BERKELEY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNiVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNtA 
 

r 
 
 K 
 
Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, 
 
 AND OTHER NOVELETTES, 
 
 Louise ^e £^ l^anxic- 
 By 0\}\Y)k, i^^ecJ 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'FOLLE-FARINE,' ' IDALIA,' ' UNDER TWO FLAGS,' 
 
 •two little wooden shoes, etc. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cecilcastlemaineOOouidrich 
 
ct.c 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 eEClL CASTLEMAINE's GAGE; OR, THE STORY OJ' A BROIDERED 
 
 SHIELD ....... I 
 
 Little grand and the marchioness ; or our Maltese peerage 23 
 
 LADY marabout's TROUBLES ; 0R> THE WORRIES OE A CHAPERONE 6 1 
 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE ; OR, PENDANT TO A PASTEL BY LA 
 
 TOUR . . . , . . .166 
 
 "deadly dash.*' a STORY TOLD ON THE OEF DAY. . . 186 
 
 THE general's MATCH-MAKING ; OR, COACHES AND COUSINSHIP . 211 
 
 the story of a crayon-head ; or a double-down leaf in a 
 
 man's life ...... 244 
 
 THE BEAUTY OF VICQ d'AZYR J OR, NOT At ALL A PROPER PERSON 271 
 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE : PENDANT TO A PORTRAIT BY 
 
 MIGNARD J » . . . s . 295 
 
 'k LINE IN THE "DAILY :" WflO DID IT, AND WHO WAS DONE BY IT 313 
 
 tlTZ's ELECTION j OR, BLUB AND YELLOW . . , 346 
 
 "redeemed," an EPISODE WITH THE CONFEDERATE HORSE . 386 
 
 THE marquis's TACTICS ; OR, LORD GLEN's WAGER . . 405 
 
 iBlR GALAliAD's RAID J AN ADVENTURE ON THE SWEET WATERS . 428 
 
 816 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE STOBY OF A BROIDERED SHIELD. 
 
 Cecil Castlbmaine was the beauty of her county and her 
 line, the handsomest of all the handsome women that had 
 graced her race, when she moved a century and a half ago 
 down the stately staircase and through the gilded and tapes- 
 tried halls of Lilliesford. The Town had run mad after her, 
 and her face levelled politics, and was cited as admiringly by 
 the Whigs at St. James's as l3y the Tories at the Cocoa-tree, 
 by the beaux and Mohocks at Garraway's as by the alumni at 
 the Grecian, by the wits at Will's as by the fops at Ozinda*s. 
 
 Wherever she went, whether to the Haymarket or the 
 Opera, to the 'Change for a fan or the palace for a state ball, 
 to Drury Lane to see Pastoral Philips's dreary dilution of 
 Eacine, or to some fair chief of her faction for basset and 
 ombre, she was surrounded by the best men of her time, and 
 hated by Whig beauties with virulent wrath, for she was a 
 Tory to the backbone, indeed a Jacobite at heart; worshipped 
 Bolingbroke, detested Marlborough and Eugene, believed in 
 all the horrors of the programme said to have been plotted by 
 the Whigs for the anniversary show of 1711, and was thought 
 to have prompted the satire on those fair politicians who are 
 disguised as Rosalinda and Nigranilla in the 81st paper of 
 the Spectat07\ 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine was the greatest beauty of her day, 
 lovelier still at four-and-twenty than she had been at seven- 
 teen, unwedded, though the highest coronets in the land had 
 been offered to her ; far above the coquetries and minauderics 
 
 1 
 
2 CECIL CASTL^MAINF^S GAGE. 
 
 of her friends, far above the imitation of the affectations of 
 /'Lady Eetty Modley's skuttle," or need of practising the Fan 
 exercise; haughty, peerless, radiant, unwon — nay, more — 
 untouched ; for the finest gentleman on the town could not 
 flatter himself that he had ever stirred the slightest trace of 
 interest in her, nor boast, as he stood in the inner cbcle at 
 the Chocolate-house (unless, indeed, he lied more impudently 
 than Tom Wharton himself), that he had ever been honoured 
 by a glance of encouragement from the Earl's daughter. She 
 was too proud to cheapen herself with coquetry, too fastidious 
 to care for her conquests over those who whispered to her 
 through Nicohni's song, vied to have the privilege of carrying 
 her fan, drove j)ast her windows in Soho-square, crowded 
 about her in St. James's Park, paid court even to her little 
 spaniel Indamara, and, to catch but a glimpse of her brocaded 
 train as it swept a ball-room floor, would leave even their play 
 at the Groom Porter's, Mrs. Oldfield in the green-room, a night 
 hunt with Mohun and their brother Mohocks, a circle of wits 
 gathered "within the steam of the cofi'ee-pot" at Will's, a 
 dinner at Halifax's, a supper at Bolingbroke's — whatever, ac- 
 cording to their several tastes, made their best entertainment 
 and was hardest to quit. 
 
 The highest suitors of the day sought her smile and sued 
 for her hand ; men left the Court and the Mall to join the 
 Flanders army before the lines at Bouchain less for loyal love 
 of England than hopeless love of Cecil Castlemain. Her 
 father vainly urged her not to fling away ofiers that all the 
 women at St. Janies's envied her. She was untouched and 
 unwon, and when her friends, the court beauties, the fine 
 ladies, the coquettes of quality, rallied her on her coldness (envy- 
 ing her her conquests), she would smile her slight proud smile 
 and bow her stately head. "Perhaps she was cold; she might 
 be ; they were personable men % Oh yes ! she had nothing to 
 say against them. His Grace of Eelamour % — ^A pretty wit, 
 without doubt. Lord Millamont? — Diverting, but a coxcomb. 
 He had beautiful hands; it was a pity he was always thinking 
 of them ! Sir Gage Eivers % — ^As obsequious a lover as the 
 man in the ' Way of the World,' but she had heard he was 
 very boastful and facetious at women over his chocolate at 
 Ozinda's. The Earl of Argent % — A gallant soldier, surely, 
 but whatever he might protest, no mistress would ever rival 
 
encIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. % 
 
 with him the dice at the Groom Porter's. Lord Philip Bellairs? 
 — ^A proper gentleman : no fault in him ; a bel esprit and an 
 elegant courtier; pleased many, no doubt, but he did not 
 please her overmuch. Perhaps her taste was too finical, or 
 her character too cold, as they said. She preferred it should 
 be so. When you were content it were folly to seek a change. 
 For her part, she failed to comprehend how women could 
 stoop to flutter their fans and choose their ribbons, and rack 
 their tirewomen's brains for new pulvillios, and lappets, and 
 devices, and practise their curtsey and recovery before their 
 J)ier-plass, for no better aim or stake than to draw the glance 
 and win the praise of men for whom they cared nothing. A 
 woman who had the eloquence of beauty and a true pride 
 should be above heed for such affectations, pleasure in such 
 applause !" 
 
 So she would put them all aside and turn the tables on her 
 friends, and go on her own way, proud, peerless, Cecil Castle- 
 maine, conquering and unconquered ; and Steele must have 
 had her name in his thoughts, and honoured it heartily and 
 sincerely, when he wrote one Tuesday, on the 21st of October, 
 under the domino of his Church Coquette, " I say I do 
 honour to those who can he coquettes and are not such, but I 
 despise all who would be so, and, in despair of arriving at it 
 themselves, hate and villify all those who can." A definition 
 justly drawn by his keen, quick graver, though doubtless it 
 only excited the ire of, and was entirely lost upon, those who 
 read the paper over their dish of bohea, or over their toilette, 
 while they shifted a patch for an hour before they could de- 
 termine it, or regretted the loss of ten guineas at crimp. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine was the beauty of the Town : when she 
 sat at Drury Lane on the Tory side of the house, the de- 
 youtest admirer of Oldfield or Mrs. Porter scarcely heard a 
 word of the Heroic Daughter or the Amorous Widoio, and the 
 "beau fullest of his own dear self" forgot his silver-fringed 
 gloves, his medallion snuff-box, his knotted cravat, his clouded 
 cane, the slaughter that he planned to do, from gazing at her 
 where she sat, as though she were reigning sovereign at St. 
 James's, the Castlemaine diamonds flashing crescent-like above 
 her brow. At church and court, at park and assembly, there 
 were none who could eclipse that haughty gentlewoman; there- 
 fore her fond women friends, who had caressed her so warmly 
 
 1—2 
 
4 C&CtL CASTLEMAmE^^ CaCS. 
 
 and so gracefully, and pulled her to pieces behind her back, 
 if they could, so eagerly over their dainty cups of tea in an 
 afternoon visit, were glad, one and all, when on " Earnaby- 
 bright," Anglice, the 22nd (then the 11th) of June, the great 
 Castlemaine chariot, with its three herons blazoned on its 
 coronetted panels, its laced liveries and gilded harness, rolled 
 over the heavy, ill-made roads down into the country in 
 almost princely pomp, the peasants pouring out from the way- 
 side cottages to stare at my lord's coach. 
 
