveley was now doing.
+
+"Why did _you_ not ask her for that waltz, Philip?" cried the good lady,
+almost petulantly.
+
+Carruthers opened his eyes wide.
+
+"My dear mother, you know I never dance! I come to balls to oblige my
+hostesses and look at the women, but not to carry a seven-stone weight
+of tulle illusion and white satin, going at express pace, with the
+thermometer at 80 deg., and a dense crowd jostling one at every turn in
+the circle. _Bien obligé!_ that's not my idea of pleasure; if it were
+the Pyrrhic dance, now, or the Tarantella, or the Bolero, under a
+Castilian chestnut-tree----"
+
+"Hold your tongue! You might have danced for once, just to have kept her
+from Chandos Cheveley."
+
+"From the best waltzer in London? Not so selfish. Ask Amandine's wife if
+women don't like to dance with that fellow!"
+
+"I should be very sorry to mention his name to her, or any of her set,"
+responded Lady Marabout, getting upon certain virtuous stilts of her
+own, which she was given to mount on rare occasion and at distant
+intervals, always finding them very uncomfortable and unsuitable
+elevations, and being as glad to cast them off as a traveller to kick
+off the _échasses_ he has had to strap on over the sandy plains of the
+Landes.
+
+"What could possess you to introduce him to Cecil, Philip? It was
+careless, silly, unlike you; you know how I dislike men of
+his--his--objectionable stamp," sighed Lady Marabout, the white and gold
+namesakes in her coiffure softly trembling a gentle sigh in the perfumy
+zephyr raised by the rotatory whirl of the waltzers, among whom she
+watched with a horrible fascination, as one watches a tiger being pugged
+out of its lair, or a deserter being led out to be shot, Chandos
+Cheveley, waltzing Rosediamond's priceless daughter down the ball-room.
+
+"He is so dreadfully handsome! I wonder why it is that men and women,
+who have no fortune but their faces, will be so dangerously, so
+obstinately, so provokingly attractive as one sees them so often!"
+thought Lady Marabout, determining to beat an immediate retreat from the
+present salons, since they were infested by the presence of her Ogre, to
+Lady Hautton's house in Wilton Crescent.
+
+Lady Hautton headed charitable bazaars, belonged to the Cummingite
+nebulæ, visited Homes and Hospitals (floating to the bedside of luckless
+feminine patients to read out divers edifying passages, whose effect
+must have been somewhat neutralized to the hearers, one would imagine,
+by the envy-inspiring rustle of her silks, the flash of her rings, and
+the chimes of her bracelets, chains, and châtelaine), looked on the
+"Amandine set" as lost souls, and hence "did not know" Chandos
+Cheveley--a fact which, though the Marabout and Hautton antagonism was
+patent to all Belgravia, served to endear her all at once to her foe;
+Lady Marabout, like a good many other people, being content to sink
+personal resentment, and make a truce with the infidels for the sake of
+enjoying a mutual antipathy--that closest of all links of union!
+
+Lady Marabout and Lady Hautton were foes, but they were dear Helena and
+dear Anne, all the same; dined at each other's tables, and smiled in
+each other's faces. They might be private foes, but they were public
+friends; and Lady Marabout beat a discreet retreat to the Hautton's
+salons--"so many engagements" is so useful a plea!--and from the Hautton
+she passed on to a ball at the Duke of Doncaster's; and, as at both, if
+Lady Cecil Ormsby did not move "a goddess from above," she moved a
+brilliant, sparkling, nonchalante, dangerous beauty, with some of her
+sex's faults, all her sex's witcheries, and more than her sex's
+mischief, holding her own royally, saucily, and proudly, and Chandos
+Cheveley was encountered no more, but happily detained at petit souper
+in a certain Section of the French Embassy, Lady Marabout drove
+homewards, in the gray of the morning, relieved, complacent, and
+gratified, dozing deliciously, till she was woke up with a start.
+
+"Lady Marabout, what a splendid waltzer your Ogre, Chandos Cheveley,
+is!"
+
+Lady Marabout opened her eyes with a jerk that set her feathers
+trembling, her diamonds scintillating, and her bracelets ringing an
+astonished little carillon.
+
+"My love, how you frightened me!"
+
+Cecil Ormsby laughed--a gay, joyous laugh, innocent of having disturbed
+a doze, a lapse into human weakness of which her chaperone never
+permitted herself to plead guilty.
+
+"Frightened you, did I? Why, your _bête noire_ is as terrible to you as
+Coeur de Lion to the Saracen children, or Black Douglas to the Lowland!
+And, really, I can't see anything terrible in him; he is excessively
+brilliant and agreeable, has something worth hearing to say to you,
+and his waltzing is----!"
+
+Lady Cecil Ormsby had not a word in her repertory--though it
+was an enthusiastic and comprehensive one, and embraced five
+languages--sufficiently commendatory to finish her sentence.
+
+"I dare say, dear! I never denied, or heard denied, his having every
+accomplishment under the sun. The only pity is, he has nothing more
+substantial!" returned Lady Marabout, a little bit tartly for _her_
+lips, only used to the softest (and most genuine) milk of roses.
+
+Lord Rosediamond's daughter laughed a little mournfully, and played with
+her fan.
+
+"Poor man! Brilliant and beggared, fashionable and friendless, courted
+and cashiered--a sad destiny! Do you know, Lady Marabout, I have half a
+mind to champion your Ogre!"
+
+"My love, don't talk nonsense!" said Lady Marabout, hastily, at which
+Lady Cecil only laughed still more softly and gayly again, and sprung
+down as the carriage stopped in Lowndes Square.
+
+"Rosediamond's daughter's deucedly handsome, eh, Cheveley? I saw you
+waltzing with her last night," said Goodwood at Lord's the next morning,
+watching a match between the Household Cavalry and the Zingari Eleven.
+
+"Yes, she is the best thing we have seen for some time," said Cheveley,
+glancing round to see if the Marabout liveries were on the ground.
+
+"Don't let the Amandine or little Maréchale hear you say so, or you'll
+have a deuce of a row," laughed Goodwood. "She's worth a good deal, too;
+she's all her mother's property, and that's something, I know. The
+deaths in her family have kept her back two years or more, but now she
+_is_ out, I dare say Lady Tattersall will put her up high in the
+market."
+
+"No doubt. Why don't _you_ make the investment--she's much more
+attractive than that Valletort ice statue who hooked you so nearly last
+year? Fortescue's out! Well done, little Jimmy! Ah! there's the Marabout
+carriage. I am as unwelcome to that good lady, I know, as if I were
+Quasimodo or Quilp, and as much to be shunned, in her estimation, as
+Vidocq, armed to the teeth; nevertheless, I shall go and talk to them,
+if only in revenge for the telegraphic warning of 'dangerous' she shot
+at Lady Cecil last night when I asked her to waltz. Goodwood, don't you
+envy me my happy immunity from traps matrimonial?"
+
+"There is that man again--how provoking! I wish we had not come to see
+Philip's return match. He is positively coming up to talk to us,"
+thought Lady Marabout, restlessly, as her Ogre lifted his hat to her. In
+vain did she do her best to look severe, to look frigid, to chill him
+with a withering "good morning," (a little word, capable, if you notice,
+of expressing every gradation in feeling, from the nadir of delighted
+intimacy to the zero of rebuking frigidity;) her coldest ice was as warm
+as a pine-apple ice that has been melting all day under a refreshment
+tent at a horticultural fête? Her _rôle_ was _not_ chilliness, and never
+could be; she would have beamed benign on a headsman who had led her out
+to instant decapitation, and been no more able to help it than a peach
+to help its bloom or a claret its bouquet. She did her utmost to freeze
+Chandos Cheveley, but either she failed signally, or he, being blessed
+with the brazen conscience she had attributed to him, was steeled to all
+the tacit repulses of her looks, for he leant against the barouche-door,
+let her freeze him away as she might, and chatted to Cecil Ormsby,
+"positively," Lady Marabout remarked to that safest confidante, herself,
+"positively as if the man had been welcome at my house for the last ten
+years! If Cecil _would_ but second me, he couldn't do it; but she _will_
+smile and talk with him just as though he were Goodwood or Fitzbreguet!
+It is very disagreeable to be forced against one's will like this into
+countenancing such a very objectionable person; and yet what _can_ one
+do?"
+
+Which query she could by no means satisfactorily answer herself, being a
+regular female Nerva for clemency, utterly incapable of the severity
+with which that stern Catiline, Lady Hautton, would have signed the
+unwelcome intruder out of the way in a brace of seconds. And under
+Nerva's gentle rule, though Nerva was longing with all her heart to have
+the courage to call the lictors and say, "Away with him!" Cheveley leant
+against the door of the carriage unmolested, though decidedly undesired
+by one of its occupants, talked to by Lady Cecil, possibly because she
+found him as agreeable as her Grace of Amandine and Lillia Maréchale had
+done before her, possibly only from that rule of contrariety which is
+such a pet motor-power with her sex; and Lady Marabout reclined among
+her cushions, tucked up in her tiger-skin in precisely that state of
+mind in which Fuseli said to his wife, "Swear, my dear, you don't know
+how much good it will do you," dreading in herself the possible advent
+of the Hautton carriage, for that ancient enemy and rigid pietist, of
+whose keen tongue and eminent virtue she always stood secretly in awe,
+to see this worthless and utterly objectionable member of that fast,
+graceless, and "very incorrect" Amandine set, absolutely _en sentinelle_
+at the door of her barouche!
+
+Does your best friend _ever_ come when you want him most? Doesn't your
+worst foe _always_ come when you want him least? Of course, at that
+juncture, the Hautton carriage came on the ground (Hautton was one of
+the Zingari Club, and maternal interest brought her foe to Lord's as it
+had brought herself), and the Hautton eye-glass, significantly and
+surprisedly raised, said as distinctly to Lady Marabout, as though
+elfishly endowed with vocal powers, "You allow _that_ man acquaintance
+with Rosediamond's daughter!" Lady Marabout was stung to the soul by the
+deserved rebuke, but she didn't know how on earth to get rid of the
+sinner! There he leaned, calmly, nonchalantly, determinedly, as if he
+were absolutely welcome; and Lady Cecil talked on to him as if he were
+absolutely welcome too.
+
+Lady Marabout felt branded in the eyes of all Belgravia to have Chandos
+Cheveley at her carriage-door, the most objectionable man of all his
+most objectionable class.
+
+"It is very strange!" she thought. "I have seen that man about town the
+last five-and-twenty years--ever since he was a mere boy, taken up and
+petted by Adeline Patchouli for some piece of witty Brummelian impudence
+he said to her on his first introduction--and he has never sought my
+acquaintance before, but always seemed to be quite aware of my dislike
+to him and all his set. It is very grievous he should have chosen the
+very season I have poor dear Rosediamond's daughter with me; but it is
+always my fate--if a thing can happen to annoy me it always will!"
+
+With which Lady Marabout, getting fairly distracted under the iron hand
+of adverse fate, and the ruthless surveillance of the Hautton glass,
+invented an impromptu necessity for immediate shopping at Lewis and
+Allonby's, and drove off the ground at the sole moment of interest the
+match possessed for her--viz., when Carruthers was rattling down
+Hautton's stumps, and getting innings innumerable for the Household.
+
+"Mais ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte;" the old proverb's so true
+we wear it threadbare with repeating it! Lady Marabout might as well
+have stayed on Lord's ground, and not lacerated her feelings by leaving
+at the very hour of the Household Cavalry's triumphs, for any good that
+she did thereby. The Hautton eye-glass had lighted on Chandos Cheveley,
+and Chandos Cheveley's eye-glass on Rosediamond's daughter;--and Cecil
+Ormsby arched her eyebrows, and gave her parasol a little impatient
+shake as they quitted Lord's.
+
+"Lady Marabout, I never could have believed you ill-natured; you
+interrupted my ball last night, and my conversation this morning! I
+shall scold you if you ever do so again. And now tell me (as curiosity
+is a weakness incidental to all women, no woman ought to refuse to
+relieve it in another) why _are_ you so prejudiced against that very
+handsome, and very amusing person?"
+
+"Prejudiced, my dear child! I am not in the least prejudiced," returned
+Lady Marabout. (Nobody ever admitted to a prejudice that _I_ ever heard.
+It's a plant that grows in all gardens, and is sedulously matted up,
+watered, and strengthened; but invariably disavowed by its sturdiest
+cultivators.) "As for Chandos Cheveley, I merely mentioned to you what
+all town knows about him; and the dislike I have to his class is one of
+principle, not of prejudice."
+
+Lady Cecil made a _moue mutine_:
+
+"Oh, Lady Marabout! if you go to 'principle,' _tout est perdu!_
+'Principle' has been made to bear the onus of every private pique since
+the world began, and has had to answer for more cruelties and injustice
+than any word in the language. The Romans flung the Christians to the
+lions 'on principle,' and the Europeans slew the Mahomedans 'on
+principle,' and 'principle' lighted the autos-da-fé, and signed to the
+tormentor to give a turn more to the rack! Please don't appeal to
+anything so severe and hypocritical. Come, what are the Ogre's sins?"
+
+Lady Marabout laughed, despite the subject.
+
+"Do you think I am a compiler of such catalogues, my love? Pray do not
+let us talk any more about Chandos Cheveley, he is very little worth it;
+all I say to you is, be as cool to him as you can, without rudeness, of
+course. I am never at home when he calls, and were I you, I would be
+always engaged when he asks you to waltz; his acquaintance can in no way
+benefit you."
+
+Lady Cecil gave a little haughty toss of her head, and lay back in the
+barouche.
+
+"_I_ will judge of that! I am not made for fetters of any kind, you
+know, and I like to choose my own acquaintance as well as to choose my
+own dresses. I cannot obey you either this evening, for he asked me to
+put him on my tablets for the first waltz at Lord Anisette's ball, and I
+consented. I had no 'engaged' ready, unless I had had a falsehood ready
+too, and _you_ wouldn't counsel that, Lady Marabout, I am very sure?"
+
+With which straightforward and perplexing question Cecil Ormsby
+successfully silenced her chaperone, by planting her in that
+disagreeable position known as between the horns of a dilemma; and Lady
+Marabout, shrinking alike from the responsibility of counselling a
+"necessary equivocation," as society politely terms its indispensable
+lies, and the responsibility of allowing Cecil acquaintance with the
+"very worst" of the Amandine set, sighed, wondered envyingly how Anne
+Hautton would act in her place, and almost began to wish somebody else
+had had the onerous stewardship of that brilliant and priceless jewel,
+Rosediamond's daughter, now that the jewel threatened to be possessed
+with a will of its own:--the greatest possible flaw in a gem of pure
+water, which they only want to scintillate brilliantly among the
+bijouterie of society, and let itself be placed passively in the setting
+most suitable for it, that can be conceived in the eyes of lady
+lapidaries intrusted with its sale.
+
+"It is very odd," thought Lady Marabout; "she seems to have taken a much
+greater fancy to that odious man than to Philip, or Goodwood, or Fitz,
+or any one of the men who admire her so much. I suppose I always _am_ to
+be worried in this sort of way! However, there can be no real danger;
+Chandos Cheveley is the merest butterfly flirt, and with all his faults
+none ever accused him of fortune-hunting. Still, they say he is
+wonderfully fascinating, and certainly he has the most beautiful voice I
+ever heard; and if Cecil should ever like him at all, I could never
+forgive myself, and what _should_ I say to General Ormsby?"
+
+The General, Cecil's uncle and guardian, is one of the best-humored,
+best-tempered, and most _laissez-faire_ men in the Service, but was, for
+all that, a perpetual dead weight on Lady Marabout's mind just then, for
+was not he the person to whom, at the end of the season, she would have
+to render up account of the successes and the shortcomings of her
+chaperone's career?
+
+"Do you think of proposing Chandos Cheveley as a suitable alliance for
+Cecil Ormsby, my dear Helena?" asked Lady Hautton, with that smile which
+was felt to be considerably worse than strychnine by her foes and
+victims, at a house in Grosvenor Place, that night.
+
+"God forbid!" prayed Lady Marabout, mentally, as she joined in the
+Hautton laugh, and shivered under the stab of the Hautton sneer, which
+was an excessively sharp one. Lady Hautton being one of a rather
+numerous class of eminent Christians, so panoplied in the armor of
+righteousness that they can tread, without feeling it, on the tender
+feet of others.
+
+The evening was spoiled to Lady Marabout; she felt morally and guiltily
+responsible for an unpardonable indiscretion:--with that man waltzing
+with Cecil Ormsby, her "graceful, graceless, gracious Grace" of Amandine
+visibly irritated with jealousy at the sight, and Anne Hautton
+whispering behind her fan with acidulated significance. Lady Marabout
+had never been more miserable in her life! She heard on all sides
+admiration of Rosediamond's daughter; she was gratified by seeing
+Goodwood, Fitzbreguet, Fulke Nugent, every eligible man in the room,
+suing for a place on her tablets; she had the delight of beholding
+Carruthers positively join the negligent beauty's train; and yet the
+night was a night of purgatory to Lady Marabout, for Chandos Cheveley
+had his first waltz, and several after it, and the Amandine set were
+there to gossip, and the Hautton clique to be shocked, at it.
+
+"Soames, tell Mason, when Mr. Chandos Cheveley calls, I am not at home,"
+said Lady Marabout at breakfast.
+
+"Yes, my lady," said Soames, who treasured up the order, and told it to
+Mr. Chandos Cheveley's man at the first opportunity, though, greatly to
+his honor, we must admit, he did _not_ imitate the mild formula of fib,
+and tell his mistress her claret was not corked when it was so
+incontestably.
+
+Cecil Ormsby lifted her head and looked across the table at her hostess,
+and the steady gaze of those violet eyes, which were Rosediamond's
+daughter's best weapons of war, so discomposed Lady Marabout, that she
+forgot herself sufficiently to proffer Bijou a piece of bread, an
+unparalleled insult, which that canine Sybarite did not forget all day
+long.
+
+"Not at home, sir," said Mason, as duly directed, when Cheveley's cab
+pulled up, a week or two after the general order, at the door.
+
+Cheveley smiled to himself as his gray had her head turned, and the
+wheel grated off the trottoir, while he lifted his hat to Cecil Ormsby,
+just visible between the amber curtains and above the balcony flowers of
+one of the windows of the drawing-room--quite visible enough for her
+return smile and bow to be seen in the street by Cheveley, in the room
+by Lady Marabout.
+
+"Some of Lady Tattersall's generalship!" he thought, as the gray trotted
+out of the square. "Well! I have no business there. Cecil Ormsby is not
+her Grace of Amandine, nor little Maréchale, and the good lady is quite
+right to brand me 'dangerous' to her charge, and pronounce me
+'inadmissible' to her footman. I've very little title to resent her
+verdict."
+
+"My dearest Cecil, whatever possessed you to bow to that man!" cried
+Lady Marabout, in direst distress.
+
+"Is it not customary to bow to one's acquaintances--I thought it was?"
+asked Lady Cecil, with demure mischief.
+
+"But, my dear, from a window!--and when Mason is saying we are not at
+home!"
+
+"That isn't _Mason's_ fib, or _Mason's_ fault, Lady Marabout!" suggested
+Cecil, with wicked emphasis.
+
+"There is no falsehood or fault at all anywhere--everybody knows well
+enough what 'not at home' means," returned Lady Marabout, almost
+pettishly.
+
+"Oh yes," laughed the young lady, saucily. "It means 'I am at home and
+sitting in my drawing room, but I shall not rise to receive you, because
+you are not worth the trouble.' It's a polite cut direct, and a honeyed
+rudeness--a bitter almond wrapped up in a sugar dragée, like a good many
+other bonbons handed about in society."
+
+"My dear Cecil, you have some very strange ideas; you will get called
+satirical if you don't take care," said Lady Marabout, nervously.
+
+Cecil Ormsby's tone worried her, and made her feel something as she felt
+when she had a restive, half-broken pair of horses in her carriage, for
+the direction of whose next plunge or next kick nobody could answer.
+
+"And if I be--what then?"
+
+"My dear child, you could not anyhow get a more disadvantageous
+reputation! It may amuse gentlemen though it frightens half _them_; but
+it offends all women irremediably. You see, there are so few whom it
+doesn't hit somewhere," returned Lady Marabout, quite innocent of the
+neat satire of her own last sentence.
+
+Cecil Ormsby laughed, and threw herself down by her chaperone's side:
+
+"Never mind: I can bear their enmity; it is a greater compliment than
+their liking. The women whom women love are always quiet, colorless,
+inoffensive--foils. Lady Marabout, tell me, why did you give that
+general order to Mason?"
+
+"I have told you before, my dear. Because I have no wish to know Mr.
+Chandos Cheveley," returned Lady Marabout, as stiffly as she could say
+anything. "It is, as I said, not from prejudice, but from prin----"
+
+"Lady Marabout, if you use that word again, I will drive to uncle
+Ormsby's rooms in the Albany and stay with him for the season; I will,
+positively! I am sure all the gentlemen there will be delighted to have
+my society! Pray, what _are_ your Ogre's crimes? Did you ever hear
+anything dishonorable, mean, ungenerous, attributed to him? Did you ever
+hear he broke his word, or failed to act like a gentleman, or was a
+defaulter at any settling day?"
+
+Lady Marabout required some explanation of what a defaulter at a
+settling day might be, and, on receiving it, was compelled to confess
+that she never _had_ heard anything of that kind imputed to Chandos
+Cheveley.
+
+"Of course I have not, my dear. The man is a gentleman, everybody knows,
+however idle and improvident a one. If he could be accused of anything
+of that kind, he would not belong to such clubs, and associate with such
+men as he does. Besides, Philip would not know him; certainly would not
+think well of him, which I confess he does. But that is not at all the
+question."
+
+"_Ne vous en déplaise_, I think it very much and very entirely the
+question," returned Lady Cecil, with a toss of her haughty little head.
+"If you can bring nothing in evidence against a man, it is not right to
+send him to the galleys and mark him 'Forçat.'"
+
+"My dear Cecil, there is plenty in evidence against him," said Lady
+Marabout, with a mental back glance to certain stories told of the
+"Amandine set," "though not of that kind. A man may be perfectly
+unexceptionable in his conduct with his men friends, but very
+objectionable acquaintance for us to seek, all the same."
+
+"Ah, I see! Lord Goodwood may bet, and flirt, and lounge his days away,
+and be as fast a man as he likes, and it is all right; but if Mr.
+Cheveley does the same, it is all wrong, because he is not worth
+forgiving."
+
+"Naturally it is," returned Lady Marabout, seriously and naïvely. "But
+how very oddly you put things, my love; and why you should interest
+yourself in this man, when everything I tell you is to his disadvantage,
+I cannot imagine."
+
+A remark that showed Lady Marabout a skilful tactician, insomuch as it
+silenced Cecil--a performance rather difficult of accomplishment.
+
+"I am very glad I gave the order to Mason," thought that good lady. "I
+only wish we did not meet the man in society; but it is impossible to
+help that. We are all cards of one pack, and get shuffled together,
+whether we like it or not. I wish Philip would pay her more attention;
+he admires her, I can see, and he can make any woman like him in ten
+days when he takes the trouble; but he is so tiresome! She would be
+exactly suited to him; she has all he would exact--beauty, talent, good
+blood, and even fortune, though that he would not need. The alliance
+would be a great happiness to me. Well, he dines here to-night, and he
+gives that concert at his barracks to-morrow morning, purely to please
+Cecil, I am sure. I think it may be brought about with careful
+management."
+
+With which pleasant reflection she went to drive in the Ring, thinking
+that her maternal and duenna duties would be alike well fulfilled, and
+her chaperone's career well finished, if by any amount of tact,
+intrigue, finesses, and diplomacy she could live to see Cecil Ormsby
+sign herself Cecil Carruthers.
+
+"If that man were only out of town!" she thought, as Cheveley passed
+them in Amandine's mail-phaeton at the turn.
+
+Lady Marabout might wish Cheveley were out of town--and wish it devoutly
+she did--but she wasn't very likely to have her desire gratified till
+the general migration should carry him off in its tide to the deck of a
+yacht, a lodge in the Highlands, a German Kursaal, or any one of those
+myriad "good houses" where nobody was so welcome as he, the best shot,
+the best seat, the best wit, the best billiard-player, the best
+whist-player, and the best authority on all fashionable topics, of any
+man in England. Cheveley used to aver that he liked Lady Marabout,
+though she detested him; nay, that he liked her _for_ her detestation;
+he said it was cordial, sincere, and refreshing, therefore a treat in
+the world of Belgravia; still, he didn't like her so well as to leave
+Town in the middle of May to oblige her; and though he took her hint as
+it was meant, and pulled up his hansom no more at her door, he met her
+and Rosediamond's daughter at dinners, balls, concerts, morning-parties
+innumerable. He saw them in the Ring; he was seen by them at the Opera;
+he came across them constantly in the gyration of London life. Night
+after night Lady Cecil persisted in writing his name in her tablets;
+evening after evening a bizarre fate worried Lady Marabout, by putting
+him on the left hand of her priceless charge at a dinner-party. Day
+after day all the harmony of a concert was marred to her ear by seeing
+her Ogre talking of Beethoven and Mozart, chamber music and bravura
+music in Cecil's: morning after morning gall was poured into her
+luncheon sherry, and wormwood mingled in her vol-au-vent, by being told,
+with frank mischief, by her desired daughter-in-law, that she "had seen
+Mr. Cheveley leaning on the rails, smoking," when she had taken her
+after-breakfast canter.
+
+"Chandos Cheveley getting up before noon! He _must_ mean something
+unusual!" thought her chaperone.
+
+"Helena has set her heart on securing Cecil Ormsby for Carruthers. I
+hope she may succeed better than she did with poor Goodwood last
+season," laughed Lady Hautton, with her inimitable sneer, glancing at
+the young lady in question at a bazaar in Willis's Rooms, selling
+rosebuds for anything she liked to ask for them, and cigars tied up with
+blue ribbon a guinea the half-dozen, at the Marabout stall. Lady Hautton
+had just been paying a charitable visit to St. Cecilia's Refuge, of
+which she was head patroness, where, having floated in with much
+benignity, been worshipped by a select little toady troop, administered
+spiritual consolation with admirable condescension, and distributed
+illuminated texts for the adornment of the walls and refreshment of the
+souls, she was naturally in a Christian frame of mind towards her
+neighbors. Lady Marabout caught the remark--as she was intended to
+do--and thought it not quite a pleasant one; but, my good sir, did you
+ever know those estimable people, who spend all their time fitting
+themselves for another world, ever take the trouble to make themselves
+decently agreeable in the present one? The little pleasant courtesies,
+affabilities, generosities, and kindnesses, that rub the edge off the
+flint-stones of the Via Dolorosa, are quite beneath the attention of
+Mary the Saint, and only get attended to by Martha the Worldly, poor
+butterfly thing! who is fit for nothing more serviceable and profitable!
+
+Lady Marabout _had_ set her heart on Cecil Ormsby's filling that post of
+honor--of which no living woman was deserving in her opinion--that of
+"Philip's wife;" an individual who had been, for so many years, a fond
+ideal, a haunting anxiety, and a dreaded rival, en même temps, to her
+imagination. She _was_ a little bit of a match-maker: she had, over and
+over again, arranged the most admirable and suitable alliances;
+alliances that would have shamed the scepticism of the world in general,
+as to the desirability of the holy bonds, and brought every refractory
+man to the steps of St. George's; alliances, that would have come off
+with the greatest éclat, but for one trifling hindrance and
+difficulty--namely, the people most necessary to the arrangements could
+never by any chance be brought to view them in the same light, and were
+certain to give her diplomacy the _croc-en-jambe_ at the very moment of
+its culminating glory and finishing finesses. She was a little bit of a
+match-maker--most kind-hearted women are; the tinder they play with is
+much better left alone, but _they_ don't remember that! Like children in
+a forest, they think they'll light a pretty bright fire, just for fun,
+and never remember what a seared, dreary waste that fire may make, or
+what a prairie conflagration it may stretch into before it's stopped.
+
+"Cecil Ormsby is a terrible flirt," said Lady Hautton, to another lady,
+glancing at the rapid sale of the rosebuds and cigars, the bunches of
+violets and the sprays of lilies of the valley, in which that brilliant
+beauty was doing such thriving business at such extravagant profits,
+while the five Ladies Hautton presided solemnly over articles of
+gorgeous splendor, which threatened to be left on hand, and go in a
+tombola, as ignominiously as a beauty after half a dozen seasons, left
+unwooed and unwon, goes to the pêle-mêle raffle of German Bad society,
+and is sold off at the finish to an unknown of the Line, or a Civil
+Service fellow, with five hundred a year.
+
+"Was Cecil a flirt?" wondered Lady Marabout. Lady Marabout was fain to
+confess to herself that she thought she was--nay, that she hoped she
+was. If it wasn't flirting, that way in which she smiled on Chandos
+Cheveley, sold him cigarettes, laughed with him over the ices and
+nectarines he fetched her, and positively invested him with the cordon
+d'honneur of a little bouquet of Fairy roses, for which twenty men sued,
+and he (give Satan his due) did not even ask--if it wasn't flirting,
+_what was it_? Lady Marabout shivered at the suggestion; and though she
+was, on principle, excessively severe on flirting, she could be very
+glad of what she didn't approve, when it aided her, on occasion--like
+most other people--and would so far have agreed with Talleyrand, as to
+welcome the worst crime (of coquetry) as far less a sin than the
+unpardonable blunder of encouraging an Ogre!
+
+"I can't send Cecil away from the stall, as if she were a naughty child,
+and I can't order the man out of Willis's Rooms," thought that unhappy
+and fatally-worried lady, as she presided behind her stall, an emphatic
+witness of the truth of the poeticism that "grief smiles and gives no
+sign," insomuch as she looked the fairest, sunniest, best-looking, and
+best-tempered Dowager that ever shrouded herself in Chantilly lace.
+
+"I do think those ineligible, detrimental, objectionable persons ought
+not to be let loose on society as they are," she pondered; "let them
+have their clubs and their mess breakfasts, their Ascot and their
+Newmarket, their lansquenet parties and their handicap pigeon matches,
+if they like; but to have them come amongst _us_ as they do, asked
+everywhere if they happen to have good blood and good style, free to
+waltz and flirt and sing, and show all sorts of attention to
+marriageable girls, while all the while they are no more available for
+anything serious than if they were club stewards or cabmen--creatures
+that live on their fashionable aroma, and can't afford to buy the very
+bottles of bouquets on their toilette-tables--fast men, too, who,
+knowing they can never marry themselves, make a practice of turning
+marriage into ridicule, and help to set all the rich men more dead
+against it than they are,--to have them come promiscuously among the
+very best people, with nothing to distinguish them as dangerous, or
+label them as 'ought to be avoided,'--it's dreadful! it's a social evil!
+it _ought_ to be remedied! They muzzle dogs in June, why can't they
+label Ogres in the season? I mustn't send poor little Bijou out for a
+walk in Kensington Gardens without a string, these men ought not to go
+about in society without restriction: a snap of Bijou's doesn't do half
+such mischief as a smile of theirs!"
+
+And Lady Marabout chatted across the stall to his Grace of Doncaster,
+and entrapped him into purchases of fitting ducal prodigality, and
+smiled on scores of people she didn't know, in pleasant _pro tempore_
+expediency that had, like most expediency in our day, its ultimate goal
+in their purses and pockets, and longed for some select gendarmerie to
+clear Willis's Rooms of her Cobra Capella, and kept an eye all the while
+on Cecil Ormsby--Cecil, selling off everything on the stall by sheer
+force of her bright violet eyes, receiving ten-pound notes for guinea
+trifles, making her Bourse rise as high as she liked, courted for a
+spray of mignonette as entreatingly as ever Law was courted in the Rue
+Quincampoix for Mississippi scrip, served by a Corps d'Elite, in whom
+she had actually enlisted Carruthers, Goodwood, Fulke Nugent,
+Fitzbreguet, and plenty of the most desirable and most desired men in
+town, yet of which--oh the obstinacy of women! she had actually made
+Chandos Cheveley, with those wicked little Fairy roses in his coat,
+positively the captain and the chief!
+
+"It is enough to break one's heart!" thought Lady Marabout, wincing
+under the Hautton glance, which she saw only the plainer because she
+_wouldn't_ see it at all, and which said with horrible distinctness,
+"There is that man, who can hardly keep his own cab, who floats on
+society like a pleasure-boat, without rudder, ballast, or anchors, of
+whom I have told you, in virtuous indignation and Christian charity,
+fifty thousand naughty stories, who visits that wicked, notorious little
+Maréchale, who belongs to the Amandine set, who is everything that he
+ought not and nothing that he ought to be, who hasn't a penny he doesn't
+make by a well-made betting-book or a dashed-off magazine
+article,--there he is flirting all day at your own stall with
+Rosediamond's daughter, and you haven't the _savoir faire_, the strength
+of will, the tact, the proper feeling, to stop it!"
+
+To all of which charges Lady Marabout humbly bent her head,
+metaphorically speaking, and writhed, in secret, under the glance of her
+ancient enemy, while she talked and laughed with the Duke of Doncaster.
+C. Petronius, talking epicureanisms and witicisms, while the life-blood
+was ebbing away at every breath, was nothing to the suffering and the
+fortitude of Helena, Lady Marabout, turning a smiling, sunny, tranquil
+countenance to the world in front of her stall, while that world could
+see Chandos Cheveley admitted behind it!
+
+"I must do something to stop this!" thought Lady Marabout, with the
+desperation of a Charlotte Corday.
+
+"Is Cheveley going in for the Ormsby tin?" said Amandine to Eyre Lee.
+"Best thing he could do, eh? But Lady Tattersall and the trustees would
+cut rough, I am afraid."
+
+"What does Chandos mean with that daughter of Rosediamond's?" wondered
+her Grace, annoyedly. She had had him some time in her own rose chains,
+and when ladies have driven a lover long in that sort of harness, they
+could double-thong him with all the might of their little hands, if they
+fancy he is trying to break away.
+
+"Is Chandos Cheveley turning fortune-hunter? I suppose he would like
+Lady Cecil's money to pay off his Ascot losses," said Mrs. Maréchale,
+with a malicious laugh. At Ascot, the day before, he had not gone near
+her carriage; the year before he had driven her down in her
+mail-phaeton: what would there be too black to say of him _now_?
+
+"I must do something to stop this!" determined Lady Marabout, driving
+homewards, and glancing at Cecil Ormsby, as that young lady lay back in
+the carriage, a little grave and dreamy after her day's campaign--signs
+of the times terrifically ominous to her chaperone, skilled in reading
+such meteorological omens. But how was the drag to be put on the wheel?
+That momentous question absorbed Lady Marabout through her toilette that
+evening, pursued her to dinner, haunted her through two soirées, kept
+her wide awake all night, woke up with her to her early coffee, and
+flavored the potted tongue and the volaille à la Richelieu she took for
+her breakfast. "I can't turn the man out of town, and I can't tell
+people to strike him off their visiting-lists, and I can't shut Cecil
+and myself up in this house as if it were a convent, and, as to speaking
+to her, it is not the slightest use. She has such a way of putting
+things that one can never deny their truth, or reason them away, as one
+can with other girls. Fond as I am of her, she's fearfully difficult to
+manage. Still I owe it as a sacred duty to poor Rosediamond and the
+General, who says he places such implicit confidence in me, to
+interfere. It is my duty; it can't be helped. I must speak to Chandos
+Cheveley himself. I have no right to consult my own scruples when so
+much is at stake," valorously determined Lady Marabout, resolved to
+follow stern moral rules, and, when right was right, to let "le diable
+prendre le fruit."
+
+To be a perfect woman of the world, I take it, ladies must weed out
+early in life all such little contemptible weaknesses as a dislike to
+wounding other people; and a perfect woman of the world, therefore, Lady
+Marabout was not, and never would be. Nohow could she acquire Anne
+Hautton's invaluable sneer--nohow could she imitate that estimable
+pietist's delightful way of dropping little icy-barbed sentences, under
+which I have known the bravest to shrink, frozen, out of her path. Lady
+Marabout was grieved if she broke the head off a flower needlessly, and
+she could not cure herself of the same lingering folly in disliking to
+say a thing that pained anybody; it is incidental to the De Boncoeur
+blood--Carruthers inherits it--and I have seen fellows spared through
+it, whom he could else have withered into the depths of their boots by
+one of his satirical mots. So she did not go to her task of speaking to
+Chandos Cheveley, armed at all points for the encounter, and taking
+pleasure in feeling the edge of her rapier, as Lady Hautton would have
+done. The Cobra was dangerous, and must be crushed, but Lady Marabout
+did not very much relish setting her heel on it; it was a glittering,
+terrible, much-to-be-feared, and much-to-be-abused serpent,--but it
+might _feel_ all the same, you see.
+
+"I dislike the man on principle, but I don't want to pain him," she
+thought, sighing for the Hautton stern _savoir faire_ and Achilles
+impenetrability, and goading herself on with the remembrance of duty and
+General Ormsby, when the opportunity she had resolved to seek presented
+itself accidentally at a breakfast at Lady George Frangipane's toy
+villa at Fulham, and she found herself comparatively alone in the
+rose-garden with Cheveley, for once without Cecil's terrible violet eyes
+upon her.
+
+"Will you allow me a few words with you, Mr. Cheveley?" she asked, in
+her blandest manner--the kindly hypocrite!
+
+The blow must be dealt, but it might as well be softened with a few
+chloroform fumes, and not struck savagely with an iron-spiked mace.
+
+Cheveley raised his eyes.
+
+"With me? With the greatest pleasure!"
+
+"He is a mere fortune-hunter. I will _not_ spare him, I am resolved,"
+determined Lady Marabout, as she toyed with her parasol-handle, remarked
+incidentally how unequalled Lady George was in roses, especially in the
+tea-rose, and dealt blow No. 1. "Mr. Cheveley, I am going to speak to
+you very frankly. I consider frankness in all things best, myself----"
+
+Cheveley bowed, and smiled slightly.
+
+"I wish he would answer, it would make it so much easier; he will only
+look at one with those eyes of his, and certainly they _are_ splendid!"
+thought Lady Marabout, as she went on quickly, on the same principle as
+the Chasseurs Indiens approach an abattis at double-quick. "When Lord
+Rosediamond died last year he left, as probably you are aware, his
+daughter in my sole care; it was a great responsibility--very great--and
+I feel, of course, that I shall have to answer to him for my discharge
+of it."
+
+Lady Marabout didn't say whether Rosediamond was accustomed to visit her
+per medium, and hear her account of her stewardship nightly through a
+table-claw; but we must suppose that he was. Cheveley bowed again, and
+didn't inquire, not being spiritually interested.
+
+"Why _won't_ he answer?" thought Lady Marabout. "That I have not been
+blind to your very marked attention to my dear Cecil, I think you must
+be aware, Mr. Cheveley, and it is on that subject, indeed, that I----"
+
+"Wished to speak to me? I understand!" said Cheveley as she paused, with
+that faint smile, half sad, half proud, that perplexed Lady Marabout.
+"You are about to insinuate to me gently that those attentions have been
+exceedingly distasteful to you, exceedingly unacceptable in me; you
+would remind me that Lady Cecil Ormsby is a beauty and an heiress, and
+that I am a fortune-hunter, whose designs are seen through and motives
+found out; you would hint to me that our intercourse must cease: is it
+not so?"
+
+Lady Marabout, cursed with that obstinate, ill-bred, unextinguishable
+weakness for truth incidental and ever fatal to the De Boncoeurs,
+couldn't say that it was _not_ what she was going to observe to him, but
+it was exceedingly unpleasant, now it was put in such plain,
+uncomplimentary terms, to admit to the man's face that she was about to
+tell him he was a mercenary schemer, whose attentions only sprang from a
+lawless passion for the _beaux yeux_ of Cecil's _cassette_.
+
+She would have told him all that, and much more, with greatest dignity
+and effect, if he hadn't anticipated her; but to have her weapon parried
+before it was fairly out of its sheath unnerved her arm at the outset.
+
+"What _would_ Anne Hautton do? Dear me! there never was anybody
+perpetually placed in such wretched positions as I am!" thought Lady
+Marabout, as she played with her parasol, and murmured something not
+very clear relative to "responsibility" and "not desirable," two words
+as infallibly a part of Lady Marabout's stock in trade as a sneer at the
+"swells" is of _Punch's_. How she sighed for some cold, nonchalant,
+bitter sentence, such as the Hautton répertoire could have supplied! how
+she scorned herself for her own weakness and lack of severity! But she
+would not have relished hurting a burglar's feelings, though she had
+seen him in the very act of stealing her jewel-boxes, by taxing him with
+the theft; and though the Ogre _must_ be crushed, the crushing began to
+give Lady Marabout neuralgic twinges. She was no more able to say the
+stern things she had rehearsed and resolved upon, than she was able to
+stab him with her parasol, or strangle him with her handkerchief.
+
+"I guessed rightly what you were about to say to me?" said Cheveley, who
+seemed somehow or other to have taken all the talk into his own hands,
+and to have become the master of the position. "I thought so. I do not
+wonder at your construction; I cannot blame you for your resolution.
+Lady Cecil has some considerable fortune, they say; it is very natural
+that you should have imagined a man like myself, with no wealth save a
+good name, which only serves to make lack of wealth more conspicuous,
+incapable of seeking her society for any better, higher, more
+disinterested motive than that of her money; it was not charitable,
+perhaps, to decide unhesitatingly that it was impossible I could be
+drawn to her by any other attraction, that it was imperative I must be
+dead to everything in her that gives her a nobler and a higher charm;
+but it was very natural, and one learns never to hope for the miracle of
+a charitable judgment, _even_ from Lady Marabout!"
+
+"My dear Mr. Cheveley, indeed you mistake!" began Lady Marabout,
+restlessly. That was a little bit of a story, he didn't mistake at all;
+but Lady Marabout, collapsing like an india-rubber ball under the prick
+of a sarcasm, shivered all over at his words, his voice, his slight sad
+smile. "The man is as dreadful as Cecil," she thought; "he puts things
+so horribly clearly!"
+
+"Mistake? I do not think I do. You have thought all this, and very
+naturally; but now hear me for a moment. I have sought Lady Cecil's
+society, that is perfectly true; we have been thrown together in
+society, very often accidentally; sometimes, I admit, through my own
+seeking. Few men could be with her and be steeled against her. I have
+been with her too much; but I sought her at first carelessly, then
+irresistibly and unconsciously, never with the motive you attribute to
+me. I am not as utterly beggared as you deem me, but neither am I
+entirely barren of honor. Believe me, Lady Marabout, my pride alone
+would be amply sufficient to raise a barrier between me and Cecil
+stronger than any that could be opposed to me by others. Yesterday I
+casually overheard words from Amandine which showed me that society,
+like you, has put but one construction on the attention I have paid
+her--a construction I might have foreseen had I not been unconsciously
+fascinated, and forgetful, for the time, of the infallible whispers of
+my kind friends. Her fortune, I know, was never numbered among her
+attractions for me; so little, that now that Amandine's careless words
+have reminded me of the verdict of society, I shall neither seek her nor
+see her again. Scores of men marry women for their money, and their
+money alone, but I am not one of them; with my own precarious fortunes,
+only escaping ruin because I am not rich enough to tempt ruin. I would
+never take advantage of any interest I may have excited in her, to speak
+to her of a passion that the world would tell her was only another name
+for avarice and selfishness. I dare not trust myself with her longer,
+perhaps. I am no god to answer for my self-control; but you need not
+fear; I will never seek her love--never even tell her of mine. I shall
+leave town to-morrow; what _I_ may suffer matters not. Lady Cecil is
+safe from me! Whatever you may have heard of my faults, follies, or
+vices, none ever told you, I think, that I broke my word?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And when the man said that, my dear Philip, I assure you I felt as
+guilty as if I had done him some horrible wrong; he stood there with his
+head up, looking at me with his sad proud eyes--and they are
+beautiful!--till, positively, I could almost have cried--I could,
+indeed, for though I don't like him on principle, I couldn't help
+pitying him," said Lady Marabout, in a subsequent relation of the scene
+to her son. "Wasn't it a terrible position? I was as near as possible
+forgetting everything due to poor Rosediamond, and saying to him that I
+believed Cecil liked him and would never like anybody else, but, thank
+Heaven! I remembered myself, and checked myself in time. If it had been
+anybody but Chandos Cheveley, I should really have admired him, he spoke
+so nobly! When he lifted his hat and left me, though I _ought_ to have
+been glad (and I _was_ glad, of course) that Cecil would be free from
+the society of anybody so objectionable and so dangerous, I felt
+wretched for him--I did indeed. It _is_ so hard always to be placed in
+such miserable positions!"
+
+By which you will perceive that the triumphant crushing of Lady
+Marabout's Cobra didn't afford her the unmixed gratification she had
+anticipated.
+
+"I have done what was my duty to poor Rosediamond, and what General
+Ormsby's confidence merited," she solaced herself that day, feeling
+uncomfortably and causelessly guilty, she hardly knew why, when she saw
+Chandos Cheveley keeping sedulously with the "Amandine set," and read in
+Cecil's tell-tale face wonder, perplexity, and regret thereat, till the
+Frangipane fête came to an end. She had appeased the manes of the late
+Rosediamond, who, to her imagination, always appeared sitting up aloft
+keeping watch over the discharge of her chaperone's duties, but she had
+a secret and horrible dread that she had excited the wrath of
+Rosediamond's daughter. She had driven her Ogre off the scene, it is
+true, but she could not feel that she had altogether come off the best
+in the contest. Anne Hautton had congratulated her, indeed, on having
+"acted with decision _at last_," but then she had marred it all by
+asking if Carruthers was likely to be engaged to Cecil? And Lady
+Marabout had been forced to confess he was not; Philip, when pressed by
+her that very morning to be a little attentive to Cecil, having shaken
+his head and laughed:
+
+"She's a bewitching creature, mother, but she don't bewitch _me_! You
+know what Shakspeare says of wooing, wedding, and repentance. I've no
+fancy for the inseparable trio!"
+
+Altogether, Lady Marabout was far from peace and tranquillity, though
+the Cobra _was_ crushed, as she drove away from the Frangipane
+breakfast, and she was little nearer them when Cecil turned her eyes
+upon her with a question worse to Lady Marabout's ear than the roar of a
+Lancaster battery.
+
+"What have you said to him?"
+
+"My dear Cecil! What have I said to whom?" returned Lady Marabout, with
+Machiavellian surprise.
+
+"You know well enough, Lady Marabout! What have you said to him--to Mr.
+Cheveley?"
+
+Cecil's impetuosity invariably knocked Lady Marabout down at one blow,
+as a ball knocks down the pegs at lawn billiards. She rallied after the
+shock, but not successfully, and tried at coldness and decision, as
+recommended by Hautton prescriptions.
+
+"My dear Cecil, I have said to him what I think it my duty to say to
+him. Responsible as I am for you----"
+
+"Responsible for me, Lady Marabout? Indeed you are not. I am responsible
+for myself!" interrupted Lady Cecil, with that haughty arch of her
+eyebrows and that flush on her face before which Lady Marabout was
+powerless. "What have you said to him? I _will_ know!"
+
+"I said very little to him, indeed, my dear; he said it all himself."
+
+"What did he say himself?"
+
+"I _must_ tell her--she is so dreadfully persistent," thought the
+unhappy and badgered Peeress; and tell her she did, being a means of
+lessening the young lady's interest in the subject of discussion as
+little judicious as she could well have hit upon.
+
+Lady Cecil listened, silent for once, shading her face with her parasol,
+shading the tears that gathered on her lashes and rolled down her
+delicate flushed cheeks, at the recital of Chandos Cheveley's words,
+from her chaperone's sight.
+
+Lady Marabout gathered courage from the tranquillity with which her
+recital was heard.
+
+"You see, my love, Chandos Cheveley's own honor points in the same
+direction with my judgment," she wound up, in conclusion. "He has acted
+rightly at last, I allow, and if you--if you have for the moment felt a
+tinge of warmer interest in him--if you have been taken by the
+fascination of his manner, and invested him with a young girl's romance,
+you will soon see with us how infinitely better it is that you should
+part, and how impossible it is that----"
+
+Lady Cecil's eyes flashed such fire through their tears, that Lady
+Marabout stopped, collapsed and paralyzed.
+
+"It is by such advice as that you repay his nobility, his generosity,
+his honor!--it is by such words as those you reward him for acting as
+not one man in a hundred would have acted! Hush, hush, Lady Marabout, I
+thought better of you!"
+
+"Good Heavens! _where will it end?_" thought Lady Marabout,
+distractedly, as Rosediamond's wayward daughter sprang down at the door
+with a flush in her face, and a contemptuous anger in her eyes, that
+made Bijou, jumping on her, stop, stare, and whine in canine dismay.
+
+"And I fancied she was listening passively!" thought Lady Marabout.
+
+"Well! the man is gone to-day, that is one comfort. I am very thankful I
+acted as I did," reasoned that ever-worried lady in her boudoir the next
+morning. "I am afraid Cecil is really very fond of him, there were such
+black shadows under her eyes at breakfast, poor child! But it is much
+better as it is--much better. I should never have held up my head again
+if I had allowed her to make such a disadvantageous alliance. I can
+hardly bear to think of what would have been said, even now the danger
+is over!"
+
+While Lady Marabout was thus comforting herself over her embroidery
+silks, Cecil Ormsby was pacing into the Park, with old Twitters the
+groom ten yards behind her, taking her early ride before the world was
+up--it was only eleven o'clock; Cecil had been used to early rising, and
+would never leave it off, having discovered some recipe that made her
+independent of ordinary mortals' quantum of sleep.
+
+"Surely he will be here this morning to see me for the last time,"
+thought that young lady, as she paced up the New Ride under the
+Kensington Gardens trees, with her heart beating quickly under the gold
+aiglettes of her riding-jacket.
+
+"I must see her once more, and then----" thought Chandos Cheveley, as he
+leaned against the rails, smoking, as he had done scores of mornings
+before. His man had packed his things; his hansom was waiting at the
+gates to take him to the station, and his portmanteau was lettered
+"Ischl." He had only come to take one last look of the face that haunted
+him as no other had ever succeeded in doing. The ring of a horse's hoof
+fell on his ear. There she came, on her roan hack, with the sun glancing
+off her chestnut hair. He looked up to bow to her as she passed on, for
+the Ride had never been a rendezvous for more than a bow (Cecil's
+insurrectionary tactics had always been carried on before Lady
+Marabout's face), but the roan was pulled up by him that morning for
+the very first time, and Cecil's eyes fell on him through their lashes.
+
+"Mr. Cheveley--is it true you are going out of town?"
+
+"Quite true."
+
+If her voice quivered as she asked the question, he barely kept his own
+from doing the same as he answered it.
+
+"Will you be gone long?"
+
+"Till next season, at earliest."
+
+His promise to Lady Marabout was hard to keep! He would not have trusted
+his strength if he had known she would have done more than canter on
+with her usual bow and smile.
+
+Cecil was silent. The groom waited like a statue his ten yards behind
+them. She played with her reins nervously, the color coming and going
+painfully in her face.
+
+"Lady Marabout told me of--of some conversation you had with her
+yesterday?"
+
+Low as the words were, Cheveley heard them, and his hand, as it lay on
+the rails, shook like a girl's.
+
+Cecil was silent again; she looked at him, her eyes full of unshed
+tears, as the color burned in her face, and she drooped her head almost
+to a level with her hands as they played with the reins.
+
+"She told me--you----"
+
+She stopped again. Cecil was new to making proposals, though not to
+rejecting them. Cheveley set his teeth to keep in the words that rushed
+to his lips, and Cecil saw the struggle as she bent her head lower and
+lower to the saddle, and twisted the reins into a Gordian knot.
+
+"Do you--must we--why should----"
+
+Fragmentary monosyllables enough, but sufficient to fell his strength.
+
+"For God's sake do not tempt me!" he muttered. "You little know----"
+
+"I know all!" she whispered softly.
+
+"You cannot! My worthless life!--my honor! I could not take such a
+sacrifice, I would not!----"
+
+"But--if my peace----"
+
+She could not end her phrase, yet it said enough;--his hand closed on
+hers.
+
+"Your peace! Good God! in _my_ hands! I stay; then--let the world say
+what it likes!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Drive back; I have changed my mind about going abroad to-day," said
+Cheveley, as he got into his hansom at Albert Gate.
+
+"How soon she has got over it! Girls do," thought Lady Marabout, as
+Cecil Ormsby came in from her ride with the brightest bloom on her
+cheeks a June breeze ever fanned there. She laid her hat on the table,
+flung her gauntlets at Bijou, and threw herself on her knees by Lady
+Marabout, a saucy smile on her face, though her lashes were wet.
+
+"Dear Lady Marabout, I can forgive you now, but you will never forgive
+me!"
+
+Lady Marabout turned white as her point-lace cap, gave a little gasp of
+paralyzed terror, and pushed back her chair as though a shell had
+exploded on the hearth-rug.
+
+"Cecil! Good Heaven!--you don't mean----"
+
+"Yes I do," said Cecil, with a fresh access of color, and a low, soft
+laugh.
+
+Lady Marabout gasped again for breath:
+
+"General Ormsby!" was all she could ejaculate.
+
+"General Ormsby? What of him? Did you ever know uncle Johnnie refuse to
+please _me_? And if my money be to interfere with my happiness, and not
+promote it, as I conceive it its duty and purpose to do, why, I am of
+age in July, you know, and I shall make a deed of gift of it all to the
+Soldiers' Home or the Wellington College, and there is only one person
+who will care for me _then_."
