HELD IN BONDAGE GKANV1LLE DB VIGNE. HELD IN BONDAGE OR GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. % ®ale of % glag. By OUIDA, AUTHOR OF " STRATHMORE," " UNDER TWO FLAGS," " TRICOTRIN," " PUCK," BTC. "A young man married is a man that's marred." — Shakespeare. NEW EDITION. LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY PRINTED BY TAYLOR AND CO., LITTLE QUEEN STBEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. PEEFACE. ^ 5" 5" i This, the earliest work I ever wrote, is full of errors both of structure and of style. I have thought it, however, useless to attempt any correction of these. I lameut the innumerable faults in Art which neces- sarily arise in it from having been constructed as that mistaken thing "a, novel with a purpose." And I trust that no reader will form any judgment upon me as a writer from this very immature and most imper- fect romance. At the same time that I regret its artistic shortcomings, I fully adhere to the main opinions which form its basis. It is, indeed, my confirmed impression of their absolute truth which makes me now offer this apology for the inadequate skill wherewith, in these pages, I have defended them. OUIDA. The Langham, London. April 10, 1870. wP CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. — The Senior Pupil of the Chancery .... 1 II. — ,c A Southerly Wind and a Cloudy Sky proclaim it a Hunting Morning " 15 III. —In the Academic Shades of Grranta . . . .27 IV. — A Subtle Poison Drunk in the Champagne at an Opera Supper 45 V.— What was under the Cards . . ' . . . .62 VI. — A Doubled-Down Page in the Colonel's Book of Life . 64 VII.— The Little Queen of the Fairies 75 VIII.— The Forging of the Fetters 85 IX.— The Blow that a Woman Dealt 103 X.— On the First Day of a New Year . ... 115 XI. — The " Charmed Life " comes back among us . . 123 XII. — Sabretasche, having mowed down many Flowers, deter- mines to spare one Yiolet. ..... 136 XIII. — The Queen of the Fairies is found in Richmond . . 154 XIV.— How a Wife talked of her Husband . . . .163 XV. — " L'Amitie est L' Amour sans Ailes " .... 165 XVI. — The Fawn Robin Hood was to spare .... 182 XVIL— Le Chat qui Dormait 190 XVIII.— Paolo and Francesca 198 XIX. — The Skeleton which Society had never seen . . . 217 XX. — One of the Summer Days before the Storm . . . 234 XXI. — How the olden Delirium awoke ' like a Giant from his Slumbers 247 XXII.— The Cost of Honour 255 XXIII. —How a Woman woke a Feud betwixt Palemon and Arcite 273 vin CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XXIV.— The Ordeal by Fire 288 XXV.— A Bitterness greater than Death . . . .301 XXVI.— The Bridal Jewels go to the Mont de Piete . . 310 XXVII.— In the Chersonesus 315 XXVIII.— The Gazelle in the Tiger's Fangs . . . . 331 XXIX.— Between Life and Death 347 XXX. — One of those whom England has forgotten . . . 361 XXXI. — How Inconstancy was Voted a Virtue . . . 374 XXXII.— The Tortures of Tantalus 384 XXXIII.— The Wife to whom Sabretasche was Bound . . 400 XXXIV.— Release 422 XXXV.— In the Forest of Fontainbleau .... 435 XXXVI.— The Crowning Temptation of a Tempted Life . . 452 XXXVIL— Tried in the Fire, and Proven . . . .461 XXXVIII— Freed from Bondage 474 XXXIX.— Nemesis 476 XL.— Valete 486 XLI. — Adieu au Lectcur ! 488 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. CHAPTEE I. THE SENIOR PUPIL OF THE CHANCERY. It was pleasant down there in Berkshire, when the water rushed beneath the keel ; our oars feathered neatly on the ringing rowlocks ; the river foamed and flew as we gripped it ; and the alders and willows tossed in the sunshine, while we — private pupils, as our tutor called us — men, as we called ourselves — used to pull up the Kennet, as though we were some of an University Eight, and lunch at the Eerry Inn off raw chops and . half-and-half, making love to its big-boned, red-haired Hebe, and happy as kings iu those summer days, in the dead years long past and gone. What a royal time it was ! — (who amongst us does Dot say so ?) — when our hearts owned no heavier cares than a vulgus, and a theorem ; and no skeleton in the closet spoiled our troll- ing and long bowling ; when old Horace and Euripides were the only bores we knew ; and G-alatsea at the pastry- cook's seemed fairer than do ever titled Helens now ; when gallops on hired shying hacks were doubly dear, by prohi- bition; and filthy bird's-eye, smoked in clays, sweeter to our senses then, than purest Havannahs smoked to-day, on the steps of Pratt's, or the U.S. ! I often think of those days when, with a handsome tip, from the dear old gover- nor ; and a parting injunction respecting the unspeakable blessings and advantages of flannel, from my mother; I was sent off to be a private pupil, under the Eev. Josiah Prim- B 2 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. rose, D.D., F.R.S., F.K.G.S., and all the letters of the alphabet beside, I dare say, if I could but remember them. Our modern Gamaliel was an immaculate and insignifi- cant little man ; who, on the strength of a Double First, good connexions, and M.B. waistcoats, offered to train up the sons of noblemen and gentlemen, in the way they should go, drill Greek, and instil religious principles into them, for the trifling consideration of £300 per annum. He lived in a quiet little borough in the south of Berkshire, at a long, low, ivy-clad house, called the Chancery ; which had stu- pendous pretensions to the picturesque and the mediaeval ; and, what was of much more consequence to us, a capital little trout stream at the bottom of its grounds. Here he dwelt with a fat old housekeeper, a very good cook, a quasi- juvenile niece (who went in for the kitten line, and did it very badly, too,) and four, or, when times were good, six, hot-brained young dogs, worse to keep in order than a team of unbroke thorough-breds. No authority, however, did our Doctor, in familiar parlance, " Old Joey," attempt to exercise. We had prayers at eight, which he read in a style of intoning peculiar to himself, more soporific in its effects than a scientific lecture, or an Exeter Hall meeting, and dinner at six ; a very good dinner, too ; over which the fair Arabella presided : and between those hours we amused ourselves as we chose, with cricket, and smoking, jack and trout, boating and swimming, rides on hacks, such as job- masters let out to young fellows with long purses ; and desperate flirtations with all the shop girls in Frestonhills. AVe did do an amount of Greek and Logic, of course, as other- wise the £300 might have been jeopardised ; but the Doctor was generally dreaming over his possible chance of the Bampton Lectureship, or his next report for the Geological Society, and was as glad to give us our conge as we were to take it. It was a mild September evening, I remember, when I first went t« the Chancery. I had been a little down in the mouth at leaving home, just in the best of the shooting season ; and at saying good-bye to my genial-hearted gover- nor, and my own highly-prized bay, "Ballet-girl:" but a brisk coach drive and a good inn dinner never yet failed to raise a boy's spirits, and by the time I reached Frestonhills I was ready to face a much more imposing individual than GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 3 " Old Joey." The Doctor received me in his library, with a suspicious appearance of having just tumbled out of a nap ; called me his " dear young friend ;" on my first in- troduction treated me to a text or two, ingeniously dove- tailed with classic quotations; took me to the drawing- room for presentation to his niece, who smiled graciously on me for the sake of the pines, and melons, and game my mother had sent as a propitiatory offering with her darling ; and, finally, consigned me to the tender mercies of the senior pupil. The senior pupil was standing with his back to the fire and his elbows on the mantel-piece, smoking a short pipe, in the common study. He was but just eighteen ; but even then he had more of the " grand air " about him than any- one else I had ever seen. His figure, from its developed muscle, broad chest, and splendidly-modelled arm, might have passed him for much older ; but in his face were all the spirit, the eagerness, the fire of early youth ; the glow of ardour that has never been chilled, the longing of the young gladiator for the untried arena. His features were clear-cut, proud, and firm ; the lines of the lips delicate and haughty ; his eyes were long, dark, and keen as a falcon's ; his brow was wide, high, and powerful ; his head grandly set upon his throat : he looked altogether, as I told him some time afterwards, very like a thorough-bred racer, who was longing to do the distance, and who would never allow punishing by curb, or whip, or snaf&e. Such was the senior pupil, Granville de Vigne. He was alone, and took his pipe out of his lips without altering his position. " Well, sir, what's your name?" " Chevasney." " Not a bad one. A Chevasney of Longholme ?" " Yes. John Chevasney' s son." " So you are coming to be fleeced by Old Joey ? Deuced pity ! Are you good for anything?" " Only for grilling a devil, and riding cross country." He threw back his head, and laughed, a clear ringing laugh ; and gave me his hand, cordially and frankly, for all his hauteur and his seniority. "You'll do. Sit down, innocent. I am Granville de Yigne. You know us, of course. Your father rode with our hounds last January. Yery game old gentleman, he 4 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. seemed ; I should have thought him too sensible to have sent you down here ! You'd have been much better at Eton, or Eugby ; there's nothing like a public school for taking the nonsense out of people. I liked Eton, at least ; but if you know how to hold your own and have your own way, you can make yourself comfortable anywhere. The other fellows are out, gone to a flower show, I think; I never go to such places myself, they're too slow. There is ouly one of the boys worth cultivating, and he's a very little chap, only thirteen, but he's a jolly little monkey ; we call him ' Curly,' from his dandy gold locks. His father's a peer" — and De Yigne laughed again — " one of the fresh creation ; may Heaven preserve us from it ! This Frestonhills is a detestable place ; you'll be glad enough to get out of it. If it weren't for sport, I should have cut it long ago, but with a hunter and rod a man can never be dull. Are you a good shot, seat, and oar, young one ? " Those were De Yigne's first words to me, and I was honoured and delighted with his notice, for I had heard how, at seven years old, he had ridden unnoticed to the finish with Assheton Smith's hounds ; how, three years later, he had mounted a mare none of the grooms dare touch, and, breaking his shoulder-bone in the attempt to tame her, had shut his teeth like a little Spartan, that he might not cry out during its setting; how, when he had seen his Newfoundland drowning from cramp in the mere, he had plunged in after his dog, and only been rescued as both were sinking, the boy's arms round the animal's neck : — with many other such tales current in the county of the young heir to £20,000 a year. I did know his family — the royal-sounding " Us." They had been the lords of the manor at Yigne ever since tra- dition could tell ; their legends were among the country lore, and their names in the old cradle songs of rough chivalry, and vague romance, handed down among the peasantry from generation to generation. Many coronets had lain at their feet, but they had courteously declined them ; to say the truth, they held the strawbenw-leaves in supreme contempt, and looked down not unjustly on many of the roturiers of the peerage. De Yigne's father, a Colonel of Dragoons, had fallen fighting in India when his son was six years old ; and how GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 5 this high-spirited representative of a haughty House came to be living down in the dull seclusion of Erestonhills was owing to a circumstance very characteristic of De Yigne. At twelve his mother had sent him to Eton, a match in pluck, and muscle, and talent, for boys five years his senior. There he helped to fight the Lord's men ; pounded bargees with a skill worthy of the P. E. ; made himself captain of the boats ; enjoyed mingled popularity and detestation ; and from thence, when he was seventeen, got himself expelled. His Dame chanced to have a niece — a niece, tradition says, with the loveliest complexion and the most divine auburn hair in the world, and with whom, when she visited her aunt, all Oppidans and Tugs, who saw the beatific vision, became straightway enamoured. Whether De Yigne was in love with her, I can't say ; he always averred not, but I doubt the truth of his statement ; at any rate, he made her in love with him, being already rather skilled in that line of conquest, and all, I dare say, went merry as a mar- riage-bell, till the Dame found out the mischief, was scandalised and horrified at it, and confiding the affair to the tutor, made no end of a row in Eton. She would have pulled all the authorities about De Yigne's ears if he had not performed that operation for himself. The tutor, having had a tender leaning to the auburn hair on his own account, was furious ; and coming in contact with De Yigne and mademoiselle strolling along by the river-side, took occasion i;o tell them his mind. Now opposition, much less lectur- ing, De Yigne in all his life never could brook ; and he and his tutor coming to hot words, as men are . apt when they quarrel about a woman, De Yigne. flung him into the water and gave him such a ducking for his impudence, as Eton master never had before, or since. De Yigne, of course, was expelled for his double crime ; and to please his mother, as nothing would make him hear of three years of college life, he consented to live twelve months in the semi-aca- demic solitude of Erestonhills, while his name was entered at the Horse Guards for a commission. So at the Chancery he had domiciled himself, more as a guest than a pupil, for the Doctor was a trifle afraid of his keen eyes and quick wit ; since his pupil knew twenty times more of modern, literature and valuable available* information than himself b GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. and fifty times more of the world and its ways. But Old Joey, like all people, be their tendencies ever so heaven- ward, had a certain respect for twenty thousand a year. De Vigne kept two hunters and a hack in Frestonhills. He smoked Cavendish under the Doctor's own window ; he read De Kock and Le Brun in the drawing-room before the Doctor's very eyes (and did not Miss Arabella read them too, upon the sly, though she blushed if you mentioned poor " Don Juan !") he absented himself when he chose and went to shoot and hunt and fish with men he knew in the county ; he had his own way, in fact, as he had been accus- tomed to have it all his life. But it was not an obstinate nor a disagreeable " own way :" true, he turned restive at the least attempt at coercion, but he was gentle enough to a coax ; and though he could work up into very fiery passion, he was, generally speaking, sweet tempered enough, and had almost always a kind word, or a generous thought, or a laughing jest, for us less favoured young ones. I had a sort of boyish devoted loyalty to him then, and he deserved it. Many a scrape did a word or two from him get me out of with the Doctor ; many a time did he send me into the seventh heaven by the loan of his magnificent four-year-old; more than once did fivers come from his hand when I was deep in debt for a boy's fancies, or had been cheated through thick and thin at the billiard-table in the Ten Bells, where De Vigne paid my debts, refreshed himself by kicking the two sharpers out of the apartment, and threatened to shoot me if I offered him the money back again. A warm-hearted reverence I had for him in those boyish days, and always have had, Grod bless him ! But I little foresaw how often in the life to come we should be tegether in revelry and in danger, in thoughtless pleasures and dark sorrow, in the whirl of fast life and din and dash of the battle-field, when I first saw the senior pupil smoking in the study of the old Chancery at Frestonhills. One sunny summer's afternoon, while the Doctor dosed over his " Treatise on the Wise Tooth of the Fossil Hum- and-bosh Ichthyosaurus," and Arabella watered her gera- niums and looked interesting in a white hat with very blue ribbons, De Vigne, with his fishing-rod in his hand, looked into the study, and told Curly and me, who were vainly and wretchedly puzzling our brains over Terence, that he was GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. J going after jack, and we might go with him if we chose. Curly and I, in our adoration of our senior pupil, would have gone after him to martyrdom, and we sent Terence to the dogs (literally, for we shied him at Arabella's wheezing King Charles), rushed for our rods and baskets, and went down to the banks of the Kennet. De Vigne had an espe- cial tenderness for old Izaak's gentle art : it was the only thing over which he displayed any patience, and even in this, he might have caught more, if he had not twitched his line so often in anger at the slow-going fish, and sworn against them for not biting, roundly enough to terrify them out of all such intentions, if they had ever possessed any ! How pleasant it was there beside Pope's " Kennet swift, for silver eels renowned," rushing through the sunny meadow lands of Berkshire ; lingering on its way, beneath the chequered shadows of the oaks and elms, that rival their great neighbours, the beech- woods of Bucks ; dashing swiftly, with busy joyous song, under the rough-hewn arch of some picturesque rustic- bridge ; flowing clear and cool in the summer sun through the fragrant woodlands and moss-grown orchards, the nest- ling villages and quiet country towns, and hawthorn hedges dropping their white buds into its changeful gleaming waters ! How pleasant it was, fishing for jack among our Kennet meadows, lying under the pale willows and the dark wayfaring tree with its white starry blossoms, while the cattle trooped down to drink, up to their hocks in the flags and lilies and snowflakes fringing the river's edge ; and the air came fresh and fragrant over the swathes of new-mown grass and the crimson buds of the little dog- roses ! Half its beauty, however, was lost upon us, with our boyish density to all appeals made to our less material senses ; except, indeed, upon De Vigne, who stopped to have a glance across country as he stood trolling, spinning the line with much more outlay of strength and vehemence than was needed, or landing every now and then a ten- pound pike, with a violent anathema upon it for having dared to dispute his will so long ; while little Curly lazily whipped the water, stretched full length on a fragrant bed of wild thyme. What a pretty child he was, poor little fellow ; more like one of Pompadour's pages, or a boy-hero 8 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. of the Trouveres, with his white skin and his violet eyes, than an every-day slang-talking, lark-loving English lad ! " By George ! what a handsome girl," said De Vigne, taking off his cap and standing at ease for a minute, after landing a great jack. " I'm not fond of dark women generally, but 'pon my life she is splendid. What a con- tour ! What a figure ! Do for the Queen of the gipsies, eh ? "Why the deuce isn't she this side of the river ?" The object of his admiration was on the opposite bank, strolling along by herself with a certain dignity of air and stateliness of step which would not have ill become a duchess, though her station in life was probably that of a dressmaker's apprentice, or a small shopkeeper's daughter, at the very highest. She was as handsome as one of those brunette peasant beauties in the plains of La Camargue, with a clear dark skin which had a rich carnation glow on the cheeks ; large black eyes, perfect in shape and colour ; and a form such as would develop with years— for she was now probably not more than sixteen or seventeen — into full Junoesque magnificence. " By Jove ! she is very handsome ; and she knows it, too," began De Yigne again. "I have never seen her about here before. I'll go across and talk to her." Gro lie assuredly would have done, for female beauty was De Yigne's weakness; but at that minute a short, square, choleric-looking keeper came out of the wood at our back, and went up to little Curly. " Hallo, you there — you young swell ; don't you know you are trespassing?" " No, I don't," answered Curly, in his pretty soft voice. " Don't you know you're on Mr. Tressillian's ground?" sang out the keeper. " Am I. ? Well, give my love to him, and say I shall be very happy to give him the pleasure of my company at dinner to-night," rejoined Curly, imperturbably. ' : You impertinent young dog — will you march off this 'ere minute !" roared the bellicose guardian of Mr. Tres- sillian's rights of fishery. " Wouldn't you like to see me ?" laughed Curly, flinging his marchbrown into the stream. " Curse you, if you don't, I'll come and take your rod away," sang out the keeper. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 9 "Will you really ? That'll be too obliging, you look so sweet and amiable as it is," said Curly, with a provoking smile on his girlish little face. " Yes, I will ; and take you up to the house and get you a month at the mill for trespass, you abominable little devil!" vowed his adversary, laying his great fist on Curly's rod ; but the little chap sprang to his feet and struck him a vigorous blow with his childish hand, which fell on the keeper's brawny form, much as a fly's kick might on the Apollo Belvidere. The man seized him round the waist, but Curly struck out right and left, and kicked and struggled with such hearty good will, that the keeper let him go ; but, keeping his hand on the boy's collar, he was about to drag him up to the lord of the manor, whose house stood some mile distant, when, at the sound of the scuffle, De Vigne, intent upon watching his beauty across the Kennet, swung round to Curly's rescue : the boy being rather a pet of his, and De Vigne never seeing a fight between might and right without striking in with a blow for the weak one. " Take your hands off that young gentleman ! Take your hands off, do you hear ? or I will give you in charge for assault." " "Will yer, Master Stilts," growled the keeper, purple with dire wrath. " I'll give you in charge, you mean. You're poaching — ay, poaching, for all yer grand airs ; and I'll be hanged if I don't take you and the little uns, all of yer, up to the house, and see if a committal don't take the rise out of yer, my game cocks !" Wherewith the keeper, whom anger must have totally blinded ere he attempted such an indignity with our senior pupil, whose manorial rights stretched over woods and waters twenty times the extent of Boughton Tressillian's, let go his hold upon Curly, and turned upon De Vigne, to collar him instead. De Vigne's eyes flashed, and the blood mounted hot over his temples, as he straightened his left arm, and received •him by a plant in the middle of his chest, with a dexterity that would have done no discredit to Tom Sayers. Down went the man under the tremendous punishing, only to pick himself up again, and charge at De Vigne with all the fury which, in such attacks, defeats its own ends, and IO GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. makes a man strike wildly and at random. De Yigne however had not had mills at Eton, and rounds with bargees at Little Surley, without becoming a boxer, such as would have delighted a Eing at Moulsey. He threw himself into a scientific attitude ; and, contenting himself with the defensive for the first couple of rounds, without being touched himself, caught the keeper on the left temple, with a force which sent him down like a felled ox. There the man lay, like a dog, on the thyme and ground-ivy and wood- bine, till I fancy his conqueror had certain uncomfortable suspicions that he might have killed him. So he lifted him up, gave him a good shake, and finding him all right, though he was bleeding profusely, was frightfully vengeful, and full of most unrighteous oaths, though not apparently willing to encounter such another round, De Yigne pushed him on before him, and took him up to Mr. Tressillian's to keep his word, and give him in charge. "Weive Hurst, Boughton Tressillian's manor-house, was a fine, rambling, antique old place, its facade looking all the greyer and the older in contrast to the green lawn, with its larches, fountains, and flower beds which stretched in front. The powdered servant who opened the door looked not a little startled at our unusual style of morning visit; but gave way before De Yigne, aud showed us into the library, where Mr. Tressillian sat — a stately, kindly, silver-haired old man. De Yigne sank into the easy chair wheeled for him, told his tale frankly and briefly, demonstrated, as clearly as if he had been a lawyer, our right to fish on the highway side of the river (an often-disputed point for anglers"), and the consequent illegality of the keeper's assault. Boughton Tressillian was open to conviction, though he ivas a county magnate and a magistrate, admitted that he had no right over that part of the Kennet, agreed with De Yigne that his keeper was in the wrong, promised to give the man a good lecture, and apologised to his visitor for the interference and the affront. " If you will stay and dine with me, Mr. De Yigne, and your young friends also, it will give me very great pleasure ;" said the cordial and courteous old man. " I thank you. We should have been most happy," re- turned our senior pupil ; " but as it is, I am afraid we shall be late for Dr. Primrose." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. II " For Dr. Primrose ?" exclaimed Tressillian, involuntarily. " Tou are not " " I am a pupil at the Chancery," laughed De Yigne. Our host actually started; De Yigne certainly did look very little like a pupil of any man's ; but he smiled in return. " Indeed ! Then I hope you will often give me the plea- sure of your society. There is a billiard-table in wet weather, and good fishing and shooting in fine. It will be a great kindness, I assure you, to come and enliven us at Weive Hurst a little." " The kindness will be to us," returned De Vigne, cor- dially. " Grood-day to you, Mr. Tressillian ; accept my best thanks for your " A shower of roses, lilies, and laburnums, pelted at him with a merry laugh, stopped his harangue. The culprit was a little girl of about two years old, standing just outside the low windows of the library — a pretty child, with golden hair waving to her waist, and no end of mischief in her dark blue eyes. Unlike most children, she was not at all frightened at her own misdemeanours, but stood her ground, till Boughton Tressillian stretched out his arm to catch her. Then, she turned round, and took wing as rapidly as a bird off" a bough, her clear childish laughter ringing on the summer air ; while De Yigne gave chase to the only child in his life he ever deigned to notice, justly thinking children great nuisances, and led her prisoner to the library, holding the blue sash by which he had caught her. " Here is my second captive, Mr. Tressillian — what shall we do to her?" Boughton Tressillian smiled. " iUma, how could you be so naughty ? Tell this gentle- man you are a spoilt child, and ask him to forgive you." She looked up under her long black lashes half shyly, half wickedly. " Signor, perdonatemi /" she said, with a mischievous laugh, in broken Italian, though how a little Berkshire girl came to talk Neapolitan instead of English I could not imagine. " Alma, you are very naughty to-day," said Tressillian, half impatiently. " Why do you not speak English ? Ask his forgiveness properly." " I will pardon her without it," laughed De Yigne. " There, Alma, will you not love me now ?" 12 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. She pushed ner sunny hair off her eyes and looked at him — a strangely earnest and wistful look, too, for so young a child. " Si I Alma vi ama ? " she answered him with joyous vivacity, pressing upon him with eager generosity some geraniums the head-gardener had given her, and which but a moment ago she had fastened into her white dress with extreme admiration and triumph. " Bravo !" said Curly, as five minutes afterwards we passed out from the great hall door. " Tou are a brick, De Yigne, and no mistake. How splendidly you pitched into that rascally keeper !" De Yigne laughed. " It was a good bit of fun. Always stand up for your rights, my boy ; if you don't, who will ? I never was done yet in my life, and never intend to be." With which wise resolution the senior pupil struck a fusee and lit his pipe ; reaching home just in time to dress, and hand Arabella in to dinner, who paid him at all times desperate court, hoping, doubtless, to make such an impres- sion on him with her long ringlets, and bravura songs, as might trap him in his early youth into such " serious " action as would make her mistress of Yigne and its long rent-roll. That Granville saw no more of her than he could help in common courtesy, and paid her not so much atten- tion as he did to her King Charles, was no check to the young lady's wild imaginings. At eight-and-twenty women grown desperate don't stick to probabilities, but fly their hawks at any or at all quarries, so that " peradventure they may catch one !" Weive Hurst proved a great gain to us. Tressillian was as good as his word, and we were at all times cordially welcomed there, when the Doctor gave us permission, to shoot and fish and ride about his grounds. He grew extremely fond of De Yigne, who, haughty as he could be at times, and impatient as he was at any of the Doctor's weak attempts at coercion, had a very winning manner with old people ; and played billiards, heard his tales of the Eegency, and broke in his colts for him, till he fairly won his way into Tres- sillian's heart. It was for De Yigne that the butler was always bid to bring the Steinberg and the 1815 port ; De Yigne, to whom he gave a mare worth five hundred sovs., the most beautiful piece of horse-flesh ever mounted ; De GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 13 Vigne, who might have knocked down every head of game in the preserves if he had chosen ; De Vigne, to whom little Alma Tressillian, the old man's only grand-child, and the future heiress, of course, of TVeive Hurst, presented with the darling of her heart — a donkey, minus head or tail or panniers. But De Yigne did not avail himself of the sport at AVeive Hurst so much as he might have done had he no other game in hand. His affair with TressilHan's keeper had prevented his going to make impromptu acquaintance with the hand- some girl across the Kennet ; but she had not slipped from his mind, and had made sufficient impression upon him for him to try the next day to see her again in Frestonhills, and find out who she was and where she lived, two questions he soon settled, by some means or other, greatly to his own satisfaction. The girl's name was Lucy Davis ; whence she came nobody knew or perhaps inquired ; but she was one of the hands at a milliner's in Frestonhills, prized by her employers for her extreme talent and skill, though equally detested, I believe, for her tyrannous and tempestuous temper. The girl was handsome enough for an Empress ; and had wonderful style in her when she was dressed in her Sunday silks and cashmeres, for dress was her passion, and all her earnings were spent in imitating the toilettes she assisted in getting up to adorn the rectors' and lawyers' wives of Frestonhills. " The Davis " was handsome enough to send a much older man mad after her ; and De Yigne, after meeting her once or twice in the deep shady lanes of onr green Berkshire, accompanied her in her strolls, and — fell in love with her, as De Vigne had a knack of doing with every handsome woman who came near him. We all adored the stately, black-eyed, black-browed Davis, but she never deigned any notice of our boyish worship : and when De Vigne came into the field, we gave up all hope, and fled the scene in desperation. The Doctor, of course, knew nothing of the affair, though almost every one else in Frestonhills did, especially the young bankers and solicitors and grammar- school assistant-masters, who swore at that " cursed fellow at the Chancery " for monopolising the Davis — especially as the " cursed fellow" treated them considerably de haut en has. De Vigne was really in love, for the time being ; one of those hot, vehement, short-lived attachments natural to his 14 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. age and character ; based on eye-love alone, for the girl bad nothing else lovable about her, and had one of the worst tempers possible ; which she did not always spare even to him, and which when his first glamour had a little cooled, made De Vigne rather glad that his departure from Fres- tonhills was drawing near, some four months after he had seen her across the Kennet, and would give him an oppor- tunity to break oft* his liaison, which he otherwise might have found it difficult to make. The evening of the day which had brought the letter which announced him as gazetted to the — th P. TV. 0. Hussars : little Curly and I, having been sent with a mes- sage to a neighbouring rector from the Doctor, were riding by turns on Miss Arabella's white pony, talking over the coming holidays' " vacation," as old Joey called them, and of the long sunny future that stretched before us in dim golden haze, — so near, and yet so far from our young longing eyes — when De Yigne's terrier rolled out of a hedge, and jumped upon us. " Holloa !" cried Curly, " where' s your master, eh boy? There he is, by Jove! Arthur, talking to the Davis. "What prime fun ! I wish I dare chaff him !" Curly, being on the pony's back, could see over the hedge ; I could not, so I swung myself upon an elm-bough, and saw at some little distance De Vigne and Lucy Davis in very earnest conversation, or rather, as it seemed to me, altercation ; for De Yigne was switching the long meadow grass impatiently with his cane, looking pale and annoyed, while the girl Davis stood before him, seemingly in one of those violent furies which reputation attributed to her, by turns adjuring, abusing, and threatening him. Curly and I stayed some minutes looking at them, for the scene piqued our interest, making us think of Eugene Sue, and Dumas, and all the love scenes we had devoured, when the Doctor supposed us plodding at the Pons Asinorum or the De Officiis : but we could make nothing out of it, except that De Vigne and the Davis were quarrelling ; and an intuitive perception, that the senior pupil would not admire our playing the spy on him, made me leave my elm-branch, and Curly start oft* the pony homewards. That night De Vigne was silent and gloomy in the drawing-room : gave us but a brief " Good night," and shut GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 15 his bedroom door with a bang; the next morning, however, he seemed all right again, as he breakfasted for the last time in the old Chancery. " "What a lucky fellow you are, De Tigne !" sighed Curly, enviously, as he stood in the hall, waiting for the fly to take him to the station. He laughed : " Oh, I don't know ! We shall see if we all say so this time twenty years ! If I could foresee the future, I wouldn't : I love the glorious uncertainty ; it is the only sauce piqiiante one has, and I can't say I fear fate very much !" And well he might not at eighteen ! Master, when he came of age, of a splendid fortune, his own guide, his own arbiter, able to see life in all its most deliciously attractive forms, truly it seemed that he, if any one, might trust to the sauce piqiiante of uncertain fate ? Qui lira, verra. Off he went by the express with his portmanteaus, lettered, as we enviously read, " Granville de Vigne, Esq., — th P. W. O. Hussars ; " off with Punch and an Havannah to amuse him on the way, to much more than Exeter Barracks, — on the way to Manhood; with all its chances and its changes, its wild revels and its dark regrets, its sparkling champagne-cup, and its bitter aconite lying at the dregs ! Off he went, and we, left behind in the dull solitude of academic Erestonhills, watched the smoke curling from the engine as it disappeared round the bend of a cutting, and wondered in vague schoolboy fashion what sort of thing De Yigne would make of Life. CHAPTEE II. " A SOUTHERLY WIND AND A CLOUDY SKY PROCLAIM IT A HUNTING MORNING." " Confound it, I can't cram, and I won't cram, so there's an end of it!" sang out a Cantab one fine October morning, flinging Plato's Republic to the far end of the room, where it knocked down a grind-cup, smashed a punch-bowl, and I 6 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. cracked the glass, that glazed the charms of the last pet of the ballet. The sun streamed through the oriel windows of my rooms in dear old Trinity. The roaring fire crackled, blazed and chatted away to a slate-coloured Skye that lay full-length before it. The table was spread with coffee, audit, devils, omelets, hare-pies, and all the other articles of the buttery. The sunshine within, shone on pipes and pictures, tobacco- boxes and little bronzes, books, cards, cigar-cases, statuettes, portraits of Derby winners, and likenesses of fair Anonymas — all in confusion, tumbled pell-mell together among sofas and easy-chairs, rifles, cricket-bats, boxing-gloves, and skates. The sunshine without, shone on the backs, where out- riggers and four-oars were pulling up and down the cold classic muddy waters of the Cam, more celebrated, but far less clear and lovely : I must say, than our old dancing, rapid, joyous Kennet. Everything looked essentially jolly, and jolly did I and my two companions feel, smoking before a huge fire, in the easiest of attitudes and couches, a very trifle seedy from a prolonged Wine the night previous. One of them was a handsome young fellow of twenty, a threat deal too handsome for the peace of the master's daughters, and of the fair patisswres and fleuristes of Petty Cury and King's Parade ; the self-same, save some additional feet of height and some fondly-cherished whiskers, as our little Curly of Prestonhills. The other was a man of six- and-twenty, his figure superbly developed in strength and power, without losing one atom in symmetry, showing how his nerve and muscle would tell pulling up stream, or in a fast fifty minutes across country, or, if occasion turned up, in that "noble art of self-defence," now growing as popular in England, as in days of yore at Elis. " Cram ?" he said, looking up as Curly spoke. " Why should you ? What's the good of it ? Youth is made for something warmer than academic routine ; and knowledge of the world will stand a man in better stead than the quarrels of commentators, and the dry demonstrations of mathematicians." " Of course. Not a doubt about it," said Curly, stretch- ing himself. " I find soda-water and brandy the best guano for the cultivation of my intellect, I can tell you, De Vigne." GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. 17 " Do you think it will get you a double first ?" " Heaven forfend !" cried Curly, with extreme piety. " I've no ambition for lawn sleeves, though they do bring with them as neat a little income as any Vessel of Grace, who lives on clover, and forswears the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, can possibly desire." " You'll live in clover, my boy, trust you for that," said De Vigne. " But you won't pretend that you only take it because you're ' called ' to it, and that you would infinitely prefer, if left to yourself, a hovel and dry bread ! Don't cram, Curly ; your great saps are like the geese they fatten for foie gras ; they overfeed one part of the system till all the rest is weak, diseased, and worthless. But the geese have the best of it, for their livers do make something worth eating, while the reading- man's brains are rarely productive of anything worth writing." " Ah !" re-echoed Curly, with an envious sigh of assent. " I wonder whose knowledge is worth the most ; my old Coach's, a living miracle of classic research, who couldn't, to save his life, tell you who was Premier, translate ' Com- ment voics portez-vous V or know a Creswick from a Rubens, or yours ; who have everything at your fingers' ends that one can want to hear about, from the last clause in the budget to the best make in rifles ? " De Vigne laughed. " Well, a man can't tumble about in the world, if he has any brains at all, without learning some- thing; but, my dear fellow, that's all ' superficial,' they'll tell you ; and it is atrociously bad taste to study leading articles instead of Grreek unities ! Chacun a son gout, you know. That young fellow above your head is a mild, spec- tacled youth, Arthur says, who gives scientific teas, where you give roistering wines, wins Craven scholarships where you get gated, and falls in love with the fair structure of the CEdipus Tyrannus, where you go mad about the unfor- tunately more perishable form of that pretty little girl at the cigar-shop over the way ! Vou think him a muff, and he, I dare say, looks on you as an dme damnee, both in the French and English sense of the words. You both fill up niches in your own little world, you needn't jostle one another. If all horses ran for one Cup only, the turf would soon come to grief. Why ain't you like me ? I go on my own way, and never trouble my head about other people !" c iS GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Why am I not like you ?" repeated Curly, with a pro- longed whistle. " "Why isn't water as good as rum punch, or my bed-maker as pretty as little Rosalie ? Don't I wish I were you, instead of a beggarly younger son, tied by the leg in Granta, bothered with chapel, and all sorts of horrors, and rusticated if I try to see the smallest atom of life. By George ! De Vigne, what a jolly time you must have had of it since you left the Chancery !" " Oh, I don't know," said De Vigne, looking into the fire with a smile. " I've gone the pace, I dare say, as fast as most men, and there are few things I have not tried ; but I am not blase yet, thank Heaven ! AVhen other things begin to bore me, I turn back to sport — that never palls ; there's too much excitement in it. Wine one cannot drink too much of — I can't, at the least — without getting tired of it; women — well, for all the poets write about the joys of con- stancy, there is no pleasure so great as change there ; but with a good speat in the river, or clever dogs among the turnips, or a fine fox along a cramped country, a man need never be dull. The ping of a bullet, the shine of a trout's back, never lose their pleasure. One can't say as much for the brightest Rhenish that ever cooled one's throat, nor the brightest glances that ever lured one into folly ; though Heaven forbid that I should ever say a word against either !" " You'd be a very ungrateful fellow if you did," said I, " seeing that you generally monopolise the very best of both ! " He laughed again. " Well, I've seen life — I told you young fellows at Frestonhills, I trusted to my sauce piquante; and I must say it has used me very well hitherto, and I dare say always will as long as I keep away from the Jews. While a man has plenty of tin, all the world offers him the choicest dinner ; though, when he has overdrawn at Coutts's, his friends wouldn't give him dry bread to keep him out of the union ! Be able to dine en prince at home, and you'll be invited out every night of your life ; be hungry au troisihne, and you must not lick the crumbs from under your sworn allies' tables, those jolly good fellows, who have surfeited themselves at yours many a time. Oh yes, I enjoy life ; a man always can as long as he can pay for it !" With which axiom De Vigne rose from his rocking-chair, laid down his pipe, and stretched himself. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 19 " It looks fine out yonder. Our club think of challenging your University Eight for love, good will, and — a gold cup. AVe never do anything for nothing in England ; if we play, we must play for money or ornaments : I should like to do the thing for the sake of the fun, but that isn't a general British feeling at all. Money is to us, all that glory was to the Romans, and is to the Erench. Grenius is valued by the money it makes ; artists are prized by the price of their pictures. If the nation is grateful, once in a hundred years, it votes — a pension; and if we want to have a good-humoured contest, we must wait till there are subscriptions enough to buy a reward to tempt us ! Come along, Arthur, let's have a pull to keep us in practice ? " We accordingly had a pull up that time-honoured stream, where Trinity has so often won challenge cups, and luckless King's got bumped, thanks to its quasi-Etonians' idleness. Where grave philosophers have watched the setting sun die out of the sky, as the glories of their own youth have died away unvalued, till lost for ever. Where ascetic reading- men have mooned along its banks blind to all the loveliness of the water-lily below, or the clouds above, as they took their constitutional and pondered their prize essay. Where thousands of young fellows have dropped down under its trees, dreaming over Don Juan or the Lotus-eaters ; or pulled along, straining muscle and nerve against the Head- Boat ; or sauntered beside it in sweet midsummer eves, with some fair face upraised to theirs, long forgotten, out of mind now, but which then had power to make them oblivious of proctors and rustication ! We pulled along with hearty good-will, aided by an oar with which, could we have had it to help us in the University race, we must have beaten Oxford out-and-out. Eor the Brocas, and Little Surlev, could have told you tales of that long, lofty, slashing stroke; and if, monsieur or madame, you are a " sentimental psycho- logist," and sneer it down as " animal," let me tell you it is the hand which is strong in sport, and in righteous strife, that will be warmer in help, and firmer in friendship, and more generous in deed than the puny weakling's who cannot hold his own. " By George !" said De Yigne, resting at last upon his oar, "is there anything that gives one a greater zest in life than bodily exertion ?" c 2 20 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. A sentiment, however, in which indolent Curly declined to coincide. " Give me," said he, " a lot of cushions, a hookah, and a novel ; and your ' bodily exertion ' may go to the deuce for me !" De Yigue laughed ; he was not over merciful on the pre- sent-day assumption in beardless boys of effeminacy, nil admirari-ism and blase indifference. He was far too frank himself for affectation, and too spirited for ennui ; at the present, at least, his sauce piqucnite had not lost its flavour. He had seen life ; he had hunted with the Pytchley, stalked royals in the Highlands, flirted with maids of honour, supped in the Breda Quartier, had dinners fit for princes at the Star and Garter, and pleasant hours in cabinets particu- Hers at Yefours and the Maison Doree. He and his yacht, when he had got leave, had gone everywhere that a yacht could go ; the Ionian Isles knew no figure-head better than his Aphrodite's of the E.Y.T.S. ; it had carried him up to salmon fishing in Norway, and across the Atlantic to hunt buffaloes and cariboos; to Granada, to look into soft Spanish faces by the dim moonlight in the Alhambra ; and to Venice, to fling bouquets upwards to the balconies, and whisper to Venetian masks which showed him the glance of Ions; almond eyes, in the riotous Carnival time. He had a brief campaign in Scinde, where he was wounded in the hip, and tenderly nursed by a charming Civil Service widow ; where his daring drew down upon him the admiring rebuke of his commanding officer, but won him his troop, which promotion brought him back to England and enabled him to exchange into the — th Lancers, technically the Dashers, the nom de guerre of that daring and brilliant corps. And now, De Vigne, who had never lost sight of me since the Frestonhills days, but, on the contrary, had often asked me to go and shoot over Vigne, when he assembled a crowd of guests in that magnificent mansion ; having a couple of months' leave, had run down to Newmarket, for the October Meet- ing ; and had come at my entreaty to speud a week in Granta, where, I need not tell you, we feted him, and did him the honours of the place in style. " Crash ! crash ! went the relentless chapel-bell the next morning, waking us out of dreamless slumber that had endured not much more than an hour, owing to a late night of it with a man at John's over punch and vin.^t-et-un ; and GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 21 we had to tumble out of bed and rush into chapel, twisting on our coats and swearing at our destinies, as we went. The Yiewaway (the cleverest pack in the easterly counties, though not, I admit, up to the Burton, or Tedworth, or Melton mark) met that day, for the first run of the season, at Euston Hollows, five miles from Cambridge ; and Curly, who overcame his laziness on such occasions, staggered into his stall, the pink dexterously covered with his surplice, his bright hair for once in disorder, and his blue eyes most un- mistakably sleepy. " Who'd be a hapless undergrad ? That fellow De Yigne's dreaming away in comfort, while we're dragged out by the heels, for a lot of confounded humbug and form," lamented Curly to me as we entered ; while the readers hurried the prayers over, in that sing-song recitative in favour with collegemen — a cross between the drone of a gnat and the whine of a Suffolk peasant. We dozed comfortably, sitting down, and getting up, at the right times, by sheer force of habit ; or read Dumas, or Balzac, under cover of our prayer-books. The freshmen alone tried to look alive and attentive ; those better seasoned knew it was but a ritual, much such an empty, but time-honoured one, as the gathering of Fellows at the Signing of the Leases at King's ; or any other moss-grown formula of Mater ; and attempted no such thing ; but rushed out of chapel again, the worse instead of the better for the ill- timed devotions, which forced us, in our thoughtless youth, into irreverence and hypocrisy: a formula as absurd, as soulless, and as sad to see, as the praying windmills of the Hindoos, at which those " heads of the Church," who up- hold morning-chapel as the sole safeguard of Granta, smile in pitying derision ! When I got back to my rooms I found breakfast waiting, and De Vigne standing on the hearth-rug. Audit and hare-pie had not much temptation for us that morning ! we were soon in the saddle, and off to Euston Hollows. After a brisk gallop to cover, we found ourselves riding up the approach to the M.E.H.'s house, where the meet took place in an open sweep of grassland belted with trees, just facing the hall, where were gathered all the men of the Viewaway, mounted on powerful hunters, and looking all over like goers. There was every type of the genus sporting man ; stout, square farmers, with honest bull-dog physique, 22 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. characteristic of John Bull plebeian ; wild young Can tabs, mounted showily from livery-stables, with the fair, fearless, delicate features characteristic of John Bull patrician ; steady old whippers-in, very suspicious of brandy ; wrinkled feeders, with stentorian voices that the wildest puppy had learned to know and dread ; the courteous, cordial aristo- cratic M.F.H., with the men of his class, the county gentry ; rough, ill-looking cads, awkward at all things save crossing country ; no end of pedestrians, nearly run over themselves, and falling into everybody's way ; and last, but in our eyes, not least, the ladies who had come to see the hounds throw off. De Yigne exchanged his reeking hack for his own hunter, a splendid thorough-bred, with as much light action, he said, as a danseuse, and as much strength and power as a bargeman. Then we rode up to the M.F.H.'s wife, who was mounted on a beautiful little mare, and intended to follow her husband and his hounds over the Cambridge fences. " Who is that lady yonder ? " asked De Yigne, after he had chatted some moments with her. " The one on the horse with a white star on his forehead ? Lady Blanche Fairelesyeux. Don't you know her ? She is a widow, very pretty and very rich." " Yes, yes, I know Lady Blanche," laughed De Yigne. " She married old Eaire two years ago, and persuaded him to drink himself to death most opportunely. No, I meant that very handsome woman there, talkiug to your husband at this moment, mounted on a chesnut with a very wild eye." * " Oh, that is Miss Trefusis ! " "And can you tell me no more than her mere name?" "]Not much. She is some relation — what I do not know exactly — of that detestable old woman Lady Lantyre, whose ' recollections ' of court people are sometimes as gross anachronisms as the Comte de St. Germain's. They are staying with Mrs. St. Croix, and she brought them here ; but I do not like Miss Trefusis very much myself, and Mr. L'Estrange does not wish me to cultivate her acquaint- ance." "Then I must not ask you to introduce me?" said De Yigne, disappointedly. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 23 " Oh yes, if you wish. I know her well enough for that ; and she dines here to-night with the St. Croix. But there is a wide difference, you know, between making passing acquaintances, and ripening thein into friends. Come, Captain de Yigne, I am sure you w T ill ride the hounds off the scent, or do something dreadful, if I do not let you talk to your new beauty," laughed the young mistress of Euston Hollows, turning her mare's head towards the showy chesnut, whose rider had won so much of De Yigne's admiration. She was as dashing and magnificent in her way as her horse in his, with a tall and voluptuously-perfect figure, which her tight dark riding-jacket showed in all the beauty of its rounded outlines, while her little hat, with a single white feather, scarcely shadowed, and did not conceal, her clear profile, magnificent eyes, and lips by which Velasquez or Titian would have sworn. Splendid she was, and she had spared no pains to make the tableau ; and though to a keen eye, her brilliant colour, which was not rouge, and her pen- cilled eyebrows, which were tinted, gave her a trifle of the actress or the lorette style, there was no wonder that De Yigne, impressible as a Southern by women's beauty — and at that time as long as it was beauty, not caring much of what stamp or of what order — was not easy till Flora L'Estrange had introduced him to her. So we rush upon our doom ! So we, in thoughtless play, twist the first gleaming and silky threads of the fatal cord which will cling- about our necks, fastened beyond hope of release, as long as our lives shall last ! The Trefusis (as she was called in the smoking-rooms), surrounded as she was by the best men of the Yiewaway, ruling them by force of that superb form and face, bowed very graciously to De Vigne, and smiled upon him. He had caught her eyes once or twice before he had asked Mrs. L'Estrange who she was ; and now, displacing the others with that calm, unconscious air of superiority, the more irritating to his rivals that it was invariably successful, he leaned his hand on the pommel of her saddle, and talked away to her the chit-chat of the hour. The Trefusis in- tended to follow the hounds, as well as L'Estrange's wife and Lady Blanche Eairelesyeux ; so De Yigne and she rode off together as the hounds, symmetrical in form, and all in 24 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. good condition, though they were a provincial establishment, trotted away, with waving sterns and eager eyes, to draw the Euston Hollows covert. The cheery " Halloo !" rang over coppice and brushwood and plantation ; the white sterns of the hounds flourished among the dark-brown bushes of the cover ; stentorian lungs shouted out the " Stole away! — hark for-r-r-r-rard !" and as the finest fox in the county broke away, De Yigne struck his spurs into his hunter's flanks, and rattled down the cover, all his thoughts centered on the clever little pack that streamed along before him : while the whole field burst over the low pastures and oak fences and ox-rails, across which the fox was leading us. I dashed along the first three meadows, which were only divided by low hedges, with all the excitement and breathlessness of a first start ; but as we crossed the fourth at an easy gallop, cooling the horses before the formidable leap which we knew the Cam, or rather a narrow sedgy tributary of it, would give us at the bottom, I took time, and looked around. Before any of us, De Yigne was going along, as straight as an arrow's flight, working his bay up for the approaching trial ; never looking back, going into the sport before him as if he never had had, and never could have had, any other interest in life. The Trefusis, riding as few women could, sitting well down in her saddle, like any of the Pytchley or Belvoir men, was some yards behind him, " riding jealous," I could see ; rather a hopeless task for a young lady with a man known in the hunting-field as he was. The M.F.H. was, of course, handling his hunter in masterly style, his little wife keeping gallantly up with him, though she and her mare looked as likely to be smashed by the first staken-bound fence as a Sevres figure or a Parian statuette. Curly, who, thanks to his half- broken hunter, had split four strong oak bars, and been once pitched neck and crop into Cambridge mud, was coming along with his pink sadly stained ; while Lady Blanche and four of the men were within a few paces of him, and the rest of the field were scattered far and w T ide : quaint bits of scarlet, green, and black, dotting the short brown turf of the pasture lands. Splash ! went the fox into the sedgy waters of this branch of classic Cam, and scrambled up upon the opposite bank. For a second the hounds lost the scent ; then, thev threw GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 25 up their heads with a joyous challenge, breasted the stream, dashed on after him, and sped aloug beyond the pollards on the opposite side far ahead of us, streaming out like the white tail of a comet. De Vigne put his bay at the leap, but before he could lift him over, the Trefusis cleared it, with unblanched cheek and unshaken nerve. She looked back with a laugh, not of gay girlish merriment, such as Flora L'Estrange would have given, but a laugh with a certain gratified malice in it ; and he gave a muttered oath at being " cut down " by a woman as he landed his bay be- side her. 1 cleared it, so did the M.F.H., and, by some species of sporting miracle, so did his wife and her little mare. One of the yeomen found a watery bed among the tadpoles, clay, and rushes — it might be a watery grave, for anything I know to the contrary — and poor dear Curly was tumbled straight off his young one, and lay there, a helpless mass of human and equine flesh, while Lady Blanche lifted her roan over him, with a gay, unsympathising " Keep still, or Mazeppa will damage you ! " The run had lasted but ten minutes and a half as yet, and the hounds, giving tongue in joyous concert, led the way for those who could follow them, over blackthorn hedges, staken-bound fences, and heavy ploughed lands, while the fox was heading for Sifton AVood, where, once lodged, we should never unearth him again. On we went at a killing pace ; De Yigne leading the first flight, by two lengths, up to a cramped and awkward leap ; a high, stiff, strangling hedge, with a double ditch, almost as wide as a Leicestershire bullfinch. Absorbed as I was in working up my hunter for the leap, I looked to see if the Trefusis funked it. Not she ! — and she cleared it, too, lifting her chesnut high in the air, over the ugly blackthorn boughs ; but on the slippery marshy ground the horse fell, heavily and awkwardly, flinging her forward ; so at least they told me afterwards. The courtly jNI.F.H. stopped to offer her assistance, but she waved him on ; De Yigne had forgotten all his chivalry, and led straight ahead without looking back ; while picking up her hunter, the Trefusis remounted, nothing daunted by her fall. Lady Blanche's Mazeppa refused to leap ; and with a little petulant French oath, she rode further down, to try and find a gap; while my 26 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. luckless underbred one flung me over his head, rolling on his back in rushes, nettles, mud, and duckweed, and before either he or I could recover ourselves and shake off the slough, the fox was killed, and the whoop of triumph came ringing far over plantations and pastures on the clear Oc- tober air. With not a few unholy oaths, less choice than Lady Blanche's, I rode through the gap lower down, and made my way to the finish. The brush was awarded to De Yigne by the old huntsmaD, who might have given it to the Tre- fusis, for she was only a yard or two behind him ; but Squib had no tenderness for the sex ; inde'ed, he looked on them as having no earthly business in the field, and gave it with a gruff word of compliment to Granville, who of course handed it to Miss Trefusis, but claimed the right of sending it up to town, to be mounted on ivory for her. That dash- ing Amazon herself, sat on her trembling and foam-covered chesnut, with the dignity and royal beauty of Cynisca, re- turning in her chariot from the Olympic games, and De Yigne seemed to think nothing more attractive than this haughty, triumphant, imperial woman, who had skill and pluck worthy a Pytchley Nestor. 1 preferred little Flora's girlish pity for the "poor dear fox," and her pathetic lamen- tation to her husband that she " dearly loved the riding, but she would rather never see the finish." However, as De Yigne said the morning before, cliacun a son gout ; if we all liked the same style of woman where should we be ? "We rival and jostle and hate each other enough as it is, about that centre of all mischief, the Beau Sexe, Heaven knows ! We had another run that day, but it was a very slow affair. We killed the fox, but he made scarcely any run- ning at all, and we might have scored it almost as a blank day ; but for our first glorious twenty minutes, one of the fastest things I ever knew, from Euston Hollows up to Sifton Wood. Lady Blanche went back in ill-humour : missing that ditch had put the pretty widow in dudgeon for all the day ; but the Trefusis ! — it's my firm conviction that Mazeppa's galop could not have tired that woman. She rode, as De Yigne observed admiringly to me, with as firm a seat and as strong a hand as any rough-rider. Ex- cellence in his own art pleased him, I suppose, for he watched her more and more ; and rode back to Euston Hoi- GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 27 lows with her, through the gloaming, some nine miles from where the last fox was killed, looking down on her beauty with bold, tender glances. CHAPTEE III. IN THE ACADEMIC SBADES OF GKANTA. L'Estbange had bid us send his things over to his house, and make our toilettes there, after the day's sport ; and when we went down into the drawing-room we found the Trefusis sitting on an amber satin couch, queening it over the county men, a few college fellows or professors, and the borough Members, There were Mrs. St. Croix and her two daughters, showy, flighty, hawked-about women, and the G-ywn-Erlens, fresh, nice-looking girls ; and Lady Elanche, recovered from her ill-humour, and ready to shoot down any game worth or not worth the hitting ; and the Countess of Turquoise, who thought very few people knew what fun was, she told me, and instanced the dreary social torture called dining out ; and Mrs. Fitzrubric, a bishop's wife, staying in the neighbourhood, who considered the practice of giving buns at school feasts sensual, but showed herself no disrelish for champagne and mock turtle. And there was that " de- testable old woman," according to Elora, the Lady Eantyre, widow of an Irish peer, — a little, shrivelled, witty, nasty- thinking, and amusing-talking old lady, with a thin, sharp face, a hooked nose, very keen, bright, cunning, quizzical eyes, a very candid wig, and unmistakable rouge. She chattered away, in a shrill treble, of intimate acquaintance with court celebrities, some of whom certainly she could never have known, for the best of reasons, that they were dead before she was born ; and, having seen a vast deal of life, not all of the nicest, and picked up a good deal of information, she passed current in nine cases out of ten,, with her apocryphal stories and well-worn title, which covered a multitude of sins, as coronets do and charity doesn't. But she was " not visited " where her departed lord's rank might have entitled her to be, partly because she had a rather too marked skill at cards ; but chiefly, I 28 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. have no doubt, because she had no balance at any bank save Homburg and Baden, and was obliged to live by her wits, those wits being represented by the four honours and the odd trick. If poor old Fantyre had had a half-million or so at Barclay's, I dare say the charitable world would have let her buy oblivion for all the naughty secrets hidden in her old wigged head. " Diana turned to Venus, and no mistake," whispered Curly to me, as we looked at the Trefusis, her beauty heightened by her toilette, which was as tasteful as a Parisienne's, and would have chimed in with M. Chevreul's artistic notions. De Vigne, the moment he entered, crossed over to her, and, seating himself, began to talk. "Whether the lustrous gaze of his eyes, which knew how to express their admiration, got their admiration returned ; or whether she had wit enough to appreciate his conversation, where the true gold of sense, and talent, rang out in distinction to the second-hand platitudes, or Punch-cribbed mots, of the generality of people, I will not pretend to decide. At any rate, by some spell or other, he distanced his rivals by many lengths. They naturally spoke of the run of that morning, and the Trefusis, flirting her fan with stately movement, and turn- ing her full glittering eyes upon him, asked very softly, " What do you think you did this morning that pleased me?" De Yigne expressed his happiness that any act of his should do so. " It was when we took that ditch by Sifton Wood, and my stupid chesnut fell with me. Tou rode on, and never looked back ; your thoughts were with the hounds, not with me!" " Tou are more forgiving to my discourtesy than I can be to myself," smiled De Yigne. " "What you are so gene- rous as to pardon I cannot recal without shame." " Then you are very silly," she interrupted him. " A man in a time of excitement or danger should have something better to think about than a woman." " It is difficult, with Miss Trefusis before us, to think there can be anything better than a woman," whispered De Yigne. She looked at him and smiled, too ; with something of GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 29 malice in it as when she had cleared the Cam before him — a smile that at once repulsed, and fascinated ; annoyed and piqued him. Just then dinner was anuounced as served. L'Estrange took away my bewildering Countess of Tur- quoise ; Curly led in Julia St. Croix, with whom he seemed wonderfully struck, Heaven knows why, except that young fellows will go down before any battered or war-worn arrows at times ; and De Yigne gave his arm to the Trefusis, to whom he talked during all the courses with a devotion which must have interfered with his proper appreciation of the really masterly productions of the Euston Hollows chef, and the very excellent hock and claret of L'Estrange's cellar. Whether he had much response I cannot say — for I was ab- sorbed in looking at Lady Turquoise from far too respectful a distance to please me : but I should fancy not, for the Trefusis was never, that I heard, much famed for conversa- tion ; still someway or other she fascinated him with her basilisk-beauty, and when Flora gave the move she looked into his eyes rather warmly for an acquaintance not twelve hours old as yet. We were some little time before we followed them, for De Yigne and the Members got on the Eeform Bill, and did not get off it again in a hurry ; and though Lady Turquoise was bewitching, and the Trefusis' eyes magnificent, and the St. Croix very effective as they sang duets in studied poses, Chateau Margaux and unfet- tered talk proved more attractive to us. When we returned to the drawing-room, however, De Yigne took up his station beside the Trefusis again, paying her marked attention, while Flora L'Estrange sang charming little French chansons, and Julia St. Croix tortured us with bravuras, and the cruel Countess of Turquoise flirted with the county Member. What an intolerably empty-headed coxcomb, he seemed to me, I remember ! " What a fine creature that Trefusis is ! " said De Yigne, as he drove us back to Cambridge in a dog-cart. " On my life, she is a magnificent woman ! Arthur, she reminds me of somebody or other — I can't tell whom — somebody, I dare say, I saw in Spain or in Italv, or in India, perhaps." u Shall I tell you ? " said Curly. " Yes, pray do ; but you've never been about with me, old boy, how should you know ? " " I was with you at the Chancery, and I haven't forgotten Lucy Davis." 