 It was said in the town that a portly divine, who wore his 
 Scarf as one of the chaplains to the Earl of Castlemaine, had 
 prattled somewhat indiscreetly at Child's of his patron's poli- 
 lics ; that certain cypher letters had passed the Channel en- 
 closed in chocolate cakes as soon as French goods were again 
 imported after the peace of Utrecht ; that gentlemen in high 
 places were strongly suspected of mischievous designs against 
 the tranquillity of the country and government ; that the Earl 
 had, among others, received a friendly hint from a relative in 
 power to absent himself for a while from the Court where he 
 was not best trusted, and the town where an incautious word 
 might be picked up and lead to Tower-hill, and amuse him- 
 self at his goodly castle of Lilliesford, where the red deer 
 would not spy upon him, and the dark beech-woods would 
 tell no tales. And the ladies of quality, her dear friends and 
 sisters, were glad when they heard it as they punted at basset 
 and fluttered their fans complacently. They would have the 
 field for themselves, for a season, while Cecil Castlemaine was 
 immured in her manor of Lilliesford ; would be free of her 
 beauty to eclipse them at the next birthday, be quit of their 
 most dreaded rival, their most omnipotent leader of fasliion : 
 and they rejoiced at the whisper of the cypher letter, the 
 damaging gossipry of the AVhig coffee-houses, the bad repute 
 into which my Lord Earl had grown at St. James's, at the 
 misfortune of their friend, in a word, as human nature, mas- 
 culine or feminine, will ever do — to its shame be it spoken — 
 unless the fomes ^deccati be more completely wrung out of it 
 than it has ever been since the aged Gabriel performed that 
 work of purification on the infant Mahomet. 
 
 It was the June of the year '15, and the coming disafiec- 
 tion was seething and boiling secretly among the Tories ; the 
 impeachment of Ormond and Bolingbroke liad strengthened 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 5 
 
 tlie distaste to tlie new-come Hanoverian pack, their attainder 
 liad been tlie blast of air needed to excite the smouldering 
 wood to flame, the gentlemen of that party in the South began 
 to grow impatient of the intrusion of the distant German 
 branch, to think lovingly of the old legitimate line, and to 
 feel something of the chafing irritation of the gentlemen of 
 the JSTorth, who were fretting like staghounds held in leash. 
 
 Envoys passed to and fro between St. Germain, and Jaco- 
 bite nobles, priests of the church that had fallen out of favour 
 and were typified as the Scarlet Woman by a rival who, 
 though successful, was still bitter, plotted with ecclesiastical 
 relish in the task ; letters were conveyed in rolls of innocent 
 lace, plans were forwarded in frosted confections, messages 
 were passed in invisible cypher that defied investigation. 
 The times were dangerous ; full of plot and counter-plot, of 
 risk and danger, of fomenting projects and hidden dis- 
 affection — times in which men, living habitually over mines, 
 learned to like the uncertainty, and to think life flavourless 
 without the chance of losing it any hour ; and things being 
 in this state, the Earl of Castlemaine deemed it prudent to 
 take the counsel of his friend in power, and retire from 
 London for a while, perhaps for the safety of his own person, 
 perhaps for the advancement of his cause, either of which 
 were easier ensured at his seat in the western counties than 
 amidst the Whigs of the capital. 
 
 The castle of Lilliesford was bowered in the thick woods of 
 the western counties, a giant pile built by JSTorman masons. 
 Troops of deer herded under the gold-green beechen-boughs, 
 the sunlight glistened through the aisles of the tree^, and 
 quivered down on to the thick moss, and ferns, and tangled 
 grass that grew under the park woodlands ; the water-lilies 
 clustered on the river, and the swans " floated double, swan 
 and shadow," under the leaves that sv,^ept into the water; 
 then, when Cecil Castlemaine came down to share her father's 
 retirement, as now, ^yhen her name and titles on the gold 
 j)late of a tjoffin that lies with others of her race in the 
 mausoleum across the park, where winter snows and summer 
 sun-rays are alike to those who sleep within, is all that tells 
 at Lilliesford of the loveliest woman of her time who once 
 reigned there as mistress. 
 
 The country was in its glad green midsummer beauty, and 
 
6 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 
 
 the musk-rosebuds bloomed in profuse luxuriance over the 
 chill marble of the terraces, and scattered their delicate 
 odorous petals in fragrant showers on the sward of the 
 lawns, when Cecil Castlemaine came down to what she 
 termed her exile. The morning was fair and cloudless, its 
 sunbeams piercing through the darkest glades in the wood- 
 lands, the thickest shroud of the ivy, the deepest-hued pane 
 of the mullioned windows, as she passed down the great stair- 
 case where lords and gentlewomen of her race gazed on her 
 from the canvas of Lely and Jamesone, Bourdain and 
 Vandyke, crossed the hall with her dainty step, so stately yet 
 so light, and standing by the window of her own bower-room, 
 was lured out on to the terrace overlooking the west side of 
 the park. 
 
 She made such a picture as Vandyke would have liked to 
 paint, with her golden glow upon her, and the musk-roses 
 clustering about her round the pilasters of marble — the white 
 chill marble to which Belamour and many other of her lovers 
 of the court and town had often likened her. Vandyke 
 would have lingered lovingly on the hand that rested on her 
 staghound's head, would have caught her air of court-like 
 grace and dignity, would have painted with delighted fidelity 
 her deep azure eyes, her proud brow, her delicate lips arched 
 haughtily like a Cupid's bow, would have picked out every 
 fold of her sweeping train, every play of light on her silken 
 skirts, every dainty tracery of her point-lace. Yet even 
 painted by Sir Anthony, that perfect master of art and of 
 elegance, though more finished it could have hardly been 
 more faithful, more instinct with grace, and life, and dignity, 
 than a sketch drawn of her shortly after that time by one 
 who loved her well, which is still hanging in the gallery at 
 Lilliesford, lighted up by the afternoon sun when it streams 
 in through the western windows. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine stood on the terrace looking over the 
 lawns and gardens through the opening vistas of meeting 
 boughs and interlaced leaves to the woods and hills beyond, 
 fused in a soft mist of green and purple, with her hand 
 lying carelessly on her hound's broad head. She was a 
 zealous Tory, a skilled politician, and her thoughts were busy 
 with the hopes and fears, the chances for and against, of a 
 cause that lay near her heart, but whose plans were yet 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE, 7 
 
 immature, whose first blow was yet unstruck, and whose well- 
 wishers were sanguine of a success they had not yet hazarded, 
 though they hardly ventured to whisper to each other their 
 previous designs and desires. Her thoughts were far away, 
 and she hardly heeded the beauty round her, musing on 
 schemes and projects dear to her party, that would imperil 
 the Castlemaine coronet, but would serve the only royal house 
 the Castlemaine line had ever in their hearts acknowledged. 
 
 She had regretted leaving the Town, moreover ; a leader of 
 the mode, a wit, a woman of the world, she missed her 
 accustomed sphere ; she was no pastoral Phyllis, no country- 
 born Mistress Eiddy, to pass her time in provincial pleasures, 
 in making cordial waters, in tending her beau-pots, in preserv- 
 ing her fallen rose-leaves, and inspecting the confections in 
 the still-room ; as little was she able, like many fine ladies 
 when in similar exile, to while it away by scolding her 
 tirewoman, and sorting a suit of ribbons, in ordering a set of 
 gilded leather hangings from Chelsea for the state chambers, 
 and yawning over chocolate in her bed till mid-day. She re- 
 gretted leaving the Town, not for Belamour, nor Argent, nor 
 any of those who vainly hoped, as they glanced at the little 
 mirror in the lids of their snuff-boxes that they might have 
 graven themselves, were it ever so faintly, in her thoughts ; 
 but for the wits, the pleasures, the choice clique, the 
 accustomed circle to which she was so used, the courtly, 
 brilliant town-life where she was wont to reign. 
 
 So she stood on the terrace the first morning of her exile, 
 her thoughts far away, with the loyal gentlemen of the I^orth, 
 and the banished court of St. Germain, the lids drooping 
 proudly over her haughty eyes, and her lips half parted with 
 a faint smile of triumph in the visions limned by ambition 
 and imagination, while the wind softly stirred the rich lace of 
 her bodice, and her fingers lay, lightly yet firmly, on the 
 head of her staghound. She looked up at last as she heard 
 the ring of a horse's hoofs, and saw a sorrel, covered with 
 dust and foam, spurred up the avenue, which, rounding past 
 the terrace, swept on to the front entrance ; the sorrel looked 
 well-nigh spent, and his rider somewhat worn and languid, as 
 a man might do with justice who had been in boot and 
 saddle twenty-four hours at the stretch, scarce stopping for a 
 stoup of wine ; but he lifted his hat, and bowed down to his 
 saddle bow as he passed her. 
 
8 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 
 
 " "Was it the long-looked-for messenger with definite news 
 from St. Germain?" wondered Lady Cecil, as her hound gave 
 out a deep-tongued bay of anger at the stranger. She went 
 hack into her bower-xoom, and toyed absently with her 
 flowered handkerchief, broidering a stalk to a violet-leaf, and 
 wondering what additional hope the horseman might have 
 brought to strengthen the good Cause, till her servants 
 brought word that his Lordship prayed the pleasure of her 
 presence in the octagon-room. Whereat she rose, and swept 
 through the long corridors, entered the octagon-room, the 
 sunbeams gathering about her rich dress as they passed 
 through the stained glass oriels, and saluted the new-comer, 
 when her father presented him to her as their trusty and 
 welcome friend and envoy. Sir Fulke Ravensworth, with her 
 careless dignity, and queenly grace, that nameless air which 
 was too highly bred to be condescension, but markedly and 
 proudly repelled familiarity, and signed a pale of distance be- 
 yond which none must intrude. 
 