+
+Lady Cecil was quite capable of carrying her threat into execution, and
+Lady Cecil had her own way accordingly, as she had had it from her
+babyhood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I shall never hold up my head again! And what a horrible triumph for
+Anne Hautton! I am always the victim--always!" said Lady Marabout, that
+day two months, when the last guest at Cecil Ormsby's wedding déjeûner
+had rolled away from the house. "A girl who might have married anybody,
+Philip; she refused twenty offers this season--she did, indeed! It is
+heart-breaking, say what you like; you needn't laugh, it _is_. Why did I
+offer them Fernditton for this month, you say, if I didn't countenance
+the alliance? Nonsense! that is nothing to the purpose. Of course, I
+seemed to countenance it to a degree, for Cecil's sake, and I admire
+Chandos Cheveley, I confess (at least I should do, if I didn't dislike
+his class on principle); but, say what you like, Philip, it is the most
+terrible thing that could have happened for _me_. Those men _ought_ to
+be labelled, or muzzled, or done something with, and not be let loose on
+society as they are. He has a noble nature, you say. I don't say
+anything against his nature! She worships him? Well, I know she does.
+What is that to the point? He will make her happy? I am sure he will. He
+has the gentlest way with her possible. But how does that console _me_?
+Think what _you_ feel when an outsider, as you call it, beats all the
+favorites, upsets all your betting-books, and carries off the Doncaster
+Cup, and then realize, if you've any humanity in you, what _we_ feel
+under such a trial as this is to me! Only to think what Anne Hautton
+will always say!"
+
+Lady Marabout is not the only person to whom the first thought, the most
+dreaded ghost, the ghastliest skeleton, the direst aggravation, the
+sharpest dagger-thrust, under all troubles, is the remembrance of that
+one omnipotent Ogre--"QU'EN DIRA-T-ON?"
+
+"Laugh at her, mother," counselled Carruthers; and, _amis lecteurs_, I
+pass on his advice to you as the best and sole bowstring for strangling
+the ogre in question, which is the grimmest we have in all Bogeydom.
+
+
+
+
+LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES;
+
+OR,
+
+THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE.
+
+IN THREE SEASONS.
+
+
+SEASON THE THIRD.--THE CLIMAX.
+
+"My dear Philip, the most unfortunate thing has happened," said Lady
+Marabout, one morning; "really the greatest contretemps that could have
+occurred. I suppose I never _am_ to be quiet!"
+
+"What's the row _now_, madre carissima?" asked her son.
+
+"It is no row, but it is an annoyance. You have heard me speak of my
+poor dear friend Mrs. Montolieu; you know she married unhappily, poor
+thing, to a dreadful creature, something in a West India
+regiment--nobody at all. It is very odd, and it is very wrong, and there
+must be a great mistake somewhere, but certainly most marriages _are_
+unhappy."
+
+"And yet you are always recommending the institution! What an
+extraordinary obstinacy and opticism, my dear mother! I suppose you do
+it on the same principle as nurses recommend children nasty medicines,
+or as old Levett used to tender me dry biscuit _sans confiture_:
+''Tisn't so nice as marmalade, I know, Master Philip, but then, dear,
+it's _so_ wholesome!'"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Philip," cried Lady Marabout; "I don't mean it in
+that sense at all, and you know I don't. If poor Lilla Montolieu is
+unhappy, I am sure it is all her abominable odious husband's fault; she
+is the sweetest creature possible. But she has a daughter, and
+concerning that daughter she wrote to me about a month ago, and--I never
+was more vexed in my life--she wants me to bring her out this season."
+
+"A victim again! My poor dear mother, you certainly deserve a Belgravian
+testimonial; you shall have a statue set up in Lowndes Square
+commemorative of the heroic endurance of a chaperone's existence,
+subscribed for gratefully by the girls you married well, and
+penitentially by the girls you couldn't marry at all."
+
+Lady Marabout laughed a little, but sighed again:
+
+"'It is fun to you, but it is death to me'----"
+
+"As the women say when we flirt with them," interpolated Carruthers.
+
+"You see, poor dear Lilla didn't know what to do. There she is, in that
+miserable island with the unpronounceable name that the man is governor
+of; shut out of all society, with nobody to marry this girl to if she
+had her there, except their secretary, or a West Indian planter. Of
+course, no mother would ruin her daughter's prospects, and take her into
+such an out-of-the-world corner. She knew no one so well as myself, and
+so to me she applied. She is the sweetest creature! I would do anything
+to oblige or please her, but I can't help being very sorry she has
+pounced upon me. And I don't the least know what this girl is like, not
+even whether she is presentable. I dare say she was petted and spoiled
+in that lazy, luxurious, tropical life when she was little, and she has
+been brought up the last few years in a convent in France, the very last
+education _I_ should choose for a girl. Fancy, if I should find her an
+ignorant, unformed hoyden, or a lethargic, overgrown child, or an
+artificial French girl, who goes to confession every day, and carries
+on twenty undiscoverable love affairs--fancy, if she should be ugly, or
+awkward, or brusque, or gauche, as ten to one she will be--fancy, if I
+find her utterly unpresentable!--what in the world shall I do?"
+
+"Decline her," suggested Carruthers. "I wouldn't have a horse put in my
+tilbury that I'd never seen, and risk driving a spavined, wall-eyed,
+underbred brute through the Park; and I suppose the ignominy of the
+début would be to you much what the ignominy of such a turn-out would be
+to me."
+
+"Decline her? I can't, my dear Philip! I agreed to have her a month ago.
+I have never seen you to tell you till now, you know; you've been so
+sworn to Newmarket all through the Spring Meetings. Decline her? she
+comes to-night!"
+
+"Comes to-night?" laughed Carruthers. "All is lost, then. We shall see
+the Countess of Marabout moving through London society with a West
+Indian, who has a skin like Othello; has as much idea of manners as a
+housemaid that suddenly turns out an heiress, and is invited by people
+to whom she yesterday carried up their hot water; reflects indelible
+disgrace on her chaperone by gaucheries unparalleled; throws glass or
+silver missiles at Soames's head when he doesn't wait upon her at
+luncheon to her liking, as she has been accustomed to do at the
+negroes----"
+
+"Philip, pray don't!" cried Lady Marabout, piteously.
+
+"Or, we shall welcome under the Marabout wing a young lady fresh from
+convent walls and pensionnaire flirtations, who astonishes a
+dinner-party by only taking the first course, on the score of jours
+maigres and conscientious scruples; who is visited by révérends pères
+from Farm Street, and fills your drawing-room with High Church curates,
+whom she tries to draw over from their 'mother's' to their 'sister's'
+open arms; who goes every day to early morning mass instead of taking
+an early morning canter, and who, when invited to sing at a soirée
+musicale, begins 'Sancta Maria adorata!'"
+
+"Philip, _don't_!" cried Lady Marabout. "Bark at him, Bijou, the
+heartless man! It is as likely as not little Montolieu may realize one
+of your horrible sketches. Ah, Philip, you don't know what the worries
+of a chaperone are!"
+
+"Thank Heaven, no!" laughed Carruthers.
+
+"It is easy to make a joke of it, and very tempting, I dare say--one's
+woes always _are_ amusing to other people, they don't feel the smart
+themselves, and only laugh at the grimace it forces from one--but I can
+tell you, Philip, it is anything but a pleasant prospect to have to go
+about in society with a girl one may be ashamed of!--I don't know
+anything more trying; I would as soon wear paste diamonds as introduce a
+girl that is not perfectly good style."
+
+"But why not have thought of all this in time?"
+
+Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou's ears, with a
+sigh.
+
+"My dear Philip, if everybody always thought of things in time, would
+there be any follies committed at all? It's precisely because repentance
+comes too late, that repentance is such a horrible wasp, with such a
+merciless sting. Besides, _could_ I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy
+as she is with that bear of a man?"
+
+"I never felt more anxious in my life," thought Lady Marabout, as she
+sat before the fire in her drawing-room--it was a chilly April
+day--stirring the cream into her pre-prandial cup of tea, resting one of
+her small satin-slippered feet on Bijou's back, while the firelight
+sparkled on the Dresden figures, the statuettes, the fifty thousand
+costly trifles, in which the Marabout rooms equalled any in Belgravia.
+"I never felt more anxious--not on any of Philip's dreadful yachting
+expeditions, nor even when he went on that perilous exploring tour into
+Arabia Deserta, I do think. If she _should_ be unpresentable--and then
+poor dear Lilla's was not much of a match, and the girl will not have a
+sou, she tells me frankly; I can hardly hope to do anything for her.
+There is one thing, she will not be a responsibility like Valencia or
+Cecil, and what would have been a bad match for _them_ will be a good
+one for her. She must accept the first offer made her, if she have any
+at all, which will be very doubtful; few Benedicts bow to Beatrices
+nowadays, unless Beatrice is a good 'investment,' as they call it. She
+will soon be here. That is the carriage now stopped, I do think. How
+anxious I feel! Really it can't be worse for a Turkish bridegroom never
+to see his wife's face till after the ceremony than it is for one not to
+have seen a girl till one has to introduce her. If she shouldn't be good
+style!"
+
+And Lady Marabout's heart palpitated, possibly prophetically, as she set
+down her little Sèvres cup and rose out of her arm-chair, with Bijou
+shaking his silver collar and bells, to welcome the new inmate of
+Lowndes Square, with her sunny smile and her kindly voice, and her soft
+beaming eyes, which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady
+Marabout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded her purse,
+or an executioner who had led her out to capital punishment, and now
+made her radiate, warm and bright, on a guest whose advent she dreaded.
+Hypocrisy, you say. Not a bit of it! Hypocrisy may be eminently
+courteous, but take my word for it, it's never _cordial_! There are
+natures who throw such golden rays around them naturally, as there are
+others who think brusquerie and acidity cardinal virtues, and deal them
+out as points of conscience; are there not sunbeams that shine kindly
+alike on fragrant violet tufts and barren brambles, velvet lawns and
+muddy trottoirs? are there not hail-clouds that send jagged points of
+ice on all the world pêle-mêle, as mercilessly on the broken rose as on
+the granite boulder?
+
+"She _is_ good style, thank Heaven!" thought Lady Marabout, as she went
+forward, with her white soft hands, their jewels flashing in the light,
+outstretched in welcome. "My dear child, how much you are like your
+mother! You must let me be fond of you for her sake, first, and
+then--for your own!"
+
+The conventional thought did not make the cordial utterance insincere.
+The two ran in couples--we often drive such pairs, every one of us--and
+if they entail insincerity, _Veritas, vale!_
+
+"Madre mia, I called to inquire if you have survived the anxiety of last
+night, and to know what _jeune sauvage_ or feir _religieuse_ you may
+have had sent you for the galvanizing of Belgravia?" said Carruthers,
+paying his accustomed visit in his mother's boudoir, and throwing
+macaroons at Bijou's nose.
+
+"My dear Philip, I hardly know; she puzzles me. She's what, if she were
+a man, I should classify as a detrimental."
+
+"Is she awkward?"
+
+"Not in the least. Perfect manners, wherever she learned them."
+
+"Brusque?"
+
+"Soft as a gazelle. Very like her mother."
+
+"Brown?"
+
+"Fair as that statuette, with a beautiful bloom; lovely gold hair, too,
+and hazel eyes."
+
+"What are the shortcomings, then?"
+
+"There are none; and it's that that puzzles me. She's been six years in
+that convent, and yet, I do assure you, her style is perfect. She's
+hardly eighteen, but she's the air of the best society. She is--a--well,
+_almost_ nobody, as people rank now, you know, for poor dear Lilla's
+marriage was not what she should have made, but the girl might be a
+royal duke's daughter for manner."
+
+"A premature artificial _femme du monde_? Bah! nothing more odious,"
+said Carruthers, poising a macaroon on Pandore's nose. "Make
+ready!--present!--fire! There's a good dog!"
+
+"No, nothing of that sort: very natural, frank, vivacious. Nothing
+artificial about her; very charming indeed! But she might be a young
+Countess, the queen of a _monde_ rather than a young girl just out of a
+French convent; and, you know, my dear Philip, that sort of wit and
+nonchalance may be admirable for Cecil Cheveley, assured of her
+position, but they're dangerous to a girl like this Flora Montolieu:
+they will make people remark her and ask who she is, and try to pull her
+to pieces, if they don't find her somebody they _dare_ not hit. I would
+much rather she were of the general pattern, pleasing, but nothing
+remarkable, well-bred, but nothing to envy, thoroughly educated, but
+monosyllabic in society; such a girl as that passes among all the rest,
+suits mediocre men (and the majority of men _are_ mediocre, you know, my
+dear Philip), and pleases women because she is a nice girl, and no
+rival; but this little Montolieu----"
+
+And Lady Marabout sighed with a prescience of coming troubles, while
+Carruthers laughed and rose.
+
+"Will worry your life out! I must go, for I have to sit in court-martial
+at two (for a mere trifle, a deuced bore to us, but _le service
+oblige_!), so I shall escape introduction to your little Montolieu
+to-day. Why _will_ you fill your house with girls, my dear mother?--it
+is fifty times more agreeable when you are reigning alone. Henceforth, I
+can't come in to lunch with you without going through the formula of a
+mild flirtation--women think you so ill-natured if you don't flirt a
+little with them, that amiable men like myself haven't strength of mind
+to refuse. You should keep _your_ house an open sanctuary for me, when
+you know I've no other in London except when I retreat into White's and
+the U. S.!"
+
+"She puzzles me!" pondered Lady Marabout, as Despréaux disrobed her that
+night. "I always _am_ to be puzzled, I think! I never _can_ have one of
+those quiet, mediocre, well-mannered, remarkable-for-nothing girls, who
+have no idiosyncrasies and give nobody any trouble; one marries them
+safely to some second-rate man; nobody admires them, and nobody dislikes
+them; they're to society what neutral tint is among body-colors, or
+rather what grays are among dresses, inoffensive, unimpeachable, always
+look ladylike, but never look brilliant; colorless dresses are very
+useful, and so are characterless girls; and I dare say the draper would
+tell us the grays in the long run are the easiest to sell, as the girls
+are to marry; they please the commonplace taste of the generality, and
+do for every-day wear! Flora Montolieu puzzles me; she is very charming,
+very striking, very lovable, but she puzzles me! I have a presentiment
+that that child will give me a world of anxiety, an infinitude of
+trouble!"
+
+And Lady Marabout laid her head on her pillow, not the happier that
+Flora Montolieu was lying asleep in the room next her, dreaming of the
+wild-vine shadows and the night-blooming flowers of her native tropics,
+under the rose-curtains of her new home in Lowndes Square, already a
+burden on the soul and a responsibility on the mind of that home's most
+genial and generous mistress.
+
+"If she were a man, I should certainly call her a detrimental," said
+Lady Marabout, after a more deliberate study of her charge. "You know,
+my dear Philip, the sort of man one call detrimental; attractive enough
+to do a great deal of damage, and ineligible enough to make the damage
+very unacceptable: handsome and winning, but a younger son, or a
+something nobody wants; a delightful flirtation, but a terrible
+alliance; you know what I mean! Well, that is just what this little
+Montolieu is in our sex; I am quite sure it is what she will be
+considered; and if it be bad for a man, it is very much worse for a
+woman! Everybody will admire her, and nobody will marry her; I have a
+presentiment of it!"
+
+With which prophetical mélange of the glorious and the inglorious for
+her charge's coming career, Lady Marabout sighed, and gave a little
+shiver, such as
+
+    Sous des maux ignorés nous fait gémir d'avance,
+
+as Delphine Gay well phrased it. And she floated out of her boudoir to
+the dining-room for luncheon, at which unformal and pleasant meal
+Carruthers chanced to stay, criticise a new dry sherry, and take a look
+at this unsalable young filly of the Marabout Yearling Sales.
+
+"I don't know about her being detrimental, mother, nor about her being
+little; she in more than middle height," laughed he; "but I vow she is
+the prettiest thing you've had in your list for some time. You've had
+much greater beauties, you say? Well, perhaps so; but I bet you any
+money she will make a sensation."
+
+"I'm sure she will," reiterated Lady Marabout, despairingly. "I have no
+doubt she will have a brilliant season; there is something very
+piquante, taking, and uncommon about her; but who will marry her at the
+end of it?"
+
+Carruthers shouted with laughter.
+
+"Heaven forbid that I should attempt to prophesy! I would undertake as
+readily to say who'll be the owner of the winner of the Oaks ten years
+hence! I can tell you who _won't_----"
+
+"Yourself; because you'll never marry anybody at all," cried Lady
+Marabout. "Well! I must say I should not wish you to renounce your
+misogamistic notions here. The Montolieus are not at all what _you_
+should look for; and a child like Flora would be excessively ill suited
+to you. If I could see you married, as I should desire, to some woman of
+weight and dignity, five or six-and-twenty, fit for you in every
+way----"
+
+"_De grace, de grace!_ My dear mother, the mere sketch will kill me, if
+you insist on finishing it! Be reasonable! Can anything be more
+comfortable, more tranquil, than I am now? I swing through life in a
+rocking-chair; if I'm a trifle bored now and then, it's my heaviest
+trial. I float as pleasantly on the waves of London life, in my way, as
+the lotus-eaters of poetry on the Ganges in theirs; and _you'd_ have the
+barbarity to introduce into my complacent existence the sting of
+matrimony, the phosphorus of Hymen's torch, the symbolical serpent of a
+wedding-ring?--for shame!"
+
+Lady Marabout laughed despite herself, and the solemnity, in _her_ eyes,
+of the subject.
+
+"I _should_ like to see you happily married, for all that, though I
+quite despair of it now; but perhaps you are right."
+
+"Of course I am right! Adam was tranquil and unworried till fate sent
+him a wife, and he was typical of the destinies of his descendants.
+Those who are wise, take warning; those who are not, neglect it and
+repent. Lady Hautton et C^{ie} are very fond of twisting scriptural
+obscurities into 'types.' _There's_ a type plain as day, and salutary to
+mankind, if detrimental to women!"
+
+"Philip, you are abominable! don't be so wicked!" cried Lady Marabout,
+enjoying it all the more because she was a little shocked at it, as your
+best women will on occasion; human nature is human nature everywhere,
+and the female heart gives pleasurable little pulses at the sight of
+forbidden fruits now, as in the days of Eve.
+
+"Who's that Miss Montolieu with your mother this year, Phil?" dozens of
+men asked Carruthers, that season, across the mess-table, in the
+smoking-room of the Guards, in the Ride or the Ring, in the doorways of
+ball-rooms, or anywhere where such-like questions are asked and new
+pretty women discussed.
+
+"What is it in her that takes so astonishingly?" wondered Lady Marabout,
+who is, like most women, orthodox on all points, loving things by rule,
+worrying if they go out of the customary routine, and was, therefore,
+quite incapable of reconciling herself to so revolutionary a fact as a
+young lady being admired who was not a beauty, and sought while she was
+detrimental in every way. It was "out of the general rule," and your
+orthodox people hate anything "out of the general run," as they hate
+their prosperous friends: the force of hatred can no further go! Flora
+Montolieu's crime in Belgravia was much akin to the Bonapartes' crimes
+to the Bourbons. Thrones must be filled legitimately, if not worthily,
+in the eyes of the orthodox people, and this Petit Caporal of Lady
+Marabout's had no business to reign where the Hereditary Princesses and
+all the other noble lines failed to sway the sceptre. Lady Marabout,
+belonging to the noble lines herself, agreed in her heart with them, and
+felt a little bit guilty to have introduced this democratic and
+unwelcome element in society.
+
+Flora Montolieu "took," as people say of bubble companies, meaning that
+they will pleasantly ruin a million or two: or of new fashions, meaning
+that they will become general with the many and, _sequitur_, unwearable
+with the few. She had the brilliance and grace of one of her own
+tropical flowers, with something piquante and attractive about her that
+one had to leave nameless, but that was all the more charming for that
+very fact perhaps; full of life and animation, but soft as a gazelle, as
+her chaperone averred; not characterless, as Lady Marabout fondly
+desired (on the same principle, I suppose, as a timid whip likes a horse
+as spiritless as a riding-school hack), but gifted with plenty of very
+marked character, so much, indeed, that it rather puzzled her
+_camériste_.
+
+"Girls shouldn't have marked character; they should be clay that one can
+mould, not a self-chiselled statuette, that will only go into its own
+niche, and won't go into any other. This little Montolieu would make
+just such a woman as Vittoria Colonna or Madame de Sablé, but one
+doesn't want _those_ qualities in a girl, who is but a single little ear
+in the wheat-sheaf of society, and whom one wants to marry off, but
+can't expect to marry well. Her poor mother, of course, will look to me
+to do something advantageous for her, and I verily believe she is that
+sort of girl that will let me do nothing," thought Lady Marabout,
+already beginning to worry, as she talked to Lady George Frangipane at a
+breakfast in Palace Gardens, and watched Flora Montolieu, with
+Carruthers on her left and Goodwood on her right, amusing them both, to
+all semblance, and holding her own to the Lady Hautton's despite, who
+held _their_ own so excessively chillily and loftily that no ordinary
+mortals cared to approach them, but, beholding them, thought
+involuntarily of the stately icebergs off the Spitzbergen coast, only
+that the icebergs _could_ melt or explode when their time came, and the
+time was never known when the Hautton surface could be moved to anger or
+melt to any sunshine whatever. At least, whether their maids or their
+mother ever beheld the first of the phenomena, far be it from me to say,
+but the world never saw either.
+
+"Well, Miss Montolieu, how do you like our life here?" Carruthers was
+asking. "Which is preferable--Belgravia or St. Denis?"
+
+"Oh, Belgravia, decidedly," laughed Lady Marabout's charge. "I think
+your life charming. All change, excitement, gayety, who would not like
+it?"
+
+"Nobody--that is not fresh to it?"
+
+"Fresh to it? Ah! are you one of the class who find no beauty in
+anything unless it is new? If so, do not charge the blame on to the
+thing, as your tone implies; take it rather to yourself and your own
+fickleness."
+
+"Perhaps I do," smiled Carruthers. "But whether one's self or 'the
+thing' is to blame, the result's much the same--satiety! Wait till you
+have had two or three seasons, and then tell me if you find this
+mill-wheel routine, these circus gyrations, so delightful! We are the
+performing stud, who go round and round in the hippodrome, day after day
+for show, till we are sick of the whole programme, knowing our white
+stars are but a daub of paint, and our gay spangles only tinfoil. You
+are a little pony just joined to the troupe, and just pleased with the
+glitter of the arena. Wait till you've had a few years of it before you
+say whether going through the same hoops and passing over the same
+sawdust is so very amusing."
+
+"If I do not, I shall desert the troupe, and form a circus of my own
+less mechanical and more enjoyable."
+
+"_Il faut souffrir pour être belle, il faut souffrir encore plus pour
+être à la mode!_" said Goodwood, on her right, while Lady Egidia Hautton
+thought, "How bold that little Montolieu is!" and her sister, Lady
+Feodorowna, wondered what her cousin Goodwood _could_ see there.
+
+"I do not see the necessity," interrupted Flora, "and I certainly would
+never bow to the 'il faut.' I would make fashion follow me; I would not
+follow fashion." ("That child talks as though she were the Duchess of
+Amandine;" thought Lady Marabout, catching fragmentary portions across
+the table, the Marabout oral and oracular organs being always
+conveniently multiplied when she was armed cap à pie as a chaperone.)
+"Sir Philip, you talk as if you belonged to the 'nothing-is-new, and
+nothing-is-true, and it-don't-signify' class. I should have thought you
+were above the nil admirari affectation."
+
+"He admires, as we all do, when we find something that compels our
+homage," said Goodwood, with an emphasis that would have made the hearts
+of any of the Hereditary Princesses palpitate with gratification, but at
+which the ungrateful Petit Caporal only glanced at him a little
+surprisedly with her large hazel eyes, as though she by no means saw the
+point of the speech.
+
+Carruthers laughed:
+
+"Nil admirari? Oh no. I enjoy life, but then it is thanks to the clubs,
+my yacht, my cigar-case, my stud, a thousand things,--not thanks at all
+to Belgravia."
+
+"Complimentary to the Belgraviennes!" cried Flora, with a shrug of her
+shoulders. "They have not known how to amuse you, then?"
+
+"Ladies never _do_ amuse us!" sighed Carruthers. "_Tant pis pour nous!_"
+
+"Are you going to Lady Patchouli's this evening?" asked Goodwood.
+
+"I believe we are. I think Lady Marabout said so."
+
+"Then I shall exert myself, and go too. It will be a terrible
+bore--balls always are. But to waltz with _you_ I will try to encounter
+it!"
+
+Flora Montolieu arched her eyebrows, and gave him a little disdainful
+glance.
+
+"Lord Goodwood, do not be so sure that I shall waltz at all with you. If
+_you_ take vanity for wit, _I_ cannot accept discourtesy as compliment!"
+
+"Well hit, little lady!" thought Carruthers, with a mental bravissima.
+
+"What a speech!" thought Lady Marabout, across the table, as shocked as
+though a footman had dropped a cascade of iced hock over her.
+
+"You got it for once, Goodwood," laughed Carruthers, as they drove away
+in his tilbury. "You never had such a sharp brush as that."
+
+"By Jove, no! Positively it was quite a new sensation--refreshing,
+indeed! One grows so tired of the women who agree with one eternally.
+She's charming, on my word. Who _is_ she, Phil? In an heraldic sense, I
+mean."
+
+"My dear child, what could possess you to answer Lord Goodwood like
+that?" cried Lady Marabout, as her barouche rolled down Palace Gardens.
+
+"Possess me? The Demon of Mischief, I suppose."
+
+"But, my love, it was a wonderful compliment from him!"
+
+"Was it? I do not see any compliment in those vain, impertinent,
+Brummelian amour-propreisms. I must coin the word, there is no good one
+to express it."
+
+"But, my dear Flora, you know he is the Marquis of Goodwood, the Duke of
+Doncaster's son! It is not as if he were a boy in the Lancers, or an
+unfledged _petit maître_ from the Foreign Office----"
+
+"Were he her Majesty's son, he should not gratify his vanity at my
+expense! If he expected me to be flattered by his condescension, he
+mistook me very much. He has been allowed to adopt that tone, I suppose;
+but from a man to a woman a chivalrous courtesy is due, though the man
+be an emperor."
+
+"Perhaps so--of course; but that _is_ their tone nowadays, my love, and
+you cannot alter it. I always say the Regency-men inaugurated it, and
+their sons and grandsons out-Herod Herod. But to turn a tide, or be a
+wit with impunity, a woman wants to occupy a prominent and unassailable
+position. Were you the Duchess of Amandine, you might say that sort of
+thing, but a young girl just out _must not_--indeed she must not! The
+Hauttons heard you, and the Hauttons are very merciless people;
+perfectly bred themselves, and pitiless on the least infringement of the
+convenances. Besides, ten to one you may have gained Goodwood's
+ill-will; and he is a man whose word has immense weight, I assure you."
+
+"I do not see anything remarkable in him to give him weight," said the
+literal and unimpressible little Montolieu. "He is a commonplace person
+to my taste, neither so brilliant nor so handsome by a great deal as
+many gentlemen I see--as Sir Philip, for instance, Lady Marabout?"
+
+"An my son? No, my love, he is not; very few men have Philip's talents
+and person," said Lady Marabout, consciously mollified and propitiated,
+but going on, nevertheless, with a Spartan impartiality highly laudable
+"Goodwood's rank, however, is much higher than Philip's (at least it
+stands so, though really the Carruthers are by far the older, dating as
+far back as Ethelbert II., while the Doncaster family are literally
+unknown till the fourteenth century, when Gervaise d'Ascotte received
+the acolade before Ascalon from Godfrey de Bouillon); Goodwood _has_
+great weight, my dear, in the best circles. A compliment from him is a
+great compliment to any woman, and the sort of answer you gave him----"
+
+"Must have been a great treat to him, dear Lady Marabout, if every one
+is in the habit of kow-towing before him. Princes, you know, are never
+so happy as when they can have a little bit of nature; and my speech
+must have been as refreshing to Lord Goodwood as the breath of his
+Bearnese breezes and the freedom of his Pyrenean forests were to Henri
+Quatre after the court etiquette and the formal ceremonial of Paris."
+
+"I don't know about its being a treat to him, my dear; it was more
+likely to be a shower-bath. And your illustration isn't to the point.
+The Bearnese breezes were Henri Quatre's native air, and might be
+pleasant to him; but the figurative ones are not Goodwood's, and I am
+sure cannot please him."
+
+"But, Lady Marabout, I do not want to please him!" persisted the young
+lady, perversely. "I don't care in the least what he thinks, or what he
+says of me!"
+
+"Dear me, how oddly things go!" thought Lady Marabout. "There was
+Valencia, one of the proudest girls in England, his equal in every way,
+an acknowledged beauty, who would have said the dust on the trottoir was
+diamonds, and worn turquoises on azureline, or emeralds on rose, I
+verily believe, if such opticisms and gaucheries had been Goodwood's
+taste; and here is this child--for whom the utmost one can do will be to
+secure a younger son out of the Civil Service, or a country
+member--cannot be made to see that he is of an atom more importance
+than Soames or Mason, and treats him with downright nonchalant
+indifference. What odd anomalies one sees in everything!"
+
+"Who _is_ that young lady with you this season?" Lady Hautton asked,
+smiling that acidulated smile with which that amiable saint always puts
+long questions to you of which she knows the answer would be _peine
+forte et dure_. "Not the daughter of that horrid John Montolieu, who did
+all sorts of dreadful things, and was put into a West India regiment?
+Indeed! that man? Dear me! Married the sister of your incumbent at
+Fernditton? Ah, really!--very singular! But how do you come to have
+brought out the daughter?"
+
+At all of which remarks Lady Marabout winced, and felt painfully guilty
+of a gross democratic dereliction from legitimate and beaten paths,
+conscious of having sinned heavily in the eyes of the world and Lady
+Hautton, by bringing within the sacred precincts of Belgravia the
+daughter of a _mauvais sujet_ in a West India corps and a sister of a
+perpetual curate. The world was a terrible dragon to Lady Marabout; to
+her imagination it always appeared an incarnated and omniscient bugbear,
+Argus-eyed, and with all its hundred eyes relentlessly fixed on her,
+spying out each item of her shortcomings, every little flaw in the
+Marabout diamonds, any spur-made tear in her Honiton flounces, any
+crease in her train at a Drawing-room, any lèse-majesté against the
+royal rule of conventionalities, any glissade on the polished oak floor
+of society, though like a good many other people she often worried
+herself needlessly; the flaws, tears, creases, high treasons, and false
+glissades being fifty to one too infinitesimal or too unimportant to
+society for one of the hundred eyes (vigilant and unwinking though I
+grant they are) to take note of them. The world was a terrible bugbear
+to Lady Marabout, and its special impersonation was Anne Hautton. She
+disliked Anne Hautton; she didn't esteem her; she knew her to be a
+narrow, censorious, prejudiced, and strongly malicious lady; but she was
+the personification of the World to Lady Marabout, and had weight and
+terror in consequence. Lady Marabout is not the first person who has
+burnt incense and bowed in fear before a little miserable clay image she
+cordially despised, for no better reason--for the self-same reason,
+indeed.
+
+"She evidently thinks I ought not to have brought Flora out; and perhaps
+I shouldn't; though, poor little thing, it seems very hard she may not
+enjoy society--fitted for society, too, as she is--just because her
+father is in a West India regiment, and poor Lilla was only a
+clergyman's daughter. Goodwood really seems to admire her. I can never
+forgive him for his heartless flirtation with Valencia; but if he _were_
+to be won by a Montolieu, what would the Hauttons say?"
+
+And sitting against the wall, with others of her sisterhood, at a ball,
+a glorious and golden vision rose up before Lady Marabout's eyes.
+
+If the unknown, unwelcome, revolutionary little Montolieu should go in
+and win where the Lady Hauttons had tried and failed through five
+seasons--if this little tropical flower should be promoted to the
+Doncaster conservatory, where all the stately stephanotises of the
+peerage had vainly aspired to bloom--if this Petit Caporal should be
+crowned with the Doncaster diadem, that all the legitimate rulers had
+uselessly schemed to place on their brows! The soul of Lady Marabout
+rose elastic at the bare prospect--it would be a great triumph for a
+chaperone as for a general to conquer a valuable position with a handful
+of boy recruits.
+
+If it _should_ be! Anne Hautton would have nothing to say after _that_!
+
+And Lady Marabout, though she was the most amiable lady in Christendom,
+was not exempt from a feeling of longing for a stone to roll to the
+door of her enemy's stronghold, or a flourish of trumpets to silence the
+boastful and triumphant _fanfare_ that was perpetually sounding at sight
+of her defeats from her opponent's ramparts.
+
+Wild, visionary, guiltily scheming, sinfully revolutionary seemed such a
+project in her eyes. Still, how tempting! It would be a terrible blow to
+Valencia, who'd tried for Goodwood fruitlessly, to be eclipsed by this
+unknown Flora; it would be a terrible blow to their Graces of Doncaster,
+who held nobody good enough, heraldically speaking, for their
+heir-apparent, to see him give the best coronet in England to a
+bewitching little interloper, sans money, birth, or rank. "They wouldn't
+like it, of course; I shouldn't like it for Philip, for instance, though
+she's a very sweet little thing; all the Ascottes would be very vexed,
+and all the Valletorts would never forgive it; but it would be _such_ a
+triumph over Anne Hautton!" pondered Lady Marabout, and the last clause
+carried the day. Did you ever know private pique fail to carry the day
+over public charity?
+
+And Lady Marabout glanced with a glow of prospective triumph, which,
+though erring to her Order, was delicious to her individuality, at
+Goodwood waltzing with the little Montolieu a suspicious number of
+times, while Lady Egidia Hautton was condemned to his young brother,
+Seton Ascotte, and Lady Feodorowna danced positively with nobody better
+than their own county member, originally a scion of Goodwood's bankers!
+Could the force of humiliation further go? Lady Hautton sat smiling and
+chatting, but the tiara on her temples was a figurative thorn crown, and
+Othello's occupation was gone. When a lady's daughters are dancing with
+an unavailable _cadet_ of twenty, and a parvenu, only acceptable in the
+last extremities of despair, what good is it for her to watch the smiles
+and construe the attentions?
+
+"We shall see who triumphs now," thought Lady Marabout, with a glow of
+pleasure, for which her heart reproached her a moment afterwards. "It is
+very wrong," she thought; "if those poor girls don't marry, one ought to
+pity them; and as for her--going through five seasons, with a fresh
+burden of responsibility leaving the schoolroom, and added on your hands
+each year, _must_ sour the sweetest temper; it would do mine, I am sure.
+I dare say, if I had had daughters, I should have been ten times more
+worried even than I am."
+
+Which she would have been, undoubtedly, and the eligibles on her
+visiting-list ten times more too! Men wouldn't have voted the Marabout
+dinners and soirées so pleasant as they did, under the sway of that
+sunshiny hostess, if there had been Lady Maudes and Lady Marys to exact
+attention, and lay mines under the Auxerre carpets, and man-traps among
+the épergne flowers of Lowndes Square. Nor would Lady Marabout have been
+the same; the sunshine couldn't have shone so brightly, nor the milk of
+roses flowed so mildly under the weight and wear of marriageable but
+unmarried daughters; the sunshine would have been fitful, the milk of
+roses curdled at best. And no wonder! Those poor women! they have so
+much to go through in the world, and play but such a monotonous rôle,
+taken at its most brilliant and best, from first to last, from cradle to
+grave, from the berceaunettes in which they commence their existence to
+the mausoleum in which they finish it. If they _do_ get a little bit
+soured when they have finished their own game, and have to sit at the
+card-tables, wide awake however weary, vigilant however drowsy, alert
+however bored to death, superintending the hands of the fresh players,
+surreptitiously suggesting means for securing the tricks, keeping a
+dragon's eye out for revokes, and bearing all the brunt of the blame if
+the rubber be lost--if they do get a little bit soured, who can, after
+all, greatly wonder?
+
+"That's a very brilliant little thing, that girl Montolieu," said
+Goodwood, driving over to Hornsey Wood, the morning after, with
+Carruthers and some other men, in his drag.
+
+"A deuced pretty waltzer!" said St. Lys, of the Bays; "turn her round in
+a square foot."
+
+"And looks very well in the saddle; sits her horse better than any woman
+in the Ride, except Rosalie Rosière, and as she came from the Cirque
+Olympique originally, one don't count _her_," said Fulke Nugent. "I _do_
+like a woman to ride well, I must say. I promised your mother to take a
+look at the Marabout Yearling Sale, Phil, if ever I wanted the
+never-desirable and ever-burdensome article she has to offer, and if
+anything could tempt me to pay the price she asks, I think it would be
+that charming Montolieu."
+
+"She's the best thing Lady Tattersall ever had on hand," said Goodwood,
+drawing his whip over his off-wheeler's back. "You know, Phil--gently,
+gently, Coronet!--what spoilt your handsome cousin was, as I said, that
+it was all mechanism; perfect mechanism, I admit, but all artificial,
+prearranged, put together, wound up to smile in this place, bow in that,
+and frown in the other; clockwork every inch of it! Now--so-ho, Zouave!
+confound you, _won't_ you be quiet?--little Montolieu hasn't a bit of
+artifice about her; 'tisn't only that you don't know what she's going to
+say, but that _she_ doesn't either; and whether it's a smile or a frown,
+a jest or a reproof, it's what the moment brings out, not what's planned
+beforehand."
+
+"The hard hit you had the other day seems to have piqued your interest,"
+said Carruthers, smoothing a loose leaf of his Manilla.
+
+"Naturally. The girl didn't care a button about my compliment (I only
+said it to try her), and the plucky answer she gave me amused me
+immensely. Anything unartificial and frank is as refreshing as
+hock-and-seltzer after a field-day--one likes it, don't you know?"
+
+"Wonderfully eloquent you are, Goody. If you come out like that in St.
+Stephen's, we sha'n't know you, and the ministerialists will look down
+in the mouth with a vengeance!"
+
+"Don't be satirical, Phil! If I admire Mademoiselle Flora, what is it to
+you, pray?"
+
+"Nothing at all," said Carruthers, with unnecessary rapidity of
+enunciation.
+
+"My love, what are you going to wear to-night? The Bishop of Bonviveur
+is coming. He was a college friend of your poor uncle's; knew your dear
+mother before she married. I want you to look your very best and charm
+him, as you certainly do most people," said Lady Marabout. Adroit
+intriguer! The bishop was going, sans doute; the bishop loved good wine,
+good dinners, and good society, and found all three in Lowndes Square,
+but the bishop was entirely unavailable for purposes matrimonial, having
+had three wives, and being held tight in hand by a fourth; however, a
+bishop is a convenient piece to cover your king, in chess, and the
+bishop served admirably just then in Lady Marabout's moves as a _locum
+tenens_ for Goodwood. Flora Montolieu, in her innocence, made herself
+look her prettiest for her mother's old friend, and Flora Montolieu was
+conveniently ready, looking her prettiest, for her chaperone's
+pet-eligible, when Goodwood--who hated to dine anywhere in London except
+at the clubs, the Castle, or the Guards' mess, and was as difficult to
+get for your dinners as birds'-nests soup or Tokay pur--entered the
+Marabout drawing-rooms.
+
+"Anne Hautton will see he dined here to-night, in the _Morning Post_
+to-morrow morning, and she will know Flora must attract him very
+unusually. What _will_ she, and Egidia, and Feodorowna say?" thought
+Lady Marabout, with a glow of pleasure, which she was conscious was
+uncharitable and sinful, and yet couldn't repress, let her try how she
+might.
+
+In scheming for the future Duke of Doncaster for John Montolieu's
+daughter, she felt much as democratically and treasonably guilty to her
+order as a prince of the blood might feel heading a Chartist émeute; but
+then, suppose the Chartist row was that Prince's sole chance of crushing
+an odious foe, as it was the only chance for her to humiliate the
+Hautton, don't you think it might look tempting? Judge nobody, my good
+sir, till you've been in similar circumstances yourself--a golden rule,
+which might with advantage employ those illuminating colors with which
+ladies employ so much of their time just now. Remembering it, they might
+hold their white hands from flinging those sharp flinty stones, that
+surely suit them so ill, and that soil their fingers in one way quite as
+much as they soil the victim's bowed head in another? Illuminate the
+motto, mesdames and demoiselles! Perhaps you _will_ do that--on a smalt
+ground, with a gold Persian arabesque round, and impossible flowers
+twined in and out of the letters; but, _remember_ it!--pardon! It were
+asking too much.
+
+"My dear Philip, did you notice how very marked Goodwood's attentions
+were to Flora last night?" asked Lady Marabout, the morning after, in
+one of her most sunshiny and radiant moods, as Carruthers paid her his
+general matutinal call in her boudoir.
+
+"Marked?"
+
+"Yes, marked! Why do you repeat it in that tone? If they _were_ marked,
+there is nothing to be ridiculed that I see. They were very marked,
+indeed, especially for him; he's such an unimpressible,
+never-show-anything man. I wonder you did not notice it!"
+
+"My dear mother!" said Carruthers, a little impatiently, brushing up the
+Angora cat's ruff the wrong way with his cane, "do you suppose I pass my
+evenings noticing the attentions other men may see fit to pay to young
+ladies?"
+
+"Well--don't be impatient. You never used to be," said Lady Marabout.
+"If you were in my place just for a night or two, or any other
+chaperone's, you'd be more full of pity. But people never _will_
+sympathize with anything that doesn't touch themselves. The only chords
+that strike the key-note in anybody is the chord that sounds 'self;' and
+that is the reason why the world is as full of crash and tumult as
+Beethoven's 'Storm.'"
+
+"Quite right, my dear mother!"
+
+"Of course it's quite right. I always think you have a great deal of
+sympathy for a man, Philip, even for people you don't harmonize
+with--(you could sympathize with that child Flora, yesterday, in her
+rapturous delight at seeing that Coccoloba Uvifera in the Patchouli
+conservatory, because it reminded her of her West Indian home, and you
+care nothing whatever about flowers, nor yet about the West Indies, I
+should suppose)--but you never will sympathize with me. You know how
+many disappointments and grievances and vexations of every kind I have
+had the last ten, twenty, ay, thirty, forty seasons--ever since I had to
+chaperone your aunt Eleanore, almost as soon as I was married, and was
+worried, more than anybody ever _was_ worried, by her coquetteries and
+her inconsistencies and her vacillations--so badly as she married, too,
+at the last! Those flirting beauties so often do; they throw away a
+hundred admirable chances and put up with a wretched _dernier
+resort_;--let a thousand salmon break away from the line out of their
+carelessness, and end by being glad to land a little minnow. I don't
+know when I _haven't_ been worried by chaperoning. Flora Montolieu is a
+great anxiety, a great difficulty, little detrimental that she is!"
+
+"Detrimental! What an odd word you choose for her."
+
+"I don't choose it for her; she _is_ it," returned Lady Marabout,
+decidedly.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"How so! Why, my dear Philip, I told you the very first day she came.
+How so! when she is John Montolieu's daughter, when she has no birth to
+speak of, and not a farthing to her fortune."
+
+"If she were Jack Ketch's daughter, you could not speak much worse. Her
+high-breeding might do credit to a Palace; I only wish one found it in
+all Palaces! and I never knew you before measure people by their money."
+
+"My dear Philip, no more I do. I can't bear you when you speak in that
+tone; it's so hard and sarcastic, and unlike you. _I_ don't know what
+you mean either. I should have thought a man of the world like yourself
+knew well enough what I intend when I say Flora is a detrimental. She
+has a sweet temper, very clever, very lively, very charming, as any one
+knows by the number of men that crowd about her, but a detrimental she
+is----"
+
+"Poor little heart!" muttered Carruthers in his beard, too low for his
+mother to hear.
+
+"--And yet I am quite positive that if she herself act judiciously, and
+it is well managed for her, Goodwood may be won before the season is
+over," concluded Lady Marabout.
+
+Carruthers, not feeling much interest, it is presumed, in the
+exclusively feminine pursuit of match-making, returned no answer, but
+played with Bijou's silver bells, and twisted his own tawny moustaches.
+
+"I am quite positive it _may be_, if properly managed," reiterated Lady
+Marabout. "You might second me a little, Philip."
+
+"_I?_ Good Heavens! my dear mother, what are you thinking of? I would
+sooner turn torreador, and throw lassos over bulls at Madrid, than help
+you to fling nuptial cables over poor devils in Belgravia. Twenty to
+one? I'm going to the Yard to look at a bay filly of Cope Fielden's,
+and then on to a mess-luncheon of the Bays."
+
+"Must you go?" said his mother, looking lovingly on him. "You look
+tired, Philip. Don't you feel well?"
+
+"Perfectly; but Cambridge had us out over those confounded Wormwood
+Scrubs this morning, and three hours in this June sun, in our harness,
+makes one swear. If it were a sharp brush, it would put life into one;
+as it is, it only inspires one with an intense suffering from boredom,
+and an intense desire for hock and seltzer."
+
+"I am very glad you haven't a sharp brush, as you call it, for all
+that," said Lady Marabout. "It might be very pleasant to you, Philip,
+but it wouldn't be quite so much so to me. I wish you would stay to
+luncheon."
+
+"Not to-day, thanks; I have so many engagements."
+
+"You have been very good in coming to see me this season--even better
+than usual. It _is_ very good of you, with all your amusements and
+distractions. You have given me a great many days this month," said Lady
+Marabout, gratefully. "Anne Hautton sees nothing of Hautton, she says,
+except at a distance in Pall-Mall or the Park, all the season through.
+Fancy if I saw no more of you! Do you know, Philip, I am almost
+reconciled to your never marrying. I have never seen anybody I should
+like at all for you, unless you had chosen Cecil Ormsby--Cecil Cheveley
+I mean; and I am sure I should be very jealous of your wife if you had
+one. I couldn't help it!"
+
+"Rest tranquil, my dear mother; you will never be put to the test!" said
+Carruthers, with a laugh, as he bid her good morning.
+
+"Perhaps it _is_ best he shouldn't marry: I begin to think so," mused
+Lady Marabout, as the door closed on him. "I used to wish it very much
+for some things. He is the last of his name, and it seems a pity; there
+ought to be an heir for Deepdene; but still marriage _is_ such a
+lottery (he is right enough there, though I don't admit it to him: it's
+a tombola where there is one prize to a million of blanks; one can't
+help seeing that, though, on principle, I never allow it to him or any
+of his men), and if Philip had any woman who didn't appreciate him, or
+didn't understand him, or didn't make him happy, how wretched _I_ should
+be! I have often pictured Philip's wife to myself, I have often
+idealized the sort of woman I should like to see him marry, but it's
+very improbable I shall ever meet my ideal realized; one never does!
+And, after all, whenever I have fancied, years ago, he _might_ be
+falling in love, I have always felt a horrible dread lest she shouldn't
+be worthy of him--a jealous fear of her that I could not conquer. It's
+much better as it is; there is no woman good enough for him."
+
+With which compliment to Carruthers at her sex's expense Lady Marabout
+returned to weaving her pet projected toils for the ensnaring of
+Goodwood, for whom also, if asked, I dare say the Duchess of Doncaster
+would have averred on _her_ part, looking through _her_ maternal Claude
+glasses, no woman was good enough either. When ladies have daughters to
+marry, men always present to their imaginations a battalion of
+worthless, decalogue-smashing, utterly unreliable individuals, amongst
+whom there is not one fit to be trusted or fit to be chosen; but when
+their sons are the candidates for the holy bond, they view all women
+through the same foggy and non-embellishing medium, which, if it does
+not speak very much for their unprejudiced discernment, at least speaks
+to the oft-disputed fact of the equality of merit in the sexes, and
+would make it appear that, in vulgar parlance, there must be six of the
+one and half a dozen of the other.
+
+"Flora, soft and careless, and rebellious as she looks, _is_ ambitious,
+and has set her heart on winning Goodwood, I do believe, as much as ever
+poor Valencia did. True, she takes a different plan of action, as Philip
+would call it, and treats him with gay nonchalante indifference, which
+certainly seems to pique him more than ever my poor niece's beauty and
+quiet deference to his opinions did; but that is because she reads him
+better, and knows more cleverly how to rouse him. She has set her heart
+on winning Goodwood, I am certain, ambitious as it seems. How eagerly
+she looked out for the Blues yesterday at that Hyde Park
+inspection--though I am sure Goodwood does not look half so handsome as
+Philip does in harness, as they call it; Philip is so much the finer
+man! I will just sound her to-day--or to-night as we come back from the
+opera," thought Lady Marabout, one morning.
+
+Things were moving to the very best of her expectations. Learning
+experience from manifold failures, Lady Marabout had laid her plans this
+time with a dexterity that defied discomfiture: seconded by both the
+parties primarily necessary to the accomplishment of her manoeuvres,
+with only a little outer-world opposition to give it piquancy and
+excitement, she felt that she might defy the fates to checkmate her
+here. This should be her Marathon and Lemnos, which, simply reverted to,
+should be sufficient to secure her immunity from the attacks of any
+feminine Xantippus who should try to rake up her failures and tarnish
+her glory. To win Goodwood with a nobody's daughter would be a feat as
+wonderful in its way as for Miltiades to have passed "in a single day
+and with a north wind," as Oracle exacted, to the conquest of the
+Pelasgian Isles; and Lady Marabout longed to do it, as you, my good sir,
+may have longed in your day to take a king in check with your only
+available pawn, or win one of the ribands of the turf with a little
+filly that seemed to general judges scarcely calculated to be in the
+first flight at the Chester Consolation Scramble.
+
+Things were beautifully in train; it even began to dawn on the
+perceptions of the Hauttons, usually very slow to open to anything
+revolutionary and unwelcome. Her Grace of Doncaster, a large,
+lethargic, somnolent dowager, rarely awake to anything but the interests
+and restoration of the old ultra-Tory party in a Utopia always dreamed
+of and never realized, like many other Utopias political and poetical,
+public and personal, had turned her eyes on Flora Montolieu, and asked
+her son the question inevitable, "_Who_ is she?" to which Goodwood had
+replied with a devil-may-care recklessness and a headlong indefiniteness
+which grated on her Grace's ears, and imparted her no information
+whatever: "One of Lady Tattersall's yearlings, and the most charming
+creature _I_ ever met. You know that? Why did you ask me, then? You know
+all I do, and all I care to do!"--a remark that made the Duchess wish
+her very dear and personal friend, Lady Marabout, were comfortably and
+snugly interred in the mausoleum of Fern Ditton, rather than alive in
+the flesh in Belgravia, chaperoning young ladies whom nobody knew, and
+who were not to be found in any of Sir E. Burke's triad of volumes.
+
+Belgravia, and her sister Mayfair, wondered at it, and talked over it,
+raked up the parental Montolieu lineage mercilessly, and found out, from
+the Bishop of Bonviveur and Sauceblanche, that the uncle on the distaff
+side had been only a Tug at Eton, and had lived and died at Fern Ditton
+a perpetual curate and nothing else--not even a dean, not even a rector!
+Goodwood _couldn't_ be serious, settled the coteries. But the more
+hints, innuendoes, questions, and adroitly concealed but simply
+suggested animadversion Lady Marabout received, the greater was her
+glory, the warmer her complacency, when she saw her Little Montolieu,
+who was not little at all, leading, as she undoubtedly did lead, the
+most desired eligible of the day captive in her chains, sent bouquets by
+him, begged for waltzes by him, followed by him at the Ride, riveting
+his lorgnon at the Opera, monopolizing his attention--though, clever
+little intriguer, she knew too well how to pique him ever to let him
+monopolize hers.
+
+"She certainly makes play, as Philip would call it, admirably with
+Goodwood," said Lady Marabout, admiringly, at a morning party, stirring
+a cup of Orange Pekoe, yet with a certain irrepressible feeling that she
+should almost prefer so very young a girl not to be quite so adroit a
+schemer at seventeen. "That indifference and nonchalance is the very
+thing to pique and retain such a courted fastidious creature as
+Goodwood; and she knows it, too. Now a clumsy casual observer might even
+fancy that she liked some others--even you, Philip, for instance--much
+better; she talks to you much more, appeals to you twice as often,
+positively teases you to stop and lunch or come to dinner here, and
+really told you the other night at the Opera she missed you when you
+didn't come in the morning; but to anybody who knows anything of the
+world, it is easy enough to see which way her inclinations (yes, I _do_
+hope it is inclination as well as ambition--I am not one of those who
+advocate pure _mariages de convenance_; I don't think them right,
+indeed, though they are undoubtedly very expedient sometimes) turn. I do
+not think _anybody_ ever could prove me to have erred in my
+quick-sightedness in those affairs. I may have been occasionally
+mistaken in other things, or been the victim of adverse and unforeseen
+circumstances which were beyond my control, and betrayed me; but I know
+no one can read a girl's heart more quickly and surely than I, or a
+man's either, for that matter."
+
+"Oh, we all know you are a clairvoyante in heart episodes, my dear
+mother; they are the one business of your life!" smiled Carruthers,
+setting down his ice, and lounging across the lawn to a group of cedars,
+where Flora Montolieu stood playing at croquet, and who, like a scheming
+adventuress, as she was, immediately verified Lady Marabout's words, and
+piqued Goodwood à outrance by avowing herself tired of the game, and
+entering with animated verve into the prophecies for Ascot with
+Carruthers, whose bay filly Sunbeam, sister to Wild-Falcon, was entered
+to run for the Queen's Cup.
+
+"What an odd smile that was of Philip's," thought Lady Marabout, left to
+herself and her Orange Pekoe. "He has been very intimate with Goodwood
+ever since they joined the Blues, cornets together, three-and-twenty
+years ago; surely he can't have heard him drop anything that would make
+him fancy he was _not serious_?"
+
+An idle fear, which Lady Marabout dismissed contemptuously from her mind
+when she saw how entirely Goodwood--in defiance of the Hauttons' sneer,
+the drowsy Duchess's unconcealed frown, all the comments sure to be
+excited in feminine minds, and all the chaff likely to be elicited from
+masculine lips at the mess-table, and in the U. S., and in the Guards'
+box before the curtain went up for the ballet--vowed himself to the
+service of the little detrimental throughout that morning party, and
+spoke a temporary adieu, whose tenderness, if she did not exactly catch,
+Lady Marabout could at least construe, as he pulled up the tiger-skin
+over Flora's dainty dress, before the Marabout carriage rolled down the
+Fulham Road to town. At which tenderness of farewell Carruthers--steeled
+to all such weaknesses himself--gave a disdainful glance and a
+contemptuous twist of his moustaches, as he stood by the door talking to
+his mother.