30 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " The Davis ! " exclaimed De Vigne, the light of old days breaking in upon him, half faded, half familiar. " By Jove ! she is something like that girl ; I declare I had forgotten that schoolboy episode, Curly. So she is like Her, — if Lucy had been a lady instead of a dressmaker. The deuce ! I hadn't bad taste then, boy as I was ! How many things of that kind one forgets " " Lucy didn't look like a woman who'd allow herself to be forgotten. She'd make you remember her by fair means or foul," said Curly. "What! do you recollect her so well, young one?" laughed De Vigne. " I must say, she seems to have made more impression upon you, than she has done on me. There was the very devil in that girl, poor thing, young as she was ! She was bold, bad, hardened to the core. But this Trefusis, Curly! — she does bring that girl to my mind, certainly, and there is in her something there was in Lucy Davis — a something intangible which repels, while her ex- terior beauty allures one. Perhaps it is in both alike — a cold heart within." " If we were only allured where there are warm hearts, we should keep in a blessed state of indifference," said I, thinking savagely of Lady Turquoise and that confounded county Member. " Hallo, Arthur ! what has turned you cynic ? " laughed De Vigne. " Only this very morning you were sentimenta- lising over the ' Lady of Shalott,' and wanting to inflict it on me ! " "Yes, and you stopped me with the abominable quotation, ' Ass, am I onion-eyed. ? ' I say, De Vigne, I wish you'd tell us how that affair with Lucy Davis ended ? Curly and T saw you quarrelling the day before you left." " I never quarrelled ! " said De Vigne, contemptuously. " I never do with anybody ; if they don't say what I like, I tell them my mind at once, and there's an end of it. But I never quarrel ! I met Lucy that evening as T was going into Frestonhills, and when I told her I was about to leave, she demanded — what do you think ? — nothing less than a promise of marriage ! Only fancy — from me to her / She even said I had made her one ! I've been guilty of many mad things, but never of one quite so insane as that. I told her flatly it was a lie — so it was, and it put me in a GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 31 passion to be saddled with such an atrocious falsehood ; I never can stand quiet, and see people trying to chisel me, you know. I offered to do anything she liked for her ; to provide for her as liberally as she chose. But not a word would she hear from me ; she was mad, I suppose, because she could not startle or chicane me into admitting the pro- mise of marriage, having possibly in her eye the heavy damages an enlightened court would grant to her ' innocent years' and her ' wrongs ! ' At any rate, she would not hear a word I said, but she poured her invectives into my ear, letting out that she had never loved me, but had intended to make me a stepping-stone to the money, and the rank, she was always pining after ; that, having tailed, she hated me, and that before she died, would be revenged." " By G-eorge ! what an amusing idea. She'd be puzzled to do it, I fancy." " Rather," laughed De Vigne, reining up his mare ; " but women say anything in a passion. Lucy Davis had gone straight out of my mind, till you said that handsome Tre- fusis made you think of her. I am glad the St. Croix and L'Estranges are coming to lunch with you, Curly; I want to see more of my imperial beauty ; and I must be back at Yigne by Saturday. Sabretasche, and Pigott, and Severn, and no end of men are coming down for the pheasants ; I wish you were, too, old fellows ! Grood night ; Au revoir ! " And De Yigne set us down before Trinity, and drove on to the Bull ; smoking, and thinking, very likely, of his superb Trefusis. Oh, those jolly Cambridge days ! the splendid manner in which we bumped Corpus and Katherine Hall, and carried off the Cup, to the envy of all the University ; the style in which we thrashed the Exeter Eight, with ignominy un- speakable, before the eyes of Henley ; the row and scuffle of Town and Grown rows, dear to the British passion for hard hits, where Curly knocked a cobbler down and then gave him in charge for an assault ; the skill with which that mis- chievous young Honourable caught his whip round the shovel-hat of a dean, raising that venerated article of dress in mid-air, and only escaping rustication by dashing on with his tandem-team too quickly for identification : were they not all written, in their day, among the records of Trinity men's larks ? 32 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. We used to vow we were confoundedly tired of Granta, and so I dare say we might feel at the time ; but how pleasant they were, those light-hearted college days ! — the honours of the Eight-oar ; the thrashing of the Marylebone Eleven ; the rattle cross country, for the Cesare witch, or the Cambridge Sweepstakes ; the flirtations of pretty shop- girls in Petty Cury, or Trumpington-street ; the raving politics of the Union, occasional prelude to triumphs, forensic and senatorial ; the noisy wines, where scanty humour woke more merriment than wittiest mots do twenty years after ; and Cambridge port passed with a flavour, that no olives or anchovies can give to Comet claret now. How pleasant they were, those jolly college days ! As I think of them, many kindly faces and joyous voices rise before me ! Where are they all ? Some lying with the colours on their breast beside the Euxine Sea, and along the line of the Pacific; some struck down by the assassin's knife in the temples at Cawnpore ; some sleeping between the sighing of the Delhi palms, or of the sad Atlantic waves ; some wasting classic eloquence on country hinds, in moss-grown village churches; some fighting the great fight, between science and death, in the crowded hospital -wards of London ; some wearing honour, and honesty, and truth from their hearts, in the breathless, up-hill press of the great world ; — all of them, living or dead, scattered far away over the earth, since those old days, in the shadow of the academic walls ! The time to lionise Cambridge, as everybody knows, is May and June, when the backs are all in their glory ; when the graceful spires of King's rise up against blue skies ; when the white towers of John's stand bosomed in green leafy shades ; when the Trinity limes fill the air with fragrance, and the sun peers through the great shadowy elm-boughs, of Neville's Court; and the brown Cam flows under its bridges, with water-lilies and forget-me-nots on its breast, gliding, as though conscious that it was in classic shades, through vistas of waving boughs, and past gray, stately college walls ; bringing into the grave haunts of Learning, the glad and vernal freshness of the Spring. May is the time for Cambridge ; still, even in October, we managed to give the L'Estranges, and the St. Croix, a very good reception. Women are always royally received by GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 33 Cantabs, and our guests were calculated to excite the envy of all the University. We did the lions with very little architectural appreciation ; but the science of eyes and smiles, is a pleasanter one than the science of styles and orders ; and we were quite as contented, and I have no doubt much better amused, than if, Ruskin a la main, we had been competent to pull to pieces the beauty of King's, and prate of " severity " and " purity." Happy in our barbarianism, we crossed the Bridge of Sighs with a laugh at old Fantyre's jokes ; strolled down the Fellowship Walk, telling Julia St. Croix, who had not two ideas in her head, that Bacon's Gate would, to a surety, fall down on her ; went in at Humility, through Virtue, and out at Honour, flirting desperately under those grave archways ; and hurried irreverently through the libraries, where reading- men, cramming in niches, looked up, forgetting their studies at the rustle of Lady Blanche's silk flounces, and Thor- waldsen's " Byron " seemed to glance with Juanesque admiration at the superb eye of the Trefusis, as she lifted them to that statue ; which does, indeed, as the poet himself averred, make a shocking nigger of him. " How strange it seems to me,'' said De Vigne, as enter- ing King's Chapel, we brushed against one of the senior Fellows, who had dozed away in college chambers all the prime of his life — " how incomprehensible, that men can pass a whole existence, in the sort of chrysalis state of which one sees so much in Universities. That muff is a Kingsman ; he obtained his fellowship by right, his degree without distinction. He lives on, fuddling his brains — which he has never worked since he got his Eton captaincy — with port, and playing solemn rubbers, and eating heavy dinners, till a living falls as fat as his avarice desires. He has nothoughts,no ambition, no spherebeyondtheacademic pale." " And no love, I dare say, save audit, and no mistress save turtle-soup," laughed Flora L'Estrange. " Perhaps he had once, one whom the selfish creeds of the Fellowship system parted from him long ago," said Curly, with a tender glance at that very practical-minded flirt, Julia St. Croix. " That's right, Curly," said De Vigne, amusedly, " make a romance of it. Fellows of colleges, with snuff, and whist and dry routine, are such appropriate subjects for sentiment ! D 34 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. But after all, Miss Trefusis, that man is not a greater marvel to me than one of those classical scholars, who is nothing hut a classical scholar, such as one meets here and in Oxford, binding down his ambitions to the elucidation of a dead tongue, exhausting his energies in the evolving of decayed philosophies, spending, as Pelham says, ' one long school-day of lexicons and grammars,' his memory the charnel-house for the bones of a lifeless language, his brain enacting the mechanical role of a dictionary or an encyclo- paedia, living all his life, without human aspirations or human sympathies, and in his death leaving no void among men, not missed even by a dog." " It would not suit you ? " asked the Trefusis, smiling. " No, no," chuckled the old Fantyre to herself, " he'll have his pleasure, I take it, cost him what it may." " J/" echoed De Yigne, " chained down to the limits of a commentator's studies ; or a Hellenist's labours ! Heaven forbid ! I love excitement, action, change ; a mill-wheel monotony would be the death of me. I would rather have storms to encounter, than no movement to keep me alive." " Are you so changeable, then ? " " Well, yes ! — I fancy I am. At least, I never met any- thing that could chain me long as yet." He laughed as he spoke, leaning against one of the stalls the sun streaming through the rich stained glass full upon his face, and his dark lustrous eyes, gleaming with amuse- ment, at a thousand reminiscences evoked by her speech. The Trefusis looked at him with a curious smile, perhaps of longing to chain the restless and wayward spirit, perhaps of pique at his careless words, perhaps of resolve to conquer and to win him ; it might have been hate, but — it certainly was not love ! Still Flora L'Estrange whispered to her husband : " She will marry him if she can." L'Estrange laughed, and looked at Granville and his com- panion, as they were (in appearance) discussing the subjects of the storied windows of Holy Henry's chapel, but talking, I fancy, of other topics than sacred art or history. " Quite right, my pet, but I hope she won't. I would as soon see him marry a tigress !" Tired of lionizing, we soon returned to Curly's rooms, where the best luncheon which could be had out of Cambridge shops and Trinity buttery, with London wine, and game GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 35 from his governor's preserves, was ready for us. Curly never did anything without doing it well, and his rooms were, I think, the most luxurious in all Granta, with his grand piano, his bronzes, and hi3 landscapes, mixed up with tobacco-pots, boxing-gloves, pipes, and portraits of ballet pets, and heroes of the Turf and the P. It. The luncheon was as merry as it was lavish — what college meal, with fast, pretty women at the board, ever was not ? — and while the Badminton and champagne- cup went round, and the gyps waited as solemnly and dreadfully as gyps ever do, on like occasions, a cross-fire of wit and fun and nonsense, shot across the table, and mingled with the perfume of Curly's hothouse bouquets, enough to bring the stones of time- honoured Trinity about our irreverent heads. De Vigne, in very high spirits, laughed and talked with all the brilliance for which society had distinguished him ; Mora and Lady Blanche were always full of mischievous repartee ; Curly and Julia St. Croix flirted so desperately, that if it had not been for the publicity of the scene, I believe the boy would have gone straight away into a proposal. Lady Fantyre, especially when the claret-cup had gone round freely, was so amusing that we forgot she was old, and the Trefusis, if she did not contribute equally to the conversation, sat beside De Vigne, darting glances at him from her large Spanish eyes, and looking handsome enough to be inspiration to anybody. " So you leave Cambridge to-morrow ? " she said, as they were waiting for the St. Croix carriage to take them home again. " Tes. If you were going to remain I should stay too ; but Mrs. St. Croix tells me you leave on Monday," said De Vigne, in a low tone, with an admiring glance, to which few women would have been insensible. She looked at him with that cold, malicious smile, which had I been he, would have made me very careful of that woman. " It is easy to say that, when, as I am going on Monday I cannot put you to the test !" " I never trouble myself to say what I do not mean, Miss Trefusis." She laughed ; she had found she had power to pique him ! " Then will you come and see me in town after Christ- mas?" D 2 3 6 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. "What he answered I know not, but I dare say it was in the affirmative ; he would hardly have refused anything to such a glance as she gave him. He lingered beside their carriage, and when it rolled away, stood in the Trinity gateway with a smile on his lips, twisting in his fingers a white azalea she had given him. But, two hours after, the flower was thrown into the college grate, and the bedmaker swept it out with the cinders ! So he w r as not very far gone ls yet. The next morning, after we had " done chapel," De Yigne, who had sent on his groom, hunters, and luggage the day before, walked down to the station, and we with him. "I wish you two fellows were coming to Yigne with me," he said, as we w r ent along. " You don't know what a bore it is having a place like that ! So much is expected of one. You belong to the county, and the county makes you feel the relationship pretty keenly, too. You must fill the house in the Eecesses. You must hear horrible long speeches from your tenantry, wishing you health and happiness, while you're wishing them at the devil. You must have confounded interviews with your steward, who looks fright- fully glum at the pot of money that has been dropped over the Goodwood, and hints at the advisability of cutting down the very clump of oaks that makes the beauty of the drawing- room view. Then, worst of all, you're expected to hunt your own county, even though it be as unfit as the Wash or the Black Forest, while you're longing to be with the Burton or Tedworth, following Tom Smith, or Tom Edge, or Pytchley men, who don't funk at every bullfinch !" " Do you hunt the Yigne pack, then, always ?" asked Curly. "I? No. I never said I did all those things. I only said they are expected of me, and it's tiresome to say no." " Then you must make love to the Trefusis, if you don't like ' No,' for her eyes say, ' Do do it,' as clearly as eyes can speak." He laughed. " Yes. I must admit she doesn't look a very impregnable citadel." " Not if you make it worth her while to surrender ?" " None of them surrender for nothing," said De Yigne, smiling. " With some, it's cashmeres ; with others, yellow boys ; with some, it's position ; with others, a wedding-ring. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 37 I can't see much difference myself, though I'd give cashmeres in plenty, and should be remarkably sorry to be chiselled into settlements." " I should fancy so," said Curly ; " only think of the annihi- lation of larks, liberty, fun, claret, latchkeys, oyster suppers, B. and S., and Bals Masques, expressed in those two doomed words, ' a married man !' To my mind, marrying's as bad as hanging, and equally puts a finish to all life worth sup- porting!" " Did you tell Julia your views, Curly ?" asked De Yigne, quietly. " Pooh ! stuff ! What's Julia to do with me ? the girl at the Cherryhinton public, is a vast lot better-looking," muttered Curly, with an embarrassment that made me doubt if the limes of Trinity had not heard different opinions enunciated with regard to the Holy Bond. — N.B. Julia St. Croix that day three months, tied herself to that same snuffy, portly, wine-embalmed Fellow, she had laughed at with us, in King's Chapel. To be sure he had then become rector of Snooze-cum-Rest ; and when Ruth goes to woo Boaz, we may always be pretty certain she knows he is master of the harvest, and has the golden wheat-ears in her eye, sweet innocent little dear though she look. " The Cherryhinton public ? I see — that's why skittles and beer have become suddenly delightful," laughed De Yigne. ""Why not?" asked Curly, meekly. " Skittles are no sin, and malt and hops are man's natural aliment ; and as for barmaids ! why, if one's denied houris and nectar, one must take to Jane and bitter beer, n'est-ce pas?" " Don't know," said De Yigne. " I prefer Quartier Breda and Champagne. As Balzac says, ' TJne femme, belle comme Galatee ou Selene, ne pour rait me plaire tant soit peu qiCelle soit crotteeT " "You forgot that once — you didn't repudiate Lucy Davis?" " Lucy was half a lady, in dress at least," laughed De Yigne, " and she got up uncommonly well, too ; however, that was in my schoolboy days. After philosophies and problems a kitchen-maid is pardonable ; and as for the young woman who presides over the post office, or the oyster-patties, she is perfectly irresistible ! The laissez-aller of the Paphian 38 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Temple, as the fine writers say, is so delightful after the stiff stoicism of the Porch!" " "Well, thank Heaven, the Paphian Temple is built every- where," said Curly, " and you find it under the taps of XXX. as well as in the gilt walls of a Breda boudoir ; or the poor w r retches who haven't the Breda gold key, would get locked into very outer darkness indeed! Here's the train just starting. By Jove ! that's lucky ! All right, old fellow. Here's Puck; tumble in old boy." And the " old boy " being " tumbled in " (he was a wiry blue terrier), De Yigne seated himself, and was rolled off en route to Vigne with a pretty brunette opposite him, who seemed imbued with extreme admiration of the terrier or — his master. Girls always begin by calling his children " little loves " to a widower, though the brats be as ugly as sin ; and by admiring his dog to a bachelor, though frightened to death it should snap at them ! Curly and I saw the train off and walked back to Granta, to console ourselves, first with billiards and beer at Brown's, then with some hard practice on the river. Eheu ! fugaces ! I belong to the Blue Jersey B.C., the first in England ; but somehow I don't feel the zest now that I used to feel, with " Time, Five !" " Well pulled, Five !" in my ear from our stroke (poor fellow ! he went down with jungle fever, and is lying in the banyan shadows, in Ceylon sand), and the shrill imperious shrieking, as the speed and bottom of Oxford told against us, of that wicked little dog Hervey, our Coxwain (hes a bishop now, and hush-hushes you, and strokes his apron, if you whisper the smallest crumb of fun over his capital Comet wine). Dear old Cambridge ! I wouldn't give a straw for a Cambridge man who didn't grow prolix as he talked, or wrote of her, and didn't empty a bumper of Guinness's or Moet — as his taste may lie — in her honour. A man may read, or he may not read, at college. I prefer the boy who knows how to feather his oar, to one who only knows Latin quantities and Greek unities ; but at any rate, whether he get first classes or not, he will find his level, measure his weight, and learn — unless he be obtuse indeed — that through college life, as through all other life, the best watchwords are Pluck, and Honour ! I learnt that much at least, and it is no mean lesson, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 39 though I must admit that, after having had mj cross taken away, been gated times innumerable, having done all the books of Virgil by way of penance (paying little Crib, my wine-merchant's son, to write them out for me), and been shown up before the proctor on no less than six separate occasions, I got rusticated in my fourth term, and finally took my name off the books. The governor laughed, pre- ferred the Pewter I had to show, and my share in winning the Challenge Cup, to any Bell's or Craven's scholarships, and paid my debts without a murmur. Too good to be true, you will say, ami lecteur ? No ; there are fathers who can remember they have been young ; though they are unspeak- ably rare — as rare as ladies who can let you forget it ! Now came the question, what should I do ? " Nothing," the correct thing, according to the governor. " Stand for the county," my mother suggested. " Go as attache to my cousin, the envoy to St. Petersburg," my relatives opined, who had triumphed, with much unholy glory, over my rustication, as is the custom of relatives from time imme- morial. As it chanced, I had no fancy for either utter dolce, the bray of St. Stephen's, or the snows of Russia, so I put down my name for a commission. We had plenty of interest to push it, and the " Gazette " soon announced, " — th P. O. Lancers, Arthur Yane Tierney Chevasney, to be Cornet, vice James Yelverton, promoted ;" and the — th, always known in the service as the Dashers, was De Yigne's regiment, my old Frestonhills hero. The Dashers were then quartered at Kensington and Hounslow, and the first person I saw as I drove through Knightsbridge was De Yigne's groom, Harris, riding a powerful thorough-bred, swathed in body-clothing, whom I recognized as the bay of the Euston Hollows run. As soon as my interview with the Adjutant and the Colonel were over, I found out De Yigne's rooms speedily. He had the drawing-room floor of a house in Kensington Gore, well furnished, and further crowded with crowds of things of his own, from Persian carpets bought in his travels, to the last new rifle sent home only the day before. I made my way up unannounced, and stood a minute or two in the open doorway. They were pleasant rooms, just as a man likes to have them, with all the things he wants about him, ready to his hand; no madame to make him miserable by putting his 40 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. pipes away out of sight, and no housekeeper to drive him distracted by sorting his papers, and introducing order among his pet lumber. A setter, a retriever, and a couple of Skyes, were on the hearthrug, (veritable tiger-skin) ; breakfast, in dainty Sevres, and silver, stood on one table, sending up an aroma of coffee, omelettes, and devils ; the morning papers lay on the floor, a smoking cap was hung on a Parian Yenus ; a parrot, who apparently considered him- self master of the place, was perched irreverently on a bronze Milton, and pipes, whips, pistols, and cards, were thrown down on a Louis Quinze couch, that Louise de Keroualle or Sophie Arnould might have graced. From the inner room came the rapid clash of small-swords, while " ToucJie, touclie, touclie! riposte! hola /" was shouted, in a silvery voice, from a man who, lying back in a rocking-chair in the bay-window of the front room, was looking on at a bout with the foils that was taking place beyond the folding- doors. The two men who were fencing were De Yigne and a smaller, slighter fellow ; the one calm, cool, steady, and never at a disadvantage, the other, skilful indeed, but too hot, eager, and rapid : for in fencing, whether with the foils or the tongue, the grand secret is to be cool, since, in pro- portion to your tranquility, grows your opponent's exasper- ation ! The man in the bay-window was too deeply interested to observe me, so I waited patiently till De Yigne had sent his adversary's foil flying from his hand. He turned with one of his sunny smiles : " Ah ! dear old fellow, how are you ? Charmed to see you. This is the best move you ever made, Arthur. Mr. Chevasney, Colonel Sabretasche, M. de Cheffontaine, a trio of my best friends. We only want Curly to make the jwrtie carree perfect. Sit down, old boy ; we have just breakfasted, I am sorry to say, but here are the things, and you shall soon have some hot chocolate and fresh cotelettes." While he talked he forced me into an arm-chair, and dis- regarding all my protests that I had already breakfasted twice — once at Longholme, and once at a station — rang for his man. De Cheffontaine, a French attache, flung himself on a sofa, and began with a mot on his own defeat ; the fellow in the bay-window got lazily out of his rocking-chair and strolled over to us. De Yigne took his meerschaum, and we were soon talking away as hard as we could, of the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 41 belles of that season, the pets of the ballet, Richmond, the Spring Meetings, the best sales in the Yard, the last matches at Lord's, the chances of Heliotrope's being scratched, the certainty that Yane Stevens's roan filly would lose the trotting-match, with other like topics of the Town and the Hour. Sabretasche was, I found, a Brevet Lieutenant- Colonel, and Major of the Dashers, and a most agreeable man he seemed, lying back iu his chair, making us laugh at witticisms which he spoke, quietly and indolently, in a soft, low, mellow voice. Had I been a woman that beautiful face would have done for me irretrievably, as, according to report, it had done for a good many. Reckless devil-may-care, the man looked, the recklessness of one who heeds nothing in heaven or earth; a little hardened by the world and its rubs, rendered cynical, perhaps, by injustice and wrong ; but in the eyes there lay a kindness, and in the mouth a sadness which betokened better things. He might have been thirty, five-and-thirty, forty. One could no more tell his age than his character, though, looking at him, one could fancy it true what the world said of him — that no man ever found so faithful a friend, and no woman so faithless a lover, as in Yivian Sabretasche. " Chevasney, who do you think is one of the reigning beauties up here ?" asked De Yigne, pushing me some cubas. " How should I know ? The Cherry hinton barmaid ? " " Don't be a fool." " The Trefusis, then?" " Of course. She is still living with that abominable old Irish woman. They're in Bruton-street ; — a pleasant house, only everybody wonders where the Peeress finds the needful. They give uncommonly agreeable receptions. Don't they, Sabretasche ? " " Oh, very! " answered the Colonel, with an enigmatical smile, " especially to you, I've no doubt ; and the only tax levied on one for the entertainment is to pay a few compli- ments to mademoiselle, and a few guinea points to my lad} r . I can't say all the guests are the best ton ; there are too many ladies designated by the definite article, and too many gentlemen with cordons in their button-holes ; but they know how to amuse one another, and the women, if not exclusive, are at least remarkably pretty. The Trefusis is more than pretty, especially smoking a cigarette. Shall 42 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. you allow her cigars when you're married to her, De Yigne?" " Not when I am." "There's an unj us t fellow ! How like a man that is!" cried Sabretasche. " What's charming in any other woman becomes horrid in his wife. Tou remind me of Jessie Villars : when her husband smokes, she vows the scent will kill her ; when Wyndham meets her on the terrace, taking his good-night pipe, she lisps there's nothing so delightful as the scent of Latakia ! Come, Mr. Chevasney, I don't mind prying into my friends' affairs before their faces. Have not De Yigne and the Trefusis had some nice little flirta- tion before now ? " "To be sure," I answered. "It began to be rather a desperate affair; the Trinity backs could tell you many a tale, I dare say. He came down for Diana, and forsook her for Yenus." " But you can't say, oid fellow, I ever deserted the Quiver for the Ceinture," cried De Yigne. " The Yiewaway was never eclipsed by the Trefusis ! " " I don't know that. Have you taken up the affair where you left it?" " I never reveal secrets that ladies share," said De Yigne, with a demure air," but I'll be very generous, Arthur. I'll take you to call on her." " Bien oblige. What do you think of this beauty, M. de Cheffontaine ?" I asked of the lively little Baron. " Oh ! " laughed he, " all your English women are superb, divine, when they are not prudes ! " " And that is a fault you cannot pardon ? " asked Sabre- tasche, with his low silvery laugh. " Nor you ! but one cannot reproach the Trefusis with it!" Sabretasche laughed again, and quoted " Non, jamais tourterelle N'aima plus tendrement. Comme elle etait fidele A — son dernier amant !" De Yigne did not appear best pleased ; he lifted his head to look out of the window into the park, and as he looked his annoyance seemed to increase. I followed his glance GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 43 and saw the Trefusis on a very showy bay, of not first-rate action, taking her morning canter. " Ah, talk of an angel, you know ! — there she is," said Sabretasche. rt Wise woman to show often en amazone ; it suits her better than anything. She has met little Jimmy Levison, and taken him on with her. Poor Jimmy ! be- tween her smiles and old Fantyre's honours he won't come off the better for those Bruton-street soirees. Why, De Vigne, you look quite wrathful ! You wouldn't be jealous of little Jimmy, would you ? " I don't suppose De Yigne was jealous of little Jimmy ; but I dare say he was not flattered to see the same wiles given to trap that very young pigeon, which were bestowed to lure a fiery hawk like himself. " It amuses me to see all those women taking their morn- ing rides," Sabretasche continued. " The Trefusis will tell us that she cannot exist without her morning trot on ' dear Diamond,' but, sans chute, she remembered that De Yigne would be pretty sure to be breakfasting by this window, not to mention that she had whispered to little Jimmy her wish to see his new grey hack. I always look under women's words as I look under their veils ; they mean them to embellish, but I don't choose they should hide." "How do you act, Colonel." laughed De Yigne, "when you come to a Shetland veil tied down very tight ? " " I never yet met one that hadn't some holes ! " said Sabretasche. " No women are long a puzzle ; they are too inconsistent, and betray their artifices by overdoing them. She is out of sight now, De Yigne. Would you like your horse ordered ? " De Yigne laughed. " Thank you, no. Do you go to the new opera to-night, Sabretasche?" " Yes ; though I should go with infinitely more pleasure, if I could get the glories of Gluck, and Mozart, instead of the sing-song ballads of Yerdi and Balfe." " Music is the god of his idolatry ! " said De Yigne, turn- ing to me. "It is positively a passion ! Your heaven will be composed of sweet sounds, eh, Sabretasche ? " " As yours of houris and of thorough-breds ? " " Perhaps ! I should combine Mahomet's and the Indian's ideas into one — almond eyes and a good hunting-ground! 44 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Look here, Arthur, at this ' Challenge.' That man yonder did it. Isn't he a clever fellow — too good to lie still in a rocking chair, and talk about women ? " I looked at the " Challenge " — a little marble statuette from Landseer's picture ; and product of the Colonel's chisel. It was really a wonderful little thing ; every minutia, even each fine point of the delicate antlers, being most beautifully and perfectly finished. " How immensely jolly to have such talent ! " said I, in- voluntarily expressing my honest admiration. " What a resource it must be — what a refuge when other things pall ? " He smiled at my enthusiasm, and raised his eyebrows. " Cui bono ? " he said softly, as he rose and pushed back his chair. The man interested me ; and when he and" the Baron where gone, I asked De Yigne what he knew of him, as we stood waiting for his tilbury, to go and call in Bruton- street. " Of Yivian Sabretasche ? I know much of him socially, little of himself; and of his history — if history he have — nothing. He is excessively kind to me ; honourable and generous in all his dealings ; a gentleman always. More of him I know not, nor, were we acquainted ten years, should I at the end, I dare say, know more." "Why?" " "Why ? For this reason — that nobody does. Hollings- worth and he were cornets together ; yet Hollingsworth is as much a stranger to the real man as you or I. There are some fellows, you know, who don't wear their hearts on their sleeves ; he is one, I am another. Men are like snow- balls : to begin with, it's a piece of snow, soft and pure and malleable, and easily enough melted ; but the snowball soon gets kicked about and mixed up with other snow, and knocked against stones and angles, and hurried, and shoved, and pushed along till, in sheer self-defence, it hardens itself into a solid, impenetrable, immovable block of ice ! " " Nonsense ! You are not that." "Not yet, thank God!" I should say he was not ! The passionate blood of six- and-twenty, was more likely to be at boiling point than at zero. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 45 CHAPTER IV. A SUBTLE POISON DRUNK IN" THE CHAMPAGNE AT AN OPEEA SUPPER. Very good style was the Bruton-street house, and very good style the Trefusis, with the rose light falling on her from the window, where she was surrounded by plants, and birds in cages and on stands, with a little fellow of the Guards, and a courtly French exile, lounging away their morning there. She looked up with a smile of conscious power, gave her hand tenderly to De Vigne, with a full sweep of her superb eyes under their thick fringes ; bent her head to me, and put her Pomeranian dog on his knee. Old Lady Fantyre was there playing propriety, if Propriety could ever be persuaded to let herself be represented by that hook-nosed, disreputable, detestable, amusing old woman, who sat work- ing away at the tapestry-frame, with her gold spectacles on, occasionally lifting up her little keen brown eyes, and min- gling in the conversation, telling the old tale of "ma jeunesse" of the Bath and the Wells, of Ombre and Qua- drille, Sheridan and Selwyn, Talleyrand and Burke, " old Q." and Lady Coventry. " I remember you at Cambridge, Mr. Chevasney, and our merry luncheon too," said the Trefusis, as if Cambridge be- longed to some dim era of her childhood, which it was astonishing she could recall at all. " What ! my dear," burst in Lady Pantyre, " you don't mean to say you remember all your acquaintances, do you ? If so, yell have enough to do." " Certainly not. But when they are as agreeable as Mr. Chevasney " " Of course — of course. Les presents ont toujours raison" continued the Viscountess, in her lively treble, " as true, by the way, that is, as its twin maxim, Les absents ont toujours tort; it would be hard, indeed, if we might not tell tales of our friends when they couldn't hear us! But I know ive used to give cuts by the dozen. I remember walking down the Birdcage Walk with Selwyn (poor dear Selwyn, 46 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. there isn't his like in this day ; I remember him so well, though I was but a little chit then !) and a man, a very per- sonable man, too — but Lord ! my dear, not one of us — came up and reminded G-eorge he had known him in Bath. "What do you think Selwyn did, my dear? "Why, stared him in the face, of course, and said, ' Well, sir, in Bath I may possibly know you again.' " " That beats Brummel, when a lady apologised for keeping him so long standing by her carriage : ' My dear lady, there is no one to see it!' " said De Vigne, laughing. " Abominable ! " cried the Trefusis. " If I had been that woman, I would have told him I had made sure of that, or I would not have hazarded my reputation by speaking to him ! " "Brummel would have been very willing to have been seen with you" said De Yigne, fixing his eyes on her, and he knew pretty well how to make his eyes talk. " There's not one of you men now-a-days like Selwyn, began the old raconteuse again, while the Trefusis bent her stately head to her boy Guardsman, and De Vigne balanced his cane thoughtfully on the Pomeranian's nose. " Tou talk of your great wit, Lord John Boninot, why he hasn't as much wit in his whole body as there was in poor dear G-eorge' s little finger ! Ah ! there isn't one half the verve among you new people there was in my young time. Where is the man among you, who can make laughter run down the table as my friend Sheridan could ? Which of you can move heads, and hearts, like Billy Pitt ? Where among those idle lads in the Temple, who smoke Cavendish, and drink Bass, till they think nothing better than tobacco and beer, shall I see another Tom Erskine ? Which among those brainless scribblers who print poems, that make one want a Tennyson's Dictionary only to under- stand the foolish adjectives in 'em, can write like that boy Byron, with his handsome face and his wry foot ? Lord ! and what a fuss there was with him when he was first made a lion ! And then to turn his coffin from the Abbey ! Such comic verses as he made on my parrot too, he and young Hobhouse ! " And old Fantyre, having fairly talked herself out of breath, at last halted; and De Vigne, annoyed first of all with little Jimmy in the morning, and secondly with the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 47 attention the Trefusis gave her Cornet, negleeted her for the Viscountess, with much parade thereof. " I fear you are right, madam," he said, laughing. " Ours is an age of general action rather than individual greatness. "We have a good catalogue of ships, but no Ulysses, no Atrides " " Ah ! I don't remember them ; they weren't in our set!" responded Lady Fantyre, naively. " Or perhaps," continued De Vigne, stroking his mous- taches with laudable gravity, " it is rather that education ig> diffused so much more widely that the particular owners of it are not so much noticed. Arago may be as great a man as Oalileo, but it is natural that a world which teaches the laws of gravitation in its twopenny schools, scarcely regards him with the same wonder as if they disbelieved in the earth's movement, and were ready to burn him for his audacity." " Ours is an age of science and of money," suggested the Frenchman, " whose chief aim is to economize labour and time ; an age in which everything is turned to full account, from dead seaweed to living brains." " Yes," said De Vigne, " we are eminently practical ; we extract the veratrin from crocuses, and value Brunei more than Bulwer ! We throw our millions into a scheme for cutting through an isthmus, but we should not spare our minutes to listen to the music of the spheres though Py- thagoras were resuscitated to teach us them. So best ! Many more of us find it of much greater importance to get quickly to India, than to wait for all the learning of the schools ; and Adam Smith, though infinitely more prosaic, is a much more useful philosopher than Bolingbroke." ""Why don't you stand for your county," asked the Trefusis, playing with her breloques, and looking truly magnificent in her rose-velvet setting. " Because I'm before my time," laughed De Vigne. " If I could have a select Cabinet of esprits forts I should be delighted to join them, and help them to seminate liberty and tolerance; but really to settle Maynooth grants, to quarrel on 'rags or no rags,' to settle whether we shall confine ourselves to ' corks squared for rounding ' or admit rounded corks into the country, to hear one noble lord blackguard his noble friend opposite, and one hon. member 48 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. split hairs with another hon. member — it would be beyond me, it would indeed ! I would as soon go every night to an old ladies' tea-fight, where bonnets were rancorously dis- cussed and characters mercilessly blackened over Souchong and muffiDs !" " Come !" said the Trefusis, " you find such fault with your generation, you should set to work and regenerate it ? Hunting with the Yiewaway, and lounging about drawing- rooms, won't do much towards improving your species ?" " Why should I ? As Sabretasche says, " Qui bono ? ' " answered De Vigne, annoyed at her sarcastic and nonchalant tone. " Then you have certainly no business to sit at home at ease and laugh at other men over your claret and cigars ! Why may not other geDiuses have equal right to that easy put off of yours, ' Cui bono V " " They have not equal right, if they have once assumed to be geniuses. Let a man assert himself to be something, be it a great man or a scoundrel, and the world expects him to prove his assertion. But an innocent man like myself, who troubles nobody; and never sets up for a mute in- glorious Milton, declining to sing, only because his audience isn't good enough for him ; has a right to be left to his claret and cigars, and not to be worried, because it happens he is not, what he never pretended to be." The Trefusis looked at him maliciously ; there was the very devil in that woman's eye. " And are you content to be lost in the bouquet of the wine, and buried in the smoke of the tobacco ? Are you satisfied with spending your noble existence in an allegorical lounging chair, picking out the motes and never remember- ing the beam ?" The tone was provoking in the extreme ; it put up De Yigne's blood, as the first touch of the snaffle does a young thorough-bred. He stroked his long moustaches. " That depends upon circumstances. When I have had my full swing of devilries, extravagances, dissipations, pleasures, Trefusises, and other charming flowers which beset the path of youth, I may, perhaps, turn to something better-!" It was an abominably rude speech ; and though De Vigne spoke in the soft, courteous tone he used to all women, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 49 whether peeress or peasant, eighty or eighteen, it had its full effect on the Trefusis. She flushed deeply, then turned pale, and I should not have cared to provoke the malignant glance those superb eyes shot upon him. She took no notice, however, and, turning to her Gruardsman, thanked him for a bouquet which he had sent to her, and pointed it out to him, set on a console near. De Vigne drove the tilbury from the door supremely gloomy and silent. "I say, Arthur," he said at last, "Victor Hugo says, somewhere, that we are women's playthings, and women are the devil's. I fancy Satan will get the worst of the bargain, don't you?" "The deuce I do ! — that's to say, if the war's in words ; though I must say you polished off the Trefusis neatly enough just now. Did you see the look she gave you ?" " Yes," said De Vigne, shortly. " However — anything's better than a milk-and-water woman. I should grow sick of a girl who always agreed with me. They look so pretty when their blood's up ! Where shall we go now ? Suppose we turn into the Yard, and take a look at those steel greys Sabretasche mentioned ? I want a new pair to run tandem. And then we can take a turn or two round the King, and I'll show you the women worth cultivating, young one." "We followed out his programme, bargained for the greys at two hundred and fifty — and immensely cheap, too, for they were three-parts thorough-bred, with beautiful action — drove half-a-dozen times round the Ring, where fifty pair of bright eyes gleamed softly on De Vigne, from the Marchioness of Hautton in her stately barouche, to little Coralie of Her Majesty's ballet in her single horse brougham ; and then went to mess, where, the Dashers (being as crack a corps as the Tenth, the Eleventh, or the Blues), had a peculiar pattern for their plate, a Cordon bleu for their cook, and a good claret connoisseur in their Colonel. The claret was better than Cambridge port, the dinner was rather superior to Hall, and the men furnished wit choicer than Monckton's Joe Miller jokes, and Phil Hervey's Simon the Cellarer, at our AVines. I liked this dash of my new life at any rate, and I regretted leaving the table when Sabre- tasche invited me to go with him to the Opera, for I didn't E 50 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. care two pins for music ; I did not dare, however, to refuse the first favour from such an exclusive man, and, besides, having just seen little Coralie in the King, I consoled myself with the thought of the ballet to be given in the new opera. De Yigne was going, too, for reasons best known to himself; and went to his stall, while I followed the Colonel to his box, in the middle of the second act. Sabretasche spoke not at all while G-risi was on the stage, and I put my lorgnon up and took a glance round the house. I always think Her Majesty's, on a grand night, with all the boxes filled with the handsomest and best-dressed women in town, one of the prettiest sights going ; and I did the grand tier deliberately, going from loge to loge ; and in one of its centre boxes, with the scarlet folds of an opera cloak floating round her, and scarlet camellias against her white lace dress, and in her rich dark hair, sat the Trefusis, with little bright-eyed, hooked-nosed, bewigged, and black Mechlin' d, old Fantyre as a foil. Presently the Trefusis raised her bouquet to her lips quite carelessly, to take its perfume, I presume ! I happened to look down at De Vigne : his lorgnon was fixed on her too. He smiled, left his stall, and in a minute or two I saw him displacing young Lascelles of the Blues and bending down over the Trefusis. " What do you think of that affair, Chevasney ?" said the Colonel to me, as the curtain came down. " I don't know how it stands. Enlighten me, will you ? " Sabretasche shook his head. " I know no more than yourself. De Yigne, like all wise men, is silent upon his own business, and I never attempt to pry into it. I see the thing on its surface, and it seems to me that the lady is serious, whatever he be." " Serious ? Oh ? hang it ! he can't be serious." " Tant pis pour lui if he be," said the Colonel, smiling. " But, my dear boy, you do not know women as yet ; how should you, in two-and-tvventy years, have read that enig- matical book, which is harder to guess at than Sanscrit or Black letter ? You can never fathom the deep game that a clever one like the Trefusis, if I mistake her not, can play when she chooses." 2, the most knowing hand in Granta — I, who if I did GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 51 pique myself on any one thing, piqued myself on my skill and knowledge in managing the beau seoce — I, to be told I did not know women ! I pocketed the affront, however, as best I might, for I felt a growing respect for the Colonel, with his myriad talents, his brilliant reputation, and mys- terious reserve ; and told him I did not believe De Yigne cared an atom more for the Trefusis than for twenty others before her. " I hope so," he answered ; " but that chess they are plaving yonder ends too often in checkmate. However, we will not prophesy so bad a fate for our friend ; for worse he could not have than to fall into those soft hands. By the way, though, her hands are not soft, they are not the hands of a lady." "You have a bad opinion of the Trefusis, Colonel?" a Not of the Trefusis in particular." "Of her sex, then?" " I may have cause," he answered, briefly. " How full the house is, and how few of those people come for music ! How few of them would care if it were dance trash of D'Albert's, if the dance-music chanced to be most in fashion. Make it the rage, and three-quarters of the music lovers here would run after a barrel-organ ground on that stage, as they are now doing after Mario. Half England, if the Court, the Peerage, and Belgravia voted the sun a bore, and a rushlight comme il faut, would instantly shut their shutters and burn rushlights while the fashion lasted ! And then people care for the world's opinion !" " Because they can't get on without it." " True enough ! — they despise it, but they must bow to it before they can use it and turn it to their own ends ; those must, at least, who live by sufferance on it, and through it. Thank Grod, I want nothing from it, and can defy it at my leisure ; or rather forget and neglect it ; defying is too much trouble. A man who defies is certain to raise a hue and cry at his heels, whose bray and clamour is as senseless as it is deafening, and no more able to declare what it has come out after than Dogberry. Ah, you are studying that girl in the fifth from the centre. That is little Eulalie Papillon. Does she not look a pretty, innocent dove ? Yet she will cost those three fellows with her more than a racing stud, and she is as avaricious as Harpagon ! e 2 52 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. I should like to make a computation of bow many of these people come for music. That old man there, who droops his head and takes snuff during the entr'actes ; those fellows on the ground-tier taking shorthand notes for the daily journals ; one or two dilettante ladies who really know some- thing of fugues and symphonies : those are all, I verily believe. Little Eulalie comes to show herself, and carry Bevan off to her petit souper, for fear any fairer Lais should pounce on him ; those decolletees and diamondized old ladies come because it is one of the Yards where their young fillies tell best, and may chance to get a bid. Lady Ormolu there, that one with marabouts in her hair, comes because her lord is a G-eorges Dandin. and she has no chance of meeting Villiers, who is her present lover, anywhere else. Mrs. Lacquers is here because there was a rumour that her husband's Bank would not stand, and he, who is a Bible Society president and vessel of grace, but who still keeps one eye open upon terrestrial affairs, has told her to exhibit here to-night, and be as lively as possible, with plenty of rubies about her, so that he may get off to Boulogne. Dear man ! he remembers ' Aide-toi et Dieu tfaidera.' " " Have you a private Belphegor in your pocket, sir ?" said I, dropping my lorgnon, " to help you unroof the houses and unlock your acquaintances' brains ?" " My Belphegor is Experience," laughed Sabretasche. "And now hush, if you please, Chevasney ; there is G-risi again, and as J come for music, though nobody else may, I like to be quiet." It was curious to note the change that came over his melancholy expressive countenance, as he listened to the prima donna, and I saw the gaze of many women fixed upon him, as, with his eyes half-closed, and his thoughts far away, he leaned back in his chair. They said he was dangerous to women, and one could hardly wonder if he were. A gallant soldier in the field ; a charming com- panion in club or mess-room ; accomplished in music, paint- ing, sculpture, as in the hardier arts of rifle and rod ; speaking most continental languages with equal facility; his manners exquisitely tender and gentle, his voice soft as the Italian he best loved to speak, his face and form of unusual beauty ; and, to back him, all that subtler art which is only acquired in the Eleusinia of the boudoir, no marvel GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 53 if women, his pet playthings, did go down before Vivian Sabretasche. He had been born in Italy, where his father, having spent what money he had at the green tables, lived to retrench — retrenchment being always synonymous in English minds with the Continent, though whether a palace, even a little tumbledown, ortolans, lachryma-christi, and nightly reunions, do tend to tighten purse-striugs and benefit cheque-books, is an open question. Luckily for Sabretasche, his uncle, a rich old roue, of the Alvanley and Pierrepoint time, went off the stage without an heir, and he came in for all the property, a princely balance at Barclay's, a town house, and a moor up in Inverness-shire. On his accession, he left the Neapolitan Hussars, entered the Queen's, and took the position to which his old name and wealth entitled him. It was always the popular idea that Sabretasche had some history or other, though ivliy he should have nobody could probably have told you : but everybody loved him, from the charger that followed him like a dog and ate out of his hand, to the young cornets who, in their debts and their difficulties, always found a lenient judge and a kind friend in gay, liberal, highly-gifted, and ultra-fashionable Vivian Sabretasche. When he had drunk his fill of music, and I had clapped little Coralie to my heart's content ; an ovation that young lady little needed, having a hired claque of her own in omnibus-boxes, not to mention some twenty men who threw her bouquets with genuine bracelets and bravessime ; Sabre- tasche and I, passing through the crush-room, or rather the draughty, catarrh-conferring passages which answer to that portion of Her Majesty's now-a-day's, came close to De Vigne with the Trefusis on his arm, while little Lascelles escorted Lady Fantyre, nowise enraptured apparently at the charge of that shrewd old dame, with her sandalwood perfume, and her old lace, of a price, and dirt, untold. Lady Fantyre's carriage was not yet up, and we stood and chatted together, the Trefusis smiling very graciously on us, but reserving all her most telling glances for De Vigne, on whose arm she hung with a sort of proprietorship, for which I cursed her with most unchristian earnestness. " Come home to supper with us," whispered the Trefusis, as their carriage was at last announced. De Vigne accepted the invitation, and old Fantyre 54 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. extended it to Sabretasche and to me. The Colonel smiled, bowed his acquiescence, and told his man to drive us to Bruton-street, as De Yigne sprang into the Fantyre brougham. " I was engaged to what I liked much better, lansquenet at Hollingsworth's; but I Want to see how the game lies in Brutou-street. I fancy that woman's moves will be worth watching," said Sabretasche, throwing himself back on his cushions. " By the way, who is she — do you know ?" "The devil I don't! Somebody up at Cambridge said she was old Fantyre's companion ; others whispered her daughter, others her niece, others, what the old woman said herself, that she is the child of her brother — a John, or James, or something monosyllabic, Trefusis." " No very exalted lineage that," returned Sabretasche; " for if report be true— and I believe it is — the Fantyre at sixteen was an orange-girl, crying, ' Who'll buy 'em, two a penny!' up St. James' s-street; that Fantyre, the most eccentric of eccentric Irishmen (and all Hibernians have a touch of madness !) beheld her from his window in Arthur's, fell in love with her foot and leg, walked out, offered to her in the street, was accepted of course, and married at seventy- five. "What fools there are in the world, Chevasney ! She pushed her way cleverly enough, though as to knowing all the exclusives she talks about, she no more knew them than my dog did. She heard of them, of course ; saw some of the later ones at Eanelagh and the Wells ; very likely won francs at piquet from poor Brummel, when he was in deca- dence at Caen, to put him in mind of the palmy days when he fleeced Coombe of ponies ; possibly entertained Talley- rand when he was glad of an English asylum : and, of course, would get together Moore, and Jeffreys, and Tom Erskine, and all the young fellows ; for a pretty woman and a shrewd woman can always make men forget she sprang from the gutter. But as to the others — pooh ! she was no more intimate with them than I ; old Fantyre himself was in far too mal od&ur, and left his widow to live by her wits rather than to figure as a leader of ton. Here we are ; it will all be very comme ilfaut. I bet you, Chevasney, Lady Fantyre is afraid of my eye-glass !" It was all comme il faut. De Yigne was sitting beside the Trefusis, his glowing passionate eyes fixed on hers : GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 55 while in her face was merely the look of calm, conscious beauty, gratified at triumph and exigeant of homage; a beauty the embodiment of tyranny ; a beauty which would exult in denying the passion it excited ; a beauty only a tool in the hands of its possessor, to pioneer a path for her ambitions, and draw within her reach the prizes that she coveted. De Vigne did not look best pleased to see us. I dare say he would have preferred a tete-a-tete supper with old Lady Fantyre dozing after her champagne ! Such, however, was denied to him 3 perhaps they knew how to manage him better than to make his game too easy. Do any of us care for the tame pheasants knocked over at our feet in a battue, as we do for an outlying royal that has led us many hours' weary toil, through burn and bracken, over rock and furze ? We knock down the pheasants to swell our score, and leave them where they fall, to be picked up after us ; but difficulty and excitement warm our blood and fire our pride, and we think no toil or trouble too great to hear the ping of the bullett, and see the deer grallocked at last ! We had a very pleasant supper. Opera-suppers are always pieasaut to my mind ; there is a freedom about them that gives a certain pointe a la sauce, which it would be better for ladies to put down among their items for entertainment, a good deal oftener than they do. There was plenty of champagne, and under its genial influences the Fan tyre tongue was loosened, and Sabretasche amused himself with the old lady's shrewd wit and not over-particular stories ; — a queer contrast enough himself to the little snuffy, rouged, and wigged Irish peeress, with his delicate beauty of feature, and indolent refinement of tone ; while De Vigne, fired by the Parthian glances which had been so freely bestowed on him, and the proxomity of that superb Trefusis, his idol — at least for the present — talked with the wit of which, when he chose, no man on earth could give out more brilliant corruscations. The Trefusis never said very much ; hers was chiefly silent warfare. " What did you think of the ballet, Colonel ? " asked old Fan tyre, peering up into his face. At seventy-six women are still much kinder to a handsome man than to a plain one. "I thought very little of it," answered Sabretasche. 5^ GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. " Coralie has no grace ; boys make a fuss with her becaus e she happens to be pretty, but as for her dancing — faugh ! scores of Castilian girls I have seen doing the fandango, under the village chesnut-trees, would beat her hollow." " Grlorious dance that fandango is !" said De Vigne. " I have danced the fandango; no more able to help myself when the girl and the castanets began, than the holy car- dinals, who, when they came to Madrid to excommunicate the cachuca, ended by joining in it ! Like the rest of us, I suppose, they found forbidding a thing to other people, very easy and pleasant, but going without it themselves rather more difficult." " You never go without a thing you like, do you ?" asked the Trefusis. " Certainly not. Why should I ?" " I don't know; only — boys who have revelled in Bath buns, sometimes rue it, when they realise Chromate of lead." " Oh ! as for that," laughed De Yigne, " the moralists make out that a sort of Chromate of lead follows, as natural sequence, any Bath buns one may fancy to eat. 1 don't see it myself." "Tour best Bath buns are women, De Yigne?" said Lady Fantyre, with her silent chuckle, " and you'll be un- commonly lucky, my dear, if you don't find some Chromate of lead, as you call it, after one or two of them." " He will, indeed," smiled Sebretasche. " Ladies are the exact antipodes of olives : the one begins in salt, and leaves us blessed with a delicious rose aroma ; the other, with all due deference, is nectar to commence with, but how soon, through our fault entirely, of course, they turn into very gall!" Lady Eantyre chuckled again ; she was a wise old woman, in her way, aud enjoyed nothing more than a hit at her own sex. To be sure, she was leaving the field very fast, and perhaps grudged the new combatants her cast-off weapons. " True enough, Colonel ; yet, if one may believe naughty stories, the flavour's been one uncommonly to your taste ?" Sabretasche shrugged his shoulders. " My dear lady, can one put aside the Falernian because there will be some amari aliquid at the bottom of the glass ? Nobody loved the sex better than Mahomet, yet he learned GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 57 enough from his favourite almoud eyes to create his heaveu without women ! " " What a heathen you are, Sabretasche !" cried De Vigne. "If I were Miss Trefusis, I wouldn't speak to you!" " My dear fellow, I could support it!" said Sabretasche, naively, with such delicious Brummelian impudence that I believe Lady Fantvre could have kissed him — a favour for which the Colonel would have been anything but grateful. The Trefusis's eyes glared ; De Vigne, sitting next her, did not catch their expression, or I think, though he might be getting mad about her, he would not have taken the trouble he did, to look so tenderly at her, and whisper, " If he could bear it, / could not." " Yes, you could," said the Trefusis, through her pearly teeth. " You would make me the occasion for an epigram on female caprice, and go and pay the same compliments to Lady Hautton or Coralie the danseuse. I never knew the man who could not support, with most philosophic indiffer- ence, the cruelty of one woman if he had another to turn to ! — provided indeed she had not left him for some one else, when, perhaps, his pride might be a little piqued." De Yigne smiled : he was pleased to see her annoyed. " Well ! we are philosophic in self-defence, probably ; but you are mistaken in thinkiDg so lightly of the wounds you give : and I am sorry you should be so, for you will be more likely to refuse to what you fancy a mere scratch, the healing touch that you might, perhaps, be persuaded to accord if you were more fully aware of the harm you had done." Sabretasche interrupted him. " Talking of wounds, De Yigne ? My dear fellow, who gets them now ? The surest way of wounding, if such a thing be possible when the softest little ingenue wears a chain-armour of practical egotism, is to keep invulnerable yourself. Miss Trefusis teaches us that." "You know the world, Colonel," smiled old Fantyre. " I like men who do : they amuse one. When one's been behind the scenes oneself, those poor silly fools who sit in front of the stage, and believe in Talma's strut and Siddon's tears, in the rouge and the paint, and the tinsel and the trap-doors, do tire one so ! You talk of your ingenues ; I'm sure they're the most stupid lot possible !" " Except when they're ingenues de Saint L6" laughed De Yigne. 58 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Which most of them are," said the Fantyre. " Take my word for it, my dear, if you find women extra simple, sweet, and prudish, you will be no match for her ! Sherry's a very pleasant, light, innocent sort of wine, but strych- nine's sometimes given in it, you know, for all that ; and if a girl casts her eyes down more timidly than usual, you may be pretty sure those eyes have looked on queerer scenes than you fancy." " To be sure," said De Vigne. " ' C'est trop contre un mari' (or un amant) ' d'etre coquette et devote : une femme devrait opter.' ' : " Then when you marry, you will take your wife out of a casino rather than a convent ?" asked the old lady, with a comical smile. The Trefusis shot a keen, rapid, hard glance at him, as he laughed, " Come, come, Lady Fantyre, is there no medium?" "Between prudes and Aspasias ?" said her shrill little treble. " No, sir — not that I ever saw — and even, les ex- tremes se touclient, you know." " Hush ! hush !" cried Sabretasche, " you will corrupt me, Lady Fantyre — positively you will — you will make me think shockingly of all my kind, soft-voiced, soft-skinned friends !" " Somebody has made you think as badly of women as you can," said the sharp old woman. " Not I ! What do you think of that Moselle, De Vigne ?" He thought it good, but not so good as the Trefusis, who acted out the song, " Drink to me with thine eyes,' 7 in a manner eminently calculated to intoxicate him more, than all the wine ever pressed from Rhenish vineyards. And when she took a little dainty cigarette between her lips, and leant back on her favourite rose couch, laughing at the Fantyre scandals, and flashing on De Vigne her brightest glances ; even Sabretasche and I, who were set against her by that most dogged thing, a prejudice, could not deny that a finer woman had never worried a man's peace of mind out of him, or sent him headlong into follies which shut out all chance of a fairer future or a wiser path. " Come in and smoke a pipe, Arthur," said De Vigne, when we at length left the Fantyre petit souper, and Sabre- tasche had gone to his lansquenet at Hollingsworth's. "'Tisn't worth while going anywhere else, to-night; it's GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 59 three now. I have some splendid Glenlivet (how naturally one offers a Cantab something to drink ! as naturally as to a cabman, I declare), and I should like a chat with you. Hallo ! where's my number. Confound it ! why do they build town-houses all alike, that one can't know one's own by a particular mark, as the mother in the novels always knows her stolen child ? Symmetry ? Oh ! that's like Sabretasche. One wants symmetry in a racer, I allow, but in one's lodging-house I could put up without it, rather than pull up Vivandiere on her haunches twice for nothing. "Where's my latch-key ? Eight on, up the stairs ; I'll follow you. By George ! who's that smoking in my rooms ? It can't be Harris, because I gave him leave to go to Cremorne, and not come home till morning, in time to fill my bath. It is tobacco, Arthur. What a devilish impertinence!" He pushed open the door. On De Vigne's pet sofa, with a Trench novel in his hand, and a meerschaum in his lips, lay lazy, girlish-looking, lightbearted "Little Curly." " Curly ! " cried De Vigne. " By Jove, how delighted I am ! Curly ! Where, in Heaven's name, did you spring from, my boy?" " I sprang from nowhere," responded Curly, taking his pipe out of his mouth. " I've given up gymnastics, they're too fatiguing. I drove down from Claridge's, in a cab that privately informed me it had just taken six cases of scarlet fever, and three of small-pox, to the hospitals ; I found you were out — of course I knew you would be — and with the philosophy which always characterises my slightest move- ments, took Fevillet, found out a pipe (how well you brown yours, by the way), and made myself jolly." " Quite right," responded De Yigne, who was a perfect Arab for hospitality. " Delighted to see you. We're quite a Frestonhills reunion. What a pity the Doctor is not here, and dear Arabella ! But I say, Curly, have you got quit of Granta, like this disreputable fellow, or are you only run up on leave, or how is it ?" "Don't you remember my degree was given me this year because I am a Peer's son?" asked Curly, reprovingly. fc{ See what it is to be a Goth, without a classical education ! Tou should have gone to Granta, De Yigne, you'd have been Stroke of the Cambridge Eight, not a doubt of it. There's muscle gone to waste ! It's very jolly, you see, 60 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. being an Honourable, though .1 never knew it ; one gets credit for brains whether one has them or not. What an inestimable blessing to some of the pillars of the aristocracy, isn't it ? I suppose the House of Lords was instituted on that principle; and its members are no more required to know why they pass their bills, than we, their sons and. heirs, are required to know why we pass our examinations, eh?" "And what are you going to do with yourself now ;" put in De Vigne. " For the present you'll keep on that sofa, and drink S. and B. ; but apres ? " " Apres ? "Well, the governor wanted me to go in for diplomacy, but I wasn't up to it — lies are not my specialty, they're too much trouble ; so I demonstrated to him that it was clearly my mission to drink brandy, distract women, run into debt, curse parade, turn out on show days, and otherwise enjoy life, and. swear at ennui with you fellows in the Queen's. His mind was not open to it at first, but I soon improved his limited vision, and my name's now down at the Horse Guards, where, after a little neat jobbery, I dare say the thing'll soon be done." "Your governor manageable ?" said I. Curly yawned, and opened his blue eyes a little wider. " Of course ; I should cut him if he wasn't. Tou see he's a snob (I wanted him to put on his carriage-panel — Who'd have thought it ? Cotton bought it ! but he declined), and my mother's a Dorset ; gave her title for his yellows. Now my brother Gus, poor devil ! is the regular parvenu breed; short, thick, red whiskers, snub nose, and all the rest of it; while I, as you see, gentlemen," said Curly, glancing at himself with calm, complacent vanity, "am a remarkably good-looking fellow, eminently presentable and creditable to my progenitors : a second Spurina, and a regular Dorset. Therefore, the governor hates Gus (sneaky I consider it, as it is through his remarkable likeness to him that Gus is fit to frighten his looking-glass), but adores me, and lets me twist him round this little finger of mine, voyez- vous?" " And how's Julia ?" asked De Yigne. Curly looked as savage as he could look. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 6 1 " Julia ? Confound her ! how should I know ? She's been and hooked some old bov or other, I believe, poor devil !" " Who's the poor devil ?" laughed De Vigne ; " the man for being caught, or you for being deserted ? Take comfort, Curly ; there never was a man jilted yet who didn't return thanks for it twelve months after. When I was twenty, and went over to Canada for six weeks' buffalo-hunting, I fell mad in love with a great Toronto beauty, a sheriff's widow. Such ancles she had, and didn't she show them on the Ontario ! It was really one of the most serious affairs I ever had, and she flirted me into a downright proposal. The most wide-awake man, is a donkey, when he is young. But who should come on the scene just then but a rich old fur-merchant, with no end of dollars, and a tremendous house at New York ; and my little widow, thinking I was very young, and knowing nothing whatever of Vigne and its belongings, quietly threw me over, forswore all the pretty things we'd said to one another in sledging and skating, and went to live among the Broadway belles. I swore and suffered horribly ; she turned the pampas into swamps, and absolutely made me utterly indifferent to bison. I lived on pipes and soda-water for a week, and recovered. But when I ran over to America last winter to see Egerton of the Rifles, I met in Quebec a dreadful woman, ten stone at least, in a bright green dress, with blue things in her hair, and rubies for her jewels, her skin as yellow as gold, and as wrinkled as the Fan tyre's ; and I might have married that woman, with her shocking broad English, and her atrocious c Do tell ! ' What fervent thanks I returned for the fur-merchant's creation and my own preservation ! So will you, Curly, when, ten years hence, you happen to drop in at the Snoozeinrest Rectory, and find Julia as stiff as her brown-paper tracts, and as vinegar as the moral lessons she gives her parishioners, restricting her pastor and master to three glasses, and making your existence miserable at dessert by the entrance of four or five brats with shrill voices and monkey propen- sities, who make you look at them and their mother with a thrill of the deepest rapture, rejoicing that, thank Heaven, you are not a family man ! " De Vigne spoke the truth. Why the deuce did not he 62 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. remember that his passion for the Trefusis might be quite as utterly misplaced as his fancy for the Toronto widow, or the Cantab's flirtation with Miss Julia ? But, ah me ! if the truth were always in our minds, or the future always plain before us, should we make the fifty false steps that the wisest man amongst us is certain to rue before half his sands are run ? If they knew that before night was down the sea-foam would be whirliug high, and the curlews screaming in human fear, and the gay little boat lying keel upwards on the salt ocean surf, would the pleasure-party set out so fearlessly in the morning sunshine, with cham- pagne flowing and bright eyes glancing, and joyous laughter ringing over the golden sands and up to the fleecy heavens ? CHAPTEE V. WHAT WAS TNDEE THE CARDS. That night, after we were gone, old Fantyre sat with her feet on the fender of her dressing-room, sans wig, teeth, rouge, cosraetique, velvet, or lace ; and an uncommonly hideous old woman she must have looked in that guise, I am certain, though, thank Heaven ! I cannot speak to the fact from ocular observation. The Trefusis sat there, too, looking all the handsomer for dishabille, in a cerise-hued peignoir and fur slippers, and her thick long raven hair un- braided, and hanging to her waist. " My dear," began the Fantyre, " do you think you hold the trumps in that srame you're playing ? " " Certainly I do. ^ Why ? " " Because I'm not so sure. You're playing fast and loose with De Vigne, and that don't always succeed. Brummel said to me, ' If we pique a woman, she is ours.' That's true enough with us, because we're such fools ; nine times out of ten a woman don't care a rush for a man who's dying at her feet ; while she's crazy about some ugly brute, who takes no more notice of her than he does of his dirty boots. Women love to go to heel, and they'll crawl after a man who double- thongs them, in preference to one who lets them rule him. Besides, we're jealous ; we hate one another like poison from our cradles ; and if a man neglects us we fancv he likes GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 63 somebody else, and, of course, that's quite enough to make us want to trap him away from her, whoever she be ! But with men sometimes it's a dangerous game. They're the most impatient creatures in creation, and if one trout won't rise to the fly, they go off and whip another stream. All fish are alike pretty well to 'em, so that they fill their basket. Men's aim is Pleasure, and if you don't give it to 'em they will go somewhere else for it." " True enough," said the Trefusis ; " but, at the same time, to a good many men Difficulty is everything. Men of hot passion and strong will delight in pursuit, and soon grow tired of victory. They enjoy knocking the bird over ; that done, it loses all interest for them. De Vigne is such a man ; rouse his pride, you win him — yield easily, and you miss him." " Maybe, my dear — may be ! You know him better than I do, and must manage him as you choose. I dare say he does like climbing over spikes and chevaux-de-frise to get what he fancies ; he's the stamp of creature that's never happy out of excitement or danger, and Montaigne thinks like you : ' Elles nous battent mieux en fuyant, comme les Scythes.'' How racy his old French is ! I wish I had known that man ! I say, those two friends of his shouldn't be with him too much, for they don't like us ; that boy Chevasney " " Boy, indeed ! " echoed the Trefusis. " But De Vigne is fond of him ? " " I believe so ; but De Vigne is never influenced by any- body." " I hope he may not be, except by you, and that won't be to his advantage, poor fellow ! He's a very handsome pigeon, my dear — a very handsome one, indeed ! " chuckled the old lady. " But the other one is more dangerous than Chevasney ; I mean that beautiful creature — what's his name ? — Vivian Sabretasche. He don't think much about us, I dare say ; but he don't like us. Me sees through us, my dear, and, ten to one, he'll put De Vigne on his guard." " De Vigne listens to nobody who comes between him and his passion of the moment ; and how is it possible that Sabretasche should see through us, as you term it ? " " Not all our hand, my dear, but one or two cards. That calm nonchalant way of his conceals a wonderful deal of 64 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. keen observation — too keen for us. Vivian Sabretasche is very witty and very careless, and the world tells very light stories of him ; but he's a man that not Satan himself could deceive." " Well, nobody wants to deceive him." " Don't you want to marry his friend ? " " Enough of that, Lady Fantyre ! I will neither be lec- tured nor schooled. You agreed to help me, but you agreed, too, to let me succeed in my own way. I tell you, I know how to manage him, and that before this year is out, in spite of Chevasney. Sabretasche, or anybody — yes, in spite of himself— 1 shall be Granville De Yigne's wife ? " " I wish you may, my dear," said the Fantyre, with another chuckle. " Well, don't talk to me any more, child. Get Le Brun, will you, and read me to sleep." CHAPTEE VI. A DOTJBLED-DOWN PAGE IN THE COLONEL'S BOOK OE LIEE. What a pace one lives at through the season ! And when one is fresh to it, before one knows that its pleasant, frothy, syllabub surface is only a cover to intrigues, petty spites, jealousies, partisanships, manoeuvres ; alike in St. Stephen's as in Belgravia ; among uncompromising patriots as among poor foreigners farming private banks round about St. James's-street ; among portly aristocratic mothers, trotting out their innocent daughters to the market, as among the gauze-winged, tinselled, hard-worked deities of the coulisses ; — how agreeable it is ! Illusion in one's first season lasts, I think, about the space of one month. With its blissful bandeau over our eyes, we really do admire the belles of the Ring and the Bide ; we go to balls to dance, and to dinners for society. We swallow larks for ortolans, and Cremorne gooseberry for Cliquot's. We believe in the innocent demoiselles, who look so naive, and such sweet English rosebuds at morning fetes, and do not dream those glossy braids cover empty, but world-shrewd little heads, ever plotting how to eclipse dearest Cecilia, or win old Hautton's coronet ; we accept their mamma's invitations, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 65 and think bow kindly they are given, not knowing that we are only asked because we bring Shako of the G-uards with us, who is our bosom chum, and has fifteen thousand a year, and that, Shako fairly hooked, we, being younger sons, shall be gently dropped. We go to the Lords and Commons, and believe A, when he says he has the deepest admiration for his noble friend B., whom he hates like poison ; and we reverence D. when he pleads for the liberty of " the people," whom over his claret he classifies as " beastly snobs." We regard the coulisses with delight, as a temple whose Eleu- sinia it is high honour to penetrate, and fall veritably in love with all those fair nymphs fluttering their spirit veils as Willis, or clanking their spurs as Mazurka maidens. That delightful state of faith lasts about a month, then we discard the bandeau, and use an eye-glass instead ; learn to confine ourselves to " Not bad-looking " before the handsomest woman in the Park ; find out that dinners are a gathering for high feeding, but not by any means bound to furnish society ; pronounce balls a bore, and grow critical of ankles. We are careful of the English rosebuds, knowing that, kept out of view, those innocent petals have thorns, which they know well how to thrust out and dexterously impale us on them. We take mamma's invitations at their worth, and watch the dragons' teeth opening for the luckless Shako, with grim terror of a similar fate; we laugh over seltzer with a chum of ours, a whip in the Commons, who lets us into a thing or two concerning the grandiose jobbery of Downing-street ; and find out that coulisses atmosphere, however agreeable, is no exclusive boon ; that its sesame is a bracelet to the first dancer, who, though she may take a Duke's brougham, is not insensible to even a Cornet's tribute, if it come from Hunt and E-oskell, and we give less love and more Cremorne lobster-salad to the Willis and Mazurka maidens ! Such, at least, was my case ; and when I was fairly in the saddle and off at a pace, like a Doncaster favourite's, through my first season, enjoyed it considerably, even when the ban- deau was off my eyes, which, thanks to De Vigne and Sabretasche, took place very speedily. Of De Vigne I did not see so much as if no Trefusis had been in being, for he was constantly after her, going with her to morning concerts, or Richmond luncheons ; riding F 66 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. with her in the Park ; lending her a horse, too, for that showy bay of hers had come out of Bruton Mews, and no livery-stable mount is fit for any mortal, much less for a female ; attending her everywhere, but not as yet " com- promising " himself, as, according to the peculiar code of honour in such cases, we may give a girl a bracelet with impunity to ourselves ; but are lost if we hazard a diamond circlet for her " third finger." That comes rather hard on those poor women, by the way ; for Lovelace may talk, and look, and make love, in every possible style ; yet, if he stop short of the n essential question," Lovelace may go scot free ! We remark what a devil of a girl it is to flirt ; and her sworn allies, who have expressed sympathy to her in crossed notes of the fondest pathos, agree among themselves " How conceited poor Laura is to fancy Lovelace could be serious ! Why, dear, all that means nothing ; only Laura, poor thing ! has had so little attention, she doesn't know what it is. If she had had a man mad about her, as you and I have had, love — ah ! do you remember poor Frank Cavendish at the race ball ? " Whereon the sworn allies scent their vinaigrettes, indulging pleasurable recollections ; and Lovelace burns Laura's lock of hair which he asked for, under the limes in the moonlight ; thinks " How deucedly near I was ! must be more careful next time," and wonders what sort of girls he shall find at Brighton. De Yigne, however, as long as he would not come well up to hand, received no flirting kindnesses from the Trefusis — not even so much as a note to thank him for his concert- tickets, or a flower from the very bouquet he had sent her. Perhaps she knew by clairvoyance, that her Cambridge azalea had gone ignominously into the grate ; for she tried on that style no more, but was coy and reserved, as if Hannah More had been her chaperone instead of old Sarah, Lady Fantyre. This worried, excited, and roused him, and I saw, without needing much penetration, that he was drinking deeper and deeper of a stimulant which he never refused when it was fairly to his lips, and which brings worse follies and wilder deeds, and more resistless madness to men than lie in the worst insanities of del. trem., or the dreams of a thousand grains of opium ! Sabretasche and I used to swear at the power of the Trefusis, and lament De Vigne's infatuation together ; but we could do nothing to GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 67 weaken either ; opposition to a man in love is like oil to fire ! Sabretasche was remarkably kind to me; he introduced me in his set, one of the most intellectual in town ; he admitted me to his charming dinners ; and he let me into his studio, the most luxurious miniature art-palace possible, where, when employed on his marble or on his canvas, no one was ever allowed to disturb him. Sabretasche knew to perfection the great art, " How to live," and he had every facility for enjoying life : riches, refined taste, art, intellect ; men who sought him, women who courted him, a facile wit, a sweet temper ; yet, somehow or other, you could trace in him a certain shadow, often dissipated, it is true, in the sunshine of his gay words, and the music of his laugh ; but certain to creep over him again — an intangible shade of disappointment. Perhaps he bad exhausted life too early ; perhaps his refinement was jarred by the very pleasures he sought; perhaps the classic mould of his mind was not, after all, satisfied with the sedatives be gave it : — however, — as for speculating on Sabretasche, all town pretty well did that, more or less, but nobody in town was ever any the wiser for it. One morning I was going to breakfast with him; his nominal breakfast-hour was noon; though I believe he often rose very much earlier, took a cup of coffee, and chipped, or read, or painted in his studio. I took my way across the Garden's to Sabretasche' s house, which was at the upper end of Park Lane, taking that detour for motives of my own. Gwendolina Brandling, Curly's eldest sister, an exquisite nymph of eighteen, with crepe hair, had confided to me the previous day, over strawberry-ice, at a fete at Twickenham r that she was in the habit of accompanying her little sisters in their morning walk with their governess, to " put her in mind of the country," and the Hon. G-wen being a freshj honest-hearted, and exceedingly nice-looking girl, I took my way through the Gardens about eleven, looking out for Curly's sister among the pretty nursemaids, ugly children, and abominable ankle- breaking, dress-tearing perambulators which filled the walks. There was no Hon. Gwen at pre- sent ; and I threw myself down under one of the trees, put my eye-glass in my eye, and took out that day's " Punch " to while away the time till Gwen and her attendants might come in sight. F 2 68 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Suddenly a voice fell on my ear, speaking coarsely and jocosely in Italian, " Come, signor, why waste time about it ? You know that your secret is worth more than I ask. You know you would give half your riches to .make sure it would never be known by anybody, to efface it altogether — eh, eccellenza ? Come ! I ask a very low price ; not worth jangling about -. no more to you than a few scudi to me. Why waste time ? You know I can bring proofs over in twenty-four hours, and then the show-up " " Take it, and begone with you ! " Ye gods! — that last voice, cold, contemptuous, full of disgust and wrath, I recognized as Sabretasche's ! Involun- tarily I turned to look ; and saw the most fastidious and the proudest man in town, in company with a shabbily, showily-dressed fellow, with rings on his fingers, and a vulgar, insolent face, which wore at that minute an abominably insulting smile, as the Colonel shoved a roll of bank-notes into his hand, loathing and impatience quivering over his own features. The man laughed — a laugh as impudent as his smile : " Thank you, signor, a thousand thanks. I won't trouble you again till — I'm again in difficulties." Sabretasche gave him no answer, but turning his back upon the man, folded his arms upon his chest, and walked away across the Gardens, with his head bent down, while the fellow counted the notes with glistening, triumphant eyes, crushed them up as if he loved their crisp new rustle, stroked his beard, whistled an air from " Figaro," and strolled on towards the gate ; leaving me in a state of pro- found amazement at the vulgar acquaintance the Colonel had selected, and the secret, by which this underbred foreigner seemed able to hold in check, so profound a man of the world as Sabretasche. Just at that minute, G-wen and her duenna appeared in the distance ; and I went to meet them, and talked of Grisi and Mario, of Balfe's new song, and Sims Reeves' last con- cert, with the hundred topics current in the season, while the little ones ran about, and the French governess chatted and laughed, and G-wen smiled and looked like a sunbeam, and told me about her ponies and dogs and flowers down in Hampshire. Poor G-wen ! She is Madame la Duchesse de la Vieillecour now, not over happy, I fear, despite the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 69 diamonds I saw flashing on her brow and neck last uight at the Tuileries. In the gorgeous glories of her Champs Elysees hotel, in the light beauty of her summer villa at Enghien, in the gloomy state and magnificence of her chateau in the Cote d'Or, whose massive iron gates close like a death-knell, does she ever think, I wonder, of those spring mornings in the GJ-ardens when she was in her spring- time too ? It was just twelve when I reached the Colonel's house. I was shown straight to his own room ; and there he lay on one of the couches, calm, cool, imperturbable as ever, not a trace visible of his past excitement and irritation, very unlike a man with a secret hanging over his head and darkening his life ! He stretched out his hand with a kind smile : " Well, Arthur. Good morning to you. Tou are just in time for the match ; Du Loo has not been here five minutes." Du Loo was a heavy, good-humoured, stupid fellow in the Blues, who prided himself on his fine teeth and his boxing, and who was going, at half-past twelve, to have a little play with Fighting Chatney, one of the Fancy, who let himself out to beat gentlemen, in order that gentlemen might learn to beat. On the carpet at. Sabretasche's feet lay a great retriever, the one thing in the whole world for which he cared, chiefly, I believe, because, when a stray pup, it had trusted itself to his kindness. " Poor old Cid ! " said he, pausing in his breakfast to set the dog down some larded guinea-fowl. " I spoil him for sport, you say ? Perhaps ; but I don't want him for sport, and I make his life comfortable. I see in him one thing in this Yia Dolorosa ; that is perfectly content and happy ; and it is a treat to see it. Cid and I are fast friends ; and we love one another, don't we, old boy ? " The Cid looked up at him with two honest, tender brown eyes, and wagged his tail: Sabretasche had talked to him till, I believe, the dog understood him, quite as well as I did. '•' There are lots of women, Colonel," said Du Loo " whold bid high for the words you throw away on that dog." "Possibly. But are any of them as faithful, and honest, 70 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. and worthy, as my Cid ? The Cid would like broken bones and a barn with me, as well as French cookery and velvet cushions. I'm sorry I couldn't say as much for my fair ladies, Du Loo." "The devil! no," yawned the Guardsman. "Catch a woman giving up her opera-box and her milliner. Why, the other night I saw Nelly Lacquers, the British Beggars' Bank man's wife, got up no end at the Silverton drum, laughing and talking, waltzing, and carrying pearls worth two thousand ; and, by George ! if there isn't a warrant out against her husband this morning for swindling ! Musn't she be a horrid, heartless, little bit of frippery ?" " It doesn't follow," said Sabretasche. " Most likely he sent her there to disarm suspicion, while he shipped off his specie to France or America, and got his passport to Calais. I never judge people ; seemingly bad actions may have good motives, good ones may spring from base and selfish ends." Du Loo stared at him. " What the deuce, Colonel! you turning sermoniser ? " " No, my dear fellow, I have enough conscience left not to preach before practising ; though truly if that were the rule in the land, few pulpits would be filled ! But I have one virtue — tolerance ; therefore I may preach that. There is your friend, Fighting Chatney. Now for your seventh heaven, Du Loo !" " And yours too ?" "Mine? No ! there is a degree of absurdity in two mortals setting solemnly to work to pommel one another ■ there is something unpoetic, and coarse, and savage, about blood and bruises ; and, besides — it is so much exertion ! However, go at it ; it is for Arthur's delectation, and I can go into my studio if I'm tired." Du Loo and his pet of the Fancy retired to the far end ot the room, and there set-to, deliveriug from the left shoulder, and drinkiug as much beer between their rounds as a couple of draymen. As the match had been arranged for my ex- press pleasure, of course I watched it with the deepest in- terest, though Sabretasche's remarks for once gave the noble art a certain degree of ludicrousness, mingled with the admiration with which I had been accustomed to regard such " little mills." Du Loo finally floored the bruiser, to his own extreme glorification, while the Pet very generously GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 7 1 growled out to him that he might be as great a man as the Tipton Slasher, if he would but train himself properly. Du Loo left, and Sabretasehe asked me to stay ten minutes, to let him finish a picture which he had been amusing himself by taking of me, in crayons ; — a portrait, by the way, which is a far better one than any I have ever had done by R.A.'s, and which my mother still cherishes devotedly at Longholme. " What a strange fellow Du Loo is, " said the Colonel, " or, rather, what a common one ! The man's greatest delight is a Moulsey mill, and his ambitious are locked up in the brutalities of the Ring. Of any higher world he is utterly ignorant. Talk to him of art and genius, you might as well discourse to him in Hebrew ! Take him out under the summer stars, he would look bored, yawn, and ask for his cigar. Positively, Arthur, he makes one feel one's link to the animals mortifying close. In truth, the distance between the zoophytes and man, is not wider then the gulf between a Groethe and a prize-fighter, is it ? It is propor- tion of brain which makes the man superior to the pig ; should it not make as distinct a mark, between the clod of the valley, and the cultured scholar? But why am I talking all this nonsense to you ? You have more amusing occupation than to listen to my fancies. Turn a little nearer the light. That is it ! Have you seen De Vigne to-day ? " " No ; he was gone somewhere with the Trefusis and Pantyre, confound them! Do you think she will win, Colonel?" " My dear boy, how can I tell. I think she will if she can. ' Donne gentile devote d' amove'' generally manage to marry a man if they have full play with him. If De Vigne only saw her in morning calls, when his head was cool, and others were with him, possibly he might keep out of it ; but she waltzes with him — she waltzes remarkably well, too — she shoots Parthian glances at him in the tete-a-tete of conservatories, after the mess champagne ; moreover, ten to one, in some of those soft moments, he will say more than, being a man of honour, he can unsay." " And be cursed for life ! " " Possibly. Love does that for a good many, and in the fantasy of early passion many men have surrendered their entire lives to one who has made them — a blank ! Trouble- some eyes yours are, x\rthur ; I can't make out their colour. 72 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. What present will you give Mrs. De Vigue on her wedding-day ? " " Confound her, none !" I shouted. " He's a vast deal too good for fifty such as she — a cold, calculating, ambitious, loveless intriguer " " One would think you were in love with her yourself, Chevasney ! Let me catch that terrific expression, it would do for a Jupiter Tonans." " And she is so wretchedly clever !" I groaned. " In artifice ! yes ; by education ! no. Her knowledge is utterly superficial. I cannot imagine where she has lived. She speaks shockingly un grammatical French, with a most atrocious English accent ; she neither plays nor sings. Yet she waltzes, rides, and dresses splendidly, and has a shrewd, sharp sarcasm, which passes muster as wit among her admirers. In fact, she is a paradox ; and I shall regret nothing more, than to see De Vigne misled through his senses by her magnificent beauty, stooping to tie himself for life to a woman with whom he will have nothing in common, who will have neither feeling to satisfy his. heart, nor mind to satisfy his intellect, and with whom I would bet great odds a week after the honeymoon he will be disgusted." " Can't you persuade him ?" I began. He stopped me with an expressive gesture ; he had much of the Italian gesticulation. "Persuade! Bon garcon ! if you want to force a man into any marriage, persuade him against it ! Ko one should touch love affairs. Third persons are certain to oarbotter the whole thing. The more undesirable the connexion, and the more you interfere, the more surely will the ' subject' grow obstinate as a mule under your treatment. Call a person names to anybody over whom she has cast a glamour, and if he have anything of the gentleman, or the lover, in him, out of sheer amour propre, and a sort of wrong-headed, right-hearted chivalry, he will swear to you she is an angel." " And believe it, perhaps." " Most likely, until she is his wife ! There is a peculiar magic in that gold circlet, badge of servitude for life, which changes the sweetest, gentlest, tenderest betrothed into the stiffest of domestic tyrants. Don't you know that, when she's engaged to him, she is so pretty and pleasant with his men friends, passes over the naughty stories she hears of GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 73 him from " well-intentioned " advisers, and pats the new mare that is to be entered for the Chester Cup? But twelve months after, his chums have the cold shoulder and the worst wine ; and she gives him fifty curtain orations on his disgraceful conduct, while he wonders if the peevish woman who comes down an hour too late for breakfast, can by any possibility be identical with the smiling young lady who poured his coffee out for him, with such dainty fingers, and pleasant words, when he stayed down at her papa's for the shooting." I laughed. " Don't ever get married yourself, Colonel, for the sake of Heaven, women, and consistency ! " He smiled, too, as he answered : '"A young man married is a man that's marred.' That's a golden rule, Arthur ; take it to heart. Anne Hath- away, I have not a doubt, suggested it ; experience is the sole asbestos, only unluckily one seldom gets it before one's hands are burnt irrevocably. Shakspeare took to wife the ignorant, rosy-cheeked, Warwickshire peasant girl, at eighteen ! Poor fellow ! I picture him, with all his untried powers, struggling like new-born Hercules for strength and utterance, and the great germ of poetry within him, tinging all the common realities of life with its rose hue ; genius giving him power to see with God-like vision, the " fairies nestling in the cowslip chalices," and the golden gleam of Cleopatra's sails ; to feel the " spiced Indian air " by night, and the wild working of kings' ambitious lust ; to know by intuition, alike the voices of nature unheard by common ears, and the fierce schemes and passions of a world from which social position shut him out ! I picture him in his hot imaginative youth, finding his first love in the yeoman's daughter at Shottery, strolling with her by the Avon, making her an "odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds," and dressing her up in the fond array of a boy's poetic imaginings ! Then — when he had married* her, he, with the passionate ideals of Juliets and Yiolas, Ophelias and Hermiones in his brain and heart, must have awakened to find that the voices so sweet to him were dumb to her. The ' cinque spotted cowslij}- bells ' brought only thoughts of wine to her. When he was watching ' certain stars shoot madly from their spheres, ' she most likely was grumbling at him for mooning there after curfew-bell. When he was learning Nature's lore in ' the fresh cup of the crimson rose,' she was dinning in his ear 74 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. that Hammet aud Judith wanted worsted socks. When he was listening in fancy to the ' sea-maid's song, ' and weaving thoughts to which a world still stands reverentially to listen, she was buzzing behind him, and bidding him go card the wool, and weeping that, in her girlhood, she had not chosen some rich glover or ale-taster, instead of idle, useless, wayward Willie Shakspeare ? Poor fellow ! He did not write, I would swear, without fellow-feeling, and yearning, over souls similarly shipwrecked, that wise saw ' A young man married is a man that's marred ! ' My dear Arthur, I beg your pardon ! I am keeping you a most unconscionable time, but really your eyes are very troublesome. I say, some men are coming here for lansquenet to-night, will you come too ? and do bring De Yigue if you can. One sees nothing of him now, and there are few so well worth seeing. Au revoir, mon clier. I have an immense deal of work before me. I am going to the Yard to bid for Steel Patterson's cream filly ; then to the Twelfth's mess luncheon ; next I have an appointment to meet the Grodolphin — all town's talking of that fair lady, so I reveal no secret ; and apres, I must dress to dine in Eaton-square ; and I much question if any of them are worth the exertion they will cost me, except, indeed, the cream filly ! " Wherewith the Colonel dismissed me. As I saw him that night when De Vigne and I went there for the promised lansquenet, courteous, urbane, gay, nonchalant, witty, I saw no trace of any mysterious secret, nor any lingering touch of the haughty anger and impatient disgust which he had shown to his singular companion of the moiming. But then — no more did I see, what all the world said they saw, that Vivian Sabretasche was a heartless libertine, an unprin- cipled gambler, an egotist, a sceptic, a sinner of the deepest dye, to be condemned immeasurably in boudoir scandals and bishops' dinners, and only to be courted and visited, and have his crimes passed over, because he was rich, and was the fashion. CHAPTEE VII. THE LITTLE QUEEX OF THE FAIRIES. " Aether, who do you think has gone to the dogs through that rascally British Beggars' Bank '?" said De Vigne one GRANVILLE DE VIGNB. 75 afternoon, unharnessing himself after one of the greatest bores in life — a field-day in Hyde Park — and talking from his bedroom to me, as I sat drinking sherry and seltzer, before going into my rooms in the barracks. "How should I know, out of half-a-million ! " "Do you remember old Tressillian, of Weive Hurst? " u Of course. The devil ; you don't mean him ! " "lam sorry to say I do ; he has lost every penny. To think of that scoundrel, Sir John Lacquers, flinging Bible texts at your head, thrusting his charities into your face, going to church every Sunday as regularly as a verger, and to morning prayers on a week-day, building his almshouses, and attending his ragged schools ! And now he's cut off to Boulogne, with a neat surplus, I'll be bound, hidden up somewhere ; and widows, and children, and ruined gentle- men will reap the harvest he has sown. Bah ! it makes one sick of humanity !" " And is Tressillian one of his victims ? " " I believe you ! I saw his name on the list some days ago, and on Monday I met him with the child that used to be at AVeive Hurst — daughter ; no, grand-daughter — wasn't she?" " Little Alma. Yes. We used to say she'd be a pretty woman. Well, goon?" " I was very pleased to see him. You know I always liked him exceedingly. I asked him where he was living ;" he said, with a smile, ' In lodgings, in Surrey-street ; you know I can't afford Maurigy's now ;' and I called on him there yesterday : such a detestable lodging-house, Arthur ! Brummagen furniture and Irish maids ! He is just the same simple, courtly old man as ever. I'm not a susceptible fellow ; but, I give you my honour, it cut me to the heart to see that gallant old gentleman beggared through that psalm -singing, pharisaical swindler ; and bearing his re- verses like the plucky French noblesse that my father used to shelter at Vigne after the '92." " And has he nothing now ? " "Nothing. His entire principal was placed in Lacquer's hands ; AVeive Hurst is gone to pay his creditors, and one can do nothing to aid him : he is so deucedly — no ! so rightly proud. Come with me to-day and see him ; we shall drive there in ten minutes, and we must be doubly attentive to 76 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. him now. There will be just time between this and mess, it you ring, and tell them to bring the tilbury round." The tilbury soon came round, and the new steel greys, tandem, set us down in Surrey-street. . One of the Irish maids who had so excited De Yigne's disgust showed us up-stairs. Tressillian was not at home, but was expected in every minute ; and we sat down to wait for him. Through the windows, on those dismal leads which admit to the denizens of Surrey-street a view of the murky Thames and steam transports of the Cockneys, the little girl was standing, who, as soon as she caught sight of De Vigne, ran into the ro'om and welcomed him with ex- ceeding warmth and an accession of colour that might have nattered him much had she been a few years older. She was about nine or ten, an awkward and angular age ; but she had neither angles nor awkwardness, and was as pretty as they ever are in their growing time, with hair of glistening gold, bright iu shade as in sunshine, and deep blue eyes, brilliant and dark under her black silken lashes, which promised, in due time, to do a good deal of damage. In her little dainty Paris-mode dress of soft white muslin and floating azure ribbons, the child looked ill-fitted for the gloomy atmosphere of Surrey-street. Poor little thing ! a few weeks before she had been the heiress of Weive Hurst, now, thanks to that goodly creature Sir John Lacquers, her future promised to be a struggle almost for daily bread. " I am glad you are come !" she exclaimed, running up to De Vigne. " Grandpapa will be pleased to see you, and you will do him good. When he is alone he grows so sad, and I can do nothing to help him. I am no companion for him, and if I try to amuse him — if I sing to him or talk, or draw — I think it only makes him worse : he remembers Weive Hurst still more ! " " Do you not miss Weive Hurst, Alma ?" asked De Vigne. The child's eyes filled with tears, and the blood rushed over her face. " Miss Weive Hurst ! Oh, you do not guess how much, or you would not ask me ! My beautiful, darling home, with its trees, and its flowers, and its sunshine ! Miss Weive Hurst ! In this cold, dark, smoky place, where I never see the sun, or hear the birds, or feel the summer wind!" GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 77 And the little lady stopped in her vehement oration, and sobbed as if her heart would break. " What an excitable little thing !" said De Vigne, raising his eyebrows ; then he bent gently towards her, as courte- ously as if she had been a Duchess. "I beg your pardon, Alma ; I am sorry if I have vexed you. I could not know how much you loved your home ; and, perhaps — who knows — you will go back to it again some day." She raised her head eagerly. " Ah ! if I could hope that'!" " "Well, we xcill hope it !" smiled De Vigne. " Some ot . those flowers which you love so much, will tell the fairies that sleep in their buds, to come and fetch you back, because they want to see their little Queen.'* She looked at him half in surprise. " Ah ! you believe in fairies, then ? I love you for that." " Thank you. Do you, then ?" " Of course," said Alma, with the reproving tone of a believer in sacred creed, to a heathenish sceptic. " Shak- speare did, you know. He writes of Ariel and Puck, Peas- blossom and Cobweb, who ' pluck the wings from painted butterflies,' and ' kill cankers in the musk rosebuds.' Milton, too, believed in Eairy Mab, and the Groblin, whose 'shadowy flail had threshed the corn that ten day-labourers could not end.' Flowers would not be half flowers to me without their fairies, and, besides," continued Alma, with the decision of a person who clinches an argument, " I have seen them, too!" 11 Indeed ! But so have I." "Where?" asked Alma, breathless as a dilettante to whom one breathes tidings of a lost Correggio. " There ! " said De Vigne, lifting her up in his iron grasp before the high mirror on the mantlepiece. She laughed, but turned upon him with injured indigna- tion. " What a shame ! You do not believe in them — not the least more than grandpapa. I will not love you now — no, never again ! " " My dear child," laughed De Vigne, " even your sex don't love and unlove, quite in such a hurry. Don't you care for your grandpapa, then, because he has never seen fairies ? " 7 8 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Care for grandpapa ! Oh yes ! " she cried, passionately, "as much as I hate — hate! — those cruel men who have robbed him of his money. I would try not to care for Weive Hurst if he were happy, but he will never be happy without it any more than I." " Do you remember me, Alma ? " I asked, to change her thoughts. She shook her head. " Do you remember him ? " She looked very tenderly and admiringly on De Vigne. " Oh ves ! When I read ' Sintram,' I thought of him as Sir Folko." De Vigne laughed. " You bit of a child, what do you understand of ' Sin- tram ? ' " " I understand Sir Folko, and I wish I had been Ger- trude." " Then you wish you had been my wif<§, mademoiselle ? " Alma considered gravely for a moment, looking steadily in De Vigne's face. " Yes ; I think I should like to have you to take care of me, as he took care of Grertrude." We went off into shouts of laughter, which Alma could not understand. She could not see that she had said any- thing laughable. " I thought you were never going to love me again, Alma ? A wife ought to love her husband," said De Vigne. Alma made a moue onutine and turned away, her blue ribbons and her gold hair fluttering impatient defiance. Just then her grandfather came in, the stately old master of Weive Hurst. " How do you do ? " cried De Vigne. "lam having an offer made me, Mr. Tressillian, though it is not leap year. I hope you will give your consent ? " " I will never marry anybody who does not believe in fairies ! " interrupted Alma, running back again to her leads. "If she make a like proposal five or six years hence to any man, she'll hardly have it neglected," said I, when Tressillian had recalled who I was, and shaken hands with me. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 79 Tressillian smiled sadly. " Her love will be a curse to her, poor child, for she will love too well ; as for her being neglected, she will not have the gilding necessary to make youth protected, beauty appreciated, or talent go down, if she should chance t6 have the two latter as she grows older." "Which she is pretty sure to have, unless she alters dreadfully." Boughton Tressillian sighed. " Yes, she is pretty enough, and she is clever. I believe she already knows much more than young ladies who have just ' finished.' She would learn even better still if she were not so wildly imaginative. Poverina ! she is ill-fitted to grapple with the world. AVhether I spend my few years between four bare walls or not, matters little ; but hers Well, De Vigne, what news to-day ? Is the Ministry going to keep in or not ? " De Vigne stayed some half-hour chatting with him, tell- ing him all the amusing on dits of the Clubs, and all the fresh political tittle-tattle of the morning, while Tressillian, after that single expression of regret for Alma, alluded no more to his own affairs, and discussed current topics with the intelligence and interest of a man of intellect, enter- taining us with the same cheerful ease he had done at Weive Hurst, meeting his reverses with a philosophy of the highest, yet of the simplest order. De Vigne was more courtly, more delicate, more respectful to the ruined gentle- man, than he- was to many a leader of high ton, for, haughty and imperious on occasion as he was, there was a touch of true chivalry in his character. Gro down in the world, De Vigne stretched out his hand to you, be you what you might; rise high, and he cut you, or snubbed you, as he might see fit. De Vigne was not like the world, mes- sieurs ! " How I should enjoy straightening my left arm for the benefit of that cursed hypocrite of the British Beggars' Bank," began De Vigne, tooling the tilbury back again through the Strand ; and, so far forgetting himself in his irritation as to venture to use the whip to his wheeler, who revenged the insult by a pas d'extase, which produced fright- ful commotion among the omnibuses, whose conductors swore in inelegant language at " the confounded break-neck nob! " "The morality of the age is too ridiculous! For 80 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. the banker's clerk, who, with a sick wife and starving children, yields to one of the fiercest temptations that can beset a man, and takes one drop out of the sea of gold around him, it thinks penal servitude too kind a boon. To the Banker himself, who has reduced forty thousand people to want, the world is lenient, because he stuck his name on missionary lists, and came to public meetings with the Bible on his lips : and, after a little time has slipped away, men will see him installed in a Roman palace, or a Paris hotel, and will flock to his soirees by the dozens ! " " Of course ; don't you think that if Mephistopheles set up here in Belgravia, and gave the best dinners in London he would get us all to dine with him ? " " To be sure. Men measure you by what you give them. If you're a poor devil with only small beer in your cellar you are ostracized, though you be the best and wisest man in Athens ; if you've good claret, they will come and drink it with you, and only discuss your sins behind your back ; and if by any chance you have pipefuls of Johannisberg and Tokay, you will have all the cardinal virtues voted to you, without your giving testimony to your even recognizing the cardinal virtues at all ! Hallo ! gently, gently, Psyche ! what a hard mouth she has. Confound her ! she will set Cupid off again, and I shall figure in the police reports as taken up for furious driving. 1 say, what can Tressillian do?" "Do?" " Yes. What can he do that I can find him ? he is a gentleman and a scholar, but his age shuts him out from any post such as he could ever accept. He has no money — he must do something. I shall talk to Sabretasche ; he has no end of interest everywhere if he would only exert it. I think he would if I asked him, so that we might get some pleasant gentlemanlike sinecure for the old man, where he would not have much to remind him painfully of his re- verses. I'll see! By the way, Chevasney, have you got your leave ? It's a horrid bore, but I can't get mine till August. I wanted it a month earlier." "To go to Eyde ? I knew the last week in June would see the Fantyre and Trefusis transplanted from Bruton- street." He laughed. " "Well, Hyde's very pleasant in its season. GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. 1 8 However, we must make up for it among the turnips and stubble ; I think my preserves are the best in the county. You must come down, Arthur, I can't do without you ; it's a crying cruelty to coop military men up in the shooting season ; besides, you are a great pet of my mother's." " Doesn't she ever come to town ? " " Oh, yes ; but her health is delicate. She has no daughters to bring out, and I think she prefers the country in the spring and summer. Here one loses Summer alto- gether. We don't know such a word ; it is merged into the Season, and the flowers grow on ladies' bonnets instead of meadow lands. "Well ! T like it best. I prefer society to solitude. St. Simon Stylites had very fine meditations, I dare say, and a magnificent bird's-eye view of the country ; but I must say Rabelaisian Philosophies would seem more like life to me, and I fancy I see more of human nature in the Pre Catalan than the Prairies." "Yet you go mad after nature sometimes, you odd fellow?" " Of course. There is a grandeur about' the wide stretch of sea in a sunny dawn, or the sweep of hills and bird.' woods on a Highland moor, besides which the fret and flip- pery of human life are miserably insignificant. No man, who has any manhood in him at all, but feels the better for the fresh rush of a mountain wind. But for all that, I am neither poet nor philosopher enough, to live with nature always, and forswear the coarser elements of life ; lansque- net, racing, Coralies, champagne, and all one's other habitual agrements. Hang it, Arthur, why do you set me defining ; can't you let me enjoy? Ten years hence I will theorize on life as much as you please, just now I prefer taking it as it comes. There! w r e did the distance in no time." If De Yigne set his mind on doing anything, whether it was taking a cropper, or winning a woman, hooking a salmon, or canvassing a county, he never rested till it was done ; therefore, having taken Boughton Tressillian's cause steadily to heart, he set all the levers going which were available, to find something suitable to the old man's broken fortunes and refined tastes. He never let Sabretasche alone till the Colonel, who knew everybody, used his interest too, a thing he detested doing, because, as he said, it " gives you so G 82 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. much trouble, and lays you under Obligation ; a debt nobody ever allows you to forget that you owe them." To please De Yigne, however, he exerted himself; and between them they procured a consulate for Tressillian, at a large pleasant town on the Mediterranean shore, which had of late years become almost an Euglish settlement, "whose climate was exquisite, scenery perfect, combined with admirable English and Italian society," according to the elegant lan- guage of the guide-books, who told no lies about it for a wonder. Anybody who wanted to see the side of De Yigne's character that made those who really knew him love him with the love of Jonathan for David, should have seen him offering his consulship to Tressillian, with the most delicate tact and feeling, so that the ruined gentleman could feel no obligation which could touch his pride, and could receive it only as a thoughtful forestalling of his wishes. That Tres- sillian felt it deeply I could see, but De Yigne refused all thanks, and the old man felt the kindness all the deeper for his disclaimer of it. "You are a noble fellow," he said heartily ; " you will find your reward some day." " My dear sir," laughed De Yigne — when he felt things at all he generally turned them off in a jest — " I get many more rewards than I deserve, I fancy ; my life's all prizes and no blanks, except now and then, the blank of satiety. I am not one of those who ' do good and blush to find it known ; ' for the simple reason that I never do any good at all, and have not blushed since I was seven, and fell in love with my mother's lady's-maid, a most divine Frenchwoman, with gold ear-rings, who eventually took up with the butler — bad taste, after me, was it not ? You won't desert me for anybody I hope, Alma ? You will see sublime Italians at Lorave." " They will not be as handsome as you are, Sir Folko," responded Alma Tressillian, with frank admiration. "Thank you, clier enfant; you will teach me to blush if you flatter me so much. Will you take me in, Alma, if I and my yacht call upon you at any time ? " "Oh, do! do!" cried Alma, vehemently, "and sail me on the sea, and I will show you the mermaids under the waves, with their necklets of sea-shells, and their fans of pink weed ! You will see them, indeed you will, if you will only believe in the.n ! " GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 38 "Most apt illustration of faith," laughed De Vigne- " People see tables turn, and violins dance with broom-sticks, and hear Shakspeare talk through a loo-table, by sheer force of believing in them ! When will that child ever learn to come down to the coarse realities of everyday existence ? " "No," said Tressillian, " I am afraid I have hardly taken the best way of educating her for the real world. She should have gone to school, to learn the sober practicalities, and wise inanities of English schoolgirls. Her solitary life, with books and flowers, has encouraged the enthusiasm, and imagination, which come, I suppose, with her foreign blood ; but then, I always thought she would be raised above heed- ing, or considering, the world ! much more above ever working in it ! " A few days afterwards, Tressillian, with his granddaughter and an English governness he had engaged for her, set oft' for Lorave. De Vigne and I saw them at the South-Eastern station, and little Alma cried as bitterly at parting with him as any of the women who loved him could have done ; only the tears were not got up for eifect, and washed off no rouge, like most of theirs ! De Vigne consoled her with the promise of a yachting trip to Lorave, and came away from the station to drive the Trefusis down to dinner at the Star and Garter, where he gave an entertainment of which the Trefusis was undisputed Queen, and looked it too, drinking Badminton with much the same air as Juno must have worn drinking Ambrosia, and outshining all the women in beauty, and figure, and toilette : for which the women of course hated her, and respected her in one breath : for, cordially as a lady detests a handsome sister, it is notable that she no less despises an ill-dressed or ugly one. To be handsome a woman thinks an unpardonable crime in her rival ; but to be plain is a most contemptible faux pas ! I can remember De Vigne now, sitting at the head of the table, that bright June evening, at Richmond. How happy he looked ! — his forehead flushed with pleasure and triumph, his eyes flashing fire, or beaming softness and tenderness on the Trefusis, his voice ringing out with a careless, happy harmony. Life's best gifts seemed to lurk for him in that goblet of Claret Cup, which he lifted to his lips, with a fond pledge (by the eyes) to the woman he loved. Yet, if he had known his future, he would have filled the glass with g2 84 GRANVILLE DE VIGNB. hemlock rather than have coupled the Badminton with her name ! Ah, well, mes freres ! he is not the only man for whom the name that rang so sweetly, breathed in the toast of love, has chimed a bitter death-knell through all his after- life ! The Trefusis did her best to lure him into " definite action" that night, as he sat by her at dinner; and leaned out of the window afterwards beside her ; the delicate per- fume of her hair mingling with the fragrance of roses and heliotropes from the garden below, the low jug-jug of the nightingale joining with their own low voices, and the sum- mer starlight gleaming on both their faces — his, impassioned, eager, earnest ; hers, fair indeed, but fair with the beauty of the rock-crystal, which will melt neither for wintry frost nor tropic sunshine. She did her best; and the hour and the scene alike favoured her. She bent forward ; she looked up in his face, and the moon's rays gave to her eyes a liquid sweetness never their own : he began to lose control over himself; the passion within him took the reins; he who all his life through had denied himself nothing ; neither knew nor cared how to check it. He bent towards the Trefusis, his fiery pulses beating loud ; while his moustaches touched her brow : Heaven knows what he might have said, but I went up to them, ruthlessly : " De Vigne, the horses are put to, and Miss Trefusis wants to be in town by eleven, in time for Mrs. Delany's ball ; everybody's gone or going." A fierce oathi was muttered under his moustaches — he can be fiery enough if he's crossed. The Trefusis gave me a look — well! such as you, madame, will never give a man, if you are prudent, even though he be your lover's fidus Achates, and comes in just when he is not wanted. Then she rose, drawing on her gloves with a sweet, courteous smile : "Oh! thank vou, Mr. Chevasney ; how kind of you to come and tell us'! I would not be late at dear Mrs. Delany's for the world ; you know she is a very pet friend of mine." I had saved him that time, and, idiot-like, triumphed at my success. Might I not have known that no forty-horse power can keep a man from committing himself, if he is bent upon it ? and might I not have known that if a fellow entered himself for any stakes with a woman, she will have cantered in and carried off the Cup before he has saved half GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 85 the distance, let him pride himself upon his jockeyship never so highly ? 1 had saved De Vigne, and I don't think he bore me any good will for it, for he drove me aud a couple of other men back in his phaeton to Kensington, in gloomy silence. He could not go to Mrs. Delany's, for the best of all reasons — that he was not asked. Ladies never do invite with their pet friends the quarry their pet friends are trying the hardest to hire ; not from envy, pretty little dears ! — who would think of accusing them of that ? Do they ever, by any chance, break the Tenth Commandment, and covet their neighbour's carriage, horses, appointments, diamonds, point, flirtations, or anything that she has ? And the day after that the Trefusis went down to Ryde, to drive the yachting men distracted. CHAPTER VIII. THE FORGING OF THE FETTEES. What De Vigne did or did not do at Eyde I knew not. On the 31st of August, however, I found myself swinging down in the express to his own place in the south. Vigne was about eighty miles from London ; a pretty, picturesque village, of which nearly every rood belonged to him ; and his park was almost as magnificent a sweep of land as Holcombe or Longleat. It was with something warmer than pride, that he looked across, over his wide woodlands glowing in the sunset, the great elm-trees throwing their wide cool shadows far over the rich pasture land beneath ; the ferns, high as a man's elbow, waving in the breeze ; the deer trooping away into the deep forest glades ; and the lengthened avenues, stretching off in aisles of burnished green and gold, like one of Creswick's Eng- lish landscapes. A mile and a half of one of those magnificent elm-avenues brought us to the house, which was more like Hardwick Hall in exterior than any other place I know, standing grandly, too, something as Hardwick does ; but in interior, luxurious and modem to the last degree, with every elegance and comfort which upholstery and science have taught the nineteenth century to look upon as absolute requirements. 86 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. De Yigne threw the ribbons of the drag to a groom, and sprang down, while the deep bay of the dogs in the kennels some way off, gave him a welcome. In the hall he had another : as his mother, Lady Flora, a soft, delicate woman, with eyes and voice of great beauty and sweetness, came out from a morning-room to meet him, with both her hands outstretched, and a fond smile on her face. De Vigne loved his mother tenderly and reverentially. She had been a wise woman with him : as a child, she had stimulated his energies instead of repressing them, and, with strong self- command, let him risk a broken limb, rather than teach him his first idea of fear, a thing of which De Yigne was as profoundly ignorant as little kelson. As a boy, she had entered into all his sports and amusements, listening to his tales of rounders, ponies, cricket, and boating, as if she really understood them. As a man she had never attempted to interfere with him. She knew that she had trained him in honour and truth, and was too skilled in human nature to seek to pry into a young man's life. The consequence was that she kept all her son's affection, trust, and confi- dence, and, when she did speak, was always heard gently and respectfully; indeed, he would often tell her as natu- rally of his errors and entanglements as he had, when a child, told her of his faults to his servant or his Shetland. The house was full, chiefly of men come down for the shooting, with one or two girls of the Ferrers family, Lady Flora's nieces, who would have liked very well to have caught their cousin, for their father, though he was a Marquis, was as poor for a peer, as a curate with six daughters, and no chance of preferment. But their cousin was not to be caught — bv their trolling, at least. "I am delighted to see you, Mr. Clievasney," said Lady Flora, when I went down to the drawing-room after my bath and hot coffee. " You kn6w you were always a favourite of mine, at first, ne vous en deplaise, because you were a friend of Granville's, and then for your own sake. There will be some people here to-morrow to amuse you, though you gentlemen never seem to be so happy as when you are without us. Shut you up in your smoking, or billiard, or card-room, and you want nothing more ! " " True enough ! " laughed De Yigne. " [t is an ungal- lant admission, but it is a fact, nevertheless. See men at GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 87 college wines, in the jollity and merriment of a camp, in the sans gene enjoyment of a man dinner! Deny it who will, we can be happy without ladies, but ladies cannot be happy without us ! " "How conceited you are, Granville!" cried Adelina Ferrers, a handsome blonde, who thought very well of her- self. " I am quite sure we can ! " "Can you, Lina?" said De Vigne, leaning against the mantelpiece, and watching his mother's diamond rings flash in and out, as she did some beadwork. " Why do we never hear of ladies' parties, then ? Why, when we come in after dinner, do we invariably find you bored to the last extent, and half asleep, till you revive under our kindly influence ? Why, if you are as happy without us, do we never see you establish Women Clubs to drink tea, or eau de Cologne, or sal volatile ; to read new novels and talk over dress ? " " Because we are too kind. Our society improves you so much, that, through principle, we do not deprive you ot it," answered Lady Lina, with a long glance of her large azure eyes. " That's a pity, dear," smiled De Vigne, " because if we thought you were comfortably employed, we could go oft to the partridges to-morrow with much greater pleasure ; whereas, to know, as we do, that you will all be victims of ennui till we come back again, naturally spoils sport to men like myself, of tender conscience and amiable disposi- tion ! " " This is the fruit of Miss Trefusis's flattery, I suppose," sneered Blanche Ferrers, the other cousin, who could not stand fun, and who had made hard running after De Vigne a season ago. " Miss Trefusis never flatters," said De Vigne quietly. " Indeed ! " said Lady Blanche. " I know nothing of her. I do not desire ! " The volumes expressed in these four last words were such, as only women like Blanche Eerrers, could possibly compress in one little sneering sentence. De Vigne felt all that was intended in it ; his eyebrows contracted, his eyes flashed fire ; he had too knightly a heart not to defend an absent woman, and a woman he loved; as dearly as he would his own honour. " It would be to your advantage, Blanche, if you had 88 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. that pleasure. Miss Trefusis would make any one proud to know her ; even the Ladies Ferrers, though the world does say they are fond of imagining the sun created solely that it may have the honour of shining on them." He spoke very quietly, but sarcastically. His mother looked up at him hastily, then bent over her work ; Blanche coloured with annoyance, and smiled another sneer. " Positively, Granville, you are quite chivalrous in her defence ! I know it is the law at Vigne for nobody to dis- agree with you ; nevertheless, 1 shall venture, for I must assure you, that far from esteeming it an honour to know Miss Trefusis, I should deem it rather a — dish.on.oxK." How like a lion fairly roused, and longing to spring, he looked ! He kept cool, however, but his teeth were set hard. "Lady Blanche, it is rather dishonour to yourself, to dare to speak in that manner of a lady of whom you have never heard any evil, and who is my friend. Miss Trefusis is as worthy respect and admiration as yourself, and she shall never be mentioned in any other terms in my pre- sence." Gallant he looked, with his steady eyes looking sternly down at her, and his firm mouth set into iron ! A whole history of love and trust, honour and confidence, the chivalry which defended the absent, the strength which protected the woman dear to him, were written on his face. Was she, who was absent and slandered, worthy of it ? Blanche laughed derisively, but a little timidly ; it was not easy even for her to be rude to him. " Eespect and admiration ! Really, Granville, one would believe report, and imagine you intended to give Lady Fan- tyre's — what ? — niece, dependent, companion — which is it ? — your name ? " " Perhaps I do. As it is, I exact the same courtesy for her, as my friend, that I shall do if ever she be — my wife ! " He spoke slowly and calmly, still leaning on the mantel- piece; but his face was white with passion, and his dark eyes glowed like fire. A dead silence followed on his words : the silence of breathless astonishment, of unutter- able dismay : Lady Flora turned as white as her beadwork, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 89 and she did not trust herself to look at her son, but in a moment or two she spoke, with gentle dignity. " Blanche, you forget what you are saying. You can have no possible right to question your cousin's actions or opinions. Let this be the last 1 hear of such a dis- cussion. Mr. Chevasney, if you wish to be useful, will you be kind enough to hold this skein of floss silk for me ? " Just at that moment some of the men came in and sur- rounded Adelina and Blanche ; it was a relief to everybody : Lady Flora went on winding her silk, not daring to look up at her son, and he stayed where he was, leaning on the mantelpiece, playing with a setter's ears, till dinuer was announced as served : then he gave his arm to the Marchio- ness, and was especially brilliant and agreeable all the evening. That night, however, when most of us had gone off to the bachelor wing; De Vigue rapped at the door of his mother's dressing-room. She expected it, and admitted him at once. He sat by the fire for some moments, holding her hand in his own ; De Vigue was very gentle with what he loved. His mother looked up at him, with a few words : " Dearest, is it true ? " " Yes." Where he meant much, he also generally said few words. His mother was silent. Perhaps, until now, she had never realised how entirely she would lose her son to his wife ; how entirely the new passion would sweep away and replace the old affection ; how wholly and how justly, his confidences, his ambitions, his griefs, his joys, would go to another instead of to herself. Perhaps she knew how unlit De Vigne was to be curbed and tied ; how much his fiery nature would shrink from the burden of married life, and his fiery heart refuse to give the love exacted as a right : perhaps she knew, by knowledge of human nature, and ex- perience of human life, how true it is that "a young man married is a man that's marred." " Your wife ! " she said, at last, tears in her voice and in her eyes. " Grranville, you little guess all those words sound to me ; how much I have hoped, how much I have feared, how much I have prayed for, in — your wife ! Forgive me, dear j I can hardly accustom myself to it yet." 90 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. And she bent her head, and sobbed bitterly. May we believe with Madame de Girardin ? — " Cest en vain que Ton nomnie erreur, Cette secrete intelligence, Qui portant la lumiere au fond, Sur des maux ignores nous fait gemir d'avance ! " De Yigne bent his head, and kissed her. It was very rarely he saw his mother's tears ; and in proportion to their rarity they always touched him. They were both of them silent. The next question she asked, came with the resig- nation of a woman, to a man whose purpose she knew she could never alter, or even sway, any more than she could stir the elm-trees in the avenues, from the beds that they had lain in for lengthened centuries. " You really love her, then ? " " More passionately than I have ever loved a woman yet!" That sealed the sentence. Lady Flora knew, that never in love, as in sport, had De Yigne checked his fancy, or turned back from his quarry. " God help you then ! " He started back at the uncalled-for prayer; it was an in- voluntary utterance of the trembling tenderness, the unde- fined dread with which she regarded his future. He smiled down gaily at her. {< "W by, mother, what is there so dreadful in love ? One would think you thought shockingly of your sex, to view my first thought of marriage, through smoked glasses." She tried to smile. " It is such a lottery ! " " Of course it is ; but so are all games of chance ; and if one ventures nothing, one may go without play all one's life. As for happiness, that is at very uncertain odds at all times, and the only wise thing one can do is to enjoy the present. Does not La Bruyere tell us that no man ever married yet, who did not in twelve month's time wish he had never seen his wife ? It is true enough for that matter; so that, whether one does it sooner or later, one is equally certain to repent." He spoke with a light laugh and a fearless confidence in his own future which went to his mother's heart. She took both his hands in hers. " Granville, you know I never seek to interfere with your opinions, plans, or actions. You are a man of the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 91 world, far fitter to judge for yourself than I am to' judge for you ; but no one can love you better than I? " "Indeed no," said De Vignr, tenderly, "none so well." " And no one cares for your future life as I ? Therefore, will you listen to me for a minute ? " "Sixty, if you like." " Then, tell me," said his mother gently, " do you really think yourself that you are fitted for married life, or married life fitted for you? " "Don't put it in that way !" cried De Vigne, impatiently. " Married life ? lS"o ! not if I were chained down into dull domesticity ; but in our position marriage makes little or no difference in our way of life. We keep the same society, have the same diversions as before. We are not chained together like two galley-slaves, toiling away at one oar, without change of scene or of companion. She must be my wife, because, if she is not, I shall go mad ; but she is no woman only fit ' to suckle fools and chronicle small beer,' and she would be the last to deprive me of that liberty, of which, you are quite right in thinking, I should chafe inces- santly at the loss ! But I am talking myself, not listening to you. What else were you going to say ? " "I was going to say — are you sure you will never love again ? " De Yigne grew impatient again. He threw back his head ; these were not pleasant suggestions to him. " Really, my dear mother, you are looking very far into futurity ! How can I, or any man, by any possibility, answer such a question ? We are not gods, to foresee what lies before us. I know that I love now — love more deeply than I have ever done yet, and that is enough for me ! " " That is not enough for me," answered his mother, with a heavy sigh. " I can foresee your