 The new-comer was a tall and handsome man, of noble 
 presence, bronzed by foreign suns, pale and jaded just now 
 with hard riding, while his dark silver-laced suit was splashed 
 and covered with dust ; but as he bowed low to her, critical 
 Cecil Castlemaine saw that not Belamour himself could have 
 better grace, not my Lord Millamont courtlier mien nor 
 whiter hands, and listened with gracious air to what her 
 father unfolded to her of his mission from St. Germain, 
 whither he had come, at great personal risk, in many disguises, 
 and at breathless speed, to place in their hands a precious 
 letter in cypher from James Stuart to his well-beloved and 
 loyal subject Herbert George, Earl of Castlemaine. A letter 
 spoken of with closed doors and in low whispers, loyal as was 
 the househQld, supreme as the Earl reigned over his domains 
 of Lniiesford, for these were times when men mistrusted 
 those of their own blood, and when tiie very figures on the 
 tapestry seemed instinct with life to spy and to betray — when 
 they almost feared the silk that tied a missive should babble 
 of its contents, and the hound that slept beside them should 
 read and tell their thoughts. 
 
 To leave Lilliesford would be danger to the Envoy and 
 danger to the Cause; to stay as guest was to disarm suspicion. 
 The messenger who had brought such priceless jiews must 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE, 9 
 
 rest witliin the shelter of his roof; too much were risked by 
 returning to the French coast yet awhile, or even by joining 
 Mar or Derwentwater, so the Earl enforced his will upon the 
 Envoy, and the Envoy thanked him, and accepted. 
 
 Perchance the beauty, whose eyes he had seen lighten and 
 proud brow flush as she read the royal greeting and injunction, 
 made a sojourn near her presence not distasteful ; perchance 
 he cared little where he* stayed till the dawning time of action 
 and of rising should arrive, when he should take the field and 
 fight till life or death for the " White Eose and the long heads 
 of hair." He was a soldier of fortune, a poor gentleman with 
 no patrimony but his name, no chance of distinction save by 
 his sword ; sworn to a cause whose star was set for ever ; for 
 many years his life had been of changing adventure and shift- 
 ing chances, now fighting with Berwick at Almanza, now 
 risking his life in some delicate and dangerous errand for James 
 Stuart that could not have been trusted so well to any other 
 officer about St. Germain; gallant to rashness, yet with much 
 of the acumen of the diplomatist, he was invaluable to his 
 Court and Cause, but, Stuart-like, men-like, they hastened to 
 employ, but ever forgot to reward ! 
 
 Lady Cecil missed her town-life, and did not over-favour 
 her exile in the western counties. To note down on her 
 Mather's tablets the drowsy homilies droned out by the chap- 
 lain on a Sabbath noon, to play at crambo, to talk with her 
 tirewoman of new washes for the skin, to pass her hours 
 away in knotting? — she, whom Steele might have writ of 
 when he drew his character of Eudoxicty could while her 
 exile with none of these inanities ; neither could she consort 
 with gentry who seemed to her little better than the boors 
 of a country wake, who had never heard of Mr. Spectator 
 and knew nothing of Mr. Cowley, countrywomen whose 
 ambition was in their cowslip wines, fox-hunters more igno- 
 rant and uncouth than the dumb brutes they followed. 
 
 Wlio was there for miles around with whom she could 
 stoop to associate, with whom she cared to exchange a word ? 
 Madam from the vicarage, in her grogram, learned in syrups, 
 salves, and possets 1 Country Lady Bountifuls, with gossip 
 of the village and the poultry-yard ? Provincial Peeresses, 
 who had never been to London since Queen Anne's corona- 
 tion ? A squirearchy, who knew of no music save the concert 
 
lo CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 
 
 of their stop-hounds, no court save the court of the county 
 assize, no literature unless hy miracle 'twere Tarleton's Jests % 
 ]^one such as these could cross the inlaid oak parquet of LiUies- 
 ford, and he ushered into the presence of Cecil Castle- 
 maine. 
 
 So the presence of the Chevalier's messenger was not 
 altogether unwelcome and distasteful to her. She saw him 
 but little, merely conversing at table with him with that dis- 
 tant and dignified courtesy which marked her out from the 
 light, free, inconsequent manners in vogue with other women 
 of quahty of her time ; the air which had chilled half the 
 softest things even on Belamour's lips, and kept the vainest 
 coxcomb hesitating and abashed. 
 
 But by degrees she observed that the Envoy was a man 
 who had lived in many countries and in many courts, was 
 weU versed in the tongues of France and Italy and Spain — 
 in their belles lettres too, moreover — and had served his ap- 
 prenticeship to good company in the salons of Versailles, in 
 the audience-room of the Vatican, at the receptions of the 
 Duchess du Maine, and with the banished family at St. Ger- 
 main. He spoke with a high and sanguine spirit of the 
 troublous times approaching and the beloved Cause whose 
 crisis was at hand, which chimed in with her humour better 
 than the flippancies of Belamour, the airy nothings of Milla- 
 mont. He was but a soldier of fortune, a poor gentleman 
 who, named to her in the town, would have had never a word, 
 and would have been unnoted amidst the crowding beaux who 
 clustered round to hold her fan and hear how she had been 
 pleasured with the drolleries of Ghief a la Mode,, But down 
 in the western counties she deigned to listen to the Prince's 
 officer, to smile — a smile beautiful when it came on her proud 
 lips, as the play of light on the opals of her jewelled stomacher 
 — nay, even to be amused wdien he spoke of the women of 
 foreign courts, to be interested when he told, which was but 
 reluctantly, of his own perils, escapes, and adventures, to dis- 
 course with him, riding home under the beech avenues from 
 hawking, or standing on the western terrace at curfew to watch 
 the sunset, of many things on which the nobles of the Mall 
 and the gentlemen about St. James's had never been allowed 
 to share her oj)inions. For Lady Cecil was deeply read 
 (unusually deeply for her day, since fijie ladies of her rank 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. il 
 
 and fashion mostly contented themselves with skimming a 
 romance of Scuderi's, or an act of Aurungzebe) ; but she rarely 
 spoke of those things, save perchance now and then to Mr. 
 Addison, who, though a Whig, was certainly an elegant 
 scholar. 
 
 Fulke Eavensworth never flattered her, moreover, and 
 flattery was a honeyed confection of which she had long been 
 cloyed ; he even praised boldly before her other women of 
 beauty and grace whom he had seen at Versailles, at Sceaux, 
 and at St. Germain ; neither did he defer to her perpetually, 
 but where he differed would combat her sentiments courteously 
 but firmly. Though a soldier and a man of action, he had 
 an admirable skill at the limner's art ; could read to her the 
 Divina Commedia, or the comedies of Lope da' Vega, and 
 transfer crabbed Latin and abstruse Greek into elegant English 
 for her pleasure ; and though a beggared gentleman of most 
 precarious fortunes, he would speak of life and its chances, of 
 the Cause and its perils, with a daring which she found pre- 
 ferable to the lisped languor of the men of the town, who 
 had no better campaigns than laying siege to a prude, cared 
 for no other weapons than their toilettes and snulf-boxes, and 
 sought no other excitement than a coup dJedat with the lion- 
 tumblers. 
 
 On the whole, through these long midsummer days. Lady 
 Cecil found the Envoy from St. Germain a companion that 
 did not suit her ill, sought less the solitude of her bower-room, 
 and listened graciously to him in the long twilight hours, 
 while the evening dew gathered in the cups of the musk-roses, 
 and the star-rays began to quiver on the water-lilies floating 
 on the river below, that murmured along, with endless song, 
 under the beechen-boughs. A certain softness stole over her, 
 relaxing the cold hauteur of which Belamour had so often 
 complained, giving a nameless charm, supplying a name- 
 less something, lacking before, in the beauty of The Castle- 
 maine. 
 
 She would stroke, half sadly, the smooth feathers of her 
 tartaret falcon GabrieUe when Eulke Eavensworth brought 
 her the bird from the ostreger's wrist, with its azure velvet 
 hood, and silver bells and jesses. She would wonder, as she 
 glanced through Corneille or Congreve, Philips or Petrarca, 
 what it was, this passion of love, of which they all treated, 
 
12 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE, 
 
 on wliich tliey all turned, no matter liow different their 
 strain. And now and then would come over her cheek and 
 hrow a faint fitful wavering flush, delicate and changing as the 
 flush from the rose-hued reflexions of western clouds on a 
 statue of Pharos marble, and then she would start and rouse 
 herself, and wonder what she ailed, and grow once more 
 haughty, calm, stately, dazzling, but chill as the Castlemaine 
 diamonds that she wore. 
 
 So the summer-time passed, and the autumn came, the 
 corn-lands brown with harvest, the hazel-copses strewn with 
 fallen nuts, the beech-leaves turning into reddened gold.- As 
 the wheat ripened but to m.eet the sickle, as the nuts grew 
 but to fall, as the leaves turned to gold but to wither, so the 
 sanguine hopes, the fond ambitions of men strengthened and 
 matured only to fade into disappointment and destruction ! 
 Four months had sped by since the Prince's messenger had 
 come to Lilliesford — months that had gone swiftly with him 
 as some sweet delicious dream ; and the time had come when 
 he had orders to ride north, secretly and swiftly, speak with 
 Mr. Porster and other gentlemen concerned in the meditated 
 rising, and convey despatches and instructions to the Earl of 
 Mar ; for Prince James was projecting soon to join his loyal 
 adherents in Scotland, and the critical moment was close at 
 hand, the moment when, to Pulke Kavensworth's high and 
 sanguine courage, victory seemed certain ; failure, if no 
 treachery marred, no dissension weakened, impossible ; the 
 moment to which he looked for honour, success, distinction, 
 that should give him claim and title to aspire — wlure ? 
 Strong man, cool soldier though he was, he shrank from draw- 
 ing his fancied future out from the golden haze of immature 
 hope, lest he should see it v>dther upon closer sight. lie was 
 but a landless adventurer, with nothing but his sword and 
 his honour, and kings he knew were slow to pay back benefits, 
 or recollect the hands that hewed them free passage to tlieir 
 thrones. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine stood within the window of her bower- 
 room, the red light of the October sun glittering on her gold- 
 broidered skirt and her corsage sewn with opals and emeralds; 
 her hand was pressed lightly on her bosom, as though some 
 pain were throbbing there; it was new this unrest, this weari- 
 l^ess, this vague weight that hung upon her ; it was the peril? 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. i% 
 
 oi their Cause, she told herself ; the risks her father ran : it 
 was weak, childish, imworthy a Castlemaine ! Still the pain 
 throhbed there. 
 