+
+"You too, Phil?" said Goodwood, with a laugh, as the carriage rolled
+away.
+
+Carruthers stared at him haughtily, as he will stare at his best friends
+if they touch his private concerns more nearly than he likes; a stare
+which said disdainfully, "I don't understand you," and thereby told the
+only lie to which Carruthers ever stooped in the whole course of his
+existence.
+
+Goodwood laughed again.
+
+"If you poach on my manor _here_, I shall kill you Phil; so _gare à
+vous_!"
+
+"You are in an enigmatical mood to-day! I can't say I see much wit in
+your riddles," said Carruthers, with his grandest and most contemptuous
+air, as he lit his Havana.
+
+"Confound that fellow! I'd rather have had any other man in London for a
+rival! Twenty and more years ago how he cut me out with that handsome
+Virginie Peauderose, that we were both such mad boys after in Paris.
+However, it will be odd if _I_ can't win the day here. A Goodwood
+rejected--pooh! There isn't a woman in England that would do it!"
+thought Goodwood, as he drove down the Fulham Road.
+
+"'_His_ manor!' Who's told him it's his? And if it be, what is that to
+me?" thought Carruthers, as he got into his tilbury. "Philip, _you_'re
+not a fool, like the rest of them, I hope? You've not forsworn yourself
+surely? Pshaw!--nonsense!--impossible!"
+
+"Certainly she _has_ something very charming about her. If I were a man
+I don't think I could resist her," thought Lady Marabout, as she sat in
+her box in the grand tier, tenth from the Queen's, moving her fan
+slowly, lifting her lorgnon now and then, listening vaguely to the music
+of the second act of the "Barbiere," for probably about the two
+hundredth time in her life, and looking at Flora Moutolieu, sitting
+opposite to her.
+
+"The women are eternally asking me who she is, I don't care a hang
+_who_, but she's the prettiest thing in London," said Fulke Nugent,
+which was the warmest praise that any living man about town remembered
+to have heard fall from his lips, which limited themselves religiously
+to one legitimate laudation, which is a superlative nowadays, though Mr.
+Lindley Murray, if alive, wouldn't, perhaps, receive or recognize it as
+such: "Not bad-looking."
+
+"It isn't _who_ a woman is, it's _what_ she is, that's the question, I
+take it," said Goodwood, as he left the Guards' box to visit the
+Marabout.
+
+"By George!" laughed Nugent to Carruthers, "Goodey must be serious, eh,
+Phil? He don't care a button for little Bibi; he don't care even for
+Zerlina. When the ballet begins, I verily believe he's thinking less of
+the women before him than of the woman who has left the house; and if a
+fellow can give more ominous signs of being 'serious,' as the women
+phrase it, I don't know 'em, do you?"
+
+"I don't know much about that sort of thing at all!" muttered
+Carruthers, as he went out to follow Goodwood to the Marabout box.
+
+That is an old, old story, that of the fair Emily stirring feud between
+Palamon and Arcite. It has been acted out many a time since Beaumont and
+Fletcher lived and wrote their twin-thoughts and won their twin laurels;
+but the bars that shut the kinsmen in their prison-walls, the ivy-leaves
+that filled in the rents of their prison-stones, were not more entirely
+and blissfully innocent of the feud going on within, and the battle
+foaming near them, than the calm, complacent soul of Lady Marabout was
+of the rivalry going on close beside her for the sake of little
+Montolieu.
+
+She certainly thought Philip made himself specially brilliant and
+agreeable that night; but then that was nothing new, he was famous for
+talking well, and liked his mother enough not seldom to shower out for
+her some of his very best things; certainly she thought Goodwood did not
+shine by the contrast, and looked, to use an undignified word, rather
+cross than otherwise; but then nobody _did_ shine beside Philip, and she
+knew a reason that made Goodwood pardonably cross at the undesired
+presence of his oldest and dearest chum. Even _she_ almost wished Philip
+away. If the presence of her idolized son could have been unwelcome to
+her at any time, it was so that night.
+
+"It isn't like Philip to monopolize her so, he who has so much tact
+usually, and cares nothing for girls himself," thought Lady Marabout;
+"he must do it for mischief, and yet _that_ isn't like him at all; it's
+very tiresome, at any rate."
+
+And with that skilful diplomacy in such matters, on which, if it was
+sometimes overthrown, Lady Marabout not unjustly plumed herself, she
+dexterously entangled Carruthers in conversation, and during the crash
+of one of the choruses whispered, as he bent forward to pick up her fan,
+which she had let drop,
+
+"Leave Flora a little to Goodwood; he has a right--he spoke decisively
+to her to-day."
+
+Carruthers bowed his head, and stooped lower for the fan.
+
+He left her accordingly to Goodwood till the curtain fell after the last
+act of the "Barbiere;" and Lady Marabout congratulated herself on her
+own adroitness. "There is nothing like a little tact," she thought;
+"what would society be without the guiding genius of tact, I wonder? One
+dreadful Donnybrook Fair!"
+
+But, someway or other, despite all her tact, or because her son
+inherited that valuable quality in a triple measure to herself, someway,
+it was Goodwood who led her to her carriage, and Carruthers who led the
+little Montolieu.
+
+"Terribly _bête_ of Philip; how very unlike him!" mused Lady Marabout,
+as she gathered her burnous round her.
+
+Carruthers talked and laughed as he led Flora Montolieu through the
+passages, more gayly, perhaps, than usual.
+
+"My mother has told me some news to-night, Miss Montolieu," he said,
+carelessly. "Am I premature in proffering you my congratulations? But
+even if I be so, you will not refuse the privilege to an old friend--to
+a very sincere friend--and will allow me to be the first to wish you
+happiness?"
+
+Lady Marabout's carriage stopped the way. Flora Montolieu colored,
+looked full at him, and went to it, without having time to answer his
+congratulations, in which the keenest-sighted hearer would have failed
+to detect anything beyond every-day friendship and genuine indifference.
+The most truthful men will make the most consummate actors when spurred
+up to it.
+
+"My dear child, you look ill to-night; I am glad you have no
+engagements," said Lady Marabout, as she sat down before the
+dressing-room fire, toasting her little satin-shod foot--she has a
+weakness for fire even in the hottest weather--while Flora Montolieu lay
+back in a low chair, crushing the roses mercilessly. "You _do_ feel
+well? I should not have thought so, your face looks so flushed, and your
+eyes so preternaturally dark. Perhaps it is the late hours; you were not
+used to them in France, of course, and it must be such a change to this
+life from your unvarying conventual routine at St. Denis. My love, what
+was it Lord Goodwood said to you to-day?"
+
+"Do not speak to me of him, Lady Marabout, I hate his name!"
+
+Lady Marabout started with an astonishment that nearly upset the cup of
+coffee she was sipping.
+
+"Hate his name? My dearest Flora, why, in Heaven's name?"
+
+Flora did not answer; she pulled the roses off her hair as though they
+had been infected with Brinvilliers' poison.
+
+"What has he done?"
+
+"_He_ has done nothing!"
+
+"Who has done anything, then?"
+
+"Oh, no one--no one has done anything, but--I am sick of Lord Goodwood's
+name--tired of it!"
+
+Lady Marabout sat almost speechless with surprise.
+
+"Tired of it, my dear Flora?"
+
+Little Montolieu laughed:
+
+"Well, tired of it, perhaps from hearing him praised so often, as the
+Athenian trader grew sick of Aristides, and the Jacobin of Washington's
+name. Is it unpardonably heterodox to say so?"
+
+Lady Marabout stirred her coffee in perplexity:
+
+"My dear child, pray don't speak in that way; that's like Philip's tone
+when he is enigmatical and sarcastic, and worries me. I really cannot in
+the least understand you about Lord Goodwood, it is quite
+incomprehensible to me. I thought I overheard him to-day at Lady
+George's concert speak very definitely to you indeed, and when he was
+interrupted by the Duchess before you could give him his reply, I
+thought I heard him say he should call to-morrow morning to know your
+ultimate decision. Was I right?"
+
+"Quite right."
+
+"He really proposed marriage to you to-day?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And yet you say you are sick of his name?"
+
+"Does it follow, imperatively, Lady Marabout, that because the Sultan
+throws his handkerchief, it must be picked up with humility and
+thanksgiving?" asked Flora Montolieu, furling and unfurling her fan with
+an impatient rapidity that threatened entire destruction of its ivory
+and feathers, with their Watteau-like group elaborately painted on
+them--as pretty a toy of the kind as could be got for money, which had
+been given her by Carruthers one day in payment of some little bagatelle
+of a bet.
+
+"Sultan!--Humility!" repeated Lady Marabout, scarcely crediting her
+senses. "My dear Flora, do you know what you are saying? You must be
+jesting! There is not a woman in England who would be insensible to the
+honor of Goodwood's proposals. You are jesting, Flora!"
+
+"I am not, indeed!"
+
+"You mean to say, you could positively think of _rejecting_ him!" cried
+Lady Marabout, rising from her chair in the intensity of her amazement,
+convinced that she was the victim of some horrible hallucination.
+
+"Why should it surprise you if I did?"
+
+"_Why?_" repeated Lady Marabout, indignantly. "Do you ask me _why_? You
+must be a child, indeed, or a consummate actress, to put such a
+question; excuse me, my dear, if I speak a little strongly: you
+perfectly bewilder me, and I confess I cannot see your motives or your
+meaning in the least. You have made a conquest such as the proudest
+women in the peerage have vainly tried to make; you have one of the
+highest titles in the country offered to you; you have won a man whom
+everybody declared would never be won; you have done this, pardon me,
+without either birth or fortune on your own side, and then you speak of
+rejecting Goodwood--Goodwood, of all the men in England! You cannot be
+serious, Flora, or, if you are, you must be mad!"
+
+Lady Marabout spoke more hotly than Lady Marabout had ever spoken in all
+her life. Goodwood absolutely won--Goodwood absolutely "come to the
+point"--the crowning humiliation of the Hauttons positively within her
+grasp--her Marathon and Lemnos actually gained! and all to be lost and
+flung away by the unaccountable caprice of a wayward child! It was
+sufficient to exasperate a saint, and a saint Lady Marabout never
+pretended to be.
+
+Flora Montolieu toyed recklessly with her fan.
+
+"You told Sir Philip this evening, I think, of----"
+
+"I hinted it to him, my dear--yes. Philip has known all along how much I
+desired it, and as Goodwood is one of his oldest and most favorite
+friends, I knew it would give him sincere pleasure both for my sake and
+Goodwood's, and yours too, for I think Philip likes you as much as he
+ever does any young girl--better, indeed; and I could not imagine--I
+could not dream for an instant--that there was any doubt of your
+acceptation, as, indeed, there _cannot_ be. You have been jesting to
+worry me, Flora!"
+
+Little Montolieu rose, threw her fan aside, as if its ivory stems had
+been hot iron, and leaned against the mantelpiece.
+
+"You advise me to accept Lord Goodwood, then, Lady Marabout?"
+
+"My love, if you need my advice, certainly!--such an alliance will never
+be proffered to you again; the brilliant position it will place you in I
+surely have no need to point out!" returned Lady Marabout. "The little
+hypocrite!" she mused, angrily, "as if her own mind were not fully made
+up--as if any girl in Europe would hesitate over accepting the Doncaster
+coronet--as if a nameless Montolieu could doubt for a moment her own
+delight at being created Marchioness of Goodwood! Such a triumph as
+_that_--why I wouldn't credit _any_ woman who pretended she wasn't
+dazzled by it!"
+
+"I thought you did not approve of marriages of convenience?"
+
+Lady Marabout played a tattoo--slightly perplexed tattoo--with her spoon
+in her Sèvres saucer.
+
+"No more I do, my dear--that is, under some circumstances; it is
+impossible to lay down a fixed rule for everything! Marriages of
+convenience--well, perhaps not; but as _I_ understand these words, they
+mean a mere business affair, arranged as they are in France, without the
+slightest regard to the inclinations of either; merely regarding whether
+the incidents of fortune, birth, and station are equal and suitable.
+Marriages _de convenance_ are when a parvenu barters his gold for good
+blood, or where an _ancienne princesse_ mends her fortune with a
+_nouveau riche_, profound indifference, meanwhile, on each side. I do
+not call this so; decidedly not! Goodwood must be very deeply attached
+to you to have forgotten his detestation of marriage, and laid such a
+title as his at your feet. Have you any idea of the weight of the Dukes
+of Doncaster in the country? Have you any notion of what their
+rent-roll is? Have you any conception of their enormous influence, their
+very high place, the magnificence of their seats? Helmsley almost equals
+Windsor! All these are yours if you will; and you affect to
+hesitate----"
+
+"To let Lord Goodwood buy me!"
+
+"Buy you? Your phraseology is as strange as my son's!"
+
+"To accept him only for the coronet and the rent-roll, his position and
+his Helmsley, seems not a very grateful and flattering return for his
+preference?"
+
+"I do not see that at all," said Lady Marabout, irritably. Is there
+anything more annoying than to have unwelcome truths thrust in our
+teeth? "It is not as though he were odious to you--a hideous man, a
+coarse man, a cruel man, whose very presence repelled you. Goodwood is a
+man quite attractive enough to merit some regard, independent of his
+position; you have an affectionate nature, you would soon grow attached
+to him----"
+
+Flora Montolieu shook her head.
+
+"And, in fact," she went on, warming with her subject, and speaking all
+the more determinedly because she was speaking a little against her
+conscience, and wholly for her inclinations, "my dear Flora, if you need
+persuasion--which you must pardon me if I doubt your doing in your
+heart, for I cannot credit any woman as being insensible to the suit of
+a future Duke of Doncaster, or invulnerable to the honor it does her--if
+you need persuasion, I should think I need only refer to the happiness
+it will afford your poor dear mother, amidst her many trials, to hear of
+so brilliant a triumph for you. You are proud--Goodwood will place you
+in a position where pride may be indulged with impunity, nay, with
+advantage. You are ambitious--what can flatter your ambition more than
+such an offer. You are clever--as Goodwood's wife you may lead society
+like Madame de Rambouillet or immerse yourself in political intrigue
+like the Duchess of Devonshire. It is an offer which places within your
+reach everything most dazzling and attractive, and it is one, my dear
+Flora, which you must forgive me if I say a young girl of obscure rank,
+as rank goes, and no fortune whatever, should pause before she lightly
+rejects. You cannot afford to be fastidious as if you were an heiress or
+a lady-in-your-own-right."
+
+That was as ill-natured a thing as the best-natured lady in Christendom
+ever said on the spur of self-interest, and it stung Flora Montolieu
+more than her hostess dreamed.
+
+The color flushed into her face and her eyes flashed.
+
+"You have said sufficient, Lady Marabout, I accept the Marquis
+to-morrow!"
+
+And taking up her fan and her opera-cloak, leaving the discarded roses
+unheeded on the floor, she bade her chaperone good-night, and floated
+out of the dressing-room, while Lady Marabout sat stirring the cream in
+a second cup of coffee, a good deal puzzled, a little awed by the odd
+turn affairs had taken, with a slight feeling of guilt for her own share
+in the transaction, an uncomfortable dread lest the day should ever come
+when Flora should reproach her for having persuaded her into the
+marriage, a comfortable conviction that nothing but good _could_ come of
+such a brilliant and enviable alliance, and, above all other conflicting
+feelings, one delicious, dominant, glorified security of triumph over
+the Hauttons, _mère et filles_.
+
+But when morning dawned, Lady Marabout's horizon seemed cleared of all
+clouds, and only radiant with unshadowed sunshine. Goodwood was coming,
+and coming to be accepted.
+
+She seemed already to read the newspaper paragraphs announcing his
+capture and Flora's conquest, already to hear the Hauttons' enforced
+congratulations, already to see the nuptial party gathered round the
+altar rail of St. George's. Lady Marabout had never felt in a sunnier,
+more light-hearted mood, never more completely at peace with herself and
+all the world as she sat in her boudoir at her writing-table, penning a
+letter which began:
+
+     "MY DEAREST LILLA,--What happiness it gives me to congratulate
+     you on the brilliant future opening to your sweet Flora----"
+
+And which would have continued, no doubt, with similar eloquence if it
+had not been interrupted by Soames opening the door and announcing "Sir
+Philip Carruthers," who walked in, touched his mother's brow with his
+moustaches, and went to stand on the hearth with his arm on the
+mantelpiece.
+
+"My dear Philip, you never congratulated me last night; pray do so now!"
+cried Lady Marabout, delightedly, wiping her pen on the pennon, which a
+small ormolu knight obligingly carried for that useful purpose. Ladies
+always wipe their pens as religiously as they bolt their bedroom doors,
+believe in cosmetics, and go to church on a Sunday.
+
+"Was your news of last night true, then?" asked Carruthers, bending
+forwards to roll Bijou on its back with his foot.
+
+"That Goodwood had spoken definitively to her? Perfectly. He proposed to
+her yesterday at the Frangipane concert--not _at_ the concert, of
+course, but afterwards, when they were alone for a moment in the
+conservatories. The Duchess interrupted them--did it on purpose--and he
+had only time to whisper hurriedly he should come this morning to hear
+his fate. I dare say he felt tolerably secure of it. Last night I
+naturally spoke to Flora about it. Oddly enough, she seemed positively
+to think at first of rejecting him--_rejecting_ him!--only fancy the
+madness! Between ourselves, I don't think she cares anything about him,
+but with such an alliance as that, of course I felt it my bounden duty
+to counsel her as strongly as I could to accept the unequalled position
+it proffered her. Indeed, it could have been only a girl's waywardness,
+a child's caprice to pretend to hesitate, for she _is_ very ambitious
+and very clever, and I would never believe that any woman--and she less
+than any--would be proof against such dazzling prospects. It would be
+absurd, you know, Philip. Whether it was hypocrisy or a real reluctance,
+because she doesn't feel for him the idealic love she dreams of, I don't
+know, but I put it before her in a way that plainly showed her all the
+brilliance of the proffered position, and before she bade me good night,
+I had vanquished all her scruples, if she had any, and I am able to
+say----"
+
+"Good God, what have you done?"
+
+"Done?" re-echoed Lady Marabout, vaguely terrified. "Certainly I
+persuaded her to accept him. She _has_ accepted him probably; he is here
+now! I should have been a strange person indeed to let any young girl in
+my charge rashly refuse such an offer."
+
+"You induced her to accept him! God forgive you!"
+
+Lady Marabout turned pale as death, and gazed at him with undefinable
+terror.
+
+"Philip! You do not mean----"
+
+"Great Heavens! have you never seen, mother----?"
+
+He leaned his arms on the marble, with his forehead bowed upon them, and
+Lady Marabout gazed at him still, as a bird at a basilisk.
+
+"Philip, Philip! what have I done? How could I tell?" she murmured,
+distractedly, tears welling into her eyes. "If I had only known! But how
+could I dream that child had any fascination for you? How could I
+fancy----"
+
+"Hush! No, you are in no way to blame. You could not know it. _I_ barely
+knew it till last night," he answered, gently.
+
+"Philip loves her, and _I_ have made her marry Goodwood!" thought Lady
+Marabout, agonized, remorseful, conscience-struck, heart-broken in a
+thousand ways at once. The climax of her woes was reached, life had no
+greater bitterness for her left; her son loved, and loved the last woman
+in England she would have had him love; that woman was given to another,
+and _she_ had been the instrument of wrecking the life to save or serve
+which she would have laid down her own in glad and instant sacrifice!
+Lady Marabout bowed her head under a grief, before which the worries so
+great before, the schemes but so lately so precious, the small triumphs
+just now so all-absorbing, shrank away into their due insignificance.
+Philip suffering, and suffering through her! Self glided far away from
+Lady Marabout's memory then, and she hated herself, more fiercely than
+the gentle-hearted soul had ever hated any foe, for her own criminal
+share in bringing down this unforeseen terrific blow on her beloved
+one's head.
+
+"Philip, my dearest, what _can_ I do?" she cried, distractedly; "if I
+had thought--if I had guessed----"
+
+"Do nothing. A woman who could give herself to a man whom she did not
+love should be no wife of mine, let me suffer what I might."
+
+"But _I_ persuaded her, Philip! Mine is the blame!"
+
+His lips quivered painfully:
+
+"Had she cared for me as--I may have fancied, she had not been so easy
+to persuade! She has much force of character, where she wills. He is
+here now, you say; I cannot risk meeting him just yet. Leave me for a
+little while; leave me--I am best alone."
+
+Gentle though he always was to her, his mother knew him too well ever to
+dispute his will, and the most bitter tears Lady Marabout had ever
+known, ready as she was to weep for other people's woes, and rarely as
+she had to weep for any of her own, choked her utterance and blinded
+her eyes as she obeyed and closed the door on his solitude. Philip--her
+idolized Philip--that ever her house should have sheltered this creature
+to bring a curse upon him! that ever she should have brought this
+tropical flower to poison the air for the only one dear to her!
+
+"I am justly punished," thought Lady Marabout, humbly and
+penitentially--"justly. I thought wickedly of Anne Hautton. I did not do
+as I would be done by. I longed to enjoy their mortification. I advised
+Flora against my own conscience and against hers. I am justly chastised!
+But that _he_ should suffer through me, that my fault has fallen on his
+head, that my Philip, my noble Philip, should love and not be loved, and
+that _I_ have brought it on him----Good Heaven! what is that?"
+
+"That" was a man whom her eyes, being misty with tears, Lady Marabout
+had brushed against, as she ascended the staircase, ere she perceived
+him, and who, passing on with a muttered apology, was down in the hall
+and out of the door Mason held open before she had recovered the shock
+of the rencontre, much before she had a possibility of recognizing him
+through the mist aforesaid.
+
+A fear, a hope, a joy, a dread, one so woven with another there was no
+disentangling them, sprang up like a ray of light in Lady Marabout's
+heart--a possibility dawned in her: to be rejected as an impossibility?
+Lady Marabout crossed the ante-room, her heart throbbing tumultuously,
+spurred on to noble atonement and reckless self-sacrifice, if fate
+allowed them.
+
+She opened the drawing-room door; Flora Montolieu was alone.
+
+"Flora, you have seen Goodwood?"
+
+She turned, her own face as pale and her own eyes as dim as Lady
+Marabout's.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You have refused him?"
+
+Flora Montolieu misconstrued her chaperone's eagerness, and answered
+haughtily enough:
+
+"I have told him that indifference would be too poor a return for his
+affections to insult him with it, and that I would not do him the injury
+of repaying his trust by falsehood and deception. I meant what I said to
+you last night; I said it on the spur of pain, indignation, no matter
+what; but I could not keep my word when the trial came."
+
+Lady Marabout bent down and kissed her, with a fervent gratitude that
+not a little bewildered the recipient.
+
+"My dear child! thank God! little as I thought to say so. Flora, tell
+me, you love some one else?"
+
+"Lady Marabout, you have no right----"
+
+"Yea, I have a right--the strongest right! Is not that other my son?"
+
+Flora Montolieu looked up, then dropped her head and burst into
+tears--tears that Lady Marabout soothed then, tears that Carruthers
+soothed, yet more effectually still, five minutes afterwards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That _I_ should have sued that little Montolieu, and sued to her for
+Philip!" mused Lady Marabout. "It is very odd. Perhaps I get used to
+being crossed and disappointed and trampled on in every way and by
+everybody; but certainly, though it is most contrary to my wishes,
+though a child like that is the last person I should ever have chosen or
+dreamt of as Philip's wife, though it is a great pain to me, and Anne
+Hautton of course will be delighted to rake up everything she can about
+the Montolieus, and it _is_ heart-breaking when one thinks how a
+Carruthers _might_ marry, how the Carruthers always _have_ married,
+rarely any but ladies in their own right for countless generations,
+still it _is_ very odd, but I certainly feel happier than ever I did in
+my life, annoyed as I am and grieved as I am. It _is_ heart-breaking
+(that horrid John Montolieu! I wonder what relation one stands in
+legally to the father of one's son's wife; I will ask Sir Fitzroy
+Kelley; not that the Montolieus are likely to come to England)--it is
+very sad when one thinks whom Philip might have married; and yet she
+certainly is infinitely charming, and she really appreciates and
+understands him. If it were not for what Anne Hautton will always say, I
+could really be pleased! To think what an anxious hope, what a dreaded
+ideal, Philip's wife has always been to me; and now, just as I had got
+reconciled to his determined bachelor preferences, and had grown to
+argue with him that it was best he shouldn't marry, he goes and falls in
+love with this child! Everything is at cross-purposes in life, I think!
+There is only one thing I am resolved upon--I will NEVER chaperone
+anybody again."
+
+And she kept her vow. None can christen her Lady Tattersall any longer
+with point, for there are no yearling sales in that house in Lowndes
+Square, whatever there be in the other domiciles of that fashionable
+quarter. Lady Marabout has shaken that burden off her shoulders, and
+moves in blissful solitude and tripled serenity through Belgravia,
+relieved of responsibility, and wearing her years as lightly, losing the
+odd trick at her whist as sunnily, and beaming on the world in general
+as radiantly as any dowager in the English Peerage.
+
+That she was fully reconciled to Carruthers's change of resolve was
+shown in the fact that when Anne Hautton turned to her, on the evening
+of his marriage-day, after the dinner to which Lady Marabout had bidden
+all her friends, and a good many of her foes, with an amiable murmur:
+
+"I am _so_ grieved for you, dearest Helena--I know what your
+disappointment must be!--what should _I_ feel if Hautton----Your
+_belle-fille_ is charming, certainly, very lovely; but then--such a
+connection! You have my deepest sympathies! I always told you how wrong
+you were when you fancied Goodwood admired little Montolieu--I beg her
+pardon, I mean Lady Carruthers--but you _will_ give your imagination
+such reins!"
+
+Lady Marabout smiled, calmly and amusedly, felt no pang, and--thought of
+Philip.
+
+I take it things must be very rose-colored with us when we can smile
+sincerely on our enemies, and defeat their stings simply because we feel
+them not.
+
+
+
+
+A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE;
+
+OR,
+
+PENDANT TO A PASTEL BY LA TOUR.
+
+
+I have, among others hanging on my wall, a pastel of La Tour's; of the
+artist-lover of Julie Fel, of the monarch of pastellistes, the touch of
+whose crayons was a "brevet of wit and of beauty," and on whose easel
+bloomed afresh the laughing eyes, the brilliant tints, the rose-hued
+lips of all the loveliest women of the "Règne Galant," from the
+princesses of the Blood of the House of Bourbon to the princesses of the
+green-room of the Comédie-Française. Painted in the days of Louis
+Quinze, the light of more than a century having fallen on its soft
+colors to fade and blot them with the icy brush of time, my pastel is
+still fresh, still eloquent. The genius that created it is gone--gone
+the beauty that inspired it--but the picture is deathless! It shows me
+the face of a woman, of a beautiful woman, else, be sure she would not
+have been honored by the crayons of La Tour; her full Southern lips are
+parted with a smile of triumph; a chef-d'oeuvre of coquetry, a
+head-dress of lace and pearls and little bouquets of roses is on her
+unpowdered hair, which is arranged much like Julie Fel's herself in the
+portrait that hangs, if I remember right, at the Musée de Saint Quentin;
+and her large eyes are glancing at you with languor, malice, victory,
+all commingled. At the back of the picture is written "Mlle. Thargélie
+Dumarsais;" the letters are faded and yellow, but the pastel is living
+and laughing yet, through the divine touch of the genius of La Tour.
+With its perfume of dead glories, with its odor of the Beau Siècle, the
+pastel hangs on my wall, living relic of a buried age, and sometimes in
+my mournful moments the full laughing lips of my pastel will part, and
+breathe, and speak to me of the distant past, when Thargélie Dumarsais
+saw all Paris at her feet, and was not humbled then as now by being only
+valued and remembered for the sake of the talent of La Tour. My
+beautiful pastel gives me many confidences. I will betray one to you--a
+single leaf from a life of the eighteenth century.
+
+
+I.
+
+THE FIRST MORNING.
+
+In the heart of Lorraine, nestled down among its woods, stood an old
+château that might have been the château of the Sleeping Beauty of fairy
+fame, so sequestered it stood amidst its trees chained together by
+fragrant fetters of honeysuckle and wild vine, so undisturbed slept the
+morning shadows on the wild thyme that covered the turf, so unbroken was
+the silence in which the leaves barely stirred, and the birds folded
+their wings and hushed their song till the heat of the noonday should be
+passed. Beyond the purple hills stretching up in the soft haze of
+distance in the same province of laughing, luxurious, sunlit Lorraine,
+was Lunéville, the Lunéville of Stanislaus, Montesquieu, of Voltaire, of
+Hénault, of Boufflers, a Versailles in miniature, even possessing a
+perfect replica of Pompadour in its own pretty pagan of a Marquise.
+Within a few leagues was Lunéville, but the echo of its mots and
+madrigals did not reach over the hills, did not profane the sunny air,
+did not mingle with the vintage-song of the vine-dressers, the silver
+babble of the woodland brook, the hushed chant of the Ave Maria, the
+vesper bells chimed from the churches and monasteries, which made the
+sole music known or heard in this little valley of Lorraine.
+
+The château of Grande Charmille stood nestled in its woods, gray,
+lonely, still, silent as death, yet not gloomy, for white pigeons
+circled above its pointed towers, brilliant dragon-flies fluttered above
+the broken basin of the fountain that sang as gayly as it rippled among
+the thyme as though it fell into a marble cup, and bees hummed their
+busy happy buzz among the jessamine that clung to its ivy-covered
+walls--walls built long before Lorraine had ceased to be a kingdom and a
+power, long before a craven and effeminated Valois had dared to kick the
+dead body of a slaughtered Guise. Not gloomy with the golden light of a
+summer noon playing amidst the tangled boughs and on the silvered
+lichens; not gloomy, for under the elm-boughs on the broken stone steps
+that led to the fountain, her feet half buried in violet-roots and wild
+thyme, leaning her head on her hand, as she looked into the water, where
+the birds flew down to drink, and fluttered their wings fearless of her
+presence, was a young girl of sixteen--and if women sometimes darken
+lives, it must be allowed that they always illumine landscapes!
+
+Aline, when Boufflers saw her in the spring morning, in all the grace of
+youth and beauty, unconscious of themselves, made not a prettier picture
+than this young dreamer under the elm-boughs of the Lorraine woods, as
+she bent over the water, watching it bubble and splash from the
+fountain-spout, and hide itself with a rippling murmur under the broad
+green reeds and the leaves of the water-lily. She was a charming
+picture: a brunette with long ebon tresses, with her lashes drooping
+over her black, languid, almond-shaped eyes, a smile on her half-pouted
+lips, and all the innocence and dawning beauty of her sixteen years
+about her, while she sat on the broken steps, now brushing the
+water-drops off the violets, now weaving the reeds into a pretty,
+useless toy, now beckoning the birds that came to peck on the
+rose-sprays beside her.
+
+"Favette! where are your dreams?"
+
+Favette, the young naïad of the Lorraine elm-woods, looked up, the plait
+of rushes dropping from her hands, and a warm sudden blush tinging her
+cheeks and brow with a tint like that on the damask rose-leaves that had
+fallen into the water, and floated there like delicate shells.
+
+"Mon Dieu, Monsieur Léon! how you frightened me!"
+
+And like a startled fawn, or a young bird glancing round at a rustle
+amidst the leaves, Favette sprang up, half shy, half smiling, all her
+treasures gathered from the woods--of flowers, of mosses, of berries, of
+feathery grasses, of long ivy-sprays--falling from her lap on to the
+turf in unheeded disorder.
+
+"_I_ frightened you, Favette? Surely not. Are you sorry to see me,
+then?"
+
+"Sorry? Oh no, Monsieur Léon!" and Favette glanced through her thick
+curled lashes, slyly yet archly, and began to braid again her plait of
+rushes.
+
+"Come, tell me, then, what and whom were you dreaming of, ma mie, as you
+looked down into the water? Tell me, Favette. You have no secrets from
+your playmate, your friend, your brother?"
+
+Favette shook her head, smiling, and plaited her rushes all wrong, the
+blush on her cheeks as bright as that on the cups of the rose-leaves
+that the wind shook down in a fresh shower into the brook.
+
+"Come, tell me, mignonne. Was it--of me?"
+
+"Of you? Well, perhaps--yes!"
+
+It was first love that whispered in Favette's pretty voice those three
+little words; it was first love that answered in his, as he threw
+himself down on the violet-tufted turf at her feet, as Boufflers at
+Aline's.
+
+"Ah, Favette, so should it be! for every hope, every dream, every
+thought of _mine_, is centred in and colored by you."
+
+"Yet you can leave me to-day," pouted Favette, with a sigh and a _moue
+mutine_, and gathering tears in her large gazelle eyes.
+
+"Leave you? Would to Heaven I were not forced! But against a king's will
+what power has a subject? None are too great, none are too lowly, to be
+touched by that iron hand if they provoke its grasp. Vincennes yawns for
+those who dare to think, For-l'Evêque for those who dare to jest.
+Monsieur de Voltaire was sent to the Bastille for merely defending a
+truth and his own honor against De Rohan-Chabot. Who am I, that I should
+look for better grace?"
+
+Favette struck him, with her plaited rushes, a reproachful little blow.
+
+"Monsieur Vincennes--Monsieur Voltaire--who are they? I know nothing of
+those stupid people!"
+
+He smiled, and fondly stroked her hair:
+
+"Little darling! The one is a prison that manacles the deadly crimes of
+Free Speech and Free Thought; the other, a man who has suffered for
+both, but loves both still, and will, sooner or later, help to give both
+to the world----"
+
+"Ah, you think of your studies, of your ambitions, of your great heroes!
+You think nothing of me, save to call me a little darling. You are
+cruel, Monsieur Léon!"
+
+And Favette twisted her hand from his grasp with petulant sorrow, and
+dashed away her tears--the tears of sixteen--as bright and free from
+bitterness as the water-drops on the violet-bells.
+
+"_I_ cruel--and to you! My heart must indeed be badly echoed by my lips,
+if you have cause to fancy so a single moment. Cruel to you? Favette,
+Favette! is a man ever cruel to the dearest thing in his life, the
+dearest name in his thoughts? If I smiled I meant no sneer; I love you
+as you are, mignonne; the picture is so fair, one touch added, or one
+touch effaced, would mar the whole in _my_ eyes. I love you as you are!
+with no knowledge but what the good sisters teach you in their convent
+solitude, and what the songs of the birds, the voices of the flowers,
+whisper to you of their woodland lore. I love you as you are! Every
+morning when I am far away from you, and from Lorraine, I shall think of
+you gathering the summer roses, calling the birds about you, bending
+over the fountain to see it mirror your own beauty; every evening I
+shall think of you leaning from the window, chanting softly to yourself
+the Ora pro nobis, while the shadows deepen, and the stars we have so
+often watched together come out above the pine-hills. Favette, Favette!
+exile will have the bitterness of death to me; to give me strength to
+bear it, tell me that you love me more dearly than as the brother you
+have always called me; that you will so love me when I shall be no
+longer here beside you, but shall have to trust to memory and fidelity
+to guard for me in absence the priceless treasure of your heart?"
+
+Favette's head drooped, and her hands played nervously with the now torn
+and twisted braid of rushes: he saw her heart beat under its muslin
+corsage, like a bee caught and caged in the white leaves of a lily; and
+she glanced at him under her lashes with a touch of naïve coquetry.
+
+"If I tell you so, what gage have I, Monsieur Léon, that, a few months
+gone by, you will even remember it? In those magnificent cities you will
+soon forget Lorraine; with the _grandes dames_ of the courts you will
+soon cease to care for Favette?"
+
+"Look in my eyes, Favette, they alone can answer you as I would answer!
+Till we meet again none shall supplant you for an hour, none rob you of
+one thought; you have my first love, you will have my last. Favette, you
+believe me?"
+
+"Yes--I believe!" murmured Favette, resting her large eyes fondly on
+him. "We will meet as we part, though you are the swallow, free to take
+flight over the seas to foreign lands, and I am the violet, that must
+stay where it is rooted in the Lorraine woods!"
+
+"Accept the augury," he whispered, resting his lips upon her low smooth
+brow. "Does not the swallow ever return to the violet, holding it fairer
+than all the gaudy tropical flowers that may have tempted him to rest on
+the wing and delay his homeward flight? Does not the violet ever welcome
+him the same, in its timid winning spring-tide loveliness, when he
+returns to, as when he quitted, the only home he loves? Believe the
+augury, Favette; we shall meet as we part!"
+
+And they believed the augury, as they believed in life, in love, in
+faith; they who were beginning all, and had proved none of the
+treacherous triad!
+
+What had he dreamed of in his solitary ancestral woods fairer than this
+Lorraine violet, that had grown up with him, side by side, since he, a
+boy of twelve, gathered heaths from the clefts of the rocks that the
+little child of six years old cried for and could not reach? What had
+she seen that she loved half so well as M. le Chevalier from the Castle,
+whom her uncle, the Curé, held as his dearest and most brilliant pupil,
+whose eyes always looked so lovingly into hers, and whose voice was
+always lavishing fond names on his petite Favette?
+
+They believed the augury, and were happy even in the sweet sorrow of
+parting--sorrow that they had never known before--as they sat together
+in the morning sunlight, while the water bubbled among the violet tufts,
+among the grasses and wild thyme, and the dragon-flies fluttered their
+green and gold and purple wings amidst the tendrils of the vines, and
+the rose-leaves, drifted gently by the wind, floated down the brook,
+till they were lost in deepening shadow under the drooping boughs.
+
+
+II.
+
+THE SECOND MORNING.
+
+"Savez-vous que Favart va écrire une nouvelle comédie--La Chercheuse
+d'Esprit?"
+
+"Vraiment? Il doit bien écrire cela, car il s'occupe toujours à le
+_chercher_, et n'arrive jamais à le trouver!"
+
+The mot had true feminine malice, but the lips that spoke it were so
+handsome, that had even poor Favart himself, the poet-pastrycook who
+composed operas and comedies while he made méringues and fanfreluches,
+and dreamed of libretti while he whisked the cream for a supper, been
+within hearing, they would have taken the smart from the sting; and, as
+it was, the hit only caused echoes of softly-tuned laughter, for the
+slightest word of those lips it was the fashion through Paris just then
+to bow to, applaud, and re-echo.
+
+Before her Psyche, shrouded in cobweb lace, powdered by Martini,
+gleaming with pearls and emeralds, scented with most delicate amber,
+making her morning toilette, and receiving her morning levee according
+to the fashion of the day, sat the brilliant satirist of poor Favart.
+The _ruelle_ was crowded; three marshals, De Richelieu, Lowendal, and
+Maurice de Saxe; a prince, De Soubise; a poet, Claude Dorat; an abbé,
+Voisenon; a centenarian, Saint-Aulaire; peers uncounted, De Bièvre, De
+Caylus, De Villars, D'Etissac, Duras, D'Argenson--a crowd of
+others--surrounded and superintended her toilette, in a glittering troop
+of courtiers and gentlemen. Dames d'atours (for she had her maids of
+honor as well as Marie Leczinska) handed her her flacons of perfume, or
+her numberless notes, on gold salvers, chased by Réveil; the ermine
+beneath her feet, humbly sent by the Russian ambassador--far superior to
+what the Czarina sent to Madame de Mailly--had cost two thousand louis;
+her bedroom outshone in luxury any at Versailles, Choisy, or La Muette,
+with its Venetian glass, its medallions of Fragonard, its plaques of
+Sèvres, its landscapes of Watteau, framed in the carved and gilded
+wainscoting, its Chinese lamps, swinging by garlands of roses, its
+laughing Cupids, buried under flowers, painted in fresco above the
+alcove, its hangings of velvet, of silk, of lace; and its cabinets, its
+screens, its bonbonnières, its jewel-boxes, were costly as those of the
+Marquises de Pompadour or De Prie.
+
+Who was she?--a Princess of the Blood, a Duchess of France, a mistress
+of the King?
+
+Lords of the chamber obeyed her wishes, ministers signed lettres de
+cachet at her instance; "_ces messieurs_," la Queue de la Régence, had
+their rendezvous at her suppers; she had a country villa that eclipsed
+Trianon; she had fêtes that outshone the fêtes at Versailles; she had a
+"_droit de chasse_" in one of the royal districts; she had the first
+place on the easels of Coypel, Lancret, Pater, Vanloo, La Tour; the
+first place in the butterfly odes of Crébillon le Gai, Claude Dorat;
+Voisenon.
+
+Who was she?--the Queen of France? No; much more--the Queen of Paris!
+
+She was Thargélie Dumarsais; matchless as Claire Clairon, beautiful as
+Madeleine Gaussin, resistless as Sophie Arnould, great as Adrienne
+Lecouvreur. She was a Power in France--for was she not the Empress of
+the Comédie? If Madame Lenormand d'Etioles ruled the government at
+Versailles, Mademoiselle Thargélie Dumarsais ruled the world at Paris;
+and if the King's favorite could sign her enemies, by a smile, to the
+Bastille, the Court's favorite could sign hers, by a frown, to
+For-l'Evêque.
+
+The foyer was nightly filled while she played in _Zaïre_, or
+_Polyeucte_, or _Les Folies Amoureuses_, with a court of princes and
+poets, marshals and marquises, beaux esprits and abbés galants; and
+mighty nobles strewed with bouquets the path from her carriage to the
+coulisses; bouquets she trod on with nonchalant dignity, as though
+flowers only bloomed to have the honor of dying under her foot. Louis
+Quinze smilingly humored her caprices, content to wait until it was her
+pleasure to play at his private theatre; dukes, marquises, viscounts,
+chevaliers, vied who should ruin himself most magnificently and most
+utterly for her; and lovers the most brilliant and the most flattering,
+from Richelieu, Roi de Ruelles, to Dorat, poet of boudoir-graces and
+court-Sapphos, left the titled beauties of Versailles for the
+self-crowned Empress of the Français. She had all Paris for her
+chentela, from Versailles to the Caveau; for even the women she deposed,
+the actors she braved, the journalists she consigned to For-l'Evêque,
+dared not raise their voice against the idol of the hour. A Queen of
+France? Bah! Pray what could Marie Leczinska, the pale, dull pietist,
+singing canticles in her private chapel, compare for power, for sway,
+for courtiers, for brilliant sovereignty, for unrivalled triumph, with
+Thargélie Dumarsais, the Queen of the Theatre?
+
+Ravishingly beautiful looked the matchless actress as she sat before her
+Psyche, flashing _oeillades_ on the brilliant group who made every added
+aigrette, every additional bouquet of the coiffure, every little
+_mouche_, every touch to the already perfect toilette, occasion for
+flattering simile and soft-breathed compliment; ravishingly beautiful,
+as she laughed at Maurice de Saxe, or made a disdainful _moue_ at an
+impromptu couplet of Dorat's, or gave a blow of her fan to Richelieu, or
+asked Saint-Aulaire what he thought of Vanloo's portrait of her as
+_Rodugune_; ravishingly beautiful, with her charms that disdained alike
+rouge and maréchale powder, and were matchless by force of their own
+coloring, form, and voluptuous languor, when, her toilette finished,
+followed by her glittering crowd, she let Richelieu lead her to his
+carriage.
+
+There was a review of Guards on the plain at Sablons that morning, a
+fête afterwards, at which she would be surrounded by the most brilliant
+staff of an army of Noblesse, and Richelieu was at that moment the most
+favored of her troop of lovers. M. le Duc, as every one knows, never
+sued at court or coulisse in vain, and the love of Thargélie Dumarsais,
+though perhaps with a stronger touch of romance in it than was often
+found in the atmosphere of the foyer, was, like the love of her time and
+her class, as inconstant and vivacious, now settling here, now lighting
+there, as any butterfly that fluttered among the limes at Trianon. Did
+not the jest-loving _parterre_ ever salute with gay laughter two lines
+in a bagatelle-comedy of the hour--
+
+    Oui l'Amour papillonne, sans entraves, à son gré;
+    Chargé longtemps de fers, de soie même, il mourrait!--
+
+when spoken by Thargélie Dumarsais--laughter that hailed her as
+head-priestess of her pleasant creed, in a city and a century where the
+creed was universal?
+
+"Ah, bonjour! You have not seen her before, have you, semi-Englishman?
+You have found nothing like her in the foggy isles, I wager you fifty
+louis!" cried one of Thargélie Dumarsais's court, the Marquis de la
+Thorillière, meeting a friend of his who had arrived in Paris only the
+day before, M. le Chevalier de Tallemont des Réaux, as Richelieu's
+cortége rolled away, and the Marquis crossed to his own carriage.
+
+"Her? Whom? I have not been in Paris for six years, you know. What can I
+tell of its idols, as I remember of old that they change every hour?"
+
+"True! but, bon Dieu! not to know la Dumarsais! What it must be to have
+been buried in those benighted Britannic Isles! Did you not see her in
+Richelieu's carriage?"
+
+"No. I saw a carriage driving off with such an escort and such fracas,
+that I thought it could belong to nobody less than to Madame Lenormand
+d'Etioles; but I did not observe it any further. Who is this beauty I
+ought to have seen?"
+
+"Thargélie Dumarsais, for whom we are all ruining ourselves with the
+prettiest grace in the world, and for whom you will do the same when you
+have been once to the Français; that is, if you have the good fortune to
+attract her eyes and please her fancy, which you may do, for the fogs
+have agreed with you, Léon!--I should not wonder if you become the
+fashion, and set the women raving of you as 'leur zer zevalier!'"
+
+"Thanks for the prophecy, but I shall not stay long enough to fulfil it,
+and steal your myrtle crowns. I leave again to-morrow."
+
+"_Leave?_ Sapristi! See what it is to have become half English, and
+imbibed a taste for spleen and solitude! Have you written another
+satire, or have you learned such barbarism as to dislike Paris?"
+
+"Neither; but I leave for Lorraine to-morrow. It is five years since I
+saw my old pine-woods."
+
+"Dame! it is ten years since _I_ saw the wilds of Bretagne, and I will
+take good care it shall be a hundred before I see them again. _Hors de
+Paris, c'est hors du monde._ Come with me to La Dumarsais's _petit
+souper_ to-night, and you will soon change your mind."
+
+"My good Armand, you have not been an exile, as I have; you little know
+how I long for the very scent of the leaves, the very smell of the earth
+at Grande Charmille! But bah! I talk in Hebrew to you. You have been
+lounging away your days in titled beauties, _petits salons_, making
+butterfly verses, learning their broidery, their lisp, and their
+perfumes, talking to their parrots, and using their cosmétiques, till
+you care for no air but what is musk-scented! But what of this
+Dumarsais of yours--does she equal Lecouvreur?"
+
+"Eclipses her!--with Paris as with Maurice de Saxe. Thargélie Dumarsais
+is superb, mon cher--unequalled, unrivalled! We have had nothing like
+her for beauty, for grace, for talent, nor, pardieu! for extravagance!
+She ruined _me_ last year in a couple of months. Richelieu is in favor
+just now--with what woman is he not? Thargélie is very fond of the
+Marshals of France! Saxe is fettered to her hand and foot, and the
+Duchesse de Bouillon hates her as rancorously as she does Adrienne. Come
+and see her play _Phèdre_ to-night, and you will renounce Lorraine. I
+will take you to supper with her afterwards; she will permit any friend
+of mine entry, and then, generous man that I am, I shall have put you
+_en chemin_ to sun yourself in her smiles and ingratiate yourself in her
+favor. Don't give me too much credit for the virtue though, for I
+confess I should like to see Richelieu supplanted."
+
+"Does his reign threaten to last long, then?"
+
+The Marquis shrugged his shoulders, and gave his badine an expressive
+whisk.
+
+"Dieu sait! we are not prophets in Paris. It would be as easy to say
+where that weathercock may have veered to-morrow, as to predict where la
+Dumarsais's love may have lighted ere a month! Where are you going, may
+I ask?"
+
+"To see Lucille de Verdreuil. I knew her at Lunéville; she and Madame de
+Boufflers were warm friends till Stanislaus, I believe, found Lucille's
+eyes lovelier than Madame la Marquise deemed fit, and then they
+quarrelled, as women ever do, with virulence in exact proportion to the
+ardor of their friendship."
+
+"As the women quarrel at Choisy for _notre maître_! They will be friends
+again when both have lost the game, like Louise de Mailly and the
+Duchesse de Châteauroux. The poor Duchess! Fitz-James and Maurepas,
+Châtillon and Bouillon, Rochefoucauld and le Père Pérussot, all
+together, were too strong for her. All the gossip of that Metz affair
+reached you across the water, I suppose? Those pests of Jesuits! if they
+want him to be their Very Christian King, and to cure him of his worship
+of Cupidon, they will have to pull down all the stones of La Muette and
+the Parc aux Cerfs! What good is it to kill _one_ poor woman when women
+are as plentiful as roses at Versailles? And now let me drive you to
+Madame de Vaudreuil; if _she_ do not convert you from your fancy for
+Lorraine this morning, Thargélie Dumarsais will to-night."
+
+"_Mon zer zevalier, Paris at ado'able! Vous n'êtes pas sé'ieux en
+voulant le quitter, z'en suis sûre!_" cried the Comtesse de Vaudreuil,
+in the pretty lisp of the day, a charming little blonde, patched and
+powdered, nestled in a chair before a fire of perfumed wood, teasing her
+monkey Zulmé with a fan of Pater's, and giving a pretty little sign of
+contempt and disbelief with some sprays of jessamine employed in the
+chastisement of offenders more responsible and quite as audacious as
+Zulmé.
+
+Her companion, her "zer zevalier," was a young man of seven-and-twenty,
+with a countenance frank, engaging, nobly cast, far more serious, far
+more thoughtful in its expression, than was often seen in that laughing
+and mocking age. Exiled when a mere boy for a satirical pamphlet which
+had provoked the wrath of the Censeur Royal, and might have cost him the
+Bastille but for intercession from Lunéville, he had passed his youth
+less in pleasure than in those philosophical and political problems then
+beginning to agitate a few minds; which were developed later on in the
+"Encyclopédie," later still in the Assemblée Nationale. Voltaire and
+Helvétius had spoken well of him at Madame de Geoffrin's; Claudine de
+Tencin had introduced him the night before in her brilliant salons; the
+veteran Fontenelle had said to him, "_Monsieur, comme censeur royal je
+refusai mon approbation à votre brochure; comme homme libre je vous en
+félicite_"--all that circle was prepared to receive him well, the young
+Chevalier de Tallemont might make a felicitous season in Paris if he
+chose, with the romance of his exile about him, and Madame de Vaudreuil
+smiling kindly on him.
+
+"The country!" she cried; "the country is all very charming in eclogues
+and pastorals, but out of them it is a desert of ennui! What _can_ you
+mean, Léon, by leaving Paris to-morrow? Ah, méchant, there must be
+something we do not see, some love besides that of the Lorraine woods!"
+
+"Madame, is there not my father?"
+
+"_Bien zoli!_ But at your age men are not so filial. There is some other
+reason--but what? Any love you had there five years ago has hardly any
+attractions now. Five years! Ma foi, five months is an eternity that
+kills the warmest passion!"
+
+"May there not be some love, madame, that time only strengthens?"
+
+"I never heard of it if there be. It would be a very dreary affair, I
+should fancy, smouldering, smouldering on and on like an ill-lit fire.
+Nobody would thank you for it, mon cher, _here_! Come, what is your
+secret? Tell it me."
+
+Léon de Tallemont smiled; the smile of a man who has happy thoughts, and
+is indifferent to ridicule.
+
+"Madame, one can refuse you nothing! My secret? It is a very simple one.
+The greatest pang of my enforced exile was the parting from one I loved;
+the greatest joy of my return is that I return to her."
+
+"_Bon Dieu! comme c'est drôle!_ Here is a man talking to me of love, and
+of a love not felt for _me_!" thought Madame la Comtesse, giving him a
+soft glance of her beautiful blue eyes. "You are a very strange man.
+You have lived out of France till you have grown wretchedly serious and
+eccentric. Loved this woman for five years? Léon! Léon! you are telling
+me a fairy tale. Who is she, this enchantress? She must have some
+mysterious magic. Tell me--quick!"
+
+"She is no enchantress, madame, and she has no magic save the simple one
+of having ever been very dear to me. We grew up together at Grande
+Charmille; she was the orphan niece of the Priest, a fond, innocent,
+laughing child, fresh and fair, and as untouched by a breath of impure
+air as any of the violets in the valley. She was scarcely out of the
+years of childhood when I left her, with beauty whose sweetest grace of
+all was its own unconsciousness. Through my five long years of exile I
+have remembered Favette as I saw her last under the elm-boughs in the
+summer light, her eyes dim with the tears of our parting, her young
+heart heaving with its first grief. I have loved her too well for others
+to have power to efface or to supplant her; of her only have I thought,
+of her only have I dreamed, holding her but the dearer as the years grew
+further from the hour of our separation, nearer to the hour of our
+reunion. I have heard no word of her since we parted; but of what value
+is love without trust and fidelity in trial? The beauty of her childhood
+may have merged into the beauty of womanhood, but I fear no other change
+in Favette. As we parted so we vowed to meet, and I believe in her love
+as in my own. I know that I shall find my Lorraine violet without stain
+or soil. Madame, Favette is still dearer to me now, Heaven help me, than
+five years ago. Five years--five years--true! it _is_ an eternity! Yet
+the bitterness of the past has faded for ever from me _now_, and I only
+see--the future!"
+
+Madame de Vaudreuil listened in silence; his words stirred in her chords
+long untouched, never heard amidst the mots, the madrigals, the
+laughter of her world of Paris, Versailles, and Choisy. She struck him a
+little blow with her jessamine-sprays, with a mist gathering over her
+lovely blue eyes.
+
+"Hush, hush, Léon! you speak in a tongue unknown here. A word
+of the heart amongst us sounds a word of a _Gaulois_ out of
+fashion--forbidden!"
