FEIEISTDSHIP. 
 
 A STORY OF SOCIETY. 
 
 By "OUIDA," 
 
 AUTHOR Oi- "STRATHMORE," "ghANT'ILLB DB VIRJCB," " tVCK ' 
 "UNDBR TWO FLAGS," "BIOKA," BTC. * 
 
 "Si I'emploi de la Com^die est de corriger lea vicea, jo ne vols pas par 
 quelle raison il y en aura de privil^gigs."— MoLiiRB. 
 
 TOKONTO : 
 ROSE-BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 1878. 
 
1^ 
 
 A PROPOS. 
 
 A FROG that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that bore a lamp. 
 " Why do you do that ?" said the glowworm. 
 *< Why do you shine ?" said the frog. 
 
 Copyright, 1878, by J. B. Lippincott & Co. 
 
AYAl^T-PEOPOS, 
 
 When Zeus, half in sport and half in cruelty, made man, 
 young Hermes, who, as all Olympus knew, was for ever at some 
 piece of mischief, insisted on meddling with his father's work, 
 and got leave to fashion the human ear out of a shell that he 
 chanced to have by him, across which he stretched a fine cob- 
 web that he stole from Arachne. But he hollowed and twisted 
 the shell in such a fashion that it would turn back all sounds 
 except very loud blasts that Falsehood should blow on a brazen 
 horn, wliilst the impenetrable web would keep out all such 
 whispers as Truth could send up from the depths of her well. 
 
 Hermes chuckled as he rounded the curves of his ear, and 
 fastened it on to the newly-made Human Creature. 
 
 " So shall these mortals always hear and believe the thing 
 that is not," he said to himself in glee — knowing that the 
 box he would give to Pandora would not bear more confused 
 and complex woes to the hapless earth than this gift of an 
 ear to man. 
 
 But he forgot himself so far that though two ears were 
 wanted, he only made one. 
 
 Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder, and resolved 
 to avenge the theft of his milk-white herds which had led 
 him such a weary chase through Tempe. 
 
 Apollo took a pearl of the sea, and hollowed it, and strung 
 across it a silver string from his own lyre, and with it gave to 
 man one ear by which the voice of Truth should reach the 
 brain. 
 
 1* 6 
 
6 AVANT-PROPOS. 
 
 " You have spoilt all my sport," said the boy Hermes, 
 angry and weeping. 
 
 " Nay," said the elder brother, with a smile. " Be com- 
 forted. The brazen trumpets will be sure to drown the 
 whisper from the well, and ten thousand mortals to one, be 
 sur-^, will always turn by choice your ear instead of mine." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " It is a pull, sister," said the elder Miss Moira of Craig 
 Moira to the younger. 
 
 " It is a pull, sister. But we promised Archie." 
 
 " We promised Archie, and I'm wishful to see how she gets 
 on wi' the man that sold carpets." 
 
 So the carriage, bearing the Misses Moira of Craig Moira, 
 their plaids, pugs, ear-trumpets, and courier, continued its 
 course across the Roman Campagna, and up the steep and 
 wooded roads that led to the old Castle of Fiordelisa. 
 
 The Misses Moira of Moira lived on their own lands in 
 Caithness, were very rich, very ugly, very eccentric, spoke with 
 a strong native accent, and delivered their opinions uncalled 
 for; two of their sisters' children were respectively the Duchess 
 of Forfar and the Marquis of Fingal ; the younger was the 
 echo of the elder, — both wore spectacles, both were deaf; and 
 neither ever forgot that the Moiras of Craig Moira had the 
 right to sit before their sovereign, and were allied with half 
 the bluest blood and highest names in Great Britain. 
 
 They were now about to call on one of their connections, 
 and gazed anxiously through their spectacles for the Castle of 
 Fiordelisa, where she dwelt. Fiordelisa came at last in sight, 
 — a gray, rambling, and ancient pile, set amidst cypress and 
 ilex woods, with its gardens straying down into its farm-lands 
 in Italian fashion, covering hills and plains with corn and vine 
 and olive. 
 
 " A braw place this, but ill kept," said the elder Miss Moira, 
 as they entered a dark avenue of ancient oaks, " and ha3 the 
 idolatrous emblems even at the very gates." 
 
8 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 She shut her eyes oot to see the PietJi let into the wall 
 V ♦4^*hft woods, and kept them shut lest she should see any 
 TKi.rc -rf.i vii Mi/ns ..T^cjr had been brought into the land of 
 eUijh mummeries under protest by the dangerous illness of a 
 beloved sister, mother of her young Grace of Forfar, at Naples, 
 and, the sister being restored to health, they were hastening 
 away from the scene of abominations, only pausing a few days 
 in Rome because the younger of them was somewhat of an 
 invalid and unequal to rapid travelling. 
 
 The sudden stoppage of the carriage made the elder Miss 
 Moira open her eyes. They had arrived at the entrance-door 
 of Fiordelisa. 
 
 Between the centre columns of a beautiful loggia, built 
 by Bramante, there was standing a handsome, black-browed 
 woman, a little in advance of two gentlemen, who stood one 
 on each side of her, awaiting the arrival of the guests. 
 
 She was the Lady Joan Challoner. 
 
 With ardor and cordial eagerness of welcome she rushed 
 down the stone steps and darted to the carriage. 
 
 " Oh, dearest Miss Moira, how kind of you ! And dear 
 Miss Elizabeth, too ! How sorry I am not to be in Rome ! 
 We go down for good the day after to-morrow. If I had only 
 known you were coming there, of course I should have gone 
 in last week. Let me present them to you : Mr. Challoner ; 
 Prince loris. Come in, pray, out of the sun. Yes, even in 
 November it is oppressively warm. You must be overladen 
 with all those plaids. Robert lo " 
 
 " Enchant^ de I'honneur de vous voir, mesdames," murmured 
 a tall, graceful, dark-eyed person, with a sweet smile and a low 
 bow, coming forward on to the first step, and offering his arm 
 to the old gentlewoman. 
 
 " Hoot toot, man I Canna ye speak yer own tongue ?" said 
 the elder Miss Moira, sharply, accepting the arm of her host, 
 as she thought, and entering the house with him, whilst her 
 sister followed with their hostess, who was talking eagerly into 
 her ear-trumpet. The other gentleman, who had a Scotch face 
 and a German manner, and looked like a fusion between a 
 Leipsic philologist and an American senator, mauj a feeble 
 attempt to ofi'er his arm as well, but hesitated, not seeing very 
 well how to do it, and halted midway, making believe to hold 
 back a barking Clumber spaniel. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 9 
 
 The whole party passed into the loggia, and thsnce into the 
 first great apartment looking out from it, where some twenty 
 other people, English and American residents of Rome, had 
 been gathered to do honur to the Misses Moira of Moira, and 
 were taking tea, eating grapes, and looking at pictures and 
 china. Seated, the two ladies looked round the noble tapes- 
 tried guest-chamber with some bewilderment and some vague 
 displeasure. 
 
 " So ye're Joan Perth-Douglas that was ?" said the elder 
 Miss Moira, bringing her spectacles to bear on her hostess. 
 " Ye were a slip of twelve when we saw ye last, — twenty years 
 ago, ay, twenty years and more. Will ye tell me why your 
 good husband talks French to us ?" 
 
 " Allow me, madam," murmured the gentleman who looked 
 like a Leipsic philologist and an American senator, ofi'ering 
 to relieve her of her plaids. 
 
 " Don't be ofl&cious, man !" said Miss Moira, sharply. 
 " My sister's no richt in the lungs, and your master's house 
 is draughty." 
 
 The gentleman shrank back. 
 
 " I never saw a Scot so dark as your good husband, Joan," 
 pursued the elder Miss Moira, adhering to her original thoughts, 
 sternly fastening her gaze upou the graceful and dark-eyed 
 personaj];e, who murmured a soft and perplexed " Plait-il, 
 madame?" 
 
 " Have you lived among papists till you've forgot every 
 word of the tongue you were born to, sir?" asked Miss Moira 
 of him, believing that she was addressing a fellow-country- 
 man. 
 
 " You must be inconvenienced by all those plaids, madame. 
 
 Do allow me " commenced in a kind of despair the other 
 
 person who had been scouted. 
 
 " Canna ye wait till ye're spoke to !" said the lady, turn- 
 ing on him in wrath at the interference. " Canna ye teach 
 your servants bettei ways, Leddy Joan, than to gird at a body 
 like that? A very brown man for a Scot, your husband, 
 though extraordinary well-favored. How comes it he canna 
 talk his own tongue ?" 
 
 " That is not my husband," said the Lady Joan, hurriedly, 
 with a flush rising on her face and a laugh to ber eyes. " You 
 are mistaken, dear Miss Moira. I introduce people so badly. 
 
 A* 
 
10 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 This is only loris, — a friend, you know. My husband, Mr. 
 Challoner, you've been taking for a servant, and scolding 
 about your plaids." 
 
 The well-bred twenty people who were taking tea at Fiord- 
 elisa were not so perfectly well-bred that they could help a 
 little titter as they listened. 
 
 " Prut-tut !" cried the elder Miss Moira, with her head 
 higher in the air, being a person who never recognized her 
 own errors, let them be made manifest as they might. " This 
 man received us, certainly he received us, at the door (I am 
 correct, sister ?). Certainly he received us, Leddy Joan. If 
 you be master here," she demanded, with sudden vigor, of 
 the gentleman who she was informed was Mr. Challoner, as 
 he returned with a cup of tea and a cream-jug, — " if you be 
 master here, why don't you behave like it ? Are you master, 
 eh?" 
 
 Mr. Challoner, conscious of the twenty well-bred people and 
 the irrepressible iil-bred titt'ir, begged Miss Moira to tell him 
 if she took much sugar or little. 
 
 " I can sugar for myself 1" said that lady, with asperity. 
 " So you are Leddy Joan's husband, are you ? You don't 
 seem to conduct yourself like it. But I thought the other 
 was veiy dark for a Scot." 
 
 " Do you take cream, madam ?" murmured Mr. Challoner, 
 bending his back stiffly over the silver jug, whilst Miss Moira 
 stared with stony gaze at the coronets and coats of arms on 
 the chairs. 
 
 " Whose quai-terings are those ?" she demanded. " They're 
 none known north o' Tweed, nor north o' Thames either, for 
 that matter : the shape o' the shield " 
 
 " Dear Miss Moira, allow me ," said the Lady Joan, 
 
 avoiding heraldry by bringing up a small division of the twenty 
 well-bred people for presentation. But Miss Moira was not to 
 be so lightly diverted from her purpose. Having bent her 
 head as many times as politeness required, she retained her 
 grasp on Mr. Challoner, and returned to her original investi- 
 gations. " A fine place," she resumed, letting her eyes ' ove 
 from the timber roof to the mosaic floor ; " a fine place. Is 
 it your own ?" 
 
 Mr. Challoner murmured inarticulately, and stooped for the 
 sugar-tongs. . ,• 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 11 
 
 " Bought it?" said Miss Moira, sharply. 
 
 " No, — not precisely." 
 
 "Hired it?" 
 
 " Not exactly. That is, at least " 
 
 Mr. Challoner shifted his eyeglass, and, being an exact man, 
 paused to find an exact word. 
 
 " Oh, my gude soi i, then if ye've na bought it and na hired 
 it, it's na yours at all ; and what for be ye speering to ask us 
 into it?" 
 
 Mr. Challoner wondered to himself why an unkind Provi- 
 dence would move old maiden ladies from their own safe ingle- 
 nooks by gray Atlantic shores, and muttered something of " a 
 friend, an old friend." 
 
 " Oh, it's the dark man's, is it? He don't look old," said 
 Miss Moira, " and you and your good leddy live in it out of 
 friendship. Is that the custom in this papistical country, 
 pray, sir?" 
 
 Mr. Challoner murmured that he thought it was the custom, 
 — " the houses were so large, the nobility were so poor " 
 
 " And has he a good leddy ? What does she say to it ? 
 Certainly, Leddy Joan asked us out here as to her oum place. 
 Quite clearly, — her own place. I am correct, sister?" 
 
 " Quite correct, sister. Her own pbce." 
 
 " loris is not married," said Mr, Challoner, wondering if he 
 could drop the sugar-tongs again without too much awkward- 
 ness. " He is a good fellow. We are very much attached to 
 him. Will you like to st 3 my greenhouses ? I am curious 
 in the nymphaea, cyanea, coerulea, rubra " " 
 
 " A pond-lily's a puir feckless taste for a man," said Miss 
 Moira, severely. " Archie asked us to come and see his 
 daughter, and so we came. But certainly when she called on 
 us she said her * own place,' — most distinctly hci own place." 
 
 "Oh, she has got in.'^ the habit of calling it so: she has 
 done so much for it " 
 
 " But il' it be the young man's " 
 
 Lady Joan Challoner begged at that moment to present to 
 Miss Moira an Anglican clergyman. 
 
 The Anglican clergyman disposed of, Miss Moira of Craig 
 Moira returned to the charge. 
 
 " Eh, but it must be a perilous experiment, — twa masters 
 under one roof." 
 
12 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " E^ , it must, indeed," murmured the younger Miss Moira. 
 " Mony voices make muckle strife." 
 
 " Ay, they do. Tell me, now, do you twa good gentlemen 
 never fash one another?" 
 
 "Never," said Mr. Challoner, cordially ; but his cold light 
 eyes fell as he spoke. 
 
 " Then ye're just no human, sir," said Miss Moira, with 
 emphasis ; " and Joan Perth-Douglas had always a sharp 
 tongue of her own. Perth-Douglas women never were easy 
 to live with. You seem a quiet body yourself, but still " 
 
 " Let me show you my wife's fowls. The fame of the 
 poultry of Craig Moira ■" commenced Mr. Challoner. 
 
 " Still, I think you're no wise, and so I'll tell Archie," con- 
 tinued Miss Moira, not to be moved even by praise of her 
 poultry-yard. " It's a queer way of living, and certainly she 
 said her own place, ' her own place,' and ye'U no take offence, 
 for I always speak my mind, but that Papist's a deal too bonny 
 to look at, and Leddy Joan's a young woman still." 
 
 " My dear madam, I have not the most distant idea of your 
 meaning " 
 
 " Then ye're just a fule, sir," said Miss Moira, sharply. 
 
 "Will you look at my wife's poultry? Sbo has some 
 spangled bantams that — —" 
 
 " Eh ? Joan Perth-Douglas has taken to cocks and hens 
 and bubbly-jocks, has she ? Weel, there's no accounting for 
 conversions. Perth-Douglas women were always a handful. 
 I've known three generations of them, and they always were 
 masterful. Dear douce Archie never daured say his soul was 
 his own. Yes, I'll come and see your chicks and stove-plants. 
 But how can they be yours if the place is the Papist's ?" 
 
 " It was a tumble-down old barrack. We have spent a good 
 deal on it. One is always glad to do good to a friend," mur- 
 mured Mr. Challoner, a little vaguely, offering his arm to his 
 tormentor. 
 
 " Humph !" said the elder Miss Moira, with a sniff. 
 
 " We are quite farmers here, you know," Mr. Challoner 
 continued, leading Ae way through courts and chambers to 
 the open air. " The vybo'ns thing had gone to rack and ruia 
 when we took it in hand. Italians are so improvident, and 
 the national habits are so wasteful. But my wife's energy is 
 wonderful: whatever she undertakes prospers " -. ^- - '■ 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 13 
 
 " Humph !" said the elder Miss Moira, once more. " And 
 the handsome Papist, is he grateful to ye for her energy ?" 
 
 " Oh, don't talk about gratitude. There is no question of 
 that. We are always glad to be of use to our friends, and 
 loris is an excellent fellow. Ask Lord Archie." 
 
 Lord Archie was an idol of Craig Moira, and his word was 
 law there. Miss Moira was softened by it, and her suspicions 
 were mollified. She consented to be conducted through the 
 green-house, praised the bantams, and only sniffed a little as 
 she passed the open door of the castle chapel, where some 
 peasants were going in for vespers. She returned in a more 
 amiable frame of mind to her sister and her sofa, and relented 
 enough to take a fresh cup of tea and some fruit, which was 
 handed her with exquisite grace by the Prince loris. Miss 
 Moira's eyes, through their spectacles, followed the Prince loris 
 to the other end of the large reception-room. 
 
 " He's an elegant-made man, and a taking one," she said 
 to her host; "and I think ye' re no wise to live in the same 
 house with him. Oh, ye've no need to glower and lock glum : 
 an old body like me can tell truth without fashin' anybody, 
 and ye know that we and Archie's people have foregathered 
 all our lives, and it never was hid from us that Joan Perth- 
 Douglas was masterful and had her cantrips. Lord, man ! do 
 ye think they'd have wedded her to a mere decent body like 
 you, if she hadn't been a handful? Not they; they're proud- 
 stomached, and ye sold carpets and the like in Bagdad." 
 
 " Really, madam " Mr. Challoner shifted his eyeglass, 
 
 and felt that this kind of amiability was worse to bear than 
 the previous antan;onism. 
 
 " Hoot ! it's no sort of use giving yourself bobberies with 
 us. We know all about you," said Miss Moira, pleasantly. 
 " Your forbears were decent folks, dwellers on my cousin 
 Allandale's lands on the Border for mony a generation, pious 
 canny bodies, but sma' trader&i all. I mind well when 1 was 
 a bit lassie, and staying at Allandale's, buying tiipes and pins, 
 and what not, at your grandmother's little shop. She sold 
 snuff and letter-papers, and had the post, and sold stamps as 
 weel, — twa-bawbee stamps they were in those days. Ye mind 
 it too, don't ye, sister?" 
 
 " Richt well, sister. She sold sweeties too." 
 
 " Lord, man, its sma' blame to ye. Your folk were all 
 
 2 
 
14 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 decent folk in the Cheviots, anJ true believers. But I'll not 
 deny that when ye stuck up on your countin'-house stool so 
 high that ye mated with Archie's daughter, we did set our 
 necks stiff, and " 
 
 Mr. Challoner threw down a piece of majolica. It belonged 
 to the house, and would cost him nothing, and the crash of 
 the falling vase spared him more recollections of Allandale. 
 
 " Sister, we must be going. The sun's well-nigh down," 
 said the elder Miss Moira, when the majolica was picked up. 
 " Now, sir, take an old woman's word, and don't disremember 
 that your good leddy's a Perth-Douglas, and Perth-Douglas 
 women are always like bucking fillies ; and the Papist's got a 
 face o' grace and a pretty way with him. Oh, you may get 
 on your high horse as ye like ! Sense is sense. Still, I'm 
 glad to see ye have such a * "ust in your wife, and it speaks 
 well for ye both, and shows she's given over her cantrips ; 
 and I'm sorry I fashed ye about your grandame, but there's 
 nothing to be ashamed of, nothing at all. She was a good 
 clean religious body, and I'm not one to look down on ye 
 because ye are not what we are, though I'm free to own when 
 they married Joan to ye we quarrelled with Archie, as far as 
 anybody ever can quarrel with him, the fair, sweet-spoken 
 soul " 
 
 Mr. Challoner, conscious of a sudden silence that had fallen 
 on the twenty well-bred people scattered about, behind, and 
 around him, in which the voice of his torturer fell horribly 
 loud and distinct, wished that the mosaic floor would open as 
 the gulf for Curtius. 
 
 "Joan's a fine-featured woman," pursued Miss Moira, rising 
 in all her plaids, " but she's a Perth-Douglas, and she's got a 
 wild eye. You mind my word when I'm gone. Look after 
 her well with the Papist. And now good-day, and many 
 thanks to ye, Leddy Joan. I'm mighty glad to see ye've 
 taken to such a sober thing as tillin' land and fattin' fowls, 
 and I hope ye'll keep steady at it ; and, yes, to be sure, I'll 
 remember ye to my niece, Forfar, though she's never seen ye, 
 and I doubt if she's ever heard o' ye, and ye're scarce cousin 
 to her, as ye're sayin', — it's very far away, indeed ; one of 
 your forbears in the last century married the then duke's 
 seventh daughter, and they were Archie's father's great- 
 grandfather's cousins- german ; still, it counts, — oh, yes, it 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 15 
 
 counts, and I'll give her your love for certain ; and so I'll bid 
 ye farewell, and many thanks to ye, and we'll return it in kind 
 whenever ye come north again. And I suppose ye don't 
 travel with the Papist, but ye can explain to him that we'd 
 be glad to see him in Caithness, for it might be the savinj; ot 
 his soul if he came in reach of the true doctrine, and otit 
 minister would weary the Lord for him night and day, for he 
 is a personable man and a courteous, and it is sad to think he 
 will burn in the life everlasting." 
 
 " Mille remerciments, mesdames, et Sli revoir," murmured 
 the Prince loris, vaguely gathering that they were wishing 
 him well, and offering them a bouquet of autumnal heliotrope 
 and Louise de Savoie roses. 
 
 The Miss Moiras accepted the flowers, and drove away in 
 state, pugs, plaids, ear-trumpets, courier, and all, on their re- 
 turn journey towards Rome. 
 
 " There is a deal in manner, sister," said the elder Miss 
 Moira, as she smelt the heliotrope. 
 
 " There is, sister. What were ye meaning ?" 
 
 " That the Papist has a manner, and that the carpet-man 
 hasn't," replied the elder Miss Moira. " Let iiS hope that 
 Leddy Joan canna see the dijQ'crence, and has steadied down. 
 But I have my doubts, sister." 
 
 " And ye do well to have your doubts, sister. Ye were 
 ever very sharp o' sight." 
 
 The elder Miss Moira sniffed with scorn the bland air of 
 the Roman twilight. 
 
 " It needs but half an eye, Elizabeth, to see that a Perth- 
 Douglas womar loves her cantrips, and that the Papist is a 
 deal bonnier to look at than the person that sold carpets. But 
 she was very civil, and her gude man seems a well-meaning 
 douce body, and she's steadied down ; I shall say so every- 
 where ; she's steadied down, and we must do all we can for 
 her, sister. She is Archie's daughter." 
 
 " She is Archie's daughter, sister." 
 
 The elder Miss Moira would have changed her amicable 
 intentions if she could have seen her hostess dancing a war- 
 dance in the loggia and snapping her fingers after the vanish- 
 ing carriage. 
 
 " The hateful old cats !" cried the Lady Joan ; " I thought 
 they'd never go ! Wretched old women I Why didn't you 
 
16 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 stop their tongues, Robert ? And what an ass you were, lo, 
 receiving them like that ! Of course they couldn't help find- 
 ing out the house was yours, and old idiots like those will 
 never understand " 
 
 " They were good harmless people," said the Prince loris, 
 in his own tongue, a little timidly, standing under the arch 
 of his loggia, and w-jtching the sunset. 
 
 " Stuff I they are the most horrid old harridans in existence. 
 But every old hag seems good i^i you. I do believe you see 
 good in everybody 1 The idea, too, of wasting those roses on 
 em ! Koses sell for half a franc apiece now. And giving 
 them yourself, too ! They've been boring Mr. Challoner to 
 death about what you are here, and whose the house is. But 
 you're always doing something ridiculous. Only remember 
 this. Give your head away with the roses next time, if you 
 like, only all I insist is, don't compromise we/" 
 
 The Prince loris was silent. He leaned against a column 
 of the loggia, and watched the sun go down behind the hills. 
 
 Lady Joan Challoner and her husband went within to the 
 twenty well-bred people, and busied themselves pleasantly with 
 them, and gave parting smiles and Muscat grapes to some, 
 and retained a few to dinner. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Miss Moiras rolled onward to Rome through 
 the descending mists of evening, and, nodding amidst their 
 cushions, fell asleep, until, roused by the cessation of all move- 
 men*^^ and a voice they knew, they were startled to find that 
 the carriage was entering the gates of Rome. A gentleman, 
 old, bent, feeble, smiled and nodded, came up and shook hand?, 
 as the horses were stopped for a moment by the pressure of 
 traffic. This gentleman was Lord George Scrope-Stair, an 
 old acquaintance and a privileged person. 
 
 " You have been to see Pope Joan?" he said with a little 
 laugh. "Did you like Fiordelisa?" And he nodded and 
 laughed again. " Ah ! yes, we always call her Pope Joan, 
 — I do, at least, when my daughters don't hear me : Pope 
 Joan keeps the keys of both heaven and earth, and ousts Peter 
 out of his own palace, you know 1 Only my little joke. 
 Don't tell the girls. Good-night." 
 
 And the old man, who had been once a dandy and a beau 
 in days when Ger.rge the Fourth was king, walked onward in 
 the twilight, chuckling feebly. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 17 
 
 "Pope Joan,!" echoed Miss Moira of Moira, as their car- 
 riage rolled over the stones. " Sister, I wish we had not gone 
 to the place I" 
 
 " So do Ij sister," said the echo. 
 
 They went peacefully home to their hotel and dined, with 
 misgivings weighing on their souls, and then, being tired, slept 
 again until the elder Miss Moira awoke from a blissful doze 
 with a start. 
 
 *' I wonder whose the place really is, sister ?" she mumbled, 
 as she yawned. 
 
 " I wonder, sister," said the echo. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 It was sunset on the Pincio on thj first day of December. 
 Beyond St. Peter's there was that sky of purple and of gold 
 which always seems so much more marvellous here than it 
 does anywhere else, — that roseleaf warmth and soft trans- 
 parency of flame-like color which those who have looked on 
 it never will forget so long as their lives shall last on earth. 
 
 Below, loud, cracked, discordant bells were chiming one 
 against another; near at hand a military band was playing, 
 very fast and very much out of tune, waltzes of Strauss ; a 
 monk, the worse for wine, was screaming homilies from a 
 bench, and guards were vainly striving to arrest him amidst 
 the laughter of the crowd ; but nothing spoiled the grandeur 
 of the scene, or could destroy the sublime calmness of the de- 
 clining day, as the broken green lines of the hills grew black 
 against the burning scarlet of the clouds, and the vast expanse 
 of roofs and spires, cupolas and towers, obelisks and gardens, 
 ruins and palaces, colossal temples and desolate marshes, that is 
 all called Rome, stretched away wide and vague and solemn 
 as a desert; with a sun, nearly as red and ray less as the 
 desert's, hanging above the cross on the great dome. 
 
 It was four o'clock ; and there was the customary crowd 
 of fashionable idlers, fretting horses, emblazoned carriages, 
 sauntering dandies, handsome artists, tired invalids, black- 
 robed priests and scarlet-dad janitors, cuirassed soldiei'S and 
 
 2* 
 
H FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 curly-headed children, violet-gowned seminarists and purple- 
 gowned scholars, and, first and foremost, fashionable ladies 
 chattering at the top of their voices about the first fox-hunt 
 of the year, the first court ball, the new arrivals, and the 
 Pope's state of health. 
 
 The sun was going down in majesty behind the round 
 domes raised to lay the restless soul of Nero ; but up here 
 on the hill scarcely anybody looked at it, but idling and 
 laughing and talking people turned their backs to the west, 
 to hear the music better, and kept looking instead at one 
 woman as she passed, and murmured to each other in a little 
 flutter, " Dear me ! There is Etoile, and the Coronis," and 
 then reassured each other, and said, " Yes, indeed, — oh, yes, 
 really, that is Etoile with the Coronis," in a certain tone of 
 disappointment because she was only like any other well- 
 dressed woman after all, and humanity considers that when 
 genius comes forth in the flesh the touch of the coal from 
 the altar should have left some visible stigmata on the lips it 
 has burned, as, of course anybody knows, it invariably leaves 
 some smirch upon the character. 
 
 Humanity feels that genius ought to wear a livery, as Jews 
 and loose women wore yellow in the old golden days of dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 " They don't even paint 1" said one lady, and felt herself 
 aggrieved. 
 
 Nevertheless the lady and all the rest of the crowd con- 
 tinued to look. 
 
 Dorotea Coronis they had all of them seen many scores of 
 times through their opera-glasses at Covent Garden, the Grand 
 Opera, and the theatre at Baden ; but Etoile they had hardly 
 any of them ever seen, and they stared with all the admirable 
 impudence of a well-born mob. 
 
 " They don't seem to see us," said the aggrieved lady who 
 had wondered they did not paint. 
 
 " Look deuced proud," muttered an Englishman who had 
 lifted his hat eagerly and put it on sulkily, being unnoticed. 
 
 The carriage swept by again, and both the women in it 
 looked at the sunset, and not at the crowd. The crowd began 
 to feel neglected and to grow ill-natured. Sovereigns took the 
 trouble to bow : why could not these two, whose only royalty 
 was that of art? 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 19 
 
 " Who is Etoile ?" said the crowd. 
 
 " An enigma without an CEdipus," said one of its idlers, who 
 thoup;ht himself a wit. 
 
 *' There is no enigma at all, except in your imaginations," 
 said another idler, who was old and grave, which was a foolish 
 remark, no doubt, because an enigma that is purely imaginary 
 must be of necessity the mcst puzzling of all, since it follows 
 as a matter of course that nobody ever can solve it. 
 
 The carriage paused, and its occupants bought Parma violets. 
 The crowd was disposed to think there must be some motive 
 for the action, as it eyed dubiously the boar-hound trotting 
 behind the carriage, and would fain have believed that his 
 tongue hanging out meant a mystery, and that he broke a 
 commandment in wagging his tail. 
 
 It is one of the privileges of celebrity that the person cele- 
 brated can never wash his hands or open an umbrella without 
 being accredited with some occult reason for his proceedings. 
 
 " Is it really Etoile?" said the crowd. Generally speaking, 
 people were disposed to believe that she was not herself, but 
 somebody else. 
 
 She did not see them. She had a sad habit of not seeing 
 those who surrounded her. When, recalled to a sense of her 
 negligence, she begged the pardon of others for having over- 
 looked them, she was not readily forgiven. People would 
 rather be insulted than be unperceived. 
 
 Her equipage, with its long-tailed Roman horses, went the 
 round of the Pincio, past the cactus and aloes, the water- 
 clock and the kiosques for toys, the music-stands, and the 
 garden-chairs, and the various other embellishments placed 
 here, where Augustus mused and Caesar and Pompeius supped. 
 
 She gazed at the lovely light, rosy as blown pomegranate- 
 leaves, with little puffs of golden cloud upon it, light as a 
 cherub's curls. 
 
 " How matchless it is !" she said, with a sigh. 
 
 " It is Rome," said Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 And for them both, the crowd ceased to exist. They only 
 saw the slow-descending sun. 
 
 To be wise in this world one should always be blind to the 
 sunset, but never to the people that bow. The sun, neglected, 
 will not freckle us any more than if we had penned him a 
 thousand sonnets as the lord of light. A man or a woman. 
 
20 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 slighted, will burn us brown all over with blistering spots of 
 censure, indelible as stains of iodine, and deep as wounds of 
 vitriol. 
 
 " Is it really Etoile ?" said the crowd, eagerly, and scarcely 
 looked at the brilliant Gitana-like loveliness of her companion^ 
 the great Coronis, because it was familiar, but turned and 
 stared with all the stony-hearted inquisitiveness of Society at 
 the little they could see of the one whom they called Etoile, 
 which was indeed only a heap of silver-fox furs, a pile of 
 violets, a knot of old Flemish lace, and dreaming serious eyes 
 that watched the sunset. 
 
 She herself scarcely saw that any crowd was there. This 
 kind of oblivion was usually her deadliest sin, and she was 
 unconscious that she sinned, which made it very much worse. 
 People blew their bubbles or threw their stones abo;it her, and 
 she never heeded either, though indeed the stoneS) came so 
 thickly sometimes that she ought in common gratituda to have 
 been flattered : calumny is the homage of our contemporaries, 
 as some South Sea Islanders spit on those they honor. 
 
 Popularity has been defined as the privilege of being cheered 
 by the kind of people you would never allow to bow to you. 
 
 Fame may be said to be the privilege of being slandered at 
 once by the people who do bow to you, as well as by the peo- 
 ple who do not. . 
 
 " Who is she ?" said the crowd on the Pincio. 
 
 Nobody there knew at all. So everybody averred they 
 knew for certain. Nobody's story agreed with anybody else's, 
 but that did not matter at all. The world, like Joseph's father, 
 gives the favorite a coat of many colors, which the brethren 
 rend. 
 
 " She says herself " hinted the old grave idler, member 
 
 of many clubs ; but nobody wanted to hear what she said 
 herself. Pas si hete ! Of course she told a story well and laid 
 on the right colors ; pobody had talents like hers for nothing. 
 
 The old idler got no listeners, and went away pensively to 
 lean on the parapet. He was so far in the minority as to be- 
 lieve what she said herself, which was quite simple and com- 
 paratively uneventful, and, therefore, evidently improbable. 
 If she had said she had new lovers every night, and killed 
 them in a back garden every morning, like the Jewess of the 
 French Regency, people might have believed: there would 
 
•/.; 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 21 
 
 have been nothing staggeringly and audaciously impossible 
 about that. 
 
 The crowd on the Pincio, when the whisper of her name 
 had first run through it, had been alive with admiration and 
 cordiality; but the crowd felt that it had had cold water 
 thrown on its enthusiasm, and so b(igan to hiss, as fire under 
 cold water always does. 
 
 " Very clever indeed," said the cro\7d. " Oh, yes, no doubt. 
 Oh, wonderful, quite wonderful, every one knew that; but 
 who was she ? Ah ! nobody could tell. Oh, yes, indeed, it 
 was quite well known. She was a beggar's brat found on a 
 door-step ; she was a cardinal's daughter ; she was a princess's 
 petite faute; she was a Rothschild's mistress ; she was a Cabi- 
 net Minister's craze ; she was poor De Morny's daughter ; she 
 had been a slave in Circassia ; she had been a serf in White 
 Russia; she had been found frozen, with a tambourine in 
 her hand, outside the gates at Vincennes ; her father was at 
 the galleys ; her mother kept an inn. No, they were both 
 imperial spies, and very rich ; no, they were both dead ; no, 
 nobody ever said that, they said this. The poor Emperor 
 knew beyond doubt ; and the secret had died with him. She 
 was quite out of society, she was in the highest society ; she 
 was not received anywhere, she was received everywhere. Oh, 
 that was not true, but this was. Well, the less said the better." 
 
 When the world has decided that the less said the better, 
 it always proceeds directly to say everything in the uttermost 
 abundance that it can possibly think of, and it did so on the 
 Fincio this day at sunset, and asked a variety of questions as 
 well. 
 
 "Why had she come?" 
 
 " Was she going to remain ?" 
 
 " Would she go out at all ?" 
 
 " Would she receive ?" 
 
 " Would she be received ?" 
 
 " Would she go to the legations ?" 
 ". " Were those Russian furs?" 
 
 " Was that dress Worth's ?" 
 
 "Why did she stop her horses there, with her back to 
 everybody, where she couldn't hear a note of the music ?" 
 
 So they chattered, in much excitement, gazing at her through 
 their eye-glasses or from under their parasols. 
 
22 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Nobody there happened to know anything, except that she 
 had come to Rome from Paris, by Nice and Genoa, the pre- 
 vious night ; but there was a general feeling that there was 
 probably something wrong. 
 
 Why did she turn the back of her carriage to them and 
 buy Parma violets ? 
 
 In a little while, as the sun grew into a solemn red ball be* 
 hind the purple dome, and the shadows became longer, the 
 throng began to go down the great winding stairways towards 
 the square below, where the waters fell from the marble mouths, 
 and the grave sphinxes were couched beneath the drooping 
 boughs. 
 
 A lady, wrapped in sealskin, with a sealskin hat set well 
 over her brows, began to move also with the two persons who 
 formed her escort. The trio was composed of Lady Joan 
 Challoner and her husband and the Prince loris. 
 
 " Is that Etoile?" said the Lady Joan, eagerly, as the car- 
 riage dashed past them, and she caught the name spoken by 
 some bystanders. 
 
 " Is that reely Etoile, now ? Do tell," said a fashionable 
 American of her acquaintance, joining her, by name Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams. 
 
 " They say so. I've never seen her myself," answered Lady 
 Joan. " lo, and I, and Mr. Challoner have just been to call 
 on her, but she was out. She has brought me letters." 
 
 " Reely, now ! How interestin' !" said the fashionable 
 American. " Well, it's a very elegant turn-out, now, aren't 
 it?" My word I " 
 
 " You can get anything you like to pay for in Rome," said 
 the Lady Joan, with much contempt : she herself was on foot. 
 " I must be civil to her. Voightel begs roe to be so, and my 
 father too ; I must have her to dinner. Will you come, Mrs. 
 Clams?" 
 
 " Oh, thanks, now ; that's reel kind 1" said Mrs. Henry V. 
 Clams. " I'm dyin* to see her, dyin', and I've got a bet in 
 N'York about the way she wears her hair. But they do say 
 she's so rude, you know ; Cyrus C. Butterfield — as works the 
 Saratoga press, you know — wrote to ask her to send him every 
 particular of her life from her baptism upwards, and — would 
 you believe it ? — her secretary — a female, I believe — sent him 
 back his own letter I There 1" 
 
II 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The Lady Joan laughed shortly. 
 
 "I should say Cyrus C. Butterficld's inquiries would be 
 particularly inconvenient to her! I wonder why on earth 
 she has come to Rome 1" 
 
 " lb there anything strange in coming to Rome ?" said the 
 Prince loris, in his soft Roman tongue. 
 
 " No ; of course no. What silly things you say 1 Only, 
 of course she's got some motive. She's with Corouis, 
 too." 
 
 " The loveliest woman in Europe," said Mr. Challoncr, with 
 solemnity and unction. 
 
 " Wretched creature !" said the Lady Joan. 
 
 " My word, now, what s/ie's up to ?" inquired Mrs. Henry 
 V. Clams, with lively interest. " Why, she's Duchesse San- 
 torin, aren't she ?" 
 
 " And the duke is going to divorce her. 
 
 " My I You don't say so I" 
 
 " Santorin is very thankless : she has paid his debts again 
 and again," murmured the Prince loris. 
 
 " Oh, everybody that sings is an angol to you, lo 1" said 
 Lady Joan, with some irritation. 
 
 " If she's paid his debts, he's paid by the nose 1 Every- 
 body knows what these professional women always are. I 
 dare say Etoile herself is no better." 
 
 " My dear love," said Mr. Challoner, with serious reproof, 
 " surely you forget. Would your father ever " 
 
 " My father's an ass where a petticoat's concerned, and he'd 
 swear it had all the virtues inside it if it had only taken his 
 fancy. He makes a great fuss about her. Voightel, too, who 
 believes in nobody, believes in her. It's so queer 1 I sup- 
 pose she's only sharper than most people." 
 
 " I never heard a word " began the Prince loris. 
 
 " Stuff !" said the Lady Joan. " There are heaps of stories, 
 — ^hideous stories. And there's no smoke without fire, that's 
 certain. What day shall we ask her to dinner V" 
 
 " Well, now, I did read years ago, in our country, that she 
 lived with a stoker as she'd taken a fancy to in the Lyons cars - 
 once," said Mrs. Henry V. Clams, reflectively, searching into 
 the recesses of her memory. ._.*-.-- 
 
 Mr. Challoner and the Prince loris laughed outright. 
 
 " I never heard of the stoker, but I dare say there are things 
 
24 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 quite as fishy," said tho Lady Joan. " What night shall we 
 fix? Will the 6th suit you, Mrs. Claras?" 
 
 They sauntered on by the stone balustrades with the scat- 
 tered groups, who were all making for the Corso, or walking 
 under the Tempietto, Babuino-way, and who were all more 
 or less talking of Etoile and of Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 The groups seldom said anything that was amiable of either, 
 still less seldom anything that was true. But to be thus 
 spoken of at all constitutes what the world calls Fame, and 
 ever since the days of Horace the world has Tvondered that 
 the objects of it are not more grateful for the distiLotion of 
 detraction. 
 
 " Why do you spit ?" says the glow-worm. 
 
 " Why do you shine ? says the frog. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 At the entrance of the Corso, Mr. Challoner recollected an 
 appointment with a friend: his wife and the Prince loris 
 strolled on down the Corso together. 
 
 It was the hour when the street was at its fullest and 
 prettiest ; the irregular casements were half lighted, half 
 dark ; the painted and gilded signs swung in the shadows ; 
 lamps hung above balconies draped with red ; in a church 
 doorway white priests were chanting with torches flickering ; 
 at the corners stood great baskets of violets and camellias, rose 
 and whitv. , knots of pifferari droned the wild, sad monotones 
 of the music of the hills ; at a quick march a file of bersa- 
 ffUeri, with their plumes streaming, were coming up the narrow 
 way as up a mountain-pass ; horses were trampling, drums 
 were beating loud. 
 
 " I wonder how i/ou will like Etoile, lo ; you always do 
 like queer people 1" said the Lady Joan, as they moved down 
 into that picturesque chaos and luminous mingling of the 
 night and day. 
 
 Her companion answered, with gallant grace, " Whatever 
 she is, she will be only for me — la terza incommoda ! ' 
 
 The Lady Joan laughed, well pleased, as she pushed her 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 26 
 
 way through the lively and laughing crowds down to the 
 Pala/.zo di Vcnczia. In an angle near the Ripresa dei Bar- 
 beri, where two streets crossed each other in that populous 
 and convenient locality, there was a small house squeezed 
 between two grim palaces, and known as the Caisa Challoner 
 to the society and the tradespeople of Rome. 
 
 The Lady Joan climbed the stone stairs of the Casa 
 Challoner with agility, and her companion followed with 
 the accustomed matter-of-course air of a man who returns 
 home. 
 
 The house was dusky, there was only one lamp lighted in 
 the anteroom, but she pushed her way safely into a little 
 chamber heavy with the smell of Turkish tobacco and hung 
 with Turkish stuflFs and fitted with Turkish couches. 
 
 On one of the divans the Prince loris cast himself a little 
 wearily. 
 
 The Lady Joan lit a cigarette, stuck it between her teeth, 
 cast aside her sealskins, and began to look over a pib of 
 letters. 
 
 "I wish she hadn't come, bother her!" she muttered. 
 " Here's pages more of eulogy from that old Tartar, Voightel. 
 She seems to be perfection. I hate perfect people." 
 
 The Prince loris stretched himself out, and closed his eyes; 
 his friend continued her examination of her correspondence. 
 There was ten minutes' silence, broken only by the ticking of 
 a Flemish chime-clock. 
 
 At the end of ten minutes Lady Joan looked up impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 " Don't lie there, lo, doing nothing : tell me what we've got 
 for next week, that I may settle this dinner." 
 
 He sighed, raised himself, and took out a set of tablets 
 from his pocket. 
 
 " You have the English bishop and bishopess to-morrow." 
 
 " ' Bishopess 1' Well, go on." 
 
 " The Ech^ance soir6e on the 3d." 
 
 " Can't miss that. Well?" 
 
 " You take more English to the Opera on the 4th." 
 
 "5th, masked ball at the Greek Legation." ^ 
 
 "6th, Saturday?" ., ; i . 
 
 " Two teas, — names English that I cannot pronounce." 
 B 8 
 
26 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ■y " We'll throw over the teas. 6th will do. Get some cards, 
 and fill 'em up." 
 
 He obeyed, and went to a little writing-table. 
 
 " She's a sensational creature to have," continued his friend: 
 " it's best to have her seen here first, before anybody else takes 
 the cream off it. Whom shall we ask ? Clever people they 
 must be, and people that go in for that sort of thing. Ask 
 Lady Cardiff: she won't mind if Etoile does startle the pro- 
 prieties." 
 
 He filled in the card obediently; and she dictated some 
 dozen other names to him, leaning over his snoulder as he 
 wrote. 
 
 " Now fill in Etaile^s," she said. " I'll send a little note 
 with it, too, to be civil. That old beast Voightel and papa 
 make such a fuss " 
 
 *' I cannot put— Etoile ?" 
 
 " Of course not. You must put Comtesse d'Avesnes. Did 
 ever you hear such rubbish ? And papa and Voightel believe 
 in her, title and all." 
 
 "Why should they not?" said the writer, as he slid the 
 cards into their envelopes. 
 
 The Lady Joan put her tongue in her cheek, and jumped a 
 step of the hornpipe. 
 
 r " As much countess as the cat ! Now, do draw that trip- 
 tych that old Norwich wants so ; make haste. We dine at 
 seven, you know, because of the theatre. Send Anselmo with 
 the notes to-morrow morning. Etoile's you might leave to- 
 night. She's on your way home. I'll write her note now." 
 ' She crossed over to her bureau, and wrote a pretty epistle, 
 which ended, — 
 
 " Pray kindly waive ceremony, and come to us on Saturday; 
 my dear father and sc many o*' our common friends have spoken 
 so much of you that I cannot even think of you as a stranger, 
 and my husband will be as glad as I to have the honor of re- 
 ceiving Etoiie in our Roman home." - i ^ ji ,n - 
 
 Then she wrote another, which began, — 
 
 " Dearest Voightel, — The hint of a wish of yours h a de- 
 light and a command to me ; you know how I love and honor 
 all genius." 
 
 Then she scampered through half a dozen more notes, with 
 the pen of a ready writer, jujiped up and crossed over to where 
 
iM'.Iv'^-"' 
 
 
 ■A'. ;■,'■ 
 
 s .' FRIENDSHIP. 27 
 
 her friend sat, sketchin*]; by the light of a reading-lamp, and 
 ran her fingers through his soft dark hair. 
 
 " How slow you are, lo I You've only drawn one wing yet, 
 and I've written fifteen letters." 
 
 That ti%ht the Prince loris, after escorting the Lady Joan 
 to and from the broad fun of the Valle Theatre, walked through 
 the white Roman moonlight to his own palace in the street of 
 the Ripetta, and pausing, as he went, at the Hotel de Russie, 
 left the Lady Joan's note for the Comtesse d'Avesnes. 
 
 "Etoile: it is a pretty name," he thought to himself. 
 " Whose star is she beside her own ? A grent artist, all the 
 world knows: what else may she be, I wonder?" 
 
 Now, to wonder about any woman was a liberty and a lux- 
 ury forbidden to him. 
 
 The key of hi^ very thoughts hung to the girdle of the 
 Lady Joan as she moved, and lay under the pillow of the 
 Lady Joan as she slept, — or she believed it did, which satis- 
 fied her quite as well. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Who was Etoile ? 
 
 The world in general said it as often as the crowd on the 
 Pincio. 
 
 They never attended to what she said herself. Nobody 
 wants facts. Facts are hardly more amusing than mathe- 
 matics, — unless, indeed, they are the kind of facts that you 
 can only just whisper under your breath. And of this kind 
 of facts — the only kind that can in any way be diverting to 
 others — the life of the great Belgian artist remained conspicu- 
 ously, absurdly, inconsistently, and inconsiderately barren. 
 
 The world supplied the deficiency. 
 
 The world supplies you with history as our great tailor sup- 
 plies us with dresses : he surveys our face and figure and se- 
 lects for us what is appropriate. The world cuts out its gossip 
 on the same judicious lines : whether you like what is given 
 you is of no moment either to Worth or the world : you have 
 got to wear it. 
 
28 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Be thankful that you are Somebody. Neither Worth nor 
 the world would trouble themselves to fit you if you were 
 not. 
 
 In the morning Society that had been on the Pincio read 
 in its papers that Etoile was in Rome on account of her health. 
 Physicians had advised perfect repose and a warmer winter 
 than Paris or Brussels can offer. Society read the paragraph, 
 and, putting down the papers, wondered what the paragraph 
 was meant to cover. Something, of course. Heaps of things, 
 probably. Health, indeed ! What rubbish I Wasn't it a 
 sculptor? ... No; money! . . . Ah, money? . . . Oh, in- 
 deed, much worse than that ! . . . Exile was ordered, quite 
 ordered from the Elys^e. You understand? Everybody 
 whispered, nodded, seemed to understand, because nobody did 
 understand in the least ; and nobody, of 'jourse, could endure 
 to look so ignorant. 
 
 When a name is on the public mouth the public nostril 
 likes to smell a foulness in it. It likes to think that Byron 
 committed incest ; that Milton was a brute ; that Raffaelle's 
 vices killed him ; that Pascal was mad ; that Lamartine lived 
 and died a pauper ; that Scipio took the treasury moneys ; 
 that Thucydides and Phidias stole ; that Heloise and Hypatia 
 were but loose women after all : so the gamut runs over twice 
 a thousand years ; and Rousseau is at heart the favorite of 
 the world because he was such a beast, with all his talent. 
 
 When the world is driven to tears and prayers by Schiller 
 it hugs itself to remember that he could not write a line with- 
 out the smell of rotten apples near, and that when he died 
 there was not enough money in his desk to pay his burial. 
 They make him smaller, closer, less divine, the apples and the 
 pauper's coffin. 
 
 Etoile kept no rotten apples by her, and the world sniffed 
 in vain. 
 
 Had she worn meii's clothes, travelled with a married duke, 
 and had a caprice for a drunken painter, no doubt the world 
 would have better understood her genius. As it was, it felt 
 exasperated and thought her ostentatious. 
 
 After all, the innocence of a woman is no amusement what- 
 ever to aiiybody. It only gives nothing to be said about her. 
 In any case, whenever the woman is celebrated, the world will 
 not put up with nothing. It cuts out the garment of her 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 29 
 
 history to its own fancy. It is like the great tailor ; it knows 
 better than she does what she ought to wear. 
 
 Etoile rose and strolled through the courts and galleries of 
 the Vatican, unconscious, or indifierent, of the babble that 
 went on concerning her. 
 
 Society sav: her servant and the big dog, Tsar, sitting out- 
 side with the Swiss Guard. It was almost inclined to think 
 there naust be something wrong with a cardinal. What a 
 nasty savage-looking creature that dog was ! 
 
 At noon she went back to her hotel, found a few cards 
 awaiting her, and at two o'clock was seen to be driving wiih 
 the Princess Vera von Regonwalde, an ambassadress and a 
 wit. 
 
 Princess von Eegonwalde — or Princess Vera, as her friends 
 called her by her pretty girlish title — was an Austrian by 
 birth, and the wife of a Minister of another great Power, not 
 Austrian. She was one of the loveliest women that ever 
 brightened a court ; she had a face like the Cenci, a walk like 
 a young Diana's, a smile like a child's, a grace like a flower's, 
 eyes like a fawn's, fancies like a poet's, and a form that Titian 
 would have given to Venus. She had beautiful children, that 
 clung round her in Correggio-like groups ; and she always 
 looked like a picture, whether shining in velvet and cloth of 
 gold in a throne-room, or straying in a linen dress through 
 starlit myrtles on Italian hills. Princess Vera was a great 
 social power ; and when Society saw Etoile in her carriage it 
 began to think that probably after all the paragraph was quite 
 true : it began to recollect that it had always heard that this 
 great artist's lungs were not very strong. And what a beauti- 
 ful dog was the boar-hound ! Dear fellow, what was his 
 name? 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, on the contrary, as she saw the Re- 
 gonwalde carriage sweep by, said that it was right-down pre- 
 posterous, and she didn't care who heard her. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams had passed the years of her youth in 
 a Far West saw-mill, in sewing-bees, washing-bees, black- 
 berrying, and chapel-going, in the middle of a clearing, a good 
 five hundred miles from any township; and she had, now that 
 youth was fled from her, bloomed into an elegante in Europe, 
 thanks to marvellous dresses, unlimited open house, politic 
 lovers, and her husband's dollars, which were many. 
 
 8* 
 
so FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Still, as an iUgante^ Mrs. Henry V. Clams never felt quite 
 sure of her footing, and the night before, on the Pincio, at the 
 sight of Etoile in dusky olive-hued velvet, entirely unorna- 
 mented, she had had an uneasy conviction that she herself 
 had too many buttons, too many colors, too many fringes, and 
 had a bonnet too much like a firework, and that her Paris 
 deity had been faithless to her and had arrayed her in raiment 
 only fit for the " half-world," and the feeling rankled in her 
 and made her say, " Preposterous !" snappishly, though she 
 was a good-natured woman in the main. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams's countrywomen are received at all 
 the courts of Europe with no better qualification, very often, 
 than that nobody does know whcr*^ they come from ; and, did 
 any ill-judj^ed inquisitor seek to know his investigations would 
 very often lead him into raany ansa^of}' dens of the Bowery 
 and drinking-shops of " Frisco," into the shanty of many a 
 ticket-of-Ieav2 man and the paT7D shop of many a German 
 Jew. 
 
 But it is a question that Mrs. Henry V. Clams and her 
 countrywomen are very fond of asking ; and indeed, apropos 
 of their own countrywomen, they will always tell you with 
 the utmost frankness that Mrs. Phineas B. Williams once 
 Bold hot potatoes, and Mrs. Heloise W. Dobbs shot her first 
 husband in St. Louis, and Miss Anastasia B. Spyrle, betrothed 
 to Prince Volterra, danced in tights throughout the States, or 
 any other biogiaphical trifle of the sort, with an impartiality 
 scorning national bias. 
 
 " Nobody can't say where she came from," said Mrs. Henry 
 V. Clams, drawing herself out a glass of curagoa from a little 
 barrel of baccarat glass in her own drawing-room. It was her 
 day to receive. 
 
 " Nobody can't say where she came from," reiterated Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams, with a kind of triumph. 
 
 " Who wants to know where artists come from ? /don't," 
 said Lady Joan Challoner, with a fine sentiment worthy of a 
 great patron of the arts, which she was. 
 
 " W hen they stick to being artists, of course not," said Mi-s. 
 Henry V. Clams. " You don't see 'em then, and have no 
 call to speak to 'em ; but to think as Princess \ era, who, I'm 
 sure, looks as if angels and empresses weren't good enough to 
 black her shoes " ^ . v «^, ,« .. . 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 31 
 
 " Princess Vera's art-mad," said the Lady Joan. " I love 
 art myself, as you know, but still there are bounds to every- 
 thing. Well, anyhow I must know her, so I'm glad Princess 
 Vera will keep me in countenance. lo, we ought to be going. 
 What are you looking at there? Oh, a photograph of 
 Etoile." 
 
 The Prince loris laid aside an album marked CeUhritSs, 
 with a backward glance at the page he had opened it at, where 
 he saw a mere profile like a wliite cameo on a dark ground, 
 and the letters " Etoile" underneath it. 
 
 " Can one buy those portraits, madame?" he asked of his 
 hostess as he hastened to follow the Lady Joan. 
 
 " Why, my ! yes. That one's five francs. I think it's one 
 of Goupil's," said Mrs. Henry V. Clams. " But it isn't much 
 to look at : the* one of Judic's, now, or Croisette's " 
 
 But it was not J udic or Croisette that was in his f^ncy. 
 
 " Come along. Take Spit," said the Lady Joan, sharply, 
 and threw a small blue Skye dog into his arms &3 they de- 
 scended the broad Aubusson-covered staircase of the Ameri- 
 can's magnificent abode. 
 
 " That woman up-stairs was quite right : it is preposterous," 
 she continued. " But I thought I wouldn't say so, as we 
 must know her now. Where are my furs ? Take care." 
 
 The Prince loris, when in the streets, took advantage of a 
 moment when the Lady Joan was engrossed in a shop in the 
 Condotti, cheapening a piece of china, to go across to Sulcipi's 
 and order a photograph from Groupil's to be got for him. 
 
 The shopman answered with alacrity that he had one al- 
 ready. " In fact, we have several. Excellence. She is here, 
 you know, and that always creates a demand," he said, drop- 
 ping his voice. 
 
 loris bought the portrait, and slipped it inside his sable- 
 lined coat. 
 
 " Where have you been, lo ? I missed you a moment ago," 
 said the Lady Joan, angrily, having failed to cheapen the 
 china, and feeling cross accordingly. 
 
 " I went to look if it rained. I waa afraid you would get 
 wet," he answered, simply, and restored the serenity to her 
 brows by buying the bowl for her. ....-.^..^j^.- 
 
 It was a really charming piece of old Nankin. 
 
 " Etoile 1" He said the word again to himself as he left 
 
32 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 his friend in her anteroom happy with her bowl, and went to 
 his own house to dress for dinner. The name had a fascina- 
 tion for him. He looked at the photograph by the light of 
 the lamps as he walked, and when he reached his own house 
 put it away in a secret drawer. He had here and there a 
 secret drawer of which the Lady Joan did not possess the 
 secret. 
 
 The subject of his thoughts, and of the portrait, had been 
 called Etoile as long as she could remember, — the peasant- 
 folks calling her so because in her childhood she ran so fast, 
 and her long fair hair streamed after her so far, that she 
 looked like a shooting star as she flew by them in the summer 
 nights in green Ardennes. 
 
 To the world in general the name seemed strar.ge, suspici- 
 ous, uncomfortable, indicative of that string of asterisks on a 
 page which replaces what is too shocking to be printed. But 
 to her it had all the old familiar charm of a sound that bears 
 all childhood in it. 
 
 The first thing that she could remember was a sunny vil- 
 lage in the woods on the banks of the bright Meuse water, in 
 the heart of that sweet green country of Jaques and Rosalind 
 which, for some things, has no equal upon earth. 
 
 Few places on the earth are lovelier than the province 
 through which the bright Meuse wanders, and the first mem- 
 ories of Etoile were of its glancing waters, its wooded hills, its 
 rich grass-meadows, its noble forest trees, its gabled houses, 
 gray and black with time, its broad yellow roads, leading west- 
 ward to France and eastward to the Rhine. There are a 
 breadth, a graciousness, a fresh and fragrant verdure in all 
 this country not to be surpassed in charm ; it is unworn and 
 unspoilt ; and although under its leafy woods the wheel of 
 the gambler turns, and by its limpid springs the tired hypo- 
 chondriac drinks, still there is much of it that neither gambler 
 nor hypochondriac ever sees, and that is solitary as Suabian 
 or Pennine Alp, and radiant with a brightness all its own. 
 
 The beautiful rapid river, foaming by mill and weir, and 
 the hay-fields, with their grand elms and walnuts, and the 
 high hills where the pines grew, and the one little sunny paved 
 street, with the village fountain at the end, where the women 
 gossiped and the big belled horses drank, — these were the first 
 things on which the eyes of Etoile had opened, and made the 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 33 
 
 first pictures that her mind remembered. A brown-frocked 
 monk, a gray-frocked nun, a cowherd with his cattle, a wagon 
 with its team, a group of women with their burden of linen 
 going to the washing-places in the river, — these were all that 
 passed up and down the hilly road between the double row of 
 tall bird-filled aspens ; the little place was sunny, sleepy, very 
 still, but it was lovely, bosomed deep in fragrant woods, and 
 watered by the Meuse. 
 
 And then what a world of wonders Jay around ! — the prim- 
 roses, the blue jays, the leaping trout, the passing boats, the 
 foxes that stole out almost familiarly, the squirrel swinging in 
 the nut thickets of the hills, the charcoal-burners coming 
 down rough and black to tell tales of the bears and wolves 
 high up above, the grei.t Flemish cart-horses walking solemnly 
 in state caparison outward on the )iighroads to France or 
 Prussia ; the red lurid glow far away in the evening sky, 
 which told where the iron-blasters of stern, fierce Liege were 
 at work, — these were word'^rs enough for a thousand years, 
 or at least for a young child to think them so. 
 
 Etoile thought so, and her childhood went by like a fairy- 
 tale told by a soft voice on a summer day. 
 
 The house she lived in was very old, and had those charm- 
 ing conceits, those rich shadows, that depth of shade, that i)lay 
 of light, that variety, and that character which seem given to 
 a dwelling-place in ages when men asked nothing better of 
 their God than to live where their fathers had lived, and 
 leave the old roof-tree to their children's children. 
 
 The thing built yesterday is a caravansary : I lodge in it 
 to-day, and you to-morrow: in an old house only can be made 
 a home, where the blessings of the dead have rested and the 
 memories of perfect faiths and lofty passions still abide. 
 
 This house stood in a green old shady garden, and at the 
 end of the garden the trees hung over the beautiful river. 
 Etoile used to think that in just such a garden must have 
 passed the long slumbers of the Sleeping Beauty. All happy 
 childhood is like an April morning, but hers was beyond most 
 children's happy by reason of its simplicity, its unclouded 
 peace, and the fair, gay, shapeless dreams that were with it 
 always, like light golden clouds about the sun. 
 
 There were sadness and mystery near, but neither was 
 allowed to touch her. She only knew peace and joy. If she 
 ■..- »*.. - 
 
34 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 had been told that she had dropped from the stars on a mid- 
 summer night, she would have believed it quite easily : no 
 healthy child's life will ever wonder whence it comes or 
 whither it drifts. It is enough for it that it is. 
 
 This is the one felicity that the innocence of infancy and the 
 trance of passion share in common. The immediate moment 
 is the heaven alike of the child and of the lover. 
 
 She was very happy always in this, her green birth-country, 
 by the river-side. 
 
 But she was never happier than when she went out of the 
 sweet summe»- sunshine, from the murmur of the street foun- 
 tain, and from the smell of the blossoming orchards, into the 
 quiet dusky den that was her study, and bent her curls over 
 the ponderous tomes and the intricate exercises with which 
 her tutors delighted in trying her patience and her powers. 
 
 Out of doors she was the merest child, happy in all a child's 
 pleasure of new-born days and new-found berries and new- 
 made cakes, of the old swing in the sycamore, and the first 
 swallow, that showed summer, and the promise of a long day 
 in the woods to bring home violets, or any other of the many 
 simple things which made her childhood beautiful. 
 
 She knew the whereabouts of every rare wild flower ; she 
 knew every bird that haunted the woods or the streams ; she 
 was friends with all the peasant-folk, and would find their stray 
 sheep for them and tame the dogs they were afraid of; she 
 loved the wind and the wild weather as she loved the heat 
 that uncurled the carnation buds and the still moonshine when 
 the nightingales sang in the orchai ; she was not dismayed 
 if evening fell as she ran alone down a lone hillside, or if she 
 bore down through the swift wild rain like a little white boat 
 . hrough a surging sea ; she had the love of nature of a Ger- 
 man, and the unconsciousness that she loved it of a Greek. 
 
 " Til es folle^^^ said her old teacher to her because she 
 laughed and cried for joy to see the first primrose break out 
 of the bleak brown earth, and kneeled down and kissed the 
 flower, and told it how glad the birds would be, and would not 
 to have saved her life have taken it away from its shelter of 
 green leaves. " Tu, esfolle,'' said the old teachex : it is what 
 the world always says to the poet. 
 
 In the forests on the Meuse River there lived an olu man 
 who did not tell her she was foolish. He was a German, who 
 
FRIENDSHIP. S5 
 
 bad been a noted artist in his day, until paralysis of his right 
 arm by some accident had put an end to his career and his 
 hopes of fame. He was sad and alone, was harsh of temper 
 and taciturn, but he took a fancy to this child who was always 
 out of doors trying to learn the secrets of the clouds* move- 
 ments and the waters' hues, and he guided aright her passion- 
 ate instincts towards the arts. By the time she was fifteen 
 she had created things that the old master thought more mar- 
 vellous than he would confess to her. She painted all the day 
 in the open air, on the hills and by the torrents ; she studied all 
 the evenings and half the night. She was perfectly happy. 
 
 There was another world, of course, where the hay-wagons 
 went and the barges down the river; but she wanted no 
 other. 
 
 Now and then there would come to the black-and-white 
 house on the river a person for whom the ways of the house 
 were changed, and who was always whispered of in words of 
 awe by the village people. He would kiss her carelessly, bid 
 her do a problem cr write a poem, stay a few days, and go. 
 She was told that he was her father, — the Count Raoul 
 d'Avet^nes. 
 
 In tne old fighting days the Counts d'Avesnes had been a 
 fierce and mighty race, reigning in lofly regions of the wild 
 Ardennes, Catholics always, and warriors rather than cour- 
 tiers. Little by little, in strife and conspiracy and inter- 
 necine wars, they had lost their lands and greatness, until little 
 save their traditions were left in modern times. This, their 
 sole living representative, was a man of many ambitions, of 
 no achievement. A political gamester, a political conspirator, 
 his life was spent in the treacherous seas of political intrigue, 
 and he at the last perished in their whirlpool. Little was known 
 of him, — by his daughter almost nothing. He had broken 
 his wife's heart and spent her money. His own death was 
 mysterious, like his life. He passed away and made no sign. 
 
 There is so much mystery in this world, only people who 
 lead humdrum lives will not believe it. 
 
 It is a great misfortune to be born to a romantic history. 
 The humdrum always think that you are lying. In real truth 
 romance is common in life, commoner, perhaps, than the com- 
 monplace. But the commonplace always looks more natural. 
 
 In nature there are millions of gorgeous hues to a scarcity of 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 neutral tints : yet the pictures that are painted in sombre semi- 
 tones and have no one positive color in them are always pro- 
 nounced the nearest to nature. When a painter sets his 
 palette he dares not approach the gold of the sunset and dawn 
 or the flame of the pomegranate and poppy. Etoile's short 
 story had this gold and red in it, and so no one believed in 
 it any more than they do in the life-likeness of Turner's 
 Hesperides. 
 
 She, a happy and thoughtful child, lived in the little Ar- 
 dennes village with her mother's mother and her two old 
 servants, and knew nothing of all this heritage of wonder and 
 of woe. Occasionally the wonderful person who was called 
 her father came and brought a wonderful breath of the outer 
 air with him. That was all she knew. 
 
 One day his shadow passed for the last time up the sunny 
 street bel*vecn the aisles of aspen, and was seen no more there 
 ever after, and his letters ceased, and silence fell upon his fate ; 
 and in time they came to know that he was dead and she was 
 the last that lived of the once famous race of the Counts 
 d'Avesnes. 
 
 It scarcely seemed strange to her, — she had always known 
 so little. 
 
 He had been a black bead in the golden rosary of her 
 happy childhood : she barely missed it when it dropped. 
 
 In after-years people would never believe that Etoile, beyond 
 the fact of the patrician name she bore, had known so little ; 
 they forgot how completely natural and matter-of-course the 
 strangest circumstances seem to one who has been rocked in 
 them, as it were, in a cradle from birth upward. 
 
 Her father had come and gone, come and gone, as comets 
 do. He ceased to come ; it did not seem strange. 
 
 She studied in the big books, and strayed about in the 
 chestnut woods and orchards, and lived in her own fancies 
 more than in anything around her. Vague desires would oft- 
 times touch her, as she used to stand on the brow of the 
 reaped fields and watch the sun go down, red and beautiful 
 against the dusky masses of the far-oflF woods. But they were 
 desires whose wings were still folded, — like those of fledgling 
 birds, — that flutter a little way through the green leaves and 
 then are frightened at their dreams of flight. 
 
 For the rest, her grandmother and the old servants took all 
 
FRIENDSHIP. ^ 87 
 
 care of things bodily and temporal. Etoilo was free to think 
 and dream and study. 
 
 The treasures of scholai-ship are sweet to all who open them. 
 But they are perhaps sweetest of all to a girl that has been 
 led both by habit and by nature to seek them. 
 
 The soul of a girl, whilst passions sleep, desires are un- 
 known, and self-consciousness lies unawakencd, can lose itself 
 in the impersonal as no mule student can. The mightiness 
 and beauty of past ages become wonderful and all-sufficient 
 to it, as they can never do to a youth beset by the sfinging 
 fires of impending manhood. The very element of faith and 
 of imagination, hereafter its weakness, becomes the strength 
 of the girl-scholar. The very abandonment of self, which 
 later on will fling her to Sappho's death or mure her in the 
 cell of Heloise, will make her find a cloudless and all-absorb- 
 ing happiness in the meditations of great minds, in the myths 
 of heroic ages, in the delicate intricacies of language, and in 
 the immeasurable majesties of thought. The evil inseparable 
 from all knowledge will pass by her unfelt ; the greatness only 
 attainable by knowledge will lend her perfect and abiding 
 joys. ^ 
 
 Whilst they were only scholars, be sure that Sappho and 
 Heloise were calmer and more glad than any other women : 
 it was when they looked up from the written page to the 
 human face that their woes surpassed all others', — because 
 beyond all others' was their loss. 
 
 A year after the tidings of the Comte d' Avesnes' death had 
 come to the Ardennes, her grandmother, reflecting that at her 
 death the child would bo solitary, with a slender patrimony 
 and a name whose past nobility was of no present use, resolved 
 to sacrifice her own peace and move to a great city. 
 
 They went to Paris, leaving the green Mouse waters and 
 those bright woodland villages that lie out of the beaten 
 track and are so still and fresh and charming. Etoile sobbed 
 bitterly : yet she was full of ecstatic wonder and hope. She 
 forgot that thousands have had such hope before her, and had 
 only perished miserably in the vast press of life. If youth 
 did not thus forget, maturity would have no fame to record. 
 
 They made their home in a nook of old Paris within sight 
 of the trees of Luxembourg. A tumult of great ideas and 
 vague ambitions was in the mind of the child, who had studied 
 
 4. - ■ 
 
88 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 more than many men, and had the poetry of many nations all 
 alive within her. 
 
 In the city of pleasure Etoile uninterruptedly pursued 
 both art and study. Friends they had but few ; those few 
 were of the proud impoverished families of a nobility that 
 had nothing left except its traditions of honor ; and such as 
 these thought the pursuit of art a degradation. 
 
 One day Etoile, however, made a friend of her own. 
 Chances brought her across the path of an old man whose 
 name was very glorious to her, — a great master whose genius 
 had been nurtured amidst the mighty storms of the First Em- 
 pire. The old man looked long in silence at her, the harsh 
 lines of his face softening and changing ; then he turned to 
 her and uncovered his white head. 
 
 " My sun has long set," he said : " I rejoice to see yours 
 rise." 
 
 The word of David Israels was still a law in Paris and all 
 the worlds of art. He kept her secret and sent her first 
 picture to the Salon himself 
 
 " One of njy pupils," was all he would say when questioned 
 as to the painter. 
 
 The picture was only the study of a gleaner returning by 
 sunset over naked fields ; but it had an instant and unques- 
 tioned success. It was followed by greater and stronger works, 
 signed " Etoile." 
 
 The pictures were for some few years always thought to be 
 the creations of a man, were treated as such ; and when the 
 rumor was first current that the painter was a woman, — a girl, 
 — the great world of Paris laughed aloud in derision and utter 
 disbelief. 
 
 Their force, their depth of tone, their anatomical accuracy, 
 and above all their protbund melancholy, made it impossible ; 
 so they said. 
 
 Nevertheless the world, which has lived to see many impos- 
 sible things pass into the limbo of incontestable facts, lived to 
 see this pass also. 
 
 " It is time they should know the truth," said David Israels, 
 and told it. Etoile regretted that it should be told : to the 
 pure ambitions of the true artist creation is paradise, but the 
 praise of the crowd seems profanity. 
 
 But David Israels had not had his own way uriiesisted for 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 89 
 
 two-thirds of a century to consider suoh a trifle as any one's 
 personal desires. 
 
 He made the truth known, and within a year or two- she 
 sprang at once into the fierce light that beats upon a throne, 
 — the contested and bitterly-begrudged throne of genius. 
 
 David Israels lived long enough to see her triumphs, — not 
 long enough to protect her from the dark shadows that slink 
 in the path of all triumphs. Etoile became a name on the 
 tongues of all Paris, and so on all the tongues of the world. 
 She had a fame as great and as pure as is possible in this age, 
 when fame is too often awarded by the mere screams of the 
 vulgar. To her house in the Paris winters came many of the 
 greatest men of her time. She influenced them much more 
 than they influenced her. She had a life that ) < brilliant 
 and rich in all fruits of the intellect. 
 
 As recreations of her leisure, she wrote a comedy in verse 
 which had a tumultuous success on a great stage, and some 
 poems were printed in great reviews, all signed " Etoile." 
 " She has all the talents," said the world, angrily. If she 
 had only had all the vices too, the world would not, perhaps, 
 have minded so much. 
 
 Unfortunately for her reputation, no one could find out 
 that she had as much as one vice. Few women could boast 
 of being her friend, but no man could boast of being her 
 lover. 
 
 Ten years had now gone by since she left the Meuse River ; 
 they had been ten years of brilliancyj if not of happiness. 
 Genius is seldom happy, — except in its dreams or the first 
 hours of its love. 
 
 "With a woman, the vulgarity that lies in public adulation 
 is apt to nauseate ; at least if she be so little of a woman that 
 she is not vain, and so much of one that she cares for privacy. 
 For the fame of our age is not glory, but notoriety ; and noto- 
 riety is to a woman like the bull to Pasiphae: whilst it 
 caresses it crushes. 
 
 Fame brought Etoile its sweet and bitter fruits together. 
 
 " That is Etoile," said every one when she passed by. 
 People who creep by in obscurity think this notice from man- 
 kind must be paradise. 
 
 All at once she grew tired of the brilliant success that sur- 
 iiounded her ; it seemed tame, stupid, a twice-told tale. " Oh, 
 
' '^p^. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 old world, have you nothing better?" she said, thanklessly, to 
 the world which had been too prodigal of its laurels to her. 
 
 She lost zest in it all. A cough settled on her lungs. 
 When her physicians bade her rest and go to Italy, she was 
 glad. 
 
 They said she had caught coin! from working in clay. She 
 had had that desire to create sometwlug excellent in sculpture 
 which comes to most true painters ; but her malady was not 
 due to cold or clay : it was ratlier the fatal revenge entailed 
 on any mortal who has exiled the passions and the aifections, 
 and who will sicken for them unconsciously : the most splen- 
 did structure of the intellect will always have this danger at 
 its base. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 On the night when the Prince loris took the little three- 
 cornered note of his friend to the Comtesse d'Avesnes the 
 note was carried up-stairs tr a large salon on the first floor, of 
 which the windows were standing open, giving to view the 
 masses of trees on the Pincio and the Medici gardens and the 
 brilliant stars of a winter's night. The naked and tawdry 
 splendor of a hotel apartment was redeemed by masses of 
 flowers that the present.occupants of it had brought there, — 
 pale violets, snowy camellias, and early narcissi, born under 
 glass, and showing their tender heads coyly, as if cold. 
 
 Against one of the open casements leaned Etoile, wrapped 
 in her furs, — for the night was chilly, — looking at the stars 
 of Orion, which had arisen above the dark lines of the ilex- 
 trees, and listening to the fall of the fountain-water in the 
 square below. 
 
 She was fair of skin, and in form slender and supple, from 
 living much out of doors and taking much exercise in the 
 saddle and on foot : she bad br!ii;ht-hued hair that was lifted 
 a little from her forehead, and eyes like the eyes of the boyish 
 portrait of Shelley ; her velvet skirts fell to her feet in the 
 simple undulating folds that Leonardo da Vinci loved to draw. 
 People were vaguely disappointed when they saw her: they 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 41 
 
 would have liked her better in a man's coat, with her hair cut 
 short, and generally odd and untidy-looking. An artist that 
 you might by accident mistake for a duchess is annoying. 
 
 "What are you thinking of, Etoile ?" said her companion, 
 who was that wonderfully beautiful woman, brilliant as a 
 pomegranate-flower or a sapphire, who was at once Dorotea 
 Coronis and the wife of the Due de Sautorin. 
 
 " I believe I was thinking of Actea." 
 
 From the hotel she could see the dark masses of the trees 
 on the Pincio, and the round dome of the church raised to lay 
 the unholy spirit of Nero to rest. 
 
 " Poor Actea ! The slave-girl redeems the age she lived 
 in 
 
 " Rich Actea ! happy Actea !" said Dorotea Coronis, with 
 a sigh. " Her beast was god to her. She never saw him 
 as he was. No doubt she thought h»in too a great artist and 
 a perfect poet. Love is blind." 
 
 " Not the highest love, surely." 
 
 " What do you know about it ? You love nothing but 
 your art." 
 
 » That is Voightel's complaint." 
 
 " Voightel is quite right. Why have you never cared for 
 any man, Etoile ?" 
 
 " Oared ? Men are so admirable as friends ; when they 
 speak of warmer things than friendship they weary or they 
 revolt me ; I lose my regard for them and my patience with 
 them. It is hard to give a reason for these things." 
 
 " You are fortunate to be so cold." 
 
 " Ts it coldness ? And is it fortunate ? I am not so certain." 
 
 " Whatever it is, it makes you many foes. You seem to say 
 Jo men, ' You are too stupid to succeed,' and to women, ' I am 
 stronger than you.' " 
 
 " I do not mean to say anything of the kind. It is true 
 most people tire me. There is so little profundity in them, 
 and one reads them so soon. A new acquaintance is like a 
 new novel : you open it with expectation, but what you find 
 there seldom makes you care to take it off the shelf a second 
 time." 
 
 " I am glad I am an old friend." 
 
 Etoile smiled. 
 ' " Oh, old friends are our Homers and Horaces, our Shak. 
 
 4* 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 peares and Moli^res : we cannot read them too oft^n, and we 
 find something in them to suit all our moods. Why will you 
 go away from me, dear Dorotea ?" 
 
 The Duchesse Santorin laughed a little wearily. 
 
 " My dear ! when M. le Due must have two hundred thou- 
 sand francs as his New Year's 6trennes ! You forget I am not 
 my own mistress, and the Petersburg engagement was signed 
 this time last year." 
 
 "Iwouli give him no more. Surely your marriage-con- 
 tract protects you a little ?" 
 
 " Entirely. But only so can I purchase his absence. He 
 has outraged me in every kind of way, but he has not lost his 
 legal rights. He never struck me before witnesses ; and though 
 he had mistresses all over Pjurope he did not bring one under 
 the same roof with me. You see he is blameless." 
 
 The lovely dark face of the great Spanish singer grew weary 
 and full of scorn : she rose and walked to and fro the room 
 restlessly. 
 
 " I wish you were not going to Russia," said her friend, in 
 a low tone, leaving the open window. 
 
 The Duchesse Santorin looked up quickly and paused in her 
 rapid and passionate walk. 
 
 *' You think I shall meet F^dor. You mistake. He haa 
 left the Imperial Guard and had himself ordered to the Cau- 
 casus by my wish. He is there, and he will be there all 
 winter." 
 
 " But who will believe that ?" 
 
 " It does not matter what is believed. It matters what is." 
 
 " To ourselves and the God we hope for, — ^yes." 
 
 " And what else matters ? When we are ' in the light that 
 beats upon a throne' we are at once condemned unheard ; for 
 Envy and Mediocrity sit on the judgment-seat, and when ever 
 did they wait for truth ?" 
 
 In brave old Cordova, twenty years before, a tiny child with 
 some gitana blood in her had danced the zaronga with twink- 
 ling feet whenever a Castanet clicked or a tambourine sounded, — 
 a child so beautiful that when her father, a picador, lay dying 
 in the sand of the bull-ring he kissed her on the eyes and said, 
 " Though I go where I shall see the faces of the children of 
 God, there will be no face so fair among them as my Dorotea'e." 
 
 She was only five years old then, but she never afterwards 
 
 H 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 43 
 
 forgot the circle of sand, the stream of blood, the sea of faces, 
 the great dead bull, the dying man whose last breath was a 
 kiss to her. 
 
 His brethren of the tribe, unasked, took the burden of her, 
 shared between them the cost of her small wants, housed her 
 safely with good women, and even had her well taught by a 
 priest, — or taught, at least, as much as it is ever thought a 
 Spanish girl can want to know apart from her lore of fun and 
 rosary. The little Dorotea danced in every 2)citio where the 
 guitar was sounding and sang in every church where the 
 litanies were chanting, — a wild, gay, most lovely child ; proud, 
 too, — so proud that the Cordovans would say to one another 
 that perhaps the fables were true which had given to the pica- 
 dor the blood of an old kingly stock. 
 
 When she was growing a little out of childhood, some one 
 travelling through Cordova chanced to see and hear her sing. 
 
 The traveller was an old Jew whose eiTand in life was to 
 find great singers for great theatres. He was an honest man 
 and virtuous, though he loved money. He persuaded her pro- 
 tectors to sell him the little Dorotea. He took her away with 
 him, and dealt gently with her, training her wonderful powers 
 aright, and letting her know and hear nothing to her hurt. 
 At sixteen she sang in Italy, at seventeen in Paris. She had 
 one of the purest voices that had been ever heard upon the 
 stage, and her marvellous beauty and brilliancy made her fame 
 even more than her voice. Dorotea Coronis was one of the 
 wonders of the world. She had rrached as great heights of 
 perfection as any singer can, and every note that fell from her 
 lovely lips brought a shower of gold. 
 
 Among her countless lovers came the Due de Santorin, 
 Pair de France, with his heart and his couronne in his 
 hand, to lay at her feet. For it was well known that, to be 
 won, she must be wooed with Jue honor. After some reluc- 
 tance and long refusal she became his wife. His passion for 
 herself was hot but brief; his passion for her golden harvests 
 lasted. 
 
 The pride in her which the people of Cordova had seen in 
 the baby dancing the zaronga in their courts and gardens 
 made the dignity and ancientness of his name allure her. 
 She had no love for him, but neither had she any dislike. 
 Those about her urged and persuaded her. , 
 
44 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " I do not care for you, but you never shall be ashamed of 
 me," she said to him. 
 
 He swore gratitude and devotion. He did not keep his 
 word, but she kept hers. 
 
 She had now been Duchesse de Santorin for some years, 
 singing in all the cities of Europe to supply his demands, and 
 with a right to a tabouret at the court of France whenever 
 court of France there might be. The contrast sometimes 
 made her laugh as she had used to laugh above her tambour- 
 ine in the patios of old CWdova, only not with the same mirth. 
 For five years they had been virtually separated, though still 
 nominally of good accord. She had kept her word to him : 
 she had been faithful. But of course the world did not 
 think so. 
 
 Men were in love with her wherever her beautiful gazelle- 
 like eyes rested, wherever her pure lark-like voice penetrated. 
 The world knew very well that some of these, — oh, yes, of 
 course ; and the world was inclined to pity the Duo de 
 Santorin. 
 
 " She was a gitana, you know, — a gypsy, — a little bare- 
 legged, brazen thing, telling fortunes and rolling in the mud," 
 said the world feminine, jealous of that sovereign grace and 
 that incomparable art which heaven had given to Dorotea 
 Coronis. 
 
 Meanwhile there were many who loved and honored her, 
 and among them was Etoile. 
 
 They had become friends at the house of a famous Min- 
 ister one night in Paris, afi,er a representation of the " Flauto 
 Magico," and their friendship had endured. 
 
 " But the Caucasus," said Etoile this evening, — " the Cau- 
 casus is not so very far that men cannot come back from it. 
 Are you sure that Count SourofiF " 
 
 " Will do what I wish him ? Yes." 
 
 " No ; I meant rather to ask you of your own strength. 
 When you are in his own country, when you know him amidst 
 a half-savage people, in sickness and peril, wounded even, per- 
 haps, — can you be sure that you will not yourself recall him." 
 
 " Yes, I am sure. Because my resolve is for his sake, not 
 my own. Listen, Etoile." 
 
 She paused in her feverish movements to and fro the great 
 chamber and stood before her friend. > 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 45 
 
 " A woman who thinks for herself is weak, but the woman 
 who thinks for another is strong. I will not let Fedor Sou- 
 rofF be my lover because I adore him '.vith all my heart, all my 
 soul, all my life. I am a Spanish woman if I am anything ; 
 I have fire, not water, in my veins ; I have no duties to- 
 wards my husband, because he has insulted me, robbed me, 
 outraged me, beaten me, and told me a hundred times a year 
 that I am only his bank, which he honors only too much by 
 plunging his hand into it to seize its gold, — only his mechani- 
 cal nightingale, of which he keeps the key, with the title to 
 wind it up and set it singing when he wills, or break it if it 
 fail to sing. And yet — yet I will not be what they say I am 
 to the man whom I worship, and who thinks holy the very 
 stones or sand that feel my feet, and gives to me the noblest, 
 tenderest, most loyal love that was e"er given to a woman for 
 her joy and pain. I will not, — for his sake " 
 
 " For his ?" 
 
 " For his. You have seen him so little, else you would 
 know why without asking. In the first place, Santorin would 
 shoot him dead. Santorin is base, but not so base as to sink 
 to the cocu content of the modern world ; and Fedor would 
 let Santorin shoot him. That would be what he would call 
 only just. But this is the least thing. Fedor would gladly 
 die so to purchase one hour with me. What would be far 
 worse for him would be to live. "What man is more wretched 
 on earth than the bondslave of another man's wife ? Fedor 
 is young ; he has a great name, he comes of a great family, 
 who adore him ; he is a fearless and devoted soldier. I will 
 not ruin him, — I will not. He would break his career for 
 me ; he would incur exile, confiscation, even the shame of u 
 deserter, for me ; yes, and adore me the more because T 
 doomed him to them. I will not take his sacrifice. My 
 love, my love ! — he is but mortal. He will not love forever 
 thus ; not when love is but another name for disappointment. 
 Men are not like us. In time he will forget me ; he will be 
 free ; he will be happy." 
 
 She ceased suddenly ; a convulsion of violent weeping 
 passed through her ; she threw herself prostrate on a couch 
 and buried her beautiful head in her hands. 
 
 Etoile looked at her with tears in her own eyes ; she fore- 
 bore to speak ; she knew that all the passionate, proud, and 
 
46 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 veliement nature of Dorotea Coronis was centred in this great 
 passion, whose temptations it yet had strength to resist. 
 
 The windows were open, and the stars shone in the dark ; 
 the sound of the fountains below came on the silence with the 
 dull rumbling of the night traffic of Rome ; the air was sweet 
 and heavy with the smell of forced heliotrope with which they 
 had filled a large bowl on a marble table. 
 
 " To love like that 1" thought Etoile. " It must be worth 
 even all that pain." 
 
 And for the first time in her life she felt solitary. 
 
 At that moment the servant brought her the note from the 
 Casa Challoner and a bouquet of white flowers, lilies of the 
 valley and camellias, which the Prince loris had purchased in 
 the flower-shop of the Via Condotti as he passed in the 
 moonlight, and s^nt up with his own card, on one of those 
 unthinking impulses which sometimes imperilled all his pni- 
 dence. 
 
 " What sweet lilies !" said Etoile, and forsook the stars for 
 them, bending her face over their fragrance. Flowers were 
 her earliest loves, and had never been displaced in her aifec- 
 tions. Then she opened the Lady Joan's letter. 
 
 A few evenings before, in Paris, Voightel, shrewdest, 
 keenest, and most merciless of wits and men, had been to bid 
 her farewell. 
 
 " Go and see Archie's daughter, since he wishes it ; go and 
 see my Lady Joan," had said the great A^oightel, traveller, 
 philologist, past-master in all sciences and all tongues, stand- 
 ing on her hearth, and glowering through his green spectacles 
 and his grizzled beard till he looked like a magnified and 
 cynical tom-cat. " I have often talked to Joan of you. What 
 is she like ? Not a whit like Archie, but a handsome woman, 
 and a clever woman in her way, which is not your way. 
 M^rim^^e calls her his p6troleuse. It is inexact. Petrolenses 
 burn with no idea of ultimate booty ; she would never waste 
 her oil so. Cleopatra crossed with Dame du Comptoir were 
 nearer, I think. I admire her very much. I always know 
 she is lying, and yet I am always pleased when she lies to 
 please me. How contemptible ! But all men are weak. I 
 am inclined to respect women who live every hour of their 
 lives. She does. You do not. You dream too much ever 
 to live very vividly, unless you ever fall in love. I so wish 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 4*1 
 
 you would. It would make you so many friends. Men dis- 
 like a woman who will not be wooed. Believe that, my dis- 
 dainful Etoile, who will be wooed by nobody. When a woman 
 is ' kind' to various men, each favored mortal is bound in 
 honor to arm cap-d-jne and swear she never was ' kind ' to 
 anybody. Whereas, when she repulses and rebuffs them all 
 around as you do, her lovers become her enemies, and will be 
 more than human if they do not take her character away, out 
 of the sincerity of their conviction that somebody must have 
 been beforehand with them. Reasoning by analogy, I have 
 very little doubt that Faustina was a wife of remarkable 
 purity, and St. Agnes and St. Agatha very little better than 
 they should have been. Go and see our dear Joan. She is a 
 fagot of contradictions ; extraordinarily ignorant, but natur- 
 ally intelligent ; audacious, yet timid ; a bully, but a coward ; 
 full of hot passions, but with cold fits of prudence. Had she 
 your talent the world would have heard of her. As it is, she 
 only enjoys herself. Perhaps the better part. Fame is a cone 
 of smoke. Enjoyment is a loaf of sugar. I am not sure 
 what she is doing in Rome, but I am quite sure she is in 
 mischief, and quite sure she is making money. When the 
 moon on the Forum has filled your brain with schwarmerei, go 
 and see Joan. She is an admirable tonic for all poets. She 
 will be the Prose of Rome for you. You will want prose 
 there." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 At eight o'clock on the 6th of December, Etoile Comtesse 
 d'Avesnes went up the many stairs of the Casa Challoner, to 
 see for the first time the woman who was to be to her the 
 Prose of Rome. 
 
 Sne herself was tired, and had little color ; she wore no 
 jewels, and had only a knot of pale yellow tea-roses at her 
 breast ; her dress trailed softly, it was made up of black 
 Chantilly laces and pale maize hues, and the deftest hands of 
 Paris had cast the easy and simple grace of it together. 
 
 She went carelessly, indifferently, wondering if she should 
 like these people as much as she liked Lord Archie, — went 
 
FRIENDSHIP. ' 
 
 to her fate as every one does, unwitting that in the comnon- 
 place passage of the hours Destiny was striking. 
 
 As she entered the anteroom and laid aside her furs, she 
 heard a voice singing a ritornello of the Roman populace, to 
 the deep dulcet chords of a mandoline. 
 
 As her name was announced, the voice ceased, and from 
 between two curtains of Oriental silk, that shaded the inner 
 doorway, there advanced, with outstretched hands, the singer, 
 clad in black velvet, with a little collar of diamond stars at 
 her throat, which sparkled as she moved. She had a classic 
 head, fitly shaped for a bust of Athene, an Egyptian profile, 
 brilliant eyes, green by day, black by night, thick eyebrows, 
 and a cordial smile, that showed very white and even teeth. 
 
 " How charmed I am ! At last we meet ! How many 
 many times I have tried to see you in Paris and Brussels !" 
 cried the Lady Joan, with eager welcome, and with honest 
 warmth. 
 
 " Your father's daughter can be nothing but my friend," 
 answered her new acquaintance, with sincerity. 
 
 Lady Joan, her guitar still in one hand, led her guest with 
 animated and eager compliment to the hearth, pushed a low 
 chair nearer the wood fire, said some pretty words of her own 
 father and of their dear old Voightel, asked after other friends 
 they had in common, spoke of the weather, and then, as by a 
 mere careless after-thought, or accident, turned suddenly and 
 presented a person who had all the while been standing close 
 by, erect, calm, and unnoticed, like a lord in waiting beside a 
 throne. 
 
 " Prince Toris — the Comtesse d'Avesnes. loris is a great 
 friend of my husband's, — his dearest friend, indeed. Oh, of 
 course he has heard of i/ou. Who has not ? Only, of course, 
 too, he knows you best as Etoile. We all do that. It is such 
 a charming name 1" 
 
 The Prince loris looked like a picture, and bowed like a 
 courtier, and, leaning his arm on the mantel-shelf, began to 
 speak graceful nothings, in his melodious voice, i 
 
 At that moment there entered, a little hurriedly, like an 
 actor not on the stage in time for his cue, the gentleman with 
 a Scotch face and a German manner, whom Lady Joan, with 
 a little frown on her darkling brows, presented as Mr. Chal- 
 loner. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 49 
 
 Mr. Challoner, the excellence of whose countenance was 
 its unalterability under all circumstances whatever, stared 
 through his eyeglass, bent himself stiffly, and in solemn 
 phrase assured his guest of the supreme honor that he felt 
 she had done to his threshold. 
 
 Immediately upon him there followed another of his guests, 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, gorgeous in a gown that imprisoned 
 her so tightly that it only permitted of the garb of a circus- 
 rider underneath it, and weighty with a perfect Golconda of 
 rubies. 
 
 "No stones on her! — my word, and she must have got 
 lots !" reflected Mrs. Henry V. Clams, staring at the tea-roses 
 of Etoile, and settling in her own mind that artists were the 
 most disappointing people to look at, except princes, that ever 
 she saw. She was accompanied by the Marquis de Fonte- 
 branda, a Piedmontese about the court, a fair, graceful, and 
 good-looking man, who had trained her in the way she should 
 go, and still suffered many things from her love of colors and 
 her need of dictionaries. Her husband had been invited, of 
 course, but it was understood everywhere that he never came 
 anywhere; he had always a cold, or letters in from N'York. 
 Fontebranda had trained him as well. 
 
 The other guests arrived, — an English chief justice, famous 
 for his wit, a lady known to all Europe as the Marchioness of 
 Cardiff', some Italians, some Russians, and, finally, a mature 
 pet of the Lady Joan's, a white-haired and cosmopolitan Eng- 
 lishman, by name Silverly Bell, who was a most popular per- 
 son at all the English tea-parties of the Continent, for nobody 
 sugared your tea more prettily or told you nastier stories of 
 your neighbors more sweetly. 
 
 Dinner announced, Fontebranda was allotted to Etoile, Mr. 
 Challoner offered his arm to Lady Cardiff, and the hostess went 
 in with Mr. Challoner's dearest friend. 
 
 " What do you think of her, lo ?" she murmured in his 
 ear. ■ - 
 
 " Pas grand, chose .'" he murmured back, indifferently, with 
 a little shrug of his shoulders. 
 
 The Lady Joan's gray-green eyes sparkled happily. She 
 believed him. 
 
 The dinner was well appointed, quiet, and unpretentious; 
 the dishes were not too numerous, and were all good ; the 
 c 6 ^ 
 
 i 
 
Sa FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 flowers were in old Faenza bowls ; the china was old white 
 and gold Ginori, the glass Venetian, the fruit superb. All 
 went well, and there was only one discord, the voice of Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams ; but that is a kind of discord which in the 
 present construction of society is to be heard everywhere, from 
 mountain-tops to throne-rooms. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams thought again and again what " dis- 
 appointin' people" artists were. 
 
 Etoile chanced to f^ay very little. 
 
 Sometimes in society she was very silent, sometimes very 
 eloquent. Minds like hers resemble running brooks : they 
 reflect what they pass through ; they are still or sparkling, 
 dark or radiant, according as they flow over sand or moss, 
 under black cloud or sunny sky: the brook is always the 
 same ; it is what it mirrors that varies. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams — who herself was quite independent 
 of circumstance or surroundings, and whose torrents of ques- 
 tions and bubbles of curiosity and chatter never ceased on any 
 occasion, and never had been known to cease, except once at a 
 Drawing-room in London, and once at a total eclipse of the 
 Bun, on both of which occasions she had owned to being " that 
 cowed she was right down mum'' — stared at Etoile across the 
 table, and said to her next neighbor that " surety there was 
 nothing like clever people for being daft." 
 
 Her neighbor, being the English chief justice, a very clever 
 and merry person himself, assented heartily to the proposition, 
 but begged her to reflect. 
 
 " My dear lady, if talent weren't a little daft as you say, 
 how on earth would the great majority ever be got to stand it 
 at all ? Consider the enormous utility of genius looking now 
 and then like a fool." 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams stuffed her mouth with a houcMe, 
 and smiled vaguely. She did not understand, and Fonte- 
 branda was too far off* to be telegraphed to for explanations. 
 
 " If that be Etoile, why don't she talk and amuse us ?" 
 mused meanwhile, like Mrs. Henry V. Clams, a very different 
 person, the Marchioness of Cardiff, whose heart and soul had 
 been bequeathed to her unaltered from an ancestress of the 
 days of Louis XIV., and who never could see why artists 
 wanted Christian burial, or were asked to dinner, or any of 
 that sort of thing. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 51 
 
 " Is that really Etoile, did you say? the Etoile, you know ?" 
 she asked of her host. 
 
 " Yes, yes," assented Mr. Challoner, not being certain 
 whether he ou{2;ht to be very triumphant over his guest, or 
 somewhat ashamed of her. "Dear Lord Archie is fond of 
 lier^ — begged us to do what we could : you know his good na- 
 ture, — ray wife inherits it. Bear Lady CardiflF, do try these 
 larded quails." 
 
 " She looks a much better bred one than you do, my dear 
 sir," thought her ladyship, withdrawing her eyeglass from 
 Etoile to the quails. 
 
 " You said you liked to meet celebrities, — that it amused 
 you," said her host, with an accent of apology in his voice. 
 " Of course of her great genius there can be no question." 
 
 " Of course, of course ! and I am charmed," said her lady- 
 ship, occupied with her first mouthful of a larded quail. " Tell 
 her to come to my Mondays. I'll tell her myself after dinner. 
 She's very well dressed. Is it Worth ?" 
 
 " Most likely : she is said to be extravagant." 
 
 " I am sure she has a right to be. How nice it must be to 
 make your own money, and spend it, and never be bothered 
 with trustees I Oh, yes. Worth, beyond any doubt. The 
 way he ties a bow one never can mistake. And just that tea- 
 rose, too ; very pretty, very pretty indeed. What different 
 things he gives people he likes, to what he will do for mere 
 millionaires like our dear Mrs. Henry V. Clams." 
 
 Etoile, unconscious of the criticism, ruffled the tea-roses 
 among her old lace, divided her few words between Fonte- 
 branda and a Count Serge Roublezoff who sat on the other 
 side of her, looked often at her hostess, whose bright eyes 
 flashed back honest kindly smiles to hers, and, without know- 
 ing very well why she did so, watched the man whom Lady 
 Joan had installed in the seat of honor. 
 
 He was very tall and slender, with that look of distinction 
 which, though not always attendant on a great race, is never 
 found outside it ; he had high delicate features, and an oval 
 beardless face, a soft olive skin, thoughtful pensive brows, and 
 those eyes which at once allure and command women ; he had 
 a beautiful voice, infinite grace and softness of manner, and in 
 aspect might have stepped down off any canvas of Velasquez 
 or Vandyke. Etoile noticed that he was scrupulously alive to 
 
52 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 every want of the Lady Joan's ; lie bowed his head in re- 
 signed silence whenever she contradicted him, which she did 
 twice in every five minutes ; ho called her Madame with the 
 strictest ceremony, and addressed Mr. Challoner across the 
 length of the table as " mon cher," with more friendly effu- 
 sion than seemed needful, on more occasions than were natural. 
 Occasionally he looked across at Etoile herself. * 
 
 His eyes were thoughtful, dreamy, — when he chose, abso- 
 lutely unrevealing; they had the drooped languid amorous 
 lids and the long dark lashes of his country. Wherever his 
 eyes lighted, Lady Joan's followed and lighted too. 
 
 As he loo'ced he was thinking, as long afterwards he told 
 Etoile,— 
 
 " That woman is half a saint and half a muse. 
 
 " She has never loved. 
 
 " She is full of idealities. 
 
 " She has strong passions, but they sleep. 
 
 " Her dreams are the enemies of men. 
 
 " She does not care for the world. 
 
 " She has been used to her own way, and she has treated 
 all men with indiflFerence ; some few with friendship ; none 
 with tenderness. 
 
 " She seems cold ; but I think she is only uninterested. 
 
 " She is all mind. Her senses have never stirred. She 
 does not belong to our world. 
 
 " She has thoughts that go far away from us. 
 
 " She has not enough frivolity to enjoy her own generation. 
 
 " She has lovely eyes : they say so much without knowing 
 that they say anything. 
 ' " She has beautiful hands. 
 
 " She is dressed perfectly. 
 
 " I shall detest her. 
 . " Or I shall adore her. 
 
 " Which of the two ? I do not know. 
 
 " Perhaps both." 
 
 So he thought of Etoile, watching her across the table 
 whilst he talked with polite attention to his hostess, who 
 snapped him short with her curt, sharp, bright humor, and 
 seldom allowed him to finish a sentence. 
 
 He looked very much like a grave, slender deer-hound held 
 down under a keeper's leash. 
 
r 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 63 
 
 There was pride in his eyes and hipjh spirit on his aquiline 
 features, but at the table of the Challoners ho wius subdued 
 and silent, or at other moments over-assiduous to please. Etoile 
 noticed this, and wondered what relation he bore to them. 
 She gathered from what was said by him and to him that he 
 was a noble of Rome, a courtier, and the owner of an estate 
 to which they constantly referred as Fiordelisa, but which 
 seemed by some inexplicable arrangement to be the Lady 
 Joan's property also. 
 
 " What beautiful grapes 1" the chief justice chanced to say; 
 " finest where all are fine. They are your own growth ?" 
 
 The Lady Joan nodded assent. 
 
 " Yes ; they're all ofi" my vines, — down at Fiordelisa." 
 
 " You like grapes, madame ?" said loris to Etoile, who was 
 opposite to him. " Oh, you must allow me to send you some, 
 — from Fiordelisa." 
 
 " What is Fiordelisa?" thought Etoile. She did not know 
 that, although Fiordelisa was the property of loris, loris was 
 still more absolutely the property of the Lady Joan. 
 
 " What a pretty name, Fiordoiiba 1" she hazarded, as she 
 thanked him. 
 
 Lady Joan interrupted his reply. 
 
 " Yes. It was a beastly old barrack when we went in it : 
 but we have done no end to improve it, inside and out," said 
 the hostess, cracking a walnut. 
 
 Etoile fancied that the face of the Roman prince grew a 
 shade paler still, as with anger, but she thought it might be 
 only her fancy ; all artists are fanciful. He drew a flower out 
 of one of the bowls near him, and busied himself fastening it 
 into his button-hole. 
 
 Dinner over, they sauntered into one of the three or four little 
 salons of the house, — a little room, with Smyrna carpets, and 
 comfortable couches, and a great many pictures, and a great 
 deal of china. Here the Lady Joan opened her cigar-case, 
 threw herself back at ease, and expressed her hope that every- 
 body smoked. Everybody did, except Etoile. 
 
 " Ah, comtesse, you are right and wise not to do so," said 
 the Prince loris, as he crossed over to her. " Smoking has 
 no grace upon a woman's lips, and little sense on ours." 
 
 The Lady Joan hastily crossed over also, her cigar in her 
 
 hand. - . - . 
 
 5* 
 
S4 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "What things you do say, lo !" she muttered, crossly. 
 " You know Lady Cardiff smokes like a steam-engine. How 
 stupid you were at dinner, too I Go and amuse the chief 
 justice : you see Mi. Challoner's boring him to death." 
 
 He went obedient, but- not resigned, to address the chief 
 justice with all the warm and charming courtesy of his 
 habitual manner, which, en vrai Itcdien, was never warmer or 
 more charming than when he was somewhat annoyed and very 
 much wearied. The Lady Joan presented Lady CardiflF to the 
 Countess d'Avesnes, and, content with the diversioa she had 
 effected, repaid herself with joining her male guests, and re- 
 ceiving a person who just then entered, and whom she saluted 
 delightedly as her " very dear old Mimo !" 
 
 The very dear old Mimo — otherwise Count Burletta — was 
 a very shrewd person, of some fifty years, fat and fair, smiling 
 and serene. Fate had given him a meagre purse and a keen 
 eye ; he rambled about Rome, in and out all sorts of odd 
 places, and about three o'clock might be found at home any 
 day, surrounded with the fruits of his rambles, ivories, 
 enamels, tarsia work, china, cloisonn6, lac, anything and every- 
 thing that garrets and palaces, cellars and convents, could be 
 persuaded to render ; in society he was a gentleman, and could 
 lie like one ; in his shop he was honest, — unless he met with 
 a fool ; fools, he thought, were sent by the saints as food was 
 sent by Elijah's ravens ; he was a very good Catholic. 
 
 The very dear old Mimo, dropping now down on the divau 
 beside her, murmured to her many things in a low tone, un- 
 heard by ears profane, and then drew out her guitar from 
 under a pile of music. 
 
 " lo," called the Lady Joan, " where's that last song of 
 the Trastevere you wrote down for me ? — the one we heard 
 the girl sing as we came home from the Valle the other 
 night?" 
 
 loris left the chief justice and searched for the song. 
 
 Being found, the Lady Joan would not sing it ; she sang 
 something else, the riband of her old Spanish guitar hanging 
 over her shoulder, her sweeping velvet and her shining stars 
 making a fine study for a painter, her handsome teeth gleaming 
 and her eyes flashing up to her listeners with an amorous glitter- 
 ing gaze that burned its way straight up to the face of loris, who 
 leaned towards her and beat the time softly with ^s hand and 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 55 
 
 gave back the answering glance that it was his due and duty 
 to give. But 
 
 " That man is only feigning. Why does he have to feign ?" 
 thought the Countess d'Avesnes, and looked to see if Mr. 
 Challoner observed what she did. 
 
 Mr. Challoner was too well drilled by thirteen years of 
 wedded life ever to observe anything : Mr. Challoner at the 
 other end of the room discussed political news with the chief 
 justice in an undertone, so as not to disturb his wife's singing. 
 He never disturbed his wife : he was the marital modfl of the 
 nineteenth century. There are many like him, but not perhaps 
 many quite so perfect. 
 
 His wife's singing was agreeable, though she sang out of 
 time and her accent was harsh : still, she had a rich voice 
 naturally, and could give the songs of the populace, and the 
 erotic lays of the streets and fields, with a force and a hrio 
 hardly to be surpassed by the Romans themselves. 
 
 It was not pure execution nor perfect phrasing, aiid it used 
 to set the teeth of real musicians on edge, but tht^re was some- 
 thing contagious and intoxicating in it as she struck deep 
 vibrations from the chords and poured from her glances a 
 passionate light. She never looked so well as when she sang ; 
 it sent warmth into her lips and took the hardness from her 
 face ; singing, the passion that was in the woman broke up 
 from the shrewd worldly sense and the prosaic temper that 
 covered and hid it ; singing, she looked like the swart sovereign 
 of Musset's poem, who laughed to see the bold bull die and 
 flung her broidered garter to her 'over the matador. 
 
 " Allow me to compliment you on your gown, my dear 
 comtesse," said Lady Cardiflf, meanwhile seated beside Etoile. 
 " You must be tired of compliments on your talents. What 
 charming things Worth does for people of taste ! He clothes 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams over yonder, you know : what a diflFer- 
 ence 1 I am so glad you condescend to think about dress. It 
 brings you nearer our poor humanity : genius so often, you 
 know " 
 
 " Is too much like St. Simeon Stylites. I quite agree with 
 you. There is more affectation in sackcloth than in silk. Be- 
 sides, to be clothed with taste is a pleasure to oneself What 
 do you call that remarkable person who thinks it necessary to 
 load herself with rubies for a little dinner-party?" 
 
56 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Mrs. Henry V. Clams. Fontebranda has made her, forced 
 her down all our throats ; very cleverly he has done it. He's 
 no money, you know, and they've heaps. As somebody said 
 of somebody in the last century (Due d'Ork'ans, wasn't it?), 
 not being able to make her Marquise Fontebranda, which 
 I am sure he'd be very sorry to do, he has made himself 
 Mr. Henry V. Clams, and I 'think it pays him very much 
 better." 
 
 " I see. Do you visit them ?" 
 
 " Oh, of course. Everybody visits thorn. They entertain 
 very well : it's all Fontebranda. Are you staying long in 
 Rome T 
 
 " All the winter, I think." 
 
 " Delighted ! I hope it's not true what they say, — that 
 your lungs are aflfected ?" 
 
 " A little, I fear ; nothing serious." 
 
 " Ah, dear me ! Aldebaran, — you should inhale Aldebaran. 
 Do get a bottle. Consumption cured for half a crown ; you 
 know the thin": I mean." 
 
 " I have more faith in the Roman air. Who is that person 
 tuning Lady Joan's guitar ?" 
 
 " Her very dear old Mimo ? "Well, that is — Mimo, — Count 
 Burletta, you know. A good creature. Tradesman from 
 twelve to four ; Count all the rest of the day and night. If 
 you want to buy teacups and triptychs, ask Lady Joan to take 
 you there ; and, if you want to please, pay, and don't ask the 
 age of the object. Mean? Oh, I mean nothing. Mimo is a 
 connoisseur, — everybody is a connoisseur here, — and gives 
 ignorant people the benefit of his knowledge. That is all. 
 How do you like her singing ?" 
 
 " Well, you see, I am too used to great music to be very 
 easily pleased. The first musicians of Paris gather at my 
 house, and then my friend Dorotea sings to me alone so 
 cor. Stan tly." 
 
 " Ah, the Duchesse Santorin. She is here, isn't she ?" 
 
 " She is gone. She only came io see me one day. She was 
 engaged at Petersburg. She has promised me to return in 
 two months." 
 
 " Tell me, do tell me, — you must know, — is it true that 
 Santorin has sent her a citation to appear ? that he is about 
 to sue for a separation ?" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 57 
 
 " He has sent her a schedule of his latest debts. That is 
 all that I know of-^ " 
 
 " But there is some scandal about that handsome Russian, 
 Souroff, that imperial aid-de-camp, — ^you know whom I mean. 
 What is his name ? F6dor ?" 
 
 " There is no cause for any ; that I can assure you. Count 
 SourofF is in the Caucasus." 
 
 " Dear me !" said Lady Cardiff vaguely, disappointed, but 
 reflecting that of course the friend of the Duchesse Santorin 
 must say that sort of thing. 
 
 " Lady Joan looks very handsome as she sings," said Etoile, 
 to change the theme. 
 
 The English peeress put her glass up to her eye, and looked 
 at the singer. 
 
 "A good-looking woman, yes, and highly born, and young 
 still, and no fool, and yet married to a Mr. Challoner !" 
 
 " There are very odd thing's in life, are there not ?" con- 
 tinued the marchioness, musingly. " Nothing odder than its 
 Mr. Challoners. You know her father ? Indeed! A charm- 
 ing person: very unlike her, don't you think? Yes, I am 
 going ; sorry to leave you, but I must look in at the Ruspoli's. 
 I shall slip out quietly while she is making that noise. So 
 charmed you have come to Rome, my dear comtesse. Pray 
 don't forget my Mondays." 
 
 " I suppose people do receive her ?" said Lady Cardiff to 
 her host, who rushed to intercept her passage and to escort 
 her down the stairs. 
 
 " Whom ? Etoile ? Oh, certainly : there never was a 
 breath against her." 
 
 " Oh, my dear Mr. Challoner, I don't mean that. What 
 does that matter ? We receive tens of thousands of people 
 with nor'-westers blowing them black and blue" (Mr. Challo- 
 ner winced) " every day of their lives. Heaps of good people 
 are out of society, and heaps of bad people in ; only we can't 
 receive anybody unless other folks receive her too. Nobody 
 can begin, you know. It gets thrown against you afterwards : 
 if a woman is really received, it don't in the least matter what 
 she's done or what she does do. Nobody's any business with 
 the rest of her life. 7s she received ? That is all. As for 
 this particular woman, she is charming. And, of course, 
 everybody you know has the passport to my house, and every 
 
58 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 other house. Coming to the Ruspoli's? No? Ah, truel 
 You don't know them. Pity. Many thanks. Very cold. 
 Thanks. Good-evening." 
 
 And, having wrapped up many thorns in velvet in her 
 parting speech, the Marchioness of Cardiff rolled away in her 
 carriage to the Palazzo Ruspoli, leaving Mr. Challoner bowing 
 on the step in the teeth of the sharp easterly wind, with all 
 the thorns pricking in him as he turned and went up-stairs. 
 Happily for himself, he had a tough epidermis, and could re- 
 main impenetrable to thorns and even harpoons. Mr. Chal- 
 loner knew that nothing answers in the long run like invul- 
 nerability. 
 
 His wife was still singing when h'" entered, and her very 
 dear old Mimo was praising a li*;.ie Masolino panel to the 
 chief justice, who did not know jauch about art, but waa very 
 open-handed with his money, all the world knew. 
 
 The Prince loris, having gazed his heart out through three 
 songs, and made his eyes utter more amorous lyrics than any 
 she sang, thought he had done what duty required of him, 
 and sank away quietly into a corner of the sofa by Etoile, and 
 picked up some fallen leaves of the tea-roses, and talked with 
 serious feeling and graceful taste of various themes of art, and 
 gazed at her as he did so with that musing studious regard 
 which is the subtlest form of early homage. 
 
 The Lady Joan saw, and sang out of time for two seconds. 
 The Lady Joan threw her guitar aside with a haste and force 
 that imperilled its safety, and came out of her little circle of 
 admiring listeners, and bore down on the sofa where loris was 
 still tossing a few fragrant tea-rose leaves in his hand and 
 talking of art. 
 
 " Go with her to-morrow to the Logg^ ?" she called out, 
 sharply. " What are you thinking of, to ? You've got to 
 take me to the studios ; and then there is that bust to see to 
 at Fricco's, and the Bishop of Melita coming to luncheon, and 
 there are heaps of things in the afternoon. You can't go 
 anywhere to-morrow. Besides, she's got old Padre Marcello, 
 — a man who carries more art-knowledge about Rome in his 
 little finger than you do in all your brain, which is not the 
 very biggest to hold anything." 
 
 She laughed as she spoke, and blew some smoke round her 
 classic hand. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 59 
 
 loris bowed resignedly. 
 
 " I am at your commands, madame, of course, as always." 
 
 " Oh, are you !" said his hostess, roughly, too out of temper 
 to be ajjle to control the irritability she felt. " Then another 
 time don't keep me twenty minutes waiting, as you did this 
 morning at Fricco's. What were you after?" 
 
 " I was at the Vatican." 
 
 " Well, you must be here to-morrow at ten. Mind that ; 
 and see Pippo has the new curb on : he jibbed dreadfully 
 yesterday. Are you going ? So early ? I am so sorry I it 
 is only eleven o'clock," she continued, with her frankest pleas- 
 antest smile, as Etoile rose from the sofa, unconscious that 
 her rose-leaves had been falling on a volcano's brink. 
 
 " We must be friends for my father's sake," said Lady 
 Joan. " How glad I am you came to Rome !" And she fol- 
 lowed her through the rooms and the anteroom, with cordial 
 phrases and a dozen pleasant kindly plans for future intimacy 
 and mutual amusement. 
 
 loris, evading direction, reached down the furs, and envel- 
 oped with them the maize and black bows of Worth, and gave 
 Etoile his arm. 
 
 " How handsome she is, and very agreeable," said Etoile, 
 as they went down-stairs. 
 
 loris was silent. 
 
 "You are a friend of Lord Archie's?" he said, after a 
 moment's pause,-^a pause, it seemed to her, of some slight 
 embarrassment. 
 
 *' Yes ; I know him well, — dear gentle Lord Archie." 
 
 " I also am fond of Lord Archie." 
 
 " Are you any relation to them ?" 
 
 " None at all," replied loris, with a certain impatience. " I 
 may have the honor to call on you, madame. Perhaps I may 
 be of some little use. No doubt you will know every one in 
 Kome, but anything that I could do " 
 
 Mr. Challonpr overtook them on the staircase, with Mrs. 
 Henry Y. Clams and Fontebranda, who were leaving also. 
 
 " My wife wants you, loris," said the gentleman : " there is 
 some other song that can't be found." 
 
 " You have forgotten tliis, madame," said Toris, in the street, 
 as he escaped from Mr. Challoner, putting the big black 
 Spanish fan through the window of the carriage. " And do 
 
00 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 not heed what the Lady Joan said. I "will have the honor of 
 waiting on you to-morrow at noon for the Logg^, and although 
 certainly I cannot compete in knowledge with the Padre Mar- 
 cello, still, if zeal and devotion can serve you at all in this my 
 native city " 
 
 The horses, impatient, reared and plunged forward on the 
 uneven pavement of the street, and left his phrase unfinished 
 upon Etoile's ear. 
 
 He looked a moment into the moonlight, then reascended 
 the stairs. 
 
 " lo," cried the Lady Joan, " come and make me some 
 fresh cigarettes. Now we can enjoy ourselves. Mimo's got 
 such a capital story, — awfully salaio^ but so good." 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 The Lady Joan Challoner came of a very good old stock. 
 
 The Perth-Douglas family was one about whose ancient- 
 ness and admirableness there could never be any dispute. 
 The Perth-Douglases had always been gentlefolks, and their 
 names could be read backwards by the light of history as far 
 as the days of Flodden and of Bannockburn. Though of 
 such knightly descent, they were very poor, and of no great 
 estate ; but they were own cousins to the mighty Earl of 
 Hebrides, had intermarried with the no less mighty Marquises 
 of Lothian, were cousins-german to the Dukes of Lochwithian 
 and the Lords of Fingal, and owned Scotch cousinships to 
 more peers than the Order of the Thistle embraces, and as 
 many baronets as the Nova Scotia riband adorns. 
 
 Her father, Archibald Angus Perth-Douglas, fifth Earl of 
 Arhiestoune,— -always called by his friends Archie, — had no 
 seat in the Lords, and was glad of a Government place and a 
 small oflBce at court. He was an infinitely charming person, 
 whom everybody loved and caressed. Her mother had been 
 a beauty and a wit ; her grandmother the same. The Lady 
 Joan, at nineteen, had been married to Mr. Robert Challoner, 
 an obscure gentleman, whose parentage was doubtful and whose 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 61 
 
 prosperity was dubious. People had wondered very much why 
 such a handsome well-born girl as Joan Perth-Douglas should 
 be married to a Mr. Challoner. 
 
 If she had been a trifle cleverer than the clever woman she 
 was, of course she would have told people she had adored him, 
 and had insisted on having him and none other. But, as she 
 always told everybody roundly that she had always hated him, 
 this explanation could not be put forward by even her blindest 
 admirers. 
 
 There were one or two people who did know why, — really 
 why, — but a popular and eminent politician had been trustee 
 to the marriage-settlements, and no one could be indiscreet 
 enough to persist in inquiring why the settlements ever had 
 been drawn up at all. 
 
 The Lady Joan all her life long was rich in discreet friends. 
 
 Stiil, even the discreetest friends will, like the closest-packed 
 hold of a ship, leak occasionally. Salt water i. d secrets are 
 alike apt to ooze. So, whatever the reason might be, the 
 Challoners lived out of England. 
 
 The Perth-Douglases were clever people, and had had the 
 knack of always frequenting the society of cleverer people 
 than themselves. Without ever liaving distinguished them- 
 selves intellectually, they yet had thus gained an intellectual 
 reputation ; and on the feet of their ladies there had been often 
 stockings of blue. 
 
 For gentle, gracious, handsome Earl Archie, his women 
 were too many and too strong, and they worried him sorely : 
 he consoled himself with society, which was always delighted 
 to console him. His wife — beautiful and masterful — and his 
 mother and sisters, not so beautiful, but masterful to(% dis- 
 puted and quarrelled and vexed him. He was a man who 
 thought peace the one supreme good of life, but he was seldom 
 destined to enjoy it. His lot was cast throughout existence 
 amidst maitresscs-femmes : they are admirable and wondorful 
 beings, no doubt, but no man ever found them conducive to 
 his comfort as companions. 
 
 Of his daughter Lord Archie had never felt that he knew 
 very much. He had thought the marriage a very odd one 
 and a very disadvantageous one, and had done his best in his 
 gentle, sweet-tempered, tranquil fashion to oppose it. But 
 when he was told by his wife and his old friend the eminent 
 
 6 
 
62 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 politician that it had to be, and was the best thing that could 
 be, he acquiesced, because acquiescence had become his habit 
 with his numerous feminine rulers. 
 
 He was not behind the scenes ; and they told him a great 
 many fictions of the Challoner fortune and the Challoner de- 
 votion : after all it was as the girl liked, it was her aflfair more 
 than any one's. 
 
 Gentle Lord Archie thought everything was for the best in 
 this best of all possible worlds. He never worried himself or 
 anybody else. He gave away his daughter at the altar, to 
 what he stigmatized in his own soul as a cad, with the same 
 benign placidity with which, a dozen years afterwards, he lay 
 in the sunshine and smoked his cigars under the walnut-trees 
 at Fiordelisa: everything was all right, — that was Lord 
 Archie's formula. It is the only one possible for a man 
 governed by three generations of women with wills of their 
 own. 
 
 Thirteen years had gone by since Lord Archie had led his 
 daughter up to the marriage-altar, wondering why Joan, who 
 had been a good deal admired at her first drawing-room, and 
 had spirit enough for fifty cavalry soldiers, had not waited a 
 little while and done better for herself. 
 
 Thirteen years found the Lady Joan still a young woman. 
 
 She had swept a good deal of adventure into the dozen and 
 one seasons that Mr. Challoner's name had been her sunshade 
 in the heats of slander, and her vraterproof in the storms of 
 censure. 
 
 Mr. Challoner's business, in which he had risen from a clerk 
 to a managing partner, lying in Damascus and Aleppo, she 
 had had the far East and the vague sand-plains of distant 
 countries for her theatre ; and, in spite of steam and of elec- 
 tricity,— those fatal levellers of illusion, — the " far Orient" 
 still remains to the European mind a shadowy and gorgeous 
 panorama of mystery. 
 
 Perhaps through that golden haze of distance the Euro- 
 pean mind saw the adventures of the Lady Joan, as in a 
 mirage, multiplied : at any rate, home-coming travellers told 
 many tales, and averred that " Archie's daughter" was " going 
 it over there." She had Asiatic ministers for her henchmen, 
 and Turkish pashas for her obedient slaves ; big bankers were 
 as babies in her hands, and imperial steamers were at her beck 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 63 
 
 and call ; when a good-looking wayfarer chanced to have time 
 for such pastimes, she would have her Arab steeds saddled 
 and scamper away with him over the Syrian Pfisert ; and a 
 young titled Giaour on his pilgrimage found no resting-place 
 more agreeable than her flat house-top in Damascus, with 
 champagne in the ice-pails, and Mr. Challoner in his counting- 
 house. 
 
 If anybody thought it odd that she should camp out on the 
 sand-plains with strangers, such people were old fogies in the 
 Lady Joan's eyes ; these men were all her brothers, — a kind 
 Providence sent them to prevent her yawning her head oflF 
 with the intolerable boredom of Mr. Challoner's company, — 
 and she would jump on her mare, and cut her across the ears, 
 and scamper off with silver-mounted pistols in her sash, and a 
 cigar in her mouth, knowing very well that Mrs. Grundy 
 cannot do you much harm when you ride under the shadow 
 of Mount Lebanon. And even had Mrs. Grundy loomed 
 there in the stead of Mount Lebanon, she could have said 
 nothing, because Mr. Challoner himself never said anything. 
 
 He busied himself with his exports of jewelry and prayer- 
 carpets, of spice and specie, of rubies and rice, and his busi- 
 ness generally, and his fellow-merchants, and his own reflec- 
 tions, and moved about Damascus, and other cities of the East, 
 a very big man among the Jews and Gentiles, the Turks and 
 the Persians, because of the Perth-Douglas connection away 
 in the North, and the privilege it bestowed on him to ask any 
 travelling Englishman of rank to dinner and speak of " my 
 wife's cousins" the Countess of Hebrides or the Duchess of 
 Lochwithian. 
 
 When, some six years later, having ruined a very fine busi- 
 ness by too fine speculations, he found it expedient to leave 
 the bazaars and retreat on his wife's settlements, she brought 
 with her from the red Eastern skies a duskier hue on her 
 handsome face, a great skill at rolling cigarettes, much good 
 Turkish tobacco, and some good Oriental jewelry, some trash 
 and some treasure out of the bazaars, a great many souvenirs, 
 — some tender, some fierce, — and a decided experience that 
 she might play " poker" with all the Ten Commandments, so 
 long as she wrapped herself in the proof armor of Mr. Chal- 
 loner's approval and acquiescence. -- : 
 
 She had learned by heart the Arab proverb that " she who 
 
^ FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 has her husband with her may turn the moon around her 
 finger." 
 
 So useful was her husband, indeed, that at weak moments 
 she was almost grateful to him, and absolutely called him 
 Robert, a condescension very rare with her, as she never let 
 him or anybody forget that she had a right to write herself 
 " born Perth- Douglas." 
 
 But, the Black Sea once crossed again, the Lady Joan saw 
 Mrs. Grundy, the British Bona Dea, looming large on her 
 liorizon, as the Colossus once did upon the sea from Rhodes. 
 
 The Lady Joan was shrewd enough to know that the British 
 Bona Dea will not believe that all men are your brothers. 
 The Lady Joan pulled her mainsail in, and tacked her course 
 BO as to pass safely under the Colossus. 
 
 It had not been worth while out there, but here it was so. 
 And, after all, it was better to keep decently well with that 
 little house in Mayfair, and all the family ties and honors. 
 The little house had borne a great deal indeed, as little houses 
 when they are the abode of a Great House often do ; great 
 houses never washing their dirty linen in the street. But 
 Lady Joan knew that there were some things that would be 
 too strong even for the little house in Mayfair, and that it 
 would never do not to dine there when she went over " on 
 business" to London, though she had to scream till she was 
 hoarse into her grandmother's ear-trumpet, and derived no 
 pleasure from hearing the Head of the Opposition read his 
 " Notes on the Qi^cumenical Council" or his conception of an 
 obscure passage of Tertullian. 
 
 So, for sake of the little house in .Mayfair, and of a 
 great many big houses all over Europe that she desired to 
 enter, the Lady Joan, leaving the Bagdad bazaars and the 
 Great Desert, left her imprudence behind her, and consigned 
 everything of a dangerous sort to oblivion, except the Khe- 
 dive's inspiration of her letters to the " Planet" newspaper, 
 and the pearls with which the Emir of Yarkund had pre- 
 sented her for saving his life from poison. 
 
 For, touching a European strand, the hand of Mrs. Grundy 
 clasped her, and the shadow of Mrs. Grundy fell on her as 
 in eclipse falls the shade of the *• stolid earth upon the giddy 
 moon." 
 
 In the East, Lady Joan had been very young, very reck- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 65 
 
 less, "with her spirits far outbalancing her prudence, and her 
 savagencss at her exile and social extinction avenging itself by 
 all those wild night-rides with the good-looking travellers, 
 and all those campings out under the desert stars, with no- 
 body to play propriety except the Arab boys and the tethered 
 ponies. 
 
 The Lady Joan in her childhood, even in the year or two 
 between her presentation at court and her social extinction 
 under the Challoner settlements, had seen the really great 
 world. All that was best in society had habitually gathered 
 round her beautiful mother. She knew what mighty people, 
 and witty people, and people of fashion, and people of genius, 
 were. For the Anglo-Persian world of shabby adventurers, 
 of hungry commercial folks, of intriguing speculators, of oily 
 Jews, of lean Gentiles, and of trade-fattened nobodies, her 
 contempt had been naturally boundless. She had done as she 
 liked, and scoffed at the whole lot, and only smiled on them 
 when she wanted a steamer or any such little trifle of them. 
 She was a Perth-Douglas ; and if she chose to dance the 
 Carmagnole in all their counting-houses the mercantile mud 
 of Asia Minor could only be honored : so she danced it. 
 
 But when the chill colossal shadow of Mrs. Grundy fell 
 across her path. Lady Joan saw that she must mend her 
 ways. It was not steamers that she would want now, but suf- 
 frages. 
 
 Of course she despised Mrs. Grundy as much as she had 
 despised the mercantile mud : Mrs. Grundy was an old cat, 
 and represented old cats collectively. Still, it was necessary 
 to conciliate her, and even in the country of the cicisbei it 
 would be best to be on good terms with Society. 
 
 Of course Society should never really interfere with her 
 liberty ; of course Society should never prevent her regarding 
 all men as her brothers ; of course Society should never alter 
 her dancing the Carmagnole over the convenances^ as she had 
 done over the counting-houses whenever she liked : neverthe- 
 less, she said to herself she would reconcile herself with So- 
 ciety. 
 
 There were many things to be got by it, and Society after 
 all asks very little. Society only asks you to wash the outside 
 of your cup and platter : inside you may keep any kind of 
 nastiness that you like : only wash the outside ; do wash the 
 
 6* 
 
66 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 outside, says Society; and it would be a churl or an ass 
 indeed who would refuse so small a request. 
 
 Lady Joan set to work and washed her cup and platter with 
 such a clatter and so many soap-suds, and summoned so many 
 good people to look on at her doing it, that no one could pos- 
 sibly ask her what she drank and ate out of it, nor who sipped 
 from it with her. 
 
 Mr. Challoner himself set both cup and platter upon a 
 shelf in the sight of Society. Society could want no more. 
 
 As lawless free-lances in days of old entered monkish cells 
 and buried Dick the Devil or Dent du Sanglier forever under 
 Brother Philarete or Father Joseph, so the Lady Joan, enter- 
 ing society, immured her Eastern escapades under the seal of 
 an entire self-oblivion. Nothing was ever to be remembered 
 by anybody that she wished to be forgotten. This was settled. 
 It is a demand that women are very fond of making on the 
 good nature or the good taste of mankind. And if occasion- 
 ally she met an old friend uncivil enough or unkind enough, 
 without knowing that he did wrong, to " hint past history" 
 and disturb the present, she would, with all the heartiest air 
 of candor and of wonder in the world, — 
 
 " Stare upon the strange man's face 
 As one she ne'er had known," 
 
 and continue so to stare in despite of all recollections that he 
 might invoke. 
 