 Her hound, asleep heside her, raised his head with a low 
 growl as a step intruded on the sanctity of the hower-room, 
 then composed himself again to slumber, satisfied it was no 
 foe. His mistress turned slowly; she knew the horses waited ; 
 she had shunned this ceremony of farewell, and never thought 
 any would be bold enough to venture here without permission 
 sought and gained. 
 
 " Lady Cecil, I could not go upon my way without one 
 word of parting. Pardon me if I have been too rash to seek 
 it here." 
 
 Why was it that his brief frank words ever pleased her 
 better than Eelamour's most honeyed phrases, Millamont's 
 suavest periods? She scarcely could have told, save that there 
 were in them an earnestness and truth new and rare to her 
 ear and to her heart. 
 
 She pressed her hand closer on the opals — the jewels of 
 calamity — and smiled : 
 
 *^ Assuredly I wish you God speed, Sir Fulke, and safe issue 
 from all perils." 
 
 He bowed low ; then raised himself to his fullest height, 
 and stood beside her, watching the light play upon the opals : 
 
 " That is all you vouchsafe me V* 
 
 ^^ All? It is as much as you would claim, sir, is it not? It 
 is more than I would say to many." 
 
 ^^ Your pardon — it is more than I should claim if prudence 
 were ever by, if reason always ruled ! I have no right to ask 
 for, seek for, even wish for, more ; such petitions may only bo 
 addressed by men of wealth and of high title : a landless sol- 
 dier should have no pride to sting, no heart to wound ; they 
 are the prerogative of a happier fortune." 
 
 Her lips turned white, but she answered haughtily; the 
 crimson light flashing in her jewels, heirlooms priceless and 
 hereditary, like her beauty and her pride : 
 
 ^' This is strange language, sir ! I fail to apprehend you." 
 
 " You have never thought that I ran a danger deadlier than 
 that which I have ever risked on any field? You have never 
 guessed that I have had the madness, the presumption, the 
 crime — it may be in your eyes — to love you." 
 
t4 CEdL CASTLEMAmE'S GACE, 
 
 The colour flushed to her face, crimsoning even her Ibrow, 
 and then fled back. Her first instinct was insulted pride — a 
 beggared gentleman, a landless soldier, spoke to her of love ! 
 — of love ! — which Belamour had barely had courage to 
 whisper of; which none had dared to sue of her in return. He 
 had ventured to feel this for her ! he had ventured to speak 
 of this to her ! 
 
 The Envoy saw the rising resentment, the pride spoken in 
 every line of her delicate face, and stopped her as she would 
 have spoken. 
 
 " Wait ! I know all you would reply. You think it infi- 
 nite daring, presumption that merits highest reproof " 
 
 " Since you divined so justly, it were pity you subjected 
 yourself and me to this most useless, most unexpected inter- 
 view. Why " 
 
 " Why ? Because, perchance, in this life you will see my 
 face no more, and you will think gently, mercifully of my 
 offence (if offence it be to love you more than life, and only 
 less than honour), when you know that I have fallen for the 
 Cause, with your name in my heart, held only the dearer be- 
 cause never on my lips ! Sincere love can be no insult to 
 whomsoever proffered ; Elizabeth Stuart saw no shame to her 
 in the devotion of William Craven !" 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine stood in the crimson glory of the autumn 
 sunset, her head erect, her pride unshaken, but her heart 
 stirred strangely and unwontedly. It smote the one with 
 bitter pain, to think a penniless exile should thus dare to speak 
 of what Princes and Dukes had almost feared to whisper ; 
 what had she done — what had she said, to give him license 
 for such liberty 1 It stirred the other with a tremulous warmth, 
 a vague, sweet pleasure, that were never visitants there before ; 
 but that she scouted instantly as weakness, folly, debasement, 
 in the Last of the Castlemaines. 
 
 He saw weU enough what passed within her, what made 
 her eyes so troubled, yet her brow and lips so proudly set, and 
 he bent nearer towards her, the great love that was in him 
 trembling in his voice : 
 
 " Lady Cecil, hear me ! If in the coming struggle I win 
 distinction, honour, rank — ^if victory come to us, and the King 
 we serve remember me in his prosperity as he does now in his 
 «\dversity — if I can meet you hereafter with tidings of triumph 
 
r 
 
 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GACE. \% 
 
 and success, my name made one which England breathes with 
 praise and pride, honours gained such as even you will deem 
 worthy of your line — then — then — ^will you let me speak of 
 what you refuse to hearken to now — then may I come to you, 
 and seek a gentler answer V 
 
 She looked for a moment upon his face, as it bent towards 
 her in the radiance of the sunset light, the hope that hopes 
 all things gUstening in his eyes, the high-souled daring of a 
 gallant and sanguine spirit flushing his forehead, the loud 
 throbs of his heart audible in the stillness around ; and her 
 proud eyes grew softer, her lips quivered for an instant* 
 
 Then she turned towards him with queenly grace : 
 
 " Yes r 
 
 It was spoken with stately dignity, though scarce above 
 her breath ; but the hue that wavered in her cheek was but 
 the loveher, for the pride that would not let her eyes droop 
 nor her tears rise ; would not let her utter one softer word. 
 That one word cost her much. That single utterance was 
 much from Cecil Castlemaine. 
 
 Her liandkerchief lay at her feet, a delicate, costly toy of 
 lace, embroidered with her shield and chiffre ; he stooped and 
 raised it, and thrust it to his breast to treasure it there. 
 
 " If I fail, I send this back in token that I renounce all 
 hope ; if I can come to you with honour and with fame, this 
 shall be my gage that I may speak, that you will listen T 
 
 She bowed her noble head, ever held haughtily, as though 
 every crown of Europe had a right to circle it \ his hot lips 
 lingered for a moment on her hand ; then Cecil Castlemaine 
 stood alone in the window of her bower-room, her hand 
 pressed again upon the opals under which her heart was beat- 
 ing with a dull, weary pain, looking out over the landscape, 
 where the golden leaves were falling fast, and the river, tossing 
 sadly dead branches on its waves, was bemoaning in plaintive 
 language the summer days gone by. 
 
 Two months came and went, the beech-boughs, black and 
 sear, creaked in the bleak December winds that sighed through 
 frozen ferns and over the couches of shivering deer, the snow 
 drifted up on the marble terrace, and ice-drops clung where 
 the warm rosy petals of the musk-rosebuds had nestled. 
 Across the country came terrible whispers that struck the 
 
i6 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GACk, 
 
 liearts of men of loyal faith to tlie Wliite Eoso mtli a bolt of 
 ice-cold terror and despair. Messengers riding in hot haste, 
 open-mouthed peasants gossiping by the village forge, horse- 
 men who tarried for a breathless rest at alehouse doors, Whig 
 divines who returned thanks for God's most gracious mercy in 
 vouchsafing victory to the strong, all told the tale, all spread the 
 news of the drawn battle of Sheriff-Muir, of the surrender under 
 Preston Walls, of the flight of Prince James. The tidings 
 came one by one to Lilliesford, where my Lord Earl was 
 holding himself in readiness to co-operate with the gentlemen 
 of the ^N'orth to set up the royal standard, broidered by his 
 daughter's hands, in tlie western counties, and proclaim James 
 III. '• sovereign lord and king of the realms of Great Britain 
 and Ireland." The tidings came to Lilliesford, and Cecil 
 Castlemaine clenched her white jewelled hands in passionate 
 anguish that a Stuart should have fled before the traitor of 
 Argyll, instead of dying with his face towards the rebel crew; 
 that men had lived who could choose surrender instead of 
 heroic death ; that slm had not been there, at Preston, to 
 shame them with a woman's reading of courage and of loyalty, 
 and show them how to fall with a doomed city rather than 
 yield captive to a foe ! 
 
 Perhaps amidst her grief for her Prince and for his Cause 
 mingled — as the deadliest thought of all — a memory of a 
 bright proud face, that had tent towards her with tender 
 love and touching grace a month before, and that might now 
 be lying pale and cold, turned upwards to the winter stars, on 
 the field of Sheriff-Mum 
 
 A year roUed by. Twelve months had fled since the gilded 
 carriage of the Castlemaines, with the lordly blazonment upon 
 its panels, its princely retinue and stately pomp, had come 
 down into the western counties. The bones were crumbling 
 white in the cofflns in the Tower, and the skulls over Temple- 
 bar had bleached white in winter snows and spring-tide suns; 
 Kenmuir had gone to a sleep that knew no wakening, and 
 Derwentwater had laid his fair young head down for a thank- 
 less cause ; the heather bloomed over the mounds of dead on 
 the plains of Sheriff-Muir, and the yellow gorse blossomed 
 under the city walls of Preston. 
 