future, for I know your nature, your mind, your heart. You will marry now, in the mad passion of the hour ; marry as a thousand men do, ' giving up their birthright of free choice and liberty, and an open future, for a mess of porridge of a few hours' delight ! I know nothing of Miss Trefusis, nor do I wish to say any- thing against her, but I know you. You many ner, no doubt, from eye-love; for her magnificent beauty, which report says is unrivalled. After a time that beauty will grow stale and tame to you; it will not be your fault ; men 92 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. are born inconstant, and eye-love expires, when the eye has dwelt long enough on it, to grow tired and satiated. Have you not, times out of number, admired and wearied before, •Granville ? Then there will come long years of regret, im- patience of the fetters once joyfully assumed ; perhaps, for you require sympathy and comprehension, miserable years of wrangling and reproaches, such as you are least fitted of all men to endure. You will see that your earlier judgment was crude, your younger taste at fault; then, with your passions strengthened, your discernment matured, you will love again — love with all the tenderness, the depth of later years— love, to find the crowning sorrow of your life, or to drag another in to share the curse you have already brought upon yourself. Can you look steadily at such a future ? " A chill of ice passed through his veins as he heard her — the true foreshadowing of a most bitter doom ! Then he threw the presentiment off, and his hot blood flowed on again in its wild and fiery course ; he answered her pas- sionately and decidedly. " Yes ! I have no fear of any evil coming to me through my love. If she will, she shall be my wile, and whatever my future be, I accept it." The day after our arrival I found the reason for De Yigne's throwing over Brighton for his own home. The Trefusis and Lady Fantyre came down to stay at Follet, a place some three or four miles from Yigne, with some friends of the Fantyre, whose acquaintance she had made on the Continent; people whom he knew but slightly, but whom he now cultivated, more than he generally troubled himself to do, much more exclusive members of that invariably stiltified, stuck-up, aud pitiably-toaded thing, the County. The 1st 01 September came, gray, soft, still, as that de- lightful epoch of one's existence always should, and up with the dawn we swallowed seltzer or coffee, devils or omelettes, too hastily to appreciate them, and went out, in a large party ; for Sabretasche had come there the night before, with several other men, to knock the birds over, in De Yigne's princely preserves. What magic is there in sport to make us so mad after it ? A strange charm there is — a charm we enjoy too much to analyse ; and De Yigne, whose head and heart were full of different game, and Sabretasche, who GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 93 hated rising before two p.m., alike swore to the truth of it, with the dogs and the beaters around them in the open, or lying in the shade of some great hedge-trees, discussing Bass and a cold luncheon, with more appetite than they ever had for the most delicious breakfast at the Maison Doree, or the daintiest hors d'ceuvre at Tortoni's. When twilight had put an end to the everlonged-for First, and we had returned to the bachelor's wing to dress for dinner, I met De Vigne, and he put his hand on my shoulder. " "Well, Arthur, hadn't we awfully good drives ? Isn't it beautiful to see Sabretasche knock down the rocketers, such a lazy fellow as he is, too ? " " He's not a better shot than you ? " " Don't you think so ? But then he's a disciple of the dolce, and I always go hard at anything I take in hand." " You don't sell your game ? " I asked, knowing T might just as well ask him if he sold hot potatoes ! " Sell it ? No, thank you ; I am not a poulterer ! I have sport, not trade ; the fellows who sell the birds their friends help them to kill, should write up over their lodge-gates, " G-ame sold here, by men who would like to be thought gentlemen, but find it a losing concern." I would as soon send my trees up to London for building purposes as my partridges to Leadenhall. The fellows who do that sort of thing must have some leaven of old Lombards, or Chepe goldsmiths in them ; and though they have an Escutcheon instead of a Sign now, can't get rid of the trader's instinct ! " I loved to set De Vigne up on his aristocratic stilts, they were so deliciously contradictory to the radical opinions he was so fond of enunciating ! The fact was, he was an aristocrat at his heart, a radical by his head, and the two Creeds sometimes had a tilt, and upset one another. "Is anybody coming to dinner to-night?" I was half- afraid somebody was, whom I detested to see near him at all. " Yes," he answered curtly. " There are the Levisons, Lady Fantyre, and Miss Trefusis, Cavendish and Ashton." For my life I couldn't help a long whistle, I was so savage at that woman getting the better of us all so cleverly ! " The deuce! De Vigne, your mother and that nasty, gambling, story-telling old Fantyre will hardly run in couples ? " 94 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. For a second his cheek flushed. " It is my house, I invite whom I see fit. As for my mother, God bless her ! she will hardly find a woman good or true enough to run in couples with her. She is too good and true to be prudish or censorious. I have always noticed that it is women who live in glass houses who learn quickest to throw stones, I suppose in the futile hope of inducing people to imagine that their dwellings are such as nobody could possibly assail." " Why the devil, DeVigne," said I, "are you so mad about that woman ? What is it you admire in her ? " He answered with the reckless passion which was day by day getting more mastery over him. "How should I define? I admire nothing — I admire every tiling ! I only know that I will move heaven and earth to gain her, and that I would shoot any man dead who ven- tured to dispute her with me ! " " Is she worth all that ? " His eyes grew cold and annoyed ; I had gone a step too far. He took his hand off my shoulder, and saying with that hauteur which no man could assume more chillingly, " My dear Chevasney, you may apply the lesson I gave Lady Blanche yesterday, to yourself ; I never allow any remarks on my personal concerns," passed down before me into the hall : where, just alighted from the Levisons' carriage, her cloak dropped off one shoulder, something shining and jewelled wreathed over her hair, the strong wax-light gleaming on her face, with its rich geranium-hue in the cheek, and its large luminous eyes, and its short, curved, upper lip, stood in brilliant relief against the carved oak, dark armour, and deep-hued windows of the hall — the Tre- fusis. De Yigne went down the wide oak staircase and across the tesselated pavement to her side, to welcome her to Vigne ; and she thought, I dare say, as she glanced round, that it would be a conquest worth making : the master and — the home. Lady Flora looked earnestly at her as she entered. It was the first time she had seen her, for the Trefusis had been driving when, by her son's request, she had called on the Levisons, with whom she had not more acquaintance than an occasional dinner, or rencontre at some county gathering. Beautiful woman as the Trefusis looked — and that she was GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 95 this lier worst enemies could never deny — in that hard though superb profile, in those lips curved downwards while of such voluptuous beauty, in those eyes so relentless and defiant though of such perfect hue and shape, his mother found how little to hope, how much to fear ! Yet the Trefusis played her cards well. She was very gentle to Lady Flora. She did not seem to seek De Yigne, nor to try and monopolize him ; and with the Ladies Ferrers she was so calm, so self-possessed, and yet had so little assumption, that hard as Lina and Blanche were studying to pick her to pieces, they could not find where to begin, till she drew off her glove at dinner, when Blanche whispered to Sabretasche, who had taken her in, " No race there, but plenty of almond paste ! " to which the Colonel, hating the Trefusis, but liking De Yigne too well to give the Ferrers a handle against their possible future cousin, replied, " "Well, Lady Blanche, perhaps so — hut one is so sated with high race and low intelligence, that one- is almost grateful for a change ! " "Whereat Blanche, all her Paris governesses not having succeeded in drilling much understanding into her brain, was bitterly wrathful, and, in consequence, smiled extra pleasantly. The Trefusis acted her part admirably that night, and peo- ple of less skill in society and physiognomy than Lady Flora would have been blinded by it. " "What a master-spirit of intrigue that woman would be in a court ! " said Sebretasche to me. " No man— certainly no man in love with her— can stand against the strong will and skilful artifices of an ambitious and designing intrigante. Solomon tells you, you know, Arthur, that the worst enemy you young fellows have is Woman, and I tell you the same." "Yet, if report speak truly, Colonel, the sex has no warmer votary than you ? " " "Whenever did report speak truly ? Perhaps I may be only revenging myself; how should you know? It is the fashion, to look on Pamela as a fallen star, and on Lovelace as a horrid cruel wretch. I don't see it always so, myself. Stars that are dragged from heaven by the very material magnets of guineas, cashmeres, love of dress, avarice, or am- bition for a St. John's Wood villa, are not deeply to be 96 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. pitied ; and men who buy toys at such low prices are little to be censured for not estimating their goods very high. The price of a virtuous woman is rarely above rubies ; it has only this difference, that the rubies set as a bracelet will suffice for Coralie, while they must go round a coronet to win Lady Blanche! Apropos/ — whatever other silly things you do, Chevasney,' never make an early marriage." " I never intend, I assure you," I said, tartly. I thought he might have heard of Grwendolina, and be poking fun at me ; and Grwen, I knew, was not for me, but for M. le Due de Yieillecour, a poor, wiry, effete old beau, who had been about Charles X. " Very well, so far ; but you need not look so indignant, no man can tell into what he may be drawn. No one is so secure, but that next year he may commit the sin he utterly ridicules this. Look at De Yigne ; six months past he would have laughed in your face if you had spoken to him of marriage. Now he would be tempted to knock you down if vou attempted to dissuade him from marriage ! What will he gain by it ; what won't he lose ? If she were a charming woman, he would lose his liberty, his pleasant bachelor life, his power of disposing of himself how and where he chooses, without query or comment. "With a woman like the Tre- fusis he will lose more ; he will lose his peace, his self-re- spect, his belief in human nature ; and it will be well if he lose not his honour ! He will have always beside him a wife from whom his whole soul revolts, but to whom his hot- headed youth has fettered him, till one or the other shall lie in the grave. There is no knowing to what madness, what misery, his early marriage may not lead him, to what depths of hopelessness, or error, it may not drag him. Were he a weak man, he would collapse under her rein, and be hen- pecked, cheated, and cajoled ; being a strong one, he will rebel, and, still acting and seeing for himself, he will find out in too short a time, that he has sacrificed himself, and life, and name, to — a Mistake." He spoke so earnestly for the listless, careless, nonchalant, indolent Sabretasche, that I stared at him, for he was almost proverbially impassive ; he caught my eye, and laughed. " What do you think of my sermon, Arthur ? Bear it in mind if your are in danger, that is all. Will you come out into the card-room, and have a game at ecarte ? You play GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 97 wonderfully well for so young as you are ; but then you say a Frenchman taught you ? I hate to play with a man who cannot beat me tolerably often ; there is no excitement without difficulty. The Trefusis knows that ! Look at her flirting with Monckton in her stately style, while De Vigne stands by, looks superbly indifferent, and chafes all the time like a hound held in leash, while another is pulling down the stag ! " "She will not make you happy, Granville!" said his mother that night, when De Yigne bid her good night in her dressing-room, as was his invariable custom. He answered her stiffly " It is unfo rtunate you are all so prejudiced against her." "I am not prejudiced," she answered with a bitter sigh. " Heaven knows how willingly I would try to love any one who loves you, but a woman's intuition sees farther some- times than a man's discernment can penetrate, and in Miss Trefusis, beyond beauty of form and feature, I see nothing that will satisfy you : there is no beauty of mind, no beauty of heart ! The impression she gives me is, that she is an able shemer, a clever actress, quick to seize on the weak points of those around her, and turn them to her own advantage ; but that she is — forgive me! — illiterate, ambitious, and heartless! " " You wrong her and you wrong yourself! " broke in De Yigne, passionately. " Your anxiety for me warps alike your own penetration and charity of feeling. I should have thought you were above such injustice ! " "I only wish I may do her injustice," answered his mother, gravely. " But oh, Granville, 1 fear — I fear ! Dearest, do not be angry, none will ever love you more un- selfishly than 1 ! If I tremble for your future, it is only that I know your character so well. I know all that, as years go on, your mind will require, your heart exact, from the woman who is your wife. I know how quickly the glamour fades in the test of constant intercourse. A com- monplace, domestic woman would drive you from her side to another's ; a hard tyrannous, beautiful woman will freeze you into ice, like herself. I, who love you so dearly, how can I look calmy on to see the shipwreck of your life ? Mv darling ! my darling ! I would almost as soon hear that you had died on a battle-field, as your father did before you, as H 9§ GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. hear that you had given your fate into that woman's hands!" His mother's tenderness and grief touched De Yigne deeply ; he knew how well she loved him, and that this was the first time she had sought to cross his will, but — he stooped and kissed her with fond words, and rose, of the same persuasion still ! It were as easy to turn the west wind from its course, as it sweeps wild and free over the sea and land, as by words or counsel, laws or warnings, to attempt to stem the self-willed, headlong current of a man's mad passion. Had any whispered warning to Acis of his fate, would he have ever listened or cared when, in the sunset glow, he saw the witching gleam of Galatea's golden hair? "When the son of Myrha gazed up into the divine eyes, and felt his own lips glow at the touch of " lava kisses," could be foresee, or, had he foreseen, would he have ever heeded, the dark hour when he should lie dying, on those same Idalian shores ? The Trefusis played her cards ably. A few days after she played her ace of trumps, and her opponents were obliged to throw up their hands. De Vigne did not ask his mother to invite her and Lady Fantyre there ; infatuated though he was, and wisely careless on such subjects gene- rally, I think he felt that the old. ci-devant orange-girl, with her nasty stories, her dingy reputation, and her clever tricks with the four honours, was not a guest suitable to his high- born, high-bred mother. But a day or two after was his birthday, a day which, contrary to his own taste, but in accordance with old habit, had been celebrated, whether he was present or not, with wonderful eclat and magnificence. This year, as usual, " the County," and parts of surround- ing counties, too, came to a dinner and ball at Yigne ; and since the Levisons had been included in the invitations a month before we went down, now, of course, the Trefusis would accompany tbem. As De Yigne had not even the slight admixture of Roger de Coverley benevolence assumed by some county men at the present time, as he had not the slightest taste for oats or barley, did not care two straws how his farms went or how his lands were let, and hated toadying and flummery as cordially as he hated bad wine, the proceedings of the day very naturally bored him immensely; and he threw himself down, after replying to his tenants' speeches, on one of the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 99 couches of the smoking-room, with an anathema on the whole thing. " What a happy fellow you are, Sabretasche ! " said he to the Colonel, who had retired from the scene to one of the sofas with a pile of periodicals and a case of genuine Manillas. "You have nothing on your hands but your town-house, that you can shut up, and your Highland lodge, where you can leave your dogs for ten months in the year ; and have no yeomanry, tenants, and servants, to look to you yearly for sirloins and October, and a speech that is more trouble to make than fifty parliamentary ones!" "Ah ! my dear fellow," yawned Sabretasche, " I did stay in that tent pitying you beyond measure, till my feelings and my nerves couldn't stand seeing you martyrized, and scent- ing that very excellent beef, and hearing those edifying cheers any longer; so, as I couldn't help you, I took com- passion on myself, shut myself up with the magazines, and thanked Heaven I was not born to that desideratum — ' a fine landed property ! ' " De Vigne laughed. " Well, it's over now ! I shouldn't mind it so much if they wouldn't talk such bosh to one's face — praising me for my liberality and noble-mindedness, and calling me public spirited and generous, and Heaven knows what. They're a good-hearted set of fellows, though, I believe " " Possibly," said Sabretasche ; " but what extent of good- heartedness can make up for those dreadfully broad o's and a's, and those terrific ' Sunday-going suits,' and those stubble- like heads of hair plastered down with oil ? " "Not to you, you confounded refiner of refined gold," laughed De Vigne. "By-the-bye, Sabretasche, don't you sometimes paint lilies in your studio ? That raffine opera- tion would suit you to a T. I suppose you never made love to a woman who was not the ultra-essence of good breeding and Grecian outline ? " Sabretasche gave a sort of shudder ; at some recollection, or at the simple suggestion. "Well," said De Vigne ; " Cupid has a vernacular of his own which levels rank sometimes ; a pretty face, is a pretty face, whether it is under a Paris bonnet, or a cottage straw. But what I hate so, is this sort of affair, is the false light in which it makes one stand. Here am I, who don't see Vigne H 2 ioo GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. for nine months out of the year, sometimes not at all, who delegate all the bother of it to my steward, who neither knows nor care when the rents are paid, nor how the lands are divided, cheered by these people as if T were a sort of god and king over them — and, deuce take them ! they mean it, too ! Their fathers' fathers worshipped my fathers' fathers, and so they, in a more modern fashion, cheer and toast me as if I were a combined Cincinnatus and Titus ! Tou know well enough T am nothing of the kind ! I don't think I have a spark of benevolence in my composition. I could no more get up an interest in model cottages, and prize fruit, than I could in Cochin-Chinas or worsted work, and the consequence is that I feel a humbug, and instead of returning thanks to-day to my big farmers, and my small re- tainers, I should have liked to have said to them, ' My good fellows, you are utterly mistaken in your man. I am glad you are doing well, and I won't let any of you be ground down if I know it ; but otherwise I don't care a jot about any of you, and this annual affair is a very great bore to me, whatever it may be to you; and I take this opportunity of assuring you that, far from being a demigod, I am a very graceless cavalry man, and instead of doing any good witli my twenty thousand a year, I only make ducks and drakes of it as fast as I possible can.' If I had said that to them, I should have relieved myself, had no more toadying, and felt that the Vigneites and I understood one another. What a horrid bother it is one can't tell truth in the world!" " Most people find the bother lie, in having to tell the truth occasionally ! " said the Colonel, with his enigmatical smile. " You might enjoy having, like Fenelon's happy islanders, only to open your eyes to let your thoughts be read, but I am afraid such an expose would hardly suit most of us. Tou don't agree with Talleyrand, that language is given us to conceal our thoughts? " De Vigne looked at him as he poked up his pipe. " Devil take you, Sabretasche ! Who is to know what you mean, or what you think, or what you are ?" " My dear fellow," said the Colonel, cutting the West- minster slowly with one hand, and taking out his cigar with the other, " nobody, I hope, for /agree with Talleyrand, if you don't." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 101 The County came — a few to dinner, many to the ball, presenting all the varied forms of that peculiar little oligarchy ; a Duke, two Marquises, two Earls, four or five Barons, high-dried, grand old Dowagers, with fresh, pretty- looking daughters as ready for fun and flirtation as their maids ; stiltified County Queens, with daughters long on hand, who had taken refuge in High- Churching their village, and starched themselves very stiff in the operation. Pretty married women, who waltzed in a nutshell, and had many more of us after them than the girls. County beauties, accustomed to carry all before them at race balls if not at xllmack's, and to be Empresses at archery fetes if they were only units in Belgravia. Hunting Baronets, who liked the music of the pack when they threw up their heads, mucli better than the music of D'Albert's waltzes. Members with the down hardly on their cheeks; other Members, whose mission seemed to lie much more in the saddle than the benches. Rectors by the dozen, who found a village dance on the green sinful, but a ball at Vigne a very par- donable error ; scores of military men, who flirted more desperately and meant less by it than any fellows in the room ; all the County, in fact, and among them little old Fantyre, with her hooked nose, and her queer reputation, her dirty, priceless lace, and her jewels got nobody knew how, and her daughter, niece, or companion, the intrigante, the interloper, but decidedly the belle of the rooms, the handsome and haughty Trefusis. Superbly, in truth, she looked in some dress, as light 'and brilliant as summer clouds, with the rose tint of sunset on them, while her eyes, dark and lustrous as an Eastern's, shot their dangerous languid glances. One could hardly wonder that De Vigne offended past redemption the Ladies-in-their-own-right, all the great heiresses, all the County princesses royal, all the archery-party beauties; and — careless of rank, right, or com- ment — opened the ball with the Trefusis. It was her crowning triumph, and she knew it. She knew that what he dared to begin, he would dare to follow out, and that the more censure he provoked, the more certainly would he per- severe in his own will. " We have lost the game ! " said Sabretasche to me, as he passed me, waltzing with Adelina Ferrers. It was true. De Yigne was then waltzing that same valse 102 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. with ber ; whirling her round the white lilies of her bouquet de corsage crushed against his breast ; her forehead resting on his shoulder, his moustaches touching her hair as he whispered in her ear, his face glad, proud, eager, impassioned ; while the County feminine sneered, and whispered behind their fans, " What could De Yigne possibly see in that woman ? " and the County masculine swore what a deuced fine creature she was, and wondered what Trefusis she might be ? Then — that waltz over — De Yigne gave her his arm, and led her out of the ball-room to take some ice, and then strolled on with her into the conservatories, which, thanks to Lady Flora, were brilliant as the glories of the tropics, and odorous as a rich Indian night, with their fragrance exhaling from citron and cypress groves, and their heavy clusters of magnolias and mangoes. There, in that atmo- sphere, that hour, so sure to banish prudence and fan the fires of passion ; there, to the woman beside him, glorious as one of the West Indian flowers above their heads, but chill and unmoved at heart as one of their brilliant and waxen petals — De Yigne poured out in terse and glowing words the love she had so strangely awakened, laying generously and trustfully, as a knight of old laid his spoils and his life, at his queen's feet, his home, his name, his honour before the woman he loved. And she simulated tenderness to perfection ; she threw it into her lustrous eyes, she forced it into her blushing cheek, it trembled in her softened voice, it glanced upwards under her dark lashes. It was all a lie, but a lie marvellously acted : — and while he bent over her, covering her lips with passionate caresses, drinking in with every breath a fresh draught of intoxication, his heart beating loud and quick with the triumph of success, was it a marvel that he forgot his past, his future, his own experience, others' warnings, anything and everything, save the Present, in its full and triumphant delirium ? GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 103 CHAPTEE IX. THE BLOW THAT A WOMAN DEALT. " I say, Arthur— she has outwitted us !" " The devil she has, Colonel ! " " Who would have believed him so mad ?" " Who would have believed her so artful? " " Chevasney, men are great fools ! " s * And women wonderful actresses, Colonel ! " " Eight ; but it is a cursed pity." " That De Yigne is taken in, or that women are embodied lies, sir — which? " " Both ! " And with his equanimity most unusually ruffled, Sabre- tasehe turned away out of the ball-room, which De Yigne and the Trefusis, after a prolonged absence, had just re- entered ; his face saying plainly enough, that bis cause was won ; hers telling as clearly, that the estate and its master were captured. When the dawn was rising, and the great gates had closed after the last carriage-wheels, De Yigne went to his mother in her dressing-room. He wished to tell, yet he shrank from paining her — it came out with a jerk at last — " My mother, wish me joy ! I have won her, and / have no fear ! " And when his mother fully realized his words, she burst into the most bitter tears that she had ever shed for him ; for whatever in his whole life his faults might be to others, in his conduct to his mother he had none. He let her tears have their way ; he hardly knew how to console her; he only put his arm gently round her, as if to assure her that no wife should ever come between herself and him. When she raised her head she was deathly pale — pale, as if the whole of his future hung a dead and hopeless weight upon her. She said no more against it ; it was done, and she was both too wise, and loved him too truly, to vex and chafe him with useless opposition. But she threw her arms round him, and kissed him long and breathlessly, as she had kissed him in his child^ cot long ago, thinking of his father lying dead on the Indian shore with the colours for his shroud. "My darling! my darling! God bless you! God give you a happy future, and a wife who will love you, as you can love — will love ! " 104 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. That passionate broken prayer was all his mother ever said to him of his marriage. De Vigne received few congratulations ; but that sort of thing was quite contrary to his taste, and on opposition, none of his relatives, not even the overbearing, knock-me- down, Marchioness of Marquetrie, who gave the law to everybody, dared to venture. She only expressed her opinion by ordering her own carriage for the hour, and the day, at which the Trefusis came for the first time to stay at Vigne. Lady Flora treated the Trefusis with a generous courtesy, which did its best to grow into something warmer, and watched her with a wistful anxiety which was very touching. But it was evident to every one that the two could never assimilate, or even approach one another. This careful courtesy was all that would ever link them together, and, in this instance at least, the extremes did not touch. However, for the three weeks longer, that I remained there, on the surface all went on remarkably smooth. The Ferrers, of course, had left with their mother. The Trefusis, in manner, was irreproachable. Sabretasche was infinitely too polished a gentleman, to show disapproval of what he had no business with : and limited himself to an occasional satiric remark on her, so veiled in subtle wit and courtesy, that, shrewd as she was, she felt the sting, but could not find the point of attack clearly enough to return it. De Yigne, of course, saw everything in a rose light, and only chafed with impatience at the probation of an engagement ; and his mother resigned herself to the inevitable, and did her very best, poor lady ! to find out some trace of that beauty of heart, thought, and mind, which her delicate feminine instinct told her, was wanting in the magnificent personal gifts with which nature had enriched the woman who was to be his wife. So all went harmoniously on at Vigne throughout that autumn ; and the County talked themselves hoarse, specu- lating on his union with an unknown, with no rank, prestige, history, or anything to entitle her to such an honour, in whom, whether she were daughter or protegee of that dis- reputable old woman, Sarah Lady Eant'yre, Society could decide nothing for certain, nor make out anything at all satisfactory. No wonder the County were up in arms, and hardly knew which to censure the most — De Vigne for GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 10$ daring to make such a misalliance, or the Trefusis for daring to accept it ! And the Colonel thought with the County. " If I ever took the trouble (which I don't, because hate is an exhausting and silly thing) to hate anybody, it would be that remarkably handsome and remarkably detestable Trefusis," said Sabretasche, as he wrapped a plaid round his knees on the box of the drag, which was to convey him and me to the station, to take the train for those grass countries, well-beloved of every Englishman for the mere name of Pytchley, whither Sabretasche was going down for the five weeks that still remained of his leave, having invited me to accompany him ; and where T enjoyed myself uncommonly, managing most days to be in at the finish, by dint of following that best of mottoes, for which we are indebted to the best Master of Hounds who ever went to cover " Throw your heart over, and your horse will follow ! " Each hour I spent with him I grew more attached to the Colonel ; the longer I saw him in his own house, so perfect a gentleman, so perfect a host ; the longer I listened to his easy and playful talk on men and things, his subtle and profound satire on hypocrisies and follies. It was impossible not to get, as ladies say, fond of Sabretasche ; his courtly urbanity, his graceful generosity, his ready wit, all made him so charming a companion ; though of the real man it was difficult, as De Vigne said, to judge, through the non- chalance, indolence, and impassiveness, with which the Colonel chose to veil all that he said or did. He might have some secret or other in his past life, or his present career, which no man ever knew 5 he might be only, what he said he was, an idler, a trifler, a dilettante, a blase and and tired man of the world, a nil admirari-ist. Nobody could tell. Only this I could see, gay, careless, indolent though he was, that in spite of the refined selfishness, the exquisite epicureanism, the voluptuous enjoyment of life which his friends and foes attributed to him, Vivian Sabretasche, like most of the world's merry-makers was sometimes sad enough at heart. "Eriends? I don't believe in friends, my dear boy," said the Colonel, one night when we sat over the fire, after a splendid burst over the country, up wind, fifteen minutes alone with the hounds ; and a kill in the open. " There 106 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. are hundreds of good fellows who like Vivian Sabretasche and run after him because he amuses them, and is a little of the fashiou, and is held a good judge of their wine, and their stud, and their pictures. But let Vivian Sabretasche come to grief to-morrow, let his Lares go to the Jews, and his Penates to the devil ; let the Clubs, instead of quoting black-ball him, and the Post, instead of putting him in the Fashionable Intelligence, cite him among the Criminal Cases, which of his bosom friends will be so anxious then to take his arm down St. James's-street ? Which of them all will invite and flatter him then ? Will Orestes send him haunches of venison? Will Iolaiis uncork his Cornet wine for him, and Pylades stretch out his hand to him, and pick his fallen pride out of the dirt of the gutter, and fight his, battle for him when he has crippled himself ? Pshaw ! my dear Arthur, I take men at my valuation, not at their own. Don't you know — 1 Si vous etes dans la detresse O mes amis, caehez-le bien, Car l'honune est bon et s'interesse A ceux qui n'ont besoin de rien ! ' " " It is a sad doctrine, Colonel," said I, who was a boy and wished to disbelieve him. He laughed a little. "Sad? Oh, I don't see that; nothing in life is worth calling sad. According to He- raclitus, everything is sad ; according to Democritus nothing is sad. The true secret is to take things as they come, and not trouble yourself sufficiently about anything to give it power to trouble you. Enjoy your youth. Take, mine and your school-friend Ovid's counsel — ' Utendum est aetate. Cito pede labitur a?tas. . . . Hac mihi de spina grata corona data est.' " " But how's one to keep clear of the thorns ? " " By flying butterfly-like, from rose to rose, and handling it so delicately, as not to give it time to prick you ! Love makes a poetic and unphilosophic man, like Dante or Petrarca, unhappy ; but do you suppose that Lauzun, G-rammont, the Due de Richelieu, were ever made un- happy by love ? No, the very idea makes one laugh ; the poets took it seriously, and suffered in consequence ; the courtiers only made it their pastime, and enjoyed it pro- GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 107 portionately. It all depends on the way one lays hold of the roses of life : some men only enjoy the dew and fra- grance of the flower, others mismanage it somehow, and get only the thorns." " Ton've the secret, then, Colonel," said I, laughing, " for you get a whole conservatory of the most delicious under the sun, and not a thorn, I'd bet, among them ? " " Or, at all events, my skin is hard enough not to be pricked," smiled Sabretasche. " I think many men begin life, like the sand on the top of a drum, which obeys every undulation of the air from the notes of a violin near ; they are sensitive and susceptible^ shrinking at wrong or injury, easily moved, quickly touched. As years go on, the same men are like the same sand when it has been pressed, and hardened,, and burnt in fusion heat, and exposed to frosty air, and made into polished, impenetrable glass, on which you can make no impression, off whose icy surface every- thing glides away, and which it is impossible to cut with the hardest and keenest of knives. The sand is the same sand ; it is the treatment it has met with that has changed it. How I do prose to you, Arthur! — and of all the ills, a man has least right to inflict on another,, are his own theories or ideas ! Fill your glass, my boy, and pass me those macaroons. How can those poor creatures live who don't know of the Marcobrunnen and Macaroons of ex- istence? It is a good thing to have money, isn't it? It not only buys us friends, but it buys us what is of infinitely more value — all the pleasant little agrements of life. I would not keep in the world at all if I did not lie on rose- leaves ! " Wherewith the Colonel nestled himself more comfort- ably into his arm-chair, laid his head on the cushions, closed his eyes, and smoked away at his perfumed hookah, the most fragrant and delicate, that ever came out of Persia. On the 31st of December, Sabretasche and De Vigne, Curly and I (Curly had got his commission in the Cold- streams, and was the prettiest, daintiest, most flattered, and most flirted with young Guardsman of his time), went clown by the express, through the snow-whitenod fields and hedges, to Yigne, where, contrary to custom, its master was to take his bride on the first morning of the New IOS GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Tear. It was to be a very gay wedding. He, always liberal to excess, now perfectly lavish in his gifts, had followed the French fashion, he said, and given her a corheille fit for a princess of Blood Royal, which the Tre- fusis, having no delicacy of appropriation, accepted as a right. There were to be twelve bridesmaids, not the quite exclusive, and ultra high-bred, young ladies who would have followed Adelina or Blanche Ferrers, but still very stylish-looking girls, acquaintances of the Trefusis. There were to be such a breakfast and such rejoicings, as had never before been seen, even at that proverbially magnificent place. Such a wedding was entirely contrary to De Vigne's taste and ideas, but the more others had chosen to run down the Trefusis, the more did he delight to honour her, and therefore he had asked almost everybody he knew, and almost everybody went ; for all wko knew him washed him well, except his aunt and her daughters the Ladies Ferrers. They went because, else, the world might have said that they were disappointed he had not married Blanche ; but very far from wishing him well, I think they fervently hoped he might repent his hasty step, in sackcloth and ashes, and their costly wedding presents were much like Judas' s kisses. Wedding presents singularly oft-en are ! As she writes the delicately mauve-tinted congratulatory note wishing dearest Adeliza every joy that earth can give, and assuriDg her she is that very beau ideal of a perfect wife, is not Madame ten to one saying to her elder daughter, "How strange it is that Fitz should have been taken in— such a bold, flirty girl, and nothing pretty in her, to my taste ?" And as we shake Fitz's hand at our Club, telling him he is the luckiest dog going to have such a pretty girl, and such a lot of money by one coup, are we not fifty to one thinking, " Poor wretch ! he's glad of the tin, I suppose, to keep him out of the Queen's Bench ? But, by Greorge ; though I am hard up, I wouldn't take one of those con- founded Peyton woman if I knew it! Won't she just check him nicely, with her cheque-book and her consols ? " One could hardly wonder that if the Trefusis had been proved a perfect Messalina or Fredegonde, no man in love with her would have given her up as she sat that last evening of the Old Tear on one of the low couches beside the drawing-room fire at Yigne, looking with the ruddy glow GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. log of the fire-gleams upon her like one of Eubens', or Guido's, dark, glowing, voluptuous goddesses or sibyls. De Vigne was leaning over her with eyes for none but her. His mother sat opposite them both, delicate, graceful, fragile, with her diaphanous hands, and fair pure profile, and rich, soft, black lace falling in folds around her, her eyes yearn- ingly fixed upon her son ; while just behind her, playing ecarte with Curly, who was devotedly fond of that little dangerous French game, was old Lady Fantyre, with her keen, wicked eye, and her rouged, withered cheek, and her fan and feathers, flowers and jewels, and her dress — decol- letee at seventy-six ! "Look at De Vigne!" said Sabretasche to me. "His desires on the eve of fulfilment, he imagines his happiness will be also. How he bends over that chair, and looks down into her eyes, as if all his heaven hung there ! Twelve months hence he will wish to God he had never looked upon her face." " Good Heavens, Colonel !" I cried involuntarily, " what evil, or horror, do you know of her?" " None of her, personally," said Sabretasche, with a sur- prised smile. " But is she not a woman ; and is not De Yigne, poor fellow, marrying too early ? With such pre- miss my prophecy requires no diviner's art to make it a very safe one. As great a contrast as that rouged, atro- ciously-dressed, abominable old orange-woman is to his own charming and graceful mother, will be De Yigne's real future to his imaginary one. However, he is probably in Socrates' predicament, whether he take a wife or not, either way he will repent ; and he must be satisfied ; he will have the handsomest woman in England ! Few men have as much as that!" "Ladies ought to hate you, sir," said I, "instead of loving you as idolatrously as they do ; for you certainly are their bitterest enemy." " Not I," laughed Sabretasche. " I am very fond of them, except when they try and hook my favourite friends, and then I would say to them, as Thales said to his mother, that in their youth men are too young to be fettered, and after their youth they are too old. I am sorry for De Yigne — very sorry ; he is doing what in a little time, and for all his life through, he will long to undo. But he must HO GRAXVILLE DE VIGNE. have his own way ; and perhaps, after all, as Emerson says, marriage may be an open question, as it is alleged from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institu- tion want to get out, and such as are out want to get in ! Marriage is like a mirage : all the beauty it possesses lies in keeping at a distance from it." He moved away with that light laugh which always perplexed you as to whether he meant what he said in mockery or earnest, and began to arrange the pieces for a game at chess with one of the ladies. He was very right. His wife would be the woman of all others, from whom, in maturer years, De Vigne would be most certain to revolt. A man's later loves, are sure to be widely distinct in style from his earlier. In his youth, he only asks for what charms his eyes and senses ; in manhood — if he be a man of in- tellect at all — he will go further, and require interest for his mind, and response for his heart. The last hour of the Old Tear chimed at once from the bell-tower of Vigne, the belfry of the old village-church, and the countless clocks throughout the house ; as a little gold Bayadere on the mantel-piece struck the twelve strokes slowly and musically on the tambourine. Lady Elora, in her own boudoir, heard it with passionate tears, arid on her knees, prayed for her son's new future which this New Year heralded. De Yigne, alone in the library with his betrothed, heard it, and pressed his lips to hers, with words of rap- turous delight, to welcome this New Year coming to them both. Sabretasche heard it as he leant over the chair of a lovely married woman, flirting a outrance, and bent back- ward to me as I passed him : " There goes the death-knell ! The last day of freedom is over. Go and put on sackcloth and Ashes, Arthur." The Colonel's words weighed curiously upon me as I rose and dressed on the morning of New Year's-day. I, a young fellow, who looked on life and all its. chances as gaily as on a game at cricket, who should have come to this weddiug as I had gone to a dozen others, only to enjoy myself, drink the Ai and Sillery, and flirt with all the bridesmaids, dressed with almost as dead a chill upon me, I could not have told why, as if I had come to De Yigne's funeral rather than to his marriage. There seemed little reason for regret, however, as I met him that morniug coming out of GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. ill his room, and held out his hand with his sunny smile. I wished him joy in very few words — 1 wished it him too well to be able to get up an eloquent or studied speech. 11 Thank you, dear Arthur," he answered, turning his door-handle with a joyous, light-hearted laugh; " I am sure all the fairies would come and bless my marriage if you'd anything to do with the ordering of them. Come in, old fellow, and have a cigar — my last bachelor smoke — it will keep me quiet till she is out of her maid's hands. Faugh ! how I hate the folly of wedding ceremonial ! The idea of dressing up Love in white favours, and giving him bride- cake ! He smoked because, my dear young ladies, men accus- tomed to the horrid weed, can't do without it, even on their wedding-day ; but quiet he was not : he had at all times more of the tornado in him, than anything like the Colonel's equable calm ; and he was restless and excitable, and happy as only a man in the same cloudless and eager youth, with the same fearless and vehement passion, can ever be. He soon threw down his cigar, for a servant came to tell him that his mother would like to see him in her own room ; and De Vigne, who had been ceaselessly darting glances at the clock, which, I dare say, seemed to him to crawl on its way, went out, joyous as Eomeo's, Come what sorrow may- It cannot countervail this interchange of joy. He never thought of Friar Laurence's prophetic reply: These violent delights have violent ends : And in their triumph die ; like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume ! By noon we were all ready. In the dining-hall, with its bronzes and its deer-heads, and the regimental colours of his father's regiment looped up between the two end windows with his helmet, sabre, and gloves above them, the breakfast, sumptuous enough to have done for St. James's or the Tuileries, was set out, with its gold plate, its hot-house flowers, and its thousand deli- cacies ; and in the private Chapel the wedding party was assembled, with the sun streaming brightly in, through the coloured light of the stained windows. It was a very H2 GRANVILLE BE VIGNE. brilliant gathering. There were the Marchioness of Mala- chite and the Ladies Ferrers, looking bored to the last extreme, and appearing to consider it too great an honour for the mosaic pavement to have the glory of bearing their footsteps. There were other dainty ladies of rank, friends of Lady Flora's. There were the dozen bridesmaids in their gauzy dresses and their wreaths of holly or of forget- me-not ; there were hosts of men, chiefly military, whose morning mufti threw in just enough shade among the bright dresses, as brilliant by themselves as a bouquet of exotics. There were, strangely enough, close together, bizarre, quick-eyed, queer old Lady Fantyre, and soft, fragile Lady Flora ; and, there was De Vigne, standing near his mother, chatting and laughing with Sabretasche, but all his senses alive, to catch the first sound which should tell him, of the advent of his bride. How well I can see him now, as if it were but yesterday, standing on the alter-steps — where his ancestors, through long ages past, had wedded noble gentlewomen and fair patrician girls from the best and bravest Houses in the land — I can see him now, standing erect, his head up, one hand in the breast of his waistcoat, his eyes, dark as night, bril- liant and luminous with eagerness ; a flush of excitement and anticipation on his face ; not a shade, not a fear, seem- ing to rest upon him ! His mother's eyes were riveted on him, with a mournful tenderness, she could not, or did not care to conceal ; her lips quivered ; she looked at me, and shook her head. That wedding party was very brilliant, but there was a strange, dull gloom over it which everyone felt, yet none could explain ; and little of the joyous light- headedness which make " marriage-bells " proverbial for mirth and gaiety. There was a very low but an irrepressible murmur of applause, as his bride swept silently up the aisle. !Never had we seen her look so handsome. Her voluptuous form was shrouded in the shower of lace that fell around her, and about her, from her head, till it trailed behind her on the ground. The glowing damask-rose hue of her cheeks, not one whit the paler this morning, and the splendid brilliance of her eyes, were enhanced, not hidden, by the filmy floating veil. A wreath of orange-flowers, of course was woven in her hair, and a ceinture of diamonds, worthy GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 13 an imperial trousseau — one of the gifts of her lavish and bewitched lover — were jewels fitted to her. She was match- less as a dream of Rubens' ; but I looked in vain, as her eyes rested on De Vigne's, for one saving shadow of love, joy, natural emotion, tremulous feeling, to denote that he was not utterly thrown away ; and only wedded to a price- less statue of responseless marble ! She passed up to the altar with her retinue of brides- maids, in their snowy dresses and bright wreaths, into the light streaming from the painted windows. She stood beside him ; and the service began ; one of the Ferrers family, the Bishop of Southdown, read the few words which linked them for life with the iron fetters of the Church. Everyone who caught the glad, firm, eager tone of De Yigne's "I mil" remembers it to this day — remembers with what trusting love, what unhesitating promptitude he took that vow for " better or worse ! " Prophetic words ! which say, whatever ill may come of that rash oath sworn, there will be no remedy for it ; no help, no repentance that will be of any avail ; no furnace strong enough to unsolder the chains they forge for ever ! De Vigne passed the ring over her finger : they knelt down, and the priest stretched his hands over them, and forbade those whom God had joined together any Man to put asunder. And they rose — husband and wife. They came down the altar steps, his face radiant, in its frank joy, its noble pride, looking down upon her with his brilliant eyes, now soft and gleaming ; while she looked straight before her, her lips slightly parted with a smile, probably of triumph and of exultation that an interloper, an adventuress, was now the wife of the last of a haughty House, whose pride throughout lengthened centuries had ever been that all its men were brave and all its women chaste ; that not a taint rested on its name, not a stain upon its blood, not a spot upon its shield. We passed down the chapel into the vestry, he gazing down on her with all the eagerness of passion. But he had no answering glance of love. The day of acting, because the need for acting was over now. The register was open ; he took the quill, and dashed down hastily his old ancestral name ; passing it into her hand with fondly whispered words. She took it, threw back her veil, and wrote — 1 H4 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. " Lucy Treeusis — or Davis." De Yigue was bending fondly over her, his lips touching her hair, with its virginal crown, as she wrote. - "With one great cry he suddenly sprang up, as men will do upon a battle-field when struck with their death-wound. Seizing her hands in his, he held her away from him, reading her face line by line, feature by feature, with the dim horror of a man in some vague dream of hideous agony. And she smiled up in his face ; the smile of a fiend. " Granville de Vigne, do you know me now? " Aye ! he knew her now. He still held her at arms' length, staring clown upon her, the truth in all its vile horror, its abhorred shame, eating gradually into his very life ; seeming as it were to turn his warm blood to ice, and chill his very heart to stone. She laughed — a mocking derisive laugh, which broke strangely, coarsely, brutally, on the dead silence round them. " Yes ! G-ranville, yes my young lover, I am your AVife, of your own act, your own will. Do you remember the poor mistress you mocked at ? Do you remember the summer day when you laughed at my vengeance ? Do you re- member, -iny husband ? Before all your titled crowd, I take my revenge, that it may be the more complete. I would not wait for it, nor spare you one iota of your shame, nor let you keep it secret hidden in your heart ! I renounce my own ambitious to humble you lower still. They are hearing us ! All your haughty relatives, your fastidious friends, who have tried so long to stop you in your mad passion. They listen to me ! They see you dishonoured for ever in your eyes and theirs ! They will go and tell the world, what you would never have told it, that the last of his Kace has given his home, his honour, his mother's place, his father's name — that proud name which only yesterday you told me no disgrace had ever touched, no bad blood ever borne ! — to the despised love of his boyhood, his own cast- off low-born toy; a beggar's child; a " " Peace!" At that single word, hoarse as a death-cry in its unutter- able agony, she was silenced perforce. The blood had left his lips, and cheeks, a blue and ghastly hue ; and settled on his forehead in a dark and crimson stain — like the stain on GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 15 his own honour. His eyes were set and fixed, as in some mortal torture, wide-open and vacant in their pain ; his teeth were clenched as men clench them in their last struggle ; and his hand was pressed upon his heart, as he gasped for breath, like one suffocated by a deadly grip that throttles him. In the horror of the moment, all round him were dumb and paralysed; even she, in her rancorous hate, paused, awe-stricken at the ruin she had wrought, silent before the anguish, shame, and loathing that convulsed his face, as he fluug her from him with a wild shrill laugh. " Peace ! woman — devil ! or I shall have your life ! " . . . But his mother threw herself before him. " Oh, Grod ! he is mad ! Stay, for my sake, stay ! " He strained her to his heart with convulsive force : " Let me go — let me go ! " None could attempt to arrest him. He pushed his way through the crowd, hurling them aside, like a madman, and we heard the rapid rush of carriage-wheels as they rolled away — none knew where. CHAPTEE X. ON THE FIBST DAY OF A NEW YEAB. Ox another New Year's Day, ten years from that fatal marriage, the tropic sun streamed down on parched sand, and tangled jungle, where, in the sultry stillness of the noon, a contest for life and death was raging. Par away on the blue hills slept the golden day ; the great palm-leaves drooped languidly ; the jaguars, and the tigers, lay couched in the grasses ; the norikens, and parrots, closed their soft, brilliant-hued wings to sleep ; all nature in the vast solitudes was at peace ; even the broad sheet of the river was calm as a tideless lake, pausing in its rapid rush, from its mountain cradle, to its ocean grave. All nature was hushed and still, but the passions of man were warring ; when do they ever rest ? It was a skirmish of British cavalry and Beloochee infantry, in a small plain between large wo ods or hunting grounds, and the red sun shone with an and glare on the glittering sabres, and white linen helmets of the Europeans, i2 Il6 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. and the gorgeous turbans, and dark shields of the moun- taineers, who were darkening the air with their clashing swords, and breaking the holy hush of wood and hills with long rolling shouts, loud and terrible as thunder. The mountaineers doubled the English force ; they had surprised them, moreover, as, not thinking of attack, they trotted onwards from one garrison to another, and the struggle was sharp and fierce. The English were but a handful of Hussars, under command of their Major, and the odds were great against them. But at their head was one to whom fear was a word in an unknown tongue, in tvhose blood was fire, and whose heart was bronze. Sitting down in his saddle as calmly as at a meet, his eyes steady and quick as an eagle's, hewing right and left like a common trooper, the Major fought his way. The Beloochee swords gleamed round him without harm, while crashing through their bright-hued turbans, every stroke of his sabre told. They surged around him, they climbed, they wrestled, they tore, they panted for his biood, they caught his charger's bridle, they opposed before him one dense and bristling forest of swords ; still, he bore a charmed life, alike in single combat hand to hand, or in the broken charge of his scattered troop. In the fierce noontide glow, in the pitiless vertical sun- rays, while the wild shouts of the natives rang up to the heavens, and the ceaseless clang and clash of the sabres and shields startled the birds from their rest, and the tigers from their lair, he fought like grim death, as these blows glanced harmless off him, as from Achilles of old ; fought till the native warriors, savage heroes though they were, fled from his path, awe-stricken at his fierce valour, at his matchless strength, at his god-like charm from danger. He pursued them at the head of his troop, after the skirmish was over, far away across the plain ; then, as he drew bridle and put his reeking sword back into its sheath, another man near him, looked at him in amazement : " On my- life, De Yigne, what an odd fellow you are ! Tou look like the very devil in the midst of the fight ; and yet when it's over, after sharper work than any even we have seen, deuce take you if you're not as cool as if you'd w r alked out of a barrack- vard ! " GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Il7 The same 1st of January, while they were enjoying this Cavalry skirmish in the East, we were bored to death by a review at "Woolwich. The day was soft and bright, no snow or frost, as Sabretasche, with his Italianised constitu- tion, remarked with a thanksgiving. There was Boyaltv to inspect us ; there were pretty women in their carriages in the inner circle : and there was as superb a luncheon as any military man could ask, in the finest mess-room in England ; and we, ungrateful, I suppose, for the goods the gods gave us, swore away at it all, as the greatest curse imagiDable. It is a pretty scene enough, I dare say, to those who have only to look on ; the bright uniforms and the white plumes, the grays and the bays, the chesnuts and the roans, the dashing staff and the cannon's peaceful roar, the marching and the counter-marchiog, the storming and the sortie, the rush and the charge ! I dare say it may be all very amusing to lookers-on, but to us, heated and bothered and tired, obliged to go into harness, which we hated as cordially as we loved it the first day we sported in our Cornethood, it was a nuisance inexpressible, and we should have far preferred fatiguing ourselves for some better purpose under the teak-trees in India. We were profoundly thankful when it was all over aud done with, when H.R.H. F.M. had departed to Windsor without luncheon, and we were free to go up and chat with the women in the inner circle, and take them into the mess- room. There were very few we knew, yet up in town; but Parliament was about to meet, unusually early that year, and there were several from jointure houses, or little villas at Eichmond, or Twickenham, or Kew, with whom we were well acquainted. " There is Lady Molyneux," said Sabretasche, who was now Lieut.- Colonel of Ours. " I dare say that is her daughter with her. I remember she came out last season, and was very much admired, but I missed her by going that Ionian Isle trip with Brabazon. Shall we go and be intro- duced, Arthur ? She does not look bad style, though to be sure these English winter days are as destructive to a woman's beauty, as anything well can be ! " The Colonel wheeled his horse round up to the Molyneux barouche, and I followed him. Ten years had not altered Sabretasche in one iota ; he had led the same lounging Il8 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. indolent, fashionable, artistic kind of life ; his face was as handsome, his wit as light his conquests as various and far- famed as ever. He was still soldier, artist, sculptor, dilet- tante, man of fashion, all in one, the universal criterion or taste, the critic of all beauties, pictures, singers, or horses, popular with all men, adored by all women, and really chained by none. Therefore Vivian Sabretasche, whose word at White's or the XJ. S. could do more to damage, or increase, her daughter's reputation as a belle, than any other man's, had a very pleasant bow and smile in the distance, from Lady Molyneux; and a very delicate lavender kid glove belonging to that peeress, put between his fingers, when he and I rode up to her carriage. " Ah ! " cried the Viscountess, a pretty, supercilious- looking woman, who was passee, but would not by any means allow it, " I am delighted to see you both. We only came to town yesterday ; Lord Molyneux has taken a house in Lowndes-square, and there is positively scarcely a soul that we know here as yet ! Eushbrooke persuaded us to come to this review to-day, and Violet wished it. Allow me to introduce my daughter to you. Violet, my love, Colonel Sabretasche, Mr. Chevasney, Miss Molyneux." Violet Molyneux looked up in the Colonel's face as he bowed to her ; and probably thought — at least she looked as if she did — that she had never seen any man so attractive, as he returned her gaze with his soft, mournful eyes, and that exquisite gentleness of manner, to which he owed half his reputation in the tender secrets of the boudoir and flirting-room ; and leaning his hand on the door of the car- riage, bent down from his saddle, studying the new beauty, while he laughed and chatted with her and her mother. We used to say Sabretasche kept a list of the new beauties entered for the year — as " Bell's Life " has a list of the young fillies entered for the Oaks ; made a cross against those worth noticing, and checked off those already flirted with and slain ; for the Colonel was indisputably as dangerous to the beau sexe as Lauzun. Violet Molyneux was certainly worthy of being entered in this mythical book if it existed ; her complexion white as Parian, with a wild-rose colour in her cheeks, her eyes large, brilliant, and wonderfully expressive, generally flashing with the sweetest laughter ; her hair of a soft, bright, ches- GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 19 nut hue; her figure slight but perfect in symmetry; on her delicate features the stamp of quick intelligence, heightened by the greatest culture ; and in her whole air and manner the grace of high rank, and fashionable dress. Grifted with the gayest spirits, the cleverest brain, and the sweetest temper possible, one could not wonder that she was talked over at Clubs ; engaged by more than her tablets could record at every ball, and followed by a perfect cavalcade when she cantered down the Ride. Sabretasche soon took her off to the mess-room, a Lieutenant- General escorting; her mother, and I found myself sitting on her left at the luncheon : an occasion I did not improve as much as I otherwise should have done, from the fact of his being on the other side, and persuading the young lady to give all her attention to him; for, though he was scarcely ever really interested in any woman, he liked to flirt with them all, and always made himself charming. The Hon. A T iolet seemed to find him charming too ; and chatted with him gaily and frankly, as if she had known him for ages. " How I enjoyed the review to-day ! " she began. " If there are three sights greater favourites of mine than another, they are a review, a race, and a meet, because of the dear horses." " Or — their masters ? " said Sabretasche, quietly. Violet Molyneux laughed. " Oh ! their masters are very pleasant too, though they are certainly never so handsome, or so tractable, or so honest as their quadrupeds ! Most of my friends abuse gentlemen. I don't ; they are always kind to me, and unless they are very young or stupid, generally speaking amusing." "Miss Molyneux, what a treat!" smiled Sabretasche, who could say impudent things so gracefully, that every one liked them from his lips. " Tou have the candour to say what every other young lady thinks. "We know you all like us very much, but none of you will ever admit it ! Tou say you enjoyed the review ? I thought no belle, afte r her first season, ever condescended to c enjoy' anvthing." ' { Don't they ? " laughed Violet ; " how I pity them ! I am an exception, then, for I enjoy an immense number of things ; everything, indeed, except my presentation, where X was ironed quite flat, and very nearly crushed to death 120 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. arid, finally, came before her Majesty in a state of collapse, like a maimed india-rubber ball. Not enjoy things ! Why, I enjoy my morning gallop on Bonbon ; I enjoy my flowers, my birds, and dogs. I delight in the opera, I adore waltz- ing, I perfectly idolise music, and the day when a really good book comes out, or a really good painting is exhibited, I am in a seventh heaven. Not enjoy things ! Oh, Colonel Sabretasche, when I cease to enjoy life, I hope I shall cease to live ! " " You will die very early, then ! " said Sabretasche, with something of that deepened melancholy which occasionally stole over him, but which he was always careful to conceal in society. She started, and turned her bright eyes upon him, surprised and stilled : ft Colonel Sabretasche ! Why ? " He smiled ; his usual gay, courteous smile : " Because the gods will grudge earth so fair a flower, and men so true a vision, of what angels ought to be ; but — thanks to preachers, poets, and painters — never are." She shook her head with a pretty impatience : "Ah ! pray do not waste compliments upon me ; I detest them." " Yraiment? " murmured the Colonel, with a little, quiet, incredulous glance. " Yes, I do indeed. You don't believe me, I dare say. Because I have so many of them, Captain Chevasney ? Perhaps it is. I have many more than are really compli- mentary, either to my taste or my intellect." " Ladies like compliments as children like bonbons," said Sabretasche, in his low, slow voice. " They will take them till they can take no more ; but if they see ever so insigni- ficant a one going to another, how they long for it, how they grudge it, how they burn to add it to their store ! This is ceil de perdrix, will you try it ? " " No, thank you," answered the Hon. Yiolet, with a ring- ing laugh. The sarcasms on her sex did not seem to touch or disturb her; she rather enjoyed them than otherwise. " What is the news to-day ? " "Nothing remarkable," answered Sabretasche. "Births, marriages, and deaths all put together, to remind men, like Philip of Macedon's valet, that they come into the world, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 121 to suffer in it, and go out again. Much like all other news, Miss Molyneux, except that your name is down as among those arrived in town, and my friend De Yigne is mentioned for the Bath." " Ah ! that Major de Yigne ! " cried Violet. " Where is lie? — who is he ? — what has he really been doing ? I heard Lord Hilton talking about him last night, saying that he had been a most wonderful fellow in India, and that the natives called him — what was it ? — ' the Charmed Life,' I think. Is he your friend ? " " My best," said Sabretasche. " Not Jonathan to my David, you know, nor Iolaiis to my Orestes ; we don't do that sort of thing in these days. We like each other, but as for dying for each other, that would be far too much trouble ; and, besides, it would be bad ton — too demonstra- tive. But I like him ; he is as true steel as any man I know, and I shall be delighted to have a cigar with him again, providing it is not too strong a one. Lying for one's Patroclus would be preferable to enduring his bad tobacco." Violet looked at him with her radiant glance : " Well, Colonel Sabretasche, if your cigar be not kindled warmer than vour friendship, it will very soon go out again, that's all!" " Soit ! there are plenty more in the case," smiled Sabre- tasche, " and one Havannah is as good as another, for any- thing I see. But about Le Yigne you have heard quite truly ; he has been fighting in Scinde like all the Knights of the Eound Table merged in one. He is Major of the — th Hussars, and he has done more with his handful than a general of division might have done with a whole squadron. His Colonel was put Jiors de combat with a ball in his hip, and De Yigne, of course, had the command for some time. The natives call him the Charmed Life, because, despite the risks he runs, and the carelessness with which he has exposed his life, he has not had a single scratch ; and both the Sepoys he fights with, and the Beloochees he fights against, stand in a sort of awe of him. The — th is ordered home, so we are looking out to see him soon. I shall be heartily glad, poor old fellow ! " " Provided, I suppose, he brings cheroots with him good enough to allow him admittance ? " said Violet. 