 It was still a marriage for which none could see any raison 
 d^^tre. But when you go to the East and stay there in a 
 kind of golden mist it is easy to leave explanations behind you 
 when you return. All that trading of *;he Levant in various 
 goods, from bales of hay to squares of prayer-carpet, to which 
 Mr. Challoner owed his being, had come to an untimely end- 
 ing, as was well enough known, froi Bagdad to Brindisi, to 
 all merchants and bankers. And IW., Challoner had only 
 saved a few thousands out of the crash, and was, in real truth, 
 an unfortunate gentleman with a hankering turn for specu- 
 lation. 
 
 But the Lady Joan was not troubled by such little facts as 
 these : the magnificence of her imagination raised her far 
 above all prosaic realities : what a few old fogies in bank-par- 
 lors or on public exchanges might say or know waa nothing to 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 67 
 
 her ; according to her Mr. Challoner had been Croesus ; the 
 rice and the carpets were merged vaguely into what she called 
 " our bank ;" Solomon's Temple had not been more gorgeous 
 than the fortunes to which her family had sacrificed her. 
 
 There had been failures; yes, certainly there had been 
 failures ; but then even Croesus could not escape Cyrus. 
 
 As for what those old fools of consuls and merchants said, 
 that was all rubbish ; and she would close with an apotheosis 
 of herself as a sort of Semiramis of Finance, in which the 
 angels who upheld her in the empyrean were " dear old Pam," 
 and "dear old Thiers," and "dear old Elgin," and anybody 
 else of magnitude appropriate whom she had ever had a nod 
 from in her l^abyhood in her grandmother's little house in 
 May fair. 
 
 There was, indeed, scarce a great man in France, England^ 
 or Germany whom she did not claim as her " dearest old" A, 
 B, or C ; if a critic or a chancellor, a savant or a general, a 
 geologist or a Prime Minister, had ever walked thirty years 
 before into her mother's drawing-room when she was playing 
 on the hearth-rug with her alphabet, the critic or chancellor, 
 the savant or general, the geographer or Prime Minister, was 
 now forever in the mouth of the Lady Joan as her one dearest 
 old friend, that was more devoted to her than any other living 
 creature on the face of the earth. 
 
 Perhaps she had recalled herself once to their bewildered 
 memories in some crowded reception ; perhaps she had 
 bowed to them twice in the Prater, the Bois, or the Mall ; 
 perhaps she never had seen them at all since the days of her 
 alphabet : all this mattered nothing ; the critic or chancellor, 
 savant^ general, geographer, or Prime Minister, never were by 
 when she dilated upon them with such glowing aflfection, and, 
 even if they had been, would have been too polite to contradict 
 her. Gentlemen do not contradict women, nor yet show them 
 up, — a chivalrous weakness of mankind, of which the weaker 
 sex always takes the very sternest advantage. 
 
 Occasionally those disagreeable and sceptical people who are 
 to be found spoiling all society would hint that, with such dis- 
 tinguished friendships and such illimitable political and liter- 
 ary connections, it was a little wonderful that the Lady Joan 
 should have married a Mr. Challoner and take an interest in 
 teacups and triptychs. But such people were in the minority. 
 
68 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 For the most part, her use of her dearest old A, B, and C, at 
 moments when A was organizing a great war, or B busied in 
 discrowning kings, or C sending forth on the world a great 
 book mighty as Thor's hammer, was of infinite gain to her; 
 and her allies would go hither and thither, important and con- 
 fidential, and whisper, " She knew the declaration of war five 
 days before anybody ;" or, " He wrote to her the very night 
 he dictated his abdication ;" or, " She had an early copy even 
 before it went to the ' Revue des Deux Mondes ;' " and these 
 fictions flew about lively as gnats and productive as bees, and 
 secured many cards to her big Delft card-plate, because, 
 though nobody believed all of it, everybody said some of it 
 must be true, — yes, a great deal of it must be true, — because 
 people never will admit or even think that they are the mere 
 dupes of a brilliant audacity. 
 
 To the world in general, A, B, and C were names of mag- 
 nitude and weight, of awe or of adoration, as the case might 
 be ; but to her they were only " dear old creatures." Had 
 they not stumbled over her alphabet thirty years before upon 
 her mother's hearth-rug ? 
 
 It was an alliance for a lifetime. 
 
 According to the Lady Joan, she was a Nausicaa, airily 
 frolicking on the edge of the vast ocean of European compli- 
 cations ; and Odysseus had gone through all his woes and war- 
 fare, and only lay in wait under the waves, just to be ready to 
 catch her ball for her, — only just for that. 
 
 Odysseus never even saw her, never even thought of her, 
 as he waded in his deep dark seas ; but all that did not matter 
 to her. 
 
 Nor to her associates. 
 
 " Such a woman I ah, such a woman !" would murmur 
 plump Mimo Burletta. " Palmerston^ jlied on her for all 
 his secret information of Oriental things ; Palmerston^ told 
 her when she was eighteen that if she v ere but a man she 
 woulu die Prime Minister of the Crown ; Palmerston6 was 
 not one to call a lemon-pip a lemon, — ah, no, no, no ! — Palmer- 
 8ton6 knew !" And Burletta would walk about and spread 
 out his fat hands in honest adoration of her mighty powers 
 and of himself for being the confidant of so great a creature, 
 and in his mind's eye, when it was not concentrated on tea- 
 cups and triptychs, always beheld the Lady Joan seated as on 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 69 
 
 a throne within the sacred recesses of the Privy Council 
 chamber of the Universe, for lie knew as much about such 
 things as a French grocer in the provinces knows of the " Lord 
 Maire de Londres," and the Lady Joan's magnificent confi- 
 dences had dazzled him too much to much enlighten him. 
 
 Exaggeration aside, she had very great connections and re- 
 lationships, and never forgot or let anybody else forget that 
 she had them. When a cousin of high degree came near she 
 proclaimed the fact as loudl}' and loyally as heralds in days of 
 old shouted the titles and tiding* of a new king ; and these 
 mighty personages did her unwittingly yeoman's sefvice. 
 
 They were her cork buoys on the yeasty seas of European 
 society. Big people liked her because she took such infinite 
 trouble to please them, and little people liked her because she 
 could bring them in contact with the big people. 
 
 Both big and little people always apologized to one another 
 for knowing her ; every one excused their own special counte- 
 nances on some especial plea in their own especial society. 
 But, as she never knew this, it did not affect her comfort : 
 indeed. Lady Joan was of that happy disposition which could 
 ignore all enmity and accept all slights unmoved, and if she 
 knew some one had been abusing her would meet the offender 
 with such a smile, and such an emphatic cordiality, that she 
 was the best Christian that ever, being bufieted on one check, 
 turned graciously the other. 
 
 It was thoroughly sound policy. 
 
 Proud women, and sensitive women, take hints and resent 
 rcbufis, and so exile themselves from the world prematurely 
 and haughtily. They abdicate, the moment they see that any 
 desire their discrowning. But Lady Joan was not troubled 
 with this kind of delicacy. Abdication is grand, no doubt. 
 But possession is more profitable. " A well-bred dog does 
 not wait to be kicked out," says the old see-saw. But the 
 well-bred dog thereby turns himself into the cold and leaves 
 the crumbs from under the table to some other dog with less 
 good-breeding and more worldly wisdom. The sensible thing 
 to do is to stay wherever you like best to be, — stay there with 
 tooth and claw ready and a stout hide on which cudgels break. 
 People, after all, soon get tired of kicking a dog that never 
 will go. ■ 
 
 High breeding was admirable in days when the world it«elf 
 
70 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 was high-bred. But those days are over. The world takes 
 high breeding now as only a form of insolence. 
 
 Lady Joan saw this, and never troubled the world with it. 
 
 " The old cat slangs me like a pickpocket," she would say 
 of some dowager-countess who did not return her card. But 
 when she met the dowager- countess she would say, " Ah, 
 dearest Lady Blank ! Where are you staying ? I am so 
 sorry I have seen so little of you. You'll come and dine 
 with us ? What night, now ? Do fix a night ; pray do." 
 
 And nine times out of ten the Lady Blanks would relent 
 and leave a card, and even go and eat a dinned at the Casa 
 Challoner. For the Casa Challoner dinners were good, and 
 the Casa Challoner understood the axiom that it is not what 
 comes out of your own mouth but what you put into other 
 people's that makes your friends or enemies. Besides, " you 
 can't cut a woman who won't know when she's cut," said a 
 Lady Blank once : — Lady Joan had this most useful ignorance. 
 
 So on the whole she managed to enjoy life in Europe as in 
 the East. There were always times when she could " throw 
 her cap over the mill" and dance the Carmagnole, if there 
 were also many seasons that she had to put on her meeting- 
 house clothes and curtsy to Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 And besides, be the season what it would, there was always 
 — Fiordelisa. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 On the morrow the Prince loris, faithful to his word, went 
 as noon chimed from all the bells of Bome to the Hotel de 
 Russie and inquired for the Countesse d'Avesnes. But he 
 learned that she had already gone out, alone, — had been out 
 since sunrise. He left his card and turned his steps along the 
 Corso to the Casa Challoner. He was a good deal disap- 
 pointed and a little irritated, — more irritated than was reason- 
 able. 
 
 " How late you are, lo ! I told you ten o'clock," said the 
 Lady Joan, in high wrath. 
 
 She was ready-dressed for the streets, with her hat set well 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 71 
 
 over her black brows, and her person muffled in sealskin. 
 Her friend noticed for the first time that her skirts were too 
 short, and her boots were ill made, and her eyes were green in 
 the sunlight. 
 
 He pressed both her hands in his own and dropped on one 
 knee before her sofa. 
 
 " You must forgive me. My head ached, and I had many 
 letters to see to and answer." 
 
 " I thought you were gone to Etoile. You talked of it," 
 said the Lady Joan, with an angry suspicion flashing in her 
 eyes. 
 
 *' Etoile ! Cara mia, what living woman could keep me 
 away one second from here?" 
 
 Kneeliog still on the tiger-skin before her, his lips caressed 
 her with more softness than the words. 
 
 " Don't be a goose, lo : we're past all that, — at least so 
 early in the morning," said the Lady Joan. But she smiled 
 as she pushed him away, and was well pleased that he should 
 be what she called a goose. Had he not been thus a goose, 
 darkest wrath would have gathered on her stormy brows. 
 
 " Let's get oflF, though," she said, disengaging h'^rself, but 
 sweeping his hair off" his forehead with a rough caress as she 
 rose. " We're so late as it is, and I'm awfully afraid that 
 the dealer from Paris will have got those little pictures of 
 Cecchino's: the boy's beginning to know his value and ask 
 a price." 
 
 loris loaded himself with her wraps, her umbrella, and her 
 little dog, and followed her down the stairs to the ^acre. 
 
 When she did not take his ponies out she drove in a hack 
 carriage. Not to keep a carriage was an economy on which 
 she prided herself. 
 
 " A carriage is only ostentation : snobs want one : I don't," 
 she would say, in her blunt, pleasant manner. " I always tell 
 Mr. Challoner I like my own legs ; and when they're tired 
 there's always a cab ; cabs are so cheap." 
 
 And so, indeed, they were, since Ions always paid for 
 them. 
 
 The hired carriage started off, Mr. Challoner regarding its 
 departure placidly from a window, for his friendship and his 
 faith were both strong, and the wheels rattled noisily up and 
 down the hilly streets of Rome. 
 
72 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " What did you think of Etoile ?" she asked loris as they 
 drove. Etoile was very much in her own thoughts. 
 
 " She does not please me particularly," he answered, care- 
 lessly, as he lighted a cigar. 
 
 " Do you think her attractive ?" 
 
 " No, not at all." 
 
 " We must see a good deal of her. Voightel recommends 
 her to me so strongly." 
 
 Her friend shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Why do you do that ? W^ill she bore you ?" 
 
 " I think her manner insolent. She seems to see no one. 
 She is nonchalante: she is indifferent. I should think her 
 cold." 
 
 " She must warm for you, lo !" said Lady Joan, with a 
 gleam of anxiety and irony in her eyes. 
 
 " Oh 1 Dieu in en garde .^" 
 
 It was said with so genuine an emphasis, and so careless 
 and gay a laugh, that Lady Joan was quite satisfied as she as- 
 cended and descended scores of dark, foul-smelling stairways, 
 her friend behind her, into the garrets of the young painters. 
 The Challoners were well-known patrons of young painters, 
 and especially given to such patronage when those studious 
 lads had a talent for making new canvasses look like old. 
 
 The Lady Joan adored ar*^ : she told everybody so. She 
 passed half her present life striding in and out of ateliers, and 
 petting painters, and buying canvases ; the cheaper she bought 
 them the better was she pleased, for of course the Challoner 
 purse could not afford a large purchase except now and then 
 on speculation. 
 
 The old masters, fortunately for the Challoner purse, were 
 BO bounteously thoughtful of those who would come after them 
 (and sell them) that they all had their schools. Now, " Scoula 
 di Perugino," " Scoula di Tiziano," sound almost as imposing 
 as Perugino and Tiziano alone ; and, what is still more advan- 
 tageous, these schools have been prolonged into the present 
 day, and have many disciples hard at work still in the various 
 styles, on impasto and chiaroscuro with varnish and smoke, in 
 many attics and cellars of Florence, Naples, and Rome. To 
 these young disciples the Lady Joan was a goddess ; and if 
 they grumbled now and then at her prices, that was but youth's 
 idle ingratitude ; Minerva was not rDrse than a dealer ; whilst 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 73 
 
 away in Great Britain acres on acres of new plaster walls bloomed 
 with fair Madonnas and glowed with fierce martyrdoms, and 
 Shoddy, that had built the walls, was satisfied and triumphant. 
 So much joy can one clever woman diffuse. 
 
 The young painters did, indeed, say savage things of these 
 kind patrons of theirs in moments of confidence, when together 
 over macaroni and wines in an osteria outside the gates. But 
 this was only the ingratitude of the artistic nature, which, it 
 is well known, always does turn against its best benefactors. 
 And when one was born a Perth-Douglas, and has been 
 obliged to marry a Mr. Challoncr, and has never had as much 
 money as one wanted for anything, it would be hard indeed if 
 one might not enjoy such innocent compensations as may lie 
 for one in the Fine Arts. 
 
 Most people (except artists) carried off the impression that 
 Lady Joan knew a good deal about art. She had a bright, 
 firm, imposing way of declaring her opinions infallible that 
 went far towards making others believe them so. She knew 
 that in this Age of Advertisement modesty is your ruin : what 
 one has does not matter much ; it is by what one seems to 
 have that one rises or falls nowadays. 
 
 Connoisseurs and scholars found Lady Joan appallingly ig- 
 norant, and looked at each other helplessly when she swore a 
 Byzantine crucifix was a Cellini, or a bit of Berlin jmte dare 
 was Capo di Monte ; when she assigned rococo jewelry to 
 Agnes Sorel, and a panel of the Bologna Decadence to Andrea 
 Mantcgna. 
 
 But then those connoisseurs and scholars are not all the world, 
 and Lady Joan addressed herself to that much larger body, 
 — the great majority of the uneducated. Indeed, perhaps 
 nobody can comprehend how utterly uneducated it is possible 
 to be who has not lived entirely with the educated classes. 
 
 Before the mass of idle people, moneyed people, ladies of 
 fashion, and princes of shoddy she found an audience credu- 
 lous of her assertions and uncritical of her pretensions, and 
 very easily dazzled and bewildered with a little talk about 
 schools and tones; about early painters whom they did not like 
 to avow they had never heard of; about Frankenthal, which 
 they vaguely mixed up with Frankenstein ; about Marc An- 
 tonios, which they confused with Marc Antony ; about Nan- 
 kin, which they thought was a stuff, and found was a china ; 
 D ' 1 
 
74 " FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 of Kose du Barry, whljh they fancied was a mistress of Louis 
 XV., but could not understand as a cup ; of Certosina, which 
 they had an idea must mean something monastic ; and of 
 Bramante, which rhymed with Rozinante, and must be Span- 
 ish, they felt sure. 
 
 To rely on the general ignorance of mankind is usually safe, 
 and Lady Joan did so rely not in vain. She was often found 
 out in her blunders, indeed, and often laughed at ; but then, as 
 she was a gentlewoman, and not a tradesman, nobody ever told 
 her, and people only laughed behind her back. That she 
 could by any possibility ever be laughed at, never entered her 
 own imagination. 
 
 This morning she raced up and down innumerable stairs, 
 and in and out innumerable workshops of painters and sculp- 
 tors and wood-carvers, her hat well pulled down over her 
 broad black brows, and her friend laboring under her wraps 
 behind her. She cheapened everything she saw ; made a 
 million mistakes, which her friend softly corrected sotto voce ; 
 sat down astride before the easels, and smoked the artists' 
 cigars ; diffused generally a sense of her own enormous influ- 
 ence with the English press and the English y.urchasers; 
 bought a good deal of canvas and terra-cotta at dealers' prices ; 
 wearied her companion and bullied him ; slapped students on 
 the shoulders and rallied them with boisterous good fellowship ; 
 enjoyed herself exceedingly, and then, as the clock struck one 
 in a neighboring church-tower, "pulled herself together" and 
 recollected her social duties. 
 
 " Come to luncheon, lo," she said, after the last studio, 
 flinging away her last cigar-end. " Yes, you'd better come. 
 It's the bishop of Melita and roast mutton. Oh, yes, a horrid 
 bore ; but you'd better come. If the bishop lunch with you 
 it'll shut 'em up for a twelvemonth." 
 
 Who were to be " shut up" she did not explain, but her 
 companion understood that the indefinite expression alluded to 
 Mrs. Grundy and her myriad mouths. 
 
 '• Qui est Madame GrilmUe, ma chbrc f the Prince loris 
 had asked in surprise on first hearing of this mighty dame ; 
 but he never asked now : he had learned that Madame Griindee 
 was the Bona Dea of the Lady Joan. 
 
 *' My dear lo ! you don't know Mrs. Grundy I" Lady Joan 
 would retort, when he wondered to see the cigars banished. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 75 
 
 the laufTh hushed, the propriety donned, the domestic scene 
 Bet, and Mr. Challoner taken about in the stead of himself, 
 w,hen the mighty Northerners came down with all pomp into 
 Rome. She herself did know Mrs. Grundy, — had felt that 
 lady's buffets, and knew the power of that lady's smile. She 
 was aware that Mrs. Grundy represented money, dinners, court 
 balls, embassy receptions, and all the rest of the advantages 
 of society, and in her heart of hearts, though she would boast 
 otherwise, was afraid of Mrs. Grundy, — sorely afraid some- 
 times. 
 
 There is no such coward as the woman who toadies society 
 because she has outraged society. The bully is never brave. 
 
 "Oignez vilain il vous poindra: poignez vilain il vous 
 oindra," is as true of the braggart's soul still as it used to be 
 in the old days of Froissart, when the proverb was coined. 
 
 Lady Joan was a bully by nature, and gave way to her 
 nature without scruple or pity ; but she knew that society was 
 a bigger bully than herself, and did homage to it in the dust 
 accordingly. 
 
 On this occasion Prince loris shuddered at the idea of 
 cooked sheep as even one of his own peasants would have 
 done ; and an English bishop was to him a nondescript ani- 
 mal of appalling and inexplicable anatomy ; but he was well 
 used to surrendering his own will, and accompanied his hostess 
 submissively to her house, where he brushed the dust oft" 
 himself and washed his hands in Mr. Chtilloner's own sanc- 
 tum in that amicable community of goods which characterized 
 his and that gentleman's friendship. 
 
 The Lady Joan carefully deodorized herself of all traces of 
 cigar-smoke, brushed back her hair, and, sitting down for ten 
 minntes by her dressing-room fire, glanced hurriedly through 
 an article in the " Contemporary Review" on the dispute be- 
 tween Valentinian and Damasus in the days of the Early 
 Church ; then, telling Toris to come in five minutes after her, 
 as if he came through the hall-door, went herself ready primed 
 in all the proprieties to receive the Anglican Bishop of Melita 
 and his wife to the roast loin of thoroughly domestic mutton. 
 
 The Anglican Bishop of Melita was a spare, solemn, schol- 
 arly person, who had been head of a House in Cambridge in 
 his time. His wife was a no less solemn but much stouter 
 personage, who had been the daughter of a dean, and was the 
 
76 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 niece, sister, and sister-in-law of quite countless canons, rectors, 
 and pastors of all kinds. They had been presented to the 
 Challoners two days before ; and Mr. Challoner, who could 
 bring up heavy artillery when required not unsuccessfully, 
 had immediately engaged them for luncheon at once and a 
 dinner at eight days' notice. 
 
 Mr. Challoner's own recollections of the island of Melita 
 were not agreeable ones ; but for that very reason he desired 
 that all the world should behold how intimate he was with the 
 bishop of that -yiluable English possession. It was, indeed, 
 by attention to such trifles as these that Mr. Challoner had 
 succeeded in burying from the eyes of his wife's world all the 
 uncomfortable little secrets that Melita had known of him and 
 his. In this matter he and the Lady Joan were almost of 
 accord. Whatever else they disagreed about (and they did 
 disagree about nearly everything), they always agreed that 
 it was absolutely necessary to muzzle Madame Griindee. 
 Madame Grriindee is the one deity that English Society recog- 
 nizes, — indeed, the only one that makes it go to church at all. 
 
 Lady Joan, a bold woman, grinned and grimaced at the 
 goddess in the privacy of her life ; but, being a wise woman, 
 she did decorous worship to the goddess in the sight of others. 
 She snapped her fingers at her Bona Dca behind her back ; 
 but she took care to bow with the rest in front of the altars. 
 
 This is the true wisdom of a woman. A poet's brain leaks 
 throuii'li dreams, and is too big to hold such knowledi:;e ; but 
 brains like the Lady Joan's are long and close and narrow, 
 and shrewdly contain it. 
 
 Lady Joan thought that only a fool never hedged. 
 
 She liked her pleasures certainly, but she liked still better 
 a good balance of many figures at Torlonia's. Illness might 
 come, disfigurement might come, accident might come ; age 
 < rtainly would come. In those events lovers grow scarce, 
 
 it the cosy swans'-downs and sables of society and a safe 
 income will console for their absence. We weaker mortals 
 may find an infinite sadness in the picture of Sophie Arnould, 
 once the Goddess of Love of all Paris, sweeping in her 
 trembling old age the snow away from her miserable door ; 
 Sophie Arnould, once the lovely, the incomparable, the twin 
 sister of the Graces, muttering, with the wind whistling round 
 her withered limbs, of the dead days when all the Beau Si6cle 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 77 
 
 raved of the beauty of those feet and ankles ; but the Lady 
 Joan would only have laughed and said, " Old ass ! she should 
 have laid by her golden eggs while she got 'em." Lady Joan 
 felt that she herself would never derive any consolation for 
 being the subject of v»ther people's tears ; she meant to live 
 and die comfortably, and never sweep the streets for other 
 people : so she hedged. 
 
 Luckily for herself, Lady Joan had as many manners as 
 there are changes in a child's box of metamorphoses. Now 
 and then, indeed, she overdid her part. Now and then she 
 danced the Carmagnole, as one may say, by mistake, in her 
 meeting-house clothes, or grinned when she should have pulled 
 a long face. But on the whole she trimmed her candle 
 cleverly, whether it had to be burned before the altar of the 
 British Bona Dea, or whether it might flare as it liked among 
 the dancing tapers of joyous Giovidi Grasso. 
 
 On such occasions as this luncheon the Casa Challoner was 
 a temple of family felicity ; it had Bass's beer and household 
 harmony ; it had the " Times" on the table, and said " my 
 love" every five minutes ; it had plain English cooking and 
 simple English affections; it talked politics from English points 
 of view, and sighed that its general health compelled it to be 
 out of dear old England so much. 
 
 Indeed, if only Mr. Challoner could have managed to look 
 a little less wooden, and Lady Joan would not now and then 
 have put her tongue in her cheek and grinned with an " aside" 
 i( her friend, the whole thing would have been perfect : even 
 as it was it was masterly, especially when Mr. Challoner ex- 
 plained, under his breath, " a great friend of ours ; poor fel- 
 low, his affairs were very involved, — estate going to rack and 
 ruin, I think we have helped him, — yes, I may say we have 
 helped him ;" and when the Lady Joan, at the top of her 
 table, sighed as she spoke of her beloved and lamented mother, 
 talked a great deal — " (^o openly; oh, so openly!" as her 
 guests said afterwards, " there could be nothing in it" — of Fi- 
 ordelisa and of its owner, who was like a brother to her and 
 her husband, and made effective tableaux of maternal devotion 
 with her little daughter, Effie, who was twelve years old and 
 very timid and shy, but who contributed not a little to the 
 effect of the entertainment, especially when, with Lady Joan's 
 arm round her, the little girl called the Prince loris " lo." 
 
 7* 
 
78 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " An excellent creature, let them say what they like," 
 thought the bishop's wife, whose coUfaible was motherly excel- 
 lence. 
 
 " A very charming woman," thought the bishop, while the 
 Lady Joan listened, with her eyes brightly shining in most 
 eager interest, to his account of his new system for the re- 
 ligious supervision of ships' crews, and displayed her thor- 
 ough comprehension of his recent article in the " Contemporary 
 Review." 
 
 Luncheon over, she carried oflF the bishop and his wife and 
 Mr. Challoner in a landau from a livery-stable, and drove them 
 about on to the Pincio, and up and down the Corso, in the 
 sight of the city, which was in itself sufficient to silence slan- 
 derous tongues for a twelvemonth, and, bowing to her friends 
 in the streets, with the shovel-hat in the front seat before her, 
 felt she could go to as many masked balls as ever she liked 
 with impunity. 
 
 Then she went to tea with the bishop and his wife at their 
 rooms in the Piazzi di Spagna, and met many English digni- 
 taries and dowagers, and many demure spinsters, to whom she 
 talked of all her great Scotch cousins, and told them the dear 
 Hebrides had taken Villa Adriana, outside Porta Pia, and 
 offered her assistance in a lottery for the building of another 
 Protestant church within the gates, for which they were pe- 
 titioning the Government. After that, having bored herself 
 to death with estimable energy and endurance (for the root of 
 her success lay in never showing that she was wearied), she 
 justly thought she had earned her rest and recreation, and 
 told her husband to go home without her, which he did obe- 
 diently, and she lay back in her landau on the cushions so 
 lately ecclesiastically sanctified, and laughed till she cried, and 
 lighted a dozen cigarettes, and called for loris at his own 
 house, and had a gay little dinner with him and three or four 
 pets of hers, who accompanied her afterwards to the Capranica 
 Theatre, and saw one of the wittiest and K ist decorous of the 
 popular comedies, and amused herself vastly, and went home- 
 ward singing snatches of airs in chorus, and so up-stairs into 
 the Turkish room, where she sang more songs, with the guita,r 
 on her knee, and drank black coffee, and smoked, till the room 
 was one dun-colored cloud such as was wont to hide from 
 mortal eyes the tender hours of Jupiter. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 79 
 
 Thus did she make her grave bow in the face of her liona 
 Dea and dance her mirthful capers behind her, in one and the 
 same day, and mai^e the best of both worlds and smoke her 
 cigar at both ends. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 It was four by the clock when loris found himself free to 
 walk home across the intense blackness and the brilliant white- 
 ness of Roman shadows and Roman moonlight. 
 
 He drew his sables about him with a low sigh of relief as 
 the porter closed the door behind him : he looked up at the 
 stars, lighted a cigar, and paced homeward thoughtfully. 
 
 He was so used to it all that he had ceased to think about 
 it, but this night it had bored him : the songs heard five hun- 
 dred times, the furtive glances that told so old a story to him, 
 the jests, the inquiries, the insistant passion, — it was all so 
 tiresome, and he was glad to get away from it and be by him- 
 self quiet in the mild moonlit winter's night. 
 
 To loris. Nature had been kind, and Chance had been 
 cruel. 
 
 He was tall and slender of form with a delicate dark liead, 
 and :i look of thoughtful and reticent calm which would have 
 made the white monastic robes of a Dominican or the jewelled 
 costume of a Louis Quinze courtier suit him better than the 
 dress of the world that he wore. People looked at him far 
 oftener than they did at still handsomer men. 
 
 It was one of those faces which suggest the romance of 
 fate, and his eyes under their straight classic brows and their 
 drooping lids could gaze at women with a dreaming amorous 
 meaning that would pour trouble into the purest virgin soul. 
 
 Women never saw him for the first time without thinking 
 of him when he had passed from sight. He had the charm 
 of arousing at a first glance that vague speculative interest 
 which once felt so easily grows little by little into love. loris 
 was a man whom women always loved when he wished them 
 to do so. 
 
 He was a Roman and a patrician ; the purest blood and the 
 most ancient lineage were his ; they were all that remained to 
 
80 FlilENDSIIIP. 
 
 him of the vanished greatness of a race which had been 
 second to none through a thousand centuries for valor, power, 
 and all noble repute ; lie had fought, he hud travelled, he had 
 studied; he bad the taste of an artist and the manner of a 
 courtier ; he looked like a picture, and he moved like a king. 
 He had an old estate and an income slender in comparison 
 with his rank, but sufficient for his habits, which, though ele- 
 gant, still were simple. He loved his country and his depend- 
 ants, and was happy in the life of an Italian noble, which 
 is, perhaps, as lovely a life as there is to be led in this world. 
 Alas! in an evil hour of his destiny the b<ild eyes of a new- 
 comer, roving over the crowds of a court ball, had fiillen on 
 him, and his last hour of peace had then struck. 
 
 When the Lady Joan first arrived from the East, life 
 seemed to her grown very dull. It was before the season had 
 begun ; the air was heavy, the streets empty ; she missed the 
 red burning skies, she missed the fast desert scaiupers, she 
 missed the noisy bazaars, she missed the camping out; she felt 
 dull and depressed ; the men around had not yet become her 
 brothers; she was in that mood which, when an Englishman 
 is in it, makes men of other nationalities say of him " that he 
 wants something to kill." Lady Joan wanted something to 
 kill, and she found it. 
 
 At various balls, when the season came on, she noticed a 
 man who did not notice her. There was something in his 
 slender grace and his deHcate face, in his unrevealing eyes, in 
 his cold glance, which fascinated her. What fascinated her 
 much more was, that though when he bowed to other women 
 his eyes were amorously soft and his laughter light and gay, 
 his gaze if it chanced to light on her was chill and indifferent, 
 and at all times he avoided her. In vain did she drift near 
 him constantly, cast countless glances after him, waltz furiously 
 past him, and flirt with his best friends ; he took no notice 
 of her, and seemed rather repelled than attracted. One even- 
 ing she, wh > was not easily baffled, insisted that he should be 
 presented to her. He tried to avoid his fate, but it was writ- 
 ten ; a friend, who cared more to please the imperious and 
 handsome stranger from the banks of the Euphrates than to 
 please him, entrapped him ; escape was no longer possible 
 without looking like a boor. He was brought, bitterly against 
 his will, to her side : he was called Ireneo, Prince loris. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 81 
 
 " She makes one think of a snake," he thoujjht. Some 
 fancies of the Nile had entangled themselves with this new 
 acquaintance in his mind. She was everything that he dis- 
 liked in woman ; her voice seemed harsh to him, her gestures 
 rough, her attitudes masculine, her look unfeminine. She 
 had none of the soft charms of womanhood ; she danced ill, 
 she dressed ill ; she was distasteful to him : she saw all that 
 well enough, but she resolved to avenge it. 
 
 She bade him call on her ; he could do no less. When he 
 entered she seemed not to hear ; her head was resting on her 
 hands ; she turned surprised and embarrassed ; there were 
 tears in her eyes ; she spoke vaguely and hurriedly of (juelqiies 
 amerhimes ; she hinted a vie incomprise ; she let fall a mur- 
 mur of a mariage mal assorti. 
 
 It startled him. 
 
 To be astonished is in a sense to be interested. 
 
 This woman, who waltzed so madly, rode so recklessly, and 
 looked like a young black-browed bcrsagliere, was not happy 
 at heart, — had a brutal husband, — sighed restlessly for .* 
 happiness she had never known, — concealed weariness and bit- 
 terness under the mask of a defiant courage and gayety ! The 
 strange contrast of it arrested his attention, and she appeared 
 to place confidence in him — a stranger who had for six months 
 persistently avoided her — in a mariner which perplexed as 
 much as insensibly it flattered him. Men are always inclined 
 to be pitiful to the woes of a woman when they are not woes 
 which they themselves have caused. They will stone away 
 without meroy a woman whom they themselves have wounded, 
 but for the victim of another man they are quick to be moved 
 to tenderness and indignation. 
 
 The Lady Joan, knowing this, having in vain tried all other 
 sorceries, took her attitude as a victim. Whenever she found 
 any one who she thought would believe it, she always became 
 the victim of Mr. Challoner and of the rapacity of her family, 
 ^hich had sacrificed her to a brute because he was a Croesus. 
 To be sure, the riches were all left behind in the sands of 
 Abana and Pharpar, and the brute was the most well-trained 
 and patiently-enduring of maris complaisant s ; but at this time 
 the brute was absent in London, and her listener had never 
 seen him, and of Cra^sus he was not incredulous, because 
 an Englishman is always supposed to be one, and on the Con- 
 
82 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 tinent is given an unlimited credit on account of that suppo- 
 sition, of which he seldom fails to avail himself 
 
 When loris left her presence that day she had gained her 
 point with hira so far that, although she still half repelled she 
 had begun to startle and interest him. His thoughts were 
 busy with her : a woman need ask no more. As for herself, 
 the Lady Joan's pulses stirred as they had not done for many 
 a day : the duluess and -apathy that she had felt passed off her 
 like a vapor; she had wanted something to kill, and she 
 scented prey. Besides which, she was already in love. 
 
 Her spirits rose at once ; she rang and ordered her horse. 
 She rode with great courage and skill ; she flashed past loris 
 like a meteor out of the gates to the open country. As he 
 bowed to her in the sunset, he mused to himself, — 
 
 " Why did she confide in me ?" 
 
 Reason and vanity both could give him but one answer. 
 
 There was a woman at that time who loved him well, and 
 whom he had loved well also, — a countrywoman of his own. 
 As he went to her, that night, he thought of those new strange 
 darkling brows ; as he sat with her, she — whose stars and sua 
 and heaven and earth he was — felt that his attention wan- 
 dered and that his mind was absent. 
 
 When a woman like the Lady Joan is in love, escape for 
 him with whom she is in love is not easy. 
 
 ' She has the stride of a carabineer, the feet of a contadina, 
 the teeth of a gypsy, the eyes of a tigress, the manners of a 
 fish-woman," he told himself, and thought so; and yet, do 
 what he would, he could not forget the strange glitter of those 
 eyes; he could not forget how he had seen this self-willed, 
 daring, sun-browned rider from the Syrian Desert melted to 
 tears and wooing his sympathy with hesitating words of con- 
 fidence. 
 
 The very strangeness of the contrast heightened its enigma 
 for hira. 
 
 Long rides in the rosy summer hours, with the wind blow- 
 ing over the flower-filled grasses ; early mornings, when he 
 carried her knapsack for her in breezy pilgrimages to forest 
 sanctuaries or mountain-heights ; lonely evenings, when the 
 guitar was got out and the people's ritornelli tried over to his 
 teaching, with gay laughter and amorous gaze to suit the 
 words ; late nights, when the Turkish tobacco was smoked, and 
 
FRIENDSUIP. 83 
 
 the Turkish songs sung, and the Turkish sequins ghttered in 
 the lamp-light on her dusky braids, and the shining fierce eyes 
 glistened with fervid invitation and flashed with eloquent 
 meaning, — one by one these succeeded each other with fever- 
 ish rapidity until their work was done, and he was whirled into 
 a fancy as sensual as her own, if not as durable, and lost him- 
 self in it for a brief while, and woke to find the chains fast- 
 locked about him and his place assigned to him for good and 
 aye in the triangle of the Casa Clialloner. 
 
 Of course gradually he became aware that the Croesus was a 
 gentleman not too well ofi", and very fond of speculating in 
 whatever chanced to come in his way, from railway companies 
 to Capo di Monte cups, and that the brute was a person who 
 would dine with him every evening and be shrouded amicably 
 behind a newspaper after dinner, — who would grumble and 
 quarrel certainly about the soup or the salt or the servants, 
 but who would never by any chance ask him if he had a pref- 
 erence for pistols or swords. 
 
 Of course little by little he became aware that a good many 
 fictions had been spread out for his attraction, and that if any 
 one were a victi in the household it certainly was not the 
 Lady Joan. Lutle by little he saw all this byplay and all the 
 shifts and straits with which the Casa Clialloner was kept 
 straight in the world's eyes ; and he grew .so used to the in- 
 ventiveness of his mistress that when she did chance to speak 
 the truth he never believed her. But to all this knowledge 
 he only came by such slow degrees that he grew used to it as 
 it stole upon him ; and in her passion for him he could not 
 choose but believe : it was too jealous, too violent, too exact- 
 ing, too terribly ever-present with him, for him to have a 
 chance of doubting its vit^'ity nd reality. 
 
 There were times when his wn exhausted passion roused 
 itself, with infinite eftbrt and wuh a weariness that was almost 
 repugnance, to respond to the unending insistance and undying 
 fires of liers. 
 
 A woman wlio is ice to his fire, is less pain to a man than 
 the woman who is fire to his ice. There is hope for him in 
 the one, but only a dreary despair in the other. The ardors 
 that intoxicate hii^i in the first summer of his passion serve 
 but to dull and chill him in the later time. 
 
 loris, in certain passing mood, would think almost with a 
 
84 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 shudder, " Heavens ! will she insist on these transports for- 
 ever ?" 
 
 This evening, walking homeward, he felt tired of the day, 
 tired of the evening. He had had so many like them. 
 
 He knew the songs by heart, and the smiles too. The rou- 
 tine of the hours, so carefully balanced between the decorum 
 that imposed on the little world she studied and the amusement 
 and abandonment that were the real delights of her nature, 
 seemed to him weari.some and vapid. It was always the same 
 thing. She could take a genuine zest in the small Tartufferies 
 of the tea-parliament ; she could take a sincere delight in the 
 jokes of the Capranica and the jests at Spillman's. She had 
 this supreme ac^^antage, — she loved the life she led in both its 
 extremes. But he did not. 
 
 He had a contempt for the conventicle : he was tired of the 
 theatre. He bore his share in both psalm and play because ho 
 had grown into the habit of doing anything that she dictated 
 to him. But all the same he had too much good taste not to 
 be tired of both. 
 
 He walked through the dusky shadows and across the wide 
 white squares to his own little house on the bank of the river, 
 down by the Piazza del Gesii. He let himself in, took the 
 lamp that was burning in the entrance, and went up the stair- 
 case to his own favorite chamber. 
 
 The house was cumbered with busts and bronzes, and rolls 
 of old tapestries and rococo, bits of china and carving, and 
 broken fragments of sculpture. For it wa.-* in a manner the ware- 
 house of the Casa Challoner, which could itself not decorously 
 be strewn about with more things than would look natural. 
 
 He went up to his own room and threw his coat off and 
 lighted a cigar. It wao a pretty room, looking on a garden 
 that in spring was green with lemon- and orange-trees, and 
 had an old statue or two in it, and a wide-arched loggia hung 
 with creeping plants. 
 
 There was one portrait on the wall, among landscapes and 
 weapons and etchings, relics of the time when he had been an 
 art-student at San Luc's and a duellist in gray old Pisa. 
 
 It was a portrait with an Egyptian profile, a classic head, a 
 cruel jaw, and a hard mouth : he glanced up at it and turned 
 away with a sort of restless impatience at its presence there. 
 
 Indeed, it had no place of right there, — being, as it was, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 85 
 
 the portrait of another man's wife. But it was not this 
 scruple which troubled or distracted him. It had hung there 
 for several seasons. 
 
 What made him feel impatient of it now was, that for the 
 first fime it occurred to him, with a chill, that throughout all 
 the days of his life he would never be able to escape from the 
 staring watchfulness of those menacing eyes. 
 
 He was like one of those magicians of fable who, having 
 mastered spirits of good and evil for many a year in safety, 
 at last summon from the nether world a spirit that defies his 
 spells to banish it again, and abides with him, to his misery, 
 growing stronger than himself. 
 
 This night he turned restlessly and uneasily from the gaze 
 of the portrait, moved his lamp so that the picture was left 
 in darkness, and took out from his book-shelves some old 
 numbers of a great European roview. He searched through 
 them until he found certain poems signed " Etoilo." 
 
 He sat reading until the lamp grew dim and the sparro*?" 
 in his garden below began to twitter at the approach of dawn. 
 
 " Can it be possible that this woman has never known what 
 love is?" he said to himself, as he shut the book and went to 
 his bed. 
 
 The morning had risen. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "I WONDER what Voightel has told her?" thought the 
 Lady Joan to herself on the morrow. 
 
 She felt a little uneasy, — just as she had used to feel under 
 the gaze of the great explorer's green spectacles on the house- 
 top in Damascus, when the champagne was in the ice-pails 
 and Mr. Challoner in his counting-house, and Voightel's little 
 cynical, self-complaisant chuckle had sounded scarcely more 
 welcome to her than if it had been the hiss of a cobra. She 
 was uncomfortably conscious that Voightel knew much more 
 of her than was agreeable to herself; besides, he was the 
 bosom friend of that b'illiant politician who had been trustee 
 to her marriage-settlements. 
 
86 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " I dare say she knows everything, and I'm sure she's good 
 for nothing," she reflected at noonday; thereupon she dressed 
 herself in her best, took out of her wardrobe with her Astra- 
 khan furs an admirable manner — frank but not free, blunt but 
 not bold, cordial and good-natured and high-spirited — which 
 she kept on hand for people with whom it was not necessary 
 to don the meeting-house clothes, yet with whom it might be 
 dangerous to dress (\\i\iQ en dtbardeur ; and thus arrayed, with 
 her pleasantest smile shining honestly in her gray eyes, she 
 drove herself across the city to the old palace by the Colonna 
 Gardens, in which the Comtesse d'Avesnes had established 
 herself on the previous day, and, finding her at home, would 
 take no denial from Etoile, but insisted on the friend of her 
 father and of dearest Voightel passing the rest of the day 
 with her. It would be such a chr.rity. She was quite alone. 
 She said that Mr. Challoner was gone to Orbetello, and lo — 
 poor lo — was obliged to bore himself all day at the court 
 with some newly-arrived foreign potentate. 
 
 " Of course she must have led the very deuce of a life ; 
 but nobody would ever think it to look at her," the Lady Joan 
 reflected in perplexity as she surveyed her guest at her own 
 breakfast-table. Siie was quite honest in her conviction. 
 Given a woman with every opportunity to — amuse — herself, 
 why, of course the woman had — amused — herself: every idiot 
 knew that. 
 
 She did not like her guest. She could not make her out ; 
 she was irritated by her own suspicions that Voightel had told 
 her disagreeable things ; and though she liked patronizing 
 artists she did not care for artists of European celebrity when 
 they were of her own sex, and were as proud as Lucifer, as 
 she said angrily to herself, and looked round her rooms with 
 eyes that seemed to her to detect at a glance the china that 
 was mended, the canvases that were restored, the antiquities 
 that had been made yesterday, and the Certosina that had 
 been glued together last week. Nevertheless she made herself 
 charming, — got out some really good things, which she was 
 never without in case any real connoisseur should happen to 
 call, and, over the plump quails and light wines of her break- 
 fast-table, was the very model of a clever, good-humored, can- 
 did, and hospitable hostess. 
 
 No ou'^ could play the part better than she when she liked ; 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 87 
 
 and Etoile, won by her cordial good humor and bright intelli- 
 gence, reflected that Voightel when he was prejudiced could 
 be very unjust. Great men can be so, as well as little ones, 
 sometimes. 
 
 " Dear old Voightel !" said the Lady Joan, fervently. " I 
 am so fond of him ! People call him a cynic ; but I'm sure 
 his heart's in the right place. He was like a father to me in 
 Damascus." 
 
 She had hated Voightel, as a woman who loves adventures, 
 yet wishes nobody to know that she has any, does hate a grim 
 old ironical on-looker, with keen eyes watching through his 
 spectacles and the raciest humor in Christendom, on whom 
 all her prettiest fictions and sharpest devices fall harmless as 
 feathers on bronze. But she had always met Voightel with 
 both hands extended and the pleasantest of smiles. " Ah, 
 lieher mein Herr V^ she would always say to him, with the 
 frankest delight, when they crossed each other in any of the 
 cities of Europe. And Voightel would go and dine with her 
 and enjoy his dinner, — as, indeed, there was no reason that he 
 should not ; for it does not matter if you think very ill things 
 of a woman, so long as she is good-looking and makes a fuss 
 with you. 
 
 " She wuuld pounce on mo like a tiger-cat if she dared," 
 Voightel would think to himself, as she smiled on him and 
 gave him mocha, Turkish fashion, and prepared with her own 
 hands for him his water-pipe. And it tickled his fancy so 
 much that he was always at his pleasantest with her; so that, 
 though she knew that he did not believe in her one bit, she 
 was quite sure that he liked her. 
 
 So runs the world away ; and so, among all the spiders 
 cheating all the flies, a spider makes a meal for another spider 
 now and then. 
 
 Etoile, as she heard Voightel's praises, felt almost guilty 
 for the guilty and absent man who had called this ardent and 
 grateful friend of his the " Prose of Rome." 
 
 Before she could reply, there entered the Count Mimo Bur- 
 letta, plump and busy, his mouth full of new scandals and his 
 hands full of new laces. 
 
 " Am I in your way ? Is that your tailor ?" asked Etoile of 
 her hostess, in perfect good faith, not recognizing him by day- 
 light, and only seeing the filmy heaps of the laces he carried. 
 
88 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Lady Joan laughed, frowned, whispered hurriedly that he 
 was an old friend, — very poor, — snubbed the ill-timed visitor 
 and his laces, and dismissed him ; then, thinking better of it, 
 she ran after him into the anteroom and consoled him, and 
 told him, with a smile, that the Comtesse d'Avesnes had taken 
 him for a man-milliner. 
 
 " Maladetta sia /" swore Burletta, dropping his laces in his 
 rage, till he looked like a large fat ram dropping its fleece. 
 ^'■Maladetta siaT 
 
 " With all my heart !" laughed the Lady Joan, and returned 
 to her drawing-room, taking a piece of yellow Venetian point 
 with her as a reason for her absence in the anteroom. 
 
 " A collar of Marino Faliero's," she said, as she entered. 
 " Isn't it interesting ? Perhaps the very one he was executed 
 in : who knows?" 
 
 " Who knows, indeed?" said Etoile, with a smile. "But 
 why not say Desdemona's at once? It would be more 
 poetic." 
 
 The Lady Jean threw the lace aside crossly. She had a 
 suspicion that Voightel's friend was laughing at her, and she 
 did not like to be laughed at ; moreover, she preferred people 
 who believed in Faliero, or in anything else that she might 
 choose to tell them. 
 
 She had some odds and ends of real art and real history 
 jumbled together in her brain like the many-colored snips and 
 shreds in a tailor's drawer in Spain. But they wore all 
 tumbled about pell-mell, and the wrong colors came up at the 
 wrong time ; and she had so unfortunate a preference for 
 always dragging in the very biggest names and the very grand- 
 est events upon every occasion, that her adorer, Mimo Burletta, 
 who really was learned in such matters, was constantly made 
 very nervous by her blunders. 
 
 " La Challoner is beautiful, noble, chaste, — a very pearl 
 and queen of women," he would say, in his enthusiasm about 
 her. " But she makes one little, very little mistake : a pot 
 baked yesterday is always a vase of Maestro Giorgio's ; ail 
 her fiddles are Crenionas ; all her sprigged china is Saxe, all 
 her ugly plates are Palissy's ; all her naked people are Michael 
 Angelo's ; all her tapestries are Gobelin ; all her terra-cottas 
 are Pentelic marbles. Now, that is a mistake, you know: 
 the world is too little for so very much treasure. She forgets 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 89 
 
 that she makes her diamonds as cheap as pebbles. But she 
 is a divine creature for all that," would the loyal Mimo always 
 cry, in conclusion. 
 
 At this moment she looked at the lace with regret. It was 
 very yellow, very full of holes, and not very much coarser 
 than what the women make every day along the Riviera. Why 
 would her guest not believe in it ? 
 
 "Would you mind driving me about to-day?" she said, 
 glancing at the clock, reflecting that she might as well get 
 s(jmething in return for this breakfast. " The ponies are tired. 
 Mine ? — no, they're not mine exactly : they're lo's ; but of 
 course I have them whenever I like. Yes, they're nice little 
 beasts, — little Friuli nags, — fast as steam and sure-footed as 
 goats. They're very useful. Will you drive me? Thanks. 
 Perhaps you will go with me to a few studios, if you don't 
 mind ? Of course it will bore you ; you'll find it all second- 
 rate ; but to have your opinion will be such a treat to me and 
 such an honor to them 1 Are you ready ?" 
 
 Of course she carried her point and got into her guest's 
 carriage and began a round of visits. She was not quite the 
 Lady Joan of the bib-and-tucker, nor was she quite the Lady 
 Joan of the loup-and-domino, but the same adroit mixture of 
 the two that she had been throughout luncheon. 
 
 She was sincere in h.er eager invitation : she had a genuine 
 zest in exhibiting any celebrity in her companionship. It 
 gave her a cachet of talent. She liked to affect artistic society ; 
 her family had always done so ; only, where they had had all 
 that was greatest in all Europe to choose from, she had to take 
 such offshoots of intellectual power as she could obtain. 
 Sculptors who thought it high art to imitate, in stone, school- 
 boys and sucking babes, cloth trousers and silk gowns ; painters 
 who cut color like butter and like butter spread it with a knife, 
 then called the mass a chord in color or a prelude in carmine^ ; 
 clever writers who appraised their age aright, and saw that it 
 needed not high purpose nor high thought, and trained their 
 gifts accordingly, and, instead of dying like Keats or Buckle, 
 took good incomes from great newspapers, and were not too 
 clever for their peace or price : these and their like she would 
 get round her, and make them useful to her in many ingenious 
 ways. 
 
 But whenever a great fame came within her reach she 
 
 8* 
 
90 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 grasped it eagerly, and always was the first to ask it out to 
 dinner. 
 
 These pastilles of art and intellect burned in her rooms 
 gave it a fine aroma, and she liked people to run about and 
 Bay, " I met Pictra Infernale there last nij2;ht ; he means to 
 have his illustrated * Furioso' ready by New Year;" or "I 
 dined at the Challoners', to see the Kussian novelist, Sacha 
 Silchikoff, — wicked, if you like, but then how witty 1" or, 
 " I lunched 3'esterday with Lady Joan, and met Tom Tonans : 
 he says there is no art nowadays in the R. A., — nothing but 
 millinery and nursery elegiacs." 
 
 This kind of thing gave her house a smell of the Muses and 
 the Graces, and took ofF any possible likeness it might other- 
 wise have had to a hnc-d-hrac shop. Therefore having now 
 secured the friend of Voightel for all the remaining daylight 
 of a fine mild afternoon, she drove up and down many streets, 
 and went in and out many studios, smoked a cigarette here 
 and there, and finally, at five o'clock, thought it better to wind 
 up with a little tableau of respectability, and begged to stop 
 before an old dark house in an old dark quarter. 
 
 " I must make ^ou know my dear friends the Scrope-Stairs," 
 she said, entreatingly. " It's their day, and I promised I 
 would bring you if I could You won't mind coming, to 
 oblige vie^ I've told them so much about you. They're 
 such dear, good, clever people ; and they're dying to see you, 
 -dying!" 
 
 With which she went through the dusky doorway and 
 began to mount steps innumerable and very steep and dark. 
 Etoile followed her, unwilling 10 seem discourteous in such a 
 trifle, and willing to please Lord Archie's daughter when she 
 could. 
 
 " I've told lo to meet me here. The Scrope-Stairs are so 
 fond of him," said the Lady Joan, as she clambered up with 
 agility to the fourth floor. "Oh, yes, it is an awful height ; 
 but they are so very ill oif, poor dear people. Dear old Lord 
 George managed to make ducks-and-drakes of five fortunes." 
 
 She interrupted herself to put aside a dingy tapestry, and 
 led the way through ill-lit passages to a large, dim, naked- 
 looking chamber, where there w^ere congregated in solemn 
 congress some forty or fifty ladies of that age once described 
 as somewhere between twenty and sixty, whose centre of at* 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 91 
 
 traction was a tea-table, about which they revolved as planets 
 round a sun. 
 
 " How do you do, dears?" cried Lady J in, kissing a great 
 many of them one after another with ardc c effusion. "Is lo 
 come? No? Oh, just like him ! Ah, 1 beg your pardon ; 
 liow careless I am ! Yes, I have persuaded her, you see. 
 Let me present you to my friend the Comtesse d'Avesnes. 
 You know her best as Etoile. Allow me '* 
 
 Lady Joan saw an electric shock of amazement, a nervous 
 thrill of curiosity mingled with terror, palpitate through all 
 lier assembled friends at the name of Etoile, — such a tremor 
 of trepidation as thrills through a dovecote when in the blue 
 sky hovers a hawk. 
 
 k ho enjoyed it amazingly. 
 
 Though so careful to conciliate Mrs. Grundy, she cordially 
 detested that august personage, and loved to " tie a cracker to 
 her tail," as she phrased it, whenever she could do so with 
 impunity. 
 
 " So honored, so enchanted, so more than flattered ! For 
 years you have been our idol !" murmured the youngest of the 
 8crope-Stair sisters, in a twitter of excitement, whilst old 
 Lord George wandered in and made his dignified old Regency 
 bow, and put his glasses to his dim eyes and turned a pretty 
 compliment for sake of Etoile. 
 
 " But will not people think it a little odd to see her in our 
 house?" murmured the youngest sister, Marjory, a thin, eager 
 person, with a fringe of hair above a nervous face ; whilst her 
 father occupied Etoile. Lady Joan filled her mouth with 
 tea-cake. 
 
 " Oh, no, dear ; she goes everywhere : she's hand-and-glove 
 with Princess Vera. Of course there are very queer stories ; 
 but you know I'm never censorious. Where on earth can lo 
 be?" 
 
 Marjory Scrope colored: she always did so at a certain 
 name. 
 
 "We have not seen him yet to-day," she murmured. " As 
 for your friend, I am delighted. Only I thought Mrs. Mid- 
 dleway looked a little — a little — astonished. But you know 
 best always, darling Joan ; and any one dear Lord Archie 
 recommends " 
 
 Mrs. Middleway was the wife of one of those Anglican 
 
92 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 clorgymen whose flocks are all the straying Protestant sheep, 
 black and white, who clan{3e their cotillons, enjoy their mas- 
 querades, play their roulette, drink their pick-me-ups, propi- 
 tiate heaven with their bazaars, and shriek at trumpery French 
 plays, all over Italy in the winter-timo, and of whom the 
 lloman shepherd, or the Neapolitan beggar, or the Tuscan 
 vine-dresser, staring sullenly at them as they fly by on horse- 
 back, will generally mutter, " Non sono Christani." 
 
 Mrs. Middleway was a large, faded, shabby woman, with 
 two daughters to marry. She was extremely particular as to 
 whom she visited, and had a very small income. She would 
 stay at Fiordelisa in the summer, and if any one hinted that, 
 " Well, yes — well, was it not rather — rather strange, you 
 know?" Mrs. Middleway would reply, "The dear Challoners? 
 Oh, what a cruel censorious world we live in ! As if the very 
 openness of the friendship were not sufficient guarantee I 
 Why, Lady Hebrides lunched there yesterday : I met her !" 
 
 But Mrs. Middleway, being the soul of propnety, and hav- 
 ing two daughters to marry, looked askance at the entrance of 
 a celebrated person, whose name she was inclined to think 
 synonymous with Tophet, — wondered what that brown velvet 
 gown had cost, drew herself up a little stiflbr than usual, and 
 murmured to her neighbor that that sweet Lady Joan was 
 alway-;: so imprudently kind-hearted ; Lady Joan, judging by 
 her own noble self, never would believe there could be any- 
 thing wrong anywhere. 
 
 The neighbor, who was a very solemn spinster, with blue 
 spectacles, who had written a very learned book upon the 
 Privileges and Penalties of the Vestals, murmured back that 
 society was so mixed nowadays that it was really dangerous 
 to enter it at all ; one never knew whom one might not be 
 exposed to meeting. 
 
 " Ah, no ; you may well say so. There is no line drawn," 
 said the clergyman's wife, with a sigh, as she broke a tea-cake. 
 " What can society be without a line ?" 
 
 And she smoothed her shabby silk gown, and, good Chris- 
 tian though she was, could not help disliking a woman who 
 wore brown velvet, silver-fox fur, and silk-embroidered cash- 
 meres, and had old Mechlin lace at the hem of her skirt. 
 
 To the Countess of Hebrides such vanities were permis- 
 sible ; they were, like other evidences of the favoritism of 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 93 
 
 Providence, not to be questioned in justice or propriety. But 
 on only an artist ! 
 
 " When one thinks how they mnst have been purchased !" 
 she murmured to the spinster who had written the learned 
 book on the penalties of the Vestals. 
 
 The spinster shook her head. 
 
 " Very wrong of Lady Joan to have brought her," she 
 said, in a severe and choleric whisper. " Here one always was 
 safe." 
 
 " Dear Lady Joan ! she is so imprudent and so good- 
 natured !" sighed Mrs. Middleway, and had her feelings fur- 
 ther harrowed by a glimpse of the old Mechlin lace of the 
 hahj/euse underneath the immoral brown velvet of Etoile. 
 
 The glimpse she got of the Mechlin balaycusc filled lier 
 with a kind of savage pain. Ileal old Mechlin ! — sweeping 
 the dust ! These were the kinds of things that made it at 
 times almost hard even for a chaplain's wife to believe in a 
 beneficent Creator. 
 
 Meanwhile, Etoile, unconscious of the emotions she excited, 
 smiled on the antiquated homage of Lord George, wondered 
 why she had been brought to this parliament of dames, and 
 remained as indifferent to the stare of the fifty ladies as she 
 was to the crowd on the Pincio, or to the mostrari digito at 
 all times. The mill-clack of tongues grew very quiet round 
 her ; the tea did not circulate briskly, the muffins were not 
 buttered with honeyed welcome ; they did not like to talk 
 before her ; she had come from Paris, and had the reputation 
 of a wit. Altogether, she made them very uncomfortable. 
 
 " So kind of Lady Joan !" whispered the clergyman's wife. 
 "And so kind of the Stairs! — they always were kindness 
 itself; but it is a pity, because to this house every one has 
 always thought they were quite safe in bringing their daugh- 
 ters. Yes, a mistake certainly, though well meant, no doubt; 
 but when one has young girls can one be too careful ?" 
 
 " Delighted to have had the honor of receiving so much 
 genius and so much brilliancy into my sad old house," said 
 quivering old Lord George, with a bow of Brummel's time 
 and his hand on his heart. He was a feeble old man, but had 
 been very handsome in his time, and still knew a woman to 
 his taste when he saw one. Lady Joan was not to his taste : 
 only he never dared say so in his daughters' hearing. 
 
94 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " So charmed to have had such an honor, and any use we 
 can be, — and v*e may be allowed to call, may we not? — and 
 pray remember our Thursdays, — every Thursday till June, — 
 though we may hardly hope that you will deign," etc., etc., 
 said Marjory, in her most fervent manner, her beads and 
 her trinkets and her spare figure and her little rings of hair 
 all eager with courtesy. 
 
 Under these cordial valedictions Etoile went to her carriage 
 wondering why she had been taken to these excellent folks. 
 
 Lady Joan's brow was stormy : it was half-past five, and her 
 friend, the Prince loris, had not come. 
 
 She loved to take him there, — in the first place because it 
 wearied him to death, and in the second because it amused her 
 extremely to stride into that circle of " goody-goodies," as she 
 termed tliem, with her hands in her pockets and her prince at 
 her heels. The incongruity of it tickled her fancy, and she 
 knew how well it served her for all these matrons and spinsters 
 to cry in chorus to any calumniators that she might have, 
 " Oh 1 the purest friend ;bip ! The most innocent intercourse I 
 Why, those excellent Scrope- Stairs receive them together ! — 
 as if they ever would, if there tcere,^^ etc., etc. 
 
 The Scrope-Stair sisters were charmed to have him brought 
 there at any price : he was their one court-card, their one riband 
 of grace and honor. The " sex of valor' was never repre- 
 sented in their rooms save by some clergyman, or missionary, 
 or unwary traveller caught in his ignorance, or on occasion by 
 Mr. Silverly Bell, if he had any particular enemy that he de- 
 sired to drown in the teapot, with Mrs. Grundy to say the 
 " De Profundis" over the defunct. 
 
 Lord and Lady George Scrope-Stair, with their daughters, 
 were the chief mainstay and prop to that Temple of All the 
 Virtues which Lady Joan had set herself to build. They 
 were, indeed, very poor, but in compensation they were so 
 eminently — so pre-eminently — respectable 1 
 
 Not because their names were in " Debrett" and " Burke," 
 — plenty of scamps are in both who will hurt you very much 
 if you are seen with them, — but because from their fourth 
 floor there went out an eternal odor of the very severest 
 morality. 
 
 To have sipped of the tea from their teapot was to have 
 been baptized with the waters of respectability for life, and to 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 05 
 
 have eaten of their muflBns was to i.ave been sealed with the 
 seal of purity for all time. True, their teapot was terrible as 
 the caldron of Macbeth's weird sisters, and hissed till youth 
 and innocence, excellence and genius and honor, were all stew- 
 ing, cold, drowned things, in its steam. But what of that? 
 Mrs. Grundy does not mind a little scandal, — if you will only 
 whisper it. 
 
 Lord George had been a dandy and a beau when the cen- 
 tury and himself were both young ; he had had big fortunes 
 jind spent them all, and had lived many years in exile, a sad 
 and broken man, shivering by his chilly stove, and tottering 
 ouc when the day Wfis fine to have a mild little joke, when his 
 daughters were out of hearing and any chance word awoke 
 the old memories in him, as a trumpet-call wakes the spirit in 
 the worn-out charger waiting death wearily between the wagon's 
 shafts. 
 
 In his own house his daughters cowed him ; they were iron 
 to him, though wax to the rest of the world, — taking in the 
 word's eternal comedy those indispensable but subordinate 
 roles known in stage-talk as " utility parts." 
 
 They v/ere plain, passees, perfidious ; but the people they 
 toadied and the friends they flattered rather liked them the 
 better for this. 
 
 If anybody wanted a school-girl looked after, a bore taken 
 off their hands, a disagreeable errand done, or a train met on 
 a rainy day, there were the Scrope-Stairs to do it. 
 
 Provided you were only quite a proper person, you could 
 always have a Scrope Stair to do what you wanted, — from 
 ringing your bell to slandering your enemy, from pouring out 
 your tea to escorting your coffin. Their usefulness was of an 
 elasticity quite inexhaustible, and their ingenuity in consola- 
 tory sophisms was as great as that of the chamberlain of Marie 
 Leczinska, who, when she longed to play cards on the day of 
 a funeral, assured her that the gameofpig^e^ was deep mourn- 
 inj'. And, considerihg what a comfort they were, the Scrope- 
 tStairs were not expensive : some drives, some dinners, some 
 visits to you in the summer, some boxes at the opera in the 
 winter, — with these trifles these treasures were secured. 
 
 Lady Joan, whose unerring eye for her own advantage 
 never misled her, had discerned the capabilities and the advan- 
 tages of friendship with these excellent persons when first 
 
96 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 she had wintered in Italy. She saw that they had not, like her, 
 the power to make all men their brothers, but that they were 
 exactly what was wanted to induce Society to let her enjoy 
 herself with her brothers. Determined, like the spirited woman 
 she was, to dance her Carmagnole over the conventionalities, 
 she saw the necessity of having somebody to swear that she 
 was only curtsying, and not dancing at all. So she instantly 
 rushed into devoted friendship, kissed them all at every meet- 
 ing, and wrote them a dozen times a week sugary little notes 
 beginning " Dearest darling" and ending " With a thousand 
 loves." 
 
 It was not the style that suited her best, but she could do 
 it when it was wanted. 
 
 This effervescence had cooled down a little by this time, 
 but it had left a valuable residuum : the froth was gone, but 
 the wine remained. 
 
 The Scrope-Stairs had found out what her "thousand loves'' 
 were worth, but they kept their knowledge to themselves, and, 
 pouring out her tea on their Thursdays, continued to kiss and 
 be kissed. 
 
 The loyalty of the Scrope-Stairs (whom the profane jesters 
 of Society would call the Sweep-Stairs) was quite priceless in 
 its unutterable value to the Casa Clialloner. Indeed, but for 
 the Scrope-Stair friendship Society might perhaps never have 
 been friendly. But these young persons were so well-born, so 
 decorous, so eminently estimable, so sternly respectable, and so 
 stiffly irreproachable, that they really could have made Society 
 accept even odder things than Fiordelisa, and stranger things 
 than the Lady Joan, with her hands in her coat-pockets and her 
 lovers behind her, striding in to a clergyman's tea-party. 
 
 They were, it is true, very jealous, very curious, very cruel, 
 could slander viciously, toady rapaciously, and injure irrepar- 
 ably ; but these were trifles, and were, indeed, quite lost sight 
 of under the throng of amiable qualities which they developed 
 for people richer than themselves. Their moral qualities were 
 their strong point ; they were armed cap-d-pie in every kind 
 of virtue ; they had even charity, — when they were paid very 
 well for it. 
 
 The /id folks did not. very cordially join in the charity. 
 They belvjnged to an old-fashioned school, and di<I 'Jot under- 
 stand the comprehenBivcness of modern friendship, which 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 97 
 
 means anything anybody likes, from rapturous love to deadly 
 hate. 
 
 But their money was spent, their daujrhters were formidable, 
 their home was dreary, and so they obediently did as they were 
 told, and the old courtier put on his faded red riband to grace 
 Lady Joan's respectable parties, and the old wife carried her 
 knitting-needles and lambs'-wool on to the terrace at Fiordelisa ; 
 and all was as it should be, and their venerable names and 
 persons were as towers of strength built up beside the Casa 
 Cballoner. 
 
 A bolder woman would not have cared for these things, and 
 'A sillier woman would not have known their value ; but Lady 
 Joan was not above using these t'ifles and turning them to 
 good account. Even an old red riband, and a pair of knitting- 
 needles, she knew were not weapons to be despised in her 
 battle of life. 
 
 Lady Joan was like that well-trained elephant which can 
 at will root up an oak or pick up a pin ; and Lady Joan knew 
 that there are many more pins than oaks, and that a pin 
 stamped on too hastily may lame even an elephant for life. 
 So nothing was too small for her, wise woman tlipt she was. 
 
 A pattern of a new pinafore for an anxious mother ; a 
 damascened scimetar lent tur a tableau vivant ; a compliment 
 at the right minute to an ugly woman ; a young baritone 
 allowed to scream himself hoarse over her guitar ; a shoddy 
 Croesus dazzled with the statesmen and the duchesses in her 
 photograph-book ; a frank, beaming smile in the face of a bore; 
 a pressing invitation to a nervous nonenity ; a flattering defer- 
 ence to a wealthy pomposity ; a pretty set of conventionalities 
 put on stiiF and new like her ruffs and her cuflfs ; a present of 
 fruit to folks rich enough to buy up Hesperides ; a loan of 
 the pony-carriage to people who owned great studs and rare 
 racers in Suffolk or Noriblk ; nothing wasted, nothing thrown 
 away, every one conciliated, everything remembered, — herein 
 was her success. She beamed on the old folks and the rich 
 folks, no matter how they bored her, because they were solid 
 as bullion, bought pictures, and were the St. Peters of the 
 gates of Society. And she beamed on the young ones and 
 the poor ones, because who could tell what they might not 
 turn out to be some day? The corporal's knapsack may hold 
 tlio marshal's truncheon, and a little lad ouce trotted about 
 ■ 9 
 
98 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 with baskets of washed linen who lived to be King of Sweden. 
 Thus she got her paeans sung in all stages of society, and 
 broke down her oaks and picked up her pins and made her 
 path clear, and endured an amount of ennui incalculable, and 
 listened radiantly to platitudes interminable, and made herself 
 as agreeable to poor little Doremi screaming his cadenza and 
 talking of his theatrical future, as to solemn Sir Joseph, with 
 the face of a pig and the art-knovledge of a butler, and a 
 huge art gallery in England, smelling of paint and plaster, 
 and requiring many framed acres of " Gruidos, Correggios, and 
 stuff." 
 
 Of course all this cost her trouble, unending trouble. But 
 she kept foremost before her the final words of Candide, " II 
 faut cultiver notre jardin." She had a passion-flower in her 
 garden, oi oourse; but her real care and culture were her 
 cabbages. 
 
 She enjoyed her cabbages as much as her passion-flowers. 
 
 Whether she were sending her horse at racing pace across 
 the grass that covers the dead Etruscan cities, or waltzing at 
 topmost speed down the vast palace ballrooms, or bargaining 
 for old gems in dusky cellars of the Trastevere, or outwitting 
 the Ghettos in the purchase of brocades and canopies, or 
 smiling in the faces of haughty or witty women whom she 
 hated, or swinging through the feathered maize to call the 
 lazy peasants to their duties, or launching shafts of malice 
 through her black satin vizor at the Veglione, — whatever it 
 was that she was doing she did it with zest and force, and 
 with a reality of enjoyment that was contagious. 
 
 Here was the secret of ]:er success. To her nothing was 
 little. 
 
 This temper is always popular with Society. To enjoy 
 yourself in the world is, to ilw. world, the prettiest of indirect 
 compliments. 
 
 The chief offence of the poet, as of the philosopher, is that 
 the world as it is fails to satisfy him. 
 
 Society, which is after all only a conglomerate of hosts, has 
 the host's weakness : all its guests must smile. 
 
 The poet sighs, the philosopher yawns. Society feels that 
 they depreciate it. Society feels m'^re at ease without them. 
 
 To find every one acceptable to you is to make yourself 
 acceptable to every one. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 99 
 
 Hived bees get sugar because they will give back honey. 
 All existence is a series of equivalents. 
 
 "What do you think of my dear friends?" asked Lady 
 Joan, as they drove away. 
 
 Etoile hardly knew what to say. 
 
 " No doubt they are very estimable persons," she answered. 
 "But, I admit, a society like that is hardly what I am used to. 
 T counted thirty-eight ladies, very ill dressed, who I am sure 
 were all muttering, ' Apage, Satanas,' and most of them looked 
 in a fierce state of warfare with a world which had failed to 
 appreciate and — to marry them." 
 
 Lady Joan laughed. 
 
 "Oh, they're horrid old cats ; I quite agree with you there. 
 But cats scratch, you know. It's best to coax them. As for 
 the dear Scrope-Stairs, I assure you to know them is to admire 
 them, they are so indefatigable, so true, so charitable. I love 
 them all so much !" she added, with an irrepressible grin on 
 her handsome face. " Besides, you know, women are so use- 
 ful : haven't you ever found that out yet?' 
 
 " No ; perhaps because I want nothing of them." 
 
 Lady Joan decided in her own mind that Voightel must 
 have told her everything. Voightel never had ; but conscience 
 is a magic-lantern that throws distorted figures on any white 
 blank wall. 
 
 " I think you are wrong," she answered, aloud, with the 
 odd candor which sometimes characterized this woman, who 
 perhaps had been born for better things than she had achieved. 
 "I think you are wrong. Nobody knows what they may want. 
 Things hinge so horribly on accident. People who used to 
 snub Louis Napoleon thought themselves quite safe ; they 
 were always afraid he should borrow a sovereign. I knew a 
 man who gave him a drop of sherry out of a flask in a hunt- 
 ing-field after he had had a heavy fall one day in Leicester- 
 shire ; and twenty years afterwards that very drop of sherry 
 got the man a concession for public works that brought him in 
 half a million of money. There !" 
 
 " But surely he gave the sherry out of good nature, not 
 calculation ?" 
 
 " Humph ! I don't know. He was not the sort of man 
 to stop his horse to pick up a farmer. At any rate, he did 
 the civil thing, and see what he got by it. Now, that is just 
 
100 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 what I mean by being civil to women. They bore you ; well, 
 they bore me I don't deny that. But they can do one so 
 much good : just for a drop of sherry they can get you such 
 a big concession." 
 
 " You would make a good political leader," said Etoile, with 
 a smile. 
 
 Lady Joan was flattered ; though perhaps she would not 
 have been so much so had she seen into her companion's 
 thoughts. 
 
 Etoile descended at her own resting-place and sent her 
 horses home with Lady Joan, who, when out of her hearing, 
 had them turned in the direction of the house of loris. 
 
 " The Prince not home yet?" she said, sharply, to his ser- 
 vant. " Well, tell him I've been here ; and tell him if he's 
 not in at half-past seven he'll get no dinner : we shan't wait 
 for him." 
 
 The servant bowed humbly, and in his soul prayed heaven 
 to send his master's dama an accidente. 
 
 Then she had herself borne again along the twilit Corse 
 homeward, and laughed as she lay back among the cushions 
 recalling the faces of the thirty-eight matrons and virgins 
 around the sacred sun of the tea-urn. 
 
 " How scared they looked 1" she thought to herself '* Well, 
 it may all come in useful some day." 
 
 For Lady Joan was a long-sighted woman. 
 
 When Etoile went up her wide steps into the great palace, 
 pale and melancholy with Overbeck's frescoes, she saw a coat 
 lined with fur lying on the couch of the antechamber, and in 
 the dusk of her rooms, that were filled with the aromatic scent 
 of the wood fires, and burning pine-cones, a slender hand was 
 lield out to her, and a soft, melodious voice said : 
 
 " Will you forgive me that I ventured to wait for you? I 
 could not bear to be turned away a second time." 
 
 The dark, delicate head of the Prince loris was seen fitfully 
 in the gloom of the evening light. 
 
FJilENDSIIJP. 101 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Dinner at the Casa Challoner that night was on the table 
 at half-past seven. The husband and wife sat down alone. 
 Her brow was as the thunders that rest on the brow of Soracte. 
 
 At a quarter to nine loris entered. 
 
 " I was kept late at the Casa di Risparmio," he explained. 
 He endeavored to awake their interest in that excellent insti- 
 tution, but vainly. 
 
 Lady Joan ordered up for him the shreds of the fish and 
 the legs of the woodcocks. Such discipline she considered to 
 be good for him. Mr. Challoner grumbled over his claret that 
 the sauce had been ruined by waiting ten minutes for nothing. 
 
 It was a silent repast, only varied by scolding from the top 
 of the table, as a long dull day of rain may be varied by mut- 
 terings of thunder from on high. They had many such." 
 Life, when it runs on three castors, seldom runs upon velvet. 
 
 She was of opinion with Sganarelle, that " cinq ou six 
 coups de batons entre gens qui s'aiment ne font que rag^^irarder 
 I'affection." 
 
 But, like Sganarelle also, she always premised that the right 
 to give the blows should be hers. 
 
 " You must come up to Fiordelisa," said the Lady Joan 
 to Etoie with much urgency, a few days later. 
 
 Prince loris looked uneasy and ill pleased, but added, with 
 courteous efl'ect, " Fiordelisa may be so happy as to interest you, 
 perhaps, by its age and its story ; its greatness has long 
 departed." 
 
 " What can Fiordelisa be ?" thought Etoile. 
 
 The Lady Joan explained, unasked, as she drove over the 
 Campagna. She was always explaining. Explanation is a 
 blunder usually : whoever explains is, by self-implication, in 
 error ; but she was a mistress of the art, and found it answer 
 with most people. 
 
 She lived in a state of perpetual apology. The meeting- 
 house clothes were a standing apology for the cakes and ale. 
 
 It half amused Etoile as she began to perceive it, and half 
 
 9» 
 
102 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 disgusted her. To a woman who was utterly indifferent to what 
 the world said of her at any time, this struggle in another to 
 combine self-indulgence with self-justification seemed the 
 drollest of anomalies. 
 
 " Wh}'^ not be Messalina, if it please her? or why not be 
 St. Cecilia, if she liked it ?" thought Etoile. " But why pass 
 her life trimming up wrong as right, in sipping brandy and 
 declaring it is cold tea?" 
 
 But that was the mistake of a careless and contemptuous 
 temper. Lady Joan knew better. She knew that it was much 
 wiser to pass off your cognac as souchong, and that you may 
 take as much brandy as ever you like, if only you can convince 
 everybody else that it is tea. 
 
 When Theodore Hook wanted to get drunk, not to scandalize 
 the club he was in, he called for lemonade : the waiters knew 
 what to bring him. 
 
 Lady Joan called for cold tea so loudly that she might have 
 been heard from the banks of Tiber to her own old hunting- 
 gi'ounds by Abana and Pharpar. Those who waited on her knew 
 what to bring her. Meanwhile, that overgrown club. Society, 
 was quite sure it was only tea. 
 
 Society will believe anything rather than ever believe that 
 Itself can be duped. 
 
 If you have only assurance enough to rely implicitly on this, 
 there is hardly anything you cannot induce it to accept. 
 
 Her society, having once decided to believe that Lady Joan 
 only drank cold tea, were ready to go to the scaffold in a body 
 rather than admit that she even knew the color of brandy. 
 
 Her society was limited, indeed ; but then it was the club 
 she was in, — the only one that mattered to her, — all her dear 
 passers-by that wanted teacups and triptychs, and all her small 
 gentilities and freeborn republicans that asked her to dinners 
 and dances. 
 
 Besides, her brandy would not have tasted half so good if 
 she had not had the fun of persuading everybody else it was 
 tea. There is an indescribable delightfulness tc a certain order 
 of minds in smuggling. 
 
 She now preceded to explain elaborately. Fiordelisa was 
 loris's old castle, but they lived there ; it helped him a little, 
 lo was so poor ; lo was so weak ; they were so fond of him : 
 poor lo ! without her eye over him and Mr. Challoner's counsel 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 103 
 
 he would be ruined to-morrow. Yes, of course it did aid him 
 very much, their living there ; and they had done no end of 
 good to the place. Such a wretched old barn as it liad been 
 when they had gone there first of all ! Nobody could imagine 
 the trouble she took ! But then when she went in for anything 
 she always did do it thoroughly ; not like lo, — poor lo ! — who 
 would never have a centime off the estate if she did not get it 
 for him. How she slaved over those silkworms, for instance 1 
 such beastly-smelling things as they were ; and she scarcely 
 stirred out of the house for three months, she had to watch 
 them so ; but then she made three hundred pounds nearly by 
 the raw silk in the year; and only think what three hundred 
 pounds meant to poor lo ! Thus she discoursed, whipping the 
 ponies. She was so used to making the discourse that it ran 
 off her tongue like iier raw silk off the reels of the winder. 
 More or less varied, according to her auditors, it did duty to a 
 thousand listeners in the twelvemonth's time, and induced Mrs. 
 Grundy to submit to Fiordelisa, and even sometimes to visit 
 there. 
 
 " The place was quite poverty-stricken when we came," she 
 said, with a cut of the whip to the pony Pippo. " When we 
 knew him first he was the brink of ruin ; we pulled him 
 straight. Through extravagance ? — oh, no ; weakness. lo's 
 as weak as water, — give his head away if he'd got nothing 
 else to give. Just like St. Martin and his cloak. He is like 
 a child about business, too ; a baby would wind him round its 
 finger : he can't say no. If it wasa't for me, he'd maintain 
 all the ague-shaking souls of the Agro Romano ; I'm sure he 
 would." 
 
 *' Is he duly grateful to you?" Etoile, lying back in the 
 carriage, began to pity the absent man vaguely. 
 
 Lady Joan shot a glance at her. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," she muttered, a little sullenly. " He 
 knows he couldn't keep straight without me, if you mean 
 that. We've spent a great deal on the place, too ; but then 
 we've got very fond of it. I'va made three new vignas this 
 year ; got my vines out from Portugal. I grubbed up an old 
 garden and planted it with Xeres. I shall make sherry in 
 three summers more." 
 
 " And if your friend ever marry ?" said Etoile, with the 
 indifference she felt, only hazarding a natural conjecture. 
 
104 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The Lady Joan's eyes flashed as steel does in the rays of 
 the sun. 
 
 " Marry !" She drew her breath and set her teeth ; but 
 in another moment she smiled. 
 
 " Ah, yes, I do so wish he would, if he married properly. 
 But, you see, poor lo, — well, he's very silly about me ; thinks 
 there's nobody like me, and all that. But it's all nonsense. 
 I'm always telling him not to be a goose." 
 
 " He li^es in hopes of Mr. Challoner's euthanasia ? And 
 yet he lets Mr. Challoner plant his vines?" 
 
 " Bother you ! How much has Voightel told you ?" 
 thought the Lady Joan, with wrath in her soul ; but she 
 laughed and grinned pleasantly. She had a trick of grinning, 
 but then she had very handsome teeth to show. 
 
 " Mr. Challoner die ! My dear, he'll live forever ! I believe 
 he was cut out of a tree of Hgnum-vitae. I'm sure he looks as 
 if he had been. By the by, he wanted to come to-day, but some 
 telegrams came in and kept him, — heaven be praised for all 
 its mercies ! We get rid of him in the summer, you know. 
 He goes to the German baths somewhere or other with little 
 Eflfie, and Effie's Swiss governess. Have you seen that Swiss 
 girl ? Horrid little upstart ; I believe she came out of a cafe- 
 chantant at Yevay. Mr. Challoner chose her. Of course 
 EflBe's taught to disobey me, and lie, and be rude in all kinds 
 of ways that she can. Oh, my dear, you don't know half the 
 troubles I have to put up with." 
 
 " And people think Mr. Challoner s"3h an excelU at man ! 
 I suppose you did also once ?" 
 
 " I ! I always thought him the most odious cad in the whole 
 universe. I've never changed about /Aa^," responded his wife, 
 with one of those sudden bursts of temper and truthfalness 
 which occasionally upset all her best plans and tallest card 
 house of conventionalities ; then, conscious of a slip of the 
 tongue, she colored, and was glad that Pippo took to pulling. 
 
 " lo's very unhappy about you," she said, suddenly. " He 
 declares you don't like him. Is it true ?" 
 
 " Not at all : he has beautiful manners. I think him an 
 admirable laquais de placed 
 
 Lady Joan screamed with laughter, well pleased. 
 
 " Won't I tell him that 1 Poor lo 1 I suppose you wonder 
 to see him abcut our house so much ; but, you see, he's very 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 106 
 
 useful to us, and we're useful to him, end he's all alone at 
 home, and so " 
 
 " I do not wondor at all." 
 
 Lady Joan was silent. She was revolving in her mind 
 whether it was worth while to try and impose the fiction of 
 friendship on a woman who lived in Paris and who knew 
 Voightel. There were persons before whom Lady Joan tiirc 
 off her meeting-house clothes and danced her Carmagnole in 
 all the frank and boisterous abandonment natural to her. She 
 wondered whether it would be safe '.o do it here. Etoile made 
 her uneasy : she could not tell what manner of woman this 
 great artist was. 
 
 A grave, studious, contemptuous contemplrtion that seemed 
 to gaze at her from the eyes of her new acquaintance worried 
 her, and made her feel unsafe and uncertain. Like all cow- 
 ards, she was occasionally nervous. Etoile made her so. She 
 desired to conciliate her, but she did not know how to do it. 
 She desired to blind her, but she had a restless feeling that it 
 would not be safe to do so. 
 
 All the weapons with which she W8« accustomed to fence 
 with most people, and all the ruffs and farthingales with which 
 she arrayed herself to please the meeting-house and Mrs. 
 Grundy, seemed all of a sudden blunt and useless, coarse and 
 foolish. She could not take them up and put them on with 
 the fortunate mixture of swagger and propriety common to 
 her. 
 
 *' I wish she had never come near me," she thought, with a 
 useless irritation, as she turned the ponies up the rough grassy 
 road which led to Fiordelisa on this balmy sunny morning of 
 earliest winter ; and she said, aloud, — 
 
 " I sent lo up after breakfast : he'll have everything ready, 
 unless, indeed, he's given the luncheon to the dogs and the 
 wine to a pack of beggars, — which would be very like him," 
 she added, with a laugh that was not easy or good-tempered, 
 as she rattled the pon'os rp the sloping way between the red- 
 dening maples and the leafless vines. 
 
 loris came out of the wide-arched doorway to meet them 
 as the ponies — his ponies — were pulled up before the entrance. 
 He wore a black velvet dress ; he had a broad-leafed felt hat in 
 his hand ; he had a red ribbon round his throat, and a hound at 
 his side. He looked like an old Velasquez picture as the sun 
 
106 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 fell on his face and the depth of the shadow of the door was 
 still behind him in the background. 
 
 " Take my furs, lo. Oh, how stupid you are !"' cried the 
 Lady Joan. " Do you know what the Comtesse d'Avesnes says 
 of you ? She says — (now, mind that basket !") — she says she 
 thinks you are an admirable laquais de place ! ' 
 
 loris reddened under his delicate dark skin, but bowed low. 
 
 " I am glad that the Comtesse d'Avesnes can think that I 
 have even so much small merit as that in me," he answered, 
 lifting eyes of soft reproach. His eyes obeyed his will and 
 uttered what he wanted for him more eloquently than most 
 men's tongues will do. 
 
 " M, le Prince," said Etoile, with a smile, as she gave him 
 her hand, " when I see you mounted higher in the social sc{>.le, 
 I will accredit you with it. At present, mind that bafsket !" 
 
 loris gave an impatient gesture, and Lady Joan laughed, 
 not altogether well pleased at the imitation of her tones and 
 her order. 
 
 " How he will hate her !" thought the Lady Joan, consoling 
 herself with the reflection as they strolled through the house 
 on to the terrace, with the dusky wooded hills and the heights 
 of Rocca di Papa behind them, and before them, beyond the 
 now leafless vineyards and the gardens golden with orange fruit 
 and bright with Bengal roses, the width of the green Cam- 
 pagna, with the sun shining on the far yellow streak that was 
 Tiber, and the purple cloud which they knew was Rome, dusky 
 with her many roofs and ruins. 
 
 But for once Lady Joan was mistaken : loris was rather 
 inclined to hate himself. 
 
 " Do I indeed look such a fool to her?" he thought, con- 
 stantly, as they went through the house, showing her the 
 various old pictures, and marbles, and tapestries, and Etruscan 
 treasures found in the soil without. The old castle had lo«t 
 much of its whilom magnificence, but it was very ancient, 
 and had a noble and honorable melancholy in it which ill 
 accorded with the Lady Joan's cigar-boxes and ulsters, crewel 
 work and caricatures, coats of new paiut and panes of crude 
 glass ; It looked profaned and disturbed, and had that air of 
 resentment at its own profanation which ancient places do 
 seem to wear under sacrilege, as though they were sentient 
 things. ;. ; .V 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 107 
 
 They lunched in the dining hall, where Lady Joan arranged 
 all her china, pottery, porcelain, and the rest on shelves, to 
 be handy for the eye and purse of that much-suffering and 
 largely-spending class of society, " the people passing through 
 Rome." 
 
 loris sat at the bottom of his table, but Mr. Challoner's wife 
 sat at the top, and gave all the orders of the day, and chattered 
 throughout the meal of her wines and her peasants, her fowls 
 and her fruits. There was a portrait of the dead mother of 
 loris on one of the walls. Etoile wondered that he left it 
 there. 
 
 " Is Fiordelisa really yours ?" she said suddenly to him 
 when the Lady Joan had for a moment left them, her voice 
 alone being heard from afar ofiF in violent altercation with the 
 henwife, who had let the last score of fowls be sold too cheap 
 in the market. 
 
 " Fiordelisa !" he echoed, in surprise. " Yes, certainly : it 
 has been in my family twelve centuries." 
 
 " Mr. Challoner has a lease of it, I suppose ?" 
 
 " Oh, no ; I would never let it." 
 
 " You lend it to them, then ?" 
 
 " Lady Joan does me the honor to like to use it, — ^yes." 
 
 " And do your people like to be scolded ?" 
 
 " Oh, that is nothing ; they do not mind." 
 
 " But what right has she to scold them ? Because she 
 scolds you : is that it ?" 
 
 " Because she scolds everybody and everything. Some 
 women dc, ' said loris, with a shrug of his shoulders. 
 
 Etoile smiled, and the smile made him restless. It was only 
 amusement, but he thought it contempt. 
 
 From the other side of the tall cypress hedge the voice of 
 Lady Joan came in strong anger, high above the cackle of 
 poultry and the shrill outcries of the peasants. In another 
 moment she appeared in sight, a mangled mass of feathers 
 dangling from one hand and a hunting-whip in the other. 
 
 "Why will you let that beastly dog loose?" she said to 
 loris. " He has killod two of my best Brahmas. I bought 
 them only last week, — forty francs a pair, and such layers I 
 I have told ther . if I catch him loose again I'll hang him." 
 
 loris looked up with a flush on his face. " You have never 
 beaten Imperator again ?^^ 
 
108 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "Haven't I? — witkiin an inch of his life. He won't forget 
 killing the Brahmas. What did you let him loose for ? I 
 told you he never was to be loose, — great clumsy brute, break- 
 ing the plants to pieces." 
 
 " Cara Joanna ! It is impossible to keep a dog always 
 chained." 
 
 " Don't keep him at all, then. I shall hang him if I catch 
 him loose, that's all. I have just told Pietro so, and he's 
 sobbing like a baby, and Mariannina screaming ! — I should . 
 think you heard them here. Break Imperator's heart? Rub- 
 bish I Break his bones, if you like. I shall if he kills my 
 poultry. You are such an idiot, lo, about that dog." 
 
 And she went back as she came. 
 
 " Will you forgive my leaving you a second ? I must look 
 at the dog," said loris, hurriedly, with the color still in his 
 cheeks. 
 
 " I will come and see him too," Etoile answered him. 
 " But why do you let him be beaten ? She can have no right 
 to do that." 
 
 loris gave one of those gestures with which an Italian says, 
 better than by all words, that what the gods will he must 
 suffer, and their fiat is stronger than he. 
 
 They found the hound in his kennel, and he crept out tim- 
 idly, and shivering still, with pain as with fear, and fawned 
 upon his master. loris caressed him, kissed him, called him 
 endearing words, and did his best to comfort him. 
 
 *' But why not have sooner protected him ?" thought Etoile, 
 watching the mutual affection between the man and the ani- 
 mal, and making friends with the hound herself, whilst loris 
 called to his land-steward, — 
 
 " Tista, will you see to this ? Take care that when the 
 Signora is here Iniperator is kept always in kennel. Of course 
 he is to be loc se at all other times ; and if he kill or break 
 anything, do you replace it, and keep it out of the accounts. 
 I will pay you for it apart. Only take care that the Signora 
 does not see him free, and that she never hears it if he hunts 
 anything. You understand ?" 
 
 " I understand his Excellency. But in the summer ?" 
 
 " There are months before that," said loris, impatiently' ; 
 and, turning to Etoile, he excused himself for giving orders 
 before her, and asked her to come round with him to see from 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 109 
 
 an:'' .r point of view where Rocca di Papa hung above in the 
 fir-woods. 
 
 " Will you not let Imperator loose to come with us?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " I conld not do that. She would not like it." 
 
 " ip the dog h .rs, then ?" 
 
 " No, mine." 
 
 " And you cannot do as you like with your own ?" 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 " T heard a^l your orders to your bailiff," she pursued. 
 " Forgive me ; but, instead of all that complicated arrange- 
 ment with him about the dog, would it not be straighter and 
 simpler just to say to Lady Joan that you do not allow him 
 to be beaten, and that you always wish him to be free ? If 
 she be only a guest, how can you object ?" 
 
 loris sighed impatiently. 
 
 " Oh, that would not do with her. You scarcely compre- 
 hend. She is so used to have her own way ; I could not dis- 
 please her." 
 
 " Poor Imperator ! And yet you seem fond of him." 
 • " Imperator only bears what I do." 
 
 He muttered the words low, as if they escaped from him 
 against his will, as they reached the little path that wound up 
 into the hills among the myrtle-bushes, and the tufts of tra- 
 marina, and the wild growth of oleander which made the 
 mountain-side a blaze of rose-color in the days of June. 
 
 " What is the secret of Fiordelisa ?" Etoile wondered, as 
 the ladies of Craig Moira had wondered before her. 
 
 Fiordelisa was the Lady Joan's fee-simple of loris. Had 
 he never let her within the walls of Fiordelisa, Liberty would 
 not have outspread its wings and fled away from him. 
 
 Fiordelisa, crowning its hillside amidst cypress woodp and 
 olive groves warm in the light of the western sun, and facing 
 the opal and amethyst lines of the mountains — Fiordelisa was 
 the last bead of a long chaplet of noble strongholds once be- 
 longing to the great princes of loris. 
 
 When Lady Joan had been seven months in Rome, still 
 languid from the heats of the East, the summer in the city 
 alarmed her. She averred that she would die of malaria, and 
 that her lord was such a churl he would never give her the 
 means to get a breath of fresher air. 
 
 10 
 
110 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The churl had but recently joined her, and could be repre- 
 sented In any colors she chose; and she, and the churl also, 
 had breakfasted and lunched several times at that sunny 
 solitary palace standing empty on the fair hillside, and the 
 lust of desire for it had entered into her soul. Therefore 
 she wept, she went into hysterics, she had even a week's 
 fever. 
 
 loris laid the keys of Fiordelisa at her feet. What less 
 could he do ? 
 
 She aflFected reluctance, suggested danger from the wrath 
 of the churl, but in the end relented and accepted. 
 
 It was but a dreary old place, said its master, and he sent 
 up from the city all the modern necessities of daily life, had 
 its mighty old chambers swept out, the wild garden put a 
 little in order, sent his horses up there, and welcomed the 
 wife of Mr. Challoner to a villcggiatura. 
 
 Figuratively, he had put handcuffs on his own wrists. 
 
 " What a madman !" thought Mr. Challoner, when he 
 heard of the arrangement ; but aloud he said merely, " Yea 
 are very good. Will it not bore you ? No ? I fear, indeed, 
 my wife is not strong enough for travel. It is most unfortu-' 
 nate." 
 
 For Mr. Challoner of the unchanging countenance always 
 bore himself to loris, as he had done to his wife's friends in 
 the East, with the grave face and the ceremonious manner 
 wish which one Roman augur of old addressed another augur 
 in public. 
 
 Mr. Challoner was like Mrs. Siddons : he never left off the 
 .<tage face and the stage tone, even if he were only buying a 
 yard of huckaback and inquiring if it would wash. 
 
 " Go to the castle," he said to his wife ; " go to the castle, 
 since you wish it ; 1: ut take some good girl or other with you. 
 Mind that.'* 
 
 And, having thus made due provision for the safety of ap- 
 pearances, he departed for the baths in Germany, leaving his 
 wife on the hillside, — to recover her health. _ 
 
 People all wondered at the husband's complacency. They 
 would not have wondered if they had been able to see into 
 his recollections. Everything is comparative. Fiordelisa, as 
 compared with Orontes and Euphrates, Abana and Pharpar, 
 seemed to Mr. Challoner propriety itself, He himself woa- 
 
FRIENDSHIP 111 
 
 dered very much at loris. But this is a bad compliment that 
 husbands will always pay their wives. 
 
 Lady Joan's eyes sparkled as she crossed the threshold. 
 Here was an occupation of territory that meant (to her far- 
 seeing eyes at least) an annexation for life. Like Prussia and 
 Russia, she onlv wanted to get her foot once across the fron- 
 tier, and the soil was hers forever and aye. Once installed in 
 Fiordelisa, who should live, bold enough, or shrewd enough, 
 ever to turn her out of it ? 
 
 There are some women so happily constituted that they 
 consider that for the gifts of themselves all the treasures of 
 earth would be scarcely recompense enough. 
 
 Lady Joan was one of these. 
 
 When he surrendered Fiordelisa he had surrendered his 
 future into her hands. 
 
 He had not known it. But she had. 
 
 To dislodge a tenant unwilling to go is at all times diflficult ; 
 the tiles must be taken off ere even law can aid. But a 
 woman like the Lady Joan would sit still, bareheaded and 
 fast-rooted, under the open skies till the tiles were put on 
 again, and defy heaven and earth and all their elements to 
 move her. 
 
 Possession is nine points of the law ; and with nine points 
 it would have been odd indeed if Lady Joan should not have 
 managed, by hook or by crook, to obtain the tenth. 
 
 loris, with that touch of simplicity that a man's finest 
 astuteness is always mingled with, imagined that he only lent 
 Fiordelisa for a summer or two. Lady Joan laughed to her- 
 self to think how easily she had drawn away this trump card 
 from him. 
 
 " Get me out !" she thought to herself. " Not when I'm 
 once let in." 
 
 A great statesman being once asked what was the surest 
 method of success, replied, " Immovability." 
 
 Lady Joan understood the wisdom of the saying. When 
 she installed herself at Fiordelisa gayly as one who only 
 bivouacs for a midsummer picnic, she hung her cashmert) 
 upon the first peg she saw in the hall. 
 
 " There is my fee-simple for life," she thought. 
 
 What can any man do against a woman who, long ere a 
 hint be given her, has resolved that she never will take one ? 
 
112 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 loris, who thought of his country as Musset did, — " Que 
 Us soleils de Juinfont lammir passcu/er,'^ — in the midsummer 
 months looked forward to a romance bright and brief as the 
 life of the fireflies among the corn, — a midsummer madness 
 befitting the months when the oleander burns on the world 
 like fire, and the nightingales sing under flowering myrtles. But 
 Lady Joan knew better. 
 
 The castle was ancient, honorable, majestic, like an old gray- 
 beard who has lived long enough to see his children and 
 friends all die before him. These old places, grand with art 
 and architecture of a statelier and freer time than ours, touch 
 strangely poets, artists, thinkers, — asses, as the Lady Joan 
 would have said. 
 
 Its antiquity could not " scare" her, nor its sanctity silence 
 her. 
 
 She entered on its possession with the zeal of an encamping 
 gypsy and the ruthlessness of an army of occupation. 
 
 She drew on a big pair of untanned boots, strode over the 
 lands, marked the waste there was, and said to herself that 
 she would soon alter all that. Before the summer was gone 
 she had Installed herself mistress there ; before the winter 
 had come she had taught its master that she meant to be 
 mistress and master both. When next the springtime came 
 round she did not consult his pleasure, or feel any necessity 
 for hysterics: she took for granted that she should go to 
 Fiordelisa. 
 
 She did go. This time Mr. Challoner accompanied her, 
 and took with him some packets of English seeds and the 
 model of a kitchen-boiler. 
 
 The family installed itself at Fiordelisa audaciously as 
 Tchiganes, sagaciously as Prussians. They cut walks, levelled 
 trees, made the garden a fair imitation of the gravelled paral- 
 lelograms of South Kensington, closed in the loggia with doors 
 of colored glass as nearly like a railway station as they could 
 manage to make them, asked out English and Americans to 
 dinner and breakfast, and began to interest themselves in 
 breeding pigs and chickens. 
 
 " We've done so much for the old place !" said the Lady 
 Joan, working a chair-cover, while her husband brought up 
 Tegetmeier on Poultry. ' :" " 
 
 "L'audace, Taudace, tovjours de Taudace" was her motto ; 
 
FEIENDSIIJP. 113 
 
 and it is wonderful how very far one may manage to go by a 
 diligent adherence to i*. in the world, as in war. 
 
 Five years and more had now passed by since that first 
 midsummer day when she had gone up as an occupant to 
 Fiordclisa, and had turned out all the old pottery and tapes- 
 tries and artistic lumber it was full of, with the zeal and zest 
 of a victorious trooper ransacking a wine-cellar ; and by this 
 time the Lady Joan honestly considered herself the legitimate 
 occupant of it, and would have looked on the establishment 
 of any more lawful mistress there, as an invasion of her 
 rights as grave as an Irish peasant regards a writ of evictment 
 to be. 
 
 She had stuck her staff in the ground at Fiordelisa, and 
 never henceforth discoursed of it but as hers. When obliged 
 to acknowledge the fact of its master's presence and possession 
 she would allude to " poor lo" airily, as though if could not 
 have afforded a dinner unless they had been there to give him 
 one. 
 
 She set the china that she meant to sell on the shelves, 
 spread the carpets he paid for on the floors, and then talked 
 of how much she had done for him ; invited people under 
 his roof, and got credit for " such hospitality ;" gave away his 
 fruits, and eggs, and flowers, and wines, and was cited as " so 
 generous ;' and, further, amused herself throughout the spring 
 with having out there to dine and to sleep every good-looking 
 man who lingered in Rome and was glad to come and smoke 
 under the stars in the old gray cortile. 
 
 Fiction is a greyhound and Truth is a snail. She set Fic- 
 tion flying over the course. She had, indeed, once ordered 
 out from England at her own e"xpense two peach-trees and a 
 Berkshire pig. It was all she ever tiad done ; but, as every- 
 body ate a peach and tasted the ham and heard what she had 
 done, everybody took all the rest for granted. 
 
 "I do so love my bees, and my beasts, and my pigs, and 
 my poultry !" she herself would echo gushingly to the goody- 
 goodies, to whom she was careful to appear as a kind of Har- 
 riet Martineau with a model ftirm of four (thousand) acres that 
 was always, sleeping or waking, upon her mind. 
 
 " I am sure, most laudable," said the goody-goodies, quite 
 impressed with the spectacle of a person born a Perth-Douglas 
 absorbing herself in beep, and beasts, and pigs, and poultry. 
 
 10* 
 
114 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Higher society, less reverent and more dihoimaire, laughed 
 iiil it cried. 33ut, whether leaving admiration or ridicule 
 behind her, to Fiordelisa she went when the April narcissus 
 was in bloom. She conceived a kind of passion for the place, 
 it was so useful to her. 
 
 That dual character in her, which Voightel had chuckled 
 over, had full luxury of expansion both way at Fiordelisa ; 
 all the various and opposing passions of her nature found vei.t 
 therein at Fiordelisa : she could be Cleopatra at sunset and a 
 huckster at sunrise. 
 
 With a guitar on her knee, and amorous eyes shining under 
 the passion-flowers in the court by moonlight, one side of her 
 temperament had its sport and play ; with her skirts tucked 
 about her knees, a memorandum-book in her hand, and a fierce 
 vigilance in every one of her searching glances, striding through 
 granaries, wine-cellars, and cattle-stalls, pursuing missing cen- 
 times through columns of figures, and making the bailiff 
 wretched for a lost franc, the other side of her had its fullest 
 and sweetest sway also. 
 
 To be sure, she never reflected that one view of her might 
 spoil the other to the person by whose permission she was 
 there ; she never reflected that the prosaic God of Business 
 might take Love by the shoulders and turn him out of doors. 
 
 If Antony had seen Cleopatra squabbling for a coin over a 
 basket of fish or a basket of dates, he migh^ probably have 
 recovered his senses and avoided Actium. 
 
 But she did not think of this. 
 
 She had become so used to loris, and so certain of her do- 
 minion over him, that she had altogether ceased to preserve 
 for him those graces of appearance which the woman who is 
 truly wise never neglects before the man whose passion she 
 desires to keep alive. 
 
 Familiarity breeds contempt in the lover, as in the servant. 
 
 Lady Joan's vanity made her too forgetful of one supreme 
 truth, — that the longest absence is less perilous to love than 
 the terrible trials of incessant proximity. 
 
 She forgot that love likes to preserve its illusions, and that 
 it will bear better all the sharpest deprivations in the world 
 than it will the cruel tests of an unlovely and unveiled inter- 
 course. 
 , She had committed the greatest error of all : she had let 
 
FRIENL SHIP. 115 
 
 him be disenclianted by familiarity. Passion will pardon rage, 
 ■will survive absence, will forgive infidelity, will even ihrive on 
 outrage, and will often condone a crime ; but when it dies of 
 familiarity it is dead for ever and aye. 
 
 The Lady Joan in her Oriental jewelry and her Asiatic 
 drjssey was a woman for Velasquez to paint, and most men to 
 admire, and some to sigh for with ardor and desire. But the 
 Lady Joan with thick untanned leather boots on, hair pulled 
 tight from her face, and a gray skirt tucked up about her legs, 
 or astride upon a donkey in a waterproof in muddy weather, 
 counting the artichokes and tomatoes before they went to 
 market. Lady Joan was not a woman to adore or to portray ; 
 and loris, artist as Nature had made him, and lover as he was 
 expected to be, opening his window in the lovely rosy dawn 
 and looking down on her thus occupied, would sigh and won- 
 der what ever he had seen, — why ever he had sacrificed him- 
 self; and so, tired, and nerveless, and discontented, and afraid 
 to show his discontent, he would go down his staircase and 
 into the radiant balmy morning that itself outshone all the 
 dreams of all the poets, and would hear h'^r delighted voice 
 ring out, " Seven robins and a nightingale shot before break- 
 fast, lo 1 What do you think of that ?" and dared not say what 
 he thought of it, but had to smile and praise her skill, and 
 Ic^k at the little pretty ruffled blood-stained heap of feathers, 
 and submit to have the hand that was black with the car- 
 tridges passed through his arm to draw him into the loggia, 
 where the morning meal was spread, and had to take his coflfee 
 and fruit seasoned with stories of how Nannia had been caught 
 sneaking ofl" with a stolen cabbage, and how Pepe had been 
 detected filling his pockets with green peas as he had weighed 
 them, and all the while to himself watched drearily the silver 
 threads that the light found out in his mistress's hair, and 
 wondered why she dressed so shabbily because she was in the 
 country, and thought how large her hand looked as it plunged 
 among the strawberries, and felt vaguely that this was not the 
 companion fitting to that old sunlit, air-swept, flower-scented 
 loggia, with the roses round its columns, and beyond its arches 
 the wide blue hills. 
 
 But she did not dream of this : she dug and planted, and 
 bought and sold, and planned and bargained ; she kept a sharp 
 eye on the weights and measures, she ran up model sties and 
 
116 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 breeding-pens ; she got up at five to count the potatoes and 
 melons, the cherries and cabbages, that went to the market ; 
 she rode his horses, and ordered his bailiffs, and strode about 
 in gray linen and big boots, and did on the whole most ad- 
 mirably, — for herself. 
 
 No doubt if he had overheard her explaining to her English 
 and Americans how all this was done only out of charity, to 
 help " poor lo," it would all have speedily come to an end. 
 But then he never did hear — except just what was meant for 
 his ear. 
 
 He had an uncomfortable feeling that it was all disagree- 
 able, and tedious, and noisy ; and he prized the affection of 
 his peasants and farmers, and their irritation under the new 
 reign oppressed and saddened him. In his remembrance there 
 might have been a great deal of waste, but there was a great 
 deal of feudal affection. In other years at his annual visits 
 there had been only smiles, laughter, music, rejoicing; now 
 there were often rebellion, discontent, imprecations, and sullen 
 silence. 
 
 Of course, however, she, like all other great improvers, was 
 not to be daunted by such a trivial thing as poor folks' devo- 
 tion and mere clinging to old landmarks. She brought her 
 new brooms and swept away with them vigorously ; and if the 
 brooms caught at such old trumpery tapestries as custom, tra- 
 dition, and loyalty, and pulled them down in fragments, so 
 much the better, she thought: she cared for no old rubbish,— 
 that wouldn't sell again. 
 
 He sighed, and let her sweep on. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Challoner was always careful to set the seal 
 of his presence, with his flower-seeds and his kitchen-boilers, 
 on the private life of Fiordelisa, and at the beginning of each 
 summer was always to be duly met with by any passing visitors 
 gravely contemplating his wife's poultry-pens or solemnly wa- 
 tering his own stove-plants, and in his pursuit of those inno- 
 cent occupations would always find some occasion to say, in an 
 abstracted manner, leaning over a model pig-sty, " Yes, yes, 
 we have done a good deal for the place ; my wife is never so 
 happy as when she is doing good ; yes, we brought over those 
 Berkshires. Nothing like English breed ; nothing." 
 
 Society thought Mr. Challoner very durable and strangely 
 blind. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 117 
 
 Mr. Clialloncr suflfercd neither from amiability nor blindness. 
 He quiirrclk'd incessantly with his wife about everythhng else, 
 little and lar^e ; but he never quarrelled about loris. 
 
 What could a blade of .steel in a wintry dawn have p;ivcn 
 Mr. Challoner of venj^eance comparable to that which ho 
 smiled grimly over as he saw another man, daily and hourly, 
 bullied, ridiculed, stormed at, ordered about, driven to account 
 for every absent hour, and deprived of every vestige of a will 
 of his own ? 
 
 Mr. Challoner was like the Dauphin who kept the luxury 
 of a whipping-boy. 
 
 Vengeance ! — 
 
 "N'allons pas chorchcr 5, faire une quercllo 
 Pour un affront qui n'est que pure bagatelle !" 
 
 There was no one living on earth to whom Mr. Challoner 
 owed so much comfort as he did to loris. * nd, indeed, he 
 would say, with quite a cordial ring in his voice, " loris ? 
 Oh, a very good fellow, — the best friend we have !" 
 
 A quiet, excellent woman, who was his father's widow and 
 no relation to him, but whom he called his " mother," because 
 it is always so respectable to have a mother, would occasion- 
 ally, on visiting at the Casa Challoner, observe with disquie- 
 tude the Lady Joan disporting herself in a break full of masks 
 on Giovedi Grasso, or going out shooting, with her gun, and 
 her hessians, and her Iloman nobles ; and on such occasions 
 old Mrs. Challoner would murmur to the master of the estab- 
 lishment, " Puir laddie ! it's a great name and a braw house 
 to have married into, and that there's no denying^ but I'^n 
 thinking, my poor Robert, that you have paid a muckle price 
 for the gentility." 
 
 " Joan has high spirits ; it is merely high spirits," Mr. 
 Challoner would return, with an austerity that closed the 
 discussion. 
 
 For Mr. Challoner never told anybody what price he had 
 paid, whether muckle or mickle. He had never given any 
 living soul the right to say that he was other than a most 
 contented husband. 
 
 He had made his bargain with his eyes open, and the bar- 
 gain had been that he was to keep h's eyes shut. And he 
 fulfilled it loyaUy. u. , . , ^-^^....^ 
 
118 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Now and then he winced ; now and then he smiled. "But 
 It was only to himself. Lady Joan, who quarrelled with him 
 to his face, and railed at him behind his back, could not resist 
 a sort of admiration for his impassibility. " The creature 
 might be cut out of wood !" she said, often. Now, a wooden 
 husband is the most convenient of all lay figures. 
 
 This winter afternoon the real master of Fiordclisa, with 
 his guest, strolled upward by the hill -paths bordered with 
 aloe and cactus, and shaded with cereus and cistus, towards 
 the yet higher lands of Fiordelisa, where the stone pines 
 reigned alone with the tall lilac heather at their feet. 
 
 He strove to understand, to interest, and to amuse Etoile, 
 and he succeeded. He had at command graceful thoughts 
 and picturesque diction ; he loved art, and had studied it pro- 
 foundly. He had been irritated because this stranger, herself 
 eminent in the world's sight, seemed to think him a slave 
 without power or purpose, and the unlikeness of her to any 
 other woman that he had ever known stung him to interest 
 and moved him to exertion. 
 
 loris, like many men before him, had sunk into an existence 
 in which his mind had no share. 
 
 It was as nearly brainless as a naturally intelligent man's 
 life can ever be. 
 
 To obey all his ruler's desires ; to attend to the thousand 
 and one trivialities that she daily imposed ; to see that what 
 she ordered was done, and what she wanted found ; to follow 
 her hither and thither ; to avert the tempest of her temper 
 by prevision of her wishes, and to be careful that his servants, 
 his horses, his house, his patience, his presence, his endurance, 
 his exertions were all ready to the moment that she might 
 call on them, — all this nmde his day one incessant and joyless 
 routine of obedience. He woke in the morning with the 
 dreary round before him, and he lay down at night seeing 
 nothing better for the morrow, or for fifty hundred other 
 morrows, if he lived long enough to have them dawn on 
 him. Such a life killed his intelligence. The pure impersonal 
 efforts of the mind may be heightened by a great joy and 
 may be deepened by a great sorrow ; but a life of perpetual 
 triviality yet of perpetual conflict — a life, in a word, which 
 has been condensed into the one common comprehensive word 
 of worry — does so irritate and yet benumb the faculties that 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 119 
 
 all intellectual effort dies out under it. It had Ken so with 
 him. 
 
 Lady Joan was no fool ; but she was one of those women 
 who lower all they touch more than many fools. 
 
 No delicate thoufjht could live under one of her loud 
 laughs ; no impersonal discussion could survive her boisterous 
 personalities. Art itself looked ridiculous beside her preten- 
 tious patronage of it and mercenary traffic in it. And the 
 oblifjuity of her mental vision seemed to communicate itself 
 to those about her till in her presence a praying angel of Mino 
 da Fiesole's soilless marble looked no better than a squat 
 bonze from a Chinese temple. As there are women who 
 exalt all that comes in contact with them, so did she lower 
 all things. 
 
 It was not her fault. Nature had made her so. 
 
 But the effect on the mind of loris had been that of smoke 
 on painting : it had dulled all the color and obscured all the 
 lines. 
 
 A certain lassitude crossed by a certain irritation had grown 
 on him ; and the scholarship of his early youth, and the pro- 
 ficiency of art which had distinguished him at one time, had 
 died down into 'jilence and obscurity. 
 
 They wei»^ not needed for the wrangles of the house be fre- 
 quented, and the scenes of barter that he was called upon to 
 assist at in antiquity shops. 
 
 With Etoile they awoke. For the man who is a scholar 
 by culture will never altogether lose 'flight in it, and the 
 temper that is born with the poetic element in it will never 
 absolutely fail to answer to the right touch. It becomes like 
 a harp whoso silver strings are covered with dust, entangled, 
 jarred, and mute, but are still silver, and still keep song in 
 them when they are struck aright. 
 
 Not such a song, indeed, as when the chords first were 
 strung, for time and wrong usage have done much to mar 
 them ; but still a song, — a song sadder than tears some- 
 times. 
 
 The hill-paths were steep and the way long, but it seemed 
 to have been short to them both, when at last they reached 
 the pine wood, where Rocci di Papa was visible. High above 
 hung the little gray tower on the rock where Juno once stood 
 to watch how the battle went ; at least, we believe so, if we 
 
120 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 hearken to Virgil ; and if we will not believe Virgil what right 
 have we in Konie at all ? 
 
 The sun was bright on the Volscian hills, and the snow on 
 the line of the Leonessa and on the heights of the Sabine 
 niountains glowed like an opal in the light. The low lands 
 looked dusky a d bronze-hned from clouds that hung above 
 them, and a purple cloud shrouded the wild dark mountain of 
 Soracte and floated mid\. ay between earth and heaven; far, 
 far away was a glancing line that showed where the sea was 
 beating on the sad bands by Ostia ; and aloft, white and stern 
 as an Alp, rose Monte Gennaro, who wraps his mantle of frost 
 around him till the maize is tall in the plains and the girls are 
 singing among the poppies. And in the centre of it all was 
 Rome, with the cross of St. Peter's clear against the light, 
 and all the vast cloud-world around it. 
 
 There is no view on the earth like this from one of tl e 
 heights of the mountains of Home. 
 
 Etoile looked and was silent. The great tears gathered in 
 her eyes, but did not fall. 
 
 He watched her. 
 
 " You feel things too much," he said, softly. 
 
 She had forgotten him ; and she looked up with the surprise 
 of a sleeper awakened from a dream. 
 
 " Oh, no, I think not," she answered him. " I pity those 
 to whom the world is not so beautiful as it is to me."' 
 
 " And yet there are tears in your eyes."' 
 
 " Are there ? I cannot tell you — you, who have always 
 lived here, cannot know, I think — all that one feels in looking 
 so on Home. One seems to see as God sees : all the hosts of 
 the dead arise." 
 
 He was silent. The words moved him. He bowed his 
 head and stood in silence, like one who will not break in upon 
 a woman at prayer. 
 
 At that moment his name echoed shrilly on the clear air. 
 He started and listened. 
 
 " Forgive me," he said, quickly. *' She is calling us. In 
 a little while it will be dark." 
 
 " Where on earth have you been ?" said the Lady Joan, 
 with her face black as a lowering thundercloud as it loomed 
 upon them through the lines of the tall polished laurel-trees. 
 " Where ou earth have you been, lo ? The idea of climbing 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 121 
 
 up here ! and without me ! I asked for you everywhere. The 
 coffee is cold, and we shall have it pitch-dark to drive home ; 
 and there is that young idiot's opera to-night. What could 
 you be doing up here all this time ?" 
 
 " We have consoled Imperator ; and we have trodden in the 
 steps of Juno," Etoile made answer for him ; and she looked 
 Lady Joan straight in the eyes as she spoke. 
 
 There was sorae'hing in the look of contempt and of chal- 
 lenge : she herself was unconscious of it, but the other was 
 alive to it. 
 
 " If she dare to cross me liere !" thought Lady Joan ; and 
 her brow darkened in storm and her eyes glittered till they 
 were green as an angry cat'js. She was sullen and silent as 
 they descended to the house and drank the coffee which was 
 awaiting them in the square stone court. 
 
 Fiordelisa was the apple of her eye. 
 
 It was not, perhaps, very dignified work, squabbling with 
 peasantry, counting potatoes and beans, ousting old folks from 
 little territorial rights, keeping a sharp eye on the olive-presses 
 and the wine-tubs, and hunting up the Cochin China eggs out 
 of the straw and thatch. 
 
 But what would you? 
 
 John Vatbes, Emperor here in Rome, gave his wife a costly 
 crown of emeralds and diamonds that was bought with the 
 proceeds of his poultry, and why should not the hens of Fior- 
 delisa lay rings of sapphire and ear-rings of turquoises ? 
 
 Lady Joan pulled on her thick driving-gloves with a jerk 
 befoie the coffee was fairly drunk. Ions and Etoile were 
 talking gayly and laughing together. 
 
 " I am sorry to hurry you," she said, coldly. " But the 
 moment the sun goes down the nights are so bitter. And lo 
 has a fancy, you know, for us to hear the new opera. A boy 
 who lived in a dirty little poking town of the Maremma has 
 dreamt that he is Mozart and Rossini combined, and lo de- 
 voutly believes in him. lo's geese are all swans." 
 
 " A more amiable optimism, at any rate, than the common 
 one which swears there are no swans at all, — only a few ducks 
 in a pond," said Etoile, taking her coffee from him. 
 
 She smiled at him as she spoke. Almost insensibly she 
 felt drawn into defending him against these persistent mock- 
 eries, which had so littie wit or wisdom in them. 
 i ' 11 
 
122 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Perhaps we are only ducks," she added. " But we are 
 always grateful to anybody who will belieVe in our snowy 
 plumage, and who will vow for us tha^ our stagnant little 
 pond of vanity is a lake in which the mountains of the world 
 are mirrored. Who is this young composer come out of the 
 Maremma?" 
 
 " A boy of great genius," said loris ; " very young, — only 
 twenty-twc. He has had no education, except a year in Bo- 
 logna ; but he has, with many faults, many excellences. This 
 is his first opera. It is on the theme of Persephone. Parts 
 of it are very fine ; and I think the choral renderings " 
 
 " It is hideous rubbish," said Lady Joan, roughly. " Just 
 singsong out of Verdi and Gounod, and the ' infernal' part 
 of it all borrowed wholesale out of ' Lohengrin,' — growl, 
 growl, growl, — bang, bang, bang, — that's all. Besides, it's 
 been done in OrpMe mix Enfersy 
 
 " That is not quite the same thing," said loris, with an 
 involuntary smile. 
 
 " The same story," said Ladj Joan, confidently, turning to 
 Etoile. " The opera's stuff. But the boy happened to get 
 hold of lo last year; and lo thinks he knows counterpoint 
 and all that ; and so he's flattered, and believes in the trash, 
 and uses all his influence to get the opera put on the stage 
 of the Apollo. I dare say, if the truth were known, the 
 dresse: and things have come out of his own pocket. If he'd 
 only a crust he'd give it to the first creature that squealed out 
 for it. Oh, you know you would, lo, if I didn't keep you 
 straight. Give me a cigar. No, there's no time for more 
 cofi*ee. See they put those grapes in ; I want them for the 
 Bishop of Melita. And they're to kill that sheep for me 
 to-morrow. Mind Tista don't forget. And they'd better 
 shoot a few hares and send me them with the mutton in the 
 morning ; there's that big dinner we have to-morrow, and 
 Marjory wants one to jug for her father. And mind you tell 
 the man to get that fence done by Monday ; and if the black- 
 smith don't come and put the padlocks on those gates directly 
 I won't pay him one farthing, — not one farthing !" 
 
 " If I didn't see to the things he never would," she ex- 
 plained, as she took the reins of the ponies. " He'd let 
 people dawdle on forever, and pay 'em just the same for doing 
 nothing. They know I won't stand that nonsense. I've had 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 123 
 
 all the gates put up and padlocked : the whole land used to lie 
 open." 
 
 " The people here must ?.e very fond of you," said Etoile. 
 
 Lady Joan did not feel the satire. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. They vought to be. I physic 'em when 
 they're ill. Such wry fy.ccs they pull ! Of course I'm very 
 kind to 'em all ; but first of all one must make a thing pay, — 
 in lo's interests, you know." 
 
 " And you are of opinion with Zoroaster that to reap the 
 earth with profit is of more merit than to repeat — or win — ten 
 thousand prayers ?" 
 
 " I am rather of Plutarch's," said loris, joining them, and 
 stroking his ponies. 
 
 " Was Plutarch an ass, then ?" asked the Lady Joan, with 
 supreme scorn. 
 
 " You would have thought him so : he could never bring 
 himself to sell in its old age the ox which in its youth had 
 served him faithfully. Voila tout." 
 
 " That is just the sort of sentimental stuff to please you. 
 The ox would make very good beef," retorted the Lady Joan. 
 " Mind ! my sables are over the wheel." 
 
 She cut the ponies sharply over their heads with the whip 
 and started them off full gallop down the rugged slope, leaving 
 their master to spring up behind as best as he might. The 
 ponies were his own, — spirited little cobs from Friuli, with 
 jingling silver bells, and swinging foxes' tails hung at their 
 ears, — but no sort of possession was he allowed to enjoy of 
 them. 
 
 " I want Grille and Pippo to-day," he would say of a morn- 
 ing ; and his groom would answer, " I am very sorry, Excel- 
 lence, but the Signora has ordered them." loris had to shrug 
 his shoulders and see his ponies depart to the Casa Challoner. 
 Why did he never rebel? He began to ask it of hims-lf, 
 leaning with his arms on the front seat of the carriage, look- 
 ing at the profile of Etoile before him in the twilight. 
 
 " I do so wish you would come to the theatre to-night. Do 
 change your mind. There are only the Plinlimmons at din- 
 ner, — bores, I know, but wo should cut it short with the 
 Opera," urged Lady Joan, as she stopped the ponies to set her 
 guest down in <^he Quirinal Square, and pressed an invitation 
 which she knew was quite safe, since she had chanced to hear 
 
124 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 that Etoile would pass that evening with the Princess Vera, 
 who had "two or three people," — i.e., about two or three 
 hundred. 
 
 " The idea of her going to Princess Vera's I" she muttered, 
 as she drove away. " Preposterous !" 
 
 "Why that?" said loris, lighting a cigar, as the ponies 
 dashed down the street of Four Fountains. 
 
 " Good gn'acious, lo ! can you want to ask ? But Princess 
 Vera will know any artistic trash that takes her fancy, — rude 
 as she can be to every respectable person." 
 
 And she slashed Pippo across the ears again. She her- 
 self was among the respectable persons whom the Princess 
 Vera treated with a calm ignorance of their existence very 
 exasperating. 
 
 The ponies rattled up the steep siuiies to her house ; and 
 her husband, who was just then going in at the door, stopped, 
 aided loris to unload her furs, and hoped they had had a 
 pleasant day at Fiordelisa. 
 
 " Are you disposed to let Lady Norwich have your tur- 
 quoises?" asked Mr. Challoner, ten minutes later, following 
 his wife into the privacy of her own room. 
 
 ' Yes, she may have 'em. I only bought them to sell 
 again." 
 
 " I thought of saying two thousand francs ?" 
 
 " Yes ; that won't be bad. I gave eight hundred ; but then 
 the woman was hard up at Homburg, you remember, and glfid 
 to let 'em go cheap. I grudge 'em to that old cat. Mind, she 
 thinks we brought 'em from Persia, and had 'em polished in 
 Vienna." 
 
 " You'll never do better with them : I think it is a very 
 good price." 
 
 " Tolerable. And they don't suit me. Blue's for blondes. 
 Besides, they're nasty uncertain things : one never knows they 
 won't change color. What about the Urbino jar?" 
 
 " I got it. It is genuine. An incomparable bit. You 
 always make horrible mistakes, but you did not blunder there. 
 The fellow had no idea of the value of it. I bought it like a 
 common bit of kitchen pottery." " ' • 
 
 " Yes, I know : the man kept his sugar in it." 
 
 " By the way, old O'Gleunamaddy wants an antique altar- 
 screen." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 125 
 
 . " Very well. We haven't one ; but Mimo shall draw one, 
 and little Faello can carve it. It can be ready in twenty days. 
 O'Glen is a goose : he'd take anything." 
 
 " Yes. But people are not all geese that will go to visit him. 
 Remember that. You had best show him good things." 
 
 " Don't you preach. I know O'Glen as I do my alphabet. 
 He used to give me burnt-almonds when I was a baby. I say, 
 mind you go yourself about that little Pieta to that man in 
 Trastevere. lo was going, but I wouldn't let him ; he never 
 beats the people down ; and he talks some rubbish about the 
 man's wife being ill with the ague, — as if that had anything 
 to do with it ! That's just like lo. He bought a little plate 
 of Gubbio ware yesterday ; the woman that owned it asked 
 him fifteen francs, and he went and gave her seventy, — sev- 
 enty ! — just because the thing was worth it — so he said ; but 
 I believe it was only because she was crying about her land- 
 lord pressing for rent. That's just like lo : cry a little, r.nd 
 his hand goes in his pocket in a second." 
 
 Mr. Challoner smiled grimly. 
 
 His wife was very fond of airing her contempt for her 
 friend's weaknesses before him. Not that there was the 
 slightest occasion to do so. Mr. Challoner had left all rem- 
 nants of jealousy long buried in the delta of Orontes and 
 Euphrates, of Abana and Pharpar. And, besides, there was 
 such perfect confidence between his wife and himself that 
 there was never any need for explanations. 
 
 " I have boundless trust in her," he would say, austerely, 
 with injured dignity, if some old friend, too officious, ven- 
 tured to hint that Lady Joan was a little — a little — perhaps a 
 little too original. And, like all people who have boundless 
 trust, he would shut his eyes when bidden. 
 
 This kind of business-conference was a closer tie between 
 them than any the marriage-altar could forge, and at discus- 
 sions of this sort they were always good friends, finding each 
 other's views and principles often identical. Indeed, so sound 
 were his wife's ideas about business that Mr. Challoner could 
 use his pet phrase with perfect veracity when speaking of 
 her. 
 
 " You'll come to the Opera to-night ?" asked the Lady Joan 
 
 DOW. 
 
 "No— no." 
 
 11* 
 
126 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Oh, you'd better. The Norwiches will be there, and 
 that old cat Plinlimmon is coming with us. They'll all talk 
 if you don't." 
 
 " Very well," said Mr. Challoner : he was always resigned 
 to self-sacrifice for the public good. " You told them at Fior- 
 delisa that I should bring Lord Norwich up to shoot on 
 Monday?" 
 
 " Yes. Mind, though ; Norwich thinks we've bought the 
 place. You'd better make a party and take up a cold lunch- 
 eon. Echeance will go, and Plunkett, and Gualdro Males- 
 trina, and perhaps some of the attaches would if you asked 
 'em, though I hate all that Chancellerie lot, — stiff as pokers I 
 By the by, since we put up the trespass-boards all round, the 
 game's in much bettc order. lo protests, and says the people 
 will knife him for it some day, because they've always netted 
 the hares and birds as they wanted them ; but that's all rub- 
 bish, I think. Anyhow, they shan't get a head of game if 
 I can help it. There's such heaps of partridges ! I shall have 
 'em trapped for market when we've had the pick of the shoot- 
 ing. I wish you'd write to England about those pigs ; and 
 tell 'em to send out some pink kidney potatoes for planting : 
 the Plirly Emilys are the best. lo settled that bill for the 
 last, and never struck the wharf-duties ofiF it, though I told 
 him the shipper ought to pay them ; but he's always so care- 
 less about money. That's the door-bell, isn't it? — that horrid 
 Plinlimmon woman : she's got-up like a parrot, green and red 
 and yellow and blue, I dare say. What a nuisance it is to 
 have to do the polite I Go in and say all sorts of things to 
 her while I dress." 
 