 Another summer had dawned, bright and laughing, over 
 England ; none the less fair for human lives laid down, for 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 17 
 
 human hopes crashed out ; daisies powdering the turf sodden 
 with human blood, birds carolling their song over graves of 
 heaped up dead. The musk-roses tossed their delicate heads 
 again amidst the marble pilasters, and the hawthorn boughs 
 shook their fragrant buds into the river of Lilliesford, the 
 purple hills lay wrapped in sunny mist, and hyacinth bells 
 mingled with the .tangled grass and fern under the woodland 
 shades, where the red deer nestled happily. Herons plumed 
 their silvery wings down by the water-side, swallows circled 
 in sultry air above the great bell-tower, and wood-pigeons 
 cooed with soft love-notes among the leafy branches. Yet 
 the Countess of Castlemaine, last of her race, sole owner of 
 the lands that spread around her, stood on the rose-terrace, 
 finding no joy in the sunlight about her, no melody in the 
 song of the birds. 
 
 She was the last of her name ; her father, broken-hearted 
 at the news from Dumblain and Preston, had died the very 
 day after his lodgement in the Tower. There was no heir 
 male of his line, and the title had passed to his daughter ; 
 there had been thoughts of confiscation and attainder, but 
 others, unknown to her, solicited what she scorned to ask for 
 herself, and the greed of the hungry "Hanoverian pack" 
 spared the lands and the revenues of Lilliesford. In haughty 
 pride, in lonely mourning, the fairest beauty of the Court 
 and Town withdrew again to the solitude of her western 
 counties, and tarried there, dwelling amidst her women and 
 her almost regal household, in the sacred solitude of grief, 
 wherein none might intrude. Proud Cecil Castlemaine was 
 yet prouder than of yore ; alone sorrowing for her ruined 
 Cause and exiled King, she would hold converse with none 
 of those who had had a hand in drawing down the disastrous 
 fate she mourned, and only her staghound could have seen 
 the weariness upon her face when she bent down to him, or 
 Gabrielle the falcon felt her hand tremble when it stroked 
 her folded wings. She stood on the terrace, looking over her 
 spreading lands, not the water-lilies on the river below whiter 
 than her lips, pressed painfully together. Perhaps she re- 
 pented of certain words, spoken to one whom now sho would 
 never again behold — ^perhaps she thought of that delicate toy 
 that was to have been brought back in victory and hope, that 
 now might lie stained and stiffened with blood next a lifeless 
 
 2 
 
i8 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 
 
 heart, for never a word in tlie twelve months gone by had 
 there come to Lilliesford as tidings of Fulke Eavensworth. 
 
 Her pride was dear to her, dearer than ought else; she had 
 spoken as was her right to speak, she had done what became 
 a Castlemaine ; it would have been weakness to have acted 
 otherwise ; what was he — ^a landless soldier — that he should 
 have dared as he had dared ? Yet the sables she wore were 
 not solely for the dead Earl, not solely for the lost Stewarts 
 the hot mist that would blind the eyes of Cecil Castlemaine, 
 as hours swelled to days, and days to months, and she — ^the 
 flattered beauty of the Court and Town — stayed in self- 
 chosen solitude in her halls of Lilliesford, still unwedded and 
 unwon. 
 
 The noon hours chimed from the bell-tower, and the sunny 
 beauty of the morning but weighed with heavier sadness on 
 her heart ; the song of the birds, the busy hum of the gnats, 
 the joyous ring of the silver bell round her pet fawn's neck, 
 as it darted from her side under the drooping boughs — none 
 touched an answering chord of gladness in her. She stood 
 looking over her stretching woodlands in deep thought, so 
 deep that she heard no step over the la^vn beneath, nor saw 
 the frightened rush of the deer, as a boy, crouching among 
 the tangled ferns, sprang up from his hiding-place under the 
 beechen branches, and stood on the terrace before her^ craving 
 her pardon in childish, yet fearless tones. She turned, bend- 
 ing on him that glance which had made the over-bold glance 
 of Princes fall abashed. The boy was but a little tatter- 
 demalion to have ventured thus abruptly into the presence of 
 the Countess of Castlemaine ; still it was with some touch of 
 a page's grace that he bowed before her. 
 
 " Lady, I crave your pardon, but my master bade me watch 
 for you, though I watched till midnight." 
 
 " Your master !" 
 
 A flush, warm as that on the leaves of the musk-roses, 
 rose to her face for an instant, then faded as suddenly. The 
 boy did not notice her words, but went on in an eager whisper, 
 glancing anxiously round, as a hare would glance fearing the 
 hunters. 
 
 "And told me when I saw you not to speak his name, but 
 only to give you this as his gage, that though all else is lost 
 he has not forgot Ms houour nor your will," 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE, 19 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine spoke no word, but she stretched out her 
 hand and took it — ^her own costly toy of cambric and lace, 
 with her broidered shield and coronet. 
 
 " Your master ! Then — he lives T 
 
 " Lady, he bade me say no more. You have his message ; 
 I must tell no further." 
 
 She laid her hand upon his shoulder, a light, snow-white 
 hand, yet one that held him now in a clasp of steel. 
 
 " Child ! answer me at your peril ! Tell me of him vfliom 
 you call your master. Tell me all — quick — quick V 
 
 " You are his friend T 
 
 " His friend % My Heaven ! Speak on !" 
 
 " He bade me tell no more on peril of his heaviest anger ; 
 but if you are> his friend I sure may speak what you should 
 know without me. It is a poor friend, lady, who has need to 
 ask whether another be dead or living !'' 
 
 The scarlet blood flamed in the Countess's blanched face, 
 she signed him on with impetuous command ; she was 
 unused to disobedience, and the child's words cut her to the 
 quick. 
 
 " Sir Fulke sails for the French coast to-morrow night," 
 the boy went on, in tremulous haste. " He was left for 
 dead — our men ran one way, and Argyll's men the other — on 
 the field of Sheriff-Muir ; and sure if he had not been strong 
 indeed, he would have died that awful night, untended, on 
 the bleak moor, v/ith the wind roaring round him, and his 
 life ebbing away. He was not one of those who fled ; you 
 know that of him if you know aught. We got him away be- 
 fore dawn, Donald and I, and hid him in a shieling ; he 
 was in the fever then, and knew nothing that was done to 
 him, only he kept that bit of lace in his hand for weeks and 
 weeks, and would not let us stir it from his grasp. Wliat 
 magic there was in it we wondered often, but 'twas a magic, 
 mayhap, that got him well at last ; it was an even chance 
 but that he died, God bless him ! though we did what best 
 we could. We've been wandering in the Highlands all the 
 year, hiding here and tarrying there. Sir Fulke sets no 
 count upon his life. Sure I think he thanks us little for 
 getting him through the fever of the wounds, but he could 
 not have borne to be pinioned, you know, lady, like a thief, 
 and hung up by the brutes of Whigs, as a butcher hanga 
 
 2—3 
 
20 CECIL CASTLEMAJNE'S GAGE, 
 
 sheep in tlie shambles ! The worst of the danger's over— 
 they've had their fill of the slaughter ; but we sail to-morrow 
 night for the French coast — England's no place for my 
 master." 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine let go her hold upon the boy, and her 
 hand closed convulsively upon the dainty handkerchief — ^lier 
 gage sent so faithfully back to her ! 
 
 The child looked upon her face ; perchance, in his master's 
 delirium, he had caught some knowledge of the story that 
 hung to that broidered toy. 
 
 " If you are his friend, Madam, doubtless you have some 
 last word to send him T 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine, whom nothing moved, whom nothing 
 softened, bowed her head at the simple question, her heart 
 wrestling sorely, her lips set together in unswerving pride, a 
 "^mist before her haughty eyes, the broidered shield upon her 
 handkerchief — the shield of her stately and unyielding race — 
 pressed close against her breast. 
 
 " You have no word for him, lady T 
 
 Her lips parted ; she signed him away. Was this child to 
 see her yielding to such weakness ] Had she. Countess of 
 Castlemaine, no better pride, no better strength, no better 
 power of resolve, than this % 
 
 The boy lingered. 
 
 " I will tell Sir Fulke then, lady, that the ruined have no 
 friends r' 
 
 Whiter and prouder still grew the delicate beauty of her 
 face ; then she raised her stately head, haughtily as she had 
 used to glance over a glittering Court, where each voice mur- 
 mured praise of her loveliness and reproach of her coldness ; 
 and placed the fragile toy of lace back in the boy's hands. 
 
 " Go, seek your master, and give him this in gage that 
 their calamity makes friends more dear to us than their suc- 
 cess. Go, he will know its meaning !" 
 
 In place of the noon chimes the curfew was ringing from 
 the bell tower, the swallows were gone to roost amidst the 
 ivy, and the herons slept with their heads under their silvery 
 wings among the rushes by the river-side, the ferns and wild 
 hyacinths were damp with evening dew, and the summer star- 
 light glistened amidst the quivering woodland leaves. There 
 was the silence of coming night over the vast forest glados, and 
 
CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE, 2t 
 
 no sound broke the stillness, save tlie song of the grasshopper 
 stirring the tangled grasses, or the sweet low sigh of the 
 west wind fanning the bells of the flowers. Cecil Castle- 
 maine stood once more on the rose-terrace, shrouded in the 
 dense twilight shade flung from above by the beech-boughs, 
 waiting, listening, catching every rustle of the leaves, every 
 tremor of the heads of the roses, yet hearing nothing in the 
 stillness around but the quick, uncertain throbs of her heart 
 beating like the wing of a caged bird under its costly lace. 
 Pride was forgotten at length, and she only remembered — 
 fear and love. 
 