+
+
+III.
+
+MIDNIGHT.
+
+The Français was crowded. Thargélie Dumarsais, great in _Electre_,
+_Chimène_, _Inès_, as in "_Ninette à la Cour_," "_Les Moissonneurs_," or
+"_Annette et Lubin_," was playing in "_Phèdre_." Louis Quinze was
+present, with all the powdered marquises, the titled wits, the
+glittering gentlemen of the Court of Versailles; but no presence stayed
+the shout of adoration with which the parterre welcomed the idol of the
+hour, and Louis le Bien-aimé (des femmes!) himself added his royal quota
+to the ovation, and threw at her feet a diamond, superb as any in his
+regalia. It was whispered that the Most Christian King was growing
+envious of his favorite's favor with la Dumarsais, and would, ere long,
+supersede him.
+
+The foyer was filled with princes of the blood, marshals of France,
+dukes, marquises, the élite of her troop of lovers; lords and gentlemen
+crowded the passages, flinging their bouquets for her carpet as she
+passed; and poor scholars, young poets, youths without a sou--amongst
+them Diderot, Gilbert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau--pressed forward to catch a
+glimpse, by the light of the links, of this beauty, on which only the
+eyes of grands seigneurs who could dress Cupidon in a court habit
+_parfilé d'or_ were allowed to gaze closely, as she left the Français,
+after her unmatched and uninterrupted triumphs, and went to her
+carriage with Richelieu. The suppers of Thargélie Dumarsais were
+renowned through Paris; they equalled in magnificence the suppers of the
+Regency, rivalled them for license, and surpassed them for wit. All the
+world might flock to her fêtes where she undisguisedly sought to surpass
+the lavishness of Versailles, even by having showers of silver flung
+from her windows to the people in the streets below; but to her _soupers
+à huis clos_ only a chosen few were admitted, and men would speak of
+having supped with la Dumarsais as boastfully as women of having supped
+with the King at Choisy.
+
+"What you have lost in not seeing her play _Phèdre_! Helvétius would
+have excused you; all the talk of his salons is not worth one glance at
+la Dumarsais. Mon ami! you will be converted to Paris when once you have
+seen her," said the Marquis de la Thorillière, as his carriage stopped
+in the Chaussée d'Antin.
+
+Léon de Tallemont laughed, and thought of the eyes that would brighten
+at his glance, and the heart that would beat against his once more under
+the vine shadows of Lorraine. No new magic, however seductive, should
+have strength to shake his allegiance to that Memory, and, true to his
+violet in Lorraine, he defied the Queen of the Foyer.
+
+"We are late, but that is always a more pardonable fault than to be too
+early," said the Marquis, as they were ushered across the vestibule,
+through several salons, into the supper-room, hung with rich tapestries
+of "Les Nymphes au Bain," "Diane Chasseresse," and "Apollon et Daphné;"
+with gilded consoles, and rosewood buffets, enamelled with medallion
+groups, and crowded with Sèvres and porcelaine de Saxe, while Venetian
+mirrors at each end of the salle reflected the table, with its wines,
+and fruits, and flowers, its gold dishes and Bohemian glass. The air was
+heavily perfumed, and vibrating with laughter. The guests were
+Richelieu, Bièvre, Saxe, D'Etissac, Montcrif, and lovely Marie Camargo,
+the queen of the coulisses who introduced the "short skirts" of the
+ballet, and upheld her innovation so stanchly amidst the outcries of
+scandalized Jansenists and journalists. But even Marie Camargo herself
+paled--and would have paled even had she been, what she was not, in the
+first flush of her youth--before the superb beauty, the languid
+voluptuousness, the sensuous grace, the southern eyes, the full lips,
+like the open leaves of a damask rose, melting yet mocking, of the most
+beautiful and most notorious woman of a day in which beauty and
+notoriety were rife, the woman with the diamond of Louis Quinze
+sparkling in the light upon her bosom, whom Versailles and Paris hailed
+as Thargélie Dumarsais.
+
+The air, scented with amber, rang with the gay echoes of a stanza of
+Dorat's, chanted by Marie Camargo; the "Cupids and Bacchantes," painted
+in the panels of Sèvres, seemed to laugh in sympathy with the revel over
+which they presided; the light flashed on the King's diamond, to which
+Richelieu pointed, with a wicked whisper; for the Marshal was getting
+tired of his own reign, and his master might pay his court when he
+would. Thargélie Dumarsais, more beautiful still at her _petit souper_
+than at her _petit lever_, with her hair crowned with roses, true
+flowers of Venus that might have crowned Aspasia, looked up laughingly
+as her lacqueys ushered in le Marquis de la Thorillière and le Chevalier
+de Tallemont.
+
+"M. le Marquis," cried the actress, "you are late! It is an impertinence
+forbidden at my court. I shall sup in future with barred doors, like M.
+d'Orléans; then all you late-comers----"
+
+Through the scented air, through the echoing laughter, stopping her own
+words, broke a startled bitter cry:
+
+"_Mon Dieu, c'est Favette!_"
+
+Thargélie Dumarsais shrank back in her rose velvet fauteuil as though
+the blow of a dagger had struck her; the color fled from her lips, and
+underneath the delicate rouge on her cheeks; her hand trembled as it
+grasped the King's aigrette.
+
+"Favette--Favette! Who calls me that?"
+
+It was a forgotten name, the name of a bygone life that fell on her ear
+with a strange familiar chime, breaking in on the wit, the license, the
+laughter of her midnight supper, as the subdued and mournful sound of
+vesper bells might fall upon the wild refrains and noisy drinking-songs
+of bacchanalian melody.
+
+A surprised silence fell upon the group, the laughter hushed, the voices
+stopped; it was a strange interruption for a midnight supper. Thargélie
+Dumarsais involuntarily rose, her lips white, her eyes fixed, her hand
+clasped convulsively on the King's diamond. A vague, speechless terror
+held mastery over her, an awe she could not shake off had fastened upon
+her, as though the dead had risen from their graves, and come thither to
+rebuke her for the past forgotten, the innocence lost. The roses in her
+hair, the flowers of revel, touched a cheek blanched as though she
+beheld some unearthly thing, and the hand that lay on the royal jewel
+shook and trembled.
+
+"Favette? Favette?" she echoed again. "It is so many years since I heard
+that name!"
+
+Her guests sat silent still, comprehending nothing of this single name
+which had such power to move and startle her. Richelieu alone, leaning
+back in his chair, leisurely picked out one of his brandy-cherries, and
+waited as a man waits for the next scene at a theatre:
+
+"Is it an unexpected tragedy, or an arranged comedy, ma chère? Ought one
+to cry or to laugh? Give me the _mot d'ordre_!"
+
+His words broke the spell, and called Thargélie Dumarsais back to the
+world about her. Actress by profession and by nature, she rallied with a
+laugh, putting out her jewelled hand with a languid glance from her long
+almond-shaped eyes.
+
+"A friend of early years, my dear Duc, that is all. Ah, Monsieur de
+Tallemont what a strange rencontre! When did you come to Paris? I
+scarcely knew you at the first moment; you have so long been an exile,
+one may pardonably be startled by your apparition, and take you for a
+ghost! I suppose you never dreamed of meeting Favette Fontanie under my
+_nom de théâtre_? Ah! how we change, do we not, Léon? Time is so short,
+we have no time to stand still! Marie, ma chère, give Monsieur le
+Chevalier a seat beside you--he cannot be happier placed!"
+
+Léon de Tallemont heard not a word that she spoke; he stood like a man
+stunned and paralyzed by a sudden and violent blow, his head bowed, a
+mortal pallor changing his face to the hues of death, the features that
+were a moment before bright, laughing, and careless, now set in mute and
+rigid anguish.
+
+"Favette! Favette!" he murmured, hoarsely, in the vague dreamy agony
+with which a man calls wildly and futilely on the beloved dead to come
+back to him from the silence and horror of the grave.
+
+"Peste!" laughed Richelieu. "This cast-off lover seems a strange fellow!
+Does he not know that absent people have never the presumption to dream
+of keeping their places, but learn to give them graciously up!--shall I
+teach him the lesson? If he have his sixteen quarterings, a prick of my
+sword will soon punish his impudence!"
+
+The jeer fell unheeded on Léon de Tallemont's ear; had he heard it, the
+flippant sneer would have had no power to sting him then. Regardless of
+the men around the supper-table, he grasped Thargélie Dumarsais's hands
+in his:
+
+"This is how we meet!"
+
+She shrank away from his glance, terrified, she scarce knew why, at the
+mute anguish upon his face.
+
+Perhaps for a moment she realized how utterly she had abused the love
+and wrecked the life of this man; perhaps with his voice came back to
+her thronging thoughts of guileless days, memories ringing through the
+haze of years, as distant chimes ring over the water from lands we have
+quitted, reaching us when we have floated far away out to sea--memories
+of an innocent and untroubled life, when she had watched the woodland
+flowers open to the morning sun, and listened to the song of the brooks
+murmuring over the violet roots, and heard the sweet evening song of the
+birds rise to heaven under the deep vine shadows of Lorraine.
+
+One moment she was silent, her eyes falling, troubled and guilty,
+beneath his gaze; then she looked up, laughing gayly, and flashing on
+him her languid lustrous glance.
+
+"You look like a somnambulist, _mon ami_! Did nobody ever tell you,
+then, how Mme. de la Vrillière carried me off from Lorraine, and brought
+me in her train to Paris, till, when Favette Fontanie was tired of being
+petted like the spaniel, the monkey, and the parrot, she broke away from
+Madame la Marquise, and made, after a little probation at the Foire St.
+Laurent, her appearance at the Français as Thargélie Dumarsais? _Allons
+donc!_ have I lost my beauty, that you look at me thus? You should be
+reminding me of the proverb, '_On revient toujours à ses premiers
+amours!_' Surely, Thargélie Dumarsais will be as attractive to teach
+such a lesson as that little peasant girl, Favette, used to be? Bah,
+Léon! Can I not love you as well again in Paris as I once loved you at
+Grande Charmille? And--who knows?--perhaps I will!"
+
+She leaned towards him; her breath fanning his cheek, her scented hair
+brushing his lips, her lustrous eyes meeting his with eloquent meaning,
+her lips parted with the resistless witchery of that melting and
+seductive _sourire d'amour_ to which they were so admirably trained. He
+gazed down on her, breathless, silence-stricken--gazed down on the
+sorceress beauty to which the innocent loveliness of his Lorraine flower
+had changed. Was this woman, with the rouge upon her cheeks, the crimson
+roses in her hair, the mocking light in her eyes, the wicked laugh on
+her lips, the diamond glittering like a serpent's eye in her bosom--was
+she the guileless child he had left weeping, on the broken steps of the
+fountain, tears as pure as the dew in the violet-bells, with the summer
+sunlight streaming round her, and no shade on her young brow darker than
+the fleeting shadow flung from above by the vine-leaves? A cry broke
+once more from his lips:
+
+"Would to God I had died before to-night!"
+
+Then he lifted his head, with a smile upon his face--a smile that
+touched and vaguely terrified all those who saw it--the smile of a
+breaking heart.
+
+"I thank you for your proffered embraces, but _I_ am faithful. I love
+but one, and I have lost her; Favette is dead! I know nothing of
+Thargélie Dumarsais, the Courtesan."
+
+He bowed low to her and left her--never to see her face again.
+
+A silence fell on those he had quitted, even upon Richelieu; perhaps
+even he realized that all beauty, faith, and joy were stricken from this
+man's life; and--reality of feeling was an exile so universally banished
+from the gay salons of the Dix-huitième Siècle, that its intrusion awed
+them as by the unwonted presence of some ghostly visitant.
+
+Thargélie Dumarsais sat silent--her thoughts had flown away once more
+from her brilliant supper-chamber to the fountain at Grande Charmille:
+she was seeing the dragon-flies flutter among the elm-boughs, and the
+water ripple over the wild thyme; she was feeling the old priest's
+good-night kiss upon her brow, and her own hymn rise and mingle with the
+chant of the vesper choir; she was hearing the song of the forest-birds
+echo in the Lorraine woods, and a fond voice whisper to her, "Fear not,
+Favette!--we shall meet as we part!"
+
+Richelieu took up his Dresden saucer of cherries once more with a burst
+of laughter.
+
+"_Voilà un drôle!_--this fellow takes things seriously. What fools there
+are in this world! It will be a charming little story for Versailles.
+Dieu! how Louis will laugh when I tell it him! I fear though, ma chérie,
+that the 'friend of your childhood' will make you lose your reputation
+by his impolite epithets!"
+
+"When one has nothing, one can lose nothing--eh, ma chère?" laughed
+Marie Camargo. "Monsieur le Duc, she does not hear us----"
+
+"No, _l'infidèle_!" cried Richelieu. "Mademoiselle! I see plainly you
+love this rude lover of bygone days better than you do us!--is it not
+the truth?"
+
+"Chut! nobody asks for truths in a polite age!" laughed Thargélie
+Dumarsais, shaking off unwelcome memories once for all, and looking down
+at the King's diamond gleaming in the light--the diamond that prophesied
+to her the triumph of the King's love.
+
+"Naturally," added La Camargo. "My friend, I shall die with envy of your
+glorious jewel. _Dieu! comme il brille!_"
+
+
+
+
+"DEADLY DASH."
+
+A STORY TOLD ON THE OFF DAY.
+
+
+On the off-day after the Derby everybody, except the great winners, is,
+it will be generally admitted, the resigned prey to a certain gentle
+sadness, not to say melancholy, that will only dissipate itself under a
+prolonged regimen of S. and B., seidlitz well dashed with Amontillado,
+or certain heavenly West Indian decoctions;--this indisposition, I would
+suggest, we should call, delicately and dubiously, Epsomitis. It will
+serve to describe innumerable forms and degrees of the reactionary
+malady.
+
+There is the severest shape of all, "dead money," that covers four
+figures, dropped irretrievably, and lost to the "milkers;" lost always
+_you_ say because of a cough, or because of a close finish, or because
+of something dark, or because of a strain in the practising gallops, or
+because of a couple of brutes that cannoned just at the start; and
+never, of course, because the horse you had fancied was sheerly and
+simply only fit for a plater. There is the second severe form, when you
+awake with a cheerful expectation of a summons for driving "at twelve
+miles an hour" (as if that wasn't moderate and discreet!), and for
+thereby smashing a greengrocer's cart into the middle of next week, and
+running a waggonette into an omnibus, as you came back from the Downs,
+of which you have no more remembrance than that there was a crash, and
+a smash, and a woman's screams, and a man's "d--n the swells!" and a
+_tintamarre_ of roaring conductor and bellowing greengrocer, and
+infuriated females, through which you dashed somehow with a cheer--more
+shame for you--and a most inappropriate _l'Africaine_ chorus from the
+men on your drag. There is the milder form, which is only the rueful
+recollection of seeing, in a wild ecstasy, the chestnut with the white
+blaze sweep with his superb stride to the front, and of having, in your
+moment of rapturous gratitude to the red and blue, rushed,
+unintentionally, during the discussion of Fortnum and Mason's hamper,
+into a promise to take Euphrosyne Brown to Baden in August, where you
+know very well she will cost you more than all your sums netted through
+Gladiateur. There are the slenderer touches of the malady, which give
+you, over your breakfast coffee, a certain dolorous meditation as to how
+you could have been such a fool as to have placed all your trust in
+Danebury, or to have put in a hole through Spring Cottage just what your
+yacht costs for three months; which makes you wonder why on earth you
+took that lot of actresses on to the hill, and threw money enough away
+on them in those wages of idiotcy (or wages of sin, as your uncle the
+dean would translate it), of cashmeres, eau de Cologne, gloves, and
+bracelets, to have purchased those two weight-carriers offered you at
+£600 the pair, and dirt-cheap at that; or which makes you only dully and
+headachily conscious that you drank champagne up on the box-seat as if
+you were a young fellow from Eton, and now pay for the juvenile folly,
+as you know you deserve to do, when that beautiful white Burgundy at
+your club, or your own cool perfect claret at home, seems to stare you
+in the face and ask, "Why did you crack all those bottles of Dry on the
+Downs?"
+
+There are symptoms and varieties innumerable of the malady that I
+propose shall be known henceforward as Epsomitis; therefore, the off-day
+finds everybody more or less slightly done-up and mournful. Twenty-four
+hours and the Oaks, if properly prepared for by a strictly medicinal
+course of _brûles-gueules_, as the Chasseurs say, smoked perseveringly,
+will bring all patients round on the Friday; but during the twenty-four
+hours a sense that all on and off the course is vanity and vexation of
+spirit will generally and somnolently predominate in the universal and
+fashionable disease of Epsomitis.
+
+One off-day, after the magnificent victory of Monarque's unrivalled son,
+an acquaintance of mine, suffering considerably from these symptoms,
+sought my philosophy and my prescriptions. A very sharp irritant for
+Epsomitis may be administered in the form of "I told you so? It's all
+your own fault!" But this species of blister and douche bath combined is
+rarely given unless the patient be mad enough to let his wife, if he
+unluckily have one, learn what ails him. As far as I was concerned, I
+was much too sympathetic with the sufferer to be down upon him with the
+triumphant reminder that I had cautioned him all along not to place his
+trust in Russley. I, instead, prescribed him cool wines, and led him on
+to talk of other people's misfortunes, the very best way to get
+reconciled with your own. We talked of old times, of old memories, of
+old acquaintance, in the twilight, between Derby and Oaks. We got a
+little melancholy; too much champagne is always productive on the morrow
+of a gently sentimental tinge, and a man is always inclined to look on
+the world as a desert when he has the conviction that he himself has
+been made a fool in it. Among other names, that of Deadly Dash came up
+between us. What had become of him? I did not know; he did. He told me;
+and I will tell it here, for the story is of the past now.
+
+"Deadly Dash! What a shot he was! Never missed," said my friend, whose
+own gun is known well enough at Hornsey-wood House; therewith falling
+into a reverie, tinged with the Jacques-like gloom of Epsomitis in its
+severest form, from which he awoke to tell me slowly, between long
+draughts of iced drinks, what I write now. I alter his tale in nothing,
+save in filling in with words the gaps and blanks that he made,
+all-eloquent in his halting oratory, by meditative, plaintive,
+moralizing puffs from his tonic, the _brûle gueule_, and an occasional
+appeal to my imagination in the customary formula of "Oh, bother!--_you_
+understand--all the rest of it you know," which, though it tells
+everything over claret, is not so clear a mode of relation in type. For
+all else here the story is as he gave it to me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Deadly Dash!" It was a fatal sounding sobriquet, and had a fatal
+fascination for many, for me as well as the rest, when I was in my salad
+days and joined the old ----th, amongst whose Light Dragoons, it was so
+signally and ominously famous. The nickname had a wide significance;
+"_he always kills_," was said with twofold truth, in twofold meaning of
+Dash; in a _barrière_ duel he would wheel lightly, aim carelessly, and
+send the ball straight as any arrow through heart or lung, just as he
+fancied, in the neatest style anybody could dream of; and in an intrigue
+he took just the same measures, and hit as invariably with the self-same
+skill and the self-same indifference. "He always kills" applied equally
+to either kind of affair, and got him his sobriquet, which he received
+with as laughing an equanimity as a riding man gets the Gilt Vase, or a
+"lover of the leash" the Ravensworth Stakes, or the Puppy Cup and
+Goblet. He was proud of it, and had only one regret, that he lived in
+the dead days of the duel, and could only go out when he was on French
+soil. In dare-devilry of every sort he out-Heroded Herod, and distanced
+any who were mad enough to try the pace with him in that steeple-chase
+commonly called "going to the bad." It was a miracle how often he used
+to reach the stage of "_complete_ ruin" that the Prince de Soubise once
+sighed for as an unattainable paradise; and picked himself up again,
+without a hair turned, as one may say, and started off with as fresh a
+pace as though nothing had knocked him over. Other men got his speed
+sometimes; but nobody could ever equal his stay. For an "out and out
+goer" there was nobody like Deadly Dash; and though only a Captain of
+Horse, with few "expectations," he did what Dukes daren't have done, and
+lived at a faster rate than all the elder sons in the kingdom put
+together. Dash had the best bow and the brightest wits, the lightest
+morals and the heaviest debts of any _sabreur_ in the Service; very
+unscrupulous fellows were staggered at _his_ devil-me-care vices; and as
+for reputation,--"a deuced pleasant fellow, Dash," they used to say at
+the Curragh, in the Guards' Club, at Thatched House anniversary dinners,
+in North Indian cantonments, in Brighton barrack-rooms, or in any of the
+many places where Deadly Dash was a household word; "a very pleasant
+fellow; no end 'fit' always, best fun in life over the olives when you
+get him in humor; shoot you dead though next morning, if he want, and
+you be handy for him in a neat snug little Bad; make some devil of a
+_mot_ on you too afterwards, just as pleasantly as if he were offering
+you a Lopez to smoke!"
+
+Now, that was just the sort of celebrity that made me mad to see the
+owner of it; there wasn't a living being, except that year's favorite
+out of the Whitewall establishment, that I was half so eager to look at,
+or so reverent when I thought of, as "the Killer." I was very young
+then. I had gone through a classic course of yellow covers from Jeffs'
+and Rolandi's, and I had a vague impression that a man who had had a
+dozen _barrière_ affairs abroad, and been "_enfant_" to every lovely
+_lionne_ of his day, must of necessity be like the heroes of Delphine
+Demireps' novels, who had each of them always a "je ne sais quoi de
+farouche et de fier dans ses grands yeux noirs, et toute la révélation
+d'une ame usée, mais dominée par des passions encore inépuisables,
+écrite sur son sombre et pale visage," &c, &c, in the Demireps' most
+telling style.
+
+I don't know quite what I expected to see in the Killer, but I think it
+was a sort of compound of Monte Christo, Mephistopheles, and Murat mixed
+in one; what I did see was a slight delicate man with a face as fair and
+soft as a girl's, the gentlest possible manners, and a laugh like music.
+Deadly Dash had led a life as bad as he could lead, had lit his cigar
+without a tremor in the wrist, on many gray mornings, while his
+adversary lay dying hard among the red rank grasses, had gamed so deep
+twenty-four hours at a stretch that the most reckless _galérie_ in
+Europe held their breath to watch his play; had had a tongue of silver
+for his intrigues and a nerve of steel for his _vendetta_; had lived in
+reckless rioting and drunk deep; but the Demirep would not have had him
+at any price in her romance; he looked so simply and quietly
+thorough-bred, he was so utterly guiltless of all her orthodox traits.
+The gentlest of mortals was Deadly Dash; when you first heard his sweet
+silvery voice, and his laughter as light and airy as a woman's, you
+would never believe how often abroad there a dead man had been left to
+get stiff and cold among the clotted herbage, while the Killer went out
+of the town by the early express, smoking and reading the "Charivari,"
+and sipping some cold Curaçoa punch out of his flask.
+
+"Of course!" growled a man to me once in the Guards' smoking-room, an
+order of the Scots Fusilleers to Montreal having turned him misanthrope.
+"Did Mephistopheles ever come out in full harness, with horns and tail
+complete, eh? Not such a fool. He looked like a gentleman, and talked
+like a wit. Would the most dunder-headed Cain in Christendom, I should
+be glad to know, be such an ass as to go about town with the brand on
+his forehead, when he could turn down Bond Street any day and get a
+dash of the ladies' pearl powder? Who ever _shows_ anything now, my good
+fellow? Not that Dash 'paints,' to give the deuce his due--except
+himself a little blacker even than he is; he don't cant; he couldn't
+cant; not to save his life, I believe. But as to his bewitching you,
+almost as bad as he does the women, I know all about that. I used to
+swear by him till----"
+
+"Till what?"
+
+"Till he cut a brother of mine out with Rachel, and shot him in the
+woods of Chantilly for flaring-up rough at the rivalry. Charlie was
+rather a good fellow, and Dash and I didn't speak after that, you see.
+Great bore; bosh too, perhaps. Dash brews the best Curaçoa punch in
+Europe, and if he name you the winning mount for the Granby, you may let
+the talent damn you as they like. Still you know as he killed
+Charlie,--" and the Guardsman stuck a great cheroot in his mouth, in
+doubt as to whether, after all, it wasn't humbug, and an uncalled-for
+sacrifice, rather scenic and sentimental, to drop an expert at Curaçoa
+brew, and a sure prophet for Croxton Park, just because in a legitimate
+fashion he had potted your brother and relieved your entail;--on the
+whole, a friendly act rather than otherwise? "Keep clear of the Killer,
+though, young one," he added, as he sauntered out. "He's like that
+cheetah cub of Berkeley's; soft as silk, you know, _patte de velours_,
+and what d'ye call 'em, and all the rest of it, but deucedly deadly to
+deal with."
+
+I did know: it was the eternal refrain that was heard on all sides; from
+the wily Jews through whose meshes he slipped; the unhappy duns who were
+done by him; the beauties who were bewitched by him; the hosts and
+husbands who, having him down for the pheasants, found him poach other
+preserves than those of the cover-sides; the women who had their
+characters shattered by a silvery sneer from a voice that was as soft,
+in its murderous slander, as in its equally murderous wooing; and all
+the rest, who, in some shape or another, owed ruin to that Apollo
+Apollyon--Deadly Dash. Ruin which at last became so wide and so deep,
+that even vice began to look virtuous when his name was mentioned (vice
+always does when she thinks you are really cleared out), and men of his
+own corps and his own club began to get shy of having the Killer's arm
+linked in theirs too often down Pall Mall, for its wrist was terribly
+steady in either Hazard, whether of the yard of green table or the
+twenty yards of green turf.
+
+At last the crisis came: the Killer killed one too many; a Russian
+Prince in the Bois de Vincennes, in a quarrel about a pretty wretched
+little chorus-singer of the Café Alcazar, who took their fancies both at
+once. The _mondes_ thought it terribly wicked, not the deed you know,
+but the audacity of a cavalry man's having potted a Very Serene High
+Mightiness. In a Duke, all these crimes and crimcons, though as scarlet,
+would have been held but the crimson gold-dotted fruit adorning the
+strawberry-leaves; Deadly Dash, a Light Dragoon whose name was signed to
+plenty of "floating little bills," could not bid high enough to purchase
+his pardon from society, which says to its sinners with austere front of
+virtue, "Oblivion cannot be hired,--unless," adds Society, dropping to
+mellowest murmur her whisper, "unless you can give us a premium!" So
+Dash, with a certain irresistible though private pressure upon him from
+the Horse Guards--sent in his papers to sell. What had been done so
+often could not now be done again; the first steeple-chaser in the
+Service could not at last even save his stake, but was finally,
+irretrievably, struck out.
+
+Certainly the fellow was a bad fellow, and deserved his crash so far; he
+had no scruples, and no conscience; he spared neither woman nor man; of
+remorse he had never felt a twinge, and if you were in his path he would
+pick you off some way or other as indifferently as if you were one of
+the pigeons at Hornsey. And yet, he had been kind to me, though I was a
+young one; with his own variable Free Lance sort of liberality, the man
+would give his last sou to get you out of any difficulty, and would
+carry off your mistress, or beggar you at chicken-hazard, with the
+self-same pleasant air the next day: and I could not help being sorry
+that things had come to this pass with him. He shot so superbly! Put him
+where you would, in a warm corner while the bouquets of pheasants were
+told off; in a punt, while a square half-mile of wild-ducks whirred up
+from the marshes; in a dark forest alley in Transylvania, while the
+great boar rushed down through the twilight, foaming blood and roaring
+fury; in a still Indian night with the only target here and there a
+dusky head diving amidst the jhow jungle three hundred yards away: put
+him where you would, he was such a magnificent shot! The sins of a
+Frankenstein should not have lost such a marksman as Deadly Dash to the
+Service.
+
+But the authorities thought otherwise; they were not open to the fact,
+that the man who had been out in more _barrière_ affairs, and had won
+more Grand Military stakes than any other, should, by all laws of
+war-policy, have had his blackest transgressions forgiven him, till he
+could have been turned to account against Ghoorkas, Maories, or Caffres.
+The authorities instead, made him send in his papers, not knowing the
+grand knack of turning a scamp into a hero--a process that requires some
+genius and some clairvoyance in the manipulator,--and Deadly Dash, with
+his lightest and airiest laugh, steamed down channel one late autumn
+night, marked, disgraced, and outlawed, for creditors by the score were
+after him, knowing very well that he and his old gay lawless life, and
+his own wild pleasant world, and his old lands yonder in the green heart
+of the grass countries that had gone rood by rood to the Hebrews, were
+all divorced for ever with a great gulf between them that could never
+close.
+
+So he dropped out of the Service, out of the country, out of
+remembrance, out of regret; nobody said a De Profundis over him, and
+some men breathed the freer. We can rarely be sure of any who will be
+sorry to miss us; but we can always be certain of some to be glad we are
+gone. And in the Killer's case these last were legion. Here and there
+were one or two who owed him a wayward, inconstant bizarre fit of
+generosity; but there were on the other hand hundreds who owed him
+nothing less than entire ruin.
+
+So Deadly Dash went with nobody to regret him and nobody to think of him
+for a second, after the nine hours' wonder in the clubs and the
+mess-rooms that his levanting "under a cloud" occasioned; and so the old
+sobriquet, that had used to have so signal a notoriety, dropped out of
+men's mouths and was forgotten. Where he was gone no one knew; and to be
+sure no one asked. Metaphorically, he was gone to the devil; and when a
+man takes that little tour, if he furnish talk for a day he has had very
+distinguished and lengthened obsequies as friendship goes in this world.
+Now and then in the course of half-a-dozen years I remembered him, when
+I looked up at the head of a Royal over my mantelpiece, with thirteen
+points, that he had stalked once in Ayrshire and given to me; but nobody
+else gave a thought to the Killer. Time passed, and whether he had been
+killed fighting in Chili or Bolivia, shot himself at Homburg, become
+Mussulman and entered the Sultan's army, gone to fight with the Kabyles
+and Bedouins, turned brigand for the Neapolitan Bourbons, or sunk
+downward by the old well-worn stage, so sadly and so often travelled,
+into an adventurer living by the skill of his écarté and the dread
+surety of his shot, we did not know; we did not care. When society has
+given a man the sack, it matters uncommonly little whether he has given
+himself a shroud.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seven or eight years after the name of Deadly Dash had ceased to be
+heard among cavalry men, and quoted on all things "horsey," whether of
+the flat or of the ridge and furrow, I was in the Confederate States, on
+leave for a six months' tour there. It was after Lee's raid across the
+border and the days of Gettysburgh. I had run the blockade in a
+fast-built clipper, and pushed on at once into the heart of Virginia, to
+be in the full heat of whatever should come on the cards; cutting the
+cities rather, and keeping as much as I could to the camps and the
+woods, for I wanted to see the real thing in the rough. In my relish for
+adventure, however, I was a trifle, as it proved, too foolhardy.
+
+Starting alone one day to cross the thirty miles or so that parted me
+from the encampment of some Virginian Horse, with no other companions
+than a very weedy-looking steel gray, and a brace of revolvers, I fairly
+"lost tracks," and had not a notion of my way out of a wilderness of
+morass and forest, all glowing with the scarlet and the green of the
+Indian summer. Here and there were beautiful wild pools and lakes shut
+in by dense vegetation, so dense, that at noon it was dark as twilight,
+and great tablelands of rock jutted out black and rugged in places; but
+chiefly as far as was to be seen stretched the deep entangled woodland,
+with nothing else to break it, brooding quietly over square leagues of
+swamp. The orioles were singing their sweetest, wildest music overhead;
+sign of war there was none, save to be sure, now and then when I came on
+a black, arid circle, where a few charred timbers showed where a hut had
+been burnt down and deserted, or my horse shied and snorted uneasily,
+and half stumbled over some shapeless log on the ground--a log that when
+you looked closer was the swollen shattered body of a man who had died
+hard, with the grasses wrenched up in his fingers that the ants had
+eaten bare, and the hollows of his eyes staring open where the carrion
+birds had plucked the eyeballs out. And near him there were sure to be,
+half sunk in swamp, or cleaned to skeletons by the eagles and hawks,
+five, or ten, or twenty more, lying nameless and unburied there, where
+they had fallen in some scuffle with pickets, or some stray cavalry
+skirmish, to be told off as "missing," and to be thought of no more.
+These groups I came upon more than once rotting among the rich Virginian
+soil, while the scarlet and purple weight of blossoming boughs swayed
+above, and the bright insect life fluttered humming around them; they
+were the only highway marks through the wooded wilderness.
+
+So lonely was it mile after mile, and so little notion had I of either
+the way in or the way out, that the _hallali!_ of a boar-hunt, or the
+sweet mellow tongues of the hounds when they have found in the coverts
+at home, were never brighter music to me than the sharp crack of rifles
+and the long sullen roll of musketry as they suddenly broke the silence,
+while I rode along, firing from the west that lay on my left. The gray,
+used to powder, pointed his ears and quickened his pace. Though a weedy,
+fiddle-headed beast, his speed was not bad, and I rattled him over the
+ground, crashing through undergrowth and wading through pools, with all
+my blood up at the tune of those ringing cheery shots; the roar growing
+louder and louder with every moment, and the sulphur scent of the smoke
+borne stronger and stronger down on the wind, till the horse broke
+_pêle-mêle_ through a network of parasites; dashed downward along a
+slope of dank herbage, slipping at every step, and with his hind legs
+tucked under him; and shot, like a run-in for a race, on to a green
+plateau, where the skirmish was going on in hot earnest.
+
+A glance told me how the land lay. A handful of Southern troopers held
+their own with tremendous difficulty against three divisions of Federal
+infantry, whom they had unexpectedly encountered, as the latter were
+marching across the plateau with some batteries of foot artillery,--the
+odds were probably scarcely less than five to one. The Southerners were
+fighting magnificently, as firm in their close square of four hundred as
+the Consular Guard at Marengo, but so surrounded by the Northern host,
+that they looked like a little island circled round by raging breakers.
+Glancing down on the plain as my horse scoured and slid along the
+incline, the nucleus of Southerners looked hopelessly lost amidst the
+belching fire and pressing columns of the enemy. The whole was
+surrounded and hidden by the whirling clouds of dust and smoke that
+swirled above in a white heavy mist; but through this the sabres
+flashed, the horses' heads reared, maddened and foam-covered, like so
+many bas-reliefs of Bucephalus, the lean rifle-barrels glittered, and
+for a moment I saw the Southern leader, steady as a rock in the centre,
+hewing like a trooper right and left, and with a gray heron's feather
+floating from his sombrero, a signal that seemed as well known and as
+closely followed as the snowy plume of Murat.
+
+To have looked on at this and not have taken a share in it, one would
+have been a stone, not a man, and much less a cavalry-man; I need not
+tell you that I smashed the gray across the plateau, hurled him into the
+thick of the mêlée, dashed _somehow_ through the Federal ranks, and was
+near the gray plume and fighting for the Old Dominion before you could
+have shouted a stave of "Dixie." I was a "non-combatant," I was a
+"neutral"--delicate Anglo-euphemism for coward, friend to neither and
+traitor to both!--I was on a tour of observation, and had no business to
+fire a shot for one or the other perhaps, but I forgot all that, and
+with the bridle in my teeth and a pistol in each hand, I rode down to
+give one blow the more for the weak side.
+
+How superbly that Gray Feather fought!--keeping his men well up round
+him, though saddle after saddle was emptied, and horse after horse tore
+riderless out of the ranks, or reeled over on their heads, spurting
+blood, he sat like a statue, he fought like a Titan, his sabre seemed
+flashing unceasingly in the air, so often was it raised to come down
+again like lightning through a sword-arm, or lay open a skull to the
+brains; the shots ploughed up the earth round him, and rattled like hail
+through the air, a score of balls were aimed at him alone, a score of
+sabres crossed his own; but he was cool as St. Lawrence ice, and laid
+the men dead in struggling heaps under his charger's hoofs; only to
+fight near the man was a glorious intoxication; you seemed to "breathe
+blood" till you got drunk with it.
+
+The four hundred had been mowed down to two; I did as good work as I
+could, having wrenched a sword out of some dead trooper's hand; but I
+was only one, and the Northerners counted by thousands. Come out of it
+alive I never expected to do; but I vow it was the happiest day of my
+life--the pace was so splendidly fast! The Gray Feather at last glanced
+anxiously around; his men stuck like death to him, ready to be hewed
+down one by one, and die game; his teeth were set tight, and his eyes
+had a flash in them like steel. "Charge! and cut through!" he shouted,
+his voice rolling out like a clarion, giving an order that it seemed
+could be followed by nothing short of supernatural aid. The Southrons
+thought otherwise; they only heard to obey; they closed up as steadily
+as though they were a squadron on parade, despite the great gaps between
+them of dying chargers, and of heaped-up killed and wounded, that broke
+their ranks like so much piled stones and timber; they halted a moment,
+the murderous fire raking them right and left, front and rear; then,
+with that dense mass of troops round them, they charged; shivered the
+first line that wedged them in; pierced by sheer force of impetus the
+columns that opened fire in their path; wrenched themselves through as
+through the steel jaws of a trap, and swept out on to the green level of
+the open plateau, with a wild rallying Virginian shout that rings in my
+ears now!
+
+I have been in a good many hot things in my time; but I never knew
+anything that for pace and long odds could be anything near to that.
+
+I had kept with them through the charge with no other scratch than a
+shoulder cut; and I had been close to their chief through it all. When
+we were clean out on the plains beyond pursuit--for the Union-men had
+not a squadron of cavalry, though their guns at long range belched a
+storm in our wake--he turned in his saddle without checking his mare's
+thundering gallop, and levelled his rifle that was slung at his aide.
+"I'll have the General, anyhow," he said, quietly taking aim--still
+without checking his speed--at the knot of staff-officers that now were
+scarce more than specks in a blurred mass of mist. He fired; and the
+centre figure in that indistinct and fast-vanishing group fell from the
+saddle, while the yell of fury that the wind faintly floated nearer told
+us that the shot had been deadly. The Gray Feather laughed, a careless
+airy laugh of triumph, while he swept on at topmost pace; a little more,
+and we should dive down into the dark aisles of grand forest-trees and
+cavernous ravines of timber roads, safe from all pursuit; a second, and
+we should reach the green core of the safe and silent woods, the cool
+shelter of mountain-backed lakes, the sure refuge of tangled coverts. It
+was a guinea to a shilling that we gained it; it was all but won; a
+moment's straight run-in, and we should have it! But that moment was not
+to be ours.
+
+Out of the narrow cleft of a valley on the left, all screened with
+hanging tumbled foliage, and dark as death, there poured suddenly across
+our front a dense body of Federal troopers and Horse Artillery, two
+thousand strong at the least, full gallop, to join the main army. We
+were surrounded in a second, in a second overpowered by sheer strength
+of numbers; only two hundred of us, many sorely wounded, and on mounts
+that were jaded and ridden out of all pace, let us fight as we would,
+what could we do against fresh and picked soldiers, swarming down on us
+like a swarm of hornets, while in our rear was the main body through
+which we had just cut our way? That the little desperate band "died
+hard," I need not say; but the vast weight of the fresh squadrons
+pressed our little knot in as if between the jaws of a trap, crushing it
+like grain between two iron weights. The Gray Feather fought like all
+the Knights of the Round Table merged in one, till he streamed with
+blood from head to foot, and his sabre was hacked and bent like an
+ash-stick, as did a man near him, a tall superb Virginian, handsome as
+any Vandyke or Velasquez picture. At last both the Gray Feather and he
+went down, not by death--it would not come to them--but literally hurled
+out of their stirrup-leathers by crowding scores who poured on them,
+hamstrung or shot their horses, and made them themselves prisoners--not,
+however, till the assailants lay heaped ten deep about their slaughtered
+chargers. For myself, a blow from a sabre, a second afterwards, felled
+me like so much wood. I saw a whirling blaze of sun, a confused circling
+eddy of dizzy color, forked flames, and flashes of light, and I knew no
+more, till I opened my eyes in a dark, square, unhealthy wooden chamber,
+with a dreamy but settled conviction that I was dead, and in the family
+vault, far away under the green old elms of Warwickshire, with the rooks
+cawing above my head.
+
+As the delusion dissipated and the mists cleared, I saw through the
+uncertain light a face that was strangely but vaguely familiar to me,
+connected somehow with incoherent memories of life at home, and yet
+unknown to me. It was bronzed deeply, bearded, with flakes of gray among
+the fairness of the hair, much aged, much worn, scarred and stained just
+now with the blood of undressed wounds and the dust of the combat, for
+there was no one merciful enough there to bring a stoup of water; it was
+rougher, darker, sterner, and yet, with it all, nobler, too, than the
+face that I had known. I lay and stared blankly at it: it was the face
+of the Southern Leader of the morning, who sat now, on a pile of straw,
+looking wearily out to the dying sun, one amongst a group of twenty,
+prisoners all, like myself. I moved, and he turned his eyes on me; they
+had laid me down there as a "gone 'coon," and were amazed to see me come
+to life again. As our eyes met I knew him--he was Deadly Dash.
+
+The old name left my lips with a shout as strong as a half-killed man
+can give. It seemed so strange to meet him there, captives together in
+the Unionists' hands! It struck him with a sharp shock. England and he
+had been divorced so long. I saw the blood leap to his forehead, and the
+light into his glance; then, with a single stride, he reached the straw
+I lay on, holding my hands in his, looking on me with the kindly eyes
+that had used to make me like the Killer, and greeting me with a warmth
+that was only damped and darkened by regret that my battle done for fair
+Virginia had laid me low, a prisoner with himself, and that we should
+meet thus, in so sharp an hour of adversity, with nothing before us but
+the Capitol, the Carroll prison, or worse. Yet thus we did meet once
+more and I knew at last what had been the fate of Deadly Dash, whom
+England had outlawed as a scoundrel, and the New World had found a hero.
+
+Though suffering almost equally himself, he tended me with the
+kindliest sympathy; he came out of his own care to ponder how possible
+it might be to get me eventual freedom as a tourist and a mere
+accidental sharer in the fray; he was interested to hear all that I
+would tell him of my own affairs and of his old friends in England, but
+of himself he would not speak; he simply said he had been fighting for
+the Confederacy ever since the war had begun; and I saw that he strove
+in vain to shake off a deep heart-broken gloom that seemed to have
+settled on him, doubtless, as I thought, from the cruel defeat of the
+noon, and the hopeless captivity into which he, the most restless and
+the most daring soldier that oversaw service, was now flung.
+
+I noticed, too, that every now and then while he sat beside me, talking
+low--for there were sentinels both in and out the rude outhouse of the
+farm that had been turned into our temporary prison--his eyes wandered
+to the gallant Virginian who had been felled down with himself, and who,
+covered like himself with blood and dust, and with his broken left arm
+hanging shattered, lay on the bare earth in a far-off corner motionless
+and silent, with his lips pressed tight under their long black
+moustaches, and such a mute unutterable agony in his eyes as I never saw
+in any human face, though I have seen deaths enough in the field and the
+sick-ward. The rest of the Confederate captives were more ordinary men
+(although from none was a single word of lament ever wrenched); but this
+superb Virginian excited my interest, and I asked his name, in that sort
+of languid curiosity at passing things which comes with weakness, of the
+Killer, whose glance so incessantly wandered towards him.
+
+"Stuart Lane," he answered, curtly, and added no more; but if I ever saw
+in this world hatred, passionate, ungovernable, and intense, I saw it in
+the Killer's look as his glance flashed once more on to the motionless
+form of the handsomest, bravest, and most dauntless officer of his
+gallant regiment that he had seen cut to pieces there on that accursed
+plateau.
+
+"A major of yours?" I asked him. "Ah, I thought so; he fought
+magnificently. How wretched he looks, though he is too proud to show
+it!"
+
+"He is thinking of--of his bride. He married three weeks ago."
+
+The words were simple enough, and spoken very quietly; but there was an
+unsteadiness, as of great effort, over them; and the heel of his heavy
+spurred jack-boot crashed into the dry mud with a grinding crush, as
+though it trod terrible memories down. Was it a woman who was between
+these two comrades in arms and companions in adversity? I wondered if it
+were so, even in that moment of keen and heavy anxiety for us all, as I
+looked at the face that bent very kindly over the straw to which a shot
+in the knee and a deep though not dangerous shoulder-wound bound me. It
+was very different to the face of eight or nine years before--browner,
+harder, graver far; and yet there was a look as if "sorrow had passed by
+there," and swept the old heartlessness and gay callousness away,
+burning them out in its fires.
+
+Silence fell over us in that wretched outshed where we were huddled
+together. I was hot with incipient fever, and growing light-headed
+enough, though I knew what passed before me, to speak to Dash once or
+twice in a dreamy idea that we were in the Shires watching the run-in
+for the "Soldiers' Blue Riband." The minutes dragged very drearily as
+the day wore itself away. There were the sullen monotonous tramp of the
+sentinels to and fro, and, from without, the neighing of horses, the
+bugle calls, the roll of the drums, the challenge of outposts--all the
+varied, endless sounds of a camp; for the farmhouse in whose shed we
+were thrown was the head-quarters _pro tem_. of the Federal General who
+commanded the Divisions that had cost the Killer's handful of Horse so
+fearfully dear. We were prisoners, and escape was impossible. All arms
+of course had been removed from us; most, like myself, were too disabled
+by wounds to have been able to avail ourselves of escape had it been
+possible; and the guard was doubled both in and out the shed; there was
+nothing before any of us but the certainty of imprisonment in all its
+horrors in some far-off fortress or obscure jail. There was the possible
+chance that, since certain officers on whom the Northerners set great
+store had lately fallen into Southern hands, an exchange might be
+effected; yet, on the other side, graver apprehensions still existed,
+since we knew that the General into whose camp we had been brought had
+proclaimed his deliberate purpose of shooting the three next
+Secessionist officers who fell into his power, in requital for three of
+his own officers who had been shot, or were said to have been shot, by a
+Southern raider. We knew very well that, the threat made, it would be
+executed; and each of us, as the sun sank gradually down through the hot
+skies that were purple and stormy after the burning day, knew, too, that
+it might never rise again to greet our sight. None of us would have
+heeded whether a ball would hit or miss us in the open, in a fair fight,
+in a man-to-man struggle; but the boldest and most careless amidst us
+felt it very bitter to die like dogs, to die as prisoners.
+
+Even Deadly Dash, coolest, most hardened, most devil-may-care of
+soldiers and of sinners, sat with his gaze fastened on the slowly
+sinking light in the west with the shadow of a great pain upon his face,
+while every now and then his glance wandered to Stuart Lane, and a
+quick, irrepressible shudder shook him whenever it did so. The Virginian
+never moved; no sign of any sort escaped him; but the passionate misery
+that looked out of his eyes I never saw equalled, except, perhaps, in
+the eyes of a stag that I once shot in Wallachia, and that looked up
+with just such a look before it died. He was thinking, no doubt, of the
+woman he loved--wooed amidst danger, won amidst calamity, scarcely
+possessed ere lost for ever;--thinking of her proud beauty, of her
+bridal caress, that would never again touch his lips, of her fair life
+that would perish with the destruction of his.
+
+Exhaustion from the loss of blood made everything pass dreamily, and yet
+with extraordinary clearness, before me, I felt in a wakening dream, and
+had no sense whatever of actual existence, and yet the whole scene was
+so intensely vital and vivid to me, that it seemed burned into my very
+brain itself. It was like the phantasmagoria of delirium, utterly
+impalpable, but yet intensely real. I had no power to act or resist, but
+I seemed to have ten times redoubled power to see and hear and feel; I
+was aware of all that passed, with a hundredfold more susceptibility to
+it than I ever felt in health. I remember a total impossibility that
+came on me to decide whether I was dreaming or was actually awake.
+Twilight fell, night came; there was a change of sentries, and a light,
+set up in a bottle, shed a flickering, feeble, yellow gleam over the
+interior of the shed, on the dark Rembrandt faces of the Southerners and
+on the steel of the guards' bayonets. And I recollect that the Killer,
+who sat by the tossed straw on which they had flung me, laughed the old,
+low, sweet, half-insolent laugh that I had known so well in early days.
+"_Il faut souffrir pour être beau!_ We are picturesque, at any rate,
+quite Salvatoresque! Little Dickey would make a good thing of us if he
+could paint us now. He is alive, I suppose?"
+
+I answered him I believe in the affirmative; but the name of that little
+Bohemian of the Brush, who had used to be our butt and _protégé_ in
+England, added a haze the more to my senses. By this time I had
+difficulty to hold together the thread of how, and when, and why I had
+thus met again the face that looked out on me so strangely familiarly in
+the dull, sickly trembling of the feeble light of this black, noisome
+shed in the heart of Federal Divisions.
+
+Through that haze I heard the challenge of the sentries; I saw a soldier
+prod with his bayonet a young lad who had fainted from hæmorrhage, and
+whom he swore at for shamming. I was conscious of the entrance of a
+group of officers, whom I knew afterwards to be the Northern General and
+his staff, who came to look at their captives. I knew, but only dreamily
+still, that these men were the holders of our fate, and would decide on
+it then and there. I felt a listless indifference, utter and opium-like,
+as to what became of me, and I remember that Stuart Lane, and Dash
+himself, rose together, and stood looking with a serene and haughty
+disdain down on the conquerors who held their lives in the
+balance--without a trace of pain upon their faces now. I remember how
+like they looked to stags that turn at bay; like the stags, outnumbered,
+hunted down, with the blood of open wounds and the dust of the long
+chase on them; but, like the deer, too, uncowed, and game to the finish.
+
+Very soon their doom was given. Seven were to be sent back with a flag
+of truce to be exchanged for the seven Federal officers they wanted out
+of the Southerners' hands, ten were to be transmitted to the prisons of
+the North,--three were to be shot at day-dawn in the reprisal before
+named. The chances of life and of death were to be drawn for by lottery,
+and at once.
+
+Not a sound escaped the Virginians, and not a muscle of their English
+Leader's face moved: the prisoners, to a man, heard impassively, with a
+grave and silent dignity, that they were to throw the die in hazard,
+with death for the croupier and life for the stake.
+
+The General and his staff waited to amuse themselves with personally
+watching the turns of this new _Rouge et Noir_; gambling in lives was a
+little refreshing change that sultry, dreary, dun-colored night, camped
+amongst burnt-out farms and wasted corn-lands.
+
+Slips of paper, with "exchange," "death," and "imprisonment" written on
+them in the numbers needed, were made ready, rolled up, and tossed into
+an empty canteen; each man was required to come forward and draw, I
+alone excepted because I was an officer of the British Army. I remember
+passionately arguing that they had no right to exempt me, since I had
+been in the fray, and had killed three men on my own hook, and would
+have killed thirty more had I had the chance; but I was perhaps
+incoherent in the fever that was fast seizing all my limbs from the rack
+of undressed wounds; at any rate, the Northerners took no heed, save to
+force me into silence, and the drawing began. As long as I live I shall
+see that night in remembrance with hideous distinctness: the low
+blackened shed with its foetid odors from the cattle lately foddered
+there; the yellow light flaring dully here and there; the glisten of the
+cruel rifles; the heaps of straw and hay soaked with clotted blood; the
+group of Union Officers standing near the doorway; and the war-worn
+indomitable faces of the Southerners, with the fairer head and slighter
+form of their English chief standing out slightly in front of all.
+
+The Conscription of Death commenced; a Federal private took the paper
+from each man as he drew it, and read the word of destiny aloud. Not one
+amongst them faltered or paused one moment; each went,--even those most
+exhausted, most in agony,--with a calm and steady step, as they would
+have marched up to take the Flag of the Stars and Bars from Lee or
+Longstreet. Not one waited a second's breath before he plunged his hand
+into the fatal lottery.
+
+Deadly Dash was the first called: there was not one shadow of anxiety
+upon his face; it was calm without effort, careless without bravado,
+simply, entirely indifferent. They took his paper and read the words of
+safety and of life--"Exchange." Then, for one instant, a glory of hope
+flashed like the sun into his eyes--to die the next; die utterly.
+
+Three followed him, and they all drew the fiat for detention; the fifth
+called was Stuart Lane.
+
+Let him have suffered as he would, he gave no sign of it now; he
+approached with his firm, bold cavalry step, and his head haughtily
+lifted; the proud, fiery, dauntless Cavalier of ideal and of romance.
+Without a tremor in his wrist he drew his paper out and gave it.
+
+One word alone fell distinct on the silence like the hiss of a shot
+through the night--"_Death!_"
+
+He bowed his head slightly as if in assent, and stepped backward--still
+without a sign.
+
+His English chief gave him one look,--it was that of merciless
+exultation, of brutal joy, of dark, Cain-like, murderous hate; but it
+passed, passed quickly: Dash's head sank on his chest, and on his face
+there was the shadow, I think, of a terrible struggle--the shadow, I
+know, of a great remorse. He strove with his longing greed for this
+man's destruction; he knew that he thirsted _to see him die_.
+
+The Virginian stood erect and silent: a single night and the strong and
+gallant life, the ardent passions, the chivalrous courage to do and
+dare, and the love that was in its first fond hours would all be
+quenched in him as though they had never been; but he was a soldier, and
+he gave no sign that his death-warrant was not as dear to him as his
+bridal-night had been. Even his conquerors cast one glance of admiration
+on him; it was only his leader who felt for him no pang of reverence and
+pity.
+
+The lottery continued; the hazard was played out; life and death were
+scattered at reckless chance amidst the twenty who were the playthings
+of that awful gaming; all had been done in perfect silence on the part
+of the condemned; not one seemed to think or to feel for himself, and
+in those who were sent out to their grave not a grudge lingered against
+their comrades of happier fortune. Deadly Dash, whose fate was release,
+alone stood with his head sunk, thoughtful and weary.
+
+The three condemned to execution were remanded to separate and solitary
+confinement, treated already as felons for that one short night which
+alone remained to them. As his guards removed him, Stuart Lane paused
+slightly, and signed to his chief to approach him; he held out his hand
+to Dash, and his voice was very low, though it came to my ear where they
+stood beside me: "We were rivals once, but we may be friends _now_. As
+you have loved her, be pitiful to her when you tell her of my
+death,--God knows it may be hers! As you have loved her, feel what it is
+to die without one last look on her face!"