 Mr. Challoner went in obedient and welcomed the Plin- 
 limmons, who were very rich people, who had made a vast 
 fortune by a new kind of candle, warranted never to melt or 
 to splutter, and fulfilling its warranty nobly. He apologized 
 for his wife's tardy appearance, and quite affected the Plin- 
 limmons, who were simple, sentimental folks, oppressed with 
 the extent of their own wealth and their own ignorance, by 
 the tender manner in which he regretted his wife's impru- 
 dence in being out so late in the cold, thereby endangering 
 her lungs and his happinevss — but she was so wilful, and so 
 fond of art, and so charitable — and she had been visiting a 
 poor painter, who had been laid up with fever, etc., etc., etc. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 127 
 
 From painters to painting is a natural transition, and led 
 naturally to the sight of some landscapes which were on sale 
 for a charity, and which the Plinlimmons fell in love with, 
 and begged might be sent to them at the Hotel ConstaTitia ; 
 and 80 the time was whiled away until the Lady Joan en- 
 tered, radiant in amber, and black lace, and Etruscan orna- 
 ments, and greeted her dearest Mrs. Plinlimmon with that 
 cordial and honest warmth which was her greatest attraction 
 to shy women and timid men. 
 
 Then there entered silently without announcement one whom 
 Mr. Challoner presented to the good Monmouthshire folks aloud 
 as " our valued friend the Prince loris," and, with a sotto voce 
 whisper, " A Spanish duke aj well as a Roman prince ; a god- 
 son of the Pope's." 
 
 And the valued friend bowed with a calm, ceremonious grace 
 not common in Monmouthshire, and said some courteous phrases 
 ia French, and then fell back and gazed at Mrs. Plinlimmon in 
 her gorgeous attire with grave amazement, and murmured to 
 himself, ^''Dio mio ! Dio mio /" 
 
 " You must be vory civil to 'em ; they're awfully rich, — 
 made pots of money by candles," whispered Lady Joan in his 
 ear as she bade him fasten her bracelet. 
 
 He had learned what people who were rich meant in the 
 Casa Challoner, and was silent. 
 
 He was ordered to give his arm to the Plinlimmon daughter, 
 who had red hair, and was dressed in green ; and he failed to 
 comprehend a word of her French, and wished those stupid, 
 ill-dressed islanders would not come to bore him, and felt 
 more tired all through the dinner than he had ever done in 
 all his life. 
 
 " How absent you are, lo 1" said Lady Joan, sharply, as the 
 Fiordelisa woodcocks went round. 
 
 " loris is thinking of Mademoiselle Etoile," said Mr. Chal- 
 loner, with a grim smile. " You have often heard of Mad- 
 emoiselle Etoile, no doubt, Mrs. Plinlimmon ?" 
 
 And they discussed Mademoiselle Etoile with asperity, as 
 became people at whose table she had dined six nights before. 
 
 loris sat silent, with a flush on his face. 
 
 Lady Joan looked at him from time to time with sus- 
 picion : it was not possible that he was really thinking about 
 anything but herself? 
 
128 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "What is the matter with you to-night?" she muttered, 
 rouglily, as she rose to go to the Opera. 
 
 loris shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Oh, ma chere ! when you weigh me to the earth with a 
 red-haired demoiselle, with teeth like a wild boar's and the 
 bones of a giantess !" 
 
 Lady Joan laughed and told him to hold his tongue ; they 
 were as rich as Croesus. Then, quite satisfied, she let him 
 fold her cashmeres about her and take her to the carriage. 
 
 A very vain woman is always so easily lulled into content- 
 ment. 
 
 She ridiculed every note of the " Persephone" all the way 
 through it, because it amused her to do so, and because she 
 hud begrudged the money he had spent in helping the boy- 
 composer of it. But loris, sitting in the shadow, scarcely 
 heard her. He was thinking of the sunset on the hill under 
 Rocca di Papa. 
 
 He was glad when the tedious evening drew to its close and 
 left him free. 
 
 Meantime the Plinlimmons went to their hotel, enchanted 
 with having met a live Italian prince, and such attention from 
 so charming a household, and when they should depart to be 
 in time for the assembling of Parliament (Plinlimmon being 
 member for a borough) would tell everybody that the Casa 
 Challoner was the most delightful house in Rome. To shy 
 people the Lady Joan's ardent cordiality was unspeakably 
 precious, and to ignorant people her extensive artistic allusions 
 were unspeakably imposing ; besides, she was really a Perth- 
 Douglas. To nervous persons who have made candles such a 
 union of rank and good nature as she presented was altogether 
 irresistible. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; they were chosen for us by a friend of ours, 
 Lady Joan Challoner: she'd just got the like for her own 
 cousin, the Countess of Hebrides," Mrs. Plinlimmon would 
 say before many objects of Italian art in her London reception- 
 rooms, and would feel happy and glorious in the possession 
 alike of high art and high acquaintances. Such general 
 felicity could a clever woman diffuse only by smiling and 
 selling a few trifles. 
 
 The Lady Joan was catholic in her sympathies in society, and 
 obeyed the mandate of Edward the Third to his ladye-love, — 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 129 
 
 , .. "Bid her be free and general as the sun, 
 
 Who emiles upon the basest weed that grows 
 As lovingly as on the fragrant rose." 
 
 For the Lady Joan never forgot that there are weeds by 
 which an attentive gatherer has before this discovered a veia 
 of gold in common soil, or found a fortune in a pool of borax. 
 
 She knew that after all it is Vinjiniment petit that it is 
 infinitely great. 
 
 A woman like Etoile will be blind to this. She will be 
 touched instantly by pain ; she will be moved to quick charity ; 
 she will be capable of strong deed and deep thought; she 
 will answer trust or appeal as a golden harp the player's touch ; 
 but the small thiogs of life will pass by her : what is antipa- 
 thetic to her she will offend by unconscious neglect, what is 
 distasteful to her she will turn hostile by careless disdain ; 
 she will go through the world doing good where she can, 
 cleaving to what seems to her to be truth, and seeking un- 
 wittingly only what responds to her own temperament; so 
 the world is set thick with foes for her, as the path of the 
 jungle with snakes. 
 
 Lady Joan was a proud woman in her own odd fashion, and 
 it hurt her pride bitterly sometimes to do so much homage to 
 the Infiniment Petit ; but she did do it, and she secured the 
 suffrages of all the little people who wanted to look great, 
 of aii the frogs who wanted to be bulls, of all the geese 
 who wanted to be swans, of all the ir^^e and enlightened 
 re])ublicans who flew to a title as a moth to a light, of all 
 the small gentilities who were nobodies in their own counties 
 at home, but abroad gave themselves airs, and had quite 
 fi number of figures to their bank balance, — in francs. 
 
 It hurt her pride sorely, yet she did it ; and, like everybody 
 who is wise in his own generation, she reaped her reward in kind. 
 
 When the Norwiches dined there on the next night, Lady 
 Joan was different in character. The Norwich people were 
 great, solemn, stupid, and of vast influence. He was a mar- 
 quis of long descent, she the daughter and sister of a duke ; 
 they were very fussy, very pompous, very proud. Lady Joan 
 dressed herself in rigid black velvet, and only wore a string 
 of pearls ; she was very quiet, looked classic and handsome, 
 talked of her child, showed only really good things, set loris at 
 the far end of the table, and spoke, if at all, distantly of 
 
130 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Fiordelisa as " a place we go to in the summer. Mr. Challoner 
 likes farminf^." 
 
 For the Norwiches, and such persons as the Norwiches gen- 
 erally, Lady Joan was as much of a gentlewoman as she could 
 be, — nervous a little, a little abrupt, too anxious for approval, 
 and too careful to conciliate, but otherwise quite irreproachable. 
 
 The Norwiches and such people as the Norwiches, going 
 home, would say, " That daughter of Archie's lives at Rome. 
 Oh, yes, we dined with them ; oh, yes, grown a very agreeable 
 woman, too, — quite quiet ; a good mother, and seems to agree 
 with that person she married very well. Oh, of course we 
 dined there. One must always stand up for a Perth-Douglas." 
 
 Now and then, indeed, — for no human mind is so godlike 
 that it can altogether foresee and prevent every accident, — the 
 Norwich people, or the people of whom Lord and Lady Nor- 
 wich were types, were startled by coming suddenly across Lady 
 Joan, without her bib and tucker, tete-d-tete with loris at some 
 marble table in a Paris cafe, or some greeu bench at an open- 
 air concert at Spa, when business had obliged her to travel, 
 and she had mingled business with pleasure : the real Lady 
 Joan without meeting-house clothes on ; the real Lady Joan 
 who was Cleopatra by moonlight up at Fiordelisa ; the real 
 Lady Joan who came home from masquerades at five in the 
 morning ; the real Lady Joan who sang and smoked, with a 
 dozen men about her, half the night ; and this real Lady Joan 
 would startle the Norwiches and other decorous personages a 
 little unpleasantly and give them a sudden sensation as of sea- 
 sickness. But she would whip on her bib and tucker very 
 lightly and quickly, and would explain, " I'm on my way to 
 join Mr. Challoner, and he don't like me to travel alone; so 
 he sent loris to meet me. lo only loses my money and gets 
 the wrong labels stuck on my boxes ; and of course I could 
 travel by myself from here to San Francisco, but Mr. Challoner 
 is always so fidgety." 
 
 So she V70uld adjust bib and tucker before the cafe mirror ; 
 and the Norwiches, or the type of persons they represented, 
 would be satisfied, and say to each other, " You see her 
 husband knows it ; there can't be anything in it," and so 
 would go and see her in the winter, though they had had 
 that awkward view of her eating her sorbet with the hand- 
 some Italian beside her, smoking his cigarette, — a situation 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 131 
 
 which would have ruined any woman of less resources and her 
 ready invention. But in truth the Lady Joan was Proteaa, 
 and slipped in and out of a dozen various skins as easily as a 
 lizard slips out of its tail. '«•« 
 
 " Why do the great ladies go to see our Prince's dama ?" 
 said many a good Roman matron of them all standing at one 
 of the fountains in the wall to gossip with her neighbors as 
 the carriages swept by to the Casa Challoner. 
 
 They did not understand it. 
 
 They were not aware of the golden rules of good society. 
 
 Paolotto, the baker, had a handsome wife, who betrayed 
 him for Franco, the Swiss Guard, with the fair curls, on duty 
 at the Pope's Palace yonder, and Paolotto's wife set out at 
 nightfall once too often ; and Paolotto, following, fell upon 
 fair Franco with a knife, and slew the Swiss ere he had time 
 to point his halberd. That they could understand. That was 
 Koman and righteous, — just as much so as if it had been the 
 other way, and it had been the Swiss who, by God's grace, 
 had killed the baker. Anything, so that it was man to man, 
 and good steel used about it. 
 
 But then they are barbarians still in old Trastevere. 
 
 If Paolotto had been trained in good society, he would have 
 only smiled on Franco of the yellow curls, and asked him to 
 speak fair some upper scullion, so as to get the Paolotto loaves 
 ordered and taken for the Vatican kitchen, and so have warmed 
 his oven if his heart were cold, and made his loaves of lighter 
 weight, having the Papal patronage and blessing. Poor Pao- 
 lotto drew his knife instead ; and, as he went through the 
 streets between the Guards to pay his penalty. Lady CardiflF, 
 who was passing by, looked at him and asked what he had 
 done, and, hearing, smiled and said, " Vengeance is out of 
 date, like flour, my poor fellow. We have ground bones, and 
 Friendship." 
 
132 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " It's lasted some years, but I don't think they can be very 
 well suited," said Lady Cardiff, watching through her eye- 
 glass the forma of loris and Mr. Challoner's wife pass away 
 Hown the vista of her numerous rooms, after a visit of cere- 
 TTiony on her day. " I don't think they can be very well 
 suited : he looks like Romance, and she like the Money 
 Market. The Eros he would choose would be a soft, tender 
 god of silence and shadow ; and hers is a noisy little Adver- 
 tising Agent, witii handbills and a paste-pot. Very bad form, 
 by the way, to afficher publicly like that." 
 
 Etoile, who had become somewhat intimate with this mer- 
 ciless speaker, and who had just then entered, reddened a 
 little. 
 
 " You dine often with her. Lady Cardiflf!" 
 
 " What a tragical tone of reproach ! No, my dear comtesse, 
 I don't dine there often. Far from it. I find it too expen- 
 sive to have to buy a pan or a platter, or some ugly magot or 
 other, every time after dinner : it would come cheaper at Spill- 
 man's. She amuses me, though. Clever woman ; knows how 
 to suit herself to her society, and never knows when she has 
 a rebuflf. How useful that is I" 
 
 " Surely she never suffers one?" said Etoile. " Every one 
 appears to like her." A sentiment of loyalty to her absent 
 old friend and to the woman whose hand she took in friend- 
 ship moved her to a defence with which her convictions did 
 not go. 
 
 Lady Cardiff smiled and dropped her eyeglass. 
 
 " Oh, of course people like her. She'll bore herself to 
 death. There's no more popular quality. Besides, she has 
 such a tower of strength in that excellent husband of hers. 
 Of all lay figures there is none on earth so useful as a wooden 
 husband. You should get a wooden husband, my dear, if you 
 want to be left in peace. It is like a comfortable slipper or 
 your dressing-gown after a ball. It is like springs to your 
 carriage. It is like a clever maid who never makes mistakes 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 133 
 
 with your notes or comes without coughing discreetly through 
 your dressing-room. It is like tea, cigarettes, postage-stamps, 
 foot-warmers, eiderdown counterpanes, — anything that smooths 
 life, in fact. Young women do not think enough of this. 
 An easy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of 
 life. He is like a set of sables to you. You may never want 
 to put them on ; still, if the north wind do blow, — and ono 
 can never tell, — how handy they are ! You pop into them 
 in a second, and no cold wind can find you out, ray dear. 
 Couldn't find you out, if your shift were in rags underneath I 
 Without your husband^ countenance, you hcve scenes. With 
 scenes, you have scandal. With scandal, you come to a suit. 
 With a suit, you most likely lose your settlements. And 
 without your settlements, where are you in sociej;y ? With a 
 husband like that wooden creature Mr. Challoncr, you are 
 safe. You need never think about him in any way. His 
 mere existence suflfices. He will always be at the bottom of 
 your table and at the head of your visiting-cards. That is 
 enough. He will represent Respectability for you, without 
 your being at the trouble to represent Respectability for your- 
 self Respectability is a thing of which the shadow is more 
 agreeable than the substance. Happily for us, society only 
 requires the shadow." 
 
 With which Lady Cardiff, wittiest of women by heritage, 
 as her grandmother had frightened Fox and almost awed 
 Sydney Smith, crossed the room and lighted a fresh cigar- 
 ette. 
 
 " And love," said Etoile, " where does that come in your 
 arrangements ?" 
 
 " Olives and sweetmeats, my love," said Lady Cardiff. " I 
 am talking of soup and fish and the roti, — and of the man 
 who pays for them. Young women don't think enough of 
 the roti. They fall in love with some handsome ass who 
 makes court to them after the style of French /euillelons, and 
 they believe life will be always moonlight and kisses. Once 
 married, he spends all their money, damns them a dozen times 
 a day, and keeps his smiles for other houses, while ten to one 
 he is as jealous as a Turk to boot. Moonlight and kisses are 
 excellent in their way, but they should come afterwards. They 
 are only olives and sweetmeats. You can't dine on them. 
 Those pretty trifles are for Paolo and Francesca, not for Mr. 
 
 12 
 
134 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and Mrs. Rimini. I am very immoral ? My dear comtesse, 
 I am only practical. An easy husband, who never asks ques- 
 tions or cares where your letters go, — ah ! you must have 
 been married to a Lord CardiflF, as I have been, to know the 
 blessing of that. With an easy husband you have all the 
 amusement of doing wrong and all the credit of doing right." 
 
 " In this case, indeed," she went on, " it is that poor loris 
 who pays for the roti as well as the bonbons, which is hardly 
 fair. But that does not matter a bit to Society : Society will 
 always go to dinner so long as the husband sits at the end of 
 the table. Disgraceful ? Oh, well, pbrhaps ; but if the hus- 
 band like it we have no business to say so. Of course Beli- 
 sarius knew Antonina once danced in nothing but a zone, and 
 had always Jiad a weakness for big biceps ; but if Belisarius 
 liked to make believe that Antonina was a piece of ice incar- 
 nated, Byzantium was bound to make believe so too, and to 
 know nothing about the zone and the bicepsi. You do not see 
 it? Of course not, because you are a great artist and do not 
 trouble your head to understand Society. You live on Olympus. 
 We are mere mortals." 
 
 " That is severe, Lady Cardiff." 
 
 " No, my dear. It must be a great thing to have Cloud- 
 land to resort to if Society turn one out of doors ; but to poor 
 ordinary humanity, that has no heaven beyond the card-basket, 
 Society has a weight that you people who are poets never can 
 be brought to convprehend. I believe that you really are all 
 happier if your card-basket is quite empty, because nobody 
 ever disturbs your dreams by ringing at your door-bell." 
 
 The Marchioness of Cardiff loved to call herself an old 
 woman. But she had kept three things of youth in her, — a 
 fair skin, a frank laugli, and a fresh heart. She was a woman 
 of the world to the tips of her fingers ; she had had a life of 
 storm and a life of pleasure ; she turned night into day ; she 
 thought no romances worth reading save Balzac's and Field- 
 ing's ; she did not mind how wicked you were if only you never 
 were dull. She was majestic and still handsome, and looked 
 like an empress when she put on her diamonds and sailed down 
 a salon. On the other hand, she would laug^i till she cried ; she 
 would do an enormity of good and always conceal it ; she hon- 
 ored unworldliness, when she saw it, though she regarded it as a 
 kind of magnificent dementia ) and, with all her sharpness of 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 135 
 
 sight, the veriest impostor that ever whined of his misery could 
 woo tears to her eyes and money from her purse. She always 
 wintered in Rome, and never lived with Lord Cardiff. Ho 
 and she were both people who were delightful to everybody 
 else, but not to each othor. She was a Tory of the old school 
 and a Legitimist of the first water ; she believed in Divine 
 right, and never could see why the Reform Bill had been 
 necessary. Nevertheless, Voltaire was her prophet, and Roche- 
 foucauld her breviary ; and though she saw no salvation out- 
 side the Almanack de Gofha, her quick wit almost drove her 
 at times near the wind of Demcoracy. Anomalies are always 
 amusing, and Lady Cardiff was one of the most amusing 
 women in Europe. 
 
 " Smoke. Why don't you smoke ?" she said to Etoile. 
 " You make me think of Talleyrand and whist. What a 
 miserable old age you prepare for yourself! You look grave, 
 ma chhre comtesse. What are you thinking about?" 
 
 " Pardon me. 1 was thinking of my friend Dorotea. She 
 is blameless, and the world is cruel to her. Yet in these 
 women you talk of the same world makes a jest of dishonor. 
 Why ? It is unjust and capricious." 
 
 " When was the world ever anything hut unjust and capri- 
 cious?" said Lady Cardiff. "Still, do you mean to tell me, 
 really honestly, sans phrases, that the Duchesse Santorin is 
 faithful to that brute and spendthrift?" 
 
 " Entirely faithful ; entirely blameless ; yes." 
 
 "Dear me!" 
 
 Lady Cardiff was so amazed that she walked the whole 
 length of the room and back again. It was late in the day, 
 and her visitors and courtiers had all departed ; she and EtoiJe 
 were alone. 
 
 " It is no use, you know," she said, at last ; " nobody'U 
 ever believe it." 
 
 " Dorotea's actions are not shaped by what people believe." 
 
 " Dear me !" said Lady Cardiff once more. 
 
 " When one gets among these kind of people one is all 
 adrift," she thought to herself. " They have such extraordi- 
 nary ideas." 
 
 " But there was great scandal about FMor Souroff. You 
 can't deny that," she said, aloud. 
 
 " Count Souroff has a great and loyal love for her, — yes. 
 
136 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 But he obeys her. He is in the Caucasus, trying to lose his 
 life, and failing, of course, as all do who wish to lose it." 
 
 " How very uncomfortable !" said Lady CardiflF. " Then 
 everybody was wrong, and she don't care for him ?'' 
 
 " That is a question I can have no right to reply to, I 
 think." 
 
 " You mean she does ? Then she'll call him back from 
 the Caucasus, my dear; and goodness knows why she sent 
 him there. You believe her and I believe you, but nobody 
 else would. Nobody /" 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Oh, nobody, nobody I You know everybody says the 
 worst they can now. They won't let her sing at court in 
 England this season." 
 
 "And yet " 
 
 " And yet our dear Lady Joan can go to court. Oh, yes ; 
 and Mrs. Henry V. Clams too, and ten hundred others like 
 them. You don't seem to understand. Your friend may 
 have Count SouroiF killed and buried in the Caucasus. It 
 won't make any difference. Society has made up its mind." 
 
 " And why? What has she done, except be innocent ?" 
 
 " Oh, dear, dear ! what has that to do with it?" said Lady 
 Cardiff, vexed as by the obtuseness of a little child to under- 
 stand the alphabet, and thinking to herself, " One can't tell 
 her it's because the woman is an artist: she's an artist 
 herself." 
 
 " It seems to me the main question," said Etoile, as she 
 rose and gathered up her furs. 
 
 " That is because you live in Cloud-land, as I tell you," 
 said Lady Cardiff. " Who cares what Joan Challoner is or 
 is not ? She has got a well-trained husband, and we have to 
 receive her, though we grin behind her back. Who cares 
 what your beautiful friend is or is not ? She has got a bad 
 name, and she will be hanged for it, like the poor proverbial 
 dog that had one. You seem to me, my dear Comtesse Etoile, 
 to take life far too terribly seriously. To your poetic temper 
 it is a vast romance, beautiful and terrible, like a tragedy of 
 iEschylus. You stand amidst it entranced, like a child by 
 the beauty and awe of a tempest. And all the while the 
 worldly-wise, to whom the tempest is only a matter of the 
 machineries of a theatre, — of painted clouds, electric lights, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 137 
 
 and sheets of copper, — the worldly-wise govern the storm as 
 they choose, and leave you in it defenceless and lonely as old 
 Lear. To put your heart into life is the most fatal of errors : 
 it is to give a hostage to your enemies whom you can only 
 ransom at the price of your ruin. But what is the use of 
 talking? To you, life will be always Alastor and Epipsy- 
 chidion, and to us, it will always be a Treatise on Whist. 
 That's all 1" 
 
 " A Treatise on Whist ! No ! It is something much worse. 
 It is a Book of the Bastile, with all entered as criminal in it 
 who cannot be bought oflf by bribe or intrigue, by a rogue's 
 stratagem or a courtesan's vice 1" 
 
 Lady CardiflF laughed, and wrapped the furs about her guest 
 with a kindly touch. 
 
 " The world is only a big Harpagon, and you and such as 
 you are Maitre Jacques. '• Puisque vous Vavez vouluP you 
 say, and call him frankly to his face, ' Avare, ladre, mlain^ 
 fesse-mathieu ^ and Harpagon answers you with a big stick 
 and cries, ' Apprenez d parler .'' Poor Maitre Jacques ! I 
 never read of him without thinking what a type he is of 
 Genius. No offence to you, my dear. He'd the wit to see 
 he would never be pardoned for telling the truth, and yet he 
 told it ! The perfect type of genius." 
 
 Etoile went home thoughtful, and with a vague sense of 
 trouble upon her. 
 
 She had taken as a residence part of an old palace, entered 
 from the Montecavallo, but with all its great windows looking 
 into the Rospigliosi gardens. The rooms were immense, 
 vaulted, noble in form and proportion, with frescoes that were 
 beautiful with the gorgeous fancies of some nameless artist 
 of the days of the Carracci. Here she installed herself for 
 the winter at her ease, and here she felt as if she had already 
 dwelt for twenty years. Of one great chamber, with deep em- 
 brasured casements, she made her favorite apartment, half 
 studio, half salon, and, filling the embrasures with palms, and 
 ferns, and flowers, and burning oak logs and dried rosemary 
 on the wide hearth, and getting about her the picturesque 
 litter of old bronzes and old brocades, of casts, and sketches, 
 and books, made tranquilly her home in Rome. 
 
 She missed the strong intellectual life that had surrounded 
 her in Paris, the keen and witty discussion, the versatile 
 
 12* 
 
138 ■ FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 talents, the brilliant paradoxes, the trenchant logic of that 
 section of the world by which she had been surrounded ; but 
 in return she felt a dreamy and charming repose, a sense of 
 peace and exhilaration both in one ; thought was lulled and 
 basked only in the immemorial treasures of the past ; strife 
 seemed far away, and the mere sense of physical life seemed 
 enough. 
 
 She regretted that she had not come unknown to all the 
 motley winter world that ever and again broke the charm of 
 this spell which falls on every artist and every poet entering 
 Kome. She thrust it away as often as she could, but she had 
 celebrity, and it had curiosity, and it buzzed about her and 
 would not be gainsaid. She would fain have shut herself 
 alone in her frescoed rooms when she was not among the mar- 
 bles of the Vatican or the Capitol, or beneath the ilexes of 
 Borghese and Pamfili. But it is not easy to escape from the 
 world of ordinary men and women, or to escape publicity, 
 when you have a public name ; and people were eager to visit 
 Etoile and say that they had seen her at home, with her olive 
 velvet skirts, and her old Flemish laces, and her background 
 of palms, and her great dog on her hearth, and on her easel 
 some sketch half covered with some relic of gold brocade. 
 
 " As they must come some time, let them all come together, 
 and not spoil the week," she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, 
 and named Sundays for her martyrdom. 
 
 " I will not come on Sundays," murmured loris, as he heard 
 her say it. 
 
 Etoile smiled. " Oh, yes, you will, — if your sovereign mis- 
 tress order you to accompany her." 
 
 "Flait-ilf' said loris, with a look of innocent uncon- 
 sciousness ; then added, in a low tone, " You are pleased to be 
 cruel." 
 
 The Casa Challoner itself received on a Wednesday, making 
 on that day a solemn religious sacrifice to the Bona Dea. It 
 was specially swept and garnished, morally as well as actually ; 
 the pipes and cigars were locked up, the too-suggestive statu- 
 ettes put out of sight, the good-looking slaves all banished ; 
 and little Efl5e, prettily dressed, was prominently petted by her 
 mother ; Mr. Challoner was as cordial and communicative as 
 nature would permit him to become, and Lady Joan was as 
 full of proper sentiments and domestic interests as if she were 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 139 
 
 a penny paper or a shilling periodical. In her bevy of Eng- 
 lish dowagers, American damsels, and Scotch cousins, amidst 
 the bsinkers' and consuls' and merchants' wives, the small gen- 
 tilities and the free-born republicans, Lady Joan was sublime: 
 she would have been worthy the buriu of Balzac and the 
 crowquill of Thackeray. 
 
 loris was usually banished from these Wednesdays, but 
 Lady Joan would generally speak of him once in five minutes. 
 " To's gone to get me some camellias," or " lo's gone to look 
 at some pictures." Or she would turn over the photograph 
 album before Mrs, Grundy and say, " Yes, that's lo : you met 
 him here last week. Handsome ? Well, we don't think him 
 quite that, but we're very fond of him, poor fellow." 
 
 And Mrs. Grundy would go away quite satisfied, and take 
 her daughter on the following Wednesday ; for Mrs. Grundy 
 will suppose anything rather than it were possible for anybody 
 to deceive herself. 
 
 " Showed me the man's likeness openly, her husband stand- 
 ing by, and the dear bishop," Mrs. Grundy would say, after- 
 wards. " Of course there's nothing in it, — nothing ! Do 
 you suppose she would show me his photograph if there were ? 
 It is the purest friendship, — the most perfect kindness." 
 
 All the bankers' and consuls' and merchants' wives, all the 
 small gentilities and the free-born republicans, who did not go 
 to the Sundays on Montecavallo, used to compare her admirable 
 Wednesdays, with the teapot and the small talk, to those in- 
 iquitous Sabbath-days. 
 
 " They say you can't see across the rooms for the smoke at 
 the Comtesse Etoile's ; there are all kinds of liqueurs ; anybody 
 plays and sings that likes. The Prince of Scheldt sung heaps 
 of cafi-chantant and guard-room songs last Sunday, and imi- 
 tated Teresa and then cats on the roofs — oh ! scandalous, 
 quite scandalous ! They say " 
 
 And, being shut out from the Sundays, they would go and 
 take the tea and muffins on a Wednesday, and feel what a 
 blessing it was to move only in irreproachable society. 
 
 " Yes, / don't go on the Sundays either ; at least, I go 
 very seldom," said Lady Joan, and let a shade of regret on 
 her frank face hint the rest. 
 
 "The Etoile Sundays are delightful," said Lady Cardiff, 
 who did go, and was reassured that she had done quite right 
 
140 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 in going by meeting Princess Vera in the doorway, and an- 
 other ambassadress a little farther on. " I like her very 
 much ; I like her immensel}'^ ; though she never does seem to 
 Bee that Somebody is Anybody, and was contemptuous, actu- 
 ally contemptuous^ to the Prince of Scheldt ; while she was 
 everything that was amiable to some horrid little snufiy crea- 
 ture, eighty years old, who happened to have all Beethoven 
 and Schumann at his fingers' ends. Yes, I like her. She 
 seems to look over one, through one, past one ; and that isn't 
 comfortable or complimentary ; but she pleases me. She isn't 
 a bit like anybody else. She makes me think of Sappho and 
 St. Dorothea. What are you laughing at, pray ?" 
 
 loris, despite his protest, did come now and then on the 
 Sundays, but he came alone and rarely. 
 
 To Etoile he said, " You have said I am a slave ; I will not 
 exhibit myself with my chains on to the merciless raillery of 
 your eyes, and — I do not care to come when others monopolize 
 you." 
 
 To Lady Joan he said, " Ah, ma ch^re, you know that 1 
 am afraid of ' celebrities.' Leave me in peace. I see her too 
 often as it is in your house for my tranquillity." 
 
 That was no lie ; but his hearer did not understand it in 
 its true sense, and was pleased and satisfied. 
 
 " lo won't go near her if you drag him with ropes," she 
 said to her watch-dog, Marjory Scrope. 
 
 The watch-dog, with a keener and sharper Jlaire, had 
 already smelt danger. 
 
 And once, twice, thrice the watch-dog, going to copy the 
 Rospigliosi Aurora, on an order of Lord Fingal's, saw a tall 
 and slender form that she knew pass the palace-gate of 
 Etoile in bright mornings at noontide. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 141 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " Bought it for ei<];ht hundred francs, and can sell it, my 
 dear madam, for a hundred thousand, honor bright !" the 
 O ' Glenn am addy, an Irish member of Parliament, was calling 
 out in hif.hest glee in the Lady Joan's morning-room. " Two 
 men scru'obin' the dirt off all day long, and two dozen sheets 
 of waddin' used already ; it's almost clane ; and it's a real 
 great picture 1 What school, madam ? Oh, it's not a picture 
 of a school at all : it's a ' Salutation to the Virgin,' madam, 
 twelve feet by twenty. Who by ? Ah, now, that I'm not 
 sure of, but it's a very old master. Cara — Cara — Caradog- 
 gia, I'll be thinkin'. Count Burletta says I'd get a hundred 
 thousand to-morrow for it aisy ; but I'll not be selling it. I'll 
 send it home to the ould place. It's a wonderful place, 
 madam, is Rome, for pickin' up treasures in the dirt, and I 
 cannot be grateful enough to ye for having put me in the way 
 of doin' it. With a little ready money, and a little knowledge, 
 it's wonderful what a fortune one may make. Not that I'm 
 wantin' one ; but when one has children there's never too 
 much broth in the old pot, — is there, now ? Only eight hun- 
 dred francs my picture ! — think o' that ! Say, countin' cleanin', 
 and the waddin', a thousand all told. And lyin' without a 
 purchaser ever since the conquest of Italy by Bonaparte ; and 
 such a mass of soot and dust, that if your good husband hadn't 
 pointed out the value of it to me I'd have taken it for a 
 chimney-board and nothin' better. Indeed I would. What 
 a thing it is to be clever ! And didn't ye say ye'd take me to 
 a new shop to-morrow mornin' that ye know of? — that is, I 
 mane, an old shop. I love an antique bronze, madam, better 
 than anythin' in the world, — mighty old, ye know, madam, 
 and green as grass, with plenty of pattern on it." 
 
 " You mean patina, said the Lady Joan, repressing a 
 smile. " Dear O'Glenn, of course I shall be only too de- 
 lighted to take you anywhere or serve you in any way ; and 
 about the picture I'm enchanted. Such a find as that don't 
 occur once in a dozen years; and if Mr. Challoner hadn't 
 
142 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 been so fond of you he would never have let you run off with 
 it. I'll come and see it to-morrow, and bring lo. And now you 
 must stop for luncheon. I've got some real Southdown thyme- 
 fed meat for you ; I sent over for the breed myself. They'd 
 such wretched, long-legged, iieshless beasts at Fiordelisa when 
 I went there first ! Now our mutton fetches far and away 
 the first price in the market ; indeed, Spillman buys it up 
 always." 
 
 " What a treasure of a woman ye are !" sighed the 
 O'Glennaniaddy. " Ye know everything, from antiquity to 
 mutton ! Quite amazin' ! Ah, sir, ye've drawn a prize indeed 
 in your marryin' ; and few prizes it is that there are 1" 
 
 Mr. Challoner bowed, — gratified. 
 
 The O'Glennamaddy could not stop for the mutton, being 
 very busy, and post-haste on his way back for the opening of 
 the Dublin season ; and the Lady Joan was not ill pleased 
 that he could not. The O'Grlennamaddy was a delightful 
 person, of a childlike faith and an elastic purse, but she had 
 had enough of him. Moreover, she expected Etoile to lunch- 
 eon, having organized a party to the Grrotto of Egeria, and she 
 would not have cared for her to hear of the Salutation of the 
 Virgin and the sheets of wadding. 
 
 She herself was in high spirits, having received a rather 
 chillily-worded invitation for herself and husband, and their 
 friend the Prince loris, to go up and breakfast with her 
 mighty cousins the Hebrides, who had just come to their big 
 villa outside by the Porta Pia. But she did not mind its 
 being chilly ; it would serve her purpose as well as if it were 
 warm. A single invitation to breakfast or dinner at the 
 Countess of Hebrides' always filled Mrs. Grundy's mouth 
 with sweetness and silence safely for the season. True, neither 
 the Earl nor the Countess of Hebrides liked her, and asked 
 her as little and as coldly as possible to their house. But 
 what of that ? 
 
 Lady Joan floated herself by means of her big relations as 
 swimmers in a storm by air-belts. Cousins very near to her 
 might come to study art in Rome ; but if they studied it in 
 humble dwellings, and had no taste or figure for Society, their 
 relationship was sternly rejected at the Casa Challoner. But 
 when cousins removed twice a hundred times, as Scotch 
 oousins can be, came with pretty handles to their names, and 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 143 
 
 cousins at the f^reat hotels, the hospitality of tho Casa Ohalloner 
 was truly Highland in its lavishness, and a series of excellent 
 dinner-parties proclaimed the new arrival and the near relation- 
 ship to the city. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the cordial good understanding of 
 Mr. Challoner and his wife at such times as these. They 
 walked together, drove together, never spoke without a smile, 
 and called each other " my love" and " my dear" with the 
 most excellent reciprocity. 
 
 The Countess of Hebrides, who had always wondered at 
 the odd marriage "Archie's daughter" had made, was obliged 
 to concede that the inhalUance had turned out better than 
 might have been feared, and that the husband seemed a good 
 creature ; and so let the good creature make purchases for her 
 in Etruscan jewelry, and Castellani necklaces, and Koman 
 antiquities, and modern Fortunys and Tito Contis. 
 
 The mighty Hebrides never stayed very long at a time ; 
 but these great people are like the sun, and leave a trail 
 of glory behind them long after they have passed out of sight. 
 
 The after-glow of them rested on the Casa Challoner and 
 gilded it like the Ark of the Covenant in the sight of all the 
 artists, and journalists, and bric-d-brac collectors, and trans- 
 atlantic wayfarers who made the sum of their daily society, 
 and who drifted perpetually in and out of their hospitable 
 chambers, and who in return defended everywhere the 
 Challoner reputation with as much ardor and perhaps as little 
 discretion as they defended a doubtful Guercino that they 
 wanted to sell, or an antique Pausanias of which everything was 
 modern except the right ear. 
 
 The Society of the Winter Cities is motley. There are 
 two parts to it, — the small fish that always live in the foreign 
 water, and the bigger fish that only float through it. The 
 fish that live in the water, who for the most part have mould 
 on their backs of some "story" or another, and cannot well 
 live in their own native streams, vie with each other for the 
 big fish that only come to tarry for a season, with all the glory 
 of diamond-bright scales upon them, and all their signet-marks 
 as monarchs of the deep. When a big fish arrives, the little 
 fish all rush to catch the shadow of his glory ; and there are 
 no bigger fish anywhere than these salmon from north of 
 Tweed with which the Lady Joan claimed kinship. 
 
144 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 And it was her mighty skill in catching the big fish that 
 kept herself in smooth waters. 
 
 Mrs. Macacrip, the banker's wife, whose father had driven a 
 wheelbarrow and wielded an auctioneer's hammer in New 
 York, would not quarrel with a woman who could ask her to 
 luncheon with that very great lady the Countess of Hebrides. 
 Mrs. Middleway, the evangelical pastor's better half, could 
 only eagerly return calls that brought her into the same cham- 
 bers with that really noble and Christian gentleman, Lord 
 Fingal ; and all the rest of the little people who were the 
 mouthpieces of that irresistible potentate Mrs. Grundy would 
 not be either cold or censorious on any one who could call 
 half the Peerage " my cousins." 
 
 Lady Joan pleased Mrs. Grundy, and most other women, 
 for many reasons. 
 
 First of all, she was indisputably a lady in her own right 
 and p Perth-Douglas ; and, besides, there was that floating im- 
 pression that she had something to hide, and something to 
 fear, which enabled them to feel above her level. Water may 
 like to find its own level, but women do not. Again, she took 
 extreme trouble to conciliate her own sex. She was morbidly 
 anxious about their estimate of her: her braggadocio oft^n 
 veiled a quaking pulse. For women she hung her Christmas- 
 tree with pretty trifles ; for women she bought tickets at 
 charity balls, and gave them lavishly away to large families of 
 marriageable daughters ; for women she gave her carefully cal- 
 culated dinners when a duke's eldest son or a rich unmarried 
 commoner was passing through Rome ; for women, indeed, 
 she would even go so far as to find among all her roha, a few 
 lengths of real old Venetian lace, or a genuine rococo locket, 
 and let some happy fair one go off" with it really at a bargain. 
 And all this study and self-sacrifice brought her in a rich 
 harvest. 
 
 For any harvest is rich to us that is the one of our desire ; 
 and the light of Lady Joan's eyes was her own face reflected 
 in a Louis Quinze mirror at some great banker's ball, and her 
 own name inscribed on the books of some hotel where some 
 royal princess was staying; her own Delft card-plate filled with 
 polished pasteboard, and her own little drawing-room packed 
 with persons who were Personages. 
 
 Throughout Society there is everywhere to be met with a 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 145 
 
 large clnss of woll-born people wh - want perpetual amusement 
 and cannot pay for it. They are Jie offijhoots of the nobilities 
 of nations ; the flowers that are next the rose ; the fringes of 
 the purples ; the crumb of the cake. They are nicely man- 
 nered, frothily educated, have tastes wider than their purses, 
 are utterly useless, and like to be amused from one year's end 
 to the other without its costing them greatly. They like to 
 use other people's carriages, to have other people's opera-boxes, 
 to dine out constantly, to get innumerable pleasantnesscis with- 
 out having their pride hurt by any approach to patronage ; 
 because they are gentlefolks, — always gentlefolks, — only they 
 like life to be a merry-go-round on other people's horses. 
 
 It is a large class, and a gay one, and an amiable one, and 
 a very grateful one, — so long as you are able to entertain it. 
 When the day comes that you cannot, do so, it will forget you : 
 that is all. 
 
 It will not be bitter about you : it has not mind enough 
 for that: it will only forget you. It is always enjoying 
 itself. 
 
 It is a class which abounds in all cities of pleasure ; and 
 its suffrages are to be bought. What pleases it it will praise ; 
 and these praises are like little puffs of south wind : they will 
 send up a monster balloon like a soap-bubble, if only there be 
 but enough of them. 
 
 The Lady Joan, who had been born among the purples, but 
 had been forced to live among its fringes, courted this num- 
 erous class, and succeeded with it. 
 
 " I took lo to my dear Hebrides ; they are so fond of him !" 
 she would be able to say for a twelvemonth ; so she thought to 
 herself now, receiving the Hebrides' invitation ; and in her 
 mind's eye she could see all the bankers' and consuls' and 
 merchants' wives, all the little gentilities, and all the freeborn 
 Americans, running about, and saying, with virtuous lips, 
 " She took him to the Hebrides' I How can there be anything 
 in it?" 
 
 And if ever Lady Joan blessed Providence she blessed it 
 fcr Scotch cousinship. 
 
 At this moment, however, she put aside both the great 
 
 Hebrides, and the Salutation to the Virgin, and arrayed 
 
 herself in the cliaracter she always wore for Voightel's friend. 
 
 ; She wore many characters, according to her spectators. For 
 
 Q 13 
 
146 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the great Scotch cousins she was a very happy and virtuous 
 wife, — ill placed, indeed, in a social position unworthy of her, 
 but with qualities that would have graced a duchess's coronet. 
 To the world in general she was a much-enduring and much- 
 forgiving martyr, — a sacrifice by her fumily to the golden calf, 
 and heroically pressing the knife of sacrifice meekly to her 
 bosom. To a chosen few she was an adventurous, devil-may- 
 care, high-spirited creature, who threw her cap over the mill 
 and didn't care who saw it in the air. To herself she was 
 a combination of fine mind and fearless nature, a sort of 
 Madame Tullien dashed with the virile vigor of a Lady of 
 Lathom. 
 
 But even tlie chosen few never saw her as she actually was, 
 and it may certainly be averred that she herself never diu. 
 She thought she had a will of iron, a brain of steel, a daunt- 
 less courage, and a matchless wit. She never dreamed that 
 she was alter all only a terrible coward at heart, disguised in 
 a fine swagger like Pistol's, having neither the force in her to 
 defy society nor the force in her to deny her passions. 
 
 At this moment she arrayed herself in the part that she 
 always thought most appropriate for receiving a person who 
 knew Voightel and lived in Paris, and did, her best to seem 
 to Etoile a clever, brilliant woman of the world, with honest 
 outspokenness of tongue and fearless utterances of advanced 
 thought, yet one that never affected to be altogether above the 
 mundane amusements of a pleasant society that adored her as 
 one of its leaders. 
 
 " So delighted to see you I so kind of you to come !" she 
 cried, with that cordiality of welcome which looked so real 
 when she did not upset it with a bit of rudeness or bad tem- 
 per. " You are always with Princess Vera, aren't you ? 
 How can you condescend to such small folks as we are? But 
 I'm charmed that you do. Will a feminine Velasquez like 
 yourself deign to help me in a most important question ? 
 Look here at all these old plates. lo's brought them for me 
 to pick out a costume for the Clams's fancy ball. What do 
 you say to this — or this ? They're all very stifi", but that 
 style rather suits me, I think, and I've lots of brocade doing 
 nothing. Don't you think this one, if it were made of ruby 
 velvet, and the stomacher sown with seed-pearls ? I bought 
 a lot the other day. And the ruff will be becoming. And 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 147 
 
 I've lieaps of old Venetian prints. lo says theflo plates aren't 
 correct. lie's some old family portrait he wants me to dres» 
 like. You know lie's such a fitinet about historical accuracy. 
 He made himself wretched the other niuht because my Louis 
 Treize costume had eighteenth-century buttons on it and lace 
 only fil'ty years old. lie said I was a dancinji^ anachronism. 
 Good gracious ! here he is, — come to luncheon, actually, — a 
 thing he never does. That's because 7/oj/'re here! My dear 
 lo, can't you throw your coat down without breaking those 
 tulips all to pieces?" 
 
 The fallen petals of the tulips made her eyes darken angrily. 
 Why did he come to luncheon when he was not ordered ? Of 
 course when ordered he hud to come, no matter how inconve- 
 nient to himself; but any sign of an independent will in him 
 was a glimpse of that cloven hoof of rebellion which she had 
 believed that she had crushed under forever. 
 
 When lie rebelled she always made him ridiculous. Before 
 he could speak, she tossed him the costume drawings. 
 
 " Here ; Comtesse Etoile has chosen this dress for me," she 
 called to him. " Take a pencil and write out what the stuflf 
 and all ought to be on the margin, and then Mariannina can 
 follow your notes. Have you been to the Palmiro sale ? I 
 hope to goodness you didn't let that Capo di Monte slip through 
 your fingers. Has Davis s agent got it? Oh, good heavens, 
 lo, what a fool you are ! I knew how it would be if I didn't 
 go myself! Mr. Challoner'll be furious. There'll be no peace 
 for a week. It's always so when you do anything alone." 
 
 "Jl/a c/«^re, the person from London " began loris. 
 
 But she never indulged him by hearing his explanations. 
 
 " Nonsense ! Of course Davis's agent got it if you weren't 
 quick enough. Don't talk rubbish. You know well enough 
 I'd told you to get it at any price, — any price. It will fetch 
 hundreds in Pall Mall. All the rest of the Palmiro things 
 were trash, but that was worth any money. But it's always 
 so when you go alone. Have you had those grapes and 
 woodcocks sent up to the Hebrides ? Did you send to Fior- 
 delisa for the camellias for to-night? And have you told 'em 
 to blister Pippo ? Oh, you'll be going to the stable to sit with 
 him. What do you think he did do?" she pursued, turning 
 ■ to Etoile. " When his old mare was blistered last summer he 
 stayed with her all day long, because he thought she felt the 
 
148 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 pain less if he stroked her ! I believe he'll want to give the 
 hares and foxes anaesthetics before we shoot 'em next ! There 
 he was all day long in the mare's stall, reading Giusti and 
 stroking her neck. He wore mourning when the old beast 
 died." 
 
 " Oh ! — carissima inia ! " 
 
 " Oh, you know you did, or you wanted to, if I hadn't lauglied 
 at you. Now, write those notes clear, so that Mariannina 
 can read 'em. Ruby velvet, and just a touch here and there 
 ot gold. I want to use up that lame (Voro we got in the 
 Ghetto. The stomacher isn't cut right ? Well, draw it the 
 shape it should be. Shall it bf sown with seed-pearls or 
 Turkish sequins ? Oh, pearls, I think. We bought all 
 those ropes of 'em the other day^ and I may as well wear *em 
 before " 
 
 " Before we sell them again," she was going to say, but in- 
 stead, as Etoile was there, substituted a less tell-tale phrase. 
 
 " Before I get sick of the sight of them, lying about in that 
 dish. One does get sick of pearls so soon. Now, diamonds 
 never pall on you. They seem always changing. When a 
 fairy sends me anything for my birthday, I wish she'd always 
 Bend me diamonds." 
 
 loris sighed. He knew what that meant. And diamonds 
 cost money, and he was not rich. He sketched the Venetian 
 costume obediently in silence. Lady Joan walked over to him 
 and rested one hand on his shoulder, and with the other 
 stroked back the dark hair of his head as it was bent over 
 the drawing. 
 
 All the while she looked at Etoile furtively, as though by 
 the action she would say, " Take care what you do. This is 
 
 mine." 
 
 loris moved under her touch a little petulantly. He went 
 on drawing without response. 
 
 Etoile looked at him through dreaming eyes : that delicate 
 aquiline profile against the high crimson lights of the wall- 
 hangings had a fascination for her as for all artists. For the 
 moment she felt a sense of disgust to see those strong, firm, 
 sinewy hands clasped on his shoulder like a hand that holds, 
 and holds forever. She rose and turned from the sight, and 
 went to a little Albano hanging near. 
 
 loria threw his pencil away broken. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 149 
 
 " It is of no use drawing on that wretched paper," he said, 
 displacing the hand that was on his shoulder by a quick and, 
 as it seemed, accidental manoeuvre. " I will send you the 
 costume later. It will be much easier to copy at once that 
 Venetian portrait I told you of; you shall have it by to-mor- 
 row morning." 
 
 '* Luncheon is ready," said the Lady Joan, curtly, and she 
 went in without ceremony to her dining-room, where she 
 scolded her little girl for having put on silk when she ought 
 to have put on merino, and did a battle-royal with her hus- 
 band about the disputed frock. Of course she did not care a 
 rush about the frock, but the fierce disputation did her good. 
 The child was brought up on very simple principles. What 
 her father ordered her mother forbade, and what her mother 
 commanded her father refused. The child had quickly learned 
 how to get all she wanted by the mere process of pitting them 
 one against the other. 
 
 " Mamma will let me have it, because papa can't bear me 
 to," she would say to her little companions, with questionable 
 grammar but the unquestionable principles proper to a young 
 daughter of a house whose foundation-stone was the Triangle 
 of Dumas. 
 
 All through luncheon Lady Joan descanted on the extrav- 
 agance of the offending frock, and the injury done to her by 
 the loss of the Capo di jNIonte to Davis. 
 
 She was a woman whose passions, like the fires in Vesuvius, 
 threw up much smoke and many stones. 
 
 loris talked of literature and art, ate only a few of his own 
 grapes, and for once disregarded his hostess. 
 
 Mr. Challoner, who always listened and watched impassive 
 as Fate and as immutable, commenting on all things, and in- 
 terfering in none, like the Chorus to a Greek play, — Mr. 
 Challoner thought to himself that his own vengeance was 
 dawning. 
 
 But after all Mr. Challoner was a man of the world. Things 
 were better for him as they were. Peace is a calmer thing 
 than revenge, — especially when peace means that some one else 
 is worried instead of yourself, and revenge means that you will 
 be left all alone to bear the beating of the storm. 
 
 Mr. Challoner, as a student of human nature and a mere 
 mortal man, could not but enjoy the prcvis'on that loria was 
 
 13* 
 
150 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 drifting unconsciously away into love elsewhere. But Mr. Chal- 
 loner, as a marl complaisant and a philosopher, knew that 
 this drifting away would be a fatal blow to his own rest and 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Solomon thought a dinner of herbs with quietness better 
 than a stalled ox and contention ; but modern men and women, 
 who have no fancy for herbs in these days, unless mixed with 
 sherry and soles by an excellent cook, contrive by these tacit 
 and amicable arrangements to obtain both the ox and the 
 quietness. 
 
 Compromise is the note of the present century and the 
 choi e. of all wise men. Arbitration instead of arms ; dam- 
 ages instead of vengeance ; give-and-take instead of cut-and- 
 thrust ; universal doubt and polite suspicion instead of frank 
 faith or stout denial. Compromise everywhere, caretaking, 
 timorous, shrewd, dubious, apprehensive, wise; compromise 
 is the supreme art of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Mr. Challoner and his wife studied this great theory to 
 perfection ; and it was only because they, like the greatest of 
 mortals, were human that they sometimes forgot its rule so far 
 as to quarrel about their shares of a picture's profits or fling 
 their respective secrets at each other's head. This was very 
 seldom ; and, besides, what did it matter ? It was only when 
 nobody else was there. 
 
 " You think me very insincere ?" murmured loris tu Etoile, 
 a quarter of an hour later. 
 
 " Insincere ? What have I said ?" 
 
 " In words nothing. Your eyes say it." 
 
 " My eyes are very ill-bred, then." 
 
 "Nay, tell me the truth." 
 
 " Well, I should think you were very frank by nature, but 
 are somewhat false from habit." 
 
 " And what makes you suppose that ?" 
 
 " How can I tell ? Artists, you see, are like dogs : they go 
 by instinct, and draw deductions without being aware of it. 
 We are unreasonable animals, not fit for drawing-room >."* 
 
 " But what should make you imagine me insincere ?" 
 
 She laughed at his persistency. 
 
 "Well, do you not always call your friend ^ma chlre^ when 
 I only am with you both, and most ceremoniously ' Madame* 
 when other people are by ?" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 151 
 
 " Oh, that is only friendship. You must not infer more 
 than they mean from such little slips of the tongue." 
 
 " I infer just what they do mean, — no more." 
 
 loris smiled. A man cannot help smiling when one woman 
 talks to him of his position with another. It is not vanity : 
 it is recollection and anticipation combined. 
 
 " You are very mischievous, madame," he answered, airily. 
 " Perhaps one does learn to lie in the world. Society has 
 made falsehood its axle-tree, and cannot well turn round with- 
 out it. But I do not think I ever should lie to you." 
 
 " Why ? What is there about me ? I am not like your old 
 stone Bocca della Verita, to bite the hand off all false speakers. 
 
 " No, you are something much better," he said, abruptly. 
 " You are one of those women who shame men into truth." 
 
 His eyes dwelt on her with earnestness, with warmth, with 
 a passing sadness. He touched her hand with that hesitating 
 timidity which in him was as successful with women as au- 
 dacity. His fingers closed on heis one moment with a sort of 
 supplication in the gentleness of the action. 
 
 They were standing in the anteroom of the Casa Challoner. 
 Lady Joan came through the Oriental curtain dividing the 
 rooms, and saw. 
 
 Her brows contracted, but she gave no other sign of anger. 
 
 "Are you people ready?" she cried, in her cordial and 
 ringing voice ; she had planned a drive to show her guest the 
 Caffarella, " My dear comtesse, have you got enough on ? 
 You know it grows awfully cold at twilight. I was afraid Mr. 
 Challoner would insist on our having his company ; but the 
 dear Dean has carried him off to the English schools. Heaven 
 be praised for all its small mercies ! You'd never forget it if 
 you heard him prose about Numa. * Numa never existed at all.' 
 Well, settle it so and have done with it, I say. But not a bit 
 of it : he'll preach on for three hours and a half to prove 
 that Numa was moonshine. As if anybody could prove a 
 negation ! Call for Eccelino. We'll take him up at the 
 Circle, I promised him ; and the other men rode on before. 
 Take heaps of cigars, lo. How could you lose that Capo di 
 Monte to-day ? It makes me so savage. You are like a baby 
 in some things. I do believe if it wasn't for me you'd be 
 ruined to-morrow, and have to sit on the Spanish Steps to get 
 halfpence. Let's be off, or we shall have all the daylight gone." 
 
152 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 And Lady Joan sliowed herself solicitous as she got into 
 the carriage that her guest should be protected by scarfs and 
 furs against the hard wind blowing from the Apennines, with 
 all the frank and pleasant cordiality that a wise woman displays 
 when she has a grudge to pay off — by and by. 
 
 Lady Joan laughed and talked her brightest as they rolled 
 along ; and when she chose she could be very agreeable in a cheer- 
 iiil and offhand fashion, which won her much admiration among 
 that large proportion of society which thinks good spirits a 
 pretty compliment to itself She had seen a great deal of 
 men and manners ; she had seen most cities and some few 
 courts ; she read human nature well, though narrowly ; she 
 could tell a tale with point and humor, especially when it had 
 in it a flavor of broad mirth. Within herself she was deeply 
 incensed at what she had seen and heard. But then, she 
 reasoned, lo could only have been making game of that stuck- 
 up adventuress : he disliked Etoile ; he had always said so. 
 So she was very amiable to Etoile as they drove to the Grotto 
 of Egeria, and did not chastise her lover more severely than by 
 bestowing all her smiles on Eccelino di Sestri, a good-looking 
 courtier, who had adored herself dans le temps. 
 
 " lo's my friend, of course, just as Eccelino is," she would 
 say, in her most candid manner. It was a distinguishing fea- 
 ture of Lady Joan's administrative capabilities that she could 
 keep men together without their quarrelling about her. Per- 
 haps the reason was that she let each of them think that she 
 cheated for him all the others ; or perhaps the reason was that 
 the love she inspired was not of the strongest kind. 
 
 The carriage went out by the Albano road, under the leaf- 
 lesc elm-trees, to the silent places where Egeria's altar lies 
 fallen under the green pall of the ivy and the wild water-fed 
 moss. 
 
 The sun was still high, the sky cloudless, and the north 
 wind dropped as they entered the valley of the Almo. 
 
 " No doubt that unhappy Numa, if he ever did exist, must 
 have been awfully bullied by his wife ; I should think she 
 was a scold ; and the length of her tongue made him adoro 
 the Muse of Silence as much as I do when Mr. Challoncr 
 vouchsaf(>s one of his historical orations," said Lady Joan, with 
 her bright laugh, as she got out of her carriage, sauntered 
 down into the dell, lighted her cigar, and pitched stones at the 
 
FRIENDSHIP. . 153 
 
 fallen statue that lies like a dead thing beneath the arching 
 rock. 
 
 " All lovers adore that Muse. Numa was only like all of 
 us there," said the Count di Sestri. 
 
 " Do they ? I don't know anything about lovers ; I only 
 care for friends," laughed the Lady Joan, with her cigarette 
 in her white teeth. She, for her own part, did not adore 
 Silence at any time, and in her own heart considered that it 
 was of no use being made love to at all unless you could pub- 
 lish the triumph of it right and left to your society. She 
 liked to fasten her lover to her skirts as she pinned a signal- 
 ribbon to her domino at the Veglione. She was not a woman 
 to let her llonieo go from her when the lark sang ; on the 
 contrary, she liked all the cocks in the neighborhood to crow 
 their shrillest and call attention to him on her balcony ; though, 
 of course, she would say to the cocks, like the cat in the Am- 
 maux Parlants, " Je suis une chatte anglaise et je n'ai point 
 d'amants 1" None of the animals believed the cat, certainly. 
 Still, in its way the cry was useful. 
 
 loris went forward and gathered a sprig of broom and a 
 few sprays of maidenhair fern, and gave them to Etoile. 
 
 " Juvenal would be satisfied, I suppose. He hated the 
 costly marbles and the artificial ornamentation ; there is little 
 enough left of them now. I am sure you, too, like it best 
 as it is?" 
 
 " Yes, the bubbling brook sings the fittest song for'Egeria 
 and poor Tatia too, who must have been so jealous of her ; I 
 am sure she never cared for all her mortal rivals in the new 
 city on the hills there, but Egeria must have made her heart 
 ache ; Egeria, who came on the wings of the wind as she did 
 herself, and came into her own temple to take his very soul 
 awp.y " 
 
 " Have you ever loved any one, I wonder?" thought the 
 Lady Joan, turning and looking at her with a sudden 
 thought. 
 
 " Egeria also forgave even disloyalty," saiS loris, aloud. 
 " No infidelity changed her. She was faithful to him through 
 death and after it." 
 
 Etoile smiled. 
 
 " Which is only to say I should think that the nymph was 
 a woman afler all." 
 
 a* 
 
154 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " How little you know of women !" 
 
 " Don't turn cynicj lo," cried Lady Joan, flinging her 
 cigar-end at the mutilated statue. " It won't suit you at all. 
 You are naturally a cross between Faust and the young man 
 in the Peau de Chagrin ; between Romeo and Reuben, un- 
 stable as water, etc., — you know what I mean. You are as 
 credulous as a seal and as soft-hearted as a dog ; cynicism is 
 for men who drink brandy, beat their wives, wear long beards, 
 and never wash their hands. Nature made yoit, " 
 
 But he lost this definition of his character, as he had wan- 
 dered away after Etoile, who had gone farther down to where 
 the little stream bubbled up among the mosses that had once 
 been Numa's bed. 
 
 Lady Joan glanced after them, and lit a new cigarette. She 
 knew passion and all its ways too well not to know the mean- 
 ing of that silent unconscious irresistible magnetism which 
 draws two unfamiliar lives one to another in the indefinable 
 physical attraction which is the birth of love. But her 
 natural quickness of intelligence was obscured by her over- 
 weening vanity. 
 
 " He is only fooling her," she thought, with indifference 
 and amusement. " After all, if he like to do that, let him." 
 
 If another woman were made to love her lover hopelessly, 
 that would be only so much additional entertainment for her- 
 self She was so sure of him, — as sure as she was of the ring 
 on her hand, that would stay there forever unless she threw it 
 aside. 
 
 " loris seems to admire that new-comer," said the Count 
 Eccelino. 
 
 " Oh, dear, no, he doesn't," said Lady Joan, coolly. " He 
 rather dislikes her, — thinks her insolent and Ute montie. 
 But I've told him to be agreeable to her. She is a great 
 favorite of Voightel's. You know dear old Voightel, the 
 cleverest man in all Europe. We were so fond of him long 
 ago at Damascus." 
 
 Of course he was only fooling Etoile, she said to herself, 
 glancing, as she laughed with the other men about her, at 
 the two figures that had strayed away side by side under the 
 shadows of the trees along the stream towards the ruins that 
 tradition allies with the memory of Volumnia and Virgilia, 
 and with the great cry from the breaking heart of the hero,— 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 155 
 
 " I melt, and am not 
 Of stronger earth than others." 
 
 Of course he was only fooling Etoile ; he disliked her, so 
 he had said a score of times ; nevertheless that solitary walk 
 displeased her, 
 
 " Who is she ? I haven't an idea," she said, roughly, to 
 another question of Eccelino di Sestri's. "Of course she's 
 known all the world over, for that matter, by name ; but as 
 to where she came from, I should be very sorry to have to 
 answer for that. These kind of people always drop down 
 from the moon, ot say they do, to demonstrate that they 
 didn't jump up from the gutter." 
 
 " But she is a Countess d'Avesnes ? " 
 
 " Yes. That's her name, or she says it is. It sounds very 
 aristocratic ; but I don't much believe myself in aristocracy that 
 has no relations, and travels about with a big dog, and has the 
 knowledge of Manon Lescaut, with the innocent airs of Una. 
 Men like that sort of thing ; they believe in naked feet 
 walking over hot ploughshares without a burn. We don't. 
 We're more consistent. We don't look for daisies on dung- 
 heaps. It's rubbish , you know. After all, think what that 
 woman has seen ! I don't say there's any real harm in her, — 
 Voightel would not have sent her to me if there had been, of 
 course, — but it's perfectly ridiculous to suppose that she has 
 the white-paper past that she pretends to have. She's very 
 clever, that everybody knows ; and a very clever woman can't 
 be a very innocent one, — when she's an artist, I mean." 
 
 The Lady Joan concluded with a puff of smoke up into 
 the traceries of the ash-boughs overhead, for she remembered 
 that she always pictured herself to her world as combining in 
 her own person the two excellences which she had just declared 
 to be incapable of co-existence. 
 
 " Calomnicz, calommez .'" said Voltaire ; " calomniez tou- 
 Jours : quelque chose resteray 
 
 So the Lady Joan was of opinion that if you only lie ever- 
 lastingly something of it all will always be believed somewhere. 
 
 If you are only well beforehand with your falsehood, all will 
 go upon velvet ; nobody ever listens to a rectification. " Is it 
 possible ?" everybody cries, with eager zest ; but when they 
 have only to say, " Oh wasn't it so ?" nobody feels any partic- 
 ular interest. It is the first statement that has the swing and 
 
15G FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the success ; as for explanation or retractation, — pooh ! — who 
 cares to be bored ? 
 
 She knew very well that what she said was not true. But 
 Lady Joan knew also that a little fiction always came in 
 handy. 
 
 Besides, when loris had wandered away without permission 
 along the bend of the water, it was only human nature to 
 fling a stone after his companion. 
 
 Moreover, she was really incredulous that any one with 
 such opportunities for amusement as Etoile had possessed could 
 have been idiot enough to have led as quiet a life as a rosebush 
 in a nun's lattice window. 
 
 Men might believe it. But she was not to be taken in by 
 any such nonsense. 
 
 Fame to a woman is like the tunica incendialis of the Latin 
 martyrs, and it is never the fault of other women like the 
 Lady Joan if the torches of slander do not set it ablaze till 
 the sulphur flames burn up the life within. 
 
 She smiled her sunniest and kindliest, however, when the 
 truants returned from the temple of Fortuna Mutabilis, as the 
 first shadow of sunset fell over the grass. 
 
 " My dear, are you not afraid of the cold ?" she said affec- 
 tionately to Etoile. " We must be moving, I fear, and leave 
 the ghost of Egeria to salute the moon all alone. You must 
 come back to dinner with us. Oh, yes, you must! I wish you 
 would go to the masquerade with me ; but you care so little for 
 those things. You don't get half out of life that you might, 
 believe me. However, I suppose in return for all you lose 
 primroses talk to you, and stones have voices, and all that kind 
 of thing. I've more of the Peter Bell in me. Give me my 
 furs, lo ; and call up the carriage. Oh, of course she'll come 
 to dinner : I won't take any refusal. Mr. Challoner will dis- 
 course of nothing but Numa, unless we're strong enough in 
 number to take him down. Of all the cants, I do think that 
 new cant of proving that nothing ever was, and that nobody 
 ever lived, is the very worst bore that sceptical education has 
 developed. Five o'clock 1 Tell them to drive fast, i shall 
 take you home to dinner too, Eccelino ; and I'll give you the 
 cotillon to-morrow night if you're good at the Macscrips'." 
 
 Count Eccelino bowed his ceremonious thanks with an air 
 of ardent gratitude. But he was too used to receive favors of 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 157 
 
 this sort whenever his friend was out of favor to be much 
 flattered by them actually. As a punishment tlicy were also 
 lost upon loris, who, as they drove homeward, was silent, 
 letting his dark eyes brood softly upon the face of Etoile, so 
 that whenever she looked up she met their gaze in the pensive 
 Koman twilight. 
 
 She persisted in not dining with them that night, and went 
 to her own room and sat and dreamed, with her head on her 
 hands over a fire of oak and pine. 
 
 " That man is not happy," she thought again and again ; 
 and she seemed always to feel that tender hesitating touch of 
 his fingers, always to see those eloquent and wistful eyes in 
 the evening shadows. 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Joan went home and dined, and then 
 " mystified" herself in loup and domino for that first Vegliono 
 of the year. 
 
 She had a passion for masquerades. No scrutiny of mari- 
 tal wrath drew her to heed the secrecy of that most dingy and 
 prosaic of all Venusbergs, — a haignoir au troisieme. No weak 
 objections on the part of her lord to any pastimes of friendship 
 drove her, as they drive some ill-used wives, to require the 
 shelter of one of those little close-curtained cloth-hung closets, 
 where the poor god of love is huddled up in a black sacque 
 and his rosy mouth soiled with champagne-cup. She could 
 go home with her escort at four or five in the morning, and use 
 her latch-key, and Mr. Challouer, like a sensible sleeper, only 
 turned cosily in his bed at the back of the house, and, if he 
 woke at all at the sound of his hall-door's unclosing, only 
 thought what a fool the other man was to have danced attend- 
 ance through all those hours in the noise and the heat of that 
 dingy festival. 
 
 Lady Joan had no need of masquerades. With her latch- 
 key in her pocket, and her friend's cab at her command, she 
 could come and go, alone or accompanied, in that happy free- 
 dom which is the privilege of a perfect conjugal comprehension. 
 The cabman knew much more about her than Mr. Challoner. 
 
 But, though she had no need of them, her soul adored the 
 Veglione. That danse Macabre was the delight of her heart, 
 as the Brumalia of the Roman matron's. 
 
 To myst4fy herself, or think she did so ; to laugh louder 
 than with due regard to Society she ever could elsewhere ; to 
 
 14 
 
158 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 throw a stone and grin undiscovered and pass on ; to fasten 
 Btraugers with her shining eyes, and jeer at them, and leave 
 them ; to torment her friends and torture her foes, and sup 
 and smoke and go home in the daybreak, when the masks 
 were all reeling up the streets and the Carnival songs were 
 greeting the sunrise, — that was pleasure to the Lady Joan. 
 
 It requited her for a hundred dismal clerical luncheons off 
 cold lamb and lettuce, with chaplains and consuls ; it fortified 
 her against a thousand big dinners with her tongue tied, and 
 her " dear Robert" at the bottom of the table. 
 
 loris sighed this evening as he fastened her mask behind 
 her ears and went down with her into the dingy whirlpool. 
 He was so tired of it all. 
 
 The thin disguises, the stupid jokes, the commonplace in- 
 trigues, the coarse pretence of deceiving and of being de- 
 ceived, the noise, the uproar, the shrill cries, the headlong 
 dances, — they had grown so tiresome. He had laughed his 
 lightest and waltzed his wildest in other years ; but he was 
 tired of it all — very tired — now as he walked about among 
 the screaming crowd, and exchanged the vapid phrases of 
 custom, with dominoes that were as well known to him as 
 though he had met them in broad day, and heard the resonant 
 voice of his empress ring loud above the music in merciless 
 speech and worn-out jibes, and lighted her cigarettes, and car- 
 ried her fan, and got her claret-cup, and thought how long 
 the night was, — the boisterous, empty, joyless, senseless night, 
 through which, all the while, he had to laugh and be ready 
 with answer, and look amused, and turn an airy compliment, 
 and join in all the mirth, and never show a yawn, but wait on 
 duty till the kindly sun should rise, and so release him. 
 
 What weariness will men endure if only it be not in the 
 name of virtue ! 
 
 " A fine long night, Excellence !" said the cabman, with a 
 radiant smile, as loris paid him while the bells of the first 
 mass rung in the dawn. 
 
 " A terrible long night," thought his employer, looking up 
 at the blue morning skies. 
 
 The cabman, who, had he ever been cross-questioned by 
 Society, could have rendered the clerical cold lamb forever a 
 Passover of the past to the Casa Challoner, drove away joy- 
 ous to get his breakfast and gamble in the sun. Ions went 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 159 
 
 up-staira and shut the sun out, and threw hunself on his 
 bed. 
 
 " Good God ! once I thought this, pleasure 1" he murmured, 
 as his lieavy eyelids fell. 
 
 So had he thought this, love. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " CHi:RE CoMTESSE Etoile, pardon me, but you sow the 
 earth with dragons' teeth !" said Lady Cardiff one afternoon, 
 about four o'clock, on the Pincio. " You cannot want en- 
 emies ; you really cannot want them, — you must have so 
 many ! I don't wish to be rude, you know, but you must. 
 Whoever shines, etc. Why will you make so many unneces- 
 sary ones ? Do tell me." 
 
 *' What have I done ?" said Etoile, with amazement and a 
 little absently. She was thinking of things that loris had 
 said the night before in the Palazzo Farnese, where there had 
 been an early reception. 
 
 " Done?" echoed Lady Cardiff. "Why, you have cut our 
 beloved Mrs. Henry V. Clams dead! Unconsciously, I dare 
 say, but still dead. You looked at her as you did it ; you 
 did really. I must say so if they ask me." 
 
 " I did not see her," said Etoile. " Not that I should be 
 unwilling to commit the crime consciously, if you mean that." 
 
 " Good gracious ! Has she offended you ?" 
 
 " Not in the least ; but why should I know her ? She is far 
 less educated than my maid, and very many times more vulgar." 
 
 " Of course ; but still why ?" 
 
 " With a vulgarity more blatant for the fine clothes it is 
 dressed in ; a vulgarity that is not even redeemed by mere 
 decency." 
 
 Lady Cardiff shifted her sunshade. 
 
 " Terribly strongly you put things ; of course they sound 
 horrible when you put them like that. But everybody knows 
 her. It's a way we've got into nowadays. Why don't you 
 write a comedy like T Etranglre or the Famille Benoiton, 
 and put all that into it ? We should applaud it on the stage j 
 
160 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 but it only sounds uncomfortable off; — you don't mind my 
 sayinj^ wliut I think ?" 
 
 " Pray always say what you think. Would you continue 
 to know Mrs. Henry V. Clums if her husband were ruined to- 
 morrow ?" 
 
 " Goodness me ! of course not ; and she would never expect 
 it, — never. She does know her place. There is nothing like 
 a free and independent citizen for taking slights good-tem- 
 peredly. I never knew how much kicking a human being 
 would stand until I knew these born-democrats. One didn't 
 know them twenty years ago. I don't know why we didn't. 
 They hadn't struck oil, I suppose, and made it worth our 
 while ; or Worth hadn't dressed them, and they were still mere 
 natural tar and feathers. Somehow we didn't know them. 
 Perhaps they hadn't come over to * Europe.' Know her if she 
 were ruined ? The idea ! You might as well ask would Fonte- 
 brauda continue to filer le parfait amour.^^ 
 
 " Poor woman !" said Etoile. 
 
 " You needn't pity her, my dear. You may be quite sure 
 she knows quite well the terms on which she has my visits 
 and his devotion. If all the ' red cents' went to-morrow, I 
 dare say she'd go back across the water and ' keep a bar' 
 very happily. The days of strong objections and strong emo- 
 tions are alike over, believe me. As for you, you are exactly 
 like Molit^re's Misanthrope ; I shall call you Alceste : 
 
 * Eire franc et sincere est mon plus grand talent, 
 Je ne sais point jouer les hommea en parlant, 
 Et qui n'a pas le don de cacher oe qu'il pense, 
 Doit faire en ce pays fort peu do residence.* 
 
 Dear mel why will people go on writing? As if Moli^re 
 and Fielding between them hadn't said all that there is to be 
 said better than any one else ever can say it I By the by, 
 why wouldn't you go to the Echeance ball ?" 
 
 " I dislike balls." 
 
 " Very well ; if you dislike dancing don't dance ; though 
 if a woman don't, you know, they always think she has got a 
 short leg, or a cork leg, or something or other that's dreadful. 
 But why not show yourself at them ? At least show yourself. 
 One goes to balls as one goes to church. It's a social muster, 
 and not to be there looks odd. I wish you had gone. Our 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 161 
 
 dear Joan was in ^reat force there ; her lo behind her chair 
 at supper, and she scndini^ him about here, there, and every- 
 where to do tliis, that, and the other. ' lo, hand that mayon- 
 naise.' * lo, take Lady Cardiff tliat chiciccn.' lo, reach mo 
 those strawberries.' You should have heard her 1 I fz;rinned, 
 and everybody grinned, — except that admirable wooden hus- 
 band. She'd got a fine set of sapphires on, and told five different 
 histories in my hearin*]; of how she did get 'em. Do you 
 happen to know where she did ? ' To' does, I suppose. Sho 
 wanted us all to take shares in some Society for the Diffusion 
 of llabbits over the Campagna. It seems there are no rabbits 
 in Italy. I never noticed it: did you? And we're all to 
 repair this omission of Nature and make a fortune out of 
 their tails (I think it's their tails) ; and there is no risk what- 
 ever, she says ; it's to be all pure profit. Clever creature 1 
 She really is great fun. Half her life is spent in being so 
 dreadfully afraid people should think she has a lover, and the 
 other half is spent in being so dreadfully afraid people should 
 think she hnsti't ! I left her at the ball, and I didn't como 
 away till five. Poor * lo' looked very much bored, I thought. 
 What a very queer thing love is 1" 
 
 Etoile was silent. She was thinking of him as he had 
 been at the Palazzo Farnese earlier in the same evening. Sho 
 felt angered — unreasonably angered — that he had gone later 
 to this ball. 
 
 " Not that it's hardly ever more than the mere question of 
 a quid pro quo,^* continued Lady Cardiff, looking up into the 
 pink dome of her point-lace parasol ; "a give-and-take part- 
 nership of vanity and convenience. Throw in with the self- 
 ishness of this vanity the mere animal selfishness of the senses, 
 and weld them with the adhering force of habit, and you have 
 the only form of love that is known to nine-tenths of our men 
 and women. Passion is a dead letter to them. It would scare 
 them out of their lives. They know no more of it than they 
 do of God, and think no more of it than they do of 
 their graves. Modern love is like modern furniture, very 
 showy and sold at a long price, but all veneer. Pray, how is 
 your friend with the grande passion that sends its object to 
 the frosty Caucasus? I saw in yesterday's Galignani that 
 Fedor Souroff had been badly wounded in some mountain 
 skirmish. Is that true? Yes? Dear me! Now, if he had 
 
 14* 
 
162 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 only taken a fancy to Mrs. Henry V. Clams or our dear Joan, 
 nothing of that would have happened to him. It's a caution, 
 as Mrs. Henry would say. Ah, there's General Desart and 
 Mrs. Desart, and Buonretiro. Pretty woman still, ain't she ? 
 Been flirting fifteen years straight through, and as ' fit' now 
 as ever she was. They are two of the pillars of the Casa 
 Chalioner. General Desart believes in Mr. Challoner as one 
 man of honor believes in another. There's nothing so charm- 
 ing as the amiability of any unamiable people when they oc- 
 cupy the same position, and that a ticklish one. ' Ca' me and 
 I'll ca' thee,' is ever present in their minds. General Desart 
 declares he is ready to put his hand in the fire if loris is any- 
 thing he oughtn't to be, etc., etc. ; and Mr. Challoner is ready 
 to put his hand in the fire if Buonretiro is anything he 
 oughtn't to be, etc., etc. Beautiful reciprocity of faith ! Ah, 
 my dear general, how do ? Lovely weather, isn't it ? Charlie 
 gone back to Eton ? Handsome boy. How do, dear ? How 
 well you look ! You miss Charlie ? To be sure, to be sure. 
 One always misses school-boys, if only by the preternatural 
 stillness of the house when they're gone. Shall I see you at 
 the Japanese Embassy to-night ?" 
 
 With a few pleasant words Lady Cardiff bade the Desarts 
 adieu, and sailed on under the palm that once saw Augustan 
 Rome. 
 
 By the toy-kiosque they met again Mrs. Henry V. Clams 
 and the Marquis Fontebranda ; reaching the summer-house, 
 they encountered the great Duchess of Bridgewater, and her 
 shadow. Lord Dauntless, who were on the eve of hastening 
 home, one to the Court, and the other to the Commons ; by 
 the water-clock they saw "that leader of fashion the Baroness 
 de Bruges, with young Ferrara, who had a face like the 
 Dolce Christ and was twenty years her junior ; feeding the 
 swans was lively Lady Eyebright, who cheated at cards and 
 had her ears boxed, but was highly esteemed nevertheless, 
 because she was believed to have compromised herself with 
 a very high personage, and to have heaps of his letters, very 
 ill spel Nearer the wall, looking at the sunset and her 
 neighbors' gowns alternately, was Princess Gregarine, whom 
 men called " Les vices sympathiques ;" ugly as a Kaflfir, charm- 
 ing as a siren, who called herself the best-dressed gorilla in 
 Europe, and whose caprices ranged from grand dukes to cor- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 163 
 
 porals of the guard, and, except for superiority of plunder, 
 preferred the latter. 
 
 " Delightful age we live in," said Lady Cardiff, when she 
 had nodded to them all, and stopped for her last chat, and 
 was going towards her carriage. " Such dear, virtuous women 
 all these are, and so funny it is to see them where Messalina 
 used to make a beast of herself with Silius ! Poor Messa- 
 lina ! She was but a primitive creature, and knew no better 
 than to exhibit herself in the streets ; and Claudius was an 
 easy husband, and uxorious. Yet he did cut up rough at 
 last. Mr. Challoner and General Desart, Bridgewater and 
 Gregarine, never will. It has been reserved for the Christian 
 world, which boasts of its one wife to one man, to produce a 
 polygamy and polyandra side by side in its midst like the lion 
 and the lamb in Revelation. We've drawing-room editions 
 of everything, — we should have had one of the Bible and 
 Shakspeare, only that nobody ever reads them, — and so we 
 have drawing-room editions of illicit love, a pretty thing that 
 we can ask to dinner, nod to in church, and meet at court 
 balls. Dear me ! poor Messalina was a very primitive crea- 
 ture, and must have had a sort of conscience in her after all. 
 We've none." 
 
 As the carriage passed outward, and went under the clipped 
 ilex-trees of the Villa Medius in the rosy light of the passing 
 day, under the trees they saw the Lady Joan and loris. 
 
 Lady Joan kissed her hand with a bright and cordial smile. 
 
 loris, as he bowed, colored and then grew very pale. 
 
 Lady Cardiff smiled as she said, "Are they going up? 
 They'll join the Desarts, I dare say ; quite seasonable. The 
 Duchess and the Gregarine are a flight above her ; even little 
 Eyebright, I think, don't favor her much. Little Eyebright's 
 no fool, though she does lose her pin-money for a year in five 
 seconds at draw-poker. What a charming game, and what a 
 charming name, — draw-poker I It is such an epitome of our 
 times, isn't it ? All the cards ' chucked,' and the game to the 
 one that * grabs' quickest. When «;he world had good man- 
 ners it played 6cartd and piquet ; now it has no manners at 
 all, it plays poker. It's curious that we should have no man- 
 ners, but it is true. Heavens ! to think of the old grandea 
 dames I remember in my babyhood, — friends of the Lam- 
 balle and the Polignac, sitters to Lawrence and poems for 
 
164 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Praed ! "Where has it all gone, — the serene grace, the grand 
 courtesy, the perfect delicacy of sentiment and of phrase, the 
 true consciousness of noblesse ohlige ? It has gone like the 
 old sweet fragrant scent of the dried rose-leaves in the rooms. 
 Nobody has dried rose-leaves now. They have hrfde-parfums 
 instead, and the perfumes au as loud as their dress and their 
 speech." 
 
 Lady Cardiff sighed as she drew up the carriage-skin 
 closer. 
 
 *' I took a pretty woman yesterday (a great lady, too, as 
 place goes) to see Vassiltchikoff's new house. The house is 
 lovely, and has worlds of pretty things : he's a great collector. 
 ' Oomme vans etes hien mstalU ici,^ she said to him. '// faut 
 que fy pince quelq^ie chose.^ And she carried off one of his 
 best bits of Saxe. and an enamelled sweetmeat-box of Petitot's. 
 And she'd only seen him twice before. 
 
 " ^Pince r The language of the gutter, and with the lan- 
 guage the manners, and with the manners the morals : of 
 course ! — inevitable and perpetual conjunction. 
 
 " But, my dear, the supreme feminine passion of the day 
 is the bourgeois passion of thrift ! In face of all our lawless 
 expenditure and idiotic profusion ! Yes. In flice of all that. 
 Perhaps because of all that. Women seldom spend their oion 
 money. Ask Dauntless, loris, Buonretiro, or Hel^ne Gre- 
 garine's grand dukes. It is expensive work to be Madame's 
 * friend' nowadays. Thrift is the fashionable woman's master- 
 motive : it's only a means to an end ; she gets that she may 
 squander. She is the miser and the heir in one person. She 
 seldom W3ars a dress three times, it's true, and never heeds 
 the loss of one ; but that is a matter of vanity and rivalry. 
 To make up for it, she insures her chemises, underpays her 
 governesses, sells her wardrobe when she has to go into mourn- 
 ing, borrows from her friends, and plunders from her lovers. 
 In all her romances she keeps a weather eye open to what 
 will pay, and, when she is insisting on a separation, never 
 adores Don Juan so much but what she keeps hold of her 
 money if she can. That most poetic and transparent soul. 
 Princess Milianoff, wore mourning here all Carnival, because her 
 lover was sent out of the country ; ruined her family by her head- 
 strong passion ; told Milianoff flat to his face that she loathed 
 him and everything belonging to him, and adored Storuellino 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 165 
 
 and meant to live witli him at all costs; but all the Fame she 
 Btipulated that she should have all the Milianoft's jewels, and 
 even asked for the twelve footmen's liveries, and all their silk 
 stockings. Impossible, you say? No ; a fact, my dear. A plain, 
 hard, absolute fact. The lawyers heard her. People who say 
 * Impossible' don't know our world ; that's all. She was mad 
 about Stornellino, but all the same she thought she might as 
 well plunder while she could from her husband. The women 
 of our day don't perceive when they drop to bathos. They 
 make absurd anti-climaxes, and never see the ridicule of them. 
 Madame Milianoff was superb in her wrath and her beauty, 
 deaf to her sister's prayers, blind to her father's tears, ad- 
 amant to her husband's upbraiding, declaring by all the 
 powers that were that she loathed even her child because 
 her child was also his. It was a scene of Medea, of Phcedre, 
 of Lucrezia, — but all the same she fbuglit for every one of 
 her diamonds, and remembered the footmen's silk stockings. 
 Now, if there were a living Beanniarchais to put that on the 
 stage, who'd believe it? And yet it is a fact, I tell you. A 
 fact as hard as a pebble. All thrift, my dear ; all thrift. 
 That is why there is no passion in our day. They have sen- 
 sual fancies like rockets, that make a great rutsh and blaze for 
 a second, but they are always fastened to a gold stick of solid 
 bullion, and when the rocket evaporates in the air tlie stick 
 comes down to the ground, — and they keep it. When the 
 woman of our day publi: hes her ^ Souvenirs de men Tendresses,* 
 she need only edit her bunker's book, — with a key and an ex- 
 planatory note or two. ^A la place du cceiir elle n^a qunne 
 lettre de cliange.^ If the quotation is not textual ly correct 
 it ought to be : it would have been if Hugo had known as 
 much of our world as he does of little Jeanne. By the way, 
 Joan Challoner will get that royal subsidy, they say, out of 
 the ministers for her Messina Bridge, to prop it up a little 
 while. I dare say that's why she looks so smiling to-day. 
 
 " Ah 1 all her efforts seem very puny and petty to you, no 
 doubt ; but, in point of fact, those efforts mean very much. 
 They mean perpetual Immiliation, cofstant self restraint, con- 
 tinual strain, incessant vigilance. Only fancy what it must 
 be to that fiery-hearted violent creature to choke down her 
 temper, to control her scorn, to hide her passion, to veil her 
 disdain, perpetually to stoop and eat dust in the sight of every- 
 
166 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 body, and bring her tameless tongue to utter all the humble 
 pie of commonplace and compliment I What a purgatory it 
 must be, you say ? N — no ; hardly that. A continual effort 
 certainly, but she is sustained in it by her anxiety to succeed ; 
 and, after all, very likely she feels the fuu of the whole thing, 
 and grins all day behind her mask. 
 
 " It is nothing new, all this, though you fume about it now, 
 as Alceste fumed and fretted in his time. Society always had 
 its fixed demands. It used to exact birth. It used to exact 
 manners. In a remote and golden age there is a tradition that 
 it was once contented with mind. Nowadays it exacts money, 
 or rather amusement, because if you don't let other folks have 
 the benefit of your money. Society will take no account of it. 
 But have money and spend it well (that is, let Society live 
 on it, gorge with it, walk ankle-deep in it), and you may bo 
 anything and do anything ; you may have been an omnibus- 
 conductor in the Strand, and you may marry a duke's 
 daughter. You may have been an oyster-girl in New York, 
 and you may entertain royalties. It is impossible to exag- 
 gerate an age of anomaly and hyperbole. There never was 
 an age when people were so voracious of amusement, and so 
 tired of it, both in one. It is a perpetual Carnival and a per- 
 manent yawn. If you can do anything to amuse us you are 
 safe, till we get used to you, — and then you amuse us no 
 longer, and must go to the wall. Every age has its price : 
 what Walpole said of men must be true of mankind. Any- 
 body can buy the present age that will bid very high and 
 pay with tact as well as bullion. There is nothing it will not 
 pardon if it see its way to getting a new sensation out of its 
 leniency. Perhaps no one ought to complain. A society with 
 an india-rubber conscience, no memory, and an absolute indif- 
 ference to eating its own v/ords and making itself ridiculous, 
 is, after all, a convenient one to live in, — if you can pay for 
 its suffrages. Panshanger Pomfret married out of his own 
 rank the other day. We were horrified. We were outraged. 
 We had no words to express our sense of the infiimy that gave 
 a great man and seventy-five thousand a year to a woman 
 whom nobody knew. We found out all about her in a month, 
 that she had been on the boards of fifth-rate theatres, that 
 she had sung in music-halls and danced in tights, that she 
 had been to chimney-sweeps' balls, that she had cooked saus- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 167 
 
 ages and sold gin-sling, that she had hired a fictitious mother 
 out from an unmentionable place in New York, in short, that 
 there was nothing that she hadn't done, and we ran a neck- 
 and-neck race as to who should know the last newest and vilest 
 story about her. Well, Pan Pomfret took the bull by the 
 horns, and gilded the horns. (They seldom prick then^ my 
 dear.) London, and Paris, and Italy were dazzled by his 
 wealth and summoned to his entertainments. He got his 
 cousin to present her at court, and his sister to receive her, 
 and down the throat of the rest of the world forced her like 
 a very big golden pill. II connatt son monde, my dear. Luxe 
 in London, luxe in Paris, luxe in Home ; and Society bidden 
 to enjoy it ; and, above all, luxe with tact, like minever on 
 white satin. Nothing resists the two, — nothing. They make 
 a sovereign's robes, in which a beggar will look regal. It is 
 only a year since he married her, but there is nothing on 
 earth more successful than Panshanger Pomfret's wife. Sang 
 in music-halls 1 Danced in tights ! Heavens ! my dear, we 
 would all swear till we were black in the face that the pub- 
 lic never saw so much even as the very tip of her nose. She 
 did sing in private concerts, in Park Lane and Portman 
 Square, and, we think, once at Buckingham Palace. But 
 anything else, my dear ! anything else ! why, we never heard 
 of such slander, — never I We see, hear, and feel her only 
 through a golden shower, as Danae saw, heard, and felt 
 Jupiter ; and what a diflFerence it makes in our sentiments ! 
 Mr. Challoner's wife can't be Panshanger Pomfret's, but in 
 her little way she goes on the same principle. The Pomfrets 
 go in for treble events at four figures, and the Challoners for 
 selling-races and shilling sweepstakes, but the prinr'^ile is 
 the sane, — the only principle, indeed, that will ever succeed 
 nowadays. 
 
 " Believe me. Society is a plant that must be fed and 
 watered, and dug and matted scrupulously," continued Lady 
 Cardiff, gravely, as they rolled homeward through the sunset- 
 lightened streets. " If you do not take endless trouble with 
 it, it will never blossom for you. Are there not dukes and 
 duchesses nearly as obscure as Jones and Brown ? Are there 
 not millionnaires — ay, billionnaires, for that matter — who live 
 hidden under their gold as utterly as if it were a dust-heap ? 
 Why do you see a parchioness a nonentity whose name is 
 
1C8 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 barely known off her estates, and a new-comer, who has noth- 
 ing but her shrewd sense and her pleasant manner, pushed 
 up into a leader of fashion ? It's all a matter of trouble and 
 tact, my dear; nothing more. It isn't what you have, but 
 how you spend it. It isn't what you are, but what you appear 
 to be. It isn't rank, or brains, or riches, or conduct ; you 
 may have any one of them, or you may have them all, and 
 yet they may avail you nothing. You may remain obscure, 
 iiook at Lady Kencarrow in London now, — not pretty, not 
 clever, not witty, a third-rate actress in the country, as any- 
 body knows, and yet what a success ! Princes of the blood 
 go to dine with her ; her house is the very temple of distinction. 
 All a matter of tact, my dear, and of attention. She has 
 devoted her life to getting a Position. She has succeeded. 
 Nothing succeeds like success. You people who are very 
 clever, or very proud, or very careless never — pardon me — 
 succeed with Society. You make a stir in it, perhaps, but 
 that never lasts long : you won't take the pains to please it ; 
 and it soon leaves you for people who do. A witty thing comes 
 into your head, and you say it, careless whom it may hit. You 
 are bored by the vanity of other folks, and you sliow it, in- 
 different where you may offend. You won't conciliate big 
 little people, and they in their spite set the big big people 
 against you. So the snow-ball grows, and one day it gets 
 large enough and hard enough to knock you out of Society 
 altogether. People must make themselves agreeable to be 
 agreeable to the world ; yes, and eat a good deal of dust, too ; 
 that I concede. If they are very high and mighty by birth 
 and all the rest of it, of course they can be as disagreeable as 
 they choose, and make others eat the dust always. But if not, 
 there is nothing for it but to toady. Believe me, nothing but 
 to toady. Dear Lady Joan knows it. In her little way she 
 succeeds thoroughly. It's a very little way, I grant, — to be 
 visited like other people, and go to bankers' balls and clergy- 
 men's tea-fights, and stand well in ordinary society generally. 
 That's her ambition ! But see how she attains to what she 
 wants, — -just by smiling on women she hates, and making 
 believe that a twopenny-halfpenny chaplain can send her to 
 heaven on earth I Oh, it all seems unutterably small to you. 
 I know that," she said, with some impatience, as Etoile irrev- 
 erently laughed. " You clever poetic people have a sort of 
 
FRlENDSlIir. 1G9 
 
 world of you.rown, a rock among the waves, like Cliateau- 
 briand's Tomb. But, after all, my dear creature, Society is 
 not to be despised. Tt is pleasant. Pleasantness is the soft 
 note of this generation, just as scientific assassination is the 
 harsh note of it. The age is compounded of the two. Half 
 of it is chloroform, the other half is dynamite. We are not 
 brilliant, nor powerful, nor original ; we shall never sparkle 
 like the beau siecle^ nor leave heirs to immortality like the 
 Cinque Cento, nor shape the world anew like the early Chris- 
 tians, nor radiate with crystal clearness like the days of Pericles. 
 But when we are not murderous, we are pleasant, pre-eminently 
 pleasant ; we know how to gild things, we know how to gloss 
 them, we know how to set chairs on wheels and put spring 
 cushions in them : we are the Age of Ana3sthetics. We have 
 invented painless dentistry and patent bedsteads, we have dis- 
 covered chloral and condonation, and though we have, to be 
 sure, to bear uncomfortable things like the telephcne, the Com- 
 mune, and Wagner, still we snooze ourselves asleep, and decide 
 that since we must all die so soon >7e will be as comfortable as 
 we can whilst we are living. It is the doctrine of Horace, 
 with the poetry left out. We are like Tennyson's * Lotus- 
 eaters:' ' Let us alone; what is there worth a row?' (Isn't 
 that the line ?) Now, you see, you people who will live oa 
 that rock in the midst of the sea, and fly across to us like 
 eagles, only disturb us. That is the truth. You make us 
 think, and Society dislikes thinking. You call things by 
 their right names, and Society hates that, though Queen Bess 
 didn't mind it. You trumpet our own littleness in our ear, 
 and we know it so well that we do not care to hear much 
 about it. You shudder at sin, and we have all agreed that 
 there is no such thing as sin, only mere differences of opinion, 
 which, provided they don't offend us, we have no business 
 with : adultery is a liaison, lying is gossip, debt is a momentary 
 embarrassment, immorality is a little slip, and so forth ; and 
 when we have arranged this pretty little dictionary of con- 
 venient pseudonyms, it is not agreeable to have it sent flying by 
 fierce, dreadful, old words, that are only fit for some book that 
 nobody ever reads, like Milton or the Family Bible. We do 
 not want to think. We do not want to hear. We do not 
 care about anything. Only give us a good dinner and plenty 
 of money, and let us outshine our neighbors. There is the 
 H 15 
 
170 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Nineteenth Century Gospel. My dear, if Ecclesiastes him- 
 self came over from that rock of yours, ho would preach in 
 vain. You cannot convince people that don't want to be con- 
 vinced. We call ourselves Christians, — Heaven save the 
 mark ! — but we are only the very lowest kind of pagans. We 
 do not believe in anything, — except that nothing matters. 
 Well, perhaps nothing does matter. Only one wonders why 
 ever so many of us were all created, only just to find that 
 out." 
 
 And Lady Cardiff, whc sat and watched the world and her 
 generation with the same contemptuous yet good-humored 
 amusement that she watched children plunder a Christmas- 
 tree or maidens romp in a cotillon, drew a long breath as she 
 ended her harangue, lighted a fresh cigarette as she rolled home 
 in the dusk, and sighed for the days of Louis Quatorze. 
 
 " Why don't you talk, lo ?" the Lady Joan was saying, 
 meanwhile, walking on under the trees past the kiosque. 
 
 " Mais, ma chlre ! — there is such a noise from all those 
 carriages." 
 
 " Stuff ! There's no more noise than any other day. Did 
 you see Etoile?" 
 
 " I saw her." 
 
 " With Lady Cardiff. Horrid woman. Lady Cardiff. I can't 
 think what you like in he^. She is as insolent as ever she 
 can be. I quite believe that story that Lord Cardiff left her 
 because she horsewhipped him for driving another woman down 
 to Richmond." 
 
 " px se peitt,^* said loris, with a little shrug of his shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 " Unless it were worse,^^ said Lady Joan. " Many people 
 say it was worse. I do believe she's said something to the 
 Monmouthshires, for they have refused my dinner. After my 
 giving 'em all those things, too ; and I wanted 'em to meet the 
 Norwiches and the Fingals, because Fingal's out of temper 
 about that tabernacle of Mimo's. Somebody's been nasty and 
 told him it is all modern bits glued together." 
 
 " But of course !" said loris, with a certain contempt, as 
 of one whose advice had been disregarded and was now 
 proved right. 
 
 " Oh, of course ! you're always so wise !" said his friend, 
 with much irritation. " Of course, when he'd had the money 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 171 
 
 iu advance and there wasn't a tabernacle to be found, nobody 
 could do otherwise, and Finj^al was delighted with the thing, 
 delighted, until some busybody went and put him out of 
 conceit of it. Mimo has most excellent taste ; nobody 
 better." 
 
 " Lord Fingal has better," said loris, coldly : " the taber- 
 nacle will blemish hit chapel." 
 
 " You've never seen his chapel, and never will, L!nle.ss I 
 take you to have your soul converted to the true faith, as the 
 Moira old fudges wanted me to do : do you remember ? If 
 you didn't like Mimo's tabernacle, why didn't you let us sell 
 the one out of Fiordelisa? That^s genuine 1" 
 
 " Ma chh-e,'" said loris, blandly, " you know well that there 
 is nothing I ever refuse you. AH I reserve to myself is the 
 altar my fathers knelt at. It is foolish, no doubt, but it is a 
 foolishness I cannot give up." 
 
 " Oh no, you can be a mule when you like," muttered 
 Lady Joan, who had found him on matters that touched his 
 ancestral creed immovable even under her menaces. loris 
 was a man who clung to ancient faiths and ancient ways : he 
 did uot believe in them very devoutly, indeed, because he was 
 a man of the world and of his time, but he would not have 
 them disturbed. Spoil or embellish, ruin or restore, the rest 
 of Fiordelisa as she might, he had will enough of his own to 
 bar her progress at the chapel door. The Lady Joan, who 
 looked longingly at its Delia Robbias, its Cellini candlesticks, 
 its old oak screen, its old marble altar, and its chased silver 
 chalices, felt herself defrauded of her rights. *' All these 
 things growing mouldy for a set of peasants!" she would 
 mutter, ard in her mind's-eye see them fittingly moved away 
 to South Kensington, and did not despair even yet of one day 
 so moving them. 
 
 At that moment Mr. Silverly Bell joined them in th.eir 
 walk. " My dear St. Paul !" cried Lady Joan, enchanted : 
 his baptismal name was Paul. 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell was flattered, and smiled. He had a 
 soft sweet smile, — never softer, never sweeter, than when he 
 was carrying little drops of poison about in little sweetmeats 
 of pretty phrases : that was his occupation. No one could 
 say Mr. Silverly Bell was otherwise than good-natured ; he 
 never said an ill-natured thing : he only " regretted," only 
 
172 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " wished," only " feared." When a person's cliaracter was so 
 bad that as a savior of society he was obliged to drown it in 
 the teapot, he always sighed as he did so, tenderly, and wore 
 a quite crushed air, as of extreme pain. 
 
 Lady Joan was very fond of him : she had not known him 
 very long, indeed, but at a glance she had discovered the ex- 
 treme usefulness of him, — smile, sigh, and all. He had started 
 with a prejudice against her, but he had been vanquished ; 
 she welcomed him so delightedly, invited him so persistently, 
 praised him so ardently, that he could not but yield, and, with 
 this handsome woman on his arm at the spinsters' teas and 
 the clergymen's gatherings, could not but feel meekly flattered. 
 In return, he placed himself — smile, sigh, and all — at her 
 disposal, and was of great value. 
 
 " Silverly Bell assures me there's nothing in it, — nothing 
 in it. He must know : he's always in her house," said jMrs. 
 Grundy, time and again, when, having received a momentary 
 scare from the sight of Lady Joan rattling out at the gates 
 with a gun between her knees, and the handsome profile of 
 loris dark against the sun beside her, Mr. Silverly Bell reas- 
 sured her seriously, and smoothed down her rufiled scruples 
 with a few judicious words. 
 
 " What do I care for the old cats ?" she would say, with 
 a grin, twitching Pippo's reins, and flecking her whip over her 
 tossing mane. But she did care, care endlessly, care with all 
 her heart and soul. People who do not care do not say so. 
 The soldier who is not afraid never boasts that he fears no 
 ball. 
 
 Thr lawless gypsy-half of her sent her across country with 
 her whip and her cigar, her gun and her lover, rattling through 
 the dust at full gallop, and showing her white teeth at broad 
 jests that she shouted above the din of the wheels. But the 
 coward in her was none the less powerful ; and when the ponies 
 were back in the stable, she would shake off the dust and don 
 a full suit of decorum, and bear herself with cheerful counte- 
 nance, and go through all the million and one ceremonials of 
 commonplace existence with a zeal and a patience that demanded 
 their reward and got it. 
 
 A woman who ought to be out of society, but, nevertheless, 
 is always in it, commands the genuine respect of both sexes. 
 She pleases them, too ; for she neither offends the stronger sex 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 173 
 
 by too much virtue, nor offends the weaker sex hy too much 
 effrontery. Lady Joan lunching njcei<ly off cold lamb and 
 lettuce with a clergyman's wife on a Sunday morning, and 
 Lady Joan going jctyou.sly to champagne and caviare at the 
 mascjuerade on a Sunday night, was an instance of that 
 adaptability to circumstances which is the most popular of all 
 qualities. 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell, and such as he, enabled her to go at 
 once to the lamb and lettuce and to the champagne and caviare. 
 She knew this, and petted Mr. Silverly Bell and his typo 
 accordingly. 
 
 It may be opposed to all the graceful theories on the relations 
 of the sexes, but it is true that the woman who seeks the ad- 
 miration of the majority, and shows that it is agreeable to her, 
 will almost always secure it. She will turn against her the 
 highest order of men, indeed, but, as this is a very small 
 minority, the loss will not be felt. In society, as in politics, 
 the majority is the least intelligent but the most imposing 
 section. 
 
 Happily for herself, she was so constituted that she could 
 enjoy netting a minnow as much as landing a sturgeon, and 
 brought to her efforts at capture an infinite zest that was of 
 itself assurance of success. She took so much trouble, she 
 was so charmed with commonplaces, her smile beamed so 
 radiantly, her hand pressed theirs so cordially, her manner 
 was so accentuated with the strongest welcome and the most 
 eager enjoyment of their companionship, that a man could 
 hardly be otherwise than gratified with his own effect on her, 
 and, when he left her presence, could not do less than defend 
 the good manners and good taste of a lady so favorable to 
 himself. 
 
 The art of pleasing is more based on the art of seeming 
 pleased than people think of, and she disarmed the prejudices 
 of her enemies by the unaffected delight she appeared to take 
 in themselves. You may think very ill of a woman, but 
 after all you cannot speak very ill of her if she has assured 
 you a hundred times that you are among her dearest friends. 
 
 And if a very fastidious mind is displeased with flattery, 
 very fastidious minds are not general, and a taste for flattery 
 is. " Be honey, and the flies will eat you," says the old saw ; 
 but, like most other proverbs, it will not admit of universal 
 
 16* 
 
174 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 application. There is a way of being honey that is thoroughly 
 successful and extremely popular and constitutes a kind of 
 armor that is bomb-proof 
 
 " Michael Angelo was a fool," said Mr. Pratt, the English 
 sculptor, who lived with Roman princes, and was called Phidias 
 Pratt by artists in general, and took the derision seriously as 
 a compliment — to IMiidias, and would demonstrate to you that 
 the Apollo of the Belvedere was nothing so very extraordinary 
 after all. 
 
 " A sublime fool, but a fool !" said Phidias Pratt, shifting 
 his scarlet fez on one side. " Did all his work himself: only 
 think of the waste of power 1 Half his years spent in chip- 
 ping, — lost in mere stonemason's labor. Now, I keep sixty 
 workmen ; I never touch the marble, — never touch it ! — and 
 look what numbers of statues I can turn out in the year." 
 
 "And the ideas, Mr. Pratt?" said Etoilo. "Do you hire 
 them also, or do you do without them ?" 
 
 " The ideas ! the ideas !" echoed Phidias, with a stare ; 
 and the good fellow walked off huffed in his velvet gown, 
 among his marble children, who all gazed vacuously into space 
 with scarcely more soul in any one of them than in the carven 
 doll of a Swabian toy-maker. 
 
 He had married, twenty years before, twenty thousand a 
 year in the person of an alderman's heiress, and his works 
 were to be seen in law courts and public halls, gentlemen's 
 mansions and people's parks. What did he want with ideas ? 
 Nevertheless, he felt the allusion to such a thing was in very 
 bad taste. 
 
 The Lady Joan, who had brought Etoile to the studio, 
 grinned as she herself fell into ecstasies over a Desolation, the 
 embroideries of whose tunic she declared she felt she must 
 pick off with a pair of scissors, the marble was so exactly like 
 thread. 
 
 " How could you inquire for such * outsiders' as ideas ?" 
 she murmured to Etoile. " Of course he hires his ideas : 
 clever young Italians sell heaps of ideas for a hundred francs. 
 All that's dear old Phid's own in his sculptures is his name 
 on the pedestals." 
 
 " Poor Michael A ngelo !" 
 
 The Lady Joan laughed. 
 
 " Well, I don't think you need put yourself out for him : 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 175 
 
 he's pretty safe, and I don't think Phid here will go down to 
 posterity with liim. But Pliid will hate you, you know, for- 
 ever. Why don't you tell him that Venus at the Bath is 
 beautiful?" 
 
 " A bathing woman, that must have been modelled ut Trou- 
 ville ? With a hip out of joint, too : look !" 
 
 " Phid gives capital parties, and he's ' coining' every day," 
 said Lady Joan, dryly. " And his wife has the longest and 
 nastiest tongue in Europe." 
 
 And she swam after the sulking Phidias, and told him that 
 his Sabrina was the noblest work of the century. Sabrina 
 was robed from head to foot : Mr. Phidias Pratt thought the 
 nude barbarous ; he held, too, that it was very easy : " only 
 study anatomy, and there you were." 
 
 " A very intelligent woman, that wife of Challoner's," said 
 the f'ood Phidias to his own wife, a few hours later. " If I 
 Trere you, I'd call on her: it isn't worth while to be too starchy : 
 of course she larks about with loris, and all that kind of thing ; 
 but it's no business of ours if the husband like it ; and she 
 tells me Lord Hebrides is her cousin. The Hebrides are 
 here this winter. I'd leave a bit of pasteboard, if I were 
 
 you." 
 
 His wife, who hitherto had always insisted that the Casa 
 Challoner was too flagrant to be entered, because she herself 
 came from Clapham and had severe notions, allowed herself to 
 be persuaded against her conscience, and left the bit of paste- 
 board, and a few days later a larger piece inscribed, " Mrs. 
 Pratt. At Home. Tacsdays," — with a very small " music" 
 hiding itself in the corner. 
 
 Lady Joan gave a grimace of triumph before the big card. 
 Mrs. Pratt's musical Tuesdays were among the choicest gather- 
 ings of the season : all the embassies went there, and hitherto 
 Lady Joan had languished in vain for an entrance. 
 
 Of course a similar big card was delivered at the house of 
 loris. Society, provided only you will wash your cup anu 
 platter, will always oblige you in these little things. 
 
 Mrs. Pratt had been six years bringing her Clapham con- 
 science into recognition of the Casa Challoner ; but, having 
 brought her conscience round at last, she brought it round 
 with a handsome s\veep, and knew the polite ways of society 
 too much not to follow them, and sent the big card to loris, so 
 
176 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 that he might enter her presence with the Lady Joan, and be 
 at hand for the Lady Joan's fan on the Lady Joan's wish to 
 walk about the rooms, or the Lady Joan's carriage when the 
 party was over. Mrs. Phidias Pratt knew that as a leader of 
 society she must be amiable in such matters. 
 
 So did Lady Joan gain her point, by merely pretending to 
 want her scissors to pick oflF the embroideries of a marble 
 Desolation, and by saying that a Sabrina surpassed Praxiteles 
 and Donatello. 
 
 Who should say she was not a cleverer woman than Etoile ? 
 
 Certainly Mrs. Pratt left cards little and big on Etoile, as 
 she woiild have done on Phryne or Mephistopheles, had she 
 met either of them at Princess Vera's ; but Mr. Pratt said to 
 his wife that he was sure there would be something queer 
 about her somewhere which would come out some day, and 
 Mrs. Pratt pursed her mouth to her friend : " Y — e — es. 
 We do receive her. We met her at Princess Vera's. But, 
 wlio was she ? That is what I never can learn." 
 
 " Who was she .^" said Mrs. Pratt, with sepulchral whisper 
 and solemn stare, and had away of say* ig it, and of vaguely 
 implying a great deal by the way she ^ id it, for which Lady 
 Joan could have kissed her, " detestable old woman," with 
 her dukes and duchesses and rubbish, though the Lady Joan 
 had always considered her to be. For the Lady Joan did not 
 permit other people to air dukes and duchesses ; as for herself, 
 dukes and duchesses were all her cousins, and came in handy 
 when she wanted to impress the small fry of society ; that was 
 different ; when you are born a Perth-Douglas, and want to sell 
 a teacup or a triptych, you must employ the advantage that 
 Nature has given you. 
 
 But she was very often so out of temper with hei ilf that 
 neither dukes nor duchesses, teacups nor triptychs, couk recon- 
 cile her to life. She knew very well that when she had been pre- 
 sented at seventeen, handsome, black browed, and Spanish-look- 
 ing, there had been no reason in life why she should not have 
 become an English duchess in her own person. By temper 
 she was ambitious, by nature she longed for place and power ; 
 she knew very well that her life was a coiry manque ; and now 
 and then some irritated pride at the smallness of her aims and 
 the pigmy proportions of her results would wake in her, find 
 make her acrid and disappointed and enraged with her past and 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 177 
 
 her present. There were times when she realized that her life 
 was, after all, obscure and little and ip;noble. 
 
 Sometimes it made her in such a rage with herself that she 
 shook her fist at the image of her black brows in her mirror. 
 For she was shrewd enough, and — in her own odd way — proud 
 enough, to hate herself heartily at times for all the dust she 
 ate, and all the honey she prepared for the eating of Society. 
 And still more she hated those who had sight enough to see the 
 dust on her mouth, and the honey in her hands, and among 
 them she instinctively numbered Etoile. 
 
 She began to detest Etoile with that vehement and concen 
 trated dislike which is only the stronger because it cannot ex- 
 plain itself or put any clear name to its origin. 
 
 Something in the glance of Etoile stung her conscience ; 
 something in her smile made her pride wince : she was always 
 fancying that Etoile was thinking of all Voightel had told her 
 of those days when the champagne had been in the ice-pails on 
 the house-tops in Damascus. Voightel had told her nothing, 
 but the Lady Joan would never have credited that. Somehow, 
 too, before Etoile's life — meditative, poetic, studious, always 
 aloof from the world even when in the world — her own life 
 seemed common and bustling and base and ridiculous. At the 
 bottom of her soul lay a contempt for herself, a bitter and 
 restless contempt : it stirred in her and stung her in this 
 stranger's presence, — and she hated her. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " Why don't people like Etoile ?" said Lady Cardiff. 
 
 " Don't they like her ?" said a Russian baroness. " I do." 
 
 " You do, my dear, I do, a hundred clever people do, but 
 not tlie majority !" 
 
 " I will tell you why," said Princess Vera, who was in her 
 own house, and to whom tliese ladies had come as an amateur 
 deputation about a great charity ball at the Capitol. 
 
 " Yes. Well ?" said Lady Cardiff, in expectation of a tit- 
 bit of news. 
 
 " She likes to see the sun rise," said Princess Vera. 
 
178 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " What ? The sun rise in winter !" 
 
 "In winter and summer. Unnatural, isn't it?" said 
 Princess Vera, liftinj^ her lovely head from an old miniature 
 she was copyinjji;. " It is those unnatural tastes that we find 
 unpleasant. The traditional lady who answered naively that 
 she did not care for innocent pleasures was the one candid 
 person of all womanhood, depend on it, and represented a sen- 
 timent more general than we like to acknowledge. A woman 
 who does like innocent pleasures is to us just what a writer 
 who won't take money for his books, or a painter who won't 
 sell his pictures, is to all other writers and all other painters. 
 Nothing is so objectionable in anybody as to be above every- 
 body else's tastes and necessities. When we come from our 
 balls feeling ugly and untidy and enmti/ees, and see her just 
 coming out of the door beginning the day, we feel to dislike 
 her. It is all the sunrise. Nothing else." 
 
 People laughed. Princess Vera, who was always lovely, 
 and never enmiyee, and cared for sunrises herself, could afiord 
 to say such things. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, who was present, felt angry, though 
 she never dared to open her lips before Princess Vera. 
 
 " Of course one aren't as neat and spry comin' out as goin' 
 in, and after the cotillon how should we be? but there's no 
 call for her to say so," she thought, feeling personally aggrieved, 
 and wondering if Princess Vera had seen her curl drop off into 
 the soup, as it had done at the Japanese Embassy supper on 
 the previous night. 
 
 Princess Vera was quite right : Society was naturally sus- 
 picious of such a queer taste for sunrises. 
 
 Society could never understand it. Why should anybody 
 who wasn't obliged go out early? All the pretty fashionable 
 women who waltzed themselves half out of their bleeveless 
 bodices till sunrise dawned on them drinking hot soup and 
 champagne, and then slept serenely with chloral's benign aid 
 till it was time to have their complexions " done up," never 
 could understand or forgive a woman who walked, drove, or 
 rode in solitude while the dew was still fresh. 
 
 For some years the world that talked about her had thought 
 E*^oile went out for mysterious intrigues, which intention would 
 have redeemed the unnatural action and made it more natural ; 
 but, being at length after several seasons compelled to conclude 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 179 
 
 that this explanation was impossible, the eccentricity of the 
 habit could be only annoying. 
 
 That she went for mere air, mere exercise, and the charm 
 that lies in the freshness and silence of the early day, was a 
 thing far too simple to be grasped by the astute intelligence 
 of an experienced Society. 
 
 The simplicity of the artist is always the stumbling-block 
 of the artist with the world. 
 
 One early morning, following this habit, she was wandering 
 alone with her dog under the woods of the Pamphili Doria, 
 where she had especial permission to drive at her pleasure. In 
 the breezy uplands of that lovely place she rambled ankle-deep 
 in violets, lost in thought, the dreamy scholarly fanciful thought 
 which Rome begets in any contemplative mind ; suddenly her 
 thoughts were scattered by the excitement and apparent sorrow 
 "yf Tsar, who ran to and fro, whining and pawing at some 
 object on the grass under the oak-trees. On going nearer to 
 the dog, she found outstretched there a woman who had 
 fainted and was lying insensible. 
 
 She was young and handsome, though her face had the 
 gaunt gray leanness of long hunger, and her bones seemed 
 almost starting through the skin. When the woman came to 
 herself, she moaned for her child, refusing to be comforted, 
 and begging to be taken home. " Home" was a miserable 
 garret, in a dark and loathsome lane of crowded hovels. 
 
 Etoile had her taken there, and followed her. 
 
 In the garret was a baby of two years ; he was rosy and 
 well ; the mother had starved herself to give him the little 
 food she could get. By little and little she told her story, a 
 very trite one : she was a Hungarian, a ballet-dancer, engaged 
 at fifteen years of age to follow a wandering Viennese troop, 
 and, falling ill, left behind them unpaid ; for the enterprise 
 had not succeeded. In her poverty and beauty a young French 
 painter had found her and loved her : she had been happy for 
 six months. Then her lover had deserted her, gone to his own 
 country, promising to return ; he had written once or twice, 
 but never now for two years. She had no relatives and no 
 friends. Dance any more she could not, for her ankle had 
 been broken in a stage-trap, and, though well again, had been 
 ill set and was stiff. Friendless, sick, and wretched, she had 
 dropped from one depth to another depth, lower and lower, but 
 
180 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 keeping herself honest that the boy might not blush for her 
 in his munhood. 
 
 She had gone into the Pamphili woods to gather violets to 
 sell, and had fainted as she had stooped to the first flower. 
 It was one of those short sad stories which lie thick and com- 
 mon as dust under the roofs of great cities. Death conies 
 and brushes such dust away ; and it gathers again by the 
 morrow. 
 
 Etoile, returning to see her l?ter in the day, and welcomed 
 in the wretched attic with touching gratitude, found that the 
 poor creature's one desire was to get some means of mainten- 
 ance for herself and the child in Rome. She could not bear 
 to leave the place where her love's short joys had been known, 
 and where her lover, she always hoped, might one day or 
 other return. 
 
 She did not know what to do, but was willing to do any- 
 thing " that would not make the child ashamed." The sculp- 
 tors would have paid her to let them model her form, which 
 was symmetrically beautiful ; but better death, even for the 
 boy, than that, she thought. She clung with absolute fidelity 
 to her lover's memory. 
 
 The hive of wretched houses in which she dwelt was in 
 the heart of Home, and almost touched the back of the Casa 
 Challoner. When, with an aching heart, she left the garret, 
 the little child stretching his arms out after her, and the 
 mother blessing her and the dog too for rescue from the grave, 
 it was twilight in the short wintry day, and the lamp, lighted 
 before the doorway of the Temple of all the Virtues, caught 
 her sight as it glanced through the gloom. 
 
 " Perhaps she could help me to help her," thought Etoile. 
 She vaguely doubted in all things the woman who Voightel 
 had said would be to her the Prose of Home, yet the energy 
 and promptitude of a character utterly opposite to her own as 
 vaguely impressed her by its very unlikeness to herself. The 
 Hungarian girl, in her wretchedness, was only divided by a 
 few yards from the cosy mirthful chambers of the Casa Chal- 
 loner. To speak of her might perhaps secure her a friend 
 there. 
 
 It was a Wednesday, and several of the heavy landaus, that 
 yearly bear to and fro their freight of rich foreign visitora 
 about the streets of Eome, were standing before the house. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 181 
 
 Etoile descended from her own carriage, and remembered that 
 she ought weeks before to have attended one of these solemn 
 rites. 
 
 The house looked curiously changed. It made her think 
 of Sganarelle drawing a long face to feel the patient's pulse. 
 
 There was no scent in the Turkish room save from a foun- 
 tain of eau de Cologne ; there was a tea-urn in the Turkish 
 room solemn as a high altar ; there were crowds entirely com- 
 posed of ladies, and serried ranks of dowagers and spinsters 
 bolt upright on the Turkish divans. There was a murmur 
 of small talk like the unending murmur of the sea ; the Bishop 
 of Melita and a Dean of St. Edmund's conversed together in 
 the centre of the chamber ; Mr. Challoner had become " dear 
 Robert," and was handing bread-and-butter; and amidst it all 
 stood the Lady Joan, with a little ruff round her throat, and 
 a gray gown, who was asking after a baby's health with enger 
 solicitude, and standir^g with her little girl's curls pressed 
 tenderly to her side, herself SDiiling sweetly in the face of 
 Mrs. Grundy, as typified at that moment by Lady George 
 Scrope-Stair and that very proper little person, Mrs. Mac- 
 scrip. 
 
 Mrs. Grundy was in great force, 'ndecd, in all her types 
 there, and the Lady Joan, with her hand on I a' child's neck, 
 was saying, apologetically, — 
 
 " Well, you know, I don't like it, and that's the truth. 
 Of course there are unpleasant sorts of stories, and Mr. Chal- 
 loner doesn't approve my being much with her. But, you 
 know, I'm always good-natured, and my father is such a dear 
 blind goose " 
 
 " The Comtesse d'Avesnes !" shouted her servant between 
 the silk curtains of her drawing-room doorway. 
 
 The serried battalions of Mrs. Grundy's forces fell asunder 
 with a shock, and some dropped their biscuits, and one even 
 dropped her cup. The Lady Joan, however, who never 
 dropped anything except an inconvenient memory or an unre- 
 munerative acquaintance, rushed forward with cordial smile 
 and outstretched hands. 
 
 " Too good of you ! What a pleasure ! You, who despise 
 tea-fights, too I Do come to the fire. Elfie, go and fetch the 
 cream." 
 
 Little Eflfie, bringing the cream, looked softly at Etoile, 
 
 16 
 
182 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 who had been kind to her, and timidly stroked the silver-fox 
 furs of her dress. 
 
 " I like jou," said the child, in a nervous little voice. 
 " Why did mamma say ?'' 
 
 " Effie, hand the cake to Lady George," said Mr. Challoner, 
 who was standing on guard by the hearth-rug, having just 
 safely left the bishop and the dean cordially discussing the 
 state of the Colonial Church. The child, frightened, slid 
 timidly away, and it never occurred to Etoile that the words 
 which she had partially overheard on her entrance could by 
 any chance whatever have referred to herself. 
 
 The serried ranks of Mrs. Grundy drew away from the fire, 
 and, as around a safe and holy sanctuary, closed round the 
 tea-table, where the Scrope-Stair sisters, in bonnetless intimacy, 
 were presiding over the urn. 
 
 "Dear Lady Joan is too good-natured," sighed Mrs. Grundy, 
 sotto voce, and the Scrope-Stair sisters murmured back, — 
 
 " Oh, yes, you know ; it is her independence and nobleness. 
 She never will believe in thd possibility of evil." 
 
 Mrs. Grundy shook her head, and, glancing towards the 
 fire, wondered what the cost of the silver-fox furs had been. 
 "Why could questionable characters always dress so well ? 
 Mrs. Grundy does not always dress well. 
 
 Lady Curdifi" nodded from her corner by the hearth, where 
 she had ensconced herself with her eye-glass, and motioned 
 Etoile to a seat beside her. 
 
 " How do, my dear Comtesse? Cold day, isn't it? What 
 a charming gown ! And those niello buttons too, — delicious ! 
 It's quite amusing here : only one's alwaj'S afraid she'll come 
 out with something for one to buy. If it wasn't for that ap- 
 prehension it would really be delicious to see her butter all 
 those bores and do the proper for Mrs. Grundy. I've said I'd 
 the toothache, and kept quiet just to watch her. It's great 
 fun. How does she square it with all her little games ? But 
 the liti^le games are only the boldness of innocence. So Mimo 
 Bays. He must know." 
 
 Lady Cardiif put up her eye-glass to look at Mrs. Henry 
 V. Clams's Bretonne toilette (the entire costume of a fisher- 
 girl, correctly copied, in feuille-morte velvet and navy-blue 
 satin, with a merveilleuse bonnet to crown it appropriately), 
 and Lady Cardiff said aloud for the benefit of neighbors that 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 18S 
 
 His Holiness was very ill, the old trouble in the legs, and then, 
 sinking her voice, continued, — 
 
 " In Spain, you know, my dear, when a lovely woman has 
 had an adventure her friends say she has eaten a lily. That's 
 just what her friends say. She munches her leeks, and they 
 swear they're lilies. Happy creature ! AU comes of a wooden 
 husband, as I told you the other day, and her admirable faculty 
 of boring herself to death. She will hear me ? Nonsense ; 
 she is screaming into Lady George Scrope's ear-trumpet. If 
 she did hear, she'd only ask me to dinner and sell me a magot. 
 That's her way of revenging herself She's been dying to be 
 acquainted with the Monmouthshires for four winters, but 
 they never would let her be introduced to them. (You know 
 whom I mean, — the Monmouthshires : she's the Duke of 
 Brecon's sister.) Well, when I was with them one day last 
 week, in comes my Lady Joan, bold as brass, and with her 
 pockets full of all the sweepings of her bric-d-hrac shops, and 
 rosaries of olives, that she gathered herself upon Olivet, — all 
 these as offerings to Anne Monmouthshire, who is perfectly 
 mad on the subject of a lottery for the blind English in Rome, 
 (t believe there are six of them blind, or some such number.) 
 And all these sweepings and olives were for that lottery. The 
 bait took ; yes, the bait took. Anne Monmouthshire, who 
 always loathed her, has returned her card, and has certainly 
 invited her to a musical party next week. Now, i/ou, instead 
 of doing a thing like that, only find out sick old folks and do 
 good to them, and let nobody be the wiser. 
 
 " There ! there I" said Lady Cardiff, vivaciously, interrupt- 
 ing herself, as a haughty-looking dowager, with a very aquiline 
 nose, and very fine sables, sailed into the room. " Didn't I 
 tell you so ? Just look at her. There's Anne Monmouth- 
 shire actually come on her dai/ ! Watch her new ! Watch 
 her ! W^hat eagerness, what cordiality, what ecstasy ! Dear 
 me, how very funny it is that anybody born a Perth-Douglas 
 should be such a snob ! Ghe pined four whole winters to get 
 the Monmouthshires here, and now she's done it, just by those 
 shop-sweepings and olives. Really she ought to have been a 
 greater creature than she is I Oh, I see you despise all these 
 things. You are leasrues above such considerations. You are 
 governed by your sympathies and your antipathies. You seek 
 or shun other folks by no better rule tlian their merit or 
 
184 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 demerit. What can be more iudiscreet? You like people 
 who can be of no manner of service to you, and dislike all 
 sorts of great personages. Pardon me, but that is not how 
 Society is carried on. Society is an aggregate of personal 
 enemies : all women are all women's enemies, and most women 
 are most men's enemies, too, if men did but know it, — which 
 they don't ; but hostility should never interfere with prudence. 
 A grain of sand may blind a Samson, or a Sappho : that is 
 the figure that should always loom large before any of us. 
 Don't provoke the sand with a whirlwind : take a watering- 
 pot. That is where our admirable Lady Joan is pre-eminent. 
 To look at her, she should raise the whirlwind : with an 
 Oriental profile and a mastiff's jaw, one would expect a whirl- 
 wind from her. Not a bit of it ; she has a nice green water- 
 ing-pot, like a true British horticulturist, and she smooths 
 her sand diligently with a silver shower from the parish pump. 
 The whirlwind does the world good : it clears the mist, it 
 sweeps away tlie pestilence, it bears the eagles as the sea her 
 ships, and drives the clouds before it. Oh, yes, and it's very 
 nice in epic poetry. But the watering-pot is a much meeker 
 domestic servant, and a much more popular instrument. If 
 you would use the watering-pot, my dear, you would never 
 get the dust in your eyes." 
 
 Wherewith Lady Cardiflf rose and swam away majestically 
 to her friend Anne Monmouthshire, and said, very cruelly, — 
 
 " Didn't know you knew Lady Joan, my love ! Delighted 
 to meet you so unexpectedly. Have you come to get any 
 more rosaries ? Gathered the olives yourself, dear Lady Joan, 
 didn't you, and on Olivet? Dear me, how charming! just 
 like Noah's dove. Wasn't it Noah's dove ?" 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Henry V. Clams approached Etoile, who 
 always filled her with that uncomfortable sensation which 
 Burns embodies as the idea that a " chiefs amang us takin' 
 notes," and, engaging her timidly in conversation, invited her 
 to dinner, — a very great dinner to be given in twelve days 
 from that time. 
 
 Etoile declined, on the plea that she had come for health, 
 and went out very little. Mrs. Henry V. Clams suddenly 
 felt that the Bretonne costume was loud, and the merveilleuse 
 bonnet incongruous. " She's real nasty," thought that good- 
 natured lady. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 185 
 
 At that moment the^e entered a person very unlike the 
 ./Jishop of Melita and the Dean of St. Ednmnd's, — a graceful 
 and distinguished-looking person, with a charming smile and 
 a perfect bow. 
 
 Lady Cardiff put up her eye-glass. 
 
 " Dear me ! There's loris !" she said to her friend Anne 
 Monmouthshire, whom she had cruelly possessed herself of, 
 and drawn away near the door. " Dear me I Husbands 
 usually shirk these ' days,' but he and Mr. Challoner are 
 really most exemplary. What do I mean? Oh, I don't 
 mean anything, of course, my dear. Nice-looking man, isn't 
 he ? Such race about him. Somehow he doesn't go well 
 with the tea-urn, do you think? and the bishop? You are 
 quite delighted with her ? To be sure : why shouldn't you 
 be? I'm sure she tries hard to please you, and she never 
 did anything in the East, you know, but gather those olives ; 
 never anything ! Such a pretty idea, too, Olives from Olivet I" 
 
 Meanwhile, as loris entered, the brow of his hostess grew 
 black as night. " You're an hour too early : how could 
 you be such a fool ?" she muttered, roughly. " You ought 
 always to let 'em all be gone : I've told you so fifty hundred 
 times." 
 