 In the silence and the solitude came a step that she knew, 
 came a presence that she felt. She bowed her head upon her 
 hands ; it was new to her this weakness, this terror, this 
 anguish of joy ; she sought to calm herself, to steel herself, to 
 summon back her pride, her strength ; she scorned herself for 
 it all ! 
 
 His hand touched her, his voice fell on her ear once more, 
 eager, breathless, broken. 
 
 '* Cecil ! Cecil ! is this true % Is my ruin thrice blessed, or 
 am I mad, and dream of heaven T 
 
 She lifted her head and looked at him with her old proud 
 glance, her lips trembling with words that all her pride coiikl 
 not summon into speech ; then her eyes filled with warm, 
 blinding tears, and softened to new beauty; — scarce louder 
 than the sigh of the wind among the flower-bells came her 
 words to Fulke Eavensworth's ear, as her royal head bowed 
 on his breast : 
 
 " Stay, stay ! Or, if you fly, your exile shall be my exile, 
 your danger my danger !" 
 
 The kerchief is a treasured heirloom to her descendants 
 now, and fair women of her race, who inherit from her he^.. 
 azure eyes and her queenly grace, will reaal how the proudest 
 Countess of their Line loved a ruined gentleman so well that 
 she was wedded to him at even, in her private chapel, at the 
 hour of his greatest peril, his lowest fortune, and went with 
 him across the seas till friendly intercession in high places 
 gained them royal permission to dwell again at Lilliesford 
 unmolested. And how it was ever noticeable to those who 
 murmured at her coldness and her pride, that Cecil Castle- 
 maine, cold and negligent as of yore to all the world beside, 
 
2t CECIL CASTLEMAINE^S GAGE, 
 
 "would seek her linsbaiid's smile, and love to meet his eyes, 
 and cherish her beauty for his sake, and be restless in his 
 absence even for the short span of a day, with a softer and 
 more clinging tenderness than was found in many weaker, 
 many humbler women. 
 
 They are gone now the men and women of that genera- 
 tion, and their voices come only to us through the faint echo 
 of their written words. In summer nights the old beech-trees 
 toss their leaves in the silvery light of the stars, and the river 
 flows on unchanged, with the ceaseless, mournful burden of 
 its mystic song, the same now as in the midsummer of a cen- 
 tury and a half ago. The cobweb handkerchief lies before 
 me with its broidered shield ; the same now as long years 
 since, when it was treasured close in a soldier's breast, and 
 held by him dearer than all save his honour and his word. 
 So, things pulseless and passionless endure, and human life 
 passes away as swiftly as a song dies off from the air — as 
 quickly succeeded, and as quickly forgot ! Eonsard's refrain 
 is the refrain of our lives : 
 
 Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en, ma dame ! 
 Las ! le temps, non ; mais 7iom«,bous en allona I 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 OUR MALTESE PEERAGE. 
 
 All first things are voted the best: first kisses, first toga 
 virilis, first hair of the first whisker ; first speeches are often 
 so superior that members subside after making them, fearful 
 of eclipsing themselves ; first money won at play must always 
 be best, as it is always the dearest bought ; and first wives 
 are always so super-excellent, that, if a man lose one, he is 
 generally as fearful of hazarding a second as a trout of biting 
 twice. 
 
 But of all first things commend me to one's first uniform. 
 No matter that we get sick of harness, and get into mufti as 
 soon as we can now ; there is no more exquisite pleasure than 
 the first sight of oneself in shako and sabretasche. Hoav we 
 survey ourselves in the glass, and ring for hot water, that the 
 handsome housemaid may see us in all our glory, and lounge 
 accidentally into our sister's schoolroom, that the governess, 
 who is nice-looking and rather flirty, may go down on the 
 spot before us and our scarlet and gold, chains and buttons ! 
 One's first uniform ! Oh ! the exquisite sensation locked up 
 for us in that first box from Sagnarelli, or Bond-street ! 
 
 I remember my first uniform. I was eighteen— as raw a 
 young cub as you could want to see. I had not been licked 
 into shape by a public school, whose tongue may be rough, 
 but cleans off grievances and nonsense better than anything 
 else. I had been in that hotbed of effeminacy. Church 
 principles and weak tea, a Private Tutor's, where mamma's 
 
i4 IITTLJS GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 darlings are wrapped up, and stuffed -witli a little Terence and 
 Horace to show grand at home ; and upon my life I do be- 
 lieve my sister Julia, aged thirteen, was more wide awake and 
 up to life than I was, when the governor, an old rector, who 
 always put me in mind of the Yicar of Wakefield, got me 
 gazetted to as crack a corps as any in the Line. 
 
 The — th (familiarly known in the Service as the " Dare 
 Devils," from old Peninsular deeds) were just then at Malta-, 
 and with, among other trifles, a chest protector from my 
 father, and a recipe for milk arrowroot from my Aunt Matilda 
 who lived in a constant state of catarrh and of cure for the 
 same, tumbled across the Bay of Biscay, and found myself 
 in Byron's confounded " little military hot-house," where 
 most military men, some time or other, have roasted themselves 
 to death, climbing its hilly streets, flirting with its Valetta 
 belles, drinking Bass in its hot verandahs, ya^^^ling with ennui 
 in its palace, cursing its sirocco, and being done by its Jew 
 sharpers. 
 
 From a private tutor's to a crack mess at Malta ! — from 
 a convent to a casino could hardly be a greater change. Just 
 at first I was as much astray as a young pup taken into a 
 stubble-field, and wondering what the deuce he is to do there ; 
 but as it is a pup's nature to sniff at birds and start them, so 
 is it a boy's nature to snatch at the champagne of life as soon 
 as he catches sight of it, though you may have brought him 
 up on water from his cradle. I took to it, at least, like a 
 retriever to water-ducks, though I was green enough to be a 
 first-rate butt for many a day, and the practical jokes I had 
 passed on me would have furnished the Time^ with food for 
 crushers on " The Shocking State of the Army " for a twelve- 
 month. My chief friend and ally, tormentor and initiator, 
 W{xs a little fellow, Cosmo Grandison ; in Ours he was "Little 
 Grand" to everybody, from the Colonel to the baggage-women. 
 He was seventeen, and had joined about a year. What a pretty 
 boy he was, too ! All the fair ones in Yaletta, from his Ex- 
 cellency's wife to our washerwomen, admired that boy, and 
 spoilt him and petted him, and I do not believe there was a 
 man of Ours who would have had heart to sit in coui^t-mar- 
 tial on Little Grand if he had broken every one of the Queen's 
 regulations, and set every General Order at defiance. I think 
 I see him now — ^he was new to ]\Ialta as I, having just landed 
 
LITTLE 01^ AND AND THE MARCHIONESS, ^S 
 
 with, the Dare Devils, m route from India to PortsmoutTi — as 
 lie sat one day on the table in the mess-room as cool as a 
 cucumber, in spite of the broiling su.n, smoking and swinging 
 his legs, and settling his forage-cap on one side of his head, 
 as pretty-looking, plucky, impudent a young monkey as ever 
 piqued himself on being an old hand, and a knowing bird 
 not to be caught by any chaff however ingeniously prepared. 
 
 " Simon," began Little Grand (my " St. John," first bar- 
 barised by Mr. Pope for the convenience of his dactyles and 
 hexameters into Sinjin, being further barbarised by this little 
 imp into Simon) — " Simon, do you want to see the finest 
 woman in this confounded little pepper-box? You're no judge 
 of a woman, though, you muff — taste been warped, perhaps, 
 by constant contemplation of that virgin Aunt Minerva — 
 Matilda, is it % all the same." 
 
 " Hang your chaff," said I ; " you'd make one out a 
 fool." 
 
 " Precisely, my dear Simon; just what you are!" responded 
 Little Grand, presently. "Bless your heart, I've been engaged 
 to half a dozen women since I joined. A man can hardly 
 help it, you see ; they've such a way of drawing you on, you 
 don't like to disappoint them, poor little dears, and so you 
 compromise yourself out of sheer benevolence. There's such. 
 a run on a handsome man — it's a great bore. Sometimes I 
 think I shall shave my head, or do something to disfigure 
 myself as Spurina did. Poor fellow, I feel for him ! Well, 
 Simon, you don't seem curious to know who my beauty is T 
 
 " One of those Mitchell girls of the Twenty-first % You 
 waltzed with 'em aU night; but they're too tall for you. 
 Grand." 
 
 " The Mitchell girls !" ejaculated he, with supreme scorn. 
 " Great maypoles ! they go about with the Fusiliers, like a 
 pair of colours. On every ball-room battle-field one's safe to 
 see Hum flaunting away, and as everybody has a shot at 'em, 
 their hearts must be pretty well riddled into holes by this 
 time. No, mine's rather higher game than that. My mother's 
 brother-in-law's aunt's sister's cousin's cousin once removed 
 was Yiscount Twaddle, and I don't go anything lower than 
 the Peerage." 
 