122 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Sous entendu" said the Colonel. " I would infinitely prefer losing a friend to incurring a disagreeable sensation. Would not you ? " " Oh ! of course," answered the young lady, with a rapid flash of her mischievous eyes. " Frederick's feelings, when he saw Katte beheaded, must have been trifling child's play, to what the Sybarite suffered from the doubled rose- leaves ! " " Undoubtedly," said Sabretasche. tranquilly. " I am glad you agree with me ! If we do not take care aud un- double the rose-leaves for ourselves, we may depend on it we shall find no one who will take so much trouble for us. To Aide-toi et Dieu tf aider a, they should add Aide-toi et le monde faidera, for I have always noticed that Providence and the world generally befriend those who can do without their help." " Perhaps there is a deeper meaning in that," answered Violet, " and more justice than first seems ? After all, those who do aid themselves may deserve it the most, and, those whose heads and hands are silent and idle, hardly have a right to have the bonbons of existence picked out and given to them." "I don't know whether we have a right to them, but we find them pleasant, and that is all I look at ; and besides, Miss Molyneux, when you have lived a little longer in the world, you will invariably find that it is to those who have much, that much is given, and vice versa. Establish your- self on a pedestal, the world will worship you, even though the pedestal be of very poor brick and mortar ; lie modestly down on a moorland, though it be, like James Fergusson, for genius to study science, why, you may lie there for ever if you wait for anybody to pick you up ! The world has a trick of serving, like the Swiss Guard and the secret police, whichever side is uppermost and pays them best. However, thank Heaven I want nothing of it, and it is very civil to me." " Because you want nothing of it ? " "Preciselv." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 23 CHAPTEE XI. THE " CHAEMED LIFE" COMES BACK AMONG US. " Thaxk God I have found a girl who has some notion of conversation. I believe, with the Persians, that ten measures of talk were sent down from Heaven, and the ladies took nine ; but of conversation, argument, repartee — the real use of that most facile, dexterous, sharp-pointed weapon, the tongue — what woman has a notion ? They employ a thousand superlatives in describing a dress, they exhaust a million expletives in damning their bosom friend. But as for conversation, they have not a notion of it ; if you begin an argument, they either get into a passion or subside into monosyllables ! A woman who has good conversation is as rare as one who does not care for scandal. I have met them in Paris salons, and we have found one to-day." So spoke Sabretache at mess that night a propos of Violet Molyneux, who was under discussion in common with our bisque and our wine. " Then you allow her your approval, Colonel," said Mon- tressor, of Ours. " Certainly I do," said Sabretasche. " She is exquisitely pretty, even through my eye-glass ; and, what is much better, she can talk as if Nature had given her brains, and reading had cultivated them. I dare say they count ou her making a good marriage." ci No doubt they do. Jockey Jack has hardly a rap," replied another man. " They can't keep up their Irish place, so they hang out in town three parts of the year, and take a shooting-box, or visit about for the rest. Confound it, I wouldn't be one of the Upper House, without a good pot of money to keep up my dignity, for anything I could see ! Violet came out last season, vou know?" "Yes, I know; I remember hearing she made a great sensation, " answered the Colonel. " Ormsby told me she was the best thing of the season — the first, by-the-by, I was ever out of London. Lady Molyneux must try to run down Eegalia, or Cavendish Grey, or one of the great 124 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. matrimonial coups. My lady knows how to manoeuvre, too ; I wonder she should have a daughter so frank and un- affected." " They've seen nothing of one another," answered Piggott, who always knew everything about everybody, from the price Lord Goodwood gave for his thorough-bred roan fillies, to the private thoughts that' Lady Honoria Bandoline wrote each night in her violet-velvet diary. " My lady's always running out somewhere ; if you were to call at eight in the morning you'd find her gone off to early Matins ; if you were to call at twelve, she'd be off to the Sanctified and Born-again Clearstarcher's jubilee with Lord Saving-grace; at two, she'd be closeted and lunching with her spiritual master — whoever he chance to be ; at three, she'd be having a snug boudoir flirtation ; at four, she'd be in the Park, of course, or at a morning concert ; at six, she'd be dressing for dinner ; at ten, she'd be off to three or four balls and crushes ; and so between the two she certainly carries out that delightful work, ' How to Make the Best of Both Worlds,' which my Low Church sister sent me the other day!" "With the idea that you were doing your very utmost to make the worst of 'em, Charlie ? " laughed Sabretasche. " I don't know the volume — Heaven forfend ! — but the title sounds to me sneaky, as if it wanted to get the sweets out of both, yet compromise itself with neither. Tour sketch of Lady Molyneux is as true to life as one of Leech's ; but certainly her child is about as unlike her as could possibly be imagined." " Oh, by George ! yes," assented Montressor, heartily ; " Vy hasn't one bit of nonsense about her." " And she's a divine waltzer — turn her round in a nut- shell." " And can't she ride !" " And her voice is perfection." " And— she can talk ! " added Sabretasche. " I will call in Lowndes-square to-morrow. So the — th is ordered home ? We shall see De Yigne again ?" " Unless he exchange to a regiment still on active service," said Pigott. " He won't do that," I answered. " I heard from him last Marseilles mail, and he said he intended to return GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 125 overland. Poor fellow ! what ages it is since we've seen him !" " It is ten years, isn't it ? " said Sabretasche, setting down his champagne-glass with half a sigh. (i He has had some sharp work out there. I hope it has done him good. I never wished to see a man look as he looked last time I saw him." " Where's his rascally wife ? " asked Montressor. "The Trefusis ?" said I, impatiently. " i'll never give her his name, though the law may. She is at Paris, cut by all his set of course, living with the Fantyre, in a dashing hotel in the Champs Elysees, keeping a green and gold Chasseur six feet high, and giving soirees to a certain class of untitled English and titled French, who don't care a fig for her story, and care a good deal for her suppers." " She calls herself Mrs. De Vigne, I think !" " She is Mrs. De Vigne," said Sabretasche, with that bitter sneer which occasionally passed over his features. "Tou^ forget the sanctity, solemnity, and beauty of the marriage tie, my dear Montressor. You know it is too ' holy ' to be severed, either by reason, justice, or common sense." " Holy fiddlesticks, Colonel," retorted Montressor, con- temptuously ; " the best law for that confounded woman would have been Lynch law ; and if I'd had my way, I would have taken her out of church that morning and shot her straight away out of hand." " Too handsome to be shot, Fred." " She will not be so handsome in a few years ; she will soon grow coarse," said the Colonel, that most fastidious of female critics. u She is the full-blown dashing style to strike youngsters, but there is not a single charm that will lastr " Are there in any of them ? None last long with you, Colonel, I fancy?" Sabretasche laughed gaily. " To be sure not ! ' Therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.' Don't you admit the truth of that ? " Six weeks or so after this, I was dining with Sabretasche at his own house — one of his charming, exclusive little 126 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. dinner parties. The other men had just left ; and the Colonel and I were sitting before the inner drawing-room fire, with the Cid stretched on the rug between us. "What a sin it is that such a union should be valid," said Sabretasche, talking of De Vigne. " I think I hear that wretched woman tell me, with her cold, triumphant smile, ' Colonel Sabretasche, my father's name was Tre- fusis, my mother's name was Davis — one was a gentleman, the other a beggar-girl. I have as much, or as little, right to the one as to the other. Let your friend sue for a divorce, the law will not give it him." " Too true ; the law will not. Our divorce law is " " An inefficient, insufficient, cruel farce ! " said Sabre- tasche, more energetically than I had ever heard him say anything in his life. " In an infatuated hour a man saddles himself with a she-devil like the Trefusis — a liar, a drunkard, a mad woman : what redress is there for him ? None. All his life through he must drag on the same clog ; fettering all his energies, crushing out all his hopes, chaining down his very life, festering at his very heart-strings. There, at his hearth, must sit the embodied curse — there, in his home, it must dwell — there, at his side, it must be, till G-od release him from it ! " I looked up at him in surprise, it was very unusual to see him so warm about anything. He took up his hookah again ; yawned, and pointed to a marble statuette of his own chipping, on which the firelight was gleaming. " Look at that little Venus Anadyomene, Arthur, with the firelight shining on her ; quite Kembrandtesque, isn't it ? I'll paint it so to-morrow." "Do, and give the picture to Violet Molyneux. But if you divorce for insanity, every husband sick of his wife can get a certificate of lunacy against her ? If for drunkenness, what woman will be safe from having drams innumerable sworn to her ? If for incompatibility of temper, after every little temporary quarrel, scores would fly to the divorce courts, and be heartily sorry for it after ? Come, how would you redress it? " "My dear fellow," said Sabretasche, languidly, " I'm not in parliament. I'm much too idle a man. You talk like a sage, /only feel — for poor De Vigne." " You don't feel more for him than I, Colonel — the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 127 Jezebel of a woman ! That such an union should be legal, is a disgrace. At the same time, divorce seems to me, of all the niceties of legislature, the most ticklish and unsatis- factory to adjust. If you were to shut the door on divorce, there it an evil unbearable; if you open it too wide, almost as much harm may accrue ! " " My dear Chevasney, you talk like a paterfamilias, a Solon of seventy, a mortal machine without blood, or bones, or feelings," said Sabretasche, impatiently. "I don't care a straw for theories ; I look at facts. Put yourself in the position, Arthur, and then sit in judgment. I take it if every man had to do that, the laws would be at once wiser and more lenient ; whereas now, on the contrary, it is your man who has the stolen pieces in his pocket, who cries out the most vehemently for the thief to be hanged, hoping to throw off suspicion ! Put yourself in the position! Now you are young and easily swayed, you fall in love — as you phrase it — with some fine figure or pretty face. Down you go headlong, never stopping to consider whether her mind is attuned to yours, her tastes in common with yours, her character such as will go well with yours, in the long inter- course that takes so much to make it harmony, so little to make it discord. You marry her ; the honeymoon is barely out, before the bandage is off your eyes. "We will suppose you see your wife in her true colours — coarse, perhaps low- bred, with not a fibre of her moral nature that is attuned to yours, not a chord in heart or mind that is in harmony with yours. She revolts all your better tastes, she checks all your warmer feelings, she debases all your higher in- stincts ; union with her, humbles you in your own eyes ; contact and association with her, lower your tone of thought, and imperceptibly draw you down to her own level. Your home is one ceaseless scene of pitiful jangle, or of coarser violence. She makes your house a hell, she peoples your hearth with fiends; she and her children — hideous likenesses of herself — bear your own name, and make you loathe it. Perhaps you meet one the utter con- trast of her, the fond ideal in your youth of what your wife was to be ; one in whom you realise all you might have been, all you might have done ! You look on Heaven, and devils hold you back. You thirst for a purer life, and fiends mock at you and will not let you reach it. What 128 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. escape is there for you ? None but the grave ! Eealise this — realise it— and you will feel how as a prisoner lies dying for the scent of the fresh air, while the free man sits contentedly within ; so a man, happily married, or not married at all, looks on the question of divorce in a very different light to a man fettered thus, with the torments of both Prometheus and Tantalus, the vulture gnawing at his vitals, the lost joys mocking him out of reach ! " His indolence was gone, his impassiveness changed to vivid earnestness ; his melancholy eyes darkened and dilated : — I shuddered involuntarily. " Tou draw a terrible picture, Colonel, and a true enough one, no doubt, as many men would witness if one could see into their homes and hearts. But what I want to know is, how to redress it ? What judge could dive into the hidden mysteries of human life, the unuttered secrets of mutual love or mutual hate ? What judge could say where the blame lay ; or, seeing only the surface, and hearing only the outside, weigh the just points of fitness or unfitness ? Who can decide between man and woman? Who, seeing the little of the inner existence that is ever revealed in a law court, could judge between them? We know how mis- chievously absurd the divorce mania was in G-ermany ? How Dorothea Yeit broke with the best of husbands, on the plea of ' want of sympathy,' and went over to Frederick Schlegel ; and how the Sensitive doctrine of which Schleier- macher was inaugurator, made it only necessary to be tied, to feel the want of being ' sympathetically matched,' and being untied again. Men would marry then as carelessly as they flirt now, and would, as soon as a pretty face had grown stale to their eye, find ■ out that she was a vixen, a virago, addicted to gin, or anything that suited their pur- pose, though she might really have every virtue under heaven. Don't you think that it is impossible, as long as human nature is so changeable, and short-sighted, or mar- riage numbered among our social institutions at all, to trim between too much liberty in it and too little P" " Hush, hush, my good Arthur ! " cried the Colonel, with a gesture of deprecation; "pray keep all that for the benches of St. Stephen's some twenty years hence, it is far too chill, sage, and rational for me to appreciate it. I prefer feeling to reasoning — always have done. Possibly, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 129 the evils might accrue that you prophesy ; but that does riot at all disprove what I say, that the marriage fetters are at times the heaviest handcuff's men can wear ; heavier than those which chain the galley-slave to his oar, for he has committed crime to justify his punishment, whereas a man tricked into marriage by an artful intrigante, or hurried into it by a mad fancy, has done no harm to any one — except himself! If you have such a taste for reason, listen to what John Milton — that grave, calm Puritan and philo- sophic Republican, the last man in the universe to let his passions run away with him — says on the score." He stretched out his hand to a stand of books near him, and took out a Tetrachordon, bound, as all his books were, in cream-coloured vellum. "Hear what John Milton says : — ' Him I hold more in the way to perfection who foregoes an impious, ungodly, and discordant wedlock, to live according to peace, and love, and God's institution, in a fitter choice ; than he who debars himself the happy experience of all godly, which is peaceful conversation in his family, to live a contentious and unchristian life not to be avoided ; in temptations not to be lived in ; only for the false keeping of a most unreal nullity, a marriage that hath no affinity with God's intentions, a daring phantasm, a mere toy of terror ; awing weak senses, to the lamentable superstition of ruining themselves : the remedy whereof God in his law vouchsafes us ; which, not to dare use, he warranting, is not our perfection, but is our infirmity, our little faith, our timorous and low conceit of charity; and in them, who force us to it, is their masking pride, and vanity, to seem holier and more circumspect than God.' What do you say now ? Can you deny the justice, the wisdom, the wide charity and reason of his arguments ? It is true he was unhappy with his wife, but he was a man to speak, not from passion, but from conviction. Milton was made of that stern stuff that would have you cut off your right hand if it offended you. In Rome he would have been a Yirginius, a Cincinnatus ; in the early Christians' days, he would have died with Stephen, endured with Paul. He is not a man like myself, who do no earthly good that I know of, who am swayed by impulse, imagination, passion — a hundred thousand things, who have never checked a wish or denied a desire. Milton is one of your saints and heroes, yet even K 130 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. he has the compassionate wisdom to see that divorce would save many a man, whom an unfit union drives headlong: to his ruin. He knows that it is cowardice and hypocrisy, and, as he says, a wish to seem holier and more circumspect than Grod, which makes your precisians forbid what nature and reason alike demand, and to which, if the Church and the Law forbade freedom ever so, men would find some means to pioneer their own way. Tou may cage an eagle out of the sunlight, but the bird will find some road to life, and light, and liberty ; or die beating his wings in hopeless effort. — Look there ! Good Heavens ! " I sprang up : he rose very quickly for his usual indolent movements. In the doorway stood De Vigne, and we grasped his hands silently, none of us speaking. The me- mory of that last scene in the chapel at his fatal Marriage Altar, was strong upon us all. Then Sabretasche put his hand on his shoulder, pushed him gently into an arm-chair before the fire, and said, softly, as a man speaks to a woman. " Dear old fellow ! there is no need for us to say welcome home ? " De Vigne looked up with something of his old smile, though it faded instantly. " No need, indeed : and doiH say it. I know you are both glad to see me, and let us forget that we have ever been separated. Arthur, old boy, if it wouldn't sound an insult, I should tell you you were grown ; and as for you, Colonel, you are not a whit altered ; it is my belief you wouldn't change if you lived as long as Sue's "Wandering Jew ! They told me at the barracks, Arthur was dining with you, and so I came on straight. My luggage is still in the JBera, but 1 brought up some cheroots. Try them, both of you." We saw that he wished to sweep away the past, and avoid all allusion to his own fate ; and we fell in with his humour. Smoking round the fire, we tried to ignore every painful subject ; but as I looked at him, I found it hard not to utter aloud my curse on the woman who l*ad sent him out into exile. Ten long years had not passed without leaving their stamp upon him. His face had lost the glow, the bright eagerness, the rounded outline of his earlier vouth. Pale GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 131 he had always been, but now the pallor was that of marble, as if the hot young blood surging through his veins had been suddenly frozen ; as when the first breath of winter checks the free, warm, vehement waters in their course, and chills them into ice. It was still the face of a man of way- ward will, and strong passions, but of waywardness which had cost him dear, and of passions that were chained down perhaps for ever. " You have seen good service out there, De Vigne," bo- gun Sabretasche, to lighten the gloom which was stealing upon us. " On my word we feel quite proud of you ! What a lion you have been, old fellow." De Yigne smiled. " I looked a lion because I was among puppy dogs ! Yes, I saw good service, not so much, though, as I should have liked. Some of it was pretty sharp work, but we dawdled a whole year away at that miserable Calcutta court ; if it had not been for pig-sticking I should never have borne it at all, but I got no end of spears. Then we went up to a hill station, where there was nobody but an old judge, and a missionary or two, who had been bankrupt shoemakers, and taken to dispensing Grace, as a means of getting a few shillings from those discerning Christians who sent them out, firmly crediting their assurances that they felt ' specially called.' There the hill deer, and the ortolans, and a tiger or two, kept us going ; and then we were ordered off to have a shy at the mountain rebels. They fought magni- ficently, I must say. Ah ! by Jove !" cried De Yigne, his eyes lighting up, " there at last T really lived. The con- stant danger, the ceaseless vigilance, the free life, the sharp service, roused me up, and gave me a zest for existence which I thought I had lost for ever." " Xonsense, nonsense ! " cried the Colonel. " You will have zest enough in it again by-and-by. jN"o man on the sunny side of forty has lost what he may not regain." " Except where one false step has murdered pride and ruined honour! " said De Yigne between his teeth. "Well, Sabretasche, what have you been doing all these years ? Flirting, buying pictures and painting them, setting the fashion, and criticizing new singers, as usual, I suppose." "Don't talk of the years ! " cried Sabretasche, lifting his eyebrows. " If I see to-morrow I shall be forty-five. It is k 2 132 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. disagreeable to grow old ; one begins to doubt one's at- tractions ! " " You are young enough ! — and yet, I don't know; it is a popular fallacy that time counts by years. One is old according to the style of one's life, not the length of it." " I heard Violet Molyneux tell you last night, Colonel, that you were in the first prime of manhood. So take comfort," said I. He smiled. " Poor little fool ! " be muttered, under his moustaches. " Violet Molyneux — who is she ? " asked De Vigne. " That's a new name to me. Is she a daughter of Jockey Jack, as we used to call him ? " " Yes," I answered ; " and a lovely creature. She's a fresh beauty, and a new love for Sabretasche, who worships him most devoutly, especially since she came to his studio this morning and saw his last painting of Esmeralda and Djali." " Don't crack me up, Arthur," said Sabretasche, rather impatiently. " Jockey Jack has a daughter who knows how to talk, and sings well enough to please me (two esptcial miracles, as you can fancy, my dear De Vigne) • but, certainly, both her tongue and her thorax do their business unusually well, and she is very lovely to boot. What have I been doing, did you say ? Leading just the same life I have led for the last twenty years. Making love to scores of women, wasting my time over marble and canvas, heading a Hyde Park campaign, or directing a Richmond fete ! Caramba ! one gets tired of it." " Why lead it, then ? " " Because none are any better. Do my scientific friends, who absorb their energies in classifying a fossil encrinite ; my parliamentary friends, who concentrate their energies in bribing the Unwashed ; my philanthropic friends, who hoax the public, and get hoaxed themselves, by every text- quoting thief who has the knack, and the tact, to touch up their weak points ; my literary friends, who write to line portmanteaus ; my celebrated friends, who toil to get heart-disease, and three damning lines in history — do these, any of them, enjoy themselves one wit the more ; or fail to say with Solomon, ' Vanity of vanities — all is vanity ? ' Tell me so — show me so, and I will begin their GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 33 life to-morrow. Our vocation is to amuse ourselves, and slay our fellow-creatures by way of intermediate pastime ; and it is as good a one, for ail I can see, as any other." " To slay our fellow r - creatures ! " cried De Yigne. " Come, come, put it a little more gracefully. To fight like Britons — to die for our colours. Something a little more poetic and patriotic ! " " Same thing, my dear De Yigne : only the wording different ! " " You like the same life as the Cid, Colonel," said I, smiling. " To eat daintily, sleep warmly, lie on cushions without anybody to trouble you, and kill your game when the spirit moves you." "And love most truly, and do my duty, as far as I see it, most faithfully ? No, no, Arthur, that doesn't do for me at all ; it's not in my role." "You'll write on the Cid's grave," said De Yigne, "as Byron wrote on Boatswain's, ' In life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend. " Yes, indeed ; and like him ' I neyer had but one, and here he lies.' The Cid," said Sabretasche, drawing his dog's ears through his hands — " the Cid is the only thing that cares for me." " For you, the adored of all women, the cher ami of all beauties, the ' good fellow ' of every man worth knowing in town ! What do you mean by only having a doy to care for you ? The world would never believe you." " I mean what I say. Bon Dieu ! how much does the world know of any of us ? " " Little enough," said De Yigne, " but it is always of those of whom it knows least, that it will affect to know most ; and the stranger you sit next at a dinner party is ten to one far better acquainted with your business than you are yourself. We shall hear you are to marry — what is her name ? — Yoilet Molyneux soon." " Not I," said Sabretasche ; "at least you may hear it, but I shall live, and die, as I am now — alone ! Who would care for reports ? I can as soon imagine a man taking heed of every tuft of dandelion that passes him in the air, or 134 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. every insect that crawls beneath his feet, as taking notes of the reports that buzz round his career." "By Jove, yes! " cried De Vigne. " Out campaigning, one is free from all that trash. Before the cannon's mouth men cannot stop to split straws ; and with one's own life on a thread, one cannot stop to ruin another's character. I do not know how it is — I have read pretty widely, but phi- losopher never preached endurance to me as well as Nature. A few months ago I was camping out to net ortolans. Bound us was the dense stretch of the forests and jungles ; no wind, no sound, except the cry of the hill deer ; nothing stirring, except now and then an antelope flitting like a ghost across the clearing, and, over it all, the southern stars. On my life, as I lay there by our watch-fire alone, with my pipe, it struck me that, if we would let her, Nature would be a truer teacher than creeds or homilies. Human life seems so small beside the vast life of great forests. The calm grand silence rebukes our own feverishness. "We who fancy that the eyes of all the universe are on us, that we are the sole love and charge of its Creator, feel what ephe«iera we are in the giant scale of existence ; what countless myriads of such as we have been swept from their place out of sight, and not a law of the spheres around been stirred, not a moment's pause been caused, in the silent march of creation! Under men's tutelage, I grow impatient and irritated. What gage have I that they know better then I ? They rouse me into questioning their dogmas, into penetrating their mysteries, into searching out, and proving, the nullity of the truths they assume for granted ; but under the teach- ing of Nature I am silent. I recognise my own inferiority. I grow ashamed of my own pride." " Aye ! " answered Sabretasche. " A wayside flower, a sunny savannah, even a little bit of lichen on a stone in the Campagna, has taught one truer lessons than are taught in the forum or the pulpit. Man sees so little of his fellow- man; he is so ready to condemn, so slow to sj'mpathise with him, that, if he attempt to teach, he is far more apt to irritate than aid : but, to the voices of Nature, the bluntest sense can hardly fail to listen, and they speak in a tongue translatable alike to the Indian in his woods and the savant in his study:" " But one is apt to lose sight of Nature in the hurry GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 135 and conflict of actual every-dav social life ! Standing alone among the Alps, a man learns his own insignificance; but once back in the world, the first line of a favourable review, the first hurrah of an admiring constituency, the first applause that feeds his ear in the world he lives in, will give him back his self-appreciation, and he will find it hard not to fancy himself of the importance to the universe that he is to his clique. That is partly why I was unwilling to leave campaigning. There the jungle and the stars took me in hand, and there, by my camp fire, I would listen to them, though God kno^vs whether I be the better for it. Here, on the contrary, men will be prating at me, and I shall chafe at them, and it will be a wonder if I do not kick out at some of them. My guerilla life suits me better than my fashion- able one." " You are too good for it all the same," said Sabretasche ; "and if you should put the kicking process into execution, it will be a little wholesome chastisement for them, and a little sanitary exertion for you ! Jungles and planets are grander and truer, sans cloute, but Johannisberger and Society are equally good for men in their way, and, besides — they are very pleasant ! " "Tour acme of praise, Sabretasche," laughed De Vigne. " I agree with you that human nature is, after all, the best book we can learn, only the study is irritating, and one sees so much en noir there, that if we look too long we are apt to fling away our lexicon, with a curse." " The best way. after all," said the Colonel, with a cross between a yawn and sigh, " is to take nothing seriously ! Men and women are marionettes ; learn the tricks of their wires and strings, and make them perform, at your will, tragedy, comedy, farce, whatever pleases your mood. Human life is a kaleidoscope, with which the wise man amuses him- self ; it has pretty pictures for the eye, if you know how to shake them up, and as for analysing it, pulling it to pieces, for being only bits of cork and burnt glass, and quarrelling with it for being trumpery instead of bond fide brilliants — cui bono? — you won't make it any better." " Possibly ; but I shall not' be taken in by it." " My dear fellow, I think the time when we are taken in by it is the happiest part of our lives." "Maybe. His drum is no pleasure to a boy after he has 136 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. broken it, and found the music is empty wind, with no mystery about it whatever ! I say, what is your clock ? Am I not keeping you from some engagement or other?" "None at all," answered Sabretasche, "and you will just sit where you are for the next four hours. Grive me another cheroot, and take some more brandy. Is it likely we shall let you off early ? " We did not let him off early; and all the small hours had chimed before we had done talking, with the fire burning brightly, and the Cid lying full length between us, with his muzzle between his fore-pads, while De Vigne told us tales of his Indian campaign that roused even listless Sabretasche, and fired my blood like the war-note of the Long Roll, or the trumpet call of Boot and Saddle ! CHAPTER XII. SABEETASCHE, HAVING MOWED DOWN MAST FLOWERS, DETERMINES TO SPARE ONE VIOLET. From the hour he had left her in the vestry at Vigne church, De Yigne had never seen the woman who, by law, stood branded on him as his wife. His passion changed to loathing, and the hate wherewith he hated her was far greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. Could it be otherwise? Could any man feel anything but deadliest hate towards the woman who had outwitted and entrapped him, outraged his honour, shivered his pride to the dust, and shaped her vengeance in a form which must press upon him with a dead and ice-cold weight, strike from his path all the natural joys that bloom so brightly for a man so young ; and stretch over his whole existence a shadow all the blacker that its giant upas-tree sprang from the forgotten seed of a boyish sin. He left her in the madness of his agony ; and swore never to touch even her hand again. Passion changed to abhorrence, and what had charmed and intoxicated him with the sensual beauties of form, now filled him only with abhorrence and disgust. He saw her bearing his own name, holding his own honour ; coarse, cruel, ill-born, ill-bred, the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 137 pollution of her past life vainly covered with the varnish of society ; and seeing her thus, knew that till one or other was in the grave this woman was his wife. Remorse, too, was added to his curse. His mother had died of that blow which had struck at the root of 'her son's peace and honour. She had been for some years aware, though she had never allowed De Vigrie to be told of the frail tenure on which she held her life, that any sudden emotion or ex- citement might at any time be her death-blow : a secret she had kept with that silent heroism of which here and there women are found capable. As De Yigne left the chapel, Sabretasche had lifted her up in what he believed to be a fainting fit ; it was a swoon, from which she never awoke, and her son was left to bear his curse alone. I have seen men writhing in their death agony, I have seen women stretched across the lifeless body of their lover on the battle-field ; I have seen the torture of human souls cooped up by shoals in hospital sick-wards ; I have seen mortal suffering in almost all its phases — and they are varied and pitiful enough, — but I never saw any so silent and vet so awful as De Yigne's, when we hurried after him up to town. "When we found him, the Trefusis's re- venge had done its work upon him ; lengthened years would not have quenched life, and light, and youth, as the remorse, the humiliation, the conflicting passions at war within him, had already done. The tidings we brought crowned the anguish that had entered into his life. G-ently as Sabretasche broke it to him, I thought it would have killed him. His lips turned grey as stone, he stag- gered like a drunken man, and threw up his arms in his blind agony. " My Grod ! and I have murdered her !" — that was all he said. Under what throes his iron pride was bowed in his night watches beside the lifeless form of the mother whose love for him had slain her, no one knew. He was alone in his doom, and I could only guess by my knowledge of him how madly he cursed the passions that had wrought his ruin, how long and silently the vulture of remorse gnawed his heart away, with the haunting memory of his folly and its fruit. As rapidly as possible he exchanged into the — th Hussars, and sailed for Scinde. He saw none of his old 138 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. companions and acquaintance, save the Colonel and myself; he sh mined all who had been witnesses of his marriage, all who knew of the stain upon his name. It is easy to bear the contempt and censure of the world when defiance of its laws brings fame and rapture ; but its sneer may be hard even to a brave man to bear, when the world has cause to call him Fool, when it can triumph in vaunting its own superior penetration, in recalling its own wise prophecies of his fall, and in compelling him to make the most difficult of all confessions to a proud heart — '• I ivas ivrong /" He commissioned Sabretasche to make arrangements with his wife, but all that the Colonel, consummate man of the world though he was, could do, was to exact that she should receive an allowance of two thousand a year, on condition that she never came to England. The Trefusis accepted it, possibly because she knew the law would not give her so much, and went to Paris and the Bads, leading a pleasant life enough I doubt not, but careful to make it far too proper a one — outwardly, at the least — to give him any chance of a divorce. Separated from him at the altar, she was still legally his wife and bore his name. By what miracle of metamorphosis, by what agency, assistance, or self-education, she had been enabled to change and exalt herself, we knew not then, nor till long afterwards. That De Yigne had not recognised her was scarce astonishing. In those long years the unformed girl of seventeen had changed into the mature beauty of five-and-twenty ; she had grown taller, her form had developed, fashion, dress, and taste lent her beauty a thousand aids unknown to her in her earlier days. It was not wonderful that, having for- gotten Lucy Davis, and almost all connected with her, he should fail to recognise her in so utterly different a sphere, so entirely altered as she was in feature, manner, station, and appearance ; though how she had so metamorphosed herself I used to think over many and many a time, never able to find a solution. At length, after ten years' absence, De Yigne returned home to resume the social life he had so suddenly snapped asunder. To careless eyes he was much the same, but I felt that the whole man was changed. Reserved, sceptical of all truth and of all worth, his generous trust changed to chill suspicion, his fiery impetuosity chained down under a GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 39 semblance ol icy cynicism, his strong passions held down under an iron curb, the treachery of which he had been the victim seemed to have wholly altered his once frank, warm, and cordial nature. " The fact is," said Curly to me, as we were riding down Piccadilly to the Park, " De Vigne, poor fellow ! is as frozen by this miserable mesalliance as the ships in the Arctic Seas. It would do him a world of good to fall in love again, but he won't. Ah, by Jove, here he is ! Beau- tiful creature, that mare, of his is — three parts thorough- bred ; and just look at her wild eye. How are you ? My dear fellow, I'm deucedly glad you're come back !" " Very kind of you, Curly," laughed De Vigne, " but I'm not sure I re-echo you. A gallop in the cool night through the juugle is preferable to passing up and down the Hide yonder." " Wait till the Eide is full," replied Curly, " with all the gouty wits, and the dandy politicians, and the amazoned belles, and the intensely got-up stock-brokers, and the im- mensely showy livery-stable hacks, who would go so de- lightfully if they weren't broken- winded, or knocked-kneed ! "Wait till the season, my good fellow — till you drink Seltzer as thirstily as a tired hound drinks water, till you spend the summer nights crushed up on the staircases, till you waste a couple of hundred giving a dinner to men and women who, having eaten your croustades, drive away to demolish your character, — wait till the season, and then you'll admit the superiority of enjoyment to be found in Town ! There's nobody in it yet, except, indeed, Violet Molyneux." " Whom I have not seen," said De Vigne ; " but I will call, for I used to know her mother very well, an eminently religious flirt ! I have a curiosity to see this young beauty, because she has Sabretasche's good word." " A good word, by-the-by, that's apt to do them as much damage in one way as his condemnation does in another. She little knows what a desperate Lothario he is. I wonder if he'll ever marry ? " "I wonder if you'll ever hang yourself, Curly?" said De Vigne, dryly. " I say, shall we go and call on the Molyneux now ? May as well." •' Do ! " responded Curly. Lady Molyneux was at home, a rare thing for that rest- 140 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. less mosaic of religion and fashion, of decided " ton " and pronounced " piety ; " and we found her, chatting with one of her beloved spiritual brothers, the Bishop of Campanile, a most pleasant ton viveur, by no means a Saint Anthony on the score of earthly temptations, while in a low chair sat Violet Molyneux talking to Sabretasche, who was listen- ing to her with an air of half-indolent amusement, and mag- netising her with the soft lustrous gaze of his mournful eyes, that had wound their way into so many women's love. Lady Molyneux welcomed us all charmingly ; while there was a shadow of impatieuce in her daughter's tell-tale eyes at having her talk interrupted : but the Colonel, who had a knack of monopolising a woman quietly, did not give up his seat, and soon resumed his discussion with her, which it seemed was on the poets of the present day. * "What do you think of the ' Idyls of the Lotus and the Lily?'" asked Violet of De Vigne, referring to the book they were discussing, the last mystical nonsense that had issued from the imagination of the pet rhymer of the day. " I cannot say I think much," smiled De Vigne. " To read that man's works one wants a dictionary of all his unintelligible jargon, his ' double-barrelled adjectives,' his purposely-obscured meanings ! " " All that is treason here, De Vigne," said Sabretasche, with a smile. " Miss Molyneux is the patron and champion of everything visionary, high wrought, and unintelligible to ordinary mortals. These raving individuals, ' sad only for wantonness,' strangely please dreamy young ladies and gentlemen ignorant of the true meaning, sorrows, and burdens of this ' work-a-day world.' " Violet made him a graceful reverence. " Is that a hit at me ? But you forget, that feeling — romance, as you are pleased to call it — has been the germ and nurse of all great writers. The swan must suffer before it sings. Did not his child-love inspire Dante, ? Would Petrarch have been all he is but for the ' amove veementissimo ma unico ed onesto?' Did not his passion for Mary Cha- worth have its influence for life upon the writings of Bryon ? And was not Leonora d'Este to Tasso what Diana's kiss was to Endymion ? " GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 141 " And was uot the domestic misery of Milton's married life the inspiration of that tirade upon women in Adam's speech?" asked Sabretasche quietly; "and but for Anne Hathaway, might we have ever had that oration of Pos- thumus : ' Even to viee They are not constant ; but are changing still One rice, but of a minute old, for one Not half so old as that ?'" " Some better woman taught him, then," cried Violet, 11 that from women's eyes ' Sparkles still the right Promethean fire. They are the books, the arts, the academes That show, contain, and nourish all the world ! ' " Sabretasche bowed his head in acknowledgment of defeat. " You have conquered me, as Rosaline conquered Biron ! " • He said the words as he had said such things to scores of other women as lovely as Violet Molyneux ; from any- body else she would have taken them at their value; at the Colonel's glance her colour deepened. 11 But don't you think, Miss Molyneux," suggested De Vigne, " that when Tasso languished in Ferrara dungeons, he must have wished he had never seen the Este family ! Don't you fancy that G-emma Donati must have rather can- celled Dante's good opinion of the beau sexe, and that his 1 wife of savage temper ' may have been a bitter tonic rather than sweet balm to his genius ? And as for Byron — well ! Miss Milbanke was rather a thorn in his side, wasn't she ? And with all the romance in the world, I think, when he called on Mrs. Musters, he must have thought he had been rather a fool. What do you say ? " " I say that you have not a trace, not a particle, not an infinitesimal germ of romance ! " " Thank Heaven— no ! " said De Vigne, with a laugh. I doubt, though, if the laugh was heartfelt. I dare say he thought of the time when romance was hot and strong in him, and trust and faith strong too ! " I pity you, then ! "Where I think you sceptical men err so much," said Violet, turning her brilliant eyes on 142 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Sabretasche, " is in confounding false and true, good and bad, feeling with sentiment, genius with pretension. Why at one sweep condemn the expression of unusual feeling as sentiment, simply because it is unusual ? Deep feeling is rare ; but it does not follow that it is unreal. Tou tread on a thousand ordinary flowers — daisies, buttercups, cow- slips, anemones — in an every-day walk ; they are all fair, all full of life ; but out of all the Flora, there is only one Sensitive Plant that shrinks and trembles at your touch. Yet, though the Sensitive Plant is organised so far more tenderly, it is no artificial offspring of mechanism, but as fresh and real, and living a thing as any of the others ! " De Yigne and Curly were now chatting with Lady Moly- neux, whose bishop had taken his conge. Sabretasche still sat by Violet a little apart. " I believe you," he said, gently ; " there are sensitive plants, so fresh and fair, that it is a sin they should ever have to shiver in rude hands, and learn to bend with the world's breath. But live as long as we have, and you will know that the deep feeling of which you are thinking is never found in unison with the poetic and drivelling senti- ment we ridicule. Boys' sorrows vent themselves in words — men's griefs are voiceless. If ever you feel — pray G-od you never may — vital suffering, you will find that it will never seek solace in confidences, never lament itself, but rather hug its torture closer, as the Spartan child hugged the fierce wolf-fangs. You will find the difference between the fictitious sorrows which run abroad proclaiming their own wrongs ; and the grief which lies next the heart night and day, and, like the iron cross of the Eomish priest, eats it slowly, but none the less surely, away." They were strange words to come from Vivian Sabre- tasche ! Violet looked at him in surprise, and her laughing eyes grew sad and dimmed. He had forgotten for the moment where he was ; at her earnest gaze he roused him- self with the faintest tinge of colour on his face. " I am going to ask you to do me a most intense kind- ness ; would'you mind singing me Hullah's ' Three Fishers ?' I declare to you it has haunted me ever since I heard you sing it on Tuesday night ; and it is so seldom I hear any music that is not a screech — rarely, indeed, anything that satisfies me as your songs do." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 43 " Oh yes, if you will sing me those Italian songs of yours. Major De Vigne, if you have no romance, I am quite sure you cannot care for music, so I give you full leave to talk to mamma as loudly as ever you like, I am going to sing only to Colonel Sabretasche." Sabretasche looked half-pleased, half-amused at the dis- tinction accorded to him, and followed her to the back drawing-room, where he leaned on the piano looking down upon her, while Violet sang with one of the best gifts of nature a clear, bell-like, melodious voice, highly tutored, and as flexible and free as the song of a mavis in spring- time. I am not sure whether her mother was best pleased or not at that musical tete-a-tete, for Sabretasche had an universal reputation as a most unscrupulous libertine, and Lady Molyneux knew his character too well to think he was likely to be doing any more than playing with Violet, as the most attractive beauty in town. But then, again, his word was almost law in all matters of taste. He could injure Violet irretrievably by a depreciating criticism, and could make her of tenfold more marketable value by an approving word, for there were numbers of men who moulded themselves by his dictum. So Lady Molyneux let them alone. I don't suppose, however, that she noticed Violet drawing out a large bunch of her floral namesakes from a Bohemian glass, and lifting them up for Sabretasche to scent. "Are they not delicious ? They remind me of dear old Corallyne, when I used to gather them out of the fresh damp moss. Do you know Kerry, Colonel Sabretasche ? Xo ? Oh, you should go there ; it is so beautiful, with its blue lakes, and its wild mountains, and its green, fragrant woodlands." "I should like it, I dare say," said Sabretasche, smiling, " with you for my guide. I want some added charm now to give ' greenness to the grass and glory to the flower.' Once I enjoyed them for themselves, as you do ; but as one gets on in life there is too silent a rebuke in nature for us to enjoy it unrestrainedly. Is Lord Molyneux' s estate in Kerry?" " Don't call it an estate," laughed Violet ; " it always amuses me so when I see it put down in the peerage. It is only miles and miles of moorland, with nothing growing 144 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. on it but tangled wood and glorious wild-flowers. There are one or two cabins with inhabitants like kelpies. The house has been, perhaps, very grand when all we Irish were kings, and you Sassenachs, Roman slaves ; but at the pre- sent moment, having lost three-quarters of its roof and nine-tenths of its timbers, having rats, and owls, and ghosts innumerable, no windows, and no furniture, you would pro- bably think it more picturesque than comfortable, and feel more inclined to paint it than to live in it." "But you live in it?" " Ah ! when I was a child ; but it was a little better then. There was a comfortable room or two in it, and I was very happy there with my favourite governess and my little rough pony, when papa and mamma were up here or in Paris, and left us to ourselves in Corallyne. I wonder if I shall ever be as happy as I was there ?" " Tou are very happy here ?" said Sabretasche, with a sort of pity for the joyous heart to which sorrow was yet but a name. "Happy? Oh, yes; I enjoy myself, and I am always light-hearted ; but I have things to annoy me here ; the artifices and frivolities of society worry me. I want to say always what I think, and nobody seems to do it in the world." " The world would be in hot water if they did. But pray speak it to me." " I always do ! Yes, I enjoy London life. I like the whirl, the excitement, the intellectual discussion, the vivid, real life men lead here. I should enjoy it entirely if I did not see too many hard, cruel, worn faces under the fair smiling masks." " Pauvre enfant!" murmured Sebretasche. "Do you suppose there are any light hearts under the dominoes ?" " Yours is not a light one?" " Mine !" echoed the Colonel, with a strange intonation ; then he laughed his gay soft laugh. " If it be not, made- moiselle, you are the first who has had penetration enough to find it out. I am queteur of amusement in general to all my friends ! There is De Yigne going, and so must I. I shall not thank you for your songs." " 2u> !" she said, laughingly. " You would not have asked me to sing if you had not wished to hear me, for I know that on principle you never bore yourself." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 145 ".Never. No one is worth such a self-sacrifice." "JSTotevenl?" " To suppose such a case, I must first imagine you boring me, which just at present is an hypothesis not to be imagined by any stretch of poetic fancy," laughed Sabretasche, as he held out his hand to bid her good morning. She held the violets up to him. " You have forgotten the flowers ? " " May I have them ? " He slipped them Hastily into the breast of his waistcoat, and came forward to Lady Molyneux. " Violet, my love," began her mother, as the door closed on us, " Colonel Sabretasche comes here a great deal ; I wish you would not be quite so — quite so— expansive with him." " Expansive ! What do you mean ? " " I mean what I say, my dear Violet," repeated the Vis- countess, the milk of roses turning a little sour. "You treat him quite as familiarly as if he were your father or your lover. You need not colour, I don't say he is the last ; God forbid he should be, with his principles. I know he makes himself agreeable to you, but so, as every one will tell you, he has done for the last twenty years to any pretty woman that came across his path ; and your speech to his friend De Vigne, about ' singing only to Colonel Sabretasche,' was not alone unmaidenly, it was absurd." " How so ? I only cared for him to hear it and like it.'' " It was all very well for him to hear it and like it," re- plied my lady, irritably — prominent piety has a queer knack of souring the temper — " his extreme fastidiousness makes his good word well worth having ; the best way to make your opinion of value in society is to admire nothing, as he does 1 But, at the same time, it is a dear way of gaining his applause to keep all other men in the background while you are flirt- ing with him. Before you saw him you liked Regalia, and Killury, and plenty of others, well enough ; now you really attend to no one else." " All they can do is to ride, and waltz, and smoke ; he has the genius of an artist. They think they please me by vapid flattery ; he knows better. They are one's subjects, he is one's master ! " L I4 6 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Lady Molyneux was seriously appalled by such an out- burst. She raised her eyebrows sarcastically : " Tou admire Vivian Sabretasche very much, Violet ? I should not advise you to say so, my dear." " Why not ? it is the truth." " Few truths can be spoken," replied the eminently reli- gious, fashionable lady, coldly. " Why you had better not proclaim your very Quixotic admiration for Sabretasche, because he bears as bad a character for morality as he bears a good one for talent and fashion. What his life has been every one knows ; he is a most unprincipled libertine. No one ever dreams of expecting anything serious of him ; he is the last man in the universe to marry, but a flirtation with him may very greatly injure your prospects — " " Oh, pray don't! I am so sick of those words ; they are so lowering, so pitiful, so conventional, making a market of oneself ! I cannot bear to hear you speak so. As to his ]ife, he has led the same life as most men, probably ; but you need only look in his eyes to see whether anything base or cruel can attach itself to him." Her mother sighed, and sneered, and smiled unpleasantly. " My love, the way you talk is too absurd. Tou forget yourself strangely. How is it possible for you to judge of the character of a man nearly fifty, a blase man cf the world, who was one of the greatest roues about town while you were a little child in the nursery ; it is too ridiculous ! But go and dress for dinner. The dear bishop, and Cavendish Grey, and Killury will dine here." " Poor sensitive plant, it would be a pity my hands should touch it and wither its freshness and fairness," thought the Colonel, as he turned his tilbury from the door. " Vivian Sabretasche, I say, are you growing a fool ? Don't you know that the golden gates won't open for you ? You barred them yourself; you have no right to complain. Have you not been going to the bad all the days of your life ? Have you not persuaded the world, ever since you lived in it, that you are a reckless, devil-may-care Don Juan, a smasher of the entire Decalogue ? Why should you now, just because you have looked into that girl's bright eyes, be trying to trick yourself and her into the idea that you possess such affairs as heart, and feeling, and regrets, because she, fresh to life, is innocent enough to have a taste for such nonsense? GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 147 All folly — all folly ! Back to your animate friends, horses and men, and your inanimate loves, chisel and palate, or you may grow a fool in your older years, as many wise men have done before. You've pulled up many fair flowers in your day, you can surely leave that one Violet in peace." " Open the door, Colonel Sabretasche, and let me out. It is of no use telling me not — I will ! " With which enunciation of her own self-will the Hon. Violet Molyneux sprang to the ground in St. James' s-street, just opposite the bay-window, to the unspeakable horror of her mother, and the excessive amusement of De Vigne and Sabretasche, who were driving in the Molyneux barouche. One of the powdered, white-wanded, six-feet-high plushes that swayed to and fro at the back of the carriage, having dismounted at some order of his mistress's, had happened to push, as those noble and stately creatures are given to pushing every plebeian perinatetic, against a young girl passing on the pavement. The girl had with her a portfolio of pictures, which the abrupt rencontre sent out of her grasp, scattering its contents to the four winds of heaven, and to apologise was the work of a second with that perfectly courteous, but, according to her mamma and her female friends, much too impulsive and unconventional young beauty, the Hon. Violet, whose fatal lessons, learnt on the wild moorlands and among the fragrant woods of her be- loved Corallyne, and the aristocratic experiences of her single season had been sadly unable to unteach her. " Ashton, how can you be so careless ? Pick those draw- ings up immediately and very carefully," said the young beauty, as, turning to the young girl, she apologised with polished courtesy for the accident her servant had caused, while the man, in disgusting violence to his own feelings, was compelled to bend his stately form, and even to so far fall from his pedestal of powdered propriety and flunkeyism grandeur, as to run — yes, absolutely run — after one of the sketches, which, wafted by a little breeze that must have been that mischievous imp Puck himself, ambled gently and tantalisingly down the street. The young girl thanked her with as bright a smile as Violet's, and votes were divided in the club windows as to which of the two was the most charming, though the one was a fashionable belle, with l2 148 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. every adjunct of taste and dress, and the other an unpro- tected little thing walking with a woman servant in St. James's-street; an artist probably, or a governess. She took her portfolio (by this time men in the clubs were all looking on, heartily amused, and Sabretasche and De Yigne were picking up the pictures, on the back of which they had time to observe the initials " A. T., St. Crucis-on-tbe-hill, Eichmond Park," with much more diligence than the grand- iose flunkey ;) thanked Violet with a low graceful bow, and was passing on, when she looked up at De Yigne. Her lips parted, her eyes darkened, her face brightened; she stood still a minute, then she came back : " Sir Folko ! " But he neither saw nor heard her, his foot was on the step of the barouche ; the footman shut the door with a clang, swung himself up on the footboard, and the carriage rolled away into Piccadilly. " Violet, Violet ! how you forget yourself, my love ? " whispered Lady Molyneux, scandalised and horror-stricken. "I wish you would not be quite so impulsive. All the gentlemen in White's were staring at you." " Let them stare, dear," laughed Violet, merrily. " It is a very innocent amusement, it gives them a great deal of pleasure and does me no harm. What glorious blue eyes that girl had. Tou should laud me for my magnanimity in praising another woman so pretty." " For magnanimity in that line is not a virtue of your sex," said De Vigne. " Tou cynic ! I don't see why it should not be." " Don't you ? Did you, on your honour, then, fair lady, ever speak well of a rival ? " " I never had one." " You never could," whispered Sabretasche, bending for- ward to tuck the tiger-skin over her. " But supposing you had ? " persisted De Vigne. " I hope I should be above maligning her ; but I am afraid to think how I should hate her." Violet's eyes met the Colonel's ; her colour rose, and he incongruously enough turned his head away. " If Miss Molyneux treats the visionary things of life so earnestly, what will she do when she comes to the realities ?" laughed De Yigne. Lady Molyneux sighed ; on occasions she would play at tender maternity, but it did not sit well upon her. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 49 " Ah ! if we did not find some armour besides our own strength in our life pilgrimage, few of us women would be able to endure to the end of the Via Dolorosa." " True ! Britomart soon finds a buckler studded with the diamonds of a good dower, or stiffened with the parch- ment-skins of handsome settlements ; and, tender and gentle as she looks, manages to go through the skirmish very unscathed by dint of the vizor she keeps down so wisely, and the sharp lance of the tongue she keeps always in rest against friend and foe !" " What thrusts of the spear you deserve ; you are worse than your friend, and he is bad enough ! " cried Violet, looking rather lovingly, however, on the Colonel, despite his errors. " I am sure if women take to lance and vizor, it is only in self-defence, for you would pierce us with your arrows if you could find a hole in our armour." " But here and there is a woman who unhorses us at once, and on whom it is a shame to draw our swords. Agnes Hotots are very rare, but when we do find them, Kingsdale is safe to go down before them," said Sabretasche, with his eloquent glance. " I should think you have both of you been conquered or imprisoned some time or other by some Cynisca, or Maria de Jesu, whom you cannot forgive, and who makes you so bitter upon us all ! " laughed Violet. She said it in the gay innocence of her heart ! Both were silent : and Violet instinctively felt that she had trodden on dangerous ground — then De Vigne laughed, though a curse would have been better in unison with his thoughts. " Miss Molyneux, with all due deference to your sex, there are few men I fear, who, if they told you the truth, would not have to confess having found, that those warm and charming feelings with which you young ladies start fresh in life, have a knack of disappearing in the atmosphere of society, as gold disappears melted and swallowed up in aqua regia." " Will you let your pure gold be lost in this metaphorical aqua regia? " whispered the Colonel, half smiling, half sadly, as he handed her out, at her own house. " Oh ! never ! " " You mean it now, but — AY ell, we shall see !" And 150 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Sabretasche led her up the Steps with his low, careless laugh. " When you are Madame la Princess d'Hautecour, or her Grace of Regalia, perhaps you will not smile so kindly on your old friends !" She turned pale ; ber large eyes filled with unshed tears. She thought of the violets she had given him a few days before. " You are unkind and unjust, Colonel Sabretasche," she said haughtily. " I thought you more kind, more true — " " I am neither," said Sabretasche, abruptly for that ultra suave and tender squire of dames. " Ask your mamma for my character, and believe what she will tell you. I would rather you erred in thinking too ill — though that people would say is impossible — than too well of me." " I could never think ill of you — " " Tou would be wrong, then," said Sabretasche, gravely. Just then her mother and De Yigne entered and the Colonel, with his light laugh, turned round to them with some jest. Violet could not rally quite so quickly. That night, at a loo party at Sabretasche's house, De Yigne and I told the other fellows of Yiolet's impulsive action in St. James's-street ; while the Colonel went on with his game in silence. "She's a great deal too impulsive; it's horrid bad ton," yawned little Lord Killtime, an utterly blase gentleman of nineteen. " I like it," said Curly. " It's a wonderful treat now-a- days to see a girl natural." " She is very lovely, there is no doubt about that," said De Yigne. " I dare say they mean to set her up high in the market. Her mother is trying hard for Regalia." " He's a lost man, then," said Wyndham, who had cut the Lower House and Eed Tape for the lighter loves of Pam and Miss. "I never knew the Molyneux, senior, make hard running after any fellow but what she finished him (she's retreated into the bosom of the Church now, and puts up with portly bishops and handsome popular preachers : women often do when they get passees ; the Church is not so difficile as the laity, I presume !) ; but ten or less years ago I vow it was dangerous to come within the signal of her fan, she'd such a clever way of setting at you." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 15 1 " Jockey Jack didn't care," laughed St. Lys, of the Eleventh. " Well, her daughter's no mauceuvrer ; and, by George, it's worth a guinea a turn to waltz with her." " She's not bad looking," sneered Vane Castleton, tht youngest son of his Grace of Tiara, the worst of all those by no means incorruptible, and very far from stainless pillars of the state, the " Castleton family." " But, by George, I never came across so bold, off-hand, spirited a young filly." Sabretasche looked up, anger in his languid, tired eyes. " Permit me to differ from you, Castleton. Your remark, I must say, is as much signalised by knowledge of character as it is by elegance of phraseology ! Young fellows like Killtime may make such mistakes of judgment ; we who know the world should be wiser." De Vigne, sitting next him, looked up and raised his eye- brows at the Colonel's unusual interference and warmth. "ffltu, Brute/" Sabretasche understood, and gave him an admonitory kick under the table. " Who's portrait is that, Sabretasche ?" asked De Vigne, to stop Vane Castleton's tongue, pointing to a portrait over the mantelpiece in the inner drawing-room, where we were playing ; the portrait of a very pretty woman. " My mother, when she was twenty. Didn't you know it ? It was taken just before she married. I believe it was an exact likeness, but I don't remember her." " It reminds me of somebody — I cannot think of whom. I beg your pardon, I take ' miss.' " " Why will you talk through the game ?" said I. "Don't you think the picture is like that girl who occasioned Violet's championship this morning ? That's whom you are thinking of, I dare say." " Who's talking now, I wonder ?" said De Vigne. " Heart's trumps ? I did not notice that girl ; I was too amused to see Miss Molyneux. No, it is somebody else, but who, I cannot think, for the life of me." " Nor can 1 help you," said Sabretasche, " for there is not a creature related to my mother living. But now Arthur mentions it, that little girl was not unlike her ; at least, I fancy she had the same coloured hair. A propos of like- nesses, there will be a very pretty picture of Lady Geraldine 152 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Ormsby in the Exhibition this year. I saw it, half finished, at Maclise's yesterday." ""Why don't you exhibit, Sabretasche ?" said TYyndham. " You paint a deuced deal better than half those Fellows and Associates !" " Bien oblige!" cries the Colonel. "I should be parti- cularly sorry to hang up my pets of my easel, to be put level with people's boots, or high above their possible vision, or — if honoured with the ' second row ' — be flanked by shock- ing red-haired pre-Eaphaelite angels and staring portraits of gentlemen in militia uniform ; and criticised by a crowd of would-be cognoscenti and dilettante cockneys, with a catalogue in their hand and Euskin rules in their mind, who go into ecstasies over cottage scenes with all Teniers' vul- garities, and none of Teniers' redeeming talent. Exhibit my pictures? The fates forfend ! Wyndham, help your- self to that Chateau Cos, and, De Vigne, there is some of our pet Madeira. How sorry I am Madeira now grows graves instead of grapes ! Xonsense. Don't any of you think of going yet. Let us sit down again for a few more rounds." We did, and we played till the raw February dawn was growing gray in the streets, while we laughed and talked over Sabretasche's wine — laughs that might have jarred on Violet's ear, and talk that might have made her young heart heavy, coming from her hero's lips. But when we were gone, and the fire was burning low, the Colonel sat before the dying embers with his dog's head upon his knee, and thought, I believe : " "What a fool I am ! Women, wine, cards, art, play — are they all losing their enchantment? Are my rose-leaves beginning to lose their scent, and crumple under me ? That girl — child she is to me — has been the only one who has had penetration enough to see that the bal masque has ceased its charm. She reads me truer than all of them. She will believe no ill of me. She almost makes me wish there were no ill for her to believe ! Shall she be the first woman to whom I have shown mercy, the first for whom I have re- nounced self? Cid, old boy ! is your master wholly dead to generositv and honour because the world happens to say he is?" That night De Vigne and I smoked our pipes together GRANVILLE BE VIGNE. 