 He murmured penitent apologies, greeted the saints around 
 the tea-urn gayly and gracefully, and cros'^cd to the sinner in 
 the silver furs. " I saw your liveries at tuo door, so I ven- 
 tured to enter," he murmured to Etoile. Mr. Challoner shifted 
 his eye-glass with a grim smile, and, vacating his post by the 
 fire, asked Mrs. Grundy if the Chemnitz scandal were not a 
 terrible blow to Society. Mr. Challoner always spoke of So- 
 ciety with peculiar tenderness and respect, as if it were his 
 elder brother. 
 
 The Baroness Chemnitz, who hod dealt this blow, was a 
 beautiful young Roman, with a head as perfect as a narcissus, 
 and a body as graceful as its stem. , She had been wedded by 
 a ruined family to a great German capitalist at eighteen. She 
 had decorated his wonderful Louis Quinze houses and Renais- 
 sance hotels for some five or six seasons. She had seen all 
 the world dance in her gorgeous rooms until ten in the morn- 
 ing in Paris, Berlin, and Rome. Then a great love had en- 
 tered into her, — a whirlwind of passion that transformed the 
 pale, pensive narcissus into a purple passiflora with a heart of 
 
 16* 
 
186 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 fire. She fell, but she fell grandly. She erred, but she never 
 swerved from her punishment. She faced the wrath of her 
 husband, the fury of her family, the ra;;e of the world. She 
 confessed herself guilty, and claimed her separation, and left 
 all the gold and the glories of her place, and went out to face 
 solitude, — for her lover even turned against her ; lovers, like 
 Society, dislike a storm, and blame a hesitation to deceive. 
 The husband had to be held back by main force from her de- 
 struction ; she hurled her hatred of him in his teeth, and 
 shook herself free from the trammels of his riches, and went 
 down into the dust of obscurity. What could an outraged 
 Society do? — such a woman as this was unnatural. To old 
 Greek times perhaps she might belong, but born under the 
 Second Empire of France, surely she should have known some 
 better way than this. 
 
 She was in love, of course, — women always were, — but then 
 to leave such luxury for love ! 
 
 What depravity ! sighed Society. Such a ball as her last 
 was, — diamond rings and sapphire lockets given away like 
 pebbles in the cotillon, and twenty thousand francs spent in 
 forced strawberries alone ! IIow stupid, when, with a little 
 management, nothing need have been known, you know ! — 
 her bedroom hung with white satin embroidered with wreaths 
 of roses ; her footmen to be counted by the score ; her lovers 
 like the dreams of Aladdin ; and to leave all that, when with 
 a little tact ! — was there ever such unheard-of madness ? — to 
 make an abominable eclat, when with only a grain of sense 
 no one need have suspected anything! — to lose a fortune 
 counted by trillions, because she could not smile in her lord's 
 eyes, and lie a little gracefully and manage things quite quietly, 
 as good-breeding teaches every one ! What insuperable idiocy ! 
 — what inconceivable baseness ! Did she not know better her 
 mere duty to Society ? 
 
 WHiat did Society care for the woman's agony, for her long 
 temptation, for her piteous feebleness, for the mute misery 
 with which she had played her part in the gorgeous pageant of 
 her life, for the passionate sickness for one voice, one glance, 
 one touch, which had made her cast away all the pomp and 
 powers of her place and fling herself into the dust for love 
 alone ? 
 
 What did they know or care ? They only saw a fool who 
 
r 
 n 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 187 
 
 forfeited pride and pleasure and possession ; who left wealth 
 and ease and the delijj^hts of boundless extravagance behind 
 her as so much dross ; who could not lie, who would not be 
 bribed, who would not be content with treachery and vice, 
 but craved for liberty, and stooped to truth I Society was 
 outraged. 
 
 If her precedent were followed, what balls would there be 
 to go to? A husband who leai)ed like a lion to avenge his 
 own dishonor, and a wife who shook off niillions like dust 
 from her unfaltering feet! Society was aghast: nothing 
 frightens it like passion. For what does Passion care to 
 amuse Society ? 
 
 Society with one voice proclaimed Geltrude Chemnitz the 
 vilest of her sex, and now, around the Lady Joan's tea-table, 
 agreed with Mr. Challoner thpt in these flagrant cases Society 
 could not be too severe. Society, which invited Lady Joan 
 and lori^ to the same entertainments ; Society, which smiled 
 and sniggered with vile beneficence on a million illicit unions ; 
 Society, which had invented and patronized those blasphemies 
 of " friendship" and fervent parodies of " purity ;" Society, 
 which pressed the wife's wedded hand warm from her lover's 
 lips, so long as the husband presided blandly at the desecration 
 of his hearth ; Society, which smiled good-humoredly on the 
 " little weaknesses" of post-nuptial loves so long as the sup- 
 planted lord had neither modesty enough to feel his shame, 
 nor virility enough to take his vengeance ; Society, which 
 crowned the adulteress, and welcomed her so long as she kept 
 a lie upon her mouth and had a bold front lifted to the gaze 
 of men ; Society, which only when the man was roused as 
 man, and the woman could blush as woman, saw " any harm 
 whatever," and only when the doors were shut, the tables feast- 
 less, and the world forgotten in woe, found out that sin was 
 after all an ugly thing, and faithless wives were wantons. 
 
 " It is such a grievous thing when a woman forgets herself!" 
 said the Lady Joan, who had danced at the last monster ball 
 in the Louis Quinze rooms, and ordered lo to bring her her 
 chicken and champagne in tones that a kindly duchess would 
 barely use to a steward's room-boy. 
 
 She herself never forgot herself; she only forgot other 
 people, — when they were of no use to her, — which does not 
 matter at all. 
 
188 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 What a fool the beautiful wife of Baron Chemnitz looked 
 to her ! — to have only one lover in all your life, and let every- 
 body know it, and leave white satin bedrooms and Louis Quince 
 dinin_2:-rooms, diamonds as big as marbles, and horses from the 
 imperial haras, and all th-^ rest of it, with a horrible rupture 
 and uproar, so that all Europe heard of the crime I 
 
 It made Lady Joan quite ferocious to think what chances 
 other women had and what dire mess and misuse they made 
 of them. Only see what she did, — with little rooms like 
 bandboxes, and no money to speak of, and never a Louis 
 Quinze mirror in the house at all, unless it were bought to be 
 sold on the morrow. 
 
 She felt more respect than ever for herself, and felt that 
 there was some use, after all, in a Mr. Challoner, just as there 
 is, no doubt, in sea-anemones an;] house-flies, and other inferior 
 creations, whose existence a superior humanity is apt thought- 
 lessly to resent as useless and insignificantly superfluous, and 
 occasionally prominently disagreeable. 
 
 " My 1 It's a caution, aren't it 1" said Mrs. Henry V. 
 Clams, thoughtlessly, biting a piece out of a bit of Madeira 
 cake. 
 
 Lady Joan looked severe as Diana Nemorensis. A caution ! 
 Who wanted "a caution" in good society? Did not Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams know that she was eating cake in the Temple 
 of all the Virtues? 
 
 " It is disgusting, — perfectly disgusting," she said, with 
 severity. " And to think we all went to her only last week 1 
 Really, it is quite horrible, isn't it? It makes one almost 
 feel ashamed oneself." 
 
 " I don't see no call to do that," said Mrs. Henry V. Clams, 
 reddening a little, for she had brought a sort of conscience 
 out of the land of wooden nutmegs, and never could attain 
 the sublime audacity of the Lady Joan's panoply of perfection. 
 " I don't pee no call to do that. We aren't no kith or kin to 
 her, poor soul. Oh, my ! she'll miss it fine, I reckon : do you 
 mind that riviere Chemnitz gave her New Year's Day ? Pearls 
 as big as plovers' eggs: weren't they, now? She must be 
 downright vicious." 
 
 " Innate depravity 1" said the Lady Joan. "Well, she'll 
 starve now, thank goodness. She hasn't a penny of her own, 
 you know." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 189 
 
 And the ladies present, who had all danced, and drunk, and 
 borne oft" the costly cotillon toys from the Chemnitz balls 
 throughout four Carnivals, agreed that she ought to starve ; 
 all except Mrs. Henry V. Clams, who was too good-natured, 
 and whose conscience was pricking her. 
 
 The Prince loris turned round in the low chair where he 
 sat by the hearth beside Etoile, and murmured a word in favor 
 of his lovely countrywoman. 
 
 " The blame is hardly Geltrude's," he said, gently. " I 
 knew her from her infancy : she was of the sweetest nature ; 
 but her people forced her into a marriage that she loathed ; 
 she was frank and fearless, and our women are not cold, ftes- 
 dames : love to them " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, lo ! This is not the place to talk in 
 such a way, ' said Lady Joan, sharply, with a heavy frown. 
 " There is no excuse for Madame Chemnitz, — not the slightest. 
 She should have done her duty. It was certainly gilded 
 enough to make it easy 1" 
 
 loris was silent, and, turning back again to the fire, resumed 
 his conversation with Etoile. When your lady-love arrays 
 herself in ruffs and farthingale of social virtue, there is ob- 
 viously nothing to do but to be silent. You cannot quarrel 
 with her for having managed so well that whilst she smiles 
 upon you she yet makes the world smile on her : it would be 
 both impolite and ungrateful. 
 
 " I am pained for Chemnitz, — very pained. What can 
 riches compensate to a man for dishonor ?" said Mr. Challoner, 
 sternly gazing at the teapot. The assembled ladies murmured 
 applause to so beautiful if hackneyed a sentiment. 
 
 " Lord ! what a liar that man is 1" thought Mi's. Henry V. 
 Clams, and went to her carriage to take up Fontebranda at 
 the club. 
 
 Fontebranda never asked her to make Mr. Henry V. Clams 
 lie in that manner: Fontebranda only said to her, " Get a 
 great cook ; give three big balls a winter, and drive English 
 horses : you need never consider Society then, it will never 
 find fault with you, ma tr^s-cherey 
 
 She did not quite understand, but she obeyed ; and Society 
 never did. Society says to the members of it as the Spanish 
 monk to the tree that he pruned, and that cried out under bis 
 hook, — 
 
190 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " It Ls not beauty that is wanted of you, nor shade, but 
 olives." 
 
 Moral loveliness or mental depth, charm of feeling or noble- 
 ness of instinct, beauty or shade, it does not ask for ; but it 
 does ask for olives, — olives that shall round off its dessert, 
 and flavor its dishes, and tickle its sated palate, — olives that 
 it shall pick up without trouble, and never be asked to pay 
 for : these are what it likes. 
 
 Now, it is precisely in olives that the woman who has one 
 foot in Society and one foot out of it will be profuse. 
 
 She must please, or perish. 
 
 She must content, or how will she be countenanced ? 
 
 The very perilousness of her position renders her solicitous 
 to attract and to appease. 
 
 Society follows a natural selfishness in its condonation of 
 her ; she is afraid of it, therefore she must bend all her efforts 
 to be agreeable to it; it can reject her at any given moment, 
 80 that her court of it must be continual and expansive. No 
 woman will take so much pains, give so much entertainment, 
 be so willing to conciliate, be so lavish in hospitality, be so 
 elastic in willingness, as the woman who adores Society and 
 knows that any black Saturday it may turn ou her with a 
 bundle of rods and a peremptory dismissal. 
 
 Between her and Societv there is a tacit bond. 
 
 " Amuse me, and I will receive you." 
 
 " Receive me, and I will amuse you." 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Joan dismissed, one by one, the whole 
 battalion of Mrs. Grundy's forces, and the lighter squadrons 
 of airy ladies who had carried off the gold toys from the 
 Chemnitz cotillons, and heard the carriages of the deans, and 
 the dowagers, and the bauker*^ wives, and the more modest 
 cabs of the minor acquaintances, roll away towards the Corso 
 in the dusk. The Serope-Stairs bonneted and cloaked them- 
 selves, and also prepared to depart. 
 
 " They are excellent persons," loris had said confidentially 
 of them to Etoile, that day in the corner by the fire: "il/a/t/ 
 mi seccano ! They arc the sort of women we put in con- 
 vents in our country. It is terrible that the English have 
 nowhere to put their unmarriagcablc women, but can only let 
 them overrun other lands, like flocks of goats, stray and 
 unhappy." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 191 
 
 "You are very ungrateful: they adore you, all these 
 sisters." 
 
 " Oh ! Cent le pire difaut /" had rejoined loris, with his 
 light laugh. 
 
 But the Scrope-Stiiirs sisters, assisting at the tea-table, had 
 heard nothing of this, and little divined what he had been 
 saying as he had sat in the corner by the fire, in the low chair 
 that Lady CardiflF had vacated. 
 
 " lo," said Lady Joan, as the sisters embraced her in adieu, 
 and with that glitter of wrath in her eyes which* loris knew 
 but too well, " the girls can't go by themselves, and I can't 
 spare anybody. See them home, will you ? Gcc b'lck by 
 seven : Ronsoulet will be here, you know, and Victor." 
 
 loris glanced at Etoile, hesitated, sighed, and ofiered his 
 escort to the sisters. 
 
 " They might go from the Campidoglio to Soracte : no one 
 would stop them," he thought to himself; but courtesy was 
 his nature, and obedience to his tyrant was second nature. 
 
 " He'd have gone home with her if I hadn't sent him off," 
 thought the Lady Joar, wondering why Etoile still remained 
 in the low chair by the fire. 
 
 " I lingered behind your other visitors because I want your 
 advice, if you will give it me," said Etoile, as though answering 
 her thoughts, as the door closed upon loris, and Mr. Challoner 
 vanished into his own den. 
 
 She responded eagerly, all attention in an instant, remem- 
 bering that Etoile had bought a good deal of brocade. 
 
 " Delighted I Anything I can do, — only tell me. What 
 is it?" 
 
 To her view, "helping people" always meant advising them 
 to buy hric-cL-hrac ; and she heartily resolved that if it meant 
 furniture, china, or stuffs, she must send Mimo a hint to get 
 out all the best things he had, and to mind that all the marks 
 and the millesimes were correct. 
 
 Etoile sat down beside Lady Joan, and told her the story 
 of the dancing-girl who was starving behind the wall of 
 her house. 
 
 " The little boy is lovely," she said, when she had ended 
 the sad little history; "and the woman, I am sure, would 
 interest you if you saw her. She would die, and even let the 
 child die, sooner than be faithless to her faithless lover." ■* 
 
192 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Lady Joan listoned with cooled interest. Since it was not 
 teacups and triptyclis, why was she bored about it ? 
 
 " Very interesting, no doubt," she said, dryly. " But rather 
 immoral, don't you think ?" 
 
 " Immoral ? No : there arc many things more immoral, — 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, for instance." 
 
 Tbe Lady Joan winced. She hesitated a moment whether 
 she would seem very virtuous or seem very charitable and 
 beyond all prejudices. 
 
 " It is too kind of you to be so interested," she said, at 
 length. " You must tell it all to lo : he'll be rushing off 
 directly, with soup in one hand and bank-notes in the other. 
 Certainly the girl's case is very sad ; but then, you see she 
 brought it on herself. Why did she listen to her painter 
 biiibre she saw the marriage-lines? I should think your 
 best way would be to speak »to the Austrian Consul, or per- 
 haps your Princess Vera would condescend. I think they'd 
 S'nd her back for nothing ; and I suppose she has some 
 friends ?" 
 
 " None, I believe," said Etoile. " But do not trouble your- 
 self; it will not cost much to set her up in some little trade 
 that will enable her to keep herself and the boy. That is all 
 I meant to ask your advice about." 
 
 " Of course I would do anything in charity that I could," 
 said Lady Joan, vaguely feeling that she had made a wrong 
 move. " But a ballet-girl and an illegitimate child and all 
 that, — one hardly knows what to do. I've just sent a house- 
 maid away for light conduct. One must be just : one must 
 not put a premium on immorality." 
 
 " It is a pity Society often allows so high a one !" answered 
 Etoile, with that flash of contempt which the Casa Challoner 
 was learning to fear. Lady Joan, however, was always ready 
 for any thrust. 
 
 " I don't think Society does," she answered : she always 
 defended Society, since Society accepted her. " It gives cer- 
 tain rules, and if you keep to them it has no business to at- 
 tack you, — and never does, in point of fact. Women are 
 rash themselves and headstrong, and do foolish things, and 
 then they complain of Society. I've no prejudices, — not one : 
 I would just as soon shake hands with your ballet-girl as with 
 a duchess. But, you see, as long as one lives in the world one 
 
^<V»:. v.:^:.. .' 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 193 
 
 can't follow every impulse of one's heart, and ihese poor girls 
 just throw themselves away on some headlong passion, and 
 then think it very cruel of humanity not to be ready with 
 gold christening-cups and rose-silk cradles for their babies. 
 Their fate's very dreadful and very hard, no doubt, but they 
 make it themselves, you see." 
 
 " By forgetting themselves, which women in Society never 
 do, no doubt." 
 
 " Of course they never do, except that ass of a Geltrude 
 Chemnitz ! If you don't remember yourself, who will ?" said 
 the Lady Joan, with a pleasant laugh, ignoring the equivoque. 
 " As for the world well lost for love, and all that, it's rubbish, 
 you know. The world is too strong for anybody that sets up 
 against it. And when you've lost the world, i.e., your bread 
 and cheese in it, love flies out of the window. That's common 
 sense." 
 
 " ..i would be common sense, then, if this poor Hungarian 
 descended to infamy to feed herself" 
 
 " Just so. Having once slipped into the pit to gather a 
 flower, she ought to go down to the bottom to pick up a bit 
 of silver. But that's the sort of consistency you poetical 
 creatures never possess. You will fling yourselves to perdition 
 in 2i furia of self-sacrifice, and then you are supremely aston- 
 ished that the world only thinks you are a donkey whose legs 
 are broken. Society can't classify. It only lays down a few 
 broad lines, and packs into two sets the people who keep in 
 'em and* the people who jump over 'em. Unjust? Oh, I 
 dare say. But the thing is so. It's no good kicking against 
 the pricks. No doubt Magdalen is a charming person, utterly 
 underrated, and very much misjudged, and all the rest of it; 
 but all that common folk can judge by is that she has dragged 
 her hair in the dust ond has made a beast of herself " 
 
 " Without corresponding advantages 1" 
 
 Lady Joan laughed, but when she was on her high horse 
 of morality she rode it with cynicism indeed, but with con- 
 summate coolness, and would now and then enunciate opinions 
 with which Hannah More herself could have found no fault. 
 Indeed, to do her justice, womt;n who sacrificed themselves — 
 at a loss — did seem to her " too poor for heaven, and too pale 
 for hell." 
 
 " I am shocked at you," she said, with her frankest smile. 
 I 17 
 
194 FEIENDSHJP. 
 
 " What is the use of railing against Society ? Society, after 
 all, is only Humanity en masse, and the opinion of it must 
 be the opinion of the bulk of human minds. Complaints 
 against Society are like the lions' against the man's picture. 
 No doubt the lions would have painted the combat as going 
 just the other way, but then, so long as it is the man who 
 has the knife or the gun, and the palette and the pencil, where 
 is the use of the lions howling about injustice ? Society has 
 the knife and the pencil, — that's the long and the short of it ; 
 and if people don't behave themselves they feel 'em both, 
 and have to knock under. They're knifed first, and then 
 caricatured, — as the lions were. I can't see so much injustice 
 myself. The world's a very pleasant place, if you'll only keep 
 s'/raight in it." 
 
 And the Lady Joan pulled up the ruffles of old lace about 
 her shapely throat, and glanced with a little grin at two big 
 envelopes just came in, — invitations to a ball at the Mac- 
 scrips', and a dramatic representation at one of the minor 
 Legations. 
 
 Etoile bade her good-evening, and went away. Left alone, 
 she snapped her fingers at the deserted tea-table, jumped a 
 step or two of a bolero, lit a cigar, and, going to her chamber, 
 got into a gown of loose Eastern brocade with gold threads 
 shining in it, twisted a string of amber beads round her head, 
 and felt dressed appropriately for the guests she expected ,-^ — 
 Victor Louche, a second-class French dramatist, and M. Ron- 
 soulet, a very great sculptor, with Madame Patauge, Vho was 
 Madame Ronsoulet de facto, but not de Jure. They were 
 tonic that she required after a Wednesday afternoon. 
 
 Society is like the porter of your Paris house. It frowns 
 and bars the door, or rushes to bring all the keys to you, 
 according as you have filled its pockets or have left them 
 empty. Lady Joan knew her porter. 
 
 She was not rich, indeed, not even with all the teacups and 
 triptychs in the world ; but then she knew how to be obliging ; 
 she would run up the back-stairs to spare the porter any 
 trouble about the front, and when the porter was grumpiest 
 and sulkiest, would look up in his face and smile. No porter 
 could long resist such conduct, — not even the grim porteress 
 that is called Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 But there is an amount of fatigue in being so very consid- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 195 
 
 erate to your porter, and Lady Joan always recompensed her- 
 self for her consideration with some little pleasant indulgence 
 or other when the porter could not see through her keyhole. 
 
 In a sense, too, she liked the sharp and strong contrasts of 
 her life. She loved the bisque soup after the barley broth, 
 the caviare toast after the boiled sole with herbs. She liked 
 keeping the goats and the sheep apart, and frisking up the 
 wild glens with the one and feeding in the fat pastures with 
 the other. She liked lunching decorously off cold lamb with 
 a clergyman's family and talking of her dear friends the deans 
 and the bishops, and she liked going to an artists' ball after- 
 wards and dancing and screaming till the daylight shone in at 
 the windows. She liked driving staidly about with her great 
 cousin of Hebrides with the white-wanded footmen of Heb- 
 rides behind, and she liked rattling the same nights about the 
 streets, in the white Roman moonlight, in a hired cab, with 
 her friends, singing choruses. She liked having a bevy of 
 Hidrried and maiden dames to tea on a Tuesday afternoon and 
 enchantir-g them with old laces miraculously purchased and 
 pattern opinions miraculously fabricated, and she liked dining 
 at home that evening with a few choice spirits who quoted 
 Beaudelaire in a haze of smoke, and brought out the suggest- 
 ive little statuettes, and held that none but fools could believe 
 in any deity under any name, and quoted as their amatory 
 gospel, " Li amour, c'est lafemme d'un autre^ 
 
 On the whole, there was much wisdom in these ways of 
 life. She saw life in all its aspects, and got credit from all 
 its actors. And she seldom made mistakes in either the dull 
 comedy or the gay one, — except, indeed, when sometimes she 
 talked too long to a cynic or met the eyes of a guileless 
 woman. 
 
 At such times she would quail a little, and feel as though, 
 despite all her cashmeres of conventionality and sables of con- 
 tent, some one had stripped her naked in the full blaze of a 
 noonday sun. 
 
 Her guests came in all together, laughing, happy, and good- 
 humored, bringing with them much sparkle of fresh wit, and 
 much smell of stale smoke, into the chambers where Mrs. 
 Grundy had sat in august majesty but an hour before. 
 
 Victor Louche was a thin, sallow man, with a pungent 
 tongue and a salacious humor, who lived among actors and 
 
196 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 actresses, and was the life and soul of winter nights at Bi- 
 gnon's, and summer days at Etretat; Madame Patauge was a 
 cheery soul, with much mirth, many anecdotes, and a reper- 
 tory of all the liveliest songs of the last half-century, which 
 she could still sing with power and zest, like the female La- 
 blache that she was. Madame Pdtai'^e, originally the daughter 
 of a house-porter in Paris, in days when Louis Piiilippe waa 
 king, knew her Paris as a child its nurse ; she had gone on 
 the stage of the Opera Comique and been successful ; she had 
 married a journalist, who had beaten her and spent her money; 
 she had consoled herself in the atelier of M. llonsoulet when 
 he was unknown to fame, and had finally settled down perma- 
 nently side by side with him when he became famous. She 
 was a very big woman, with a very big voice, and M. Ron- 
 soulet, who was a very little man, spent life much as a pigmy 
 might do chained between the four paws of an elephant. But 
 it was a good-natured elephant, and was totally unconscious 
 that it crushed him ; it thought, indeed, that carrying him 
 about by its trunk was a benefit : female elephants have these 
 delusions. 
 
 She was an honest soul ; she never sought to conceal what 
 she had been, or what she was ; when she had quarrelled with 
 her husband she had abused him soundly, packed up her 
 trunks, and departed from under his roof, with the frankest 
 avowal of her intentions ; she never concealed either the storms 
 or the sunshine of her adventurous years ; and she adored 
 Ronsoulet with an adoration as big as her person. Neverthe- 
 less, a world which accepted the Lady Joan rejected this poor 
 Madame, who was only Ronsoulet by courtesy. She was mal 
 vue by Society, though she was a hundred times the better, 
 truer, tenderer, and worthier woman. In fact, Society would 
 have blushed to have been supposed to have even known the 
 mere fact of her existence. 
 
 Lady Joan invited this trio of sorry sinners to dinner be- 
 cause the songs and anecdotes tickled her palate ; because 
 after Mrs. Grundy at tea she required mental tonic and re- 
 freshment ; because Ronsoulet would make her own bust for 
 nothing ; because Victor Louche had always known a good 
 deal about her ; because — there were fifty becauses. Besides, 
 nobody knew of these Bohemian banquets ; her servants never 
 talked ; and if she were seen driving up to the little villa out- 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 197 
 
 side Porta Pia, where MM. Ronsoulet and Louche were living 
 together, she only went to have her bust modelled, — that was 
 all. 
 
 "Do you speak to that creature?" said Society to her, 
 once, when the good-tempered fi't, woman smiled, and nodded, 
 and waved hands to her in delighted recognition across the 
 crowd on the Pincio. Such contre-temps will now and then 
 occur to the most perfect diplomatists. And the Lady Joan 
 replied, with that frank regard which always told her intimate 
 friends when she was lying with the most hardihood, — 
 
 " Well, you know, Mr. Challoner's always telling me I'm 
 too good-natured to people. But I see her at Ronsoulet's 
 studio. What can I do ? One must just bow. I haven't the 
 heart to cut people : I'm so weak about all that. Besides, 
 you know, I have not the stiiF ideas nf other women : my 
 poor mother was always so over-kind to all artists. You see, 
 we are so well known. We can do things other folks can't. 
 Nobody ever can say a word against us." 
 
 So Society gave her much credit, alike for frankness, spirit, 
 and propriety, a triad seldom allowed to exist in unison ; and 
 it was the general feeling in society that she was a very excel- 
 lent young woman, and that it was high treason against her to 
 suppose for a moment that she had any other attractions up 
 at Fiordelisa than her bees and her beasts, her pigs and her 
 poultry. 
 
 On the whole. Lady Joan was as successful as that ingenious 
 smuggler who traded in sheep, to run brandy ashore, and whose 
 upper deck was crowded with innocent lambs, while the alcohol 
 that cheated the revenues reposed cask against cask, all snug 
 and unseen, underneath in the hold. 
 
 " Is it worth the trouble ?" landsmen wonder, sooing the 
 contraband sloops hover off the Spanish shores : " is it worth 
 so much calculation, so many risks, such constant oscillation 
 between safety and ruin ?" The contrabandista will tell you 
 that it is, — that no money rings so cheerily as his, and no wine 
 tastes so well. 
 
 Lady Joan had the same opinion. 
 
 Her's were only small gains, like the smuggler's, — a duchess's 
 bow, an ambassadress's nod, cards to half a hundred houses, 
 bankers' balls, clergymen's praises, American dinners, — no 
 more than the smuggler's dollars and tobacco. But then these 
 
 17* 
 
198 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 were everything to her. Some desire the apple of the Hesper- 
 ides, others only hunger for a sweet potato. Lady Joan was 
 of this wise other section. And she bought her sweet potato 
 in the right market, and ate it, and was happy. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Scrope-Stair sisters made a Cerberus quite invaluable 
 stationed forever at the hall door of the Casa Challoner. 
 
 Cerberus of Hades was but a primitive and one-ideaed beast, 
 whose sole office was to prevent miserable sinners from escaping 
 their punishment. This Cerberus of society was a much more 
 civilized being, and had the advanced views proper to its epoch, 
 — the epoch that has the Triangle instead of Troy. Cerberus, 
 by alternately fawning and growling, induced Society to swallow 
 the discrepancies of the Casa Challoner, as Cerberus itself had 
 swallowed them. And it is only this first swallowing that is 
 any trouble. An impropriety to Society is like a fish-bone in 
 the human throat ; fifty to one it will not slip down, but if 
 once it pass all faces are calm ; the fish-bone is accepted in 
 safety, and will be heard of no more. A little butter will be 
 taken after it, — nothing else. 
 
 Old Lord George had not utterly forgotten that he had once 
 been a man of the world, though he had adopted an air of 
 sleepy senility, which kept him out of rows and served him 
 well ; and old Sir George would watch the Lady Joan with a 
 twinkle in his eye, and take her measure very correctly. He 
 kept his lids half shut, and was very hard of hearing for the 
 majority of the world, and could act a cross between King 
 Lear and Poor Tom with an admirable skill when any quarrel 
 \/as going on around him. But he had not forgotten that he 
 had once been " handsome Scrope" in the guard-room of St. 
 James's, and he appraised his daughters' friend very neatly, 
 and did not like his daughters' friendship. But what could 
 he do all alone ? 
 
 Middleway stayed up there, — the pious Middleway, who 
 talked of Providence as his own Senior Partner, and of Para- 
 dise as a sort of bonus awarded for thrifty and timely insur- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 199 
 
 ance ; Middleway dined at the Casa Challoner, and took his 
 beloved girls to Fiordelisa, strong in their maiden innocenct, 
 and their blond chignons. To be sure, there was the Seventh 
 Commandment printed among its brethren in any church 
 where Middleway officiated, — the Seventh Commandment in 
 all the glaring outspokenness and culpable heedlessness of the 
 feelings of Society, of which Moses, like too many other 
 great writers, was guilty, and there were times when the ex- 
 cellent Middleway felt that the Decalogue ought, like the 
 Decameron, to be edited in more polite language. But still, 
 qualms or no qualms, Middleway lunched with Mrs. Henry 
 V. Clams, and visited at Fiordelisa, and where Middleway, 
 austere though courteous, boldly trod, how should poor old 
 trembling Lord George dare to refuse to enter ? 
 
 Besides, there was Marjory I 
 
 At the thought of Marjory all rebellion would die out of 
 him, — Marjory, with her pinched lips, her sharp voice, and her 
 resolute will, who, if he ventured to cross her wishes, would 
 never let him have a brazier of charcoal, or a glass of whiskey, 
 or a bank-note in his pocket ever again throughout his dreary 
 days, but would remind him fifty times oftcner than she did 
 already that if he had not been a spendthrift his daughters 
 would not now have to trudge through mud and dust to copy 
 gallery canvasses and chapel frescoes. There was Middleway, 
 and there was Marjory : so old Lord George stifled his con- 
 science, and let the mutton from Fiordelisa be set upon his 
 table, and the eggs from Fiordelisa be broken into his sherry, 
 and pretended to be dozing in the sun when the Lady Joan on 
 the terrace of Fiordelisa called lori^ to her feet. He was a 
 gentleman at heart, this poor, worn-out, weary octogenarian ; 
 he had been an English soldier, and was still an English gen- 
 tleman, and sometimes he felt ashar'ed. But he had ^rown 
 timid with age, and his home was chill and dreary, and his 
 daughters bade him obey, and he did obey, and Lady Joan 
 sent him new eggs and fresh vegetables with the most grate- 
 ful regularity. She iiiid grown rather bored with Cerberus, 
 but Cerberus was still very useful to her, and she threw the 
 admirable watch-dog the titbits she knew it desired. 
 
 She called them darling girls, though they were older than 
 herself, had them always to her second-rate dinners, gave them 
 patterns for gowns, took them to the theatres, sent them gamo 
 
200 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and honey aad wine, had them to stay at Fiordelisa, and, above 
 all, let Marjory feast her eyes on loris. 
 
 Poor Marjory, in the beginning of time when Lady Joan 
 had first arrived from Abana and Pharpar, Orontes and 
 Euphrates, with her huntress's blood all on fire for want of 
 something to kill, had not been a watch-dog : she had been a 
 catspaw. 
 
 Before Lady Joan had reached the sublime height of intre- 
 pidity from which she now invited the Church to lunch up at 
 Fiordelisa, whilst she was still under that certain chill and 
 awe of that vision of the British Bona Dea whi^^h had loomed 
 before her on her landing at Brindisi, she had deemed it worth 
 while to be prudent. 
 
 In pursuit of prudence she had bidden Ions pay a semblance 
 of court to her dear friend Marjory, and took Marjory about 
 with her conspicuously. loris laughed, pitied himself, and 
 obeyed. He played his part gracefully in the meaningless 
 comedy, and its victim based upon it her wildest hopes, as 
 baseless as they were wild. When she perceived that she had 
 been but fooled, — used as the mere screen of another's con- 
 venience, — the passion of that fading hope survived the death 
 of hope. She consumed her heart in rage and misery, but 
 consumed it in silence. To break with the Casa Challoner 
 would have been to lose all sight of loris : she continued to 
 kiss her friend in public and private, and nurtured her un- 
 spoken passion in her breast, feeding it hungrily on every look 
 and tone and gesture of her friend's lover. She saw what 
 her friend did not see : she foresaw the time when the proverb 
 would hold good that too much tying loosens. She marked 
 her friend's mistakes, and gauged the power of her friend's 
 tyranny ; she saw when the chain was strained, and lay in wait 
 for some dim future, as the gray adder hides under the stone. 
 
 She loved him with the terrible love of the woman who 
 hungers for a life that will no more come to her than the silver 
 moon in summer will come to a child's cries, — who knows that 
 liis hours, his thoughts, his senses, are all another's and will 
 never be hers, yet dreams of some day when disaster or dis- 
 appointment may drag him down within her grasp, and whis- 
 pers in the hush of the night to her own sick soul, " Who 
 knows? who knows?" v;v: 
 
 The comedy had long ceased to be played, and the years had 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 201 
 
 gone by since then, but the desire of the moth for the star still 
 burnt on, and the gentle grace, the tender familiarity, the 
 kindly courtesy of his ways with women fed the smouldering 
 fire with every unthinking action. She knew that it was use- 
 less, hopeless, rootless, but still, in the dreary routine and re- 
 pression of her days, she hugged closer this one sweetness : 
 only to see him, to hear him, be where he was, this she deemed 
 better than naught ; she fought firmly for the Temple of all 
 vhe Virtues becau.se on its altars her own hopes smouldered, 
 aud when she defended the innocence of its rites, there was 
 so robust a ring of sincerity in her voice because it hurt her 
 so fiercely to think of those long amorous summers which the 
 nightingalec of Fiordelisa hymned. 
 
 Lady Joan knew her folly well enough, and gleefully grinned 
 over it in secret, and even approved of it. It was useful to 
 her, the one supreme test-weight by which the liady Joan 
 balanced all things. 
 
 " If the poor ass likes to fret herself to fiddle-strings after lo, 
 let her," said the Lady Joan in her thoughts ; and Lady Joan 
 in public kissed her with efiusion before a dozen spinsters, and 
 took her oft^n to the theatres, and said to everybody, " If lo 
 would only be persuaded to marry that dear darling good girl ! 
 — but he won't hear of it, you know. Such a pity ! — such 
 friends as we all are, it would be delightful !" 
 
 Meantime, Marjory Scrope grew passive, if not resigned, as 
 the season swept on, and accepted the reign of the Lady Joan 
 as inevitable, and would have been even willing to make 
 common cause with her against any invader of her sovereignty, 
 and, sharp of eye and ear, saw many a sign that escaped the 
 happy and blind vanity of her friend, heard many a yawn, de- 
 tected many a gesture of weariness and impatience, and had 
 almost ceased to be jealous of what she saw had to him be- 
 come but a habit. But at any gleam of a fresh interest, any 
 glance of a new thought for him, she sprang up as a snake 
 springs : not the Lady Joan herself could ever have been as 
 swift to see it, as ferocious to resent it, as she was. 
 
 And, with the prescience of an unerring way, the hatred 
 of Marjory Scrope-Stairs had darted down and fastened on 
 Etoile. 
 
 Marjory, indeed, was hardly used. Jacob for Rachel had 
 Dot served more devotedly than she for six years had served 
 1* 
 
202 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the Lady Joan for the wage of proximity to Tons. She had 
 toiled early and late ; she had copied old frescoes and let the 
 Lady Joan sell them ; she had worked chairs and cushions and 
 finished lace that her friend had begun and got tired of; she 
 had never minded being asked at the eleventh hour to fill up a 
 place at a dinner, unexpectedly left vacant; she had trudged 
 through sludge and sleet on bitter winter days to ransack curi- 
 osity-barrows for the Casa Challoner ; and finally, she had gone 
 about in society armed cap-a-pU in defence of that Temple of 
 all the Virtues, and made herself generally ridiculous with a 
 stubbornness and a heroism worthy of a far better cause. She 
 had led a hard, dull, joyless life. She had been a watch-dog, 
 and been bound to take blows and be out in all weathers ; she 
 had been a screen, and had borne all the brunt of the fire, and 
 been pushed aside when not wanted ; she had been a catspaw 
 and was left with burnt fingers and sore heart out in the cold 
 whilst her clever friend gleefully munched the fruit. She had 
 been hardly dealt with for six mortal years ; but she had been 
 able to bear it all for the sake of that baseless, shapeless, yet 
 inextinguishable hope which had sustained her. She had 
 grown used, with the dull pain of an old half-healed wound, 
 to seeing the supremacy of the Lady Joan. 
 
 But now ! — She hated the new-comer with that deadly 
 hatred which has no pity, as it has no parallel, — the hatred 
 of an obscure and discontented woman for the woman who ii 
 eminent and adored. 
 
 Etoile herself never thought about her at all, save to feel 
 compassion for her vaguely as the slavey of Society and the 
 shadow of the Lady Joan. But Marjory Scrope thought of 
 her from morn till night, watched her gestures, studied her 
 every word, hated her for the very frou-frou of her skirts, 
 the mere silent softness of her sweeping velvets, hated her 
 beyond all for the look that the eyes of loris gained whenever 
 they gazed on her, and in the stillness of the nights dreamed 
 of her, and, waking, muttered, " I have borne enough : never 
 will I bear that ! — never, never, never !" 
 
 " Take the watering-pot," had said that wise woman of the 
 world. Lady Cardifl; 
 
 Perhaps, if Etoile had taken the watering-pot, — if she had 
 drunk tea at the Scrope-Stairs, given the Scrope-Stairs a few 
 pretty things, praised the Scrope-Stair drawings, and bought 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 203 
 
 a water-color of the School ^^ Athens, — even this sandstorm 
 of envy and hatred might nave been allayed. But that was 
 not her way. 
 
 " My dear, you never seem to fear the mob," said Lady 
 Cardiff. " It is jast the mob that builds up guillotines ; and 
 the woman who has ' ^nius is just Marie Antoinette to it, — 
 ' the accursed proud Austrian,' — and the mob howls till the 
 axe falls." 
 
 No doubt it was a true exordium ; but Etoile feared the 
 mob no more than did the daughter of Maria Theresa. 
 
 Thip night, when the Lady Joan sternly bade her knight 
 attend the knightless damsels to their home, loris obeyed. 
 He was aware of the hopeless passion he had long before in- 
 spired, and pitied the woman who felt it, and was friends with 
 her in the same kindly, courtly, gentle spirit with which he 
 took off his hat to the old orange-woman at the corner and 
 asked the cobbler's wife in the cellar how her rheumatism 
 fared. It was tiresome to him to go out of his way in the 
 damp chilly night, with the snow beginning to fall, to escort 
 Cerberus whom his mistress had chosen for the nonce to dress 
 up as a Una without a lion. But he did the behest chival- 
 rously, and went with the sisters gayly and courteously to their 
 dull, old, dark, long palace down by the Forum Trajano, and, 
 having discharged his duty, thought that he had justly earned 
 a little recreation. 
 
 loris, with people he disliked, was apt to pour out on them 
 a graceful effusion which they took for cordiality and regard. 
 They were never more mistaken in their lives. To women 
 who wearied him, to men he mistrusted, to enemies always, 
 and to strangers generally, loris was courtier enough by habits, 
 and meridional enough in nature, to be unrelaxing in courtesy 
 and ardent in protestation : amiability is the armor of the 
 South, as much as rudeness is of the North. 
 
 In the dusk on the staircase that night, loris as he had es- 
 corted Cerberus had seen a jewel shining on the stone, had 
 stooped for it, and recognized a black onyx medallion, with a 
 monogram in pearls, which he remembered seeing once about the 
 throat of Etoile. He did not send it up-stairs to her by the 
 servant, as he might have done, since he had left her sitting 
 by the fire, but said nothing of it to his companions, and 
 slipped it into his pocket. His escort ended, and the sisters 
 
204 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Bafe at hoDie, he went to his own home, dined hastily, and, 
 calling about eight o'clock at the house on the Monte Cuvallo, 
 sent to know if the Comtesse d'Avesnes would receive him. 
 
 Etoile, her own brief dinner ended, was sitting in a low 
 chair by the hearth, with great Tsar at her feet, looking over 
 some old prints, Marcantonios amidst them, which she had 
 bought that morning. 
 
 The room was large, but warm ; great bowls of flowers stood 
 on the marble tables ; old tapestries and embroideries were 
 scattered about ; there were sketches . here and there ; the 
 hearth was wide and open ; oak logs were burning on it, and 
 their flame shone red on the giallo antico of itL huge carved 
 chimney-piece ; a marble copy of the Belvedere Mercury which 
 she had bought stood near, with a cluster of rose-red azaleas 
 in vases around it ; and a bronze of the Vatican Jove was 
 half hidden in white camellias. A certain sense of home fell 
 on loris as he entered, — a sense that never touched him in his 
 own lonely house or within the chambers of the Casa Clialloner. 
 
 Etoile, who was dressed in white stuffs that fell softly about 
 her, and had a knot of geranium at her throat, turned, with 
 a smile, as she saw him. 
 
 " Is it anything very urgent ? Has Lady Joan found a fault 
 in the Venetian costume?" 
 
 A. shadow passed over his mobile face at the name : he 
 came forward and dropped on one knee by the hearth. 
 
 " Nothing 'irgent ; and perhaps you will rebuke me for an 
 intrusive impertinence. I had the fortune to find this to- 
 night, and I could not resist restoring it into your own hands." 
 
 She gave a cry of 'pleasure. 
 
 " Oh, that is very good of you ! My dear locket ! I had 
 just sent to advertise for it. You shall look in it for your 
 reward." 
 
 " May I indeed ?" 
 
 She pressed the secret spring for him, and he saw the por- 
 trait of Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 His heart beat with a quick relief. He had expected to see 
 some face of his own sex. 
 
 " The Duchesse Santorin is very happy to have such a 
 friend," he said, gravely. 
 
 " But you barely look at it : there is no more beauvifal face 
 in Europe." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 205 
 
 " I do not care to look at it," said Ions, and his soft eyes 
 gazed at her own face. 
 
 Etoile felt her cheek grow warm, — she could not tell why, — 
 and she drew a little away. 
 
 " Make Tsar move farther, — ^be has very bad manners, — 
 and rise up. Prince loris. ' There is a pleasant chair there." 
 
 " Will you not call me lo ? Every one does." 
 
 " I do not care to do what every one does," she answered 
 him, a little impatiently. She seemed to hear the " lo ! lo !" 
 of Lady Joan's imperious demands ringing loudly over hill 
 and vale by the banks of the Almo. 
 
 He caressed Tsar, and sank into the chair near her, within 
 the warmth of the hearth. 
 
 " You are all alone ? You are going to spend your evening 
 alone?" 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " ' Never less alone than when alone.' It is fortunate for 
 me that I feel so, for I have always been left very much to 
 myself." 
 
 " But surely " 
 
 " You mean I might be out somewhere to-night ? Oh, 
 yes ; and any other nights. But I do not care very much for 
 society, — not even for that of Paris. In my own house there 
 I receive a good deal : that I like ; but society is monotonous : 
 it has no infinite variety, as study has, and art. Besides, I 
 think the artist, like the saint, should keep himself ' unspotted 
 from the world' as far as possible. It only dims our sight and 
 dwarfs our aims." 
 
 " And you are not very strong in health, I fear." 
 
 " They say so. Perhaps I have tried to do too much too 
 early." 
 
 " The perfect fruit and flower have been too much for the 
 young tree that bore them." 
 
 " Perfect; 1 Ah, if you could only know how ill content I 
 am with all that men call great in what I do, — how poor and 
 pale the best is beside the visions that I see 1" 
 
 " That of course. What RaiFaelle hria left us must be to 
 the glories he imagined as the weaver's dye to the suLset's 
 fires. Tell me, — ^you have been in Rome before ?" 
 
 " Never. I studied in Belgium and in Paris, — nowhere 
 else ; but to be taught by Israels was almost au atonement for 
 
 18 
 
206 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the loss of Rome. But it is because I lost Rome in my 
 student days that I cannot endure to waste any hours here in 
 tlie mere distractions of Society which I can have anywhere 
 else. In your city it is so easy to * be with the immortals.* 
 I wander in your wonderful haunted places as long as it ia 
 light, and then when evening corner on I am tired." 
 
 " You do wisely for yourself, — though cruelly to others." 
 
 " Ah, pray do not make me compliments : I dislike them. 
 We are not in Society now ; we can be natural." 
 
 " You always doubt my sincerity." 
 
 " No, not always. Tsar would not like you so well if you 
 could not be true sometimes." 
 
 loris lifted up the noble head of the dog and kissed him. 
 
 " I think I am always true — except when she makes me 
 false," he murmured, as he stooped to the hound. " Madame, 
 tell me more of yourself. You cannot think what interest it 
 has for me. Nay, I am saying no flattery now, but the sim- 
 plest fact. When the world says * Etoile' every one wonders ; 
 I have wondered with the rest. Do not be angered." 
 
 " Why should I be ? I will tell you anything you like. 
 Not that there is much to tell. My years are written on my 
 panels and canvases. I have lived between the studio and 
 the open air." 
 
 There was something dreamy and familiar in the warm, 
 wood-scented air, the mellow light, the bright hearth, the 
 shadowy, fragrant chamber. It seemed to loris that he had 
 been there all his life watching the glow from the fire fall on 
 the white folds of her dress and finding out the red geraniums 
 at her throat ; whilst little by little, in the easy communicative- 
 ness of fireside talk, the various changes of her life, with its 
 ambitions and its fruitions, passed before him, and her words 
 built up to his fancy the little village on the green Meuse 
 waters and the dull old house in the gardens of the Luxem- 
 bourg. 
 
 Etoilo very seldom spoke of herself. 
 
 She had grown to see that no one ever believed a word she 
 said : so silence had become a habit with her. 
 
 What they expected she did not know ; nor, perhaps, did 
 they any better. But the mere truth never had a chance of 
 being credited. It never has. 
 
 " Truth is a gem that loves the deep," applies to truth 
 
FRJENDSniP. 207 
 
 metaphysical, lilstorical, philosophical. But truth personal 
 is rather a flower like the brier rose, too homely, too simple, 
 and too thorny for men to care to gather it. They like a lie, 
 which, like the barometrical flower, will change its color half 
 a dozen times a day. 
 
 With loris she had a different feeling. She was willing to 
 talk to him, glad to take him back with her in fancy to her 
 childish days. He listened with that soft, mute attention, 
 that homage of scarce-broken silence, which his gaze made 
 more eloquent than the most eager words of other men. The 
 firelight shone on his delicate dark head ; his eyes were dreamy, 
 musing, tender. The moments sped swiftly away and became 
 hours. At last he drew a deep breath, as of a man who casts 
 off a burden of dread. 
 
 " And amidst it all — ^you have never loved !" 
 
 " Loved 1" echoed Etoile, in a vague, startled sort of sur- 
 prise. Her face grew warm ; she felt troubled, she could not 
 have told why. 
 
 " Is it true ?" he persisted. " It is true, is it not, you have 
 never loved any one ?" 
 
 Etoile bent forward and put back a burning piece of wood 
 that had fallen too far. As she did so, one of the geranium 
 flowers fell out from among the blossoms at her throat. He 
 caught it from the fire. 
 
 " Answer me," he said, eagerly. " Is it true ?" 
 
 " Certainly true, — yes. But I do not know why " 
 
 He put the scarlet flower in his breast. 
 
 " Why I have the daring to ask you so personal a question ? 
 Only to ask it seems a profanation, and I need not have asked 
 it ; for I knew '' 
 
 " What can you mean ? What can you know ?" 
 
 " I knew that it was so before you spoke a word. The first 
 night I saw you I said in my thoughts, * That woman has no 
 past;' for a woman who has had no passion has no past, no more 
 than those flowers, born to-day, that are at your breast. Then 1 
 studied those scattered poems that are signed ' Etoile,' and I was 
 yet more sure. You write of love from without, not from 
 within. It is a thing you have read of, dreamed of, built up to 
 yourself in fancy, but have not felt. You theorize on it exter- 
 nally, as you might of life in some far planet more beautiful than 
 earth. But love, you know, — no, you do not know, — is a fiercer, 
 
208 FRIENDSHJP. 
 
 fouder, ay, and perhaps a grosser and viler thing than you have 
 ever been touched by. You have said to yourself, ' I shall 
 love like that some day.' You have not said to yourself, ' I 
 loved like that in a day that is dead.' Now, between those 
 two there is such a gulf, — such an abyss, — such a sea of flame I 
 And when you have crossed that gulf you will not look at us 
 all any longer with those clear, candid, wondering eyes, as if 
 you had strayed down out of a better world than ours. No ; 
 then you will only look back, and you will be no longer pure 
 of heart, as you are now. Tell me : am I not right?" 
 
 A flush went over her face. lie was half leaning, half 
 kneeling by her ; his eyes watched her with a dreamy pleasure 
 in them, half sensual, half spiritual. 
 
 He was utterly in earnest as he spoke ; he meant truly what 
 he uttered , but he was a master in the power of casting sweet 
 trouble into a woman's soul, and there was an added pleasure 
 to him wh*in the soul was deep and calm like a lake and his 
 was the first hand to drop either a pearl or a stone into its 
 depths. 
 
 " Am I not right?" he murmured, softly. 
 
 She pushed her hair back from her forehead a little wearily 
 and with a sense of confusion. 
 
 " Yes, — oh, yes," she answered him, " I suppose a woman's 
 life without love is incomplete. I suppose I only sleep ; but 
 I can care for no one — in that way. Art alone moves me." 
 
 He had risen as he had spoken last ; and now, bending 
 downward with exquisite grace, he touched her hand with 
 his lips as softly as a bird's wing might brush a rose in 
 passing. 
 
 " Happy he for whom you shall awake," he murmured, as he 
 stooped. 
 
 Then he glanced at the clock, bowed low, caressed the dog, 
 and went. 
 
 The clock-hands stood at eleven. 
 
 Etoile sat without moving as he had left her gazing into 
 the fire. A nameless emotion stirred within her and made 
 her pulse thrill. A troubled pain, that yet was not pain at 
 all, was on her. " What have I missed ?" she wondered ; and 
 then her face grew warm again, and she rose with a restless 
 impatience of herself, not understanding what ailed her. 
 
 Meanwhile, loris passed out into the moonlit night, which 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 209 
 
 was cold and wet, flinging his furs about him in the teeth of 
 the north wind, and, with the geranium flower hidden in his 
 breast, mounted the staircase of the Casa Chal loner. 
 
 At the Casa Challoner the dinner had been gay, but Lady 
 Joan had been gloomy. 
 
 In vain did Vi'^^tor Louche tell his best stories, and Madame 
 Paturge cap the m with still better ; in vain did both of them 
 sing the funniest and naughtiest songs that theatres and ca/ds- 
 chantants had ever rung with ; in vain did they disport them- 
 selves and earn their truffles and their wine and their entrance 
 into the Temple of all the Virtues ; in vain : the brow of the 
 Lady Joan was dark, her high spirits had departed, and her 
 eyes were as two scimitars flashing ominously in moonlight. 
 
 Victor Louche, innocent or malicious, called out from the 
 piano at eleven o'clock, " Ah, pardieu ! where is Prince lo ? 
 I thought I missed something familiar from the memiy 
 
 The cheery Paturge from a capacious chair sent out a cone 
 of tobacco-smoke. 
 
 " Ah, yes, where is Prince Charming ? It seemed to me 
 there was something wanting. You have never quar'-elled with 
 him, ma mie ? He is too delightful. Such manners 1 Ah I" 
 
 " Quarrel !" said Lady Joan, scornfully. " Who could 
 quarrel with lo ? Quarrel with a bean-stalk ! That's more 
 character than he ha^ " 
 
 " Jealous : who of, I wonder ?" thought the astute Victor, 
 with a crash of the chords. 
 
 Mr. Challoner was, as usual, in his own sanctum, with the 
 « Times" and the Share-list. 
 
 Madame Paturge looked across at Monsieur Ronsoulet and 
 winked ; but the wink was lost on him : he was thinking of 
 his statue of Palestrina for the new Opera-house, and a little 
 of the Chateaubriand at dinner. He roused himself slowly 
 to what they were talking about. 
 
 " To be sure : where is loris?" he muttered, " I never dined 
 here without him before. And there is no one in Europe with 
 a truer or more delicate instinct for the arts. Where ia he ?" 
 
 " I expected him to dinner," said Lady Joan, sulkily. 
 When she was out of temper she sometimes told the truth. 
 
 The Turkish curtains were at that moment put aside, and 
 through the doorway loris entered, kissed Madame Paturge's 
 hands with gay gallantry, saluted Eonsoulet with reverential 
 
 18* 
 
210 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 friendship, and accosted Victor Louche with a graceful com- 
 pHment on his last comedy. 
 
 " Such perfect manners, ma mie. You will never change 
 for the better," said Madame Paturge in a low tone to her 
 hostess, who, however, did not even hear, but said roughly 
 and curtly to the oflFender, — 
 " Where have you been ?" 
 
 " I have dined at home. I found a mass of correspondence." 
 " I told you to go with the Stairs." 
 " I accompanied those amiable sisters." 
 " Well, why didn't you come straight back here ?" 
 " I remembered orders I had to give Giannino at home. I 
 knew you could not miss me ; you would be too well amused." 
 " You've been writing all the evening ?" 
 " Yes." 
 
 The eyes of loris began to grow a little angry under their 
 long lashes. Victor Louche, who feared a scene, began to 
 sing " Qa me chatouille dans le nez." 
 Madame Paturge nudged her hostess. 
 " Perhaps he has been playing at the club, and lost money." 
 " lo never plays," says the Lady Joan, .savagely. 
 There was an awkward silence. 
 
 Victor Louche sang very loud and made a great noise with 
 the pedals. loris crossed over to M. Ronsoulet. 
 " Caro maestro, how goes the Palestrina?" 
 " The bean-stalk won't bend forever," thought Madame 
 Paturge in her capacious chair. 
 
 Fortunately for the preservation of peace there then entered 
 Mimo and Trillo and a youth of three-and-twenty, Guido Ser- 
 ravalle, who sang a fine second to her favorite ritornello. 
 
 Trillo brought her word of an Inspecteur des Beaux- Arts 
 who was coming from Petersburg and would buy a great deal ; 
 Mimo, of an order that Lord Norwich had given him to find 
 an altar-screen, trecento^ if possible; and Gruido Serravalle 
 brought her a new song and an old lute, inlaid with ivory and 
 silver, as a present. They sufi&ced to avert the thunders of 
 her wrath ; but, even as she hastily reckoned that the lute was 
 certainly worth three or four hundred francs and smiled on 
 the donor, her brow was still dark and her face was still 
 sullen. 
 
 The sagacious Madame Paturge, from her chair blowing 
 
hRIENDSniP. 211 
 
 clouds of cigarette-smoke about her head, watched and winked 
 once more to the slumbering Ronsoulet. 
 
 " She is jealous, and he is not. No, he does not even resent 
 that lute : he is only glad that the lute spares him a scene. 
 Ah I there is a storm in the air. I should like to see it break." 
 
 But the sagacious Paturge had not that pleasure : loris did 
 not wait for it. 
 
 He left the house with Victor Louche, and left the old ivory 
 lute on his mistress's knee, and Guido Serravalle kneeling 
 before her to tune it, with Mimo and Trillo on either side of 
 her, like her tutelary twin deities as they were. 
 
 " Ronsoulet," said Madame Paturge as they went home, 
 " that will not last very long." 
 
 " Will it not, my dear?" said Ronsoulet ; and he sighed, for 
 experience had taught him that liberty was hard to obtain. 
 
 The next morning, while the day was still young, loris, in 
 his own little room, taking his coffee, was confronted by an 
 imperious and furious woman. A scene was his fate. 
 
 What did he mean? How dared he? Where had he 
 been ? What could he say ? 
 
 The whirlwind broke over his head. The fierce gray eyes 
 flashed like steel. The storm had lost nothing of its violence 
 by having been pent up till noon. 
 
 Irritated, annoyed, deafened, surprised, exasperated, he 
 sought refuge in an untruth : he affected jealousy of the old 
 ivory lute. 
 
 It was a lie, but it imposed on her. It calmed the troubled 
 waters of her soul. She believed, and, believing, consented 
 to be pacified. 
 
 So blinded by her credulous vanity was she that she omitted 
 to notice that all the while he never told her where his evening 
 had been spent. 
 
212 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 " He was jealous of poor little Guido I" thought Lady Joan, 
 with a flash of delight and amusement, an hour after the tem- 
 pest, as she glanced in the mirror to see if her brow were 
 smooth again and her dress uncrumpled, and hastened from 
 the house of loris. 
 
 On the threshold, with whom should an unkind fate bring 
 her sharply in contact but Lord and Lady Norwich, ponderous 
 and solemn, their footman behind them, walking feebly down 
 the street to their carriage ! They had been to see a neigh- 
 boring church which boasted a famous fresco. 
 
 Lord and Lady Norwich looked a little stiflF; liady Joan for 
 the moment a little blank. But it was just one of those 
 moments which, like the meetings at the Paris cafds when 
 without her bib and tucker, tested her savoir-faire^ and never 
 found her wanting. 
 
 " Oh, dear Lady Norwich," she cried, with rapture, " what 
 a fortunate moment to meet you ! This is lo's house. You 
 know lo's house ? Mr. Challoner brought you the other day 
 to see his tapestries, didn't he ?'' (Lord and Lady Norwich, 
 still stiffly, assented.) " How I do wish you would come in 
 again now ! Will you come in again now ? I've just been to 
 see such a lovely old Francia he has found out right away in 
 the mountains. It belongs to a poor old priest, a vicar of a 
 miserable village, who is really almost starving, and never knew 
 the worth of it till lo told him. Mr. Challoner and I have 
 been enchanted with the picture. I'm afraid Robert's just 
 gone, and lo was already out, but I could show you this 
 Francia if you would not mind coming up-stairs. You know 
 I do as I like here. Poor dear lo ! he's just like my brother. 
 Could you spare me five minutes?" 
 
 Lord and Lady Norwich were thawing: they hesitated, 
 mumbled that it was cold, but finally yielded ; she was so 
 solicitous and so deferential that they consented to enter the 
 house and to carry their venerable persons and their unim- 
 peachable respectability and dignity up the staircase to see the 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 213 
 
 Fruncia, 'which was placed alone in its glory on an old oak 
 easel in one of the entrance-chambers. 
 
 " Very fine ; really very fine," said Lord Norwich, and safe 
 down before it. 
 
 The Francia was a real Francia ; it had been in the family 
 of loris for as many centuries as have gone by since the tender 
 old painter looked with wet eyes on llaffaclle's panel that made 
 him ashamed of the labors of his own long lifetime. There 
 was no doubt about the Francia, which was a treasure and 
 favorite with loris ; and the slow, torpid heart of Lord Norwich 
 began to quicken with longing for it. 
 
 " Wasted in a village presbytery, — dear me ! dear me !" ho 
 said, and shook his head. He was an honorable man ; he said 
 straight out that he would give the needy priest the just price 
 for it, and named a large sum. 
 
 " I'm sure lo can get it for you for that," said the Lady 
 Joan. " I'm so sorry lo's not home now. He was already 
 gone out when I came in first. But I'll tell him, and let you 
 know this evening for certain." 
 
 " Perhaps he may wish to buy it himself," said Lord Nor- 
 wich, — a scrupulous man, very delicate and hesitating under 
 his pomposity. 
 
 Lady Joan laughed. 
 
 " Poor dear lo ! Buy it 1 He'll have to sell his own pic- 
 tures, more likely, I'm afraid. You know he's so poor, though 
 we try to keep things straight for him in the country. No, 
 he let it hang here on the chance of finding a purchaser for 
 the poor old vicario. He'll be so delighted you have seen 
 and fancied it. lo loves to do good. Dear Lady Norwich, 
 are you cold on this marble floor ?" 
 
 Lady Norwich began to think the rooms were cold : if Lord 
 Norwich had seen enough of the picture she wished to go. 
 This was precisely what Lady Joan wanted her to do. She 
 was afraid every moment that loris w ^uld come out of his 
 own little room, and she had no meu ) of signalling to him to 
 stay there shut up ; and though of course she could readily 
 have explained his appearance on some hypothesis or another, 
 still it was better to avoid it. So she suggested that the 
 apartment was cold. -^~- 
 
 " lo is so little at home, you know : he is so much with 
 US," she said, frankly. ■..- , . ..^. ■■ii^^^ ,,,.-_r^.,^.:[:: -:-}.i,v^ . 
 
214 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " As if she would say that, if there were anything between 
 them !" thought Lady Norwich, and commented on the speech 
 to this eflFect afterwards to her friends. So Lady Joan piloted 
 them in safety down-stains, and was oifered a seat in their 
 carriage, and took it, and drove home to luncheon with these 
 great and excellent people, and having begun the morning 
 with a scene, ended it with a success, likt the truly clever 
 woman she was. 
 
 " Not like to sell the Francia, lo !" she screamed, later in 
 the day. " But you must sell it ! you shall sell it I If I 
 hadn't sold it I should have been compromised for life. 
 Would you dare to compromise me by telling these old asses 
 the picture is yours ?" 
 
 A gentleman cannot compromise a woman, even if she has 
 just made him a stormy scene in an unasked visit to his own 
 house. So loris, with an impatient and embittered heart, saw 
 his Francia transferred to the Norwich collection. 
 
 The purchase-money was a large sum indeed. 
 
 " It will set your poor priest at ease for his life, I hope," 
 said the kindly stupid purchaser, who liked to think people 
 were comfortable through his means. 
 
 loris bowed in silence. 
 
 There was no poor priest to have the purchase-money ; but 
 the Lady Joan shortly afterwards bought herself a rivihre of 
 emeralds that was going cheap, and, from the Chemnitz sales, 
 an old cabinet of the first matchless Boule. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 The gardens of the Colonna Palace are among the mosc 
 charming things of Rome. When the iron gate clangs behind 
 you and you climb the ilex-walk to them, you will ten to one 
 be all alone. The gardens are just such gardens as Horace 
 and Virgil used to move in ; you sit under the shattered pine 
 planted to mark Rienzi's death, and all the temples and towers 
 of the immortal city lie beneath, and the pile of the Capitol 
 soars upward near you, from the mass of roofs, like a cliff 
 from out the sea ; the pigeons pace to and fro, the ducks push 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 215 
 
 their flat beaks among the grass, swallows skim by, oranges 
 drop, the sound of the many trickling streams and fountains 
 blends with the subdued murmur of the streets far down below. 
 The world holds few sweeter or nobler places to dream in than 
 these gardens of Rienzi's foes. 
 
 Etoile found them out, and often went across the piazza to 
 them in the early morning or at the decline of day, with the 
 great dog Tsar. 
 
 One afternoon, having passed all the morning in the Vati- 
 can galleries with Princess Vera, she entered the gardens to 
 sit and watch the sun sink to his setting. As she sat there, 
 with volumes of Giusti and of Leopardi on her lap, at which 
 she had not even looked. Tsar rose and moved his tail in ani- 
 mated welcome. She glanced downward through the shelving 
 descent of ilex- and orange-leaves, and saw coming across 
 from the palace by the little bridge that crosses the street the 
 figure of loris. 
 
 Tsar ran headlong down the winding walks and steps to 
 meet him. He came up, caressing the dog, and approached 
 her with uncovered head. 
 
 " I saw you from the gallery of the palace ; I could not 
 resist ascending. I saw you were looking more at Rome than 
 at your books. You love my city ?" 
 
 " Ah, what a commonplace ! That is only to say that I 
 am not quite soulless." 
 
 " Few care for Rome as you do." 
 
 " No ? To be sure, Lady Joan says that it is as dirty as 
 Cairo, as dear as Trouville, as ugly as Brighton, and as great 
 an imposture as Athens. Tastes differ." 
 
 He gave an impatient gesture. 
 
 " Why must you always speak of her? Let me forget that 
 she <jxists for a moment." 
 
 Etoiifc looked at him a moment, then looked away. 
 
 " Do not say those things to me. They are not loyal." 
 
 " Loyal 1 Do slaves give loyalty ? You have called me a 
 slave." 
 
 She was silent. 
 
 " Can loyalty be enforced by cudgels and chains ? She 
 thinks it can ; but it cannot." 
 
 " Tell her so, then : not mc." 
 
 loris sighed impatiently. 
 
216 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Tell her ! How little you know her !" he muttered. He 
 thought of the fierce storms, the violent reproaches, the tem- 
 pestuous outbursts, which avenged the slightest opposition to 
 his tyrant's will. 
 
 All that men most dread, and which they have concentrated 
 in the one all-eloquent word a " scene," she could pour out 
 upon his head in any fatal hour that her whim was crossed or 
 wrath excited. 
 
 A woman's violence is a mighty power ; before it reason 
 recoils unnerved, justice quails appalled, and peace perishes 
 like a burnt-up scroll ; it is a sand-storm, before which courage 
 can do but little : the bravest man can but fall on his face and 
 let it rage on above him. 
 
 He walked to and fro, a moment or two, on the level path 
 '^f the upper terrace, then very wearily rested his elbows on 
 the wall and leaned there near her where she sat. 
 
 It was a beautiful afternoon : the sun was still above the 
 dusky lines of the pines of Monte Mario, far away in front, 
 and the warm light tinted the soft, clear olive of his cheek 
 and the delicate, proud outlines of his face. 
 
 His face and figure lent themselves to the beauty of any 
 scene. Standing on a reaped field, against the bare poles of 
 the maize, in his white limn dress, with the warm sun about 
 him, he had a poetic, supple, picturesque grace that Leopold 
 Robert would have loved to perpetuate ic a Roman sketch ; 
 standing in a crowded presence-chamber, with orders hanging 
 to his coat, and a sea of court ladies, laces, and feathers, and 
 diamonds about him. in the wax-light, he had a grave, medi- 
 tative dignitj?^ of beauty that Vandyke would have liked to 
 render in a portrait which should have all the lordly sadness 
 of his Charles Stuait in it. 
 
 With loris all this was quite -jnconscious : hence its charm. 
 Nature had made him so : tliat was all. But his personal 
 graces gave him an irresistible sway over women. This kind 
 of power to charm is like a magician's gift. 
 
 Women shall honor great ability, shall behold true manliness, 
 shall be worshipped with knightly reverence, shall be assailed 
 by all the splendor of intellect, shall be woocid with all daring 
 and all humility, and yet shall remain cold, and as untouched, 
 as marble in the quarry. And then there shall come one who 
 has this magic gift, — this wand that wakes the bleeping senses, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 217 
 
 this rose that, slipped into the bosom, banishes all peace, 
 this power of love incarnated, — and though the magician be 
 faithless as the wind, and rootless as the wind-born flower, 
 yet in him alone forever shall be her heaven and her hell. 
 
 " What a life is mine !" he said impetuously now, after a 
 long silence. " The life of a lackey 1 You described it \yell 
 that day at Fiordelisa. No will of my own ; no time of my 
 own ; ordered here, ordered there ; dragging through the same 
 endless and joyless routine. The lackey has more liberty than 
 I, for he at least stipulates for some few hours of freedom. 
 What future can I look forward to ? I dare not look forward ; 
 a dead blank faces me, — faces me everywhere. With no home, 
 with no interest, with no children, with no hope, is it worth 
 while living ? At times I envy the very mules that creep past 
 me with their loads : they are less sensible of the weight they 
 bear than I am." 
 
 Etoile looked at him and felt a pang at her own heart, half 
 of pity, half of pain. She could not doubt the sincerity of 
 this passionate lament. 
 
 " But your friendship " she murmured, and then paused, 
 
 with the color in her face. 
 
 It was not friendship that thus dragged upon his life. She 
 felt ashamed to speak the sorry lie Society allows and loves. 
 
 loris, with one of his swift changes of mood, and uneasily 
 conscious that he had betrayed himself too far, turned and 
 laughed carelessly. 
 
 '' Friendship ! Ah, yes ! Friendship means anything,— 
 everything, — from deadliest hate and hottest love downward to 
 the zero of complete indifference ! There is only Tsar, I think, 
 who really gives one the honest friendship of a by-gone day." 
 
 He drew the dog to him and caressed him, and sank down 
 on the bench beside her, and talked of Leopardi, whom he 
 had known when he himself had beea a little child, and 
 together they watched the pile of the Capitol grow dark and 
 the sun descend beliind the purples of the pines ; together 
 they left the gardens, that grew drear and cold when once 
 the sun had set, and passed across the square in the fleeting 
 twilight. 
 
 At her door he bade her adieu, and with a heavy heart and 
 a reluctant step went slowly back to the house which stood to 
 him in the stead of home, — a bastard home, warmed with the 
 K 19 
 
218 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 dull fires of a worn-out passion : he felt a great reluctance io 
 enter, an utter weariness of all he would encounter. 
 
 Day after day, night after night, the comedy was always 
 the same. The curt command, the hard contempt, the com- 
 mercial discussion, the sensual gaze, the trite caress, the hollow 
 ecstasy, — he knew them all, one after another, so well, so 
 horribly well. His heart failed him as he mounted the long 
 stone staircase and entered the familiar atmosphere, haunted 
 with stale smoke and stiiTcd by the twang of the mandolin. 
 
 He hated the scent ; he hated the sounds. They were all 
 fraught to him with the sickliness of an enforced habit, of a 
 perpetual repetition. Shining eyes flashing through tobacco- 
 mist ovo I ribboned guitar may be intoxicating for six hours, 
 six weeks, even six months. But for six years I . . . 
 
 In six years the laugh palls, the songs jar, the eyes repel. 
 
 A sense of dulness and jaded effort fell on him always now 
 whenever he crossed the threshold of that too terribly well- 
 known room. The deadly apathy of a familiarity that is not 
 hallowed by any sense of sanctity or sweetness fell on him 
 heavy as lead whenever he entered her dwelling. He knew 
 all that would be said and done, all that would be expected and 
 exacted : it had no more interest for him than a comedy that 
 has run three hundred nights has for the stall-keepers. 
 
 A woman need never dread the fiercest quarrel with her 
 lover : the tempest may bring sweeter weather than any it 
 broke up, and after the thunder the singing of birds will sound 
 lovelier than before. Anger will not extinguish love, nor will 
 scorn trample it dead ; jealousy will fan its fires, and offences 
 against it may but fasten closer its fetters that it adores beyond 
 all liberty. But when love dies of a worn-out familiarity it 
 perishes for ever and aye. 
 
 Jaded, disenchanted, wearied, indifferent, the tired passion 
 expires of sheer listlessness and contemptuous disillusion. 
 
 The death is slow and unperceived, but it is sure ; and it 
 is a death that has no resurrection. 
 
 This was how the passion which the Lady Joan desired to 
 cudgel into immortality was dying now. 
 
 When he entered the Turkish room this afternoon he found 
 her the centre of an adoring circle of half a dozen youths, 
 with the white-haired Silverly Bell and the very dear old 
 Mimo as more solid ballast. She was surrounded by sketches 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 219 
 
 of costumes, Eastern stuffs, strings of sequins, and damascened 
 weapons, and was discussing her own and her companions' 
 attire at a fancy ball to be given by the Echdances. 
 
 " How late you are, lo 1 Where have you been all this 
 time?" she said, in greeting, a heavy frown upon her brows. 
 
 " With the King of Denmark," answered loris. 
 
 " What ? Why, Almeria's in attendance on him." 
 
 " Almeria is indisposed. They sent for me." 
 
 Iiady Joan looked at him sharply. She had a vague sus- 
 picion that there was something withheld from her. 
 
 " Where did the king go?" she pursued, being possessed 
 with the common feminine belief that catechisms produce 
 truth as their results. 
 
 " To the galleries," answered loris. 
 
 " Will he buy while he's here ?" said the Lady Joan, her 
 thoughts reverting to business and her eyes to Burlctta. 
 
 loris shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I really cannot say." 
 
 Then he took up the day's " Fanfulla" and sat down near 
 the window, whilst she returned to her costumes and her 
 courtiers, and put on her yashmaks, and rattled her tambou- 
 rines, and screamed at the youths' jokes and smiled on their 
 homage, and petted her dear old friends Silvorly and Mimo 
 so cleverly that neither was envious of the other. 
 
 " How different it is with her I" he mused, with a sigh, to 
 himself. 
 
 Etoile had become " her" in his thoughts. 
 
 " You're as grave as an owl, lo," cried the Lady Joan, 
 snapping her fingers in his face as six o'clock sounded, and 
 she dismissed her slaves, and threw the windows open to let 
 the cigar-smoke out, since the Dean of St. Edmund's and 
 the Lady Barbara, his wife, were going to dine with her, 
 and other eminent respectabilities were to meet them ; and 
 her well-trained servant was already clearing away the French 
 songs, and the cigar-ash, and the costumes, and the tambourines, 
 and laying out in their stead grave English journals and reports 
 of Academies of Art and Science. 
 
 She was careful to give many dinners, and good ones. She 
 knew that money laid out on plovers' eggs and truffles, green 
 peas in winter, and salmon from the North, sherries from the 
 Xerxes plains, and clarets from the Garonne's banks, will 
 
220 FlilENDSHIP. 
 
 bring forth high interest in the shape of much long-suffering 
 from a propitiated, and by consequence pardoning, Society. 
 
 She had never read the " Satyricon," and perhaps never 
 heard of it, but she acted on the principle inculcated by the 
 priestess ^nothea. In this age, as in that, two broad gold 
 pieces, provided they be big enough, will buy the right to 
 kill the sacred goose of the temple and even to cook it too. 
 
 The world is like aged ^nothea. 
 
 " Slay the divine bird 1 oh, vilest sinner !" she cried, and 
 banged her trencher down in ruthless rain of blows ; but, soft- 
 ening at the sight of a well-filled hand, she relented. " Nay, 
 sweet youth, it was but in love and fear for thee I scolded. 
 Nay, I promise thee, surely it shall be known to none. 
 And since the bird is dead it were of no avail to avenge it ; 
 I will strip it in thine honor, and we will make merry over 
 its baked meats !" 
 
 Society has not changed much since the " Satyricon." It 
 has invented prettier names for the old vices, — that is all. 
 
 loris now moved from her touch with that petulance which 
 took in him the charm of a woman's grace and a woman's 
 waywardness. 
 
 " Carissima mia ! One does not feel flattered when you 
 take such ardent interest in young lads of twenty that can 
 warble a cafe ballad ; and, as you only reproach me when I 
 come here, and amuse yourself with others, why should I 
 endeavor to be anything but grave?" 
 
 She did not know the secret of the impatience which moved 
 him, the comparison with the thoughts and ways of another 
 woman that he instituted to her own loss in his own medita- 
 tions. She believed that he was angered at her attention to 
 the young men, as he had been angry at the ivory lute, and 
 such anger argued jealousy, and jealousy had been very quiet 
 in him for some years. She was delighted at its revival. 
 
 " What a goose you are I Go home and dress," she cried 
 gayly to him as she disappeared into her own chamber. Ho 
 caught her hand and detained her a moment. 
 
 " Who dines with you to-night? I forget." 
 
 " Oh, a heap of great people. Bores of the first water. 
 Just the folks that always make me want to dance the Cancan 
 in their faces and make the seventh heaven of Mr. Challoner." 
 
 " You have not asked — the Comtesse d'Avesnes ?" 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 221 
 
 " Etoile ! My dear lo 1 Are you mad ? "What, ask a 
 Paris Sappho to meet the Dean of St. Edmund's and the 
 Countess of Norwich I When will you understand the de- 
 corum of the inviolate isle of fogs and fogies ?" 
 
 And the Lady Joan went into her dressing-room with a 
 laugh and shut the door, to glance over the London reviews 
 on the Dean's learned study of the " Use and Import of the 
 Letter Koph." 
 
 loris went out, and down the stairs thoughtfully. He was 
 not at ease : he felt as if he had heard a blasphemy, and had 
 let it pass, unrebuked, out of cowardice. 
 
 Lady Joan, her study of the letter Koph completed, went 
 to her toilet in a contented and radiant mood, and had her 
 velvet dress put on, and ran a gilt spadella through her dark 
 braids, and clasped a gilt waist-belt round her, and saw that 
 she looked very well. 
 
 " He was actually jealous of those nice boys ! "What fun 
 it is ! Poor lo 1" she thought to herself, with that complacent 
 pity for the sufferer from her own fascinations which is the 
 greatest enjoyment of a very vain woman. She was enraptured 
 to think that the old folly was in him still, and she was in 
 happy ignorance of the workings of his thoughts. 
 
 He was jealous ! She smiled at herself in the glass with 
 perfect satisfaction. After six years he was still jealous I 
 
 He was jealous, — poor lo ! 
 
 Lady Joan smiled at herself, thinking of Abana and Phar- 
 par, Orontes and Euphrates, and so in perfect good humor 
 went into her drawing-room, to form a domestic picture on the 
 hearth-rug with her husband and child by the time that Lord 
 and Lady Norwich and the Dean of St. Edmund's and his 
 wife entered, coming all together from the Hotel des lies 
 Britanniques. 
 
 She was on such good terms with herself that she behaved 
 "with admirable composure throughout five hours of dreary 
 and dignified platitudes, and enraptured the Dean with her 
 sound views of the dangers of Christianity from the Greek 
 Church, and thanked Lady Barbara with efl'usion for a 
 promised recipe for knitting children's woollen stockings. 
 
 " We have only one treasure, you know," said Lady Joan, 
 with her warmest smile, " and I like to fancy she wears any- 
 thing of my own making when I can 1" 
 
 19* 
 
222 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "Such a natural sentiment I" rejoined the Dean's wife, 
 quite touched. She had left sons and daughters of all ages 
 in the monastic shades of St. Edmund's, and "worshipped 
 them. 
 
 " What an excellent young woman that is, my dear I" said 
 Lady Barbara to the Dean as they drove home to their hotel. 
 " And such a devoted mother too, evidently." 
 
 " A vastly agreeable woman," murmured the Dean, in tones 
 as soft and thick as the t^te de crtme he had been drinking. 
 " Good common sense in her, — no superficiality : her remarks 
 about my pamphlet were really astonishingly clever. Quite a 
 deep knowledge for a woman. A very bad marriage she made ; 
 a very bad marriage. I remember wondering at it at the time. 
 But it seems to have turned out remarkably well, — house nicely 
 appointed, — nice dinner : that sturgeon was particularly well 
 done." 
 
 " And Mr. Challoner such a good creature." 
 
 " Sensible man. Something in the East, wasn't he? Consul 
 — carpets — something that began with a C, I know. Asked 
 me to go with him to see a Gentile da Fabriano that is to be 
 had as a wonderful bargain." 
 
 " Oh, yes : she told me about it. It belongs to that striking- 
 looking man that sat quite silent at dinner, an Italian, a great 
 friend of theirs : he'd been with the King of Denmark all day ; 
 and I fancy he's very poor, by what she said, — that it would 
 be a charity." 
 
 " Ah ! the Italians always are as poor as church rats. Cer- 
 tainly let us go and see it. I always admire Gentile and all 
 that school of Early Upper Italy. They are very kind people, 
 evidently, — excellent people." 
 
 So the Dean of St. Edmund's droned himself into a doze, 
 and was ready whenever he should go back to his cloister to 
 vow in society everywhere that by all his clerical dignity Joan 
 Challoner was the most estimable of her sex ; and his wife 
 was ready to second him. ' , 
 
 Thus just by reading about the letter Koph for ten minutes, 
 and by becgiug a recipe to knit woollen stockings, she secured 
 champions in the Church of England, and sold a picture next 
 day at a net profit of three hundred pounds. 
 
 " Have I a soul ?" said Voltaire's peacock. " Certainly I 
 have: look at my tail." . j^.,. ;; • ..:.r ? v ^ j^r ^, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 223 
 
 Lady Joan would have said, " Certainly I have : look at my 
 card-basket and my bargains." 
 
 " You were very stupid to-night, lo," she said, roughly, 
 when the Dean and his lady wore fairly away, and loris re- 
 mained alone with her, with the lamps burning low. " You 
 were very stupid to-night," she said, giving a twist to the silver- 
 gilt spilla in her coiled hair. 
 
 " I have a headache, carissima mia" 
 
 Lady Joan looked dubiously at him. 
 
 " You're always having headaches now." 
 
 " And you do not pity me ?" 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't always have *em just when mtf 
 friends dine here," she said, ungraciously. " You're always 
 well enough when that woman's here." 
 
 " What woman ?" 
 
 "As if you didn't know I You're twice as civil to her as 
 you need be. Marjory's noticed it, I can tell you. Oh, don't 
 look so innocent. You're always after Etoile. You know you 
 are." 
 
 " Mais, ma chhre ? You always see me courteous, I hope, 
 to all your sex." 
 
 " All my fiddlesticks 1 Courteous, indeed ! You're much 
 more than courteous, — talking to her all night, going away 
 when she goes away, sitting staring at her as if she were some- 
 thing new-fallen from heaven." 
 
 " Mais, ma chlre f What exaggeration I I told you t^e 
 first night we saw her that she did not even please me, — that 
 she was insolent, and was cold ; she is lost in her art ; she does 
 not perceive that such mere mortals as myself exist." 
 
 " You try to show her you exist, at any rate. Marjory saw 
 you walking with her this very day in the Colonna gardens." 
 
 " La bonne Marjory must want to make mischief. I came 
 up from calling on Marc' Antonio by the gardens to make a 
 short cut, and she was there : it was the purest accident." 
 
 " Humph 1" Lady Joan was a woman of experience, and 
 did not believe in accidents between men and women. 
 
 ",Do not let us quarrel about nothing," he said, rousing 
 himself and altering the twist of the gilded spilla. " She is 
 no woman to me. If I look at her at all, it is merely as one 
 would look at old Grillparzer at Vienna, or Wagner at Bai- 
 reuth, — for the sake of what she has done. When a woman 
 
224 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 has entered a public arena she is half unsexed. You know 
 "what I think of notoriety for your sex." 
 
 His heart smote him as he spoke, as though he uttered a 
 blasphemy against the saints of his childish faith. But he 
 did speak with an admirable carelessness and contempt com- 
 bined which carried conviction to his hearer's ear. 
 
 Lady Joan liked to be persuaded that she had voluntarily 
 abstained from being a celebrity, as Richelieu liked to be per- 
 suaded that he had voluntarily abstained from being a poet. 
 Besides, she was always easily lulled into complacenf serenity. 
 A very vain woman is easily deceived, because it seems impos- 
 sible to her that any one can ever be preferred to herself 
 
 He played with the spilla in her hair and leaned over her 
 in the mellow lamplight. She looked up into his amorous 
 eyes, and was content ; the lustre in them was dim to what 
 she had once seen there, and the fire spent, yet he knew how 
 to make their dreamy depths tell the tale she had heard ten 
 thousand times and never tired of: it was only acting now, 
 but it was acting so perfect that she lived its dupe in happy 
 blindness. Keen and shrewd and hard of temper though she 
 was, here she was duped as utterly as the softest and silliest of 
 her sex. 
 
 Though very clever in many ways, one thing in her was 
 stronger than her cleverness, and that was vanity. 
 
 A very trustful woman believes in her lover's fidelity with 
 her heart ; a very vain woman believes in it with her head. 
 
 To Lady Joan it would have seemed more possible for the 
 stars to fall from the sky than for any man to desert her. 
 
 In passion for him she was as reasonless and as sightless 
 as any Juliet or Gretchen lying for the first moment in her 
 lover's arms. The years had blown low the flame in him, but 
 in her they had only fanned it to a fiercer strength. The 
 ridicule of him, the command of him, the oppression and the 
 tyranny and the suspicion of him, were only her way of 
 showing power, only her device for making her world be- 
 lieve the thing she wished. Alone with him, love intoxicated, 
 drugged, subdued her ; alone with him, she was only an eager, 
 passionate, voluptuous mistress ; alone with him, she was only 
 Cleopatra, — the Dame du Comptoir was dead. 
 
 loris was in everything the superior of his tyrant. 
 
 In intelligence, in taste, in culture, in disposition, he was 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 225 
 
 alike far beyond her. Yet, by a coarse, rough energy which 
 swept before it his hesitating temperament, and by a sensual, 
 fierce passion which his soft nature recoiled from conflict with, 
 she had obtained a dominion over him wiiich he had ceased 
 even to think of contesting. The women who love men truly 
 never obtain this power : they love too well to watch the 
 occasion to seize it. The old proverb that, between two, one 
 is always booted and spurred, the other always saddled and 
 bridled, is as true as proverbs always are, which are " the dis- 
 tilled drops of the experience of nations." It is not superi- 
 ority of mind, or of character, or of person, that determines 
 which shall ride and which shall be ridden ; it is generally 
 rather the result of a certain hardness of temper which de- 
 termines the question early in the day and never loses the 
 supremacy. Taken roughly it may be safely predicted tliat it 
 will always be the highest nature which will submit. Often 
 it is the jade that rules the hero, the fool that has feet kissed 
 by the genius. 
 
 The very fierceness and force and fire of this woman, which 
 had at first intoxicated him, served now at once to repel and 
 to intimidate him. 
 
 From the stern eyes, from the imperious voice, from the 
 vigorous gestures, from the resolute will that had once fasci- 
 nated him by their sheer strength which swept his softer nature 
 away on it as a mountain-torrent sweeps a tree, he had little by 
 little grown to recoil in the inevitable reaction of all purely 
 animal passion. Her heel was set on his throat. Once he 
 had kiysed the foot that so degraded him. But little by 
 little he had begun to breathe laboredly under its oppression. 
 Little by little the desire to raise it and rise had come to hini. 
 He was tired of his life. 
 
 Tired of the orders and counter-orders, of the buying and 
 selling, of the petty hypocrisies, of the puerile aims, of the ex- 
 actions that compelled him to follow like her shadow her path 
 through society, of the obligation to show himself wheresoever 
 she might choose to go in that continual attendance which 
 is a rapture when voluntary from passion, a deathly fatigue 
 when imposed from habit, — he was like a prisoner who drags a 
 cannon-ball at his ankle. 
 
 Night after night, as he dressed to go through the social 
 comedy whose every speech and gesture he knew beforehand, 
 
226 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 he sighed, impatient to be free ; and yet he went. Habit is 
 an ever-lengthening chain whose links get heavier with each 
 added ring. 
 
 With lier their love was still alive, an ever-burning fire, 
 irresistible and insatiable in ita hours of abandonment. With 
 him their love was dead and was replaced by habit. 
 
 It is a terrible difference. 
 
 Letting himself out of her house in the cold rosy dawn, he 
 shuddered, not with the physical chill of the wintry night, but 
 at the vision of hh own future. 
 
 " This woman always !" 
 
 So he thought every morning, yet every night he went back 
 to her, as the mill-horse to its yoke. She was not faithful to 
 him, because such women as she know not fidelity. She was 
 not truthful to him, because truth was not in her and could 
 not find its home in her mouth. She was the ruin of his life, 
 whilst she declared herself his salvation. Her tyranny, her 
 exactions, her ridicule, and her overwhelming egotism cast 
 into the cold shade of men's scorn the man whom she delighted 
 to oppress and wound, as a child loves to hurt the pet that it 
 hugs to its bosom. His idiosyncrasies were lost under her in- 
 ordinate vanities, and her obtrusive personalities drove him to 
 the refuge of silence and self-repression. He passed his life 
 like a tree under the shadow of a high wall : only the wall 
 had been built up brick and brick, so that he had never noticed 
 it till it was forever there between him and the sun. 
 
 She herself was in love still, — with that terrible and untiring 
 passion which can exist in a woman who to masculine vigor 
 unites feminine caprice. 
 
 • She delighted to make him subservient, to render him ab- 
 surd, to deny him any will of his own, to ridicule his words, 
 to mock at him before the world. • But this was the result 
 only of her natural temper. It was only as she beat a dog, or 
 punished a child, or tyrannized over whatever lay at her mercy. 
 Besides, she thought that it imposed on her society ; she 
 thought that it veiled her own passion for him, which was 
 strong and fierce and keen, which begrudged a glance or a 
 smile from him elsewhere, which took a voluptuous delight in 
 his person, in his touch. But in his presence, in his regard, 
 in his caress, there was still intoxication for her ; she would 
 have seen him dead sooner than given to another ; her passion 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 227 
 
 was violent, faithless, cruel, ignoble, but it was passion, and it 
 was living still, — a restless sea of fire that beat itself upon the 
 cold ashes of his own dead desires till it warmed them to a 
 semblance of itself. 
 
 Once he had felt as tiger-tamers feel, and the very danger 
 that there was in the creature he caressed had served to en- 
 thrall him. Little by little the reality of the tigress temper 
 had become visible to him, and its greed and hardness and 
 predatory instincts were revealed. This queen of the desert 
 that laid her soft cheek against his was, after all, only a cat 
 that growled. Little by little the sense stole on him that his 
 arms held what preyed on him, — and would devour him. 
 
 But when he awoke to his own peril it was too late ; the 
 tamed tigress had sprung and mastered him. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Cleopatra after sunset, the Lady Joan rose nevertheless 
 every morning Dame du Comptoir to the tips of her fingers. 
 Eventide might be for the mandolin or the mask, and the 
 tender passions and the fierce ones, but noonday was none the 
 less for business. 
 
 Her forenoons were sternly given to those commercial con- 
 siderations for which she had brought a leaning from the banks 
 of Abana and Pharpar, Orontes and Euphrates. Telegrams 
 and letters about her various speculations and gigantic com- 
 mercial transactions scarcely let her swallow her breakfast in 
 comfort ; and, these attended to, there were the teacups and 
 triptychs, the pots and the pans of her excellent friends and 
 brothers Mimo and Trillo ; china to be packed, canvases to be 
 backed, and all the minutise to be attended to of that sublime 
 mission of the difiusion of Art which she had set herself as 
 her object in life, only secondary to the Berkshire pigs and the 
 Brahma poultry and the general salvation of Fiordelisa. 
 
 Mimo and Trillo were the very Dioscuri of Art; twin 
 Tyndarids of connoisseurship and commerce ; Gemini of 
 genius who were both unspeakably dear to her ; though plump 
 Mimo bore off the palm as far as being petted by her went, 
 
228 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and was by far the more enthusiastic in her praises. Accord- 
 ing to hiiii she was angelic, heroic, unequalled, far above all 
 the mortal weaknesses of her sex, and only possessing one 
 little, little, little fault, — that of being so unnaturally and 
 superhumanly perfect that she was incapable of conceiving 
 that a base-minded world could ever put incorrect constructions 
 on her noble actions. 
 
 " Poverina ! Certainly she compromises herself; alas ! she 
 does compromise herself; but it is only the boldness of inno- 
 cence!" said Mimo, with a bit of cracked Limoges in his hand 
 and a big cigar in his mouth. 
 
 " It was the boldness of innocence." It cost the good fellow 
 no more to say so than it did to say that any one of his round 
 plates, painted and baked by a living workman in a cellar in 
 the Ti'astevere, was pure Gubbio ware, with the iridescent 
 hues colored by Maestro Giorgio himself. 
 
 " It was the boldness of innocence." 
 
 The phrase tickled the fancy of Mimo very much, and was 
 forever ready on his tongue, as ^^Antico — proprio antico /" 
 was forever on it before any doubtful plaque of reponssd work 
 or any quattrocentista bridal coffer that had been carved and 
 gilded the week before. " It was the boldness of innocence." 
 After all, if the phrase pleased her so much, it cost him very 
 little to say it ; and what mortal man would not learn it by 
 heart, when, just for saying it, you get a cosy sofa to lounge 
 in, and a nice little dinner to eat, and a handsome woman to 
 pet you? 
 
 Besides, " the boldness of innocence" is like the reputation 
 for oddity ; once accorded, it is as elastic as india-rubber and 
 as comprehensive as the umbrellas of the kings of the East, 
 which would shelter three hundred men. There is nothing 
 you cannot explain away with it ; before it Juvenal himself 
 would be obliged to make his bow and retire quite satisfied. 
 
 Trillo was somewhat more austere, and had not the com- 
 fortable roundness as of a child's tumbler or an Indian god 
 which characterized Mimo ; he was also more astute, and could 
 never be brought to rhapsodize as Mimo would do over the 
 Berkshire pigs and the Minerva who had imported them. 
 Trillo went in for high art, found marvellous RaflFaelles and 
 Luca della Robbias in old cellars and old walls, and, though 
 occasionally to oblige he would condescend to furniture, he 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 229 
 
 would never ran about and find old chairs for you, as Mimo 
 would do any day of his life. Trillo hud only a studio, and 
 never had anything else, whereas Mimo, if you were buying a 
 good deal of him, did not so much mind your calling his cham- 
 bers a shop. But this unbending austerity of Trillo made him, 
 perhaps, the more useful of the two in the main. Trillo even 
 impressed the great Hebrides family, and found them a stove 
 painted by Hirschvogel when that master stayed and worked 
 in Venice, and an altar-screen in ivory carved by Desiderio, 
 before which all South Kensington subsequently went on its 
 knees. He had been, indeed, so fortunate as to find these 
 exact works of art three years before for Prince Kour.in»asine, 
 who had borne them oif to his castle in White Russia ; but 
 White Russia and Ben Nevis are far-asundered ; and the de- 
 signs were so beautiful that it was not extraordinary that both 
 Hirschvogel and Desiderio should have been so enamored of 
 them as to have executed them twice. 
 
 Both Mimo and Trillo, who were men of judgment, suffered 
 many things from the ignorance of their Minerva. She would 
 confuse styles and orders, jumble up schools and epochs, call 
 Turin Arazzi Gobelin, and Frankenthal china Worcester*, 
 attribute a Dutch ivory to Alessandro Algardi, and a post- 
 Renaissance painting to Spinello or Francia ; and they would 
 shiver when these mistakes were made before folks that knew, 
 and would groan together in secret. 
 
 But these were trifles, after all, — there were so very few 
 folks that knew ; and their Minerva was invaluable to them, 
 and they sat at her feet solemn as the owi of her emblem, 
 whenever the great Scotch cousins came with her, or the 
 much-enduring British tourist was brought in her train. In- 
 deed, in one sense her ignorance was advantageous : it looked 
 so frank. 
 
 In fact, her very blunders became useful. 
 
 Trillo would pull his beard and sigh that the dear and noble 
 lady had such wonderful natural intelligence that she had never 
 been brought to correct it by study. She had too much 
 good faith, too ; she fell a prey to designing persons ; and 
 Trillo pulled his beard, and sighed again, and confessed that a 
 good deal the dear and noble lady had in her house was ro- 
 baccia, — all sheer robaccia ! She had been imposed on ; she 
 was always imposed on when he and Mimo were not by ; she 
 
 20 
 
230 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 had a few real gems, — ^yes, a few real gems, — Mimo and iie 
 
 had secured them for her ; but as for tlie rest ! Now, 
 
 mutual admiration societies answer woll ; but mutual deprecia- 
 tion societies answer, perhaps, still better. The former is a 
 gilded screen that may soon fall to pieces ; but the latter is 
 an impenetrable haze, such as hid Jove from mortal eyes 
 profane. 
 
 The tried partnership between the Temple of all the Virtues 
 and Mimo and Trillo had never been signed or sealed, — nay, 
 had never even been whispered, — but it served its purpose 
 admirably. 
 
 When people took tea and a muffin in the Temple they did 
 not see the fine wires connecting it with the shop and the 
 studio ; and when they went to the shop and the studio they 
 did not discern the metaphorical telephone by which shop and 
 studio took counsel with the Temple. But nevertheless the 
 impalpable lines were there ; and Mimo and Trillo, who were 
 the Owl and the iEgis of Minerva, naturally absorbed much 
 of Minerva's attention, especially when there came any mighty 
 cousins wanting teacups and triptychs, or an ^Esthetic Dean 
 or a Ritualistic Rector with a pretty taste in the way of carved 
 choir-seats or ornamented vestments. 
 
 So that in one way or another she was always very busy. 
 
 The practical half of her temperament which Voightel had 
 called the dame du comptoir was filled with a multiplicity of 
 objects and interests, from new people to conciliate to old china 
 to sell, from bargains to be disposed of to balls to get invited to, 
 from companies to be floated to visiting-cards to be left; and this 
 harassing and multitudinous minutiae of interests so absorbed 
 her at times that she actually forgot to watch Toris, and left 
 him a certain slender enjoyment of personal liberty of which 
 he was quick to avail himself to the utmost. 
 
 Prudence at times required that she should call on people 
 with no escort but Mi'. Challoner's ; business at times required 
 that she should rummage amidst old lumber-shops with Bur- 
 letta as her guardian and guide ; her own pleasure at times 
 required that she should disport herself at theatres or in Cam- 
 pagna rides with Douglas Graeme or young Guido Serravalle. 
 Occasionally, too, there would pass through Rome some old 
 friend of the camping-out days of the Desert, of whom it was 
 not judicious to allow loris to see too much, since loris had 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 231 
 
 queer fancies, and among them was one that she had been a 
 stranger to Eros and Anteros till he met her. Men will have 
 these notions, — pure vanity, no doubt, — but it is never worth 
 while to disturb them. 
 
 So thus — here and there — he gained his morning or even- 
 ing of freedom ; and whenever such a release came to him he 
 hesitated never now as to how he should spend it, but wended 
 his way to the old house by the Rospigliosi garden, and made 
 friends with Tsar, and sat in the dreamy fragrance of Etoile's 
 narcissi and winter roe ;9. 
 
 Very clever as both the Lady Joan and Marjory Scropo 
 were in their several manners, and experienced as the latter 
 certainly was in masculine ways and wiles, to neither of them 
 did it occur to remember, in their observations of loris, two 
 things. 
 
 First, that human nature yearns for freedom. 
 
 Secondly, that human nature has a tendency towards that 
 ■which is forbidden. 
 
 When they sei themselves in their several modes to watch 
 him and were convinced that they succeeded in learning all 
 his actions, they never took into account that men are like 
 school-children, and cannot by any amount of spying be 
 hindered from wholly following their bent, and will only be 
 driven into devices for concealing it. 
 
 The real temper of loris, the amorous but reticent, impas- 
 sioned yet impassive temperament of his nationality, had been 
 long lost sight of under the dulling influence of a galling routine. 
 The semi-conjugal character of his position in the Casa Chal- 
 loner and at Fiordelisa had long taken all savor of intrigue 
 out of it : it was impossible to cheat himself into thinking he 
 was climbing an escalier dirohe when Mr. Challoner welcomed 
 him so blandly up the grand staircase ; his life had long lost 
 the supreme charm of life : it had lost all possibility of the 
 unforeseen arriving in it. Rising in the morning he knew all 
 the routine of the coming twenty-four hours as well as he 
 knew the numerals on the clock's face, which would tell them 
 as they passed. 
 
 In her intense eagerness to absorb him completely, she had 
 overshot her mark ; she had washed out of his life all expect- 
 ation and all desire. She had made it a mere sand-plain, 
 monotonous and arid, with her own figure looming perpetually 
 
232 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 in mirage on its horizon, till turn where he would he could see 
 nothing else. 
 
 When the charm of a new interest, the mystery of a 
 character he did not comprehend, the attraction of a woman 
 unlike any that he had ever known, — when all these fell in 
 his path he gave way to the impulse that moved him to pursue 
 them with hardly more thought at first than a child has as it 
 runs down a by-path to see nearer a butterfly on the wing. 
 
 ^'■Vous Vavez voulur he would have said to the woman 
 who had sought to blind his eyes and bind his fancies. She 
 had done it herself: the slave's life into which she had en- 
 chained him had made the slave's instincts awake in him, — 
 the instincts to hide and to escape. 
 
 He had fallen into an utterly cheerless routine of existence, 
 to which he was only reconciled by the sort of ferocious seduc- 
 tion that she still possessed for him ; but when the eyes of 
 Etoile first met his they had awakened the dormant romance 
 and the forgotten dreams of his youth. 
 
 It became sweet to him to have thoughts that his tyrant 
 could not divine, sympathies that she could not reach, happy 
 hours that she could not mar ; and at first he merely concealed 
 the frequency of his visits to Etoile as he concealed every 
 better emotion that he felt from his mistress. As it was, she 
 never suspected them. 
 
 In the forenoons that she gave to Mimo and Trillo, and to 
 business generally, she seldom ordered or expected his attend- 
 ance, and most of those forenoons found him by Etoile's hearth, 
 sitting in the fragrance of her heliotropes and hyacinths. 
 When Lady Joan questioned him as to his morning he would 
 say he had been at the Court or the Vatican, at the studios or 
 the stables, and she was content. 
 
 To loris, who had much of the artist and something of the 
 poet, and who might say, like Camors, of his imagination, 
 "./'e/i tti, maw je Vetouffe^^ there was a pure and fresh pleas- 
 ure in roaming over Rome with Etoile. 
 
 Accustomed for years to a woman who ransacked all art only 
 to get something to buy cheap and sell dear, and who regarded 
 a picture or a bust only with an eye as to what it would fetch 
 in ten years' time, he found a new delight in the culture and 
 fancy of a woman to whom every stone had a story and every 
 statue was a living friend. When he went with Etoile and 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 233 
 
 stood before the Faun of the Capitol he saw that she grew 
 very pale and was quite silent. 
 
 " What do you feel ?" he asked her. 
 
 After a little while she answered him what she did feel and 
 what with her was truth. 
 
 " I can hardly tell you. I have thought of all these marbles 
 so long that really to see them seems stranger than a dream. 
 The Faun is the very incarnation of the youth of the world. 
 Three thousand years have passed since he was called to shape, 
 and he smiles as if he had been called out from the white rock 
 but yesterday. Yet so many creeds have changed, and so many 
 empires fallen, and so many cities perished, since he saw the 
 light ! — the Apollo again, he should not be the god of any art, 
 for all art changes ; he is the god of nature, the god eternal, 
 the god of the flowers that grew out of Caesar's ashes, and the 
 sea that smiles though it drowned Shelley, and the sun that 
 shines on while nations perish." 
 
 loris, standing by her, thought of another woman who, 
 coming there for the first time also, had made a wry face at 
 the Apollo and snapped her fingers at him, and called this 
 glory of the Belvedere a moonstruck posture- master, and this 
 Faun of the Capitol a jolly little rogue, but had said she never 
 could see what anybody found in stone dolls to rave about. 
 He had dwelt with the lower and coarser intelligence till he 
 had got used to it, but it had never altogether ceased to jar 
 on him. The finer and more spiritual impulses in him re- 
 vived and sprang up eagerly to meet the purer atmosphere of 
 Etoile's fancies, as pressed-down reeds spring up to meet the 
 breeze. 
 
 Meditation and fancy were with her the very sap of life, 
 pervading her from root to branch, as its sap a tree ; with him 
 they were but the utmost crown of leaf that fluttered in the 
 wind, and was put forth, or frozen back, according to the air 
 around. Yet there was likeness enough in them to give sym- 
 pathy, and whilst he was with her he thought and saw and 
 spoke as she did, — and was true in it. 
 
 He also met Etoile at one or two great houses, embassies, 
 and palaces, where the Lady Joan did not penetrate, and where 
 she permitted him io go, because she always hoped, some day 
 or other, to squeeze herself in by his means. 
 
 When his tyrant was near, her boisterous self-assertion 
 
 20* 
 
234 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 completely subdued him ; her incessant watchfulness made him 
 constrained ; and, annoyed by her persistent claims on his 
 attention, yet afraid to resist them, he had grown into the 
 habit of a silent self-effacement in sheer self-defence. 
 
 Away from her he was transformed, and all the grace, talent, 
 and social gifts natural to him had their play. Nature had 
 bestowed on him a graceful and dignified presence, a face that 
 attracted the eyes of all women, and that happy tact and 
 charm of manner which in society outweigh all accomplish- 
 ment and achievement. 
 
 He would have looked well in a panel of Giorgione's or a 
 canvas of Vandyke's, and his grace and bearing went fittingly 
 with these grave old palaces of Rome, where the motley of 
 modern society almost gathers the grace of a dead day by 
 the spell of its surroundings, in the solemn beauty of galleries 
 that Raffaelle painted, and the gorgeous vastness of halls that 
 Michael Angelo built. 
 
 Etoile had looked at him at first as she would have done at 
 a portrait or a statue ; then the portrait smiled, the statue 
 spoke ; he lingered beside her in those noble galleries, where 
 the genius of the past gazed down on the frivolity of the 
 present ; when she was occupied by others he stood near, 
 mute and listening ; when he was there he was her shadow ; 
 when he was not there she missed him. 
 
 Etoile, from the years when she had pored over Shakspeare 
 and Racine and Goethe in the woodland shadows of her tran- 
 quil Ardennes, had had no passion save for her art ; though 
 it was not likely that the world in general was going to be so 
 simple as to believe this. It is seldom that the world is simple 
 enough to receive a truth. " I am Truth, and have few 
 acquaintances," says the gentleman in Congreve's comedy : 
 when he comes in, most people look the other way. 
 
 Etoile in every fibre of her mind and temper was an artist. 
 The artist quite absorbed and extinguished the woman in her. 
 Men thought her — ^because they found her — cold. They 
 paid her court and wooed her in all kinds of ways, but they 
 all left her unmoved. 
 
 Sometimes she would watch two lovers gliding under moonlit 
 trees, or look a woman with a young child in her arms, and 
 wish that this warmth of human love would touch her. But 
 
 it did not. _, :.;.;.:,,. ;.. ^ ..-.-; \--:^ -:•..>- -•'^ ?..,«■;• 'r ^ 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 235 
 
 She had many who wooed her, hut none who moved her. 
 Sometimes it seemed to her that she was like a hi^h-strung 
 instrument, that echoes all the emotions of the soul but re- 
 mains itself insensible to them. 
 
 She led a life of much isolation by choice, and of much 
 retirement by preference. She considered that to be great the 
 artist must be much alone with himself and with nature, and the 
 leisure she had was given to the arts. When she went into 
 the world it amused her for half an hour ; then it grew tedious. 
 She liked better her library, her atelier, her solitude ; or the 
 open air, where every breath that blew took her in fancy to 
 the woods and waters of her happy childhood. 
 
 " You are an innocent woman, you are a famous woman, but 
 you are not a happy woman," said a great wise man to her 
 once. 
 
 "No? I suppose there is always something missing," she 
 answered him. 
 
 Meanwhile, the world in general knew that she was famous, 
 thought that she was happy, but did not in the least believe 
 her innocent. 
 
 To loris, as to the world, it seemed strange to find a woman 
 who was still young, and had some place in the great world, 
 passing her time in study and in thought. To come in with 
 the early morning to her, and see her, with old chronicles 
 and crabbed manuscripts, following the threads of disputed 
 histories or gathering the thoughts of forgotten pasts, had a 
 charm for him. In his youth he had been a student too, and 
 to meet her in her own field he shook oflf him that worldly 
 levity and that lower habit of thought which had obscured 
 and absorbed his mind in his later years. It attracted yet it 
 tantalized him to find her pure intellectual abstractions absorb 
 her, whilst the daily pleasures of other women's lives scarce 
 held her for a second. He felt that to make this woman know 
 a human passion would be to draw her down to eaith and break 
 her skyward-bearing wings, and yet he desired to do it, — daily 
 desired more and more. 
 
 As with him so with a chamois-hunter who, seeing a moun- 
 tain hawk sailing far, far away in the clear rarefied air above 
 the clouds, lifts his rifle and sends death through the blue 
 serene sacred peace of the still heavens. 
 
 The bird drops into a deep abyss where no eyes see its dying 
 
236 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 agony. It is out of reach, and if reached were of no use to 
 him who shot it, since ne only seeks the chamois of the hills 
 that gives him food and shoe-leather. And yet he fires. 
 
 And the bird is dead. 
 
 Something of the hunter's feeling woke in him now. She 
 was so far away and so content in that high air where nothing 
 mortal followed. He wanted to bring her down and handle 
 her closer, and feel if her heart beat, — make it beat, indeed, 
 by pain, if only pain would do it. Not from cruelty; oh, no. 
 He was never cruel to the lowliest thing that moved. Only 
 from vague curiosity, and a baffled wonder, and an awakening 
 desire, and that eagerness for what is rare and strange, which 
 is as eager in the man with his loves as in the child with his 
 pastimes. 
 
 So he came to her constantly in the long mornings of the 
 winter, when the sun grew warm at noon ; and went to houses 
 where he could meat her, when he could secure an hour's free- 
 dom ; and studied her, and grew a little more familiar with her 
 day by day, and learned the details of her life, and told her 
 stories of his own, and gave her that delicate, half-uttered, 
 all-eloquent sympathy which his tact, perhaps, rather than his 
 heart taught him at first ; and at times would sit quite silent 
 gazing at her with that mystical, voluptuous, contemplative 
 light in his dreamy gaze which Love has given to the Southern 
 and the Eastern alone of the sons of men, and which will 
 draw a woman toward it as the sun draws up the dew. 
 
 Meanwhile, the one who believed she held the key of his 
 thoughts knew nothing of the truth. 
 
 So long as he was always close at hand to be shown off as 
 a slave, so long as he consented to follow her about and be 
 made absurd at her pleasure, so long as he bought and sold 
 and fetched and carried for her, and she could call on lo aloud 
 to all the four winds of heaven wheresoever she went, with 
 the display and vanity that were so sweet to her, so long the 
 Lady Joan was not a woman to notice a stifled sigh, a laggard 
 step, a look of weariness, a gesture of reluctance. These are 
 the signs that women who love well, read, trembling, and in 
 themselves droop by as the field-born pimpernel droops by the 
 darker passing of a sunmier rain-cloud. I3ut she was not one 
 of these. Her vanity bore her buoyant against all perception 
 of such changes. He was her servant, her worshipper, her 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 237 
 
 lover, her plaything : what more could he want of heaven or 
 of earth? 
 
 So long as she enchained his person it never occurred to 
 her that his mind, and his heart, and his soul might be else- 
 where. 
 
 Now and then a thrill of savage jealousy ran through her, 
 wakened by some word of Marjory Scrope's or some sight of 
 Etoile ; but it was soon lulled by a careless laugh or a con- 
 temptuous denial from loris. 
 
 She T as duped where a less vain and less arrogant temper 
 would have been instantly alarmed. 
 
 Meanwhile, oppression had its usual result, and produced as 
 its fruit deception. 
 
 loris was of a frank and tender nature, but he had lived 
 much among women, and they had made him false. 
 
 The untruthfulness of women communicates itself to the 
 man whose chief society they form, and the perpetual neces- 
 sities of intrigue end in corrupting the temper whose chief 
 pursuit is passion. 
 
 Women who environ a man's fidelity by ceaseless suspicion 
 and exaction create the evil that they dread. 
 
 loris deceived this woman at first in trifles, later on in graver 
 things, because she ruthlessly demanded from him an amount 
 of time and a surrender of will which no man will ever give 
 without becoming either openly or secretly a rebel. She had 
 made him fear her, so he betrayed her. In love, as in a king- 
 dom, the tyrant sits upon a hollow throne. 
 
 But she was one of those to whom " an immense Me is the 
 measure of the Universe;" and this " immense Me" obscured 
 a sight otherwise sharp as the hav;k's and clear as the pigeon's. 
 
 Meantime, loris once more rose to the light of the day with 
 the sense that the day might bring some charm he was not 
 sure of, some interest he would not exhaust. Once more the 
 delight of the uncertain had come to him, playing fitfully 
 about his path ; and once more the sound of the lutes in the 
 moonlight, the sheen of the stars above the palms and the 
 laurels, seemed in unison with his fancies, because, once more, 
 he felt young. He did not reason about it, because he was a 
 man who never reasoned when he could avoid doing so, and 
 who always shut his eyelids as long as he could to what was 
 inconvenient or painful. But ho resigned himself with few 
 
238 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 striig<:;lca to the fresh influences that stole on liim, and never 
 asked himself when they would leave him. 
 
 Ills mistress had been right when she had said that there 
 was something of the Faust and something of the llomeo in 
 him, but there was still more of the Hamlet. He would bear 
 the ills he had, for fear of others that he knew not of, and 
 would question himself at times, — 
 
 "Am I a cowftrd? 
 
 It cannot bo 
 
 But I am pigeon-livcrcd, and lack gall 
 To make oppression bitter." 
 
 The delicate, unreal reasoning, the vacillation of thought 
 which produced infirmity of purpose, the wounded pride which 
 took refuge in silence, the complexity of impulses which baflfled 
 at unravelling them both friend and foe, the armor of jest, the 
 inner core of sadness, had all of them the Hamlet cast. Like 
 Hamlet he could smile upon his foe; like Hamlet he could 
 make mock of his own dishonor ; like Hamlet he was destined 
 to say of the deepest passion of his life, " You should not 
 have believed me : I loved you not," and loved the more all 
 the while he said it. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " How ridiculous it is that she should go to such places 1" 
 said the Lady Joan, a day or two later, with wrath and scorn, 
 as she ate her breakfast, flinging away a local journal which 
 recorded the name of Etoile in the list of guests at a Russian 
 grand duchess's party. 
 
 " Why ridiculous ?" said loris, between his teeth, without 
 looking up. His face grew darker as he stooped and picked 
 up the paper. 
 
 " Why ?" screamed the Lady Joan. " Why ? It is worse 
 than ridiculous ! It is disgusting !" 
 
 " Why?" said loris, very coldly. :':,- 
 
 The Lady Joan burst out laughing. 
 
 " Good heavens, lo ! Where have you lived ? You who 
 used to know Paris like a book I you who pretend to know 
 the world 1" - >..■.,.■ 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 239 
 
 " I do not understand," said her lover, still coldly. 
 
 " Oh, don't you ? I should think you mij^ht well enough, 
 though you never can see half an inch before your nose I 
 Look what a life she's led !" 
 
 "Perfectly innocent? That is rare. But is it forbidden, 
 objectionable?" 
 
 The Lady Joan shrieked with fresh laughter. 
 
 "Innocent? You're innocent! Why, only listen to any- 
 body talking about her for ten minutes, and you'll liear enough 
 to set your very hair on end. You never went to 'em, I sup- 
 pose, but her Sunday evenings in Paris were scaTidalous 1 — 
 that I do know for a fact. Even respectable men wouldn't go." 
 
 loris laughed a little slightingly. 
 
 " I have never met any one of my sex so very virtuous. 
 I suppose those very virtuous men belong to your country. 
 But, ma cMre, since you know such things of her, why 
 receive her ?" 
 
 " It was that old beast Voightel." 
 
 " Surely it was your father ?" 
 
 " Oh, Lord, no ! She hardly knew papa. At least, yes, 
 of course, she did know him, but he only went to her now 
 and then." 
 
 " Where the respectable men would not go ? Poor Lord 
 Archie 1" 
 
 The Lady Joan colored and grew angry. 
 
 " You know very well what I mean : poor dear papa never 
 is as particular as he ought to be." (loris thought of Lord 
 Archie lying smoking under the cherry-trees of Fiordelisa, and 
 mentally agreed that he was not.) " And she charms men, and 
 all that kind of thing ; improper women always do," continued 
 the Lady Joan, who was so used to putting on her ruiF of de- 
 corum that she would put it on sometimes even with those 
 who ruffled it the most. " The life of Etoile has been in- 
 famous, altogether infamous. I know so many people who 
 know all about her, and of course since we became acquainted 
 with her I've naturally inquired more. If I had known all I 
 do now, of course I never would have let her set her foot in 
 my door." 
 
 "It is a very beautiful foot," said loris, who felt a great 
 anger in him that he dared not display and could not alto- 
 gether smother ; and either by accident or design, his eyes 
 
240 FltlENDSIIIP. 
 
 glanced at the foot of the Lady Joan, visible from the short- 
 ness of her skirt, in the large stout boot which tramped over 
 his ploughed fields and in and out so many studios and up and 
 down so many stairs of the Bona Dea's temples. The glance 
 and the words filled up the measure of her fury, — a fury she 
 smothered as he did his auger, for these two people, whilst 
 living in the closest intimacy, almost habitually deceived each 
 other. She flung herself round to a bureau, and took out a 
 letter and threw it to him. 
 
 " There I read that, since you don't believe me ?" 
 
 loris read : his eyebrows drew together a little, but other- 
 wise his face did not change. He read it calmly through, 
 then gave it back to her. 
 
 " Conclusive, — if true." 
 
 It was a letter from a man who did ill in art what Etoile 
 did supremely well, — a man who had hungered after her suc- 
 cesses with envious greed for many a year, — a man, moreover, 
 who had endeavored to pay court to her and had failed. To 
 him, knowing him well, the Lady Joan had written a careless 
 question or two about Etoile : in answer he had poured out 
 — exaggerated — all that calumny had ever invented of her. 
 Lady Joan had relied on the almost certain fact that when a 
 man's or a woman's nature is not noble it will be very petty 
 indeed : there is but little middle way betwixt the two. 
 
 " Conclusive, if true," said loris, carelessly, and handed her 
 the sheet. " But why should we quarrel about hur ? She is 
 nothing to us ; and she is here to-day and will be gone to- 
 morrow." 
 
 His heart was beating with anger and impatience, and a 
 certain sickness of doubt was stealing upon him, and with 
 it also a better impulse of chivalrous championship of the 
 wronged and absent woman. But habit was stronger with 
 him than any of these feelings, and it was his habit constantly 
 to conceal all his real thoughts from his inquisitor. The screw 
 never brings forth but a galled lie. 
 
 " If true !" echoed the Lady Joan, a little more satisfied, 
 locking up her letter. " There's no ' if about it. Anybody 
 who knows her will tell you the same thing. It was disgraceful 
 of my father to send her to me ; but Voightel can always 
 turn him round his finger, and Voightel's a beast." 
 
 loris remained silent : he had heard Voightel rhapsodized 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 241 
 
 over in the Casa Challoner with the most fervent worship as 
 the most learned, most distinguished, most marvellous of men, 
 and once, when he had been expected there, though he had 
 not arrived, had seen the dryest of wines, the choicest of pipes, 
 the sweetest of woids got ready to salute his arrival. 
 
 At the instant JMr. Challoner entered. 
 
 " We were talking of Etoile, llobert," said his wife. 
 " Aren't you disgusted with that brute Voightel persuading 
 my father to send her to nie?^' 
 
 Mr. Challoner was used to catching quickly a clue. 
 
 " It was certainly ill advised," he said, in his best and most 
 wooden manner. " One cannot be too careful, and there are 
 very odd stories " 
 
 The Lady Joan felt that there were momentij in which Mr. 
 Challoner was priceless. 
 
 " So I was saying to lo," she answered him. " Her life in 
 Paris was always very queer, wasn't it?" 
 
 " And you are always over-indulgent and hasty," said Mr. 
 Challoner, with the paternal manner which now and then he 
 assumed with much eflfect. " Yes ; yes. Of course it would 
 have been better not to have known her, but when we go to 
 the country the acquaintance will die a natural death, and if 
 she be here another winter we need not resume it. Here is a 
 telegram from Sicily, loris." 
 
 Telegrams from Sicily were always flying in at the Casa 
 Challoner. 
 
 In gratitude to Free Italy for the agreeable refuge she gave 
 them, and the many teacups and triptychs she let them pick 
 up, Mr. Challoner and his wife (or rather his wife and Mr. 
 Challoner) had determined on creating for her a tubular bridge. 
 
 The bridge was to go over the Straits of Messina, by the 
 Gulf of Faro, and connect Sicily with the mainland, and do 
 away with brigandage and barbarism for ever and aye. There 
 was very little of it made as yet, except upon paper, — nothing, 
 indeed, except some piles that had been driven in on the shore 
 by Scylla ; but the prospectus had been out, a id the shares all 
 sold, for four years past, and a Scotch duke was the nominal 
 head of it, and a great many clerks and contractors were fussing 
 and fuming over it alike in Calabria and in Cannon Street, and 
 money was turning; about it in the churn of the Exchanges 
 and Chambers of Counuerce. 
 
 L 21 -/■■::.■,:■:,:-:.'. 
 
242 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " My bridge," the Lady Joan called it, with a fine wholesale 
 appropriation, — as she said " my farm" when talking of Fior- 
 delisa. 
 
 She thought herself a great woman of business. The age 
 of Money, of Concessions, of Capitalists, and of Limited 
 Liabilities, has Lirgely produced the female financier, who 
 thinks, with M. de Camors, that " Vhumanit6 est composde des 
 acHonnairesy Other centuries have had their especial type 
 of womanhood : the learned and graceful hetaira, the saintly 
 and ascetic recluse, the warrior of Oriflamme or Red Rose, 
 the dame de beautS, all loveliness and light, like a dew-drop, 
 the philosophic pricieuse, with sesquipedalian phrase, the 
 revolutionist, half nude of body and wholly nude of mind, 
 each in her turn has g'ven her sign and seal to her especial 
 century, for better or for worse. The nineteenth century has 
 some touch of all, but its own novelty of production is the 
 female speculator. 
 
 The woman who, breathless, watches la housse and la haisse; 
 whose favor can only be won by some hint in advance of the 
 newspapers ; whose heart is locked to all save golden keys ; 
 "who starts banks, who concocts companies, who keeps a broker, 
 as in the eighteenth century a woman kept a monkey, and in 
 the twelfth a knight ; whose especial art is to buy in at the 
 right moments and to sell out in the nick of time ; who is 
 great in railways and canals and new bathing-places and shares 
 in fashionable streets ; who chooses her lovers, thinking of 
 concessions, and kisses her friends for the sake of the secrets 
 they may betray from their husbands : — what other centuries 
 may say of her who can tell ? 
 
 The Hotel Rambouillet thought itself higher than heaven, 
 and the generation of Catherine of Sienna believed her deal 
 planks the sole highway to the throne of God. 
 
 But the present age is blessed with the female financier, 
 and must make the best of her, as it must of the rotten rail- 
 ways, the bubble banks, the choked-up mines, the sand-filled 
 canals, the solitudes of brick and mortar, which it owes to her 
 genius. 
 
 Lady J- i believed herself to be one of these modern 
 blessings. For those who would listen to her, she had always 
 miracles to tell of firms she saved and concessions she obtained, 
 of ministers' graces won by her smile and monarehs' signatures 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 243 
 
 obtained by her intercession. According to herself, there was 
 scarce a steamer that floated, or banker that prospered, or 
 traction-engine that ran, or new street that was traced out, 
 from the Thames to the Nile, from the Danube to the Tigris, 
 that did not owe something to lier procreative or protecting 
 powers. She described herself as a kind of ambulatory Lamp 
 of Aladf^in, and if you only rubbed her up (the right way) 
 she woulO make a palace spring up for you like a mushroom. 
 How muca of this was true, and how much imagination, was 
 perhaps one of those things that no man will ever know, — 
 like the real thoughts of Lord Beaconsfield, or the real use of 
 the secret-service money in England, or the real discoveries 
 of the Black Cabinet under Persigny. It was an Eleusinian 
 mystery. 
 
 Prci'ane persons were apt to consider that her ability for 
 commerce wiis chiefly exercised in buying pots and pans and 
 chairs and tables, in old shops, in old highways and byways 
 wherever she went, north, south, east, or wcvSt. But this was 
 ill-nature. She really had a talent for getting up companies 
 and persuading people to take shares in them, and was very 
 fond of running up the back-stairs of politics and coming down 
 them with the pot-luck of a ministerial concession or of a royal 
 subsidy picked up from the seething stew-pan of international 
 jobberies. 
 
 Her lovers devoutly believed in her as a woman of business. 
 It was not an attribute that attracted, but it was one that awed 
 them. " Damn it, madame, who falls in love with attributes?" 
 says Berkeley. Probably no one. But the chain once fastened, 
 certain attributes may serve to rivet it, e;.pecially when they 
 are fear-compelling. 
 
 In his soul loris detested these South Sea Bubbles that his 
 mistress was so fond of blowing. It is not engaging to see 
 the Bourse quotations seized as eagerly as your love-notes 
 could be, or to have a tender silence broken by a sudden recol- 
 lection that Macmaw and Filljaw's telegram at once must be 
 answered. 
 
 But, though it revolted him, it served to entangle him. 
 His name was of use to her; she taught him how to obtain 
 concessions, and knew herself how to work them when got ; 
 his influence was of use to her; his title sparkled on the Mes- 
 sina Bridge prospectus before the Board in Cannon Street, and 
 
244 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 enabled her to say in England that she had all Italy at her 
 beck and call, as in Italy she said she had all England. She 
 was a woman of resources and of foresight ; gradually she 
 drew all his affairs into her hands, and made him drift at her 
 will hither and thither ; she got him into the habit of being 
 guided by her, and habit has much weight on a Southern 
 temper ; she thrust through her amorous butterfly the honey- 
 laden pin of commerce, and fastened down the wings that, 
 without it, would have borne him to fresher flowers. 
 
 Besides, Finance served her well in other ways than this : 
 if Paris and Menelaiis h^d gone together to build a bridge or 
 dig a canal, they could never afterwards, for very ridicule's 
 sake, have called up Greece to arms. 
 
 " They've gone to Calabria together to see about my bridge," 
 she would say to Mrs. Grundy at five-o'clock tea. " Such a 
 bore ! isn't it ? I'm quite dull without them. But it will be 
 a grand thing for Italy when it is done ; so one must not mind 
 trouble." 
 
 " They" was her pet pronoun, her horse of battle, her choice 
 piece of prudence, and Mrs. Grundy would go away and say 
 to Mrs. Candor, '' He's only with her so much because they're 
 making a tubular bridge by the Gulf of Faro. The Duke of 
 Oban is president of it ; a great deal of English money is put 
 into it. Fine idea, very. Her idea originally, I believe. Oh, 
 what a cruel backbiting world we live in, my dear !" 
 
 Meanwhile, until " they" came back from Calabria, Lady 
 Joan petted good-looking Douglas Graeme, or handsome Eccel- 
 lino da Sestri, or Guido Serravalle with his guitar, or anybody 
 else that came handy, and had cosy little dinners with plump 
 Mimo in the corner, and tuneful Guido to sing to her, and en- 
 joyed herself exceedingly, and wrote to loris word every day 
 that she was wretched. 
 
 This winter morning, however, the telegram brought no 
 call to Calabria, and she had planned to spend it at Fiordelisa. 
 Mr. Challoner — the telegram disposed of — proceeded to tell 
 her that it was ten o'clock, and the ponies were standing at 
 the door. 
 
 The morning was still very cold ; snow was still upon all 
 the liills, a fierce wind was blowing boisterously down the face 
 of the river ; it was not attractive weather for the country, 
 loris sighed uneasily as he took up all her shawls, and went 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 245 
 
 down-stairs, to be driven by her across the Campagna in the 
 teeth of the Alpine blasts. 
 
 Mr. Challoner stood in the window up-stairs, and watched 
 their departure with the nearest approach to a smile that ever 
 appeared upon his countenance. Then he went into his own 
 little sanctum, stirred up his fire, sat down in his most comfort- 
 able chair, and began to read his Frencli and i]nglish papers. 
 He felt that this morning at least he had the better part. 
 
 " He's a very useful fellow to me," Mr. Challoner had said 
 in an unguarded moment once, over some sherry, to old Lord 
 George Stair, who had mumbled a vague assent, and had 
 thought, among other wicked things he had read in his far- 
 away youth, of Diderot's song of Six Sous that Grimm quotes 
 in his Memoirs. 
 
 Meantime, while Mr. Challoner enjoyed his " Pall Mall 
 Gazette" and his " Figaro" before an oak fire, with a pipe of 
 tragrant tobacco to make him yet more comfortable, the ponies 
 sped on, under the lash of his wife's whip, through the chilly 
 and windy morning. 
 
 " Are you grown dumb, lo ?" she said, sharply, as they flew 
 over the frosted turf. 
 
 loris drew his furs closer across his mouth. 
 
 " It is not agreeable to swallow ice," he said, coldly ; but the 
 ice that hurt him was the ice at his heart, not the ice in the 
 air. 
 