 " What, is it somebody you've met at his Excellency's T 
 
 " Wrong again, beloved Simon. It's nobody I've met at 
 
^6 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 old Stars and Garters', though his lady-wife could no more 
 do without me th^n without her sal-volatile and flirtations. 
 IN'o, she don't go there ; she's too high for that sort of thing 
 — sick of it. After all the European Courts, Malta must be 
 ' rather small and slow. I was introduced to her yesterday, 
 and," continued LittLe Grand, more solemnly than was his 
 wont, " I do assure you she's superb, divine ; and I'm not very 
 easy to please." 
 
 " What's her name T I asked, rather impressed with this 
 view of a lady too high for old Stars and Garters, as we irre- 
 verently termed her Majesty's representative in her island of 
 Malta. 
 
 Little Grand took his pipe out of his lips to correct me 
 with more dignity. 
 
 " Her title, my dear Simon, is the Marchioness St. Julian." 
 
 " Is that an English peerage. Grand T 
 
 "Hum! What! Oh yes, of course! What else should 
 it be, you owl T 
 
 Not being in a condition to decide this point I was silent, 
 and he went on, growing more impressive at each phrase : 
 
 " She is splendid, really ! And I'm a very difficile fellow, 
 you know ; but such hair, such eyes, one doesn't see every 
 day in those sun-dried Mitchells, or those little pink Eovilliers. 
 Well, yesterday, after that confounded luncheon (how I hate 
 all those complimentary affairs ! — one can't enjoy the truffies 
 for talking to the ladies, nor enjoy the ladies for discussing 
 the truffles), I went for a ride with Conran out to Villa JS'e- 
 ponte. I left him there, and went down to see the overland 
 steamers come in. While I was waiting, I got into talk, 
 somehow or other, with a very agreeable, gentleman-like fellow, 
 who asked me if I'd only just come to Malta, and all that sort 
 of thing — you know the introductory style of action — till we 
 got quite good friends, and he told me he was living outside 
 this wretched little hole at the Casa di Eiori, and said — wasn't 
 it civil of him ? — said he should be very happy to see me if 
 I'd call any time. He gave me his card — Lord Adolphus 
 Eitzhervey — and a man with him called him ' Dolph.' As 
 good luck had it, my weed went out just while we were talk- 
 ing, and Eitzhervey was monstrously pleasant, searched all 
 over him for a fusee, couldn't find one, and asked me to go 
 up with him to the Casa di Eiori and get a light. Of course 
 
Little grand amd the marchioness. ^7 
 
 I did, and lie and I and Guatamara had some sherbet and a 
 smoke together, and then he introduced me to the Marchioness 
 St. Julian, his sister — \>j Jove ! such a magnificent woman, 
 Simon, you never saw one like her, I'll wager. She was un- 
 commonly agreeable, too, and such a smile, my boy ! Sho 
 seemed to like me wonderfully — not rare that, though, you'll 
 say — and asked me to go and take coffee there to-night, after 
 mess, and bring one of my chums with me ; and as I like to 
 show you life, young one, and your taste wants improving 
 after Aunt Minerva, you may come, if you like. Hallo ! 
 there's Conran. I say, don't tell him, I don't want any 
 poaching on my manor." 
 
 Conran came in at that minute ; he was then a Brevet- 
 Major and Captain in Ours, and one of the older men who 
 spoilt Little Grand in one way, as much as the women did 
 in another. He was a fine, powerful fellow, with eyes like 
 an eagle's and pluck like a lion's ; he had a grave look, and 
 had been of late more silent and self-reticent than the other 
 roystering, debonnair, light-hearted "Dare Devils;" but 
 though, perhaps, tired of the wild escapades which reputa- 
 tion had once attributed to him, was always the most lenient 
 to the boy's monkey tricks, and always the one to whom he 
 went if his larks had cost him too dear, or if he was in a 
 scrape from which he saw no exit. Conran had recently 
 come in for a good deal of money, and there were few bright 
 eyes in Malta that would not have smiled kindly on him ; 
 but he did not care much for any of them. There was some 
 talk of a love affair before he went to India, that was the 
 cause of his hard-heartedness, though I must say he did not 
 look much like a victim to the graride passion, in my ideas, 
 which were drawn from valentines and odes in the " Woman, 
 thou fond and fair deceiver " style ; in love that turned its 
 collars down and let its hair go uncut and refused to eat, and 
 recovered with a rapidity proportionate to its ostentation; 
 and I did not know that, if a man has lost his treasure, he may 
 mourn it so deeply that he may refuse to run about like Har- 
 pagon, crying for his cassette to an audience that only laughs 
 at his miseries. 
 
 "Well, young ones," said Conran, as he came in and threw 
 down his cap and whip, "here you are, spending your hours 
 in pipes and bad wine. What a blessing it is to h^ve a 
 
28 LITTLE dRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 palate tliat isn't llasd, and that will swallow all wine just 
 because it is wine I That South African goes down with 
 better relish, Little- Grand, than you'll find in Chateau 
 Margaux ten years hence. As soon as one begins to want 
 touching up with olives, one's real gusto is gone." 
 
 " Hang olives, sir ! they're besstly," said Little Grand ; 
 " and I don't care who pretends they're not. Olives are like 
 sermons and wives, everybody makes a wry face, and would 
 rather be excused 'em. Major, but it's the custom to call 'em 
 good things, and so men bolt 'em in complaisance, and while 
 they hate the salt-water flavour, descant on the delicious rose 
 taste." 
 
 " Quite true, Little Grand ! but one takes olives to enhance 
 the wine ; and so, perhaps other men's sermons make one en- 
 joy one's racier novel," and other men's wives make one 
 appreciate one's liberty still better. Don't abuse olives ; 
 you'll want them figuratively and literally before you've done 
 either drinking or living !" 
 
 " Oh ! confound it, Major," cried Little Grand, " I do hope 
 and trust a spent ball may have the kindness to double me 
 up and finish me off before then 1" 
 
 " You're not philosophic, my boy." 
 
 " Thank Heaven, no !" ejaculated Little Grand, piously. 
 " I've an uncle, a very great philosopher, beats all the sages 
 hollow, from Bion to Buckle, and "vrates in the Metaphysical 
 Quarterly, but I'll be shot if he don't spend so much time in 
 trying to puzzle out what life is, that aU his has slipped 
 away without his having lived one bit. When I was 
 staying with him one Christmas, be began boring me with a 
 frightful theory on the non-existence of matter. I couldn't 
 stand that, so I cut him short, and set him down to the 
 luncheon-table ; and while he was full swing with a Strasbourg 
 pate and Comet hock, I stopped him and asked him if, with 
 them in his mouth, he believed in matter or not 1 He was 
 shut up, of course ; bless your soul those theorists always are, 
 if you're down upon 'em with a little fact !" 
 
 " Such as a Strasbourg pate *? — that is an unanswerable 
 argument with most men, I believe," said Conran, who liked 
 to hear the boy chatter. " What are you going to do vfith 
 yourself to-night, Grand T 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 29 
 
 "I am going to — ar — lium — to a friend of mine," said 
 Little Grand, less glibly than usual. 
 
 " Yery well ; I only asked, because I would have taken 
 you to Mrs. Fortescue's with me ; they're having some acting 
 proverbs (horrible exertion in this oven of a place, with the 
 thermometer at a hundred and twenty degrees); but if you've 
 better sport it's no matter. Take care what friends you make, 
 though Grand ; you'll find some Maltese acquaintances very 
 costly." 
 
 " Thank you. I should say I can take care of myself," 
 replied Little Grand, with immeasurable scorn and dignity. 
 
 Conran laughed, struck him across the shoulders with his 
 whip, stroked his own moustaches, and went out again, 
 whistling one of Verdi's airs. 
 
 "I don't want him bothering, you. know," ecxplained Little 
 Grand ; " she's such a deuced magnificent woman !" 
 
 She was a magnificent woman, this Eudoxia Adelaida, 
 Marchioness St. Julian; and proud enough Little Grand and 
 I felt when we had that soft, jewelled hand held out to us, 
 and that bewitching smile beamed upon us, and that joyous 
 presence dazzling in our eyes, as we sat in the drawing-room 
 of that Casa di Fiori. She was about thirty-five, I should say 
 (boys always worship those who might have been school- 
 fellows of their mothers), tall and stately, and imposing, with 
 the most beautiful pink and white skin, with a fine set of 
 teeth, raven hair, and eyes tinted most exquisitely. Oh ! she 
 was magnificent, our Marchioness St Julian ! Into what un- 
 utterable insignificance, what miserable washed-out shadows 
 sank Stars and Garters' lady, and the Mitchell girls, and all 
 the belles of La Valetta, whom we hadn't thought so very bad 
 looking before. 
 
 There was a young creature sitting a little out of the 
 radiance of light, reading ; but we had no eyes for anybody 
 except the Marchioness St. Julian. We were in such high 
 society, too; there was her brother. Lord Adolphus, and his 
 bosom Pylades, the Earon Guatamara ; and there was a big 
 fellow, with hooked nose and very curly hair, who was intro- 
 duced to us as the Prince of Orangia Magnolia ; and a little 
 wiry fellow, with bits of red and blue ribbon, and a star or 
 two in his button-hole, who was M. le Due de Saint-Jeu. We 
 were quite dazzled with the coruscations of so much aristocracy, 
 
30 LITTLE GRAND AmVD THE MARCHIONESS, 
 
 especially when they talked across to each other — so familiar- 
 ly, too — of Johnnie (that was Lord Eussell), and Pam, and 
 "old Buck" (my godfather, Buckingham, Lord Adolphus 
 explained to us), and Montpensier and old Joinville; and 
 chatted of when they dined at the Tuileries, and stayed at 
 Compi^gne, and hunted at Belvoir, and spent Christmas at 
 Holcombe or Longleat. We were in such high society! 
 How contemptible appeared Mrs. Maherly's and the Fortescue's 
 soirees ; how infinitesimally small grew Charlie Euthven, and 
 Harry Yilliers, and Gray and Albany, and all the other young 
 fellows who thought it such great guns to be au mieux with 
 little Graziella, or invited to Sir George Dashaway's. JFe 
 were a cut above those things now — ^rather ! 
 