+
+Then, and then only, his bronze cheek grew white as a woman's, and his
+whole frame shook with one great silent sob; his guard forced him on,
+and his listener had made him no promise, no farewell; neither had he
+taken his hand. He had heard in silence, with a dark and evil gloom
+alone upon him.
+
+The Federal General sharply summoned him from his musing, as the chief
+of those to be exchanged on the morrow under a white flag of parley;
+there were matters to be stated to and to be arranged with him.
+
+"I will only see you alone, General," he answered curtly.
+
+The Northerner stared startled, and casting a glance over the
+redoubtable leader of horse, whose gray feather had become known and
+dreaded, thought of possible assassination. Deadly Dash laughed his old
+light, ironic, contemptuous laugh.
+
+"A wounded unarmed man can scarcely kill you! Have as many of your
+staff about you as you please, but let none of my Virginians be present
+at our interview."
+
+The Northerners thought he intended to desert to them, or betray some
+movement of importance, and assented; and he went out with them from the
+cattle-shed into the hot, stormy night, and the Southerners who were
+condemned to death and detention looked after him with a long, wistful,
+dog-like look. They had been with him in so many spirit-stirring days
+and nights of peril, and they knew that never would they meet again. He
+had not given one of them a word of adieu; he had killed too many to be
+touched by his soldiers' loss. Who could expect pity from Deadly Dash?
+
+An hour passed; I was removed under a guard to a somewhat better lodging
+in the granary, where a surgeon hastily dressed my wounds, and left me
+on a rough pallet with a jug of water at my side, and the sentinel for
+my only watcher, bidding me "sleep." Sleep! I could not have slept for
+my ransom. Though life had hardened me, and made me sometimes, as I
+fear, callous enough, I could not forget those who were to die when the
+sun rose; specially, I could not forget that gallant Virginian to whom
+life was so precious, yet who gave himself with so calm a fortitude to
+his fate. The rivalry, I thought, must be deep and cruel, to make the
+man from whom he had won what they both loved turn from him in hatred,
+even in such extremity as his. On the brink of a comrade's grave, feud
+might surely have been forgotten?
+
+All that had just passed was reeling deliriously through my brain, and I
+was panting in the sheer irritation and exhaustion of gunshot wounds,
+when through the gloom Dash entered the granary, closely guarded, but
+allowed to be with me on account of our common country. Never was I more
+thankful to see a familiar face from home than to see his through the
+long watches of that burning, heavy, interminable night. He refused to
+rest; he sat by me, tending me as gently as a woman, though he was
+suffering acutely himself from the injuries received in the course of
+the day; he watched me unweariedly, though often and often his gaze and
+his thoughts wandered far from me, as he looked out through the open
+granary door, past the form of the sentinel, out to the starry solemn
+skies, the deep woods, and the dark silent land over which the stars
+were brooding, large and clear.
+
+Was he thinking of the Virginian whose life would die out for ever, with
+the fading of those stars, or of the woman whom he had lost, whose love
+was the doomed soldier's, and would never be his own, though the grave
+closed over his rival with the morrow's sun? Dreamily, half
+unconsciously, in the excitement of fever, I asked him of her of whom I
+knew nothing:
+
+"Did you love that woman so well?"
+
+His eyes were still fixed on the distant darkening skies, and he
+answered quietly, as though rather to his own thoughts than my
+words,--"Yes: I love her--as I never loved in that old life in England;
+as we never love but once, I think."
+
+"And she?"
+
+"And she--has but one thought in the world--_him_."
+
+His voice, as he answered, now grated with dull, dragging misery over
+the words.
+
+"Had she so much beauty that she touched you like this?"
+
+He smiled slightly, a faint, mournful smile, unutterably sad.
+
+"Yes; she is very lovely, but her beauty is the least rare charm. She is
+a woman for whom a man would live his greatest, and if he cannot live
+for her--may--die."
+
+The utterance was very slow, and seemed to lie on me like a hand on my
+lips compelling me to silence; he had forgotten all, except his memory
+of her, and where he sat with his eyes fixed outward on the drifting
+clouds that floated across the stars, I saw his lips quiver once, and I
+heard him murmur half aloud: "My darling! My darling! You will know how
+I loved you _then_----"
+
+And the silence was never broken between us, but he sat motionless thus
+all the hours through, looking out at the deep still woods, and the
+serene and lustrous skies, till the first beams of the sun shone over
+the hills in the east, and I shuddered, where I lay, at its light;--for
+I knew it was the signal of death.
+
+Then he arose, and bent towards me, and the kindly eyes of old looked
+down on mine.
+
+"Dear old fellow, the General expects me at dawn. I must leave you just
+now; say good-bye."
+
+His hand closed on mine, he looked on me one moment longer, a little
+lingeringly, a little wistfully, then he turned and went out with his
+guard; went out into the young day that was just breaking on the world.
+
+I watched his shadow as it faded, and I saw that the sun had risen
+wholly; and I thought of those who were to die with the morning light.
+
+All was very calm for a while; then the beat of a drum rolled through
+the quiet of the dawn, and the measured tramp of armed men sounded
+audibly; my heart stood still, my lips felt parched,--I knew the errand
+of that column marching so slowly across the parched turf. A little
+while longer yet, and I heard the sharp ring of the ramrods being
+withdrawn, and the dull echo of the charge being rammed down: with a
+single leap, as though the bullets were through me, I sprang, weak as I
+was, from my wretched pallet, and staggered to the open doorway, leaning
+there against the entrance powerless and spell-bound. I saw the file of
+soldiers loading; I saw the empty coffin-shells; I saw three men
+standing bound, their forms distinct against the clear, bright haze of
+morning, and the fresh foliage of the woods. Two of them were
+Virginians, but the third was not Stuart Lane With a great cry I sprang
+forward, but the guards seized my arms and held me, helpless as a woman,
+in their gripe. He whom we had called Deadly Dash heard, and looked up
+and smiled. His face was tranquil and full of light, as though the pure
+peace of the day shone there.
+
+The gripe of the sentinels held me as if in fetters of iron; the world
+seemed to rock and reel under me, a sea of blood seemed eddying before
+my eyes; the young day was dawning, and murder was done in its early
+hours, and I was held there to look on,--its witness, yet powerless to
+arrest it! I heard the formula--so hideous then!--"Make
+ready!"--"Present!"--"Fire!" I saw the long line of steel tubes belch
+out their smoke and flame. I heard the sullen echo of the report roll
+down from the mountains above. When the mist cleared away, the three
+figures stood no longer clear against the sunlight; they had fallen.
+
+With the mad violence of desperation I wrenched myself from my guards,
+and staggered to him where he lay; he was not quite dead yet; the balls
+had passed through his lungs, but he breathed still; his eyes were
+unclosed, and the gleam of a last farewell came in them. He smiled
+slightly, faintly once more.
+
+"She will know how I loved her now. Tell her I died for her," he said
+softly, while his gaze looked upwards to the golden sun-rays rising in
+the east.
+
+And with these words life passed away, the smile still lingering gently
+on his lips;--and I knew no more, for I fell like a man stunned down by
+him where he was stretched beside the grave that they had hewn for him
+ere he was yet dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I knew when I saw him there, as well as I knew by detail long after,
+that he had offered his life for Stuart Lane's, and that it had been
+accepted; the Virginian, ignorant of the sacrifice made for him, had
+been sent to the Southern lines during the night, told by the
+Northerners that he was pardoned on his parole to return in his stead a
+distinguished Federal officer lately captured by him. He knew nothing,
+dreamt nothing, of the exchange by which his life was given back to the
+woman who loved him, when his English Leader died in his place as the
+sun rose over the fresh summer world, never again to rise for those
+whose death-shot rang sullen and shrill through its silence.
+
+So Deadly Dash died, and his grave is nameless and unknown there under
+the shadow of the great Virginian forests. He was outlawed, condemned,
+exiled, and the world would see no good in him; sins were on him
+heavily, and vices lay darkly at his door; but when I think of that
+grave in the South where the grass grows so rankly now, and only the
+wild deer pauses, I doubt if there was not that in him which may well
+shame the best amongst us. We never knew him justly till he perished
+there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And my friend who told me this said no more, but took up his
+_brûle-gueule_ regretfully. The story is given as he gave it, and the
+States could whisper from the depths of their silent woods many tales of
+sacrifice as generous, of fortitude as great. That when he had related
+it he was something ashamed of having felt it so much, is true; and you
+must refer the unusual weakness, as he did, to the fact that he told it
+on the off-day of the Derby, after having put a cracker on Wild Charley.
+A sufficient apology for any number of frailties!
+
+
+
+
+THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING·
+
+OR,
+
+COACHES AND COUSINSHIP.
+
+
+Where the devil shall I go this Long? Paris is too hot; the inside of my
+adorable Château des Fleurs would give one a lively idea of the feelings
+of eels in a frying-pan. Rome's only fit to melt down puffy cardinals,
+as jocks set themselves before the kitchen fire preparatory to the
+Spring Meetings. In Switzerland there's nothing fit to eat. Spain might
+be the ticket--the Andalusians are a good-looking lot, but they haven't
+a notion of beer. Scotland I daren't enter, because I know I should get
+married under their rascally laws. I'd go to the Bads, but the V. P.'s
+fillies say they mean to do 'em this summer, and I won't risk meeting
+them if I know it; the baits they set to catch the unsuspecting are
+quite frightful. Where the devil _shall_ I go?
+
+So spoke Sydenham Morton, whilom Captain of Eton, now, in due course,
+having passed up to Kings, discussing ham-pie and audit, devils and
+coffee, while the June sun streamed through the large oriel windows.
+
+"_To_ the devil, I fear, if you only find your proper fraternity," said
+a man, coming in. Oak was never sported by Sydie, except when he was
+rattling certain little squares of ivory in boxes lined with green felt.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Keane, is that you? Come in."
+
+The permission was needless, insomuch as Keane was already in and down
+on a rocking-chair.
+
+"One o'clock, and only just begun your breakfast! I have finished more
+than half my day's work."
+
+"I dare say," answered Sydie; "but one shining light like you,
+monseigneur, is enough for a college. Why should I exert myself? I swore
+I hadn't four marks a year, and I've my fellowship for telling the
+furbelow. We all go in for the dolce here except you, and you're such a
+patent machine for turning out Q. E. D.s by the dozen, that you can no
+more help working than the bed-maker can help taking my tea and saying
+the cat did it, and 'May she never be forgiven if she ever so much as
+looked at that there blessed lock.' I say, find a Q. E. D. for me, to
+the most vexatious problem, where I'm to go this Long?"
+
+"Go a quiet reading tour; mark out a regular plan, and travel somewhere
+rugged and lonely, with not a crinoline, or a trout-stream, or a pack of
+hounds within a hundred miles; the middle of Stonehenge, for example, or
+with the lighthouse men out at the Smalls or Eddystone. You'd do wonders
+when you came back, Sydie."
+
+Sydie shook his head and puffed gravely at his pipe.
+
+"Thank you, sir. Cramming's not my line. As for history, I don't see
+anything particularly interesting in the blackguardisms of men all dust
+and ashes and gelatine now; if I were the Prince of Wales, I might think
+it my duty to inquire into the characters of my grandfathers; but not
+being that individual, I find the Derby list much more suited to my
+genius. As for the classics, they won't help me to ask for my dinner at
+Tortoni's, nor to ingratiate myself with the women at the Maison Dorée;
+and I prefer following Ovid's counsels, and enjoying the Falernian of
+life represented in these days by milk-punch, to plodding through the De
+Officiis. As for mathematics, it _may_ be something very grand to draw
+triangles and circles till A meets B because C is as long as D; but I
+know, when I did the same operation in chalk when I was a small actor
+on the nursery floor, my nurse (who might have gone along with the
+barbarian who stuck Archimedes) called me an idle brat. Well, I say,
+about the Long? Where are _you_ going, most grave and reverent
+seignior?"
+
+"Where there are no impertinent boys, if there be such a paradise on
+earth," rejoined Keane, lighting his pipe. "I go to my moor, of course,
+for the 12th, but until then I haven't made up my mind. I think I shall
+scamper over South America; I want freshening up, and I've a great fancy
+to see those buried cities, not to mention a chance of buffalo hunting."
+
+"Travelling's such a bore," interrupted Sydie, stretching himself out
+like an india-rubber tube. "Talk of the cherub that's always sitting up
+aloft to watch over poor Jack, there are always ten thousand demons
+watching over the life of any luckless Æothen; there are the
+custom-house men, whose natural prey he becomes, and the hotel-keepers,
+who fasten on him to suck his life-blood, and there are the mosquitoes,
+and other things less minute but not less agonizing; and there are
+guides and muleteers, and waiters and ciceroni--oh, hang it!
+travelling's a dreadful bore, if it were only for the inevitable widow
+with four daughters whom you've danced with once at a charity ball, who
+rushes up to you on the Boulevards or a Rhine steamer, and tacks herself
+on to you, and whom it's well for you if you can shake off when you
+scatter the dust of the city from the sole of your foot."
+
+"You can't chatter, can you?"
+
+"Yes; my frænum was happily cut when I was a baby. Fancy what a loss the
+world would have endured if it hadn't been!" said Sydie, lazily shutting
+his half-closed blue eyes. "I say, the governor has been bothering my
+life out to go down to St. Crucis; he's an old brick, you know, and has
+the primest dry in the kingdom. I wish you'd come, will you? There's
+capital fishing and cricketing, and you'd keep me company. Do. You shall
+have the best mount in the kingdom, and the General will do you no end
+of good on Hippocrate's rule--contrarieties cure contrarieties."
+
+"I'll think about it; but you know I prefer solitude generally;
+misanthropical, I admit, but decidedly lucky for me, as my companions
+through life will always be my ink-stand, my terrier, and my papers. I
+have never wished for any other yet, and I hope I never shall. Are you
+going to smoke and drink audit on that sofa all day?"
+
+"No," answered Sydie, "I'm going to take a turn at beer and Brown's for
+a change. Well, I shall take you down with me on Tuesday, sir, so that's
+settled."
+
+Keane laughed, and after some few words on the business that had brought
+him thither, went across the quad to his own rooms to plunge into the
+intricacies of Fourrier and Laplace, or give the vigor of his brain to
+stuffing some young goose's empty head, or cramming some idle young dog
+with ballast enough to carry him through the shoals and quicksands of
+his Greats.
+
+Gerald Keane was a mathematical Coach, and had taken high honors--a rare
+thing for a Kingsman to do, for are they not, by their own confession,
+the laziest disciples of the dolce in the whole of Granta, invariably
+bumped and caught out, and from sheer idleness letting other men beat
+Lord's and shame the Oxford Eleven, and graduate with Double Firsts,
+while they lie perdus in the shades of Holy Henry? Keane, however, was
+the one exception to the rule. He was dreadfully wild, as ladies say,
+for his first term or two, though equally eloquent at the Union; then
+his family exulting in the accuracies of their prophecies regarding his
+worthlessness, and somebody else daring him to go in for honors, his
+pluck was put up, and he set himself to work to show them all what he
+could do if he chose. Once roused to put out his powers, he liked using
+them; the bother of the training over, it is no trouble to keep place as
+stroke-oar; and now men pointed him out in the Senate House, and at the
+Senior Fellows' table, and he bid fair to rank with the writer on Jasher
+and the author of the Inductive Sciences.
+
+People called him very cold. It was popularly averred that he had no
+more feeling than Roubilliac's or Thorwaldsen's statues; but as he was a
+great favorite with the under-grads, and always good-natured to them,
+there were a few men who doubted the theory, though _he_ never tried to
+refute or dispute it.
+
+Of all the young fellows, the one Keane liked the best, and to whom he
+was kindest, was Sydenham Morton--Sydie to everybody in Granta, from the
+little fleuriste opposite in King's Parade, to the V. P.'s wife, who
+petted him because his uncle was a millionnaire--the dearest fellow in
+the world, according to all the Cambridge young ladies--the darling of
+all the milliner and confectioner girls in Trumpington Street and Petty
+Cury--the best chap going among the kindred spirits, who got gated, and
+lectured, and rusticated for skying over to Newmarket, or pommelling
+bargees, or taking a lark over at Cherryhinton--the best-dressed,
+fastest, and most charming of Cantabs, as he himself would gravely
+assure you.
+
+They were totally dissimilar, and far asunder in position; but an affair
+on the slope of the Matterhorn, when the boy had saved the elder man's
+life, had riveted attachment between them, and bridged over the
+difference of their academical rank.
+
+The Commencement came and went, with its speeches, and its H.R.H.
+Chancellor, and its pretty women gliding among the elms of Neville's
+Court (poor Leslie Ellis's daily haunt), filling the grim benches of the
+Senate House, and flitting past the carved benches of King's Chapel.
+Granta was henceforth a desert to all Cambridge belles; they could walk
+down Trumpington Street without meeting a score of little straw hats,
+and Trumpington Street became as odious as Sahara; the "darling Backs"
+were free to them, and, of course, they who, by all relations, from
+those of Genesis to those of Vanity Fair, have never cared, save for
+_fruit défendu_, saw nothing to admire in the trees, and grass, and
+river, minus outriggers and collegians. There was a general exodus:
+Masters' red hoods, Fellows Commoners' gold-lace, Fellows' gown and
+mortar boards, morning chapel surplices, and under-grads' straw-hats and
+cutaway coats, all vanished from court and library, street and cloister.
+Cambridge was empty; the married Dons and their families went off to
+country-houses or Rhine steamers; Fellows went touring with views to
+mediæval architecture, Roman remains, Greek inscriptions, Paris laisser
+aller, or Norwegian fishing, according to their tastes and habits;
+under-grads scattered themselves over the face of the globe, and were to
+be found in knots of two or three calling for stout in Véfour's, kicking
+up a row with Austrian gendarmerie, chalking up effigies of Bomba on
+Italian walls, striding up every mountain from Skiddaw to the Pic du
+Midi, burrowing like rabbits in a warren for reading purposes on
+Dartmoor, kissing sunny-haired Gretchens in German hostelries, swinging
+through the Vaterland with knapsacks and sticks, doing a walking
+tour--in fact, swarming everywhere with their impossible French and
+hearty voices, and lithe English muscle, Granta marked on them as
+distinctly as an M.B. waistcoat marks an Anglican, or utter ignorance of
+modern politics a "great classic."
+
+Cambridge had emptied itself of the scores of naughty boys that lie in
+the arms of Mater, and on Tuesday Keane and Sydie were shaking and
+rattling over those dreadful nervous Eastern Counties tenders, through
+that picturesque and beautiful country that does permutations with such
+laudable perseverance on pollards, fens, and flats--flats, fens, and
+pollards--at the snail's pace that, according to the E.G.R., we must
+believe to be "express."
+
+"I wrote and told the governor you were coming down with me, sir," said
+Sydie, hanging up his hat. "I didn't tell him what a trouble I had to
+make you throw over South America for a fortnight, and come and taste
+his curry at the Beeches. You'll like the old boy; he's as hot and
+choleric, and as genial and good-hearted, as any old brick that ever
+walked. He was born as sweet-tempered and soft-mouthed as mamma when an
+eldest son waltzes twice with Adeliza, and the pepper's been put into
+him by the curry-powder, the gentlemanlike transportation, and the
+unlimited command over black devils, enjoyed by gentlemen of the
+H.E.I.C.S."
+
+"A nabob uncle," thought Keane. "Oh, I see, yellow, dyspeptic, always
+boring one with 'How to govern India,' and recollections of 'When I
+served with Napier.' What a fool I was to let Sydie persuade me to go. A
+month in Lima and the Pampas would be much pleasanter."
+
+"He came over last year," continued Sydie, in blissful ignorance, "and
+bought the Beeches, a very jolly place, only he's crammed it with
+everything anybody suggested, and tried anything that any farmer
+recommended, so that the house and the estate present a peculiar
+compendium of all theories of architecture, and a general exhibition of
+all sorts of tastes. He's his hobbies; pouncing on and apprehending
+small boys is one of 'em, for which practice he is endeared to the youth
+of St. Crucis as the 'old cove,' the 'Injian devil,' and like
+affectionate cognomens. But the General's weak point is me--me and
+little Fay."
+
+"His mare, I suppose?"
+
+"His mare!--bless my heart, no!--his mare!" And Sydie lay back, and
+laughed silently. "His mare! By George! what would she say? She's a good
+deal too lively a young lady to run in harness for anybody, though
+she's soft-mouthed enough when she's led. Mare! No, Fay's his niece--my
+cousin. Her father and my father went to glory when we were both smalls,
+and left us in legacy to the General, and a pretty pot of money the
+legacy has cost him."
+
+"Your cousin, indeed! The name's more like a mare's than a girl's,"
+answered Keane, thinking to himself. "A cousin! I just wish I'd known
+that. One of those Indian girls, I bet, tanned brown as a berry, flirts
+à outrance, has run the gauntlet of all the Calcutta balls, been engaged
+to men in all the Arms, talks horridly broad Anglo-Indian-English. I
+know the style."
+
+The engine screamed, and pulled up at the St. Crucis station, some
+seventy miles farther on, lying in the midst of Creswickian landscapes,
+with woodlands, and cottages, and sweet fresh stretches of meadow-land,
+such as do one's heart good after hard days and late nights in dust and
+gaslight.
+
+"Deuced fine points," said Sydie, taking the ribbons of a high-stepping
+bay that had brought one of the neatest possible traps to take him and
+Keane to the Beeches, and springing, in all his glory, to the box, than
+which no imperial throne could have offered to him one-half so
+delightful a seat. "Governor never keeps screws. What a crying shame
+we're not allowed to keep the sorriest hack at King's. That comes of
+gentlemen slipping into shoes that were meant for beggars. Hallo, there
+are the old beech-trees; I vow I can almost taste the curry and dry from
+looking at them."
+
+In dashed the bay through the park-gates, sending the shingle flying up
+in small simoons, and the rooks cawing in supreme surprise from their
+nests in the branches of the beech-trees.
+
+"Hallo, my ancient, how are you?" began Sydie to the butler, while that
+stately person expanded into a smile of welcome. "Down, dog, down! 'Pon
+my life, the old place looks very jolly. What have you hung all that
+armor up for;--to make believe our ancestors dwelt in these marble
+halls? How devilish dusty I am. Where's the General? Didn't know we were
+coming till next train. Fay! Fay! where are you? Ashton, where's Miss
+Morton?"
+
+"Here, Sydie dear," cried the young lady in question, rushing across the
+hall with the most ecstatic delight, and throwing herself into the
+Cantab's arms, who received her with no less cordiality, and kissed her
+straightway, regardless of the presence of Keane, the butler, and
+Harris.
+
+"Oh, Sydie," began the young lady, breathlessly, "I'm so delighted
+you're come. There's the archery fête, and a picnic at Shallowton, and
+an election ball over at Coverdale, and I want you to dance with me, and
+to try the new billiard-table, and to come and see my aviary, and to
+teach me pistol-shooting (because Julia Dupuis can shoot splendidly, and
+talks of joining the Rifles), and to show me how to do Euclid, and to
+amuse me, and to play with me, and to tell me which is the prettiest of
+Snowdrop's pups to be saved, and to----" She stopped suddenly, and
+dropped from enthusiastic tirade to subdued surprise, as she caught
+sight of Keane for the first time. "Oh, Sydie, why did you not introduce
+me to your friend? How rude I have been!"
+
+"Mr. Keane, my cousin, the torment of my existence, Miss Morton in
+public, Little Fay in private life. There, you know one another now. I
+can't say any more. Do tell me where the governor is."
+
+"Mr. Keane, what can you think of me?" cried Fay. "Any friend of
+Sydenham's is most welcome to the Beeches, and my uncle will scold me
+frightfully for giving you such a reception. Please do forgive me, I was
+so delighted to see my cousin."
+
+"Which I can fully enter into, having a weakness for Sydie myself,"
+smiled Keane. "I am sure he is very fortunate in being the cause of such
+an excuse."
+
+Keane said it _par complaisance_, but rather carelessly; young ladies,
+as a class, being one of his aversions. He looked at Fay Morton,
+however, and saw she was not an Indianized girl after all. She was not
+yellow, but, au contraire, had waving fair hair, long dark eyes, and a
+mischievous, sunny face--
+
+    A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,
+    And sweet as English air could make her.
+
+"Where's the governor, Fay?" reiterated Sydie.
+
+"Here, my dear boy. Thought of your old uncle the first thing, Sydie?
+God bless my soul, how well you look! Confound you, why didn't you tell
+me what train you were coming by? Devil take you, Ashton, why's there no
+fire in the hall? Thought it was warm, did you? Hum! more fool you
+then."
+
+"Uncle dear," said Miss Fay, "here is Sydie's friend, Mr. Keane; you are
+being as rude as I have been."
+
+The General, at this conjuration, swung sharp round, a stout, hale,
+handsome old fellow, with gray moustaches and a high color, holding a
+spade in his hand and clad in a linen coat.
+
+"Bless my soul, sir," cried the General, shaking Keane's hand with the
+greatest possible energy, "charmed to see you--delighted, 'pon my honor;
+only hope you're come to stay till Christmas; there are plenty of
+bachelors' dens. Devil take me! of what was I thinking? I was pleased
+to see that boy, I suppose. More fool I, you'll say, a lazy,
+good-for-nothing young dog like him. Don't let me keep you standing in
+the hall. Cursed cold, isn't it? and there's Little Fay in muslin!
+Ashton, send some hot water into the west room for Mr.--Mr.----Confound
+you, Sydie, why didn't you tell--I mean introduce me?--Mr. Keane.
+Luncheon will be on the table in ten minutes. Like curry, Mr. Keane?
+There, get along, Sydie, you foolish boy; you can talk to Fay after
+luncheon."
+
+"Sydie," whispered Fay, an hour before dinner, when she had teased the
+Cantab's life out of him till he had consented to pronounce judgment on
+the puppies, "what a splendid head that man has you brought with you;
+he'd do for Plato, with that grand calm brow and lofty unapproachable
+look. Who is he?"
+
+"The greatest philosopher of modern times," responded her cousin,
+solemnly. "A condensation of Solon, Thales, Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero,
+Lucullus, Bion, Theophrastes, and Co.; such a giant of mathematical
+knowledge, and all other knowledge, too, that every day, when he passes
+under Bacon's Gate, we are afraid the old legend will come to pass, and
+it will tumble down as flat as a pancake; a homage to him, but a loss to
+Cambridge."
+
+"Nonsense," said Miss Fay, impatiently. "(I like that sweet little thing
+with the black nose best, dear.) _Who_ is he? What is he? How old is he?
+What's his name? Where does he live?"
+
+"Gently, young woman," cried Sydie. "He is Tutor and Fellow of King's,
+and a great gun besides; he's some twenty-five years older than you. His
+name on the rolls is Gerald, I believe, and he dwells in the shadow of
+Mater, beyond the reach of my cornet; for which fact, not being
+musically inclined, he is barbarian enough to return thanks daily in
+chapel."
+
+"I am sorry he is come. It was stupid of you to bring him."
+
+"Wherefore, _ma cousine_? Are you afraid of him? You needn't be. Young
+ladies are too insignificant atoms of creation for him to criticise.
+He'll no more expect sense from you than from Snowdrop and her pups."
+
+"Afraid!" repeated Fay, with extreme indignation. "I should like to see
+any man of whom I should feel afraid! If he doesn't like fun and
+nonsense, I pity him; but if he despise me ever so much for it, I shall
+enjoy myself before him, and in spite of him. I was sorry you brought
+him, because he will take you away when I want you all to myself; and he
+looks so haughty, that----"
+
+"You _are_ afraid of him, Fay, and won't own it."
+
+"I am _not_," reiterated Fay, impetuously; "and I will smoke a cigar
+with him after dinner, to show you I am not one bit."
+
+"I bet you six pair of gloves you do no such thing, young lady."
+
+"Done. Do keep the one with a black nose, Sydie; and yet that little
+liver-colored darling is too pretty to be killed. Suppose we save them
+all? Snowdrop will be so pleased."
+
+Whereon Fay kissed all the little snub noses with the deepest affection,
+and was caught in the act by Keane and the General.
+
+"There's that child with her arms full of dogs," said the General,
+beaming with satisfaction at sight of his niece. "She's a little,
+spoilt, wilful thing. She's an old bachelor's pet, and you must make
+allowances. I call her the fairy of the Beeches, God bless her! She
+nursed me last winter, when I was at death's door from these cursed cold
+winds, sir, better than Miss Nightingale could have done. What a
+devilish climate it _is_; never two days alike. I don't wonder
+Englishwomen are such icicles, poor things; they're frostbitten from
+their cradle upwards."
+
+"India warms them up, General, doesn't it?"
+
+The General shook with laughter.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure; if prudery's the fashion, they'll wear it, sir,
+as they would patches or hair-powder; but they're always uncommonly glad
+to leave it off and lock it out of sight when they can. What do you
+think of the kennels? I say, Sydie, confound you, why did you bring down
+any traps with you? Haven't room for 'em, not for one. Couldn't cram a
+tilbury into the coach-house."
+
+"A trap, governor?" said Sydie, straightening his back after examination
+of the pups; "can't keep even a wall-eyed cab-horse; wish I could."
+
+"Where's your drag, then?" demanded the General.
+
+"My drag? Don't I just wish I had one, to offer my bosom friend the
+V. P. a seat on the box. Calvert, of Trinity, tooled us over in his to
+the Spring Meetings, and his grays are the sweetest pair of goers--the
+leaders especially--that ever you saw in harness. We came back 'cross
+country, to get in time for hall, and a pretty mess we made of it, for
+we broke the axle, and lamed the off-wheeler, and----"
+
+"But, God bless my soul," stormed the General, excited beyond measure,
+"you wrote me word you were going to bring a drag down with you, and of
+course I supposed you meant what you said, and I had Harris in about it,
+and he swore the coach-house was as full of traps as ever it could hold,
+so I had my tax-cart and Fay's phaeton turned into one of the stalls,
+and then, after all, it comes out you've never brought it! Devil take
+you, Sydie, why can't you be more thoughtful----"
+
+"But, my dear governor----"
+
+"Nonsense; don't talk to me!" cried the General, trying to work himself
+into a passion, and diving into the recesses of six separate pockets one
+after another. "Look here, sir, I suppose you'll believe your own words?
+Here it is in black and white.--'P. S. I shall bring _my Coach_ down
+with me.' There, what do you say now? Confound you, what are you
+laughing at? _I_ don't see anything to laugh at. In my day, young
+fellows didn't make fools of old men in this way. Bless my soul, why
+the devil don't you leave off laughing, and talk a little common sense?
+The thing's plain enough.--'P.S. _I shall bring my Coach down with
+me_.'"
+
+"So I have," said Sydie, screaming with laughter. "Look at him--he's a
+first-rate Coach, too! Wheels always oiled, and ready for any road;
+always going up hill, and never caught coming down; started at a devil
+of a pace, and now keeps ahead of all other vehicles on all highways. A
+first-class Coach, that will tool me through the tortuous lanes and
+treacherous pitfalls of the Greats with flying colors. My Coach! Bravo,
+General! that's the best bit of fun I've had since I dressed up like
+Sophonisba Briggs, and led the V. P. a dance all round the quad, every
+hair on his head standing erect in his virtuous indignation at the awful
+morals of his college."
+
+"Eh, what?" grunted the General, light beginning to dawn upon him. "Do
+you mean Mr. Keane? Hum! how's one to be up to all your confounded
+slang? How could I know? Devil take you, Sydie, why can't you write
+common English? You young fellows talk as bad jargon as Sepoys. You're
+sure I'm delighted to see you, Mr. Keane, though I did make the
+mistake."
+
+"Thank you, General," said Keane; "but it's rather cool of you, Master
+Sydie, to have forced me on to your uncle's hands without his wish or
+his leave."
+
+"Not at all, not at all," swore the General, with vehement cordiality.
+"I gave him carte blanche to ask whom he would, and unexpected guests
+are always most welcome; _not_ that you were unexpected though, for I'd
+told that boy to be sure and bring somebody down here----"
+
+"And have had the tax-cart and my phaeton turned out to make comfortable
+quarters for him," said Miss Fay, with a glance at The Coach to see how
+he took chaff, "and I only hope Mr. Keane may like his accommodation."
+
+"Perhaps, Miss Morton," said Keane, smiling, "I shall like it so well
+that you will have to say to me as poor Voltaire to his troublesome
+abbé, 'Don Quichotte prenait les auberges pour les châteaux, mais vous
+avez pris les châteaux pour les auberges.'"
+
+"Tiresome man," thought Fay. "I wish Sydie hadn't brought him here; but
+I shall do as I always do, however grand and supercilious he may look.
+He has lived among all those men and books till he has grown as cold as
+granite. What a pity it is people don't enjoy existence as I do!"
+
+"You are thinking, Miss Morton," said Keane, as he walked on beside her,
+with an amused glance at her face, which was expressive enough of her
+thoughts, "that if your uncle is glad to see me, you are not, and that
+Sydie was very stupid not to bring down one of his kindred spirits
+instead of----Don't disclaim it now; you should veil your face if you
+wish your thoughts not to be read."
+
+"I was not going to disclaim it," said Fay, quickly looking up at him
+with a rapid glance, half penitence, half irritation. "I always tell the
+truth; but I was _not_ thinking exactly that; I don't want any of
+Sydie's friends--I detest boys--but I certainly _was_ thinking that as
+you look down on everything that we all delight in, I fancied you and
+the Beeches will hardly agree. If I am rude, you must not be angry; you
+wanted me to tell you the truth."
+
+Keane smiled again.
+
+"Do I look down on the things you delight in? I hardly know enough of
+you, as we have only addressed about six syllables to each other, to be
+able to judge what you like and what you don't like; but certainly I
+must admit, that caressing the little round heads of those puppies
+yonder, which seemed to afford you such extreme rapture, would not be
+any source of remarkable gratification to me."
+
+Fay looked up at him and laughed.
+
+"Well, I am fond of animals as you are fond of books. Is it not an open
+question whether the live dog or sheepskin is not as good as the dead
+Morocco or Russian leather?"
+
+"Is it an open question, whether Macaulay's or Arago's brain weighs no
+more than a cat's or a puppy's?"
+
+"Brain!" said impudent little Fay; "are your great men always as honest
+and as faithful as my poor little Snowdrop? I have an idea that
+Sheridan's brains were often obscured by brandy; that Richelieu had the
+weakness to be prouder of his bad poems than his magnificent policies;
+and that Pope and Byron had the folly to be more tenacious of a glance
+at their physical defect than an onslaught on their noblest works. I
+could mention a good many other instances where brain was not always a
+voucher for corresponding strength of character."
+
+Keane was surprised to hear a sensible speech from this volatile little
+puss, and honored her by answering her seriously.
+
+"Say, rather, Miss Morton, that those to whom many temptations fall
+should have many excuses made. Where the brain preponderates, excelling
+in creative faculty and rapid thought, there will the sensibilities be
+proportionately acute. The vivacity and vigorous life which produced the
+rapid flow of Sheridan's eloquence led him into the dissipation which
+made him end his days in a spunging-house. Men of cooler minds and
+natures must not presume to judge him. They had not his temptation; they
+cannot judge of his fault. Richelieu, in all probability, amused himself
+with his verses as he amused himself with his white kitten and its cork,
+as a _délassement_; had he piqued himself upon his poetry, as they say,
+he would have turned poetaster instead of politician. As for the other
+two, you must remember that Pope's deformity made him a subject of
+ridicule to the woman he was fool enough to worship, and Byron, poor
+fellow, was over-susceptible on all points, or he would scarcely have
+allowed the venomed arrows from the Scotch Reviewers to wound him, nor
+would he have cared for the desertion of a wife who was to him like ice
+to fire. When you are older, you will learn that it is very dangerous
+and unjust to say this thing is right, that wrong, that feeling wise, or
+this foolish; for all temperaments are different, and the same
+circumstances may produce very different effects. Your puppies will grow
+up with dissimilar characters; how much more so, then, must men?"
+
+Miss Fay was quiet for a minute, then she flashed her mischievous eyes
+on him.
+
+"Certainly; but then, by your own admission, you have no right to decide
+that your love for mathematics is wise, and my love for Snowdrop
+foolish; it may be quite _au contraire_. Perhaps, after all, I may have
+'chosen the better part.'"
+
+"Fay, go in and dress for dinner," interrupted the General, trotting up;
+"your tongue would run on forever if nobody stopped it; you're no
+exception to your sex on that point. Is she?"
+
+Keane laughed.
+
+"Perhaps Miss Morton's frænum, like Sydie's, was cut too far in her
+infancy, and therefore she has been 'unbridled' ever since."
+
+"In all things!" cried little Fay. "Nobody has put the curb on me yet,
+and nobody ever shall."
+
+"Don't be too sure, Fay," cried Sydie. "Rarey does wonders with the
+wildest fillies. Somebody may bring you down on your knees yet."
+
+"You'll have to see to that, Sydie," laughed the General. "Come, get
+along, child, to your toilette. I never have my soup cold and my curry
+overdone. To wait for his dinner is a stretch of good nature, and
+patience that ought not to be expected of any man."
+
+The soup was not cold nor the curry overdone, and the dinner was
+pleasant enough, in the long dining-room, with the June sun streaming in
+through its bay-windows from out the brilliant-colored garden, and the
+walls echoing with the laughter of Sydie and his cousin, the young lady
+keeping true to her avowal of "not caring for Plato's presence."
+"Plato," however, listened quietly, peeling his peaches with tranquil
+amusement; for if the girl talked nonsense, it was clever nonsense, as
+rare, by the way, and quite as refreshing as true wit.
+
+"My gloves are safe; you're too afraid of him, Fay," whispered Sydie,
+bending forwards to give her some hautboys.
+
+"Am I?" cried Miss Fay, with a _moue_ of supreme contempt. Neither the
+whisper nor the _moue_ escaped Keane, as he talked with the governor on
+model drainage.
+
+"Where's my hookah, Fay?" asked the General, after dessert. "Get it,
+will you, my pet?"
+
+"Voilà!" cried Miss Fay, lifting the narghilé from the sideboard. Then
+taking some cigars off the mantelpiece, she put one in her own mouth,
+struck a fusee, and, handing the case to Keane, said, with a saucy smile
+in her soft bright eyes, though, to tell the truth, she was a little bit
+afraid of taking liberties with him:
+
+"If you are not above such a sublunary indulgence, will you have a cigar
+with me?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," said Keane, with a grave bow; "and if you
+would like to further rival George Sand, I shall be very happy to give
+you the address of my tailor."
+
+"Thank you exceedingly; but as long as crinoline is the type of the sex
+that are a little lower than the angels, and ribbon-ties the seal of
+those but a trifle better than Mephistopheles, I don't think I will
+change it," responded Little Fay, contemptuously, as she threw herself
+down on a couch with an indignant defiant glance, and puffed at her
+Manilla.
+
+"I _hate_ him, Sydie," said the little lady, vehemently, that night.
+
+"Do you, dear?" answered the Cantab; "you see, you've never had anybody
+to be afraid of, or had any man neglect you before."
+
+"He may neglect me if he please, I am sure I do not care," rejoined Fay,
+disdainfully; "only I do wish, Sydie, that you had never brought him
+here to make us all uncomfortable."
+
+"He don't make me uncomfortable, quite otherwise; nor yet the governor;
+you're the only victim, Fay."
+
+Fay saw little enough of Keane for the next week or two. He was out all
+day with Sydie trout-fishing, or walking over his farms with the
+General, or sitting in the study reading, and writing his articles for
+the _Cambridge Journal_, _Leonville's Mathematical Journal_, or the
+_Westminster Review_. But when she was with him, there was no mischief
+within her reach that Miss Fay did not perpetrate. Keane, to tease her,
+would condemn--so seriously that she believed him--all that she loved
+the best; he would tell her that he admired quiet, domestic women; that
+he thought girls should be very subdued and retiring; that they should
+work well, and not care much for society; at all of which, being her
+extreme antipodes, Little Fay would be vehemently wrathful. She would
+get on her pony without any saddle in her evening dress, and ride him at
+the five-bar gate in the stable-yard; she would put on Sydie's
+smoking-cap, and look very pretty in it, and take a Queen's on the divan
+of the smoking-room, reading _Bell's Life_, and asking Keane how much he
+would bet on the October; she would spend all the morning making wreaths
+of roses, dressing herself and the puppies up in them, inquiring if it
+was not a laudable and industrious occupation. There was no nonsense or
+mischief Fay would not imagine and forthwith commit, and anything they
+wanted her not to do she would do straightway, even to the imperilling
+of her own life and limb. She tried hard to irritate or rouse "Plato,"
+as she called him, but Plato was not to be moved, and treated her as a
+spoilt child, whom he alone had sense enough to resist.
+
+"It will be great folly for you to attempt it, Miss Morton. Those horses
+are not fit to be driven by any one, much less by a woman," said Keane,
+quietly, one morning.
+
+They were in the stable-yard, and chanced to be alone when a new
+purchase of the governor's--two scarcely broken-in thorough-bred
+colts--were brought with a new mail-phaeton into the yard, and Miss Fay
+forthwith announced her resolution of driving them round the avenue. The
+groom that came with them told her they were almost more than he could
+manage, their own coachman begged and implored, Keane reasoned quietly,
+all to no purpose. The rosebud had put out its little wilful thorns;
+Keane's words added fuel to the fire. Up she sprang, looking the
+daintiest morsel imaginable perched up on that very exalted box-seat,
+told the horrified groom to mount behind, and started them off, lifting
+her hat with a graceful bow to "Plato," who stood watching the phaeton
+with his arms folded and his cigar in his mouth.
+
+Soon after, he started in the contrary direction, for the avenue circled
+the Beeches in an oval of four miles, and he knew he should meet her
+coming back. He strolled along under the pleasant shadow of the great
+trees, enjoying the sunset and the fresh air, and capable of enjoying
+them still more but for an inward misgiving. His presentiment was not
+without its grounds. He had walked about a mile and a half round the
+avenue, when a cloud of dust told him what was up, and in the distance
+came the thorough-breds, broken away as he had prophesied, tearing along
+with the bits between their teeth, Little Fay keeping gallantly hold of
+the ribbons, but as powerless over the colts now they had got their
+heads as the groom leaning from the back seat.
+
+On came the phaeton, bumping, rattling, oscillating, threatening every
+second to be turned over. Keane caught one glance of Fay's face,
+resolute and pale, and of her little hands grasping the ribbons, till
+they were cut and bleeding with the strain. There was nothing for it but
+to stand straight in the animals' path, catch their heads, and throw
+them back on their haunches. Luckily, his muscles were like
+iron--luckily, too, the colts had come a long way, and were not fresh.
+He stood like a rock, and checked them; running a very close risk of
+dislocating his arms with the shock, but saving little Fay from
+destruction. The colts stood trembling, the groom jumped out and caught
+the reins, Keane amused himself silently with the mingled penitence,
+vexation, shame, and rebellion visible in the little lady's face.
+
+"Well," said he, quietly, "as you were so desirous of breaking your
+neck, will you ever forgive me for defeating your purpose?"
+
+"Pray don't!" cried Fay, passionately. "I do thank you so much for
+saving my life; I think it so generous and brave of you to have rescued
+me at such risk to yourself. I feel that I can never be grateful enough
+to you, but don't talk in that way. I know it was silly and self-willed
+of me."
+
+"It was; that fact is obvious."
+
+"Then I shall make it more so," cried Miss Fay, with her old wilfulness.
+"I do feel very grateful, and I would tell you so, if you would let me;
+but if you think it has made me afraid, you are quite wrong, and so you
+shall see."
+
+And before he could interfere, or do more than mechanically spring up
+after her, she had caught the reins from the groom, and started the
+trembling colts off again. But Keane put his hand on the ribbons.
+
+"Foolish child; are you mad?" he said, so gravely yet so gently that Fay
+let them go, and let him drive her back to the stable-yard, where she
+sprang out, and rushed away to her own room, terrified the governor with
+a few vehement sentences, which gave him a vague idea that Keane was
+murdered and both Fay's legs broken, and then had a private cry all to
+herself, with her arms round Snowdrop's neck, curled up in one of the
+drawing-room windows, where she had not been long when the General and
+Keane passed through, not noticing her, hidden as she was, in curtains,
+cushions, and flowers.
+
+"She's a little wilful thing, Keane," the General was saying, "but you
+mustn't think the worse of her for that."
+
+"I don't. I am sick of those conventional young ladies who agree with
+everything one says to them--who keep all the frowns for mothers and
+servants, and are as serene as a cloudless sky abroad, smile blandly on
+all alike, and haven't an opinion of their own."
+
+"Fay's plenty of opinions of her own," chuckled the General; "and she
+tells 'em pretty freely, too. Bless the child, she's not ashamed of any
+of her thoughts and never will be."
+
+"I hope not. Your little niece can do things that no other young lady
+could and they are so pretty in her that it would be a thousand pities
+for her to grow one atom less natural and wilful. Grapes growing wild
+are charming--grapes trained to a stake are ruined. I assure you, if I
+were you, I would not scold her for driving those colts to-day. High
+spirits and love of fun led her on, and the courage and presence of mind
+she displayed are too rare among her sex for us to do right in checking
+them."
+
+"To be sure, to be sure," assented the governor, gleefully. "God bless
+the child, she's one among a thousand, sir. Cognac, not milk and water.
+There's the dinner-bell; confound it."
+
+Whereat the General made his exit, and Keane also; and Fay kissed the
+spaniel with even more passionate attachment than ordinary.
+
+"Ah, Snowdrop, I don't hate him any more; he is a darling!"
+
+One glowing August morning Keane was in the study pondering whether he
+would go to his moor or not. The General had besought him to stay. His
+gamekeeper wrote him that it was a horribly bad rainy season in
+Invernessshire; the trout and the rabbits were very good sport in a mild
+way here. Altogether, Keane felt half disposed to keep where he was,
+when a shadow fell across his paper; and, as he looked up, he saw in the
+open window the English rosebud.
+
+"Is it not one of the open questions, Mr. Keane," asked Fay, "whether it
+is very wise to spend all this glorious morning shut out of the sight of
+the sun-rays and the scent of the flowers?"
+
+"How have _you_ been spending it, then?"
+
+"Putting bouquets in all the rooms, cleaning my aviary, talking to the
+puppies, and reading Jocelyn under the limes in the shrubberies--all
+very puerile, but all very pleasant. Perhaps if you descended to a lazy
+day like that now and then, you might be none the worse!"
+
+"Is that a challenge? Will you take me under the limes?"
+
+"No, indeed! I do not admit men who despise them to my gardens of
+Armida, any more than you would admit me into your Schools. I have as
+great a scorn for a skeptic as you have for a tyro."
+
+"Pardon me. I have no scorn for a tyro. But you would not come to the
+Accademe; you dislike 'Plato' too much."
+
+Fay looked up at him half shyly, half mischievously.
+
+"Yes, I do dislike you, when you look down on me as Richelieu might have
+looked down on his kitten."
+
+"Liking to see its play?" said Keane, half sadly. "Contrasting its gay
+insouciance with his own toil and turmoil, regretting, perhaps, the time
+when trifles made his joy as they did his kitten's? If I were to look on
+you so, there would not be much to offend you."
+
+"You do not think so of me, or you would speak to me as if I were an
+intelligent being, not a silly little thing."
+
+"How do you know I think you silly?"
+
+"Because you think all women so."
+
+"Perhaps; but then you should rather try to redeem me from my error in
+doctrine. Come, let us sign a treaty of peace. Take me under the limes.
+I want some fresh air after writing all day; and in payment I will teach
+you Euclid, as you vainly beseeched your cousin to do yesterday."
+
+"Will you?" cried Fay, eagerly. Then she threw back her head. "I never
+am won by bribes."
+
+"Nor yet by threats? What a difficult young lady you are. Come, show me
+your shrubbery sanctum now you have invaded mine."
+
+The English rosebud laid aside its wilful thorns, and Fay, a little less
+afraid of her Plato, and therefore a little less defiant to him, led him
+over the grounds, filled his hands with flowers, showed him her aviary,
+read some of Jocelyn to him, to show him, she said, that Lamartine was
+better than the Oedipus in Coloneus, and thought, as she dressed for
+dinner, "I wonder if he does despise me--he has such a beautiful face,
+if he were not so haughty and cold!"
+
+The next day Keane gave her an hour of Euclid in the study. Certainly
+The Coach had never had such a pretty pupil; and he wished every dull
+head he had to cram was as intelligent as this fair-haired one. Fay was
+quick and clever; she was stimulated, moreover, by his decree concerning
+the stupidity of all women; she really worked as hard as any young man
+studying for degrees when they supposed her fast asleep in bed, and she
+got over the Pons Asinorum in a style that fairly astonished her tutor.
+
+The Coach did not dislike his occupation either; it did him good, after
+his life of solitude and study, something as the kitten and cork did
+Richelieu good after his cabinets and councils; and Little Fay, with her
+flowers and fun, mischief and impudence, and that winning wilfulness
+which it amused him gradually to tame down, unbent the chillness which
+had grown upon him. He was the better for it, as a man after hard study
+or practice is the better for some fresh sea-breezes, and some days of
+careless dolce.
+
+"Well, Fay, have you had another poor devil flinging himself at your
+feet by means of a postage-stamp?" said Sydie one morning at breakfast.
+"You can't disguise anything from me, your most interested, anxious, and
+near and dear relative. Whenever the governor looks particularly stormy
+I see the signs of the times, that if I do not forthwith remove your
+dangerously attractive person, all the bricks, spooneys, swells, and
+do-nothings in the county will speedily fill the Hanwell wards to
+overflowing."
+
+"Don't talk such nonsense, Sydie," said Fay, impatiently, with a glance
+at Keane, as she handed him his chocolate.
+
+"Ah! deuce take the fellows," chuckled the General. "Love, devotion,
+admiration! What a lot of stuff they do write. I wonder if Fay were a
+little beggar, how much of it all would stand the test? But we know a
+trick worth two of that. Try those sardines, Keane. House is let,
+Fay--eh? House is let; nobody need apply. Ha, ha!"
+
+And the General took some more curry, laughing till he was purple, while
+Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she was rarely guilty; Sydie
+smiled, and Keane picked out his sardines with calm deliberation.
+
+"Hallo! God bless my soul!" burst forth the General again. "Devil take
+me! I'll be hanged if I stand it! Confound 'em all! I do call it hard
+for a man not to be able to sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens!
+what will come to the country, if all those little devils grow up to be
+food for Calcraft? He's actually pulling the bark off the trees, as I
+live! Excuse me, I _can't_ sit still and see it."
+
+Wherewith the General bolted from his chair, darted through the window,
+upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a stand of flowers in his exit,
+and bolted breathlessly across the park with the poker in his hand.
+
+"Bless his old heart! Ain't he a brick?" shouted Sydie. "Do excuse me,
+Fay, I must go and hear him blow up that boy sky-high, and give him a
+shilling for tuck afterwards; it will be so rich."
+
+The Cantab made his exit, and Fay busied herself calming the kittens'
+minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniums. Keane read his _Times_ for
+ten minutes, then looked up.
+
+"Miss Morton, where is your tongue? I have not heard it for a quarter of
+an hour, a miracle that has never happened in the two months I have been
+at the Beeches."
+
+"You do not want to hear it."
+
+"What! am I in _mauvais odeur_ again?" smiled Keane. "I thought we were
+good friends. Have you found the Q. E. D. to the problem I gave you?"
+
+"To be sure!" cried Fay, exultantly. And kneeling down by him, she went
+through the whole thing in exceeding triumph.
+
+"You are a good child," said her tutor, smiling, in himself amazed at
+this volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. "I think you will
+be able to take your degree, if you like. Come, do you hate me now,
+Fay?"
+
+"No," said Fay, a little shyly. "I never hated you, I always admired
+you; but I was afraid of you, though I would never confess it to Sydie."
+
+"Never be afraid of me," said Keane, putting his hand on hers as it lay
+on the arm of his chair. "You have no cause. You can do things few girls
+can; but they are pretty in you, where they might be--not so pretty in
+others. _I_ like them at the least. You are very fond of your cousin,
+are you not?"
+
+"Of Sydie? Oh, I love him dearly!"
+
+Keane took his hand away, and rose, as the General trotted in:
+
+"God bless my soul, Keane, how warm it is! Confoundedly hot without
+one's hat, I can tell you. Had my walk all for nothing, too. That cursed
+little idiot wasn't trespassing after all. Stephen had set him to spud
+out the daisies, and I'd thrashed the boy before I'd listen to him.
+Devil take him!"
+
+August went out and September came in, and Keane stayed on at the
+Beeches. They were pleasant days to them all, knocking over the
+partridges right and left, enjoying a cold luncheon under the luxuriant
+hedges, and going home for a dinner, full of laughter, and talk, and
+good cookery; and Fay's songs afterwards, as wild and sweet in their way
+as a goldfinch's on a hawthorn spray.
+
+"You like Little Fay, don't you, Keane?" said the General, as they went
+home one evening.
+
+Keane looked startled for a second.
+
+"Of course," he said, rather haughtily. "That Miss Morton is very
+charming every one must admit."
+
+"Bless her little heart! She's a wild little filly, Keane, but she'll go
+better and truer than your quiet broken-in ones, who wear the harness so
+respectably, and are so wicked and vicious in their own minds. And what
+do you think of my boy?" asked the General, pointing to Sydie, who was
+in front. "How does he stand at Cambridge?"
+
+"Sydie? Oh, he's a nice young fellow. He is a great favorite there, and
+he is--the best things he can be--generous, sweet-tempered, and
+honorable----"
+
+"To be sure," echoed the General, rubbing his hands. "He's a dear boy--a
+very dear boy. They're both exactly all I wished them to be, dear
+children; and I must say I am delighted to see 'em carrying out the plan
+I had always made for 'em from their childhood."