 " It is only jealousy made her say those things !" he was 
 thinking to himself, and his fealty went out to Etoile, with the 
 eager revolt and the caressing devotion that slander of an ab- 
 sent thing he cares for will rouse in any man who has a man's 
 heart beating within him. 
 
 And he cared for her greatly already, though he was half 
 unwilling and half afraid to face the truth of it and all its 
 perils, and hid it from himself under the shelter of a thousand 
 plausible synonymes and reasons. 
 
 The Lady Joan, who heeded cold weather no more than she 
 heeded the cold shoulder of a desirable acquaintance, cut his 
 ponies over the ears, and rattled onward, with her pistol-case 
 under her feet in case she should be in a mood to shoot cats 
 or robins, on both of which she waged fiery war. 
 
 The cats might kill a chicken, and the robins steal a cherry. 
 
 loris oflen pleaded for both, but in vain. 
 
246 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 The grand old house looked bleak and dreary in the cloudy 
 angry day, with the mountain-winds rushing through the leaf- 
 less aisles of its vineyards. Imperator howled in his kennel, 
 and the heart of his master ached. The Lady Joan sprang 
 down at the court-yard gate, and kilted her skirts high, and 
 wrapped her waterproof about her, and, calling out for Gian, 
 for Vico, for Beppo, for Cecco, whilst those frightened servitors 
 came tumbling out from stable, wine-cellar, tool-house, and 
 barn, strode away, to the delight of her soul, scolding, weigh- 
 ing, scrutinizing, ordering, railing, altering, chaffering, bully- 
 ing, raising heaven and earth because a measure was short, 
 and unpacking a wagon-load of cabbages to make sure that 
 their number was right. She had a hundred thousand things 
 to do before she could enjoy herself and shoot her cats and 
 robins. 
 
 loris. free for the moment, lighted a cigar and strolled away 
 by himself over his lonely fields, green with the tender young 
 corn and red with barberry and bryony. He heard her voice 
 in loud discussion with his bailiflF as to which Roman bull was 
 to be mated with the new brindled cow from Alderney, and 
 shuddered a little in disgust as he heard. " Her breviary is 
 the stock-book !" he thought, and went on his lonely walk 
 under the edge of the woods. 
 
 He thought of Etoile by her hearth. 
 
 Would she miss him this morning ? 
 
 With loris gentle impulses were natural. His character had 
 in it that honey of softness which the flies will eat, — and tigers 
 and bears as well as flics. Old people lived on him with no 
 other claim than their utter uselessness ; hangers-on devoured 
 his substance because he had not resolution enough to cut them 
 adrift; a poor old homeless soul slipped and broke her limb as 
 he was passing, and he took her into his own house and kept 
 her there year upon year ; an unwillingness to see pain, and 
 an aversion to wound, were strong in him ; Lady Joan found 
 it out, and despised it, and laughed at it, and profited by it, 
 all at once. " lo's such a fool," she would say, — and think 
 him such a fool, — and yet all the while love the folly in him 
 from its own utter unlikeness to herself 
 
 It had grown to be with him as of old it was with the Capet 
 kings and their Maires du Palais. The natural indolence and 
 infirmity of purpose which often cripples many fine and deli- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 247 
 
 cate minds found relief in her strong opinions and her decisive 
 action : it became so much easier to answer, " Ask the signora," 
 than to decide for himself between disputing servants or to 
 refuse for himself a supplicant's petition. Things had to be 
 done that he was not hard enough or rough enough to do him- 
 self: it became so much simpler to say, " Go to the signora," 
 than incur an hour's contention, or send away an old farmer 
 with tears in his eyes. She liked all this kind of authority 
 and tyranny ; and he detested it. So the habit of reliance on 
 her grew, and, being first sown by the generosity of his nature, 
 became fast rooted in his nature's weakness. 
 
 There was not a question but that things went on in much 
 more orderly mode since she had hung up her cachemire at 
 Fiordelisa. 
 
 The old happy, careless, wasteful ways were ended, just as 
 the old wooden ploughs that might have served Cincinnatus 
 were replaced by new steel ones from Sheffield. True, the people 
 were sullen and discontented ; true, there was not a shepherd 
 that did not scowl where he had been used to smile, as he 
 leaned on his staff on the thyme-covered hills and watched his 
 padrone go by. 
 
 " But look at the figures at Torlonia's," she would say, if 
 he remonstrated. 
 
 And how could he remind her that the figures at Torlonia's 
 were not at the head of his own balance-sheet ? 
 
 There are things that a man cannot say. 
 
 She had twisted the steward's whip and pen out of his hands 
 with a jerk, had sent the drones and parasites flying, had 
 brought the devil incarnate, the people thought, in screaming 
 farm-engines, had cut down all the estim.ates and all the wages, 
 had nipped off the beggar's crusts to crumble whole loaves 
 away on her own hobbies, and had let her fancy run riot in 
 building and cattle-breeding, if she could be said to have any- 
 thing about her so aerial and foolish as a fancy. 
 
 All this was noisy, unpleasant, interminable work, though 
 she thought it a paradise, and pooh-poohed any demurrer or 
 remonstrance on the part of the master of Fiordelisa with the 
 sublime disdain she always showed for other people's feelings. 
 
 In the years that had elapsed since the family had gone 
 there with the flower-seeds and the kitchen boiler, and been 
 first visited there by Lady George Scrope-Stair with her 
 
248 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 sanctifying knitting-needles, the quiet noble old place had 
 known few moments of peace. Hammers had almost always 
 been going, workmen working, smiths soldering, delvers dig- 
 ging, in a confusion of sounds that made loris's head ache 
 and made yawning gaps in his capital for ondless wages. 
 There is nothing in the world so amusing as lO make improve- 
 ments when other people will pay for them : vestries, landscape- 
 gardeners, architects, and city aediles all know this ; and Lady 
 Joan was not a whit behind vestries and ocdiles in her appre- 
 ciation of it. 
 
 loris looked wistful when a brave row of evergreen oaks 
 fell, to give place to a row of brand-new granaries raised on 
 new principles ; or a rose-garden perished, to make an acre of 
 asparagus- and pineapple-beds : he looked grave when he saw 
 the sum total that the new granaries and the asparagus- and 
 pineapple-beds cost : did not the old barns and threshing-floors, 
 the old vegetables and orchards, do just as well ? 
 
 " You'll find the profit of it all by and by," said the Lad/ 
 Joan to him : as the vestries and aediles say so to the public. 
 But he failed ever to see the profit : he could only see Black 
 Care as the bills came in, and the laborers crowded round his 
 steward to be paid, week after week, month after month. 
 
 No doubt. Lady Joan was a great administrator ; but great 
 administrators are expensive luxuries to the states which sup- 
 port them. 
 
 loris had never been rich, and, with the new granaries and 
 asparagus-beds, and all the other improvements, he felt himself 
 growing poorer every hour. 
 
 He was very tired of it. He was stung by the muttered 
 words and dark glances of his peasantry. He liked to be well 
 with all people, and the discontent of his contadini oppressed 
 him. In other years, when he had made brief visits in the 
 vintage-time, the people had worshipped him and met him 
 with music and laughter and song and their tributes of fruits 
 and of flowers ; now they passed him sullenly, or, if they 
 stopped him, stopped but to complain. He was pained by 
 them and for them, but he did nothing. Personal kindness 
 he would show them whenever he could. But he did not lift 
 his hand to stay hers that fell so heavily on them. 
 
 He loved them as he loved the houi d Imperator. But he 
 feared her more. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 249 
 
 Often he would go out in the fields and roam by himself, 
 for very weariness, and then on the beautiful wild hill-side, 
 scarlet with poppies and fragrant with the wild cistus bushes, 
 he would meet some old man or some young child, who would 
 stop him and hold their hand out and mutter of the tyrannies 
 of the " padrona" up at the house, and he would give them 
 money that he could ill afford, and go back impatient and sor- 
 rowful, and, as he passed through the house, hear the notes of 
 the mandolin twanging, and the tinkle of the coffee-cups upon 
 the terrace, and the laughter of Lady Joan and of Burletta, 
 and would avoid it all with a vague distaste, and go up to 
 his own room and lock himself in there and glance at his 
 mother's portrait and know that he had sinned and met his 
 retribution. 
 
 In these old noble places life should be " set to music." 
 Love, in its highest passion and its fairest forms ; Art as the 
 gift of God to man ; day-dreams, in which the hours unfold, 
 beautiful and uncounted, like the leaves of the oleander flowers ; 
 nights, when " the plighted hands are softly locked in sweet 
 unsevered sleep ;" gay laughter here and there, glad charity 
 with all things ; meditation now and then to deepen the well- 
 springs of the mind ; the open air always ; limbs bathed in the 
 warmth as in a summer sea ; the opal skies of evening watched 
 with fancies of the poets ; and everywhere perpetual sense of 
 a delicious rest, and of desire and of hope crowned to fruition : 
 this was the life for Fiordelisa. 
 
 And he knew it. 
 
 And he instead abode in this : fierce wrangle, lowest aims ; 
 shrewd watchfulness for gain, perpetual chatter of art as means 
 of loss and profit ; hard tyranny and sated possession that 
 dressed themselves as passion and made dupes one of the other; 
 and, all through the long and radiant hours of the day one 
 voice forever ringing in glee or wrath because a bird was shot, 
 or theft of grain unpunished, or grapes by the high-road 
 poached, or old coins found dug up under the garden-mould 
 that could be sold again, or old pottery found in some poor 
 peasant's hut, bought for a loaf of bread and good in the 
 winter for the guineas of a millionaire. 
 
 And he endured the one life and he dreamed of the other, and 
 knew what the years might be, yet bore with them as they were 
 from habit and from fear and from inertia, and meanwhile the 
 
250 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Lady Joan reigned as she chose in Fiordelisa, and cut the trees, 
 and weighed the produce, and vulgarized the rooms, and harried 
 the peasantry, and meddled with the wine-presses, and rooted 
 herself into the soil, so that never should any step save hers 
 be heard there, and never any offspring of his old race bloom 
 there, and heeded not the desolation that she worked for him, 
 — heeded it no more than she did the curse of the peasant 
 hungering in his hut, or the pangs of the song-bird dying in 
 the summer. 
 
 What did his sighs or his people's matter to her ? 
 
 So long as she kept Fiordelisa, and drove Pippo and Grillo 
 about, and trafficked in pictures and laces and furniture, and 
 exhibited her lover in all places and possibilities to everybody 
 as her prey and property and appendage, what did it matter to 
 her whether the heart of the man was weary, or his nerves 
 jaded, or his passion worn out ? what did it matter to her that 
 all liberty and peace and gladness had withered for him under 
 her touch ? what did it matter to her that he shut his eyes 
 with a shudder from facing the blank that was all his here- 
 after ? 
 
 Women who love to folly may watch with terror a weary 
 glance, may torture their own hearts in endless doubt whether 
 they be not unworthy of the heart that beats upon theirs, may 
 be ready to cast themselves adrift on a sea of misery rather 
 than drag as a weight for a day on the life that is dearer than 
 their own soul to them. But the Lady Joan was no such 
 fool. 
 
 She had got him and she held him fast, as a fisherman a 
 prize from the sea. He might writhe, might sigh, might strug- 
 gle, might sicken, might be weary at times unto death : what 
 did she care for that ? She saw a glimpse of it sometimes, 
 and it smote her vanity to the quick, though she never com- 
 prehended its full import ; but it never entered her thoughts 
 to release him or offer him release. She only pulled the curb 
 tighter, and revenged herself by sharper observation and by 
 harder tyranny. 
 
 So long as she had what she wanted, and incurred no mor- 
 tification in the sight of others, she was not likely to set him 
 free for any consideration so slight and unimportant to her as 
 his own wishes. Weak women thought about those things, 
 but Lady Joan was strong. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 251 
 
 This day seemed to him more long and tedious than any he 
 -ad ever passed. 
 
 When they sat down to luncheon in the chilly tapestried 
 room which wanted summer and the roses of summer to 
 brighten it, she entertained him with a bead-roll of her victories 
 and her captives, of a stable-boy's theft punished, a kite killed 
 and nailed to the door, a hundred thrushes trapped for market, 
 a fox's earth found and stopped, that the fox might die of 
 suffocation in its hole, a false bottom to a sieve detected as the 
 grain was measured, an error found in the manure receipts, a 
 stray dog shot, a cat hanged by the neck, a litter of pigs born. 
 He listened wearily ; he was tired of it all, because he was tired 
 of her. 
 
 As yet he scarcely realized that this — the quart d^heure de 
 Rabelais^ to which all passion that is merely passion comes 
 soon or late — had struck for him. He was silent and inatten- 
 tive throughout the midday meal ; and when at length the 
 Lady Joan, furious at his indifference, uprose from his table 
 and threw some silver off it, and told him that he deserved to 
 be ruined and die in the hospital, and that she was a fool to 
 fag out her life for him as she did, he could only sit silent still, 
 being unable to reply according to his honest thoughts, and 
 only hoped that she would not go into hysterics. Lady Joan 
 could have hysterics when all other weapons failed, as well as 
 the merest Rosa-Matilda that ever breathed. 
 
 This time, however, she did not go into them, because she 
 had a great many last instructions to give to the huttero about 
 that Alderney cow, and also remembered that she was to dine 
 at seven o'clock with her cousins Lord and Lady Fingal at the 
 lies Britanniques. For checking hysterics there is no receipt 
 so good as to remember a dinner-party. 
 
 It was twilight in the freezing winter's day when she deigned 
 at length to depart, with some pineapples out of the hotbeds 
 for her friends, and give her last order, and leave the grand 
 old house to the night and the cold, and drive back across the 
 plain with two mounted shepherds behind them, well armed, 
 in case of any thieves that might spring from behind a ruined 
 tomb or a cluster of acacias. 
 
 They reached home in safety, where Mr. Challoner, having 
 passed a tranquil afternoon in the club and at the Messina 
 bridge ofi&ces, where he was held an oracle, was waiting, ready 
 
252 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 dressed for the Fingal dinner, with lighted lamps and an even- 
 ing newspaper, serene and solemn in his solitude as a Red 
 Indian chief at a " big smoke." 
 
 loris, who was not invited to the Fingal party, excused him- 
 self from remaining to see them off on the plea of a chill he 
 had felt and much correspondence to answer, and hurried to 
 the house of Etoile ere it should be the hour for his own 
 attendance at the Quirinale. 
 
 " I cannot sleep without seeing her," he said to himself. 
 
 " What on earth's come to lo, I wonder ?" said the Lady 
 Joan, very crossly. " He's always ill now, — or stupid." 
 
 Mr. Challoner lifted his eyes from his " Pall Mall Gazette." 
 
 " In love," he said, curtly, with immovable visage, and re- 
 placed his eyeglass, which had dropped. He and his wife 
 always kept up a polite fiction between themselves, even in 
 private : loris was their mutual friend. 
 
 Lady Joan darted from her brilliant eyes such a look of 
 flame as a tigress might give whose hard-earned prey was 
 snatched from her jaws. 
 
 " Pshaw I" she said, savagely : " what an idiot you are, 
 Robert, always !" 
 
 Mr. Challoner perused the " Pall Mall Gazette" unmoved : 
 revenge was sweet, but peace was sweeter. 
 
 Fortunately, to preserve his peace in the absence of the su- 
 preme guardian of it, there entered handsome Douglas Graeme, 
 her cousin, who came to escort his cousin to their other cousins, 
 the Fingals ; and Lady Joan rushed to get herself into Genoa 
 velvet, Irish point, and English propriety. 
 
 Meanwhile, loris went and found Etoile in her chamber 
 alone by the warmth of the hearth, and the spacious, quiet 
 room, with its smell of hot-house heliotropes, and the odorous 
 many-flowered narcissus, — which in Italy we call tazzette, and 
 in France Jeamietfes, and in England have no popular name 
 for, because we have not the plant, — looked very familiar and 
 inviting to him as he entered it, himself jaded, cold, and weary. 
 
 " I can stay but a few moments, I fear, but I thought I 
 might venture to ask if you are well," he said, softly bending 
 to her with that look in his eyes by which a man tells the 
 woman he looks on that she is a dearer sight to him than any 
 other the world holds. 
 
 " You are not well yourself; you seem tired." Her voice 
 
FRIENDSHIP. . 253 
 
 trembled a little as she spoke to him, and her eyes fell before 
 his. 
 
 " I am tired/' he said, with a sigh. 
 
 The long, tasteless, dreary day unrolled before his memory 
 as he spoke, begun in the chilly morning with altercation and 
 strife, worn away in common cares and calculations of price 
 and profit, ended with rough dispute or with coarse mirth as 
 the sun began to grow low behind his leafless vineyards. They 
 were al! alike, these weary days, when it pleased his despot to 
 call him forth in the cold mist that rose from the river, and 
 make him go out to the old gray castle on the hill to levy 
 tribute from his farms, and number his winter fruits, and harry 
 the hearts of his people, in the pastime that she called looking 
 after Fiordelisa. 
 
 Once, when this passion had been young in him, he had 
 risen joyfully enough to skim the gray Campagna with her ere 
 the day was fully up, and pass the hours in enamored willing- 
 ness in the solitudes of his deserted halls. But now ! — he rose 
 to these days with a yawn, he felt their dull length drag on 
 and on with a sigh ; they left him at their close worn out and 
 disdainful of himself. 
 
 " I am tired," he said, now, standing by the fire, and letting 
 his eyes rest themselves in dreamy contemplation on Etoile. 
 
 She gave him a yellow rose from a cluster that sho had been 
 placing in water as he had entered ; there was tea standing 
 near her on a little Japanese stand ; she poured him out a cup, 
 and brought it to him by the hearth. He followed all her 
 movements with a sense of content and peace. 
 
 As she tendered him the little cup, his fingers caressed 
 hers, and, as he drew the cup away, his lips lingered on her 
 wrist. 
 
 She colored, and left him. 
 
 " Where have you come from now?" she asked him, as she 
 went to the roses. 
 
 The words stung him as a snake stings. 
 
 " I have come from Fiordelisa." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 " No ! Have I ever the luxury to be alone?" 
 
 Her heart beat quicker with an anger that she did not seek 
 to analyze. 
 
 " Why complain of what is vour choice ?" 
 .... 22.- • 
 
254 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Was it ever tnr/ choice?" he muttered, thinking of those 
 earliest hours when a black-browed stranger had set her will to 
 bring him to her feet. 
 
 " Surely it must have been when you gave Fiordelisa." 
 
 " I never gave Fiordelisa. I thought at most of one sum- 
 mer — of two " 
 
 ''Then hovN'i.^it?" 
 
 "How? Can I bid her go? I?" 
 
 Etoile rose and walked to and fro a moment impatiently, 
 pushing her hair out of her eyes. 
 
 " It is useless for me to pretend to misunderstand. Yonr 
 position is not one a woman oon talk of — without shame. But 
 it were absurd to deny that I see it in its true light, and that 
 I am very sorry for you, — very, v( ry sorry ! And yet how can 
 you live on in it ? The Triangle of Dumas 1 — how unreal, 
 how deceitful, how contemptible, how absolutely immoral in 
 the deepest sense of immorality's degradation, is this sin that 
 you and she, and the world with you, call Friendship, Sin ! — 
 the naked sins of the old days were innocence and decency 
 beside it. One can excuse sin that is honest, one can compre- 
 hen*,' the fatal force of a blind passion, one can see how even 
 an unholy love may be redeemed by sacrifice and courage. 
 But this ! — it is only ore long lie palmed ofi" upon the world, 
 and as cowardly as every lie must ever be !" 
 
 " The world is not deluded by the lie, believe me," said lo^in, 
 with his delicate contempt. 
 
 " If you had loved this woman," she pursued, disregarding, 
 " if you had loved her really with any kind of great love, 
 however guilty before the laws of man, could you have ever 
 borne to live like this, to take the husband's hand, to caress 
 the child, to act the social farce ? If you had really loved her 
 with any truth of love, such share of her with her duties and 
 her friends would have been impossible to you, such adoption 
 of her hearth and home would have been loathsome 1" 
 
 " There is love and love," said loris. " You think of a kind 
 of love that is seldom felt, that women like her cannot kindle. 
 You do not understand " 
 
 '' No ! I do not understand. I understand passion, though 
 I have not felt it. If you had struck the husband down upon 
 the hearth, and borne the wife away from all the world, — that 
 I could have understood." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 255 
 
 loris laughed a dreary scornful lau<;h. 
 
 " I know not which soonest would have repented such a 
 tragedy, — she or he or I. There are women for whom the 
 world may well be lost. Seriously, can you think her one of 
 them?" 
 
 " You must have thought her one of them once, at the least, 
 or else " 
 
 " Good heavens ! how little you realize, how little you com- 
 prehend " 
 
 His thoughts drifted back to the early time when a new- 
 comer with basilisk eyes had cast her toils about him. The 
 love born and matured behind black masks in the fumes of 
 cigarette- smoke, in the riot of cotillons, in the daybreak hours 
 after a ball, was not the love of which his companion spoke. 
 The world well lost for love ! — he laughed out of the very 
 weariness and heart-sickness of his soul, thinking of his mis- 
 tress in loup and domino, in ruff and starch, screaming in the 
 dingy crowd of the opera ball, lunching off lamb and lettuce 
 with a dean ! 
 
 " Perhaps I do not comprehend. I am glad, then, I do not 1" 
 said Etoile, with more impatience than she knew. " If you 
 slew the husband, — or he you, — I am barbarian enough to 
 feel that that might come within my sympathies. It would at 
 least be frank !" 
 
 loris laughed lightly and bitterly. 
 
 " Poor man ! he is terribly tiresome and trls-hmirgeois. 
 But why should I kill him for that ? As to his killing me, 
 I am his best friend, his souffre-doidenr, his whipping-boy. 
 Whatever other qualities he may lack, he is not ungrateful 
 —to me !" 
 
 Etoile unconsciously pulled asunder a rose she held, and 
 shred its petals on the floor. 
 
 " I said I was sorry for you. I retract it. Since you can 
 jest so about your fate, you are worthy of it." 
 
 "Jest!— I?" 
 
 He stooped and took her hands, and kissed them with a 
 half-timid and half-passionate tenderness. 
 
 " If I jest, it is to hide that I suffer. Be sorry for me: 
 Heaven knows I need it." 
 
 And he kissed her hands again, and went to the Court, 
 where he was in waiting that night. 
 
256 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Etoile stood by her hearth with the fallen rose-leaves at 
 her feet. 
 
 She felt as if some share of their falsehood and of their 
 shame had fallen on her. 
 
 And yet a sweet and subtle joy, which she felt afraid of, 
 stole upon her too. 
 
 Meantime, the Lady Joan went and dined with her cousins 
 the Fingals, and returned thence, much out of temper, to her 
 own house. The dinner at the Fingals had tried her patience 
 sorely ; it had been severe, dreary, dull ; she had sat between 
 an archaeologist and a travelling Oxford professor ; neither 
 had felt her fascinations, one had corrected her on a point of 
 ail; it was an utterly " blank day," both for business and for 
 amusement. She felt as ill used as any M. F. H. who has 
 been out from noon to night in rain and fog and has never 
 once " found." Lady Joan hated waste of time, or waste of 
 anything, even of lamp-cottons ; and she scolded her servants 
 for having so many lamps burning when she went home. 
 
 By the light of one of them she read some telegrams and 
 letters : they did not improve her temper. They told her 
 that the shares of the bridge over the Messina Straits, to 
 which the Italian ministers had refused the subsidy, were a 
 drug on the market, and that rf fine Parmeggianino she had 
 sent to London for sale had been examined by rude experts, 
 and declared good for nothing, but the big piece of cypress- 
 wood on which it was painted. 
 
 " Fools! dolts! idiots !" said Lady Joan, sweeping all the 
 European exchanges and all European connoisseurs into the 
 mighty circle of her scorn. She had promoted the bridge, 
 she had purchased the Parmeggianino : was that not enough 
 for the world ? 
 
 " They'll say my pigs are not Berkshires next!" she said, 
 in her wrath. 
 
 " No, no, no," murmured Burletta, who had come in for a 
 midnight cigar. " No, no, no I — the pigs are transcendent 
 pigs ; of the plumpness and the roundness and the pinkness 
 of babies are those pigs, and eir bacon will be as a foretaste 
 of paradise ; but as for pictures, and especially the Parmeggi- 
 anino, you will do me the justice to admit, cara mia " 
 
 " That you're a transcendent ass I" said the Lady Joan, 
 furiously. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 257 
 
 The very dear old Mimo lifted his shoulders to his ears and 
 his eyebrows to the ceiling, and solemnly lighted an enormous 
 cheroot. 
 
 " I always said the Parmeggianino would not go down in 
 the city of London ; I always said that it would not go down," 
 he reiterated, for he adored his goddess, but he adored still 
 more proving himself in the right, and he had always averred 
 that the Parmeggianino was too crude, was too brown, was too 
 big, was too glazed, was too strong meat, in point of fact, even 
 for Shoddy's acres of plaster walls. 
 
 " You thankless brute !" cried his Minerva, flinging all her 
 letters away in a crumpled ball. " Is that all your gratitude 
 for my getting your Tabernacle sold to the Fingals ?" 
 
 The very dear old Mimo reposed his fat person comfortably 
 among the sofa cushions. 
 
 " My Tabernacle is a beautiful Tabernacle," he said, tran- 
 quilly. " Pure Quattro Cento ; pure Qiiattro Cento ; that I 
 will swear, — not a detail of it that is not Quattro Centisto ; I 
 chose every detail myself; and the wood is old — old — old — 
 that too I will swear, and I ought to know, for the wood was 
 a flour-hutch of my mother's when I was a baby, per Bacco 1 
 What more would Milordo Fingal have?" 
 
 " You are an ass, Mimo !" said Lady Joan, again, but she 
 laughed a little whilst she frowned. 
 
 " Che-che — no ! That I am not," said Burletta, stoutly. 
 " In my way I am very wise. I know what the city of Lon- 
 don and its very clever people will accept and what it will not 
 accept, though I have never been there. It will be on its 
 knees before my Tabernacle, if Milordo Fingal will show it in 
 their Fine Arts Court ; all their South Kensington will adore 
 my mother's flour-hutch. But I did always say, you will allow, 
 that the Parmeggianino " 
 
 Lady Joan gave him a sounding box on the ear. Undis- 
 turbed, Burletta picked up his cigar, which had been shaken 
 out of his mouth by the shock, and kissed the Lady Joan's 
 cruel fingers. 
 
 " Keep to the pigs, mia carissima, and let me choose the 
 pictures," he said, with paternal tenderness. And together they 
 smoked the calumet of peace. 
 
 In the recesses of his own soul Burletta began to have hia 
 doubts about Palmerston^, — began to think that Palmerston^ 
 
 22* 
 
258 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 might after all not be very much more genuine than the over- 
 big Parmeggianino. He began to think that Minerva, like 
 Jove, sometimes nodded, and that the Messina Bridge, and 
 other wonderful benefits to mankind, were not very much more 
 trustworthy than his own rickety Renaissance chairs, and not 
 one-half as solid as that venerable flour-hutch which his zeal 
 for the antique had transformed into a tabernacle. But his 
 misgivings he shut into his own loyal soul, {ind trotted about 
 none the less vah'antly, holding up his plump hands, and 
 crying,— 
 
 " What a woman ! — ah, what a woman ! Such influence, 
 such power, such wisdom ! And yet look how she stoops to 
 
 trifles, — those hams, those wines, those capons " And 
 
 then would be unable to proceed further, from sheer ecstasy. 
 
 For to the very dear old Mimo, who had slender fare at 
 home, and indeed had been used to satisfy nature off a roll 
 and a sausage at a small osterid, the breakfasts and dinners of 
 the Casa Challoner and Fiordelisa were as banquet of the 
 gods ; and it would have been hard indeed if, in return for 
 them, he would not have held up his hands and cried aloud, — 
 
 " Such a woman ! — ah, such a woman ! The world has not 
 her equal. There is nothing that she does not know, and 
 nothing that she cannot do, — nothing, nothing, nothing !" 
 
 And a good many people believed him, as they believed in 
 his cracked bits of Limoges and his floir -hutch that was pro- 
 moted to a tabernacle. There is nothing that you may not 
 get people to believe in if you will only tell it them loud 
 enough and often enough, till the welkin rings with it. A 
 claque is an institution not confined to theatres, and naturally 
 for a well-born lady who would take Lord and Lady Fingal to 
 see his yellow ivories and his old Cremona fiddles, and could 
 get him sublime orders from the mighty Hebrides for all sorts 
 of things, from church doors as big as Alps to enamels no 
 bigger than your thumb, the ^ood and grateful Mimo felt that 
 he could never ckp his hands loud enough before the stage of 
 the world. 
 
 If she made mistakes — onf! — she was a woman, or, at 
 least, Mimo would say, with a sudden misgiving that this ad- 
 mission was derogatory to her, she was a goddess. But he, 
 who metaphorically was the owl at the feet of this Minerva, 
 could be familiar with her, as the owl may have jovially flapped 
 
. FRIENDSHIP. 259 
 
 its wings in merry moments over the disbarred casque and the 
 unbuckled aegis, and in such confidential familiarity would 
 venture to say to her, — 
 
 " Keep to the pigs, mia carissima, and let me choose the 
 pictures." 
 
 CHAPTER XXr. 
 
 Lady Joan, who, when she was not blinded by the mufflers 
 of her vanity and inordinate belief in herself, was very sharp- 
 sighted, saw that society, when it has strained itself to swallow 
 a good deal that is as much against its laws as wine against 
 the Koran's, will, by the natural law of expansion and recoil, 
 require to be equally severe in refusing to swallow something 
 else, if only in justification of its principles. Because society 
 always adheres to its principles ; just as a Moslem subscribes 
 none the less to the Koran because he may just have been 
 blowing the f'^oth off his bumper of Mumra's before he goes 
 to his mosque. 
 
 The Duchess of Bridgewater was the highest and mightiest 
 of gentlewomen, and her mere nod was honor, and if Lord 
 Dauntless paid her bills, nobody could know it but his 
 bankers, and all the great world stayed with her at her Castle 
 of Indolence, in the heart of a country that crnwled on its 
 knees to her beck and her call. The Princess Giegarine was 
 the mirror of fashion and the privileged vixen of courts : if 
 common soldiers in their guard-rooms toasted her as a common 
 wanton as they drank their rum, a polite society knows no- 
 thing of what common soldiers say in their horrid guard-rooms. 
 Lady Byebright cheated at cards, and had her ears boxed, 
 but she was always Lady Eyebright, because she never rao oft' 
 with any one of her lovers^ and hcid a host of great relatives 
 making everything smooth as fast as she ruffled it. Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams kept open house all the year long, a pleasant 
 hotel, where no bill was brought, with fresh pleasure for every 
 shining hour, and no demands made on either brains or de- 
 cency, — a little temple of Fortune, with Pactolus flowing 
 through it, so that any who pleased could dip his glass and 
 
260 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 drink and come again. And Lady Joan, — Lady Joan was a 
 precious precedent set on high like a lamp to lighten the dark- 
 ness of all those ill-matched wives who fain would be consoled, 
 yet fain would be both pitied and respected, as martyrs to a 
 crooked circumstance. Society would not quarrel with any of 
 these, nor any of the thousands of whom they were the types. 
 
 Quarrel, indeed ! Nothing was further from its dreams. 
 There Wiis that " salve !" on the thresholds of these ladies' 
 houses, and their like, that Society, entering therein and find- 
 ing Vice seated by the hearth, would, on coming out, declare 
 Vice quite a changed creature, nay, not Vice at all, but fair 
 Friendship, gentle Generosity, mere mirth, sweet gaiet6 du 
 coeur, or what you will, something so innocent that saints 
 might call her sister. 
 
 But nature has an inevitable law of expansion and recoil : a 
 society so elastic is of necessity equally tightly drawn at times. 
 
 It will adore the Duchess of Bridgewater and Princess 
 Gregarine ; it will apologize for Mrs. Henry V. Clams and 
 Fiordelisa, and say with virtuous mien that it hates uncharita- 
 ble judgment. 
 
 But still, ailer doing so much, it must for principle's sake 
 condemn somebody, as the Turk, after his dry champagne, 
 will order the stick to a Christian. 
 
 It always must have some criminal to garrote with the iron 
 collar of its conscientious censure. 
 
 It had taken Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 Lady Joan saw no reason why it should not take Etoile too. 
 
 *' Nothing against her?" she muttered, thinking over what 
 she had heard. " How sick one gets of their saying so I 
 Nothing against her ? There must be heaps, if one could 
 only find it out 1 And if there isn't " 
 
 The Lady Joan knew herself a woman of rare invention and 
 resources : she could prove her cheap bargains to be priceless 
 treasures, and fill princes' cabinets with her cupboard sweep- 
 ings ; she could make Staffordshire Saxe and Rafaels to order, 
 call Titians from the nether world, and summon all antiquity; 
 it would be odd indeed, she thought, if she could not do such 
 a little thing as smirch a character and blast a life. 
 
 " You make buttons out of Dante's skull !" cries Giusti in 
 reproach to the world ; Lady Joan saw no reason why she 
 should not sharpen poison-arrows from her enemy's brain ; 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 261 
 
 for into an enemy her irritable, suspicious, and self-conscious 
 temper had already in her own thoughts raised Etoile. 
 
 " I don't know anything about her," she would say, with 
 fine frankness, to her society. " My father knows her a little, 
 — yes ; but then he's so good to all the world, and he always 
 tries to believe the best of everybody. Of course she has 
 wonderful talent, but she must have had a very strange life, 
 all alone and among men so much, and hating women : where 
 could she learn all she has done, too, and get all that passion 
 of the verses, and the other things? One wonders: that 
 couldn't all be got out of a breviary. Oh, I dare say what 
 she says is true ; it may be, no doubt it is. Still, there must 
 be a good deal more she doesn't say ; there must be. Oh, it 
 matters so little to me, you know. If I can be of use to her, I 
 don't mind what people like to chatter about me. My friends 
 know nie and won't misjudge me. As for the world, you 
 know /never care a fig for it !" 
 
 This fiction, delivered as she could deliver her fictions, with 
 a steadfast glance and an honest bluntness of tone, that car- 
 ried conviction to her most skeptical listeners, was a seed 
 which, falling on congenial soil, was certain to take root and 
 bear its fitting fruit and flower. 
 
 She never said anything direct ; oh, never anything direct 
 in the least. On the contrary, she told every one that she 
 was herself most tolerant, and was not bound to be the judge 
 of anybody, and had for her part seen so much of people of 
 genius in her mother's house, when she was quite a girl, that 
 she saw no harm at all in any of their eccentricities. Still, here 
 and there she would confide to her associates her distress that 
 other people had not her tolerance and were ofiended at meet- 
 ing Etoile. 
 
 Sociity, which was always vaguely averse to Etoile, because 
 she did not conciliate it, was very willing to receive such hints. 
 There were high spheres of it, indeed, where the fumes of 
 such fictions could not reach, but through all the lower strata 
 of it these fumes spread insidiously, like sulphur-smoke. 
 
 Mrs. Phidias Pratt shook her head, not willing to do more 
 till she was quite sure not to ofiend Princess Vera by doing 
 it; Mrs. Maescrip and Mrs. Henry V. Clams, and the colo- 
 nies they represented, said that all the dear Embassy people 
 were nowadays so far too good-natured ; and the Scropc-Stair 
 
262 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 sisters began to sigh, and hum and ha, and look sorrowful and 
 mysterious, and murmur, " Oh, don't be afraid, doiCt ! She 
 never comes to us on our day, she doesn't, indeed ; and of 
 course, if ever she did, we would take care there should be no 
 risk of your speakin^ij." 
 
 And Mr. Silverly Bell, with his softest voice and most purr- 
 ing manner, carried his gentle countenance into many a decor- 
 ous drawing-room, and dropped a hint, — just a hint : dear 
 Lady Joan was too good-natured, dear Lord Archie was a 
 trifle imprudent; out of kindness, oh, yes, purest kindness, 
 but a mistake ; no, he didn't wish to say anything, he never 
 said anything; he was not a gossip, like dear Lady CardiflF; 
 nothing he abhorred more than gossip ; still, when he loved 
 and valued any one as he did, — whoever it was he was call- 
 ing on, — he thought it right to warn them from making any 
 acquaintance they might hereafter regret. 
 
 In a word, he earned his luncheons and dinners and petting 
 in the Casa Challoner. All the Lady Joan's pets had to work 
 hard for her. 
 
 This, however, did not, of course, prevent Mr. Silverly Bell 
 from calling himself eagerly on Etoile, and drinking her tea 
 with a slice of lemon in it, and feeling very comfortable by her 
 fire, and pretending to adore her and Tsar. 
 
 " A man may go anywhere !" he would say, with a pretty 
 deprecating little smile, when Mrs. Macscrip or Mrs. Middle- 
 way would tax him with going very often to the Montecavallo 
 to see " that" woman. 
 
 " A man may go anywhere, and an old man, too !" he would 
 say, charmingly, and look a little guilty, as if he saw and 
 heard things in the rooms by the RospiglioM gardens that 
 were sadly tempting to the old Adam, old though it was in 
 him. 
 
 The spy of Society is an institution quite as useful to pri- 
 vate ends as to political ones. As his reward. Lady Joan 
 asked him to a dinner given for the Hebrides, and told Lady 
 Hebrides he was her dear old Saint Paul. 
 
 " Dear, dear !" thought Lady Cardiff, when she saw these 
 sulphur-fumes rising, " why didn't she take a caprice for a 
 married man, have a fancy for a drunken sculptor, go to nasty 
 museums in men's clothes, or anything of that kind? They 
 would have said nothing about her tJien. When a person is 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 263 
 
 famous the world will have storiea of some sort. It's better 
 to give it something tangible ; it talks much less. Heavens 1 
 if she'd only had a caprice for an attic and an artist, or spent 
 six months with the married man, as I say, we should all be 
 swearing her innocence till we were hoarse, — ^just as the dear 
 Scrope-Stairs swear to Lady Joan's. You ought never to dis- 
 appoint the world. It is -a pieuvre, and has a million mouths ; 
 you can't shut them all ; you can only give them something 
 to suck." 
 
 Etoile, meanwhile, was serenely unconscious of all these 
 threads netting, and mouths opening, about her feet, and, had 
 she been conscious, would have been as serenely indifferent. 
 
 She passed her days in great dreams and great studies ; the 
 world was beautiful about her, and its past full of all the ter- 
 rible and tender mysteries of the human soul ; every hour had 
 for her some art to be pursued, some aim to be kept sight of; 
 she believed in a god 
 
 " Qui puisse donner un astre St un S.me innocent." 
 
 All the little conspiracies and petty cruelties of a world of 
 women were noticed no more by her than were the gnats in 
 the air, or the dust on the stones, any day that she mounted 
 the Scala llegia to gaze at the Sistina Sibyls. 
 
 Lady Cardiff, who did not care much for the Sistina Sibyls, 
 and who had said correctly that a grain of dust may blind you, 
 ventured on a word of warning. 
 
 " You do not conciliate women," she said, one day. "You 
 do not think about them : oh, no, of course not ; but, believe 
 me, a woman who does not is socially lost. Her sex will wait, 
 — wait years, may-be, — but will fall on her like Destiny at 
 last, and rend her in pieces, some way or another. To please 
 our own sex we must either confer benefits or crave them ; 
 we must be either patron or toady." 
 
 " What a noble choice of parts you offer us 1" 
 
 Lady Cardiff was invulnerable to rebuke. 
 
 " Of course, to patronize is more agreeable," she pursued, 
 imperturbably. " But I am not sure but what the toady in 
 the long run gets most cakes and ale. Believe me, women 
 hold the keys of the world for a woman ; but to get the keys 
 you must crawl to their good will upon your knees, as the 
 true believers up the Scala Sancta. To a fearless temper that 
 
264 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 respects itself this is impossible, you say ? Yes, my dear, and 
 that is just why frank and fearless spirits have generally such 
 a very bad time of it in this world. There is only one way to 
 deal with women : be very civil to their faces, and do them 
 all the harm you can, especially behind their backs in a draw- 
 ing-room ; never offend one, and never trust one ; kiss them 
 as if they were your salvation, and watch them as if they were 
 your assassins. ' Live with your friends, remembering they 
 will one day be your enemies.' Talleyrand's advice is sound 
 for our sex at all events. If you want a thing made public, 
 tell it to three women separately in private ; cry ; say it will 
 be ruin to you if it ever get known ; and by seven o'clock 
 next day all the town will have heard of it. You may be 
 quite satisfied of that. Women never like one another, ex- 
 cept now and then an old woman and a young woman like you 
 and me. They are good to one another among the poor, you 
 say? Oh, that I don't know anything about. They may be. 
 Barbarians always retain the savage virtues. In society women 
 hate one another. All the more because in society they have 
 to smile in each other's faces every night of their lives. Only 
 think what that is, my dear I — to grudge each other's con- 
 quests, to grudge each other's diamonds, to study each other's 
 dress, to watch each other's wrinkles, to outshine each other 
 always on every possible occasion, big or little, and yet always 
 to be obliged to give pet names to each oth r, and visit each 
 other with elaborate ceremonial. Why, wom..n must hate each 
 other I Society makes them. Your poor folks, I dare say, 
 in the midst of their toiling and moiling, and scrubbing and 
 scraping, and starving and begging, do do each other kindly 
 turns, and put bread in each other's mouths now and then, be- 
 cause they can scratch each other's eyes out, and call each other 
 hussies in the streets, any minute they like, in the most open 
 manner. But in society women's entire life is a struggle for 
 precedence in everything, — beauty, money, rank, success, dress, 
 everything. We have to smother hate under smiles, and envy 
 under compliment, and while we are dying to say ' you hussy,' 
 like the women in the street, we are obliged, instead of boxing 
 her ears, to kiss her on both cheeks, and cry, ' Oh , my dear- 
 est I — how charming of you ! — so kind !' Only think what 
 all that repression means. You laugh? Oh, you very clever 
 people always do laugh at these things. But you must study 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 265 
 
 Society, or suffer from it, sooner or later. If you don't al- 
 ways strive to go out before everybody, life will end in every- 
 body going out before you ; everybody, — down to the shoe- 
 black ! Study Society, my love, or else do not come into it 
 at all. To live like De Quincey or Wordsworth is compre- 
 hensible, though I should fancy it very I'.ncomfortable. But 
 a middle way is idiocy. You only pleas;^ neither the Hermits 
 nor Vanity Fair." 
 
 " Is it so very necessary to please anybody ?" 
 
 Lady Cardiff shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " That depends, my dear, on one's own desires. I should 
 say it was very necessary ; Mrs. Henry V. Clams would say 
 so. Lady Joan would say so, all Society would say so. But 
 I'm sure I daren't say it is for you. You don't seem to care 
 for all we care for : I believe Society seems to you no better 
 than a Flemish kermesse." 
 
 " Not half so good ! At a kermesse the children at least are 
 genuine, with their gilded cakes and their merry-go-rounds. In 
 our society the very children are biases before they are in their 
 teens. Little Nadine Apraxine was invited to luncheon when 
 I was with her the other day : she is eight years old. She 
 came up to her mother and whispered, ' Make an excuse for 
 me : I don't wish to go : their cook is not good.' " 
 
 " A discerning child !" said Lady Cardiff, with approval. 
 " An admirable child ! I wish she was my grand-daughter. 
 She will have a future, that child. As for the rest of us, I 
 am sure our cakes are gilt, my dear, we won't touch them if 
 they aren't; and we go round and round on the same wooden 
 horse, God knows, every year of our lives ; we are very like 
 the kermesse, after all. And we do enjoy ourselves ; you are 
 mistaken if you think we don't; perhaps things look blue in 
 the morning, that comes of the champagne and the chloral ; 
 but by the time we get ' done up' and begin our visits, we are 
 really enjoying ourselves, and go on doing it till the small 
 hours. Blasi, of course, everybody is in a sense, but there's 
 always some ammonia to smell of that wakes us up : when 
 we're young the ammonia is coquetry, when we're old it's 
 scandal. When we've got our eyebrows neatly drawn, and our 
 eyes nicely washed with kohl, and are ready for the kermesse, 
 we jump on one or other of the wooden horses, and away we 
 go to a ' rosy time,' as the raoing men say. I don't think 
 M 23 
 
266 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 people get tired ; not in your sense : bless you, little Nadine 
 Apraxine will never tire of finding that her friends' cooks are 
 bad, till she hasn't a tooth left that isn't a false one to mumble 
 her dinner. The joy of disparagement never dies till we die. 
 There are two things that nobody ever tires of: they are the 
 pleasures of excelling and of depreciating." 
 
 " Excelling ! — it is rather a Dead Sea apple, I fear. The 
 effort is happiness, but the fruit always seems poor." 
 
 Lady Cardiff could not patiently hear such nonsense. 
 
 " There you are again, my dear feminine Alceste,'J she said, 
 irritably, " looking at things from your solitary stand-point on 
 that rock of yours in the middle of the sea. You are think- 
 ing of the excelling of genius, of the possession of an ideal 
 fame, of the ' huntress mightier than the moon,' and / am 
 thinking of the woman who excels in Society, — who has the 
 biggest diamonds, the best chef, the most lovers, the most 
 cJiic and chieyi, who leads the fashion, and condescends when 
 she takes tea with an empress. But even from your point 
 of view on your rock, I can't quite believe it. Accom- 
 plished ambition must be agreeable. To look back and say, 
 ' I have achieved !' — what leagues of sunlight sever that 
 proud boast from the weary sigh, ' I have failed !' Fame must 
 console." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but the world, at least, does its best that it 
 should not. Its glory discs are of thorns." 
 
 " You mean that superiority has its attendant shadow, which 
 is calumny ? Always has hud, since Apelles painted. What 
 does it matter, if everybody looks after you when you pass 
 down a street, what they say when you pass i^" 
 
 " A malefactor may obtain that sort of flattery. I do not 
 see the charm of it." 
 
 " You are very perverse. Of course I talk of an unsullied 
 fame, not of an infamous notoriety." 
 
 " Fame nowadays is little else but notoriety," said Etoile, 
 with a certain scorn, " and it is dearly bought, perhaps too 
 dearly, by the sacrifice of the serenity of obscurity, the loss of 
 the peace of private life. Art is great and precious, but the 
 pursuit of it is sadly embittered when we have become so the 
 plaything of the public, through it, that the simplest actions 
 of our lives are chronicled and misconstrued. You do not be- 
 lieve it, perhapvS, but I often envy the women sitting at their 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 267 
 
 cottage doors, with their little children on their knees : no one 
 talks of themV^ 
 
 ** J'ai tant do gloiro, 6 roi, que j'aspiro au fumior!" 
 
 said Lady Cardiff. " You are very thankless to Fate, my 
 dear; but I suppose it is always so." 
 
 And Lady Cardiff took refuge in her cigar-case, being a 
 woman of too much experience not to know that it is quite 
 useless to try and make converts to your opinions, and especi- 
 ally impossible to convince people dissatisfied with their good 
 fortune that they ought to be charmed with it. 
 
 " It is very curious," she thought, when she got into her 
 own carriage, " really it makes one believe in that odd doc- 
 trine of — what is it? — Compensations; but certainly, people 
 of great talent always are a little mad. If they're not flight- 
 ily mad with eccentricity and brandy, they arc morbidly 
 mad with solitude and sentiment. Now, she is a great crea- 
 ture, really a great creature, might have the world at her 
 feet if she liked ; and all she cares for is a big dog, a 
 bunch of roses, and some artist or poet dead and gone 
 three hundred or three thousand years ! It is very queer. 
 It is just like that extraordinary possession of Victor Hugo's : 
 with powers that might have sufficed to make ten men bril- 
 liant and comfortable, he must vex and worry about politics 
 that didn't concern him in the least, and go and live under a 
 skylight in the middle of the sea. It is very odd. They 
 are never happy ; but when they are unhappy, and you 
 tell them that Addison could be a great writer and yet live 
 comfortably and enjoy the things of this world, they only tell 
 you contemptuously that Addison had no genius, he had only 
 a Style. I suppose he hadn't. I think if I were one of them, 
 and had to choose, I would rather have only a Style, too." 
 
 That night Lady Cardiff went to a very big dinner at Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams's, — the dinner which Etoilu had declined. 
 Fontebranda had arranged it, as he arranged everything, from 
 the ball she once gave an imperial prince to the tisane she 
 took when she caught a chill ; and on this night it was an 
 unspeakably grand affair, all ablaze with princes and ministers. 
 
 " We married women have a good time out here," Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams, in her dressing-room a few hours before, 
 wrote to a sister in the States. " If I'd stayed at home I'd 
 
2G8 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 have boon set away among the old folks long ago ; girla are all 
 the go in Now York ; in Europe girls aren't nowhere ; it's 
 right down horrid to see 'em, batches and batches of 'em, and 
 not a man to waltz with 'em if there's a married woman got a 
 clean place on her ticket;. You should see Heloise B. Dobbs, 
 you remember her shooting that fine young man in St. Louis : 
 she's fifty, as you know, if she's an hour ; my dearest dear, 
 she wears lower dresses than any of us, half a foot below the 
 shoulder-blades, and you'll leave her spinning like a steam- 
 wheel in the cotillon if you slope off any minute before day- 
 dawn." 
 
 And Mrs. Henry V. Clams, having poured so much truth 
 into the bosom of her sister in New York, had herself arrayed 
 in white tafietas embroidered in silver with rosebuds and 
 humming-birds, and, with humming-birds on her shoulders, 
 humming-birds in her hair, and humming-birds on her shoes, 
 went down to her big dinner, and met Mrs. Heloise B. Dobbs, 
 who, with a narrow strap about her waist, and an infinitesimal 
 strap over each shoulder, made up in diamonds what she lacked 
 in dress, and each cried to the other, " My dearest dear I 
 How lovely you look !" and each thought of the other, " The 
 Jezebel ! the girls would lynch her down home !" 
 
 The dinner was a great success : all that Mrs. Henry V. 
 Clams did was a suecess, thanks to Fontebranda. Comet 
 clarets, Highland salmon, pines from Covent Garden, and 
 everything else from Paris, was Alberto Fontebranda's recipe 
 for making Society smile, and Society always smiled very 
 sweetly. Mr. Henry V. Clams sometimes, paying the bills, 
 did not smile ; but then nobody minded what he did or did not. 
 
 " What 'd you bring me to Europe for, if I aren't to make 
 a figger in it ?" said his wife, very sensibly. " It's pufFectly 
 daft to cry out as you do : you can't make a figger for nothing, 
 and your pile's as big as the Catskills !" 
 
 And Mr. Henry V. Clams was silenced, because it was 
 sweet to hi-m also to make a figure, if only vicariously, and to 
 entertain princes, even if they never distinguished him from 
 his footmen. 
 
 He made a struggle once to sit at the bottom of his own 
 table, but resigned even that because Fontebranda told him, 
 contemptuously, " Tout cela c'cst chang6 maintenant, passe de 
 mode tout a fait .'" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 2G9 
 
 Mr. Henry V. Clams felt that in New York he would have 
 tried a playful six-shooter on his familiar friend Fontebranda. 
 
 But ho was in Europe, and wished to make a figure. So, 
 without disputin<i;, he sat at the side, and felt ineonj^ruous and 
 jostled, and could never be brought to understand that, hia 
 wife being opposite to him, the sides were the top and the 
 bottom ; but he had to sit there, and supposed it was Fasliion. 
 She had always Fontebranda on her left hand, and some illus- 
 trious being on her right : that was Fashion too. 
 
 Mr. Henry V. Clams would have been happier eating dev- 
 illed tomatoes in Delmouico's. 
 
 When the great dinner was over, and the big bow-wow folks 
 (as Mrs. Henry V. Claras would call them sometimes when 
 her spirits were high and her Fashion forgotten) were all de- 
 parted, Mr. Henry V. Claras bowing on the top of his stairs, 
 and being supposed by most to be a groom of the chamber too 
 nervous for his place, the inner life of the Palazzo Clams 
 came coyly from its hiding-place out on to the hearth ; that is 
 to say, whiske^', rum, and " pick-me-ups" were rolled in with 
 card-tables, cigar-boxes were opened, and a little roulcttc-wheel 
 began to turn for those who liked it. 
 
 A dozen people, intimate friends, remained, and the host 
 and hostess were always willing to lose their money for those 
 who helped them to make a figure. Mr. Henry V. Clams 
 rattled the napoleons in his trousers pocket, spat furtively into 
 a Swiss jardiniere, drank a choice drink called " wake-the- 
 dead," and began to feel once more an independent citizen. 
 
 " Alberto," said his wife. 
 
 " Ma trhs-chh-e .^" responded Fontebranda. 
 
 " That's been a big thing I" 
 
 ^^ Bien reussi, chh-e, mais out." 
 
 " But there's one thing riles me, right down riles me," said 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, also sipping the " wake-the-dead." 
 
 " I know," said the voice of her husband, solemnly. "The 
 canvas-backs wanted green ginger. I guess you don't get 
 ginger green in this country ?" 
 
 The idiocy of this remark passed unnoticed, because no one 
 ever noticed his remarks unless it was absolutely necessary to 
 reprove or instruct him. 
 
 " Riles 1" echoed Fontebranda. " Cela veut dire--n\es ?" 
 
 " Quim^agace^^^ explained Mrs. Henry V. Clams, pronouncing 
 
 23* 
 
270 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 it with a fine breadth of tone as mag-ass. " Qui Wb enrage I 
 There was a German serene, a Russian own-cousin-to-the- 
 throne, a Frencli marshal, an English peeress, two embassies, 
 and the Lord knows how many of your own dukes and princes, 
 Alberto, and yet with all those that woman wouldn't come I" 
 
 " Woman ? woman ? Mais qui done T' said the Count Al- 
 berto, staring hard over his halo of smoke. 
 
 " Etoile !" 
 
 " Bah 1" said Fontebranda, with scorn. 
 
 "Oh, you may ' bah !' " retorted his sovereign mistress, as 
 she threw her own cigarette fiercely into a cluster of azaleas. 
 " It riles me ; it makes me downright mad 1 Are those first- 
 class prize-trotters to dine here, and that one-horse concern, 
 an artht^ to say no ?" 
 
 Lady Joan Challoner, who was lying back in an arm-chair 
 smoking, with loris on one side of her, and Eccelino di Sestri 
 and Douglas Graeme on the other, took her cigar out of her 
 teeth, and smiled pleasantly. 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Clams, what can it matter ? I think she 
 showed good feeling, for once. I wish she'd showed as much 
 for us, and never brought her letters to me !" 
 
 The face of loris grew paler even than was its wont, and 
 his brows contracted, as he sat on the arm of her chair. 
 
 He was silent, and was ashamed of his silence. 
 
 He felt false to his fairest faith ; he felt a coward and un- 
 true, yet his lips remained closed. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, whose spirits were high, owing to 
 the success of her " big thing" and the draught of the " wake- 
 the-dead," threw one knee over the other comfortably as she 
 leaned back in her chair and smoked her cigarette. 
 
 " Dear Lady Joan, now, do tell !" she said, confidently. 
 " Come now, do tell ; we're all ong intim here, and nobody '11 
 go and say anything. Who was she ? do tell 1 I'll bet you 
 know." 
 
 Ijady Joan looked sorrowful, and settled the spilla in her 
 hair. 
 
 " N — no, I don't," she said, slowly. " At least, you know, 
 not positively, and I don't want to do her any harm : why 
 should I ? Of course I've heard a good many stones, who 
 hasn't? but artists are always like that, you know, ond of 
 course she could not be the anatomist she is without/ — well, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 271 
 
 without very queer studies. Look how she must have studied 
 the nude ! Been in the most horrible anatomical museums 
 and academies. No doubt must have been !" she said, in con- 
 clusion, with a touching modesty, though on some occasions 
 she vowed she despised all Prudes, and had hung up behind 
 her seat at her dinner-table a most unblushii.g and colossal 
 Nudity, which she called Titian's " Choice of Paris." But 
 then these trifling incongruities never disturbed her : she knew 
 that Mrs. Grundy does not mind a few incongruities. 
 
 Besides, Titian lived ever so long ago : nobody can help 
 what he painted. 
 
 And then (which made such a difference also) the nudity 
 was the joint property of herself and Mimo and Trillo, — a 
 gigantic speculation bought between them, just when the In- 
 specteur des Beaux-Arts was expected from St. Petersburg. 
 The Inspecteur des Beaux- Arts was not impressed with the 
 nudity, and would not buy it for the Hermitage, so it still 
 hung behind the Lady Joan at dinner, waiting some more 
 enlightened Inspecteur, or some billionnaire, come out of a 
 foundry, or a lead-mine, with a love of the arts. 
 
 " Oh, my ! that's real shocking !" said Mrs. Henry V, Clams, 
 awed by the word " anatomical." She was not sure what it 
 meant ; it was vaguely associated in her mind with a travelling 
 showman in the Far West, who had gone about with a skull, 
 and some monstrosities in glass bottles, and a dried alligator 
 out of the swamps. 
 
 " But that don't tell us who she was " die pursued, her 
 thirst of curiosity stimulated by a second draught of the 
 " wake-the-dead." 
 
 " Oh, as for that," said the Lady Joan, with a fine careless- 
 ness, " it wouldn't matter who she was, if she'd always lived 
 decentl '. I can tell you who she was, if you care about it so 
 much. She was a little girl picked off" the streets by old Is- 
 raels, — you know, the French painter ; her mother was an ' un- 
 fortunate,' and Israels tumbled over the child on the sill of a 
 wine-shop. That's the simple truth. But of course that 
 wouldn't matter, if when she'd grown up she'd kept straight." 
 
 Lady eloan blew some smoke into the air after this perform- 
 ance of her imagination. She had invented it quite on the 
 spur of the moment, and felt that hours of reflection could not 
 iiave enabled her to hit on anything better. She saw the face 
 
272 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 of loris pale, eager, and almost stern, as he strove to listen, but 
 she spoke in her own tongue, rapidly, and he failed to follow 
 her. 
 
 " That is the real truth," she added, "because a great friend 
 of old Israels's told me ; he'd seen the child, a dirty little brat, 
 tumbling about in the old man's atelier when Israels first took 
 her home." 
 
 " Oh, my !" said Mrs. Henry V. Clams again, almost gasp- 
 ing with the effects of her surprise and the " wake-the-dead." 
 " Oh, my 1 And yet she gives herself such highfalutin' airs ! 
 Well, I do like that ! My word, I'd like to tell her !" 
 
 Lady Joan looked at her hostess and at all her other list- 
 eners with an honest, frank light in her steadfast eyes. 
 
 " Well, you know, I, for one, would never reproach her 
 with that. Could she help what she was born ? What I do 
 dislike knowing her for is that, though certainly she has a 
 certain amount of talent, she never would have been heard of 
 if she hadn't been much too indulgent to certain great persons 
 who can give fame with their nod ; ind I know that half- 
 more than half — of the accuracy and the beauty of her 
 pictures, and in consequence all their celebrity, is due to the 
 talent of an obscure lover of hers, a certain Pierre Gerarde, a 
 great colorist, who works them up and lets them go out in her 
 name. It is so vilely dishonest, you know ; it really hurts one 
 to think of it." 
 
 " Lord ! then even her pictures aren't her own 1" gasped 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, in the extremity of her stupefaction 
 resorting once more to the " wake-the-dead." 
 
 Mr. Henry V. Clams, listening on the hearth, spit softly 
 once more into the azaleas. 
 
 " Uncommon kind of that young man," he said, dryly. 
 " That young man must be a real Christian. Where was he 
 riz, that very liberal young man, my lady?" 
 
 Lady Joan colored a little. 
 
 " He is a Belgian, I believe," she said, hurriedly. " But 
 everybody knows it perfectly well in Paris." 
 
 " Then they must be darned fools in Paris to make a fuss 
 over the wrong critter," said Mr. Henry V. Clams. " I believe 
 they've a prize for Virtue : they oughter crown that most un- 
 common young man." 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Mr. Clams, and don't be so vulgar," 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 273 
 
 said his wife, whilst Fontcbranda, weary of a conversation in 
 a tongue he could not comprehend, effected a diversion by 
 rolling up the roulette-table a little nearer. 
 
 Lady Joan, who never gambled, — she liked nothing that 
 was uncertain, — took her leave and went home with her friend. 
 
 loris never spoke. He had not very clearly understood, 
 but he had gathered the drift of her words enough to feet 
 angered with her and ashamed of himself. In silence they 
 rolled through the dark midnight towards the Casa Challoner. 
 Lady Joan was wondering if she had gone too far in the bril- 
 liant invention of Pierre Gerarde, but she was not much afraid. 
 She knew that a lie makes so many friends : it is such a common 
 pastime, and begets such a fellow-feeling in everybody. When 
 a lie is found out, nobody is so angry with the teller of it as 
 everybody is with the worrying and uncompromising truth- 
 teller ; he is a bore if you like. 
 
 " A cullender is rot hindered by a hole moie or less," says 
 the Eastern proverb ; and she knew that society likes cullen- 
 ders, — if you will only pour dirty water through them. 
 
 Looking at the profile of loris in the uncertain, faint gleam 
 of the light from the lamps, she mutely debated within herself 
 whether she might translate her fiction of Pierre G6rarde and 
 try it on him. But on reflection sht desisted : he might go 
 and tell Etoile. They drove home in an unbroken silence. 
 
 " Aren't you coming up, lo?" she said, in surprise, as he 
 turned away from her at the bottom of her own staircase. 
 
 " No 1" said loris, curtly. " And I think — I think, ma 
 ch^re, that you might respect the names of those who are your 
 guests and take your hand in friendship ; that is all. Felicis- 
 sima 7iotte!" 
 
 She, stupefied with amazement and choked with rising fury, 
 stood under the rays of her staircase lamp, gazing into the 
 vacancy of the dark entrance-hall, as the dull sound of the 
 closing door echoed through the house and woke Mr. Challoner, 
 sleeping the sleep of the just and dreaming dreams of the 
 Share List. 
 
 " My God ! does he care for her .^" she tliought. In the 
 dull midnight a new light broke in upon her ; but it could not 
 pierce very far through the triple folds of her own supreme 
 vanity. 
 
274 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 The next day was stormy and cold. 
 
 The mild and sunny weather which had graced the Carnival 
 was passing away as the Carnival drew to its close, and the 
 bitter winds were sweeping in from the ravines of the Abruzzi 
 and the Apennines, and driving the brown Tiber into sullen 
 swell. 
 
 loris came out of his house in the teeth of the wind, and 
 felt weary and chilly. He had been sitting in his own room, 
 under thie watchful eyes of the portrait there, and striving to 
 wade through a mass of papers, in the vain endeavor to un- 
 derstand his own position and responsibilities in regard to 
 those mighty international works by the Gulf of Faro to 
 which he had been persuaded to put his name. All that he 
 could thoroughly understand was that his money was sinking 
 into the sands of Faro, as the piles were sinking there. 
 
 That he had lost money was usually the only clear convic- 
 tion that remained to him as a result of all the enterprises into 
 which he was launched. That he would not let others lose 
 money, through him or by him, was the only resolve, strong 
 enough and fixed enough in his mind, to resist all the influ- 
 ences that were around him and that labored to shake it in 
 him. The conviction and the resolve together were not peace- 
 ful mental food. He was not used to thought of this kind : 
 his past was full of very different memori 3. 
 
 To lead a cotillon at the Tuileries, to fight a duel at the 
 frontier, to string a guitar in a moonlit garden, to study paint- 
 ing in an old Academy, to view the beauty of a court, to talk 
 music with the Abbe Liszt, to exchange courtly ceremonials 
 with cardinals, to rove through Alpine valleys with a hunter 
 king, — these made up a life like a Boccaccio story, like a 
 pageant-picture of Carpaccio or Bordone indeed, but they 
 were no meet preparation for the lore of the financial world, 
 for the gambling of the board-room and the share-market. 
 
 The dizzy figures made his eyes ache, the endless letters 
 made his brain dull. He knew what ruin meant, and some- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 275 
 
 thing that was not unlike ruin looked at him from the col- 
 umns of numerals, from the piles of correspondence. He 
 knew also that on his estate the columns of loss and of profit 
 were far from equal ; that in the matter of Fiordelisa expen- 
 diture was not met by any return ; every pineapple cost him 
 about fifty francs, and every pineapple was given away to some 
 friend, — not his own. The pineapples were a sample of the 
 rest. 
 
 He sat and studied the dreary figures that filled sheet after 
 sheet, from the bills paid for the pineapple-beds to the ac- 
 counts for the bridge by the Gulf of Faro, and he felt bewil- 
 dered and wearied. With a sword, with a paint-brush, with 
 a crabbed musical score, with an abstruse Italian or Latin 
 poem, with a tender woman's hand stealing into his own, he 
 would have known what to do ; but with accounts and with 
 finance ! 
 
 loris rose, having wasted his day, and having no surer idea 
 of what he was committed to in the present, or of what he 
 had better do in the future, than if he had never wasted a 
 morning of freedom over those hateful masses of arithmetic 
 and correspondence. His head ached, and his heart ached 
 too. 
 
 He was free, for his tyrant was gone, on the arm of hand- 
 some Douglas Graeme, with Silverly Bell as Propriety, to a 
 classical concert given for a charity by Lady Anne Monmouth- 
 shire at her rooms in her hotel, and, the concert ended, was to 
 dine with the Dean of St. Edmund's, at the same great hotel, 
 in that decorous attention to the decorums of the world which 
 no passion, pleasure, or naughtiness ever made the Lady Joan 
 omit, any more than passion, pleasure, or naughtiness made 
 ladies of the Borgian era neglect their fasts or fail to make 
 their plenary confession. 
 
 By mere instinct as he left his house, fatigued and out of 
 spirits, his steps bore him down the crowded Corso to the old 
 palace on the Horses' Hill, where so much of the stifled 
 romance and resolve of his vanished youth seemed to arise for 
 him as he crossed his threshold. 
 
 In an earlier time he had always made some excuse to his 
 conscience, — some painting, some book, some flower, some 
 gallery hard of access, for which he brought admittance, some 
 treasure of art unknown to the general student, of which he 
 
276 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 brought tidings ; but for some time he had now neglected to 
 use these pleas, unless interrogated by his tyrant, rnd he en- 
 tered the house of Etoile familiurly and so frequently that the 
 servants had ceased to go through any formula, and threw the 
 doors open to him without bidding. 
 
 To-day it was five o'clock. Etoile was out, but would be 
 home in a few moments, so they said. He went in, and cast 
 himself on a couch and waited. 
 
 The silence, the fragrance, the soft shadows of the room 
 soothed him ; the dog, lying asleep, looked up and welcomed 
 liim lazily, then slept again ; there were wet sketches, open 
 books, fresh flowers, countless things that spoke to him as if 
 they had voices of their absent mistress. He took up a volume 
 that lay face downwards near him. 
 
 It was the " Nelida" of Daniel Stern. 
 
 It was open at that true and eloquent passage which seems 
 to' vibrate with the deep scorn of a courageous nature for the 
 careful egotism of a cowardly one. 
 
 " Marcher environnie des hommages que le monde prodigue 
 aux apparences hypocrites ; jouir d, ['ombre d'un mensonge de 
 Idches et furtifs plaisirs ; ce sont Id les vulgaires sagesses de 
 ces femmes que la Nature a faites egalement impuissantes 
 pour le Lien quelles reconnaissent et pour le tnal qui les shiuit ; 
 4galement incapables de soumissioH ou de revoke, aussi 
 depourvues du courage qui se resfgne d porter des chaines 
 que de la hardicsse qui s'ejforce d les briser.'' 
 
 " It is a portrait of Joan," thought loris, and put the book 
 down impatient to be reminded of what, here, he desired to 
 forget. Yet it moved him to pleasure to think that Etoile 
 had been reading it ; a pencil line scored by the passage told 
 him that she also must have been thinking of " ces vulgaires 
 sagesses" of the woman who claimed his allegiance, and per- 
 hapij been resenting them for his sake. 
 
 It was sweet to his sense of power to know that she should 
 care thus ; it gave him a fuller consciousness of triumph to 
 feel that this woman, so long above all human envies and 
 enmities, stooped to both through his influence and for his 
 sake. And he mis-read in a measure the emotions that moved 
 her. Though, in a sense, jealousy of the woman who had 
 absorbed and charmed his life, it was far more a scornful im- 
 patience of the vice that cloaked itself as virtue, of the tim- 
 
FRIENDSniP. 277 
 
 orous time-serving that loved the world better than passion 
 or candor. The contempt of the courageous temper for the 
 coward's is seldom understood ; the impatience of courage for 
 the craven meanness of a lie is seldom rightly measured. 
 
 loris thought she was jealous as other women were ; but he 
 was wrong. 
 
 " Dear me 1" said the voice of Lady Cardiff at that instant 
 on the threshold of the chamber. Although a person who 
 was never surprised at anything, she was so surprised to see 
 him there that the ejaculation escaped her. 
 
 " How very much at home he looks ! more than he ever 
 does in the other place," she thought to herself, as loris rose 
 to meet her with that gay and graceful greeting which so well 
 became him. 
 
 " My dear Prince, charmed to see you. I only looked in 
 for five minutes ; they said she'd be here in a moment. Pretty 
 rooms, aren't they ? and what quantities of flowers ! head- 
 aching, but pretty," said Lady Cardiff, as she seated herself on 
 a couch opposite to him, and took out her cigarette-case. 
 " Will you have one ? Don't she let you ? She lets me. 
 Horrid weather; isn't it? I have just come from Lady 
 Anne's concert ; they have been tuning their instruments two 
 hours, — at least I thought it was tuning their instruments ; 
 but they said it was Op. 101, Motifs on B flat. Very beau- 
 tiful, they said. Queer thing, isn't it? that the pretty things 
 that please one are all irretrievably wrong, and everything that 
 sets one's teeth on edge, and scratches through one's brain 
 like a metallic tooth comb, is scientifically exquisite. I don't 
 profess to understand it ; I suppose nightingales are all wrong, 
 aren't they ? And yet one likes to hear them. Myself, I 
 prefer a nightingale to Op. 101. Your friends the Challoners 
 were there ; at least the lady was : she it was who told me 
 that it was Op. 101." 
 
 " Lady Joan is fond of music," said loris, feeling irritated 
 beyond endurance nt the bare mention of a name that in this 
 hour he had hoped peacefully to forget, 
 
 " Oh, that's being fond of music, is it ? to '^hoot the night- 
 ingales and like Op. 101. She does shoot the nightingales 
 up at your place, doesn't she ? I've heard so. But I'm sure 
 you like the birds better than the metallic tooth comb, don't 
 you?" 
 
 24 
 
278 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "1 am a countryman of the melodists," said loris, with a 
 smile. " I plead guilty to thinking the delight of the ear the 
 first charm of all music : you know it is a rococo opinion 
 scorned by all modern science." 
 
 " Oh, I know ; I know," said Lady Cardiff. " The night- 
 ingales are to be summoned before School Boards, I believe, and 
 educated out of their perverse trick of being harmonious. Ours 
 is a delightful age: each of us is merely an egg, or an atom, or 
 a gas {il vHy a pas beaucoup d choisir. I think the egg's the 
 least humiliating of the three), and Thought is only a mere 
 secretion like bile, and Mind is only a grayish sort of sponge 
 under the skull, and it is only an accidental crease in the 
 sponge that makes it a Genius, a crease another way would 
 have made it an idiot ; and yet, poor wretches as we are, 
 made up of only gas and a creased sponge, we are required to 
 be capable of appreciating Op. 101 ! Now, that is really 
 absurd, you know. Don't you think so ? By the way, how 
 did the gas-and-sponge that we unhappy accidents of evolution 
 call the Count Milliadine, get on at the court to-day ? Is he 
 liked?" 
 
 The Count Milliadine was a new Russian Minister who had 
 been officially received that morning : loris had conducted the 
 reception : apropos of the reception Lady Cardiff plunged 
 into politics, which she thought much more diverting than 
 Op. 101. 
 
 loris, who himself thought even Op. 101 less odious than 
 politics, suited himself to her mood with that gracious adapt- 
 ability of which he had learned the trick at courts, but Lady 
 Cardiff, to her amusement, saw his eyes ever and again turning 
 to a Louis Quinze clock on its bracket. 
 
 In a quarter of an hour's time Etoile returned from her 
 drive, and brought a fragrance of fresh-gathered violets into 
 the chamber with her : she had been in the Dorian woods 
 with Princess Vera and her children. 
 
 Lady Cardiff watched the silent greeting exchanged between 
 her and loris, affecting herself to be entirely engrossed with 
 a fusee that would not strike. 
 
 '• Ah, ah,'' thought she, wise in such signs, and swift to 
 read them. " That is it, is it ? Well, why not ? Only there 
 will be the very mischief to pay in the other place. And 
 will he be strong enough to battle through rough weather? 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 279 
 
 A bully like that doar woman that loves Op. 101 wants such 
 a bully to beat her !" 
 
 Aloud, she only said, — 
 
 " Dear me, how tiresome these fusees arc ! Cher Prince, 
 Live you a light? A thousand thanks. Violets! what a 
 quantity ! but how unpleasantly wet ! You can buy them at 
 the street-corner. Not the same thing as gathering them? 
 No ? Now, I should have fancied it much more agreeable. 
 But that is one of the things that are like Op. 101 to rae. 
 You didn't hear about Op. 101 ? I have been telling loris : 
 I thought they hadn't finished tuning the fiddles, and it 
 seemed the concert was over when I didn't know it had 
 begun. Oh, thanks, my love, no : I must go, really. I only 
 waited for you ton seconds, because I wanted to hear about," 
 etc., etc. 
 
 And she proceeded to explain some errand about a book of 
 French memoirs promised to some Russian invalid ; a mere 
 nothing. She had come, intending to have an hour's com- 
 fortable chat over the fire in twilight ; but she comprehended 
 that one at least of them was wishing her absent, and Lady 
 Cardiff was too sympathetic and too well bred not to catch a 
 situation in a glance and conform herself to its exigencies at 
 all personal sacrifice. She bowed herself out with admirable 
 tacc, just staying long enough to look hurried and forced to 
 go, — quite naturally, — and loris took her to her carriage. 
 
 " Dear me 1" said Lady Cardiff, to herself, once more, when 
 alone amidst her cushions. " There will be the mischief to 
 pay with a vengeance. What a pity he is hampered like 
 that ! — such a nice-looking man, and such admirable manners, 
 in a day when manners are scarcely more than a tradition, and 
 everybody shuffles about in slippers, slippers that are down 
 at heel too, for the most part. What a pity 1 There is 
 nothing in the world so hard to get rid of as the nineteenth- 
 century Guinevere, when she has made a domestic animal of 
 the marital dragon and knows that Arthur will never say 
 anything unless Launcelot seems likely to leave her on his 
 hand^. Poor Launcelot ! If he ever do get into the news- 
 papers everybody is horrified at him, and full of sympathy for 
 the dragon, but it is Launcelot that is to be pitied ; fifty to 
 one Guinevere threw herself at his head, went down to his 
 rooms, wrote to him at his club; did all kinds of silly things. 
 
280 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and when she grew theatrical threatened him with Arthur. 
 I shouldn't in the least wonder if even Mr. Challoner were to 
 grow into the ' wronged Pcndragon' if ever they find out that 
 Guinevere has to clear out of Fiordelisa." 
 
 And Lady Cardiflf settled herself among her cushions, and 
 tried to read a " Journal pour Rire," by the fading light bf 
 the day, as her carriage rumbled through the streets of Rome, 
 but failed to be able to keep her mind to it, partly from want 
 of light, partly from wonder as to the sentiments she had 
 detected. 
 
 " The ' wronged Pendragon' will be very fine," she thought 
 to herself. " It will be so vei*y fine if only by contrast with 
 Arthur's ' boundless trust' 1" 
 
 And the idea amused her much more than did the " Jour- 
 nal amusant." 
 
 Meantime loris had returned to the rooms that the wet 
 violets were filling with their fragrance. 
 
 Etoile had thrown aside her furs, and stood with the fire- 
 light playing on her uncovered head, and the straight folds of 
 her velvet skirt as she placed the violets in old shallow porce- 
 lain bowls, the dog lying at her feet. 
 
 " They were the last of the year, I fear," she said to him, 
 as he returned. " The tulips are all out under the oak woods 
 to-day. I care most for the violets. I remember how bitterly 
 I used to cry when I was a little child, and our old servants 
 threw them into syrups to boil them down : to buy them at 
 street-corners seems nearly as bad. Do you understand ? or 
 is it all Op. 101 to you?" 
 
 " I understand," he said, with a smile and a sigh. " May 
 I stay here a little while ? I am tired. Figuratively, I have 
 been at street-corners all the day, buying and selling. I feel 
 dull, chilly, and jaded. May I stay?" 
 
 " Of course." The color flushed her face a little. She 
 went on putting the violets in their shallow bowls beside 
 the hearth. His eyes dwelt on her with musing tenderness, 
 and followed the movements of her hands under their old lace 
 ruffles among the forest flowers with the water-drops sparkling 
 on her fingers like diamonds. 
 
 " Why do you wear no rings ?" he asked, abruptly. 
 
 She laughed a little. 
 
 " Vanity I They spoil the haud ; they disguise it." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 281 
 
 " That is a sculptor's idea ; I think it is a right one. Your 
 hands are too beautiful to need ornament " 
 
 " Or compliment." 
 
 " Trath is not compliment. I never use the language of 
 compliment to you; you know that very well. Tell me, — 
 you have been reading that book of Daniel Stern's — ' Nd- 
 lida'?" 
 
 " Yes. It is not a very clever book, though written by a 
 clever woman. But " 
 
 " It has one passage that is eloquent. Did you think of 
 me when you marked it ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He stretched his hand out to the book and read the 
 passage again, in silence. Then with a sigh he tossed it 
 away. 
 
 " She might have sat for the picture," he said, with con- 
 tempt. 
 
 " It is not right of you to say that !" Etoile said, quickly, 
 with a sense of pleasure i»" his wrong-doing that she blamed, 
 for which she was impatient and scornful of herself. " It is 
 like her, no doubt; it is like ten thousand other women, 
 probably ; it is like all the feeble passions of the world which 
 wear the cloak of convenience and the mask of a vulgar wis- 
 dom ; but it is not for you to say so, since you bear with her 
 as she is." 
 
 " Why? since we are speaking with our hands in the 
 Bocca della Ventd to-night ?" said loris, his voice hissing a 
 little between his teeth. " And, even if cowardly it be, you 
 know very well slaves are always cowards : their tyrants make 
 them so, and cannot complain. No !" he said, quickly, chang- 
 ing his tone to a soft supplication, " do not say cruel things to 
 me. I cannot bear them from you. Perhaps I am ignoble 
 and unmanly. Before you I feel so." 
 
 " It is not before me. It is before yourself," she said, in a 
 low voice, as she returned to the hearth and stood in the 
 flickering light from the burning logs. " Your name is noble, 
 not only with the mere nobility of rank, but with all the 
 inherited nobility of knightly actions and of chivalrous tem- 
 pers ; because the material greatness of your house may have 
 vanished, that is but a reason the more to sustain it high in 
 the respect of the world and the honor of men ; you are not 
 
 24^ 
 
282 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 free to be ridiculed, you are not free to be despised ; you 
 represent the honor of a thousand years of knighthood that 
 stands or falls with you. It is not before me that you should 
 feel your self-surrender to an ignoble passion shameful : it is 
 before yourself and before the memory of your forefathers I" 
 
 loris listened, with his head bent and his eyes drooped. 
 
 " No other woman ever spoke to me like that," he said, 
 under his breath ; and was silent, leaning his arm on the old 
 yellow marble of the mantel-piece. 
 
 " It should not be what women say ; it should be what 
 your own heart tells you. You have so much heritage of 
 greatness in your old race, so many memories to incite and 
 ennoble you ; your country-people love you, and you love 
 them ; there are so many beautiful possibilities in your own 
 future ; your life on your own lands might be " 
 
 " When my future is her prey, as the presen. is, and every 
 rood of my land is blighted by her 1" he muttered, wearily. 
 " Ah, you do not understand : once I too thought as you 
 think, and dreamed of great things, or at least of a life not 
 unworthy of great memories ; but Society eats away all nobil- 
 ity, and makes us shiftless, vacuous, worthless, and insincere 
 as itself What are women ? Only delicate pretty triflers, 
 or mere beasts of prey, that excite our baser desires and teach 
 us to stifle our higher natures, lest we should make them 
 yawn. You will say it is unmanly to lay blame upon your 
 sex. Perhaps it is. But before such a woman as you are, one 
 learns to feel what men might be if women were more like 
 you. You tell me it is cowardly to say that those words of 
 that book describe the one woman who more than any other 
 has dragged my life down to a lower level and laid it waste 
 and barren of all hope. It is not her fault : she cannot help 
 being what nature made her : no one can give more than they 
 have in them. Yet it is the truth, the merest, coldest truth. 
 What is her love for me beyond such passion as a tigress 
 knows, and, even so, forever second to her worldly interests 
 and worship of herself " 
 
 " Hush 1 hush ! It is not loyal " 
 
 He laughed aloud. 
 
 " Loyal 1 I am as loyal to her as she to me. Believe me, 
 in a guilty passion that dares the world there may be loyalty, 
 because there may be strength ; but in such an intrigue as 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 283 
 
 hers and mine, public as marriage, yet steeped in hypocrisies 
 of social lies, there can be no faithfulness, because to each 
 other, to ourselves, and to Society, we are false, — false in every 
 caress, in every word, in every thought, — a very hell of false- 
 hood !" 
 
 "Hush!" 
 
 " Why ? Let me speak the truth to you at least. No. 
 woman ever influenced me as you do. I think you could 
 make me what you would if I were always near you. You 
 arc like the flowers you love : you speak to men of the God 
 they have forgotten. The flowers do not know what they do, 
 neither do you. Are you offended ? Forgive me." 
 
 Etoile ^as silent for a moment. 
 
 " Offended ? No ; not that. But. it is not just to her. 
 Besides, you do not mean it." 
 
 " Let her take care of herself: she is well able. Do I not 
 mean what I say of you? Look at me and see." 
 
 She did look at hira, with the calm, frank, candid regard 
 with which she had looked always in the face of men. Their 
 passions had never moved her,, and she had controlled them 
 or dismissed them without effort. Before the deep dreamy 
 gaze of his eyes, caressing, ardent, mysterious with the veiled 
 story of a passion he dared not avow, her own eyes fell ; 
 something in his look startled, troubled, hurt her. 
 
 " Prince loris," she said, coldly, " it is half-past seven 
 o'clock. They will be waiting for you at the Casa Challoner. 
 You forget your duties." 
 
 loris recovered himself and controlled his gaze. 
 
 " I do not return there to-night. I shall go home and 
 dine alone." 
 
 But he did not move to go ; silence fell between them ; he 
 leaned against the old yellow marble by the hearth ; the lids 
 drooped over his tell-tale eyes. 
 
 A servant entered with the lamps. Her heart beat quickly ; 
 she feared she had been harsh to him. 
 
 The light seemed to fall on them as from a world they had 
 forgotten. 
 
 "Will you dine here?" she said, a little hurriedly. "In 
 half an hour I expect my old friend Voightel : he arrives 
 from Paris. Yes ? Stay, then, and re-read ' N61ida' while I 
 go away and change my gown." 
 
284 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 He kissed her hands. Left alone, it was not " N^lida" that 
 he read, but the troubled story of his own heart. 
 
 Meanwhile he hoped that the snow on the Alps niight 
 detain Baron Voightel. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The snow did not detain Baron Voightel : at ten minutes 
 past eight o'clock he took his green spectacles, his gray beard, 
 and his caustic wit into the rooms of Etoile, and seeing loris 
 there, who looked very much at home and had one of her 
 tea-roses in his coat, thought to himself, with a chuckle, " A 
 la bonne hevre ! It always comes at last. What sort of man 
 is he, I wonder, that can charm our ludifferentia ?" 
 
 They had a very pleasant dinner that evening, and pleasant 
 hours after it by the great wood fire, and Voightel could not 
 have told that loris was wishing him deep in a snow-drift, for 
 loris was at his gentlest, brightest, and most graceful, and 
 when at midnight they both took leave, accompanied Voightel 
 to his. hotel, and, -pressing both his hands, declared the grati- 
 fication and honor that he felt in becoming acijuainted with 
 the mighty traveller. 
 
 " A charming person ; beautiful manners and a liistorio 
 face," thought Voightel : nevertheless he shook his head as he 
 went up the stairs of his hotel. 
 
 Voightel was bound for Brindisi, and had only some thirty- 
 dx hours to pass in Rome : far away, in iiiose wild untrodden 
 •ands which he loved, men, armed to the teetli, were waiting 
 Lis leadership, and many a problem of unexplored tracks and 
 unnavigated lakes was awaiting his efforts to master them. 
 A great expedition, that the governments of three countries 
 had combined to organize, had been put under his command, 
 and he had no time to loiter and read a romance. 
 
 Voightel was a scholar, a savant, an explorer and a dweller 
 in deserts, but he was an observer of men, a citizen of the 
 world ; he was old and tough, and shrewd and learned, and 
 could be very fierce ; his alternate studies of civilized and 
 barbaric life had disposed him to rate simple courage as high 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 285 
 
 as a Lacedaemoiian, and to be somewhat deaf and blind to 
 the vast increast- in excellences of all sorts which modern 
 manners claim. 
 
 On this subjeci he was whimsical, and, to some hearers, 
 extremely irrilatinj.;, — the more so as no one could deny that 
 he had the amplest experiences of both extremes, which lent 
 to his arguments that authoritative exactitude which exas- 
 perates the most pati ^nt opponent. 
 
 He was exasperating also in many other ways. He hac an 
 inconveniently long memory for all kinds of minutiae : no lie 
 imposed on him, and no hypocrisies succeeded with him. 
 What was still mor'^. exasperating, he had a stout belief in 
 innocence when he found it, and a profound contempt for the 
 world's general ideas as to vice and virtue. 
 
 When Voightel went to bed that night he found a honeyed 
 little note saying that, his impending arrival having been an- 
 nounced in the journals, Mr. and Lady Joan Challoner be- 
 sought him not to forget the sincerest and most devoted of his 
 friends. Voightel, who was an ungrateful man, or at least 
 everybody said so except those savfge tribes whom he adored, 
 twisted the note up and lit his good-night pipe with it. 
 But in the morning, when Voightel had seen the king, a 
 few ministers, and half a hundred archaeologists and men 
 of science, he found time to look in at the Casa Challoner, 
 and was met with the most rapturous and cordial welcome, 
 and many heartrending regrets that he had only half an hour 
 to bestow there. 
 
 It was five o'clock, and it chanced to be a Wednesday, and 
 Lady Joan was surrounded by ladies. Voightel was terrible 
 to Mrs. Grundy, because he had horrible ideas as to polygamy, 
 and was also said to have eaten his own cabin-boy in cutlets 
 in the Caribbean Isles. 
 
 But the Lady Joan, for once regardless of her Bona Dea, 
 received him with an absolute adoration and ecstasy, insisted 
 on his smoking, and pressed on him all the liqueurs ever made 
 upon earth. Such a dear, dear old friend ! Could she pver 
 forget his kindness in those delightful old days in darling 
 Damascus 1 
 
 Voightel took the petting, sipped the liqueurs, smoked in a 
 circle of dowagers and damsels, and said, with the genuine 
 good humor, " We don't forget anything about Damascus, do 
 
286 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 we? What good tr^s-sec you used to have, Joan, and how 
 clever Horace Vere was in knocking the heads oflf the bot- 
 tles ! We used to shoot cats from the roofs, and crows 
 too. You never missed aim in those days. Is your wrist 
 steady now 1 Pleasant days <^.hey were ; too pleasant 1 Poor 
 Jack Seville !" 
 
 Lady Joan felt as if some one had poured ice-water down 
 her back, and was very elFusive and ardent in pressing the 
 liqueurs upon him. 
 
 " Just the same woman," thought Voightel, eying her ; 
 *'just the same, only older; of course she's just the same; 
 there are cats and crows here, and champagne ; and I suppose 
 dear Robert has a counting-house to be put away in some- 
 where." 
 
 At that moment loris entered. 
 
 " lo, come and let me present you to the very dearest friend 
 I have in the world, — a second father !" cried the Lady Joan. 
 
 " We met last night," was on Voightel's lips, but he saw 
 that loris bent gravely before him with the ceremonious grace 
 of a perfect stranger. Voightel was old and shrewd : he could 
 see a situation at a glance and guess a great deal in ? a instant. 
 He seemed not to remember loris, and felt that loris was 
 grateful to him. 
 
 "Is he a great friend of yours?" Voightel said aside to 
 Lady Joan. " ^h ! as great a friend as Jack Seville ? Poor 
 Jack ! This man is handsomer ; but then you have come into 
 the land of living pictures. Jack only painted 'em." 
 
 Lady Joan colored and winced. 
 
 " Mr. Challoner farms loris's land," she answered, hurriedly. 
 " The prince is very poor, you know, and Mr. Challoner is 
 very fond of him." 
 
 " Challoner was fond of poor Jack, and of Horace too," 
 said Voightel, with an innocent meditation. '' Good creature 
 your husband always was. So you farm, do you ? Does it 
 pay here ? Nice country, but not remunerative, is it ?" 
 
 " We don't do it for profit !" said Lady Joan, almost sharply, 
 she felt so sorely tried. 
 
 " What it is to live in a poetic country !" said Voightel. 
 " But the force of association is everything : when I ate that 
 cabin-boy, whom I hear that admirable lady in a shabby purple 
 gown over there talking about to her neighbpr, he was just as 
 
FlUENDSmr. 287 
 
 agreeable to me as tender veal. It was all the force of associa- 
 tion : my hosts liked him as well aa veal, — better, even ; so 
 did I. No doubt in Pail-Mall I should hold fried cabin-boy 
 in abhorrence. We are all the puppets of custom : don't you 
 think so, madam ?" 
 
 The lady in a shabby purple gown, who was Lady George 
 Scrope-Stair, thus suddenly addressed, was too horrified to be 
 able to answer him. (" I have heard hiii confess the fact 
 myself," said Lady George forever afterwards.) 
 
 "Ah! he was a pretty boy, madam, and we ate him with 
 nutmeg and caper sauce," said Voightel, and rose and took 
 himself away, his hostess following him on to the stall's. 
 
 loris, under pretext to her of offering him an umbrella, fol- 
 lowed him into the street, where it was raining a little. 
 
 " I did not seem to recognize you just now, my dear baron," 
 he said, with his sweetest smile, " because the Lady Joan had 
 so often spoken of presenting me to you that I did not like to 
 deprive her of the pleasure by telling her she had been fore- 
 stalled. She honors you so greatly." 
 
 Voightel looked in his face through his green spectacles. 
 
 " I understand," he said, dryly, and they parted with elabo- 
 rate courtesy on the pavement before the Casa Challoner. 
 
 Voightel felt that there was danger impending, and if his 
 caravan had not been chartered, and his Arabs armed to the 
 teeth, and his escort all waiting far away in the sand-plains 
 already, he would have stayed in Rome to see the romance 
 unwind itself, and to guide its threads if need be. 
 
 " A very handsome man, and charming, but weak, I fear," 
 tliought Voightel. " Not the man to have the courage of his 
 opinions, I am afraid. I wish he did not act so prettily. I do 
 not like pretty lies. Ugly ones are bad enough. A pretty 
 lie is like a poison in a rose : you die in perfume, but you 
 die." 
 
 Thereupon he betook himself to the house of Etoile. He 
 had never in his life wished for any tie of the affections, but 
 at that moment he wished that he had been her father, that 
 he might have said, " Beware 1" 
 
 As it was, he dined with her, and felt his way very pru- 
 dently, being sure of nothing. 
 
 " I saw your guest of last night, to-day," he said, carelessly, 
 after dinner. ^ 
 
288 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " HandsoL- 3 man, very. I saw him at Joan CLalloner's." 
 
 Etoile was silent. 
 
 "He's her friend, isn't he?" 
 
 " They arc great friends, — yes." 
 
 Voightel, eying her sharply, chuckled. 
 
 " Ah I In a catalogue of their old masters, our beloved 
 Forty Prudes of the London 11. A. the other day put down 
 * Portrait of Lady Hamilton, noted for her friendship with 
 Nelson.' Friendship is such an elastic word. There never 
 was an age when it stood for so many things in private, and 
 was yet so absolutely non-existent in fact. Our dear Joan has 
 had many such friends, though I don't think one ever let her 
 farm for him before. What are his estates like ?" 
 
 " They are large, but, I should think, not very profitable." 
 
 " With Joan on them ? Probably not." 
 
 " Why did you go and see her, if you don't like her ?" 
 
 " My dear, she loves me." 
 
 " Then you are very thankless." 
 
 Voightel laughed. 
 
 " She seems to have grown very proper, — admirably proper : 
 ehe had got muffins and tea. In Damascus days it was cham- 
 pagne and caviare. I reminded her of Damascus days. Ret- 
 rospection is always so delightful. 1 think chc did not wish 
 the prince she farms for to see too much of me. I wonder 
 she lets you give him tea-roses. Oh, a thousand pardons ; I 
 meant nothing ! Only I fancy my Lady Joan does not love 
 you, and she is nasty when she is crossed. '■G'est un joueur 
 contre qui, lie rieri perdre c'esf heauconp gagner.^ What was 
 said of Tilly is as true of her.' Oh, you need not look so 
 tranquilly scornful, and indeed I suppose you will leave Rome 
 very shortly, will you not? Embittered, is she? Yes, I dare 
 say she may be. It is not nice to marry a Mr. Challoner, and 
 sell teacups, and black Mrs. Grundy's shoes, — not nice at all, 
 when one was born to better things, — and it must naturally 
 sour one. Why do I go and see her ? It's the greatest service 
 I can ever do her. It's just the same with her as it is with 
 poor Tartar. Tartar can't say he's traced the Lost Waters, 
 and lived in the middle of Africa, with a pat of butter on his 
 head for all his clothing, before tne, when I left him funking 
 at the coast, and have worn a pat of butter ten years myself. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 289 
 
 But for that very reason I dine with Tartar in any city I meet 
 him in, out of pure Christian charity. 'Sharp old Voightel 
 been dining with me,' says Tartar ; and people beiieve then in 
 his pat of butter. ' Dear old Voightel's been dining with mo,' 
 says Lady Joan ; and then people believe in hers. Besides, if 
 one cut all the good-looking women that one knows something 
 about, one would never go out to dinner at all. It's just be- 
 cause I do know that she's so thankful to have a chance of 
 being civil to me. And dining out is agreeable after the desert. 
 Though I can live on pulse, I have a palate lor oysters. Know 
 all about her ? To be sure I know all about her. Knew her 
 in short frocks, and used to give her sugar-plums: she s{)it 
 at me when they weren't big enough. Dear, dear! Archie's 
 daughter ought to have married a duke. IIow does she stand 
 here ? She's only scotched her early mistakes, not killed 'em. 
 No woman ever can kill 'em. II, ny a que les morts qui ne 
 revienneut pas, and ugly storias never die. There's always 
 somebody to keep them alive. Oh, of course, she knows that 
 I know every one of her little slips," he said, in conclusion, 
 with that chuckle of grim satisfaction. " She is always de- 
 lighted to see me fill my pipe, and brings me the best Char- 
 treuse, and don't lie more than once in ten minutes about her 
 doings in the East and dear old Palmerston. She is talking 
 Platonics and selling pictures now, they tell me, and gets 
 people to believe in both? Dear me ! well, the credulity of 
 human nature always was an unknown quantity. She's an 
 artful dodger, our dear Joan ; but there — there I one should 
 never say anything." 
 
 With which he stretched his legs and sipped his claret 
 comfortably. 
 
 " Platonics and pictures," he echoed, with a chuckle. " A 
 charming combination ; very popular, I dare say. Bless my 
 soul ! I saw loris to-day again, as I told you ; he did not seem 
 to me to go well with the tea and the tea-cakes. He would 
 have suited our moonlit roofs in Damascus much better. Ah ! 
 he'll never get away from her, you know. I can see his fate 
 in his face. Jack Seville never would have got away if he 
 hadn't died. The only man to have a chance with her would 
 be a thoroughgoing bully, — a bigger bully than she is. The 
 only law she knows is ' Faustrecht.' But this man's a gentle- 
 man, and weak. There's no hope for him. He won't use the 
 
290 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 fist to her, actually or allegorically. Isn't that a sketch of him 
 over there?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Etoile was angered to feel herself color. 
 
 Voifhtel walked over to the easel and stood there silently, 
 then walked back again. 
 
 ''Very like a Giorgione or a Titian ; very historic face ; you 
 ought to paint him in a coat of mail. Lord ! if he knew 
 all I could tell him 1" Voightel chuckled wickedly in his 
 chair. 
 
 " But one should never say anything," he repeated, cau- 
 tiously, hoping that his companion would ask him every- 
 thing. 
 
 But Etoile made no sign ; she tried, indeed, to change the 
 conversation. The loyalty of her temperament made her 
 averse to hearing any evil of a woman who still was — at least 
 in Society's sense of the much-tried word — her friend. 
 
 Voightel, however, who loved to hear his own tongue, as 
 was natural in a man who spent years in silence amidst un- 
 peopled deserts, and then came back to Europe to have his 
 speech listened to as an oracle's at princes' dinners and in 
 public lecture-rooms, — Voightel would not leave the subject, 
 and cheerily puffed out with his smoke all he knew. 
 
 Voightel, who declared it was always best to say nothing, 
 said everything, in the usual contrast between theory and 
 practice, — said. every thing, with that chuckle of grim satisfac- 
 tion with which human nature surveys human frailty, — an echo 
 of the laugh that Satan laughed behind the tree, and that 
 Eve heard and never could forget, and so transmitted to her 
 posterity, — the laugh which Gounod has caught in the serenade 
 of the Bio deir Or. 
 
 Voightel laughed, with that laugh, as he told his Damascene 
 recollections. 
 
 " Why do you take her pipe and her Chartreuse and tell 
 me those things of her? It is unfair and ungenerous," said 
 Etoile, with some disgust and some impatience. To sit still 
 and hear an enemy unjustly dealt with seemed to her an un- 
 generous meanness. Etoile had the old-fashioned idea that 
 one should be even more scrupulous with a foe tlian with a 
 friend. The whole theme, too, annoyed her, and made her 
 ill at ease and dissatisfied with herself. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 291 
 
 Voightel rose to leave for his ni«^ht-train for Brindisi ; but 
 his eyes were gloomy and troubled through his green spee- 
 tacles. 
 
 "What are you so chivalrous for? Tlie vvo.nan is your 
 foe, or will be. My dear, the days of Fontcnoy arc gone out ; 
 everybody nowadays only tries to got the first fire, by hook or 
 by crook. Ours Is an age of cowardice and cuirassed cannon ; 
 chivalry is out of place in it." 
 
 " There can be no reason why she should be ever anything 
 except my friend," said Etoile, with a certain defiance ; but 
 she felt that her voice was weak, and her color changed as 
 Voightel looked at the sketch on the easel. 
 
 "Of course, no reason in life," he said, dryly. "Only 
 Archie and I were fools to send you to her. Well, she is au 
 agreeable woman when she likes. Treat her as such ; but 
 keep her at arm's length. If you can buy a thousand francs' 
 worth of lace of her, that will do to trim your maid's night- 
 caps, do. It will not be dear at the price. You will not bw 
 able to sell it again for more than a thousand pence, but it 
 will be cheap at the price. A bowl of milk to a cobra is the 
 better part of valor. It enables you to retreat unmolested. 
 Mejiez-vons toiijours. But indeed 1 suppose you and she can 
 never have any quarrel, you are so far apart ; you are in the 
 clouds, and she is busy among the steam mills. Mejiez-vous : 
 that is all. And remember that she is a handsome woman, 
 and a charming creature, and a dear soul ; and, above all, she 
 is Archie's daughter. Ah ! that goes so far with so many of 
 us ! 8he is Archie's daughter ; but all the same the less seen 
 of her the better. Still, buy the lace, — oh, yes, buy the lace ; 
 and, if you can bring your mind to details, let it be some cotton 
 rubbish off a village priest's surplice, and let her think you 
 tJiink it Doge's point of fifteen hundred. My dear, there is 
 no money better laid out than what is spent in bowls of 
 milk. You don't see it? no, you will never charm snakes, 
 then : you will only get stung by them." 
 
 And Voightel rose to go on his way to the lands of the 
 sun ; but before leaving the room he turned back and held out 
 his hand once more to Etoile with trouble in his keen old 
 eyes. 
 
 ^'- MeJiez-vons ! — remember that; remember that. But I 
 wish I and Archie had not told you to come to her. And I 
 
292 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 m 
 
 wish you were safe out of Rome. If you will stay, buy lace 
 enouj^h, and lot her think you could ^et the French Govern- 
 ment to purchase an early master for the Louvre. Oh, my 
 dear, if you are so obstinate that you will not leave the swamp, 
 and so foolhardy that you will not set a bowl of milk, bitten 
 you nmst be. It is written." 
 
 When he left her, the tears stood in his old resolute eyes, 
 that would have looked unwinking down the iron tubes of a 
 line of muskets levelled against him. 
 
 He felt a vague fear of her future. 
 
 She, who had been her own destiny, and never believed in 
 any force of fate or doom of destiny other than lies in the 
 nature we are born with, f(^lt also a dim, shapeless apprehen- 
 sion. She sat long, thinki;.g, beside her dying fire. 
 
 There are times when, even on the bravest temper, the 
 ironical mockery, the cruel despotism of trifling circumstances, 
 that have made themselves the masters of our lives, the hewers 
 of our fate, must weigh with a sense of iuvoluntary bondage, 
 against which to strive is useless. 
 
 The weird sisters were forms of awe and magnitude propor- 
 tionate to the woes they dealt out, to the destiny they wove. 
 But the very littleness of the daily chances that actually shape 
 fate is, in its discordance and its mockery, more truly terrible and 
 more hideously solemn ; it is the little child's laugh at a frisk- 
 ing kitten which brings down the avalanche and lays waste 
 the mountain-side, or it is the cackle of the rtartled geese that 
 saves the Capitol. 
 
 To be the prey of Atropos was something at least; and 
 the grim Deiis vuU perdere, uttered in the delirium of pain, at 
 the least made the maddened soul feel of some slender account 
 in the sight of the gods and in the will of heaven. But we, 
 who are the children of mere accident and the sport of idlest 
 opportunity, have no such consolation. 
 
 All that Voightel had told her of this woman, whose friend- 
 ship, as the world calls friendship, she had accepted, weighed 
 on her with oppression and disgust. 
 
 " What is it to me ?" she thought, and in vain told her- 
 self so. 
 
 It was much to her, because loris had grown to be much. 
 She scarcely knew it, but the pity she felt for him, the sym- 
 pathy that he had appealed for, drew her heart towards him 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 293 
 
 as it had never been drawn to any mortal crca.uro. The pas- 
 sion of other men had annoyed, revolted, or wearied her, but 
 his, speakinj^ only as yet in his eyes and his voice, approach- 
 ing her with soft hesitation, with a tender and almost timid 
 grace, stole on her unawares and did not alario her. 
 
 loris, swift to read all women, and incredulous oi good faith 
 in them, was perplexed, and^yet impressed by the possibilities 
 of passion, and the absolute absence of it, which he detected 
 in her. Something of the exultation and the pride of an un- 
 paralleled conquest could, he felt, be the boast of the man who 
 should become her lover. 
 
 " lie was the first that ever burst into that silent sea." 
 
 It would be like that Norse king's triumphant joy when 
 the sharp prow cut through untraversed waters and his sight 
 ranged over untrodden shores. 
 
 He had first made her grow used to him and to his presence 
 near her. 
 
 With the noonday chimes of the churches and convents of 
 Rome she had been almost sure from the first days of their ac- 
 quaintance to hear the door unclose and his voice ask, " Fenton 
 eatrer .?" with the soft gladness in it of one who is sure that 
 he is welcome. 
 
 Those sunny winter mornings ; the dreamy smell of the 
 burning pines ; the blue sky beyond the window-panes ; the 
 clusters of hot-house bloom full of soft color ; the vague sense 
 of exhilaration and of languor which the Roman air carries in 
 it, — she rose to them all every day with the sweetest sense of 
 happiness that had ever touched her life. They were all blent 
 together confusedly and fragrantly, like her flowers in their 
 baskets of moss. The days were soft, and radiant, and she 
 awoke to each with a new joy in her heart, that she thought 
 was born of the new air and the new light, and of the imme- 
 morial earth around. 
 
 The first awakening of the artist in Italy is like the sudden 
 blowing of a flovver. All previous life seems but as a trance, 
 sad-colored and heavy with monotory. All that were hueless 
 dreams before, take torm and color, and the vaguest ideals all 
 at once grow real. The hunger of the desire of the mind 
 ceases, and a dreamy, ethereal content steals like music on a 
 
 ■ ■ 25* ... 
 
294 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 south wind over the intelligence, which ceases to question and 
 accepts and enjoys. 
 
 Man never seems so great, nor God so near, nor mortal life 
 so infinite, us here. 
 
 The very immensity of the past serves to heighten the 
 charm of the present. The very flower of human achieve- 
 metit has blossomed here from the tree of life. Beside the 
 Sun God unscathed through two thousand years Art ceases to 
 seem vain. Beside the eternal well-spring of Egeria s foun- 
 tain passion may cheat itself into faith that is immortal. 
 
 Art is strewn broadcast in the common ways, as the red 
 tulips and the purple-capped anemones strew the common pas- 
 tures ; and passion is in the air, in the light, in the wind ; it 
 is in every burden of song down the still dark ways of the 
 city, and in every shadow that falls on the lustrous white sheen 
 of the fruit-scented fields. In other lands love may be an acci- 
 dent of life ; in Italy it is life itself 
 
 The breath of passing love-fancies which dulls the mirror of 
 most women's souls had never passed over her. She had 
 lived, so far as all love went, as untouched as any mountain- 
 flower that blows where no steps of men have ever wandered. 
 Her heart was like a deep, unrutfled lake. 
 
 Passion must be remembered to be known, as the sun Inust 
 be seen. 
 
 Men had wooed her with passion, sparing no pains. But 
 a thousand lovers whom she rejects will teach a woman no- 
 thing. If they cannot waken her soul or her senses she will 
 escape from them as ignorant and as emotionless as though 
 she had dwelt all her days in a desert isle. One day there 
 will come a touch which will toil her all ; but till that comes 
 she remains ignorant, because unmoved. The woman who 
 has a hundred lovers, but who has not loved, is like a child 
 that is blind. They tell her the sun is there, and she thinks 
 she knows what manner of glory the sun's is. But, in truth, 
 she knows nothing. She sits in the dark, and plays with vain 
 imaginings, like the sightless child. She may pity the pain 
 of a wasted passion, that is all. The pity which is not born 
 from experience is always cold. It cannot help being so. It 
 does not understand. 
 
 " You know nothing of love," Voightel had said to her one 
 day, years before, ia Paris. " It is very strange, you, whom 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 295 
 
 all the world believes to have had such a jeunease orageuse^ 
 and whom so many men are willin<^ to adore, you know no 
 more of it than that white gardenia flower in your girdle." 
 
 *' Except in theory," she answered him. " I have read so 
 much of it. It is the theme of the world " 
 
 "i?eac?/" echoed the old wise man, with scorn. "Oh, 
 child, what use is that? Read! The inland dweller reads 
 of the sea, and thinks he knows it, and believes it to be as a 
 magnified duck-pond, and no more. Can he tell anytV'ng of 
 the light and the shade, of the wave and the foam, of the 
 green that :s near, of the blue that is far, of the opaline 
 changes, now pure as a dove's throat, new warm as a flame, 
 of the great purple depths and the fierce blinding storm, and 
 the delight and the fear, and the hurricane rising like a horse 
 snorting for war, and all that is known to the man who goes 
 down to the great deep in ships ? Passion and the sea are 
 like each other. Words shall not tell them, nor color portray 
 them. The kiss that burns, and the salt spray that stings, — 
 let the poet excel and the painter endeavor, yet the best they 
 can do shall say nothing to the woman without a lover and to 
 the landsman who knows not the sea. If you would live, — 
 love. You will live in an hour a lifetime ; and you will won- 
 der -how you bore your life before. But as an artist all will 
 be over with you : that I think." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 As Etoile sat by her fire, and the train bore Voightel south- 
 ward and eastward through the snow, loris ascended the stairs 
 of his prison-house. 
 
 It was ten o'clock : there was a ball for which his escort was 
 commanded ; he was dressed for the evening, some orders hung 
 at his button-hole. His own sentiments were disregarded as 
 to his orders. 
 
 " Decorations are out of place at private houses," he had 
 constantly urged : " they should only be worn at courts and 
 embassies. I assure you, ma chhre, that anywhere else they 
 are vulgar." 
 
\ 
 
 296 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Put thf^m on when you go with me," said the Lady Joan, 
 sharpl}^. She knew her own spheres and orbits better than he 
 did ; the bankers and consuls' wives, the small gentilities, and 
 the free-born republicans, and all Shoddy in general, are very 
 much impressed by any decorations. 
 
 The Lady Joan was alone when he entered, and was lying 
 on her sofa. Mr. Challoner was sleeping the sleep of the just 
 in an after-dinner doze in his own little room. 
 
 " How late you are, lo !" she cried, and lifted herself, and 
 threw her arm about his throat. 
 
 He yielded, and felt ashamed. 
 
 His heart smote him for a sort of unfaithfulness. But it 
 was not to her that he felt faithless. 
 
 " Why didn't you come to dinner?" she asked him, caress- 
 ing his silky dark hair. " Robert was as cross as a bear. You 
 get very uncertain now. What do you do with yourself?" 
 
 *' I have to be much oftener at the court, and I spend so 
 much time in that weary Messhia Bureau," said loris, and he 
 sank down on a low stool and leaned his forehead on her knee. 
 He felt weary, out of tune, impatient of himself and her. He 
 felt a coward, and untrue. 
 
 Nevertheless, she was alone ; the lamps burned low ; the 
 instincts of long habit were strong with him. 
 
 This passion had become a habit, and when passion and 
 habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredu- 
 lity that habit awakes to find its companion fled, itself alone. 
 
 The clock ticked on, the hours went by ; she was happy, 
 and he did not care to realize that he was false. 
 
 Midnight came. She left him to go to her room and change 
 her attire, and came back radiant with black-and-gold woven 
 Eastern stufis and a train of amber silk, and bade him clasp 
 her bracelets, and see if the diamond spilla were set right in 
 her braids. 
 
 " It's one o'clock. Let's be off, dear !" she said, as she 
 thrust her hand into a glove ; and he brought her satin cloak, 
 and wrapped her up in it. 
 
 They went together through the quiet house and down the 
 dusky stairs. Mr. Challoner was still sleeping the sleep of 
 the just, but by this time he was not in his den, but on his 
 bed. 
 
 The jar of the closing house-door woke him : he turned 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 297 
 
 comfortably, and thought how glad he was he had not to go 
 out in the snow to a ball. 
 
 Their cab joined the long string of slowly-creeping carriages, 
 and in due time they were set down, and went together into 
 the palace, with its modern upholstery all abla\ie with wax- 
 lights, and very much like a transformation-scene in a panto- 
 mime, with its pink-tinted lamps and its paradise of palms. 
 
 The great ball was being given at the Anglo-American 
 bankers', the Macscrips, who were very rich people, and al- 
 ways spent ten thousand francs on the flowers, and said that 
 they did so. 
 
 It was not the highest society that went to the Macscrips', 
 but it was a kind of society that Lady Joan enjoyed very 
 much better than tlie highest, — a society that was reverential 
 to her because she was a Perth-Douglas, that believed all she 
 said about dear old Palmerston or anybody-^-lse, and did not 
 call in question her knowledge of the Arts, — a society in 
 which she could waltz all night, and talk about " lo," and feel 
 that she was Somebody, as she never could feel with Princess 
 Vera's contemptuous gaze on her, or under the inquisition of 
 Lady CardiflF's eye-glasses. 
 
 She went up the crowded stairs and into the reception- 
 room with loris behind her, and Mrs. Macscrip, who was a 
 very censorious and particular little person, received her with 
 delight. 
 
 " So kind of you ! But where's dear Mr. Challoner ? Is 
 he not coming ?" 
 
 " He's not very well to-night, but I've brought lo," said the 
 Lady Joan, nodding to a dozen acquaintances. 
 
 '' Delighted — too kind of you — charmie de vovs voir, 
 Prince /" said Mrs. Macscrip, amidst a tide of incoming 
 people that surged about her like sea-waves. 
 
 ^^ Tovjoia'S votre serviteur !^' murmured loris, with his per- 
 fect bow, that had been admired at FrohsdorflF, at Vienna, and 
 at the court of Petersburg ; and then followed the Lady Joan's 
 black-and-amber fan-shaped skirts, which were as a beacon 
 from whose rays he must not stray. 
 
 She plunged into the delights of the evening, and he bore 
 the weariness of it as well as he could. 
 
 He never danced. She danced all night. It was very 
 tiresome to him to wait through the crush and heat of the 
 
298 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 thronged rooms, with the noise of the band, or the tongues 
 of the chatterers, always dinning in his ear. He had been 
 to so many of these things; alone, he would not have been 
 amused amidst this mixed and second-rate society, but aloue, 
 he could at least have gone after leaning in a doorway twenty 
 minutes. With her no such escape was possible. 
 
 To hold her fan, to offer his arm, to bow five hundred times, 
 to murmur, " Comme vous etes belle /" to women he thought 
 hideous, to say, ''^EachanU de vous trouver P' to bores he met 
 every day, to be always at hand if she warned to go and get 
 an ice, or to see the lamp-lit garden, or to cross the room to a 
 friend's sofa, — these were his alternate diversions for six mortal 
 hours. It was a tedious martyrdom. He envied Mr. Chal- 
 loner at home and asleep. 
 
 The sun was up when at last it pleased her to get into her 
 cab ai d bid him light her a cigarette. 
 
 " You've been as dull as ditch-water all night, lo," she said, 
 as she took it ; " and how pale you are 1 Now look at me. I'm 
 as fresh as paint." 
 
 He went home once more to his own house by the break of 
 day, and throw himself on his bed, to court in vain the heavy 
 slumber of morning. He was unhappy, and his conscience 
 was ill at ease, and lie could not lull it to rest with sophisms. 
 
 ^^ Avoir mejiti, c'st avoir sonffert. N^etre jamais soi,/aire 
 illusion toiijours^ c^est une fatigue. Eire caressant, se retenir, 
 se rSprimer, toitjours etre sur le qui-vive, se guetter sans cesse^ 
 chafouiller le poignard, sucrer le poison^ veiller sur la rondeur 
 de son geste et la munque de sa voix^ ne pas avoir un regard — 
 rien nest plus difficile, rien li'est plus douloureux.^* 
 
 So wrote a great master ; and so suffered loris. 
 
 In the early days of an illicit passion concealment is charm- 
 ing ; every secret stairway of intrigue has a sweet surprise at 
 its close ; to be in conspiracy with one alone against all tha 
 rest of humanity is the most seductive of seductions. Love 
 lives best in this soft twilight, where it only heart: 'ts own 
 heart and one other's beat in the solitude. 
 
 But when the reverse of the medal is turned, — when every 
 step on the stairs has been traversed and tired of, when, in- 
 stead of the heart's beat, there is but an upbraiding voice, 
 when it is no longer with one, but from one, that concealment 
 is needed, — then the illicit passion is its own Nemesis, thea 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 299 
 
 nothing were ever drearier, wearier, more anxious, or more 
 fatiguing than its devious paths become, and they seem to liold 
 the sated wanderer in a labyrintii of which he knows, and 
 knowing hates, every wind and curve and coil, yet out of 
 which it seems to him he will never make his way back again 
 into the light of wholesome day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 That same night that the Lady Joan drew her black-and- 
 amber skirts through the ball-room crowds, and drew her lover 
 behind them, to the admiration and approbation of all who 
 beheld her, a sledge, furiously driven, was crossing one of the 
 vast level tracts of Russia in the teeth of a storm of snow and 
 wind. 
 
 For hour after hour there was no break in the wide white 
 track save when, at some wretched group of hovels or some 
 small walled hamlet, the steaming and half-frantic horses were 
 changed. The frozen plains stretched all around, dotted here 
 and there by the black stems of stunted pines. The snow fell 
 ceaselessly. Now and then through the roar of the wind there 
 came as the wind lulled for a moment the sound of a wolf- 
 pack baying afar oif. The sledge went on, the horses tore 
 their way through drift and hurricane. 
 
 Every now and then a voice from within cried into the bit- 
 ter air, " Faster ! faster 1 for the love of heaven 1" The voice 
 was feeble and feverish. 
 
 " We had better stop, Fedorivanovitch," urged a stronger 
 voice, tenderly ; but the other always answered, "No, no I on I 
 on!" 
 
 And the voice was obeyed, for it had the sound of death in 
 it. 
 
 The road was lost sight of; all tracks were obliterated ; even 
 the burning oil in the lamps was frozen ; the snow fell always. 
 The horses were urged onwards in the dark, for the night was 
 black, though the world was white. Verst upon verst was 
 covered of that horrible, silent highway. The baying of 
 wolves was heard nearer. The wind whirled the falling snow 
 
300 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 round and round in endless gyrations. It was a night when 
 men die like frozen sheep. 
 
 Still the feeble voiee within cried always, " No, no ! on 1 
 on 1" and it was obeyed. The gliminer of dull lights at 
 length grew near, and showed wheic one more posting- station 
 was. 
 
 " It is time," muttered the driver, for he knew that in 
 another half-hour his good beasts would fall to rise no more. 
 He flogged them onward towards that faint light ; the snow 
 ceased for a little while to fall ; the bay of the pack behind 
 them grew distant once more. 
 
 " The Father be praised 1" said the driver, as he pulled his 
 horses up half dead before the cluster of miserable dwellings. 
 
 It was in the middle of the night, but there were people 
 awake. The postmaster came out with a lantern into the 
 cold, which was enough to freeze every living thing. Through 
 the open door, from which the snow was cleared, the light of 
 a lamp streamed. A servant got down from the sleigh. 
 
 " Hold the light here," he said, with an ashen face. 
 
 " Is he worse ?" said the driver, leaving his quivering beasts 
 for a moment. The man snatched the lantern and held it so 
 that- he could see into the interior of the tarantass. 
 
 " Dear God !" he cried, with a great shout. 
 
 Then, trembling with another tremor than that of cold, he 
 tore away the furs and wraps. The post-people saw the form 
 of a young man. The head was sunk upon the breast ; from 
 the breast blood had oozed out over the costly furs and frozen 
 there. 
 
 " He has but swooned ; he has but swooned," the people 
 cried. Tiie driver added, " Only half an hour ago he was 
 crying to me to go faster." 
 
 " The night is death !" cried the servant, beside himself. 
 " It is Fedorivanovitch SouroflF. Help me carry him within 
 — quick ! quick ! quick !" 
 
 A dozen stout arms aided him to lift his master from the 
 sleigh. He was quite a young man, of singular beauty, and 
 he wore the uniform of the Cuirassiers of the Guard ; his 
 face was without color, his lips scarcely breathed ; blood still 
 oozed from his chest and froze as the outer air reached it. 
 - " His wound has broken out afresh 1" cried the servant, and 
 wept as children weep. , ,:,,,- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 301 
 
 They carried his master within the posting-house and laid 
 him down on the skins and rugs of his sledge on the floor by 
 the warmth of the stove. 
 
 It was a poor, miserable place ; but the people were kind 
 from pity and sorrow, not merely from respect for the sword 
 and for a great noble's name. Women were crying ; they 
 brewed hot tea quickly ; they prayed to their saints ; they 
 did what they knew. 
 
 " But on such a night to be out," they cried, " with a 
 wound I it is death." 
 
 " It is death," said his servant. " Bat he was in such haste 
 to reach Petersburg he would have no delay. What can wo 
 L J ? — what can we do ? Is there a surgeon ?" 
 
 There was none nearer than at a town they named lying 
 versts away. 
 
 The oflScer meanwhile was dying. He had never moved 
 since they had laid him there upon the black bearskins from 
 his sleigh ; his head had fallen back, his eyes were closed ; the 
 drops of tea they tried to force through his teeth only wetted 
 his lips ; they had torn his linen open and his shirt, but they 
 could not stanch the blood. It flowed sluggishly, feebly, but 
 it flowed always, and looked dark and clotted. It came from 
 the lungs. 
 
 He had been wounded, by a spear, six weeks before in the 
 chest. 
 
 The people stood round him appalled, silent, helpless ; the 
 women sobbed ; his servant kneeled beside him. Without, 
 the snow fell, and the winds howled and the wolves. The 
 dull, yellow rays of the lamp fell on the pallid and delicate 
 beauty of his face. 
 
 Suddenly his eyes opened wide, he stretched his arms out, 
 he gazed with heart-sick yearning into the circle of strange 
 faces that were about his death-bed. 
 
 "Doroteal" he cried, aloud, and his hands felt the empty 
 air feebly, as for some beloved thing they sought to touch. 
 
 " Dorotea !" he cried once more. 
 
 Then he fell back exhausted ; the blood gushed with a 
 quicker current from his breast ; he sighed once, — wearily, — 
 
 and then was dead. 
 
 * * ♦ ♦ iK . * * 
 
 " That is the name of the woman he loved," said the soldier 
 
 2^ 
 
302 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 that was both his servant and his foster-brother. " I have a 
 written packet to take to her, his c^ross for his mother, his 
 Bword for the Tzar, It is a singiiij; woman that lie loved. 
 Perhaps she is singinp; now, and he lies dead." 
 
 9|c tf. Hi )|c m jK 9(e 
 
 She was singing, — in the " Romeo and Giulietta" of Gou- 
 nod, in the Opera House of St. Petersburg. It was a great 
 night, by imperial command. The court was present in all its 
 brilliancy, and not even the presence of the Tzar could restrain 
 the delirium of the overflowing house. Never before, so they 
 vowed, had the beauty of Dorotea Coronis been so great or 
 her marvellous voice so divine. In her white robes, in the 
 balcony-scene, with the diamonds in her hair and on her 
 breast, her supreme loveliness vanquished even the magic of 
 her voice. She was so beautiful that for some moments the 
 volleys of applause welcomed only her beauty and would not 
 let her voice be heard. They adored the scene and forgot the 
 singer. She was the rival of herself 
 
 Then, when at last silence came and let her voice be heard, 
 that seemed like a lark's to lose itself in the very heights of 
 heaven, the hushed and breathless crowds forgot her beauty 
 and believed that they listened to the angels. 
 
 She had had many a night of triumph, many a night when 
 great theatres had rung with the thunders of a people's hom- 
 age, and a multitude beside itself with rapture had thrust her 
 horses from the shafts and drawn her to her home. But no 
 night had perhaps ever equalled this one. 
 
 When the opera was ended, imperial gifts were brought to 
 her in the choicest shapes that jewels could be found to take, 
 and crowns and wreaths and clusters of flowers, all holding 
 some gem of price, covered her dressing-chamber with their 
 costly lumber. 
 
 When she left the Opera House the whole city seemed in 
 commotion. It was a white city, for it was still midwinter ; 
 but a million lights sparkled everywhere above the snow. A 
 brilliant guard was escorting the imperial carriages ; there was 
 a guard also for herself, — a volunteer guard of many of the 
 highest gentlemen of the land, bearing torches and shouting 
 vivats in her honor. They ran with her to her house, a bril- 
 liant medley of fantastic figures, wrapped in furs and waving 
 torches. The thunder of their plaudits rang up to the clear 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 303 
 
 liteel-hued sky of the North, where th^ stars were shining 
 BO intense in their brilliancy that they seemed to pierce the 
 frozen air with spears of light. Across one-half tlie heavens 
 also there was outspread in all its wonder the rose-red rays 
 and golden flames of the aurora borealis. 
 
 -' Oh, the night of nights !" cried in ecstasy the old Span- 
 ish woman who had never left her since she first had sung in 
 Seville. 
 
 Dorotea Coronis did not answer : she sat before her mirror, 
 with lier hands listlessly clasped, weary and silent. What was 
 triumph to her? A story stale and withoi t power to charm. 
 Of what use were all the voices of earth adoring her ? She 
 only longed to hear one that was never now upon her ear. 
 
 " Oh, my love, my love I oh, my soul !" she had said in her 
 heart all the while that the flood of song had poured from lier 
 lips, and she had seen nothing of the great throngs that lis- 
 tened to her, nothing of the deluge of light and the sea of 
 faces : she had only seen in memory the eyes of Fedor. 
 
 A great supper waited for her, where princes were the hosts, 
 in a very bower of camellias and roses that gold had made 
 bloom whilst the Neva was ice and the whole land was snow ; 
 but she sent word that she was unwell, and sat alone in her 
 chamber, disrobed, with her loose hair hanging over her, 
 whilat the aurora burned in the midnight skies, and the old 
 Spaniaid, crouching on the threshold, told her beads. 
 
 Thtr'j was a little open casket before her ; there were letters 
 in it, — Lothing but letters, and one lock of a man's fine fair 
 hair. 
 
 She read all the letters, one by one from first to last, as she 
 had read them a thousand times. The first were a mere few 
 formal lines of such courtesy as strangers pay ; the others, 
 eloqueiit utterances of an absorbing passion, now alive with 
 hope, now desolate with despair; the last, words that made 
 light of a spear- wound received in a mountain-skirmish, and 
 that burned with !\ love that made all physical pain indifi'erent, 
 nay, unfelt. 
 
 " You call me cold," she thought as she read. " Oh, my 
 love I oh, my soul ! you do not know. What were the world's 
 scorn, the world's shame, to me, — the vile world that harbors 
 the prostitute and the pander in its high places, and hugs 
 a lie and all that speak one ? The world that stones inno- 
 
304 FRIENDSUIP. 
 
 cence like a poor dog called mad, and kisses the clay foot of 
 any gilded sin I What were the world to me? Think you I 
 would not welcome the worst that it could do to me to buy 
 one hour with you ? But, my love, my soul, I want to save 
 you from myself. Oh, God ! give me strength to bo strong, 
 to ' be cold,* to bear your reproach, to bear your pain 1 
 Mother of Christ, give me strength to keep you free : it is for 
 you, — for you, — for you I" 
 
 Then she warmed the letters in her breast as if they were 
 the pale cheeks of some little ailing child, and clasped them to 
 her, and rocked herself to and fro wearily, as one whose bur- 
 den was greater than her force. 
 
 The door of her chamber unclosed without the sound 
 reaching her ear : with a noiseless step her husband entered 
 and approached her, seeing in the mirror before her the letters 
 clasped to her bosom, the white grief of her bowed face, 
 the great tears that stole one by one from under her closed 
 eyelids. 
 
 He stretched his hand over her shoulder and, with a clutch 
 as chill and hard as though his hand was in a glove of steel, 
 he grasped the letters that lay in her bare breast. 
 
 Then the Due de Santorin smiled. 
 
 " We have wanted these a long time, my lawyers and I," 
 he said, slowly. " You will have no more like them, madame. 
 Your lover is dead I" 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 loRis awoke very weary in the morning. 
 
 He had slept but little, and that feverishly. 
 
 The shrill shrieks and yells and whooping cries of the 
 maskers scare sleep from all eyes on the last nights of Car- 
 nivul in Rome. 
 
 With sunrise the maskers had gone to their homes, worn 
 out with noisy riot and rapture ; the suu came tenderly in 
 through the orange boughs by his casement ; some robins 
 were singing on the window-sill ; but he awoke feverish and 
 depressed, and turned from the waking smile of the day. 
 
» FRIENDSHIP. 306 
 
 " N'es-tu pas mien ? 
 Ab ! Je vols quo tu tn'iiiincs bicn, 
 Tu rougia quiiud jo to rogarde," 
 
 he murmured, as he closed his eyes ajxainst tlie light, as the 
 old words of the poet, dead nearly three centuries ago, drifted 
 through his misty thoughts. It was not the woman whoso 
 skirts he had followed through the close crowds of the ball- 
 room that recalled these tender old words to his memory as ho 
 awoke. 
 
 Then he remembered with a shudder that it was Fat Tues- 
 day, — last day of Carnival, last night of masquerade. 
 
 His friend loved the roar and the riot of Carnival ; sho 
 was at the height of her happiness, throned in a break, dis- 
 guised, and with wire visor, flinging the showers of chalk over 
 the crowd, and sustaining the duel of the sweetmeats with the 
 balconies. There was a robust vigor of insatiable enjoyment 
 in her throughout the mad pranks >f those headlong frolics, 
 which once had attracted, which now disgusted him. She 
 herself paid little heed whether he were disgusted or attracted : 
 he was hers, as much as the live bird tied to her bouquet. 
 