153 over bis fire in the Albany, where he had taken a suite. Yigne had been shut up since his mother's death, and he rarely alluded, even distantly, to the scene of his folly and his wrongs ; I do not think he could have endured to revisit, far less to live in it. " Is Sabretasche really getting touched by that bewitching Irish girl ? " said I to him, as we sat smoking. " God knows ! He was rather touchy about her, wasn't he ? But that might be only for the pleasure of setting down Castleton, a temptation I don't think I could forego myself. According to his own showing, he's never in love with any woman, but he makes love to almost all he comes across." " Oh, he's a deuced fellow for women ! — but he might be really caught at last, you know." " Certainly," assented De Yigne ; " none are so wise that they may not become fools ! Socrates, when he was old, sage that he was, did not read in the same book with a woman without falling in love with her." " You are complimentary to love ? Is it invariably a folly ? " " I think so. At least, all /wish for is to keep clear of it all the rest of mv life." '•'Why?" " Good God ! need you ask ? From my boyhood I was the fool of my passions. To love a woman was to win her. I stopped for no consideration, no duty, no obstacle ; I let nothing come between me and my will, I was as obstinate to those who tried ever to stop me in any pursuit, as I was weak and mad in yielding up my birthright at any price, if I could but buy the mess of porridge on which I had for the time being set my fancy. Scores of times I did that — scores of times some worthless idol became the thing on which I staked my soul. Once I did it too often! It is such eternal misery that that woman, so low-born, so low-bred, shameless, degraded, all that I know her to be, should bear my name, should proclaim abroad all the folly into which my reckless passions led me. Thank God I knew it when I did — thank God I left her as I did — thank God that no devils like herself were born to perpetuate my shame, and make me loathe my name because they bore it ! Then you ask me if I am steeled to love ! It has changed mv whole nature — 154 GRANVILLE BE VIGNE. the misery of that loathsome connexion ! It is not the tie I care for — it is the shame, Arthur — the bitter, burning, shame ! It is the odium of knowing that she bears my name, the humiliation that twice in my life have I been fooled by her beauty ; it is the agony that my mother, the only pure, the only true friend whom fate ever gave me, was murdered by my reckless passions ! " His hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and the black veins swelled upon his face ; it looked as though cast in chill, grey stone. It was my first glimpse of those ghastly dark hours, which exorcised, or invisible, in society and ordinary life, fastened relentlessly upon him in his hours of solitude ; of that sleepless and merciless Remorse which dogged his steps by day, and made night horrible. At that same hour, in a little bed whose curtains and linen were white and pure as lilies, a young girl slept, like a rose- bud lying on new-fallen snow ; her golden hair fell over her shoulders, her blue eyes were closed under their black, silky lashes, a bright, happy smile was on her lips, and as she turned in her dreams, she spoke unconsciously in her sleep two words — " Sir Folko ! " CHAPTER XIII. THE QUEEX OE THE EAIBIES IS EOTTXD IX RICHMOND. Not content with his house in Park-lane, Sabretasche had lately bought, beside it, a place at Richmond that had be- longed to a rich old Indian millionnaire. It had been origin- ally built and laid out by people of good taste, and the merchant had not lived long enough in it to spoil it : he had only christened it the " Dilcoosha," which title, being out of the common, Sabretasche retained. It was very charming, with its gardens, sloping down to the Thames, and was a pet with the Colonel ; a sort of Strawberry-hill, save that his taste was much more symmetrical and graceful than Horace's; and he spent plenty of both time and money, touching it up and perfecting it till it was beautiful in its way as Luciennes. De Vigne and I drove down there one morning, towards the end of February, to see the paces tried, on a level bit of grass-land outside the grounds, of a chesnut Sabretasche GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 155 had entered for Ascot. Stable slang and the delights of " ossy men " were not refined enough for the Colonel's taste, but he liked to keep a good racing stud ; and he wished to have De Yigne's opinion on Coronet, who had run a good second at the " Two Thou ; " for De Vigne, who was very well known in the Ring and the Rooms, was one of the surest prophets of success or failure that ever talked over a coming Derby on a Sunday afternoon at Tattersall's. " What trick do you think my man Harris served me yes- terday ? " said De Vigne, as we came near Richmond. " Harris — that good-natured fellow ? What has he done? " " Cut and run with a dozen of my shirts, three morning, two dress-coats ; in fact a complete wardrobe ; and twenty pounds or so — I really forget how much exactly — that I had left on the dressing-table when I went to mess last night. And that man I took out of actual starvation at Bombay ! — have forgiven him fifty peccadilloes, let him off when I found him taking a case of my sherry, because he blubbered and said it was for his mother, found up the poor old woman, who wasrCt a myth, and wrote to Stevens at Vigne to give her an almshouse ; and then this fellow walks off with my goods ! And you talk to me of people's gratitude ! Bah ! How can you have the face, Arthur, to ask me to admire human nature ? " " I don't ask you to admire it — Heaven forefend ! — I don't like it well enough myself. What a rascal ! 'Pon my life there seems a fate in your seeing the dark side of humanity." "The dark side? Where's any other? I never found any gratitude yet, and I don't expect any. People court you while you're of use to them ; when you are not, you may go hang. Indeed, they will help to swing you off the stage, to lessen their own sense of obligation. By Jove ! we're half- an-hour too early for the Colonel." " Too early ? " said I. " Then let us go and see that pretty little artist of St. James's-street. I always meant to look her up ; and you said she lived somewhere near here." " I think she did ; St. Crucis something or other. What a naughty fellow you are, Arthur," laughed De Vigne. " We'll try and find her out, if you like ; though I don't think it's worth while. Hallo ! my good man ; is there a place called St. Crucis anywhere in Richmond? " 156 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " St. Crucis-on-tlie-hill be you meaning, sir ? a little farm ? " said the hedge-cutter he asked, who was sitting in the sun eating his dinner. " Take the road to your left, then the turning to the right, and a mile straight on will see you there." De Vigne tossed him half-a-crown, tooled the greys in the direction told him, and we soon arrived in the quiet lane where the little farm-house stood ; turned in at the gate — it was as much as the dashing mail-phaeton could do to pass it — and into a small paved court on one side of which stood the house, long, low, thatched, and picturesque, more like Hampshire than Middlesex ; with a garden, an orchard, and a paddock adjoining ; all now black and bare in the chill February morning. " Does a young lady, an artist, reside here ? " De Vigne inquired at the door ; scarcely had he spoken than the young girl herself, looking temptingly pretty in-doors, came out of an inner room and ran up to him. " Ah ! it is you ? how glad I am ! Do come in, pray do ? " " What a strange little thing ! " whispered De Vigne to me, as we followed her through the house to a room at the west end, a long, low chamber with an easel standing in its bay-window, and water-colour etchings, pastels, etudes, pictures of all kinds, hung about its walls ; while some books, and casts, and flowers, gave a refinement to its plain simpli- city, often wanting in many a gilt and gorgeous drawing- room which I have entered. " So you recognised me ? How kind of you to come ! " said the girl, looking up in De Vigne's face. De Vigne was wholly surprised ; he looked at her for some moments. " Eecognise you ? I am ashamed to say I do not." " Ah ! and yet you have called on me. I do not under- stand ! " said the little artist, with a sunny smile, but very marked bewilderment in her eyes and words. " I have never forgotten you, Sir Folko. I knew you the other day, when that young lady's servant knocked down my portfolio. Have \ou quite forgotten little Alma? I am so glad to see you — you cannot think how much ! " And Alma Tressillian held out both her hands to him, with a bright, joyous welcome on her upraised face. "Little Alma ! " repeated De Vigne. " Yes, yes ! I re- member you now. Where could my mind have gone not to GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 157 recognise you at once ? You are not the least altered since you "were a child. But how can you have come from Lorave to London ? Come, tell me everything ? My dear child, you are not more pleased to see me than I am to see you ! ' Alma was little altered since her childhood : now, as then, her golden hair and eloquent dark-blue eyes, with the con- stant change, and play, and animation of all her features, made her greatest beauty. They were not regularly beauti- ful as Violet Molyneux's, their mobility and extreme intellectuality of expression was their chief charm, after all. She was not so tall as Violet, nor had she that exquisite and perfect form which made the belle of the season compared with Pauline Bonaparte ; but she had something graceful and fairy-esque about her, and both her face and figure were instinct with a life, an intelligence, a radiance of expression which promised you a rare combination of sweet temper and hot passions, intense susceptibility, and highly- cultivated intellect. You might not have called her pretty : you must have called her much more — irresistibly winning and at- tractive. " Come, tell me everything about yourself," repeated De Vigne, as he pushed a low chair for her, and threw himself down on an arm-chair near. " You must remember Captain Chevasney as well as you do me. We shall both of us be anxious to hear all you have to tell ; though, I am ashamed to say that in taking the liberty to call on the fair artist whose pictures I picked up, I had no idea I should meet my little friend the Queen of the Fairies ! " " Indeed ! Then I wonder you came, though I am very glad to see you ! Why should you call on a stranger? Yes, I recollect Captain Chevasney,'' smiled Alma, with a pretty bend of her head (she did not add "as well"). " I was so sorry when you did not see me that day in Pall Mall ; I thought I might never come across you again." " But where is your grandpapa ? — is he in town ? " She looked down and her lips quivered : " G-randpapa has been dead three years." " Dead ! My dear child, how careless of me ! I am grieved, indeed! " exclaimed De Vigne, involuntarily. " You could not tell," answered Alma, looking up at him, great tears in her blue eyes. " He died more than three years ago, but it is as fresh to me as if it were but yesterday. 158 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Nobody will ever love ine as he did. He was so kind, so gentle, so good.. In losing him I lost everything ; I prated day and night that I might die with him ; he was ray only friend!" " Poor little Alma ! " said De Vigne, touched out of that haughty reserve now habitual to him. " I am grieved to hear it, both for the loss to you of your only protector, and the loss to the world of as true-hearted a man as ever breathed. If I had been in England he would have seen me at Lorave, as I promised, but I have been in India since we parted. I wish I had written to him ; I ought to have done so ; but one never knows things till too late." " He left a letter for you, in case I should ever meet you. Tou were the only person kind to us after the loss of his fortune," said Alma, as she sprang across the room — all her movements were rapid and foreign — knelt down before a desk, and brought an unsealed envelope to De Vigne, di- rected to him by a hand now powerless for ever. " This for me"? I wish I had seen him," said De Vigne, as he put it away in the breast of his coat. "I ought to have written to him ; but my own affairs engrossed me, and — we are all profound egotists, you know, to whatever un- selfishness we may pretend. What was the cause of his death ? "Will it pain you to tell me ? " " Paralysis. He had a paralytic stroke six months before, which ended in congestion of the brain. But how gentle, how good, how patient he was through it all ! " She stopped again ; the tears rolled off her lashes. She was quite unaccustomed to conceal what she felt, and she did not know that feeling is bad ton ! '* And you have been in England ever since?" asked De Vigne, to divert her thoughts. "Oh no!" she answered, brushing the tears off" her lashes. " Tou know the governess grandpapa took for me to Lorave ? She has been extremely kind. She was with me at his death. I was fifteen then, and for a year after- wards she stayed with me in Lorave ; I loved the place so dearly, dearer still after his grave was there, and I could not bear to leave it. But Miss Kussell had no money, and no home. She works for her living, and she could not waste her time on me. She was obliged to look for another situa- tion, and when she came over to it — it is in a rector's family GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 59 near Staines — I came with her, and she placed me here. My old nurse has this farm ; grandpapa bought it for her many years ago, when she left us and married. Her hus- band is dead, but she still keeps the farm, and makes bread to send into town. It was the only place we knew of, and nurse was so delighted to let me have the rooms, that I have been here ever since." " Poor little thing, what a life ! " cried De Vigne, invo- luntarily. " How dull you must be, Alma ! " She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders. Gesticulation was natural to her, and she had caught it from the Italians at Lorave. " Buried alive ! Sylvo to talk to, and the flowers to talk to me; that is my society. But wherever I might have been, I should have missed him equally, and I can never be alone while I have my easel and my books." " Have you painted these ? " I exclaimed in surprise, for there were masterly strokes in the sketches on the walls that would have shamed more than one " Associate." " Yes. An Italian artist, spending the summer at Lorave, saw me drawing one day, something as Cimabue saw little Giotto, and had me to his studio, and gave me a regular course of instruction. He told me I might equal Elizabetta Sirani. I shall never do that, I am afraid, but I find a very good sale for my sketches ; they take them at Ackermann's and Eowney's, and I work hard. I sketch every day out of doors, to catch the winter and summer tints. But I hate winter : it is so unkind, so cheerless ! I always paint Sum- mer in my pictures ; not your poor pale English season, but summer golden and glorious, with the boughs hanging to the ground with the weight of their own beauty, and the vineyards and corn-fields glowing with their rich promise ! " " Enthusiastic as ever ? " laughed De Yigne. " How are our friends the fairies, Alma ? " " Do you suppose I shall give news of them to a disbe- liever ? " said Alma, with a toss of her head. " I have not forgotten your want of faith. Are you as great a sceptic now ? " " Ten times more — not only of fairy lore, but of pretty well everything else. Fairies are as well worth credence as all the other faiths of the day ; I would as soon credit Queen Mab as a ' doctrinal point ! ' What do you think of the fairies now ? " 160 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Look ! Do you not think I sketched that from sight ? " said Alina, turning her easel to him, where she had drawn a true Titania, such as " on pressed flowers does sleep," for whom " the cowslips tall her pensioners be : " " Where oxlips and the nodding violets grow, Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine, Lulled in those flowers with dances and delight ; " the veritable fairy queen of those dainty offsprings of romance, who used to meet " In grove or green, By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen." '• How splendidly you draw, Alma ? " exelaimed De Yigne. " If you exhibited at the Water-Colour Society, you would excite as much wonder as Rosa Bonheur. And do these pay you well ? " "Yes ; at least, what seems so to me." " Pauvre enfant! " smiled De Yigne; her ideas of wealth and his were strikingly different. " A friend of mine is a great connoisseur of these things. I must show them to him some day ; but I cannot stay now, for I have an engagement at two, and it is now striking." " But you will come and see me again," interrupted Alma, beseechingly. " Pray do. You cannot think how lonely I am. I have no friends, you know. " " Oh yes, I will come," answered De Yigne. " I have much more to hear about you and your pursuits. How could you know us, Alma, after so long ? " " I did not know Captain Chevasney," said the little lady, with uncomplimentary frankness, " but I knew you perfectly. The first picture I could sketch was one of you for Sir Polko. You know I always thought you like him ? Besides, grandpapa talked of you so constantly, and I was so expecting you to come to Lorave with your yacht, as you had promised, that it was impossible for me to forget you. I was so grieved when you did not notice me in Pall Mall. I called you, but you did not hear. You were thinking of that young lady. How lovely she was ! Who is she ? " " Lord Molyneux's daughter. I was not thinking of her, though, but that the pair of horses in her carriage were not worth half what I heard they gave for them," said GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. l6l De Vigne, laughing, as he offered her his hand ; " and now, good-bye. I am very pleased to have found you out, and you must pardon us our impertinence in calling on one whom we thought a stranger, since it has led us to one whom we may fairly claim as an old friend ? " Alma looked gratefully in his face, and bid him, with a radiant smile, not defer his visit to St. Crucis, as he had done his yachting to Lorave. She guessed little enough what had prevented that yachting to Lorave. " Strange we should have lighted on that child ! That's your doing, Arthur, going after the beaux yeux ! " said he, as we drove to the Dilcoosha. " She is the same frank, impulsive, enthusiastic little thing as when we first saw her. She was the heiress of Wieve Hurst then ; now she has to work for her bread. "Who can prophesy the ups and downs of life ? Boughton Tressillian was game to the backbone. Perhaps she inherits some of his pluck — it is to be hoped so — she will want it. A woman, young unprotected, and attractive as she looks, is pretty sure to come to grief some way or other. Her very virtues will be her ruin ! She is not one of your sensible, prudent, cold, common-place women, who go through the world scathless ; too wise to err, too selfish to sacrifice themselves ! Alma will come to grief, I am afraid. Here, take the reins, Arthur, and J will see what her grandfather says." He tore open the letter, and gave a long whistle. " What's the matter?" said I. " She isn't his grandchild after all." " Not ? His daughter, I suppose ? " £?o ; no relation at all. The letter is broken off un- finished ; probably where his hand failed him, poor old man. He says my name recurred to him as the only per- son who had not heeded his decline of fortune, and the only man of honour whom he could trust. Out of his income as consul he contrived to save her a few hundreds — voila tout ! He must leave her, of course, to struggle for herself; and this is what weighs so heavily upon him, because, it seems, he adopted this child when she was two years old, believing he would make her an heiress ; and, according to his view of the case, he considers he has done her a great wrong. Who she is he does not tell me, except that she was a little Italian girl. He was going, no doubt, to add M 1 62 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. more, as he began the letter by saying he wished her secret to be known to some one, and having heard much of my mother, appealed to her, through me, to aid and serve Alma if she would ; but here the sentence breaks off unfinished." " Do you think Alma knows it ; she calls him her grand- father still ? " " Can't say — yet of course she does," said De Vigne. with a cynical smile. " No woman's curiosity ever allowed her to keep an unsealed letter three years and never look into it ! Here we are. It will be as well not to tell Sabretasche of his neighbour, eh? He is such a deuced fellow for women, and she would be certain to go down before his thousand-and-one accomplishments ! Not that it would matter much; perhaps ; she will be somebody's prey, no doubt, and she might as well be the Colonel's, save that he is a little quicker fickle than most, knowing better than most the value of his toys." With which concluding sarcasm De Yigne threw the reins to his groom, who met him at the door, and entered that abode of perfect taste and epicurean luxury, known as the Dilcoosha, where Sabretasche and luncheon were waiting for us. And where, after due discussion of Strasbourg pates, Comet Hock, Bass, and the news of the day, we inspected the chesnut's paces, pronounced him pretty certain, unless something unforeseen in the way of twitch and opium-ball occurred, to win, and drove back to town together, De Vigne to dine at the Rag, go to a theatre for half an hour, and end at Pratts', and I to call on a certain lady who had well-nigh broken my heart, when it was young and breakable, who had exchanged rings with me under the Kensington G-arden trees, when she was fresh, fair, Gwen Brandling, and who was now staying in town as Madame la Duchesse de la Yieillecour, black velvet and point replacing the muslin and ribbons, dignity in the stead of girlish grace, and a fin sourire of skilled coquetry in lieu of that heartfelt smile, Gwen's whilom charm. I take it doves are sold by the dozen on the altar- steps of St. George's ? but — it is true that the doves have a strange passion for the gold coins that buy them, and would not fly away if they could. N^importe ! Madame de la Yieillecour and I met as became people living in good society ; if less fresh she was, perhaps, more fascinating, and though one begins life tender and GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 63 transparent as Sevres, one is stone-china, luckily, long before the finish, warranted never to break at any blows whatever. CHAPTEE XIV. HOW A WIFE TALKED OF HER HUSBAND. In a very gay and gaudy drawing-room in the Champs Elysees, in an arm-chair, with her feet on a chauffer ette, in a rich cashmere and laces, looking a very imposing and richly- coloured picture, sat De Yigne's wife, none the less hand- some for the wear of Paris life, intermixed with visits to the Bads, where she was almost as great an attraction as the green tables, and the sound of her name as great a charm as the irresistible " Faites votre jeu, messieurs ! " A little ful- ler about the cheek and chin, a trifle more Junoesque in form, a little higher tinted in the carnation hue of her roses, but otherwise none the worse for the ten years that had passed since she wore the orange-blossoms and the diamond ceinture on her marriage morning. She had an English paper in her hand, and was running her eye over the fashionable intelligence. Opposite to her was old Eantyre, her nose a little more hooked, her eye sharper, her rouge higher, a little more dirty, witty, and de- testable than of yore ; taking what she called a demie-tasse, but which looked uncommonly like cognac uncontaminated by Mocha. And these two led a very pleasant life in Paris ; with the old lady's quick wits, questionable introductions, and imperturbable impudence, and the younger one's beauty, riches, and excessive freedom ! " "What's the matter, my dear ? " asked Lady Fantyre ; " you don't look best pleased." '"I am not pleased," said the Trefusis (such I must call her), her brow dark, and her full under-lip protruded. " De Yigne is back." "Dear, dear! how tiresome!" cried the Eantyre; "and just when you'd begun to hope he'd been killed in India. Well, that is annoying. It's a nice property to be kept out of, ain't it ? But you see, my dear, strong men of his age are not good ones to be heir to, even with all the chances of war. So he's come back, is he ? What for, I wonder ? " m 2 164 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Here it is, among the arrivals : ' Claridge's Hotel : Major de Vigne.' He is come back because he is tired of the East, probably. I wonder if he will come to Paris ? I should like to meet him." And the Trefusis laughed, showing her white teeth. " Why, my dear ? To give him a dose of aconite ? No,. you're too prudent to do anything of that sort. Whatever other commandments you break, my dear, it won't be the Sixth, because there's a capital punishment for it," said the old lady, chuckling at the idea. " You'd like to meet him, you say — I shouldn't. I don't forget his face in the vestry ! Lord ! how he did look ! his face as white as a corpse, and as fierce as the devil's. " Did you ever see the devil ? " sneered the Trefusis. " Tes, my dear — in a scarlet cashmere ; and very well he looks in women's clothes, too," said the Fantyre, with a dia- bolical grin. The Trefusis laughed too. "He has found me dangerous, at any rate." " Well, yes : everybody has, I think, that has the pleasure of your acquaintance," chuckled Lady Fantyre. " But I don't think so much of your revenge, myself. Very poor ! What's three thousand a year out of his property ? And as for not letting him marry, I think that's oftener kindness than cruelty to a man. Don't you think it would have been better to have queened it at Vigne, and had an establish- ment in Eaton-square, and spent his twenty thousand a year for him, and made yourself a London leader of fashion, and ridden over the necks of those haughty Ferrers people, and all his stiff-necked friends — that beautiful creature, Vivian Sabretasche, among 'em. What do you think, eh ? " " It might have been better for me, but it would have spoilt my revenge. He would have left me sooner or later, and as he is infinitely too proud and reserved a man to have told any living soul the secret of his disgrace, I should have lost the one grand sting in my vengeance — the humiliation before the world." " Pooh, pooh, my dear, a man of fortune is never humili- ated ; the world's too fond of him ! The sins of the fathers are only visited on the children where the children are going down in the world." (The Fantyre might be a nasty old woman, but she spoke greater truths than most good people.) GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 65 " So you sacrificed your aggrandisement to your revenge ? Not over sensible, that." " You can't accuse me of often yielding to any weakness," said the Trefusis, with a look in her eye like a vicious mare's. " However, my revenge is not finished yet." " Eh ? Not"? What's the next act ? ^ On my word, you're a clever woman. Lucy. You do my heart good." The first time, by the way, that Lady Fantyre ever ac- knowledged to a heart, or the Trefusis received such a com- pliment. " This. I know his nature — you do not. Some day or other De Vigne will love again, and passionately. Then he will want to be free ; then, indeed, he shall realise the force of the fetters by which I hold him." The old lady chuckled over the amusing prospect. " Very likely, my dear. It's just what they can't do, that they always want to do. Tell a man wine's good for him, and forbid him water, he'd forswear his cellar, and run to the pump immediately ! And if you heard that he'd fallen in love, what would you do ? " " G-o to England,, and put myself between her and him, as his deserted, injured, much enduring, and loving wife. Old Eantyre drank up her coffee, and nodded approvingly. " That's right, my dear ! Play your game. Play it out ; only take care to keep the honours in your own hand, and never trump your partner's card." " Not much fear of my doing that," said the Trefusis, with a smile. There was not, indeed ; she marked her cards too cleverly ■for she was keen enough to be Queen of the Paris Greeks. CHAPTEE XV. " l'amitie est l' amour sans ailes." Scaecely anyone was in town except a few very early birds, heralds of the coming season, and the Members, victims to an unpitying nation ; but there was still some people one knew dotted about in Belgravia and Park-lane, others in jointure-houses or villas up " Tamese Ripe," among them a very pretty widow, Leila Lady Puffdoff, who dwelt 1 66 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. in the retirement of her dower-house at Twickenham, ard enlivened the latter portion of her veuvage by matinees onusicales, breakfasts, and luncheons for some of those dear friends who had been the detestation of le feu Puffdoff. To a combination of all three, Sabretasche, De Vigne, Curly, a man called Monckton, and myself, drove in De Yigne's drag a day or two after our rencontre with little Alma Tressillian. " An amateur affair, isn't it ? " asked De Vigne. " Ar- tistes' morning concerts are bad enough, where Italian singers barbarise 'Annie Laurie' into an allegro move- ment with shakes and aspeggios, and English singers scream Italian with vile British o's and a's ; but amateur matinees musicales, where highly-finished young beauties in becoming morning toilettes excruciate one's ears, whether they have melody in their voices or no, just because they have been taught by Grarcia or Grardoni, are absolutely unbearable. Don't you think so, you worshipper of har- mony ? " " I ? Certainly," responded Sabretasche. " As a rule, I shun all amateur things. "Where professional people, who have applied sixteen hours a day, all their energies, and all their capabilities, to one subject, even then rarely succeed, how is it possible but that the performances of those who take up the study as a pastime must be a miserable failure, or at best but second-rate? Occasionally, however (in- deed, whenever you see it, but the sight is so rare!), talent will do for you without study more than study ever will—" " As you will show us in your songs this morning, I suppose ? " laughed Monckton. "If I sang ill I should never sing at all," replied Sabre- tasche, carelessly, with that consciousness of power which true talent is sure to have, as it is as sure not to have undue self-appreciation. " I mean, however, in Miss Molyneux's Aria ; even you will admire that, De Vigne." Sabretasche was quite right ; it was a treat to hear Violet Molyneux's rich, passionate, bell-like voice. T\ r e had heard nothing like it of late ; and Violet's voice was really one which, as a professional, would have ranked her very high. Besides, there was a tone in it, a certain fresh- ness and gladness, mingled with a strange pathos and GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 67 passion, which moved even those among her auditors most biases, most fastidious, and most ready to sneer, into silence and admiration. " That is music," said De Vigne, in the door of the music-room. " If she would sing at morning concerts I would forswear them no longer. Look at that fellow ; if he be ever really caught at all, it will be by her voice." I looked at " that fellow," being Sabretasche, who leaned against the organ, close to Violet Molyneux ; his face was calm and impassive as ever, but his melancholy eyes were fixed upon her with such intense earnestness, that Violet, glancing up at him as she sang, coloured despite all her self-possession, and her voice was unsteady for half a note. Lauzun though the Colonel was, I believe Violet's voice pleased him still more than her beauty. The latter be- guiled the senses, as many others had before ; the former beguiled the soul, a far rarer charm ! "You came late; half our concert was over?" said Violet to him, as they stood talking in a winter-garden, one of the whims — and a very charming whim, too — of the Puffdoff's. " I came in time to sing what I had promised, and to hear what I desired, vour — " " You did like it ? " " Too well to compliment you on it. I ' liked ' it as I liked, or rather I felt it — as I have felt, occasionally, the tender and holy beauty of Eaphael, the hushed glories of a summer night, the mystical chimes of a starlit sea. Your voice did me good, as those things did, until the feverish fret and noise of practical life wore off their influence again." Violet gave a deep sigh of delight. 14 You make me so happy ! I often think that the doc- trine of immortality has no better plea than the vague yearning for something unseen and unconceived, the uu- uttered desire which rises in us, at the sound of true music. I have heard music at which I could have shed more bitter tears than any I have known, for I have had no sorrow, and which answered the restless passions of my heart better than any human mind that ever wrote." " Quite true ; and that is why, to me, music is one of the strangest gifts to men. Painting creates, but creates by 1 68 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. imitation. If a man imagine an angel, he must paint from the woman's face that he loves best — the Fornarina sat for the Madonna. If he paint a god, he must take a man for model ; anything different from man would be grotesque. We never see a Jupiter, or a Christ that is anything more, than a fiercely-handsome, or a sadly-handsome man. Music, on the contrary, creates from a spirit-world of its own ; the fable of Orpheus and its lyre is not wholly a fable. In the passionate crash and tumult of an overture, in the tender pathos of one low tenor note, in the full swell of a Mag- nificat, in the low sigh of a Miserere, the human heart throws off the frippery and worry of the world ; the nobler im- pulses, the softer charity, the unuttered aspirations that are buried, yet still live, beneath so much that is garish and contemptible, wake up ; and a man remembers all he is and all he might have been, and grieves, as the dwellers in Arcadia grieved over their exile, over his better nature lost." " Ah," answered Violet, her gay spirits saddened by the tone in which Sabretasche, ordinarily so careless, light, non- chalant, and unruflled, spoke, " if we were always what we are in such moments, how different would the world be ! If human nature lasted what it is in its best moments, poets would have no need to fable of an Eden." Sabretasche looked down on her long and earnestly. " Do you know that you are to me something as music is to you ? When I am with you I am truer and better ; I breathe a purer atmosphere. You make me for the time being, feel as I used to feel in my golden days. You bring me back enthusiasm, belief in human nature, noble aspira- tions, purer tastes, tenderer thoughts — in a word, you bring me back youth ! " Violet lifted her eyes to his, full of the happiness his words gave her ; and Sabretasche's hand rested on hers as she played with a West Indian creeper clinging round the sides of a vase of myrtles. The colour wavered in the Parian fairness of her face ; her eyes and lips were tremu- lous with a vague sense of delight and expectation, but — he took his hand away with a short quick sigh, and set himself to bending the creeper into order. There was a dead silence, a disappointed shadow stole unconsciously over Violet's tell-tale face. She looked up quickly. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 169 " "WTiy do you always talk of youth as a thing passed away from you ? It is such folly. You are now in your best years." " It is past and gone from my heart." " But might it not have a resurrection ? " " It might, but it may not." Violet mused a moment over the anomalous reply. " What curse have you on you ? " she said, involuntarily. Sabretasche turned his eyes on her filled with unutter- able sadness. " Do not rouse my demon ; let him sleep while he can ! But, Violet, when you hear about in the world of which you and I are both votaries — as hear you have done and will do — many tales of my past and my present, many reports and scandals circulated by my friends, believe them or not as you like by what you know of me ; but believe, at the least, that I am neither so light-hearted nor so hard- hearted as they consider me. You are kind enough to honour me with your friendship ; you will never guess how dearly I prize it ; but there are things in my career which I cannot reveal to you, and against interest in me and my fate I warn you j it can bring you no happiness, for it can never go beyond friendship ! " It was a strange speech from a man to a woman ; espe- cially from a man famous for his conquests, to a woman famous for her beauty ! He saw a shiver pass over Violet's form, and the delicate rose hue of her cheeks faded utterly. He sighed bitterly as he added, the blue veins rising in her calm white fore- head: " None to love me have I ; I never had, I never may have ! " Great tears gathered slowly in Violet's eyes, and despite all her self-control, fell down on the glowing petals of the West Indian flowers. " But you will let me know more of you than anyone else does? " she said, in a hurried, broken voice. " You will not at least forbid me your friendship ? " " Friendship — friendship ! " repeated Sabretasche, with a strange smile. " You do not know what an idle word, what a treacherous salve, what a vain impossibility is friendship between men and women ! Yet if you are willing to give 170 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. me yours, I will do my best to merit it, and to keep myself to it. Now let us go. I like too well to be with you to dare be with you long." " What does Sabretasche mean with Molyneux's daugh- ter?" said De Yigne to me in a cabinet de peinture, De Vigne having only just escaped from the harpy's clutch of the little Countess's fairy fingers, " How should I tell ? He's a confounded inconstant fellow, you know. He's always flirting with some woman or other." " Flirtation doesn't make men look as he looked while he listened to her. Flirtation amuses. Sabretasche is not amused here, but rather, I should say, intensely worried." " What should worry him ? He could marry the girl if he wished." " How can you tell? " "Well, I suppose so. The Molyneux would let him have her fast enough. Her mother wants to get her off; she doesn't like two milliner's bills. But you interesting yourself in a love affair ! What a Saul among the pro- phets?" " Spare your wit, Arthur. I never meddle with such tinder, I assure you. I am not overfond of my fellow- creatures, but I don't hate them intensely enough to help them to marry. I say, have you not been sufficiently bored here ? The concert is over. Let us go, shall we ? " " With pleasure. I say you have not paid your pro- mised visit to little Tressillian. 'Tisn't far ; we might walk over, eh ? " " So we will. Are you after poor Alma's clievelure doree already ? " laughed De Yigne. " Make her mistress of Longholme, Chevasney, aud I'll give her away to you with pleasure. I won't be a party to other conditions, for her grandfather's sake — her guardian's sake, rather. By the way, I must make out whether she knows or not that the relationship was a myth." " Thank you. I have no private reason for proposing the call, except the always good and excellent one of pass- ing the time and seeing a pretty woman. There is the Puffdoff coming after you again. Let's go away while we can." We were soon out of that little bijou of a dower-house GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 171 that shrined the weeds and wiles of the late PuffdofFs handsome Countess, and smoking our cigars, as we walked across to Richmond. Alma was sitting at her easel, with her back to the door, painting earnestly, with little Sylvo at her side. She was dressed prettily, inexpensively, I have no doubt, but some- how more picturesquely than many of the women in hundred guinea dresses and point worth a dowry— the picturesque- ness of artistic taste, and innate refinement, which gave her the brilliance and grace of a picture. She turned rapidly at the closing of the door, sprang up, and ran towards De Yigne with that impulsiveness which always made her seem much younger than she was. " Ah ! you have come at last ! I began to think you would cheat me as you cheated me of the yachting trip to Lorave ; and yet I thought you would not disappoint me." "No, but I shall scold you," said De Yigne, " for sitting there, wearing your eyes out — as Mrs. Lee phrases it — over your easel. Why do you do it ? " "It is my only companion," pleaded Alma. "With my brush I can escape away into an ideal world, and shut out the real and actual, with all its harshness, trials, and priva- tions. You know the sun shines only for me upon canvass ; and besides," she added, with a gay smile, "to take a practical view of it, I must make what talent I have into gold." "Poor little thing!" exclaimed De Yigne. It struck him, who had flung about thousands at his pleasure ever since he was a boy, as singular, and as- somehow unjust, that this girl, young as she was, should have to labour for her living with the genius with which nature had endowed her so royally — genius the divine, the god-given, the signet- seal, so rare, so priceless, with which nature marks the few who are to ennoble and sanctify the mass ! " Ah ! I am a poor little thing ? " repeated Alma, with a moue mutine indicative of supreme self-piety and indignation at her fate. " I should love society ; I see nothing but nurse and Sylvo. I love fun ; I have nobody to talk to but the goldfinch. I hate solitude, and I am always alone. I should like beautiful music, beautiful pictures, gardens, statues, conservatories, luxuries." " More honour to you to bear it so well, Miss Tressillian," said I. 172 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Oh, I don't bear it well," interrupted Alma. " I some- times get as impatient as a bird beating its wings against a cage ; I grow as restless in its monotony as you can fancy. I am not a philosopher, and never shall be." " Life will make you one in spite of yourself," said De Yigne. " Never ! If I ever come to rose-leaves, I will lie down on them coute qui coute. As long as I can only get a straw mattress, there is not much virtue is renunciation." " But there are cankerous worms in rose-leaves," smiled De Yigne. " But who would ever enjoy the roses if they were always remembering that ? Where is the good ? " " You little epicurean ! " laughed De Yigne, looking at her amusedly. His remembrance of her as a child made him treat her with a certain gentle familiarity. " You would have a brief summer, like the butterflies. That sort of summer costs dear, when the butterfly lies dying on the brown autumn leaves, and envies the bee housed safely at home." " N'importe ! " cried the little lady, recklessly. " The butterfly, at least, has enjoyed life, and the bee, I would bet, goes on humming and bustling all the year round, never knowing whether the fuchsias are red or white, as long as there is honey in them ; only looking in orchises with an eye to business, and never giving a minute in his breathless toil to scent the heliotropes, or kiss the blue- bells for their beauty's sake ! " " Possibly not ; but when the fuschias and orchises, blue- bells and heliotropes, are withered and dried, and raked away by ruthless gardeners for the unpoetic destiny of making leaf mould ; and the ground is frozen, and the trees are bare, and the wind whistles over the snow — how then ? Which is the best off, butterfly or bee ? " " Hold your tongue ! " laughed Alma. " You put me m mind of those horrible moral apologues, and that de- testable incitement to supreme selfishness, ' La cigale ayant chante tout Pete,' where the ant is made out a most praiseworthy person, but appears to me simply cruel and mean. But to answer you is easy enough. What good does the bee get from his hard work ? Has his honey taken away from him for other people's eating, and is GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 173 smoked out of his house, poor little thing, by human mon- sters, whom, if he knew his power, he could sting to death ! The butterfly, on the contrary, enjoys himself to the last, dies in the course of nature, and leaves others to enjoy themselves after him." " Tou did not lose your tongue in Lorave, Alma ? " said De Yigne, with a grave air of solicitous interest. "With the little Tressillian he had a little of his old fun, something of his old laugh. " No, indeed ; and I should be very sorry if I had, for I love talking." " Tou need not tell us that," smiled De Yigne. " I will never talk to you again," cried Alma, with su- preme dignity : "or, rather, I never would if I were not too magnanimous to avenge an insult by such enormous punish- ment." " To yourself. Just so. You are quite right," said De Yigne, with an amused smile. " "What are you painting now, Alma ? May we see ? " "I was drawing you," she answered, turning the easel towards him. It was a really wonderful portrait from memory, done in pastels. " My likeness ? By Jove ? " cried De Yigne, " what on earth put it into your head, petite, to do that ? " " I knew you would make a splendid picture — your face is beautiful," answered Alma, tranquilly. "Whereon De Yigne went into a fit of laughter, the first real laughter that I had heard since his marriage-day. ""Why do you laugh?" asked Alma; "I only tell vou. the truth." At which gratifying assurance De Yigne laughed still more. The girl amused him, as Richelieu's and Mon- taigne's little cats amused them when they laid down the sceptre and the pen, and tied the string to their kitten's corks. And thinking of her still merely as Tressillian's little granddaughter, he was not on his guard with her as with other women, and treated her with cordiality and freedom. " Well, Alma, I am extremely obliged to you. You have made a much handsomer fellow of me than Maclise would have done, I am afraid," said he, smiling ; " and if ever my picture is wanted side by side with "Wellington's, I hope, for the sake of creating an impression on posterity, that you will be kind enough to paint it for me." 174 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " It is not more handsome than you," said Alma, reso- lutely. " It is too bad of you to laugh so, but that is like men's ingratitude." " Don't abuse us," said De Yigne ; " that is so stale a stage- trick ! "Women are eternally running after us, and eternally vowing that they would not stir a step for any of us. They spend their whole existence in trying to catch us, but their whole breath reiterating that they only take us out of compassion. If I hear a lady abuse or find fault with us, I know that her grapes ' sont trop verts, et horn pour des gou- jats: " Alma laughed : " Very probably. But I don't abuse you. I prefer yours to my own sex. Tour code of honour is far better than ours." " The generality of women have no notion of honour at all! "said De Yigne; "they tell falsehoods and circulate scandals without being called to account for it, and the laxity of honour in trifles that they learn in the nursery and school-rooms corrodes their sense of right towards others in all their after-life. A boy at school is soon taught that how- ever lax he may be in other things, it is ' sneaky ' to peach, and learns a rough sort of Spartan honour ; a girl, on the contrary, tells tales of her sisters unreproved, and hears mamma in her drawing-room take away the character of a ' dearest friend ' whom she sees her meet the next moment with a caress and an endearment. But modern society is too ''religious' to remember to be honourable ; and is too occu- pied with proclaiming its ' morality ' to have any time to give to common honesty." " As Sir John Lacquers taught us ! " "Lacquers and scores like him, whose slips are passed over because their scrip is inscribed with a large text and pilgrim's purse full of Almighty Dollars. I think of pub- lishing a ' Manual of Early Lessons for Eminent Christians : ' I. Do good so that not only your right hand knows it, but all your neighbourhood likewise. II. Give as it is likely to be given unto you. III. Strain very hard at a sin the size of a gnat if it be your poor relation's, and swallow one the size of a camel if it be your patron's. IV. Never pray in your closet, as no one will be the wiser, but go as high as you can on the housetop, that society may think you the holiest man in Israel. V. Borrow of your friend without paying him, GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 175 because he will not harm you, but give good interest to strangers, because they may have the law on you. VI. Judge severely, that gaining applause for your condemnation of others you may contrive to hide your own shortcomings. VII. Eat pates defoie gras in secresy but ha.Te jours maigres in public, that men who cannot see you in secret may reward you openly ! I could write a whole Paraphrase of the Gospel as used and translated by the ' Church of England ' and other elect of the kingdom of Heaven ; an election, by the way, exceedingly like that of Themistocles, where every man writes down his own name first, entirely regardless of lack of right or qualification for the honour ! " "But different in this respect," said Alma, "that there the generals did remember to put Themistocles after them ; whereas the shining lights of the different creeds are a great deal too occupied with securing their own future comfort to think of drawing any of their brothers up with them. The churches all take a cross for their symbol ! they would be nearer the truth if they took the beam without the trans- verse ; for egotism is more their point than self-sacrifice ! But will you look at my pet picture ? " The picture she spoke of stood with its face to the wal.. As she turned it round, De Vigne and I gave an involun- tary exclamation of surprise, it so far surpassed anything we should have fancied a girl of her age could have accom- plished. The picture was one not possible to criticise chilly by exacting rules of art and of perspective. One looked at it as Murillo looked at the first Madonna of his wonderful mulatto, not to discuss critically, but to admire the genius stamped upon it, to admire the vivid breathing vitality, the delicate grace, and wonderful power marked upon its canvas. De Vigne looked at it silently while Alma spoke ; he con- tinued silent some minutes after she had ceased ; then he turned suddenly : " Alma, if you choose, you can be as great a woman as Elizabeth Sirani — a greater than Eosa Bonheur, because what she gives to horses and cows, you will give to human nature. Be content. Whatever sorrows or privations come to you, you will have God's best gift, which no man can take away, the greatest prize in life — genius ! " Alma looked up at him, her eyes brilliant as diamonds, her whole face flushed, her lips trembling. 176 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " You think so ? Thank God ! I would have died to hear you say that." " Better live to prove it ! " said De Vigne, mournfully. " Your picture is both well conceived and well carried out : it tells its own story ; the imagining of it is poetic, the treat- ment artistic. There are faults, no doubt, but I like it too well to look out for them. "Will you let let me have it at my house a little while? I have some friends who are artists, others who are cognoscenti, and I should like to hear their opinion on it." " Will you keep it ? " asked Alma, with the first shyness I had seen in her. " If you would hang it anywhere in your house, and just look at it now and then, I should be so glad. Will you?" " I will keep it with pleasure, my dear child ; but I will keep it as I would Landseer's, or Mulready's, by being allowed the pleasure of adding it to my collection. Your picture is worth — " " Oh, don't talk of worth ! ' " cried Alma, vehemently. " Take it — take it, as I give it you with all my heart ! I am so glad to give you anything, you were so kind to him / Did he say anything in his letter to you that I might hear ? " De Yigne turned quickly. " Did you not read it ? It was unsealed." " Eead it ? ]N"o ! You could not think for a moment that another person's letter was less sacred to me because it happened to be unsealed ! That is not your own code, I should say. What right have you to suppose me more dis- honourable than yourself? " Her eyes sparkled dangerously, the colour was hot in her cheeks, the imputation had roused her spirit, and her fiery indignation was as becoming as it was amusing. "I beg your pardon. I was wrong," said De Vigne. You have a man's sense of honour, not a woman's ; I am glad of it. Your grandpapa says very little. It was merely to ask me if I met you, to be your friend. It is little enough I can ever aid you in, and my friendship will be of little use to you ; but such at it is, it will be yours, if you like to take it." She held her hand out to him by way of answer ! There were too many tears in her voice for her to trust herself to say anything. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 177 "You do not remember your parents at all ? asked De Vigne. She shook her head. " I remember no home but Weive Hurst. Nurse told me both died when I was a baby, and that grandpapa could never bear me to mention them to him : I don't know why. How happy I was at Weive Hurst ! I wonder if I shall ever be again ? " " To be sure you will," said De Vigne, kindly. " You have a capacity for happiness, and are gay under heavy clouds ; at eighteen no one has said good-bye to all the sun- shine of life. Well, you have read Monte Christo ? You must remember his last words." " ' A ttendre et esperer ' ?" repeated Alma. " To me they are the saddest words in human language. They are so sel- dom the joy-bells to herald a new future — they are so often the death-knell to a past wasted in futile striving and disap- pointed desire. ' Attendre et esperer ! ' How many golden days pass in trusting to those words ; and when their trust be at last recompensed, how often the fulfilment comes too late to be enjoyed. ' Attendre et esperer ! ' Ah ! that is all very well for those who have some fixed goal in view — some aim which they will attain if they have but energy and pa- tience enough to go steadily on to the end; but only to wait for an indefinite better fate, which year after year retreats still farther — only to hope against hope for what never comes, and in all probability will never come — that is not quite so easy." " If not, it is the lot of all. I agree with you, nothing chafes and frets one more than waiting ; it wears all the bloom off the fruit to waste all our golden hours gazing at it afar off, and longing for it with Tantalus thirst. It has never suited me. I have too often brushed the bloom oft mine plucking them too soon. I agree with you, to wait for happiness is a living death, to hope for it is a dreamer's phantasy ; but it is not like your usual doctrine, you little enthusiast, who are still such a child that you believe in the possible realisation of all your fond ideals ? What were you saying to me the other day at Strawberry Hill about Chatterton, that if the poor boy had only had the courage to wait and hope, he might have reaped long years of honour and fame ? " " But Chatterton had an aim ; and he had more ; he had N 178 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. genius. I know he was goaded to madness by poverty. I know how bitter must have been the weary fret of thinking what he should eat, and wherewithal he should be clothed, the jar and grind of every-day wants, of petty, inexorable cares. At the same time, I wonder that he did not live for his works ; that for their sake he did not suffer and endure ; that he did not live to make the world acknowledge all that marked him out from the common herd. I know how he wearied of life ; yet I wished he had conquered it. Genius should ever be stronger than its detractors. ' What is the use of my writing poetry that no one reads ? ' asked Shelley. Yet he knew that the time would come when it would be read by men wiser than those of his generation, and he wrote on, following the inspiration of his own di- vine gift. Men know and acknowledge now how divine a gift it was." "True," answered De Vigne; " wrestle with fate, and it will bless you, is a wise and a right counsel ; still here and there in that wrestling-match it is possible to get a croc en jambe, which leaves us at the mercy of Fate, do what we may to resist her. Men of genius have very rarely been appre- ciated in their own time. Too often nations spend wealth upon a monument to him whom they let die for want of a shilling. Too many, like Cervantes, have lacked bread while they penned what served to make their country honoured and illustrious. They could write of him : ' Porque se digua que uno mano herida Pudo dar a su dueno eterna vida ; ' but they could leave him to poverty for all that. A prophet has no honour in his own country, still less in his own time ; but if the prophets be true and wise men they will not look for honour, but follow Philip Sydney's counsel, look in their own hearts and write, and leave the seed in their brain as ploughmen the corn in their furrows — content that it will bring forth a harvest at the last, if it be ripe, good wheat." " Yet it is sad if they are forced to see only the dark and barren earth, and the golden harvest only rise to wave over their tomb ? " " It is ; but, petite, there are few things not sad in life, and one of the saddest of them is, as Emerson says, ' the mad- ness with which the passing age mischooses the object on GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 179 which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned.' The popu- lace who crowded to look at Charles and Louise de Kerrou- aille coming to Hampton never knew or thought of Cromwell's Latin secretary, dictating in his study, old, blind, and poor. "Well, it oniy shows us what fools men are, either to court the world or care for it ! A propos of celebres, Alma, you, vowed as you are to historic associations, should never be dull here, with all the souvenirs that are round Richmond and Twickenham ? " "Ah!" said Alma, turning her bright beaming face on him, " how often I think of them all ! — of the talk round that little deal table in the Grotto ; of Swift, with his bril- liant azure eyes, and his wonderful satire, and his exigeant selfish loves ; of Mrs. Clive, with her humourous stories ; of Harry Fielding, laughing as he wrote his scenes, and packing away his papers to eat his scrag of mutton as gleefully as if it were an entremet ; of Walpole, fitting up a Gothic chapel and writing for a Paris suit, publishing ' Otranto,' and talk- ing scandals in Boodle's — how often I think of them ! " " Tou need not tell me that," laughed De Vigne. " With your historic passion, you live in the past. " Well ! it is safer and less deceptive, if not less visionary, than living in the future." " Perhaps I do both ; yet I have little to hope from the future." " Why ? " said De Vigne, kindly. " Who knows but what one of your old favourites, the fairies, may bring good gifts to their little queen ? We will hope so, at least." Alma shook her head. " I am afraid not. The only fairy that has any power now is Money ; and the good gifts the gods give us now-a-days, only go to those who have golden coffers to put them in ! " The morning after, while De Vigne was breakfasting, the cart that brought in Mrs. Lee's home-made bread to town left at his house Alma's picture ; she had looked, I suppose, for his address in the Court Guide, and remembered her pro- mise, though I am afraid the recipient of her gift had for- gotten the subject altogether. When it came, however, he hung it in a good light, and pointed it out to Sabretasche, who dined with him that night, to meet a mutual Paris friend. "What do you think of that picture, Colonel ? " he said, s 2 180 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. as we came into the drawing-room for a rubber. Whist was no great favourite with De Vigne ; he preferred the rapidity and exciting whirl of loo or lansquenet ; but he played it weli, and Sabretasche and De Cassagnac were especially fond of it. It suited the Golonel to lean back in a soft chair, and make those calm, subtle combinations. He said the game was so deliciously tranquil and silent ! Sabretasche set down his coffee-cup, put his glass in his eye, and lounged up to it. " Of this water-colour ? I like it exceedingly. Where did you get it ? It is not the style of any one I know ; it is more like one of your countrymen's, Cassagnac, eh ? It wants toning down ; the light through that stained window is a trifle too bright, but the boy's face is perfect. I would give something to have idealised it ; and the hair is as soft as silk. I like it extremely, De Vigne. Where did you get it ? " " I picked it up by accident. It pleased my eye, and I wanted to know if my eye led me right. I know you are a great connoisseur." fl There is true power in it, and an exquisite delicacy of touch. The artist is young, is'nt he ? Do you know him ? " "Slightly. He works for his livelihood, and is only eighteen." " Eighteen ? By Jove ! if the boy go on as he has begun he will beat Maclise and Ingress. Has he ever tried his hands at oils •? " "I don't know, I'm sure." " It's a pity he shouldn't. He works for his livelihood, you say ? If he will do me a picture as good as this, leaving the subject to himself, I will give him fifty guineas for it, if he think that sufficient. Some day, when we have nothing better to do, you will take me to his studio — a garret in Poland-Street, probably, is it not ? Those poor wretches ! How they live on bread-and-cheese and a pipe of bird's-eye, I cannot conceive ! If the time ever come when I have my turbot aud hock no longer, I shall resort to an overdose of morphia. What is the value of life when life is no longer enjoyment?" " Yet," suggested De Vigne, u if only those were alive who enjoyed living, the earth would be barren very speedily, I fancy." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 181 " That depends on how you read enjoyment," said De Cassagnac. " Enjoyment is easily enough defined — taking pleasure in things, and having things in which to take pleasure ! Some men have the power to enjoy, and not the opportunity ; others the opportunity and not the power; the combination of both makes the enjoyment, I take it." " But enjoyment is a very different thing to different men. Enjoyment for Sabretasche, lies in soirees, like the Gore House, or Madame de Sable's, wine as good as your claret, women as pretty as La Dorah, good music, good painting, and immeasurable dolce. Enjoyment lies, for Professor Owen, in the fossil tooth of an ichthyosaurus ; for an Italian lazzarone, in sun, dirt, and maccaroni ; for a woman, in dress, conquests, and tall footmen; for the Tipton Slasher, in the belt, undisputed : enjoyments are as myriad as the stars." "I know what you mean, my dear fellow," said Sabre- tasche, dropping his eye-glass, and taking up his cup again. " You mean that Hodge, the bricklayer, goes home covered with whitewash, sits down to Dutch cheese, with the brats screaming about, with the same relish as I sit down to my very best-served dinner. It is true, so far, that I should rather be in purgatory than in whitewash, should turn sick at the cheese, murder the children and kill my own self afterwards ; and that Hodge, by dint of habit and blunted senses, can sup- port life where I should end it in pure self-defence. But I do not believe that Hodge enjoys himself — how should he, poor wretch ! with not a single agrement of life ? He does not know all he misses, and he is not much better than the beast of the field ; but at the same time he only endures life, he can't be said to enjoy it. I agree with de Yigne, that there is but one definition of enjoyment, and the ' two hand- fuls, with quiet and contentment of spirit,' is a poetic myth, for poverty and enjoyment can by no means run in tandem."' "And contentment is another myth," added De Yigne. " If a man has all he wants, he is contented, because he has no wish beyond, and is a happy man ; if he has not what he wants, and is conscious of something lacking, he cannot be called contented, for he is not so." " Precisely ! I don't look to be contented, that is not in the lot of man ; all I ask are the agreements and refinements of life, and without them life is a curse. Neither Diogenes, 1 82 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. limiting himself to cabbages and water, nor Alexander, drunk with the conquest of the empires, was one bit more con- tented at heart than the other. Discontent prompted the one to quit mankind and cast off wealth, the other to rule mankind and amass wealth." " And, after all, there is no virtue in contentment, since contentment is satisfaction in one's lot ; there is far more virtue in endurance — strong, manful, steady endurance — of a fate that is adverse, and which oue admits to be such, but against which one still fights hard. Patience is all very well, but pluck is better," said De Yigne. " The tables are set. Shall we cut for partners ? You and Cassagnac ! Chevasney and I may give ourselves up for lost ! " CHAPTEE XVI. THE FAWN ROBIN HOOD WAS TO SPARE. De Yigne never did anything by halves, to use a sufficiently expressive, if not over-elegant, colloquialism. He hated and mistrusted women, not individually, but sweepingly, en masse. At the same time, there were in him, naturally, too much chivalry and generosity not to make him pity the " Little Tressillian," and show her kindness to the best of his power. In the first place the girl was alone, and had no money ; in the second, he had known her as a child, still held her as such, indeed, and never thought of classing her among his detested " beau sexe ; " in the third, the letter of Bough- ton Tressillian had in a way recommended her to his care, and though De Yigne would have been the first to laugh at another man who had taken up a girl of eighteen as a pro- tegee, and made sure no harm could come of it, he really looked on Alma as a child, though a very attractive and in- teresting child it is true, and would have stared at you if you had made his kindness to her the subject of one of those jests customary on the acquaintance of a man about town and an unprotected girl. As he had promised, he picked out some of the choicest books of his library, — not such as youDg ladies read generally, but such as it might be better if they did — and sent them to her, with the reviews and periodicals of the month. He sent her, too, a handsome parrot, for her GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 83 to teach, he said, she being such an admirable adept in the locutory art, and ordered her a cartload of flowers to put her in mind of Weive Hurst. " Her room looked so pitifully dull, poor child ! " said he, one morning, when I was lunching with him. "Those flowers will brighten it up a little. Eaymond, did you send Robert down with those thiDgs to Eichmond ? " " Yes, Major." I chanced to look at the man as he spoke ; he was the new valet, a smooth, fair-faced fellow, really gentlemanlike to look at, not, ca va sans dire, the " gentlemanism " of high breeding, but the gentlemanlyism of many an oily parson or sleek parvenu. There was a sly twinkle in his light eyes, and a quick, fox-like glance, as he answered his master, which looked as if he at least attached some amusement to the Major's acquaintance with the pretty artiste. De Vigne, unhappily, never remembered the presence of servants ; he thought they had no more eyes or ears than the chairs or tables around him. They served him as the plates or the glasses did, and they were no more than those to him ; though more mischief, reports, and emorouillements have come from the prying eyes, course tongues, and secondhand slanders of those " necessary evils " than we ever dream of, for the buzz of the servants' hall is often as poisonous as the subdued murmur of the scandal-retailing boudoir above- stairs. How it came about, I don't know, but Alma, some way or other, was not long kept in petto. Some three weeks after Sabretasche, Curly, Severn, Castleton, and one or two other men, were at De Yigne's house. We had been play- ing Baccarat, his favourite game, and were now supping, between three and four, chatting of tw T o-year olds and Derby prophecies, of bon mots and beauties, of how Mademoiselle Fifine had fleeced little Pulteney, and Bob Green's roan mare won a handicap for 200 sovs., of Lilla Dorah's last ex- travagance in the " shady groves of the Evangelist," and of the decidedly bad ankles now displayed to us at Her Majesty's; with similar floating topics of the town. It was curious to see the difference between men's outer and inner lives. There was Sabretasche lying back in the very easiest chair in the room, witty, charming, urbane, with not a trace on his calm delicate features of the care within 184 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. him that he had bade Violet Molyneux not tempt him to un- veil. There was Tom Severn, of the Queen's Bays, with twenty " in re's" hanging over his head, and a hundred " little bills " on his mind, going to the dogs by express train, who had been playing away as if he had had Courts' to back him. There was Wyndham, with as dark and melancholy a past as ever pursued a man, a past of which I know he repented, not in ostentatious sackcloth and ashes, but bitterly and unfeign- edly in silence and humility, tossing down Moet's with a gay laugh and a ready jest, as agreeable in the card-room as he was eloquent in the Lower House. There was Charlie Fitz- hardinge, who, ten years ago, had accidently killed his youngest brother — a Benjamin tenderly and deeply loved by him, and had never ceased to be haunted by that fair dis- torted face, laughing and chatting as if he had never had a care on his shoulders. There was Vane Castleton, the worst, as I have told you, of all Tiara's sons ; with his low voice, his fair smooth brow, his engaging address, whom nobody would have thought would have hurt a fly, yet whom we called " Butcher," because, in his petty malignity, he had hamstrung a luckless mare of his for not winning a sweep- stakes, and had shot dead the brother of a girl whom he had eloped with, and left three weeks after without a shilling to help herself, for trying, poor boy ! to revenge his sister. There was De Vigne — yet no ! De Vigne's face was no mask, but w r as the type true enough of his character, and wore the truce of an unquiet fate. " Halloa, De Vigne," began Tom Severn," " a pretty story this is about you, you sly dog ! So this painter of yours we were all called in to admire, a little time ago, is a little con- cealed Venus, eh? " De Vigne looked up from helping me to some mayon- naise. " Explain yourself Tom ; I don't understand you." " Won't understand, you mean. You know you've a little beauty locked up all to yourself at Richmond, and never have told it to your bosom friends. Shockingly shabby of you, De Vigne, to show us that water-colour and let us believe it was done by a young fellow in Poland-street ! However, I suppose you don't want any rivals poaching on your manor, and the girl is stunning, the blokes say, so we must forgive you." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 85 DeVigne looked supremely disdainful and a little annoyed. " Pray, my dear, Severn, may I ask where you picked up this cock-and-bull story ? " " Oh, yes. Winters, and Egerton, and Steele were making chaff about it in the Army and Navy this morning, saying Hercules had found his Omphale, and they were glad of it, for Dejanira was a devil ! " The blood flushed over De Yigne's white forehead as Severn, in the thoughtlessness of his heart, spoke what he meant as good nature ; even yet he could not hear unmoved the slightest allusion to the Trefusis, the one disgrace upon his life, the one stain upon his name. "How they heard it I can't tell you," said Severn; "you must ask 'em. Somebody saw the girl looking after you at the gate, I believe. She's a deuced pretty thing — trust you for that, though. But what do you call it a cock-and-bull story for ? It's too likely a one for you to deny it with any- chance of our believing you, and Heaven knows why you should try. Tou may hate women now, but everybody knows you never forswore them. We are all shepherds here, as Robin Hood says." De Yigne was annoyed : in the first place, that this re- port, which could but be detrimental to her, should, in so brief a time, already have circulated about himself and Alma ; in the second, any interference with him or his pursuits or plans always irritated him exceedingly ; in the third, he knew that if he ever disabused their minds of his having any connexion with Alma, to know that a pretty woman was living alone and unprotected was for these fellows to ferret her out immediately, to which her metier of professional artist would give them the means at once. He was exceedingly annoyed ; but he was too wise a man not to know that mani- festation of his annoyance would be the surest way to con- firm the gossip that had got about concerning them, which lor himself, of course, didn't matter two straws. He laughed slightly. " We are, it is true; Tom ; never- theless, there is a fawn here and there that it is the duty of all of us, Robin Hoods though we be, to spare ; don't you know that ? I assure you that the gossip you have heard is pure gossip, but gossip which annoys me^ for this reason, that the lady who is the innocent subject of it is the grand- daughter of a late friend of mine, Tressillian, of Weive Hurst, 1 86 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. whom I met accidently a few weeks ago. Her picture hangs in my room because she wished to have Sabretasche's judg- ment upon it, as a dilettante. Beyond, I have no interest in her, nor she in me, and for the sake of my dear friend, any insult to her name I shall certainly consider as one to my own." He spoke quietly and carelessly, but his words had weight. De Vigne had never been known to condescend to a lie, not even to a subterfuge or a prevarication, and there was a haughty noli one tangere air about him. " All right, old boy," said Tom. " / did'nt know, you see ; fellows will talk." " Of course they will," said De Vigne, eating his marinade leisurely ; " and in nine times out of ten they would have been right. I never set up to be a pharisee, G-od knows ! However, I have no temptation now, for love affairs are no longer to my taste. I leave them to Corydons like Curly." " But hang it ! De Vigne," said Vane Castleton, " Tom's description of this little Trevelyan, Trevanion — what is it ? — is so delightful, if you don't care for her yourself, you might let your friends. Introduce us all, do." " Thank you, Castleton," said De Vigne, drily. " Though you are a Duke's son, I must say I don't think you a very desirable addition to a lady's acquaintance.' He cordially detested Castleton, than whom a vainer or more intensely selfish fellow never curled his whiskers nor befooled women, and he had only invited him because he had been arm-in-arm with Severn when De Vigne had asked Tom that morning in Regent Street. Lord Vane pushed his fine fair curls off his forehead — an habitual trick of his ; his brow was very low, and his blond hair, of which he took immense care, was everlastingly falling across his eyes. " Jealous, after all ! A trifle of the dog in the manger, eh ? with all your philosophy and a — a — what do you call it, chivalry ? " he said, with a supercilious smile. 1 knew De Vigne was growing impatient ; his eyes bright- ened, his mouth grew set, and he pulled his left wristband over his wrist with a jerk. I think that left arm felt an in- tense longing in its muscles and sinews to " straighten from the shoulder ; " with him, as with David, it was a great diffi- culty to keep the fire from " kindling." But he spoke quietly, very quietly for him ; more so than he would have done if no other name than his own had been implicated in it; for GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 187 he knew the world too well not to know, also, that to make a woman the subject of a dispute or a brawl is to do her the worst service you can. " I shall not take jour speech as it might be taken, Castle- ton," he said, gravely, with a haughty smile upon his lips. " My friends accept my word, and understand my meaning ; what you may think of me or not is really of so little con- sequence that I do not care to inquire your opinion." Castleton's eyes scintillated with that cold unpleasant glare with which light eyes sometimes kindle when angry. If he had been an Eton or Rugby boy, one would have called him u sulky ; " for a man of rank and fashion the word would have been too small, A scene might have ensued, but Sabretasche — most inimitable tactician — broke the silence with his soft low voice. " De Yigne, do you know that Harvey Goodwin's steel greys are going for an old song in the Yard ? I fancy I shall buy them." So the conversation was turned, and Alma's name, was dropped. Curly, however, half out of mechancete half because he never heard of a pretty woman without making a point of seeing her, never let De Yigne alone till he had promised to introduce him to her. "Do, old fellow," urged Curly, "because you know 1 remember her at Weive Hurst, and she had such deuced lovely eyes then. Do ! I promise you to treat her as if she were the richest heiress in the kingdom and hedged round with a perfect abatis of chaperones. I can't say more !" So De Yigne took him down, being quite sure that if he did not show him the way Curly would find it for himself, and knowing, too, that Curly, though he was a " little wild," as good-natured ladies phrase it, was a true gentleman ; and when a man is that, you may trust him, where his honour is touched or his generosity concerned, to break through his outer shell of fashion, ennui, or dissipation, and " come out strong." So De Yigne, as I say, took him down one morning, when we had nothing to do, to St. Crucis. It was a queer idea, as conventionalities go, tor a young girl to receive our visits without any chaperone to protect her and play propriety ; but the little lady was one out of a thousand ; she could do things that no other woman could, and she welcomed us 1 88 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. with such a mixture of frank and child-like simplicity, with the self-possession, wit, and ease of a woman accustomed to society, that it was very pretty to see her. And we should have known but a very trifle of life if we had not felt how utterly distant from boldness of any kind was our Little Tressillian's charming vivacity and candour — a vivacity that can only come from an unburdened mind, a candour that can only spring from a heart that thinks no ill because it means none. "To the pure all things are pure." True words ! Many a spotless rain-drop gleams uusoiled on a filthy and betrodden trottoir; many a worm grovels in native mud beneath an unspotted and virgin covering of fairest snow. It was really pretty to see Alma entertain her callers. She was perfectly natural, because she never thought about herself. She was delighted to see De Vigne, and happy to see us as he had brought us — not quite as flattering a reason for our welcome as Curly and I were accustomed to receive. " Have you walked every day, Alma, as I told you ?" said De Yigne. " Not every day," said Alma, penitentially. " I will when the summer comes, but the eternal spring upon my canvas is much dearer and more tempting to me than your chill and changeable English spring." * You are very naughty, then," said De Vigne; "you will be sorry ten years hence for having wasted your health. What is your aim in working eternally like this ?" " To make money to buy my shoes, and my gloves, and my dresses. I have nobody to buy them for me ; that is aim practical enough to please you, is it not ?" " But that is not your only one, I fancy ?" smiled Curly. "Miss Tressillian scarcely looks like the expounder of prosaic doctrine." " No ; not my only one," answered Alma, quickly, her dark blue eyes lighting up under their silky and upcurled lashes. " They say there is no love more tender than the love of an artist for his work, whether he is author, painter, or musician; and I believe it. For the fruit of your talent you bear a love that no one, save those who feel it can ever attempt to understand. You long to strengthen your wings, to exert your strength, to cultivate your powers, till GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 1 89 you can make them sucb as must command applause ; and when I see a masterpiece, of whatever genre, I feel as if I should never rest, till I, too, had laid some worthy offering upon the altar of Art." Ideal and enthusiastic as the words may seem, coldly considered ; as she spoke them, with her eloquent voice and gesticulation, and her whole face beaming w4th the earnestness of her own belief; we, quickest of all mortals to sneer at " sentiment," felt no inclination to ridicule here, but rather a sad regret for the cold winds that we knew would soon break and scatter the warm petals of this bright, joyous, Southern flower, and gave a wistful back- ward glance to the time when we, too, had like thoughts — we, too, like fervour ! De Vigne felt it ; but, as his wont was, turned it with a laugh : " Curly, you need not have started that young lady ! In that fertile brain I ought to have warned you there is a powder-magazine of enthusiasm ready to explode at the mere hint of a firebrand, which one ought not to approach within a mile at the least. It will blow itself up some day in its own excessive energy, and get quenched in the world's cold water ! " " Heaven forefend ! " cried Curly. " The enthusiasm, which you so irreverently compare to gunpowder, is too rare and too precious not to be taken all the care of that one can. If the ladies of the world had a little of such fire, we, their sons, or lovers, or brothers, might be a trifle less useless, vapid, and wearied." "Quenched in the world's cold water! " cried Alma, who had been pondering on De Vigne's speech, and had never heard poor Curly's. u It never shall be, Sir Folko. The fire of true enthusiasm is like the fires of Baku, which no water can ever attempt to quench, and which burn steadily on from night to day, and year to year, because their well- spring is eternal." " Or because the gases are poisonous, and nobody cares to approach them ? asked De Vigne, mischievously. I noticed that Alma was the first who had brought back in any degree the love of merriment and repartee natural to him in his youth ; the first with whom, since his fatal marriage-day, he had ever cordially laughed. She called 190 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. him Sir Folko, because she persisted in the resemblance between him and her favourite knight which she had disco- vered in her childhood, and because, as she told him, " Major de Vigne" was so ceremonious. His manner with her, like that to a pretty spoilt child, had established a curiously familiar friendship between them, strangely different from the usual intercourse of men and young girls ; for De Vigne received from her the compliments and frankly expressed admiration that come ordinarily from the man to the woman. Somehow or other, it seemed perfectly natural between them, and, apres tout, Eve's My author and disposer ! — what thou will'st, Unargued I obey. God is thy law, Thou mine is strangely touching, sweet, and natural. Curly was enchanted with her ; he went into tenfold more raptures about her than the beauties of the drawing- room, with their perfect tonrnures and sweeping trains, had ever extorted from him ; she was " just his style ; " a thing, however, that Curly was perpetually avowing of every dif- ferent style of blonde and brunette, tall or small, statuesque or kittenish, as they chanced to chase one another in and out of his capacious heart. " She is a little darling ! " he swore earnestly, as we drove homewards, " and certainly the very prettiest woman I have ever seen." " Eather overdone that, Curly," said de Vigne, drily, " considering all the regular beauties you have worshipped, and that Alma is no regular beauty at all." " No, she's much better," said Curly, decidedly. " "Where's the regular beauty that's worth that little dear's grace, and vivacity, and lovely colouring ? " De Vigne put up his eyebrows, as if he would not give much for the praise of such a universal admirer, as Curly was, of all degrees and orders. CHAPTER XVII. LE CHAT QUI DOEMAIT. " Who is that little Tressillian they were talking of at De Vigne's the other night r " Sabretasche asked me one morn- GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. igi ing, in the window at White's — his club, par excellence, where he was referee and criterion on all things of art, fashion, and society, and where his word could crush a belle, sell a picture, and condemn a coterie. He shrugged his shoulders as I told him, and stroked his moustaches : " Very little good will come of that ; at least for her ; for him there will be an amusement for a time, then a certain regret — remorse, perhaps, as he is very generous-hearted — and then a separation, and — oblivion." " Do you think so ? I fancy de Vigne paid too heavy a price for passion to have any fancy to let its reins loose again." " Mon cher, mon cher ! " cried Sabretasche, impatiently, " if Phaeton had not been killed by that thunderbolt, do you suppose that the bouleversement and the conflagration would have deterred him from driving his father's chariot as often as Sol would let him have it ? " " Possibly not ; but I mean that De Vigne is thoroughly steeled against all female humanity. The sex of the Tre- fusis cannot possibly, he thinks, have any good in it ; and I believe he only takes what notice he does of Alma Tressil- lian from friendship for her old grandfather and pity for her desolate position." " Friendship — pity ? For Heaven's sake, Arthur, do not you, a man of the world, talk such nonsense. To what, pray do friendship and pity invariably bring men and women ? De Vigne and his protegee are walking upon mines." " Which will explode beneath them ? " " Sans doute. We are, unhappily, mortal, mon ami ! I will go down and see this little Tressillian some day when I have nothing to do. Let me see ; she is painting that pic- ture for me, of course, that I ordered of him from his un- known artist. He must take me down : I shall soon see how the land lies between them." Accordingly, Sabretasche one day, when De Vigne and he were driving down to a dinner at the Castle, took out his watch, and found De Vigne's clocks had been too fast. " We shall be there half an hour too soon, my dear fellow. Turn aside, and take me to see this little friend of yours with the pretty name and the pretty pictures. If you re- 192 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. fuse, I shall think Vane Castleton is right, and that you are like the famed dog in the manger. I have a right to see the artist that is executing my own order." De Vigne nodded, and turned the horses' heads towards St. Crucis, not with an over-good grace, for he knew Sabre- tasche's reputation, and the Colonel, with his fascination and his tonnes fortunes, was not exactly the man that, whether dog in the manger or not, De Vigne thought a very safe friend for his little Tressillian. But there was no possibility of resisting Sabretasche when he had set his mind upon anything. Very quietly, very gently, but very securely, he kept his hold upon it till he had it yielded up to him. So De Vigne had to introduce the Colonel, who dropped into an easy chair beside Alma, with his eye-glass up, and began to talk to her. He was a great adept in the art of " bringing out." He had a way of hovering over a woman, and fixing his beautiful eyes on her, and talking softly and pleasantly, so that the subject under his skilful mesmerism developed talent that might otherwise never have gleamed out ; and with Alma, who could talk with any and every- body on all subjects under the sun, from metaphysics and ethics to her kitten's collar, and who would discuss philo- sophies with you as readily as she would chatter nonsense to her parrot, Sabretasche had little difficulty. De Vigne let the Colonel have all the talk to himself, irritated at the sight of his immovable and inquiring eye- glass, and the sound of his low, trainante, musical voice. Now and then, amidst his conversation, the Colonel shot a glance at him, and went on with his criticisms on Art, sacred, legendary, and historic ; and on painting in the mediaeval and the modern styles, with such a deep know- ledge and refined appreciation of his subject as few presi- dents of the E-.A. have ever shown in their lectures. At last De Vigne rose, impatient past endurance, though he could hardly have told you why. " It is half-past six , Sabretasche ; the turbot and turtle will be cold." The Colonel smiled : " Thank you, my dear fellow ; there are a few things in life more attractive than turtle or turbot. The men will wait ; they would be the last to hurry us if they knew our provocation for delay." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 193 De Tigne could have found it in his heart to have kicked the Colonel for that speech, and the soft sweet glance accompanying it. " He will spoil that little thing," he thought, angrily. " No woman's head is strong enough to stand his and Curly's flattery." " I like your little lady, De Vigne," said Sabretasche, as they drove away. "She is really very charming, good style, and strikingly clever." *" She is not mine," said De Vigne, with a haughty stare of surprise. " "Well ! she will be, I dare say." " Indeed, no. I did not suppose your notions of my honour, or rather dishonour, were like Yane Castleton's." " Xor are they, cher ami" said the Colonel, with that grave gentleness which occasionally replaced his worldly wit and gay ordinary tone. " But like him I know the world; and I know, as you would, too, if you thought a moment, that a man of your age cannot have that sort of friendly intercourse with a girl of hers, without its surely ripening into something infinitely warmer and more dangerous. You would be the first to sneer at an attempt at platonics in another ; you are the last man in the world to dream of such follies yourself. Tied as you are, you cannot frequent her society without danger for her ; and for you, probably remorse — at the least, satiety and regret, With nine men out of ten the result would be a liaison lightly formed and as lightly broken ; but you have an uncommon nature, and a young girl like little Tressillian your warmth of heart would never let you desert. I hate advising ; I never do it to anybody. My life has left me little title to counsel men against sins and follies which I dailv commit myself; nor do I count as sins many things the world condemns as such. Only here I see so plainly what will come of it, that I do not like you to rush into it blind- fold and repent afterwards. Because you have had fifty such loves which cost you nothing, that is no reason that the fifty-first may not cost you some pain, some very great pain, in its formation or its severance — " " You mean very kindly, Sabretasche, but there is no question of ' love ' here," interrupted De Vigne, with his impatient hauteur. " In the first place, you, so well read in woman's character, might know she is far too frank and o 194 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. familiar with me for any fear of the kind. In another I have paid too much for passion ever to risk it again, and I hope I know too well what is due from honour and gene- rosity to win the love of a young unprotected girl while I am by my own folly fettered and cursed by marriage ties. Sins enough I have upon my soul, God knows, but there is no danger of my erring here. 1 have no temptation ; but if I had I should resist it; to take advantage of her inno- cence and ignorance of my history would be a blackguard's act, to which no madness, even if I felt it, would ever make me condescend to stoop !" De Vigne spoke with all the sternness and impatience natural to him when roused, spoke in overstrong terms, as men do of a fault they are sure they shall never commit themselves. Sabretasche listened, an unusual angry shadow gathering in his large soft eyes, and a bitter sneer on his features, as he leaned back and folded his arms to silence and dolce. " Most immaculate Pharisee ! Remember a divine in- junction, ' Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall.' ' De Vigne cut his horses impatiently with the whip. " I am no Pharisee, but I am, with all my faults and vices, a man of honour, I hope." Sabretasche answered nothing, but annoyance was still in his eyes, and a sneer still on his lips. De Vigne had one striking fault, namely, that if advised not to do a thing, that thing would he go and do straight- way ; moreover, being a man of strong will and resolve, and very reliant on his own strength, he was apt, as in his fatal marriage, to go headlong, perfectly safe in his own power to guide himself, to judge for himself, and to draw back when it was needful. Therefore, he paid no attention whatever to Sabretasche's counsels, but, as it chanced, went down to see Alma rather more often than he had done before ; for she had said how much she wished she could exhibit at the Water-Colour Society, which De Vigne, knowing something of the president, and of the society in general, had been able to manage for her. " What should I do without you? " said Alma, fervently, to him one day, when he went there to tell her her picture was accepted. " You are so kind to me, Sir Folko ! " I ? Not at all, my dear child, I wisli you would not GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 195 exalt me to such a pinnacle. What will you say when I tumble down one day, and you see nothing of me but worthless shivers ? " "Reverence you still," said Alma, softly. " A fragment of the Parthenon is worth a whole spotless and unbroken modern building. If my ideal were to fall, I should treasure the dust." cc But, seriously," he interrupted her, " I wish you would not get into the habit of rating me so high, Alma. I don't in the least come up to it. You do not guess — how should you ? — you cannot, even in fancy, picture the life that I, and men like me, lead ; you cannot imagine the wild follies with which we drown our past, the reckless pleasures with which we pass our present, our temptations, our weaknesses, our errors ; how should you, child as you are, living out ot the world in a solitude peopled only with the bright fancies of your own pure imagination, that never incarnates the hideous fauns and beckoning bacchanals which haunt and fever ours ? " " But I can," said Alma, earnestly, looking up to him. " I do not go into the world, it is true, but still I know the world to a certain extent. Montaigne, Rochefoucauld, Ra- belais, Goethe, Emerson, Bolingbroke, the translated clas- sics, do you not think they teach me the world, or, at least, of what makes the world, Human Nature, better than the few hours at a dinner-table, or the gossip of morning calls, which you tell me is all girls in good society see of life ? You know, Sir Folko, it always seems to me, that women, fenced in as they are, in educated circles, by boundaries which they cannot overstep, except to their own hindrance ; screened from all temptations ; deprived of all opportunity to wander, if they wished, out of the beaten track ; should be gentle to your sex, whose whole life is one long tempta- tion, and to whose lips is almost forced that Circean ' cup of life ' whose flowers round its brim hide the poisons at its dregs. Women have, if they acknowledged them, passions, ambitious, impatience at their own monotonous role, long- ings for the living life denied to them ; but everything tends to crush these down in them, has thus tended through so many generations, that it has come to be an accepted thing that they must be calm, fair, pulseless statues ; and when here and there a woman dares to acknowledge that o 2 196 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. her heart beats, and that nature is not wholly dead within her, the world stares at her, and rails at her, for there is no hete noire so terrible to the world as Truth ! No, I can fancy your temptations, I can picture your errors and your tbllies, I can understand how you drink your poison one hour because you liked its flavour, and drink more the next hour to make you forget your weakness in having yielded to it at all. That my own solitude and imagination are only peopled with shapes bright and fair, I must thank Heaven and not myself. If I had been born in squalor and nursed in vice, what would circumstance and surroundings have made me ! Oh, I think, instead of the Pharisee's presumptuous ' I thank Grod that I am holier than he,' our thanksgiving should be, ' I thank God that I have so little opportunity to do evil ! ' and we should forgive, as we wish to be forgiven ourselves, those whose temptations, either from their own nature or from the outer world, have been so much greater than our own." Her voice was wonderfully musical, with a strange pathos in it ; and her gesticulation had all the grace and fervour of her Southern origin. Her words sent a thrill to De Vigne's heart ; they were the first gentle and tolerant words he had heard since his mother had died. He had known but two classes of women ; those who shared his errors and pandered to his pleasures, whose life disgusted, while their beauty lured him ; and those whose illiberality and whose sermons only roused him to more wayward rebellion against the social laws which they expounded. It touched him singularly to hear words at once so true, so liberal, and so humble, from one on whose young life he knew that no stain had rested ; to meet with so much comprehension from a heart, compared with his own, as pure and spotless from all error as the snow-white roses in her windows, on which the morning dewdrops rested without soil. And at her words something of De Vigne's old nature . began to wake into new existence, as, after a long and weary sleep, the eyelids tremble before the soul arouses to the heat and action of the day. A. memory of the woman called his wife passed over him — he could scarcely tell why or how — with a cold chill, like the air of a pestilent charnel-house. "Alma, if women were like vou, men might be better GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 197 than they are. Child, I wish you would uot talk as you do. You wake up thoughts and memories that had far- better sleep." She touched his hand gently : " Sir Folko, what are those memories? " He drew his haud away and laughed, not joyously, but that laugh which has less joy in it even than tears : " Don't you know a proverb, Alma — ' Weveillez pas le chat qui dort ? " " But were the cat a tiger I would not fear it, if it were yours." "But I fear it." There was more meaning in that than Alma guessed. The impetuous passion that had blasted his life, and linked his name with the Trefusis, would be, while his life lasted, a giant whose throes and mighty will would always hold him captive in his chains ! He was silent; he sat looking out of the window by which he sat, and playing with a branch of the white rose. His lips were pressed together, his e} r ebrows slightly con- tracted, his eyes troubled, as if he were looking far away — which indeed he was — to a white headstone lying among fragrant violet tufts under the old elms at Vigne, with the spring sunshine, in its fitful lights and shadows, playing fondly round the name of the only woman who had loved him at once fondly and unselfishly. Alma looked at him long and wistfully, some of his darker shadows flung on her own bright and sunny nature — as the yew-tree throws the dark shadows of its boughs over the golden cowslips that nestle at its roots. At last she bent forward, lifting her soft frank eyes to his. " Sir Folko, where are your thoughts ? Tell me." Her voice won its way to his heart ; he knew that in- terest, not curiosity, spoke in it, and he answered gently, "With my mother." It was the first time he had spoken of her to Alma — he never breathed her name to any one. " You loved her dearly ? " " Very dearly." Alma's eyes filled with tears, a passion very rare with her. " Tell me of her," she said softly. I98 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " No. I cannot talk of her." " Because you loved her so much ? " " No. Because I killed her." This was the great remorse of his life ; that his folly had cost him his name and, as he considered, his honour, was less bitter to him than that it had cost his mother's life. Alma, at his reply — uttered almost involuntarily under his breath — gazed at him, horror-stricken, with wild terror in her large eyes ; yet De Vigne might have noticed that she did not shrink from, but rather drew the closer to him. Her expression recalled his thoughts. " Not that, not that," he said hastily. " My hand never harmed her, but my passions did. My own headlong and wilful folly sent her to her grave. Child ! you may well thank God if Temptation never enter your life. No man has strength against it." For the first time De Vigne felt an inclination to disclose his marriage ; to tell her what he would have told to no other living being : of all his own madness had cost him, of the fatal revenge the Trefusis had taken, of the head- long impetuosity which had led him to raise the daughter of a beggar-woman to one of the proudest names in Eng- land, of the fatal curse which he had drawn on his own head, and the iron fetters which his own hand had forged. The words were already on his lips, in another minute he would have bent his pride and laid bare his secret to her, if at that moment the door had not opened — to admit Alma's late governess. Alma was very right — our life hinges upon Opportu- nity ! De Yigne never again felt a wish to tell her of his marriage. CHAPTEE XVIII. PAOLO AND FRANCESCA. May came ; it was the height of the season ; town was full ; Her Majesty had given her first levee ; Belornvia and M ay fair were occupied ; the Eide aud the Eing were full, too, at six o'clock every day, and the thousand toys with GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. igg which Babylon amuses her grown babies were ready, among others the Exhibition of Fine Arts, where, on its first day, De Yigne and I went to lounge away an hour, chiefly for the great entertainment and fun afforded to persons of sane mind by the eccentricities of the pre-Raphaelite gentlemen. In the entrance we met Lady Molyneux and her daughter, Sabretasche and his young Grace of Regalia with them. It was easy to see which the Viscountess favoured the most. " Are you come to be disenchanted with all living woman- hood by the contemplation of Messrs. Millais and Hunt's ideas, Major De Yigne ? " asked Yiolet, giving him her hand, looking a very lovely sample of " living womanhood." Ladies said she was very extravagant in dress. She mi^ht be ; she was naturally lavish, and liked instinctively all that was graceful in form or colouring ; but I only know she dressed perfectly, and, what was better, never thought about it. " Perhaps we should suffer less disappointment if ladies were like Millais's ideals," smiled De Vigne. " From those rough, red-haired, long-limbed women we should never look for much perfection ; whereas the faces and forms of our living beauties are rather like Belladonna, beautiful to look at, but destruction to approach or trust." " You are incorrigible ! " cried Yiolet, with a tiny shrug of her shoulders, " and forget that if Belladonna is a poison to those who don't know how to use it, it is a medicine and a balm to those who do." " But for one cautious enough to cure himself, how many unwary are poisoned for life ! " laughed De Vigne. He said it as a jest, but a bitter memory prompted it. " Send that fellah to Coventry, Miss Molyneux, do," lisped Regalia ; " he's so dweadfully rude." "Not yet; sarcasms are infinitely more refreshing than empty compliments," said Yiolet, with a scornful flash of her brilliant eyes. The little Duke was idiot enough to attempt to flatter Yiolet Molyneux, to whom the pas in beauty and talent was indisputably given ! " Colonel Sabretasche, take my catalogue, I have not looked into it yet, and mark all our favourites for me. I am going to enjoy the pictures now, and talk to nobody." A charming ruse on the young lady's part to keep Sabre- tasche at her side and make him talk to her, for they passed 200 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE- over eleven pictures, and lingered over a twelfth, while he discoursed ou the Italian and French, the G-erman and the English schools. "Why have you never been to see me for four days ? " asked Violet, standing before one of the glorious sea pieces of Stanfield. Sabretasche hesitated a moment. " I have had other engagements." Violet's eyes flashed. " I beg your pardon, Colonel Sabretasche ; not being capricious myself, it did not occur to me that you were so. However, if it be a matter of so little moment to you, it is of still less to me." " Did I not tell you," whispered Sabretasche, " that I like too well to be with you to dare to be with you much. You cannot have forgotten our conversation at Rich- mond ?" " No," she answered, hurriedly; " but you promised me your friendship, and you have no right to take it away. I do not pretend to understand you, I do not seek to know more than you choose to tell me, but since you once pro- mised to be my friend, you have no right — " "Violet, for God's sake do not break my heart!" broke in Sabretasche, his voice scarcely above his breath, but full of such intense anguish that she was startled. " Tour friend I cannot be ; anything dearer I may not be. Forget me, and all interest in my fate. Of your interest in me I am utterly unworthy ; and I would rather that you should credit all the evil that the world attributes to me, and cred- iting it, learn to hate me, than think that I, in my own utter selfishness, had thrown one shade on your young life, mingled one regret with your bright future." They were both leaning against the rail ; no one saw Vio- let's face as she answered him. " To speak of hate from me to you is folly, and it is too late to command forgetfulness. If you had no right to make me remember you, you have still less right to bid me forget you." " Violet, come and look at this picture of Lance's, Regalia talks of buying it," said her mother's cold, slow, languid voice. Violet turned, and though she smiled and spoke about the picture in question with some of her old vivacity and self- GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. 201 possession, her face had lost its brilliant tinting, and her white teeth were set together. De Yigne joined them at that minute. " Miss Molyneux, I want to show you a painting in the Middle Room. It is just your style, I fancy. Will you come and look at it ? " We all went into the Middle Room after him, Sabretasche too, pausing occasionally to look at some of the luckless exiles near the ceiling with his lorgnon. By-the-way, what a farce it is to hang pictures where one must have a lorgnon to look at them ; the exhibition of the Few is the suppres- sion of the Many ! "Tiola!" said De Yigne. "Anil wrong? Don't you like it?" " Like it ! " echoed Violet. " Oh, how beautiful ! " Quite forgetful that she was the centre of a crowd who were looking at her much more than at the paintings on the walls, she stood, the colour back in her cheeks, her eyes lifted to the picture. The painting deserved it. It was Love — old in story, yet new to every human heart — the love of Francesca and Paolo, often essayed by artists, yet never rendered, even by Ary Scheffer, as Dante would have had it, and as it was rendered here. There were no vulgarities of a fabled Hell ; there were the two, alone in that true torture — Ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria yet happy, because together. Her face and form were in full light, his in shadow. Heart beating against heart, their arms round each other, they looked down into each other's eyes, On his face were the fierce passions, against which he had had no strength, mingled with deep and yearning regret for the fate he had drawn in with his own. On hers, lifted up to him, was all the love at sight of which he who beheld it " swooned even as unto death ; ' the love — piacer si forte Che come vedi ancor non m'abbandona the love which made hell, paradise ; and torture together, dearer than heaven alone. Her face spoke, her clinging arms circled him as though defying power in eternity strong enough to part them; her eyes looked into his with unutterable 202 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. tenderness, anguish for his sorrow, ecstacy in his presence ! — and on her soft lips, still trembling with the memory of that first kiss which had been their ruin, was all the heroism and all the passion, all the fidelity, devotion, and joy in him alone, spoken in that one sentence — Questi che mai da me non fia diviso ! The picture told its tale; crowds gathered round it; and those who could not wholly appreciate its wonderful colour- ing and skill were awed by its living humanity, its passionate tenderness, its exquisite beauty. Violet stood, regardless of the men and women around her, looking up at the Francesca, a fervent response to it, a vearning sympathy with the warm human love and joys of which it breathed, written on her mobile features. She turned away from it with a heavy sigh, and the flush deepened in her cheeks as she met Sabretasche's eyes, who now stood behind her. " You are pleased with that picture," he said, bending his head. " Is it not beautiful ? " cried Violet, passionately. " It is not to be criticised ; it is to be loved. It is art and poetry and human nature blended in one. Whoever painted it in- terprets art as no other artist here can do. He has loved and felt his subject, and makes others in the force of his genius feel and love it too. Listen how every one is prais- ing it ! They all admire it, yet not nine out of ten of these people can understand it. Tell me who painted it, quick ! Oh ! give me the catalogue ! ' She took it out of his hands with that rapid vivacity which worried her mother so dreadfully as bad ton, and turned the leaves over till she reached " 226. Paolo and Francesca — Vivian Sabretasche. ' Amor che a nullo amato amar perdona, Mi prese del costui piacer si forte, Che come vedi ancor non m'abbandona Amor condusse noi ad una morte.' " She dropped the book ; she could not speak, but she held out her hand to him, and Sabretasche took it for an instant as they leaned over the rail together in the security and "solitude of a crowd." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 203 " Do not speak of it here," be whispered, as he bent down for the fallen catalogue. " 'Pon my honour, Sabretasche," whispered little Eegalia, " we're all so astonished — turning artist, eh ? Never knew you exhibited. Splendid picture — ah — really ! " "You do me much honour," said Sabretasche, coldly — he hated the little puppy who was always dawdling after Violet — " but I should prefer not to be congratulated before a room full of people." " On my life, old fellow, I envy you," said De Vigne, too low for anyone to hear him ; " not for being the talk of the room, for that is neither to your taste nor mine, but for having such magnificent talent as you have given us here." " Cui bono ? " said Sabretasche, with his slight smile, that was too gentle for discontent, and too sad for cynicism. " I had not an idea whose Francesca I was bringing Miss Molyneux to see," De Yigne continued. *' How came you to exhibit this year ? " " Oh, I have been a dabbler in art a long time," laughed the Colonel. " Many of the Forty are my intimate friends ; they would not have rejected anything I sent." " They would have been mad to reject the Francesca ; they have nothing to compete with it on the walls. I wish you were in Poland- Street, Sabretasche, that one could order of you. You are the first fine gentleman, since Sir Greorge Beaumont, who has turned ■ artiste veritable,' and you grace it better than he." Sabretasche and his Grace of Eegalia, De Yigne, and I, went to luncheon that day with Lady Molyneux in Loundes- square, at which meal the Colonel made himself so charming, lively, and winning, that the Viscountess, strong as were her leanings to her pet Duke, could not but admit that he shone to very small advantage, and made a mental mem. never to invite the two together again. The Molyneux were devo- ting that morning to picture-viewing. And from the Eoyai Academy, after luncheon, they went to the French aquarelles, in Pall Mall, and thence to the Water-Colour Exhibition, whither De Yigne and I followed them in his tilbury. " I wonder what they will say to Alma's picture," said De Yigne, as we alighted. " 1 wish it may make a hit, as it is her livelihood now, poor child ! " Strange enough, it was before Alma's picture that we 204 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. found most people in the room congregated ; and Violet turned to us : " Come and look here, Major De Vigne ; this ' Louis Dix- sept in the Tower of the Temple,' by Miss Trevelyan — Tre- vanion — no, Tressillian — whoever she be — is the gem of the collection to my mind. There is an unlucky green ticket on it, else I would purchase it. "What enviable talent ! I wish I were Miss Tressillian ! " "How rash you are!" said De Yigne. "How can you tell but that Miss Tressillian may be some masculine woman living in an entresol, painting with a clay pipe between her teeth, and horses and cows for veritable models in a litter adjoining, dressing like George Sand, and deriving inspira- tion from gin ? " " "What a shameful picture ! " cried Violet, indignantly. " I do not know her, nor anything about her, it is true, but I am perfectly certain that the woman who idealised and carried out this painting, with so much delicacy and grace, must have a delicate and graceful mind herself." " Or," continued De Vigne, ruthlessly, " she may now, for anything you can tell, be a vieille Jille who has conse- crated her life to art, and grown old and ugly in the con- secration, and who — " " Be quiet, Major De Vigne," interrupted Violet. " I am perfectly certain that the artist would correspond to the picture : Raphael was as beautiful as his paintings, Michael Angelo was of noble appearance, Mozart and Mendelssohn had faces full of music — " " Fuseli, too, was," said De Vigne, mischievously, " re- markably like his grand archangels ; Reynolds, in his brown coat and wig, is so poetic that one could have no other ideal of the ' Golden Age ; ' Turner's appearance was so artistic that one would have imagined him a farmer bent on crops ; fat and snuffy Handel is the embodiment of the beauty of the Cangio d'Aspetto — " " How tiresome you are ! " interrupted Violet again. "I am establishing a theory ; 1 don't care for facts — no theorists ever do in these days ! I maintain that a graceful and ennobling art must leave its trace on the thought and mind and manners of its expositors (I know you are going to remind me of Morland at the hedge-alehouse, of Opie, and the ' little Jew-broker,' and of Nollikens making the GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 205 writing-paper label for the single bottle of claret) ; never mind, I keep to my theory, and I am sure that this Miss Tressillian, who has had the happiness to paint the lovely face of that little Dauphin, would, if we could see her, correspond to it ; and I envy her without the slightest hesitation." " You have no need to envy any one," whispered Regalia. Violet turned impatiently from him, and began to talk to Sabretasche about one of those ever-charming pictures of Mr. Edmund Warren. De Vigne looked at me and smiled, thinking with how much more grounds the little Tressillian had envied Violet Molyneux. " I wish I could tell you half I feel about your Fran- cesca," said Violet, lifting her eyes to Sabretasche's face, as they stood apart from anybody else in a part of the room littie frequented, for there were few people there that morning, and those few were round Alma's pet picture. " You can never guess how I reverence your genius, how it speaks to my heart, how it reveals to me all your inner nature, which the world, much as it admires you, never sees or dreams of seeing." Sabretasche bent his head ; her words went too near home to him to let him answer them. " All your pictures," Violet went on, " bear the stamp of a masters's talent, but this — how beautiful it is ! I might have known no other hand but yours could have called it into life. Have you long finished it ?" " I finished the painting two years ago ; but three months ago I saw for the first time the face that answered my ideal, the face that expressed all that I would have expressed in Francesca. I effaced what I had painted, and in its stead I placed — yours." Violet's eyes dropped ; the delicate colour in her cheeks deepened. She had been dimly conscious of a resemblance in the painting, and De Vigne's glance from Francesca to herself had told her that he at the least saw it also ; and, indeed, the face of the painting, with its delicate and im- passioned features, and the form, with its voluptuous grace, were singularly like her own. Sabretasche looked closer at her. " You could love like Francesca," he said involuntarily. It was not above his breath, but his face gave it all the eloquence it lacked, as hers all the response it needed. 206 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. She beard his short quick breathing as he stood beside her ; she felt the passionate words which rose to his lips ; she knew that if ever a man's love was hers his was then. But he was long silent, and when he spoke his voice was fall of that utter anguish which had startled her twice before. " Keep it, then, and give it to some man more worthv of it than I ! " " Violet, my love, are you not tired of all this ? " said Lady Molyneux, sweeping up. " It is half-past four, and I want to go to Swan and Edgar's. Pictures make one's head ache so ; I was never so ill in my life as I was after the Sis- tine chapel." Sabretasche took her to their carriage without another word between them. The next day to our surprise, the Colonel asked for leave, got it, and went away. " What the deuce is that for, Colonel ? " said I. " Never been out of town in the season before, have you ? " " Just the reason why I should be now, my dear fellow," responded Sabretasche, lazily. " Twenty years of the same thing is enough to tire one of it, if the thing were para- dise itself; and when it comes to be only dusty paves, white- bait dinners, and club gossip, ennui is very pardonable. The medical men tell me, if I don't give up Pleasure for a little time, Pleasure will give up Me. You know I am not over- strong ; so I shall go to the Continent, and look at it in spring, before there are the pests of English touring about, with Murray's, carpet-bags, and sandwiches." He vouchsafed no more on the subject, but went. His de- parture was talked of in clubs and boudoirs ; women missed him as they would have missed no other man in London, for Sabretasche was universal censor, referee, regulator of fashion, his bow was the best thing in the Park, his fetes at Richmond the most charming and exclusive of the season; but people absent on tours are soon forgotten, like dead leaves sucked under a water-wheel and whirled away ; and after the first day, perhaps, nobody save De Vigne and I re- marked how triste his house in Park-lane looked w r ith the green persiennes closed over its sunny bay-windows. AVhatever his motive, the Colonel was gone to that golden land where the foamy Rhone speeds on her course, and Mar- GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 207 seilles lies by the free blue sea, and the Pic du Midi rears its stately head. The Colonel was gone, and all the clubs, and drawing-rooms, and journals were speaking of his Francesca ; speaking, for once, unanimously, in admiration for its won- derful union of art and truth. The Francesca was the theme of the day in artistic circles ; its masterly conception and un- exceptionable handling would for any pencil have gained it fame ; and in fashionable circles it only needed the well- known name of Vivian Sabretasche to give it at once an interest and a brevet of value. The Francesca was talked of by everybody, and, strangely enough, the picture most appreciated in another line by the papers and the virtuosi was the Little Tressillian's, which, with its subject, its treatment, and the truthful rendering of the boy's face, attracted more attention than any woman's picture had done for along time ; the art reviews were almost unani- mous in its praise ; certain faults were pointed out — re- viewers must always find some as a sort of voucher of their own discernment — but, for all that, Alma's first picture was a very decided success. ]N T ot long after the Exhibition, De Vigne, one morning after early parade, ordered his horse round, put some of the journals in his coat-pocket, and rode towards Richmond, with the double purpose of having a cool morning gallop before the bother of the day commenced, and of seeing Alma, which he had not done since the success of her picture. He rode fast ; — I believe it would have been as great a misery to him to be obliged to do a thing slowly as it would have been to Sabretasche to do it quickly ! — and he enjoyed the fresh morning, with the free, pure air of spring. His nature was naturally a very happy one ; his character was too strong, vigorous, and impatient to allow melaucholy to become habitual to him ; he was too young for his fate, however it preyed upon his pride, to be constantly before him ; his wife was, indeed, a bitter memory to him, but she was but a memory to him now, and a man imperceptiblv forgets what is never recalled to him. Except occasional deep fits of gloom and an unvarying cynical sarcasm, De Vigne had cured himself of the utter despondency into which his marriage had first thrown him ; the pace at which he lived, if the pleasures were stale, was such as does not ^eave a man much time for thought, and now, as he rode 208 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. alcmg, some of his natural spirits came back to him as they generally do in the saddle to a man fond of riding. " At home of course ?" he said to Mrs. Lee, as she opened the door to him — said it with that careless hauteur which was the result of habit, not of intention. De Yigne was very republican in his theories, but the patrician came out in him malgre lui ! " Yes, sir," said the old nurse, giving him her lowest curtsey. "Yes, sir, she's at home, and there's a young gentleman a-calling on her. I'm glad of it ; she wants somebody to talk to bad enough. ' Tain't right, you know, sir, for a merry child like that to be cooped up alone ; you might as well put a bird in a cage and tie its beak up, so that it couldn't sing ! It's that young gentleman as came with you, sir, the other day." De Yigne stroked his moustaches. " Oh, ho ! Master Curly's found his way, has he ? I dare say she'll be a confounded little flirt, like all the rest of them, when she has the opportunity," was his reflection, more natural than complimentary, as he opened the door of Alma's room, where the little lady was sitting, as usual, in the window, among the birds and flowers De Yigne had sent her ; Curly, lying back in a chaise longue, talking to her quite as softly and far more interestedly than he was wont to talk to the beauties in his mother's drawing-room. But Alma cut him short in the middle of a sentence as she turned her head at the opening of the door, and sprang up at the sight of De Yigne. " How glad I am ! How good you are to come so early !" " Not good at all ; the air is beautiful to-day, one only wants to be fishing in a mountain burn to enjoy it thoroughly. Hallo, Curly ! " said De Yigne throwing himself into an arm-chair ; " how are you ? How did you manage to get up so early ? I thought you never were up till after one, except on Derby Day ?" " Or other temptation greater still," said Curly with an eloquent glance ot his long, violet eyes at Alma. " Do you mean that for a compliment to me ?" said the Little Tressillian, with that gay, rebellious air which was so pretty in her. " In the first place, I do not believe it, for there is no woman on the face of the earth who could attempt to rival a horse ; and in the second, I should not GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 209 thank you for it if I did, for compliments are only fit for empty heads to feed on " " Meaning, you think yours the very reverse of empty ?" said De Vigne, quietly. " Certainly. I am not a boarding-school girl, monsieur," said Alma, indignantly. " I have filled it with what food I can get for it, and I know at least enough to feel that I know nothing — the first step to wisdom the sages say." " But if you dislike compliments you might at least accept homage," said Curly, smiling. " Homage ? Oh ! yes, as much as you like. I should like to be worshipped by the world, and petted by a few." " I dare say you would," said De Yigne. " I can't say your desires are characterised by great modesty!" " Well, I speak the truth," said Alma, naively. " I should like to be admired by the thousands, and loved just by one or two." " You have only to be seen to have your firs* wish," said Curly, softly, " and only to be known to have much more than your second." Alma turned away impatiently ; she had a sad knack ot showing when she was annoyed. "Really you are intolerable, Colonel Brandling. You spoil conversation utterly. I say those things because I mean them, not to make you flatter me. I shall talk only to Sir Folko, for he understands me, and answers me pro- perly." With which lecture to Curly she twisted her low chair nearer to De Yigne, and looked up in his face, much as spaniels look up in their master's, liking a kick from them better than a caress from a stranger. " Have you seen Miss Molyneux lately ?" " Yes ; and not long ago I heard Miss Molyneux envy- ing you!" " Me ! / envy her, if you like. How does she know me ! What has she heard about me ? Who has told her anv- thingof me?" " Gently, gently, de grdce ! I don't know that she has heard anything of you, or that anybody has told her any- thing about you ; but she has seen something of yours, and admired it exceedingly." " All ! my picture ! " cried Alma, joyously, her envy and p 2IO GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. her wrongs passing away like summer shadows off a sunny landscape. " "What has been said about it ? Who has seen it ? Do the papers mention it ? Have the — " " One question at a time, please, then perhaps I may contrive to answer them," said De Yigne, smiling ; i: though the best answer to them all will be for you to read these. Here, see how you like that ! " He took a critique by a well-known Art-critic out of his pocket, and gave it to her, pointing out, among many con- demnatory notices of other works, the brief words in praise of her own, worth more than whole pages of warmer lauda- tion but less discriminating criticism, which Alma read with her eyes beaming, and her whole face in a rose flush of delight. " Wait a minute ; reserve your raptures," said De Yigne, putting the ' Times ' and other papers before her. " If the first review sends you into such a state of exultation, we shall lose sight of you altogether over these." " Ah, they make me so happy ! " she cried, with none of the dignity and tranquil pride becoming to a successful artist, but with a wild, gleeful triumph amusing to behold. " I used to think my pictures would be liked if people saw them ; but I never hoped they would be admired like this ; and it is all owing to you ; without you I should never have had it!" " Indeed you would, though. You have nothing to thank me for, I can assure you." " I have ! You knew how I could exhibit it ; you did it all for me ; but for you my picture would now be hanging here, unnoticed and unpraised ; and you know well enough that your few words are of more value to me than all these ! " With which Alma tossed over the table, with contemptuous energy, the reviews which had charmed her a minute or two before. " Yery unwise," said De Yigne, drily. " These will make your fame and your money ; my words can do you no good whatever." She twisted herself away from him with one of her rapid, un-English movements. " How courteous he is ! You are very forbearing, Miss Tressillian, to put up with him ! " said Curly, who had been listening, half amusedly, half irritably, to this conversation, which excluded him. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 211 Alma was angry with De Yigne herself, but she was not going to let any one else be so too. " Forbearing ? What do you mean ? I should be very ungrateful if I were not thankful for such a friend," " Now that is too bad," said Curly, plaintively. " I, who really admire your most marvellous talent, only get tabooed for being a flatterer, while he is thought perfection, and pleases by being most abominably rude." " You had better not measure yourself with him, Colonel Brandling," said Alma, with that mischievous impudence which sat well upon her, though no other woman, I believe, could have had it with such impunity. " Vous me piquez, mademoiselle," said Curly. " You will tempt me by your very prohibition to enter the lists with him. I should not care to dispute the belt with him in most things, but for such a prize — " " What nonsense are you talking, Curly," said De Yigne, with that certain chill hauteur now so customary to him, but which Alma had never yet seen in him. " A prize to be fought for must be disputed. Don't bring hot-pressed com- pliments here to spoil the atmosphere." " That's right, take my part," interrupted Alma, not un- derstanding his speech as Curly understood it. " You see, Colonel Brandling, that sort of high-flown flattery is no compliment ; if the man meant it, it says little for his intel- lect, for we are none of us angels without wings, as you call us ; and if he do not mean it, it says little for ours, for it is easy to tell when any one is really liking or only laugh- ing at us." " Indeed ! " said Curly. " I wish we were as clear when ladies were liking or laughiug at us ; it would save us a good many disappointments, when enchanting forms Of life and light, who have softly murmured tenderest words when they stole our hearts away in tulle illusion at a hunt ball, bow to us as chillily as to a first introduction when we meet them afterwards en Amazone in the Bide, with somebody as rich as he is gouty on their off-side." " Serve you right for being so credulous," said De Yigne. " Women are either actresses or fools ; if they are amiable they are stupid, and if they are clever they are artful." " Like Thackeray's heroines," suggested Curly. " Exactly ; shows how well the man knows life. The p 2 212 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. first thing the world teaches a clever woman is to banish her heart. Women may thrive on talent, they are certain to go to rack and ruin on feeling." " I don't agree with you," said Alma, looking up, ready for a combat. "Don't you, petite?" laughed De Yigne, "I think you will when you have a few more years over your head, and have seen the world a little." " No, I do not," returned the Little Tressillian, decidedly, " I believe that in proportion as you feel so do you suffer ; but I deny that all clever women are actresses. "Where will you go for all your noblest actions but to women of intellect and mind? Sappho's heart inspired the genius which has come down to us through such lengthened ages. Was it not love and genius in one, which immortalised Helo'ise ? Was it not intellect, joined to their love for their country, which have placed the deeds of Polycrita, Hortensia, Hersillia, Mademoiselle de la Eochefoucauld, among the records of patriotism ? One of the truest affec- tions we have heard of was that of Yittoria Colonna for Pescara, of the woman who ranks only second to Petrarch, the friend of Pope, and Bembo, and Catarini, the adored of Michael Angelo, the admired of Ariosto ! Oh, you are very wrong ; where you find the glowing imagination, there, too, will you find as ardent affections ; where there is expansive intellect, there, and there only, will be charity, tolerance, clear perception, just discrimination ; with a large brain, a large heart, the more cultured the intelligence, the more sensitive the susceptibilities ! Lucy Edgermond would make your tea for you tolerably, and head your table re- spectably, and blush where she ought, and say Yes and No like a well-bred woman : but in Corinne alone will you find passion to beat with your own, intellect to match with your own, sympathy, comprehension, elevation, all that a woman should give to the man she loves ! " A Corinne in her own way I can fancy she looked, too, her blue eyes scintillating like stars in her earnestness, and her voice rising and falling in impassioned vehemence, ac- companied with her vivacious and unconscious gesticulation, a trick, probably, of her foreign blood. Curly listened to her with amazement, this was something quite new to him ; it was not so new to De Yigne, but it touched him with GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 213 something deeper, more like regret than amusement. A glimr/se of the golden land is pain when we know the door is locked, and the key irrevocably lost. " Do you suppose, petite" he said, with a bitter smile, " that if there were Corinnes in the land men would be such fools as to go and take the Lucies of modern society in their stead ? Heaven knows, if there were women such as you describe, we might be better men ; more earnest in our lives, more faithful in our loves ! But you draw from the ideal, I from the real, two altitudes very far wide apart ; as far apart, my child, as dawn and midnight." His tone checked and saddened Alma's bright and enthu- siastic nature. She gave a heavy sigh. u It is midnight with you, I am afraid, and I so want it it to be noon ! " He answered with a laugh. "If it be, it is like midnight at a bal d* Opera, with plenty of gaslights, transparencies, music, and amusement enough to send the sun jealous, and making believe the day has dawned ! " "But don't the gaslights, and transparencies, and all the rest of your bal d' Opera look tawdry and garish when the day is really up and on them ? " " We never let the daylight in," laughed De Yigne ; *' and won't remember that we ever had any brighter light than our coloured lamps. Why should we ? They do well enough for all intents and purposes." Alma shook her head : " They won't content you always." " Oh yes, they will ; I have no desires now but to live without worry, and die in some good hard fight in harness, like my father. What ! are you going, Curly ? I'll come with you." " Yes, I must," said Curly. " I'm going to a confounded dejeuner in Palace Gardens, at that little flirt's, Jerry Maberly. I shall barely get back in time. How time slips in some places. If I promise to leave compliments, i. e. in your case, truth, behind me, may I not come again ? Pray be merciful, and allow me." " How can I prevent you ? " said Alma, in a laughing uuconsciousness of Curly's meaning. " Certainly, come if you like ; it is kind of you, for I am very dull here alone. 214 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. I am no philosopher, and cannot make a virtue of necessity, and pretend to take my tub and cabbage-leaves in prefer- ence to a causeuse and delicate mayonnaise." " Capricious, like all your sex. Tou are asking for com- pliments now, Alma. ' On ne hue d' ordinaire que pour etre hue,' " said De Vigne, drily. " Am I ? I did not mean it so," answered the girl, innocently. " Nor did I take it so," said Curly, bending towards her as he took her hand ; " so I shall not say how I thank you for your permission, but only avail myself of it as often as- I can." De Vigne stood looking disdainfully on, stroking his moustaches ; and thinking, I dare say, what arrant flirts all women were at heart, and what fools men were to pander to their vanities. He bid her good morning with that careless hauteur which he had often with everybody else, but very rarely with her. While he stood at the door waiting for his groom, he heard Alma's voice : " Come back a minute." He went back, as in courtesy bound. " Why did you speak so crossly to me ? " " I ! I was not aware of it." "But I was, and it was not kind of you, Sir Polko." " Why will you persist in calling me like that knight sans peur et sans reproche ? " said De Yigne, impatiently. " I tell you I have nothing in common with him — with his pure life and his spotless shield. He did no evil ; I do — Heaven knows how much ! He surmounted his temptations ; I have always succumbed to mine. He had a conscience at ease ; mine might be as great a torture as the rack. His past was one of wise thoughts and noble deeds ; mine can show neither the one nor the other." " Of your life you know best ; but in your character I choose to see the resemblance," replied Alma, always reso- lute to her own opinion. " Was he not a man who feared nothing, who was fierce to his foes and generous to those who trusted him ? As for his past, he had probably drawn experience from error, as meu ever do ; and learnt wisdom out of folly. And as for his stainless shield, is not your haughtv De Yigne honour as unsullied as when it passed to you?" GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 215 " No" said De Yigne, fiercely. u My folly stained it, and the stain is the curse of my life. Child, why will you speak of such things ? If you care for my friendship, you must never allude to my past." Deadly memories were stirring in him. Most women might have been afraid of him in his haughty anger. She was not. She looked up at him, bewildered, it is true, but with a strange mingling of girlish tenderness and woman's passion, both unconscious of themselves. " Oh, I will not ! Do forgive me ! " " Yes, yes, I forgive you," said De Yigne, hastily. "Don't exalt me into a god, Alma, that's all; for I am very mortal." He laid his hand on her shoulder, with the familiar kind- ness he had grown into with her. In another second he was across his horse's back, and riding out of the court -yard with Curly, while she stood in the doorway looking after him, shading her eyes from the May sun, which touched up her golden hair and her bright- hued dress into a brilliant tableau, under the low, dark porch of her home. Curly rode on quietly for some little way, busying his mind with rolling the leaves round a Manilla, and lighting it en route, while De Yigne puffed away at a giant Havan- nah, between regulating which and keeping his fidgety Grey Derby quiet (he usually rode horses that would have thrown any other man but him or M. Earey), he had little leisure for roadside conversation. At last Curly broke silence, flicking his mare's ears thoughtfully. "Well, De Yigne ! I don't know what to make of it ! " " Don't know what to make of what ? " demanded De Yigne, curtly. He was a little impatient with his Frestonhills pet. One may not care two straws for pheasant-shooting — nay, one may even have sprained one's arm, so that it is a physical impossibility to lift an Enfield to one's shoulder — and yet, so dog-in-mangerish is human nature, that one could kick a fellow who ventures to come in and touch a head of our defendu or uncared-for game ! * Of that little thing," returned Curly musingly. " I don't understand her." 216 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. " Very possibly ! " " Why very possibly ? I know a good deal of women, good, bad, and indifferent, but I'll be hanged if I can un- derstand that Little Tressillian. She is so frank and free one might take no end of advantage of her ; and yet, some- how, deuce take it, one can't. The girl's truth and fearless- ness are more protection to her than other women's pruderies and chevaux-de-frise." De Vigne did not answer, but smoked silently. " She is a little darling," resumed Curly, meditatively. " One feels a better fellow with her — eh ? " " Can't say," replied De Vigne. " I have generally looked on young ladies, for inflammable boys like you, as dangerous stimulants rather than as calming tonics." "Confound your matter-of-fact," swore Curly. "You may laugh at it if you like, but I mean it. She makes me think of things that one pooh-poohs and forgets in the bustle of the world. She's a vast lot too good to be shut up in that brown old house, with only a kitten to play with, and an old nurse to take care of her." " She seems to have made an impression on you ! " " Certainly she has ! " said Curly, gaily. " And, 'pon my life, what makes still more impression on me, De Yigne, is, tbat you and I should be going calling on and chatting with her as harmlessly as if she were our sister, when we ought to be making desperate love to her, if she hadn't such con- founded trusting eyes of hers that they make one ashamed of one's own thoughts ! ' Pon my life, its very extraordi- nary ! " " If extraordinary, it is only honour," said De Vigne, with his coldest hauteur, "towards a young, guileless girl, utterly unprotected, save by her own defencelessness. For my own part, as a ' married man ' (how cold his sneer grew at those words !), I have no right to 'enter the lists' with you, as you poetically phrased it to-day ; and for yourself, you are too true a gentleman, Curly, though it is ' our way' to be unscrupulous in such matters, to take unfair advan- tage of my introduction. Indeed, if you did, I, to whom Mr. Tressillian appealed for what slight assistance I have it in my power to afford her, should hold myself responsible for having made you known to her, and should be bound to take the insult as to myself." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 217 Curly, at the beginning of De Yigne's very calm, but very grandiose speech, opened his lazy violet eyes, and stared at him ; but as he went on, he turned to his old Frestonhills hero with his smile, — so young in its bright- ness : " Quite right, De Vigne. You are a brick ! and if I do any harm to that dear little Tressillian, I give you free leave to shoot me dead like a dog, and I should richly deserve it too. But go and see her I must, for she is worth all the women we shall meet at Jerry's to-day, though they do count themselves the creme de la creme" " The creme de la creme can be, at the best, only skim ! " said De Vigne, with, his ready fling of sarcasm ; ' but I am not going to the Maberlys,' thank you. Early strawberries and late on dits are both flavourless to my taste ; the fault of my own palate perhaps. I shall go and lunch at the U. S., and play a game or two at pool. How pleasant the wind is ! Grey Derby wants a gallop." Pal am on and Arcite were not truer or warmer friends than De Vigne and Curly ; but, when a woman's face daz- zled the eyes of both, the death-blow was struck to friend- ship, and the seeds of feud were sown. CHAPTER XIX. THE SKELETON WHICH SOCIETY HAD NEVER SEEN. On the 12th of May, Leila Countess of Puffdorff gave a ball, concert, and sort of moonlight fete, all three in one, at her charming dower-house at Twickenham. All our set went, and all of Ours, for lefeu Puffdorff had been in the Dashers, and out of a tender memory of him, his young widow made pets of all the Corps ; not, one is sure, because we were counted the handsomest set of men in all Arms, but out of pure love and respect for our late gouty Colonel, who, Georges Dandin in life, became a Mausolus when un- der the sod. "Who upholds that the good is oft interred with our bones ? 'Tisn't true though it is Shakspeare who says it ; if you leave your family or your pet hospital a good many thousands, you will get the cardinal virtues, and 2l8 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. a trifle more, in letters of gold on your tomb ; though if you have lived up to your income, or forgotten to insure, any penny-a -lining La Monnoye will do to scribble your epitaph, and break off with ' ; C'est trop mentir pour cinq ecus /" Le feu Puffdorff became " my poor dear lord," as soon as the grave closed over him ; pour cause — " my poor dear lord " had left his Countess most admirably well off, and with some of this "last bequest " the little widow gave us a charming fete on this 12th of May. I went to the ball late ; De Yigne chose instead to go to a card party at Wyndham's, where play was certain to be high. He preferred men's society to women's at all times, and I must say I think he showed his judgment ! The first person I saw was Violet, on Curly's arm, with whom she had been waltzing. Brilliant and lovely she looked, with all her high-bred grace and finish about her ; but she bad lost her colour, there was an absence of all that free spon- taneous gaiety, and there was a certain distraction in her eyes, which made me guess the Colonel's abrupt departure had not been without its effect upon our most radiant beauty. She had promised me the sixth dance the previous day in the Park, and as I waltzed with her, pour m'amuser, I mentioned Sabretasche's name casually, when, despite all her sang-froid, a slight flush in her cheeks showed she did not hear it with indifference. "When I resigned her to Re- galia, I strolled through the rooms with the other beaute regnante of the night, Madame la Duchesse de La Vieille- cour. Good Heavens ! what relationship was there between that stately, haughty-eyed woman, with her Court atmo- sphere about her calm but finished coquetteries, and bright- faced, blithe-voiced G-wen Brandling, who had given me that ring under the trees in Kensington Grardens ten years before ? Ah, well ! Time changes us all. The ring was old-fashioned now ; and Madame and I made love more amusingly and more wisely, if less truly than earnestly, than in those old silly days when we were in love, before I had learned experience and she had taken up prudence and ducal quarterings ! I was sitting under one of the luxuriant festoons of creepers in the winter garden with her Excellency ; reveng- ing, perhaps, a little more naturally than rightly, on Madame de La Vieillecour the desertion of Gwen Brandling ; and 1 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 219 suppose I was getting a trifle too sarcastic in the memories I was recalling to her, for she broke off our conversation suddenly, and not with that subtle tact which Tuileries air had taught her. " Look! Is it possible! Is not that Colonel Sabretasche? I thought he was gone to Biarritz for his health ? " I looked ; it was Sabretasche, to my supreme astonish- ment, for his leave had not nearly expired ; and in a letter De Vigne had had from him a day or two previous, there had been no mention of his intending to return. " How charming he is, your Colonel ! " said Madame de La Vieillecour languidly. " I never met anybody hand- somer or more witty in all Paris. Bring him here, I want to speak to him." " Surprised to see me, Arthur ? " said Sabretasche, laugh- ing, as I went up to him, obedient to her desires. " I always told you never to be astonished at anything I do. Madame de La Vieillecour there ? She does me much honour. Is she trying to make you singe your wings again ?" He came up to her with me, of course, and stood chatting some minutes. " I am only this moment arrived," he said, in answer to her. " When I reached Park-lane this evening, I found Lady Puffdorff's card ; so I dined, dressed, and came off, for I knew I should meet all my old friends here. Yes, I am much better, thank you ; the sweet air of the Pyrenees must always do one good, and then they give all the credit to the Biarritz baths ! Shockingly unjust, but what is just in this world ? " He stayed chatting some moments, though his eyes glanced impatiently through the rooms. The air of the Pyrenees had indeed done him good ; his listless melan- choly, which had grown on him so much during the last month, had entirely worn off; there was a clear mind-at- ease look about him as if he were relieved of some weight that had worn him down, and there was a true ring about his voice and laugh whicli had not been there, gay as he was accounted, since I had known him, even when he was ten years younger than he was now. He soon left Madame de La Vieillecour, and lounged through the rooms, ex- changing a smile, or a bow, or a few words with almost 220 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. every one he met, for Sabretasche had a most illimitable acquaintance. Violet Molyneux was sitting down after her waltz with Eegalia, leaning back on a couch, fanning herself slowly, and attending very little to the crowd of men who had gathered, as they were certain to do, round the beauty of the season. She generally laughed, and talked, and jested with them all, so that her pet friends called her a shocking flirt, but to-night she was listless and silent, playing ab- sently with her bouquet, though admiring glances enough were bent upon her, and delicate flattery enough breathed in her ears, to have roused the Sleeping Beauty herself from her trance. It required more, however, to rouse her ; that little more she had, in a voice well accustomed to give meaning to such words, which whispered : " How can I hope I have been remembered when you have so many to teach you to forget ? " She looked up ; her wild-rose colour came back into her cheeks ; she gave him her hand without a word, and one of her vassals, a young Yiscount, in the Bines, relinquished his place beside her to Sabretasche. Then she talked to him, quietly enough, on indifferent subjects, as if neither remembered their last strange interview in the Water- colour Exhibition, as if the Francesca were not in both their minds, as if love were not lying at the heart and gleaming in the eyes of each of them ! Sabretasche asked her to waltz ; she could not, since she had only the minute before refused Eegalia ; but she took his arm and strolled into the winter-garden, leaving the full rise and swell of the ball-room music with the subdued hum and murmur of the Society in the distance. He spoke of trifles as they passed the different groups that were laughing, chatting, or flirting in the several rooms ; but his eyes were on hers, and spoke a more elo- quent language. Yiolet never asked him of his sudden return or his abrupt departure. She was too happy to be with him again to care through what right or reason she was so. Gradually they grew silent, as tbey strolled on through the conservatories till they were alone. One side of the winter-garden was open to the still night, where the midnight stars shone on trees and statues, with lamps GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 221 gleaming between, while the nightingales sang their chants of love, which give utteranoe in their unknown tongue to those diviner thoughts, that yearning sadness, which lie far down unseen in Human nature. The night was still, there was no sound save the distant music and the sweet gush of the nightingales' songs close by ; the wind swept gently in till the air was full of the dreamy and voluptuous fragrance which lulls the senses and woos the heart to those softer moments which, could they but last, would make men never need to dream of heaven. Such hours are rare ; what wonder if, to win them, we risk all, if in them we cry with the Lotus Eaters, " Let us alone. What is it that will last ? All things are taken from us and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil ? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? All things have rest and ripen towards the grave In silence ; ripen, fall, and cease. Give us long rest or death ; dark death or dreamful ease." He, in the still beauty of the night, could listen to every breath and hear each heart-throb of the woman he loved, as he looked into her face with its delicate and impassioned beauty — the beauty of the Francesca. All the passion that was in him stirred and trembled at it ; the voluptuous spell of the hour stole over his thoughts and senses : he stooped towards her : " Violet!" It was only one word he spoke : but in it all was uttered to them both. He drew her to his heart, pressing his lips on hers in kisses long and passionate as those that doomed Francesca. And the stars shone softly, and the nightingales sang under the early roses in the fair spring night, while two human hearts met and were at rest. When they went back into the ball-room the waltz had its charm, the music its melody, the flowers their fragrance, again, for Yiolet ; for a touch of the hand, a glance of the eyes, were sufficient eloquence between them, and his whis- pered Good night, as he led her to her carriage, was dearer to her than any flattery poet or prince had ever breathed. 222 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. Nay, she was so happy that she even smiled brightly on Eegalia, to her mother's joy — so happy, that when she reached the solitude of her chamber, she threw herself on her knees in her glittering gossamer ball-dress, with as un- checked and impetuous tears of rapture as if she had been Little Alma iu her cottage home, rather than the beauty of the Season, with Coronets at her feet. Lord Molyneux was a poor Irish peer ; Sabretasche was rich, of high family, a man whose word was law, whose pre-eminence in fashion and tone was acknowledged, whose admiration was honour, and at whose offer of marriage any one would feel proud. His social position was so good, his settlements would be so unexceptionable, why ! even our dear saint, the Bishop of Comet-Hock, though he shook his head over Sabretasche' s sins, and expressed his opinion with considerable certainty concerning the warmth of his ultimate reception — you know where — would have handed him over with the greatest eagerness either of his pretty, extravagant daughters, had the Colonel deigned to ask for one of them. Therefore, when Sabretasche called the morn- ing after, and made formal proposals for Violet, Jockey Jack, though considerably astonished ; as society had settled that Sabretasche would never marry, as decidedly as it had settled that he was Mephistopheles in fascinating guise ; was excessively pleased, assented readily, and had but one drawback on his mind — telling Ms wife — that lady having set her affections on things above, namely, little Regalia's balls and strawberry-leaves. "When he came out of Molyneux' s study that morning, he naturally took his way to where his young love sat alone. She sprang up as he entered, with so fond a smile and so bright a blush, that Sabretasche thought he had never seen anything of half so much beauty, sated as he had been with beauty all his days. " How lovely you are ! " he said involuntarily, some minutes after, as he sat beside her on the couch,' passing his hand over the soft perfumed hair that rested against his arm. " Oh ! do not tell me that. So many do ! " cried Violet. " I like you to see in me what no one else sees." " I see a great deal in you that no one else sees ; whole tableaux of heart and mind, that no one else can have a GRANVILLE BE VIGNE. 22$ glance at," said Sabretasche, smiling. " But T am proud of your beauty, my lovely Francesca, for all that ; though it may be a fact patent to all eyes." " Then I am glad I have it ! I would be a thousand times worthier of you if I could." " The difficulty ' to be worthy ' is not on your side," said he, with a shade of his old sadness. " I cannot bear to think that a life so pure as yours should be dedicated to a life so impure as mine. How spotless is your past, Violet — how dark is mine ! " " But how few have been my temptations — how many yours ! " she interrupted him, softly. " I shall not love you the less, through whatever fires you may have passed. A woman's office is to console, not to censure ; and if a man have trust in her enough to reveal her past sins or sorrows, her pleasure should be to teach him to forsake them and forget them." " God bless you ! If my care and tenderness can repay, your future shall reward you," he whispered. " What I have chiefly to tell you, is of wrongs done to me — wrongs that have sealed my lips to you till now — wrongs that have weighed on me for more than twenty long years, and made me the enigmatical and wayward man I probably have seemed. It is a long story, but one I would rather you should know before you fully give yourself to me." She looked up at him with a silent promise that in heart she ivas already given to him ; and leaning against him, Vio- let listened to the story — which every different scandal- monger had guessed at, and each separate coterie tried, and vainly tried, to probe — the story of the Colonel's early life. "You know," began Sabretasche, "that I was born and educated in Italy ; indulged in all things by my father, and accustomed to every luxury, I grew up with mucn of the soft- ness, voluptuousness, and passion of the Italian character, while at fifteen I knew life as many a man of five-and-twenty, brought up in seclusion and puritanism here, does not. But though I was in the Neapolitan service, and first in pleasure and levity among the young noblesse, I was still impres- sionable and romantic, with too much of the poetry and im- agination of the country in me to be blase, though I might be inconstant. I never recall the memory of my youth, up to three-and-twenty, without regret, it was so full of enjoy- 224 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. merit. In the suininer of my four-and-twentieth year I left Naples, during the hot season, to stay with a friend of mine, whose estates lay in Tuscany. You were in Tuscany last year. How fair the country is under the shadow of the Apennines, with its brown olive woods and its glorious sun- sets ! It is strange how the curse of its ingratitude to its noblest sons still clings to it, so favoured by nature as it is ! Delia Torre's place was some six or seven miles from Sienna. I had gone up to Florence previously with my father, whose oldest friend was consul there ; and travelling across Tus- cany where malaria was then rife, a low fever attacked me. I was travelling vetturino — there were no railways there in those days — and my servant, finding that I was much too ill to go on, stopped of his own accord at a village not very far from Cachiano. The single act of a servant, who would have died to serve either me or my father, grew into the curse of my life ! The name of the village was Montepulto. I dare say you passed through it ; it is beautifully placed, its few scattered houses, with their high-peaked roofs, standing among the great groves of chesnuts and the grey thickets of olives, and vineyards and woods of genista and myrtle lying in the glowing sunlight. There Anzoletto stopped of his own accord. I was too ill to dissent ; and as the car- riage pulled up before the single wretched little inn the place afforded, the priest of the village, who was passing, offered me the use of his own house. I had hardly power to accept or refuse, but Anzoletto seized on the offer eagerly ; and I was conveyed to the house, where for many days, I knew nothing of what passed, except that I suffered and dreamt. When I awoke from sleep one evening into con- sciousness, I saw the red sunset streaming through the purple vine around my lattice, Anzoletto asleep by my bed- side, and a woman of great beauty watching me : of great beauty, Violet, but not your beauty. It seemed to me then the face of an angel : afterwards, G-od forgive her ! I knew it as the face of a fiend. She was the niece, some said the daughter, of the priest of Montepulto. She was then five- and-twenty — when men love women their own age, or older, no good can come of it — and very beautiful : a Tuscan beauty, with blonde hair, and long, large, dark eyes ; a lovely woman, in fact, with a certain languid grace which charmed one like music. She had, too, a certain aristocracy of air. The priest GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 225 himself was of noble though decayed family ; a sleek, silent suave man, discontented with his humble position in Monte- pulto, but meek and lowly-miuded, according to his own telling, as a religieux could be. I awoke to see Sylvia da' Castrone by my bedside. I recovered to have her constantly beside me, to gaze on her dangerous charms in the equally dangerous lassitude of convalescence. There is a certain languid pleasure in recovering from illness when one is young that makes all things seem couleur de rose ; to me, with my impressionable senses and my southern tempera- ment, there was something in this seclusion, shared with one as beautiful as the scenes among which I found her, which appealed irresistibly at once to poetry and passion, then the two dominant elements in my character ; and to my desires, with which no ambitions greater than those of pleasure, and no pains harsher than those of love, had at that time mingled. Sufficient to say, I began to love this woman ; as I recovered my love grew, till sense, prudence, pride, all that might have restrained me, were submerged in it. I loved her tenderly, honourably, as ever man could love woman. I decked her in all the brilliant hues of a poet's fancy, I thought her the re- alization of all my sweetest ideals, I believed I loved for all eternity ! I never stopped to learn her nature, her charac- ter, her thoughts ; I never paused to learn if she in any way accorded to all my requirements and ideas ; I loved her — I married her ! Heavens, what that madness has cost me ! " The memory came over him with a deadly shudder ; at its recollection the fell shade it had so long cast on him returned again, and he pressed Yiolet convulsively to his heart, as if with her warm, young love to crush out the burden of that cold and cruel dead one ; the intelligence of his marriage cast a death-like chill over her, but even in its pain her first im- pulse was to console him. She lifted her head and kissed his cheek, the first caress she had ever oifered him, as if to show more tenderly than words could give them, her sympathy and her affection. As silently he thanked her ; then with an effort he resumed his story. " We were married — by the Priest Castrone, and for a few weeks I believed my fairest dreams were realised. Yio- let, do not let my story pain you. All men have many early loves before they reach that fuller and stronger one which is the crown of their existence. I was happy, then, when I Q 226 GRANVILLE DE VIGXE. was a boy, and when you were not born, my darling ! — but you will give me greater happiness, as passionate, and more perfect. We were married; and for a week or two the sur- render of my liberty seemed trifling pay indeed for the rap- ture it had brought me. The first shock back to actual life was a letter from my father. I dared not tell him of my hasty step ; not from any anger that I should have met, but from the grief it would have caused him, for the only thing he had ever interdicted to me was an early or an un- equal marriage. Fortunately, the letter was only to ask me to go to England on some business for him. I went, of course, taking Sylvia with me ; and while in London, at her suggestion (it did not occur to me, or I should have made it), we had the ceremony again performed in a Protestant church. She said it pleased her to be united to me by the religion of my country as well as of her own. I loved her, and believed her, and was only too happy to make still faster, if I could, the fetters which bound me to a woman I idolised ! We were a month or two in England ; then we returned, and I bought her a little villa just outside Naples, where every spare moment that I had formerly given to dissipation or amusement, or idle dreaming by the sea-shore, I now gave to my wife. Oh, my love ! my love ! that any should have borne that title before you ! Gradually now dawned on me the truth which she had carefully concealed during our earlier intercourse ; that, graceful, gentle as she was in seeming, her temper was the temper of a fiend, her passions such as would have disgraced the vilest woman in a street brawl ! Eancy what it was to me, with my taste, over-refined, accustomed at home to the gentlest tones and softest voices, abhorring what was harsh, vulgar, or unharmonious ; to hear the woman I worshipped meet me, if I was a moment later than she expected, or the presents I brought her a trifle less costly than she had anticipated — meet me with a torrent of reproaches and invectives, her beautiful features distorted with fury, her soft eyes lurid with flame, her coral lips quiver- ing with deadly venom, railing alike at her dogs, her servants, and her husband ! — a fury ! — a she-devil ! Good Heavens ! what fiercer torment can there be for man than to be linked for life with a vixen, a virago ? None can tell how it wears all the beauty of his life away : how surely, like the dropping of water on a stone, it eats away his peace ; how it lowers GRANVILLE DE VIGNE 227 him, how it degrades him in his own eyes, how it drags him down to her own level, until it is a miracle if it do not rouse in him her own coarse and humiliating passions ! Looking back on those daily scenes of disgrace and misery, which grew, as week and month rolled by, each time worse and worse, as my words ceased to have the slightest weight, I wonder how I endured them as I did ; yet what is more incredible still, I yet loved her despite the hideous deformity of her fiendish nature, for a virago is a fiend, and of the deadliest sort. Still, though my life grew a very agony to me, and the weight of my secret from my father unbearable — I dared not tell him, for he was in such delicate health that the shock might have been fatal — I was never neglectful of her. Strange as it seems, little as the world would believe it, I was most con- stant to, and patient with her. I have done little good in my life, God knows, but in my duty as a husband to her, boy as I was, I may truly say I never failed. Some twelve months after our marriage she gave birth to a daughter. I was very sorry. I am not domestic — never shall be — and a child was the last inconvenience and annoyance I should have wished added to the menage. I hoped, however, that it might soften her temper. It did not ; and my life became literally a curse. " At this time Sylvia's brother came to Naples, a showy, handsome, vulgar young man, with none of her exterior delicacy, who had been my detestation in Montepulto. Naturally he came to his sister's house, though he had no liking for me, for our antipathy was mutual ; but he quar- tered himself on his sister, for he was poor, and had nothing to do. I generally, when I went to her after Castrone's arrival, found him and some of his friends — rollicking, do- nothing, mauvais snjets, like himself — smoking and drinking there ; while Sylvia, decked with her old smiles, and adorned in the rich dress it had been my delight to bestow on her, lay on her couch, flirting her fan or touching her guitar ; her lovely voice had been one of her greatest charms for me ; but, once married, she never let me hear it. The men were odious to me, accustomed as I was to the best society of the old Italian noblesse, but I was so sick and heart-weary of the constant contentions which awaited me in my wife's home, that I was glad of the presence of other persons to prevent a scene of passion and abuse. The chief visitor at Sylvia's house was a friend of her brother's — an artist of Q 2 228 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. the name of Lani — a young fellow, exceedingly handsome, in a coarse, full-coloured style, though utterly detestable to me, with his loud voice, his vulgar foppism, and his would- be wit. He pleased Sylvia, however; a fact to which I never attached any importance, for I was not at all of a suspicious or sceptical nature then, and I am never one of those who think that a woman must necessarily be faithless to her husband because she likes the society of another man ; on the contrary, a husband's hold on her affection must be very slight, if, to keep it, he must subject her to a seclusion almost conventicnal. Fidelity is no fidelity unless it has opportunity to swerve if it chose. So, to be jealous of Lani never occurred to me. I could not have stooped to it, had it even done so, for I held my own honour infinitely too high to dream that another could sully it. My trust and my security were rudely destroyed ! Six months more went on. Sylvia clamoured ceaselessly for the acknowledg- ment of our marriage ; in vain I pleaded to her that my father was on his death-bed, that the physicians told me that the slightest mental shock would end his existence, that as soon as ever I had lost him, which must be at farthest at a few months' time, I would acknowledge her as my wife, and take her to Eugland, where large property had just been left me. Such a plea would, you would think, have been enough for any woman's heart. It availed nothing with her; she made it the occasion for such awful scenes of exe- cration and passion as I pray Heaven I may never see in woman or man again. I refused to endanger my father's life to please her caprices. The result was one so degrading to her, so full of shame and misery to me, that for several days I could not bring myself to enter her presence again. My love was gone, trampled down under her coarse and cruel invectives. In the place of my lovely and idolised wife I found a fiend : and I repented too late the irrevocable folly of an Early Marriage, the curse of so many men. "When at last I went to what should have been my home, and teas my hell, the windows of some of the rooms stood open ; I walked up the gardens and through those windows into the rooms unannounced, as a man in his own house thinks he is at liberty to do. How one remembers trifles on such days of anguish as that was to me ! I remember the very play of the sunshine on the ilex-leaves, I remember GRANVILLE DE V1GNE. 229 how I brushed the boughs of the magnolias out of my'path as I went up the verandah steps ! Unseen myself, I saw Lani and my wife : his arms were round her, her head upon his breast, and I caught words which, though insufficieut for law, told me of her infidelity. God help me ; what I suffered! Young, unsuspicious, acutely sensitive, painfully alive to the slightest stain upon my honour, to be displaced by this vulgar, low-bred rival. Great Heavens ! how bitter was my shame." Violet's bauds clenched on his in the horror ot his wrongs : " Oh, my dearest, my dearest ! Would to Heaven I could avenge you ! " " Death has avenged me, my darling ! Those few words which fell on my ear, in the first paralysed moment of the treachery which had availed itself of my unsuspecting hos- pitality to rob me of my honour, were sufficient for me. Even then I had memory enough to keep myself from stooping to the degradation of a spy, and from lowering myself before the man who had betrayed me. I went farther into the room, and they saw me. Lani had the grace to look guilty and ashamed ; for only the day before he had asked me to lend him money, and I had complied. I remember beiug perfectly calm and self-possessed ; one often is so in hours of the greatest suffering or excitement. I motioned him to the door ; and he slunk like a hound afraid of a double thonging. He went out, and I was left alone — with my wife. Do you wonder that I have loathed and abhorred that title, holding it as a synonym with al that is base, and treacherous, and shameful — a curse from which there is no escape — a clog, rather than take which into his life a man had better forego all love, all pleasure, all passion — a mess of porridge with poison in the cup, for which he must give up all the priceless birthright of liberty and peace, never enjoyed and never valued till they are lost for ever, past recall ? " Do you think there was any shame, remorse, repent- ance, on her face, any regret for the abuse of all my con- fidence, any consciousness of the fidelity thus repaid, of the trust thus returned? ]N~o; in her face there was only a devilish laugh. She met me with a sneer and a scoff; she had the brazen falseness to deny her infidelity, for she knew 230 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. that admission would divorce her and give me freedom ; aud when I taxed her with it, she only answered with invectives, with violence, insult, and opprobrium. It seemed as if a demon entered into her when she became possessed with that fearful and fiend-like passion. I will not sully your ears with all the disgraceful details of the scene where a woman gave reins to her fell passions, and forgot sex, truth, all things, even common decency of language or of conduct : suffice it, it ended in worse violence still. As I rose, to leave her for ever, and end the last of these horrible inter- views, which destroyed all my self-respect, and withered all my youth, she sprang upon me like a tigress, and struck at my breast with a stiletto, which lay on a table near, among other things of curious workmanship. Strong as I was at that time, I could scarcely master her — a furious woman is more savage in her wrath than any beast of prey ; she clung to me, yelling hideous words, and striking blindly at me' with her dagger. Fortunately for me, the stiletto was old and blunt, and could not penetrate through the cloth of my coat. By sheer force I wrenched myself from her grasp, unclenched her fingers from the handle of the dagger, and left her prostrate, from the violence of her own passions, her beautiful hair unloosened in the struggle, her hands cut and torn in her own wild fencing with the stiletto, her eyes glaring with the ferocity of a tigress, her lips covered with foam. From that hour I never saw her face. — Last week I read the tidings of her death. 1 ' Sabretasche paused. He had not recalled the memory of his marriage without bitter pain ; never till now had his lips breathed one word of his story to a living creature, and he could not lift the veil from the secret buried for twenty years without the murderous air from the tomb poisoning the free, pure atmosphere which he now breathed. All the colour fled from Violet's lips and cheeks ; she burst into convulsive sobs, and trembling painfully, shrank closer into his arms, as if the dead wife could come and claim him from her. Gently and tenderly he caressed and calmed her. " My precious one, I would not have told you my story if I had known how it would pain you. I did not like you to be in ignorance of my previous marriage, and I could not tell vou the fact, without tellinsr vou also the history of the- GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 231- wretched woman who held from me the title you have promised me to bear. But do not let it weigh on you. Great as my wrongs were I can forgive them now. She can harm me no longer ; and you will teach me in the sun- shine of your presence to forget the deadly shadow of her past. I will tell you no more to-day, you look so pale. "What will your mother say to me for sending away your brilliant bloom ? She likes me little enough already ! Do you wish me to go on ? Then promise me to give me my old gay smiles ; I should be sad, indeed, for my early fate to- cast the slightest shade on your shadowless life ! Well, I left her as I said. It is useless to dwell on the anguish, the misery, the shame which had crowded into my young heart. To have my name stained, my wife stolen from me by that low-bred cur, and to know that to this woman I was chained, till one or other of us should be lain in the grave ! — it was enough to drive a man of four-and-twenty to any reckless- ness or any crime. With that shame and horror upon me, I had to watch over the dying hours of my father. He died shortly afterwards in my arms, peacefully, as he had spent his life. I saw the grave close over one from whom I had never had an angry word or a harsh glance, and reckless and heart-broken I came to England. I took Counsel's advice about my marriage ; they told me it was perfectly legal and valid, and that the evidence, however morally or rationally clear, was not strong enough to dissolve the un- holy ties which bound me to one whom in my heart I knew a virago, a liar, an adulteress, who would, if she could, have added murder to her list of crimes. Of her I never had heard a word. I left her, at once and for ever, to her lovers and her passions." " Did the child die ? " asked Yiolet. " I wish you had had no child, Yivian. I am jealous of everything that has ever been yours ! . . . Pray God that I may live and make atonement to you! " "My darling!" he murmured fondly. " Tou need be jealous of nothing in my past ; none have been to me what you are and will be. I never remembered the child. She was nothing to me ; how could I even know that she was mine ? But some years afterwards, they told me she had died in infancy. So best with such a mother ! "What could she but be now ? I came to England, entered the array, 232 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. and began the life I have led ever since, plunging into dissipation, to still the fatal memories that stirred within me ; revenging myself on that sex whom I had before trusted and worshipped ; gaining for myself the reputation, to which your mother and the rest of the world still hold, of an unscrupulous profligate ; none guessing how my heart ached while my lips laughed; how, sceptical by force, I yet longed to believe ; and how the heart of my boyhood craved to love and be loved. Three years after my arrival here, the sight of Castrone recalled to me the past in all its hideous horror. What errand think you he, shameless as his sister, came upon me ? Xone less than to extort money from me by the threat, in Sylvia's name, that she would come over to England and proclaim herself my wife. I was weak to yield his demand to him, and not to have the servants show him at once out of the house; but money was plentiful, his presence was loathsome; the idea of seeing that woman, of being forced to endure her presence, of having the mistress of young Lani known in England as my wife, was so horrible, that, without thinking, I snatched at the only means of security. I paid him what he asked — exhorbitant of course — and hung that other mill-stone round my neck for life ! Erom that time, to within the last twelvemonth, her brother has come to me, whenever his or her exchequer failed ; she was not above living on the husband she had wronged ! Eor twenty years I kept my secret ; all I had to remind me of my fatal tie was the annual visit of Castrone. Can any one wonder that when I met you I forgot oftentimes my own fetters, and, what was worse, your danger ? In my many loves I have only, I confess, sought pleasure and revenged myself on Sylvia's sex — how could I think well or mercifully of women ? But you roused in me something infinitely deeper, and more render. In you the soft idyls of my lost dreams lived again; with you the grace and glory of my lost youth returned. Before, as a man of the world — bitterly as I felt the secret disgrace of it — I experienced no inconvenience from the tie. I wooed many lightly, won them easily, forsook them recklessly. Xone of the three could I do with you. They only charmed my senses ; you won into my heart ; they had amused me, you grew dear to me — a Tide difference, Violet, in a woman's influence upon a man. GRAXVILLE DE VIGNE. 233 At first, I confess I flirted carelessly with you. But when the full beauties of your heart and mind unfolded them- selves to me for the first time, I remembered mercy, even while I learnt that for the last time I loved ! How great were my sufferings I need not tell you. Unable to bear the misery of constant intercourse with you, conscious in myself that if long under the temptation I should give way under it, and say words for which, when you knew all, you might learn to hate me — " " Oh, never, never !" whispered Violet, fondly. " I should always love you, come what might." Sabretasche passed his hand fondly over her brow : " I knew well that you would. But it was the very con- sciousness that, if you loved, you would love very differently to the frivolous and inconstant women of our set, which roused me into mercy to you. I left for the south of Prance, to give myself time for reflection, or — vain hope ! — to forget you, as I had forgotten many ; to give you time to find, if it so chanced, some one who, more worthy of your attachment, would reward it with the legitimate happiness which the world smiles upon. In a week from leaving London I was in the Pyrenees, intending to stay there for some time for the sake of the sea-bathing; but the first evening I was at Biarritz, I took up over my chocolate an Italian newspaper — how it chanced to come there I know not — it was the * Xazionale ' of Naples. Among the death's I read that of my wife ! Grreat Heaven ! that a husband's first thoughts should be a thanksgiving for the death of the woman he once fondly loved, over whose sleep he once watched, and in whom he once reposed his name, his trust, his honour ! I read it over and over again, the letters danced and swam before my eyes ; I, whom the world says nothing can disturb or ruffle, shook in every nerve, as I leaned out into the evening air, dizzy and delirious with the rush of past memories, and future hopes, that surged over my brain ! With that one fateful line I was free ! No prisoner ever welcomed liberty with such rapturous ecstasy as I. The blight was off my life, the curse was taken from my soul, my heart beat free again as it had never done during the twenty long years that the bitter shame and misery of my marriage had weighed upon me. Love and youth and joy were mine again. A new existence, fresher and fairer, had 234 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. come back to me. My cruel enemy, who bad given my honour to a cur, and who had yet stooped to live on the money she robbed from the boy-husband she had wronged, was dead, and I at last was free — free to offer to you the fondest love man ever offered woman — free to receive at your hands the golden gifts, robbed from me for so long. Violet, — I know that I shall not ask for them in vain ? " She lifted her face to his with broken words, in her eyes gleaming unshed tears ; and his lips lingered upon hers, the new youth and joy he coveted came back to Sabretasche, never, he fondly thought, to leave him again while both their lives should last. CHAPTEE XX. ONE OF THE SUMMER DATS BEEOEE THE STOEM. The Derby fell late that year. The day was a brilliant, sunshiny one, as it ought to be, for it is the sole day in our existence when we are excited, and do not, as usual, think it necessary to be bored to death to save the golden morning sunbeams, and the rose-hued reflex of the China roses upon her, Alma was leaning as we alighted.. Like her home, she chanced to look her prettiest and most picturesque that day; a picture shrined in the dark ches- nut-boughs and the glowing flowers — a picture which we could see, though she could not see us. " Is that Miss Tressillian ? How lovety she is ! " cried Violet, enthusiastically. Sabretasche, thinking of her alone, smiled at her ecstasies. The Viscountess raised her glass with supercilious and hyper- critic curiosity. Castleton did the same, with the look in his eyes that he had given the night before to the very superior GRANVILLE DE VIGl 243 ankles of a new danseuse. De Vigne caught the look — by George ! how his eyes flashed — and he led the way into the house, sorely wrathful with hiin. Alma's innate high breed- ing never showed itself more than now when she received her unexpected influx of visitors. The girl had seen no societ}^ had never been " finished," nor taught to " give a re- ception;" yet her inborn self-possession and tact never deserted her, and if she had been brought up all her days in the salons of the Tuileries or St. James, it would have been impossible to show more calm and winning grace than she did at this sudden inroad on the conventual solitude of her studio. Violet and she fraternised immediately ; it was no visit from a fashionable beauty to a friendless artist, for Vio- let was infinitely too thorough bred not to recognise the intuitive aristocracy which in the little Tressillian was thoroughly stamped in blood and feature, manner and mind, and would have survived all adventitious circumstances or surroundings. There was, besides, a certain resemblance, which we had often noticed in their natures, their vivacity, and their perfect freedom from all affectations. The Viscountess sat down on a low chair in a state of super- cilious apathy. She cared nothing for pictures. The parrot's talk, which was certainly very voluble, made her head ache, and Vane Castleton was infinitely too full of admiration of Alma to please her ladyship. De Vigne, when he had done the introductory part of the action, played with Sylvio, only looking up when Alma addressed him, and then answering her more distantly and briefly than his wont. He could have shot Castleton with great pleasure for the free glance of his bold light eyes, and such a murderous frame of mind rather spoils a man for society, however great he may generally be as a conversationalist ! TVe, however, managed to keep up the ball of talk very gaily, even without him. It was chiefly, of course, upon art — turning on Alma's pictures, which drew warm praises from Violet and Castleton, and, what was much more, from that most fastidious critic and connoisseur, the Colonel. We were in no hurry to leave. Castleton evidently thought the chevelure doree charming; women were all of one class to him — all to be bought ! some with higher prices and some with lower, and he drew no distinction between them, except that some were blondes and some bruues. Violet liked leaning r 2 244 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. against the old oak window-seat, scenting the roses, and listening to Sabretasche's classic and charming disquisitions upon painting, and Alma herself was in her element with highly-bred and highly-educated people. AVe were in no hurry to go : but Lady Molyneux was, and was much too bored to stay there long. " You will come and see me ? " said her daughter, holding out her hand to Alma. " Oh, yes, you must. Mamma, is not Thursday our next 'At Home? ' Miss Tressillian would like to meet some of our celebrities, I am sure ; and they would like to see her, for every one has admired her ' Louis Dix-sept.' Have you any engagement ? " Of course Alma had none. She gave a glance at De Vigne, to see if he wished her to go, but as he was absorbed in teaching Sylvio to sit on his hind legs and hold a riding- whip on his nose, she found no responsive glance, and had to ac- cept it without consulting him. Violet taking acceptance for granted, and her mamma, who did not care to contradict her before Sabretasche, joining languidly in the invitation, the little Tressillian stood booked for the Thursday soiree in Lowndes-square. Violet bade her good day, with that suave warmth which fashionable life could never ice out of her, and the Vis- countess swept out of the room, and down the garden, in no very amiable frame of mind. She rather affected patronising artists of all kinds, and had brought out several proteges, though she unhappily dropped them as soon as their novelty had worn off; but to patronise a girl's genius, whose face Vane Castleton admired, was a very different matter, for my lady was just now as much in love as she had ever been in love with anything, except herself, and there is no passion more exigeant and tenacious than the fancy of a woman, passee herself, for a young and handsome man ! De Vigne was a little behiud the rest as he left the room, and Alma called him back, her face full of the delight that Violet's in- vitation had given her. " Oh, Sir Folko ! I am so happy. "Was is not kind of Miss Molyneux P " " Very kind indeed." " Don't you like me to go ? " " I ? What have I to do with it ? On the contrary, I think you will enjoy yourself very much." GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 245 u You will be there, of course ? " " I don't know. Perhaps." " Oh, you will," cried Alma, plaintively. " You would not spoil all my pleasure, surely ? But why have you spoken so little to me this morning? " " You had plenty of others to talk to you," said De Yigne, coldly. ' : At least, you have seemed very much amused." " Sir Folko, that is very cruel," cried Alma, vehemently. " You know as well as I can tell you, that if you are not kind to me, all the world can give me no pleasure." "Nonsense! G-ood-bye, petite," said de Yigne, hastily, but kindly, for his momentary irritation had passed, as he swuug through the garden and threw himself across his horse. " What a little darling she is, Yivian ! " said Yiolet, as they cantered along the road. " Don't you think so ? " Sabretasche laughed : " Eeally, I did not notice her much. There is but one * darling ' for me now." " Deuced nice little thing, that ! " said Castleton to me ; '•' uncommonly pretty feet she has ; I caught sight of one of them. I suppose she's De Yigne's game, bagged already probably, else, on my honour, I shouldn't mind dethroning La Yaldare, and promoting her. French women have such deuced extravagant ideas." I believe if De Yigne had heard him he would have knocked Castleton straight off his horse ! His cool way of disposing of Alma irritated even me a little, and I told him, a trifle sharply, that I thought he had better call on his " honour " to remember that Miss Tressillian had birth and education, and that she was hardly to be classed with the Anonyma of our acquaintance. To which Castleton responded with a shrug of his shoulders and a twist of his whiskers : " Bless your soul, my dear fellow, women are all alike ! Never knew either you or De Yigne scrupulous before," and rode on with the Yiscountess, asking me, with a sneer, if I was the Major's gamekeeper ? " De Yigne was very quick to act, but he was unwilling to analyse. It always fidgeted him to reason on, to dissect, and to investigate his own feelings ; he was not cold enough 246 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. to sit on a court-martial ou bis own heart, to cut it up and put it in a microscope, like Gl-osse over a trog or a dianthis, or to imitate De Quincey's habit of speculating on his own emotions. He was utterly incapable of laying his own feelings before him, as an anatomist lays a human skeleton, counting the bones, and muscles, and points of ossification, it is true, but missing the flesh, the colouring, the quick flow of blood, the warm moving life which gave to that bare skeleton all its glow and beauty. De Vigne acted, and did not stop to ask himself why he did so nine times out of ten ; therefore he never inquired, or thought of inquiring, why he had experienced such unnecessary and unreasonable anger at Castleton and Alma, but only felt remorsefully that he had lacked kindness in not sympathising with the poor child in her very natural delight at her invitation to Lowndes-square. "Whenever he thought; he had been un- kind, if it were to a dog, he was not easy till he had made reparation ; and not stopping to remember that unkindness from him might be the greater kindness in the end, he sent her down on Thursday morning the best bouquet the pick of Covent Grarden could give him, clasped round with a parwre of jewels, as delicate in workmanship as rare in value, with a line, (i "Wear them to-night in memory of your grandfather's friendship for ' Sir Polko.' " De Vigne's virtues led him as often into temptation as other men's vices. "When he sent^those flowers and pearls to the Little Tressillian, I am certain he had no deeper motive, no other thought, than to make reparation for his unkindness, and to give her as delicately as he could orna- ments he knew that she must need. With him no error was foreplanned and premeditated. He might have slain you in a passion, perhaps, but he could never have stilet- toed you in cold blood. There was not a taint of malice or design, not a trace of the " serpent nature " in his character. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 247 CHAPTER XXI. nOW THE OLDEN DELIRIUM AWOKE LIKE A GIANT ERO.M HIS SLUMBERS. The ]Molyneux rooms in Lowndes Square were full, not ■crowded ; the Viscountess knew too well the art of society to cram her apartments, as is the present habitude, till lords and ladies jostle and crush one another like so many Johns and Marys crowding before a fair — the rooms were full, and " brilliantly attended," as the morning papers had it next day, for though they were of the fourth order of nobility, the Molyneux had as exclusive a set as any in town, and knew " everybody." " Everybody ! " Compre- hensive yet exclusive phrase ! meaning, in their lips, just "the creme de la creme, and nothing whatever below it; meaning, in a Warden's, all his Chapter ; in a schoolgirl's, all her school-fellows ; in a leg's, all the " ossy-men ; " in an author's, those who read him ; in a painter's, those who praise him ; in a rector's, those who testimonialize and saint him ! In addition to the haute volee of fashion there was the haute volee of intellect at the Viscountess's Reception, for Lady Molyneux dearly loved to have a lion (though whether a writer who honours the nations, or an Eastern prince in native ugliness and jewellery, was perhaps imma- terial to her !) ; and many of our best authors and artists were not only acquaintances of hers, but intimate friends of Sabretasche's, who at any time threw over the most aristocratic crush for the simplest intellectual reunion, pre- ferring, as he used to say, the Grod-given cordon of Brain to the ribbons of Bath or Grarter. I went there early, leaving a dinner-party in Eaton Square sooner than perhaps I should have done, from a trifle of curiosity I felt to see how the " Little Tressillian" comported herself in her new sphere ; and I confess I did not expect to see her quite so thoroughly at home, and quite so much of a star in her own w r ay as I found her to be. I have told you she had nothing of Violet's regular and perfect beauty — regular as a classic statue, perfect as an exquisitely-tinted picture — yet, someway or other, Alma told as well in her way as the lovely Irish belle in hers 5 248 GRANVILLE DE VIGNB. told even better than the Lady Ela Ashburnington, our modern Medici Venus — but who, alas ! like the Venus, never opeDS those perfectly-chiselled lips ; or the exquisite Mrs. Tite Delafield, — whose form would rival Canova's Pauline, if it weren't made by her couturier e . or even Madame la Duchesse de la Vieillecour, 'now that — ah me I — the sweet rose bloom is due to Palais Royal shops, and the once innocent lips only breathe coquetries studied be- forehand, while her maid brushes out her long hair, and G-wen — pshaw ! Madame la Duchesse — glances alternately from Octave Peuillet's or Feydeau's last novel to her Dres- den-framed mirror. Yes, Alma won upon all ; whether it was her freshness,, whether it was her natural abandon, whether it was her un- usual talent, wit, and gay self-possession (for if there is a being on earth whom I hate, 'tis Byron's " bread-and-but- ter miss "), I must leave undetermined. Probably, it was that nameless something which one would think Mephis- toplieles himself had given some women, so surely and so unreasoningly do men go down before it, whether they will or no. The women sneered at her, and smiled supercili- ously, but that was of course ! See two pretty women look at each other — there is defiance in the mutual regard, and each thinks in her own heart, " Je vats me f rotter contre Wellington I " One might have imagined that those high- bred beauties, with their style and their Paris dress, their acknowledged beauty, and their assured conquests, could well have spared Alma a few of the leaves out of their weighty bay wreaths. Yet I believe in my soul they grudged her even the stalks, and absolutely condescended to honour her with a sneer (surest sign of feminine envy) when they saw not only a leaf or two, but a good many garlands of rose and myrtle going to her in the Olympic game of " Shining/' An E. A. complimented her on her talent, a Cabinet minister smiled at her repartee, a great litterateur ex- changed mots with her, Curly fell more deeply in love with her than ever, Castleton was rapturous about her feet, very biases men about town went the length of exciting themselves to ask her to dance, and Attaches and G-uards- men warmed into stronger admiration than their customary nil admirari-ism usually permitted about her. Yet she GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 2+9. bent forward to me as I approached her with a very eager whisper : " Oh, Captain Chevasney ! isn't Major De Yigne coming ? " I really couldn't tell her, as I had not seen him all day, save for a few minutes in Pall Mall ; and the disappoint- ment on her face was amusing. But a minute afterwards her eyes flashed, the colour deepened in her cheeks. " There he is ! " she said, with an under-breath of delight. And her attention to Curly and Castleton, and the other men, began to wander considerably. There he was, leaning against the doorway, looking bored, I was going to say, but that was rather too affected a thing, and not earnest nor ardent enough for any feeling of De Vigne's ; it was rather the look of a man too impatient and too spirited for the quiet trivialities around him, who would prefer " fierce love and faithless war " to drawing-room flirtations and polite character-damning ; the look of a horse who wants to be scenting powder and leading a charge, and is ridden quietly along smooth downs where nothing is stirring, with a curb that he does not relish. Ostensibly, he was chatting with a member of the Lower House ; abso- lutely, he was watching Alma with that look in his eyes r caused, I think, by a certain peculiarity of dropping the lashes over them when he was angry, which made me fancy he was not overpleased to see the men crowding round the little lady. " He won't come and speak to me. Do go and ask him to come," whispered Alma, confidentially, to me. I laughed — he had not been more than three minutes in the room ! — and obeyed her behest. " Tour little friend wants you to go and talk to her, De Yigne." He glanced towards her. ' ; She is quite as well without any attention from me, considering the reports that have already risen concerning us, and she seems admirably amused as it is." " Holloa ! are we jealous ? '■ II Jealous ! Of what pray ! " asked my lord, with supreme scorn. And moving across the room at once in Alma's direction (without thinking of it, I had suggested the very thing to 250 GRANVILLE BE VIGNE. send him to her, in sheer defiance), he joined the group gathered round the little Tressillian, whose radiant smile at his approach made Castleton sneer and poor Curly swear sotto voce under his moustaches. De Vigne, however, did not say much to her ; he shook hands with her, said one or two things, and then talking with Tom Severn (whom Alma had attracted to her side) about the ties shot off at Hornsey "Wood that morning, left the little lady so much to the other men, that though he was within a yard of her, she thought she preferred him in her studio at St. Crucis than in the crowded salons of that " set " of his in which she had wished to meet him. De Vigne talked to those about him, but he meanwhile watched her dancing, lightly and gracefully as a Spanish girl or an Eastern bayadere ; watched her, the fact dawn- ing on him, with a certain warning thrill, that she was not, after all, a little thing to laugh at, and play with, and pet innocently, as he did his spaniel, but a woman, as dangerous to men as she was attractive to them, who could no more be trifled with without the trifling falling back again upon the trifler, than absinthe can be drunk like water, or opium eaten long without delirium. Certain jealousies surged up in his heart, certain embers that had slumbered long began to quicken into flame ; the blood that he had tried to chill into ice-water rushed through his veins with something of its natural rapidity and fire. He had pooh-poohed Sabretasche's earnest and my half- laughing counsels ; he now heeded as little what ought to have roused him much more, the throbs of his own heart, and the passions stirring into life within him. She was a child ; his own honour was guard sufficient against love growing up between them. So he would have said if he had ever reasoned on it. But he was not cold enough for such self-examination, and even now, though jealousy was waking up in him, he was wilfully blind to it, and to the irritation, which the sight of the other men crowding round, and claiming, her excited in him. ''Don't you mean to dance with me ? " whispered Alma, piteously, as he passed her after the waltz was over. "I seldom dance," he answered. It was the truth ; waltzing used to be a passion with him, but since the Trefusis had waltzed his reason away, the dance had brought disagreeable associations with it. GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. 251 " But you must waltz with me ! " " Hush ! All the room will hear you," said De Vigne, smiling in spite of himself. " Let me look at your list, then ! " " Oh, I would not make any engagements. I might have been engaged ten deep, but I kept them all free for you." "May I have the honour of the next waltz with you, then, Miss Tressillian? " asked De Vigne, in a louder tone, for the benefit of the people around. As he put his arm round her, and whirled her into the •circle, he remembered, with a shudder at the memory, that the last woman he had waltzed with was the Trefusis. In India wilder sports and more exciting amusements had filled his time, and since he had been in England he had chiefly frequented men's society. " Tou had my note, Sir Eolko ? " was Alma's first ques- tion. " I could never thank you for your beautiful gifts, I could never tell you what happiness they gave me." " Tou have said far more than enough, petite," said De Vigne, hastily. " No," persisted Alma, " I could never say enough to thank you for all your lavish kindness to me." "Nonsense," laughed De Vigne. "I have given jewels to many other women, Alma, but none of them thought they had any need to feel any gratitude to me. The grati- tude they thought was due to them for having allowed me to offer them the gift." He spoke with something of a sneer, from the memory of how — to him, at least — women high and low, had ever been cheap, and worthless as most cheap things are ; and the words cast a chill over his listener. For the first time the serpent entered into Alma's Eden — entered, as in Milton's apologue, with the first dawning knowledge of Passion. Unshed tears sprang into her eyes, making them flash and gleam as brilliantly as the gems he had given her. "If you did not give them from kindness," she said, passionately, " take them back. My happiness in them is gone." " Silly child ! " said De Vigne, half smiling at her vehe- ment tones. " Should I have given them to you if I had aiot cared to do so ? On the contrary, I am* always glad 2^2 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. to give you any pleasures if I can. But do you suppose,. Alma, that I have gone all my life without giving presents to any one till I gave them to you ? " Alma laughed, but she looked, half vexed, up in his face even still : " No, I do not, Sir Eolko ; but you should not give them to me as you gave them to other women, any more than you should class me with other women. You have told me you did not ? " " My dear Alma, I cannot puzzle out all your wonderful distinctions and definitions," interrupted De Yigne, hastily. "Have you enjoyed the evening as much as you antici- pated ? '"' " Oh, it is delightful ! " cried the little lady, with that rapid alternation from sorrow to mirth due to her extreme susceptibility to external impressions. De Yigne raised his eyebrows, and interrupted her again, somewhat unwarrantably : "You are a finished coquette, Alma," Her blue eyes opened wide under their black lashes. "SirFolko*! I?" " Yes, you. I am not finding fault with you for it. All women are who can be. I only wonder where, in your seclusion, you have learned all those pretty wiles and ways that women, versed in society from their childhood, fail to acquire. Who has taught you all those dangerous tricks, from whom have you imitated your skill in captivating Curly and Castleton and Severn, and all those other men, however different their styles or tastes ? You are an accom- plished flirt, petite, and I congratulate you on your pro- ficiency." He spoke with most unnecessary bitterness, much more than he was conscious of, and certainly much more than he ought to have used, for the little Tressillian was just as- much of a coquette — if you like to call it so — and no more of one than De Yigne in reality liked ; for he measured women by their power of fascination. But now the devil of jealousy had entered into him. Her eyes flashed, her lips quivered a little ; Alma was not a woman to sit down tranquilly under injustice ; her nature was too passionate not to be indignant under accusa- tion, though it was at the same time much too tender not to forgive it as rapidly where she loved the offender. GRANVILLE DE V1GNE. 253 " For shame, Sir Folko ! ' Coquette ! ' I have beard you use that word to women you despise. Coquette, I have heard you say, means one to whom all men are equal. I thank you greatly for your kind opinion of me ! " " Hush, hush ! Heaven knows that was far from my thoughts ! Forgive me, I know you have no artifice or affec- tation, and I should never attribute them to you. Let nothing I say vex you. If you knew all, you would not wonder that I am sceptical and suspicious, and sometimes perhaps unjust." He spoke kindly, gently, almost fondly. He was angry with himself for having spoiled her unclouded pleasure. She looked up in his face with a saddened, reproachful tenderness, which had never been in her eyes before, dif- ferent to their impetuous vexation, different still to their frank, affectionate confidence : " Yes ; but trust me at least, if you doubt all the world ? " " I do ! " He spoke in a low whisper, her heart throbbing against his, her breath upon his cheek, his hand closing tight upon hers in the caress of the waltz ; and with the voluptuous swell of the music, the tender and passionate light of the eyes that were lifted to his, for the first time there awoke, and trembled in them both, the dawn of that passion which the one had never before known, which to the other had been so fierce and fatal a curse. At that moment the music ceased : De Yigne gave her his arm in silence, and soon after seated himself by her on one of the couches, while other men came round her, taking ices and talking the usual ball-room chit-chat. It was strange how much that single evening did for Alma ; she was admired, courted, followed ; she learnt her own power, she received the myrtle crown due to her own attractions, to the grace and talent of Nature she seemed to acquire the grace and talent of Society, and to the charming and winning ways of her girlhood she added the witchery, wit, and fascination of a woman of the world. In that one night she grew tenfold more attractive than before ; she was like a bird, who never sings so well till he has tried his wings. Not even Lady Ela, or Madame la Duchesse, had more men anxious for the pleasure of taking them to their 254 GRANVILLE DE VIGNE. carriages than the 3 r oimg debutante. Curly's soft words pleaded for the distinction ; Tom Severn would ihin have had it ; Castleton tried hard to give her his arm ; but De Vigne kept them all off, and took her down with that tran- quil appropriativeness which he thought his intimacy with her would warrant. He would not have been best pleased if he had heard the laugh and the remarks that followed them, from the men that were on the staircase watching the women leave ! The gas-light shone on her eyes, as she leaned forwards in the carriage, and put out both her hands to him. " Sir Polko ! if I could but thank you as I feel ! " " If I could but prove to you you have nothing to thank me for ! " " At least, I have all the happiness that is in my life ? " " Happiness ? Hush ! " said De Vigne, passionately. " How can you tell but that some day you may hate me, loathe me, and wish to Grod that we had never met ? " "IPO Heaven ! no. If I were to die by your hand, I would pray with my latest breath that God might bless you." " You would ? Poor child ! Alma, good night ! " " Good night." Those two good nights Avere very soft and low — spoken with a more tender intonation than any words that had ever passed between them. His hands closed tightly upon hers; the love of woman, his favourite toy in early youth, the stake on which he risked so much in early manhood, was beguiling him again. His head was bent so that his lips almost touched her brow ; perhaps they might have touched, and lingered there — but, " "Way for the Duchesse de Vieil- lecour's carriage! " was shouted; the coachman started off his horses, and De Vigne stood beneath the awning, with the bright gas glare around and the dark street beyond him, while his heart stirred and his pulses quickened as, since his marriage-day, he had vowed they never should again for any woman's sake. He walked home alone, without waiting for his night-cab, or, indeed, remembering it, smoking as he paced the- streets, forsaken in the early morning save by some wretch- ed women reeling out of a gin-palace, or some groups quit- tin