+
+"Being what, General, may I ask?"
+
+"Why, any one can see, as plain as a pikestaff, that they're in love
+with each other," said the General, glowing with satisfaction; "and I
+mean them to be married and happy. They dote on each other, Keane, and I
+sha'n't put any obstacles in their way. Youth's short enough, Heaven
+knows; let 'em enjoy it, say I, it don't come back again. Don't say
+anything to him about it; I want to have some fun with him. They've
+settled it all, of course, long ago; but he hasn't confided in me, the
+sly dog. Trust an old campaigner, though, for twigging an _affaire de
+coeur_. Bless them both, they make me feel a boy again. We'll have a gay
+wedding, Keane; mind you come down for it. I dare say it'll be at
+Christmas."
+
+Keane walked along, drawing his cap over his eyes. The sun was setting
+full in his face.
+
+"Well, what sport?" cried Fay, running up to them.
+
+"Pretty fair," said Keane, coldly, as he passed her.
+
+It was an hour before the dinner-bell rang. Then he came down cold and
+calm, particularly brilliant in conversation, more courteous, perhaps,
+to her than ever, but the frost had gathered round him that the sunny
+atmosphere of the Beeches had melted; and Fay, though she tried to
+tease, and to coax, and to win him, could not dissipate it. She felt him
+an immeasurable distance from her again. He was a learned, haughty,
+grave philosopher, and she a little naughty child.
+
+As Keane went up-stairs that night, he heard Sydie talking in the hall.
+
+"Yes, my worshipped Fay, I shall be intensely and utterly miserable away
+from the light of your eyes; but, nevertheless, I must go and see
+Kingslake from John's next Tuesday, because I've promised; and let one
+idolize your divine self ever so much, one can't give up one's larks,
+you know."
+
+Keane ground his teeth with a bitter sigh and a fierce oath.
+
+"Little Fay, I would have loved you more tenderly than that!"
+
+He went in and threw himself on his bed, not to sleep. For the first
+time for many years he could not summon sleep at his will. He had gone
+on petting her and amusing himself, thinking of her only as a winning,
+wayward child. Now he woke with a shock to discover, too late, that she
+had stolen from him unawares the heart he had so long refused to any
+woman. With his high intellect and calm philosophy, after his years
+spent in severe science and cold solitude, the hot well-springs of
+passion had broken loose again. He longed to take her bright life into
+his own grave and cheerless one; he longed to feel her warm young heart
+beat with his own, icebound for so many years; but Little Fay was never
+to be his.
+
+In the bedroom next to him the General sat, with his feet in his
+slippers and his dressing-gown round him, smoking his last cheroot
+before a roaring fire, chuckling complacently over his own thoughts.
+
+"To be sure, we'll have a very gay wedding, such as the county hasn't
+seen in all its blessed days," he muttered, with supreme satisfaction.
+"Sydie shall have this place. What do I want with a great town of a
+house like this, big enough for a barrack? I'll take that shooting-box
+that's to let four miles off; that'll be plenty large enough for me and
+my old chums to smoke in and chat over bygone times, and it will do our
+hearts good--freshen us up a bit to see those young things enjoying
+themselves. My Little Fay will be the prettiest bride that ever was
+seen. Silly young things to suppose I don't see through them. Trust an
+old soldier! However, love is blind, they say. How could they have
+helped falling in love with one another? and who'd have the heart to
+part 'em, I should like to know!"
+
+Keane stayed that day; the next, receiving a letter which afforded a
+true though a slight excuse to return to Cambridge, he went, the
+General, Fay, and Sydie believing him gone only for a few days, he
+knowing that he would never set foot in the Beeches again. He went back
+to his rooms, whose dark monastic gloom in the dull October day seemed
+to close round him like an iron shroud. Here, with his books, his
+papers, his treasures of intellect, science and art, his "mind a
+kingdom" to him, he had spent many a happy day, with his brain growing
+only clearer and clearer as he followed out a close reasoning or
+clenched a subtle analysis. Now, for the sake of a mischievous child but
+half his age, he shuddered as he entered.
+
+"Well, my dear boy," began the General one day after dinner, "I've seen
+your game, though you thought I didn't. How do you know, you young dog,
+that I shall give my consent?"
+
+"Oh, bother, governor, I know you will," cried Sydie, aghast; "because,
+you see, if you let me have a few cool hundreds I can give the men such
+slap-up wines--and it's my last year, General."
+
+"You sly dog!" chuckled the governor, "I'm not talking of your
+wine-merchant, and you know I'm not, Master Sydie. It's no good playing
+hide-and-seek with me; I can always see through a milestone when Cupid
+is behind it; and there's no need to beat round the bush with me, my
+boy. I never gave my assent to anything with greater delight in my life;
+I've always meant you to marry Fay, and----"
+
+"Marry Fay!" shouted Sydie. "Good Heavens! governor, what next?" And the
+Cantab threw himself back and laughed till he cried, and Snowdrop and
+her pups barked furiously in a concert of excited sympathy.
+
+"Why, sir, why?--why, because--devil take you, Sydie--I don't know what
+you are laughing at, do you?" cried the General, starting out of his
+chair.
+
+"Yes, I do, governor; you're laboring under a most delicious delusion."
+
+"Delusion!--eh?--what? Why, bless my soul, I don't think you know what
+you are saying, Sydie," stormed the General.
+
+"Yes I do; you've an idea--how you got it into your head Heaven knows,
+but there it is--you've an idea that Fay and I are in love with one
+another; and I assure you you were never more mistaken in your life."
+
+Seeing the General standing bolt upright staring at him, and looking
+decidedly apocleptic, Sydie made the matter a little clearer.
+
+"Fay and I would do a good deal to oblige you, my beloved governor, if
+we could get up the steam a little, but I'm afraid we really _cannot_.
+Love ain't in one's own hands, you see, but a skittish mare, that gets
+her head, and takes the bit between her teeth, and bolts off with you
+wherever she likes. Is it possible that two people who broke each
+other's toys, and teased each other's lives out, and caught the measles
+of each other, from their cradle upwards, should fall in love with each
+other when they grow up? Besides, I don't intend to marry for the next
+twenty years, if I can help it. I couldn't afford a milliner's bill to
+my tailor's, and I should be ruined for life if I merged my bright
+particular star of a self into a respectable, lark-shunning,
+bill-paying, shabby-hatted, family man. Good Heavens, what a train of
+horrors comes with the bare idea!"
+
+"Do you mean to say, sir, you won't marry your cousin?" shouted the
+General.
+
+"Bless your dear old heart, _no_, governor--ten times over, _no_! I
+wouldn't marry anybody, not for half the universe."
+
+"Then I've done with you, sir--I wash my hands of you!" shouted the
+General, tearing up and down the room in a quick march, more beneficial
+to his feelings than his carpet. "You are an ungrateful, unprincipled,
+shameless young man, and are no more worthy of the affection and the
+interest I've been fool enough to waste on you than a tom-cat. You're an
+abominably selfish, ungrateful, unnatural boy; and though you _are_ poor
+Phil's son, I will tell you my mind, sir; and I must say I think your
+conduct with your cousin, making love to her--desperate love to
+her--winning her affections, poor unhappy child, and then making a jest
+of her and treating it with a laugh, is disgraceful, sir--_disgraceful_,
+do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, I hear, General," cried Sydie, convulsed with laughter; "but Fay
+cares no more for me than for those geraniums. We are fond of one
+another, in a cool, cousinly sort of way, but----"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" stormed the General. "Don't dare to say another word
+to me about it. You know well enough that it has been the one delight of
+my life, and if you'd had any respect or right feeling in you, you'd
+marry her to-morrow."
+
+"She wouldn't be a party to that. Few women _are_ blind to my manifold
+attractions; but Fay's one of 'em. Look here, governor," said Sydie,
+laying his hand affectionately on the General's shoulder, "did it never
+occur to you that though the pretty castle's knocked down, there may be
+much nicer bricks left to build a new one? Can't you see that Fay
+doesn't care two buttons about me, but cares a good many diamond studs
+about somebody else?"
+
+"Nothing has occurred to me but that you and she are two heartless,
+selfish, ungrateful chits. Hold your tongue, sir!"
+
+"But, General----"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir; don't talk to me, I tell you. In love with
+somebody else? I should like to see him show his face here. Somebody
+she's talked to for five minutes at a race-ball, and proposed to her in
+a corner, thinking to get some of my money. Some swindler, or Italian
+refugee, or blackleg, I'll be bound--taken her in, made her think him an
+angel, and will persuade her to run away with him. I'll set the police
+round the house--I'll send her to school in Paris. What fools men are to
+have anything to do with women at all! You seem in their confidence;
+who's the fellow?"
+
+"A man very like a swindler or a blackleg--Keane!"
+
+"Keane!" shouted the General, pausing in the middle of his frantic
+march.
+
+"Keane," responded Sydie.
+
+"Keane!" shouted the General again. "God bless my soul, she might as
+well have fallen in love with the man in the moon. Why couldn't she like
+the person I'd chosen for her?"
+
+"If one can't guide the mare one's self, 'tisn't likely the governors
+can for one," muttered Sydie.
+
+"Poor dear child! fallen in love with a man who don't care a button for
+her, eh? Humph!--that's always the way with women--lose the good
+chances, and fling themselves at a man's feet who cares no more for
+their tom-foolery of worship than he cares for the blacking on his
+boots. Devil take young people, what a torment they are! The ungrateful
+little jade, how dare she go and smash all my plans like that? and if I
+ever set my heart on anything, I set it on that match. Keane! he'll no
+more love anybody than the stone cherubs on the terrace. He's a splendid
+head, but his heart's every atom as cold as granite. Love her? Not a bit
+of it. When I told him you were going to marry her (I thought you would,
+and so you will, too, if you've the slightest particle of gratitude or
+common sense in either of you), he listened as quietly and as calmly as
+if he had been one of the men in armor in the hall. Love, indeed! To the
+devil with love, say I! It's the head and root of everything that's
+mischievous and bad."
+
+"Wait a bit, uncle," cried Sydie; "you told him all about your previous
+match-making, eh? And didn't he go off like a shot two days after, when
+we meant him to stay on a month longer? Can't you put two and two
+together, my once wide-awake governor? 'Tisn't such a difficult
+operation."
+
+"No, I can't," shouted the General: "I don't know anything, I don't see
+anything, I don't believe in anything, I hate everybody and everything,
+I tell you; and I'm a great fool for having ever set my heart on any
+plan that wanted a woman's concurrence--
+
+    For if she will she will, you may depend on't,
+    And if she won't she won't, and there's an end on't."
+
+Wherewith the General stuck his wide-awake on fiercely, and darted out
+of the bay-window to cool himself. Half way across the lawn, he turned
+sharp round, and came back again.
+
+"Sydie, do you fancy Keane cares a straw for that child?"
+
+"I can't say. It's possible."
+
+"Humph! Well, can't you go and see? That's come of those mathematical
+lessons. What a fool I was to allow her to be so much with him!" growled
+the General, with many grunts and half-audible oaths, swinging round
+again, and trotting through the window as hot and peppery as his own
+idolized curry.
+
+Keane was sitting writing in his rooms at King's some few days after.
+The backs looked dismal with their leafless, sepia-colored trees; the
+streets were full of sloppy mud and dripping under-grads' umbrellas; his
+own room looked sombre and dark, without any sunshine on its heavy oak
+bookcases, and massive library-table, and dark bronzes. His pen moved
+quickly, his head was bent over the paper, his mouth sternly set, and
+his forehead paler and more severe than ever. The gloom in his chambers
+had gathered round him himself, when his door was burst open, and Sydie
+dashed in and threw himself down in a green leather arm-chair.
+
+"Well, sir, here am I back again. Just met the V. P. in the quad, and he
+was so enchanted at seeing me, that he kissed me on both cheeks, flung
+off his gown, tossed up his cap, and performed a _pas d'extase_ on the
+spot. Isn't it delightful to be so beloved? Granta looks very delicious
+to-day, I must say--about as refreshing and lively as an acidulated
+spinster going district-visiting in a snow-storm. And how are you, most
+noble lord?"
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+"Only that? Thought you were all muscle and iron. I say. What _do_ you
+think the governor has been saying to me?"
+
+"How can I tell?"
+
+"Tell! No, I should not have guessed it if I'd tried for a hundred
+years! By George! nothing less than that I should marry Fay. What do you
+think of that, sir?"
+
+Keane traced Greek unconsciously on the margin of his _Times_. For the
+life of him, with all his self-command, he could not have answered.
+
+"Marry Fay! _I!_" shouted Sydie. "Ye gods, what an idea! I never was so
+astonished in all my days. Marry Little Fay!--the governor must be mad,
+you know."
+
+"You will not marry your cousin?" asked Keane, tranquilly, though the
+rapid glance and involuntary start did not escape Sydie's quick eyes.
+
+"Marry! I! By George, no! She wouldn't have me, and I'm sure I wouldn't
+have her. She is a dear little monkey, and I'm very fond of her, but I
+wouldn't put the halter round my neck for any woman going. I don't like
+vexing the General, but it would be really too great a sacrifice merely
+to oblige him."
+
+"She cares nothing for you, then?"
+
+"Nothing? Well, I don't know. Yes, in a measure, she does. If I should
+be taken home on a hurdle one fine morning, she'd shed some cousinly
+tears over my inanimate body; but as for _the other thing_, not one bit
+of it. 'Tisn't likely. We're a great deal too like one another, too full
+of devilry and carelessness, to assimilate. Isn't it the delicious
+contrast and fiz of the sparkling acid of divine lemons with the
+contrariety of the fiery spirit of beloved rum that makes the delectable
+union known and worshipped in our symposia under the blissful name of
+PUNCH? Marry Little Fay! By Jove, if all the governor's match-making was
+founded on no better reasons for success, it is a small marvel that he's
+a bachelor now! By George, it's time for hall!"
+
+And the Cantab took himself off, congratulating himself on the adroit
+manner in which he had cut the Gordian knot that the General had muddled
+up so inexplicably in his unpropitious match-making.
+
+Keane lay back in his chair some minutes, very still; then he rose to
+dine in hall, pushing away his books and papers, as if throwing aside
+with them a dull and heavy weight. The robins sang in the leafless
+backs, the sun shone out on the sloppy streets; the youth he thought
+gone for ever was come back to him. Oh, strange stale story of Hercules
+and Omphale, old as the hills, and as eternal! Hercules goes on in his
+strength slaying his hydra and his Laomedon for many years, but he
+comes at last, whether he like it or not, to his Omphale, at whose feet
+he is content to sit and spin long golden threads of pleasure and of
+passion, while his lion's skin is motheaten and his club rots away.
+
+Little Fay sat curled up on the study hearth-rug, reading a book her
+late guest had left behind him--a very light and entertaining volume,
+being Delolme "On the Constitution," but which she preferred, I suppose,
+to "What Will He Do With It?" or the "Feuilles d'Automne," for the sake
+of that clear autograph, "Gerald Keane, King's Coll.," on its fly-leaf.
+A pretty picture she made, with her handsome spaniels; and she was so
+intent on what she was reading--the fly-leaf, by the way--that she never
+heard the opening of the door, till a hand drew away her book. Then Fay
+started up, oversetting the puppies one over another, radiant and
+breathless.
+
+Keane took her hands and drew her near him.
+
+"You do not hate me now, then?"
+
+Fay put her head on one side with her old wilfulness.
+
+"Yes, I do--when you go away without any notice, and hardly bid me
+good-bye. You would not have left one of your men pupils so
+unceremoniously."
+
+Keane smiled involuntarily, and drew her closer.
+
+"If you do not hate me, will you go a step farther--and love me? Little
+Fay, my own darling, will you come and brighten my life? It has been a
+saddened and a stern one, but it shall never throw a shade on yours."
+
+The wild little filly was conquered--at last, she came to hand docile
+and subdued, and acknowledged her master. She loved him, and told him so
+with that frankness and fondness which would have covered faults far
+more glaring and weighty than Little Fay's.
+
+"But you must never be afraid of me," whispered Keane, some time after.
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"And you do not wish Sydie had never brought me here to make you all
+uncomfortable?"
+
+"Oh, please don't!" cried Fay, plaintively. "I was a child then, and I
+did not know what I said."
+
+"'Then,' being three months ago, may I ask what you are now?"
+
+"A child still in knowledge, but _your_ child," whispered Fay, lifting
+her face to his, "to be petted and spoiled, and never found fault with,
+remember!"
+
+"My little darling, who would have the heart to find fault with you,
+whatever your sins?"
+
+"God bless my soul, what's this?" cried a voice in the doorway.
+
+There stood the General in wide-awake and shooting-coat, with a spade in
+one hand and a watering-pot in the other, too astonished to keep his
+amazement to himself. Fay would fain have turned and fled, but Keane
+smiled, kept one arm round her, and stretched out his hand to the
+governor.
+
+"General, I came once uninvited, and I am come again. Will you forgive
+me? I have a great deal to say to you, but I must ask you one question
+first of all. Will you give me your treasure?"
+
+"Eh! humph! What? Well--I suppose--yes," ejaculated the General,
+breathless from the combined effects of amazement and excessive and
+vehement gardening. "But, bless my soul, Keane, I should as soon have
+thought of one of the stone cherubs, or that bronze Milton. Never mind,
+one lives and learns. Mind? Devil take me, what am I talking about? I
+don't mind at all; I'm very happy, only I'd set my heart on--you know
+what. More fool I. Fay, you little imp, come here. Are you fairly broken
+in by Keane, then?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Fay, with her old mischief, but a new blush, "as he has
+promised never to use the curb."
+
+"God bless you, then, my little pet," cried the General, kissing her
+some fifty times. Then he laughed till he cried, and dried his eyes and
+laughed again, and grunted, and growled, and shook both Keane's hands
+vehemently. "I was a great fool, sir, and I dare say you've managed much
+better. I _did_ set my heart on the boy, you know, but it can't be
+helped now, and I don't wish it should. Be kind to her, that's all; for
+though she mayn't bear the curb, the whip from anybody she cares about
+would break her heart. She's a dear child, Keane--a very dear child. Be
+kind to her, that's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of January 13th, beginning the Lent Term, Mr. Sydenham
+Morton sat in his own rooms with half a dozen spirits like himself, a
+delicious aroma surrounding them of Maryland and rum-punch, and a rapid
+flow of talk making its way through the dense atmosphere.
+
+"To think of Granite Keane being caught!" shouted one young fellow. "I
+should as soon have thought of the Pyramids walking over to the Sphinx,
+and marrying her."
+
+"Poor devil! I pity him," sneered Henley of Trinity, aged nineteen.
+
+"He don't require much pity, my dear fellow; I think he's pretty
+comfortable," rejoined Sydie. "He did, to be sure, when he was trying to
+beat sense into your brain-box, but that's over for the present."
+
+"Come, tell us about the wedding," said Somerset of King's. "I was sorry
+I couldn't go down."
+
+"Well," began Sydie, stretching his legs and putting down his pipe,
+"she--_the_ she was dressed in white tulle and----"
+
+"Bother the dress. Go ahead!"
+
+"The dress was no bother, it was the one subject in life to the women.
+You must listen to the dress, because I asked the prettiest girl there
+for the description of it to enlighten your minds, and it was harder to
+learn than six books of Horace. The bridesmaids wore tarlatane à la
+Princesse Stéphanie, trois jupes bouillonnées, jupe desous de soie
+glacée, guirlandes couleur dea yeux impériaux d'Eugénie, corsets
+décolletés garnis de ruches de ruban du----"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, hold your tongue!" cried Somerset. "That jargon's
+worse than the Yahoos'. The dead languages are bad enough to learn, but
+women's living language of fashion is ten hundred times worse. The
+twelve girls were dressed in blue and white, and thought themselves
+angels--we understand. Cut along."
+
+"Gunter was prime," continued Sydie, "and the governor was prime,
+too--splendid old buck; only when he gave her away he was very near
+saying, 'Devil take it!' which might have had a novel, but hardly a
+solemn, effect. Little Fay was delightful--for all the world like a bit
+of incarnated sunshine. Keane was granite all over, except his eyes, and
+they were lava; if we hadn't, for our own preservation, let him put her
+in a carriage and started 'em off, he might have become dangerous, after
+the manner of Etna, ice outside and red-hot coals within. The
+bridesmaids tears must have washed the church for a week, and made it
+rather a damp affair. One would scarcely think women were so anxious to
+marry, to judge from the amount of grief they get up at a friend's
+sacrifice. It looks uncommonly like envy; but it _isn't_, we're sure!
+The ball was like most other balls: alternate waltzing and flirtation, a
+vast lot of nonsense talked, and a vast lot of champagne drunk--Cupid
+running about in every direction, and a tremendous run on all the
+amatory poets--Browning and Tennyson being worked as hard as cab-horses,
+and used up pretty much as those quadrupeds--dandies suffering
+self-inflicted torture from tight boots, and saying, like Cranmer, when
+he held his hand in the fire, that it was rather agreeable than
+otherwise, considering it drew admiration--spurs getting entangled in
+ladies' dresses, and ladies making use thereof for a display of
+amiability, which the dragoons are very much mistaken if they fancied
+continued into private life--girls believing all the pretty things said
+to them--men going home and laughing at them all--wallflowers very
+black, women engaged ten deep very sunshiny--the governor very glorious,
+and my noble self very fascinating. And now," said Sydie, taking up his
+pipe, "pass the punch, old boy, and never say I can't talk!"
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD;
+
+OR,
+
+A DOUBLED-DOWN LEAF IN A MAN'S LIFE.
+
+
+I was dining with a friend, in his house on the Lung' Arno (he fills,
+never mind what, post in the British Legation), where I was passing an
+autumn month. The night was oppressively hot; a still, sultry sky
+brooded over the city, and the stars shining out from a purple mist on
+to the Campanile near, and the slopes of Bellosguardo in the distance.
+It was intensely hot; not all the iced wines on his table could remove
+the oppressive warmth of the evening air, which made both him and me
+think of evenings we had spent together in the voluptuous lassitude of
+the East, in days gone by, when we had travelled there, fresh to life,
+to new impressions, to all that gives "greenness to the grass, and glory
+to the flower."
+
+The Arno ran on under its bridge, and we leaned out of the balcony where
+we were sitting and smoking, while I tossed over, without thinking much
+of what I was doing, a portfolio of his sketches. Position has lost for
+art many good artists since Sir George Beaumont: my friend is one of
+them; his sketches are masterly; and had he been a vagrant Bohemian
+instead of an English peer, there might have been pictures on the walls
+of the R. A. to console one for the meretricious daubs and pet
+vulgarities of nursery episodes, hideous babies, and third-class
+carriage interiors, which make one's accustomed annual visit to the
+rooms that once saw the beauties of Reynolds, and Wilson, and Lawrence,
+a positive martyrdom to anybody of decent refinement and educated taste.
+The portfolio stood near me, and I took out a sketch or two now and then
+between the pauses of our conversation, looking lazily up the river,
+while the moonlight shone on Dante's city, that so long forgot, and has,
+so late, remembered him.
+
+"Ah! what a pretty face this is! Who's the original?" I asked him,
+drawing out a female head, done with great finish in pastel, under which
+was written, in his own hand, "Florelle." It was a face of great beauty,
+with a low Greek brow and bronze-dark hair, and those large, soft,
+liquid eyes that you only see in a Southern, and that looked at you from
+the sketch with an earnest, wistful regard, half childlike, half
+impassioned. He looked up, glanced at the sketch, and stretched out his
+hand hastily, but I held it away from him. "I want to look at it; it is
+a beautiful head; I wish we had the original here now. Who is she?"
+
+As I spoke--holding the sketch up where the light from the room within
+fell on what I had no doubt was a likeness of some fair face that had
+beguiled his time in days gone by, a souvenir of one of his loves more
+lasting than souvenirs of such episodes in one's life often are, if
+merely trusted to that inconstant capricieuse, Memory,--I might have hit
+him with a bullet rather than asked him about a mere etude à deux
+crayons, for he shuddered, and drank off some white Hermitage quickly.
+
+"I had forgotten that was in the portfolio," he said, hurriedly, as he
+took it from me and put it behind him, with its face against the wall,
+as though it had been the sketch of a Medusa.
+
+"What do you take it away for? I had not half done looking at it. Who is
+the original?"
+
+"One I don't care to mention."
+
+"Because?"
+
+"Because the sight of that picture gives me a twinge of what I ought to
+be hardened against--regret."
+
+"Regret! Is any woman worth that?"
+
+"She was."
+
+"I don't believe it; and I fancied you and I thought alike on such
+points. Of all the women for whom we feel twinges of conscience or
+self-reproach in melancholy moments, how many _loved us_? Moralists and
+poets sentimentalize over it, and make it a stalking-horse whereby to
+magnify our sins and consign us more utterly to perdition, while they do
+for themselves a little bit of poetic morality cheaply; but in reality
+there are uncommonly few women who can love, to begin with, and in the
+second, vanity, avarice, jealousy, desires for pretty toilettes, one or
+other, or all combined, have quite as much to do with their 'sacrifice'
+for us as anything."
+
+"Quite true; but--there are women and women, perhaps, and it was not of
+that sort of regret that I spoke."
+
+"Of what sort, then?"
+
+He made me no reply: he broke the ash off his Manilla, and smoked
+silently some moments, leaning over the balcony and watching the
+monotonous flow of the Arno, with deeper gloom on his face than I
+remembered to have seen there any time before. I was sorry I had chanced
+to light upon a sketch that had brought him back such painful
+recollections of whatever kind they might be, and I smoked too, sending
+the perfumed tobacco out into the still sultry night that was brooding
+over Florence.
+
+"Of what sort?" said he, abruptly, after some minutes' pause. "Shall I
+tell you? Then you can tell _me_ whether I was a fool who made one grand
+mistake, or a sensible man of the world who kept himself from a grand
+folly. I have been often in doubt myself."
+
+He leaned back, his face in shadow, so that I could not see it, while
+the Arno's ebb and flow was making mournful river-music under our
+windows,--while the purple glories of the summer night deepened round
+Giotto's Tower, where, in centuries past, the Immortal of Florence had
+sat dreaming of the Paradiso, the mortals passing by whispering him as
+"the man who had seen hell," and the light within the room shone on the
+olives and grapes, the cut-glass and silver claret-jugs, the crimson
+Montepulciano and the white Hermitage, on the table, as he told me the
+story of the head in crayons.
+
+"Two years ago I went into the south of France. I was chargé d'Affaires
+at ---- then, you remember, and the climate had told upon me. I was not
+over-well, and somebody recommended me the waters of Eaux Bonnes. The
+waters I put little faith in, but in the air of the Pyrenees, in the
+change from diplomacy to a life _en rase campagne_, I put much, and I
+went to Eaux Bonnes accordingly, for July and August, with a vow to
+forswear any society I might find at the baths--I had had only too much
+of society as it was--and to spend my days in the mountains with my
+sketching-block and my gun. But I did not like Eaux Bonnes; it was
+intensely warm. There were several people who knew me really; no end of
+others who got hold of my name, and wanted me to join their
+riding-parties, and balls, and picnics. That was not what I wanted, so I
+left the place and went on to Luz, hoping to find solitude there. That
+valley of Luz--you know it?--is it not as lovely as any artist's dream
+of Arcadia, in the evening, when the sunset light has passed off the
+meadows and corn-lands of the lower valley, and just lingers golden and
+rosy on the crests of the mountains, while the glow-worms are coming out
+among the grasses, and the lights are being lit in the little homesteads
+nestling among their orchards one above another on the hill-sides, and
+its hundred streams are rushing down the mountains and under the trees,
+foaming, and tumbling, and rejoicing on their way! When I have had my
+fill of ambition and of pleasure, I shall go and live at Luz, I think.
+
+"_When!_ Well! you are quite right to repeat it ironically; that time
+will never come, I dare say, and why should it? I am not the stuff to
+cogitate away my years in country solitudes. If prizes are worth
+winning, they are worth working for till one's death; a man should never
+give up the field while he has life left in him. Well! I went to Luz,
+and spent a pleasant week or so there, knocking over a few chamois or
+izards, or sketching on the sides of the Pic du Midi, or Tourmalet, but
+chiefly lying about under the great beech-trees in the shade, listening
+to the tinkle of the sheep-bells, like an idle fellow, as I meant to be
+for the time I had allotted myself. One day----"
+
+He stopped and blew some whiffs from his Manilla into the air. He seemed
+to linger over the prelude to his story, and shrink from going on with
+the story itself, I thought; and he smothered a sigh as he raised
+himself.
+
+"How warm the night is; we shall have a tempest. Reach me that wine,
+there's a good fellow. No, not the Amontillado, the Château Margaux,
+please; one can't drink hot dry wines such a night as this. But to
+satisfy your curiosity about this crayon study.--One day I thought I
+would go to Gavarnie. I had heard a good deal, of course, about the
+great marble wall, and the mighty waterfalls, the rocks of Marboré, and
+the Brêche de Roland, but, as it chanced, I had never been up to the
+Cercle, nor, indeed, in that part of the Midi at all, so I went. The
+gods favored me, I remember; there were no mists, the sun was brilliant,
+and the great amphitheatre was for once unobscured; the white marble
+flashing brown and purple, rose and golden, in the light; the cascades
+tumbling and leaping down into the gigantic basin; the vast plains of
+snow glittering in the sunshine; the twin rocks standing in the clear
+air, straight and fluted as any two Corinthian columns hewn and
+chiselled by man. Good Heaven! before a scene like Gavarnie, what true
+artist must not fling away his colors and his brushes in despair and
+disgust with his own puerility and impotence? What can be transferred to
+canvas of such a scene as that? What does the best beauty of Claude, the
+grandest sublimity of Salvator, the greatest power of Poussin, look
+beside Nature when she reigns as she reigns at Gavarnie? I am an art
+worshipper, as you know: but there are times in my life, places on
+earth, that make me ready to renounce art for ever!
+
+"The day was beautiful, and thinking I knew the country pretty well, I
+took no guides. I hate them when I can possibly dispense with them. But
+the mist soon swooped down over the Cercle, and I began to wish I had
+had one when I turned my horse's head back again. You know the route, of
+course? Through the Chaos--Heaven knows it is deserving of its
+name;--down the break-neck little bridle-path, along the Gave, and over
+the Scia bridge to St. Sauveur. You know it? Then you know that it is
+much easier to break your neck down it than to find your way by it,
+though by some hazard I did not break my neck, nor the animal's knees
+either, but managed to get over the bridge without falling into the
+torrent, and to pick my way safely down into more level ground; once
+there, I thought I should easily enough find my way to St. Sauveur, but
+I was mistaken: the mists had spread over the valley, a heavy storm had
+come up, and, somehow or other, I lost the way, and could not tell where
+I was, whether St. Sauveur was to the left or the right, behind me or in
+front of me. The horse, a miserable little Pyrenean beast, was too
+frightened by the lightning to take the matter into his hands as he had
+done on the road through the Chaos, and I saw nothing for it but to
+surrender and come to grief in any way the elements best pleased;
+swearing at myself for not having stayed at the inn at Gavarnie or
+Gedre; wishing myself at the vilest mountain auberge that ever sheltered
+men and mules pêle-mêle; and calling myself hard names for not having
+listened to my landlady's dissuasions of that morning as I left her
+door, from my project of going to Gavarnie without a guide, which seemed
+to her the acme of all she had ever known or heard of English strangers'
+fooleries. The storm only increased, the great black rocks echoing the
+roll of the thunder, and the Gave lashing itself into fury in its narrow
+bed; happily I was on decently level ground, and the horse being, I
+suppose, tolerably used to storms like it, I pushed him on at last, by
+dint of blows and conjurations combined, to where, in the flashes of the
+lightning, I saw what looked to me like the outline of a homestead: it
+stood in a cleft between two shelving sides of rock, and a narrow
+bridle-path led up to it, through high yews and a tangled wilderness of
+rhododendrons, boxwood, and birch--one of those green slopes so common
+in the Pyrenees, that look in full sunlight doubly bright and
+Arcadian-like, from the contrast of the dark, bare, perpendicular rocks
+that shut them in. I could see but little of its beauty then in the fog
+that shrouded both it and me, but I saw the shape and semblance of a
+house, and urging the horse up the ascent, thundered on its gate-panels
+with my whip-handle till the rocks round echoed.
+
+"There was no answer, and I knocked a little louder, if possible, than
+before. I was wet to the skin with that wretched storm, and swore not
+mildly at the inhospitable roof that would not admit me under it. I
+knocked again, inclined to pick up a piece of granite and beat the panel
+in; and at last a face--an old woman's weather-beaten face, but with
+black southern eyes that had lost little of their fire with age--looked
+through a grating at me and asked me what I wanted.
+
+"'I want shelter if you can give it me,' I answered her. 'I have lost
+my way coming from Gavarnie, and am drenched through. I will pay you
+liberally if you will give me an asylum till the weather clears.'
+
+"Her eyes blazed like coals through the little grille.
+
+"'M'sieu, we take no money here--have you mistaken it for an inn? Come
+in if you want shelter, in Heaven's name! The Holy Virgin forbid we
+should refuse refuge to any!'
+
+"And she crossed herself and uttered some conjurations to Mary to
+protect them from all wolves in sheep's clothing, and guard their
+dwelling from all harm, by which I suppose she thought I spoke fairly
+and looked harmless, but might possibly be a thief or an assassin, or
+both in one. She unlocked the gate, and calling to a boy to take my
+horse into a shed, admitted me under a covered passageway into the
+house, which looked like part, and a very ruined part, too, of what had
+probably been, in the times of Henri-Quatre and his grandfather, a
+feudal chateâu fenced in by natural ramparts from the rocks that
+surrounded it, shutting in the green slope on which it stood, with only
+one egress, the path through which I had ascended, into the level plain
+below. She marshalled me through this covered way into an interior
+passage, dark and vaulted, cheerless enough, and opened a low oak door,
+ushering me into a chamber, bare, gloomy, yet with something of lost
+grandeur and past state lingering about its great hearth, its massive
+walls, its stained windows, and its ragged tapestry hangings. The woman
+went up to one of the windows and spoke with a gentleness to which I
+should have never thought her voice could have been attuned with its
+harsh patois.
+
+"'Mon enfant, v'là un m'sieu étranger qui vient chercher un abri pour un
+petit peu. Veux-tu lui parler?'
+
+"The young girl she spoke to turned, rose, and, coming forward, bade me
+welcome with the grace, simplicity, and the naïve freedom from
+embarrassment of a child, looking up in my face with her soft clear
+eyes. She was like----No matter! you have seen that crayon-head, it is
+but a portrayal of a face whose expression Raphael and Sassoferrato
+themselves would have failed to render in its earnest, innocent,
+elevated regard. She was very young--
+
+    Standing with reluctant feet
+    Where the brook and river meet--
+    Womanhood and childhood fleet.
+
+Good Heavens, I am quoting poetry! what will you think of me, to have
+gone back to the Wertherian and Tennysonian days so far as to repeat a
+triplet of Longfellow's? No man quotes _those_ poets after his salad
+days, except in a moment of weakness. Caramba! why _has_ one any
+weaknesses at all? we ought not to have any; we live in an atmosphere
+that would kill them all if they were not as obstinate and
+indestructible as all other weeds whose seeds will linger and peer up
+and spoil the ground, let one root them out ever so! I owed you an
+apology for that lapse into Longfellow, and I have made it. Am I to go
+on with this story?"
+
+He laughed as he spoke, and his laugh was by no means heartfelt. I told
+him to go on, and he lighted another Manilla and obeyed me, while the
+Arno murmured on its way, and the dusky, sultry clouds brooded nearer
+the earth, and the lights were lit in the distant windows of the palace
+of the Marchese Acqua d'Oro, that fairest of Florentines, who rouges so
+indiscriminately and flirts her fan so inimitably, to one of whose balls
+we were going that night.
+
+He settled himself back in his chair, with his face darkened again by
+the shadow cast on it from the pillar of the balcony; and took his cigar
+out of his mouth.
+
+"She looked incongruous in that bare and gloomy room, out of place with
+it, and out of keeping with the old woman--a French peasant-woman,
+weather-beaten and bronzed, such as you see any day by the score riding
+to market or sitting knitting at their cottage-doors. It was impossible
+that the girl could be either daughter or grand-daughter, or any
+relation at all to her. In that room she looked more as one of these
+myrtles might do, set down in the stifling gloomy horrors of a London
+street than anything else, save that in certain traces about the
+chamber, as I told you, there were relics of a faded grandeur which
+harmonized better with her. I can see her now, as she stood there with a
+strange foreign grace, an indescribable patrician delicacy mingled with
+extreme youthfulness and naïveté, like an old picture in costume, like
+one of Raphael's child-angels in face--poor little Florelle!
+
+"'You would stay till the storm is over, monsieur? you are welcome to
+shelter if you will,' she said, coming forward to me timidly yet
+frankly. 'Cazot tells me you are a stranger, and our mountain storms are
+dangerous if you have no guide.'
+
+"I did not know who Cazot was, but I presumed her to be the old woman,
+who seemed to be portress, mistress, domestic, cameriste, and all else
+in her single person, but I thanked her for her permitted shelter, and
+accepted her invitation to remain till the weather had cleared, as you
+can imagine. When you have lost your way, any asylum is grateful,
+however desolate and tumble-down. They made me welcome, she and the old
+peasant-woman, with that simple, unstrained, and unostentatious
+hospitality which is, after all, the true essence of good breeding, and
+of which your parvenu knows nothing, when he keeps you waiting, and
+shows you that you are come at an inapropos moment, in his fussy fear
+lest everything should not be _comme il faut_ to do due credit to _him_.
+Old Cazot set before me some simple refreshment, a _grillade de
+châtaignes_, some maize and milk, and a dish of trout just caught in the
+Gave below, while I looked at my châtelaine, marvelling how that young
+and delicate creature could come to be shut up with an old peasant on a
+remote hill-side. I did my best to draw her out and learn her history;
+she was shy at first of a complete stranger, as was but natural, but I
+spoke of Garvarnie, of the beauty of the Pyrenees, or Tourmalet, and the
+Lac Bleu, and, warming with enthusiasm for her birthplace, the girl
+forgot that I was a foreign tourist, unknown to her, and indebted to her
+for an hour's shelter, and before my impromptu supper was over I had
+drawn from her, by a few questions which she was too much of a child and
+had too little to conceal not to answer with a child's ingenuousness,
+the whole of her short history, and the explanation of her anomalous
+position. Her name was Florelle de l'Heris, a name once powerful enough
+among the nobles of the Midi, and the old woman, Madame Cazot, was her
+father's foster-sister. Of her family, beggared in common with the best
+aristocracy of France, none were now left; they had dwindled and fallen
+away, till of the once great house of L'Heris this child remained alone
+its representative: her mother had died in her infancy, and her father,
+either too idle or too broken-hearted to care to retrieve his fortunes,
+lived the life of a hermit among these ruins where I now found his
+daughter, educating her himself till his death, which occurred when she
+was only twelve years old, leaving her to poverty and obscurity, and
+such protection and companionship as her old nurse Cazot could afford
+her. Such was the story Florelle de l'Heris told me as I sat there that
+evening waiting till the clouds should clear and the mists roll off
+enough to let me go to St. Sauveur--a story told simply and
+pathetically, and which Cazot, sitting knitting in a corner, added to by
+a hundred gesticulations, expletives, appeals to the Virgin, and prolix
+addenda, glad, I dare say, of any new confident, and disposed to regard
+me with gratitude for my sincere praises of her fried trout. It was a
+story which seemed to me to suit the delicate beauty of the flower I
+had found in the wilderness, and read more like a chapter of some
+versified novelette, like 'Lucille,' than a _bonâ fide_ page out of the
+book of one's actual life, especially in a life like mine, of
+essentially material pleasures and emphatically substantial and palpable
+ambitions. But there _are_ odd stories in real life!--strange pathetic
+ones, too--stranger, often, than those that found the plot and underplot
+of a novel or the basis of a poem; but when such men as I come across
+them they startle us, they look bizarre and unlike all the other leaves
+of the book that glitter with worldly aphorisms, philosophical maxims,
+and pungent egotisms, and we would fain cut them out; they have the ring
+of that Arcadia whose golden gates shut on us when we outgrew boyhood,
+and in which, _en revanche_, we have sworn ever since to
+disbelieve--keeping our word sometimes, perhaps to our own
+hindrance--Heaven knows!
+
+"I stayed as long as I could that evening, till the weather had cleared
+up so long, and the sun was shining again so indisputably, that I had no
+longer any excuse to linger in the dark-tapestried room, with the
+chestnuts sputtering among the wood-ashes, and Madame Cazot's needles
+clicking one continual refrain, and the soft gazelle eyes of my young
+châtelaine glancing from my sketches to me with that mixture of shyness
+and fearlessness, innocence and candor, which gave so great a charm to
+her manner. She was a new study to me, both for my palette and my
+mind--a pretty fresh toy to amuse me while I should stay in the Midi. I
+was not going to leave without making sure of a permission to return. I
+wanted to have that face among my pastels, and when I had thanked her
+for her shelter and her welcome, I told her my name, and asked her leave
+to come again where I had been so kindly received.
+
+"'Come again, monsieur? Certainly, if you care to come. But you will
+find it a long way from Luz, I fear,' she said, naïvely, looking up at
+me with her large clear fawn-like eyes--eyes so cloudless and untroubled
+_then_--as she let me take her hand, and bade me adieu et bonsoir.
+
+"I reassured her on that score, you can fancy, and left her standing in
+the deep-embrasured window, a great stag-hound at her feet, and the
+setting sun, all the brighter for its past eclipse, bathing her in
+light. I can always see her in memory as I saw her then, poor
+child!----Faugh! How hot the night is! Can't we get more air anyhow?
+
+"'If you come again up here, m'sieu, you will be the first visitor the
+Nid de l'Aigle has seen for four years,' said old Cazot, as she showed
+me out through the dusky-vaulted passage. She was a cheerful, garrulous
+old woman, strong in her devotion to the De l'Heris of the bygone past;
+stronger even yet in her love for their single orphan representative of
+the beggared present. 'Visitors! Is it likely we should have any,
+m'sieu? Those that would suit me would be bad company for Ma'amselle
+Florelle, and those that should seek her never do. I recollect the time,
+m'sieu, when the highest in all the departments were glad to come to the
+bidding of a De l'Heris; but generations have gone since then, and lands
+and gold gone too, and, if you cannot feast them, what care people for
+you? That is true in the Pyrenees, m'sieu, as well as in the rest of the
+world. I have not lived eighty years without finding out that. If my
+child yonder were the heiress of the De l'Heris, there would be plenty
+to court and seek her; but she lives in these poor broken-down ruins
+with me, an old peasant woman, to care for her as best I can, and not a
+soul takes heed of her save the holy women at the convent, where, maybe,
+she will seek refuge at last!'
+
+"She let me out at the gate where I had thundered for admittance two
+hours before, and, giving her my thanks for her hospitality--money she
+would not take--I wished her good day, and rode down the bridle-path to
+St. Sauveur, and onwards to Luz, thinking at intervals of that fair
+young life that had just sprung up, and was already destined to wither
+away its bloom in a convent. Any destiny would be better to proffer to
+her than that. She interested me already by her childlike loveliness and
+her strange solitude of position, and I thought she would while away
+some of the long summer hours during my stay in the Midi when I was
+tired of chamois and palette, and my lazy dolce under the beech-wood
+shades. At any rate, she was newer and more charming than the belles of
+Eaux Bonnes.
+
+"The next morning I remembered her permission and my promise, and I rode
+out through the town again, up the mountain-road, to the Nid de l'Aigle;
+glad of anything that gave me an amusement and a pursuit. I never wholly
+appreciate the far niente, I think; perhaps I have lived too entirely in
+the world--and a world ultra-cold and courtly, too--to retain much
+patience for the meditative life, the life of trees and woods, sermons
+in stones, and monologues in mountains. I am a restless, ambitious man;
+I must have a _pursuit_, be it of a great aim or a small, or I grow
+weary, and my time hangs heavily on hand. Already having found Florelle
+de l'Heris among these hills reconciled me more to my _pro tempo_
+banishment from society, excitement, and pleasure, and I thanked my good
+fortune for having lighted upon her. She was very lovely, and I always
+care more for the physical than the intellectual charms of any woman. I
+do not share some men's visionary requirements on their mental score; I
+ask but material beauty, and am content with it.
+
+"I rode up to the Nid de l'Aigle: by a clearer light it stood on a spot
+of great picturesqueness, and before the fury of the revolutionary
+peasantry had destroyed what was the then habitable and stately château,
+must have been a place of considerable extent and beauty, and in the
+feudal times, fenced in by the natural ramparts of its shelving rocks,
+no doubt all but impregnable. There were but a few ruins now that held
+together and had a roof over them--the part where Madame Cazot and the
+last of the De l'Heris lived; it was perfectly solitary; there was
+nothing to be heard round it but the foaming of the river, the music of
+the sheep-bells from the flocks that fed in the clefts and on the slopes
+of grass-land, and the shout of some shepherd-boy from the path below;
+but it was as beautiful a spot as any in the Pyrenees, with its
+overhanging beech-woods, its wilderness of wild-flowers, its rocks
+covered with that soft gray moss whose tint defies one to repeat it in
+oil or water colors, and its larches and beeches drooping over into the
+waters of the Gave. In such a home, with no companions save her father,
+old Cazot, and her great stag-hound, and, occasionally, the quiet
+recluses of St. Marie Purificatrice, with everything to feed her native
+poetry and susceptibility, and nothing to teach her anything of the
+actual and ordinary world, it were inevitable that the character of
+Florelle should take its coloring from the scenes around her, and that
+she should grow up singularly childlike, imaginative, and innocent of
+all that in any other life she would unavoidably have known. Well
+educated she was, through her father and the nuns, but it was a
+semi-religious and peculiar education, of which the chief literature had
+been the legendary and sacred poetry of France and Spain, the chief
+amusement copying the illuminated missals lent her by the nuns, or
+joining in the choral services of the convent; an education that taught
+her nothing of the world from which she was shut out, and encouraged all
+that was self-devoted, visionary, and fervid in her nature, leaving her
+at seventeen as unconscious of evil as the youngest child. I despair of
+making you imagine what Florelle then was. Had I never met her, I should
+have believed in her as little as yourself, and would have discredited
+the existence of so poetic a creation out of the world of fiction; her
+ethereal delicacy, her sunny gayety when anything amused her, her
+intense sensitiveness, pained in a moment by a harsh word, pleased as
+soon by a kind one, her innocence of all the blots and cruelties,
+artifices and evils, of that world beyond her Nid de l'Aigle, made a
+character strangely new to me, and strangely winning, but which to you I
+despair of portraying: I could not have _imagined_ it. Had I never seen
+her, and had I met with it in the pages of a novel, I should have put it
+aside as a graceful but impossible conception of romance.
+
+"I went up that day to the Nid de l'Aigle, and Florelle received me with
+pleasure; perhaps Madame Cazot had instilled into her some scepticism
+that 'a grand seigneur,' as the woman was pleased to term me, would
+trouble himself to ride up the mountains from Luz merely to repeat his
+thanks for an hour's shelter and a supper of roasted chestnuts. She was
+a simple-minded, good-hearted old woman, who had lived all her life
+among the rocks and rivers of the Hautes-Pyrenées, her longest excursion
+a market-day to Luz or Bagnères. She looked on her young mistress and
+charge as a child--in truth, Florelle was but little more--and thought
+my visit paid simply from gratitude and courtesy, never dreaming of
+attributing it to 'cette beauté héréditaire des L'Heris,' which she was
+proud of boasting was an inalienable heirloom to the family.
+
+"I often repeated my visits; so often, that in a week or so the old
+ruined château grew a natural resort in the long summer days, and
+Florelle watched for my coming from the deep-arched window where I had
+seen her first, or from under the boughs of the great copper beech that
+grew before the gate, and looked for me as regularly as though I were to
+spend my lifetime in the valley of Luz. Poor child! I never told her my
+title, but I taught her to call me by my christian name. It used to
+sound very pretty when she said it, with her long Southern
+pronunciation--prettier than it ever sounds now from the lips of
+Beatrice Acqua d'Oro yonder, in her softest moments, when she plays at
+sentiment. She had great natural talent for art, hitherto uncultivated,
+of course, save by such instructions as one of the women at the convent,
+skilful at illuminating, had occasionally given her. I amused myself
+with teaching her to transfer to paper and canvas the scenery she loved
+so passionately. I spent many hours training this talent of hers that
+was of very unusual calibre, and, with due culture, might have ranked
+her with Elisabetta Sirani or Rosa Bonheur. Sitting with her in the old
+room, or under the beech-trees, or by the side of the torrents that tore
+down the rocks into the Gave, it pleased me to draw out her unsullied
+thoughts, to spread her mind out before me like a book--a pure book
+enough, God knows, with not even a stain of the world upon it--to make
+her eyes glisten and glow and dilate, to fill them with tears or
+laughter at my will, to wake up her young life from its unconscious,
+untroubled, childish repose to a new happiness, a new pain, which she
+felt but could not translate, which dawned in her face for me, but never
+spoke in its true language to her, ignorant then of its very name--it
+amused me. Bah! our amusements are cruel sometimes, and costly too!
+
+"It was at that time I took the head in pastels which you have seen, and
+she asked me, in innocent admiration of its loveliness, if she was
+_indeed_ like that?--This night is awfully oppressive. Is there water in
+that carafe? Is it iced? Push it to me. Thank you.
+
+"I was always welcome at the Nid de l'Aigle. Old Cazot, with the
+instinct of servants who have lived with people of birth till they are
+as proud of their master's heraldry as though it were their own,
+discerned that I was of the same rank as her adored House of De
+l'Heris--if indeed she admitted any equal to them--and with all the
+cheery familiarity of a Frenchwoman treated me with punctilious
+deference, being as thoroughly imbued with respect and adoration for the
+aristocracy as any of those who died for the white lilies in the Place
+de la Révolution. And Florelle--Florelle watched for me, and counted her
+hours by those I spent with her. You are sure I had not read and played
+with women's hearts so long--women, too, with a thousand veils and
+evasions and artifices, of which she was in pure ignorance even of the
+existence--without having this heart, young, unworn, and unoccupied,
+under my power at once, plastic to mould as wax, ready to receive any
+impressions at my hands, and moulded easily to my will. Florelle had
+read no love stories to help her to translate this new life to which I
+awoke her, or to put her on her guard against it. I went there often,
+every day at last, teaching my pupil the art which she was only too glad
+and too eager to learn, stirring her vivid imagination with descriptions
+of that brilliant outside world, of whose pleasures, gayeties and
+pursuits she was as ignorant as any little gentian flower on the rocks;
+keeping her spell-bound with glimpses of its life, which looked to her
+like fairyland, bizarre bal masqué though it be to us; and pleasing
+myself with awakening new thoughts, new impressions, new emotions, which
+swept over her tell-tale face like the lights and shades over
+meadow-land as the sun fades on and off it. She was a new study, a new
+amusement to me, after the women of our world, and I beguiled my time
+with her, not thoughtlessly, as I might have done, not too hastily, as I
+_should_ have done ten years before, but pleased with my new amusement,
+and more charmed with Florelle than I at first knew, though I confess I
+soon wished to make her love me, and soon tried my best to make her do
+so--an easy task when one has had some practice in the rose-hued
+atmosphere of the boudoir, among the most difficile and the most
+brilliant coquettes of Europe! Florelle, with a nature singularly
+loving, and a mind singularly imaginative, with no rival for me even in
+her fancy, soon lavished on me all the love of which her impassioned and
+poetic character was capable. She did not know it, but I did. She loved
+me, poor child!--love more pure, unselfish, and fond than I ever won
+before, than I shall ever win again.
+
+"Basta! why need you have lighted on that crayon-head, and make me rake
+up this story? I loathe looking at the past. What good ever comes of it?
+A wise man lives only in his present. 'La vita è appunto una memoria,
+una speranza, un punto,' writes the fool of a poet, as though the bygone
+memories and the unrealized hopes were worth a straw! It is that very
+present 'instant' that he despises which is available, and in which,
+when we are in our senses, we absorb ourselves, knowing that that alone
+will yield a fruit worth having. What are the fruits of the others? only
+Dead Sea apples that crumble into ash.
+
+"I knew that Florelle loved me; that I, and I alone, filled both her
+imagination and her heart. I would not precipitately startle her into
+any avowal of it. I liked to see it dawn in her face and gleam in her
+eyes, guilelessly and unconsciously. It was a new pleasure to me, a new
+charm in that book of Woman of which I had thought I knew every phase,
+and had exhausted every reading. I taught Florelle to love me, but I
+would not give her a name to my teaching till she found it herself. I
+returned it? O yes, I loved her, selfishly, as most people, men or
+women, do love, let them say what they will; _very_ selfishly,
+perhaps--a love that was beneath her--a love for which, had she seen
+into my heart, she might have disdained and hated me, if her soft nature
+could have been moved to so fierce a thing as hate--a love that sought
+its own gratification, and thought nothing of her welfare--a love _not_
+worthy of her, as I sometimes felt then, as I believe now.
+
+"I had been about six weeks in the Pyrenees since the day I lost myself
+en route from Gavarnie; most of the days I had spent three or four
+hours, often more, at the Nid de l'Aigle, giving my painting lessons to
+Florelle, or being guided by her among the beech-wooded and mountain
+passes near her home. The dreariest fens and flats might have gathered
+interest from such a guide, and the glorious beauties of the Midi, well
+suited to her, gained additional poetry from her impassioned love for
+them, and her fond knowledge of all their legends, superstitions,
+histories, and associated memories, gathered from the oral lore of the
+peasantry, the cradle songs of Madame Cazot, and the stories of the old
+chronicles of the South. Heavens! what a wealth of imagination, talent,
+genius, lay in her if _I_ had not destroyed it!