 She dormed her wire mask and her costume, Turkish, 
 Chinese, Moyen-age, or what not, and amused herself with 
 that zest in the masquerade which made her as boisterous and 
 gleeful as any lad of fifteen summers. The noisy, dusty, riotous, 
 shrieking pandemonium was paradise to her, and woe betide 
 him if he had not his carriage ready at her door, with its steeds 
 pranked out in fooling guise and its cushions laden with con- 
 fetti and flowers. 
 
 He rose to this weary duty with a sigh. In 'iays of boy- 
 hood he had loved well enough the merriment and graceful 
 mummeries of Carnival, which then had been full of a color 
 and a light which have now passed forever away from the 
 Carnival as from the world ; now, it seemed to him, both he 
 and the world had grown grave and fatigued, and could never 
 any more shake their joy-bells without eflbrt. 
 
 Lady Joan did not care what he felt or did not feel : she 
 sent him word to mind and be ready at three o'clock. 
 
 He bade his servant see that the break and the horses 
 were ready, and then went out of the house to the house of 
 
 Etoile. -:v--r'-::,,;. ■■'.> k^.•:^.:■ :' : .. :. i..«,-^Si^:.,.= 
 
 She was so used to see him there by noonday that she only 
 
 .,.26* 
 
SOS FRIENDSHIP, * 
 
 looked up with a smile as he entered, and went on with a 
 study she was pain tin*;. 
 
 Ho looked at it quickly : it was his own portrait. 
 
 " Go in the light, yonder,' she said to him, without answer- 
 ing his glad rapid words of surprise. " I made this study 
 from memory : I want to finish it. I shall call it Hamlet." 
 
 " Hamlet ! And why ?" 
 
 " Because you are very like Hamlet : you will never be sure 
 of what you wish " 
 
 " I am only too sure of what I wish," said loris, almost in- 
 audibly, and his eyes dwelt on her with a sombre passion in 
 them that, like a magnetism, drew up her own regard to his. 
 
 She looked a moment, then shuddered a little, and grew 
 pale. 
 
 He kissed her lefl hand as it hung by her side, and kept it 
 in his own. 
 
 In the silence thev could hear the beating of each other's 
 hearts. 
 
 The servant threw open the door, and they started as if 
 they were guilty. He left her side quickly, and went and 
 stood by the hearth. An old German musician had entered, 
 a little feeble old man, unknown to fame, but who had all the 
 music of his country at his fingers' ends and in his heart and 
 soul. 
 
 " You bade me bring you the Passion Music of the sublime 
 Bach," he said, with the humble fond look at her as of a dog 
 to the only creature kind to him. The old man knew, heard, 
 saw nothing but his music. 
 
 With a timid salutation to loris, whom he did not know, 
 he shambled to the grand piano standing in the shadow, 
 and ran his hands over it and began to play unbidden. The 
 solemn, tender, mystic melodies filled the room with their 
 power. 
 
 She motioned to loris to stay where he was, and continued 
 her painting. The light fell on his delicate features, thought- 
 ful and mysterious, like the heads of Bronzino's and the old 
 Florentine painters' portraits ; the odors of the jonquils and 
 hyacinths were in the air, sweet and tranquil as peace ; the 
 music stole softly from the distant shadows, where the musi- 
 cian played on unseen, unwitting of the flight of time. 
 
 loris was unhappy, yet content: unquiet, yet lulled to a 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 307 
 
 dreamy repose. Etoile was very pale, and her hand, as it 
 moved, had lost its firm, unerring nuistery, and trembled ever 
 so little. Yet, when their eyes met acros.s the sunlight and 
 the heads of the flowers, they were both happy. 
 
 They did not need words : the music was the fittest iatcr* 
 preter of both their hearts. 
 
 Two o'clock rang from the bells without. 
 
 Both started to think that time had flown thus by them 
 unnoted. They had scarcely spoken, yet the hour was perhaps 
 the sweetest of both their lives and the purest of his. Never 
 afterwards could one of them, at least, hear the music of 
 those themes without the hot tears rushing to her eyes, and 
 that short sweet serene hour returning to her like " remem- 
 bered kisses after death.'' 
 
 Two o'clock rang and struck from clock and bells, and 
 Princess Vera sent a message begging that she would not 
 forget to come to her balcony in an hour's time. 
 
 " The Corso !" said Etoile, in impatience, and turned the 
 wet panel with his portrait on it to the wall. 
 
 The Corso I 
 
 loris remembered his tyrant. 
 
 " I too must go to the Corso," he said, with a restless 
 sigh. 
 
 She did not ask with whom ; she did not even look at him. 
 He took his leave whilst the old German still played on through 
 the sad intricate melodies of '^chumann and Chopin. 
 
 He went out of her presence serener, happier, with the 
 melodies about him like the very breath of religion, and the 
 fragrance of the flowers seeming to follow him in symbol of 
 a pure soul opened to his gaze and touch. 
 
 He went, and drove the horses to the Casa Challoner ; and 
 down the stairs came his mistress, masked, and with a spangled 
 domino. Behind her were Guido Serravelle as a trovatore, 
 with his guitar, and Douglas Graeme as a Louis Treize mous- 
 quetaire, and all with tin shovels in their hands to bespatter 
 the crowd with their chalk. 
 
 " You look as dull as a grave-digger, lo. Why didn't you 
 dress up in something?" said the Lady Joan, as she tossed 
 him a mask on her doorstep. She gave a piercing Carnival 
 yell, and jumped into the break ; young Guido strummed his 
 guitar ; Mimo ran up puffing and breathless, fat and absurd, 
 
308 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 clad as a Condottiere, and banging the step with his sword ; 
 the Count di Sestri, stately and elegant, dressed as Cesare 
 Borgia in azure and white, came also. 
 
 " En route !" cried the Lady Joan, with rapture, and they 
 rolled away, soon mixed with the jostling press of carriages 
 and cars, maskers and mummers, under the white clouds of 
 the flyiu : chalk. 
 
 loris, all the dreary hours through, looked up at the brilliant 
 balcony of the Princess Vera, but* he did not see Etoile there. 
 He was glad. 
 
 The Corso over, ending with its fairy war of the Moccoletti, 
 till a sea of fire sparkled from the Porta del Popolo to the 
 Repriso dei Barbrie, they went to dinner in a private room at 
 Sp'.llraann's, a very gay, noisy, and costly dinner, that lasted 
 long, and thence, at midnight, the Lady Joan, slipping into a 
 black domino instead of a spangled one, as a snake slips its 
 skin, passed to the Veglione. 
 
 He was not relieved from his attendance on her until four 
 o'clock on the following morning, when, tired for once, and 
 hoarse from screaming in falsetto through her mask, she con- 
 sented to leave the crowded foyer and go home. 
 
 loris did not go home. He walked about the quiet streets 
 in the clear crisp air, as the gray in the sky showed the break- 
 ing day, and went far out of his way to pass the old palace on 
 the Montecavallo. 
 
 " She has been asleep all these hours," he thought, and 
 looked up at the dark grated casements which shut in the sleep 
 of Etoile. 
 
 How horrible it seemed to him that a woman could grin 
 and scream and riot through the day and night, and give and 
 take the veiled indecencies and salacious jests of that masked 
 motley mob of the masquerade at the Apollo ! 
 
 Some gardeners were entering the Colonna gardens. He 
 entered with them, and dropped down on the bench where he 
 had found Etoile sitting a few days before. 
 
 Day was breaking over the vastness of Rome, outspread in 
 its grayness and calm beneath. 
 
 He looked at it till the tears rose in his eyes and dimmed 
 his sight, as the light of dawn trembled over the city. 
 
 " Oh, the things that I dreamt in my youth !" he thought: 
 and his heart was sick ; for he felt that his youth and his 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 309 
 
 dreaius might all have resurrection, but at the gates of the 
 grave where they were buried a dread shape stood, and barred 
 tho way ; and the spectre was the ghost of a dead passion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Challoner, who was a virtuous man and 
 did not go to masked balls, and was a wise man and let no 
 spectres rise to him, was having a cup of tea comfortably in 
 bed ; after that he had a cold bath, the morning papers, an 
 interview with his little girl and the governess, and then pro- 
 ceeded at a leisurely pace through the streets, across the water, 
 to a certain grim old mansion in the centre of the Trasttvere, 
 and towards one of the many doors that opened on its grimy 
 wide staircase of stone, a door that had been made out of keep- 
 ing with its surroundings by modern additions of plate-glass 
 and brass plates, and bore on it, in conspicuous letters, " Societa 
 Italiana-Inglese del Ponte Calabrese-Siciliano," and had under- 
 neath this inscription : " Bureau della Direzione." 
 
 When Mr. Challoner had mounted the grimy staircase and 
 ha-^, passed the modernized door, he was generally very happy, 
 even happier than when with his little girl and her governess. 
 
 To begin with, he was a director, a thing which he always 
 liked being. The word director had an important, responsible, 
 pompous kind of sound that was balm to him ; he had been a 
 singularly unlucky man, but t)ie word director always blinded 
 him to this fact : it has a successful sound about it ; in spite 
 of the innumerable bubbles and awful earthquakes that it too 
 often heralds, the word director always sounds like wealth and 
 public esteem. But sweeter, even than for this, was his ofiice 
 desk to Mr. Challoner, because it symbolized all his substitutes 
 for that more vulgar vengeance which ignorant men wondered 
 he had never taken on loris. 
 
 loris was wearied and impatient of this speculation into 
 which he had been beguiled. 
 
 Things were going wrong ; all these dreary and complicated 
 troubles into which he had been drawn were each day knitting 
 themselves tighter and more intricately. 
 
310 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Mr. Challoner had a knack of making things go wrong quite 
 unintentionally : on the banks of Orontes and Euphrates they 
 had gone so wrong that hundreds and thousands and even mil- 
 lions of pounds, and the whole name and fame of a very fine 
 business, had tumbled into those historic rivers and been seen 
 no more. 
 
 " A mauvais jeu honne mine,''' said Mr. Challoner, and the 
 more unfortunate he was, the more imperturbably did he set 
 his unchangeable countenance in a stern and blank repose, oft" 
 which it was impossible for anybody to take any diagnosis of 
 his feelings, and begin to play again, with shares for his cards 
 and the round world for his roulette-wheels. It was in a very 
 small way indeed, but it was as sweet to him as if he had been 
 a Rothschild. His wife enjoyed selling a cracked teacup, and 
 he enjoyed floating an obscure company. He had not succeeded 
 in anything, and in all probability never would ; but that did 
 not interfere with his enjoyment. 
 
 If he had gone out in a wintry dawn and shot at loris, it 
 would have been uncomfortable and unsatisfactory : even if he 
 had seen loris lying dead on the turf it would not haye pleased 
 him particuli vly ; he was a slow-blooded and humane person ; 
 but to see the money of loris dropped down into bottomless 
 abysses of speculation, and the honor of loris imperilled in 
 hastily- and ignorantly-assumed responsibilities, did please him 
 a little in a sluggish sort of way, and made him smile when he 
 was safely shut up alone, examining loris's signatures, in the 
 Bureau of the Messina Bridge. It was a vengeance much 
 more appropriate to his era than the shot in the wintry dawn 
 would have been. 
 
 Mr. Challoner was essentially a man of his time. He could 
 pocket all affronts, and conceal all resentments ; he could turn 
 pompous placid phrases when his veins were turning cold in 
 wrath ; he could enter a drawing-room behind his wife and 
 loris and endure imperturbably the smile of the drawing-room 
 crowd ; but he was human, nevertheless, and when he saw the 
 fortunes of his wife's friend dropping — dropping — dropping 
 into the Sicilian sands and *seas, he smiled. Mr. Challoner 
 knew by experience that curses may come home again, but 
 money never does. Mr. Challoner would sit at his desk in 
 this large and ancient palace that held the Messina offices, 
 and count up columns of figures, and feel content, — so con- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 311 
 
 tent that when his wife would call for him in the twilight, as 
 she did sometimes, he would say quite good-huraoredly, — and 
 he was not a good-humored man, — " And loris : is loris with 
 you, my love?" 
 
 Yet in this the fourth season of its commercial existence 
 the bridge at the Straits of Messina could not be said to be a 
 success : indeed, it had stopped short at its very commence- 
 ment. The piles were there in the sand for anybody who 
 liked to look at them, but they could not be said to advance 
 , traffic, and they did not satisfy the shareholders. 
 
 It costs a good deal of money to drive piles into sand, and 
 a good many millions of francs were driven in with them, 
 and the crabs ran in and out the piles, and the waves washed 
 them, but there was no bridge to be seen in the soft ambient 
 air spanning the waters. To be sure there was always the 
 bridge upon paper, in the clearest and most colossal designs 
 that could delight the soul of any engineer ; and the engineers 
 said that the piles in the sand were all that could be reason- 
 ably expected from the number of years and the number of 
 millions. But everybody is not an engineer to understand 
 this, and the shareholders were not satisfied : indeed, when 
 ever are shareholders satisfied ? 
 
 If you give them ten per cent, and a bonus, they are fright- 
 ened : they think you are going too fast ; if you give them 
 nothing at all, and make them pay up, they are equally 
 frightened, and rush and sell out and ruin you and them- 
 selves. 
 
 There are only the swine at Gadara that ever could equal 
 shareholders in silliness, so the Lady Joan said ; but she was 
 not herself very angry when the shares of the Messina Bridge 
 dropped from zenith to zero ; sue was quite good-tempered 
 about it; she was only a promoter, not a shareholder, and 
 sensibly said that you cannot expect colossal works to be rattled 
 off in a day. 
 
 Into the sand anu the sea, with the piles, however, had 
 gone a good deal of money, not of hers. " I'm too poor to 
 put money in ; I can only give 'em my brains," she always 
 said, pleasantly, in all affairs of the kind. But loris had 
 put his money in, allured by those fair white parchment 
 designs with all the engineers' lines and dots and figures ; and 
 when he went down to the Gulf of Faro, and looked over the 
 
:'2 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 blue serene sea where the bridge should have been, and was 
 not, his heart sunk as lead would have sunk in the sea. And 
 his heart smote him too, thinking of those shareholders whom 
 in all innocence and good faith he had so unhappily helped to 
 mislead ; and he could not laugh when the Lady Joan called 
 them his Gadarene swine. 
 
 Mr. Challoner did smile, as far as the rigidity of his counte- 
 nance could ever be said to do so. 
 
 He had been a shepherd of the sheep that were silly as 
 swine, and had been well paid to be a shepherd, and could 
 sit at his handsome desk in the old palace where the bureau 
 was, serenely and without responsibility. 
 
 It was only loris that was responsible. 
 
 The bridge by the Gulf of Faro was one of those doomed 
 enterprises which open like a blaze of fireworks on a king's 
 birthday, and in a little while leave but some charred sticks and 
 some burnt fingers to the darkness of the night. Its fate was 
 written, and its name was ruin. 
 
 Even if ever it were to get built, no commerce could ever 
 for centuries to come be enough to repay its gigantic cost. 
 And it never would get built; the seas and the winds for- 
 bade it. 
 
 " Who ever said it would be built ?" cried Lady Joan, in 
 irritation at the simplicity of loris when he was surprised and 
 pained at this. " Who ever said it would be built ? We 
 proposed to try and build it. That is quite another thing." 
 
 When he did not see the difierence, she told him he was a 
 fool. To propose is lucrative ; to build is not so. 
 
 loris, whose imagination had been taken captive with bril- 
 liant fancies of reviving the old commerce between Africa and 
 Italy, of opening up the old highways of the seas and bringing 
 within easy reach the vast untouched riches of the great isles, 
 was inconsolable, and full of bitter anxiet'es, as the months 
 iind the years slipped by and brought no nearer the realization 
 of those splendid schemes that had glittered so brilliantly on 
 paper and parchment. 
 
 He saw no return for his money nor for that of ali the tens 
 of thousands of shareholders embarked in it. He saw con- 
 tinual expenditure : that was all. The public history of the 
 bridge of Faro WiiJ like the private history of the land at 
 Fiordelisa. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 313 
 
 Meantime, to Mr Challoner, both the public and the private 
 history were matters of grim and tranquil diversion. 
 
 " Wrath is a terrible impiety, quite an impiety," said Mr. 
 Challoner, furling his umbrella in the offices that afternoon 
 when his day's labors were done, for on his road thither that 
 morning, meeting an acquaintance in the street, he had heard 
 with regret that Baron Chemnitz and the Marquis Cardello 
 had met in a fatal encounter on the dreary lands of a Flemish 
 frontier town, and that Cardello was dead, and his adversary 
 dying. Mr. Challoner, furling his umbrella, felt a compassion 
 tinged with contempt for both the combatants. 
 
 What good did dying do? 
 
 Mr. Clialloner looked at loris's signatures lying on his desk, 
 and, having made his umbrella quite smof>th, went out into 
 the street again contentedly. 
 
 " So the baron has killed Cardello, and is shot through the 
 lungs himself?" said another acquaintance that he met, and 
 then stopped einbarrassed, fearing Mr. Challoner might have 
 gome fellow-feeling; but Mr. Clialloner had none. 
 
 lie was very sorry for both, he said, very ; and more sorry 
 still for Society. 
 
 And he undid the beautifully-neat umbrella as a few drops 
 fell from the clouds, and went onwards. All the world w^as 
 talking of the tragedy that had closed the great Chemnitz 
 scandal in the darkness of death. 
 
 Mr. Challoner pursued bis tranquil way home to the Tem- 
 ple of all the Virtues, and, as the sounds of his wife's guitar 
 struck on his ear, put his umbrella in the rack, and looked at 
 the sables of loris hanging on the coat-stand of the anteroom, 
 then he shook his head atid smiled grimly. He shook his 
 head for Baron Chemnitz, he smiled for himself. 
 
 On the other side of the Oriental silk curtains his wife and 
 loris were speaking of the tragedy. 
 
 "Alas! that poor woman 1" said loris, absently, thinking 
 of I he lost and lonely creature for whose sake these men had 
 perished. 
 
 Lady Joan, who was tired after the masking of the day and 
 night, struck a chord of her chitarra and laughed, as she lay 
 full length on her sofa. 
 
 " How could she be such a fool !" v : .v<,P 
 
 Mr. Challoner entered the room and went up to the sofa, 
 o 27 
 
314 FRIENDSUIP. 
 
 Btaring hard through his eyeglasses, not seeing, or not willing 
 to see, the heavy frown on his wife's brows. 
 
 " There is bad news from the Straits, loris," he said, 
 without preface, and began to extract letters, papers, and 
 telegraphic despatches from his pocket. 
 
 The fjice of loris, pale and weary already, grew paler. 
 
 Mr. Challoner thought of Baron Chemnitz lying dying with 
 the air whistling through his pierced lungs, thought of him 
 certainly with regret and pity, because he had been so great a 
 headstone of the commercial world, but still with contempt, — 
 the contempt of a superior person. 
 
 " Very bad news," he said, with a sigh. " I fear we shall 
 lose — well, I dare not say how much we shall lose. Read 
 these letters." 
 
 Now, " we" was a figure of speech, — ti\e vague, metaphor- 
 ical, much-beloved pronoun hourly in use at the Casa Chal- 
 loner and at Fiordelisa ; a mere figure of speech, because, 
 though Mr. Challoner was a shepherd, the gOld of loris had 
 gathered together this flock that was more silly than the 
 Gadarene swine. 
 
 loris stretched his hand for the letters : his dark cheek grew 
 very white ; but the Lady Joan snatched them before he could 
 touch them. 
 
 " Oh, bother I What do you come pulling a long face for, 
 Robert? The letters will keep till to-morrow. Bad news 
 always keeps and never evaporates, — worse luck ! Of course 
 everything's going wrong : you wouldn't listen to we, either 
 of you." 
 
 And she read the letters disdainfully, tossing a page here 
 and there to loris. She was not very anxious herself; the 
 concession had been got ages ago, and had been taken dis- 
 creetly and advantageously to the English market, where 
 everybody that knows anything takes his golden eggs at all 
 times to be hatched ; nothing could undo the fact of the con- 
 cession, or take away its profits. As for the sheep that wore 
 silly as the Gadarene swine, if they liked to run down the 
 slope, let 'em. . - ^ — 
 
 That was the Lady Joan's opinion. 
 
 The letters were indeed of very ominous import. Mr. 
 Challoner had not exaggerated ; he never did exaggerate : he 
 waa a very exact man. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 315 
 
 All the letters were bad, and could scarcely have been worse : 
 they told of riotous work-people clamoring for wages, of labor 
 at a stand-still for want of funds, of ill-conducted tides that 
 sucked under every bit of timber or stone deposited near them, 
 of many millions that had produ'jcd nothing except some rot- 
 ten piles, convenient resting-plaie for barnacles ; and, finally, 
 very disagreeable hints that sliareholders were dissatisfied, and 
 clamored, and began to talk of a commission of inquiry. 
 
 loris's changeful face altered from its pallor to an angry and 
 nervous flush. 
 
 " But it is abominable !" he said, rising in an indignant sur- 
 prise and pain. " Why should they write in that manner? 
 They must surely know that I have done my best. Is not my 
 own money gone in the sand and the sea with theirs ? I do 
 not comprehend. Would they insult :ne?" 
 
 " Nobody talks of insult in business, lo," said the Lady 
 Joan, dryly. " In business you pocket your fine feelings. 
 Don't look like that. What does it matter? They are a set 
 of idiots." 
 
 " I do not understand," said loris, unheeding, crushing in 
 his hand one of the letters he had read. " Can any man give 
 better guarantee of his good faith than to risk all he hiis? 
 You said it was an enterprise that was good ; all these men 
 said it was good. I have done my best ; I have imperilled 
 myself; I will pay those laborers that cry for their wages 
 out of my own means single-handed ; if I am penniless to- 
 morrow I will pay them all. Yes, to-day. But how is it 
 my fault? Can I govern the waters? Can I say to the 
 sea. Peace ? Could I tell that the sands would sink and the 
 storms arise ? They have no patience, those people, and no 
 
 He was strongly agitated ; his face had grown very white 
 again, and the nerves of his brow were swollen. He paced up 
 and down the room. He did not understand. 
 ; Mr. Challoner leaned back in his chair, and trimmed his 
 nails thoughtfully. He liked being a shepherd, and knew 
 that he would probably have to cease being a shepherd if 
 those silly flocks screamed so loudly ; yet he enjoyed the mo- 
 ment. 
 
 He felt more compassionate contempt than ever for Baron 
 Chemnitz, who could think of nothing better than those un- 
 
316 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 comfortable and discreditable pistol-shots in a field in Flan- 
 ders. 
 
 Lady Joan picked up the crumpled letter and smoothed it. 
 
 " Don't look so awfully put out, lo," she said, with a roup;h 
 effort at consolation. " It'll all come right. And don't, for 
 heaven's sake, talk of going paying the navvies and ship- 
 wrights yourself. You always will come to grief in business, 
 because you always will bring such fine sentiments into it with 
 you. llemember the china pot that would go swimming down 
 stream with the iron pots: that's you to the life " 
 
 " I shall pay them," said loris, between his teeth. 
 
 In all these bitter and angry letters nothing had stung him 
 80 much as the statement that the foreign workmen on the 
 Gulf of Faro were clamoring against the direction for their 
 unpaid wages. 
 
 " Oh, heavens ! what a fool you are !" she cried, with utter 
 impatience. " You've no more right or need to pay them than 
 the Duke of Oban I Do you think because his name's on the 
 prospectus, heW go and empty his pockets for all those yelling 
 brutes? The works are at a stand-still for a little time for 
 want of funds ; the men must take the rough with the smooth, 
 the fat with the lean : they know that well enough. They 
 can't complain : let 'em look to the contractors who brought 
 'em over to the work ! We're riot the contractors." 
 
 " I shall pay them," said loris. " I shall pay them as long 
 as I can, if I sell Fiordelisa." 
 
 "Soil Fiordelisa!" 
 
 She sprang erect on to her feet. No tigress bereft of her 
 young ever darted into more vivid fury, more instantaneous 
 ferocity of attack and defence. - • 
 
 " Sell Fiordelisa !" Was he mad ? was she ? was the world 
 in its orbit ? were the heavens shining around and above ? 
 Sell Fiordelisa ! 
 
 Mr. Chnlloner, having pared the remaining nail on his little 
 finger, with scrupulous attention, lifted his eyes and saw his 
 ■wife transformed, her eyes blazing, her lips quivering, her 
 head flung back, her voice ringing shrill as a clarion, her 
 breath hissing fierce as a storm-wind. 
 
 " My love, you forget yourself," said Mr. Challoner, with 
 dignity, draping his toga and adjusting his countenance, though 
 no one was there to behold it, " You forget yourself, Joan. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 317 
 
 If our friend wish to part with his estate, what is it to 
 us ?" 
 
 And Mr. Challoner, havin^j said this solemnly, only to re- 
 lieve his conscience, for neither of his companions heard a 
 syllable that he said, picked up the fallen letters and went to 
 his own small study. 
 
 He always withdrew from a scene. 
 
 From the study, though afar off, he still heard the echo of 
 his wife's furious voice, as when shut in a mountain-cavera 
 you hear the roll of the storm in the valley. 
 
 Mr. Challoner lit a comfortable pipe of Oriental tobacco, 
 and unfolded his " Pall-Mall Gazette." 
 
 " She will end with hysterics," he thought, and looked at 
 his watch. It still wanted three hours of dinner-time. The 
 hysterics would have time to come and pass away before the 
 hour should strike at which they were to go and dine with 
 liord and Lady Norwich, a fish dinner for Ash Wednesday, at 
 which his wife would wear a different mask from the wire one 
 of the Corso and the satin one of the Apollo. 
 
 Mr. Challoner smoked on serenely. 
 
 He felt regret, as he smoked, that Baron Cheuinitz, a pillar 
 of the temple of commerce, had not been able to think of any- 
 thing better than those pistols in the damp Flemish field. 
 
 He threw fuel on his stove and slipped his feet in slippers. 
 
 From the distant apartment there still came dully through 
 the closed doors the furious echo of Ms wife's outc;ios. Mr. 
 Challoner felt how thoroughly well Lucretius had understood 
 human nature when he had penned that now hackneyed state- 
 ment about the placid enjoyment of a tempest when one is 
 safely housed oneself. 
 
 CHAPTER XXYIII. 
 
 A FEW nights later there was a dinner at the Casa Chal- 
 loner, to which Etoile had been engaged three weeks before, 
 that she might meet some expected friends of absent Lord 
 Archie's. He had begged them to see her, and had written 
 to his daughter to that effect. They were called Denysons of 
 
 27* 
 
318 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Kingsclere, people passing but a few days in Rome, learned, 
 agreeable, and higb-bred, wbo loved art and Lord Arcbie, and 
 from tbe latter cause visited at the Caaa Challoner, and for the 
 former reason laughed very much at its artistic pretensions. 
 
 When the evening came, Etoile felt reluctant to go ; she 
 got into her dress listlessly, and hesitated as to whether she 
 would not send word she was too fatigued and unwell : it 
 would have been partially true ; a feverish depression weighed 
 on her, and seemed to undo all the good the calm and mild 
 winter had done her. 
 
 " You have been staying out of doors too much at sunset," 
 said her friends; but she felt guilty as they said it: it was 
 not the sunset ; it was rather that the trouble of another's life 
 was entering her own, and the agitation and unreality of it 
 were moving her own, which had so long been serenely fixed 
 in the deep tranquillities and truths of art. From the moment 
 that another life has any empire on ours, peace is gone. 
 
 Art spreads around us a profound and noble repose, but 
 passion enters it and then art grows restless and troubled, as 
 the deep sea at the call of the whirlwind. 
 
 " I will not go," she said to herself; she felt to shudder 
 from the touch of the hand which locked the fetters of loris 
 on him. 
 
 She leaned against the grating of her great casement, 
 watching that sunset which is so oft maligned as the cause of 
 those fevers that men and women's follies, faults, and indiscre- 
 tions bring upon themselves. It was burning beyond the dark 
 lines of Monte Mario across the city ; she could see the radi- 
 ance through the bars ; the rosy warmth fell across the wide 
 square and made the pavement flush till it looked like porphyry. 
 The piazza was empty, except for a brown-frocked monk and 
 a little child dragging a quantity of arbute boughs, doomed to 
 the dyers and cut down ere spring came. She watched the 
 sunset, and did not see loris passing from the palace until he 
 was beneath the casement : it was not his nearest way home 
 from the Quirinal, but he made it so very often. He uncov- 
 ered his head and looked up with a smile ; the window was 
 not much above him. He had beea to see her early that 
 morning. ' . :. ,. 
 
 " Are you dressed already ?" he said, in a litue alarm. 
 " Am I so late, then ?" . ;•, . t i. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 319 
 
 " My clock was fast. Yes, I am dressed ; but, if it were 
 not rude, I would so willingly not go. I was thinking of 
 excusing myself even now." 
 
 A quick fear leaped into his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, do not do that I she would never forgive it." 
 
 " Do you think I care cither for what she forgives or re- 
 venges ?" 
 
 Etoile spoke with a sudden petulance new to her, leaning 
 against the iron grating of the great embrasure. 
 
 " No, no," he murmured ; " of course not ; but she is a 
 bitter foe, and it is not worth while. Come, pray come, for 
 my sake !" 
 
 Her eyes softened at the last words. 
 
 " It is for that I would stay away," she said, a little impetu- 
 ously. " I mean, — speaking to me as you do of her, it is not 
 possible to feel at ease either with myself or her." 
 
 " We must all wear masks in the world," said loris, with a 
 little smile and a brilliant joy lighting his uplifted eyes, for 
 her words had said to him more than she thought lay in them. 
 
 " I have never worn one," she said, quickly. " Where I 
 could not feel frank friendship or at least honest indifference, 
 I have never gone : it makes me ashamed, remembering all 
 that you and I have said, to take her hand, to sit at her table. 
 If she knew, what would she say ?" 
 
 A flush, that was not from the sunset, passed over his face. 
 
 " I will never ask you to do it again. But this once pray 
 come, — for my sake !" 
 
 He raised himself on the stone coping of the wall and passed 
 his hand inside the grating and touched hers. 
 
 " I will not go if you do not," he said, wilfully. " Promise 
 
 me. 
 
 " This once ; no more." 
 
 " No more, then. Give me a rose to wear in my coaL,— 
 just one." 
 
 She smiled, and broke a half-blown rose off the plants in the 
 jardiniere and passed it through the bars to him, — a creamy 
 tea-scented Niphetos. 
 
 He kissed her fingers, and then the rose, uncovered his head 
 once more, and went on quickly across the brightness of the 
 square. 
 
 She remained motionless, leaning against the casement. 
 
320 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 A sense of oppression and of want of frankness and of 
 faith weighed on her. Her creeds were not of tlie world. 
 
 When she piissed up the stairs of the Casa CMialloner she 
 felt eohl, thouj^h the night was warm. The Turkish room 
 was full when she entered, but all she saw in the blaze of 
 lights was the face of loris ; ho had a Niphetos rose in his 
 coat. 
 
 lie came forward, whe' all others had saluted her, with his 
 grave ceremonious grace of greeting. " Trhs-honori de vans 
 voir, Comtesse. La sanU va hie it .^" 
 
 " How distant lie is with her," thought his hostess, with glee. 
 " Marjory must make a mistake. I am sure he never sees her, — 
 except here." 
 
 The dinner passed off v.ell. 
 
 For the first time Etoilo saw Lady Joan in her court mantle 
 of stiff and irreproachable propriety. The Denysons of Kings- 
 clere were not people to be trifled with ; and though they had 
 had tho bad taste to wlrfh to meet a Parisian artist, and had 
 discomfited her a good dv;ul by bringing that request from her 
 father, still they were persona so irreproachably placed and so 
 highly cultured Jiat she diired play no antics with them. She 
 had asked some fashionable Russians and some aristocratic 
 Italians to meet them, had a Monsignore and a very learned 
 German Professor, had put on the Genoa velvet, fresh paint, 
 and English propriety , sei Ions far away from herself at table, 
 and discoursed with seriousness^, decorousness, and amiability. 
 
 Etoile sat near her, and, hi;rself very silent, listened and 
 watched the scene set and rehearsed for the Denysons of 
 Kingsclere. 
 
 Every word seemed to her as if it should bring down some 
 such swift judgment of heaveii as smote Sapphira's lie. She, 
 who knew the truth, seemed t , look down into this woman's 
 soul and see all its shifts an<i sophistries, all its nakedness and 
 meanness, until her own heart grew sick. Her own cheeks 
 grew hot with shame, her own eyes grew dai'k with scorn ; 
 she was absent, and scarcely heard what was said to herself; 
 she was thinking all the while, "Oh, well may the world be 
 sick, since all its food is lies !" ; ,V^ 
 
 And on the other side, far down across the lights and the 
 flowers and ihe glass she saw the Niphetos rose in loris's 
 breast. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 321 
 
 " Your Muse is a very silent one," said Sir Walter Denyson 
 to Ilia liostess, havin;i; watched Etoile some time. 
 
 " She would talk if lo were near her," tsaid Lady Joan, 
 with a short laugh. 
 
 " Does she favor your friend, then ?" 
 
 " I believe so ; but he's only bored by it at present. Per- 
 haps he will be entangled later on ; he is rather weak, you 
 know," said his hostess, in a whisper, with another laugh. 
 
 Sir Walter, who knew his friend Archie's daughter pretty 
 well, was mystified, and said afterwards to his wife that he did 
 not fancy Joan cared much about that good-looking Italian, 
 though slie did live in his house : she did not seem to think 
 much of him. 
 
 The dinner over and the guests gathered once more in the 
 I'urkish room, which looked very pretty witii flowers in the 
 old blue and white bowls, and coffee served in little jf wel- 
 liJce Persian cups, Lady Joan went to the piano, and her watch- 
 dog came in in time to accompany her It was not a night 
 for the guitar; the guitar in all its forms, viol, lyre, chitarra, 
 or mandolin, is a melodious and romantic instrument, sugges- 
 tive of love-trysts and moonlight ; the piano is an unpleasant 
 piece of mechanism, invented to spoil the human voice, and 
 domestic and respectable in proportion to its unpleasantness. 
 On propriety nights. Lady Joan always sang to the piano. 
 
 loris, at the moment that his hostess was singing, passed 
 across the chamber to where Etoile was resting on one of the 
 divans. 
 
 " What beautiful lace, Comtesse ! point d'Argentan, is it 
 not ?" he said, touching the lace of her dress ; then added, 
 very low, — 
 
 " How can I thank you for coming ? but you seem out of 
 spirits, grave, constrained. What is it?" 
 
 " I feel treacherous, — untrue !" murmured Etoile, wearily, 
 all the scorn and pain she felt glancing for one instant from 
 her eyes to his. 
 
 " It is not you that are so," he said, with a sad tenderness. 
 " But you are quite right. This is no atmosphere for you. 
 I will not ask you to come again " 
 
 "No. I will never come again." ■ :' t 
 
 And she kept her word. 
 
 " What a charming fan !" said loris, for the benefit of Sir 
 
 0* 
 
322 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Walter, who was hovering near, longing to approach her, and 
 loris took the fan and talked of its epoch, Louis Seize, and 
 of fan-painters, and of the genre rocaille, on all of which he 
 could speak with judgment, knowledge, and that infinite grace 
 which characterized the least thing that he did or said, and 
 Sir Walter, watching his occasion, joined in the conversation, 
 and found the Muse still silent. 
 
 When Etoile left, which was early, loris could not take 
 her to her carriage, for the host himself performed that office, 
 but loris, giving her back her fan, found means to murmur 
 in her ear,— - 
 
 " I shall go away with the others. The night is over for 
 me ; I have my talisman with me, — my rose." 
 
 " Coquln ! you play the spy for your wife 1" he muttered 
 between his teeth, as standing r.bove in the vestibule he 
 watched the form of Mr. Challoner pass down the staircase ; 
 and his heart beat angrily within him under the Niphetos rose. 
 
 " lo ! come here !" cried the Lady Joan, as he returned to 
 her Turkish room. " Here is Sir Walter raving with jealousy 
 of you : he says Etoile would hardly look at him, she seems 
 so much in love with you." 
 
 " But indeed I never — —^ began Sir Walter, in protest. 
 
 " Monsieur, I am not so happy,'' said loris, with his coldest 
 smile and airiest grace. " No Muse will stoop to earth for 
 me ; and as for the tender passions — -je suis iin homme mort /" 
 
 " You do not look it," said Sir Walter, with a smile. 
 
 Lady Joan frowned heavily. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Lent had come, and Lady Joan had her black domino 
 and loup hung up in a closet, and put on the meeting-house 
 clothes very demurely, and devoted herself in this pious and 
 dreary period of social life to those especial patron saints of 
 hers, the " people passing through." The " people passing 
 through" were rather bored '\a Lent, and were glad to be 
 taken about by her to Mimo's and Trillo's to fill up the dull 
 mornings; and in the evening to dine with her — "just by 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 323 
 
 ourselv<»!S, you know, — nothing but fish" — or ask her to din- 
 ner at their various hotels. In Lent, Lady Joan was always 
 as hard at work as the chiming bells and the swinging censers; 
 it was her harvest- time, when she looked forward to gathering 
 in the fruits of all the seeds of good-nature, hospitality, atten- 
 tion, and love of the fine arts, which she had been sowing 
 so broadcast ever since early winter. " The people passing 
 through" were always beginning by that time to think of 
 passing out; and it was not her fault if they did not bear with 
 them, as " homing" birds are said to bear foreign seeds, in- 
 numerable praises of the Casa Challoner and also numerous 
 articles out of it. 
 
 She had borne with the burden of the Lady Blanks all 
 winter ; she had endured like the stanchest of martyrs their 
 pomposity or prolixity, their coldness or their curiosity : she 
 had toiled early and late to smile on them and their heavy 
 connubial moiety, magistrate, member of parliament, or peer- 
 age nonenity ; their pink, long-limbed, long-lipped daughters ; 
 their straw-colored monosyllabic sons ; their general infinite 
 ponderousness, weariness, and pre-eminent respectability. She 
 had borne them all with patience inexhaustible, with fortitude 
 unsurpassable. 
 
 It was in Lent that she looked for her rewards ; it was in 
 Lent that the Lady Blanks asked her to mornings of classical 
 music and teas for colonial bishops ; that the pink-cheeked 
 daughters and the straw-colored sons rode over and lunched at 
 Fiordelisa ; that the connubial moieties became of the sheep 
 that the crook of Mr. Challoner guarded, or, if less obliging 
 than that, at least bought a Parmegianino or a Tabernacle, a 
 fine bit of buhl, or a nice piece of old Modena tapestry. 
 
 Lent was her harvest, when the narcissi and the tulips were 
 all out in the Campagna, and the Northerners began to feel 
 hot and to get in a fright ab -o^t fever, and the families were 
 pleased to breath the hill-aii of Fiordelisa; and the Lady 
 Blanks would say, " See you in town this season ? — yes? — oh I 
 — yes? Delighted;" and solved that, after all her civility, 
 they must certainly know hof in London. 
 
 In Lent the Lady Blanks kept her busy, and Fiordelisa was 
 better seen without its lord, so that in Lent loris was freer 
 than at any other season of the year. 
 
 In the long, still, sunny mornings, when she was esortinf' 
 
324 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the Lady Blanks to Mimo's and Trillo's, or riding out •with 
 the straw-colored sons to Fiordelisa, he found his way to the 
 flower-filled chamber of Etoile, and passed the hours in that 
 sweet atmosphere of sympathy, that va^ue ecstatic trouble 
 which fills the d;iybreak of love with a light that is only the 
 lovelier for its clouds. 
 
 He found a repose with her that was even sweeter than 
 passion. He was true with her, and before her ; here was her 
 essential charm to him. Whoever has to wear a mask is in a 
 sense ill at ease. In the presence of Etoile he threw his mask 
 away. His real nature — impulsive, generous, erring, repent- 
 ant, tender, contemptuous, sensitive, ironical, by turns — was 
 laid bare to her. He did not speak all the truth to her, 
 but he spoke nothing that was not the truth. 
 
 It was a sort of bond with him to her to feel that he did 
 not deceive her. The perpetual strain of the comedy in which 
 he had always to play his part in the Casa Challoner became 
 wearisome ; and as his mistress never suspected that he wore 
 a mask he never dared to unloosen it. With this other woman, 
 who understood him and stripped the velvet off his mask and 
 saw the pasteboard underneath, he could toss it aside without 
 disguise, and laugh at the use of it or sigh at the use of it, 
 whichever his mood might be. 
 
 It may be doubted if a man is ever really happy with a 
 woman with whom he cannot be candid. The charm of in- 
 timacy lies in perfect ease. To need a lie is to endure a 
 restraint. 
 
 When tired and perplexed with the chaos in which his for- 
 tunes were whirling, in the darkness of lisasters that he scarcely 
 understood and still less knew how to confront, he escaped from 
 them as into paradise to the quiet painted chamber, with the 
 mellow sunlight sleeping on the whiteness of the Lenten lilies. 
 
 Now and then he asked himself, " Where am I drifting?" 
 but he waited for no answer, and drifted on with closed eyes. 
 
 With his mistress he had never bee'.i happy. His heart for 
 a while had been "burned in the poisonous solvent" which tens 
 of thousands take for love, knowin<', no better or loftier thing 
 all their lives long ; but the poison had burned itself away and 
 left as its dregs disquietude and f^atiety. With Etoile he was 
 happy as a man can only be wh'^n the better nature in him is 
 Batisiicd and not ashamed. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 325 
 
 Yet, partly because it was a natural instinct with him to 
 conceal what most he felt, partly from the same sense that 
 makes a man shy of his reli<i;ion bcinj? touched or his emotions 
 lauj:;hed at, chiefly because he was always afraid of the ruthless 
 vengeance of his tyrant on any thought of his that wandered 
 from herself, he began to deny as Hamlet denied, forgetful that 
 such denials fall lightly as rain, but, like a raindrop on the 
 trusty steel, may turn to rust and eat a cruel road. 
 
 Marjory Serope, going to and fro to her weary labors of 
 copying the Rospigliosi Aurora for Lord Fingal, saw again 
 once — twice — thrice in one week the tall, slender form of loris 
 passing across the Square of the Four Horses, and told her- 
 self, with a quickly-throbbing heart, that he was only going to 
 the Quirinal, but saw, despite her longing not to see, that he 
 did not bear towards the Quirinal, but towards the old, gray, 
 ancient mansion where Etoile lived amidst her frescoes and 
 her flowers. 
 
 Marjory, toiling across the last stones of the square in the 
 blast of the stormy Lenten wind, grew sick and pale, grew 
 faint with fear, and as she sat at her work saw the faces of 
 Aurora and the Hours through a mist, and sketched the horses 
 of the chariot out of drawing. 
 
 As much as her work would let her have liberty to do, — 
 for Lord Fingal was in haste for his copy, and she in haste to 
 see the check for it, — she kept a spy's watch upon the old 
 palace by the Colonna gardens; she talked with its porter, she 
 went past it in daybreak and dusk ; she longed to find some- 
 thing, she hardly knew what, something, anything, against the 
 woman that dwelt there. It was so bitterly hard to her : she 
 had to copy all day and get a pittance at the end of her labors, 
 or, if she got more, knew that more was only given out of 
 charity and sympathy because she was a marquis's grand- 
 daughter and thought praiseworthy so to work for her living. 
 And Etoile, — half an hour's rough sketch in charcoal from the 
 hand of Etoile would fetch two hundred guineas in any city 
 of Europe ! 
 
 As she went to and fro across the square, in sunlight or 
 showers, the horses of Etoile would bespatter her with dust 
 or with mud, or she fancied they did, if they passed by twenty 
 yards off". Watching the door, she would see loris pass through 
 with the v?asy and accustomed air of one who goes where he is 
 
 28 
 
326 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 expected and is certain of his reception. Sometimes as she 
 "went home, with her portfolio under her arm, as evening fell 
 she would see Etoile come out to go to some rjinner at Princess 
 Vera's, or some informal " at home" at the Palazzo Farnese. 
 She watched and watched, and hated and hated. 
 
 She was a prudent creature under all her bitterness ; other- 
 wise she could have torn her copy of the Aurora into shreds 
 with hatred of herself for having to sit copying there whilst 
 this woman, who could make her hundreds in an hour, sat 
 doing nothing amidst her palms and hyacinths and smiling 
 in the face of loris ! 
 
 '' I see you often in the Montecavallo, lo," she was imprudent 
 enough to say once, biting her lip, and relying on their long 
 intimacy. 
 
 loris looked surprised and unconscious. 
 
 " But certainly — I go often to the Quirinal." 
 
 " It is not the Quirinal that I meant," she said, sharply. 
 " You go to Etoile." 
 
 loris, who was smoking, looked at his cigarette and shrugged 
 his shoulders. 
 
 " But seldom. One cannot always refuse ; she does me the 
 honor to ask me things about Rome : she is composing a Ro- 
 man picture. She has been spoilt by her world : she is used 
 to rule, and is easily put out." 
 
 He said it very tranquilly : it was his impulse always to slip 
 on his velvet mask before interrogation. 
 
 Marjory Scrope looked at him sharply. He only partially 
 deceived her. 
 
 " What does it matter to you whether she is put out or not, 
 since you dislike her?" 
 
 loris shrugged his shoulders once more. 
 
 *' Mali ! she is a woman ; one cannot be rude. You know 
 I never say no. Do not you and Joanna always reproach me 
 with my weakness ?" 
 
 Marjory laughed uneasily. 
 
 " I suppose she is going to paint you in the Roman picture 
 and make you celebrated forever ?" 
 
 " Trop dlionneurr said loris, with a careless smile. "No, 
 it is purely archaeological details that I give her. You know 
 I like to trace the old ways under the new. I am of a little 
 use to her, — not much." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 327 
 
 " And what is this — archaeological — picture ?" 
 
 " The chariot of Tullia," said loris, with ready invention. 
 He knew the invention was safe : his questioner would not 
 dare to question the great artist as to her future works. 
 
 Marjory looked at him, and still was but half deceived. 
 
 " I do not believe the least ii\ this archasology. I believe 
 you are in love with her 1" she said, with a nervous and 
 anxious laugh. 
 
 " I have never even liked her," said loris, with an admir- 
 able nonchalance. 
 
 *' Nor have I," he thought to himself, " because I have 
 always loved her." 
 
 Why would they question him ? They deserved to get a 
 He for their pains. And indeed people who ask a man about 
 a woman do merit this punishment. 
 
 " What's all this about an archaeological picture, lo ?" said 
 the Lady Joan, fiercely, a day later. " Marjory says you are 
 helping Etoile about a new painting. Is it true ? Because, 
 if it's true, I won't have it. She'll be putting your portrait 
 in it ; I know she will. What do you mean by going there ? 
 And I thought she did not paint at all ; that the doctors had 
 forbidden her. What lies she tells !" 
 
 " Calm yourself, ma ch^re,'^ said loris, with a tranquillizing 
 gesture. " There is no falsehood at all. She is thinking out 
 a great picture, — studying details for it ; that Is all. Where 
 is the harm?" 
 
 " Oh, I suppose she wants to paint something because she 
 makes all her money by painting," said the Lady Joan, with 
 unutterable scorn : she herself sold what other people painted, 
 which is a much loftier occupation. " But what do you want 
 to have anything to do with it for ?" she continued, still 
 fiercely. " It's ridiculoiis going there, wasting your time with 
 her. She's horribly rude to me, — refused my last two invita- 
 tions, and scarcely took the trouble to make even an excuse. 
 I wanted her to meet Victor Louche. I believe she's afraid 
 of all he knows about her." 
 
 loris, in an imprudent moment, laughed contemptuously, 
 and Lady Joan, infuriated, continued : 
 
 ~ " I won't have you go ! If she can't paint her pictures 
 alone, let 'em go unpainted. She never did paint 'em alone ; 
 I always told you so. She always got men to help her, — 
 
328 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 always. She's laying a trap; I can see that. She never 
 comes near me now ; scarcely calls. After dl that I've done 
 for her 1 I can see through her drifti well enough. Does she 
 dare talk of me to you ?" 
 
 " Mais^ ma chP/re ! — as if I should allow any one to profane 
 your name to me !" 
 
 " Profane fiddlesticks !" cried Lady Joan, in a fury. " I'm 
 certain she knows ; I'm certain she guesses." 
 
 loris was silent. It was a delicate subject. 
 
 " You wouldn't go near her if you respected me," said Lady 
 Joan, more and more in a fury. " I knew what she thought 
 that first day up at Fiordelisa. I could see it in her eyes. I 
 dare say she's gone and written to my father. It is disgrace- 
 ful. You have no decency, lo, and no sense, to go and see 
 that woman, and sit with her and talk over me. Oh, it is no 
 use your saying anything. Archaeology ! Rubbish ! When 
 ever did you care about archaeology ? You care about a new 
 face, a trick of manner, a way of looking as if the earth and 
 everybody on it were dust and dirt and muck and mire ! 
 That's new, and takes your fancy, and you forget all my sacri- 
 fices, all I have endured, all I have risked, all I have " 
 
 Hysterics choked her. 
 
 loris rose and paced the chamber. 
 
 " This is absurd, intolerable !" he muttered, half aloud. 
 He was tempted to fling off his mask and throw it at her feet 
 for good and aye. 
 
 "*' Is it absurd that you think an adventuress an angel ?" she 
 screamed, with a shrill hiss. 
 
 " I think no woman an angel : who can who has had the 
 happiness to live with you ?" he interrupted her, with a chill 
 laugh that barbed the dubious compliment and sent it home 
 through the triple mantle of her vanity. 
 
 " Oh, no, I never claim to be one," she said, bitterly : " I 
 leave such pretensions for those who have more wit to paint 
 their wings than I have ; for those who fool you with child- 
 like eyes and the seriousness of a would-be Muse and some 
 paltry talk of the Greek gods and heroes. When it is for her 
 you neglect me, — forget me, — insult me " 
 
 " Who has insulted you ? W^hen do you ever let yourself 
 be forgotten ? What is the use of my coming to you ? You 
 only receive me with reproach and reprimand," said loris, tak- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 329 
 
 ing refuge in answering anger, and letting escape liim a touch 
 of all the sombre irritation of which his soul was full. " What 
 do you require that I do not give up? Is there any moment 
 of my time my own ? You even claim to know my thoughts 
 better than I know them. Do I ever rebel ? Do I lake my 
 freedom, as other men would ? M(i chhre, be reasonable. 
 You treat me like a spaniel : you chain me and you cuft" 
 me. Cannot you be content? I am your dog, if it be not 
 an affront to any dog to say so." 
 
 He spoke with the bitter though subdued detestation of 
 himself, and of his bondage, that day by day was growing 
 sterner and stronger in him ; and the mere glimpse of any 
 such passion in him filled her with terror. 
 
 If he had only read her aright, he might with ease have 
 been her master. 
 
 This was not the first of such scenes that the last few weeks 
 had witnessed ; not the first muttering of that storm of revolt 
 which some day or another she felt would burst above her 
 head and wrench from her not only himself but — Fiordelisa. 
 She grew terrified ; her breath failed her before the vision that 
 for a moment flashed before her eyes. Had she wrung the 
 galled withers once too often ? Had she strained a strand too 
 far the ever-yielding rope ? 
 
 She fell at his feet in a tempest of emotion, rage, fear, sus- 
 picion, apprehension, all seething in her, as angry seas seethe 
 under the lightning and the hurricane of a storm. 
 
 Vast is the power of turbulence ; it will conquer when all 
 that is holy, that is tender, that is long-suffering, that is noble, 
 shrink away unheard and disregarded. 
 
 loris might have ruled her had he read her aright ; but, 
 alas ! he missed the occasion to seize the mastery. He let her 
 rave on, and drooped his head to the storm. 
 
 When she was somewhat calmer he kissed her hands. 
 
 " Ccirussima mia, you excite yourself needless)" " he said, 
 and bent his knee beside her. " If it be as you fancy, — if 
 any one divine your amiable goodness to me, — the more need 
 is it to lull such suspicions by not displaying any jealousy of 
 me: you must see that, do you not? Be tranquil." 
 
 "You will never go to her, then, — never?" muttered his 
 tyrant, clenching her hands on his wrist. ,. . * 
 
 " Never ; or at the utmost merely as much as courtesy and 
 
 28* 
 
330 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 caution require," said loris. " Pray be tranquil, mia cava / 
 These scenes distress me unspeakably. There is no kind of 
 ground for them." 
 
 She grew calmer and was convinced. 
 
 loris as he knelt there felt none of the composure that he 
 aflFected so admirably. His temples ached with the scream of 
 her voice, his pi:lses thrilled with apprehension and anger, his 
 heart beat with a stifled shame and a stifled rage. He was 
 tempted by a great longing to fling off the mask and tell the 
 truth and bid her do her worst. 
 
 But he hesitated ; the old habit of subserviency to her was 
 on him heavy and paralyzing. He believed also that he was 
 vitally necessary to her, the very breath of her life ; he was 
 reluctant to strike her so dread a blow ; he was afraid to rise 
 and say to his tyrant, " I will be free!" 
 
 " Another time," he said to himself: another time he would 
 confess to her that his allegiance was a lifeless thing of habit 
 and of duty. Another time he would say to her, " Love is 
 not in our command, and mine is dead." 
 
 " Another time." 
 
 And he murmured words that were false, and spent caresses 
 that were joyless and faithless, and knew that he was false to 
 his fairest faith, yet had not strength to unclasp the hands 
 that held him and put back the mouth that wooed him, and 
 say the simple truth : " Our love is dead !" 
 
 He left the house ill at ease and ashamed, conscious that he 
 had been disloyal to all the best emotions of his nature ; feel- 
 ing as though he had forever lost the right to look into the 
 clear, proud eyes of Etoile. 
 
 Yet he fancied he would have done more wrong had he 
 risen up boldly and told the truth to his mistress and broken 
 from the unholy bonds that held him. 
 
 The curious honor of his world and of his sex was about 
 him like the fetters of an encircling serpent about the living 
 flesh, paralyzing action and numbing and deadening life. The 
 woman that was worthless in his sight was sacred. The 
 woman that was sacred in his sight was sacrificed. 
 
 He fancied this was honor ; and if the men of his genera- 
 tion could have been put to the vote they would have declared 
 it honor too. 
 ;. For men of the world have set up an idol called honor 
 
FRIENDSUIP. 331 
 
 which is a false idol, rery foolish, very cluraay, very cruel, yet 
 to which they immolate themselves with a sincerity and a 
 stupidity that are touching, and immolate oftentimes those 
 dear to them. 
 
 According to this idol the fiat goes forth that a man may 
 blamelessly desert an innocent woman, but not a guilty one ; 
 he may break the heart of the bruised lily, and no harm done, 
 but he must bide the brunt with perjured Guinevere, or be 
 man-sworn. It is curious reasoning and illogical, and the 
 results brutal and often tragical ; but men in adhering to it 
 are quite honest. 
 
 It is this honesty which women sharp of sight and keen 
 of execution turn with ruthless skill to their own purposes. 
 
 Men are never as Jever as they think themselves, and are 
 generally much better than other people suppose them, 
 
 " loris is in love with Etoile !" said his mistress, showing 
 her white teeth in her harsh laugh, but airing her indiflFerence, 
 as she rang the changes on the same subject a little later the 
 very next day, when, as it chanced, Etoile was carelessly 
 named in her presence by Douglas Graeme after luncheon. 
 
 " What folly !" said loris, angrily ; and his heart beat 
 thickly, for he felt once again a coward and untrue. 
 
 " I believe you are !" she cried, glad to say so, since her 
 cousin, Douglas Graeme, was by to hear. " I do believe you 
 are ! Well, if it be so, gare d, vous 1 I should not wish to see 
 any friend of mine in her toils." 
 
 Douglas Graeme opened his blue eyes wide. 
 
 " You mean the great painter that I have seen at your 
 house? Oh, she is as cold as ice; every one knows that; 
 she is quite indilTerent to men. If loris " 
 
 " Has touched her, he has a marvellous conquest, I suppose 
 you mean ?" said the Lady Joan, with impatience. " How 
 can you believe such trash? Innocent! So is a flower-pot 
 innocent; but when the crickets and mice tumble into it, 
 where it's set to trap them covered over with moss, I don't 
 fancy they think so, do they ? Do you believe she made all 
 the money she spends by her pictures ? Good heavens, Douglas, 
 where have you lived ? Are you in short frocks still ?" 
 
 " I do not understand," began her cousin, who looked 
 bewildered. > ' •: 
 
 ; loris grew a shade paler. ( ?V sJ v 
 
332 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " It would, at least, be well to respect your flither's friend 
 and your own guest," he said, in a low tone ; but there were 
 a sternness and a menace in his voice which were new from 
 his lips and strange to lier car. 
 
 " A woman my father's seen once or twice in a few studios 1" 
 she said, with boundless scorn. " How can you call her his 
 friend?" 
 
 " Because she is so." 
 
 " She is nothing of the kind 1 She is the daughter of that 
 old beast Voightcl, and my father is a fool about anything that 
 Voightel " 
 
 " You said the other day she was found in the streets." 
 
 " So she was. Voightel never noticed her till she grew 
 famous, — if you call it famous, — thanks to David Israels in his 
 dotage." 
 
 " Is all the world in its dotage, then, also ?" 
 
 " Very likely it is. What are her pictures, after all ? No- 
 thing but would-be Geromes ; rank imitations of all his besti- 
 alities. Tom Tonans says so. They wouldn't hang them 
 even in England." 
 
 " It is a pity — for England." 
 
 loris rose, as he said so, and lighted a cigar. 
 
 Lady Joan burst into a boisterous laugh. 
 
 " You see he's in love, don't you, Douglas?' 
 
 " He has been so a long time, my cousin : we all are," said 
 Douglas Graeme, gallantly, being desirous of preventing a 
 scene. 
 
 "Stuff!" said his cousin, too violently irritated in her own 
 soul to be pacified with any such mere compliment. " He is 
 in love with Etoile : you see he is in love with Etoile. He 
 frowns if one says a syllable, and can't talk of her without 
 turning pale or red. Poor lo ! Can't you find anybody better 
 to erect into an angel than a Paris Sappho that has knocked 
 ■ about Bohemian ateliers all her days, and gets herself up in 
 intellect and innocence to please you, as she drapes her lay 
 figure in calico and calls it Pudicitia? Do be more sensible, 
 pray. Take some Vittoria Colonna of your own nationality : 
 you can know all about Aer." 
 
 loris shrugged his shoulders and turned his back. 
 
 *' Your interest in me is most benevolent," he said, for the 
 benefit of Douglas Graeme. " But I am not in the peril you 
 
FlilENDsmv. 333 
 
 imagine, ybz dlionneur. And, if you will allow me to correct 
 you, Sappho did not Kiint." 
 
 lori.s went uway angered deeply and a little ashamed of 
 himself. 
 
 He felt as the faithless follower felt when the cock crew, — 
 as all feel who let a treachery pass by unpunished and condoned 
 by a cowardly silence. He felt disloyal with a twofold dis- 
 loyalty. As for the slander, it was the mere venomous breath 
 of a jealous woman ; so he said to himself. He could have 
 laughed aloud at it, it seemed so ludicrous to him, so clumsy, 
 so poor. Yet it clung about him like a noxious vapor that 
 hangs in the air. 
 
 You cannot strike the vapor, nor seize it, nor see it ; yet it 
 is there, spoiling all sweet genial weather and flower-scented 
 breezes, and making the glad day sickly. 
 
 The lie seemed to buZii about him like a mosquito stinging 
 in the sunshine. 
 
 Lady Joan, left alone, sat lost in thought. On calm reflec- 
 tion she was convinced that her friend Marjory's apprehensions 
 resulted only from the fags and fancies of her friend Marjory's 
 brain, whose weakness of hopeless jealousy she knew. 
 
 " Of course he cares for nobody but me," she thought. 
 She filled the universe to herself; she was convinced that she 
 filled it equally to him. She was easily lulled, easily blinded, 
 because her immeasurable vanity was Ibrever between her and 
 any truth. 
 
 She was envious of Etoile, she distrusted the influence of 
 Ktoile, and she hated her for her glance, for her words, for her 
 modes of life, for her scarcely-veiled contempt, — for anything 
 and everything, — as only one woman can hate another. 
 
 But Lady Joan, though Cleopatra in her idle hours, was 
 not a Cleopatra to whou) Mark Antony was all. She was a 
 Cleopatra to whom her ships, her freight'*, her slaves, her allies, 
 and her merchandise in general were always more than her 
 hero ; and at this moment she was a Cleopatra overburdened 
 with many prosaic anxieties. 
 
 She had caught fire as ea.sily as tow held to a match to the 
 incendiary whispers of her friend, and had flamed fiercely as 
 petroleum ; but the flame had soon died down, and only burned 
 dully among the embers of sullen fears. loris gone, and 
 Douglas Graeme also, she grew a prey to more solid and more 
 
334 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 terrestrial anxieties than those of passion. Her bureau was 
 inundated with papers and lior head was filled witli plans ; acres 
 of arithmetic spread out before her eyes, and reams of cor- 
 respondence, with telejz;ram8 in cipher, aroused and tore her 
 from the preoccupation of amorous doubts. 
 
 J3oyond everything she was a woman of business. 
 
 She went across to her husband's little sanctum and opened 
 the door. 
 
 " Robert, come out and talk over my idea." 
 
 Mr. Challonor, who was busy writing, took his eyeglasses 
 oflF liis nose and emerged from his den. 
 
 " It is of little use to talk," he said, gloomily : " it is time 
 to act." 
 
 " Of course it is. That's j ust what I want to see you about. 
 One ought to go there directly." 
 
 " One ought," said Mr. Challoner, still deep in gloom. 
 " Besides, you must not give any more dinners ; really the 
 cost " 
 
 •' I'm sure we've everything from Fiordelisa, except the 
 fish," said his wife, "and the foreign wines and the sweet- 
 meata. And I shall go on giving dinners till I go, — if I do 
 go. People are nasty the moment you don't stop their mouths 
 with a dinner. What do you think, by the way, Marjory told 
 me this morning about Etoile ? — that lo'? in love with her I 
 Did you ever know such an idiotic absurdity ?" 
 
 Mr. Challoner was too wrapped in gloom to smile, though 
 the ghost of what might in happier circumstances have been 
 a smile came upon his face. 
 
 " I saw it coming on long ago ; indeed, the very night she 
 came here," he replied, tranquilly ; and he did, even in his 
 gloom, rather enjoy saying that. 
 
 His wife's eyes flashed fire. 
 
 " Oh, did you?" she said, roughly. " You're always very 
 clever in seeing through a millstone, and never see an inch 
 before your own nose. lo's just told me he can't endure her." 
 
 " It does not interest me either way," said Mr. Challoner, 
 drearily. " Did you call me to tell me that ?" 
 
 " Of course not," said Lady Joan, searching among her 
 cipher telegrams and her acres of arithmetic. 
 
 " I want you to read all these, and decide whether you 
 think we can do it." ... . :. >., v v ■■- -.^ v ,-.w ^^ ^^ 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 335 
 
 Mr. Challoncr grumbled, fixed hia glasses, and busied him- 
 self in her papers. 
 
 She was as great as that Emperor of Byzantium who ruled 
 the East and the West, yet busied himself selling his hens' 
 eggs and bought diamonds with the proceeds. 
 
 Were it a question of five francs for a coffee-cup or five 
 millions for a concession, she was equal to either fortune. 
 Nobody could say that she despised trifles. She might bo 
 marking out a royal subsidy in her meditations, but if any- 
 body came in that wanted a length of lace she devoted herself 
 to the lace. She really ought to have been a greater woman 
 than she was ; but then, alas ! her vanity obscured her vision : 
 it was a myopia which impeded her way to entire success. 
 
 Mr. Challoncr knew this very well, and on occasions even 
 said it — flatly. Then they had a battle-royal. But they did 
 not have a battle now, as he gave all his mind to her telegrams 
 and arithmetic. 
 
 She was at this time almost too much o^ierwhelmcd with busi- 
 ness, dearly as she loved it. She was sending Titian's " Choice 
 of Paris" off to the most puissant Imperial Government of 
 Pieklehaube, for which an Inspector of Fine Arts, more en- 
 lightened than the Russians are, had just purchased it. She 
 felt that she would miss the eight-feet- high nudities behind 
 her dinner-table sadly, but she obeyed beyond anything the 
 injunction, " Put money i' thy purse, put money i' thy purse." 
 She was also shipping off several Old Masters to a loan collec- 
 tion in Edinburgh. Her name looked well in the catalogues, 
 and the loan meant generally an eventual sale to some wealthy 
 body or another visiting the collection. Again, and first and 
 foremost, she had a great transaction in meditation. 
 
 Lady Joan loved transactions ; she always found them 
 lucrative. " Keep on turning money : some will always stick 
 to your fingers," said a capitalist once; and she thought the 
 same. 
 
 The present transaction was no less a one than the medi- 
 tated transfer of the Societii Italiana-In 4ese del Ponte Cala- 
 brese-Siciliano from one body of shepherds to another. 
 
 The Duke of Oban had withdrawn from the presidency in 
 disgust and with stroi / language, expressed in rough Doric; 
 the sheep that were as silly as swine were rushing down their 
 slope with such headlong haste and uproar that all the world 
 
336 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 could hear them, and Mr. Challoner with his crook could do 
 nothing to stop them. The workmen down on the coast, by 
 tlie .sunken piles and the devourinj^ sea, had been paid for some 
 weeks at the cost of loris ; she began to foresee that if things 
 went on at this rate Fiordelisa would be imperilled, Lt her 
 shriek as she would. 
 
 Lying awake at nights between her evening's cotillons and 
 her morning's hric-d-brac, she had turned it over and over all 
 Carnival in her busy brain, and now that with Lent things 
 were really at a climax and could not well be worse anyhow, 
 her busy brain had cleverly hit on a transfer. 
 
 If a transfer could only be accomplished everything would 
 be saved (except the sheep that weie as silly as swine), and 
 everything would be clianged (except Mr. Challoner's crook). 
 Now, in the whole length and breadth of the financial world, 
 as on the turf, there is nothing so difficult as to *' raise a dead 
 'un in the betting ;" nothing so arduous as to float once more 
 into the ambient air a bubble that has already collapsed and 
 burst. 
 
 It is quite easy to inflate a new commercial balloon ; nothing 
 easier. A door-plate, a good name or two, and plenty of ad- 
 vertisements ; these are all that is necessary. There need be 
 nothing behind the door-plate, nobody behind the names ; the 
 advertisements will do all that is required, if only the thing 
 be new, quite new. Now, the Messina bridge was not new ; 
 it was an exploded rocket, a pulled cracker, a melted sorhct, an 
 umbrella turned inside out, — anything, indeed, that is limp, 
 collapsed, exhausted, and done for; but the energy of the 
 Lady Joan was not to be daunted by these facts. Indeed, she 
 cared very little for facts at any time. 
 
 Facts were for the odious people that carried dates at their 
 fingers' ends and a list of pottery-marks in their pockets, who 
 went to museums to verify their history, and to their bankers 
 to know the wisdom of any enterprise : she was above such 
 little trivialities of common sense as facts. 
 
 So she resolved to set afloat on the markets of the world a 
 transfer. 
 
 " But, mia can'ssima" objected Mimo Burletta, in a simile 
 born of his trade, " the poor pot is dropped, broken all to 
 pieces : you cannot make it whole again ! You cannot." 
 
 "Stuff I" said the Lady Joan. "Don't you join 'em with 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 337 
 
 white of egg and paint 'em all over whon your pots break ? 
 So shall I." 
 
 Mimo was silent : he was aware of the excellence of the 
 process. Occasionally, horrid people called connoisseurs would 
 scrape with a penknife, and discover the white of egg, and the 
 paint that was over the glaze, instead of under it. But then 
 connoisseurs are few. lie smiled at then when he met them, 
 as the Romans at death, but he never otfered to sell them any- 
 thing. Were there financial connoisseurs on the Exchanges? 
 Mimo did not know. He felt muddled, and did not venture 
 on any more remonstrance. 
 
 "She is a great creature," he thought to himself: there 
 were always the pigs to show that, the lovely pink pigs slowly 
 maturing to succulent bacon, m the patent English galvanized- 
 iron pig-styes out at Fiordelisa. 
 
 And she prepared to join her broken pot and paint it. 
 
 She projected a transfer, i.e., the same plant, the same 
 projects, the same society, but a new purchase by new pur- 
 chasers, an issue of new shares, and an entirely new pros- 
 pectus. 
 
 Modern enterprises mainly consist of a prospectus, as a 
 tadpole of its head. 
 
 She also intended to have a new name. She meant to call 
 her piles in the sand, etc., " The Mediterranean Company for 
 the Facilitation of Communication in the South." 
 
 This was beautifully vague, and would also allow for the 
 driving in of other piles into many other places on the sea- 
 shores of Europe and Africa. 
 
 Lady Joan had not lived in Damascus without learning a good 
 deal about speculation. In Asia and Africa speculators of all 
 kinds are as many as the mosquitoes. In the wasted garden 
 of the world, English bankers, French financiers, Greek and 
 Italian and German agents d'affaires^ Jews of all sorts and 
 sizes, fatten there as fatten the locusts, and like the locusts 
 devour everything ere harvest be due. The dream-cities of 
 the " Arabian Nights" are the 8t<3ws in which the children 
 of Israel gorge, and the splendid and lovely lands that were 
 once the envy of Alexander, and the amaze of Herodotus, are 
 now in their misery delivered over to the oppression and the 
 extortion of tyrants far viler than Pharaoh or Mithridates, 
 Tamerlane or Aurungzebe, tyrants whose sceptre is a pen, 
 F 2U 
 
338 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 whose throne is a greasy oflBce-stool, and whose symbol is a 
 pair of shears. 
 
 Far and wide, from the Fellah of Egypt to the Arab of 
 Lebanon, from the negro that slaves in Soudan to the Bud- 
 dhist that toils among the canebrakes on the Irrawaddy, one 
 and all bend their backs to the rod of the European adventurer, 
 one and all are stript and cheated and plundered and sacrificed, 
 to put money in the purses of contractor and commission 
 agent ; one and all pay by the sweat of their brow and the 
 famine of their bodies for the curse of civilization that falls 
 across them, devastating as drought, blighting as the close 
 clouds of locusts when the sun grows dark with them. 
 
 Prostrate the East lies, to be strangled and sheared by the 
 West. 
 
 How dare it complain ? The adventurers bring it in return 
 a steam-engine and a religion. 
 
 Lady Joan had not so long watched this shearing process 
 without learning more or less how to do it, and getting a pair 
 of scissors if not a pair of shears. 
 
 Indeed, so throughly congenial was the East to her by reason 
 of the perpetual clipping which is possible there, that it was a 
 \Qry great pity she ever had left it. Italy, since it has en- 
 joyed freedom, has felt the shears a good deal, but it is never 
 so possible to wield them incessantly in the temperate zone. 
 People talk, and things get into the papers, in Europe ; in 
 Asia you are beyond all that. 
 
 At this juncture Lady Joan sighed for Asia : on revient ton- 
 jours d, ses premiers amours. In Asia the workmen never 
 would have dared to squeal for wages ; there would have been 
 the kouhash on their backs, and spirited pashas to appeal to, 
 who would have known better than to give a hearing to a lot 
 of diggers of the sand. 
 
 She sighed for Asia, but she had no necromancer's wand to 
 transport Messina beyond the Dardanelles : so she turned her 
 thoughts, /ante tie inienx, to London. 
 
 Only to carry out her intentions it was absolutely necessary 
 that she should go to London, and this at once, if her scheme 
 were to have any chance of prosperity. 
 
 There is no place like London for finding the white of egg 
 that will adhere and the paint that will stick on the glaze of 
 financial pots that are broken. 
 
FRIENDSIIJP. 339 
 
 Above all, beyond all, and most odious of all, loris must 
 know nothing of it till the mended pot was successfully painted 
 and sold. loris, on occasion, had odd, qaixotic caprices. 
 lorLs would almost certainly be for leaving the shreds of the 
 pot untouched, whilst, as best he could, he would essay to save 
 the sheep that were silly as the Gadarenc swine. loris, if he 
 knew her scheme, would inevitably, in one of his idiotic im- 
 pulses, spoil all. 
 
 This was what she had resolved as she had lain awake after 
 her Carnival balls, rei^tless, angry, and disturbed. 
 
 She knew how to paint the pot, being conversant with all the 
 ins and outs and technicalities of business, and having a passion 
 for speculation, which was the one kindred sentiment that 
 linked her and Mr. Challoner together in the one isolated 
 harmony of their lives. 
 
 She knew, or thought she knew, the kind of people to float 
 it; she knew, or thought she knew, the puppets needful to 
 replace the Duke of Oban and the rest of the indispensable 
 marionettes. She took her husband into her confidence, and 
 he, otherwise willing that loris should be ruined, was very 
 unwilling to cease to be a shepherd himself, and very cordially 
 approved of all her intentions. 
 
 "Do you think we can do it?" she said, this morning, as 
 her " idea" ploughed a slow way through the heavy earth of 
 Mr. Challoner's more stolid intelligence, backed with letters 
 from trusty correspondents in various commercial dens and 
 rows of figures drilled like Prussian regiments. 
 
 Mr. Challoner gazed drearily and solemnly into vacancy, 
 and laid the mass of papers on his knee that related to the 
 mending of the broken pot. 
 
 " Yes, I think you can," he said, with the cautious utter- 
 ranee of a man who never committed himself. "Ye — es, I 
 think you can : it promises ; but I suppose you see very well 
 that it will necessitate your going to London." 
 
 Across his wife's face fell a gloom deep as that of a moon- 
 less night. 
 
 " Of course I know I must," she said, sullenly, and with a 
 stanch and heroical finnness. 
 
 The obligation to go away lay on her soul like lead. It 
 harassed her night and day. It haunted her like a bad dream, 
 but she was resolved to brave everything, and go. Mended 
 
340 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and painted the pot must be, and nobody could do it but 
 herself. 
 
 When inclination and interest pulled different ways, she was 
 far too heroic a woman not to make inclination walk the plank 
 and disappear. The Venusberg was all very well, but Capel 
 Court and Cannon Street were better. Besides, her Venus- 
 berg was safe enough : she would put a padlock on it, and 
 leave her watch-dog on guard. 
 
 She was quite of Lady Cardiff's opinion, that Love was the 
 bonbons and olives of the banquet of life ; Money was the 
 soup and fish and the roti. Still, the necessity to go away 
 harassed her soul as the steam plough harrows the wild High- 
 land waste. 
 
 It was absolutely necessary to go to London, and to go to 
 London without him. She passed feverish days and sleepless 
 nights, torn between desire and dread, — desire to go and make 
 her projects realities, dread to leave him behind her near the 
 woman she hated. 
 
 If she did not go, she saw that Fiordelisa might be swamped 
 with the piles in the sands by the sea, and loris without 
 Fiordelisa would not have been half loris, nay, no loris 
 at all, as he stood in her measure. Being forced to lose 
 either loris or Fiordelisa, she would unhesitatingly have let 
 loris go. Passion was strong with her, but never so strong 
 as self-interest. The Dame du Comptoir outbalanced the 
 Cleopatra. 
 
 Nevertheless, the conflict of the two was tough and bitter, 
 and rent her sorely as they wrestled. She began to grow worn, 
 hectic, and haggard ; in these days of indecision she became 
 nervous, restless, sullen, hysterical, by turns. loris was touched 
 with remorse at what he thought was a carking anxiety for his 
 welfare ; and Mr. Challoner, who for once was honored with 
 being in her secret, thought it advisable to make a few visits 
 all by himself in society with a sombre air, like a newly-mado 
 widower's, and hint that decline had always been terribly fatal 
 to her family ; his wife would over-exert herself; alas 1 yes, she 
 would ; her energy was so great, and her physical strength not 
 proportionate to it. 
 
 " A most devoted husband," said Society, and thought he 
 expressed himself very nicely. 
 
 " An excellent person ; most attached couple," said General 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 341 
 
 Desart, standing on the club steps, whilst Mrs. Desart was at 
 home having her eyebrows painted on her lovely brow by the 
 Duke of Buonretiro. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Lent pa^ssed, and the weather grew warm ; in after-years 
 when they looked back to the Lenten time it wi»s beautiful 
 and embalmed, as with the scent of buried blossoms and the 
 sounds of music forever stilled, in the hearts of both loris and 
 Etoile. 
 
 It was the true and perfect springtide of the year, when 
 Love walks among the flowers, and comes a step nearer what 
 it seeks with every dawn. 
 
 Without Love, spring is of all seasons cruel, — more cruel 
 than all the frost and frown of winter. 
 
 As this springtide grew, and with it grew the wannth, and 
 the mountain-sides changed to a dewy greenness, and the 
 plains were all a sea of grasses and of flowers, she moved from 
 her old palace to a villa as old outside the gates, set in a grand 
 old garden, and with the Anio running by its walls. loris 
 found the place for her, persuaded her to rent it, charged him- 
 self with facilitating the transport there of her bronzes, tapes- 
 tries, and canvasses, and was glad that the copyist of the 
 Aurora would no longer be able to spy upon him when he 
 should pass up on to these old gray terraces. 
 
 His mistress heard of this charge with anger ; it bewildered 
 and annoyed her ; go away herself she fancied that she must ; 
 she would fain have had the woman in whom she was vaguely 
 conscious of a rival, away also. 
 
 " Is it true that she has taken Rocaldi ?" she said sharply 
 to loris. 
 
 loris looked up. " Who has taken Rocaldi ?" 
 
 " What afi'ectation ! as if you didn't know ! They say you 
 took it for her " 
 
 " Pardon me, I forgot. Yes, I believe she has taken it ; 
 but it is no doing of mine : indeed, I told her it was not 
 thought very healthy." 
 
 29* 
 
342 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 He looked so indilFcrent, and spoke so tranquilly, that his 
 listener, as usual, was deceived. 
 
 " Marjory was mistaken, and so was I: he does not care," 
 she thought to herself. Aloud she said, with a laugh, " It is 
 on the road to Fiordelisa. I suppose that counterbalances its 
 unhealthiness. She is certainly bent on your subjugation, lo I" 
 
 "Machere! What folly !" 
 
 He had passed all that morning in the old neglected gar- 
 dens of Rocaldi with Etoile, and in the stately melancholy 
 rooms, arranging her pictures, planning changes for her, di- 
 recting workmen, listening to the birds that filled the ilex 
 thickets and flew about the palms. 
 
 But he was not afraid ; Etoile and she seldom met, and he 
 had no longer to fear intimacy between them : moreover, he 
 knew that Etoile never spoke of him : it would not be like her 
 nature or her ways. 
 
 " Vous Vavez vonlu /" he thought to himself, as he saw how 
 completely his mistress was blinded; she had brought it on 
 her own head; she had kept him in a subserviency, and de- 
 manded from him a surrender of his time and of his thoughts, 
 which no man will give with )ut being driven into the self- 
 compensation of concealment. Time and thought, like all his 
 other possessions, were signed and sealed away into her hands, 
 but it was only human nature that he should rebel and take 
 his own out of both time and thought unknown to her. His 
 life had been pervaded by her like a room by the smell of 
 camphor wood. Open the window, bring in flowers, burn 
 pastilles, throw rose-water about, do what you will, there is 
 the smell of the camphor wood still. To escape it you must 
 go out to the fresh air. He had done so. 
 
 The fault was hers. 
 
 She had made passion into a police sergeant, and put love 
 under lock and key. Passion betrayed and Love escaped 
 her : it was only in the laws of human nature. 
 
 But she did not know it. 
 
 To loris, as to every Italian, mystery and silence were the 
 very essence of Love's life; to steal away when the lark sings, 
 is the joy of every lover since the days of Ilomeo. His mis- 
 tress, who had called to all the crowing cocks at dawn to see 
 him on her balcony, had thrown aside the sweetest spell of 
 power. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 343 
 
 The lover in him was once more awake, and he deceived his 
 jailer as the lover ever does. 
 
 Meanwhile, Etoile remained unconscious of the labyrinth 
 she entered, conscious only of the fatal paradise of an artist's 
 dreams. 
 
 Etoile thought very little about the world at any time, and 
 much of its evil was written in a de-'^d tongue to her. 
 
 Of course nobody would have believed that. Nevertheless 
 so it was. 
 
 A woman whose chief companionship has been that of wise 
 men will keep an absolute honesty of mind, because she will 
 have been in contact with honest minds that would not con- 
 taminate her own. Women are the chief corrupters of women. 
 Men, unless they are very bad (and there are not many that 
 are so), in their intercourse with a woman whom they find 
 without guile, will, when they speak of evil, bid her know 
 it as the base nettle, which has no power to sting the bold 
 and innocent hand that grasps to cast it forth. Women will 
 smile and say the nettle is difficult to pluck, — oh, yes, no 
 doubt, — but then there is a flower inside it ; only touch and 
 see. 
 
 Passions and sins had been revealed to her. She had seen 
 the human pulses all laid bare by the anatomists of three thou- 
 sand years of human culture. She had heard the thinker 
 muse aloud, the cynic sneer, the poet sigh, over the conflict of 
 the beast and of the god which, in its various shapes, is yet 
 the same in all the human histories, be they under the law of 
 Manu, or Vishnu, or Aphrodite, or Christ. 
 
 She was not ignorant of evil, but innocent of it. 
 
 As women of religion, with the red cross on their breasts, 
 bend over the wide war wounds of naked men, so she beheld 
 corruption, yet remained aloof from it; knew it, and yet knew 
 it not ; beheld and heard of it, yet was unsullied by it, as a 
 child may walk clean through a lazaretto. 
 
 The world hardly understands this difference. 
 
 It cannot comprehend that the awakening of the intelligence 
 and the sleep of the senses can long be co-existent. 
 
 Shakspeare knew this truth. Goethe did not. Gretchen 
 has no middle way betwixt a stupid ignorance and an abso- 
 lute surrender. But Imogen knows well the perils of hei 
 path, but with clear eyes and with firm feet goes onward. 
 
344 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The women of Shakspeare are all innocent, with the noblest, 
 fairest, truest faith and form of innocence, but they are not 
 ignorant of evil. Of all the poets' women they are the most 
 perfect. But they know the woe of the world that is around 
 them, and, when the hour comes, the passion. 
 
 But if a living woman comes, who has like Imogen her 
 drawn sword yet her child's heart, the world will never believe 
 in her. 
 
 She will shake the rock of its disbelief as vainly as Desde- 
 mona shook Othello's. Faithful to one alone as Desdemona 
 she may be, but like Desdemona she must die deemed to her 
 latest breath a wanton. And when she lies dead they will say 
 so still. For the world, not having Othello's love, has not his 
 penitence. 
 
 "Aren't you going away at all, then?" asked the Lady 
 Joan sharply of Etoile, meeting her one day by chance in the 
 Borghese woods during Holy Week. 
 
 " I think not," she murmured, coldly. " I have taken an 
 old villa outside the gates : I go to remain there in a few 
 days." 
 
 " So lo told me. Rocaldi, isn't it ? I am sure I am most 
 charmed," said Lady Joan, remembering herself. " You must 
 come to see us very often at Fiordelisa. We all go up to Fior- 
 delisa in a week or so for the summer. Ilocaldi lies on the 
 way to Fiordelisa : I think lo said so." 
 
 Then coldly they bade each other good-day. 
 
 " Isn't it indecent the way she lives?" said the Lady Joan, 
 fiercely, as she passed onward. 
 
 " I don't see any indecency," said Mr. Challoner, looking 
 about him as if it were a thing to be detected in the air. 
 
 " You never see an inch before your face," said his wife. 
 *' Of course I'll never let her into Fiordelisa, if she stay here 
 a hundred years, rude, insolent, ungrateful, abominable creature 
 that she is !" 
 
 " What has she done, except fascinate loris ?" said Mr. 
 Challoner, with a face of gloom, but an inward complacency. 
 
 " Fascinate a fiddlestick !" said his wife, with consummate 
 scorn. " As if I cared whatever fool he may make of him- 
 self ! — ^besides, I know he can't bear her ; she disgusts him ; 
 he has said so fifty times ; he hates notorious women." 
 
 " You cannot properly call her notorious," said Mr. Chal- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 345 
 
 loner, who loved nothing better than to pick at straws with his 
 wife : " the word notorious means " 
 
 " I don't want to be taught out of a dictionary by you," said 
 the Lady Joan. " It's enou<;h for me that she refuses my 
 invitations, and never even calls on me, except by leaving a 
 card ; when you think all we did for her, all our kindness, all 
 our hospitality, — a woman that really it is horrible to think 
 has ever crossed our threshold, when one knows what she 
 is " 
 
 " It is inconsistent to be annoyed with her for crossing it 
 no more, then," said Mr. Challoner, who was in a contradictory 
 and boorish humor, having come from a melancholy perusal 
 of the reports of the Society Italiana-Inglese. 
 
 " Oh, you and lo think her right, of coui"se. You'd both 
 see me insulted and trampled on, and never get out of your 
 chairs I Your're just like my father " 
 
 " H-us-sh !" said Mr. Challoner, who thought a scene would 
 be inconvenient in the well-filled Borghose woods with the 
 scarlet royal liveries passing. " Il-us-sh ! What does it mat- 
 ter, one Wv.y or the other ? Nothing easier than to say we 
 made a mistake in receiving her. My love, here is Lady Nor- 
 wich. Dear Lady Norwich " 
 
 That night Etoile went to a reception at the Palazzo Far- 
 nese, which was one of the many eminent houses that did not 
 open its doors to the Lady Joan. The reception was given 
 for the Emperor and Empress of Amazonia, high and catholic 
 sovereigns, in their travels. It was now Easter, and Rome 
 had still a fashionable foreign crowd at its command, though 
 the crowd were on the eve of dispersion to Northern lands, to 
 the glories of Marlborough House and the Orleans Club, to 
 the grand stand of Chantilly and the pavillion of Trouville. 
 
 Pasqua, though shorn of its pontifical splendors, still is 
 Pasqu^, in Rome ; and the fashionable crowd was waiting for 
 its final functions, and enjoying a few last farewell-fetes mean- 
 while. 
 
 loris came late, very late : he had escaped from the Casa 
 Challoner by the plea of a Prince's command, which existed 
 only in his imagination, and had left the Lady Joan sitting, 
 sullen and worried, over cipher telegrams and arithmetic, smok- 
 ing strong Turkish and drinking black coffee. 
 
 He came into the beautiful gallery that has no rival in the 
 p» 
 
346 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 world, himself looking in unison with the place, pale, graceful, 
 pensive, proud, giving a low bow here, a charming greeting 
 there, grand seigneur in every gesture, as all his forefathers 
 had been before him. 
 
 He made his slow, courteous way through the august crowd, 
 where nearly every one was an acquaintance, and by degrees* 
 without apparent desire or design, approached a woman in a 
 cream-hued dress, made like the gowns of the Marie de 
 Medicis portraits, with pale-yellow roses and japonica, and 
 diamonds at her bosom and about her throat. It was Etoile : 
 she was talking with two foreign ministers and Princess 
 Vera. 
 
 He saw her glance wander towards him, her color change, 
 her breath come quicker ; though he could not hear her words, 
 he felt sure that they lost their lucidity and eloquence and 
 grew absent and ill connected. He smiled and mui'mured to 
 himself once more, — 
 
 " Je vois bien que tu m'aimes : 
 Tu rougis quand je te regardo." 
 
 Then he joined her, and spoke with her and the two minis- 
 ters on the topic of the hour. 
 
 As his eyes dwelt caressingly on the long, straight folds of 
 the creamy dress and its old filmy laces, he thought with a 
 shudder of the strong hand that had just grasped his in the 
 Casa Challoner, and the stern lips gripping their cigarette. 
 
 After a while, without observation, he drew her away alone ; 
 he was a master in the little arts of society ; and the Palazzo 
 Farnese is so vast that five hundred people in its mighty cham- 
 bers look no more than a handful of leaves on a lake. 
 
 " I want to ask you something, if you will not be too harsh 
 to me," he murmured, his eyes resting tenderly on the yellow 
 roses that moved with her breath. 
 
 " Am I likely to be harsh ? Ask." 
 
 " You never go to her now," he said, in a low tone. 
 
 " No. You know very well why ; " 
 
 He hesitated, then said, with that sort of timidity which in 
 him was a caressing and supplementary gracefulness, — 
 
 " Perhaps if you would go now and then, it might be 
 better." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 347 
 
 " Alas ! you know her temper, her vehemence, her fancies : if 
 she thinics herself slighted she may take some vengeance " 
 
 " On you 1" said Etoile, with a glance of vague alarm. 
 
 " Ah, no ! On you !" 
 
 " On me 1" she echoed, with an inflection of absolute indif- 
 ference and s3orn. " What can any woman do to me, or man 
 either ? Whit idle fears I Are you not ashamed to give 
 them any shape in words?" 
 
 " Alas 1" said loris, with a sigh, and paused ; he thought of 
 the base calumnies that his mistress sent forth as serpents dart 
 their tongues, but he shrank from speaking of them. " I 
 understand that intimacy between you is impossible," he mur- 
 mured ; " but the mere empty courtesies of society, the mere 
 forms of friendship, might be more wisely kept up : if you would 
 dine there again, call oftener " 
 
 "I will not." 
 
 Etoile turned suddenly, and her eyes burned for a moment 
 into his with an anger that filled him with admiration, because 
 it was so righteous and so frank. 
 
 " When I came to her I did not know what she was. Now 
 I know. I have become your friend, — more than your friend ; 
 I have your confidence. Perhaps you are wrong to give it ; 
 perhaps I am wrong to receive it ; perhaps — but so it is. We 
 cannot unsay all that we have said. If she come to me I 
 will receive her, through respect for her father, receive her 
 with all courtesy, but I will not go into her house again, — 
 never, never ! I will not affect to her to hold her in esteem 
 while in my heart I hold her infamous ! I will not ! My friend- 
 ship has never been the empty falsehood of Society ; it has 
 never been the secret sneer of conventionality covered with a 
 conventional caress ; it shall not be so to her. Could I palm 
 off the lie on her, I should merit any lie that she might tell 
 of me!" 
 
 She spoke with force and with emotion ; her own inmost 
 sense of her antagonism to this woman made her strive the 
 more to be loyal to her, made her cling the closer to sincerity 
 in her dealings with her. 
 
 " You are superb, but you are not of this world," he said, 
 and kissed her hands with tender wondering eyes. 
 
 " I try to be just," said Etoile, wearily. A sense of con- 
 straint and concealment began to weigh upon her. 
 
348 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 loris sighed. 
 
 This truthfulness was beautiful to him, because it was so 
 strange, so utterly unlike all that he had ever known in 
 the women who had influenced his life, but it embarrassed 
 him. 
 
 He felt — and hated himself for so feeling — that women were 
 easier to deal with who had those instincts of intrigue, those 
 proficiencies in deception, which he had been wont to think 
 inborn in all womanhood. 
 
 "Justice is very diflScult and very rare," he said, with 
 hesitation. 
 
 " Yes, more diflScult, more rare, than mercy. But one must 
 be just, even to an enemy, or be barg." 
 
 She paused abruptly, and colored, remembering all that it 
 implied to ac'inowledge his mistress as her foe. 
 
 He smiled, well pleased, though troubled. 
 
 " You are half a warrior, half a child, and all a muse," he 
 said, tenderly. " But you are not made for our base and 
 banal world." 
 
 " You have women enough around you that are. Go to 
 them. Will you not?" 
 
 She smiled a little as she spoke. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then do not complain of me." 
 
 " Do I complain ?" 
 
 Their voices were very low, there was no one near them : 
 the great room was full of the scent of roses ; above-head were 
 the gorgeous yet tender hues of frescoes. 
 
 Her eyes fell beneath his. 
 
 "Why will you talk to me of her?" she said, irrelevantly, 
 with pain and with impatience in her voice. " It is t« be 
 false to both her and me. You must know that." 
 
 " I could never be false to yoi/," he murmured, and, as they 
 stood together, stooped till his breath was on her brow and his 
 cheek touched hers. 
 
 She grew very pale ; he watched the quick, high beating 
 of her heart. 
 
 " You are not free to speak so." 
 
 " I will be free." 
 
 They were both silent ; beyond the doors there were some 
 movement and subdued murmur of voices. They were no 
 
' FRIENDSHIP. 349 
 
 longer alone with the roses ; the world, that is the enemy of 
 passion, was about thcra. 
 
 The groat empress for whom this PasquJi fi'tc was given, 
 and who was an amiable old lady in a knitted shawl, and her 
 husband, who was driving the host almost to madness by re- 
 quiring the date and history of every morsel of sculpture and 
 of fresco on the walls and ceilings, were both approaching, 
 with a polite little throng of decorated personages about them. 
 
 They wished to see Etoilo. She went to be presented to 
 them. 
 
 " Dreadful bore 1" murmured Lady Cardiff to her as she 
 went. " However, my dear, you are strong in dates and docu- 
 ments, so perhaps it will not plague you so much as it does 
 his poor Excellency yonder. They should not educate Royal- 
 ties and Imperialities : they are very much nicer when they 
 can only say how-do." 
 
 loris, seeing Lady Cardiff's eyes on him, bent down with 
 ardent devotion to a beautiful countrywoman of his own, tho 
 Duchess of Ara Coeli. 
 
 " I wonder if he is entangling Etoile or disentangling him- 
 self," thought Lady CardiflF, following him with her glance. 
 " There will be a very great difference. Whichever way he 
 begins, he will end. I wish I knew him well enough to talk 
 to him : not that one ever does any good in these things : they 
 always have their course like comets, and no one can change 
 it by screaming. But I am afraid ; yes, I am afraid. Ho 
 will not be bully enough to get rid of t)iat bully of his. It 
 is an odd thing that men are always over-brutal or over-gentle. 
 I wish Lady Joan had caught a Sir John Brute. loris has 
 not enough of the brute. As for her, if she do care for him, 
 he ought to be Petrarch and Mirabeau blended. Our sort of 
 love will never do for her. Our love is like the moccoletti : 
 the fun consists in setting fire to as many tapers and blowing 
 out as many as ever we can. The passions of the world are 
 only tapers, dipped in petroleum sometimes indeed, but never 
 either the sun or the stars that she dreams of. Don't you 
 think so, loris ?" she asked, suddenly, aloud. 
 
 " Plalt-il?^^ said loris, leaving his duchess. 
 
 Lady Cardiff looked at him through her eyeglass. 
 
 "I was thinking aloud ; a bad habit ; I was thinking not 
 one man m a million can love a woman like Mirabeau ; and 
 
 80 
 
350 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 not one in ten millions like Petrarch. Now, women like our 
 feminine Raffaelle yonder want Miraboaus and Petrarchs, who 
 are not to bo found. Failing the suns and the stars, do you 
 think such a woman should be satisfied with the light of a 
 taper?" 
 
 He looked annoyed. 
 
 " I presume she would be the best judge of the light that 
 would content her!" he said, coldly; "but I should imagine, 
 madame, that she was quite above the need of any light except 
 her own." 
 
 Lady Cardiff smiled. 
 
 " I am very glad to hear you say so ; you Sf i a good deal 
 of her, 1 believe, and can tell one. Of course, genius is like 
 the nautilus, all sufficient for itself in its pretty shell, quite at 
 home in the big ocean, with no fear from any storm. But if 
 a wanton stone from a boat passing by breaks the shell, where 
 is the nautilus then ? Drowned ; just like any common crea- 
 ture ! Oh, dear, no 1 I was not thinking of anything in es- 
 pecial. Do tell me who that new woman is in the black and 
 red, with the huge pearls ; never saw her before ; — a Rouma- 
 nian princess ? Ah ! they are all princesses in Roumania." 
 
 Then Lady CardiflF released him ; but he did not return to 
 the duchess. 
 
 " Drowned ; just like any common creature 1" 
 
 The words rung in his ears and haunted him. He knew 
 the truth that their figure conveyed. The nautilus-shell had 
 ridden on the sea of the world safe and buoyant through the 
 winds of fame and the storm of envy. "Was his the hand 
 that should cast the stone from the passing boat and make 
 that fairy voyage end in wreck and in disaster? Forbid it 
 Heaven I 
 
 He was a man thoughtful by nature, though by deliberate 
 choice he often would not think. To the dangers of the course 
 he was pursuing he was wilfully blind, because he did not 
 choose to pause and look close into it^j peril ; but these words 
 shook him to a fuller, franker sense of the thing that he was 
 doing. He was not Petrarch, he was not Mirabeau ; but he 
 was the man she loved, and so the maker of her fate, — the 
 light that would shed eternal summer about her, or the stone 
 that would sink her in the storm. 
 
 He went slowly through the brilliant throngs, with the Car- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 351 
 
 raccio and the Raphael frescoes above his head, ard the cour- 
 teous smile and empty phrase of socie ' upon his lips ; but he 
 saw very little of what was around iiim ; he saw only the 
 creamy hues of a far-off dress, the shining of some diamonds 
 among yellow flowers, a wistful glance now and then from 
 eyes that, unconscious of what they did, followed and sought 
 him. 
 
 " Drowned ; just like any common creature I" 
 
 Yes ! if he chose. 
 
 His pulse beat high, his cheek grew warm ; he was victori- 
 ous, yet uneasy in his victory. 
 
 People began to go away: the imperial guests had gone, 
 and others were free to go. 
 
 He went out and waited on the great stairs until the time 
 that he saw her pass by. An old man, a minister, was con- 
 ducting her to her carriage. 
 
 loris drew back with a deep bow, and let her pass on down 
 into the halls below and the gardens that were illumined to 
 the edge of the Tiber. The great courts of Fiirnese were full 
 of flickering torches, trampling horses, gilded lackeys ; the 
 lamps of many colors twinkled under the sombre arcades. 
 Such scenes are commonplace elsewhere, and pall by repetition, 
 but in Rome they are always majestic because the past is 
 always in them : through these gardens Borgia had passed, 
 through these arcades Raffaelle had roamed. 
 
 loris threw his furs about him, and went down into the 
 torch-glare and the press of men and horses. Above the 
 garden the moon was hanging; music came from the open 
 casements on the air. 
 
 A carriage was passing slowly outward into the Campo del 
 Fiori. 
 
 At a sign from him his own followed it. 
 
 When she descended at her door, he was there in the clear 
 moonlight. 
 
 "Did you think I could bear not to say good-night?" he 
 murmured, and he wrapped her cashmeres closer around her 
 very gently, and led her up the darkened staircase under the 
 pallid sad frescoes of Overbeck. 
 
 In the great rooms tho lamps were burning, the fire was 
 low on the hearth, the flowers were spreading their sweetness 
 on vacancy. 
 
352 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 He took the cashmeres from about her, and his arms en- 
 closed her instead. 
 
 " You love me, 1 love you," he said, softly. " Make mo 
 what you think me ; what you wish me : I am yours !" 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Some persons passing at that moment down the stairs and 
 corridors of the Farnese were saying to each other, " What 
 absurdity to suppose that there was anything between loris 
 and Etoile ! Did you not see him ! how coldly he bowed. 
 He seems hardly to know anything of her. Why will people 
 talk nonsense ? Besides, you know very well he is entirely 
 accapare by that Englishwoman ; oh, yes." 
 
 Lady Cardiff, as she overheard the remark as she also passed 
 down the staircase, smiled to herself It was the sort of thing 
 that interested her, — to watch the drama passing on the stage, 
 and hear the comments of the audience ou it at the same 
 time. 
 
 " What a Une mouche he is !" she thought. " Well, I will 
 keep their secret, though they don't choose to trust me with 
 it. But a day's secrecy here will be an error with his bully : 
 he should be fierce, firm, and frank, — but he won't be, not he. 
 I wish Le were Petrarch or Mirabeau. My poor nautilus 1 
 — how long will he leave you serene in your shell, and how 
 much will he understand the harm he does when he breaks 
 it?" 
 
 And she went home, and for once had no pleasure in reading 
 her " Figaro" in bed. 
 
 " That's what comes of being interested in a creature that 
 feels things : it is catching, like diphtheria," she thought 
 angrily to herself, as she read a column of Villemessant twice 
 over v?ithout caring about it ; and decided to take a little 
 chloral. 
 
 " He won't even know how soon the shell will break : that 
 will be the worst of it," she thought, as she poured out the 
 drops. " He has lived so long with a woman as hard as a 
 cocoanut." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 353 
 
 The woman who was hard as a cocoanut was at that hour, 
 as the carriages sped throucjh the moonlit midnight from the 
 courts of Farnese, — rolling through Home with a dull thunder 
 that reached her ear and made her angry, because to Farnese 
 she went not herself, — sitting alone before her writing-table, 
 smoking, sorting her papers and telegrams, and issuing com- 
 mands to her sleepy, worn-out waiting-woman. 
 
 " Have you everything packed for Fiordelisa ?" she was 
 saying, in conclusion. " The oxen will be in here early for 
 the boxes ; mind that you are ready, that is all ; and tell the 
 cook to go up there by sunrise, as soon as he's been to market, 
 because I shall have some people up to luncheon, and he must 
 have a good many things cold and savory ; see you tell him ; 
 and let these letters be posted, and give me my bath by eight 
 o'clock, and send somebody round early to the Prince loris 
 to tell him to be here by ten o'clock, — not a second later ; 
 and that's all, I think. I'll wear my line3y-woolsey gown 
 to-morrow, and I come back to go to the opera, you know, at 
 night, and you will get out my amber dress and the emeralds 
 for that." 
 
 And she went to her couch and slept in peace, though the 
 carriages were still rolling by from Farnese. 
 
 In the morning her messenger brought her a pencilled note 
 back ; loris regretted, — apologized, — but he was in his room, 
 and could not rise : he had one of his bad headaches. He 
 would endeavor to join her later. 
 
 On any other day she would have darted down to his house 
 and made his head ache ten times more severe with her fuss 
 and her remedies and her noise, but that day she was busy, she 
 could only send Mr. Challoner. Against Mr. Challoner, loris 
 kept his chamber-door barred, and sent out word that he was 
 really unwell. She heard, hesitated : should she go herself? — ■ 
 then reflected that he so often had headaches, especially now, 
 and she was overwhelmed with business, and she had prom- 
 ised to drive out Douglas Graeme and Guide Serravalle, and a 
 Lady Blank was to go up and lunch at Fiordelisa of whom 
 there were great hopes in regard to the purchase of a huge 
 oaken altar-screen discovered by Mi mo. 
 
 She was sorry that he had his headache, because in her 
 rough way she cared for him, but perhaps it was not alto- 
 gether unfortunate : the Lady Blank, who was to buy the 
 
 30* 
 
354 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 altar-screen, was a person of prudish and peculiar notions, and 
 there was coming up with her an English Consul, who was a 
 family man, and would bring his young daughters to play lawn- 
 tennis, — a bore certainly, but useful when any Lady Blanks 
 were there. Lady Joan regarded the Consul with boundless 
 contempt, as the very poorest limpest threadpaper of a man, 
 but the threadpaper was noted for strong domestic principles 
 and sentiments, and, as he played lawn-tennis with his little 
 girls on the grass of Fiordelisa, was a useful pawn on her 
 social chess-board. " Dear Mr. Dunallan takes his children 
 
 there, and he never would, you know, if " said Mie small 
 
 gentilities of whom he was chief, whenever the small gentili- 
 ties had qualms. 
 
 When the ponies came to the door and the oxen came to 
 bear these household gods of the Casa Challoner, which it 
 was then wont to carry with them, like the ancient Latins, she 
 made up her mind and took her departure for Fiordelisa. 
 
 She was in love with loris, but the apple of her eye, the 
 jewel of her treasures, the idol of her heart, was Fiordelisa. 
 
 Besides, she could not lose the chance of selling the altar- 
 screen. 
 
 So she slashed the ponies and started off, Douglas Graeme 
 beside her, her guitar and her gun at her feet, the oxen labor- 
 ing far behind under the weight of the household gods. 
 
 To move something looked respectable, and like ownership 
 of the old gray castle on the hill. Besides, some of the house- 
 hold gods were always for sale, — a use to wh'ch the ancient 
 Latins did not put them. 
 
 " Is she gone, Giannino?" asked loris of his servant, who 
 had been sent for to be useful for the packing of the goods. 
 " Yes, Excellence," said the man, and added, under his breath, 
 " the saints be praised !" 
 
 " You may open the blinds," said loris, who was lying on 
 the outside of his bed, and he rose at once. 
 
 There was a knot of yellow roses and jessamine in a giass 
 by his bed : they were crushed and faded flowers, but he put 
 them to his lips, and the sweetness of the most triumphant 
 hour of his life seemed in them. 
 
 He was very happy, yet he knew himself in great peril. 
 
 The one consciousness heightened the other. 
 
 He passed the morning at Rocaldi with Etoile. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 355 
 
 She was not yet living there, but oflen passed the days in 
 the great, lonely, balmy garden. 
 
 The terraces were moss-grown now, the statues mutilated 
 and fallen, the ivy and pimpernel ran in their innocent riot 
 over the unweeded walks, but it was beautiful ; walls of thick 
 ilex darkness enclosed it, and here and there tall palms soared 
 up from a wilderness of roses. The cool and lovely summer 
 that comes with April was like a caress upon the land ; under 
 all the fresh foliage birds sang, and above-head was a cloudless 
 sky. 
 
 " Ah, how I wonder that I could ever live without — " 
 
 Etoile sighed amidst it all as only the happy sigh, and left 
 the phrase unended. 
 
 loris, sitting at her feet on the marble steps of the terrace, 
 smiled, and kissed the hands he held. 
 
 " The nautilus sails no more by itself," he thought, and 
 aloud he said, " You were but a muse before ; now you are a 
 woman. I have called you down to earth." 
 
 " Is it earth ?" she said, dreamily. " Hardly " 
 
 To her it seemed something diviner far. 
 
 But with him love was of earth, and did not lift its wings. 
 
 " Had he seen her first, 
 She might have made this and that other world another world 
 For the sick man, but now 
 The shackles of an old love straitened him;" 
 
 and the baneful influence of long years of bondage was like a 
 sickness in him, body and soul. He was passionately proud 
 of the new power he had gained, of the new bonds that he in 
 turn had woven, of the strength he had found to usurp do- 
 minion over a mind by others untamable and beyond human 
 reach. 
 
 But triumph and passion are far oflF the love of which 
 Etoile dreamed, as Elaine dreamt before the Shield. These 
 subtle fires that enclosed her in their warmth and devouring 
 speed are fires that burn up the soul and then die down. 
 
 But of this she was ignorant ; she only knew that all exist- 
 ence was transfigured for her, that her past seemed pale and 
 poor as a starved flower on a barren moor ; and only now — 
 now, when his hands touched her and his dyes gazed at her, 
 did she awake and live. 
 
356 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " It is terrible," she said, and grew pale, and was afraid of 
 these new joys that seemed like gods to rule and to destroy. 
 
 He only smiled with victorious consciousness. " Your 
 dreams were the enemies of men. I have made them my 
 prisoners. They will never wander from me now." 
 
 " It is that which is terrible," she said, under her breatn, 
 with a vague and sudden sense of that irremediable loss which 
 Love calls gain. 
 
 Some dread, like Merlin's dread, passed over her like a chill 
 wind. 
 
 " If I fear 
 Giving you power upon me through the charm 
 That you might play me falsely, having power. 
 However well you think you love me now 
 (As sons of kings, loving in pupilage, 
 Have turn'd to tyrants when they came to power), 
 I rather dread the loss of use than fame." 
 
 But to him this dread in her was sweetest flattery, supremest 
 attestation of his empire that made him glad with a boy's 
 gladness, proud with a despot's pride. loris only smiled and 
 kissed her closed eyelids with his silent lips. 
 
 And once more she was blind, — and happy. 
 
 The lovely day burned itself out in fire, color like the flush 
 of the rose laurel flowers spreading itself over the western 
 heavens. 
 
 They had been happy. 
 
 By common tacit consent they had never spoken of the one 
 who was now the enemy of both. 
 
 She loomed in the darkness of their future like a tempest- 
 cloud that darkens the fair sky with menace, sure to be ful- 
 filled ; but neither remembered her, or, if her memory passed 
 over them, would dwell on it. To the woman it seemed so 
 easy for him to close the doors of the grave on the old ashes 
 of a dead shame, and come forth from it into the bright air of 
 untainted joys, that she thought it outrage to him to speak of 
 such a thing as duty ; to him the effort seemed so difl&cult 
 that he would not face its obligation till the sheer hour of 
 need should strike. 
 
 To her he had said, " I will be free." She would have thought 
 it insult to doubt his word or urge on its fulfilment. To him 
 its fulfilment looked so hard and hazardous that he drove it 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 357 
 
 from his memory until such time as he should be forced to 
 rise and grapple with the spectre. 
 
 To her it seemed simple as the growth of a field-lily, that 
 he should rise from unworthiness and be free; to him it 
 seemed perilous as seizure of an asp, to divorce himself from 
 the snake-like folds of a guilty tie. 
 
 So the hours passed, and her name was unspoken between 
 them. 
 
 To her it seemed shameful, to him it seemed loathsome, to 
 utter it. 
 
 At sunset he took his leave of her. She did not ask him 
 whither he went. 
 
 They loved each other ; that seemed to Etoile to shut out 
 forever from them the baseness of suspicion, the unworthiness 
 of doubt. 
 
 But at the last moment, when his cheek was against hers 
 in his farewell, she murmured to him, — 
 
 " You will tell her the truth— now?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He murmured back the word on her lips. 
 
 He went, and left her to the dreams that henceforth were his 
 captives, her hands lightly clasped behind her head, her eyes 
 closed, her lips pa»-tcd in a soft slight smile : nothing any 
 more, but only the woman that he loved, the woman that 
 loved him, and gladder, prouder to be that, than of all fame, 
 or use, or praise, or place on earth. 
 
 He went, and his reluctant steps and his hesitating will 
 bore him to where all the manhood in him rebelled against 
 and forswore ; bore him to the lamplight, the laughter, the 
 smoke, and the quarrels of the Turkish chamber. 
 
 He felt a coward and untrue, but habit is stronger than 
 conscience ; he said to himself, " To-morrow, not to-night." 
 
 He recoiled from seizing the asp and flinging it from him, 
 yet he submitted under the sense of its tightening folds. 
 
 " You do not look ill now," said his tyrant, sharply, standing 
 under the light in yellow shining raiment, with glittering eyes, 
 fierce and curious and menacing. " You do not look ill now. 
 What has kept you away? You are coming to the opera?" 
 
 " I am not well ; but I will come." 
 
 He grew very pale ; he seemed to suffer. She bent her 
 jealous eyes on liim. 
 
358 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Arc you ill ? I believe there is nothing the matter with 
 you except indolence. We had a splendid day. I have sold 
 the screen ; everything is gone up ; we can go to stay to- 
 morrow. You do look pale. Take some wine; no? Poor 
 lo 1 You are feverish." 
 
 She brushed the hair off his forehead and leaned her hand 
 on it : he shuddered under the touch. 
 
 " There is your husband," he muttered, impatiently, and 
 moved away. She stared at him : she thought he must bo 
 feverish indeed, to be afraid of her lord's presence. 
 
 Other men entered to accompany her to the opera. 
 
 It was a great night by royal command. The house was 
 brilliant ; the soldier-king sat with his hands resting on the 
 hilt of his sword ; the opera was " Comte Ory ;" never again 
 did loris hear the graceful melodies of it without a shudder of 
 hateful recollection. 
 
 His mistress looked well ; her amber skirts swept his feet, 
 thick gold chains were twisted around her shapely head : she 
 had a great fan of ostrich feathers ; she laughed and was gay ; 
 he sat in the chair behind her and seldom spoke. 
 
 Turning her head to him, she thought that it was true 
 he was not well ; he had fever, his face was so flushed, and 
 his eyes had so strange a look. 
 
 "May I leave you?" he asked her, early in the hateful 
 night. " May I leave you ? You have others with you, and 
 indeed I am ill, — at least too ill to bear this music and this 
 glare." 
 
 She pitied him fpr once, believed, and let him go. 
 
 He returned t Etoile, to the cool shadowy flower-filled 
 chamber on the Montecavallo, with its windows open to the 
 Rospigliosi gardens, to the song of the nightingales, and the 
 shine of the stars. 
 
 " Have you told her?" she asked him. 
 
 " I could not to-night," he answered, " She is gone to the 
 opera. Do not let us talk of her. I want peace. I have 
 been without it so long. Give it me 1" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 359 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 On the morrow loris said to himself, " I must tell her now." 
 And his courage quailed even as quailed Launcclot's before 
 the Queen, knowing that " at a wink the false love leaps to 
 hate." 
 
 And he was not armed even as Launcolot was, with a crown 
 diamond, to pave the way to freedom. 
 
 He knew his tyrant well enough to know that liberty she 
 would have sold, — at a high price ; but he had not such pur- 
 chase-money. All his riches, such as they were, were whirl- 
 ing already in the maelstrom of her speculations or sunk in 
 the sands by the Sirens' sea. 
 
 He awoke with a heavy heart, even though his pulse beat 
 high with fresh and unworn joys. There was a conflict to go 
 through that he dreaded : it had been easier to stand stripped 
 to his shirt, with the bare sword in his hand, in the dawn that 
 saw a duel in his student days. Moreover, he scarcely wished 
 to unveil this sweet secrecy, this love unguessed of the world, 
 and carry it out into the broad day that had no shadows. He 
 was so weary of publicity, of bondage, of thraldom, that all 
 the world could laugh at as street crowds can jeer a galley-slave 
 working with his gang on public roads ; it was delightful to him 
 once more to know a passion that was shut in between his own 
 heart and one other's, like a culled flower between the closed 
 pages of a poem. 
 
 When the public voice proclaims it, love has lost half its 
 mystic charm. Never to the lover is the hour of love so fair 
 as when it is stolen from the rest of the covetous day, and 
 the gentle theft is hidden from the world. Troubled and 
 feverish he was ; but it is this trouble and this fever that are 
 youth. 
 
 For a few days he was ill enough to make it natural that 
 he should let the transit to Fiordelisa be made without hira ; 
 ill enough to withdraw himself with the petulance of indis- 
 position from his mistress's presence ; well enough to rise as 
 the cool twilight came, and take his way to the quiet chambers 
 
3C0 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 of Etoilc. Once or twice he was compelled to go to FiordoHsa. 
 Ho felt a traitor and false, — not to the woman who reigned at 
 Fiordelisa, but to Etoile, to whom he did not confess that ho 
 went thither ; to Etoile, to whom he said, " She is in the 
 country : do not let us speak of her." 
 
 The position was full of peril, but it was a peril that was 
 sweet, — as sweet as it was to Komeo to gaze up into the moonlit 
 balcony, knowing that naked swords might be unsheathed and 
 waiting for him among the white garden lilies. 
 
 Etoile did not dream of any peril. 
 
 He loved her : it seemed to her as natural as for the day to 
 dawn that he should put from about him the foul bonds of an 
 unlovely and loveless tyranny. The days went by, to her 
 beautiful as a child's fancy of Hesperides. She never ques- 
 tioned him. She never doubted him. Since he loved her, it 
 seemed to her that all the threads of those coarse and roughly- 
 woven meshes, twisted round his life, must fall asunder and 
 drop away at a touch, like the frail gross things they were. 
 To doubt his power to put them from about him now, would 
 have seemed to her like doubting his honor itself, like doubt- 
 ing the very manhood in him. She asked him nothing be- 
 cause she feared nothing. He was the maker and master 
 of both their fates. *' Since he loves me" — she would think, 
 with a smile ; and think that all was said, and made sure, in 
 that. 
 
 It was one of those errors, simple, yet sublime, which cost 
 far more than many a crime. 
 
 Once she said to him, with a thrill of pain and of aver- 
 sion, — 
 
 " Must she be there in your house all the summer?" And 
 he answered her, — 
 
 " What matter, love, since I am not there ?" 
 
 Ho had come from Fiordelisa that day and had prom- 
 ised to return there ; but he meant honestly to go thither no 
 more after that one evening. He said to himself every day, 
 " To-morrow I will tell the truth," and every day faded and 
 died with the truth untold. Had Etoile been more mis- 
 trustful of him, it might have been better for him : it would 
 have been less easy to deceive her, less temptation to con- 
 tinue in the perilous path of secrecy. As it was, he closed 
 her eyes and kissed their shut lids, and knew well that they 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 3G1 
 
 would not open unless he bade tliom. Siic lived in her 
 dreams; and her dreams, as he had said, were his captives. 
 
 One day she awoke from her dreams for a moment, and 
 looked at him with eyes whose tenderness seemed to him to 
 hold all heaven in their gaze, and said to him in a low tone, 
 *' Let her stay in the house if you must, — ^your dead mother's 
 house ! — but tell her of this, tell her all the truth at once. It 
 is but just to her." 
 
 " I will." He kissed her as he promised. 
 
 She shivered a little as with a sudden chill. " Tell her, 
 so that I may never sec her again near you : it would hurt 
 me ; I feel as if it would kill me ; now." 
 
 loris promised her once again, and meant what he vowed. 
 " They will meet in the world ; they will be iViends a few 
 years hence," he thought ; " or at leitst any other women 
 would but these." 
 
 His heart misgave him ; his task was harder than he strove 
 to think it. He was used to the banal and brief passions of 
 society ; the ties so close one hour, so loose the next ; the 
 prudent shallow hatreds that kissed and jested, the fleet emo- 
 tions that seethed like boiling froth, and evaporated in mere 
 vapor ; the poor base trumpery evanescent thing that women 
 of the world call love. These were what he had seen, and 
 what he had known, but a chill passed over him as he felt that 
 it was not with such as those that he had now to deal; that 
 on one side of him was a passion cruel as death, and on the 
 other side a love high as the angels : that of the women who 
 claimed his life now, one was too fierce, the other too frank, 
 for either ever to drift away into the indifterence that is the 
 world's form of forgiveness, ever to look into the other's face 
 and smile because Society was watching. 
 
 He left her and drove across the plain in the radiant after- 
 noon colors warm on the clusters of cistus and the plains of 
 grass; the April light was lovely about his path, and in the 
 thickets by the mill streams the thrushes and finches were 
 singing, and the white butterflies were afloat like leaves of 
 white roses scattered on the wind. 
 
 He drove slowly through all the loveliness and lustre of the 
 
 fast-declining day ; he dreaded the place whither he went, the 
 
 voice that would there smite on his ear. He was happy with 
 
 a sweet sense of youth, of triumph, of sympathy, of hope, that 
 
 Q 81 
 
362 FRIKi\DSnU'. 
 
 had lonj5 been ti 3trati«rcr to his breast ; but he wiis ill at ease, 
 and his pulse beat with a dull a[)j)rehciision. 
 
 This woman to whom he was faithless was not a woman to 
 forp;ive. 
 
 The sun had set when he reached Fiordelisa, but day still 
 lingered, golden, yet shadowy. With a strange sense of 
 loathing he threw the reins to his servant, and approached the 
 house by a side-path that led by an old arched door into the 
 cortile. 
 
 He heard the tinkle of cups, the uproar of laughter, tlio 
 sounds of the mandolin, and the voice of his mistress singing 
 one of the popular songs : 
 
 "Ad ogni fenestra vo' tomlere un lacio 
 A tiadimento per tradir la luna, 
 A tradimonto per tradir le stolle, 
 A tradimento per tradir il sole, 
 Perche restai trad/to dall' Amoret" 
 
 Tradito ! — his blood ran cold, as if a dagger touched him. 
 What would her vengeance be when she knew herself betrayed, 
 befooled, forsaken ? He had felt a bare blade in a duel, and 
 facod a rain of bullets in a battle with as much calmness as 
 other men ; he had carried the dead, and watched by the sick, 
 in the gi-eat cholera of Home with tranquil and dauntless devo- 
 tion ; but the bravest man on earth will quail before a woman 
 that he fears. 
 
 loris as he stood a moment by the old gray door, before un- 
 latching it, felt a sickly sense at once of fear and of loathing, 
 as the fierce imperious singing thrilled through his nerves. 
 When he should tell her that she must arise and depart and 
 lot another reign tliere, how would it be ? 
 
 Through a grating in the door he saw the court ; the tea- 
 table, the lounging-chairs, the rugs and skins, the hanging 
 creepers ; he saw Mr. Challoner dozing, the child playing with 
 a colored balloon, the servants moving with a tray, Burletta 
 and Serravalle smoking, Douglas Grceme making tea, and on 
 a couch that was covered with a tiger-skin, the Lady Joan 
 singing her song of treason, and striking the cords of her 
 mandolin. 
 
 With a horrible blankncss and suddenness, the full realiza- 
 tion fell on him how utterly she believed herself to be 
 mistress there until the grave should take her ! 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 363 
 
 With a sliock he himself realized how hitter as death, and 
 inexorable a.s liatred, are those unholy unions which are 
 blasphemy of marriage and a parody of love, yet are passed 
 off on a world that is willing to be duped — as friendship. 
 
 He opened the door with the reckless gesture of a man who 
 goes straight on a drawn sword : he was sick of his bonds, 
 indifferent to his danger, braced to the conflict, ready for the 
 worst : the hour of fate and of freedom had struck. 
 
 Lady Joan, as the door unclosed, stopped in her song, and 
 loosened her hold of her mandolin. " lo ! How late you 
 are ! I have some sud news for you. Come here !" 
 
 He went reluctant; he stood by her with a look on his face 
 new th'jre : she wa.s not alone ; he could say nothing. The 
 hour had passed : his courage had sunk. 
 
 " Grandmother is very ill," said the Lady Joan. " I have 
 got to go to England. How you look !" 
 
 " It is sudden," said loris, ana his voice shook a little: his 
 heart leaped with a great relief and a great joy ; she thought 
 the emotion was sorrow and despair. 
 
 " Awfully sudden," she said, as her hand closed on his. 
 which was5 cold and unresponsive. " I had the telegram this 
 afternoon. They fear she cannot live." 
 
 It was true : she had had the telegram, and it had arrived 
 opportunely to give her a reason for that journey which was 
 so inevitable and imperative in the pursuit of her idea. 
 
 Burletta, who knew that the real cause of the journey was 
 that the poor pot was going to be mended and painted, sat and 
 smoked with the obese gravity of a fat pasha. " What a great 
 creature she is !" he thought ; " always a good little lie ready, 
 smooth as an egg, round as an apple." 
 
 He did not himself believe any more in the telegram than 
 he had done in the Parmeggianino, but there he wronged her. 
 She had really had it, favored by fortune, as fortune always 
 favors the bold. 
 
 " Such a sad thing !" said Douglas Graeme over the teapot. 
 " Such a bore, too, just as we were all so tremendously jolly 
 up here ! Poor old Lady Archicstoune. Why couldn't she 
 go off before? She must be really quite antediluvian !" 
 
 Mr. Challoner, waking from his slumbers, shook his head. 
 
 " Ninety years of a most admirable life now going to its 
 long rest !" he said, with a tinge of poetry in his feelings and 
 
364 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 his tone. " The train leaves at 7.45, I think. Joan, always 
 impetuous, wished to start to-night; but it is impossible to 
 peek." 
 
 loris all the while stood silent. 
 
 Lady Joan got out of her tiger-skin couch, and gave her 
 little girl a box on the ear. 
 
 " You heartless little thing I How dare you play with that 
 bladder, when poor old great-grannie is dyiug, and you will 
 never be able to see her any mure ?" 
 
 " You were singing, mamma," murmured the child. " You 
 were singing. I did not know " 
 
 " Come here, my darling ; never mind mamma," said Mr. 
 Challoner, from his rocking-chair. 
 
 Lady Joan, with a glance and a gesture that loris knew and 
 was in the habit of obeying, flung herself out of the iron gate 
 which led to the old grassy pleasaunce beyond the court, where 
 the peacocks were strutting under the boughs. 
 
 " How odd you look, lo !" she muttered, as he followed her. 
 " What is the matter with you?" 
 
 The truth sprang to his lips. 
 
 Had it been spoken, all his future would have been freed, 
 and have risen to a brighter and a purer light, as the loosed 
 lark rises to the sun. But the cruel mischances that mock 
 men were at work in tha i osy evening air. 
 
 As he hesitated, and kept silence, Douglas Graeme came 
 through the open gate after them, throwing cake to the pea- 
 cocks. 
 
 " What will all your beasts and your birds do without you, 
 Joan ?" he said, in the easy familiarity of their cousiuship 
 seventy-seven times removed. 
 
 " lo will be here to take care of them," said the Lady 
 Joan, tartly, annoyed to be followed when she wished to be 
 alone. 
 
 " Do you mean you are going withc t lo?" cried Douglas 
 Graeme, saucily. " I should have as oou dreamt of your 
 going without — your husband I" 
 
 " Don't be impertinent," said his cousin, more tartly still. 
 
 loris stood pale and silent under the boughs, and turned and 
 went back to the house. 
 
 " You are breaking his heart, you cruel woman !" said 
 Douglas Graeme, with a merry laugli. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 365 
 
 She smiled, and bade him hold his tongue. She liked to be 
 thought cruel and invulnerable. 
 
 Dinner was soon after served as the moon rose, and loris 
 was not again alone with her. He was excited, and talked 
 and laughed with more animation than was his wont ; his eyes 
 occasionally had a brilliant flash of light in them, that Mr. 
 Challoner, who was an observant man, alone saw. 
 
 " He is glad we are going,'' thought Mr. Challoner, and 
 pitied the man who knew his wife so little as to imagine she 
 would not come back. 
 
 Mr. Challoner himself intended to come back : he liked 
 the place ; he liked the shooting ; he liked the model pig-styes ; 
 he liked, above all, leaving his wife there whilst he himself 
 went to the baths. 
 
 " Not come back ? pas si hete .'" mused Mr. Challoner, as 
 he ate his olives slowly and sipped his old lacryma with relish. 
 Memories of some of loris's careless signatures floated before 
 his mental vision. There was no knowing ; things might be 
 managed. Mortgages are elastic things, but they are given to 
 sudden collapse like other elastic articles. The place would 
 be a nice dower for his own little daughter, and he fancied 
 there was a title that went with the land. So Mr. Challoner 
 dreamed over loris's olives and loris's lacryma-christi. Mr. 
 Challoner was a poor man indeed, but he was a practical man. 
 loris was not practical. 
 
 The moon shone in on the old dining-hall through the grated 
 casements on to the dinner-table with its flowers, sweetmeats, 
 and fruits, and flashed on the silver dagger that was run 
 through the Lady Joan's braided hair. 
 
 loris's feverish vivacity had changed into an absorbed silence. 
 He was thinking of another woman whom the moonbeams 
 might soon find there. 
 
 r)utside the nightingales were singing. 
 
 Lady Joan looked at his averted face. 
 
 " Poor fellow," she thought, " how unhappy he is !" 
 
 There is always something pathetic about a person who is 
 utterly and entirely deceived. In her absolute self-deception 
 even Lady Joan became patlvetic. 
 
 The dinner was long. Mr. Challoner and Burletta both 
 liked their dinners. When at last it was over. Lady Joan 
 caught up her guitar, threw its riband over her shoulders, and 
 
 81* 
 
366 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 sauntered out into the eortile, and thence into the garden once 
 more. 
 
 " Come with me, lo I" she called to him. 
 
 He hesitated, then obeyed with laggard step. 
 
 Douglas Graeme this time was too discreet to follow them. 
 He stayed in the court with Mr. Challoner, and smoked. 
 
 It was nine o'clock ; the grass was dewy beneath their feet ; 
 the crescent moon was sinking. As loris joined her outside 
 the gate in the fragrant darkness, she stretched out her hand, 
 and curled her arm about his, and leaned towards him. 
 
 She took his stillness and his irresponsiveness for grief and 
 for anger. 
 
 "Don't mind it so much," she said, tenderly. "I shall 
 come back as soon as ever I can, and I will write every day, 
 and you might meet me in Paris, as you have done before, 
 lo ! how pale you are I" 
 
 " It is a shock to me to lose you so suddenly," he muttered, 
 and he wound his arm about her as she leaned against his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " I cannot tell her now," he thought. '' It will be easier to 
 write it, and it will hurt her less." 
 
 So the lie passed, that for evermore he was never to undo 
 and unwind from about his life. 
 
 As he stooped his head where they stood together in the 
 twilit garden ways, and kissed her, he felt disloyal and un- 
 faithful ; but it was not the disloyalty to her that smote him, 
 — not the unfaithfulness to her that stung him with its sense 
 of shame. 
 
 He felt disloyal to the other lips that he had touched that 
 day ; he felt unfaithful to the fairer faith that had come to 
 him with the April blossoms like a gift of God. 
 
 " Amor mio .'" murmured his mistress, flinging her arms 
 about his throat in that fierce tenderness with which in her 
 strange way she loved him. 
 
 The nightingales were singing in the leaves. He could 
 have strangled them for that jarring tumult of song. 
 
 loris shuddered under the en)brace ; but he submitted to it. 
 