+
+"At length the time drew near when my so-called sojourn at the Baths
+must end. One day Florelle and I were out sketching, as usual; she sat
+under one of the great beeches, within a few feet of one of the cascades
+that fell into the Gave du Pau, and I lay on the grass by her, looking
+into those clear gazelle eyes that met mine so brightly and trustfully,
+watching the progress of her brush, and throwing twigs and stones into
+the spray of the torrent. I can remember the place as though it were
+yesterday, the splash of the foam over the rocks, the tinkle of the
+sheep-bells from the hills, the scent of the wild flowers growing round,
+the glowing golden light that spread over the woodlands, touching even
+the distant crest of Mount Aigu and the Pic du Midi. Strange how some
+scenes will stamp themselves on the camera of the brain never to be
+effaced, let one try all that one may.
+
+"There, that morning, I, for the first time since we had met, spoke of
+leaving Luz, and of going back to that life which I had so often amused
+her by describing. Happy in her present, ignorant of how soon the scenes
+so familiar and dear to her would tire and pall on me, and infinitely
+too much of a child to have looked beyond, or speculated upon anything
+which I had not spoken of to her, it had not presented itself to her
+that this sort of life could not go on for ever; that even she would not
+reconcile me long to the banishment from my own world, and that in the
+nature of things we must either become more to each other than we were
+now, or part as strangers, whom chance had thrown together for a little
+time. She loved me, but, as I say, so innocently and uncalculatingly,
+that she never knew it till I spoke of leaving her; then she grew very
+pale, her eyes filled with tears, and shunned mine for the first time,
+and, as an anatomist watches the quiver of pain in his victim, so I
+watched the suffering of mine. It was her first taste of the bitterness
+of life, and while I inflicted the pain I smiled at it, pleased in my
+egotism to see the power I had over her. It was cruel, I grant it, but
+in confessing it I only confess to what nine out of ten men have felt,
+though they may conceal or deny it.
+
+"'You will miss me, Florelle?' I asked her. She looked at me
+reproachfully, wistfully, piteously, the sort of look I have seen in the
+eyes of a dying deer; too bewildered by this sudden mention of my
+departure to answer in words. No answer was needed with eyes so eloquent
+as hers, but I repeated it again. I knew I gave pain, but I knew, too, I
+should soon console her. Her lips quivered, and the tears gathered in
+her eyes; she had not known enough of sorrow to have learnt to dissemble
+it. I asked her if she loved me so much that she was unwilling to bid me
+farewell. For the first time her eyes sank beneath mine, and a hot
+painful color flushed over her face. Poor child! if ever I have been
+loved by any woman, I was loved by her. Then I woke her heart from its
+innocent peaceful rest, with words that spoke a language utterly new to
+her. I sketched to her a life with me that made her cheeks glow, and her
+lips quiver, and her eyes grow dark. She was lovelier in those moments
+than any art could ever attempt to picture! She loved me, and I made
+her tell me so over and over again. She put her fate unhesitatingly into
+my hands, and rejoiced in the passion I vowed her, little understanding
+how selfishly I sought her, little thinking, in her ignorance of the
+evil of the world, that while she rejoiced in the fondness I lavished on
+her, and worshipped me as though I were some superior unerring godlike
+being, she was to me only a new toy, only a pursuit of the hour, a
+plaything, too, of which I foresaw I should tire! Isn't it Benjamin
+Constant who says,'Malheureux l'homme qui, dans le commencement d'un
+amour, prévoit avec une précision cruelle l'heure où il en sera lassé'?
+
+"As it happened, I had made that morning an appointment in Luz with some
+men I knew, who happened to be passing through it, and had stopped there
+that day to go up the Pic du Midi the next, so that I could spend only
+an hour or two with Florelle. I took her to her home, parted with her
+for a few hours, and went down the path. I remember how she stood
+looking after me under the heavy gray stone-work of the gateway, the
+tendrils of the ivy hanging down and touching her hair that glistened in
+the sunshine as she smiled me her adieux. My words had translated, for
+the first time, all the newly-dawned emotions that had lately stirred in
+her heart, while she knew not their name.
+
+"I soon lost sight of her through a sharp turn of the bridle-path round
+the rocks, and went on my way thinking of my new love, of how completely
+I held the threads of her fate in my hands, and how entirely it lay in
+my power to touch the chords of her young heart into acute pain or into
+as acute pleasure with one word of mine--of how utterly I could mould
+her character, her life, her fate, whether for happiness or misery, at
+my will. I loved her well enough, if only for her unusual beauty, to
+feel triumph at my entire power, and to feel a tinge of her own poetry
+and tenderness of feeling stirring in me as I went on under the green,
+drooping, fanlike boughs of the pines, thinking of Florelle de l'Heris.
+
+"'M'sieu! permettez-moi vous parle un p'tit mot?'
+
+"Madame Cazot's patois made me look up, almost startled for the moment,
+though there was nothing astonishing in her appearance there, in her
+accustomed spot under the shade of a mountain-ash and a great boulder of
+rock, occupied at her usual task, washing linen in the Gave, as it
+foamed and rushed over its stones. She raised herself from her work and
+looked up at me, shading her eyes from the light--a sunburnt, wrinkled,
+hardy old woman, with her scarlet capulet, her blue cloth jacket, and
+her brown woollen petticoat, so strange a contrast to the figure I had
+lately left under the gateway of the Nid de l'Aigle, that it was
+difficult to believe them even of the same sex or country.
+
+"She spoke with extreme deference, as she always did, but so earnestly,
+that I looked at her in surprise, and stopped to hear what it might be
+she had to say. She was but a peasant woman, but she had a certain
+dignity of manner for all that, caught, no doubt, from her long service
+with, and her pride in, the De l'Heris.
+
+"'M'sieu, I have no right, perhaps, to address you; you are a grand
+seigneur, and I but a poor peasant woman. Nevertheless, I must speak. I
+have a charge to which I shall have to answer in the other world to God
+and to my master. M'sieu, pardon me what I say, but you love Ma'amselle
+Florelle?'
+
+"I stared at the woman, astonished at her interference and annoyed at
+her presumption, and motioned her aside with my stick. But she placed
+herself in the path--a narrow path--on which two people could not have
+stood without one or other going into the Gave, and stopped me
+resolutely and respectfully, shading her eyes from the sun, and looking
+steadily at my face.
+
+"'M'sieu, a little while ago, in the gateway yonder, when you parted
+with Ma'amselle Florelle, I was coming out behind you to bring my linen
+to the river, and I saw you take her in your arms and kiss her many
+times, and whisper to her that you would come again "ce soir!" Then,
+m'sieu, I knew that you must love my little lady, or, at least, must
+have made her love you. I have thought her--living always with her--but
+a beautiful child still; but you have found her a beautiful woman, and
+loved her, or taught her love, m'sieu. Pardon me if I wrong your honor,
+but my master left her in my charge, and I am an ignorant old peasant,
+ill fitted for such a trust; but is this love of yours such as the Sieur
+de l'Heris, were he now on earth, would put his hand in your own and
+thank you for, or is it such that he would wash out its insult in your
+blood or his?'
+
+"Her words amazed me for a moment, first at the presumption of an
+interference of which I had never dreamt, next at the iron firmness with
+which this old woman, nothing daunted, spoke as though the blood of a
+race of kings ran in her veins. I laughed a little at the absurdity of
+this cross-questioning from her to me, and not choosing to bandy words
+with her, bade her move aside; but her eyes blazed like fire; she stood
+firm as the earth itself.
+
+"'M'sieu, answer me! You love Ma'amselle Florelle--you have asked her in
+marriage?'
+
+"I smiled involuntarily:
+
+"'My good woman, men of my class don't marry every pretty face they
+meet; we are not so fond of the institution. You mean well, I know; at
+the same time, you are deucedly impertinent, and I am not accustomed to
+interference. Have the goodness to let me pass, if you please.'
+
+"But she would not move. She folded her arms across her chest, quivering
+from head to foot with passion, her deep-set eyes flashing like coals
+under her bushy eyebrows.
+
+"'M'sieu, I understand you well enough. The house of the L'Heris is
+fallen, ruined, and beggared, and you deem dishonor may approach it
+unrebuked and unrevenged. Listen to me, m'sieu; I am but a woman, it is
+true, and old, but I swore by Heaven and Our Lady to the Sieur de
+l'Heris, when he lay dying yonder, years ago, that I would serve the
+child he left, as my forefathers had served his in peace and war for
+centuries, and keep and guard her as best I might dearer than my own
+heart's blood. Listen to me. Before this love of yours shall breathe
+another word into her ear to scorch and sully it; before your lips shall
+ever meet hers again; before you say again to a De l'Heris poor and
+powerless, what you would never have dared to say to a De l'Heris rich
+and powerful, I will defend her as the eagles by the Nid de l'Aigle
+defend their young. You shall only reach her across my dead body!'
+
+"She spoke with the vehemence and passionate gesticulation of a
+Southern; in her patois, it is true, and with rude eloquence, but there
+was an odd _timbre_ of pathos in her voice, harsh though it was, and a
+certain wild dignity about her through the very earnestness and passion
+that inspired her. I told her she was mad, and would have put her out of
+my path, but, planting herself before me, she laid hold of my arm so
+firmly that I could not have pushed forwards without violence, which I
+would not have used to a woman, and a woman, moreover, as old as she
+was.
+
+"'Listen to one word more, m'sieu. I know not what title you may bear in
+your own country, but I saw a coronet upon your handkerchief the other
+day, and I can tell you are a grand seigneur--you have the air of it,
+the manner. M'sieu, you can have many women to love you; cannot you
+spare this one? you must have many pleasures, pursuits, enjoyments in
+your world, can you not leave me this single treasure? Think, m'sieu! If
+Ma'amselle Florelle loves you now, she will love you only the dearer as
+years go on; and _you_, you will tire of her, weary of her, want change,
+fresh beauty, new excitement--you must know that you will, or why should
+you shrink from the bondage of marriage?--you will weary of her; you
+will neglect her first and desert her afterwards; what will be the
+child's life _then_? Think! You have done her cruel harm enough now with
+your wooing words, why will you do her more? What is your love beside
+hers? If you have heart or conscience, you cannot dare to contrast them
+together; _she_ would give up everything for you, and _you_ would give
+up nothing! M'sieu, Florelle is not like the women of your world; she is
+innocent of evil as the holy saints; those who meet her should guard her
+from the knowledge, and not lead her to it. Were the Sieur De l'Heris
+living now, were her House powerful as I have known them, would you have
+dared or dreamt of seeking her as you do now? M'sieu, he who wrongs
+trust, betrays hospitality, and takes advantage of that very purity,
+guilelessness, and want of due protection which should be the best and
+strongest appeal to every man of chivalry and honor--he, whoever he be,
+the De l'Heris would have held, as what he is, a coward! Will you not
+now have pity upon the child, and let her go?'
+
+"I have seldom been moved in, never been swayed from, any pursuit or any
+purpose, whether of love, or pleasure, or ambition; but something in old
+Cazot's words stirred me strangely, more strangely still from the daring
+and singularity of the speaker. Her intense love for her young charge
+gave her pathos, eloquence, and even a certain rude majesty, as she
+spoke; her bronzed wrinkled features worked with emotions she could not
+repress, and hot tears fell over her hard cheeks. I felt that what she
+said was true; that as surely as the night follows the day would
+weariness of it succeed to my love for Florelle, that to the hospitality
+I had so readily received I had, in truth, given but an ill return, and
+that I had deliberately taken advantage of the very ignorance of the
+world and faith in me which should have most appealed to my honor. I
+knew that what she said was true, and this epithet of 'coward' hit me
+harder from the lips of a woman, on whom her sex would not let me avenge
+it, with whom my conscience would not let me dispute it, than it would
+have done from any man. _I_ called a coward by an old peasant woman!
+absurd idea enough, wasn't it? It is a more absurd one still that I
+could not listen to her unmoved, that her words touched me--how or why I
+could not have told--stirred up in me something of weakness,
+unselfishness, or chivalrousness--I know not what exactly--that prompted
+me for once to give up my own egotistical evanescent passions and act to
+Florelle as though all the males of her house were on earth to make me
+render account of my acts. At old Cazot's words I shrank for once from
+my own motives and my own desires, shrank from classing Florelle with
+the _cocottes_ of my world, from bringing her down to their level and
+their life.
+
+"'You will have pity on her, m'sieu, and go?' asked old Cazot, more
+softly, as she looked in my face.
+
+"I did not answer her, but put her aside out of my way, went down the
+mountain-path to where my horse was left cropping the grass on the level
+ground beneath a plane-tree, and rode at a gallop into Luz without
+looking back at the gray-turreted ruins of the Nid de l'Aigle.
+
+"And I left Luz that night without seeing Florelle de l'Heris again--a
+tardy kindness--one, perhaps, as cruel as the cruelty from which old
+Cazot had protected her. Don't you think I was a fool, indeed, for once
+in my life, to listen to an old woman's prating? Call me so if you like,
+I shall not dispute it; we hardly know when we are fools, and when wise
+men! Well! I have not been much given to such weaknesses.
+
+"I left Luz, sending a letter to Florelle, in which I bade her farewell,
+and entreated her to forget me--an entreaty which, while I made it, I
+felt would not be obeyed--one which, in the selfishness of my heart, I
+dare say, I hoped might not be. I went back to my old diplomatic and
+social life, to my customary pursuits, amusements, and ambitions,
+turning over the leaf of my life that contained my sojourn in the
+Pyrenees, as you turn over the page of a romance to which you will never
+recur. I led the same life, occupied myself with my old ambitions, and
+enjoyed my old pleasures; but I could not forget Florelle as wholly as I
+wished and tried to do. I had not usually been troubled with such
+memories; if unwelcome, I could generally thrust them aside; but
+Florelle I did not forget; the more I saw of other women the sweeter and
+brighter seemed by contrast her sensitive, delicate nature, unsullied by
+the world, and unstained by artifice and falsehood. The longer time went
+on, the more I regretted having given her up--perhaps on no better
+principle than that on which a child cares most for the toy he cannot
+have; perhaps because, away from her, I realized I had lost the purest
+and the strongest love I had ever won. In the whirl of my customary life
+I sometimes wondered how she had received my letter, and how far the
+iron had burnt into her young heart--wondered if she had joined the
+Sisters of Sainte Marie Purificatrice, or still led her solitary life
+among the rocks and beech-woods of Nid de l'Aigle. I often thought of
+her, little as the life I led was conducive to regretful or romantic
+thoughts. At length my desire to see her again grew ungovernable. I had
+never been in the habit of refusing myself what I wished; a man is a
+fool who does, if his wishes are in any degree attainable. And at the
+end of the season I went over to Paris, and down again once more into
+the Midi. I reached Luz, lying in the warm golden Pyrenean light as I
+had left it, and took once more the old familiar road up the hills to
+the Nid de l'Aigle. There had been no outward change from the year that
+had flown by; there drooped the fan-like branches of the pines; there
+rushed the Gave over its rocky bed; there came the silvery sheep-bell
+chimes down the mountain-sides; there, over hill and wood, streamed the
+mellow glories of the Southern sunlight. There is something unutterably
+painful in the sight of any place after one's lengthened absence,
+wearing the same smile, lying in the same sunlight. I rode on, picturing
+the flush of gladness that would dawn in Florelle's face at the sight of
+me, thinking that Mme. Cazot should not part me from her again, even, I
+thought, as I saw the old gray turrets above the beech-woods, if I paid
+old Cazot's exacted penalty of marriage! I loved Florelle more deeply
+than I had done twelve months before. 'L'absence allument les grandes
+passions et éteignent les petites,' they say. It had been the reverse
+with me.
+
+"I rode up the bridle-path and passed through the old gateway. There was
+an unusual stillness about the place; nothing but the roar of the
+torrent near, and the songs of the birds in the branches speaking in the
+summer air. My impatience to see Florelle, or to hear her, grew
+ungovernable. The door stood open. I groped my way through the passage
+and pushed open the door of the old room. Under the oriel window, where
+I had seen her first, she lay on a little couch. I saw her again--but
+_how_! My God! to the day of my death I shall never forget her face as I
+saw it then; it was turned from me, and her hair streamed over her
+pillows, but as the sunlight fell upon it, I knew well enough what was
+written there. Old Cazot, sitting by the bed with her head on her arms,
+looked up, and came towards me, forcing me back.
+
+"'You are come at last, to see her die. Look on your work--look well at
+it--and then go; with my curse upon you!'
+
+"I shook off her grasp, and forcing my way towards the window, threw
+myself down by Florelle's bed; till then I never knew how well I loved
+her. My voice awoke her from her sleep, and, with a wild cry of joy, she
+started up, weak as she was, and threw her arms round my neck, clinging
+to me with her little hands, and crying to me deliriously not to leave
+her while she lived--to stay with her till death should take her; where
+had I been so long? why had I come so late? _So late!_--those piteous
+words! As I held her in my arms, unconscious from the shock, and saw the
+pitiless marks that disease, the most hopeless and the most cruel, had
+made on the face that I had left fair, bright, and full of life as any
+child's, I felt the full bitterness of that piteous reproach, 'Why had I
+come so late?'
+
+"What need to tell you more. Florelle de l'Heris was dying, and I had
+killed her. The child that I had loved so selfishly had loved me with
+all the concentrated tenderness of her isolated and impassioned nature;
+the letter I wrote bidding her farewell had given her her death-blow.
+They told me that from the day she received that letter everything lost
+its interest for her. She would sit for hours looking down the road to
+Luz, as though watching wearily for one who never came, or kneeling
+before the pictures I had left as before some altar, praying to Heaven
+to take care of me, and bless me, and let her see me once again before
+she died. Consumption had killed her mother in her youth; during the
+chill winter at the Nid de l'Aigle the hereditary disease settled upon
+her. When I found her she was dying fast. All the medical aid, all the
+alleviations, luxuries, resources, that money could procure, to ward off
+the death I would have given twenty years of my life to avert, I
+lavished on her, but they were useless; for my consolation they told me
+that, used a few months earlier, they would have saved her! She lingered
+three weeks, fading away like a flower gathered before its fullest
+bloom. Each day was torture to me. I knew enough of the disease to know
+from the first there was no hope for her or me. Those long terrible
+night-hours, when she lay with her head upon my shoulder, and her little
+hot thin hands in mine, while I listened, uncertain whether every breath
+was not the last, or whether life was not already fled! By God! I cannot
+think of them!
+
+One of those long summer nights Florelle died; happy with me, loving and
+forgiving me to the last; speaking to the last of that reunion in which
+_she_, in her innocent faith, believed and hoped, according to the
+promise of her creed!--died with her hands clasped round my neck, and
+her eyes looking up to mine, till the last ray of light was quenched in
+them--died while the morning dawn rose in the east and cast a golden
+radiance on her face, the herald of a day to which she never awoke!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a dead silence between us; the Arno splashed against the wall
+below, murmuring its eternal song beneath its bridge, while the dark
+heavy clouds drifted over the sky with a sullen roll of thunder. He lay
+back in his chair, the deep shadow of the balcony pillar hiding his face
+from me, and his voice quivered painfully as he spoke the last words of
+his story. He was silent for many minutes, and so was I, regretting that
+my careless question had unfolded a page out of his life's history
+written in characters so painful to him. Such skeletons dwell in the
+hearts of most; hands need be tender that disentomb them and drag out to
+daylight ashes so mournful and so grievous, guarded so tenaciously,
+hidden so jealously. Each of us is tender over his own, but who does not
+think his brother's fit subject for jest, for gibe, for mocking dance
+of death?
+
+He raised himself with a laugh, but his lips looked white as death as he
+drank down a draught of the Hermitage.
+
+"Well! what say you: is the maxim right, _y-a-t-il femmes et femmes_?
+Caramba! why need you have pitched upon that portfolio?--There are the
+lights in the Acqua d'Oro's palace; we must go, or we shall get into
+disgrace."
+
+We went, and Beatrice Acqua d'Oro talked very ardent Italian to him, and
+the Comtesse Bois de Sandal remarked to me what a brilliant and
+successful man Lord ---- was, but how unimpressionable!--as cold and as
+glittering as ice. Nothing had ever made him _feel_, she was quite
+certain, pretty complimentary nonsense though he often talked. What
+would the Marchesa and the Comtesse have said, I wonder, had I told them
+of that little grave under the Pyrenean beech-woods? So much does the
+world know of any of us! In the lives of all men are doubled-down pages
+written on in secret, folded out of sight, forgotten as they make other
+entries in the diary, and never read by their fellows, only glanced at
+by themselves in some midnight hour of solitude.
+
+Basta! they are painful reading, my friends. Don't you find them so? Let
+us leave the skeletons in the closet, the pictures in the portfolio, the
+doubled-down pages in the locked diary, and go to Beatrice Acqua
+d'Oro's, where the lights are burning gayly. What is Madame Bois de
+Sandal, _née_ Dashwood, singing in the music room?
+
+    The tender grace of a day that is dead
+    Will never come back to me!
+
+That is the burden of many songs sung in this world, for some dead
+flowers strew most paths, and grass grows over myriad graves, and many
+leaves are folded down in many lives, I fear. And--retrospection is very
+idle, my good fellow, and regret is as bad as the tic, and flirting is
+deucedly pleasant; the white Hermitage we drank to-night is gone, we
+know, but are there no other bottles left of wine every whit as good?
+Shall we waste our time sighing after spilt lees? Surely not. And
+yet--ah me!--the dead fragrance of those vines that yielded us the
+golden nectar of our youth!
+
+
+
+
+THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR;
+
+OR,
+
+"NOT AT ALL A PROPER PERSON."
+
+
+Bon ami, do you consider the possession of sisters an agreeable addition
+to anybody's existence? _I_ hold it very intensely the reverse. Who pats
+a man down so spitefully as his sisters? Who refuses so obstinately to
+see any good in the Nazarene they have known from their nurseries? Who
+snubs him so contumaciously, when he's a little chap in jackets and they
+young ladies already out? Who worries him so pertinaciously to marry
+their pet friend, "who has ten thousand a year, dear! Red hair? I'm sure
+she has not! It's the most lovely auburn! But you never see any beauty
+in _refined_ women!" Who, if you incline towards a pretty little
+ineligible, rakes up so laboriously every scrap of gossip detrimental to
+her, and pours into your ear the delightful intelligence that she has
+been engaged to Powell of the Grays, is a shocking flirt, wears false
+teeth, is full five years older than she says she is, and has most
+objectionable connections? Who, I should like to know, does any and all
+of these things, my good fellow, so amiably and unremittingly as your
+sisters? till--some day of grace, perhaps--you make a telling speech at
+St. Stephen's, and fling a second-hand aroma of distinction upon them;
+or marry a co-heiress and lady-in-her-own-right, and they _raffolent_ of
+that charming creature, speculating on the desirability of being
+invited to your house when the men are down for September. Then, what a
+dear fellow you become! they always _were_ so fond of you! a little
+wild! oh, yes! but they are _so_ glad you are changed, and think more
+seriously now! it was only from a _real_ interest in your welfare that
+they used to grieve, &c., &c.
+
+My sisters were my natural enemies, I remember, when I was in the daisy
+age and exposed to their thraldom; they were so blandly superior, so
+ineffably condescending, and wielded, with such smiling dexterity, that
+feminine power of torture known familiarly as "nagging!" Now, of course,
+they leave me in peace; but from my earliest to my emancipated years
+they were my natural enemies. I might occasionally excite the enmity, it
+is possible. I remember, when I was aged eight, covering Constance, a
+stately brunette, with a mortifying amount of confusion, by asking her,
+as she welcomed a visitor with effusion, why she said she was delighted
+to see her when she had cried "There's that odious woman again!" as we
+saw the carriage drive up. I have a criminal recollection of taking
+Gwendolina's fan, fresh from Howell and James's, and stripping it of its
+gold-powdered down before her face ere she could rush to its rescue, as
+an invaluable medium in the manufacture of mayflies. I also have a dim
+and guilty recollection of saying to the Hon. George Cursitt, standing
+then in the interesting position of my prospective brother-in-law, "Mr.
+Cursitt, Agneta doesn't care one straw for you. I heard her saying so
+last night to Con; and that if you weren't so near the title, she would
+never have accepted you;" which revelation inopportunely brought that
+desirable alliance to an end, and Olympian thunders on my culprit's
+head.
+
+I had my sins, doubtless, but they were more than avenged on me; my
+sisters were my natural enemies, and I never knew of any man's who
+weren't so, more or less. Ah! my good sirs, those domesticities are all
+of them horrid bores, and how any man, happily and thrice blessedly
+free from them, can take the very worst of them voluntarily on his head
+by the Gate of Marriage (which differs thus remarkably from a certain
+Gate at Jerusalem, that at the one the camels kneel down to be lightened
+of all _their_ burdens ere they can pass through it; at the other, the
+poor human animal kneels down to be loaded with all _his_ ere he is
+permitted to enter), does pass my comprehension, I confess. I might
+amply avenge the injuries of my boyhood received from _mesdemoiselles
+mes soeurs_. Could I not tell Gwendolina of the pot of money dropped by
+her caro sposo over the Cesarewitch Stakes? Could I not intimate to
+Agneta where her Right Honorable lord and master spent the small hours
+last night, when popularly supposed to be nodding on the Treasury
+benches in the service of the state? Could I not rend the pride of
+Constance, by casually asking monsieur her husband, as I sip her coffee
+in her drawing-room this evening, who was that very pretty blonde with
+him at the Crystal Palace yesterday? the blonde being as well known
+about town as any other star of the demi-monde. Of course I could: but I
+am magnanimous; I can too thoroughly sympathize with those poor fellows.
+My vengeance would recoil on innocent heads, so I am magnanimous and
+silent.
+
+My sisters have long ceased to be mesdemoiselles, they have become
+mesdames, in that transforming crucible of marriage in which, assuredly,
+all that glitters is not gold, but in which much is swamped, and
+crushed, and fused with uncongenial metal, and from which the elixir of
+happiness but rarely exhales, whatever feminine alchemists, who
+patronize the hymeneal furnace, may choose to assure us to the contrary.
+My sisters are indisputably very fine women, and develop in full bloom
+all those essential qualities which their moral and mental trainers
+sedulously instilled into them when they were limited to the
+school-room and thorough-bass, Garcia and an "expurgated" Shakespeare,
+the society of Mademoiselle Colletmonté and Fräulein von Engel, and the
+occasional refection of a mild, religious, respectably-twaddling fiction
+of the milk-and-water, pious-tendency, nursery-chronicling, and
+grammar-disregarding class, nowadays indited for the mental improvement
+of a commonplace generation in general, and growing young ladies in
+particular. My sisters are women of the world to perfection; indeed, for
+talent in refrigerating with a glance; in expressing disdain of a
+toilette or a ton by an upraised eyebrow; in assuming a various
+impenetrable plaît-il? expression at a moment's notice; in sweeping past
+intimate friends with a charming unconsciousness of their existence,
+when such unconsciousness is expedient or desirable; in reducing an
+unwished-for intruder into an instantaneous and agonizing sense of his
+own de trop-ism and insignificance--in all such accomplishments and
+acquirements necessary to existence in all proper worlds, I think they
+may be matched with the best-bred lady to be found any day, from April
+to August, between Berkeley Square and Wilton Crescent. Constance, now
+Lady Maréchale, is of a saintly turn, and touched with fashionable
+fanaticism, pets evangelical bishops and ragged school-boys, drives to
+special services, and is called our noble and Christian patroness by
+physicians and hon. secs., holds doctrinal points and strong tracts,
+mixed together in equal proportion, an infallible chloride of lime for
+the disinfectance of our polluted globe, and appears to receive
+celestial telegrams of indisputable veracity and charming acrimony
+concerning the destiny of the vengeful contents of the Seven Vials.
+Agneta, now Mrs. Albany Protocol, is a Cabinet Ministress, and a second
+Duchesse de Longueville (in her own estimation at the least); is
+"strengthening her party" when she issues her dinner invitations,
+whispers awfully of a "crisis" when even penny-paper leaders can't get
+up a breeze, and spends her existence in "pushing" poor Protocol, who,
+thorough Englishman that he is, considers it a point of honor to stand
+still in all paths with praiseworthy Britannic obstinacy and opticism.
+Gwendolina, now Lady Frederic Farniente, is a butterfly of fashion, has
+delicate health, affects dilettanteism, is interested by nothing, has
+many other charming minauderies, and lives in an exclusive circle--so
+tremendously exclusive, indeed, that it is possible she may at last draw
+the _cordon sanitaire_ so _very_ tight, that she will be left alone with
+the pretty woman her mirrors reflect.
+
+They have each of them attained to what the world calls a "good
+position"--an eminence the world dearly reveres; if you can climb to it,
+_do_; never mind what dirt may cling to your feet, or what you may
+chance to pull down in your ascent, so questions will be asked you at
+the top, when you wave your flag victoriously from a plateau at a good
+elevation. They haven't all their ambitions--who has? If a fresh
+Alexander conquered the world he would fret out his life for a
+standing-place to be able to try Archimedes' little experiment on his
+newly-won globe. Lady Maréchale dies for entrance to certain salons
+which are closed to her; she is but a Baronet's wife, and, though so
+heavenly-minded, has _some_ weaknesses of earth. Mrs. Protocol grieves
+because she thinks a grateful country ought to wreathe her lord's brow
+with laurels--_Anglicè_, strawberry-leaves--and the country remains
+ungrateful, and the brows bare. Lady Frederic frets because her foe and
+rival, Lady Maria Fitz-Sachet, has footmen an inch taller than her own.
+They haven't all their ambitions satisfied. We are too occupied with
+kicking our dear friends and neighbors down off the rounds of the social
+ladder to advance ourselves always perhaps as entirely as we otherwise
+might do. But still they occupy "unexceptionable positions," and from
+those fortified and impregnable citadels are very severe upon those who
+are not, and very jealous of those who are, similarly favored by
+fortune. When St. Peter lets ladies through the celestial portals, he'll
+never please them unless he locks out all their acquaintance, and
+indulges them with a gratifying peep at the rejected candidates.
+
+The triad regard each other after the manner of ladies; that is to say,
+Lady Maréchale holds Mrs. Protocol and Lady Frederic "frivolous and
+worldly;" Lady Frederic gives them both one little supercilious
+expressive epithet, "_précieuses_;" Mrs. Protocol considers Lady
+Maréchale a "pharisee," and Lady Frederic a "butterfly;"--in a word,
+there is that charming family love to one another which ladies so
+delight to evince, that I suppose we must excuse them for it on the plea
+that
+
+    'Tis their nature to!
+
+which Dr. Watts puts forward so amiably and grammatically in excuse for
+the bellicose propensities of the canine race, but which is never
+remembered by priest or layman in extenuation of the human.
+
+They dislike one another--relatives always do--still, the three Arms
+will combine their Horse, Line, and Field Batteries in a common cause
+and against a common enemy; the Saint, the Politician, and the Butterfly
+have several rallying-points in common, and when it comes to the
+question of extinguishing an ineligible, of combining a sneer with a
+smile, of blending the unexceptionably-courteous with the
+indescribably-contemptuous, of calmly shutting their doors to those who
+won't aggrandize them, and blandly throwing them open to those who will,
+it would be an invidious task to give the golden apple, and decide which
+of the three ladies most distinguishes herself in such social prowess.
+
+Need I say that I _don't_ see very much of them?--severe strictures on
+society in general, with moral platitudes, over the luncheon wines at
+Lady Maréchale's; discourse redolent of blue-books, with vindictive
+hits at Protocol and myself for our disinclination to accept a
+"mission," and our levity of life and opinions at "a period so full of
+social revolutions and wide-spread agitation as the present," through
+the soup and fish at Agneta's; softly hissed acerbities and languidly
+yawned satires on the prettiest women of my acquaintance, over the
+coffee at Lady Frederic's; are none of them particularly inviting or
+alluring. And as they or similar conversational confections are
+invariably included in each of the three ladies' entertainments _en
+petit comité_, it isn't wonderful if I forswear their drawing-rooms.
+Chères dames, you complain, and your chosen defenders for you, that men
+don't affect your society nowadays save and except when making love to
+you. It isn't _our_ fault, indeed: you bore us, and--what can we do?--we
+shrink as naturally and pardonably from voluntary boredom as from any
+other voluntary suffering, and shirk an air redolent of ennui from the
+same principle as we do an air redolent of diphtheria. Self-preservation
+is a law of nature, and female society consists too exclusively of
+milk-and-water, dashed here and there with citric acid of malice, to be
+either a recherché or refreshing beverage to palates that have tasted
+warmer spices or more wholesome tonics.
+
+So I don't see much of my triad of sisters unless accidentally, but last
+August I encountered them by chance at Vicq d'Azyr. Do you know Vicq
+d'Azyr? No? All right? when it is known universally it will be spoilt;
+it will soon be fashionable, dyspeptic, artificial, like the crowds that
+will flock to it; its warm, bubbling springs will be gathered into long
+upright glasses, and quaffed by yellow-visaged groups; brass bands will
+bray where now the thrushes, orioles, and nightingales have the
+woodlands to themselves; cavalcades of hired hacks will cut up its
+thyme-covered turf, and young ladies will sketch in tortured outline and
+miserable washes the glorious sweep of its mountains, the crimson tints
+of its forests, the rush of its tumbling torrents, the golden gleam of
+its southern sun. Vicq d'Azyr will be a Spa, and will be spoilt;
+dyspepsia and bronchia, vanities and flirtations, cares and conquests,
+physicians and intrigantes, real marchionesses puffing under asthma,
+fictitious marquises strewing chaff for pigeons, monde and demi-monde,
+grandes dames and dames d'industrie will float into it, a mighty army of
+butterflies with a locust power of destruction: Vicq d'Azyr will be no
+more, and in its stead we shall have--a Fashionable Bath. Vicq d'Azyr,
+however, is free _yet_ from the hand of the spoiler, and is
+charming--its vine-clad hills stretching up in sunny slopes; its little
+homesteads nestling on the mountains' sides among the pines that load
+the air with their rich heavy perfume; its torrents foaming down the
+ravines, flinging their snowy spray far over the bows of arbutus and
+mountain-ash that bend across the brinks of their rushing courses; its
+dark-eyed peasant girls that dance at sunset under the linden-trees like
+living incarnations of Florian's pastorals; its sultry brilliant summer
+nights, when all is still, when the birds are sleeping among the
+ilex-leaves, and the wind barely stirs the tangled boughs of the
+woodland; when night is down on the mountains, wrapping hill and valley,
+crag and forest in one soft purple mist, and the silence around is only
+broken by the mystic music of the rushing waters, the soft whirr of the
+night-birds' wings, or the distant chime of a village clock faintly
+tolling through the air:----Caramba, messieurs! I beg your pardon! I
+don't know why I poetize on Vicq d'Azyr. _I_ went there to slay, not to
+sketch, with a rifle, not with a stylus, to kill izzards and chamois,
+not to indite a poem à la mode, with double-barrelled adjectives, no
+metre, and a "purpose;" nor to add my quota to the luckless loaded walls
+of the Academy by a pre-Raphaelite landscape of arsenical green, with
+the effete trammels of perspective gallantry disregarded, and trees
+like Dr. Syntax's wife, "roundabout and rather squat," with just
+two-dozen-and-seven leaves apiece for liberal allowance. I went to Vicq
+d'Azyr, amongst other places, last August, for chamois-hunting with
+Dunbar, of the Queen's Bays, taking up our abode at the Toison d'Or,
+whither all artists, tourists, men who come for the sport, women who
+come for its scenery, or invalids who come for its waters (whose
+properties, _miserabile dictu!_ are just being discovered as a panacea
+for every human ill--from a migraine to an "incurable pulmonary
+affliction"), seek accommodation if they can have it, since it is the
+only hotel in the place, though a very good one; is adorned with a
+balcony running round the house, twined and buried in honeysuckle and
+wild clematis, which enchants young ladies into instant promotion of it
+into their sketch-books; and gives you, what is of rather more
+importance, and what makes you ready to admire the clematis when, under
+gastronomic exasperation, you might swear at it as a harbor for
+tarantule--an omelette, I assure you, wellnigh as well cooked as you
+have it at Mivart's or Meurice's.
+
+At the Toison d'Or we took up our abode, and at the Toison d'Or we
+encountered my two elder sisters, Constance and Agneta, travelling for
+once on the same road, as they had left Paris together, and were
+together going on to the fashionable capital of a fashionable little toy
+duchy on the other side of the Rhine, when they should have finished
+with the wilder beauties and more unknown charms of Vicq d'Azyr and its
+environs. Each lady had her little train of husband, courier, valet,
+lady's-maid, small dog, and giant jewel-box. I have put the list in the
+inverse ratio of their importance, I believe. Your husband _versus_ your
+jewel-box? Of course, my dear madam; absurd! What's the value of a
+little simple gold ring against a dozen glittering circlets of diamonds,
+emeralds, rubies, and garnets?
+
+Each lady was bent on recruiting herself at Vicq d'Azyr after the toils
+of the season, and of shining _après_ with all the brilliance that a
+fair share of beauty, good positions, and money, fairly entitled
+them to expect, at the little Court of--we will call it
+Lemongenseidlitz--denominated by its charming Duchess, Princess Hélène
+of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz, the loveliest and most volage of all
+minor royalties. Each lady was strongly opposed to whatever the other
+wished; each thought the weather "sultry" when the other thought it
+"chilly," and _vice versâ_. Each considered her own ailments "unheard-of
+suffering, dear!--I could never make any one feel!" &c. &c.--and assured
+you, with mild disdain, that the other's malady was "purely nervous,
+entirely exaggerated, but she _will_ dwell on it so much, poor darling!"
+Each related to you how admirably they would have travelled if _her_
+counsel had been followed, and described how the other _would_ take the
+direction of everything, _would_ confuse poor Chanderlos, the courier,
+till he hardly knew where he was, and _would_ take the night express out
+of pure unkindness, just because she knew how ill it always made her
+(the speaker) feel to be torn across any country the whole night at that
+dreadful pace; each was dissatisfied with everything, pleased with
+nothing, and bored, as became ladies of good degree; each found the sun
+too hot or the wind too cold, the mists too damp or the air too dry, and
+both combined their forces to worry their ladies'-maids, find fault with
+the viands, drive their lords to the registering of an oath never to
+travel with women again, welcome us benignly, since they thought we
+might amuse them, and smile their sunniest on Dunbar--he's
+heir-prospective to the Gwynne Marquisate, and Lady Marqueterie, the
+Saint, is not above keeping one eye open for worldly distinctions, while
+Mrs. Albany Protocol, though a Radical, is, like certain others of the
+ultra-Liberal party, not above a personal kow-towing before those
+"ridiculous and ought-to-be exploded conservative institutions"--Rank
+and Title.
+
+At the Toison d'Or, I say, when, after knocking over izzards _ad
+libitum_ in another part of the district, we descended one evening into
+the valley where Vicq d'Azyr lies nestled in the sunset light, with the
+pretty vendangeuses trooping down from the sloping vineyards, and the
+cattle winding homewards down the hill-side paths, and the vesper-bells
+softly chiming from the convent-tower rising yonder above its woods of
+linden and acacia--at the Toison d'Or, just alighting with the
+respective suites aforesaid, and all those portable embarrassments of
+books, tiger-skin rugs, flacons of bouquet, travelling-bags warranted to
+carry any and everything that the most fastidious can require en route
+from Piccadilly to Peru, with which ladies do love to encumber and
+embitter their own persons and their companions' lives, we met, as I
+have told you, mesdames mes soeurs.
+
+"What! Dear me, how very singular! Never should have dreamt of meeting
+_you_; so much too quiet a place, I should have thought. No Kursaal
+_here_? Come for sport--oh! Take Spes, will you! Poor little dear, he's
+been barking the whole way because he couldn't see out of the window.
+Ah, Major Dunbar, charmed to see you! What an amusing rencontre, is it
+not?" And Lady Maréchale, slightly out of temper for so eminent a
+Christian at the commencement of her greeting, smoothed down her ruffled
+feathers and turned smilingly on Dunbar. I have said he will be one day
+Marquis of Gwynne.
+
+"By George, old fellow! _you_ in this out-of-the-way place! That's all
+right. Sport good, here? Glad to hear it. The deuce take me, if ever I
+am lured into travelling in a _partie carrée_ again."
+
+And Maréchale raised his eyebrows, and whispered confidentially to me
+stronger language than I may commit to print, though, considering his
+provocation, it was surely as pardonable as Uncle Toby's.
+
+"The thing I dislike in this sort of hotels and places is the admixture
+of people with whom one is obliged to come in contact," said Constance,
+putting up her glass as she entered the long low room where the humble
+table d'hôte of the Toison d'Or was spread. Lady Maréchale talks sweetly
+of the equality of persons in the sight of Heaven, but I never heard her
+recognize the same upon the soil of earth.
+
+"Exactly! One may encounter such very objectionable characters! _I_
+wished to dine in our own apartments, but Albany said no; and he is so
+positive, you know! This place seems miserably primitive," responded
+Agneta. Mrs. Protocol pets Rouges and Republicans of every country,
+talks liberalism like a feminine Sièyes or John Bright, projects a
+Reform Bill that shall bear the strongest possible family resemblance to
+the Décrets du 4 Août, and considers "social distinctions _odious_
+between man and man;" but her practice is scarcely consistent with her
+theory, seeing that she is about as tenacious and resentful of
+objectionable contact as a sea-anemone.
+
+"Who is that, I wonder?" whispered Lady Maréchale, acidulating herself
+in readiness, after the custom of English ladies when catching sight of
+a stranger whom they "don't know."
+
+"I wonder! All alone--how very queer!" echoed Mrs. Protocol, drawing her
+black lace shawl around her, with that peculiar movement which announces
+a woman's prescience of something antagonistic to her, that is to be
+repelled _d'avance_, as surely as a hedgehog's transfer of itself into a
+prickly ball denotes a sense of a coming enemy, and a need of caution
+and self-protection.
+
+"Who is that deucedly handsome woman?" whispered Maréchale to me.
+
+"What a charming creature!" echoed Dunbar.
+
+The person referred to was the only woman at the table d'hôte besides my
+sisters--a sister-tourist, probably; a handsome--nay more, a beautiful
+woman, about eight-and-twenty, distinguished-looking, brilliant, with a
+figure voluptuously perfect as was ever the Princess Borghese's. To say
+a woman looks a lady, means nothing in our day. "That young lady will
+wait on you, sir," says the shopman, referring to the shopwoman who will
+show you your gloves. "Hand the 'errings to that lady, Joe," you hear a
+fishmonger cry, as you pass his shop-door, referring by his epithet to
+some Mrs. Gamp or Betsy Priggs in search of that piscatory cheer at his
+stall. Heaven forbid we should give the abused and degenerate title to
+any woman deserving of the name! Generalize a thing, and it is vulgar.
+"A gentleman of my acquaintance," says Spriggs, an auctioneer and
+house-agent, to Smith, a collector of the water-rate. "A man I know,"
+says Pursang, one of the Cabinet, to Greville Tempest, who is heir to a
+Dukedom, and has intermarried with a royal house. The reason is plain
+enough. Spriggs thinks it necessary to inform Smith, who otherwise might
+remain ignorant of so signal a fact, that he actually does know a
+gentleman, or rather what he terms such. Pursang knows that Tempest
+would never suspect him of being _lié_ with men who were anything else;
+the one is proud of the fine English, the other is content with the
+simple phrase! Heaven forbid, I say, we should, nowadays, call any woman
+a lady who is veritably such; let us fall back on the dignified,
+definitive, courtly last-century-name of gentlewoman. I should be glad
+to see that name revived; it draws a line that snobbissimi cannot pass,
+and has a grand simplicity about it that will not attract Spriggs,
+Smith, and Spark, and Mesdames S., leurs femmes!
+
+Our sister-tourist, then, at the Toison d'Or, looked, to my eyes at the
+least, much more than a "lady," she looked an _aristocrate jusqu'au bout
+des ongles_, a beautiful, brilliant, dazzling brunette, with lovely
+hazel eyes, flashing like a tartaret falcon's under their arched
+pencilled eyebrows, quite an unhoped godsend in Vicq d'Azyr, where only
+stragglers resort as yet, though--alas for my Arcadia--my sister's pet
+physician, who sent them thither, is about, I believe, to publish a
+work, entitled "The Water-Spring in the Wilderness; or, A Scamper
+through Spots Unknown," which will do a little advertising of himself
+opportunely, and send hundreds next season to invade the wild woodlands
+and sunny valleys he inhumanly drags forth into the gas-glare of the
+world.
+
+The brilliant hazel eyes were opposite to me at dinner, and were, I
+confess, more attractive to me than the stewed pigeons, the crisp
+frog-legs, and the other viands prepared by the (considering we were in
+the heart of one of the most remote provinces) really not bad cook of
+the Toison d'Or. Lady Maréchale and Mrs. Protocol honored her with that
+stare by which one woman knows so well how to destroy the reputation of
+another without speech; they had taken her measurement by some method of
+feminine geometry unknown to us, and the result was apparently not
+favorable to her, for over the countenances of the two ladies gathered
+that expression of stiff dignity and virtuous disdain, in the assuming
+of which, as I have observed before, they are inimitable proficients.
+"Evidently not a proper person!" was written on every one of their
+lineaments. Constance and Agneta had made up their minds with celerity
+and decision as to her social status, with, it is to be presumed, that
+unerring instinct which leads their sex to a conclusion so
+instantaneously, that, according to a philosopher, a woman will be at
+the top of the staircase of Reasoning by a single spring, while a man is
+toiling slowly up the first few steps.
+
+"You are intending to remain here some days, madame?" asked the fair
+stranger, with a charming smile, of Lady Maréchale--a pleasant little
+overture to chance ephemeral acquaintance, such as a table d'hôte
+surely well warrants.
+
+But the pleasant little overture was one to which Lady Maréchale was far
+too English to respond. With that inimitable breeding for which our
+countrymen and women are continentally renowned, she bent her head with
+stately stiffness, indulged herself with a haughty stare at the
+offender, and turned to Agneta, to murmur in English her disgust with
+the _cuisine_ of the really unoffending Toison d'Or.
+
+"Poor Spes would eat nothing. Fenton must make him some panada. But
+perhaps there was nothing better than goat's milk in the house! What
+could Dr. Berkeley be thinking of? He described the place quite as
+though it were a second Meurice's or Badischer Hof!"
+
+A look of amusement glanced into the sparkling, yet languid eyes of my
+opposite neighbor.
+
+"English!" she murmured to herself, with an almost imperceptible but
+sufficiently scornful elevation of her arched eyebrows, and a slight
+smile, just showing her white teeth, as I addressed her in French; and
+she answered me with the ease, the aplomb, the ever suave courtesy of a
+woman of the world, with that polish which gives the most common
+subjects a brilliance never their own, and that vivacity which confers
+on the merest trifles a spell to amuse and to charm. She was certainly a
+very lovely creature, and a very charming one, too; frank, animated,
+witty, with the tone of a woman who has seen the world and knows it.
+Dunbar adored her, at first sight; he is an inflammable fellow, and has
+been ignited a thousand times at far less provocation. Maréchale
+prepared for himself fifty conjugal orations by the recklessness with
+which, under the very eyes of madame, he devoted himself to another
+woman. Even Albany Protocol, dull, somnolent, and superior to such
+weaknesses, as becomes a president of many boards and a chairman of
+many committees, opened his eyes and glanced at her; and some young
+Cantabs and artists at the other end of the table stopped their own
+conversation, envying Dunbar and myself, I believe, for our
+juxtaposition with the _belle inconnue_; while my sisters sat trifling
+with the wing of a pigeon, in voluntary starvation (they would have had
+nothing to complain of, you see, if they had suffered themselves to dine
+well!), with strong disapprobation marked upon their lineaments, of this
+lovely vivacious unknown, whoever she might be, talking exclusively to
+each other, with a certain expression of sarcastic disdain and offended
+virtue, hinting far more forcibly than words that they thought already
+the "very worst" of her.
+
+So severe, indeed, did they look, that Dunbar, who is a good-natured
+fellow, and thinks--and thinks justly--that Constance and Agneta are
+very fine women, left me to discuss, Hoffmann, Heine, and the rest of
+Germany's satirical poets, with my opposite neighbor, and endeavored to
+thaw my sisters; a very difficult matter when once those ladies are
+iced. He tried Paris, but only elicited a monosyllabic remark concerning
+its weather; he tried Vicq d'Azyr, and was rewarded for his trouble by a
+withering sarcasm on the unlucky Toison d'Or; he tried chit-chat on
+mutual acquaintances, and the unhappy people he chanced to name were
+severally dismissed with a cutting satire appended to each. Lady
+Maréchale and Mrs. Protocol were in one of those freezing and
+unassailable moods in which they sealed a truce with one another, and,
+combining their forces against a common foe, dealt out sharp, spherical,
+hard-hitting little bullets of speech from behind the abatis in which
+they intrenched themselves.
+
+At last he, in despair, tried Lemongenseidlitz, and the ladies thawed
+slightly--their anticipations from that fashionable little quarter were
+couleur de rose. They would meet their people of the best _monde_, all
+their dearest--that is of course their most fashionable--friends; the
+dear Duchess of Frangipane, the Millamonts those charming people,
+M. le Marquis de Croix-et-Cordon, Sir Henry Pullinger, Mrs.
+Merivale-Delafield, were all there; that delightful person, too, the
+Graf von Rosenläu, who amused them so much at Baden last year, was, as
+of course Dunbar knew, Master of the Horse to the Prince of
+Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz; they would be well received at the
+Court. Which last thing, however, they did not _say_, though they might
+imply, and assuredly fully thought it; since Lady Maréchale already
+pictured herself gently awakening his Serene Highness to the spiritual
+darkness of his soul in legitimatizing gaming-tables in his duchy, and
+Mrs. Protocol already beheld herself closeted with his First Minister,
+giving that venerable Metternich lessons in political economy, and
+developing to him a system for filling his beggared treasury to
+overflowing, without taxing the people a kreutzer--a problem which,
+though it might have perplexed Kaunitz, Colbert, Pitt, Malesherbes,
+Talleyrand, and Palmerston put together, offered not the slightest
+difficulty to _her_ enterprising intellect. Have I not said that
+Sherlock states women are at the top of the staircase while we are
+toiling up the first few steps?
+
+"The Duchess--Princess Hélène is a lovely woman, I think. Winton saw her
+at the Tuileries last winter, and raved about her beauty," said Dunbar,
+finding he had hit at last on an acceptable subject, and pursuing it
+with more zeal than discretion; for if there be one thing, I take it,
+more indiscreet than another, it is to praise woman to woman.
+
+Constance coughed and Agneta smiled, and both assented. "Oh yes--very
+lovely, they believed!"
+
+"And very lively--up to everything, I think I have heard," went on
+Dunbar, blandly, unconscious of the meaning of cough, smile, and
+assent.
+
+"Very lively!" sighed the Saint.
+
+"_Very_ lively!" smiled the Politician.
+
+"As gay a woman as Marie Antoinette," continued Dunbar, too intent on
+the truffles to pay en même temps much heed to the subject he was
+discussing. "She's copied the Trianon, hasn't she?--has fêtes and
+pastorals there, acts in comedies herself, shakes off etiquette and
+ceremonial as much as she can, and all that sort of thing, I believe?"
+
+Lady Maréchale leaned back in her chair, the severe virtue and dignified
+censure of a British matron and a modern Lucretia expressed in both
+attitude and countenance.
+
+"A second Marie Antoinette?--too truly and unfortunately so, I have
+heard! Levity in _any_ station sufficiently reprehensible, but when
+exhibited in the persons of those whom a higher power has placed in
+exalted positions, it is most deeply to be deplored. The evil and
+contagion of its example become incalculable; and even when, which I
+believe her excusers are wont to assert of Princess Hélène, it is merely
+traceable to an over-gayety of spirit and an over-carelessness of
+comment and censure, it should be remembered that we are enjoined to
+abstain from every _appearance_ of evil!"
+
+With which Constance shook out her phylacteries, represented by the
+thirty-guinea bracade-silk folds of her skirt (a dress I heard her
+describe as "very plain!--serviceable for travelling"), and glanced at
+my opposite neighbor with a look which said, "You are evidently not a
+proper person, but you hear for once what a proper person thinks!"
+
+Our charming companion did hear it, for she apparently understood
+English very well. She laughed a little--a sweet, low, ringing laugh--(I
+was rather in love with her, I must say--I am still)--and spoke with a
+slight pretty accent.
+
+"True, madame! but ah! what a pity your St. Paul did not advise, too,
+that people should not go by appearances, and think evil where evil is
+not!"
+
+Lady Maréchale gave stare number two with a curl of her lip, and bent
+her head stiffly.
+
+"What a very strange person!" she observed to Agneta, in a murmur,
+meant, like a stage aside, to be duly heard and appreciated by the
+audience. And yet my sisters are thought very admirably bred women, too!
+But then, a woman alone--a foreigner, a stranger--surely no one would
+exact courtesy to such, from "ladies of position?"
+
+"Have you ever seen Princess Hélène, the Duchess of Lemongenseidlitz,
+may I ask?" Maréchale inquired, hastily, to cover his wife's sneer. He's
+a very good fellow, and finds the constant and inevitable society of a
+saint slightly trying, and a very heavy chastisement for a few words
+sillily said one morning in St. George's.
+
+"I have seen her, monsieur--yes!"
+
+"And is she a second Marie Antoinette?"
+
+She laughed gayly, showing her beautiful white teeth.
+
+"Ah, bah, monsieur! many would say that is a great deal too good a
+comparison for her! A second Louise de Savoie--a second Duchesse de
+Chevreuse--nay, a second Lucrezia Borgia, some would tell you. She likes
+pleasure--who does not, though, except those with whom 'les raisins sont
+trop verts et bons pour des goujats?'"
+
+"What an insufferably bold person!" murmured Constance.
+
+"Very disagreeable to meet this style of people!" returned Agneta.
+
+And both stiffened themselves with a little more starch; and we know
+that British wheats produce the stiffest starch in the world!
+
+"Who, indeed!" cried Maréchale, regardless of madame's frown. "You know
+this for truth, then, of Princess Hélène?"
+
+"Ah, bah, monsieur! who knows anything for truth?" laughed the lovely
+brunette. "The world dislikes truth so much, it is obliged to hide
+itself in out-of-the-way corners, and very rarely comes to light. Nobody
+knows the truth about her. Some think her, as you say, a second Marie
+Antoinette, who is surrendered to dissipation and levity, cares for
+nothing, and would dance and laugh over the dead bodies of the people.
+Others judge her as others judged Marie Antoinette; discredit the
+gossip, and think she is but a lively woman, who laughs at forms, likes
+to amuse herself, and does not see why a court should be a prison! The
+world likes the darker picture best; let it have it! I do not suppose it
+will break her heart!"
+
+And the fair stranger laughed so sweetly, that every man at the
+dinner-table fell in love with her on the spot; and Lady Maréchale and
+Mrs. Protocol sat throughout the remainder of the meal in frozen dignity
+and unbreakable silence, while the lovely brunette talked with and
+smiled on us all with enchanting gayety, wit, and abandon, chatting on
+all sorts of topics of the day.
+
+Dinner over, she was the first to rise from the table, and bowed to us
+with exquisite grace and that charming smile of hers, of which the
+sweetest rays fell upon _me_, I swear, whether you consider the oath an
+emanation of personal vanity or not, my good sir. My sisters returned
+her bow and her good evening to them with that pointed stare which says
+so plainly, "You are not my equal, how dare you insult me by a
+courtesy?"
+
+And scarcely had we begun to sip our coffee up-stairs in the apartments
+Chanderlos had secured for the miladies Anglaises, than the duo upon her
+began as the two ladies sat with Spes between them on a sofa beside one
+of the windows opening on the balcony that ran round the house. A chance
+inadvertent assent of Dunbar's, à propos of--oh, sin unpardonable!--the
+beauty of the incognita's eyes, touched the valve and unloosened the
+hot springs that were seething below in silence. "A handsome woman!--oh
+yes, a gentleman's beauty, I dare say!--but a very odd person!"
+commenced Mrs. Protocol. "A very strange person!" assented Mrs.
+Maréchale. "Very free manners!" added Agneta. "Quite French!" chorused
+Constance. "She has diamond rings--paste, no doubt!" said the
+Politician. "And rouges--the color's much too lovely to be natural!"
+sneered the Saint. "Paints her eyebrows, too!" "Not a doubt--and tints
+her lashes!" "An adventuress, I should say!" "Or worse!" "Evidently not
+a proper person!" "Certainly not!"
+
+Through the soft mellow air, hushed into evening silence, the words
+reached me, as I walked through the window on to the balcony, and stood
+sipping my coffee and looking lazily over the landscape wrapped in
+sunset haze, over the valley where the twilight shadows were deepening,
+and the mountains that were steeped yet in a rose-hued golden radiance
+from the rays that had sunk behind them.
+
+"My dear ladies," I cried, involuntarily, "can't you find anything a
+little more kindly to say of a stranger who has never done you any harm,
+and who, fifty to one, will never cross your path again?"
+
+"Bravo!" echoed Maréchale, who has never gone as quietly in the
+matrimonial break as Protocol, and indeed will never be thoroughly
+broken in--"bravo! women are always studying to make themselves
+attractive; it's a pity they don't put down among the items a trifle of
+generosity and charity, it would embellish them wonderfully."
+
+Lady Maréchale beat an injured tattoo with the spoon on her saucer, and
+leaned back with the air of a martyr, and drawing in her lips with a
+smile, whose inimitable sneer any lady might have envied--it was quite
+priceless!
+
+"It is the first time, Sir George, I should presume, that a husband and
+a brother were ever heard to unite in upbraiding a wife and a sister
+with her disinclination to associate with, or her averseness to
+countenance, an improper person!"
+
+"An improper person!" I cried. "But, my dear Constance, who ever told
+you that this lady you are so desperately bitter upon has any fault at
+all, save the worst fault in her own sex's eyes--that of beauty? I see
+nothing in her; her manners are perfect; her tone----"
+
+"You must pardon me if I decline taking your verdict on so delicate a
+question," interrupted Lady Maréchale, with withering satire. "Very
+possibly you see nothing objectionable in her--nothing, at least, that
+_you_ would call so! Your views and mine are sufficiently different on
+every subject, and the women with whom I believe you have chiefly
+associated are not those who are calculated to give you very much
+appreciation for the more refined classes of our sex! Very possibly the
+person in question is what _you_, and Sir George too, perhaps, find
+charming; but you must excuse me if I really cannot, to oblige you,
+stoop to countenance any one whom my intuition and my knowledge of the
+world both declare so very evidently what she should not be. She will
+endeavor, most probably, if she remain here, to push herself into our
+acquaintance, but if you and my husband should choose to insult us by
+favoring her efforts, Agneta and I, happily, can guard ourselves from
+the objectionable companionship into which those who _should_ be our
+protectors would wish to force us!"
+
+With which Lady Maréchale, with a little more martyrdom and an air of
+extreme dignity, had recourse to her _flacon_ of Viola Montana, and sank
+among the sofa cushions, a model of outraged and Spartan virtue. I set
+down my coffee-cup, and lounged out again to the peace of the balcony;
+Maréchale shrugged his shoulders, rose, and followed me. Lo! on the
+part of the balcony that ran under _her_ windows, leaning on its
+balustrade, her white hand, white as the flowers, playing with the
+clematis tendrils, the "paste" diamond flashing in the last rays of the
+setting sun, stood our "dame d'industrie--or worse!" She was but a few
+feet farther on; she must have heard Lady Maréchale's and Mrs.
+Protocol's duo on her demerits; she _had_ heard it, without doubt, for
+she was laughing gayly and joyously, laughter that sparkled all over her
+_riante_ face and flashed in her bright falcon eyes. Laughing still, she
+signed me to her. I need not say that the sign was obeyed.
+
+"Chivalrous knight, I thank you! You are a Bayard of chivalry; you
+defend the absent! What a miracle, mon Dieu! Tell your friends from me
+not to speak so loudly when their windows are open; and, for yourself,
+rest assured your words of this evening will not be forgotten."
+
+"I am happy, indeed, if I have been fortunate enough to obtain a chance
+remembrance, but do not give me too much praise for so simple a service;
+the clumsiest Cimon would be stirred into chivalry under such
+inspiration as I had----"
+
+The beautiful hazel eyes flashed smilingly on me under their lashes.
+(_Those_ lashes tinted! Heaven forgive the malice of women!) She broke
+off a sprig of the clematis, with its long slender leaves and fragrant
+starry flowers, and gave it to me.
+
+"_Tenez, mon ami_, if ever you see me again, show me that faded flower,
+and I shall remember this evening at Vicq d'Azyr. Nay, do not flatter
+yourself--do not thrust it in your breast; it is no gage d'amour! it is
+only a reward for loyal service, and a souvenir to refresh my own
+memory, which is treacherous sometimes, though not in gratitude to those
+who serve me. Adieu, mon Bayard--et bonsoir!"
+
+But I retained the hand that had given me my clematis-spray.
+
+"Meet you again! But will not that be to-morrow? If I am not to see you,
+as your words threaten, till the clematis be faded and myself forgotten,
+let me at least, I beseech you, know where, who, by what name----"
+
+She drew her hand away with something of a proud, surprised gesture;
+then she laughed again that sweet, ringing, mocking laugh:
+
+"No, no, Bayard, it is too much to ask! Leave the future to hazard; it
+is always the best philosophy. Au revoir! Adieu--perhaps for a day,
+perhaps for a century!"
+
+And the bewitching mystery floated away from me and through the open
+window of her room. You will imagine that my "intuition" did not lead me
+to the conclusion to which Lady Maréchale's led her, or assuredly should
+I have followed the donor of the clematis, despite her prohibition. Even
+with my "intuition" pointing where it did, I am not sure what I might
+have done if, in her salon, I had not caught sight of a valet and a
+lady's maid in waiting with her coffee, and they are not such spectators
+as one generally selects.
+
+The servants closed her windows and drew down their Venetian blinds, and
+I returned to my coffee. Whether the two ladies within had overheard her
+conversation as she had heard theirs, I cannot say, but they looked
+trebly refrigerated, had congealed themselves into the chilliest human
+ice that is imaginable, and comported themselves towards me fully as
+distantly as though I had brought a dozen ballet-girls in to dinner with
+them, or introduced them to my choicest acquaintance from the Château
+des Fleurs.
+
+"A man's taste is so pitiably low!" remarked Lady Maréchale, in her
+favorite stage aside to Mrs. Protocol; to which that other lady
+responded, "Disgracefully so!"
+
+Who _was_ my lovely unknown with the bright falcon eyes and the charming
+laugh, with her strange freedom that yet was _not_, somehow, free, and
+her strange fascination? I bade my man ask Chanderlos her
+name--couriers know everything generally--but neither Mills nor
+Chanderlos gave me any information. The people of the house did not
+know, or said they did not; they only knew she had servants in
+attendance who came with her, who revealed nothing, and paid any price
+for the best of everything. Are impertinent questions ever asked where
+money is plentiful?
+
+I was dressing the next morning something later than usual, when I heard
+the roll of a carriage in the courtyard below. I looked through the
+half-open persiennes with a semi-presentiment that it was my sweet
+foreigner who was leaving ere I could presume on my clematis or improve
+our acquaintance. True enough, she it was, leaving Vicq d'Azyr in a
+travelling-carriage, with handsome roans and servants in imperial-blue
+liveries. Who the deuce could she be?
+
+"Well, Constance," said I, as I bade Lady Maréchale good morning, "your
+_bête noire_ won't 'press herself into your acquaintance,' as you were
+dreading last night, and won't excite Maréchale and me to any more high
+treason. Won't you chant a Te Deum? She left this morning."
+
+"So I perceived," answered Lady Maréchale, frigidly; by which I suppose
+_she_ had not been above the weakness of looking through _her_
+persiennes.
+
+"What a pity you and Agneta agitated yourselves with such unnecessary
+alarm! It must have cost you a great deal of eau-de-Cologne and
+sal-volatile, I am afraid, last night. Do you think she contaminated the
+air of the salle-à-manger, because I will order Mills to throw some
+disinfectant about before you go down?"
+
+"I have no inclination to jest upon a person of that stamp," rejoined
+Lady Maréchale, with immense dignity, settling her turquoise
+wristband-studs.
+
+"'That stamp of persons!' What! Do you think she is an adventuress, an
+intrigante, 'or worse' still, then? I hoped her dashing equipage might
+have done something towards cleansing her character. Wealth _is_ a
+universal purifier generally."
+
+"Flippant impertinence!" murmured Lady Maréchale, disgustedly, to Mrs.
+Protocol, as she swept onwards down the staircase, not deigning me a
+glance, much less a response, stiffening herself with a little extra
+starch of Lucretian virtue and British-matronly dignity, which did not
+grow limp again throughout breakfast, while she found fault with the
+chocolate, considered the _petits pains_ execrable, condemned the
+sardines as uneatable, petted Spes, kept Maréchale and me at Coventry,
+and sighed over their enforced incarceration, by Dr. Berkeley's orders,
+in Vicq d'Azyr, that kept them in this stupid place away from
+Lemongenseidlitz.
+
+Their anticipations from Lemongenseidlitz were charmingly golden and
+rose-tinted. They looked forward to consolidating their friendship with
+the dear Duchess in its balmy air, to improving a passing acquaintance
+into an intimate one with that charming person the Baroness
+Liebenfrauenmilch, Mistress of the Robes to Princess Hélène, and to
+being very intimate at the Court, while the Pullingers (their
+bosom-friends and very dear rivals) would be simply presented, and
+remain in chagrin, uninvited to the state balls and palace festivities.
+And what more delightful than that last clause? for what sauce invented,
+from Carême to Soyer, flavors our own _plats_ so deliciously, I should
+like to know, as thinking that our beloved next-door neighbor is doomed
+to a very dry cutlet?
+
+As Pérette, in a humbler fashion, built visions from the pot of milk, so
+mesdames mes soeurs, from the glittering court and capital of
+Lemongenseidlitz, erected brilliant châteaux en Espagne of all their
+sayings and doings in that fashionable little city whither they were
+bound, and into which they had so many invaluable passports. They were
+impatient to be journeying from our humble, solitary valley, and after
+a month of Vicq d'Azyr, they departed for their golden land, and I went
+with them, as I had slain izzards almost _ad nauseam_, and Dunbar's
+expiration of leave had taken him back to Dublin.
+
+It was five o'clock when we reached its Reidenscher Hof, nine when we
+had finished dinner. It was stupid work yawning over coffee and
+_Galignani_. What was to be done? Maréchale proposed the Opera, and for
+the first time in his life was unopposed by his wife. Constance was in a
+suave, benignant mood; she was thinking of her Graf von Rosenläu, of the
+Pullingers, and of the sweet, adroit manner in which she would--when she
+had captivated him and could proffer such hints--awaken his Serene
+Highness to a sense of his moral guilt in not bringing to instant
+capital punishment every agent in those Satanus-farmed banks that throve
+throughout his duchy. Lady Maréchale and Mrs. Protocol assented, and to
+the little miniature gayly-decorated Opera House we drove. They were in
+the middle of the second act of "Ernani." "Ernani" was stale to us all,
+and we naturally lorgné'd the boxes in lieu of the stage. I had turned
+my glass on the left-hand stage-box, and was going steadily round, when
+a faint cry of dismay, alarm, amazement, horror, broke, muffled and low,
+from mesdames mes soeurs. Their lorgnons were riveted on one spot; their
+cheeks were blanched; their hands were tremulous; if they had beheld a
+spiritual visitant, no consternation more profound, more intense, could
+have seized both with its iron hand. _My_ sisters too! the chilliest,
+the calmest, the most impenetrable, the most unassailable of mortals!
+
+"And we called her, in her hearing, not a proper person?" gasped Lady
+Maréchale.
+
+"We thought her a lorette! an intrigante! a dame d'industrie!" echoed
+Mrs. Protocol.
+
+"Who wore paste jewels!"
+
+"Who came from the Rue Bréda!"
+
+"Who wanted to know us!"
+
+"Whom we wouldn't know!"
+
+I turned my Voightlander where their Voightlanders turned; there, in the
+royal box, leaning back in the fauteuil that marked her rank, there,
+with her lovely hazel eyes, her witching smile, her radiant beauty,
+matchless as the pearls gleaming above her brow, there sat the
+"adventuress--or worse!" of Vicq d'Azyr; the "evidently a not proper
+person" of my discerning sisters--H.S.H. Princess Hélène, Grand-Duchess
+of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz! Great Heavens! how had we never
+guessed her before? How had we never divined her identity? How had we
+never remembered all we had heard of her love of laisser-aller, her
+taste for adventure, her delight in travelling, when she could,
+unattended and incognita? How had we never put this and that together,
+and penetrated the metamorphosis?
+
+"_And I called her not a proper person!_" gasped Lady Maréchale, again
+shrinking back behind the azure curtains; the projectiles she had shot
+with such vindictive severity, such delighted acrimony, from the
+murderous mortar of malice, recoiling back upon her head for once, and
+crushing her to powder. What reception would they have _now_ at the
+Court? Von Rosenläu would be powerless; the Pullingers themselves would
+be better off! Pérette's pot of milk was smashed and spilt! "Adieu,
+veau, vache, cochon, couvée!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the pitcher lies shivered into fragments, and the milk is spilt,
+you know, poor Pérette's dreams are shivered and spilt with them. "I
+have not seen you at the palace yet?" asked her Grace of Frangipane. "We
+do not see you at the Court, mesdames?" asked M. de la Croix-et-Cordons.
+"How did it happen you were not at the Duchess's ball last night?" asked
+"those odious Pullingers." And what had my sister to say in reply? My
+clematis secured _me_ a charming reception--how charming I don't feel
+called upon to reveal--but Princess Hélène, with that calm dignity which
+easily replaced, when she chose, her witching _abandon_, turned the
+tables upon her detractors, and taught them how dangerous it may be to
+speak ill--of the wrong people.
+
+
+
+
+A STUDY À LA LOUIS QUATORZE:
+
+PENDANT TO A PORTRAIT BY MIGNARD.
+
+
+She was surpassingly fair, Madame la Marquise. Mignard's portraits of
+her may fully rival his far-famed Portrait aux Amours. One of them has
+her painted as Venus Victrix, in the fashion of the day; one of them, as
+herself, as Léontine Opportune de Vivonne de Rennecourt, Marquise de la
+Rivière, with her crève-coeurs, and her diamonds, and her gay smile,
+showing her teeth, white and gleaming as the pearls mingled with her
+curls à la mode Montespan. Not Louise de la Beaume-le-Blanc, when the
+elm-boughs of St. Germain first flung their shadow on her golden head,
+before it bent for the Carmelite veil before the altar in the Rue St.
+Jacques; not Henriette d'Angleterre, when she listened to the trouvères'
+romances sung under her balcony at St. Cloud, before her young life was
+quenched by the hand of Morel and the order of Monsieur; not Athénaïs de
+Mortemart, when the liveries of lapis lazuli blue dashed through the
+streets of Paris, and the outriders cleared her path with their whips,
+before the game was lost, and the iron spikes were fastened inside the
+Montespan bracelets;--none of them, her contemporaries and
+acquaintances, eclipsed in loveliness Madame la Marquise. Had she but
+been fair instead of dark, the brown Bourbon eyes would have fallen on
+her of a surety; she would have outshone the lapis lazuli liveries with
+a royal guard of scarlet and gold, and her friend Athénaïs would have
+hated her as that fair lady hated "la sotte Fontanges" and "Saint
+Maintenon;" for their sex, in all ages, have remembered the sage's
+precept, "Love as though you will one day hate," and invariably carry
+about with them, ready for need, a little essence of the acid of Malice,
+to sour in an instant the sugared cream of their loves and their
+friendships if occasion rise up and the storm-cloud of rivalry loom in
+the horizon.
+
+She was a beauty, Madame la Marquise, and she knew it, as she leaned out
+over the balcony of her château of Petite Forêt, that lay close to
+Clagny, under the shadow of the wood of Ville d'Avrée, outside the gates
+of Versailles, looking down on her bosquets, gardens, and terraces
+designed by Le Nôtre; for though she was alone, and there was nothing
+but her little dog Osmin to admire her white skin, and her dark eyes,
+and her beautiful hands and arms, and her diamond pendants that
+glittered in the moonlight, she smiled, her flashing triumphant smile,
+as she whispered to herself, "He is mine--mine! Bah! how can he help
+himself?" and pressed the ruby agraffe on her bosom with the look of a
+woman who knew no resistance, and brooked no reluctance to worship at
+her shrine.
+
+Nothing ever opposed Madame la Marquise, and life went smoothly on with
+her. If Bossuet ever reproved her, it was in those _anathèmes cachés
+sous des fleurs d'oranger_ in which that politic priest knew how to deal
+when expedient, however haughty and relentless to the world in general.
+M. le Marquis was not a savage eccentricity like M. de Pardaillon de
+Gondran, would never have dreamt of imitating the eccentricity of going
+into mourning, but if the Bourbon eye _had_ fallen on his wife, would
+have said, like a loyal peer of France, that all his household treasures
+were the King's. Disagreeables fled before the scintillations of her
+smiles, as the crowd fled before her gilded carriage and her Flanders
+horses; and if ever a little fit of piety once in a while came over her,
+and Conscience whispered a mal à propos word in her delicate ear, she
+would give an enamelled lamp to Sainte Marie Réparatrice, by the advice
+of the Comtesse de Soubise and the Princesse de Monaco (who did such
+expiatory things themselves, and knew the comfort they afforded), and
+emerge from her repentance one of the most radiant of all the brilliant
+butterflies that fluttered their gorgeous wings in the Jardin de Flore
+under the sunny skies of Versailles.
+
+The moonlight glittered on the fountains, falling with measured splash
+into their marble basins; the lime-leaves, faintly stirred by the sultry
+breezes, perfumed the night with their voluptuous fragrance, and the
+roses, twining round the carved and gilded balustrade, shook off their
+bowed head drops of dew, that gleamed brightly as the diamonds among the
+curls of the woman who leaned above, resting her delicate rouged cheek
+on her jewelled hand, alone--a very rare circumstance with the Marquise
+de la Rivière. Osmin did not admire the rare solitude, for he rattled
+his silver bells and barked--an Italian greyhound's shrill, fretful
+bark--as his quick ears caught the distant sound of steps coming swiftly
+over the turf below, and his mistress smiled as she patted his head:
+
+"Ah, Osmin!--here he is?"
+
+A man came out from under the heavy shadow of lime sand chestnuts, whose
+darkness the moon's rays had no power to pierce, crossed the lawn just
+under the balcony, and, coming up the terrace-steps, stood near her--a
+man, young, fair, handsome, whose age and form the uniform of a Captain
+of the Guards would have suited far better than the dark robes of a
+priest, which he wore; his lips were pressed closely together, and his
+face was pale with a pallor that consorted painfully with the warm
+passionate gleam of his eyes.
+
+"So! You are late in obeying my commands, monsieur!"
+
+Surely no other man in France would have stood silent beside her, under
+the spell of her dazzling glances, with such a picture before him as
+Madame la Marquise, in her azure silk and her point d'Angleterre, with
+her diamond pendants shaking among her hair, and her arched eyebrows
+lifted imperiously! But he did; his lips pressed closer, his eyes
+gleaming brighter. She changed her tone; it was soft, seductive,
+reproachful, and the smile on her lips was tender--as tender as it ever
+could be with the mockery that always lay under it; and it broke at last
+the spell that bound him, as she whispered, "Ah! Gaston, you love me no
+longer!"
+
+"Not love you? O God!"
+
+They were but five words, but they told Madame la Marquise of a passion
+such as she had never roused, despite all her fascinations and
+intrigues, in the lovers that crowded round her in the salons within, or
+at Versailles, over the trees yonder, where love was gallantry, and all
+was light comedy, with nothing so foolish as tragedy known.
+
+He clasped her hands so closely that the sharp points of the diamond
+rings cut his own, though he felt them not.
+
+"Not love you? Great Heaven! Not love you? Near you, I forget my oath,
+my vows, my God!--I forget all, save you, whom I adore, as, till I met
+you, I adored my Church. Torture endured with you were dearer than
+Paradise won alone! Once with you, I have no strength, you bow me to
+your will as the wind bows the lime-leaf. Oh! woman, woman! could you
+have no mercy, that with crowds round you daily worshipping your
+slightest smile, you must needs bow _me_ down before your glance, as you
+bow those who have no oaths to bind them, no need to scourge themselves
+in midnight solitude for the mere crime of Thought? Had you no mercy,
+that with all hearts yours, you must have mine to sear it and destroy
+it? Have you not lives enough vowed to you, that you seek to blast mine
+for ever? I was content, untroubled, till I met you; no woman's glance
+stirred my heart, no woman's eyes haunted my vigils, no woman's voice
+came in memory between my soul and prayer! What devil tempted you to
+throw your spells over me--could you not leave _one_ man in peace?"
+
+"Ah bah! the tempted love the game of temptation generally full as well
+as the tempters!" thought Madame la Marquise, with an inward laugh.
+
+Why did she allow such language to go unrebuked? Why did she, to whom
+none dared to breathe any but words the most polished, and love vows the
+most honeyed, permit herself to be addressed in such a strain? Possibly
+it was very new to her, such energy as this, and such an outbreak of
+passion amused her. At any rate she only drew her hands away, and her
+brilliant brown eyes filled with tears;--tears _were_ to be had at
+Versailles when needed, even her friend Montespan knew how to use them
+as the worst weapons against the artillery of the Evêque de Comdom--and
+her heart heaved under the filmy lace.
+
+"Ah, Gaston! what words! 'What devil tempted me?' I know scarcely
+whether love be angel or devil; he seems either or both! But you love me
+little, unless in that name you recognize a plea for every madness and
+every thought!"
+
+The scarlet blood flushed over his face, and his eyes shone and gleamed
+like fire, while he clenched his hands in a mortal anguish.
+
+"Angel or devil? Ay! which, indeed! The one when it comes to us, the
+other when it leaves us! You have roused love in me I shall bear to my
+grave; but what gage have I that you give it me back? How do I know but
+that even now you are trifling with me, mocking at me, smiling at the
+beardless priest who is unlearned in all the gay gallantries of
+libertine churchmen and soldierly courtiers? My Heaven! how know, as I
+stand beside you, whether you pity or disdain me, love or scorn me?"
+
+The passionate words broke in a torrent from his lips, stirred the
+stillness of the summer eve with a fiery anguish little akin to it.
+
+"Do I not love you?"
+
+Her answer was simple; but as Léontine de Rennecourt spoke it, leaning
+her cheek against his breast, with her eyes dazzling as the diamonds in
+her hair, looking up into his by the light of the stars, they had an
+eloquence far more dangerous than speech, and delirious to the senses as
+magician's perfumes. His lips lingered on hers, and felt the loud fast
+throbs of the heart she had won as he bent over her, pressing her closer
+and closer to him--vanquished and conquered, as men in all ages and of
+all creeds have been vanquished and conquered by women, all other
+thoughts fleeing away into oblivion, all fears dying out, all vows
+forgotten in the warm, living life of passion and of joy, that, for the
+first time in a brief life, flooded his heart with its golden voluptuous
+light.
+
+"You love me? So be it," he murmured; "but beware what you do, my life
+lies in your hands, and you must be mine till death part us!"
+
+"Till my fancy change rather!" thought Madame la Marquise, as she put
+her jewelled hand on his lips, her hair softly brushing his cheek, with
+a touch as soft, and an odor as sweet, as the leaves of one of the roses
+twining below.
+
+Two men strolling below under the limes of Petite Forêt--discussing the
+last scandals of Versailles, talking of the ascendency of La Fontanges,
+of the Spanish dress his Majesty had reassumed to please her, of the
+Brinvilliers' Poudre de Succession, of the new château given to Père de
+la Chaise, of D'Aubigny's last extravagance and Lauzun's last mot, and
+the last gossip about Bossuet and Mademoiselle de Mauléon, and all the
+chit-chat of that varied day, glittering with wit and prolific of
+poison--glanced up to the balcony by the light of the stars.
+
+"That cursed priest!" muttered the younger, le Vicomte de Saint-Elix, as
+he struck the head off a lily with his delicate cane.
+
+"In a fool's paradise! Ah-ha! Madame la Marquise!" laughed the
+other--the old Duc de Clos-Vougeot--taking a chocolate sweetmeat out of
+his emerald-studded bonbonnière as they walked on, while the
+lime-blossoms shook off in the summer night wind and dropped dead on the
+grass beneath, laughing at the story of the box D'Artagnan had found in
+Lauzun's rooms when he seized his papers, containing the portraits of
+sixty women of high degree who had worshipped the resistless Captain of
+the Guard, with critical and historical notices penned under each;
+notices D'Artagnan and his aide could not help indiscreetly retailing,
+in despite of the Bourbon command of secrecy--secrecy so necessary where
+sixty beauties and saints were involved!
+
+"A fool's paradise!" said the Duc de Clos-Vougeot, tapping his
+bonbonnière, enamelled by Petitot: the Duc was old, and knew women well,
+and knew the value and length of a paradise dependent on that most
+fickle of butterflies--female fidelity; he had heard Ninon de Lenclos
+try to persuade Scarron's wife to become a coquette, and Scarron's wife
+in turn beseech Ninon to discontinue her coquetteries; had seen that,
+however different their theories and practice, the result was the same;
+and already guessed right, that if Paris had been universally won by the
+one, its monarch would eventually be won by the other.
+
+"A fool's paradise!"
+
+The courtier was right, but the priest, had he heard him, would never
+have believed; _his_ heaven shone in those dazzling eyes: till the eyes
+closed in death, his heaven was safe! He had never loved, he had seen
+nothing of women; he had come straight from the monastic gloom of a
+Dominican abbey, in the very heart of the South, down in Languedoc,
+where costly missals were his only idol, and rigid pietists, profoundly
+ignorant of the ways and thoughts of their brethren of Paris, had reared
+him up in anchorite rigidity, and scourged his mind with iron
+philosophies and stoic-like doctrines of self-mortification that would
+have repudiated the sophistries and ingenuities of Sanchez, Escobar, and
+Mascarenhas, as suggestions of the very Master of Evil himself. From the
+ascetic gloom of that Languedoc convent he had been brought straight, by
+superior will, into the glare of the life at Versailles, that brilliant,
+gorgeous, sparkling, bizarre life, scintillating with wit, brimful of
+intrigue, crowded with the men and women who formed the Court of that
+age and the History of the next; where he found every churchman an _abbé
+galant_, and heard those who performed the mass jest at it with those
+who attended it; where he found no lines marked of right and wrong, but
+saw them all fused in a gay, tangled web of two court colors--Expediency
+and Pleasure. A life that dazzled and tired his eyes, as the glitter of
+lights in a room dazzles and tires the eyes of a man who comes suddenly
+in from the dark night air, till he grew giddy and sick, and in the
+midst of the gilded salons, or soft confessions of titled sinners, would
+ask himself if indeed he could be the same man who had sat calm and
+grave with the mellow sun streaming in on his missal-page in the
+monastic gloom of the Languedoc abbey but so few brief months before,
+when all this world of Versailles was unknown? The same man? Truly
+not--never again the same, since Madame la Marquise had bent her brown
+eyes upon him, been amused with his singular difference from all those
+around her, had loved him as women loved at Versailles, and bowed him
+down to her feet, before he guessed the name of the forbidden language
+that stirred in his heart and rushed to his lips, untaught and unbidden.
+
+"A fool's paradise!" said the Duc, sagaciously tapping his gold
+bonbonnière. But many a paradise like it has dawned and faded, before
+and since the Versailles of Louis Quatorze.
+
+He loved, and Madame la Marquise loved him. Through one brief tumult of
+struggle he passed: struggle between the creed of the Dominican abbey,
+where no sin would have been held so thrice accursed, so unpardonable,
+so deserving of the scourge and the stake as this--and the creed of the
+Bourbon Court, where churchmen's gallantries were every-day gossip;
+where the Abbé de Rancé, ere he founded the saintly gloom of La Trappe,
+scandalized town and court as much as Lauzun; where the Père de la
+Chaise smiled complacently on La Fontanges' ascendancy; where three
+nobles rushed to pick up the handkerchief of that royal confessor, who
+washed out with holy water the royal indiscretions, as you wash off
+grains of dust with perfumed water; where the great and saintly Bishop
+of Condom could be checked in a rebuking harangue, and have the tables
+turned on him by a mischievous reference to Mademoiselle de Mauléon;
+where life was intrigue for churchmen and laymen alike, and where the
+abbé's rochet and the cardinal's scarlet covered the same vices as were
+openly blazoned on the gold aiglettes of the Garde du Corps and the
+costly lace of the Chambellan du Roi. A storm, brief and violent as the
+summer storms that raged over Versailles, was roused between the
+conflicting thoughts at war within him, between the principles deeply
+rooted from long habit and stern belief, and the passions sprung up
+unbidden with the sudden growth and gorgeous glow of a tropical
+flower--a storm, brief and violent, a struggle, ended that night, when
+he stood on the balcony with the woman he loved, felt her lips upon
+his, and bowed down to her feet delirious and strengthless.
+
+"I have won my wager with Adeline; I have vanquished _mon beau_ De
+Launay," thought Madame la Marquise, smiling, two days after, as she
+sat, en negligé, in her broidered chair, pulling Osmin's ears, and
+stirring the frothy chocolate handed to her by her negro, Azor, brought
+over in the suite of the African embassy from Ardra, full of monkeyish
+espièglerie, and covered with gems--a priceless dwarf, black as ink, and
+but two feet high, who could match any day with the Queen's little Moor.
+"He amuses me with his vows of eternal love. Eternal love?--how _de
+trop_ we should find it, here in Versailles! But it is amusing enough to
+play at for a season. No, that is not half enough--he adores! This poor
+Gaston!"
+
+So in the salons of Versailles, and in the world, where Ninon reigned,
+by the Court ladies, while they loitered in the new-made gardens of
+Marly, among other similar things jested of was this new amour of Madame
+de la Rivière for the young Père de Launay. "She was always eccentric,
+and he _was_ very handsome, and would have charming manners if he were
+not so grave and so silent," the women averred; while the young nobles
+swore that these meddling churchmen had always the best luck, whether in
+amatory conquest, or on fat lands and rich revenues. What the Priest of
+Languedoc thought a love that would outlast life, and repay him for
+peace of conscience and heaven both lost, was only one of the passing
+bubbles of gossip and scandal floating for an hour, amidst myriads like
+it, on the glittering, fast-rushing, diamond-bright waters of life at
+Versailles!
+
+A new existence had dawned for him; far away in the dim dusky vista of
+forgotten things, though in reality barely distant a few short months,
+lay the old life in Languedoc, vague and unremembered as a passed
+dream; with its calm routine, its monastic silence, its unvarying
+alternations of study and prayer, its iron-bound thoughts, its rigid
+creed. It had sunk away as the peaceful gray twilight of a summer's
+night sinks away before the fiery burst of an artificial illumination,
+and a new life had dawned for him, radiant, tumultuous, conflicting,
+delicious--that dazzled his eyes with the magnificence of boundless
+riches and unrestricted extravagance; that charmed his intellect with
+the witty coruscations, the polished esprit, of an age unsurpassed for
+genius, grace, and wit; and that swayed alike his heart, his
+imagination, and his passions with the subtle intoxication of this syren
+of Love, whose forbidden song had never before, in faintest echo, fallen
+on his ear.
+
+Far away in the dim, lifeless, pulseless past, sank the memory of the
+old Dominican abbey, of all it had taught him, of all it had exacted, in
+its iron, stoical, merciless creed. A new life had arisen for him, and
+Gaston de Launay, waking from the semi-slumber of the living death he
+had endured in Languedoc, and liked because he knew no other, was
+happy--happy as a prisoner is in the wild delight with which he welcomes
+the sunlight after lengthened imprisonment, happy as an opium-eater is
+in the delicious delirium that succeeds the lulling softness of the
+opiate.
+
+"He loves me, poor Gaston! Bah! But how strangely he talks! If love were
+this fiery, changeless, earnest thing with us that it is with him, what
+in the world should we do with it? We should have to get a lettre de
+cachet for it, and forbid it the Court; send it in exile to Pignerol, as
+they have just done Lauzun. Love in earnest? We should lose the best
+spice for our wine, the best toy for our games, and, mon Dieu! what
+embroilments there would be! Love in earnest? Bagatell! Louise de la
+Vallière shows us the folly of that; but for its Quixotisms she would
+now be at Vaujours, instead of buried alive in that Rue St. Jacques,
+with nothing to do but to weep for 'Louison,' count her beads, and
+listen to M. de Condom's merciless eloquence! Like the king,
+
+    J'aime qu'on m'aime, mais avec de l'esprit.
+
+People have no right to reproach each other with inconstancy; one's
+caprices are not in one's own keeping; and one can no more help where
+one's fancy blows, than that lime-leaf can help where the breeze chooses
+to waft it. But poor Gaston! how make _him_ comprehend that?" thought
+Madame la Marquise, as she turned, and smiled, and held out her warm,
+jewelled hands, and listened once again to the words of the man who was
+in her power as utterly as the bird in the power of the snake when it
+has once looked up into the fatal eyes that lure it on to its doom.
+
+"You will love me ever?" he would ask, resting his lips on her white low
+brow.
+
+"Ever!" would softly answer Madame la Marquise.
+
+And her lover believed her: should his deity lie? He believed her! What
+did he, fresh from the solitude of his monastery, gloomy and severe as
+that of the Trappist abbey, with its perpetual silence, its lowered
+glances, its shrouded faces, its ever-present "memento mori," know of
+women's faith, of women's love, of the sense in which _they_ meant that
+vow "for ever"? He believed her, and never asked what would be at the
+end of a path strewn with such odorous flowers. Alone, it is true, in
+moments when he paused to think, he stood aghast at the abyss into which
+he had fallen, at the sin into which, a few months before, haughty and
+stern in virtue against the temptation that had never entered his path,
+he would have defied devils in legion to have lured him, yet into which
+he had now plunged at the mere smile of a woman! Out of her presence,
+out of her spells, standing by himself under the same skies that had
+blooded over his days of peace in Languedoc, back on his heart, with a
+sickening anguish, would come the weight of his sin; the burden of his
+broken oaths, the scorch of that curse eternal which, by his creed, he
+held drawn down on him here and hereafter; and Gaston de Launay would
+struggle again against this idolatrous passion, which had come with its
+fell delusion betwixt him and his God; struggle--vainly, idly--struggle,
+only to hug closer the sin he loved while he loathed; only to drink
+deeper of the draught whose voluptuous perfume was poison; only to
+forget all, forsake all, dare all, at one whisper of her voice, one
+glance of her eyes, one touch of the lips whose caress he held would be
+bought by a curse through eternity.
+
+Few women love aught "for ever," save, perchance, diamonds, lace, and
+their own beauty, and Madame la Marquise was not one of those few;
+certainly not--she had no desire to make herself singular in her
+generation, and could set fashions much more likely to find disciples,
+without reverting to anything so eccentric, plebeian, and out of date.
+Love _one_ for ever! She would have thought it as terrible waste of her
+fascinations, as for a jewel to shine in the solitude of its case,
+looked on by only one pair of eyes, or for a priceless enamel, by
+Petitot, to be only worn next the heart, shrouded away from the light of
+day, hidden under the folds of linen and lace.
+
+"Love one for ever?"--Madame la Marquise laughed at the thought, as she
+stood dressed for a ball, after assisting at the representation of a
+certain tragedy, called "Bérénice" (in which Mesdames Deshoulières and
+De Sévigné, despite their esprit, alone of all Paris and the Court could
+see no beauty), and glanced in the mirror at her radiant face, her
+delicate skin, her raven curls, with their pendants shaking, her
+snow-white arms, and her costly dress of the newest mode, its stomacher
+gleaming one mass of gems. "Love one for ever? The droll idea! Is it
+not enough that I have loved him once?"
+
+It was more than enough for his rivals, who bitterly envied him; courtly
+abbés, with polished smiles, and young chanoines, with scented curls and
+velvet toques, courtiers, who piqued themselves on reputations only
+second to Lauzun's, and men of the world, who laughed at this new
+caprice of Madame la Marquise, alike bore no good will to this Languedoc
+priest, and gave him a significant sneer, or a compliment that roused
+his blood to fire, and stung him far worse than more open insult, when
+they met in the salons, or crossed in the corridors, at Versailles or
+Petite Forêt.
+
+"Those men! those men! Should he ever lose her to any one of them?" he
+would think over and over again, clenching his hand, in impotent agony
+of passion that he had not the sword and the license of a soldier to
+strike them on the lips with his glove for the smile with which they
+dared to speak her name; to make them wash out in blood under the trees,
+before the sun was up, the laugh, the mot, the delicate satire, which
+were worse to bear than a blow to the man who could not avenge them.
+
+"Pardieu! Madame must be very unusually faithful to her handsome Priest;
+she has smiled on no other for two months! What unparalleled fidelity!"
+said the Vicomte de Saint-Elix, with petulant irritation.
+
+"Jealous, Léonce?" laughed the old Duc, whom he spoke to, tapping the
+medallion portrait on his bonbonnière. "Take comfort: when the weather
+has been so long fixed, it is always near a change. Ah! M. de Launay
+overhears! He looks as if he would slay us. Very unchristian in a
+priest!"
+
+Gaston de Launay overheard, as he stood by a _croisée_ at Petite Forêt,
+playing with Osmin--he liked even the dog, since the hand he loved so
+often lay on its slender neck, and toyed with its silver chain. And,
+sworn as he was to the service of his Church, sole mistress as his
+Church had been, till Léontine de Rennecourt's eyes had lured him to his
+desertion of her, apostate in his own eyes as such a thought confessed
+him to have grown, he now loathed the garb of a priest, that bound his
+hands from vengeance, and made him powerless before insult as a woman.
+Fierce, ruthless longing for revenge upon these men seized on him;
+devilish desires, the germ of which till that hour he never dreamt
+slumbered within him, woke up into dangerous, vigorous life. Had he
+lived in the world, its politic reserve, its courtly sneer, its light
+gallantries, that passed the time and flattered amour-propre, its
+dissimulated hate that smiled while plotting, and killed with poisoned
+bonbons, would never have been learnt by him; and having long lived out
+of it, having been suddenly plunged into its whirl, not guessing its
+springs, ignorant of its diplomacies, its suave lies, termed good
+breeding, its légères philosophies, he knew nothing of the wisdom with
+which its wise men forsook their loves and concealed their hatreds. Both
+passions now sprung up in him at one birth, both the stronger for the
+long years in which a chill, artificial, but unbroken calm, had chained
+his very nature down, and fettered into an iron monotony, an unnatural
+and colorless tranquillity, a character originally impetuous and vivid,
+as the frosts of a winter chill into one cold, even, glassy surface, the
+rapids of a tumultuous river. With the same force and strength with
+which, in the old days in Languedoc, he had idolized and served his
+Church, sparing himself no mortification, believing every iota of her
+creed, carrying out her slightest rule with merciless self-examination,
+so--the tide once turned the other way--so the priest now loved, so he
+now hated.
+
+"He is growing exigeant, jealous, presuming; he amuses me no longer--he
+wearies. I must give him his congé," thought Madame la Marquise. "This
+play at eternal passion is very amusing for a while, but, like all
+things, gets tiresome when it has lasted some time. What does not? Poor
+Gaston, it is his provincial ideas, but he will soon rub such off, and
+find, like us all, that sincerity is troublesome, ever de trop, and
+never profitable. He loves me--but bah! so does Saint-Elix, so do they
+all, and a jealous husband like M. de Nesmond, _le drôle!_ could
+scarcely be worse than my young De Launay is growing!"
+
+And Madame la Marquise glanced at her face in the mirror, and wished she
+knew Madame de Maintenon's secret for the Breuvage Indien; wished she
+had one of the _clefs de faveur_ to admit her to the Grande Salle du
+Parlement; wished she had the _couronne d'Agrippine_ her friend Athénaïs
+had just shown her; wished Le Brun were not now occupied on the ceiling
+of the King's Grande Galerie, and were free to paint the frescoes of her
+own new-built chapel; wished a thousand unattainable things, as spoilt
+children of fortune will do, and swept down her château staircase a
+little out of temper--she could not have told why--to receive her guests
+at a fête given in honor of the marriage of Mademoiselle de Blois and
+the Prince de Conti.
+
+There was the young Comte de Vermandois, who would recognize in the
+Dauphin no superiority save that of his "_frère aine_;" there was "_le
+petit bossu_," Prince Eugene, then soliciting the rochet of a Bishop,
+and equally ridiculed when he sought a post in the army; there was M. de
+Louvois, who had just signed the order for the Dragonades; there was the
+Palatine de Bavière, with her German brusquerie, who had just clumsily
+tried to insult Madame de Montespan by coming into the salon with a
+great turnspit, led by a similar ribbon and called by the same name, in
+ridicule of the pet Montespan poodle; there was La Montespan herself,
+with her lovely gold hair, her dove's eyes, and her serpent's tongue;
+there was Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan the Duchesse de
+Richelieu and the Duchesse de Lesdiguières; there was Bussy Rabutin and
+Hamilton. Who was there not that was brilliant, that was distinguished,
+that was high in rank and famed in wit at the fête of Madame la
+Marquise?--Madame la Marquise, who floated through the crowd that
+glittered in her salon and gardens, who laughed and smiled, showing her
+dazzling white teeth, who had a little Cupid gleaming with jewels
+(emblematic enough of Cupid as he was known at Versailles) to present
+the Princesse de Conti with a bridal bouquet whose flowers were of
+pearls and whose leaves were of emeralds; who piqued herself that the
+magnificence of her fête was scarcely eclipsed by His Majesty himself;
+who yielded the palm neither to La Vallière's lovely daughter, nor to
+her friend Athénaïs, nor to any one of the beauties who shone with them,
+and whose likeness by Mignard laughed down from the wall where it hung,
+matchless double of her own matchless self.
+
+The Priest of Languedoc watched her, the relentless fangs of passion
+gnawing his heart, as the wolf the Spartan. For the first time he was
+forgotten! His idol passed him carelessly, gave him no glance, no smile,
+but lavished a thousand coquetries on Saint-Elix, on De Rohan-Soubise,
+on the boy Vermandois,--on any who sought them. Once he addressed her.
+Madame la Marquise shrugged her snow-white shoulders, and arched her
+eyebrows with petulant irritation, and turned to laugh gayly at
+Saint-Elix, who was amusing her, and La Montespan, and Madame de
+Thianges, with some gay mischievous scandal concerning Madame de
+Lesdiguières and the Archbishop of Paris; for scandals, if not wholly
+new are ever diverting when concerning an enemy, especially when dressed
+and served up with the piquant sauce of wit.
+
+"I no longer then, madame, lead a dog's life in jealousy of this
+priest?" whispered Saint-Elix, after other whispers, in the ear of
+Madame la Marquise. The Vicomte adored her, not truly in Languedoc
+fashion, but very warmly--à la mode de Versailles.
+
+The Marquise laughed.
+
+"Perhaps not! You know I bet Mme. de Montevreau that I would conquer
+him. I have won now. Hush! He is close. There will be a tragedy, _mon
+ami_!"
+
+"M. le Vicomte, if you have the honor of a noble, the heart of a man,
+you fight me to-night. I seek no shelter under my cloth!"
+
+Saint-Elix turned as he heard the words, laughed scornfully, and signed
+the speaker away with an insolent sneer:
+
+"Bah! _Révérend Père!_ we do not fight with women and churchmen!"
+
+The fête was ended at last, the lights that had gleamed among the limes
+and chestnuts had died out, the gardens and salons were emptied and
+silent, the little Cupid had laid aside his weighty jewelled wings, the
+carriages with their gorgeous liveries, their outriders, and their
+guards of honor, had rolled from the gates of Petite Forêt to the Palace
+of Versailles. Madame la Marquise stood alone once more in the balcony
+of her salons, leaning her white arms on its gilded balustrade, looking
+down on to the gardens beneath, silvered with the breaking light of the
+dawn, smiling, her white teeth gleaming between her parted rose-hued
+lips, and thinking--of what? Who shall say?
+
+Still, still as death lay the gardens below, that an hour ago had been
+peopled with a glittering crowd, re-echoing with music, laughter, witty
+response, words of intrigue. Where the lights had shone on diamonds and
+pearl-broidered trains, on softly rouged cheeks, and gold-laced coats,
+on jewelled swords and broideries of gold, the gray hue of the breaking
+day now only fell on the silvered leaves of the limes, the turf wet
+with dew, he drooped heads of the Provence roses; and Madame la
+Marquise, standing alone, started as a step through the salon within
+broke the silence.
+
+"Madame, will you permit me a word _now_?"
+
+Gaston de Launay took her hands off the balustrade, and held them tight
+in his, while his voice sounded, even in his own ears, strangely calm,
+yet strangely harsh:
+
+"Madame, you love me no longer?"
+
+"Monsieur, I do not answer questions put to me in such a manner."
+
+She would have drawn her hands away, but he held them in a fierce grasp
+till her rings cut his skin, as they had done once before.
+
+"No trifling! Answer--yes or no!"
+
+"Well! 'no,' then, monsieur. Since you _will_ have the truth, do not
+blame me if you find it uncomplimentary and unacceptable."
+
+He let go her hands and reeled back, staggered, as if struck by a shot.
+
+"Mon Dieu! it is true--you love me no longer! And you tell it me
+_thus_!"
+
+Madame la Marquise, for an instant, was silenced and touched; for the
+words were uttered with the faint cry of a man in agony, and she saw,
+even by the dim twilight of dawn, how livid his lips turned, how ashy
+gray grew the hue of his face. But she smiled, playing with Osmin's new
+collar of pearls and coral.
+
+"Tell it you 'thus'? I would not have told it you 'thus,' monsieur, if
+you had been content with a hint, and had not evinced so strong a desire
+for candor undisguised; but if people will not comprehend a delicate
+suggestion, they must be wounded by plainer truths--it is their own
+fault. Did you think I was like a little shepherdess in a pastoral, to
+play the childish game of constancy without variations? Had you
+presumption enough to fancy you could amuse me for ever----"
+
+He stopped her, his voice broken and hoarse, as he gasped for breath.
+
+"Silence! Woman, have you no mercy? For you--for such as you--I have
+flung away heaven, steeped myself in sin, lost my church, my peace, my
+all--forfeited all right to the reverence of my fellows, all hope for
+the smile of my God! For you--for such as you--I have become a traitor,
+a hypocrite, an apostate, whose prayers are insults, whose professions
+are lies, whose oaths are perjury! At your smile, I have flung away
+eternity; for your kiss, I have risked my life here, my life hereafter;
+for your love, I held no price too vast to pay; weighed with it, honor,
+faith, heaven, all seemed valueless--all were forgotten! You lured me
+from tranquil calm, you broke in on the days of peace which but for you
+were unbroken still, you haunted my prayers, you placed yourself between
+Heaven and me, you planned to conquer my anchorite's pride, you wagered
+you would lure me from my priestly vows, and yet you have so little
+mercy, that when your bet is won, when your amusement grows stale, when
+the victory grows valueless, you can turn on me with words like these
+without one self-reproach?"
+
+"Ma foi, monsieur! it is you who may reproach yourself, not I," cried
+his hearer, insolently. "Are you so very provincial still, that you are
+ignorant that when a lover has ceased to please he has to blame his own
+lack of power to retain any love he may have won, and is far too
+well-bred to utter a complaint? Your language is very new to me. Most
+men, monsieur, would be grateful for my slightest preference; I permit
+none to rebuke me for either giving or withdrawing it."
+
+The eyes of Madame la Marquise sparkled angrily, and the smile on her
+lips was a deadly one, full of irony, full of malice. As he beheld it,
+the scales fell at last from the eyes of Gaston de Launay, and he saw
+what this woman was whom he had worshipped with such mad, blind,
+idolatrous passion.
+
+He bowed his head with a low, broken moan, as a man stunned by a mortal
+blow; while Madame la Marquise stood playing with the pearl-and-coral
+chain, and smiling the malicious and mischievous smile that showed her
+white teeth, as they are shown in the portrait by Mignard.
+
+"_Comme les hommes sont fous!_" laughed Madame la Marquise.
+
+He lifted his eyes, and looked at her as she stood in the faint light of
+the dawn, with her rich dress, her gleaming diamonds, her wicked smile,
+her matchless beauty; and the passion in him broke out in a bitter cry:
+
+"God help me! My sin has brought home its curse!"
+
+He bent over her, his burning lips scorching her own like fire, holding
+her in one last embrace, that clasped her in a vice of iron she had no
+power to break.
+
+"Angel! devil! temptress! _This_ for what I have deemed thee--_that_ for
+what thou art!"
+
+He flung her from him with unconscious violence, and left her--lying
+where she fell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gray silvery dawn rose, and broke into the warmth and sunlight of a
+summer day; the deer nestled in their couches under the chequered
+shadows of the woodlands round, and the morning chimes were rung in
+musical carillons from the campanile of the château; the Provence roses
+tossed their delicate heads, joyously shaking the dew off their scented
+petals; the blossoms of the limes fell in a fragrant shower on the turf
+below, and the boughs, swayed softly by the wind, brushed their leaves
+against the sparkling waters of the fountains; the woods and gardens of
+Petite Forêt lay, bright and laughing, in the mellow sunlight of the
+new day to which the world was waking. And with his face turned up to
+the sky, clasped in his hand a medallion enamel on which was painted the
+head of a woman, the grass and ferns where he had fallen stained crimson
+with his life-blood, lay a dead man, while in his bosom nestled a little
+dog, moaning piteous, plaintive cries, and vainly seeking its best to
+wake him to the day that for him would never dawn.
+
+When her household, trembling, spread the news that the dead priest had
+been found lying under the limes, slain by his own hand, and it reached
+Madame la Marquise in her private chambers, she was startled, shocked,
+wept, hiding her radiant eyes in her broidered handkerchief, and called
+Azor, and bade him bring her her flask of scented waters, and bathed her
+eyes, and turned them dazzling bright on Saint-Elix, and stirred her
+chocolate and asked the news. "_On peut être êmue aux larmes et
+aimer le chocolat_," thought Madame la Marquise, with her friend
+Montespan;--while, without, under the waving shadow of the
+linden-boughs, with the sunlight streaming round him, the little dog
+nestling in his breast, refusing to be comforted, lay the man whom she
+had murdered.
+
+The portrait of Mignard still hangs on the walls of the château, and in
+its radiant colors Madame la Marquise still lives, fair type of her age,
+smiling her victorious smile, with the diamonds shining among her hair,
+and her brilliant eyes flashing defiance, irony, and coquetry as of
+yore, when she reigned amidst the beauties of Versailles;--and in the
+gardens beyond in the summer nights, the lime-boughs softly shake their
+fragrant flowers on the turf, and the moonlight falls in hushed and
+mournful calm, streaming through the network of the boughs on to the
+tangled mass of violets and ferns that has grown up in rank luxuriance
+over the spot where Gaston de Launay died.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired.
+
+A few obvious errors in original printing have also been repaired:
+
+  Page 82, first paragraph: "out of the Cara di Fiori" corrected to
+                            "out of the Casa di Fiori".
+
+  Page 145, last paragraph: "Lady Hautton has just" corrected to
+                            "Lady Hautton had just".
+
+  Page 167,  4th paragraph: "anything put a pleasant" corrected to
+                            "anything but a pleasant".
+
+  Page 167, last paragraph: "nor even when he went that" corrected to
+                            "nor even when he went on that".
+
+  Page 173,  4th paragraph: et C^{ie} is an abbreviation for the
+                            French word "compagnie".
+
+  Page 224, last paragraph: "Helvetius" corrected to "Helvétius".
+
+Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady
+Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories, by Ouida
+
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