 "I cannot tell her the truth to-night," he thought. 
 
 Alas I for him the day was never to dawn that should hear 
 him tell it her. 
 
 The lovely deep azure of the sky was above them, with 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 367 
 
 here and there the clusters of the stars ; the air was full of 
 the fresh fragance of tlie spring ; near them were the glossy 
 dark leaves of an orange-tree and the curling tendrils of a 
 purple clematis that covered the old gray wall of the cor- 
 tile. He never again saw this garden path of his old 
 home, by evening-time, in starlight, without a sickly passion 
 of regret. 
 
 If he had but put her arms from about his throat, and told 
 her the truth then ! 
 
 The summer night waned and passed, and the sunrise came, 
 and a day of hurry, turmoil, nuisance, noise, business, followed 
 it, and with the full of evening she went from Fiordelisa ; and 
 he let her go, still with the truth untold. 
 
 " It will be easier written," he said to himself, with the 
 procrastinating habit of a hesitating and indolent temperament, 
 and stood in the glare and dust and uproar of the railway 
 terminus, seeing the train for the North steam slowly out into 
 the golden haze, past the old broken temples and the ruined 
 aqueducts. 
 
 She had gone, believing a falsehood ; she had gone, believing 
 him broken-hearted ; she had gone, saying to him, " I shall 
 be back by harvest," and thinking to herself, " How he will 
 miss me I What will he do ?" 
 
 And he let her go wrapped in the happy lie that her own 
 vanity made her accept with so simple a credulity, like the 
 merest peasant maiden that ever lent an ear to the whispers 
 of her own amorous vanity. 
 
 He let her go, self-deluded. 
 
 As the steam drifted over the distant Campagna and the 
 train vanished in the yellow mists of the hot evening, he drew 
 a deep breath, like a man who casts from his shoulders a bur- 
 den borne too long. 
 
 Then he went to the woman he loved. 
 
 The sunset splendors of the falling night were streaming 
 through the glow of roses on the terrace as with glad and im- 
 petuous eagerness he entered her presence and threw himself 
 at her feet. 
 
 " Rejoice with me !" he cried: " she is gone !" 
 
 "Gone?" 
 
 He laughed aloud in the gayety and gladness of his re- 
 lease. 
 
3C8 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " She is gone ! — yes. I am a slave no more ; for your love 
 is an empire and not a bondage." 
 
 The nightingales sung in a palm-tree that a passion-flower 
 clung to and climbed, and their song was beautiful to him. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 It is true she was gone, but not gone as those who leave no 
 trace, — not gone as those who go forever. All things spoke 
 of her at Fiordelisa ; her clothes hung on the pegs; her guitar 
 was cast on a couch ; her cigars filled an old silver ostensoir ; 
 her alpenstock and her sun-umbrella leaned together in the 
 loggia ; her legacy of orders and commands weighed on every 
 dependant and occupied every hour. "When loris went up 
 there next day, and as his first act of freedom loosened the 
 hound from his chain, he shuddered as the signs of her pres- 
 ence met him everywhere : they were also the menaces of her 
 return. 
 
 Imperator gambolled to and fro with mad joy, having no 
 prescience of future captivity that should avenge on him his 
 present raptures. But his master could not shake off all 
 foreboding. 
 
 As the days wore on, the electric wires shocked him into 
 unwelcome remembrance of her with messages that he cast 
 impatiently aside or as impatiently answered ; and the post 
 brought him long close pages of amorous words, mingled in 
 odd union with a thousand directions as to vineyards and 
 brood-mares, and old furniture and new cattle, which he threw 
 away but half read indeed, yet which served to keep ever 
 present to him the tyrant who was absent. 
 
 Again and again he took up his pen to write the truth to 
 her, and be free. 
 
 But aii;ain and again he deferred the unirracious ♦:ask that 
 was hard to word aright, and forbore to do more than reply 
 that the brood-mare had foaled, or that the rains had hurt the 
 young vines. 
 
 He was so content with her away, he dreaded to launch tho 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 369 
 
 bolt that might free him forever indeed, but which might call 
 her back fleet and ferocious, riding the whirlwind of vengeance; 
 who could be sure ? 
 
 He strove to forget her as utterly as her insistent and con- 
 tinual messages and letters would allow ; he dared not risk the 
 recall which he feared the truth, when told, would prove to a 
 woman who, as his knowledge of her told him, would never 
 passively accept dismissal or forgive infidelity. 
 
 To Etoile he said, " She is in trouble ; death is around her: 
 she is not thinking of me. Before she dreams of returning, 
 I will tell her : that will be time enousrh." 
 
 She did not insist : she thought he would always do what 
 honor needed. But when he asked her to go with him to 
 Fiordelisa she would not: a sense of aversion made her shrink 
 from the thought. 
 
 " Fiordelisa is very dear to me, because it is yours. But 
 wait," she said to him. " Let her memory be exorcised ; let 
 all trace of her be gone ; then I will come. To me it shall 
 be so sacred : everything shall be as it was in your mother's 
 time. You will tell me what she liked b(?st, and we will have 
 it so ; but wait. Let all signs of the woman who has so cruelly 
 profaned it first pass away." 
 
 He loved her for her answer, and was half glad, though 
 half angry, that she would not go there ; yet the reply made 
 him ill at ease ; she took for granted, as so natural and so 
 simple, that dethronement which he knew could not be com- 
 passed without tempest and revolution, perhaps not even with- 
 out ruin. 
 
 When Etoile said to him with a smile, not thinking to hurt 
 him, " Let your priest asperge it with holy water and strew 
 rosemary, — that is the old charm to cleanse places from evil 
 possession, — then I will come," he did not smile in answer. 
 A vague fear, dark, sullen, menacing, as the temper of the 
 woman whom he must brave, weighed on him. Again and 
 again he thought, with passionate futile regret, " Why did I 
 not tell her all that night, when she kissed me, and I loathed 
 her?" 
 
 It would have been so quickly told then ; one flash of light- 
 ning, and the storm would have broken over his head and 
 burst and rolled away. 
 
 Now, the storm lowering hung in the distant sky and over- 
 
370 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 shado'Fed the brightness of each rising day. Every morning 
 that he rose he thought to himself, " If she should come back 
 to-niglit 1" The dread of her was always with him. Where 
 Tennyson makes his Guinevere say, — 
 
 "Our bond is not the bond of man and wife : 
 This good is in it, whatsoe'er of ill, 
 It can be broken easier," — 
 
 he wrote of a world far away, in which Guinevere would 
 meekly end in " holy house at Almesbury," a sorrowful weak 
 woman, sore troubled with one sin, where modern ladies lightly 
 bear a bushel such and never feel them. But now that Gui- 
 nevere needs no sanctuary, finding all she needs in the bosom 
 of a tender and long-suffering society, and repentance and re- 
 morse lie with other archaic words embalmed in the dust of 
 dictionaries whence no one takes them out, — now the bonds 
 of Guinevere are the hardest the world forges, and if Launce- 
 lot dare to strike for freedom the world will frown him back 
 to bondage and tell him that in fealty to his traitress his duty 
 lies and all his honor. 
 
 Meanwhile, except for this sudden fear which sometimes 
 started up and seized him, as in a dream of the night a cold 
 hand seems to seize the sleeper and hold him in a horrid 
 wakefulness, loris was happy as since his boyish days he never 
 had been. A woman who loved him perfectly, questioned 
 him never, and could not weary him, because of the frequent 
 surprises and unfathonied deptlis of a nature which he still but 
 vaguely understood, though its strength and its simplicity were 
 alike lovely to him, — such a woman awoke all the joys of his 
 youth. 
 
 He felt young once more as he hastened through the noon 
 warmth or the evening moonlight to dream his fresh dream 
 as he looked in the eyes of Etoile. It could not last, he knew, 
 this rose-glow of sunrise, this golden hush and glory of a love 
 that was like daybreak ; it could not last : it must pass into 
 the limbo of dead passions as daybreak passes into the common 
 likeness of all time, filled with the noise and trouble of the 
 world ; but whilst it lasted it was so fair ; he bade it stay, as 
 Faust cried to it before him : being happy. 
 
 It was the same with lier. 
 
 It was enough for her to listen for his step, to hearken for 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 371 
 
 his voice, to remember his touch and his look when he was 
 gone, to feel the very air grow lighter, the very earth seem 
 lovelier, because he came ; she had been but a muse before, 
 how sweet it was to stoop and become mortal ! To love the 
 life that loves you I None can know how deep a delight it is, 
 save those who long have dwelt alone, sufficient to themselves, 
 in the asceticism of the arts and all the cold contemptuous soli- 
 tude of fame. 
 
 When he was absent, she kept his memory with her as 
 Elaine kept the shield at Astolat, embroidering it with every 
 beautiful fancy and with every knightly symbol ; when he was 
 there she had but one thought, to give him the peace, the 
 pride, the joy, of life so long denied him. 
 
 Being strong, she would not show her strength to him. 
 Being proud, she would not show her pride to him. Having 
 been called by men cold, too scornful, hard to please, it pleased 
 her now to stoop and wait upon his smile and let him see how 
 weak, so far as a great love is weakness, she could be at his 
 behest. 
 
 Vain women delight to make their power felt ; but Etoile, 
 who was not vain, but who had laid her strength upon the 
 world, as the driver his whip upon the ass's neck, and knew 
 her strength, and had seen men bend beneath it and before it, 
 Etoile found her joy in stooping lowly in meek obedience. 
 
 He was not wiser, greater, goodlier than many another no 
 doubt, she had found him in his bondage and known him in his 
 weakness ; he was not lord of himself nor yet of others ; but 
 he was what she loved ; the only creature that she loved- ; the 
 only life that was dear to her, and that taught her the mere 
 common joys of earth, and made her know the sweetness of 
 hu.man lips and the light of human eyes ; she had dwelt alone 
 and apart, and now she lived for him ; she fancied that for 
 this sweet surprise of human mastery no payment of her whole 
 life could be enough. 
 
 Out of the deep abundance of her pity love had risen, and 
 she now wondered that she had lived — not knowing love. 
 
 It was like a trance that fell upon her, — a trance whose 
 visions are of heaven, whilst those who stand by and look on 
 say, This is death. 
 
 The conflict that was before her was one that needed to be 
 fought in mud and mire, with rough weapons, with harsh 
 
372 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 thrusts, with merciless coarse blows on low and craven foes ; 
 but of the conflict she thought notinug ; she only was happy, 
 — with her hand in his. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 The world had grown quite empty round them ; all the 
 idlers and pleasure-seekers had flown away ; in Home there 
 were no sounds but of the fall of the fountains and the thrill 
 of the guitars at nightfall. 
 
 Lady Cardiff was the last to go. 
 
 She came to bid Etoile farewell one day at Rocaldi towards 
 the close of the day : she guessed much, but she inquired 
 nothing, being a woman who knew the world. Only airily 
 and indifferently she said, at the close of her visit. — 
 
 " Do you mean to stay here all the summer ? My dear, it 
 will try your health. These grand old gardens harbor death, 
 you know. At least you will die if you wish to live, and live 
 if you wish to die ; people always do ; a young mother will 
 die as she gives her child its first kiss, and a hospital for in- 
 curables will remain full to its roof! Very odd: the gods 
 do jest with us. Apropos, I conclude you know old Lady 
 Archiestounc is dead in London ? Our dear Joan is gone over ; 
 filial piety, you know ; some people do say it's the Messina 
 Bridge instead. Anyhow, she is gone. How comfortable 
 loris must be ! — like a boy out of school, T should think. I 
 suppose you see him still sometimes ? Now, I wonder if he 
 will let her come back ? he ought not : it is his one chance 
 of salvation : no one has that sort of chance twice. 
 
 'There is a tide, which, taken at the flood, 
 Leads on to fortune.* 
 
 True statement, but most involved metaphor, like most of 
 Shakspeare's. A tide cannot /eac^ you anywhere : it may Jloat 
 you." 
 
 Lady Cardiff dropped her eyeglass, having seen what she 
 feared in Etoile's changing eyes. 
 
 " Come and see my great palms," said Etoile, and led her 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 373 
 
 out to tlic gardens where two of the stateliest palras of Rome 
 towered in the light as they stood perchance in distant days 
 of Horace. 
 
 Lady Cardiff lifted her eyeglass to them. 
 
 " I don't care for any vegetables," she said, as she looked. 
 " I am like Dr. Johnson : I like the street-posts and the peo- 
 ple that walk past them. Still, they are fine trees. I can see 
 that. But only look how they are stifled under those passion- 
 flowers : quite an allegory, — isn't it ? you should write a poem 
 on it. Won't you have the passion-flowers cut down ?" 
 
 " And my poor nightingales that sing all night in the passion- 
 flowers? Oh, no !'' 
 
 " Passion-flowers and nightingales ! Most poetic I" said 
 Lady Cardiff, almost crossly. " But I wish the air were bet- 
 ter, my dear : you will excuse me if I am prosaic. A well- 
 trapped drain is the best poetry, after all." 
 
 " The air is beautiful," stad Etoile, with a smile that made 
 her face at once tender and thouurhtful and full of that name- 
 less light, like a flame shining through alabaster, which only a 
 great joy gives. 
 
 " Poison !" said Lady Cardiff, sharply. 
 
 Then on a sudden impulse she touched Etoile's forehead 
 with her lips. 
 
 " God bless you, my love ! Cut the passion-flowers down ; 
 they will only choke the palras, believe me, only choke them. 
 I wish you were not going to stay here with the nightingales; 
 but you are the best judge of the air that suits you, and you 
 are your own mistress, and I am not an old friend to have the 
 right to scold you. I wish I vere. Adieu !" 
 
 " What business had he to grow his passion-flowers there *'" 
 she thought, with anger, to herself, as her carriage rolled o. ^ 
 of the ilex shadows of Bocaldi. " If he will have strength 
 enough it will all come right ; but he will not have strength : 
 he will let that biack-browed jadj return, and there will be 
 nothing but misery out of it all for the innocent one. It is 
 always so. How loyal she is to him, too ! — not a word of his 
 name ! Dear ! dear ! what a pity she came ! She was so con- 
 tent, and so calm, and so cold, and so wrapped in her dreams 
 and creations, and now — he will have no strength. It is she 
 who will be sacrificed, and she will live and die with a broken 
 heart on that bare rock of hers all alone in the middle of the 
 
 o.l 
 
374 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 open sea, and our dear Joan will count up her money, and 
 grin to the end of her days, — triumphant. Lord, wliat fools 
 men are ! Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it, lago !" 
 
 Then Lady Cardiff went home with the tears in her eyes, 
 and almost could have cried with rage and vexation : so much 
 did she take it to heart that, though the German Embassy 
 had sent her some choicest four-year old Johannisberg, and 
 ''Figaro" had just come in, and there was a telegram to say 
 that Lord Cardiff was punished for his sins with the gout, she 
 could enjoy none of these good things, but sat silent and out 
 of spirits until her servants told her the hour drew nigh for 
 the train to the North. 
 
 A watcher less merciful and as keen of sight — one who did 
 not come beneath the ilex shadows of llocaldi, but neverthe- 
 less kept vigil on what passed there — remained down in the 
 city throughout the sultry season : Lady Joan had left her 
 watch-dog chained by the Forum Trajano. 
 
 In their grim, dusky, dusty corner the three sisters remained 
 to copy canvases and panels, and be cited as instances of filial 
 love, because they sent their old parents to a lodging by the 
 sea. 
 
 " Such dear, good daughters I" said Society, with its last 
 breath, flying itself away. 
 
 Whilst the poor old father, tormented by sun and sand and 
 fleas and gnats, tottering about on the shore with his deaf wife 
 upon his arm, felt that Regan and Goneril might have been 
 better to bear than Cordelias who kept the purse-strings, and 
 measured the whisky, and scolded from morn to eve, and 
 heaped up their own devoted sacrifices like coals of fire on his 
 head. Lear after all had much to be thankful for, thought 
 Lord George : Lear at any rate was left alone. 
 
 The sisters had hoped that the wide empty chambers and 
 the majestic solitudes of Fiordelisa would have been placed at 
 their disposal, in her absence, by their dear friend who loved 
 them with a thousand loves ; part of the summer there had 
 been part of their perennial payment, and to stay there in her 
 absence could have been no impropriety with their mother's 
 knitting-needles and their father's crutch in the antechamber. 
 But their dear friend had gone, kissing them all indeed, but 
 making otherwise no sign, — Lady Joan did not choose to have 
 even so harmless and faithful a creature as her Cerberus in- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 376 
 
 stalled ever go temporarily in her throne, — and loris said 
 nothing. loris did not even ask them up for a day. So their 
 hopes fell fruitless, as they had seen so many hopes full, 
 knowing well what hell it is in waiting to abide dancing at- 
 tendance on the whims and wills, caprices and commands, of 
 other people. And they stayed down in their close, pent-up 
 old })ulace amidst the evil smells of the city with no other 
 consolation than that tliey would have time to finish copying 
 frescoes of Domenichino ordered by Lord Hebrides out of good 
 nature and clannish feeling, and that they could perhaps be 
 still more sure of what he whom it was their task to watch 
 should do in the absence of the one who claimed his life. 
 
 The task was diflficult, though they deemed it easy. loris, 
 knowing he was watched, turned restive, and put out his wit 
 to baffle tliem. They were no match for him in that social 
 diplomacy when he chose to exercise his skill, lie was as 
 courteous, as cordial, as compassionate as ever with these poor 
 toiling women, whom he really pitied ; but when they tried to 
 spy on him, he baffled them. 
 
 He met their questions with serene indifference ; he parried 
 their curiosity with calm evasions. 
 
 " It is what they deserve, if they persecute me," he said to 
 himself; and he beat them with their own weapons. 
 
 What affair was it of theirs ? 
 
 Once or twice he went and watched Marjory at work in 
 Santa Maria degli Angeli on her Domenichino, and gave her 
 counsel with the delicate and unerring taste in art which 
 characterized him. Sometimes he sat with them in their own 
 dull, dreary chamber : when he did so it was with intent to 
 blind them. 
 
 " Etoile? I really can tell you but little. She is shut up 
 in her villa, absorbed on some great work for next season's 
 salon," he would answer them, and say it so indifferently and 
 naturally that it almost deceived thom. Almost ; not quite, 
 for Marjory, whose soul was sick with haunting dread, would 
 now and then get a hired carriage to take her out of the gates 
 along the dusty high-roads and the yellow grass to where the 
 ilex thickets of Rocaldi hung in the ruby glow of sunset light, 
 a green oa.sis in the burnt-up desert, and went about under 
 the walls till twilight fell, and once, twice, thrice she saw a 
 form she knew, and heard the ring of a horse's hoof, and loris 
 
376 FlilENDSHIK 
 
 passed her, not noticing a woman's figure low bent in the 
 meadows, as tliough gathering herbs. 
 
 Then Marjory went home, pressing the jagged iron of 
 hungry jealousy in her breast, and wrote a letter to her bosom 
 friend away in England, and added in a postscript, as though 
 carelessly, " lo is quite well, I believe. We really see nothing 
 of him now you are away. They say he spends all his time 
 at Etoile's villa, — the archaeological picture, I suppose 1 Au 
 revoir, dearest !" 
 
 Lady Joan got the letter when she was sitting alone in the 
 little house in Mayfair. 
 
 Her grandmother was dead, which was odious, because she 
 could not go to Prince's and show ofi" her skating, which was 
 admirable, nor go anywhere else that was amusing, and was 
 bored to death with her uncles and aunts and relatives gen- 
 erally, and grew quite pale with having to do propriety so long 
 unrelieved by any touch of color or diversion. She had sold 
 two painted cofiers she had sent to a loan collection, and she 
 had lent some lace and uncut garnets to a Stafford House 
 charity, and she had gone to a Westminster Service with the 
 head of the Opposition, and she had visited the Royal Academy 
 with Tom Tonans and his wife, and had altogether been so 
 steeped in the Jordan of respectability that she felt, as soon 
 as she could get out of her mourning, she might dance the 
 Carmagnole with perfect impunity wheresoever she liked. 
 Still, Jordan had bored her. It bores most people. And 
 though this bi-annual dipping in it was deemed necessary by 
 Mr. Challoner, she felt that never — no, never again — could 
 she go through it ; she had always felt so whenever she had 
 bathed ; yet she had always returned to dip afresh, being a 
 woman in whom, after all, prudence was stronger than prefer- 
 ences. 
 
 Now, as she sat in her bedroom she read the postscript to 
 her watch-dog's warning. She had had a letter by the same 
 post from loris ; she had read it first of all ; she now seized 
 it and read it again, lie-perused by the lurid light of that 
 postscript's suggestions, the letter seemed to her no lover's 
 effusion, — seemed cold, brief, unsatisfactory. It told her tliat 
 the mare had foaled and that the vines were healthy : hardly 
 anything else. The dcvoto ed a^ettuoso, IreneOy of the signa- 
 ture seemed to her at the end to be scrawled off, as if the writer. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 377 
 
 were glad to be rid of an unwelcome task. A million sus- 
 picions darted out like little stings from between the lines and 
 seemed to hiss at her. 
 
 All day long and every day as she bathed in Jordan, as she 
 went in her crape to hear the will read, uninterested because 
 there was hardly anything to leave, and what there was went 
 to her father and aunts, — as she smothered her yawns while 
 the head of the Opposition discussed a crabbed and vexed pas- 
 sage of Dante with her, — as she toiled through the Academy, 
 where nothing interested hor, because she only liked the old 
 masters, the dear old masters, who could be bought in a garret 
 and sold at a profit, — as she travailed over documents, reports, 
 and accounts, to persuade recalcitrant shareholders, and fasci- 
 nate unwilling presidents, and eflfcct herculean transfers, all 
 day long, — in everything she did there was always one wasp's 
 sting always festering in her, — the fear of what loris might 
 be doing in Rome. 
 
 Call him she dared not. 
 
 She had just brought her transfer to boiling-point. Slie 
 had just mended and painted her broken jar. She had just 
 managed so beautifully that all the sheep that were silly as 
 swine would go over the steep all alone, and the shepherds be 
 safe with their fleeces. If he came, all would be ruined : he 
 was such a fool. Over the steep he would go himself; he 
 would break the mended pot, he would throw the soup away 
 as it boiled. He would even sell Fiordclisa. Yet every hour 
 of the day, smiling on dowagers, listening to deans, and talking 
 of Dante, every day plunging at morn into finance, and wash- 
 ing in Jordan at even, every hour the terror thrilled through 
 her, — if he should be with Etoile ! 
 
 She did not much fear it, because to be blind with a su- 
 preme vanity is like being shut in a windowless room lined 
 with looking-glasses. Yet the vague dread was there. At 
 the bark of her watch-dog it sprang up full armed. 
 
 She was alone in her bedroom, that looked over the smoke- 
 blackened roofs of Mayfair, with sooty spaiTOWs twittering on 
 the sill. With a pang of passionate longing she thought of 
 her bedroom at Fiordelisa, the rosco clinging round it, the 
 Bweet azure sky beyond it, the old sculptured shields above it, 
 a thrush singing on an orange-bough, and the voice of her 
 lover calling from the old gray court, Mia cava, chefaituf 
 
 82* 
 
378 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 She was not a tcnder-natured woman, nor one to be touched 
 by sudden memories, but at that moment the hot fierce tears 
 rushed to her eyes and tliroat ; at that moment, for once, she 
 loved with love, and not with self-love ; she felt that all the 
 world and its small gains and its shallow hypocrisies would be 
 well lost to lean upon his breast, to look into his eyes. 
 
 " If she dare take him from me 1" she said in her teeth, 
 and a bitterer oath than meti can swear was smothered in the 
 heat and harshness of her soul. 
 
 Take him from her ! 
 
 Weak women would have fled to Rome, leaving the soup 
 boiling over, the pot unglazed, the sheep unsheared ; but she 
 was strong. 
 
 She washed the scorching tears from her eyes, she swal- 
 lowed the choking fury in her throat, she put on her crape 
 gown and v/ent down-stairs to where her lord perused the 
 newspapers and her aunts sat penning letters of thanks for 
 condolence in bereavement. 
 
 " I have heard from lo," she said, frankly, with that frank- 
 ness which never deserted her even on the shores of Jordan 
 and in the house in Mayfair. " I have heard from lo. He 
 wants to come over : do you think we could get the transfer 
 signed this week ? I should like to give him a pleasant sur- 
 prise if he do come." 
 
 Mr. Challoner laid down the newspaper and considered 
 gravely. 
 
 " I think we could," he said, after a pause. '^ I will go 
 down to Cannon Street and see if I can hurry them on. Is 
 he really coming ? Well, the change might do him good ; he 
 is not very strong." 
 
 For Mr. Challoner also could read between the lines, and 
 wanted himself very much to get free to go to Germany for 
 those waters which were so vitally necessary for his little 
 daughter's health, and also he was fully alive to the fact that 
 his wife's maiden aunts, stately gentlewomen of old-fashioned 
 notions, were within hearing at their writing-table. Therefore 
 he spoke with that cordial good humor and good understanding 
 which he always put on when they were washing in Joi'dan. 
 
 " I will go with you," said his wife, and tmrned to her aunts. 
 " You will excuse me, won't you, dear aunties ? It is a busi- 
 ness affair iu which Robert and I are very interested for the 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 379 
 
 sake of some friends, a sad speculation of poor lo's that I am 
 afraid will not turn out very well, even with the very best 
 that we can do." 
 
 " Of course we have nothing to do with the affairs of Prince 
 loris, nothing," explained Mr. Challoner to the ladies at the 
 Trriting-table, as he was in the habit of explaining it to so- 
 ciety, — " nothing at all, poor fellow ; but there has been a 
 good deal of English capital put into this affair in Sicily, and 
 so it seems one's duty, really one's duty " 
 
 A.nd Mr. Challoner took out his handkerchief and polished 
 his eyeglasses, not ending his sentence, knowing all the virtue 
 that lies in the va^ue. 
 
 " I don't really know how loris stands," continued Mr. 
 Challoner, with an air of protest, " one is always so delicate 
 on these matters with friends ; but I am afraid his good nature 
 has been abused, his imagination run away with. Co-directors? 
 Yes, we are co-directors, it is true ; but he has assumed personal 
 responsibilities that I never would have done ; against my 
 advice ; quite against my advice." 
 
 Mr. Challoner sighed and gazed into vacancy. 
 
 " Is he so fond of speculation, then ?" said one of the ladies 
 at the writing-table. 
 
 " It is his patriotism," said Mr. Challoner : in the Temple 
 of the Virtues every motive was always labelled with the very 
 highest title procurable in nomenclature. 
 
 " Oh I" said the gantlewomen together ; they had lived in 
 London and Paris all their lives, and had, before this, heard 
 patriotism used as a reason for a variety of things, from a 
 minister's keeping in office against the will of the country, 
 to a newspaper's writing a country into bloodshed and bank- 
 ruptcy : they were quite aware of the word's elasticity. 
 
 " It is lo's patriotism," echoed the Lady Joan. " If he 
 thought he would do the country any good by it, he would 
 jump down into a pit and let it swallow him like Curtius. It 
 is very fine, you know, all that, but it does not pay. I always 
 tell him he will get no recompense, and end in the poor-house. 
 My dear Ilobert, get a hansom cab, quick !" 
 
 Then she put on her crape veil, and drove with her hus- 
 band to the city to hurry agents and secretaries, and get her 
 mendc^ pot baked in the muffle of European exchanges, and 
 
380 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 drawn out as new pottery by those modern masters of destiny, 
 the brokers. 
 
 " She seems to think of nothing but business," said one of 
 the gentlewomen left at the writing-table. 
 
 Guinevere might in her jealousy throw the diamond in the 
 moat. Lady Joan knew better. 
 
 Business was dear to her, dear were all its pastimes and its 
 profits ; she mewed herself in close misty d'jns of offices through 
 the sweet summer days, and condemned herself to the dusty, 
 dreary, noisy streets of London when the roses were all in 
 bloom at Fiordelisa, that she might keep her mended pot sail- 
 ing bravely and unbroken down the stream of speculation with 
 the iron pots of safer and richer enterprise. To discern hamse 
 and baisse, to watch the rise and fall of gold, to correct the 
 proofs of a prospectus and see a knot of shareholders smile, to 
 captivate brokers and commission-agents, and to be up to her 
 eyes in telegrams and despatches, — this was as the ver}' breath 
 of life to her, even in the misty, murky, sultry atmosphere 
 of the City in midsummer. But chiefly was it so sweet to her 
 because business forged the fetters that a tired love could not 
 break; business wove the shroud in which a dead love could 
 be imprisoned in its grave, her own and no one else's, even 
 though dead, dead, dead ! 
 
 Tile shrewd hard sense that underlay her amorous vanity told 
 her that passion soon or late calls to deaf ears ; pipes, and none 
 dance ; lifts its lips and meets no kiss ; but that the woman 
 who has interwoven herself with a man's fortunes, and bound 
 his hands to hers with the hempen ropes of commonplace, 
 every-day cares and troubles, has entered the very fibre of his 
 life as the lichen enters the bark of the tree. 
 
 The lichen may kill the tree ere its time, but what of that ? 
 They are together till the end comes and the axe hews down 
 both together. 
 
 So she crushed the rage, and the fear, and the longing, all 
 into her heart in silence, and drove down beside her lord to 
 the City. For one short savage instant the Cleopatra had 
 leaped up in her to o'erleap sea and mountains and reach Home 
 at a bound. But the Dame du Comptoir was still stronger 
 than the Cleopatra, and she went and worked in the City, 
 then sent a telegram — instead. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 381 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 Whilst in her hot heavy mourning s^rb, in the sooty air 
 and the gas-lit little den of her agent's office, sitting with 
 brokers and lawyers, she spun her threads about hei' distant 
 lover as the spider spins in the dark to catch the firefly that 
 makes love in the starlight, Etoile, in her cool white garments, 
 was walking amidst the blue lilies that filled the grass under 
 lier ilex groves. The chimes of a church were sounding near ; 
 the bells of goats cropping the honeysuckle in the field beyond 
 rang in unison softly ; the acacias were full of blossoms and 
 of bees ; the strong voluptuous heat lay on the land like sleep 
 on the eyes of a tired dreamer. 
 
 She walked on, her white gown trailing on the flowering 
 grasses ; she gathered a lily, and put it in her breast ; she held 
 a fan of green palm-leaves between ber and the setting sun ; 
 a ripe fruit tumbled and rolled before her feet; light and 
 silence were about her. 
 
 " How good is God !" she thought. " How beautiful is 
 life !" 
 
 His shadow fell through the sunshine, his step came 
 through the flowers, his eyes smiled down into hers, and 
 his lips touched hers. 
 
 " Dreaming always !" he murmured. 
 
 *' Dreaming of you ! Are you jealous of that?" 
 
 " No ; since your dreams are my prisoners." 
 
 He wound his arm about her ; he moved the sultry air with 
 her fan of palms. They strayed through the flowering grasses 
 together : their path was sweet with crushed herbs and dropped 
 roses. 
 
 " You are happy ?" they asked each other. 
 
 " I am happy !" each answered the other. 
 
 She said the whole truth, with no latent thought to mar it, 
 when she said that she was happy. When he said the same 
 words, a dark and restless care was tugging at his heart-strings, 
 which, though he often forced it away, seldom wholly left 
 him. 
 
382 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 Ruin seemed near him, and vengeance nearer still. When 
 in the sultry noons he wearily pored ovor the papers and ac- 
 counts of the many enterprises and speculations into which 
 friendship had allured him, he only succeeded in makinji; his 
 eyes and his heart ache ; whe*^ the electric wires shocked his 
 nerves with unwelcome reminder that though his friend was 
 absent in the flesh, in spirit she still stood at his elbow, he 
 wearily cursed the inventive genius of his generation, and felt 
 a breathless impatience and oppression, such as the magician 
 felt who had forgotten the spell by which alone the shadows 
 he had summoned could be bidden to dissolve and vanish. 
 
 She would never come back, — all would be well ; so he 
 said to himself, being of a nature that was sanguine even 
 whilst apprehensive. 
 
 He trusted in some vague way to some kind star that would 
 control her course and turn it far from his. 
 
 Meantime, he did nothing : he was happy, and the peril 
 was distant ; and he ceased to go to Fiordelisa. Her memo- 
 ries were too present there, like the scent of sandal-wood that 
 is stronger than the scent of roses, and cannot be driven out, 
 do what you will ; and the memories stifled him, and he hated 
 them. They were only deodorized when the hand of Etoile 
 lay in his. 
 
 The old hereditary love of his father's home was always in 
 him, but the place was poisoned to him : when he looked at 
 its threshing floors, its levelled lawns, its freshly cleared and 
 naked gardens, its hotbeds and plantations and stock-yards, 
 the price which all these things had cost seemed written on 
 them in ruinous figures ; and through the solitude, when the 
 throb of the English farm- engines ceased for a moment, he 
 still seemed to hear the voice of his tyrant crying out, " lo, 
 lo 1" as the voice of the horseleech cries, " Give, give !" 
 
 It used to be so beautiful, so shadowy, so still, before she 
 came, he thought, and felt that his people had been right 
 when they had wanted to take their axes and hew in pieces 
 the machines that she had brought, yelling and vomiting fire 
 and black smoke, into the sweet, serene, classic woodland 
 silence of that fair hill-side. 
 
 The noisy, fussy, screaming engine, blackening the blue sky 
 and searing the flowery grass, seemed her meet emblem. 
 
 He sighed, and left the place, and went to where a womaa 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 383 
 
 clad in wliite waa painting in a fragrant solitary place, with the 
 blue passion-flower curling about the casements. 
 
 " Teach me to forget all in my life save yourself," he mur- 
 mured. 
 
 And Etoile listened to his prayer, and let him steep himself 
 in welcome oblivion, when, to be wise, she should have harried 
 and lashed him with remembrance till he should have risen 
 and stood free. 
 
 But then she loved him. 
 
 Women who, in their warmest passions, love but themselves 
 cannot understand this utter obedience to an unwise will, this 
 tender submission to an unreasoning weakness, this absolute 
 self-negation. 
 
 Yet nothing less is love. 
 
 Meanwhile this great submission given him intoxicated him 
 like new wine : he thought himself, as he jestingly said, the 
 magician that had called the solitary star down from heaven 
 to earth, and made it his. 
 
 " Whilst you shone aloof, and aloft, above this world, all the 
 while you were waiting for me 1" he said, with a smile, that 
 she did not see was too victorious. 
 
 Had she been a lowlier woman, perhaps he would not have 
 been so careless of her peace through being so proud of her 
 glory. As it was, he, so long a slave, was never tired of feel- 
 ing himself a king in a vaster and nobler dominion than any 
 he had ever known. 
 
 This woman would have stood haughty and indifferent be- 
 fore a howling world, unblenching and serene. He knew that 
 he alone could make her grow pale as a chidden child, grow 
 flushed as a sun-kissed rose. 
 
 " The world will forget you, hidden here," he said, one day. 
 
 Etoile smiled. 
 
 " Let it forget me. What matter?" 
 
 " No, you must not let it forget you. I love that ring of 
 light about your head that men call fame : it becomes you." 
 
 " The ring of light makes the eyes ache sometimes, and 
 sometimes makes the path under one's feet dark enough," she 
 answered him, and thought, with a little pang, " Is it less 
 myself he loves than that halo about my name ?" 
 
 For it is possible to be the rival of oneself; and a vague 
 apprehension touched her. 
 
384 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " ])o you know," she said, dreamily, " sometimes the ring 
 of light seems to me like that cliairi of fireflies that cruel 
 Mexican women wear at their balls and feasts ? for every point 
 of light a little life dies in pain : so, in such notoriety as we 
 who are famous get^ with each glitter some little sweetness 
 of peace, or joy, or obscurity, perishes. Our light is made 
 of dying things." 
 
 "That is pretf^, but foolish, my dear," he answered her. 
 *' Fame is like wealth or rank or power : it gilds and burnishes 
 the dulness of life. Perhaps I never should have looked at 
 you had you been only a mere woman, — not Etoile I" 
 
 He meant nothing, yet the words stung her. 
 
 They seemed to her to say that his joy over and in her was 
 rather triumph than tenderness, — rather the pursuit of pride 
 than of love. Her heart ached with a sudden longing to be 
 the lowliest creature that lived, but only loved by him for her- 
 self, and not for the uncertain fitful light that the world's rays 
 shed on her. 
 
 " Whenever," had wise Voightel once said to her, " when- 
 ever (if ever) you do love, you will be for a few months the 
 most happy, and forever after the saddest, of women." The 
 first part of the prophecy had come to pass, and she had 
 proved its sw^eet truth ; now and then she thought of the lat- 
 ter half with a chill vague apprehension. 
 
 Not that she had any real sense of the real perils that lay 
 for her in the worn-out passion of another woman, which was 
 cast behind her, she thought, like a crushed, killed snake. 
 
 Whilst she dreamed thus amidst the passion-flowers open- 
 ing their purple hearts to the sun, she was too happy and too 
 unwise to measure or even perceive the coarse and common 
 perils that environed her, or to know the danger that lay for 
 her in an absent enemy who seemed to her too low to merit 
 any kind of fear. 
 
 She had found loris an unwilling bondsman ; whilst yet a 
 stranger he had let her see his galled weariness of the net that 
 held him ; now that he loved her, it no more would have 
 seemed possible for him to desert her for his tyrant's service 
 than it would have seemed possible for a nightingale, freed of 
 the trap, to re-enter it by choice instead of singing his song 
 of rejoicing in the moonlight, fluttering free wings. She 
 never thought of his absent mistress as any peril to himself 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 385 
 
 or her. lie was his own master, ho was free ; ho loved her, 
 he had shaken oft' him an unworthy and galling servitude : 
 it never passed across her fancy that Lady Joan was still a 
 danger for them both. 
 
 She knew that he wrote to England, but this he naturally 
 accounted for by his own entangled aft'airs. " They can ruin 
 me," he said, under his breath, and would not tell her more 
 clearly, save that they had his signatures to many obligations, 
 and had drawn him into many embarrassments that could not 
 be lightly disentangled or cleared away. 
 
 He never told the truth of his affairs to Etoile, because ho 
 thought her too visionary to care for or to comprehend the 
 entanglements of finance ; partly also because he was always 
 in his own heart ashamed of having been caught in those 
 entanglements, and w;»s conscious that for the descendant of a 
 line of warrior-nobles and of knightly princes the questionable 
 honor of the Bourse, and of its legalized gambling, was not 
 wise or dignified or even clean of conscience enough to be 
 fitting. 
 
 " Make me what you think me," he had said to her ; and 
 whilst with her he was all she thought him. Away from lier, 
 the lower aims and the coarser efforts in which his late years 
 had been steeped by one evil influence might resume their 
 sway, but in hor presence the impressionable temper of loris 
 made him truly rise to the heights on which he could meet 
 and unite with hers. 
 
 Once she had said to him, " If they can ruin you, as you 
 say, cut through all these nets of speculation, these Gordian 
 knots of obligation ; cut through them all, let it cost what it 
 may, and come out from them with your honor safe and free, 
 if it leave you poor." 
 
 He was tempted to follow her counsel ; he was tempted to 
 cast Fiordelisa and his last remnants of fortune into the 
 hands of the harpies of finance, and rescue by such loss at 
 least his manhood and his liberty. 
 
 But his temper was too hesitating for so irrevocable and 
 headlong a plunge into the unknown. He temporized ; he 
 hoped ; he waited ; he trusted ; he dallied with danger, be- 
 lieving that thus he exorcised it. 
 
 " You do not undei-stand, my angel," he would say to her, 
 and close her lips to silence with his kisses when she would 
 B 8;5 
 
386 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 have urged him to say more. He told her little, because 
 these things beside her seemed to iiim so poor and gross and 
 mean ; he felt also that he hud been in a large measure tho 
 dupe of circumstances that he should never have allowed to 
 gather round him, and he did not care for the one living 
 creature who saw in him all that the ideal of his youth had 
 once dreamed of becoming, to be roused from her faith and 
 her dreams to hear the common sorry story of fortunes em- 
 barrassed by unwise enterprise and by foolish crer'alities. 
 
 He could not bear to lower himself in her eyes. If he had 
 understood her more truly, he would have known that nothing 
 would have turned her from him ; that she would have for- 
 given him any crime, even what is harder to forgive than crime, 
 — any folly, or even any faithlessness. But he did not 
 understand aright ; and so he erred and went on in silence. 
 
 And all the while through the hot summer, written words, 
 or words brought by the electric wires, startled him from his 
 dreams, and stung him as mosquitoes sting, the sting making 
 him rise hot, irritable, and wearily awakened. 
 
 She who was absent knew how to send such words ; blows 
 to rivet loosened bolts, baits to allure vpgue ambitions, threats 
 to alarm apprehensive honor, thorns to pierce and inflame 
 careless indolence ; words that, like the pale, invisible hosts of 
 the mosquitoes, gave no rest. 
 
 Over and over again he was on the point of severing forever 
 the ropes that held the bark of his fate to the quicksands of 
 speculation. But ere ever the resolve could become accom- 
 plished fact, his tyrant, ever with him even in absence, cried, 
 "Hold!" and he paused, and doubted, and waitec as he 
 waited to tell her the truth, until forever it became too late. 
 
 Etoile knew but little of such things; what poet or artist 
 does? and she knew his love of his own old place, and dreaded 
 to urge on him any haste in action wiiich might imperil it. 
 
 " Even if they ruin you I have enough," she said once : 
 he kissed her, but said, " My angel, that would not do ; I 
 could not live upon a woman : let me free Fiordelisa in my 
 own way." 
 
 Art seemed but little to her now. 
 
 She sketched his features again and again, modelled them 
 in clay, and never tired of that ; but those long, glad, pure 
 days of absolute absorption in her work, when she used to 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 387 
 
 have no rcj^ret, but to see the light fade as the sunset, — those 
 were over forever. 
 
 Although her physicians had ordered he.- to rest for a y^r, 
 she did nut now obey them ; with his words came the desire to 
 do something more beautifiil for him than she had ever done 
 for Art alone, something with which his fancy and his features 
 should mingle and his very being be embahned. With the 
 true artist, Love finds an involuntary utterance in Art. as the 
 passion of the bird finds utterance in its song. 
 
 In her villa there was a large chamber with tapestried walla 
 jutting out into the garden, with all the rank riot of lush grass 
 and wild flowers round about it ; here she made her studio, 
 and here, when he was not with hei, she passed all ler hours, 
 like llaffaelle, seeing but one face, paint what she would, in 
 that absolute constancy and absorption of every thought, of 
 every breath, of every fancy., throughout absence, which is 
 the true fidelity of a life. Did he ever realize all that this 
 gave him, all that this meant, then and hereafter? Scarcely: 
 with liim love was a thing half of the sentiment, half of the 
 senses, and he smiled sometimes to see it become to lior holy 
 as religion, deep-rooted as the hope of immortality. 
 
 "Who should ever love you, as you love?' he thought; 
 and then he kissed her, and what need was there of any 
 subtleties of thought or word ? 
 
 Passion imperious, exacting, cruel, domineering, had long 
 preyed upon his life, but passion tender, obedient, intense, and 
 full of that humility to which a great love bonds down the 
 strongest, was strange to him. There were times when he 
 half feared it, as in the old days of visions men half feared 
 the angels that came to them in the night. 
 
 That first fancy of her, as half a muse and half a saint, 
 was with him still, and though he had made the muse see no 
 face but his own, and the saint droop n a love all of earth, 
 and was glad and triumphant, yet with a man's inconsistencj 
 he was tempted to regret that he had not passed by and left 
 them as they were : " some day she will reproach me," he 
 said to himself 
 
 Perhaps some such vague dissatisfaction with himself moved 
 Pygmalion, and some wish that he had left the marble, marble, 
 came to him when for him alone the statue bent and blushed. 
 
 To Etoile, who knew herself well to be neither muse nor 
 
388 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 saint, but only a woman to whom mere human joys had long 
 been strangers, the happiness that he had brought her seemed 
 worth the loss of life itself; love to the looker-on may be blind, 
 unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice,, a crime, yet 
 none the less is love, alone, the one thing that, come weal or 
 woe, is worth the loss of every other thing, — the one supreme 
 and perfect gift of earth, in which all common things of daily 
 life become transfigured and divine ; and perhaps of all the 
 many woes that priesthoods have wrought upon humanity, 
 none have been greater than this false teaching, that love can 
 ever be a sin. To the sorrow and the harm of the world, the 
 world's religions have all striven to make men and women shun 
 and deny their one angel as a peril or a shame ; but religions 
 cannot strive against nature, and when the lovers see each 
 other's heaven in each other's eyes, they know the supreme 
 truth that one short day together is worth a lifetime's glory. 
 
 Etoile, walking through the blue lilies of the grass in the 
 warm air, listening for his step, looked back at her past that 
 had not known this joy with wonder and with pity. " I 
 thought I saw so clearly and so far in those old years," she 
 thought, " and yet I never saw all that I missed." 
 
 " Nay, dear," said loris, with a smile, when once she said 
 this to him, " to give that insight the magician must come." 
 
 And he was glad and proud that he was that magician, and 
 she lot him see the power of his wand too much. 
 
 "Since it pleases him to know his power, what matter?" 
 she thought. " I have been strong against the world, strong 
 in my art and in my labors, strong to keep my armor bright 
 in the contest with men. The world has called me too strouyr : 
 I have earned the right to be weak." 
 
 He had been a slave so long, it pleased her to crown him a 
 king. 
 
 Even when he was tyrannous, capricious, or unjust, as a 
 man in his love will often be, she bent her head to the yoke, 
 and was silent and patient as Griseldis. " He has suffered so 
 much," she thought. " There is so much to efface for him, 
 so much to bo made up to him." So she set herself to atone 
 to him for the cruelty of another, as though it had been her 
 own. 
 
 Whsn a word that might have seemed to him too vain, or 
 too arrogant, sprang to her lips, she repressed it unspoken, lest 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 38-'* 
 
 it should seem to bear any likeness of his tyrant in it. She 
 wanted to give him back all the pride, the self-esteem, the 
 dignity of thought, of which his mistress had so long robbed 
 him : to strengthen his hands she eflfaced herself. 
 
 She had been proud all her life. She gave him her pride, 
 now, as she would have given him the kingdoms of earth had 
 she had them. 
 
 There is a story in an old poet's forgotten writings of a 
 woman who was queen when the world was young, and reigned 
 over many lands, and loved a captive, and set him free, and, 
 thinking to hurt him less by seeming lowly, came down from 
 her throne and laid her sceptre in the dust, and passed among 
 the common maidens that drew water at the well or begged at 
 the city gate, and seemed as one of them, giving him all and 
 keeping naught herself: "so will he love me more," she 
 thought. But he, crowned king, thought only of the sceptre 
 and the throne, and, having those, looked not among the 
 women at the gate, and knew her not, because what he had 
 loved had been a queen. Thus she, self-discrowned, lost both 
 her love and her kingdom. A wise man among the throng 
 said to her, " Nay, you should have kept aloof upon your 
 golden seat, and made him feel your power to deal life or 
 death, and fretted him long, and long kept him in durance 
 and in doubt, you, meanwhile, far above. For men are light 
 creatures as the moths are." 
 
 But Etoile had never read this story then, nor, had she seen 
 it, would she have read the parable. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 One summer day tidings came whose pain touched her even 
 in her paradise, — the tidings that gentle, gracious, courtly 
 Lord Archie had been drowned during a sudden storm, in 
 which his pleasure-schooner had gone down, beating off the 
 Isle of Jura, where he had been shooting on the moor. 
 
 " Dead !" said Etclle, with white lips : death seemed so 
 impossible for that charming idler, that gentle wit, that grace- 
 
 33* 
 
390 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ful saunterer through the smooth and sunny ways of a philo- 
 sophic life. 
 
 " Dead !" said lorit ; and his eyes clouded and his brows 
 grew dark, for he foresaw a darker shadow cast by this death 
 across his own path. 
 
 Lord Archie had been the sole fragile tie that had bound 
 his daughter to any kind of truth or reason ; before her father, 
 falsehood always halted on her lips. Calm and indifferent 
 though his habits were, his heart was loyal and his temper 
 true. loris had always felt that the dead man had held his 
 tigress in a manner in leash ; and now on his table in the 
 offices in the Trastevere there was lying a passionate summons 
 to him in cipher, flashed in lightning from his tyrant, crying 
 to him from across the mountains and the sea, — 
 
 " Come to me come I" 
 
 That day their solitude seemed less sweet; even the sun- 
 shine of the radiant painting-chamber seemed to grow dull ; 
 clouds heaved up from the south and the east ; a sullen sirocco 
 was blowing, and the golden hearts and blue eyes of the pas- 
 sion-flowers were filled with the sand of the desert. 
 
 "I cannot write to her?" said Eto.le, and hesitated, and 
 looked in his face. 
 
 " No," said loris, abruptly, and was silent. 
 
 She wound her hand in his. 
 
 " Would you let me write to her ? — it seems heartless not 
 to write, and I might tell her the truth of us, in some way, 
 not to hurt her." 
 
 " No !" said loris. " No ; I forbid you." 
 
 Her head drooped. She did not urge him ; she did not 
 chafe against the tyranny of the words, because she fancied 
 that such tyranny was sweet to him after long servitude. 
 
 Those who know themselves strong can bear to be submis- 
 sive. She was strong with the world ; she was only weak with 
 him. 
 
 He drew her arms about his throat : 
 
 *' Ma femme ne pent j^as ecrire d ma maitresse" he mur- 
 mured, in the language which they most often spoke. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 391 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVn. 
 
 One morning Etoile was in her painting-room. It was about 
 Ml o'clock, and fresh rains had cooled the air. In the fields 
 beyond her gardens the people were at vintage ; their merry 
 cries came to her mellowed by distance, with the laughter of 
 the children and the heavy roll of the grape- vvagons creaking 
 down the vine-alleys. 
 
 She had been working two hours. He was away in the 
 city. Her painting had come forth from the canvas into 
 life. 
 
 And in the face of it she had given the face of loris ; and 
 the work was delightful to her, — not now, as of old, for art's 
 sake, but for his. 
 
 She had left off working for a moment and thrown herself 
 on a low couch ; the sea-breeze came in through the passion- 
 flowers and stirred the folds of her white linen dress and lifted 
 the hair from her forehead ; the swallows were flying before 
 the open casements. 
 
 " The summer will soon be going, so soon the summer will 
 be a thing of the past," she thought; and the thought smote 
 her with a sudden pang in the light, the fragrance, the still- 
 ness that were round her. 
 
 This one beloved sweet summer ! 
 
 Shine the sun as it would, and bring forth its flowers and 
 its joys as it might, no summer ever could be quite like this 
 one which was fading. The vino-dressers beyond the trees 
 were dancing and shouting with gladness because the grapes 
 were ripe and the summer dying ; but each reddened leaf to 
 her was a regret, each purpled cluster to her was a lament : 
 the summer so soon would be dead. 
 
 The summer that had had no precursor, that could have no 
 successor, like itself 
 
 The door of the studio opened suddenly ; loria entered in 
 silence, and quickly crossed the marble floor and threw himself 
 beside her. He looked worn and very pale ; he knelt at her 
 feet and covered her hands with kisses. 
 
392 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " My love, I must leave you 1" he murmured. " I have to 
 go to Paris ; I shall be absent only a little while, but — but " 
 
 Etoilo thrust him backward with a sudden movement, in 
 which all the blood, and life, and heart, and soul, that were in 
 her, seemed to leap in flame to her cheek, and in lightning to 
 her eyes. 
 
 " You ure going — to her !" 
 
 " Ad I. live I am not !" cried loris; and he rose, too, in as 
 passionate a scorn as her own. " What ! you insult me by 
 thinking I would insult yon^ and follow that woman ! No, I 
 go to Paris on a matter that concerns my honor, that is all : 
 to try and save something for all those who trusted me in this 
 accursed Sicilian folly. As for her, she is in Scotland. How 
 can you doubt me so?" 
 
 She caught his hands convulsively ; she grew as white as 
 death. 
 
 " You will not go to her — ^you will not ?" 
 
 " By my dead mother's memory, if you wish, I will swear 
 to you — No ! By the heaven above us. No — ten thousanvl 
 times." 
 
 She sank down in a passion of weeping, and piteously clung 
 to him, whilst all the sweet glow of sunshine went round 
 before her blinded eyes in rings of fire. 
 
 " Oh, my love, my life, why leave me ? Have T f^iiled in 
 anything ? Am I in fault ? Are you not happy ? " 
 
 He kipsed her eyelids, and raised her in his arms. 
 
 " We are too happy ! — the gods always grudge it. Do you 
 think I would leave you for a little thing? I must go for my 
 honor. I must go to save those who trusted me ; there is no 
 other way. Listen ; try and be calm ; I shall be back before 
 our passion-flowers change color." 
 
 Then his voice faltered, and a quick sob caught his breath ; 
 as he held her to his heart she felt the hot tears fall from his 
 eyes upon her. 
 
 Nor was he lying then. He spoke the truth as he meant 
 it, as he saw it. It changed later on in his hands, as a gem 
 that no man can control changes color. He had ro.ii?ted the 
 prayers of the absent woman who besought him ; he had let 
 her entreaties beat themselves vainly on his deadness and 
 deafness, like fretting waves on the beaten sand ; he had been 
 irresponsive, and cold, and unmoved, as only a dead passion 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 393 
 
 that is buried in the charnel-house of disgust ever can be. 
 But though the truth was still untold to her flir away in the 
 North, she had felt the chill, si(;kly shudder that runs through 
 the hot leaping blood of the woman who is jealous — and 
 forsaken. 
 
 She had woven, she had spun, in the dust and the dark- 
 ness of the great city ; slio had pulled the threads ; she had 
 woven like fate. 
 
 He would not know whither he came, but he would come. 
 She wove like face. 
 
 The irises of May had been in bloom when his tyrant had 
 left him free. The white dahlias and asters of September 
 were in bloom v/hen he broke the spell of a joy too great to 
 last, and went northward. 
 
 The memories of those sweet, shinl* g, sultry months lay 
 like sleeping children in the heart of Et' ile, and until thought 
 itself should perish in her, they coulc nev jr die. 
 
 It is so much to have been once cniirely happy ; never can 
 it altogether pass away. 
 
 Yet when he went it seemed to him that she died : the 
 latter half of the old wise man's prophecy began to realize 
 itself as a cruel spell works slowly out ou a doomed thing. 
 
 She had utter faith in him. 
 
 As he had sworn, so she was sure it was ; she never wronged 
 him by the baseness of any disbelief. To doubt him would 
 have seemed to her the foulest insult. 
 
 When she touched the colors and the brushes, with which, 
 all her life before, she had been able to summon spirits and 
 angels at har will and forget the world around her, it was now 
 only to endeavor to perfect his portrait or call the soft dark- 
 ness of hlc eyes up on some blank piece of panel or of canvas. 
 Then she would drop her brush wearily, and lean her head on 
 her hands, and weep bitterly : bereft of him she was twice be- 
 reaved, for with him also had gone her art. 
 
 A vague fear, too, lay forever on her, like a stone on a living 
 blossom. 
 
 She would not wrong him with any doubt of his fidelity ; yet 
 he told her nothing ; she could not tell what toils were not 
 entangling, what dangers not encompassing, him. 
 
 He had gone to save his honor : if his honor made ship- 
 wreck ? 
 
394 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 More than once she was sorely tempted to go also to Paris. 
 It was her home ; she had a full and natural right to return 
 there ; all her interests, indeed, were suffering from her long 
 absence. Yet she did not go ; she feared that it might seem 
 to him as if she followed him, suspected him, spied upon him, 
 importuned him. He had had too much of that weary insult. 
 She would not wrong him so : therefore she stayed. 
 
 Tlie days and the weeks of that time were ever afterwprds to 
 Etoile, looking back oa them, but a dull blank, a chaos of pain, 
 such as the time of a great sickness seems in memory to the 
 sick man looking back to it. 
 
 She was herself ill in body, — so ill that physicians grew 
 grave as they looked at her, and murmured of the Roman 
 fever, and felt that there was some mental ill beside of which 
 they knew not. 
 
 She grew thinner, paler, weaker, every day, and every night 
 wept more on her sleepless pillows ; and the last of the grape- 
 harvest was gathered, and the last of the people's songs sung, 
 and the wind grew chill as they swept over bare fields, and the 
 last of the passion-flowers faded and fell. 
 
 One day a nightingale lay dead at the foot of the palms : a 
 stray shot had stilled its song forever. 
 
 A great hopelessness had fallen upon her. 
 
 All her life long she had been brave, sanguine, and ready to 
 smile at the worst enmity of the world or fate ; but suddenly, 
 as a finely-strung bow may give way, she fell into utter lassi- 
 tude and depression : a heaVy despair seemed to weigh on her 
 like a hand of ice. 
 
 He had left her with tenderness, passion, grief; but he had 
 left her. 
 
 To her it was like the fiat of their endless separation. 
 
 " Where did I fail ?" she asked herself, with a sort of 
 remorse as though the fault were hers ; and her great love 
 would not let her recognize that its own very humility, and 
 strength, and depth, had been its foes. 
 
 When loris had passed away over the mountains, he had 
 gone looking back with dim eyes and aching heart indeed, 
 but he had gone saying to himself, " If she were never to 
 behold my face again, she would never give herself to any 
 other." 
 
 Had he not been so sure, so utterly sure, all the powers of 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 395 
 
 earth would not have made him leave her, even for his honor's 
 sake, or any other force or fate. But he knew that if he were 
 to die that night, in body and soul would she be widowed 
 forever, longing only for the kiss of death. Therefore he 
 went secure. 
 
 Such security is the divinest part of love. But oftentimes 
 — alas ! it does but melt passion, as the fulness of the sun 
 melts snow into water. 
 
 She knew that he was well ; she knew that he was in Paris ; 
 and she knew no more. She did not think that he was near the 
 woman whom he had forsaken, because he had said that to 
 think so was to dishonor him. 
 
 Yet a darkness like the terrible blank of death seemed to 
 her to have come between them. All her life seemed to go 
 away with him A delirious pain kept her sleepless through 
 the nights ; a deadly apathy kept her motionless and powerless 
 through the days, 
 
 " Dead to use and name and fame," 
 
 now that the cruel charm was read. The dust gathered on the 
 work she had begun, and the flies settled down on it undis- 
 turbed. She never looked at it but once, and then wondered 
 wearily was it she who had ever had the power to create ? 
 "Was it she who once had thought life too short and earth too 
 small for Art ? She looked back on her dead self as on some 
 other woman, whom she watched curiously and wondered at 
 vaguely ; art ! — all the art of the world might have perished 
 like a burnt scroll, and she would have cared nothing, had 
 one life been beside hers. 
 
 Which is the truth, which is the madness? — when the 
 artist, in the sunlit ice of a cold dreamland, scorns love and 
 adores but one art ? or when the artist, amidst the bruised roses 
 of a garden of passion, finds all heaven on one human heart ? 
 
 Both are truth ; perhaps both are madness. 
 
 But it were well to die in one of them, without waking to 
 know ourselves mad. 
 
396 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVITI. 
 
 At four o'clock in that golden October day, when at Rocaldi 
 the shot nightingale lay dead underneath the palms, the Lady 
 Joan Challoner sat in a chamber in the Hue de llivoli. Iler 
 heavy black garments were deep with crape and all the out- 
 ward signs of woo, and the note-paper before her had black 
 edges of the broadest and the saddest ; but on her face was a 
 radiance of bronze of travel ; in her eyes was a shining smile 
 of content. She was victorious. 
 
 The transfer was effected past recall. 
 
 And before her was seated loris. 
 
 The room was small, and close, and gaudy ; a gilt clock 
 ticked with feverish haste. The sun came in hot and jrlarinjir 
 from the zinc roofs opposite the windows. loris, in the narrow, 
 pent-up space and the stifling atmosphere, shuddered and felt 
 stifled ; he looked worn and very ill. 
 
 So he told himself, as ruined nations tell themselves so 
 when, through their hesitation and their disorder, they are 
 beaten in war. 
 
 He had been betrayed and misled. 
 
 He had been drawp on from one point to another by false 
 hopes ; he had reached too late to change or arrest what he 
 disapproved of; his endeavors had all been fruitless and his 
 wishes overborne ; he had thought to save the i.iterests of all 
 those who had trusted him, and he found that he had only 
 imperilled them. The mended pot was sent rocking down the 
 stream, and his honor was embarked, a sad and trembling 
 passenger, on that frail venture. 
 
 He had come northward honestly believing that he came to 
 retrieve the fortunes of a hapless enterprise, and he found that 
 he had only fallen into the arms of a passionate and jealous 
 woman. The inexorable pressure of circumstances had forced 
 him whither he had sworn not to go ; the inexorable nets of 
 obligation had drawn him into the very peril he loathed ; he 
 had found himself face to face with her through business,— 
 only business, as she said to every one ; and his doom, like 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 397 
 
 that of the gold dropped in the sands and the Sea of Faro, 
 was written. 
 
 " lo has come about the transfer," slie said to her relatives 
 and her society. 
 
 " lo has come to me in my grief," she said to her closer 
 friends. 
 
 Her husband left for the baths of Tauness, though it was 
 lo^e in the year. The new association for Faro sprang to light 
 in the money-market and on the thick creamy paper of a 
 brativl-new prospectus. loris arrived too late to alter anything ; 
 he found that he could do nothing save sign what she wished 
 him. Lady Joan shook out her crape, and felt that she could 
 have ruled empires had she been called to them. 
 
 " You do look so ill, lo," she had cried to him, fondly, the 
 first hour they met. " That is all fretting for me. I will never 
 leave you again, — never, never !" 
 
 He shuddered, and was silent. 
 
 She believed what she said, and she meant what she said. 
 In her hard, rough, cruel way she loved him, — as she saw 
 love. 
 
 None can give what they have not in tliem. 
 
 They sat together now in the little, gilded, close room in the 
 Paris hotel, and she was happy. He could not escape her, and 
 the transfer as a fact accomplished was before her sight in its 
 printed prospectus. 
 
 V ,ris was dull indeed, for it was out of the season, and in 
 her heavy crape she could not go to amusements, laugh at 
 theatres, or walk about at open-air concerts ; but it was alwayfi 
 Paris, and she could go and dine at the cafes and drive by 
 moonlight in the Bois, and walk about and see the shops, and 
 divert herself in many ways : even crape suits have their use?. 
 And he was here under her eye and hand, never to be let loose 
 again until safe back in Fiordelisa. Later on that same night 
 her jealous fears had assailed him. 
 
 " I hear you have been always with Etoile whilst I have 
 been away," she had said, suddenly, her eyes fastened on his. 
 
 But loris, being well conscio as of all that would be said to 
 him, was impenetrably masked. 
 
 " I have seen her sometimes, of course," he made answer. 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " What more should there be ?" 
 
 , 84 
 
398 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " I heard there was a great deal more, — a great deal too 
 much." 
 
 " Believe what you like ! It is the same to me." 
 
 " You are cruel, loris !" 
 
 " It is you who are suspicious and odious !" 
 
 " To be called that oiler all I have slaved to do for you, all 
 I have suffered this cruel summer 1" 
 
 " Why will you talk folly, then ?" , i.^ij :, 
 
 "Is it folly?' - ''% 
 
 "Of course." ■ , ^^(: 
 
 " You have not been with her?" '":%> 
 
 " Who can have told you I have?" - ^ 
 
 " Marjory told me." 
 
 " She is a mischief-maker ; she is envious." 
 
 " But Etoile is in love with you .'" 
 
 " .Do not say such things to me of any woman : I do not 
 like them," 
 
 " It is true." 
 
 " True or false, do not say it : it is unpleasant to me." 
 
 " Will you swear to me you do not care about her, then ?" 
 
 " Why do you ask ? Can you not be satisfied ? Am I 
 not here ?" 
 
 She was satisfied ; and, being blinded and muffled in a vast 
 vanity that prevented her from seeing anything that was not 
 worship of herself, she never noticed that all these answers 
 were but evasions ; they were none of them such denials — 
 firm, frank, and fierce — as the man will give who, being faith- 
 ful, is suspected of infidelity. 
 
 But, though merely evasions, his conscience smote him 
 heavily for their usage. He thought he was blameless in de- 
 ceiving his tyrant, but he knew himself guilty in denying 
 what adored him. 
 
 He seemed to see the deep scorn flash from the tranquil, 
 studious eyes of Etoile, — if she could know. 
 
 *' It is only for a little while longer till all is clear," he said 
 to himself, as in the evening shadows of Fiordelisa he had 
 said to himself. " It will be easier to write the truth." 
 
 So he stayed on in Paris, and hated himself, and with 
 every day that rose, said, " I will tell her, and go to Rome 
 alone to-night." And every day passed with the tnith still 
 untold : the fatal, unnerving influence of a violent temper 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 399 
 
 and a furious will had once more fallen on him, numbing all 
 his strength. 
 
 And another and a worse thing began to come to him : he 
 began to be ashamed to go back to Etoilc, ashamed to say to 
 her, " I have sinned and been faithless !" 
 
 He had made an effort to return alone ; had pleaded the 
 end of the vintage, which needed the presence of its lord. 
 But she had raised heaven and earth, and so moved all their 
 forces that the formalities of business had bound him as the 
 threads of the Liiiputians the wrecked traveller ; and there 
 were necessities for his presence in Paris weightier and more 
 costly to break from than the necessities of the old classic 
 custom of the grape-harvest at homo. 
 
 So he stayed, galled and fretted and half broken-hearted, 
 knowing himself befooled, knowing himself a traitor, knowing 
 himself unfaithful where his fairest faith lay and sat in the 
 gilded close room, with the zinc roof shining through the lace 
 curtains of the window, and thought of cool palm shadows, of 
 creamy daturas and blue passion-flowers, — of u white form 
 moving slowly through the sunlit grass. 
 
 Sometimes, when he could evade his tormentor's vigilance, 
 and leave her engrossed with some agent de change, or some 
 artist, or some mirthful writer of indecent comedies, or any 
 other of her numerous acquaintances, he would go by himnelf 
 and look at the old house by the trees of the Luxembourg, 
 which was still Etoile's, and speak of her a little with the old 
 people left in charge there. 
 
 They let him enter once, and he sat down in the great 
 "wooden atelier opening on the garden, and felt as if her pres- 
 ence were near him ; and when they uncovered a white bust 
 that was of herself, and done by Clesinger, he turned from 
 the sightless eyes of the marble as one ashamed. 
 
 At other times he would go in the academies and private 
 palaces where her works hung, and study their power, and 
 their color, and their classic grace, and feel his pulse beat 
 more quickly as he thought: " The woman who can create 
 those only lives for me ; the muse that reigns here is but a 
 fond and fragile thing to me, that trembles if she grieves me, 
 that turns pale if I but frown !" 
 
 And the sense of her power was sweet to him, because it 
 lay like a dog at his feet. 
 
400 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 But the moments when ho was free to wander or to remem- 
 ber theiu wore rare to him, for liis tyrant was niggard of his 
 liberty and a miser over his very thoughts. 
 
 Ever and again she would wound him with the thorn of 
 some gross word, some wanton lie, some echoed calumny that 
 she flung carelessly but brutally at the name of Etoile as a 
 low hand throws a handful of mud against a marble statue, 
 j)lcased to see the pure whiteness of it stained. He felt almost 
 as base as she who threw it, since he did not raise his voice to 
 save the outrage. 
 
 " She would die for me," he thought to himself, " and I, I 
 have not the courage even to defend her from the senseless 
 calumnies of jealous hate 1" 
 
 And he kept a sullen silence that his tyrant translated as 
 indifference, and, so translating, was content. 
 
 About any name brighter, any powers higher, than those 
 of the common mass of men and women, vile innuendoes, foul 
 inventions, cowardly slanders always buzz and hover in the air 
 as insects gather in the heat about the flower that bears most 
 honey in its bn^ast. A host of rumors was in the air about 
 the name of Etoile, as about that of every other against whom 
 could be charged the great guilt of excelling ; it was easy for 
 another woman's jealousy to gather them together and make 
 a poison-cloud of th. i, and point to it and say, " Look how 
 heavy the cloud is, — how the stinging things cluster ; there 
 must be corruption near !" 
 
 And he longed to strike her on the mouth for her lie, yet 
 could not, she being a woman. 
 
 One night she had a comedian and an author to dinner with 
 her in the Rue do llivoli. They were persons she had known 
 long ; they were men of mediocre talent and of dubious repu- 
 tation, but they were useful to her, — had been useful, might 
 be useful : she invited them once whenever she passed through 
 Paris. 
 
 The comedian had desired a part in that comedy in verse 
 which had been one of the triumphs of Etoile. It had not 
 been given him. The author had had a dramatic piece rejected 
 at the great theatre where hers a little later had been so bril- 
 liantly received. Both were of that second rank in the world 
 of literature and art which is the most bitter enemy to the 
 leading rank of that world that it possesses ; both had been 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 401 
 
 passed over by Etoile with that indifference to their cxistpnco 
 which was only carelessness in her, but which all took for 
 pride. 
 
 Lady Joan launched her name on the sea of their cigar- 
 snioke when their dinner was done. 
 
 They threw themselves on it jis hounds on a deer. 
 
 They tore it, they worried it, they strangled it, as the deer 
 is torn, worried, and strangled ; only out of the malice of 
 mediocrity ; but perhaps that is the most cruel malice that 
 human life holds, because it is tlie most stupid. 
 
 loris sat and heard — in silence. 
 
 His tyrant watched him, but in vain. She caught no glance, 
 she heard no word, that she could construe. He might have 
 been deaf. 
 
 When they rose to go, she bade him see them down the 
 staircase of the hotel. 
 
 He rose and obeyed. He even ushered them to the coi*rt- 
 yard, and through the court- yard into the street, with an im- 
 passible courtesy that flattered both very greatly. 
 
 When they were fairly in the street under the midniglit 
 skies, he struck each by turn on the lips with a glove that he 
 had been twisting in his fingers. 
 
 " Messieurs, vans etes deux laches /" he said, very tran- 
 quilly, a sombre light shining in his eyes that startled them. 
 
 Then he turned on his heel and entered the hotel once 
 more before either of them had recovered from his astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 He felt the first contentment that he had known since he 
 had left Kome. 
 
 He waited within the next morning, expecting some mes- 
 sage from them, but he received none. The next day he 
 learned that the comedian had been arrested for debt, and the 
 author for an offence of the press against decency. 
 
 " You have choice friends, ma chlre .'" he said to the Lady 
 Joan, who answered him sharply: 
 
 " They wrote me that you insulted them the other evening. 
 What did you do that for, pray ? They are most excellent 
 creatures, though a little imprudent and unfortunate." 
 
 " They spoke too coarsely before you." said loris, care- 
 lessly. 
 
 She smiled, well gratified. 
 
 34* 
 
402 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 " And you would have made a duel and a fuss about that, 
 and compromised Tue ! You must not do such things, lo : it 
 is dangerous." 
 
 loris laughed aloud. 
 
 She did not understand his laugh. 
 
 She began dimly to fancy that she did not understand him, 
 weak as water, docile as the silk to the hand that winds it 
 though she had always deemed him to be. Still, she was con- 
 tent. "How fus y and foolish he is still about wc.'" she 
 thought, in her happy conceit. " The idea of being so angry, 
 just for my sake, about nothing !" 
 
 And she was vain "and proud. 
 
 Yet a certain sense of anxiety entered into her. She 
 had always known him so docile and so patient to her com- 
 mand. If alone, unknown to her, he could rise in such anger 
 (though for her sake), what might he not do some day for his 
 own? 
 
 For she knew very well that she had misled him to his 
 hurt ; that she had dragged him where it was hard to walk in 
 clean paths ; that she had exposed him to bitter misconstruc- 
 tions and harsh obligations ; that one day he might resent and 
 revolt : who could tell ? 
 
 But, after all, did it matter? She had him close and fast. 
 If she made his fortune, gratitude must bind him forever 
 to her ; if she had him ruined, necessity must keep him by 
 her side. So she was content, and the days rolled on in 
 Paris. 
 
 These days were ghastly to him ; he loathed every hour of 
 them, — from the long, dreary mornings filled with interviews 
 and correspondence on a transaction that his intelligence mis- 
 trusted and iiis conscience condemned, to the long, gaslit even- 
 ings spent in a tUe-d-ttte diimer in a cafe, a saunter through 
 the crowded streets, a drive by the lake, a supper at a restau- 
 rant, — al) the old worn-out routine that seemed to him now so 
 coarse, so common, so gross, so hateful. 
 
 Every moment that passed by seemed to make him tenfold 
 a traitor ; every night, looking up at the stars shining over 
 the sea of gaslights in the Champs Elys(5es, he thought of a 
 woman in his ov;n laud whom the moonlight was finding out 
 in her solitary chamber kneeling by her bed to pray for him, 
 or lying sleepless with wet eyes for his sake. " She loves me 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 403 
 
 BO much, she will forgive even this," he said to himself, and 
 yet felt so base in his own sight for his faithlessness that it 
 seemed to him he could never look her straightly in the eyes 
 again. 
 
 To his tyrant he did not think that he had sinned, but to 
 Etoile he knew that he had. 
 
 " She loves me so much I" he thought ; and then his hand 
 would loosen itself from his companion's clasp, and he would 
 move impatiently and thrust her away with a restless fretful- 
 ness. 
 
 " You are very changed," she said to him once. 
 
 Ke answered her sullenly, — 
 
 " You have acted without me ; you have imperilled my 
 name ; you have loaded me with fresh obligations. Can you 
 expect me to be grateful ? Do not make me scenes, for heaven's 
 sake !" 
 
 And she was stilled and vaguely alarmed, for she knew in 
 her own secret heart that she had brought ruin and him very 
 near one to the other. 
 
 True, the mended pot was swimming gayly down the stream 
 among the bronze ones, but who could tell how long it would 
 be aiioat? She had done a clever thing, and she had put 
 money in her purse, and she was rejoicing in her strength : 
 Btill, like a cold wind, there came over her the consciousness 
 that some day loris might rise in fury and reproach her as his 
 ruin. 
 
 The chill passed quickly off, the momentary spasm was soon 
 still : she was not a woman to mistrust herself or to feel the 
 heart-ache of a self-reproach. If matters turned out well, it 
 was she who had made him do so ; if ill, why, then other 
 people had been fools. And that wa.s all. So she sat in the 
 little, hot, gilded room and read her letters, and was fiercely 
 glad and fiercely proud because she iiad woven her threads so 
 patiently and well that there loris was beneath the autumn^ 
 sun by her side in Paris. 
 
 For a time there was no sound but the ticking of the gilt 
 clock and the scratching of her steel pen. loris was stretched 
 upon a couoh ; his eyes were closed, his face was colorless and 
 very weary. He was thinking, would it be possible by any 
 plea to escape alone and go to Rome that night ? 
 
 Her writing finished at length, the Lady Joan lifted her 
 
404 FRIENDSHIP. - 
 
 head and looked at him. She could not but see that ho 
 looked very ill and very fatigued, but it gratified her to see 
 him so, because she took it as witness for his grief at her long 
 absence from him. 
 
 " Poor lo, how silly he is !" she said softly to herself, the 
 self-satisfied, vain smile of complete complacency breaking over 
 her face and softening its harsher lines ; and she rose and 
 leaned a little over him, and brushed a fly from off his low, 
 broad brow. 
 
 loris, startled, lifted himself with a sudden, quick movement 
 from the cushions of the couch. As he did so, a letter fell 
 from between his shirt and waistcoat. He caught it rapidly, 
 but not so rapidly but what she had seen its superscription. 
 
 " That is the writing of Etoile !" she cried, and snatched 
 his wrist and held his hand motionless. 
 
 " It is her writing," she said, between her teeth. 
 
 " Give it me — do you hear me ? — give it me 1" 
 
 But he was more agile than she. 
 
 He twisted his wrist out of her grasp, and with a rapid 
 action tossed the letter on to the fire glowing in the open stove. 
 
 It flamed in a moment ; in another moment it was but a 
 few gray ashes on the wood. 
 
 " You have secrets from me ! She writes to you ! You 
 dare !" 
 
 The words hissed through the air about his head like a 
 volley of arrows ; she screamed, she raved, she poured abuse 
 and upbraiding from her lips in torrents of flame. 
 
 " You have secrets from me 1'' she cried once more in her 
 fury. " That woman loves you, writes to you ; you carry her 
 letters in your breast — and I 
 
 " Oh, you traitor ! — you faithless coward !" 
 
 His face grew dark, and he looked at her one moment with 
 a cold, pale rage, with an impulse which, followed, would 
 have given him back his manhood and his peace. 
 
 " If I be faithless and a coward, I am the thing you make 
 me" — the answer sprang to his lips, and with it all the truth. 
 
 But once au;ain was chance against him. 
 
 The door of their sitting-room opened ; there entered one 
 of her fellow-financiers fresh from the Bourse, where the 
 shares of the new company were being liberally favored and 
 purch^ised. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 405 
 
 She choked her wrath into silence, as only finance could 
 have had power to make her do, and, with lowering brows 
 and eyes of flame, forced a smile for the bringer of good 
 tidings. The financier was a Jew of Galicia ; he was voluble 
 and vivacious ; he had much to say, and was eager to say it ; 
 he was inquisitive, and not del-.cate ; he stayed a long time, 
 though he saw that the air he sat in was charged with a storm, 
 and he was too important and too necessary to be lightly dis- 
 missed or dealt with harshly. 
 
 The face of loris had grown expressionless and unrevealing ; 
 he had had time to stifle his impulse, to assume his mask. At 
 his heart a sudden rage was eating, but he smothered it, and 
 resumed a glacial graceful calm. 
 
 When the door closed on their visitor, she flashed her glit- 
 tering eyes of steel upon him. 
 
 " Now answer me, if you can, — if you dare " 
 
 " I have no secrets of my own from you," he answered her, 
 chillily. " But you must allow me to keep the secrets of 
 others. I could not do less than burn the letter of any woman 
 rather than have it read by any other, — even by you." 
 
 She looked at him savagely, questioningly ; his eyes met 
 hers with a cold, impenetrable serenity in their dark depths. 
 
 He had made up his mind to baffle her at any cost. He 
 succeeded. 
 
 " The secrets of others !" she echoed. " You mean that 
 she has a passion for you, and that you care nothing for her. 
 Is that what you mean ? l^ that why you burnt her letter ?" 
 
 loris was silent. 
 
 Silence gives consent. 
 
 " You might have shown it to me," she muttered. " You 
 ought to have shown it to me, whatever it was. To burn 
 it " 
 
 " The woman I love is the last that I could show it to, 
 surely," said loris, with his cold smile unchanged, and his C3'e8 
 impenetrable. He could have laughed aloud at the ironical 
 equivoque, even whilst every drop of blood in him burned 
 with a sullen anger. But to her vanity and self-delusion the 
 answer was a triumph and a joy. 
 
 " Then you admit she loves you?" she cried, aloud. 
 
 " That is what I never admit of any woman, to either woman 
 or man." 
 
406 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 His voico. had a soft, icy chill in it ; his eyes had their 
 changeless il .penetrability. 
 
 She herself screamed, and clapped both hands above her 
 head. 
 
 " As if you didn't admit it by that very answer to me ! 
 Oh, you chivalrous ass, lo ! — to give yourself all these grand 
 airs and almost make us quarrel. What nonsense ! what 
 stuff! I always saw she was scheming to entangle you. I 
 always saw she was wild about you " 
 
 " Hush, hush ! Is a ruined man such fine prey?" 
 
 " Iluincd ! you have Fiordelisa, and you are going to make 
 your fortune through me. Besides, are you not always Prince 
 loris ? I tell you I always saw her designs, — yes, the very 
 first night she came to us. With all her wonderful talent she 
 could not hide it from me. And to write to you unasked 1 
 How unwomanly ! how disgraceful 1 You were far too con- 
 siderate and too clement in burning her letter. What do such 
 women deserve? But how does sire know you are here ?" 
 
 A sudden awakening suspicion flashed freshly across her, 
 and interrupted the flood of her just iudigoation and of lior 
 chaste disgust. 
 
 loris still stood opposite to her, with his back to the light ; 
 a more observant woman would have seen the strain in his 
 calm, the rigidity in his expression, the enforced indifference 
 and restraint ; but she observed none of them. She was not 
 observant ; she was only suspicious. 
 
 " How could she know you were in Paris ?" she said, again. 
 
 He answered, coldly, — 
 
 " No doubt it is known in Rome. My servants " 
 
 " Oh, if she is low enough to go to your servants !" cried 
 his tyrant, — " I dare say she does ; well, she will know you 
 are with me' (she did not note the spasm that passed, and 
 the rigidity of his features). " She will know you are with 
 me. How dare she write? how dare she?" 
 
 " CA^re," said loris, with a smile whose bitterness escaped 
 her, — " chlre^ you forget ; our friendship, sweet though it 
 was and sacred to me, is not a bond that the world respects 
 very much : she may not understand its sanctity. That isi 
 possible." 
 
 " Then she should be made to understand," said Lady Joan, 
 curtly. 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 407 
 
 loris was silent. 
 
 " The forward wretch, to dare to write!" muttered his com- 
 panion, glaring longingly at the gray ashes in the stove : she 
 felt that she would never wholly pardon him for burning that 
 letter so before her very eyes. 
 
 " Let us go out for our drive," she said, less demurely, "and 
 as we go I will tell you all I heard of her from my dear, dear 
 father, before he left us for that fatal cruise. We will dine up 
 at Madrid ; the nights are so fine ; and a pale moon still. 
 Nobody will recognize me with my veil on, will they ?" 
 
 The hours thai followed were sickly as hours of fever to 
 loris. 
 
 The dusty roads, the scared and reddening trees, the passage 
 by the lake, so different from what he had known it when the 
 Second Empire was in its gilded glory, the dinner at Madrid, 
 the cigars on the wooded boulevard, the garden where the 
 gaudy dahlias were dying and the creepers were faded and 
 seared, — they were all loathsome to him. He hated the flare 
 of the lights ; he hated the smell of the smoke ; most of all 
 he hated himself 
 
 " I am faithless, — ftiithless !" he said to his conscience ; and 
 his conscience echoed, " Faithless." 
 
 It seemed to him that the moon-rays slanting in through 
 the balcony windows seeing him would find their way to the 
 charmer in Rome, and say to her, " Charm no more ; he is 
 faithless to you." 
 
 It was for this that he had left her ! this exhausted mockery 
 of grace ; this shame and satire of passion ; this gross gro- 
 tesque unlovely union of violence, of voluptuousness, of mer- 
 cenary greed and guile ! The white rays of the moon seemed 
 to pierce him like Ithuriel's spear. 
 
 They saw him here. 
 
 They saw her where she slept in Rome. 
 
 He was disgusted with himself. 
 
 He felt himself scarcely higher or nobler than the man 
 T^hom he had struck on the mouth with his glove. 
 
 He had surrendered her to the violence and coarseness of a 
 jealous woman. 
 
 He had let a base and unreturned passion be imputed to 
 her and had held his peace. 
 
 He had let a lie like a serpent wind round and enfold her, 
 
408 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and had not Hfled his hand to pluck it off, nor lifted his heel 
 to stamp its poisonous, flat, hissing head lifeless forever. 
 
 Moieover, he said to his conscience, " It is only for a little 
 while ; a few days more " 
 
 In vain ; for he knew that he should have strangled the lie 
 at its birth ; that he should have risen and said manfully to 
 his tyrant, — 
 
 " I am yours no more ; I am hers forever." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 It was a cheerless day in the late autumn, and Rome was 
 drenched with chilly dusky rains, dark and dreary and de- 
 pressing, swept with high winds, and overhung with m*st and 
 cloud. 
 
 It was six o'clock in the grim old palace by the Forum 
 Trajano ; it was the first day of the rites of the Bona Dea and 
 of the gathering of the incoming spinsters and dowagers in 
 that holy quarter. All the matrons and virgins of the Invio- 
 late Isle and of the Free Republic had not yet arrived in 
 Rome, but many had done so ; many had come thither that 
 dark, drear afternoon to partake of the tea that was purifica- 
 tion, and the muffin that was a voucher. 
 
 The religious rites were over ; only two or three of the 
 familiars of the place were lingering : they were Mr. Silverly 
 Bell, and Mrs. Macscrip, and the maiden lady who had 
 written so learnedly on the penalties and the privileges of 
 vestals. 
 
 They still stood round the fire, conversing. 
 
 " Is she still here?" said Mrs. Macscrip. 
 
 "Still here," said Mr. Silverly Bell. 
 
 " Taken that beautiful place that is called Rocaldi ?" 
 
 " Yes, and the rooms by the Rospigliosi also. It must 
 cost a great deal to live as she docs." . „, ., 
 
 " How does she do it? How can she do it?" 
 
 " Ah, how, indeed ? No capital, you know. Makes money, 
 certainly \ makes money ; but what is that?" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 409 
 
 " "Why doesn't she go back to Paris ? She has a house 
 there, they say, and one would think all her interests " 
 
 " Ah !" Mr. Silverly Bell smiled first, and then sighed 
 very deeply. 
 
 "Artists are all alike !" said Mr. Silverly Bell, with a tender 
 regret over the sad shortcomings of genius. 
 
 " I hope we shall never meet her any more in society,'' said 
 the author of the " Privileges and Penalties," and she shud- 
 dered between each word. 
 
 " Not likely," said Mr. Silverly Bell, with another sigh, and 
 took a letter out of his pocket. 
 
 " Here is a little portion I can read to you without any 
 violation of confidence, and written me a few weeks ago by 
 our dear absent friend ; what her poor father said to her before 
 he went on that fatal cruise to Faro ; he could never express 
 himself with sufiicient indignation at its ever having been 
 imagined possible that he ever could have presented her to 
 Lady Joan. It is all very sad." 
 
 And he read the extract from the letter in a low mellow 
 voice, v/ith a touching melancholy accent. 
 
 " My poor father told me a few days before he left for that 
 fatal cruise that he never hud known her at all, except just as 
 men do know women of no character ; going in and out of 
 studios and seeing her — when the Salon opened. He could 
 not be furious enough at its ever having been dreamt that he 
 could have ever sent her to me! You may contradict it 
 everywhere. My father always thought the worst of her. I 
 believe her very pictures are not her own." 
 
 " Is it not sad ?" said the reader again, as he finished. 
 
 " Poor dear Lady Joan !" said Mrs. Macscrip. " Infamous 
 indeed ! To abuse her hospitality in such a manner ! But 
 she is so sweetly confiding." 
 
 " Yes, so fatally frank herself, you see. She never has a 
 suspicion of evil." 
 
 " A beautiful character I" 
 
 " Most noble, yes. But sure to be abused." 
 
 " Sure to be," echoed Mr. Silverly Boll, " and its kindnCvSS 
 traded on. She should have thought, inquired, been more 
 cautious, before receiving a person merely recommended to 
 her by so notoriously bad a man as the Baron Voightel, — a 
 great man indeed, as we all know, but an excessively unscru- 
 
 8 OK 
 
^e 
 
 410 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 pulous one. A man may discover a continent and yet be unfit 
 for all the decencies of ordinary life." 
 
 " All I" the ladies sighed with him, and old Lady George, 
 straining her deaf ear to hear as she knitted, muttered over 
 her lamb's-wool, — 
 
 " Bad ? le cannibal ! I have heard him confess that he ate 
 human flesh, and preferred it to butcher's meat. He told me 
 so." 
 
 " If that were all," said Mr. Silverly Bell, gently, " one 
 might conceive the horrible agonies of hunger in shipwreck 
 driving a man even to such frightful extremity as that. But 
 in cold blood, in every-day life, to introduce a notorious adven- 
 turess to a noble and blameless lady " 
 
 " Can you call a great artist an adventuress ?" said sleepy 
 Lord George, with a gleam of humor shining in his watery 
 dim eyes. 
 
 " It is*'an expression," said Mr. Silverly Bell, hastily. " A 
 common expression. A usual expression. When one knows 
 nothing of a person, of whence they came, of how they 
 exist " 
 
 " Etoile banks at Hettinger's. I wish I did," said Lord 
 George, with a little sad mirth in the twinkle of his eyes. 
 " If she have taken a fancy to loris I think he is very much 
 to be envied : I wish I were he. What does he go away for? 
 He is a silly fellow if he don't know his good fortune." 
 
 "Good fortune!" echoed Mr. Silverly Bell, in horror. "My 
 dear sir, excuse me, arc you mad ? What worse could happen 
 to our charming but too vacillating friend than to fall into the 
 power of an unscrupulous woman, of a genius who " 
 
 " You think an unscrupulous woman without genius better? 
 Well, to be sure he has got that now," muttered Lord George, 
 fumbling for his snuff-box. But his daughters stifled the 
 atrocious words in their screams. 
 
 " Papa, how can you ! How dare you I Of course you 
 only say it for fun ; but still " 
 
 Lord George shuffled ofi" into an inner room out of the 
 storm. Mr. Silverly Bell resumed, — 
 
 " Who, because she only understands the baseness of lawless 
 passions herself, is utterly incapable of comprehending the 
 purity and intensity of a simple friiendship, such as a woman 
 that is all mind takes delight in ; a woman that is all mind 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 411 
 
 never thinks of the misconceptions tliat her innocence and 
 noble actions may be open to. Lady Joan is all mind. She 
 has done the most wonderful thinjj;s in London and Paris ; 
 entirely saved the whole Messina affair from ruin by her energy 
 and promptitude ; it is impossible to say what the shareholders 
 do not owe to hci ; and then just because a mere friend, who 
 is a director of the affair, has naturally to go over to Paris to 
 negotiate a loan with Erlanger or Rothschild (I think it is 
 Rothschild), foul-mouthed people pretend that he is gone over 
 for her ; that ho is her lover ; that — oh, it is disgusting, quite 
 disgusting I" said Mr. Silverly Bell, breaking off with eloquent 
 abruptness as his feelings grew too strong for his habitual 
 suavity. 
 
 Prim and proper little Mrs. Macscrip stroked his arm con- 
 solingly. " Dear Mr. Bell, do you suppose anybody worth 
 thinking twice about ever dreams of anything wrong with 
 dear frank Lady Joan and dear good Mr. Challoner? Im- 
 possible ! — quite impossible 1" 
 
 " If all the world were as excellent as Mrs. Macscrip, it 
 would be impossible," said Mr. Silverly Bell, gallantly. " It 
 should be impossible, even foul-mouthed as the world is," he 
 said, more bitterly. " But she is all mind, and she forgets 
 that a base tongue always attributes a base motive. She was 
 utterly annoyed to see loris in Paris. She tells me so. He 
 went over quite unexpectedly on a telegram from Erlanger 
 or Rothschild (I think it was Rothschild), and of course he 
 went to see her : what more natural, with siioh business in- 
 terests as theirs are in common? But a mere simple thing 
 like that is enough for calumny !" And tears suffused the 
 gentle pale eyes of Mr. Silverly Bell. 
 
 At that moment in from a bedchamber adjoining came the 
 youngest daughter : she was excited and eager, even more than 
 her wont, and her thin features were quivering with agitation. 
 
 " A telegram from dearest Joan," she said, breathless with 
 emotion, " from Perugia. She arrives to-night, in an hour's 
 time ! We are all to meet her." 
 
 •" " Delighted !" murmured Mr. Silverly Bell, a little envious. 
 " I will go also. Seven o'clock, — the train from Mont Cenis, 
 I think ? Is it Mont Cenis ? Did you know she was coming 
 so soon ? She wrote me next week." 
 
 " She meant to have waited till next week. She does not 
 
412 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Bay what has Imstencd her. She only says, * Meet me, seven 
 to-ni<j;ht.' Dearest Joan I" 
 
 " You must go and ^at ready, dears: I might take you ia 
 my hindau," said Mrs. Maosorip, v/ho was always good-natured 
 to quite proper people. 
 
 " Oh, no : that would detain you too long, and we are too 
 many, thanks so much," said Marjory, fluently. " Mr. Bell 
 will get us a cab ; Mr. Bell will escort us. Dear Joan I You 
 can understand my delight, I am sure. We have not seen her 
 since May I An eternity I Dear Joan, And after such grief 
 as she has had, too I" 
 
 Then the guests took their leave, pnd Mr. Silverly Bell 
 poured himself out a weak cup of tea and talked to Lady George 
 about her knitting, and the Scrope-Stairs daughters went and 
 robed themselves in waterproofs and thick veils, and went out 
 into the misty rain and howling winds with their escort. And 
 the heart of one of them beat high. 
 
 " I hope she is not all alone, you know," she said to their 
 escort. " I do hope she is not all alone. I should think loris 
 is sure to have come with her." 
 
 " Oh, I should think so," answered Mr. Silverly Bell. 
 " Challoner being still away in Germany, they would not let 
 her travel alone with her maid. Naturally he will have re- 
 turned with her ; most naturally." For Mr. Silverly Bell, in 
 his way as a friend, was quite priceless, — unless he quarrelled 
 with you : until he quarrelled with you he would see you 
 through anything, with his smile and his sigh at your ser- 
 vice. 
 
 Marjory never felt the streaming rain, the piercing winds. 
 
 In her own familiar way she was triumphant, vicariously 
 she was victorious ; for she was sure that loris was returning, or 
 else never would her friend be coming over the mountains. 
 
 He would not be hers, indeed, but she felt that to see him 
 in the old worn fetters tread the old dull paths would be al- 
 most happiness compared with the agony of the summer which 
 had seen him pass to new joys, where the passion-flowers em- 
 braced the palms. The woman who enslaves herself loves a 
 prisoner, can bear her fate whilst daily she can see him behind 
 his bars pacing to and fro his joyless cell ; but when release 
 comes, and the ship of good tidings bears him free over the sea 
 to fresh joys under fairer skies, — then, then indeed she knows 
 
 •ite 
 
FRIENDSIIir. 413 
 
 bitterness. Unless she be a noble woman ; and Marjory Scrope 
 was not noble. She had betrayed the captive's flight ; she had 
 locked the chains anew about his feet, that so at least she 
 might keep him in her sight and still the hunger of her aching 
 heart. 
 
 She was a merciless, jealous, envious woman, but, being a 
 maiden of good name and good society, she did not let these 
 cruel passions rise to the surface to be seen of men ; instead, 
 she cloaked herself in waterproof and friendship, and hastened 
 through the foggy, rainy night to meet her dearest Joan. The 
 train was late ; the night was very cold and wet. Mr. Silverly 
 Bell, despite the warmth of his rejoicing, shivered as he paced 
 the stone floor of the waiting-hall ; but Marjory was burning 
 hotly with the fever of hope and the joy of success. She 
 strained her ear, she strained her eyes ; her heart beat quickly, 
 her pale, waxen features flushed. 
 
 " I do so long to see her, darling Joan !" she said, with 
 breathless lips. The bells clanged, the dooi-s were thrown open, 
 the throng of travellers poured out in the gaslight and mist, 
 in the gloom and the rain. Foremost among the crowd she 
 Baw gray eyes like steel, a flash of white teeth, a sunbrowned 
 face with a crape veil tossed from above it. As she threw her 
 arms about the advancing form and welcomed her, her eager 
 glance saw another face in the shadow farther back, — a face 
 pale, cold, very woary, the face of a proud man, unwilling and 
 ashamed. 
 
 Then Marjory said in her heart her psalm of praise. 
 
 The fetters were fresh locii.ed. 
 
 " Are you all here, dears ? — and darling St. Paul too ?" 
 cried Lady Joan. " How good of you, such an awful evening 
 as it is I Ah, yes, my grief, — such griof indeed I lo, have 
 you got my jewel-case safe ? The tickets ? — oh, lo has them." 
 
 So she returned in triumph. 
 
 Who would ask her what she had done in Paris ? Who 
 would mind how she had returned, or with whom ? Who 
 would dare to comment on her travels, since she had the wit 
 to be met at the station by these irreproachable maidens and 
 their venerable and venerated escort ? 
 
 Other women might find such a journey from Paris land 
 them in endless troubles and obloquy, but she knew how to 
 make such adventures innocent as milk and harmless as a dove, 
 
 35* 
 
414 FRitiNDFinir. 
 
 only by sending a telegram, — one telegram, that had cost her 
 a franc ! 
 
 Society is often bought cheaply, but not often so cheaply as 
 that. 
 
 " Tiie-la /" cries a famous writer, preaching the old, natural, 
 just crusade of man against the faithl«;s8 wife. 
 
 " Ttie-la r Ilis guenon de No^* grins from one of her small 
 ears to the other at the absurd, antiquated notion as she troops 
 with hundreds like her through Society,, applauded, welcomed, 
 well content, smiling complacently in the face of a world that 
 smiles complacently at I .t. 
 
 " Tue-la r Why, she laughs aloud. Who should kill her ? 
 Her husband ? Behold him as he comes meekly in her wake, 
 joking good-humoredly with the person by whom, in barbarous 
 ages, he might have imagined himself injured! Society? 
 She caresses Society, and Society kisses her in return on both 
 cheeks. The Ape of No?.h uii^'ht be the Dove of Noah, for 
 the olive-branches that she offers und sees accepted. 
 
 " Kill her 1" The law has been re-written. 
 
 Far a^ray is the day when, in old Judea, they led such 
 women as she out under the meridian sun and bared them 
 naked and stoned them to death in the sight of the people, so 
 that their name should be a byword and a reproach through 
 all the land. 
 
 The law has been re-written. 
 
 The Ape of Noah may smile against the sun ; she may sit 
 in the seat of honor : men shall praise and women salute her 
 with a kiss ; for her there is no need of night and darkness ; 
 she may take her pleasure in peace and pride, and no voice 
 shall arraign her ; and at the banquets of her world the man 
 whom it pleases her to choose from others shall be summoned 
 beside her in tender forethought of her fond desire. 
 
 " Kill her 1" The re-written law says to her, — 
 
 " You shall enjoy the sum and substance of all vice ; you 
 shall draw your lover within y^mr chamber Avhilst your child 
 sleeps against the chamber wall ; you shall be guilty, and your 
 world shall know your guilt ; yet if your lord be only as base 
 as you, all things shall go well with you, — you shall say you 
 enjoy the shibboleth of ' friendship,' and the world will let you 
 say it and receive you." 
 
 True, if you were not guilty, but only took pleasure in 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 415 
 
 counterfeiting a guilt you had not, you would be a still poorer 
 and more contemptible thing even than you are now ; true, if 
 it were as you say, and you were innocent, you would be the 
 very fool of fools to play thus upon the house-tops the antics 
 of a sin you have not ; true, turn you which way you will, you 
 must be either the silliest or the basest of all women. 
 
 But you are many in number, and you agree to stuff your 
 shibboleth down the yawning throat of your world, and you 
 are strong by reason that you have so many sisters ; and so 
 you turn the face of the world to you and set it smiling, as he 
 who keeps the key of a clock sets the hands of the clock to 
 noonday. The day of passion is dead, — dead with the old 
 hcj'oic ages ; the day of devotion has fled away to the dream- 
 land of poets ; the day even of sin that was honest has passed 
 as a foe too frank. 
 
 Your day has dawned, and is at its meridian, — the day of 
 lust that folds its arm within prudence, of pale love that is 
 hidden in the warm cloak of convenience. 
 
 When the day of truth comes, where will you be ? 
 
 In your grave, with marble Virtues weeping over your name 
 in letters of gold. For the law has been re-written. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 It was night, and Etoilc sat alone. 
 
 The lamps had been lighted, and shed a mellow glare over 
 the great room, the pale busts and white marbles, the dusky 
 outlines of powerful sketches in charcoals, the green drooping 
 fronds of palms and ferns, and the faint soft hues of old frescoes. 
 
 The unfinished picture of the Sordello stood on a great oak 
 easel, untouched since the day that loris had lefl her ; only 
 one thing was perfected in it, and that was the face of the 
 poet : the face there was that of loris. 
 
 She sat alone, doing nothing. For the first time in all her 
 life, her hours were empty, — came without welcome, departed 
 without use. Those full rich studious days that before she 
 had known him had always seemed too short, and never had 
 one vacant moment that was not sweet through labor or through 
 
416 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 dreams, bow far away they seemed ! dead as the dead birds 
 that she had buried in her childhood under the green leaves 
 in green Ardennes. 
 
 " Oh, my love, my love 1 what you have cost me !" she 
 thought, with the scalding tears rushing to her eyes ; yet even 
 though he had cost her a hundredfold more bitter pangs she 
 would not but have had his life cross hers : she never for one 
 instant wished that they had never met. 
 
 To have been happy once : it is so much. Well, is he who 
 made us so pardoned the after cruelty or pain. 
 
 The winds roared angrily without through the yellowed 
 passion-vines wliose flowers were dead. The rains beat on 
 the long grass, and the leafless boughs against the wooden 
 shutters. 
 
 There was an ebon crucifix in the dusk beyond the lamp- 
 light ; above it hung the first portrait she had ever made of 
 him ; she kneeled there and wept bitterly, and prayed for him. 
 
 The door unclosed gently. 
 
 He came into the shadow, and thence into the light. He 
 was pallid as death, weary, worn, ashamed. She locked up 
 and saw him through the mist of her tears ; with a great cry 
 of unutterable joy she sprang to him. 
 
 For a little while he loosened his arm from about her and 
 Bank down at her feet. 
 
 " You are the angel of my soul I What can I say to you ? 
 Will you forgive?" 
 
 She leaned her hands upon his shoulder as he kneeled there, 
 and thrust him backward : gazing on his face, she felt as if a 
 knife had pierced her heart. 
 
 "You have been with her?" 
 
 The words were so low they seemed to stifle her as she 
 spoke them. 
 
 His face drooped till it was hidden on her knees. She 
 knew then that he had sinned against her. He knew then 
 that to liave been faithless to her was the darkest infidelity of 
 all his life. 
 
FRIENDSHIP, 417 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the 
 fulling rain in the darkness without. His arms were still 
 about her, his fa^e still buried on her knees. 
 
 "Can you forgive?" he muttered, at length. "Dear, I 
 saw the brute. I never meant to go to her. I was deceived, 
 misled, drawn on where I loathed to be. When I left you I 
 never foresaw what she would do. I have sinned against you, 
 but never with my heart." 
 
 She put his arms away from her, and lifted her head with 
 a sense of suffocated pain. 
 
 " You have been with her," she echoed once again. She 
 felt as if her own lips were polluted, as if her own life were 
 full of unutterable shame, and scorn, and outrage. 
 
 A man cannot perhaps know all that a woman suffers from 
 his infidelity. Hers to him may wrong his pride and his pas- 
 sions with a great agony, but it cannot seem all at once to 
 bring intense humiliation, intense desecration, personal and 
 spiritual, with it as does his to her. It cannot make him 
 ashamed to exist, as it makes her. 
 
 Moreover, he has his vengeance : she is helpless. " You 
 have been with her !" she repeated : and had the knife been 
 truly in her bresist, it would have hurt her less than this. 
 
 " I have confessed it," he muttered, wearily. " Men are 
 weak and vile ; we are not worth a thought. All the while I 
 
 have hated myself, and yet My angel, look at mc 1 Do 
 
 not look like that ! You frighten me, Etoile 1" 
 
 " Your angel ! And you could !" 
 
 A flush overspread her face ; then she grew deathly pale ; 
 she strove with trembling hands to put his hands away from 
 her ; she could not endure that he should touch her ; a dull 
 confused murmur seemed surging in her ears ; she felt faint 
 and bUnd. 
 
 Then all at once the bands of pain at her heart seemed to 
 loosen ; a great sob rose in her throat ; she shook from head to 
 foot, she shrank away from him and wept bitterly. 
 
 8* 
 
418 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 loris gathered her weeping thus in his arms, and kissed her 
 on her closed eyelids. 
 
 " She will forgive me now," he thought. " If she would 
 not forgive me she would not weep. Women that are vain 
 and are hard do not grieve : they avenge." 
 
 And his sin seemed slight to him because it was pardoned. 
 
 " Are the passion-flowers dead, dear ?" he said, caressingly. 
 " Well, they will bloom another summer, and they will find 
 your love and mine lovelier than ever, will they not? My 
 treasure, why will you weep so ? I am here with you once 
 more. And you forgive me ? — ah, yes, you forgive me : you 
 are one of the women that forgive. You would kiss my hand 
 if it stabbed you 1" 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 Meanwhile in the Turkish room Lady Joan was smoking. 
 All the racket of hasty arrival, all the disorder of long travel, 
 were about her, but she was happy. She had come back suc- 
 cessful. Who can want more than success? Tongues were 
 going gayly around her; Mimo sat on the sofa beside her, 
 and Gruido Serravalle on a stool at her feet ; Marjory Scrope 
 was making her tea, and Mr. Silverly Bell was arranging her 
 lamps. 
 
 " lo's gone to his own house with a headache," she said to 
 her companions ; but it did not disturb her : the transfer was 
 made, and he was safe back in Rome. " He hap always had 
 headache after a journey ; and it certainly was very cold 
 coming over the mountains." 
 
 She herself had no headache, nor any ills at all. She never 
 had, unless it were desirable at any moment to appear an in- 
 valid ; she was bronzed, bright-eyed, animated, amicable, even 
 gay beyond her wont, still she remembered si^e was in mourn- 
 ing. She was glad to be home again ; glad to have managed 
 BO well ; glad to have brought her captive in her train ; glad 
 to shine in the lamplight before the eyes of her adorers as a 
 very Semiramis of Finance. loris was absent indeed ; he was 
 sullen, cold, unwell, but that was not of very much conse- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 419 
 
 quence ; she had had him with her in Paris ; she had brought 
 him with her to Rome ; that was all that really mattered : she 
 was even glad he war> away ; she had so many teacups and 
 triptychs to account for with Mimo, and tuneful Guido was a 
 sillier young goose than ever as he sat at her feet. 
 
 " You were quite wrong about all that," she took a moment 
 to whisper to her watch-dog. " Oh, yes, you were, dear, quite 
 wrong : he cannot endure her : she persecuted him, — actually 
 wrote to him in Paris ; would you believe it?" 
 
 The pallid skin of Marjory Scrope flushed painfully. 
 
 " Are you sure?" she said, nervously. 
 
 " Sure ? Do you think anybody can ever deceive me ?" 
 
 " But indeed " began her poor watch-dog. 
 
 *' He cannot endure her," said Lady Joan, clinching the 
 matter. " He tore her letter into shreds before me, he was so 
 disgusted. lo has no secrets from me, you know, — no more 
 than he would have had from a sister." 
 
 Marjory kissed her with eflusion. 
 
 " So glad to have you home, darling 1" she murmured ; for 
 indeed she felt that here was a jailer from whom no escape 
 would be possible for the prisoner, whom she herself could 
 oaly see if he remained behind the bars of his prison-house. 
 She was certain that her lynx-eyed friend was blinded ; she 
 could not herself forget those summer evenings when the 
 shadow of loris had passed under the palms, and she had seen 
 him so pass herself, watching under the cestus shrub of the 
 open plains. She could not forget, and she was not deceived. 
 But she forbore to press her convictions home. What her 
 friend chose to ignore she would ignore also ; what she chose 
 to impute she would impute likewise. She had supreme faith 
 in her friend's power to hold and keep, — faith so great that 
 she kissed her in all sincerity. 
 
 The jailer was so much better than the bark of good tidings 
 that would bear him away to far and free countries I 
 
 Marjory, going home in the blowing wind and rain that 
 night, felt a dull yet fierce pleasure stir at her heart. She was 
 quick to catch a clue, she was swift to follow a hint, and she 
 was cruel as unloved and unlovely women are. 
 
 This woman whom she hated, this muse whom she envied, 
 this cold and careless celebrity who could sit amidst her flowers 
 doing nothing, this stranger whom loris loved, was to be called 
 
420 FRIENDSniP. 
 
 the fool of a hopeless passion ! The vengeance was sweet to 
 this lone maiden whose own hopeless passion had been the 
 mockery of her little world. She did not know how the lie 
 was to be fastened, how the story was to be told ; but she had 
 firm faith in her friend and in her powers of falseh>jod. 
 
 " Joan will separate them," she said to her own sick heart, 
 with a cruel joy, going home in the beating rain. She herself 
 could only wait, as echo waits till it is summoned. 
 
 For the few next succeeding days Lady Joan was in a whirl 
 of business and contentment. There was a multitude of things 
 to see after and ar/ange, — all the threads to be taken up that 
 bound the Temple of all the Virtues to Mimo's shop and 
 Trillo's studio ; Mrs. Grundy and Mrs. Candor to be called 
 on and propitiated, lest they should see anything odd in that 
 Paris sojourn and homeward journey ; all the winter's cam- 
 paign through Society to be thought over and mapped out; 
 and, beyond all, the newly-painted pot to be set on high, with 
 its glittering charms gleaming on its glaze. 
 
 The pot would not long hold water, — no mended pot ever 
 does ; but it looked very well and made a beautiful effect, and 
 that was all that was wanted. On the whole, on these first 
 days of her return she was more than even satisfied, — she was 
 brilliantly triumphant. 
 
 Yea, while at least the affairs of the bridge were going on 
 again, and the crabs and the barnacles were having more 
 planks driven into their native waters to become their home 
 in due time. True, the Societa Inglese-Italiano — be it under 
 whatever name it might — was much like that famous knight 
 of woeful story who, whether he ran in doublet of blue, or 
 red, or green, ran always equally ill and tilted direfully. The 
 brass plate on the modern door in the old palace down in 
 Trastevere had its inscription altered from that of the Ponte 
 CalabreseSiciliano to that of the Promatrice delle Communi- 
 cazione Italiane-Africane, and the prospectus read quite dif- 
 ferently, and Tunis came into it, and much was made of the 
 mails from Malta ; and altogether it was quite a new thing — 
 to look at ; but underneath it remained very much the same, 
 as a lady's face does under the paint and the pearl powder. 
 Mr. Challoner was to keep his crook and sit at his handsome 
 desk when he liked ; the old shareholders were to get nothing 
 indeed, but the new ones were to get everything, — make their 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 421 
 
 fortunes, in point of fact ; and as any old shareholder could 
 become a new one if he liked to buy new shares, what, in 
 heaven's name, had he to complain about ? His money w^as 
 gone down in the sand among the crabs and the barnacles, and 
 the winds and the waters alone were responsible for that mis- 
 fortune. If the old shareholder would not buy a dredger to 
 get it up again in the shape of fresh shares, it was clearly his 
 own fault if it remained at the bottom or if the more enter- 
 prising new shareholder dredged for it. So at least Lady 
 Joan said, and she knew all about these things, and had dwelt 
 in the Land of Goshen, where money is always going down in 
 the sand. 
 
 loris was bitterly dissatisfied and disquieted indeed, and the 
 Duke of Oban had withdrawn himself in a fury and fume, 
 and nasty people said that the old shareholders would have 
 still demanded an inquiry in public tribunals only that they 
 were loath as timid human beings are to throw good money 
 after bad. But loris never understood anything (at least, so 
 she said) ; and old Oban was a muflF and an idiot ; and the 
 old shareholders might bluster till they were hoarse, — it was 
 all their own fault if they would stand still and scream, instead 
 of coming dredging again as they might do. So she settled 
 everything to her own complete satisfaction ; and when she 
 was satisfied herself, she was not overmuch given to heeding 
 the dissatisfaction of others. 
 
 The new dredgers would go on dredging for a few years, 
 and the engineers would go on driving new piles in to please 
 the crabs, and Tunis would always be on the horizon and 
 Malta on the sea ; and if the new shareholders could not make 
 the bridge stand or the mails come and go by it, it would be their 
 own fault, — in the future ! Nobody would be responsible ex- 
 cept the sea. When the tides are against you, you can always 
 come into court with a clear conscience and quote Canute 
 (Knut, as we are told we ought to write it). She was always 
 quoting Canute now, and could always do so equally here- 
 after. 
 
 " No speculation is infallible," she would say. " No one 
 can be perfectly sure that they have Providence and all his 
 in-and-outs on their side. One can only do one's best to 
 succeed." 
 
 After all, it does not very much matter whether you succeed 
 
 36 
 
422 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 or not, when you are only that blessing of Providence, — a 
 promoter. 
 
 Besides, Lady Joan was beginning to think that a little 
 touch of ruin might not be altogether disadvantageous. Not 
 such ruin as ends in bailiffs and no dinner to eat ; not real 
 ruin such as some of those silly shareholders were screaming 
 about as their fate ; but a little touch of political ruin, or 
 rather retrenchment. It would look well, as if one had sacri- 
 ficed a good deal in driving the piles in the sand, so she 
 meditated, — as if one also had been a victim to the tides and 
 the winds. Besides, if one had to retrench, one might have 
 to live altogether at Fiordelisa: why not? The great old 
 house was full of sun and had carpets. On the whole, she 
 was not sure, if necessary, that she would not prefer to bo 
 ruined a little. She was a clever woman, and could draw 
 usefulness out of everything, as one gets good olives out of 
 old rags. 
 
 So that she was in high spirits in this rough rainy weather 
 that followed her return to Home. Her husband had not yet 
 come over the mountains ; her slaves and courtiers were all at 
 hand about her ; her mourning was useful, for it evoked so 
 much sympathy, and some people out of sympathy called on 
 her that had not called before ; night and day she was busied 
 with the new shares and the new agencies and the new enter- 
 prise : she was in paradise. loris held himself aloof indeed ; 
 loris seemed dull and cold and grave, said he was unwell, left 
 her to herself very much ; but what of that ? He had chosen 
 to sulk about the transfer : let him 1 He could not alter it ; 
 and he would recover liis temper in time, so she said. Mean- 
 while there was Douglas Graeme fresh from chamois-hunt- 
 ing, and (juido Serravalle eager to sing the same songs, and 
 Mimo and Trillo, those Tyndarids of art, both ready to run 
 about with her into Society, east and west. Lady Joan was 
 happy. 
 
 Was she going to make herself miserable because loris 
 sulked in a corner and accused her of having jeopardized his 
 honor ? Not she I He might frown as he liked : she had 
 got the transfer and she had got Fiordelisa. 
 
 She put her hands in her coat pockets and a cigar in her 
 mouth, and drove over to Fiordelisa, with Mr. Silverly Bell 
 and young Guido Serravalle and his lute by her side. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 423 
 
 " I have saved the place for loris," she said to every one : 
 it was a title the more to it. 
 
 " Did the Prince come here "with anybody whilst I was 
 away?" she asked as she visited the pigs. 
 
 They told her that he had come seldom, and had been 
 always alone. 
 
 " Then of course there never was anything between him 
 and Etoile," she thought, with content. " He would have 
 brought her here of all places at once, if there had been." 
 For such follies as delicate instinct and lofty passions never oc- 
 curred to her. She was clever, but she made a common error 
 of some clever people : she judged others by herself This 
 kind of error, however, conduces to content, and Lady Joan 
 was content, and as she rambled about thought that next year 
 she would really have that frost-bite of ruin and winter here. 
 
 Iraperator would never get an hour of liberty then, nor his 
 master. 
 
 " To think I have saved the dear old place ! It is so de- 
 lightful !" she said again and again to her companions, and 
 said it so often that she ended in believing it herself 
 
 " She has saved his estate for him 1" said her friends after 
 her in chorus, with strophe and anti-strophe of praise, marvel, 
 and applause. 
 
 It was a fine day, though cold, this first day that she had 
 visited Fiordelisa. The snow was on the mountains, and she 
 wished that it might be thick enough to block up Mr. Chal- 
 loner in Germany, but in the green plains the sea-wind was 
 blowing not unkindly, and the yellow colchicum cups were 
 glancing among the grasses. She spent a short day but a 
 bright day, rejoicing to seize her sceptre and her scales, to set 
 her foot down heavily on the innocent little freedoms that aged 
 servants had taken in her absence, to see the household all 
 hurry and skulk like trembling school-boys, the dog cower, 
 and the steward turn red over his books, to feel her power 
 all over the old house and the old lands and the old people. 
 
 She had a happy day though a brief one, and drove back 
 to Rome as the sun set, feeling that truly for a wise woman 
 all joys of this world are possible. 
 
 " Is that woman here?'' she said to her companion, as they 
 drove across the burning amber glow that rested on the plain. 
 
 *• What woman ?" 
 
424 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 "Etoile." 
 
 " Oh, yes : she is in her solitude at Rocaldi." 
 
 " Always at Kocaldi ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " la she painting?" 
 
 " They say not : she has finished nothing. Some say she is 
 iU." 
 
 Lady Joan smiled. 
 
 " 111 !" she echoed, and she lighted a new cigar. 
 
 " She has never come to me ; never written me a word ; 1 
 knew she never would when once I had seen my father." 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell sighed ; he was always compassionate. 
 
 " She is in love with lo, you know ; actually sent him letters 
 to Paris 1" she continued, after a pause. 
 
 "Indeed?" said Mr. Silverly Bell, cautiously. "And 
 he ?" 
 
 " Hates her !" said the Lady Joan. " lo knows nothing 
 about love, you know ; he is like me : he only cares for 
 friendship !" 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell coughed, not knowing quite what to say. 
 
 Fortunately there was a very fine sunset, and he made a 
 remark on it. 
 
 The Lady Joan drove onward with a smile on her face : it 
 pleased her to think of Etoile ill with her pictures untouched. 
 
 She set down her companions at their respective destina- 
 tions, and then turned the heads of her steeds to the house of 
 loris by the Piazza del Gesu. There was still a dull red glow 
 from the west sulFusing the city. 
 
 He was absent, but she entered, as her habit was, and 
 brushed past his servant up the staircase to his own little 
 chamber. 
 
 " I want some papers for your master," she said to him. 
 
 The servant dared not oppose her entrance wheresoever she 
 might choose to go. It was quite true that she wanted some 
 papers, — papers concerning the new society that had sprung 
 to life under her fostering care ; papers that she knew were on 
 his table. The little room was dark, but she struck a match 
 and lit a candle, and began unceremoniously her search amidst 
 the letters, books, and documents of all sorts that were scat- 
 tered over his bureau. She knew all his ways and all the 
 hiding-places of his desk, and rummaged in them without 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 425 
 
 remorse, searching for what she wanted, the eyes of her own 
 portrait looking down on her from the chamber wall. 
 
 Suddenly amidst her search through the mass of business 
 correspondence and letters on ceremonials of the court, she saw 
 a handwriting which made all the blood leap to her face, and 
 her hand seized the note that bore it as a cat seizes prey. 
 
 It was a note of Etoilc's, written that day, and left by him 
 there by an unwonted carelessness, instead of being consigned 
 to that secret drawer of which his visitor did not possess the 
 secret. He had put it back in its envelope, moved it hastily 
 under a pile of letters, and gone out quickly to go to Rocaldi. 
 
 Lady Joan read it. 
 
 It was not of great length, but there were words in it that 
 told her all the truth hidden from her so long. She read it 
 thrice, all the blood fading out of her face, while her teeth 
 clinched like the jaws of a steel-trap. 
 
 She had been fooled, beguiled, betrayed. And at length 
 she knew it. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 Her first impulse was that of any wounded tigress, — to 
 spring and rend and kill. 
 
 A sort of madness seized her ; in her fury she would have 
 slain him at a blow had he been there before her. A thousand 
 fires flashed before her gleaming eyes ; a thousand hammers 
 seemed beating on her brain ; the room reeled around her ; 
 she could have screamed aloud, but her tongue clove to her 
 mouth ; she stood and stared down on the letter in the dull 
 light of the flickering taper, and knew herself fooled, beguiled, 
 betrayed. 
 
 Vengeance alone seemed to her worth living for, — to kill 
 them both as tigers kill. 
 
 There was fierceness enough in her blood, and strength 
 enough in her nerve, to have driven the steel straight home 
 through flesh and bone without ever wavering once. 
 
 But it is women who love, even if they love guiltily, that 
 kill : she loved herself. The little chamber was very still, the 
 light of the taper very dim ; in the silence and the calmness and 
 
 8G* 
 
426 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the solitude the paroxysm passed away : she remembered the 
 •world. 
 
 The fierceness of her fury seethed and hissed itself into a 
 sullen calm ; she was alone, and there was nothin<^ for the 
 tempest to destroy : it raged impotent and spent itself. 
 
 Prudence, which soon tempered her passions, to harden 
 them th(3 more, as the cold flood of water hardens the heated 
 steel, rccurned to her. 
 
 What use is it to kill any one ? 
 
 They sufier for ten minutes ; you suffer for the rest of your 
 life. 
 
 There were other ways than that. 
 
 Despite all her vanity, all her credulity, all her willingness 
 to believe the thing she wished, at the back of her thoughts 
 in the depth of her heart, unadmitted, detested, thrust away, 
 there had always been the latent consciousness that the love 
 of loris had passed from her and gone to this other woman 
 whom she hated. A million little traits came back upon her 
 now that might have told her all the truth so long before, had 
 not her eyes been blinded by the cataract of an immense and 
 undoubting vanity. Out from the limbo of forgotten triviali- 
 ties there started to her memory now a million signs of glance, 
 of word, of gesture, that should have told her, ere the Lenten 
 lilies had been white, that these two had understood each other 
 in tenderest sympathy and comprehension. All these memo- 
 ries now seemed to dart from their hiding-places and shoot 
 little tongues of flame at her like demons at their play. She 
 had been fooled all the while ! 
 
 To a vain woman what blow so deadly, what offence so 
 beyond all pardon ? 
 
 She stood like a stupefied creature, the letter in her hand ; 
 and the recollection of her world — the world she lived for — 
 came to her. 
 
 Though her rage should choke her, and her hatred strangle 
 her, she must have no scene the world would hear of, — no rash, 
 wild vengeance that would level the Temple of all the Virtues 
 with the dust. 
 
 It was quite night. 
 
 Time had fled without her taking any count of its swift 
 passing. No one had dared disturb her. loris had not re- 
 turned. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 427 
 
 Pru'Joncc, and the chillier self-control begotten of a supreme 
 self-love, ruled her once more. She put the letter back under- 
 neath others as she had found it, v id gathered up the papers 
 she had come to seek, and blew tJ j taper out, and groped her 
 way to the door. 
 
 On the staircase a lamp was burning : his servant hurried 
 out, hearing her. 
 
 " I thought milady was gone long ago," he stammered, 
 wondering. 
 
 iShe controlled her voice to cheerfulness and calm command. 
 
 •' No, Giannino, your master had left me so much to write. 
 I wish he would do his own work," she said, with her usual 
 familiar laugh and frank, curt way. " Call me some cab, will 
 you ? I shall be late home for dinner. Do you know where 
 the Prince is gone?" 
 
 Giannino knew very well, but he threw his hands to heaven 
 and swore ignorance. 
 
 She went out of the house, and home. 
 
 At home she locked herself in her bedchamber and passed 
 the most bitter hour of her life. But when the hour was 
 passed, her resolve was taken. 
 
 A true and tender woman would have broken her heart ; a 
 true and impassioned woman would have ruined herself, taking 
 some fleet, fierce revenge to be mourned for with a lifetime of 
 remorse. 
 
 She, who was always strong and never true, knew better 
 ways than these. 
 
 When she heard his laggard step on the stairs and his tired 
 voice in the antechamber, she rose and withdrew the bolts and 
 bade him come to her. When he came she threw her arm 
 about his throat. 
 
 " I am feverish and cold, lo : feel my cheeks and my hands. 
 I have been doing too much for you at Fiordelisa. Where 
 have you been all day ?" 
 
 And she kissed him. 
 
 She felt him shudder. 
 
 And again she kissed him ; having chosen her vengeance, — 
 a vengeance that should not lose for her Fiordelisa. 
 
 Her first impulse had been the impulse of every woman that 
 finds herself forsaken for another. Her second instinct was 
 the stronger one of self-interest. Keen, violent, tempestuous as 
 
428 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 her passions were, one curb lay on them always, — the resolve 
 never for them or their indulgence to lose a single advantage, 
 a single practical gain. 
 
 To dash his hands away, to strike the lips that had touched 
 another's, to drive him out of her presence under a storm of 
 curses, ay, even to send a trusty blade straight through his 
 breast-bone, these were all her first impulses, fierce, natural, 
 maddened, unthinking. But before her, like a saving spirit 
 to arrest her blows and teach her patience, rose the memory 
 of — Fiordelisa. 
 
 To slay loris — even to quarrel with him — was to lose 
 Fiordelisa. 
 
 Fiordelisa was first, and he but second. 
 
 But for Fiordelisa she would have scourged him from her 
 sight, or have done worse to him ; but Fiordelisa was as a 
 silver chain lying on her rage and keeping it dumb and still. 
 
 The years were waning with her, and in a little while men 
 would cease to find sorcery in her smile. If she exiled herself 
 from Fiordelisa, never would she find such another kingdom, 
 never again would wine-press and granary be piled full for her 
 gain, and indolence and negligence drop a sceptre to her grasp ; 
 never again. 
 
 And she knew it. 
 
 Though a woman who deluded herself on many things, she 
 had no delusion here. 
 
 " You will never find such another fool," had her husband 
 said once to her in a momert of candor ; and she knew very 
 well that she never would, — that, Cleopatra though she was, 
 her days with Caesars were done. 
 
 Dearer than all passion, sweeter than all vengeance to her, 
 were her scales and her stock-books, her ledgers and her 
 leathern purse, her sway on the breezy wild hills, her rule in 
 the ancient gray halls. 
 
 Lose Fiordelisa! 
 
 Her heart turned sick, her blood ran cold, at the mere 
 thought. 
 
 Another woman reign there in her stead, — a woman who 
 would hold the old oaks sacred, let the song-birds sing, kneel 
 by the old altars, and bid roses bloom and children laugh and 
 peasants be free and the lord of all be lord in truth ! 
 
 Never, she swore in her soul, never, never, by all the 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 429 
 
 gods of vengeance, would she be thus dethroned and thus 
 di.splueed. 
 
 Sooner would she hurl torches in the granaries and see the 
 flumes rage in a hurricane of fire north and fjouth and east 
 and west till Fiordelisa were a blackened waste. 
 
 The terror of this peril calmed her. 
 
 loris she might furiou.sly have released, or as furiously 
 have struck with her clinched hand and cursed and banished. 
 But Fiordelisa 1 
 
 She sat there in the little darkling room with the taper like 
 a tiny star beside her, and felt that she would sooner lose her 
 life than Fiordelisa. 
 
 Therefore, burn in anguish, chafe in humiliations as sho 
 would, she must needs choke herself into silence and give him 
 no pretext of an angry glance, no opening of a furious word, 
 no hint of her knowledge of his infidelity, no power to seize 
 the liberty that lies in dissension and avowal. She must bo 
 silent, let silence cost her what it would, since speech would 
 lose her Fiordelisa. 
 
 If she had never known the truth, she would have been 
 suspicious, importunate, watchful, jealous, angered, curious, 
 always interrogating and always spying ; and Toris would have 
 grown impatient, and soon or late some bitter word would 
 have unlocked the gates of his secret and the fetters of his 
 bondage both at once. 
 
 But forewarned is forearmed. 
 
 Knowing the truth, and having resolved never to show she 
 knew it, nothing could seem more trustful, no one more un- 
 conscious of any rival near her, than was she ; she seemed 
 completely credulous of all he said, and against her mingled 
 ardor and good faith, devotion and his restless consciousness 
 broke itself bitterly in vain, as waves break powerless on a 
 bank of sand. If she had but broken out into rage once, all 
 would have been said, and he forever free. 
 
 But she kept her temper like a very Griselda. 
 
 Since the first winter that she had wooed him, he had never 
 known her so tender and so caressing; the harshntss of her 
 natural tones was hushed and the vigilance of her endless 
 espionage was abated. To a wonian who suspects you it is 
 easy to say, *' I am faithless ;" to a woman who trusts you it 
 is very hard to say it. 
 
430 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 She knew this so well. She took heed to let no shadow of 
 a doubt ever seem to hover near her. With the snow white 
 on the streets and plains, she spoke with a smile of their coming 
 summer at Fiordelisa. 
 
 Now and then, carelessly, as of a thing indiiferent alike to 
 both, she spoke of Etoile. 
 
 " I am glad she has the conscience not to come near me," 
 she said, one day. " That shows she knows what my poor 
 father said to me. Does she persecute you, lo, with any more 
 letters ?" 
 
 " Did I ever say that I was persecuted ?" he muttered, as 
 he turned away impatient with himself. 
 
 The Lady Joan laughed pleasantly. 
 
 " Oh, no ; I dare say you felt very complimented ; men 
 always do on their bonnes fortunes : do they not, Marjory?" 
 
 And the Echo was careful to reply. 
 
 " lo looks quite vain, I think. It is not everybody who 
 fascinates a feminine IlaiFaelle who can give his features im- 
 mortality upon canvas." 
 
 " What folly !" said loris, with a dark flush on his cheek. 
 Then Lady Joan and the Echo laughed again. 
 
 But that was all. 
 
 When he was absent, when he was inattentive, when he 
 was intentionally negligent of her summons and ceased to 
 accompany her to ball or opera or any public place, she was 
 still a very Griselda in her patience. She even said to him, 
 *' You are right, dear, perhaps, to be seen with me less '. people 
 will talk." 
 
 But all the while with all her patience she made him feel 
 that she held him closely in a very labyrinth of his own weav- 
 ing, and she never spoke of any coming day or year, or even 
 distant hereafter, but what she spoke of it as something they 
 were (juite sure to share together. 
 
 There was a sort of hateful anodyne in this security of claim 
 that seemed to drug him and hold him motionless and para- 
 lyzed, as the fell curare holds the victim that it drugs. 
 
 Once she said to him, tenderly, — 
 
 " Caro mto, I feel quite ashamed when T think that I made 
 you that scene in Paris. With all your devotion to me, to 
 insult you by any idea that you could be untrue to me for five 
 minutes I I quite hate myself, lo ; I do, indeed 1" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 431 
 
 She would sjiy these things in the noise of a street, in the 
 buzz of society, in the midst of the world, so that they gave 
 him no chance of a reply that might have been the prelude to 
 truth and freedom, but only filled him with a sickly sense of 
 all that she expected, all that she would exact, and that she 
 took for granted that he was hers forever. 
 
 All this cost, her very dear : wlien hate and fury, dread and 
 jealous fear, were seething together in her, and all her veins 
 were on fire with outraged vanity and the consciousness of his 
 broken faith, to have to keep her fury dumb, to rein in her 
 violence, to caress and smile and be still, and seem to know 
 nothing, and give no vent to any one of the bitter words that 
 every moment sprang to her lips, — all this cost her very dear. 
 But she had served a long apprenticeship in the world to the 
 art of self-repression ; and lience she held steadily one great 
 aim in view, and it gave her nerve and patience : — not to lose 
 Fiordelisa ; never to lose Fiordelisa. 
 
 This was her Alpha and her Omega. 
 
 A feebler or a franker woman would have jeopardized all in 
 one hour of reproach or of entreaty. But she knew better 
 than to give him any such loophole for escape. A tempest 
 clears the air : she filled her atmosphere with mist, in which, 
 strive as he would for the light, he should lose his path and 
 be forever lost. Long, long before hanging her cashmere up in 
 the loggia of Fiordelisa on the first day of her entrance there, 
 she had known that the wisdom for her in the future must be 
 — immovability ; that she must never seem to know, to hear, 
 to see, to feel, any sign that he might ever give that her reigu 
 should cease and hev steps depart. 
 
 To that wisdom she adhered now. 
 
 It cost her many bitter hours to cling to it, but it was her 
 Bheet-anchor, and she never let it go. And in her way she was 
 very wise. 
 
 Mr. Challoner had returned for Christmas: he never by any 
 chance neglected a domestic festival. The city was full, and 
 teacups and triptychs were in requisition; the mighty cousins 
 were some of them arrived or arriving ; the houses that had 
 to be called at were many. Mrs. Grundy and Mrs. Candor 
 were at the head of their serried battalions. The Lady Joati, 
 as usual, was busy conciliating, propitiating, purchasing, sell- 
 ing, entreating, investing, ingratiating. 8he looked ill, and 
 
432 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 grew very thin, and had a feverish, harassed glance in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " It is the great grief she has had," said the Scrope-Stairs. 
 
 " It is the superhuman energy she has shown," said Mr. 
 Silverly Bell ; and Society said after them, " Great grief — 
 great energy — most laudable — most admirable," and went 
 Btill oftener than ever to call on her. 
 
 She was supposed to have had a great financial success. 
 People are very fond of such success. 
 
 Success like that of Etoile is not popular : it seems to be 
 seated on some inaccessible pinnacle whence it seems to shower 
 pity and scorn on mankind. But a success like the mended 
 pot's, monetary, commonplace, practical, comfortable, — that is 
 another thing : everybody likes it, everybody trusts it. 
 
 lHverybody went to her accordingly, and she had many 
 peasant little occasions on which to drop a word in everybody's 
 ear. 
 
 " Etoile ? Oh, dear, no ! I never see her, never loish. She 
 never comes near me since I saw my poor father. If i 
 thought I should meet her anywhere, I should not go there. 
 No. Well, perhaps not worse than other artists. I believe 
 she lays nets for lo. He hates her, but he is very weak. 
 Poor lo ! Fanoy anybody making a hero of lo ! But, to be sure, 
 perhaps I cannot judge myself; he has been like a brother to 
 me so long : poor lo !" 
 
 For she was of this complexion, that heaven might have 
 been crashing, and the earth reeling to its doom, but she would 
 have been ready to buy cheap a length of lace or make a 
 desirable acquaintance. It is of this stout stuff that great 
 characters are always made. 
 
 She was really wretched ; she was really half mad with rage 
 and pain and terror ; in sober truth, waking or sleeping, night 
 or day, the thought of her rival was never absent from her. 
 But all the same she neglected none of all the minntlsc that 
 Society exacts ; she ran up the stairs alike of her studios and 
 her drawing-rooms; she went on her rounds of visits with her 
 husband ; and she could still rouse herself and calm herself 
 in a hurricane of hysterics if there came the slightest ' aance 
 of selling a teacup at a profit. 
 
 And when everybody was gone she would lie on her sofa 
 and take some ether, and say to her maid, " Send for the Prince 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 433 
 
 loris, will you, Marianuina? Say I am very ill this evening." 
 When reluctant he obeyed the summons, she would note how 
 cold his glance was, how unwilling his step, how inditFerent 
 his voice, and would choke the jealous rage in silence in her 
 heart, and pass her hand over his brow and murmur to him, 
 " I am so ill to-night ; I cannot let you go again. Amor mio, 
 give me those drops : I am faint." 
 
 He bent his knee beside her, sullen and yet contrite. She 
 looked thin, she looked hectic, she looked worn : he could not 
 doubt her love for him, she grew so gentle. 
 
 " Would to heaven she would hate me 1" he thought, and 
 hated himself 
 
 But she did not hate him. 
 
 True, there were times when she could have snatched the 
 silver dagger from her hair and plunged it in his breast, like 
 any jealousy-maddened fisher-girl on the edge of the waves by 
 Amalfi. True, there were hours when, knowing how he had 
 fooled her, how he believed he fooled her still, how laggard was 
 his step, how languid his caress, how dark and averted his 
 glance, she could have rent him limb from limb. True, there 
 were moments when even yet the fierce, wild temper in her 
 asserted itself, and she was ready to fling the trUth in his face 
 and curse him and let him go. 
 
 But in her inmost soul she loved him, in her savage selfish 
 way, more than she had ever done in her life ; in her heart she 
 felt a sullen respect for him for having so well deceived her ; 
 and the sense that his love was gone to another sharpened the 
 passion in her to new keenness, gave it a new birth, a new 
 lease of life, fresh vigor and fresh tenacity. She had grown 
 careless of him, being so very sure he was her toy for life ; 
 but now that she knew how slender was her hold, and how at 
 every hour it might snap, she strained every nerve to hold him. 
 Vengeance she would have ; but it should be such vengeance 
 as should fetter him forever and not cast him free. 
 
 For in her way she was very wise. 
 
 And she lay on her sofa, and took her ether nnd her mor- 
 phia, and sent for him, and wound her fingers close about his 
 wrist, and said, " You must not leave me, dear ; yes, I feel 
 faint and ill. I shall be strong again with the spring, — at our 
 dear Fiordelisa." 
 
 » 87 
 
434 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 '' One of the women tliat forgive," he had said of Etoilc. 
 
 "What woman is not of these, that loves truly ? 
 
 She forgave from the depths of her so»l, though shuddering 
 she turned from the memory of what it was that she forgave. 
 She forgave, even as he had justly said she would have kissed 
 his hand if it had stabbed her. But even as had she been 
 stabbed by him the dulness of death would have come to her 
 through him, so now a great dread and a great humiliation 
 weighed on her and would not pass away. 
 
 " You have let her come back, not knowing the truth ?" 
 she said to him ; and when he could but answer her " Yes," 
 with averted eyes and a flush on his olive cheek, she felt a 
 great sense of hopelessness tall upon her. 
 
 She was not angered ; she did not upbraid him. These 
 are the selfish ways of little and vain natures. She loved 
 him so much that she shut her lips over all reproach or re- 
 buke. But she began to comprehend that his will was much 
 as are the reeds by the river, and his promise unstable as the 
 winds that wander amidst the reeds ; and this was more terri- 
 ble to her than any peril of circumstance could have been. 
 Against circumstance the stronc: nature will rise dauntless and 
 unwearied, however long or painful be tlie conflict, but against 
 the woes that spring from character the bravest is powerless. 
 No one can alter nature. 
 
 Dully and slowly Etoile awoke to the consciousness that 
 when she had thought she loosened the toils from about his 
 feet, she had but wound them about herself as well. 
 
 He soothed her with tender words. He reassured her with 
 earnest promise. He begged of her only to have patience a 
 little while longer, and said that all would be well. She lis- 
 tened and obeyed, fearing to rouse the mysteries and dangers 
 that seemed to lie about his path. She did not understand, 
 therefore she was afraid to move. On one thing only was 
 she resolute. 
 
 " If I see her " she said with a shudder to him, " if I 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 435 
 
 see her, — which I pray heaven to spare ine, — I cannot speak 
 to her or look at her; she must think of me what she will." 
 
 " Surely : would I ask you to know hor now ?" he answered ; 
 and he did feel that not for an empire would he have the hands 
 of these women meet ; and Etoile would not have been what 
 he loved if she would have smiled upon her foe and his 
 destroyer. 
 
 Yet in his heart, though he hated himself for the transient 
 emotion, he felt a momentary impatience, a momentary wish 
 that she were of lighter temper, like others, and took things 
 less deeply. He had been used to a world in which the wife 
 smiled on her Imsband's mistress, the husband on the man 
 that dishonored him, the bitterest foes were the best friends in 
 seeming, and the rivalry, the intrigue, the crime, the enmity 
 of the hour, were all alike concealed beneath a surfiice of 
 courtesy and cordiality, and tlie friendship of society was but 
 a mask for lusts, for treachery, for hatreds. lie loved her 
 because she was not like this world ; yet habit and usage made 
 him ibr an instant wish that she would stoop to its convenient 
 hypocrisies, its bland untruths. 
 
 " What would it cost her to be ostensibly friends with her 
 rival for a few brief weeks till I am free?" he thought; and 
 then he repented of the thought, and felt that it was unworthy 
 both of himself and her. And how did he mean to take his 
 freedom ? He did not know. He drifted trusting to chance. 
 He had lost his opportunity. Opportunity is our good angel, 
 but if when it knocks we do not open quickly, it goes away 
 from us rarely to return. He was in the mist and twilight of 
 a great dilemma, and as one little cloud spreads all over the 
 heavens till the earth is dark with storm, so one hesitating and 
 timid untruth spread into a night of falsehood, a shipwreck 
 of life and love. 
 
 Etoile, who all her life had been strong because she had 
 been aloof from mankind and indifferent to human pains and 
 joys and wrapped in the lofty egotisms of the arts, Etoile 
 was now weak as the weakest ; every woman is so that loves 
 greatly. In a great love the eyes are blinded, the lips are 
 closed, the ears are deaf, the will is paralyzed, — only beholding, 
 only breathing for, only hearing, only obeying, one oth jr life 
 out of all the millions upon earth ; and nothing short of this 
 is love. 
 
43G FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Sho was weak, and weakness is ever unwise. She shrank 
 from any chance of meeting the woman whom it made her 
 burn with slianie to tliink was still her rival. She shrank 
 from any obligation of going into the routine of society and 
 greeting or passing by as some mere acquaintance the lover 
 who was all the world to her. All the trivial untruths, the 
 conventional masquerades that society regards as venial, indeed 
 as right and wise, were to her cowardly and guilty evasions ; 
 she could not stoop to them. She could keep silence since he 
 wished it ; she would bear pain if it pleased him to lay it on 
 her; she would even submit to injurious construction and 
 slanderous comment if it came to her throu<:;h obedience to 
 his will. But she would not act a social lie ; therefore she 
 shut lier doors on the world and would not go out to it, and 
 let it babble what it might of her. 
 
 She was very happy still, very often ; she believed that he 
 scarcely saw her rival ; she was full of faith in his words and 
 in her future. She withdrew into solitude, because solitude 
 was sweeter to her than any companionship when he was 
 absent. She prayed for him, she smiled on him often when 
 she could have wept; in his absence she gave herseif to art 
 for his sake, that he might still be proud of her. 
 
 Alas ! prayer was of no avail ; nor tenderness, nor love, 
 nor any delicacy or constancy of faith. To save him she 
 needed to have been of coarser fibre, of colder heart, of 
 tougher mould ; she needed to have been blunt and fierce and 
 subtle and resolute like her foe. 
 
 Ariel could not combat a leopardess ; Ithuviel's spear glances 
 pointless from a rhinoceros' hide. To match what is low and 
 beat it, you must stoop and soil your hands to cut a cudgel 
 rough and ready. She did not see this, and, seeing it, would 
 not have lowered herself to do it. 
 
 She withdrew herself into solitude, and loved him as one 
 woman perhaps loves once in a century. It seemed to her 
 that it was all that she could do ; that it must be enough, 
 since he loved her. 
 
 But it was not enough ; because he was not alone. Restless, 
 ruthless, ever-present, avaricious of every moment, unscrupu- 
 lous in every guile, fierce as a driving sirocco, and penetrating 
 everywhere like the sirocco's sand, her rival was forever beside 
 him. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 437 
 
 If she had gone down into the mud of the arena and fought 
 with the same weapon as her foe, she would have vanquished ; 
 but pride held her back, and love and faith, which would not 
 insult him. 
 
 She stayed aloof, and could not struggle with what was base 
 basely. 
 
 So the day of battle waned and went against her. 
 
 The same crowd on the Pincio spoke of her that had spoken 
 the year before, only with interest less lively because she was 
 no more a novelty. 
 
 " She is always in Rome ?" 
 
 « Yes, at Rocaldi." 
 
 " What does she do at Rocaldi ?" 
 
 " Humph— well— ah ! . . . " 
 
 Then people laughed, no one knew very well why. 
 
 " Does she send to the Salon this year?" 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 "Is she ill?" 
 
 " Nobody knows." 
 
 " One sees her driving?'* 
 
 " Oh, yes, you may see her driving." 
 
 "Not in society?" 
 
 " Not in society this year." 
 
 " Very odd." 
 
 " Such women are always odd." 
 
 " She seems to shut herself up like a nun ; perhaps the big 
 dog is a man in disguise." 
 
 Then everybody laughed again, and thought they were 
 witty. 
 
 On such a congenial temper of Society, and into minds 
 so well prepared, the voice of her foe and its echoes easily 
 dropped well-chosen words. 
 
 Lady Joan was in mourning and could not go out in the 
 evening, but she called upon people assiduously and received 
 them at home on her Wednesdays, there being nothing in tea 
 and talk against woe. 
 
 " So sorry you should ever have been exposed to meeting 
 her here," she said, with cordial apology and a sad tone in her 
 voice ; " so very, very sorry. But my poor dear father's name 
 was used without his knowledge ; his very last words to me 
 almost were in anger about her ; oh, for myself I do not mind ; 
 
 37* 
 
438 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 I am not prudish ; but for all my dear friends who met her 
 here I feel I cannot make atonement enough." 
 
 Then she would smile a little and add, " It is so tiresome 
 for poor lo ; she has taken such a fancy for him, and now 
 that she does not come here she never sees him of course, and 
 she is always teasinjj: him, — sending after him. He never 
 goes indeed, but still to a man of delicate mind like lo it 
 is painful ; yes, artists are always very strange ; it is a great 
 pity." 
 
 And she would look very frank and very sorrowful, and her 
 echoes would say the same thing a little more faintly, but very 
 faithfully, till Society was all one big echo, singing the same 
 song, like the rocks round a lake. 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell, like the famous Hibernian echo which 
 embroiders variations, would add, " The generous hospitality 
 of Lady Joan so abused ! Her noble friendship so slandered ! 
 So sad, so shocking, so shameful ! No, I have no idea who 
 pays for Rocaldi. Not its tenant, — certainly not its tenant. 
 She sends nothing to the Salon this year. Poor loris ! It all 
 annoys him unspeakably. He never saw her save in the Casa 
 Challoner, — never !" 
 
 This was what Etoile had done by leaving the field to her 
 foes, whilst scornful of the tongues of the world, and always 
 indifferent to their blame as to their praise, she lived on in her 
 solitude, counting the hours till they brought her loris. He 
 told her that he scarcely saw her rival, never save when the 
 complications of their entangled affairs made it unavoidable. 
 To doubt him was very difficult to her. To watch him was 
 impossible. 
 
 Out of an exaggerated sense of the honor due to him, she 
 would never utter his name to others ; never pass down a 
 street where it could seem as if she watched him ; never take 
 any means, not the most innocent, to ascertain whether what 
 he said were true or false. He loved her, and that was enough. 
 He was master of both their fates. 
 
 " So you have withdrawn yourself to your rock in the 
 middle of the sea, or rather in the middle of your vineyards," 
 said Lady Cardiff to her one day, with approval in her phrases, 
 but vexation in her soul. " Well, no doubt you are very wise, 
 my dear. Every one to his taste. Perhaps it is better to drop 
 Society altogether unless you conform to it altogether and make 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 439 
 
 it pleasant to you by being pleasant to itself, painting your 
 eyebrows, tittle-tattling, wearing your gowns half-way down 
 your spine, finding an H.R.H.'s inipudenee honor, kissing your 
 worst enemy, being prettily fickle and smilingly false, and 
 making yourself generally placable and affable. As you will 
 not do that, perhaj)s the rock in the middle of the sea — or the 
 vines — is best for you, an his skylight was for Victor Hugo. 
 I am sure I dare not say it isn't. Only it does seem a pity, 
 at your age, with your talents, to shut yourself up in a sort of 
 l^araclete with a lot of palm-trees. It does seem a pity. To 
 bo sure, there is Tsar." 
 
 " There is always Tsar," said Etoilo, with a smile. 
 
 " And loris," thought Lady Cardiff, with impatience and 
 discontent. 
 
 " loris embellishes a Paraclete, no doubt," she uused to 
 herself ' But she is making a terrible error. She loves with 
 the immortal love of the poets, and he with the trivial passion 
 of the world. I am sure of it, as sure as if they were both 
 before me. And what is the use of secluding herself under 
 her palm-trees? Seclusion will not beat that bully who owns 
 him. On the contrary, she should be always in the world, 
 always taking away her foe's friends, countermining her foe's 
 mines, shining, succeeding, giving her lover hosts of rivals to 
 fear, showing him always her own power, her own triumph, 
 her own caprices. That is the way that rivals are beaten and 
 men are retained. But she does not see it. If she did see it 
 she would not do it. She will wait under her palms for him 
 to come to her. Whenever he ceases to come, then she will 
 break her heart and live alone till she dies. I always used to 
 wonder how Heloise, with all her sense and knowledge and 
 genius and Greek and Latin, ever could let Abelard beat her. 
 I don't wonder since I have known Etoilo. I am quite sure 
 loris beats her — metaphorically speaking — just because he has 
 been so tired of being beaten himself Ah, dear me ! why 
 couldn't the fates have been kinder and have left that other 
 woman on her house-top in Damascus !" 
 
 But Lady Cardiff was agrande dame and a wise person, too 
 high-bred to speak of what did not concern her : so she 
 thought all this only in vexed silence, and merely said, with a 
 pleasant smile, — 
 
 " To be sure, there is always Tsar." Tsar, who at that 
 
440 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 moment was tossing in play, in the air over his head, a man's 
 glove, — a glove that belonged to the slender, soft, dark hand 
 of loris. 
 
 Lady Cardiff saw that it was a man's glove, but she said 
 nothing. 
 
 " You have heard of my poor friend ? of Dorotea ?" said 
 Etoile, hurriedly, to alter the subject. 
 
 " Yes ; I have heard." 
 
 " Is not the world bitterly cruel ? Can there be a viler sen- 
 tence, a more hideous injustice ?" 
 
 " Perhaps the one the world will pass on you will be as 
 ■ much so," thought Lady CardiflF, as she answered aloud, " You 
 hear nothing from herself?" 
 
 " Nothing — now — for many months." 
 
 " But you believe in her innocence ?" 
 
 " As I believe that the sun shines in the heavens." 
 
 " Dear me ! And she is worse than dead ?" 
 
 " Worse than dead I" 
 
 The tears rolled down the cheeks of Etoile as she spoke, 
 and she turned away. Life from one lovely, classic, cold 
 vision of all the arts had changed and become to her a thing 
 BO exijuisitely beautiful, so fearfully terrible, that she grew 
 dizzy in its midst. 
 
 Lady Cardiff glanced at her, and said aloud, pleasantly, — 
 
 " My dear. Tsar will tear that glove. Is it yours ?" 
 
 " It is Ireneo's. He spoils Tsar very much," said Etoile, 
 unthinkingly, and then she grew a little pale, being afraid 
 that she had betrayed the secret of her lover. 
 
 " loris ? Ah ! he is very fond of dogs. Lady Joan beats 
 them," said Lady Cardiff, tranquilly. 
 
 The color burned in the face of Etoile. She was silent. 
 
 " After all, Paraclete is more like common humanity than 
 one thought," mused Lady Cardiff. " That is a comfort." 
 
 But a vague apprehension was upon her, and she went 
 away once more too engrossed and too pained to care to read 
 her " Figaro," which was the effect that her visits to what she 
 called Paraclete always produced on her. 
 
 The " Figaro" was equally interesting and veracious that 
 day. It contained, like many other journals of Europe at 
 that epoch, the full account of the suit of the Due de San- 
 torin against his wife, known to the world as Dorotea Coronis, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 441 
 
 — a suit in wliich the husband was completely triumphant, 
 with a triumph chiefly due to the letters of a dead lover that 
 he placed before the court. 
 
 " Why will people write letters?" said Lady Cardiff to her- 
 self, with a tender pity for human nature. " Were there any 
 entanglements before people took to letter-writing ? I don't 
 think there can have been. Every bother and show-up comes 
 out of letters nowadays. How nice and safe it would have 
 been with only flowers for correspondence, as they had in the 
 East before we civilized it 1 If a marigold or a clove-pink 
 were found and meant anything dreadful, you could always 
 have said it was a mistake of the gardener's. San tor in him- 
 self couldn't have taken a marigold or a clove-pink into court." 
 
 She drove on to the Pincio and got out and walked, and 
 found every one talking of the Santorin suit, and full of sym- 
 pathy for the husband. 
 
 " She would never sing a note after the Russian died. That 
 was proof of guilt enough 1" said lovely Mrs. Desart. 
 
 "And she is gone into a convent in Spain," added Lady 
 Eyebright. 
 
 " She should have gone there before," said Mrs. Desart. 
 
 " Why do convents open their doors to such women ?" said 
 Lady Joan Challoner, severely. 
 
 " But the letters were no proof of her infidelity," said a 
 man, who thought with a pang of that fairest face and that 
 loveliest voice dumb and veiled in a living grave. " The 
 letters clearly reproached her with cruelty, with coldness. I 
 cannot see myself " 
 
 " There were the plainest possible proofs of criminal inter- 
 course," said Lady Joan and Mrs. Desart and Lady Eyebright 
 together. '' The letters proved it ; and, if they did not, the 
 servants' testimony did " 
 
 " A maid she had discharged, and a valet of Santorin's I 
 The old Spanish woman swore to her utter innocence " 
 
 " The old Spaniard was in her dotage : the judge said so. 
 Besides, the Hussian was not i\\Q first " 
 
 " Oh, mesdames ! " 
 
 " She was a most profligate creature. To think she should 
 have so often sung to our Queen !" 
 
 Lady Cardiff put her glass in her eye : 
 
 " She wasn't divorced then, my dear Lady Joan. Anybody 
 
442 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 adorned with the Scarlet Letter that is not a divorcee may 
 come to Court : so I suppose they nuiy sing at it. It is the 
 Victorian rule. It has many conveniences " 
 
 Lady Joan winced, but was stern in her justice. 
 
 " It serves Santorin right for marrying a person out of the 
 mud like that," she said, still severely. " What could ho ex- 
 pect? Artists are always the same. And it will be so hard 
 upon him now. He won't be Jible to marry unles; she dies." 
 
 '* You think it hard on men not to be able to marry ? How 
 nine of you ! But then all marriages are not as happy as 
 yours, dear Lady Joan," said Lady Cardiff, and she turned to 
 Mrs. Challoner. 
 
 " Santorin takes two millions from her under his marriage 
 contract. Ilather bathos, that, don't you think ? If Menelaus 
 had taken two millions from Helen would Ureece have sym- 
 pathized ? One doesn't know. Morals alter so, and manners. 
 Ours seems a lucrative age for husbands, doesn't it ? If she 
 could have gone on singing and paying his debts I am sure he 
 would never have brought his suit. No ?" 
 
 Mrs. Challoner reddened, and said something vague about 
 no payment of debts compensating any gentleman for dishonor. 
 
 Lady Cardiff went onward meditatively. 
 
 " Dear, dear," she thought to herself, " that singing woman 
 is dying in a convent, and our feminine Kaffaelle leaning'on a 
 rood that will pierce her heart like a spear some day ! Dear, 
 dear, what is the use of being born with the Muse in you if 
 you cannot take better care of yourself than that? The 
 woman was innocent, — ^yes, certainly innocent ; the letters 
 prove, if they prove anything, how she strove against her love 
 for her lover's sake ; and yet, if she were singing anywhere, 
 virt'ious women like Lady Joan and the Desart could not hear 
 her, and the very theatres would be scandalized, and very 
 likely hiss ! What an admirable century ! Royal Courts are 
 severe as Ilhadamanthus on the morals of the few that sing at 
 a state concert ; the twelve hundred that come to listen may 
 have sinned as they liked ; that don't hurt a Court at all !" 
 
 Left alone, Etoile paced restlessly to and fro the long terrace 
 on which the dog had been at play with the glove. 
 
 The fate of her friend Dorotea had filled her with pain and 
 indignation, though she had heard nothing more than what 
 the world knew, for since the moment that she had been told 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 443 
 
 of Fc'dor SourofF's death, Dorotca Coronis had died herself to 
 the world : all tics and memories of living things or living 
 friends had perished from her. But to Etoile also had como 
 that supreme absorption of love in which other aifeetions 
 perish, and nothing in the wide world seems to matter so that 
 one life lives and is near. The world often rails at this isola- 
 tion and absorption of passion as an egotism, but it is in truth 
 its highest sublimity. 
 
 Love that remembers aught save the one beloved, may bo 
 affection, but it is not love. She understood now Dorotea 
 Coronis as she had not understood her ou her first night iu 
 Home : that was all. 
 
 The name uttered before her in union with her lover's had 
 cut to her very soul. 
 
 It was to avoid this pain, thia humiliation, this bitternesa 
 which she could not resent, that she had shut herself in loneli- 
 ness here, letting the world that loved to chatter of her give 
 what motive it would to her solitude. 
 
 Was it possible that in that world they still deemed him 
 her rival's ? 
 
 Her cheeks burned, her pulse throbbed high as she paced 
 to and fro in the late chilly day. How long was it to last, 
 this secrecy, this silence, this mystery ? She was everything 
 to him, and she seemed to be nothing. 
 
 She had accepted this position because it was of his doing 
 and his choice, but she had been always impatient of them. 
 To the woman whose courage had been contemptuous and 
 daring to a fault, no sacrifice could have been so hard as this 
 demand to bear with cowardice and mask a truth. 
 
 She had been shut in her solitude till she had forgotten 
 how the world went on ; she remembered it with a shudder 
 now. 
 
 Was it possible that in the world he still passed as the lover 
 of another? 
 
 No : he was hers. That was enough. 
 
 She would not wrong him with a doubt. He had told her 
 such doubt was insult. 
 
 So she paced her lonely terrace in the red wintry afternoons, 
 and trusted him, and when his step was heard and his hand 
 touched hers, asked nothing more of him or heaven. 
 
 " When I am not there she is alone and dreams of me," 
 
444 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 loris said to himself, and that knowledge made him careless. 
 If her nature would have let her do so, it would have been 
 wiser to have had her painting- room full of worshippers and 
 her hours full of pleasures and ambitions ; he would have 
 been insecure and anxious to keep his power, and would have 
 hastened to cry to all others, " Stand off 1 she is mine I" 
 
 For men are made so. 
 
 In all the feverish pangs of love there is none sharper than 
 that with which the woman, who is loved in secret, sees the 
 life that is her own passing in the crowd of the world, amidst 
 other women, aloof from her, as a friend, as a stranger, whilst 
 she must hold her silence, and give and take from hir the 
 empty phrases of ceremonial and custom ; for a little while it 
 is sweet, that contrast between solitude and society, that soft, 
 secret tie, that tender complicity undreamed of by others ; for 
 a while it is very sweet, but afterwards it grows into a fretting 
 pain, and brings a sense of galling bitterness. 
 
 To Etoile the pain of it was doubly galling, because in all 
 her life she had never stooped to seem the thing she was not. 
 
 " Love loses its loveliness made public ; it is like the grapes ; 
 once handled, the bloom is gone," he said to her, seeking to 
 reconcile her ; and it wrs a truth, but only a truth true of lovo 
 that does not speak at all ; not true of love that maaks itself 
 and lies. 
 
 At other times he said to her, " Wait, dear, wait but a very 
 little more ; then all the world shall know that I — such as I 
 am, and most unworthy — am all yours." 
 
 And she loved him so well that the mere sound of his voice 
 — say what sophistry it would — was her paradise. 
 
 " She is nothing to you?" she murmured to him that day, 
 and hid her i'ace on his breast as she asked it, because the ques- 
 tion hurt her and seemed to her shameful. 
 
 " Do you dishonor me with the doubt ?" he said, petulantly 
 and with anger ; and she asked his forgiveness. She was not 
 wise now, nor strong : she only loved him very greatly. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 445 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 "Have I chosen the right way?" the Lady Joan asked 
 herself again and again, with rage and fear at her heart. She 
 knew all that he did with his time now, being once on the trace 
 of his trespass ; she knew the hours that he passed with her 
 rival ; she knew the way in which he spent time for which he 
 accounted to herself with a thousand specious excuses. When 
 these excuses were palmed off on her, she, knowing the truth, 
 felt at times as if she must strike him dead ; but slie held her 
 peace stanchly, and smiled, and accepted what he said. Was 
 it the right way ? Sometimes she doubted, sometimes a spasm 
 of dread seized her ; but she knew men and their weaknesses 
 and their impulses ; her experience told her that there was no 
 other way half so sure. So she wore her mask. 
 
 It was an iron mask, and hurt her ; but she wore it stanchly, 
 never loosening it, however great the strain. She never let it 
 drop before any living creature, not even before plump Mirao, 
 from whom she had no secrets, — not even before her watchdog 
 who had put her on the trail. 
 
 " I cannot forgive myself for ever introducing poor lo to 
 Etoile ; she will end in entangling him. She is clever and he 
 is so weak," she would say to the former ; and to the latter add, 
 with a smile, " lo comes to me every day to complain of that 
 woman and her passion for him. I laugh at him for being so 
 fatally attractive. It does seem so absurd to us, dear, — doesn't 
 it ? — that anybody can see a hero in lo ! Of course we are all 
 of u'^i fond of him ; but lo will never set the Thames or the 
 Tiber on fire." 
 
 Marjory Scrope could only listen, and feel a thrill of envious 
 wonder at her friend's coolness and skill. She herself could 
 not wear a mask like that ; she could only feebly imitate her 
 greater leader, and murmur in turn to Society, " Oh, no, we 
 never see her now ; we do not feel we ciuld ; we have heard 
 so very much. They say, too, she pretends there is something 
 wrong between our dear, dear friend and loris. As if we did 
 not know ! as if anybody could know as loe <lo ! So absurd, 
 
 38 
 
446 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 you know ; so cruel ; so like a woman who errs herself and 
 judges every one by her own errors. Oh, no, indeed, you need 
 never fear meeting her at our house ; we never see her now ; 
 we should not receive her." 
 
 Meanwhile the three sisters brewed the sulphur fumes in 
 their caldron, and in the Temple of all the Virtues the name 
 of Etoile was daily sacrificed as a votive offering to the kind 
 gods of Calumny, — those gracious and just gods who never 
 frown when their priests ^vq pleased or when the baked meats 
 are plenteous. 
 
 And Silverly Bell would shake his head, which he always 
 found more effective than wovds, — shake his head, and sigh 
 profoundly. 
 
 Society understood that the sigh meant all kinds of unmen- 
 tionable sin. 
 
 Of a woman who had ceased to receive, as Etoile had done, 
 who dwelt aloof from the world, and made it feel that it was 
 less to her than the grasses under her feet in the fields. Society 
 was always ready to believe anything. 
 
 " Oh, you noble imbecile ! Oh, you noble but most absolute 
 imbecile !" thought Lady Cardiff, in a futile frenzy of irritation. 
 " Why don't you understand ? why won't you understand ? 
 Have twenty lovers, and nobody'll say anything ; but to have 
 one .' ... It is a standing insolence to all the rest of our 
 sex. If you must have only one, and if that one must be 
 some one else's perjured Launcelot, there is only one way for 
 you to get yourself nd Launcelot pardoned and to beat black- 
 browed Guinevere out of the field and be victorious, — only one 
 way : throw open your house, give dinners, go out everywhere, 
 smile on everybody, bo en evidence every day ; make Guinevere 
 look disagreeable, stingy, and shabby nobody beside you ; 
 then the world will go with you, most likely, and never ask 
 if you have only one or have twenty. But to shut yourself 
 up and merely live for perjured Launcelot, and when he is 
 absent model clay and paint on panels, what can the world of 
 women make of you ? You are Imm naturse, ferae, nafurase, — 
 unlike everything and everybody. Of course they will stone 
 you, as village bumpkins run out and stone an odd stray bird 
 that they have never seen before ; and the more beautiful thd 
 plumage looks, the harder rain the stones. If the bird were 
 a sparrow the bunipkins would let it be." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 447 
 
 But Lady Cardiff could only think her thoughts, not utter 
 them, being too high-bred to interfere in any one's destiny 
 unasked, and could only say, when she heard the stones pelt- 
 ing in Society, — 
 
 " Etoile ? Oh, dear, yes ; of course I know her ; of course 
 I go to her. Why not? Everybody did go last year; I 
 should go if nobody did. It is very uncommon, you know, to 
 see a woman who paints everything except her face, and who 
 thinks Milton and Sophocles better company than ourselves. 
 Odd ? Yes, very odd ; that I grant, but interesting. An ad- 
 venturess, is she ? Ah, I didn't know it. Does it matter ? 
 I thought she was a great artist. I may be mistaken. I am 
 not mistaken ? Then why an adventuress ? I do not quite 
 understand. Same thing, is it ?" 
 
 And then Society winced under Lady Cardiff's eyeglass and 
 her co'^rtly smile ; and, feeling that it looked foolish to her, 
 felt so. 
 
 But one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one 
 friend or fifty suffice to stem the tide of enmity that is popu- 
 lar. The world, as a rule, was always angered with a woman 
 whom it had crowned, and who did not care for it; who valued 
 a dead poet or a living daf!bdil more highly than itself; and 
 who shut herself in a solitude that looked more scornful with 
 her marbles and her canvas. When it found a weakness in 
 her it shouted with joy and rained its stones. It was sweet 
 as the rotten apples in Schiller's desk to the vulgar. 
 
 Her foe knew how to hold up rotten apples in the light and 
 vow she found them on her. The world believed. The world, 
 being made up of human b ings, is very human ; it believes 
 what it likes to believe. 
 
 loris knew it; it angered him, but he let the fumes rise and 
 the echoes beat. 
 
 " It is always so with what they envy," he said to himself, 
 and it seemed to him that she was more his own, thus isolated. 
 
 What were such calumnies ? A rain of arrows would be 
 borne for his sake, as Sebastian bore them for the sake of 
 heaven. 
 
 " I am enough for her," he said, and, when his conscience 
 smote him, thought, " It will be all clear some day when they 
 know all ; she does not heed it ; she is not like other women ; 
 the world is nothing to her. I am all." 
 
448 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Besides, the worst lie did not know ; for the voice that raised 
 the echoes from the rocks was careful to call its worst in a lan- 
 guage that was unfamiliar to him. Past his ear when it was 
 strained to listen, the voice of the Lady Joan went down the 
 wind calling aloud on Calumny, but always calling in English ; 
 and Calumny, that looked the other way when she herself was 
 sinning, and went by like a meek dog, mute, leaped up like a 
 mastiff, and came foaming at the mouth. 
 
 For she was a great administrator, and could manage even 
 Calumny : it never bit her, and when she wished it flew on 
 any foe she had. 
 
 The close of Carnival came, and the revels of the Veglione 
 with it, — the Veglione for so many years so dear to the soul 
 of the Lady Joan, with its noise and glare, its malice and 
 mischief, its shrieks and suppers, its travesty of mirth, its 
 blasphemies of love. 
 
 It was a bitterly cold night, and loris shivered as he left 
 Etoile when the twelfth hour struck and went out into the 
 frosty air. 
 
 " I have masses of correspondence to look into and answer 
 by dawn," he murmured as he kissed her and left her there 
 amidst her palms and ferns, her bronzes and casts, her un- 
 finished work in clay and on canvas. 
 
 Then, with reluctant step and sinking heart, he went down 
 into the heart of the city, to the gaslit and crowded vestibule 
 of the Apollo, thrrnging with black dominoes and many- 
 colored masquers ; and up the stairs of the theatre to the Dall 
 that he had gone to, year after year, on such nights as these, 
 and opening the door of it, saw shining eyes through a vizard 
 of satin, and heard a voice shout, with malicious glee, — 
 
 " Take me down-stairs, lo, quickly ! I have changed my 
 rosette ; not a soul will know me." 
 
 He gave her his arm sullenly and silently. His thoughts 
 were back in the silent shadowy chambers where another 
 woman, in the pale light of her oil lamps, was putting the last 
 touch to his own bust in marble. 
 
 " Thus, you seem always with me," had said Etoile as they 
 had parted; and he had left her and had come to the opera ball. 
 
 He descended to the tumult and turmoil, to the fumes of 
 the wine and the smoke, to the screeching and whooping of 
 masks, to the old, worn-out, stale, stupid roystering. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 449 
 
 His companion's hand clutched his arm tightly ; her voice 
 pierced his ear as she hissed her innuendoes to others, or 
 screamed the shrill whoop of the place. Year after year they 
 had passed through the same throngs. He was sick of it, ho 
 loathed it, and loathed himself for coming to it ; but Lady 
 Joan was triumphant. 
 
 She knew whence he had come, and she said once to hira, 
 " Poor dear lo ! your head aches ? That comes of sitting all 
 alone all your evening over those tiresome papers." And 
 he muttered a vague assent, and did not notice the glance like 
 the flash of sharp steel that darted at him from the eye-holes 
 of her mask. 
 
 As he walked, deafened and weary and answering mechan- 
 ically all those who challenged or laughed, he was wondering 
 to himself why he had not had the courage to tell her that 
 night in the old garden-paths of Fiordelisa, — wondering why 
 he had not the courage now. 
 
 No one knew that she was here save her tried friends Mimo 
 and Guide, who were very sure to keep her secret. The world 
 supposed her still deep in crape and sorrow, safe in seclusion ; 
 and Mr. Challoner, who for once might not have condoned so 
 great an offence to Society, was for the moment in Venice on 
 affairs connected with his shepherd's crook and flock. This 
 was the sort of merry scapata in which her most happ^r tem- 
 perament rejoiced and gambolled as gambols a young goat. 
 
 When she was tired of the boards below and of the yelling 
 throng and went up-stairs to her niche in the third circle, she 
 was in the highest spirits, or at least appeared so. There 
 were none who knew her but her old friends. She ate her 
 caviare with a relish, and cried aloud, — 
 
 " Didn't you know that black domino that leaned against 
 this door, lo? Oh, for shame! I did. It was your Corinna, 
 — Etoile !" 
 
 loris grew very pale : he knew it was a lie, but the lie 
 infuriated him. 
 
 '■'■She here !" he said, bitterly. " What are you dreaming 
 of? That she is like yourself?" 
 
 She controlled her rage with the wonderful strength that 
 self-interost and self-mastery had given her even in her wildest 
 fury. She laughed aloud. 
 
 " My dear lo, take care what you say ; she may poniard us 
 
 38* 
 
450 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 going out. Give me a sandwich. Etoile most certainly : why 
 not ? Come to watch you. You cannot be adored by a Co- 
 rinna without being bored by it. Isn't she a Corinna? 
 Wasn't Corinna a Muse no better than she should be? Guido, 
 let us drink to the Tenth Muse, who is not like me, — the 
 Tenth Muse that adores lo, and that is watching at the door 
 with a dagger, I dare say 1" 
 
 And she laughed and emptied her glass. loris sat silent, 
 his arms folded, his head bent. 
 
 There were the actor-men present ; he could not speak ; it 
 seemed to him like profanation to even defend the woman who 
 was absent, in such a place as this. 
 
 He saw nothing of the scene before him, — of the black 
 mask, the glittering eyes, the glare of gas ; he saw Etoile in 
 the white serge of her working-dress, with the drooping fronds 
 of the ferns behind her, and her hand on the marble moulded 
 in his likeness. 
 
 On the morrow Lady Joan said to her friend, with a frank 
 regret in her voice, — 
 
 " Those men that went to the Veglione last night tell me 
 that Etoile was there, actually there, and following loris every- 
 where. Poor lo ! who only went because as one of the club 
 he was obliged to entertain. I feel such pain, I really do, 
 that an accidental rencontre with her in our house should have 
 brought about such a nuisance and scandal. And lo is such 
 a gentleman, you know, — all the old chivalrous ideas of honor ; 
 he will not even allow that she is to blame, though it is quite 
 too annoying for him. What a horrid noise, by the way, all 
 those masquers made going home 1 I could not sleep the 
 least all night for them : could you ?" 
 
 On the morrow loris, with his eyes heavy and his head hot 
 from the stupid, noisy tumult of the night, went and found 
 Etoile as he most cared to think of her, in her white serge 
 working-dress, in her studio, amidst the marbles and the 
 panels. 
 
 She looked to him, as compared with that other, like one of 
 her own cool, pale roses, beside a tumbled gas-lit red camellia. 
 
 He sighed as he looked. 
 
 She put her arms about his throat. 
 
 " What is there to make you sigh ? Tell me. If you would 
 only trust me, — quite!" 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 451 
 
 "I do trust you, — entirely. I was only thinking what 
 gross, foolish beasts are men, and that to be loved by you one 
 ought to be (as a friend of yours oucc said) Petrarca at the 
 least." 
 
 " I do not want Petrarca : I want only you." 
 
 " You have me, my angel, — such as I am." 
 
 She looked in his eyes with a hesitating fear. 
 
 " Wholly ? — always ? Are you sure ?" 
 
 " Wholly and always." 
 
 And he kissed her. 
 
 " That other is my weariness, my bane, my care," ho 
 thought. " No more. That is truth before heaven. No 
 more." 
 
 No more ! But to be that is so much. 
 
 It is tc be as the lichen on the tree, as the rust on the steel, 
 as the canker in the plant, as the mildew in the air. It is 
 to penetrate, to weaken, to obscure, to entangle, to destroy, 
 invisibly, imperceptibly, but certainly, with the certainty of 
 death. 
 
 Travellers in Western forests of virgin lands tell how strange 
 and sad a sight it is to see a tall and stately tree in all its pride 
 of leaf and crown of blossoms striving in vain to stretch up- 
 ward to air and light under the clasping, strangling masses 
 of its parasite creepers, that climb aloft on it and stifle it till 
 it becomes no more than a mere leafless shaft, borne down by 
 what caresses it. 
 
 Who looks on a man's life strangled under the parasite of 
 a worn-out yet persistent passion sees the same >*orrowful sight 
 as the wanderer in the Western wilds. The d^^ath of the tree 
 in the forest is like the moral death of the man who is held by 
 what he knows to be base. The tree strains upward, pines for 
 fresh air, and struggles beneath the enervating and paralyzing 
 thing it nourishes, but all in vain. The poisonous parasite is 
 the stronger. 
 
 The days and the weeks went on, now, and he was not 
 free, though the woman he loved and deceived believed him to 
 be so. 
 
 He thought that he did not deceive her, because that other 
 was to him, as he said, only his weariness, his bane, his ruin ; be- 
 cause each touch of her rough hand had grown hurtful to him ; 
 because each glitter of her watchful eyes made him nervous 
 
452 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and restless ; because he only bore with her as a man may bear 
 with an adder about his wrist, because he fears its mortal bite 
 if he stir it. 
 
 " I am yours only," he said to Etoile, and deemed it no 
 falsehood, because all that there was in him of heart, and 
 mind, and soul, and tenderness, and passion, — all was hers ; 
 and to that other he rendered only such sullen counterfeit of 
 unwilling and unreal emotions as were wrung from him by her 
 insistence and his hesitation. A passive obedience counts not 
 as loyal service. A forced assent means nothing. 
 
 So he told himself, and bade his conscience be still, when, 
 with a heavy fancied sense of guilt, he sat beside his tyrant and 
 heard her speak of future summers in his old home together, 
 and bent his reluctant head to the ardors of her greeting or 
 her lingering good-night. 
 
 Looking back over the waste of years since she crossed his 
 path, he saw them strewn with lost time, lost talents, lost 
 hopes, lost honor, lost fortune, — all lost by her or through her, 
 and gone for evermore. Yet she was like the adder on the 
 wrist, the parasite on the palm : he dared not stir, he could 
 not reach the light of heaven. She saw that well enough : 
 she was no longer blind. But she only drew closer round 
 him, as the adder round the wrist, as the creeper round the 
 tree. 
 
 For her passions might be weak, but she was strong. 
 
 Moreover, the complexities and contradictions of his own 
 nature were at war. He liked the very peril of his path ; he 
 was glad once more to steal unseen by moonlight to a tryst 
 that none could know ; h g obliged to pass through a crowd 
 under a blare of trumpets to a mistress who loved her vanity 
 far more than he, this silence and solitude were precious to 
 him. Silence and solitude are the twin divinities of love that 
 guard its portals while it dreams ; but the Lady Joan detested 
 them : like the old sovereigns of Rome, she thought no victory 
 of worth without its triumph moving down the public ways. 
 He had been bound so long behind her chariot, jaded and 
 impatient, of the throngs that jeer, that the sweet sense of 
 imperious mastery both of the woman he loved and of the 
 secret of his love came to him with the delight of variety, the 
 charm of power. Etoile had seemed to him at first like Del 
 Sarto's Sebastian, with the palm and arrow, and uplifted eyes, 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 453 
 
 lookinc; for lii<j;her things than earth can give. It wius sweet 
 to him to bend the palm and break the arrows and make the 
 eyes sink earthward and see only his. 
 
 The earth was once more sweet with the honey-smell of the 
 golden tulips in the springing corn, and the darkness of the 
 bay and the laurel was sttUTed all over with little white 
 blossoms, and springtime was here. 
 
 Lady Joan sat alone in her Turkish room. 
 
 It was dusky and heavy with tlie smell of stale smoke ; the 
 flowers brought there faded in it. She did not care ibr the 
 honey-smell of those cups of a gold she could not coin, iind 
 she only liked the bay and the laurel because their berries 
 fattened the blackbirds for the market-stall. 
 
 It simplifies life not to be a poet. 
 
 She sat in the' Turkish room all alone, and her face was 
 dark, her eyes were clouded, her teeth were clinched. She 
 knew how he spent the hours absent from her, and he was 
 absent now. She was Argus-eyed, and had as many ears as 
 Vishnu. She saw, heard, understood all that moved him, all 
 that he concealed. She had borne it long and with the stern 
 patience that only the consciousness of a great aim could give. 
 She meant to have vengeance and Fiordelisa, — both the 
 two sides of the shield that should hang up in the halls of her 
 triumph. 
 
 She sat in the darkened room, and thought. She was 
 alone, and she knew where he was. It seemed to her as if 
 her patience would burst its bonds, her vengeance outstrip 
 her wisdom, her heart break from her bosom : yet she was 
 strong to keep silence. Until he spoke she would not speak. 
 Time does so much and fate works so well for those who 
 know how to wait ere they strike. 
 
 The rumble from the streets filled her ears ; stray lines of 
 sunshine shone in through the dusk of the room ; she thought 
 of him there, at the feet of Etoile, under the green palms 
 where the nightingales sang at eventide. . . . All these 
 months he had fooled her thus ! 
 
 In her black garb, with a silver dagger run through her 
 dusky braids, with her stern lips close shut, and her eyes 
 dark and stormy as a tempestuous midnight, she looked a 
 woman to take a vengeance that should have rung through 
 Kurope, — to strike one blow, and see her lover dead, then 
 
454 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 shcatlie the dagger in her breast. She looked so. As she 
 sat, her clinched hand resting on a steel cuirass of old armor 
 that lay near, her own namesake of D'Arc had not more 
 bitter purpose on her brows, a Cleopatra infuriate had not 
 more foiled fierce passion in her gloomy eyes. 
 
 Alas ! the age is an age of prose, and she was in unison 
 with her age. 
 
 The old armor but lay there to be sold to a collector ex- 
 pected on the morrow, and she, itistead of wrenching tho 
 dagger from her hair, took out some letters. 
 
 " That will do," slie muttered, much as lago said, " 'Twill 
 serve." 
 
 In the many vicissitudes of her adventurous years she 
 had made many friends ; she had made one in especial very 
 useful to her. He was only a little common attorney, but he 
 was a very clever little attorney ; not at law, of which he hud 
 left the public pursuit, though lie kept its wisdom packed up 
 in his brain, but in speculation, — vague and gorgeous specula- 
 tions in distant unseen isles, whence it was easy to return, 
 with silver-mines, and diamond-fields, and lodes of lead, and 
 stories of savage princes with splendid palaces, but with gen- 
 erous souls ; a quite invaluable little attorney : always running 
 out above all to the Coral Isles that lie in the glow of the setting 
 sun in the pellucid seas of the peaceful Pacific, and running 
 back again with romantic Marco Polo storios, and producing 
 any kind of prospectus to suit the money marts and 'changes 
 of all countries ; a little attorney that she corresponded with, 
 caressed, petted, almost loved, because he was so useful to 
 her, and called Theodore, with that pleasant touch of inti- 
 mate friendship which had characterized her since the earliest 
 davs when mankind first became her " brothers" under the 
 shadow of Mount Lebanon. 
 
 Her letters were from Theodore. 
 
 He was not in the Coral Isles in the pellucid seas, but in 
 the office that knew her so well in the many courts of the 
 City of London. He had brought a gigantic enterprise from 
 the Coral Isles, — an enterprise that was only as yet an idea, 
 as even a leviathan at the commencement of its existence is 
 an embryo. 
 
 Lady Joan loved ideas, — when other people took them for 
 facts. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 455 
 
 The idea was to run railways tlirouj:;h all the Coral Tsles 
 and steamers between them ; at least, not indeed to run them, 
 because Theodore did not much think they would ever be 
 made, but to obtain the concession for making them, which is 
 all to which sensible people ever commit themselves. Theodore 
 had peculiar advantages in the Coral Isles ; he had, or said ho 
 liad, a lew coral reefs, a few spice forests, a few sugar planta- 
 tions, a few whole islands even ; perhaps he had a few savage 
 wives also ; at any rate he had n»any royal savage friends in 
 King Ooo-too-ta, and King Fi-fee-fa, and King Ze-zoo-za, and 
 all the other dusky monarchs of the smiling seas. From Ooo- 
 too-ta, and Fi fee-fa, and Ze-zoo-za he meant to get all he 
 wanted ; and the idea was already sown in many mercantile 
 minds, — soil in which a very tiny seed springs up a giant 
 pumpkin. Concessions are not as slow-growing as coral. 
 
 It was of this that Theodore now wrote ; it was of this that 
 Lady Joan thought instead of the dagger. She was a woman 
 who was not conscious when she dropped from heroics to 
 bathos. She was a woman who even in the depths of her 
 bathos might look ridiculous, but yet never failed to strike 
 home. 
 
 With a dagger one may easily fail ; but with her vengeance 
 in specie and speculation she never did. 
 
 She sat and studied the letters of Theodore and other letters, 
 her brow dark with wrath, and in her eyes ever and again a 
 lightning-flash. 
 
 The sheep that were sillier than swine were roaring like 
 wolves from whom meat has been snatched. The transfer did 
 not content them. The foreign workmen, English, Irish, and 
 German, were swearing bitter oaths down by the shores of the 
 Sirens' seas because the new direction was about to employ 
 native workmen ; and these foolish, fierce creatures, perhaps 
 because they were in a land without beer or potatoes, were 
 1 oaring louder than wolves, and could not be quieted. 
 
 The roaring reached her ear throuixh the means of her 
 correspondents. It solaced, it almost soothed her. She knew 
 it was almost madness to loris, — loris, who would not see the 
 beauty and the excellence of the transfer ; loris, who felt re- 
 morse and carerl. for honor. 
 
 She put this and that together, her hand resting on the old 
 Bteel cuirass. 
 
466 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Far awnv ii» tlio South wore these ravcninc: wolves that ho 
 thou<;ht it his duty to feed, because by liis means they had 
 come where they starved ; farther still in the West were these 
 Coral Isles, with the spice foresta, and the dusky kings, and 
 the stores of vague and virgin wealth. She had devised a 
 bridge across the waves of Messina : at a bound her imagina- 
 tion and her will went wider afield, and threw a chain of con- 
 nection from the Sicilian shores to the coral reefs. 
 
 He should be told that the coral reefs should be made to 
 feed the ravening wolves. 
 
 He should go to the coral reefs. 
 
 Weaker women might have deemed it as easy to uproot the 
 dome of St. Peter's and bear it over the mountains. But 
 she quailed before no difficulties ; she had compassed harder 
 things. 
 
 Having made Society accept herself, what was there too 
 hard for her ? 
 
 He should go to the coral reefs. 
 
 As the eagle lifted Ganymede in its talons and bore him 
 away, so should her mighty will uplift him in its claws and 
 bear him to far isles and distant shores. If he would ever 
 return who knew, who cared ? Shut in a secret drawer she 
 had a foolish scrawl that left her, in event of his death before 
 her, Fiordelisa. He had given it long ago ; he had half fo**- 
 gotten it ; he attached no import to it. To a man still young. 
 Death seems so vague a word to play with, if it please a 
 woman. 
 
 " He shall go," she said, in her solitude, and her brow 
 cleared. Since here her rival was, and his new love, and his 
 fresh passion, and she saw no other means, from his own land 
 he must depart. She did not pause to ask how she would 
 move him ; she had done harder things. 
 
 She drew her pen and ink to her and wrote to her Theodore 
 in the dusky den. 
 
 " lo's health has broken down under the strain of all this 
 anxiety," she wrote, in conclusion, " he is so harassed with his 
 wish to make it all up with the old shareholders. One cannot 
 quarrel with so noble, if exaggerated, a sense of duty. I 
 think this will be the very thing for him. I have not named 
 it to him yet. When the whole affair is quite ripe then we 
 will act ; you will tell me. You had better come over ; your 
 
Fill ENDS II ir. 457 
 
 room Is all ready. The voyage with you will do him good. 
 Who kiH)WvS? Perhaps we may all come there some day. I 
 have always wished to see those mango groves and those tur- 
 quoise seas ever since I read ' The Earl and the Doctor.' lo 
 must make money somehow ; he has spent too much on those 
 howling beasts whom he calls victims ; and I do very much 
 fear, unless we can help him with these projects of yours, that 
 his pictures will have to be sold, and his palace in the city too, 
 and heaven only knows what else ! Come over, Theo, and be 
 quick about it." 
 
 Then she signed " Joan," with a fine flourish. 
 
 What did she want with a dagger? 
 
 Yet, the letter done, she sat sullen and gloomy whilst the 
 sun died off her casements. 
 
 Let vengeance be sweet as it will, it is never so sweet that 
 it can smother the acid and bitter of humiliation and betrayal. 
 
 She went out and posted her letters with her own hands, 
 like the wise woman she was, and then she made a series of 
 visits as the sun set. 
 
 " Go yourself if you please ; not I," said loris, with petu- 
 lant contempt, when he heard of this. He knew her Theo- 
 dore as a common, scheming, shrewd, and vulgar little person, 
 who had been distasteful to him, that was all. 
 
 " Of course I said it in jest," she answered, being too wise 
 to throw her cards on the table. " The idea of my going ! 
 The idea of my being anywhere except at dear old Fiordelisa ! 
 But, jesting apart, amor mto, have you any conception, I 
 wonder, of how much you have thrown away on those work- 
 men down by the sea? I have been computing it all. I am 
 afraid you will have to do something — unpleasant. Would 
 you like me to tell you ' 
 
 " Another time, another time," he said, hastily. 
 
 " Very well," said Lady Joan, with the marvellous patience 
 to which she had braced herself. " Only don't blame me if 
 you drift into trouble, that's all. By the way, I want a gang 
 of eighty new men put on to work at those new vineyards. 
 Money ? You have money for those yelling brutes by the sea, 
 but of course you have no money for useful work at home. 
 By the way, lo, what do you think if our way of planting and 
 in igating were tried in the Pacific ? Theo tells me there are 
 most astonishing capacities for production in the soil out there, 
 D 39 
 
458 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 but all wasted in bad management, as your lands were till I 
 took them in hand." 
 
 "Take the savage isles in hand, then," said loris, with 
 roughness and contempt. 
 
 She laughed good-humoredly. 
 
 " It's a long way to go, and Fiordelisa can't spare me yet," 
 she said. " I never loved any spot on earth as I love Fiorde- 
 lisa. How I long for April, to be living under the dear old 
 roof once more ! don't you?" 
 
 loris was silent. 
 
 " Since Fiordelisa is mine " he began, with hesitation, 
 
 " What is yours is mine," she said, as she smiled in his 
 eyes. " Ah, yes, dear, I know it is good of you to say it 
 again, though Hush ! Some one is coming." 
 
 It was Mr. Challoner who entered, his hands, as usual, filled 
 with papers and newspapers. 
 
 " This is a very fine idea about the Pacific," he said, in his 
 most solemn manner. " It promises extraordinarily well. 
 White always knows. ... If one could get a capitalist to 
 take it up and issue the shares. ... A beautiful climate, a 
 delightful voyage, an interesting, unsophisticated people, a soil 
 that is the garden of the world " 
 
 " You are not writing the prospectus vet, Robert," said his 
 wife, dryly. " I was asking lo if he >uld like the voyage. 
 The voyage might do him good ; he looks so very ill. Those 
 shipwrights worry him so." 
 
 " I am almost inclined to go myself," said Mr. Challoner, 
 in his usual spirit of self-sacrifice. " I believe there are very 
 beautiful varieties of Nyynphsca to be found there, especially 
 the NymphspM rubra y 
 
 " We'll all go some day," said '.he Lady Joan, with her 
 happy decisiveness, — " some day between vintage and spring- 
 time, so as not to lose much of Fiordelisa." 
 
 loris stood between them and the familiar chamDer at he 
 had so long frequented, that stifled him between its stuiF- 
 draped walls, and the courage was wanting in him, though so 
 strong the longing, to cry to them both, " Let my future be 
 quit of you ; stand off! Let me be ruined, but let me at least 
 be free!" He stood silent, his head bent, his color changing 
 as his desire strained against the weakness of his will. 
 
 She flashed a glance at him from her keen eyes and read 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 459 
 
 his soul as tliougli he spoke his thoughts. In years bygone 
 she would have burst into tempestuous reproach, into mad 
 rage ; but, grown prudent with peril and cold in caution, she 
 kept her patience still. 
 
 " We will all go together," she said, with her frank and 
 cheerful smile. " You shall go for your water-lilies, Robert, 
 and I for coral, and lo for a fortune. And we will bring the 
 lilies, and the coral, and the fortune all back to Fiordelisa, 
 and be hoppier than ever 1" 
 
 Mr. Chulloner smiled benignly, as far as ever he could bo 
 said to smile. 
 
 " We will go for the Nyr.i'plimi and the coral, certainly, if 
 you like, my love," he said, amiably. " As for the fortune, 
 loris must please himself We have no right to persuade 
 him or even suggest to him : he is his own master ; we are 
 only his friends." 
 
 There was no one listening to be impressed by it ; but Mr. 
 Challoner never dropped the stage toga and the stage tones 
 even in the privacy of intimate friendship. 
 
 " Theodore, — you remember Theodore White?" she said to 
 several people. " He was staying with us at Fiordelisa two 
 years ago, and in the winter too. You know he has vast in- 
 fluence in the Pacific ; yes, in all those wondrous tropical 
 spicy isles we read about and feel never to believe in ; he 
 saved some savage king's life there ; and he has great pos.ses- 
 sious there : and, indeed, he has a very fine idea, — nothing 
 less thau to create a network of steam communication from 
 isle to Lsle ; in time i^ •;iii make them (juite a sea-confedera- 
 tion. Theodore has great talent at combination. Would you 
 like to be in it. anybody? Well, I will tell you all about it, 
 then, when I hear more. Theo will come over before he goes 
 back to the Pacific. I fancy the scheme will interest lo. If 
 it would only help him! Alas! yes, he has spent so much 
 maintaining all those foreign navvies and shipwrights ; nobody 
 else would have done it ; but he has s\^ch a noble sense of 
 honor, and is always ready to sacrifice himself. Poor lo ! 
 Really, if my husband did not restrain him a little he would 
 ruin himself in a week. Mr. Challoner is always V(^ry gen- 
 erous, too, but he is more ])ractical than poor lo. Wouldn't 
 you like to see those coral islands and all the dear primitive, 
 unsophisticated, cliiidlike people ? I should." 
 
460 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 And she spoke thus in many different ways, in many suitable 
 places, being a woman who always had the right regard for 
 appearances, and knowing that when a vulture soars away with 
 prey in its talons it should always look like an eagle — or a 
 guardian angel — if possible. 
 
 When many people were around them, she would jest and 
 jeer at him. 
 
 " lo ?" she would cry. " Oh, lo is to be made immortal 
 in the Paris Salon, so they say. What a fine thing for him 
 that he should have charmed a Muse 1 Look at him : he is 
 quite ashamed of all his glories. He is quite thankless, you 
 see. Do you go to Etoile's atelier ? No ? She lets no one 
 in, they say ; is that true ? Well, I suppose she has her 
 reasons. But they tell me if you do go you will see lo as 
 Sordello, — lo in all kinds of studies and of casts. What it is 
 to be enamored of him ! It must be quite delightful to be so 
 much in love. I wish I could be ; but I never was." 
 
 And then she would laugh frankly and show her handsome 
 teeth. 
 
 " Poor lo does not like it, — man's ingratitude ! We call 
 him Sordello ; it plagues him so ; he works himself into quite 
 a rage when I chaff him about his conquest." 
 
 Then, with a touching regret and modesty, she would change 
 her tone and lower her voice and say, — 
 
 " It is most painful, really, to us. We never thought we 
 were preparing such distressing scenes for him when we asked 
 her here ; he is so gentle and so trustful, one is always afraid 
 he may fall into her hands at last. Oh, no, we never see her. 
 My husband would not allow me. Of course one always con- 
 cedes a great deal to genius; but still — and, after all, who 
 knows if it be genius? Some say it is only borrowed plumes. 
 Yes, I am very sorry that she came to Home." 
 
 Then she would take lior mourning crape out of the throng 
 of matrons and spinsters to whom she had thus spoken, and 
 go away with a candid, cheerful smile, pointing to loris stand- 
 ing aloof: 
 
 " Look at Sordello ! How pensive he is, and how bored he 
 looks ! He must feel all the conspicuous unpleasantness of 
 being a celebrity, — vicariously. Do go to her atelier and see 
 if you can see the picture. But I believe she won't let you 
 in ; she has grown (juile saavaye, they say. What a thing 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 461 
 
 it is to Lave a grand passion 1 Especially an unreturned 
 one." 
 
 And she laughed so cheerily and contemptuously that Society 
 never noticed that she drew the man she laughed at after her 
 black skirts and took him home with her. 
 
 " Very well done, very well done indeed ; a little overdone, 
 perhaps, a little over-acted, but clever, undeniably clever," 
 said Lady CardilT, hearing and watching the same sort of 
 speech and the same sort of sneer half a score of times in as 
 many different houses. But Society was not as clear-sighted ; 
 Sociyty thought that Lady Joan was always outspoken and 
 frank, and was very naturally and very properly impatient of 
 foolish sentiments to which she was herself too wise to stoop ; 
 and Mr. Silverly Bell murmured, with a sigh, as he shook his 
 head, — 
 
 " A woman that is all mind cannot understand the vagaries 
 of unjustifiable passions. Talk to Joan Challoner of love ! 
 &he does not know what you mean, not she ! She is all mind." 
 
 Thus she was not idle, nor were her echoes idle either, in 
 this tedious time of enforced seclusion, when she could trail 
 her skirts through no cotillons and launch her cascade of con- 
 fetti from no Carnival break, but could only go decorously to 
 clergymen's Lent breakfasts and spinsters' tea-fights, and could 
 only solace herself at home with guitar and cigars, with private 
 purchases and public companies, with Fiordelisa and friend- 
 ship. 
 
 " Some one should tell Etoile," said Lady Cardiff" to Vera 
 von Ilegenwalde. 
 
 " Tell Etoile? Who should tell her? We have not her 
 confidence ; we do not even know what she and loris are or 
 are not to each other." 
 
 " Some one should tell her," said Lady Cardiff", having for 
 the fiftieth time heard the scoff" and the sneer and the slander 
 of Etoile's enemy. 
 
 " It would be very difficult," said Princess Vera. 
 
 " Difficult, perhaps, and I never meddle. Yet it is infamous 
 that she should be jeered at by that black-browed audacity and 
 not know it. It is true she tells me nothing, but I am sure that 
 loris has entangled her without disentangling himself It is 
 what I foresaw he would do. It is of no use regretting, but 
 it is melancholy. It is always women like that who suff'er. 
 
 39* 
 
402 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Those people with fine brains and with generous souls will 
 never learn that life is after all only a game, — a game which 
 will go to the shrewdest player and the coolest. They never 
 see this ; not they ; they are caught on the edge of great 
 passions and swept away by them. They cling to their aflfec- 
 tions like conimanders to sinking ships and go down with them. 
 They put their whole heart into the hands of others, who only 
 laugh and wring out their lifeblood. They take all things too 
 vitally in earnest. Life is to them a wonderful, passionate, 
 pathetic, terrible thing that the gods of love and of death 
 shape for them. Theydo not see that coolness and craft, and 
 the tact to seize accident, and the wariness to obtain advantage 
 do in reality far more in hewing out a successful future than 
 all the gods of Greek or Gentile. They are very unwise. It 
 is of no use to break their hearts for the world ; they will not 
 change it. La culte de Vhiimanite is the one of all others 
 which will leave despair as its harvest. Laugh like llabelais, 
 smile like Montaigne ; that is the way to take the world. It 
 only puts to death its Sebastians, and makes its Philips not 
 sorrowful to see the boat is filling." 
 
 " The boat shall not fill for her if I can help it," said 
 Princess Vera. " I will try and tell her something." 
 
 CHAPTER XLVL 
 
 TORIS left their house and went to his own. 
 
 The portrait looked no longer on him from the wall ; he 
 had removed it, giving her as the pretext that to have it hung 
 there hurt her good name. In its stead hung a brown saint 
 on a gold ground of some old tender and sombre Umbrian 
 painter. 
 
 But he always looked up to the place on the wall and 
 felt the fierce eyes upon him, though they were there no 
 more. 
 
 The golden balls on the orange-boughs swayed against the 
 open casement ; there was a soft blue sky such as Rafiaelle 
 loved ; birds were singing. Spring had come. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 463 
 
 He sat down and leaned his head on his arms. He felt 
 ashamed and contrite, stung with remorse and conscious of 
 cowardice ; weighed down, too, beneath a burden of obligation 
 and of irrevocable errors. A shudder ran tlirough him ; he 
 felt exhausted with a sickly sense of fatigue. 
 
 He knew very well that he was ruined, or would be in a. 
 very little space. It unnerved him and kept him mute and 
 irresolute. It is easy to deride riches, but they give us a su- 
 preme ease and force which without them are hard to attain. 
 To hear her parcelling out the years to come, seizing and 
 mortgaging his future, made him feel as the garroted slave 
 felt when, bound and helpless, he heard Nero and Locusta talk 
 before him how they would torture his living body and when 
 and where. 
 
 There were masses of unopened correspondence before him ; 
 he turned from them with reluctance and aversion ; at this 
 hour he was wont to be with Etoile, his hand ruffling the hair 
 above her brows, his eyes watching her with a smile. 
 
 In the pain and depression of the moment his heart almost 
 hardened against her. 
 
 " She should not have listened to me," he thought, with 
 love's captious ingratitude. " I am not what she thinks me ; 
 I never shall be." 
 
 Why had he not left the Muse aloof in the coldness of art ? 
 Why had he brought her mortal pains and joys ? His con- 
 science reproached him, and his remorse made him capricious 
 and unjust. 
 
 " Why did she trust me, why does she place her faith in 
 me?" he thought. " If she only knew me as I am ! " 
 
 And then all his heart went out to her in an ineiFable 
 tenderness. 
 
 He thought of all he had seen and heard in Paris, of her 
 works and the strength that was in them, and the many talents 
 that the world wondered at, and the grace and the color of all 
 things that she did, and the coldness that men blamed in her, 
 hurt by her upglect ; and to him she was timid as the doe ; at 
 a word he could make her heart flutter in her breast ; against 
 him she had no more strength than has a flower in the hand 
 that holds it. 
 
 Yet almost he wished he had never loved her, nor she 
 him. 
 
464 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Suddenly the door of his chamber opened, and in the ruddy 
 glow of the light from the setting sun he saw her. 
 
 He rose appalled by the look on her face, and knowing that 
 to bring her to his house there must be some great and sudden 
 cause at work. 
 
 Her hair was ruffled about her eyes, that were dark and 
 wet; her lips were very pale. She came hurriedly towards 
 him ; her hands trembled as they touched him. 
 
 " I have come ; perhaps I have done wrong ; I could not 
 wait for your coming to me. They make a by-word of my 
 name in that house of hers, I hear, and they say you stand 
 by silent. Is it true ? It cannot be true. You are not a 
 coward." 
 
 His conscience made the word smite like a sword : he grew 
 as pale as she. 
 
 " Is this your faith ?" he said, in evasion, and he put her 
 hands away as if in anger. 
 
 " It cannot be true," she muttered, feverishly. " In society, 
 I hear, they say (it is a common jest) that she says foul things 
 of me, and that you listen ; that you let her speak so of me \ 
 that you deny — deny " 
 
 " Deny what ?" 
 
 " What we are to each other." 
 
 " None knows what we are to each other ; is it not the very 
 charm of our love ? Who has said this to you ?" 
 
 " A woman who is my friend, yours too ; she has heard it 
 some time ; at last she told me. My beloved, it is not true?" 
 
 " What is not true ?" said loris, with impatience and con- 
 fujion. " I cannot understand what you mean. Where have 
 your beautiful calmness and lucidity gone ? It is unlike you 
 to tilt at wind-mills, to split straws." 
 
 " I do not. But can it be true that you — you ! — let her 
 calumniate me?" 
 
 He moved angrily and looked away at the sun setting 
 behind his orange-trees. 
 
 His conscience stung him bitterly, and he took refuge in 
 affected indignation and sternness. 
 
 " How should I know what she says or what she does ? 
 What is her house more than any other hou^e ? I was never 
 her keeper." 
 
 Her lips parted with a deep, quivering breath. She would 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 465 
 
 have spoken, but he saw his advantage in his anger, and so 
 pursued it. 
 
 " Is this your trust in me? A moment's idle gossip from 
 some fool, and you believe me capable of any baseness." 
 
 " You swore to me not to go to Aer, yet you were with lier 
 in Paris." 
 
 She spoke very low, under her breath, but the unmeant re- 
 proach struck him like a scourge. 
 
 " I was with her in Paris. Yes. I avowed it, I myself; I 
 told you I had sinned, and you forgave the sin. What is for- 
 giveness worth if its ghost rises in reproach like this ? You 
 have said I am a coward " 
 
 " I said you were not." 
 
 " You said it so as to mean I was one. What has come to 
 you? whom have you been hearkening to? Is it you who 
 speak of me with strangers, with dolts and idiots and slan- 
 derers ? You f Can I help what is said in her house ? She 
 hates you because I love you. Can you complain of that ? 
 She has a bitter tongue, and is a bitter foe ; I told you so long 
 since. I cannot help her saying what she chooses. In Paris 
 I struck two men because they spoke of you too lightly ; I 
 connot strike her : she is a woman. A woman unsexed, if 
 you will, but still a woman ; she must say what she will." 
 
 " But you must leave her." 
 
 She spoke very low, but her voice was firm ; her eyes shone 
 through their mist with a strong, steadfast liiirht. 
 
 " You live in soKtude until you dream these things. You 
 are too much alone," he said, with that manlike inconsistency 
 which turns the obedience it has commanded into a fault and 
 makes of it a reproach. " Why do you not go into the world 
 as you did when I met you ? It would be better, wiser far. 
 It would keep you from these brooding fancies." 
 
 " When you are not with me I am best alone," she answered 
 him ; " you know that so well. Besides, — besides, I cannot 
 risk seeing you beside her ; I could not bear it." 
 
 He looked past her out to where the golden fruit of his 
 garden hung in the dusky light. 
 
 " What folly !" he said, uneasily. " You are everything to 
 me, she is nothing. Is not that enough ?" 
 
 " The world thinks me nothiiig. She is everything." 
 
 " You are perverse," said her lover, irritably. 
 
466 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 His color changed. 
 
 " I have left her in every sense you can mean. Do you 
 think — can you think for one moment that you need be jeal- 
 ous of her?'' 
 
 " Jealou3 !" 
 
 She echoed the word in an infinite scorn. It seemed to 
 lower her to the level of the woman she spoke of, to sink 
 her all at once to the intrigues and baseness of low thoughts 
 and of gross passions. Jealous ! — she ! — who had found him 
 in his captivity and learned from him to disdain the tyrant 
 who chained him in it ! 
 
 " I do not think that I am jealous," she said, coldly. " That 
 is not the word to uhc between us. Can T be jealous of what 
 so long ago you told me was a weariness and a shame to you ? 
 No, it is not that," 
 
 " It is that," he said, with a passing amusement in her pain, 
 " Yes. You are jealous, my proud one. But you need not 
 be. I cannot break with her just yet entirely, — as a friend, I 
 inea!i, — not yet, because of all the meshes that hold me, all 
 that she knows of, all we are embarked in: I have told 
 you so. As for her calumny, how can I tell what she may 
 say ? She speaks in her own tongue ; it parses me as the wind 
 does. What spirit has changed you, that you become like 
 other women all at once and stoop to their low level and listen 
 to the chatter of the world ? I thought you never would have 
 wronged me go. It is not worthy of you. What, you, my 
 Muse, a listener to babbling, drivelling rumor-mongers ! Oh, 
 for shame !" 
 
 A faint smile came oa her face ; she looked at liim, and all 
 her love was in the look. " Dear, if you give your word it is 
 eROu«;h for me." 
 
 His eyes did not meet hers. 
 
 '' I have given it. Let it be enough." 
 
 A spasm of doubt ached through her heart, but she was 
 silent. 
 
 '' Forgive me," she murmured, after a pause. " I did not 
 think, indeed, that you could hear any ill of me and be mute, 
 — and ill from her ! — but yet the mere thought hurt me so. 
 Forgive me that I did you any wrong," 
 
 "I forgive," he murmured, — he who had done the wrong, — 
 and kissed her. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 467 
 
 For the first tinic she shrank a little from him. 
 
 " Wait," she said, wearily. " Does she not know the truth 
 
 yet?" 
 
 " No. I never speak of you ; it is best so — yet." 
 
 " It is always — a little longer." 
 
 " Were I not half ruined it should be to-night." 
 
 " How can she keep or hinder you?" 
 
 " The woman that is forsaken is an enemy : she is the 
 bitterest the world ever saw." 
 
 Etoile raised herself and looked at him once more. She 
 was still very pale. 
 
 " But you will forbid her Fiordelisa ? That at leaat, — 
 for me." 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 A certain resolve and imperious will, that he had never seen 
 there, wiiich if he had seen it oftener might have saved him- 
 self and her, came on her face as she gazed at him. 
 
 " You will keep her from Fiordelisa, if you love me, — now." 
 
 " I will. That 1 swear to you." 
 
 He spoke hastily, but he spoke with resolution. 
 
 Then die went away from this house which she scarcely 
 ever entered, and in which she always stayed unwillingly, 
 because it seemed to her, like Fiordelisa, desecrated and 
 usurped by the memory of a dead, base passion. 
 
 When she passed out into the red evening light two dusky 
 figures were hastening by on the other side of the street. 
 
 " There are her watchdogs," he muttered. " They have seen 
 you. You should not have come. I should have been with 
 you ere the sun set." 
 
 He bowed to her ceremoniously, standing with uncovered 
 head. Her horses bore her away through the red glow towards 
 her home. 
 
 The watchdog hurried to the Casa Challoner. 
 
 " I have proof positive, dearest, now !" that admirable 
 watcher cried. " She came out of his house — out of it — wo 
 both saw her — five minutes since !" 
 
 The eyes of the Lady Joan grew cold. 
 
 " I know it, dear," she answered, tranquilly. " She is always 
 going to his house. What can lo do more than show her out 
 again? He is a gentleman and too gentle-hearted, else ho 
 might do something rougher." 
 
408 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 " But it is disgraceful I" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but what can ono expect?" 
 
 " It is disgraceful I" And the watchdog's back was up and 
 his teeth set, — in the interests of morality, of course ; nothing 
 more. 
 
 Lady Joan smiled, still coldly. 
 
 " Poor lo I he would think a Paris Corinna a Tenth Muse 
 and an innocent recreation, and he gets his punishment ! It 
 is really hard on him, though, to be so persecuted just because 
 he made himself a little pleasant in my house to a stranger. 
 You know lo's pretty manner, dear ; you know it means 
 nothing." 
 
 Then she went out into society, and said much the same 
 thing, — more cautiously or more slightingly, as her prudence 
 told her was best. She did not go out very much, being still 
 ostensibly in deep grief, but she saw a very large number of 
 persons, and to most of them contrived to say, " Etoile ? Oh, 
 yes, I don't know her this winter : I do not like to know her, 
 you see, after all my poor father told me. Great genius ? Oh, 
 yes 1 that, of course, though it is odd she paints nothing here. 
 But I believe she is in love with our poor friend loris, — yes, 
 loris, that you so often see about our house : she took a fancy 
 to him, meeting him two or three times, and has left him no 
 peace ever since. We laugh at him very much. It makes 
 him so angry, because really he never thought twice about 
 her. But artists are always like that." 
 
 Marjory did know, — had known to her cost, — sighed a little, 
 and was silent. 
 
 '' Will you not speak to him ?" she said, hesitatingly. " It 
 is really disgraceful !" 
 
 Lady Joan laughed outright. 
 
 " Speak to him ? Not I ! What is that to me ? It serves 
 him right ; he would play with edged tools. All that matters 
 to you and me, dear, is not to know Etoile ; and we don't 
 know her. Let lo take care of himself, if he has got into 
 any trouble through imprudence." So, she would say, with a 
 broad smile and a frank laugh, a hundred times a week, and 
 going homeward, casting off her mask, would lock herself in her 
 own chamber, and weep, and rave, and moan in all the fury and 
 the feebleness of a woman that knows herself betrayed and for- 
 saken. But she was stubbornly brave and coldly wise. The 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 4C9 
 
 fit over, the storm passed ; she picked up the mask and put it 
 on again, and when she saw loris still met him as though she 
 knew nothing, and was full of eagerness and news about the 
 brood-mares at Fiordelisa and the coral of the South Sea Isles. 
 
 Meanwhile Etoilc paced up and down her old gray terraces 
 under the evening skies with a bitter sense of humiliation and 
 of bewilderment, though passion had bound its bands upon 
 her eyes and kept them so long closed. She had seen prevari- 
 cation and trouble upon his face as he had listened to her, and 
 had not seen the frank, firm indignation of a man wrongfully 
 accused. 
 
 For calumny she cared nothing. 
 
 It was like a hot wind, bringing sand and pestilence, no 
 doubt, but she had never heeded it ; she had kept the doors 
 of the house of her life closed against it, and had always 
 thought that it had only power to harm the feeble. But cal- 
 umny that he had stood by and heard ! — tliat hurt her like a 
 blow ; not for itself, but to think that he could let it pass un- 
 punished, that he could let the woman he despised utter it 
 unrebukc''. 
 
 A sudden consciousness fell on her with a heavy weight of 
 pain that all unwittingly she had failed to loosen the bands 
 about his fate, and had only bound the chains about her own ; 
 failed, as high natures and dreamful lives so often fail where 
 the harder, shrewder, meaner temper aims aright and conquers. 
 
 She looked at her canvas and her marble and smiled very 
 wearily. 
 
 " Any fool had been wiser than I !" she thought, and her 
 heart ached with uad derision of itself. 
 
 40 
 
470 FRL NDSIIJP. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 Between them from that day there fell a certain shadow 
 of restraint. 
 He began 
 
 " That drifting slow apart, 
 All unresisted, unrestrained, 
 Which comes to some when they have gained 
 
 The dear endeavor of their soul : 
 As two light skiffs that sailed together, 
 ^ Through days and nights of tranquil weather, 
 
 Adown some inland stream might he 
 Drifted asunder each from each, 
 When, floating with the tide, they reach 
 The hoped-for end, the tiromised goal, 
 
 The sudden glory of the sea." 
 
 In him the consciousness of error was a daily burden ; into 
 her the anguish of doubt had entered like an injected poison. 
 "When they met there was a name they could not speak, a 
 memory they strove in vain to exorcise. Uneasily he affected 
 a serenity he could not command ; vainly she tried to show a 
 faith she could not feel. The restlessness of conscious dis- 
 loyalty was in him ; the restlessness of perpetual apprehension 
 was with her. The infinite charms of perfect freedom and of 
 perfect faith were gone. He knew that he was not wholly 
 truo, and she feared it. 
 
 " I am a coward in her eyes !" he thought ; and the thought 
 stung him because of the truth there was in it ; and he felt 
 angered against her because she had been courageous always 
 and'could not comprehend the hesitations and vacillations of 
 his nature which unnerved him and kept him halting and 
 mute before his tyrant. To say the truth simply because the 
 truth it was seemed to her so easy and to him so hard. 
 
 " You do not understand," he would say to her, irritably ; 
 and she would be silent, wishing not to wound him ; and so 
 '' the rifl within the lute" was made, and ita music became 
 mute. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 471 
 
 Circe brewed lier simples and changed men to swine. His 
 destroyer was no sorceress, but she had a brutalizing and 
 enervating power, as every grosser nature has when once it 
 fastens on what is at once loftier yet weaker than itself. 
 
 He would leave Etoile vowing to himself to see his tyrant 
 no more, to let her take lands and repute and everything she 
 chose from him, but to force her to leave him free ; he would 
 go to her, meaning it in all firmness and fervor of resolve. 
 Then that all-pervading, all-destroying influence that was in 
 his life, as the smell of the camphor-wood in the chamber, 
 would seek him out and environ him and emasculate him, and 
 he would be once more untrue to his fairest faith, and once 
 more heart-sick of himself and the woman who mastered him, 
 and ashamed before himself and before the woman that he 
 loved. 
 
 " She shall never go to my home again,": — so he had vowed ; 
 yet as the spring stole on and the old ways were trodden by 
 her with sure feet, and she laughed and talked of Fiordelisa 
 and the summer and the future, his nerves seemed paralyzed : 
 he kept silent. 
 
 What more did she want ? Nothing. 
 
 Silence gives consent. 
 
 Feebler women would have read his aversion in his glance, 
 known his desire from his absence, understood his reluctance 
 from his silence, but she cared for none of these things. She 
 knew all that they meant, but she had shaped her course and 
 abided by it. Long before hanging her cashmere in his en- 
 trance-hall she had resolved to stay there for ever and aye. 
 Should so mere a reed as his own wish combat the stubboro 
 steel of her will ? Never ! 
 
 He was silent, and she took her course. 
 
 Great is the power of stubbornness, and greater yet that of 
 silence. 
 
 Love shall fail, honor shall droop, manliness shall cower, 
 dignity and uprightness nhall perish, but these powers shall 
 endure and conquer the powers of the brazen brow and of the 
 brazen tongue. Chi dura vince. 
 
 " You are above me; why did you ever stoop to me?" he 
 murmured once to Etoile, and felt the thing he said. He 
 hated the lower life, the grosser aims, the coarser thoughts, 
 the looser creeds of the other life that had been so long by 
 
472 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 his; and yet the higher in its turn oppressed and troubled him. 
 " You are like the edelweiss : one must come so high to grasp 
 you," ho said, smiling; yet though he smiled he felt a sense 
 of strjiin, and of an atmosphere too clear for eyes long used 
 to the mistier air of lower levels. 
 
 For the first hours of all passion there is a supreme exulta- 
 tion which sustains and inl^oxicates ; but these hours passed, 
 habit and old association reassert themselves, and, if they be 
 of gross fibre, will draw grossly downward the nature which 
 temporarily escaped them. 
 
 With Etoile he had been happier than he had ever been in 
 
 all his years ; but, had she been a lower woman than she was, 
 
 ^ she would have kept him more constant, more content, and, 
 
 measuring the forces against her better, would better have 
 
 defeated them. 
 
 As it was, she loved him, gave all to him, trusted him, and 
 lost him, perhaps by her own fault She thought it her own 
 fault always. Who does not that loves ? 
 
 Once more the flowers grew thick in the grassy ways ; the 
 grape-blossom was once more on the vine, and once more the 
 Gampagna was a tossing sea of flowers, with white acacia for 
 the foam. Shut in her gardens of Rocaldi, Etoile left the 
 world to say of her what it might, what it would ; and in the 
 warmth and the oppressiveness of the city her rival, warier, 
 wiser, colder, and more cautious, smiled on the world and 
 said. — 
 
 " I shall soon be at Fiordelisa ; Effie is so fond of Fiorde- 
 lisa : we all are. Yes, I have saved it for poor lo, — really I 
 may :*ay I have saved it. It is so pleasant to be of use to a 
 friend." 
 
 The world cast a stone at the shut gates of Rocaldi ; it 
 nodded cheerfully to the open gates of Fiordelisa. The world 
 does not like to be ignored ; and it never forgiv^^ a closed 
 door. Lady Joan knew that well, and she threw her doors 
 open. 
 
 " Look how frank and careless she is. As if there could 
 be any sin in a woman so candid as that !" said the world, in 
 return for her concession ; but of Etoile, aloof, indifl'ercnt, 
 going by with mute disdain and absent thoughts, it was will- 
 ing to believe any evil. Why not? She did nothing to 
 amuse it ; she did not even pay it the compliment of fear. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 473 
 
 Meanwhile, as the keen gray eyee of his tyrant flashed in 
 the eyes of that yet harder tyrant, the world, and her clear, 
 rin<];ing, rough tones cried twenty times a day to Society, 
 " We are going to Fiordelisa, — yes ! you must come to Fior- 
 delisa," the heart of loris as he heard sank as a stone sinks 
 under the waves. 
 
 Any hesitation, any anxiety, any interrogation from her, 
 and he would have hurled the truth at her and have let her 
 do her worst ; but in the cool assumption of right ?;a a matter 
 of course there lies an irresistible power ; it makes a con- 
 queror of the mortal as of the nation that knows aright all 
 its force. 
 
 She never gave him the chance of any moment of doubt in 
 her own perfect title ; she spoke, she wrote, she worked, she 
 schemed, she planned, she prophesied, sweeping all the future 
 into the measure of her sight, as one conscious of a kingdom 
 that no enemy could invade nor any accident diminish. In 
 its own small way it was an almost superb insolence of posses- 
 sion ; in her own heart she was on fire with rage, thrilled 
 through and through with dread, and knew that any instant 
 her throne might fall and her exile might begin, but she never 
 let one sign of this knowledge escape her. Hour on hour, 
 day after day, she smiled steadily at him and at the world, 
 and said, — 
 
 " Fiordelisa ! dear Fiordelisa ! yes, we are going there. We 
 think we shall winter there ; we mean to live and die there. 
 It is a dear old place." 
 
 She knew all that he did, every hour that he spent else- 
 where, every letter that was written to him ; she found means 
 to know everything, being once on the track of liis infidelity ; 
 but no single sign of all she knew ever escaped her ; she had 
 even self-command enough to hold her peace and never re- 
 proach him for his absence, never upbraid him for his coldness, 
 but go on steadily in her old ways, with her scales and her 
 stud-book, her ledgers and her steam-engines, her noisy econo- 
 mies and her showy extravagances. 
 
 Love ? She knew its feeblen&ss well. It will burst through 
 a tempest and break down a wall of ice, but against the dull, 
 impi^netrable, commonplace sand-heap of a changeless routine 
 it falls back powerless as the lofty, impetuous waves of the sea 
 fall back from the massed earth of a level dike. 
 
 40* 
 
474 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The waves fret themselves in vain : the dike conquers. 
 
 In her own strange way she still loved him ; in her own 
 sullen way she now hated him ; but hate and love both sub- 
 sided before her resolve to keep her hold on his life and on 
 Fiordelisa. Besides, 5t was a form of vengeance, — the widest 
 and the heaviest vengeau'ie she could take ; and even in her 
 fury she was shrewd and T/ise. 
 
 So the oxen began to drag the household gods once more 
 towards the old gray walls on the hill-side, and once more she 
 began to prepare for her summer sojourn ; and loris, hearing 
 and knowing, felt his heart stand still as he remembered that 
 he had sworn that no more should she ever dwell under his 
 dead mother's desecrated roof. 
 
 " That at least, if you love me !" had said Etoile. And he 
 loved her ; yet he stood by and saw the oxen go, the exodus 
 begin. 
 
 " My wife !" he murmured to Etoile, still with his arms 
 about her, when once more the nightingales began their song; 
 and in all honesty he meant still to " vindicate her honor to 
 the world," and give her all he had to give in answer for her 
 sacrifice to him of peace, and fame, and use, and art. 
 
 But meanwhile the wife of another pursued her shunned 
 and guilty way, and went across his threshold, and sat by his 
 hearth, and laughed, and claimed his future. And the cour- 
 age was lacking in him that was needed to thrust her from 
 his doors ; and the courage was also lacking in him to lift up 
 before the world as his nearest and dearest the life that through 
 him the world had calumniated. 
 
 For the courage thus needed was of another fibre than that 
 which fears no battle. 
 
 Though there were many times when he longed to let the 
 world know how he and he alone had had power to "break 
 the nautilus shell" and make a captive of what other men 
 had found beyond their reach, there were other times when 
 the base, noxious vapors of slander found their way to him 
 and stifled his higher resolves. He never doubted that they 
 were more than vapor ; but he knew that such vapor is the 
 world's breath, and he had not courage to thrust his hand 
 down the dragon's throat and tear out its pestilential tongue. 
 
 The triumph of being beloved by a woman whom the 
 world had crowned was precious to him ; but the courage of 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 475 
 
 being true to a woman whom the world also slandered was not 
 in his nature. 
 
 Morning, noon, and night, wherever he went, wherever he 
 moved, wherever a group was gathered together, or a dispute 
 of voices fell on his ear, she whose interest it was to divoree 
 him from Etoile contrived, with her many echoes, that he 
 should perpetually liear some innuendo, some falsehood, some 
 foulness set afloat by her, and living the lusty life that a lie 
 does live in common with other blatant, poisonous things. He 
 knew that lies they were, and yet he recoiled from meeting 
 them with an open blow, a fierce denial. His love had always 
 been rather triumph than tenderness. Love that is chiefly 
 triumph is usually captious and exacting, and apt to quarrel 
 with the very good it craves. 
 
 So he hesitated, so he waited, so he trusted to chance to cut 
 the knots into which his fall had entangled itself, and he 
 forgot that chance only favors those strong enough to com- 
 pel it. And meantime he let the bronzed, frank face of his 
 destroyer smile up to his, and let her fierce voice cry un- 
 challenged, — 
 
 " We go to Fiordelisa !" 
 
 He did not mean to let her go ; with the hand of Etoile in 
 his he dreamed of another life for his old home ; but mean- 
 time the moments and the hours and the days slipped away, 
 and he only reached a double infidelity, a dual treason, and 
 began to turn uneasily from the clear gaze of the eyes he had 
 kissed into blindness. Perhaps no crime, no sin, no fault, no 
 folly brings so much woe as does the one terrible eiTor of 
 irresolution. 
 
 It is an acid that eats away all the gold of life, imperceptibly 
 but surely, till we are left with empty hands, quite beggared, 
 and only look to our loss when to know it is all too late. 
 
 loris stood irresolute, with strong force of desire but no 
 strong force of action, wishing, waiting, playing with his fate ; 
 and fate fell on him and crushed him, as it always crushes 
 those who do not seize and make it bless them. 
 
 There came one hot and sickly day, when, though it was 
 in springtime, there was dearth and sorrow in the heavy gray- 
 ness of the air. 
 
 Etoile stood alone in her studio. 
 
 The Sordello stood still incomplete, but pure and brilliant 
 
476 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 in itfl color as though it had been conceived in Venice in 
 days of the Republic and the Renaissance. There were other 
 studies ; there were casts in clay ; there was a head in marble : 
 they all had the same features. • 
 
 " Dear, you have made me a woman, but you have killed 
 me as an artist," she said, half aloud, as she looked on them, 
 too true an artist not to know her loss. 
 
 Her eyes were wet as she looked. 
 
 The loss of the power of fancy to the artist is like the loss 
 of its wings to the bird. 
 
 She walked restlessly to and fro the stones of the floor. 
 
 Once — was it yesterday, or was it a score of years away ? 
 — she had flown to her work when the day broke with such 
 strong joy in it that she never felt physical fatigue or solitude 
 or any flight of time. Now, — she only listened for one step. 
 When she heard it not, the long, pale, weary day seemed cold 
 as death, empty as a rifled grave. 
 
 This day he had not come ; it had passed and gone without 
 one moment that recorded joy or use; she was ashamed at her 
 own apathy and feebleness, but they were stronger than she : 
 she could not strive against them : she felt an unspeakable 
 depression and foreboding that deepened as the days wore on. 
 Why would he not speak? Why would he not be true ? To- 
 gether they were happy, — yes ; but behind them, like a sullen 
 shadow, always stood the memory of that fierce and furious 
 passion that was betrayed. 
 
 '' If I told her the truth ?" she thought ; and then her 
 heart misgave her, and she was afraid the mere thought had 
 been disloyal to him, as if doubtful of his good faith. 
 
 It was not for her to speak when he kept silent; and 
 yet 
 
 She felt humiliated and stung with a sense of outrage to 
 think that he would not rise and say, " This is where my love 
 lies now, and all my trust and honor." 
 
 Now and then, seeing far ofi" in a street-crowd or at a 
 chamber window the face of her foe, she had felt a sickening 
 thrill of pain, — not jealousy, as he thought ; not jealousy, — 
 who can be jealous of what they know is scorned ? — but some 
 such impetuous hatred and disgust as she would have felt at 
 seeing a snake wind up about his limbs and she doomed to 
 look on the while and powerless to stir. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 477 
 
 Ho did not understand that ; he only thought her jealous. 
 Men see but a little way into the hearts of women. 
 
 As he sat at her feet and leaned his head on her knees he 
 thought he understood her, because he did only too iatally 
 understand that lie was the master of her fiite, the single 
 thought of her entire existence ; but he did not understand 
 her aright, because he thought the feeling which moved her 
 against her foe was the mere restless jealousy of her sex, 
 whereas it was the far deeper and far more noble hatred of 
 the nature that was true and bold for the nature that was 
 false and base. 
 
 " If she had ever loved you truly once I could have for- 
 given her from my heart, even if she had killed me," she had 
 said to him. He had smiled and kissed her, but he had not 
 understood. 
 
 He had thought it a mere pretty poetic exaggeration of 
 words. He had said to himself that no women ever forgive 
 each other to whom the same lover is dear. 
 
 This day he did not come ; the moi-row passed, and he was 
 still absent. It was gray, heavy, sickly weather, that not even 
 the outburst of blossom and flower could beautify. She 
 counted the hours till her heart grew sick. 
 
 The nightingales began their earliest notes in the palms at 
 evening ; she closed the casements against the song ; she could 
 not bear to hear it — alone. It seemed to her that the time 
 grew very long, that his silence lasted till it became dishonor 
 to them both. 
 
 "If I were to tell her?" she thought again and again; 
 and then the thought seemed to lier to be a base one, to be 
 like a betrayal of him ; and she rejected it, and felt ashamed 
 of it. 
 
 Another day came and there was no word of him. She 
 wrote, and then tore up all she wrote, being unwilling to seem 
 to imitate the exactions and the persecutions of her rival. 
 With her he should be alwavs free. 
 
 She would not cage her nightingale. 
 
 The sun was low and red, the air was dull ; she walked 
 through the blue flag-lilies that once more filled the grass, and 
 her heart was sick with foreboding. 
 
 It seemed to her that any fool had been wiser than she had 
 been. . 
 
478 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 He was not changed ; when with her ho was ptLSsionate 
 and tender us when the blue lilies had bloomed in the year 
 before, but she had learned that cruel truth which all women 
 who themselves love greatly do leorn, that a victorious love is 
 not as eager nor as supjiliant as a love that hopes yet fears. 
 
 She had had no strength, and with him she should havo 
 been very strong. From her terraces she could see in the 
 blue distance the old gray towers of Fiordelisa amidst the 
 dark cypress and ilex-woods of its hill-side. Slie looked at 
 the dusky cloud that she knew were those woods, and she 
 felt comforted. 
 
 " There at least she will never go," she thought ; " and 
 when he forbids her Fiordelisa she will know the rest." 
 
 And she plucked one of the azure irises and put it in the 
 white folds of her dress. Just so had he set one there last 
 year, and he would surely, she thought, come this evening. 
 
 She walked to and fro while the sun sank out of sight 
 and the mista of the falling night hid Fiordelisa from her 
 sight. 
 
 A servant brought her a message, — one of those brief 
 messages that ilash the woe of a life in a few curt, bold 
 words. 
 
 The message told her that her old home in Paris had, by an 
 accident, been burned to the ground, — nothing saved but her 
 statue by Clesinger. And, since misfortunes never come alone, 
 there were other tidings that a man of business who had con- 
 ducted her affairs had robbed her and fled. 
 
 Her first thought was of him. 
 
 " Will he mind very much ?" she thought. It made her 
 much poorer. She stood a while with the message in her 
 hand, thinking always of him. 
 
 Her old treasures had been dear to her, and the things of 
 her art dearer still, and the place had been full of them, but 
 it was only of him that she thought. She awoke as from a 
 trance and saw the servant waiting there. 
 
 " Tell them to get the horses," she said, quickly. It was 
 evening ; in ten minutes more it would be night. She threw 
 some black laces around her head, and when the horses were 
 ready drove down into Rome. 
 
 It was already dark. 
 
 To tell her lover was her first impulse ; to do what he 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 479 
 
 thought best ; also not to let him for ono moment deem her 
 richer than she was. 
 
 A woman who is the mistress of a great fame is never alto- 
 gether poor ; but she had lost all that she had saved ; she had 
 little left save the power of her hand. 
 
 The horses flew on through the dark down into the heart 
 of Home, to the banks of the river, where the lamps were all 
 lit, and lights were gliding to and fro on the bridges. 
 
 loris was not at his house. 
 
 She had asked where he had gone — the first time that she 
 had ever asked a question about him. The man, who knew 
 a little and guessed more, and hated the woman for whom for 
 many years he had had to do so much unpaid service, threw 
 his hands in the air and laughed. 
 
 " Where should he be but at the Casa Challoner ? He 
 came in with milady about five o'clock, and they went out 
 together." 
 
 Etoile said nothing ; she leaned back on the cushions pale 
 and cold ; she felt as if the speaker had stabbed her. 
 
 " To the Casa Challoner," she said, in a cold, clear voice to 
 her coachman. 
 
 The seivant standing in the doorway heard and was fright- 
 ened ; th) horses trotted onwards towards the Corso in the 
 moonlight and gaslight and the deep shadows of Home. 
 
 All memory of the losses that had befallen her faded out of 
 her mind ; all she was cc^. .cious of was that he was there, — 
 there ! — with all his oaths forsworn. 
 
 A very sickness of disgust came on her ; the fierce steel- 
 like eyes, the smoke-tainted lips, the twanging guitar, the large 
 firm hands, the loud rough laugh, all that he abhorred, all that 
 he was with, rose before her in imagination till all her blood 
 leaped to a scornful hatred she had never known ; and the 
 deep blue of the skies above her seemed to her full of fire. 
 She had lost much, she had been robbed, half ruined ; what 
 of that ? She forgot it. She only remembered that her lover 
 was faithless. 
 
 It was one of those moments for which the world blames 
 women bitterly, yet for which they are not to blame, for in 
 their pain they are scarce conscious wliat they do, and are 
 driven on by sheer swift instincts that they have no power to 
 control. 
 
480 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 To go there, to find him there, to cast the truth down 
 between them and see which he would cleave to, to fling at 
 her foe all the scorn, all the disdain, all the knowledge kept 
 down so long in silence, — this one impulse alone governed 
 her as she let her horses trot through the still night towards 
 the Temple of the Virtues. 
 
 In the moonlight, before the 'oorway of the house, there 
 were two wagons with teams of low gray oxen, and the wagons 
 were piled high. There was a pause and some altercation : the 
 wagons stopped the way. 
 
 " Wo are loading them with milady's boxes and other things," 
 the servant of the house said to her coachman. " We all go 
 up to Fiordelisa to-morrow. Does your mistress wish to call 
 at this time of night ? Well, I do not know ; I can ask her. 
 There is nobody up there but the Prince loris." 
 
 Then the man laughed, as servants laugh at such things in 
 Italy, and signed the oxen back and went into the doorway. 
 
 " Drive away 1" said Etoile ; then she stopped her horses 
 again in a by-street, and descended from the carriage, and 
 walked on alone under the stars. 
 
 The coarse laugh of the serving-man had checked the im- 
 pulse that had brought her to this place ; she felt heart-sick 
 with shame ; he was there, — he ! her own, lier idol, her treas- 
 ure that outweighed the world ! — he was there, at vhe feet of 
 the woman he had renounced. 
 
 Even in that moment of bitterest anguish she did not 
 deceive herself; she knew well that nothing that need move 
 her to jealousy drove him there, but only the hesitation of 
 temperament, the habit of dominion, the dread of a virago's 
 rage. But all the courage of her own nature leaped up in 
 scorn. He loved her, yet he had spent the starry hours of the 
 early night in reluctant submission to the unholy bonds he had 
 abjured, in cowardly counterfeit of a passion he had renounced 
 and lived to loathe I 
 
 And her rival went to Fiordelisa. 
 
 The insult entered her very soul like iron. 
 
 She was to go to Fiordelisa, this woman whom he had for- 
 saken and renounced ; to live in his home, to be near him all 
 the summer through, to reign there at her will I The outrage 
 of it seemed to her past all endurance. 
 
 If the woman he had renounced were to be thus allowed to 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 481 
 
 rule hiin, what was she herself? less than the verv dust in his 
 eyes, surely, or never would ho thus insult her. 
 
 In the moment of that int^jnse pain, that intense humilia- 
 tion, Etoile lost her serenity, her patience, her long-suffering 
 tenderness for him. She felt fooled and dishonored. For the 
 6rst time since she had felt his lips touch hers she thought of 
 herself, and not of him. 
 
 Such moments of profound self-abasement come to all. She 
 had been proud and loyal and of infinite truthfulness and 
 faith ; she felt betrayed and stung beyond endurance. 
 
 She walked up and down in the clear moonlight that had 
 succeeded to the gray and oppressive day. She had utterly 
 forgotten the losses that had fallen on her. The dark and 
 quiet corner where the house of her foe stood was quite de- 
 serted now. The oxen had gone away, and their loads with 
 them. The arched doors stood open. The porter had gone 
 also down the street. The lamps gleamed in the entrance. 
 The casements above were all lighted : there came from them 
 the echo of a guitar and the sound of a voice humming amor- 
 ous songs of the populace. 
 
 Etoile stood in the moonlight, without, by the open doors, 
 and hesitated. If she were to find them together, and fling 
 the truth down between them like a gauntlet? . . . Would it 
 be freedom for him, or would it be merely vengeance, a vulgar 
 vengeance, worthy of her foe, and not of her ? 
 
 She stood by the door in the shadow, swayed now by one 
 impulse, and now by another, yielding at one moment to the 
 natural, common instinct of a passion that was wronged, re- 
 strained at the other by the higher temper of a love that 
 shrank from base contention of its rifhts. 
 
 The night was very still ; there was no one near ; above the 
 steep overhanging walls the stars shone. On the stillness the 
 melodious thrill of the guitar struck clearly from the cham- 
 bers above ; then even that ceased. On the silence she heard 
 a little laugh, and then a murmuring voice : the laugh was her 
 rival's; the voice was his. 
 
 She shuddered, and moved from the threshold, and felt 
 ({< famed and dishonored. 
 
 He could laugh there ! — he, who had said to her, " Make 
 me what you think me, what you wish me ; — I am yours !" 
 
 She walked up and down the stones of the little square 
 V 41 
 
482 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 before the doors, that stil! stood open, yet she did not enter : 
 it seemed to her so vile, so poor a thing to do ; the house was 
 cursed, the very air of it was hateful ; she who had all right 
 and title of a great and loyal love could not stoop to dispute 
 him, as a wanton disputes her prey. Yet she could not tear 
 herself from the place. The very silence that had followed 
 on the song and the laugh enthralled her with a horrible 
 force ry. 
 
 He was there, — faithless to both. 
 
 Eleven o'clock struck ; the hours had fled uncounted by her. 
 Her horses waited out of sight ; the shadow of some passer- 
 by fell now and then across the white breadths of the moon- 
 light ; she did not notice it, nor hear the step. 
 
 A heavy sense of bitter humiliation oppressed her, and under 
 it burned the smouldering fires of her scorn. She wandered 
 and waited there alone, as though she were the guilty wife, 
 the wanton paramour ; and above, laughing and singing, was 
 that craven sin the world forgave, as friendship ! — a sin so 
 craven that not even to itself could it be true. 
 
 She did not reason ; she only felt heart-sick, outraged, in- 
 dignant, humbled, stung to a delirious pain. 
 
 Suddenly in the stillness there came the jarring sound of a 
 closing door ; she was near the house ; out of it she saw loris 
 pass into the moonlight. 
 
 The porter, returning hastily from his wineshop, hurried in 
 and drew the bolts and bars for the night's safety ; loris came 
 leisurely forward, along the pavement, in the shadow of the 
 walls ; then he saw her, and paused, with a cry, half of pleas- 
 ure, half of anger. 
 
 " Dear, what has happened ?" he murmured, hurriedly, and 
 cast a glance around, and saw that there was no one near, and 
 would have taken her hands ; but she thrust him quickly from 
 her, and gazed up in his face, the whiteness of her skirts 
 trailing on the dusty stones, the stars shining above them. 
 
 " Is this how you keep faith to me ?" she said, and her voice 
 was very low. 
 
 His face changed ; he took refuge in anger. 
 
 " Is this how you watch me ? What are you doing here, 
 alone, at such an hour ? Are you waiting for me ? I will not 
 have you wait so." 
 
 " You let her go to your home to-morrow ?" ^ •:'.' 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 483 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 " Tou let her go ? is it true ?" 
 
 He made no answer ; he was very pale ; he strove to take 
 her hands again. 
 
 " You are excited and angry ; you are unlike yourself. 
 How do you come in the streets at such an hour ? where are 
 your servants? do you do it to watch me? I will not be 
 watched ; I have liad enough of that elsewhere, and tO( 
 much. Why are you here ? answer me. I do not under 
 stand ; I will not be watched. If you want to upbraid me ' 
 
 He spoke with all the petulance, the offended waywardness, 
 that took a grace in him like that of a spoiled proud child ; 
 he was stung by his own conscience, and impatient that he 
 had been seen where all the manhood in him told him that it 
 was against all manliness to go. 
 
 " I would not upbraid you," said Etoile, her voice sliil very 
 low and broken. " Come a little farther, — farther from that 
 house." 
 
 He walked beside her down the shadow of the street, till 
 they were in the white breadth of the moon-rays once more. 
 
 " Are you going to lie in wait for me any night that I am 
 not with you ?" he said, with a sombre irritation, more affected 
 than real. " I fancied I was free from such things as that, 
 with you. You have said you trust me. What is trust, if it 
 doubt every act, if it measure every moment ? I have had 
 too much of this from another." 
 
 " Have you had too much, since you still go to that other ?" 
 
 "Oh, you would reproach me! you are like other women 
 after all ; after all you are no higher than they are ; you sus- 
 pect ; you accuse." 
 
 " I suspect nothing ; I see you coming from her house ; you 
 cannot deny that she is to live in your own home, even now, 
 after your promise?" 
 
 " I made no promise." 
 
 " No promise !" 
 
 He was silent ; the color passed from his face. 
 
 " I asked you for patience," he muttered a little later ; " I 
 asked you to trust me and to wait ; yes, I promised ; but one 
 is not master of oneself. She is nothing to me : cannot that 
 content you?" 
 
 "No!" ■ ' 
 
484 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 She threw the laces off her head, and the raoon-rays shone 
 in her wet eyes as they gazed into his. 
 
 " Dear, I am tired ! Are you angry ? cannot you under- 
 stand ? I am not of marble or of clay ; I am only a woman 
 that loves you, and that you love. How can I bear it, day 
 after day, to know myself first with you, yet live as though I 
 were nothing to ycu before the world, and see you in the 
 world's sight pass as hers ? Oh, my love ! my love ! I have 
 had patience, I have kept silence, till my heart is half broken. 
 Do you know anything of wh<it I suffer, when I see you by 
 her. when I hear your voice in her chamber, as I heard to- 
 night? Do you know ? I think you cannot. It is not that 
 I am jealous as you think ; it is that I am ashamed." 
 
 " You ashamed I" he muttered, and his pale cheek grew red. 
 
 " Yes, I am ashamed I ashamed of my own feebleness, of 
 my own lack of power, of my own incompetency to save you 
 from the lower life that holds you. Ah, you cannot under- 
 stand ! What use are fame, and praise, and rower ; T have to 
 give place to her .'" 
 
 All the immeasurable scorn that there was in her launched 
 itself out in that one word. 
 
 He moved uneasily and looked away. 
 
 " You do not know what you say," he muttered. " You are 
 feverish and agitated. Let us go from here ; to-morrow " 
 
 " To-morrow she goes to Fiordelisa." 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 *' Does she go to Fiordelisa ?" 
 
 He was silent still. 
 
 She laughed, a laugh that chilled and terrified him, unlike 
 any he had ever heard upon her lips. 
 
 " And you bewailed your slavery to me in almost the first 
 hours that we met 1 What use was that, since you live on in 
 it by choice ? what use to wake my pity, to come to me and 
 lament ? . . . Who is blinded ? who is betrayed ? who is 
 befooled ? Is it she, or is it I ? What have you meant of 
 all that you have said ? Was all your pain a falsehood ?" 
 
 Every word entered his soul^ as thorns into a wound ; his con- 
 science smote him bitterly, but for that very cause his anger rose. 
 
 " You insult me ! perhaps I merit it. Who can know what 
 to do, where two women claim every moment and watch every 
 word ? I lead the life of a hound 1 Falsehood ? yes, without 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 485 
 
 liberty there is always falsehood. But you leave me no more 
 ' -iedom than she does." 
 
 " I leave you all freedom. Are you not free to go to her ?" 
 
 The blood beat in her temples, the stars swam before her 
 eyes ; intense bitterness, intense humiliation, intense anguish, 
 were all at war in her ; she sciircely knew what she said. 
 
 •' Are you not free to go to her?'' she repeated ; " free to 
 drag LlJ name through the dust for her diversion ? free to let 
 me be mocked and slandered by her, you silent all the while ?" 
 
 " She never names you." 
 
 " That is untrue. She taunts me with an unanswered love, 
 and you stand by and let the shameful lie be said." 
 
 " If you choose to believe the lies of others " 
 
 Her unwonted passion broke into a low sob. 
 
 *' Oh, my love, whom would I believe against you ? Not 
 all the world I But can you say to me on your honor that 
 she knows the truth ?" 
 
 " No," he said, with a fierce roughness most uncommon in 
 him ; " no, she does not know the truth. I have not told her. 
 I am a coward. You have been pleased to say so." 
 
 She made no answer. 
 
 She would have sooner heard him tell her she must die. 
 
 " It is the temple of lies," he said, bitterly, with a backward 
 gesture of contempt towards the house that stood in the gloom 
 behind them. " I have lived among them till they are part 
 of me. What does she know ? She knows nothing. If she 
 could tell that I had even kissed your lips she would kill me." 
 
 " Are you afraid ?" 
 
 She turned and looked at him with a cold disdain that hurt 
 him more than all her rival's wildest savagery of wrath. 
 
 " You insult me 1" he said, under his breath ; and his eyes 
 grew sombre and full of fire, but they wandered from her own. 
 
 Suddenly she took his hands and held them in her own 
 against her breast. 
 
 " My beloved, I will ask your forgiveness for such insult on 
 my knees if you will tell me, with your eyes on mine, that 
 you will go back to that house now and tell her all. All ! — 
 before another hour goes." 
 
 She felt his heart beat quickly. 
 
 He looked on the ground and not at her. 
 
 " You are but a woman like the rest," he said, with evasive 
 
 41* 
 
486 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 irritation. " It is not my love you want : it is triumph over 
 a rival." 
 
 She dropped his hands and turned away from him. After 
 all the hours of their perfect love, was this all that he knew 
 of her? 
 
 " Go to her," she said, as she put him from her with a ges- 
 ture. " Go to her : it is she who is fit mate for you, — not I !" 
 
 The words severed them as steel cuts the skein of life in 
 twain forever. 
 
 The moonlight fell between them in a chill, pale space of 
 joyless light. 
 
 Not looking back once, she went away from him into the 
 shadow where her horses waited. He stood like a man who 
 has had a mortal blow, but keeps erect from pride. 
 
 He did not follow her. 
 
 Their lives were divided forever, as the chill moonlight 
 severed their shadows. 
 
 A casement above, a stone's throw oflF in the gloom, closed 
 quietly, and behind it, in the darkness, another woman laughed 
 to herself, — well content. 
 
 All things come to those who know how to wait. She had 
 only had to wait, in patience and darkness, without seeming to 
 stir a hand, and the end she desired had come. 
 
 To hold without mercy, and to be deaf and blind to all that 
 told her the truth, — this had been her strength, and it had 
 conquered. 
 
 With the morrow to Fiordelisa 1 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIIl. 
 
 That night Etoile wrote the truth to her. 
 
 When she had told it, she wrote on : 
 
 " You need fear me no more ; he and I are parted, so you may 
 listen to me for a moment. You are stronger than I ; you have 
 known how to keep him against his will, and how to ruin his 
 strength and his peace and his fortunes; will you not have pity 
 now? Pity on him. He does not love you ; he was weary of 
 you 80 long, long ago. When I met him first, his captivity was 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 487 
 
 bitter and dreary to him ; you must see this — if you would see 
 it — in a hundred signs and ways. I now ask you to set him free. 
 Not for me. I swear to you that we can nc^^er again be anything 
 to each other, because there is the black pit of a cruel lie set like 
 a gulf between him and me. I only ask you for his sake. What 
 is the life you lead him ? A life ioyless, galling, jaded, unworthy 
 of manhood, robbed of all effort and all hope. You hurt his 
 honor, you stain his name, you make him a byword and a jest. 
 You call this friendship, — to the world. I tell you that it is 
 the basest and most cruel passion that ever fed its vanity on the 
 ruin of another soi.!. I have surrendered him, and I will never 
 claim him if you will set him free, — free to find purer faiths 
 and happier ties than mine or yours, free to be able to look his 
 future in the face and feel it his own, — not mine nor yours. 
 What can 1 say to you ? how can I move you ? You are a 
 base woman, and you have never loved him in any noble sense 
 of love one hour ; but, sacrifice me as you like, jest at me, jeer 
 at me, drag my name in the dust, do anything you will of ven- 
 geance on me, — only set him free." 
 
 The tears fell from her eyes and scorched and blurred the 
 paper. 
 
 Then she tore it up, and burnt it. 
 
 What use was it to cry to the dead wall, to beat the gates 
 of brass? Sooner will the wall hear, sooner will the brass 
 melt, than the heart of a cruel woman have pity. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 It is five o'clock on a summer afternoon at Fiordelisa. 
 
 In the old gray court there is the tinkle of teacups, the 
 smell of cigar-smoke, the sounds of a guitar ; the red bignonea 
 on the south wall is all aglow with blossom ; the peacock is 
 strutting among the long grass ; the bees are humming above 
 the strawberry flowers. Lady Joan is laughing and singing 
 and thrumming the chords of the guitar ; she is lying back on 
 a low easy-chair ; she feels happy. 
 
 People have been lunching with her, a few good decorous 
 people who are now strolling about in and out the cortilc and 
 
488 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 gardens, one with another ; amidst them Mr. Silverly Bell is 
 murmuring to Mrs. Macscrip, — 
 
 " Oh, yes ; it is quite an old story now, but only too true, 
 unfortunately, only too true." 
 
 " What really ? That she lay in wait for him afcer mid- 
 night?" 
 
 "Ah, quite truel and by dear Lady Joan's house, too, 
 makin;^ such a scandal ! As if Lady Joan had anything — 
 anything — of an incorrect interest in her friend ! . . . " 
 
 " Shameful I" cries a chorus of the small gentilities and 
 the free-born republicans. 
 
 " And she tried to stab him, didn't she, with a dagger out 
 of her studio?" says that sprightly lady, Mrs. Henry V. 
 Clams, plucking some heliotrope. 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell sighs and is pained. 
 
 " Oh, no, that is exaggerated ; at least I trust it is exag- 
 gerated, loris is such a gentleman ; he never says a word ; it 
 is diflScult to know the truth ; but some people were passing, 
 and saw ... it is very painful. I used to like her, I really 
 did use to like her. Yes, she has a charm of manner ; yes, 
 until one knows. But no character, you know, and no capi- 
 tal. ... I believe she has had great losses ; that she wanted 
 loris that night to assist b ^r in some great money trouble, but 
 that kind of thing only makes it very much worse." 
 
 "Very much worse," answers Mrs. Macscrip. "Myself I 
 never will know artists : I am thankful that I did not infringe 
 on my rule for her." 
 
 " You may be so, indeed !" says Mr. Silverly Bell, and he 
 sighs. 
 
 " My ! she warn't hard up for money ; that I'll bet some," 
 cried Mrs. Henry V. Clams, casting cake to the peacock. 
 " She's took Rocaldi to shut herself up in, for good and all, 
 and she won't sell that queer picture Sordello, though they'd 
 give her long chalks for it if she would." 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell sighs again, and, as he stoops over the 
 daisies, murmurs, — 
 
 " Infatuation — aberration !" 
 
 " You don't call on her never now ?" inquires Mrs. Henry 
 V. Clams. ^ i 
 
 Mr. Silverly Bell feels his silvery hair rise erect from his 
 head. "Call! Call? ray dear madam!" -. . 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 489 
 
 " You are so almighty virtuous, Mr. Bell, you'd have saved 
 Sodom and changed Lot into salt," says that giddy soul, with 
 a fine scriptural confusion of memories. " Alberto, bring the 
 break round, and go and get my shawl." 
 
 " Dear Mr. Bell feels as we all do," said Miss Marjory 
 ScTope-Stair. " Any friend of dear Joan's must hold her as 
 an enemy ; and any friend of poor lo's also. Besides, any 
 woman must feel shocked and grieved. Why is talent always 
 allied to a deficient moral character ?" 
 
 No one replies to this general interrogation, but Mrs. 
 Henry V. Clams clinches the matter. 
 
 " She's a downright silly not to give it all the go-by, and 
 run back, and lark around in her own Paris. Nobody can't 
 ever understand artists though, they're that queer. . . . 
 Biddle-me-ree and double acrostics is nothing to 'em. Is 
 Alberto gone to get that drag ?" 
 
 Meanwhile loris hears what the Lady Joan is saying. 
 
 Some one has asked her if she stays the summer here, and 
 she answers, with a smile, — 
 
 " Oh, yes ; you know I have so much to do here ; they 
 would miss me so. I even think we shall winter here. It is 
 80 much warmer than the city, and we are all so happy to- 
 gether. Besides, you know, poor lo is ruined, or very nearly. 
 We shall help him if we live here ; you know how great my 
 husband's friendship is for him, and mine too. We mind no 
 sacrifice for a friend !" 
 
 loris hears ; and he has lost the power and the right to avenge. 
 
 The drag comes round, and other equipages. They troop 
 away joyously, leaving only Burletta, who is casting up 
 accounts in a memorandum-book, in the midst of the straw- 
 berries; and Marjory Scrope-Stair, who as she passes her 
 friend kisses the hand that is toying with the guitar, and 
 kisses it gushingly but loyally. It is the hand that has fast- 
 locked the fresh fetters. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams, who is shrewd in her own way, and 
 has brought a gleam of the national Yankee humor with her 
 out of the land of wooden nutmegs, is tickled at what she has 
 heard, and laughs to herself as she goes away. 
 
 " My word !" she murmurs, as she drives through the gates. 
 " If Alberto were to go and fall in love with anybody I won- 
 der if I'd be as clever as that, and be able to turn the tables 
 
490 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 on tho other one and make her look like the good for-naught? 
 My word ! no : I shouldn't have patience. I should just go 
 and slap her face." 
 
 And she feels her own inferiority to the Temple of the 
 Virtues. 
 
 The afternoon sun sinks lower ; the color deepens ; the 
 Bcent of the blossoms grows stronger. Burletta shuts up 
 his account-book and comes and sits on a stool beside the 
 guitar. 
 
 Mr. Challoner reclines in a rocking-chair. 
 
 The little girl plays with a shuttlecock. 
 
 Lady Joan laughs, and now and then she sings. 
 
 She has condemned him to perpetual bondage, to lifelong 
 weariness, to endless degradation ; siie has taken his life like a 
 pressed fruit and wrung it to the core ; she has exiled from him 
 all joy, all hope, all peace. Never shall his oiFspring laugh in 
 the old home of his fathers ; never shall any child smile in his 
 eyes with the smile of a woman he loved ; never shall any glad- 
 ness of liberty rise for him in his barren years ; never shall 
 any human happiness be his. 
 
 Never, never any more, so long as her life shall last and 
 feed on his, and sit by his, and wait and watch, as the tigress 
 waits and watches by the dead creature it has slain. 
 
 She has killed him more cruelly than those kill who slaughter 
 the body. 
 
 But what of that ? She is well-content. 
 
 She shoots her cats and robins, she garners her grain, she 
 fills her purse ; she rules at Fiordelisa. 
 
 Honor is gone from him, and peace, and hope, and God. 
 
 But what of that ? She rules at Fiordelisa. 
 
 In his chamber alone sits loris, having escaped the scene 
 for a moment. 
 
 His heart is sick, his life is weary. 
 
 For lack of an hour's courage he has surrendered all his 
 future to bondage. 
 
 One single falsehood at the first has sprung up into a giant 
 tree poisonous as the upas, and spreading in fetid darkness for 
 evermore betwixt him and the light of heaven. 
 
 If he had been but true ! 
 
 He sits in his solitude, — so rare a blessing is this solitude, 
 which she perpetually denies him, — and the smell of the smoke 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 491 
 
 «»iid the tinkle of the guitar rise in the air to him, and he 
 loathes them. 
 
 "lo! Id!" cries a voice, shrill, loud, imperious, "lo i come 
 down directly, or I shall come up to you 1" 
 
 Of the two evils he takes the lesser. 
 
 He goes down, with a low sigh and a slow step. 
 
 It is for this woman that he has lost the world, and lost 
 the thing that is greater and deeper than all the world, — a 
 love that never dies. 
 
 He descends his old stone staircase wearily and listlessly ; 
 sullenly and silently he enters the court and throws himself 
 into a garden-seat in the shadow of an old arched doorway. 
 
 She strike^ her guitar sharply. 
 
 *' You look as glum as an owl, lo ! How ungrateful of 
 you, when we are going to make your fortune out of the 
 Coral Isles 1" 
 
 " I am tired," he mutters, wearily. 
 
 She laughs : she does not care whether he is tired or not. 
 She has him safe, her prey forever, through one sad untruth. 
 
 The red sun sinks, the red flowers blaze. The child is at 
 play. The smoke curls lightly up among the blossoms. It 
 is dreamy and warm. Mr. Challoner, stretched peacefully in 
 his chair, dozes, with a handkerchief over his closed eyes, 
 and thinks. There are the Coral Isles. loris is poor. A 
 little more speculation, like the piles in the Sirens' Sea, and 
 who knows ? Old lands are soon ruined and old names soon 
 tarnished. Fiordelisa is a nice place. loris is not very strong. 
 Fiordelisa would make a pretty dower for EflSe in years to 
 come ; and is there not a title that goes with the estate ? 
 
 Mr. Challoner in his mind's eye sees his grandchildren 
 reigning here, where the children of loris will be never born. 
 
 The Watchdog sits humbly in the shade by the glass doors, 
 and works at a cushion that her friend has begun and has tired 
 of, and ever and again fastens thirsty, longing, anxious eyes 
 upon loris, and thinks to herself, " Festina lente, Pazlenza ! 
 Who knows? SoLietimes a sick and sorrowful soul, jaded 
 and indifferent, falls to the watcher that waits for it, as the 
 beautiful moth with broken wing falls into the web of the 
 patient and crafty spider spinning in the dust : who knows?" 
 
 The Lady Joan, with the riband of the guitar lying loose in 
 her hand, shuts her watchful eyes also, and only does not 
 
492 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 dream because she never dreams. She is a woman of action, 
 not a simpleton. She thinks instead; thinks, and smiles as 
 she thinks. 
 
 She has got all she wants, she has done all she wished, she is 
 luxuriously content; she feels victorious as Napoleon at Jena. 
 She will reign alone at Fiordelisa. Meanwhile, if they become 
 needful, there are Theodore and the Coral Isles. If loris 
 prove restive she will send him to the Coral Isles, and go into 
 society and smile and be smiled at, and say, " Ah, poor lo ! 
 so sad ; but we are doing all we can to save his property." 
 And she and society will smile on each other more sweetly 
 than ever; and as she thinks of all this the picture pleases 
 her so that for once her busy brain grows sleepy, and she also 
 dreams till the guitar glides oflF her knee, and the chords that 
 have hymned her amorous songs so often, to so many ears, are 
 broken. 
 
 loris alone dares not dream, because for him hope is dead 
 and liberty has perished. 
 
 At the same hour, as the sun sinks low, Etoile prays in 
 her chamber. 
 
 " Forgive me that I erred in haste and pain. Forgive me 
 that I had neither wisdom nor strength. God, forgive me, 
 and make him happy, though I forever suffer 1" 
 
 Is prayer only a dream too ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 THE COMPLETE SERIES OF 
 
 Vv/orcester's Dictionaries. 
 
 Quarto Dictionary. Illustrated. Library sheep. $10.00. 
 
 Universal and Critical (Octavo) Dictionary. 8vo. Library sheep. 
 
 S4.-25. 
 
 Academic Dictionary. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Half roan. $2.00. 
 
 Comprehensive Dictionary. Illustrated. 12mo. Half roan. $1.75. 
 
 School (Elementary) Dictionary. Illustrnted. l2mo. Half roan. $1,00. 
 
 Primary Dictionary. Illustrated. 16rao. Half roan. fiO cents. 
 
 Pocket Dictionary. Illustrated. 24nio. Cloth, 63 cents ; ruan, flexible, 
 8") cents ; roan, tucks, gilt edges, $1.00. 
 
 Many special aids to students, in addition to a very full pro- 
 nouncing and defining vocabulary, make the above-named books, in 
 the opinion of our most distinguished educators, the most complete 
 as well as by far the cheapest Dictionaries of our language. 
 
 *** For sale by Booksellers generally, or will be sent, carriage free, on receipt 
 of the price by 
 
 J, B. LIPriNCOTT i& CO., 
 
 PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS, AND STATIONERS, 
 716 and 717 Market Street, Fhiladelshia.