 That splendid Marchioness ! There was a head for a coronet, 
 if you like ! And how benign she was ! Grand sat on the 
 couch beside her, and I on an ottoman on her left, and she 
 leaned back in her magnificent toilette, flirting her fan like a 
 Castilian, and flashing upon us her superb eyes from behind 
 it ; not speaking very much, but showing her white teeth in 
 scores of heavenly smiles, till Little Grand, the blase man of 
 seventeen, and I the raw Moses of private tutelage, both felt 
 that we had never come across anything like this ; never, in 
 fact, seen a woman worth a glance before. 
 
 She listened to us — or rather to him, I was too awestruck 
 to advance much beyond monosyllables — and laughed at him, 
 and smiled encouragingly on my gaucherie (and when a boy is 
 gauche J how ready he is to worship such a helping hand !), 
 and beamed upon us both with an efiulgence compared with 
 which the radiance of Helen, Galatea, QEnone, Messalina, 
 Lais, and all the legendary beauties one reads about, must 
 have been what the railway nightlamps that never burn are to 
 the prismatic luminaries of Cremorne. They were all un- 
 commonly pleasant, all except the girl who was reading, whom 
 they introduced as the Signorina da' Guari, a Tuscan, and 
 daughter to Orangia Magnolia, with one of those marvellously 
 beautiful faces that one sees in the most splendid painters* 
 models of the Campagna, who never lifted her head scarcely, 
 though Guatamara and Saint-Jeu did their best to make her. 
 But all the others were wonderfully agreeable, and quite fete'd 
 Little Grand and me, at which, they being more than double 
 our age, and seemingly at home alike with Belgrave and .^e>v* 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND TLIE MARCHIONESS. 31 
 
 market, tlie Faubourg and the Pytcliley, we felt to grow at 
 least a foot each in the aroma of this Casa di Fiori. 
 
 "This is rather stupid, Doxie," began Lord Adolphus, 
 addressing his sister; "not much entertainment for our 
 guests. What do you say to a game of vingt-et-un, eh, Mr. 
 Grandisonr' 
 
 Little Grand fixed his blue eyes on the Marchioness, and 
 said he should be very happy, but, as for entertainment — Ae 
 wanted no other. 
 
 "No compliments, 'peiit ami^^ laughed the Marchioness, 
 with a dainty blow of her fan. " Yes, Dolph, have vingt-et- 
 un, or music, or anything you like. Sing us something, 
 Lucrezia." 
 
 The Italian girl thus addressed looked up with a passionate, 
 haughty flush, and answered, with wonderfully little courtesy 
 I considered, " I shall not sing to-night." 
 
 " Are you unwell, fairest friend T asked the Due de Saint- 
 Jeu, bending his little wiry figure over her. 
 
 She shrank away from him, and drew back, a hot colour in 
 her cheeks. 
 
 " Signore, I did not address you^ 
 
 The Marchioness looked angry, if those divine eyes could 
 look anything so mortal. However, she shrugged her 
 shoulders. 
 
 "Well, my dear Lucrezia, we can't make you sing, of 
 course, if you won't. I, for my part, always do any little 
 thing I can to amuse anybody ; if I fail, I fail ; I have done 
 my best, and my friends will appreciate the effort, if not the 
 result. 1^0, my dear Prince, do not teaze her," said the Mar- 
 chioness to Orangia Magnolia, who was arguing, I thought, 
 somewhat imperatively for such a well-bred and courtly man, 
 with Lucrezia ; " we will have vingt-et-un, and Lucrezia will 
 give us the delight of her voice some other evening, I dare 
 say." 
 
 We had vingt-et-un ; the Marchioness would not play, but 
 she sat in her rose velvet arm-chair, just behind Little Grand, 
 putting in pretty little speeches, and questions and bagatelles, 
 and calling attention to the gambols of her darling greyhound 
 Cupidon, and tapping Little Grand with her fan, till, I believe, 
 he neither knew how the game went, nor what money he lost; 
 ^nd I, gazing at her, and cursing him for his facile tongue, 
 
32 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 never noticed my naturels, couldn't liave said what the maxi- 
 mum was if you had paid me for it, and might, for anything 
 I knew to the contrary, have been seeing my life slip away 
 with each card as Balzac's hero with the Peau de Chagrin. 
 Then we had sherbet, and wine, and cognac for those who 
 preferred it; and the Marchioness gave us permission to 
 smoke, and took a dainty hookah with an amber mouthpiece 
 for her own use (divine she did look, too, with that hookah 
 between her ruby lips !) ; and the smoke, and the cognac, 
 and the smiles, unloosed our tongues, and we spake like very 
 great donkeys, I dare say, but I'm sure with not a tenth part 
 the wisdom, that Balaam's ass developed in his brief and pithy 
 conversation. 
 
 However great the bosh we talked, though, we found very 
 lenient auditors. Fitzhervey and Guatamara laughed at all 
 our witticisms ; the Prince of Orangia Magnolia joined in with 
 a " Per Baccho !" and a " Bravo !" and little Saint-Jeu 
 wheezed, and gave a faint echo of " Mon Dieu !" and " Tres 
 bien, tres bien, vraiment !" and the Marchioness St. Julian 
 laughed too, and joined in our nonsense, and, what was much 
 more, bent a willing ear to our compliments, no matter how 
 florid ; and Saint-Jeu told us a story or two, more amusing 
 than comme il faut, at which the Marchioness tried to look 
 grave, and did look shocked, but laughed for all that behind 
 her fan; and Lucrezia da' Guari sat in shadow, as still and 
 as silent as the Parian Euphrosyne on the console, though her 
 passionate eyes and expressive face looked the very antipodes 
 of silence and statuetteism, as she liashed half-shy, half- 
 scornful, looks upon us. 
 
 If the first part of the evening had been delightful, this 
 was something like Paradise ! It was such high society ! and 
 with just dash enough of MabiUe and coulisses laisser-aUer to 
 give it piquancy. How different was the pleasantry and free- 
 dom of these real aristos, after the humdrum dinners and 
 horrid bores of dances that those snobs of Maberlys, and For- 
 tescues, and Mitchells, made believe to call Society ! 
 
 What with the wine, and the smoke, and the smiles, I 
 wasn't quite clear as to whether I saw twenty horses' heads or 
 one when I was fairly into saddle, and riding back to the 
 town, just as the first dawn was rising. Aphrodite-like, from 
 the far blue waves of the Mediterranean. Little Grand w^-s 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. zi 
 
 better seasoned, but even lie was dizzy witli the parting words 
 of the Marchioness, which had softly breathed the delicious 
 passport, " Come to-morrow." 
 
 " By Jupiter !" swore Little Grand, obliged to give relief 
 to his feelings — " by Jupiter, Simon ! did you ever see such a 
 glorious, enchanting, divine, delicious, adorable creature? 
 Faugh ! who could look at those Mitchell girls after her? 
 Such eyes 1 such a smile ! such a figure ! Talk of a coronet ! 
 no imperial crown would be half good enough for her ! And 
 how pleasant those fellows are ! I like that little chaffy chap, 
 the Duke ; what a slap-up story that was about the bal de 
 r Opera. And Fitzhervey, too ; there's something uncom- 
 monly thorough-bred about him, ain't there'? And Guatamara's 
 an immensely jolly fellow. Ah, my boy ! that's something 
 lil^e society ; all the ease and freedom of real rank ; no non- 
 sense about them, as there is about snobs. I say, what wouldn't 
 the other fellows give to be in our luck? I think even Conran 
 would warm up about her. But, Simon, she's deucedly taken 
 with me — she is, upon my word; and she knows how to show 
 it to you, too ! By George ! one could die for a woman like 
 that— eh T 
 
 " Die !" I echoed, while my horse stumbled along up the 
 hilly road, and I swayed forward, pretty nearly over his head, 
 while poetry rushed to my lips, and electric sparks danced 
 before my eyes : 
 
 ' To die for those we love ! oh, there is power 
 In the true heart, and pride, and joy, for this. 
 It is to live without the vanished light 
 That strength is needed !' " 
 
 " But I'll be shot if it shall be vanished light," returned 
 Little Grand ; " it don't look much like it yet. The light's 
 only just lit, 'tisn't likely it's going out again directly ; but 
 she's a stunner ! and ■" 
 
 " A stunner !" I shouted ; " she's much more than that — 
 she's an angel, and I'll be much obliged to you to call her by 
 her right name, sir, She's a beautiful, noble, loving woman ; 
 the most perfect of all Nature's masterworks. She is divine, 
 sir, and you and I are not worthy merely to kiss the hem of 
 her garment." 
 
 *^ Ain't we though % I doxi't care much about kissing lier 
 
 3 
 
34 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS, 
 
 dress ; it's silk, and I don't know that I should derive nrnch 
 pleasure from pressing my lips on its texture ; "but her 
 cheek 
 
 * Her cheek is like the Catherine pear, 
 The side that's next the sun !' " 
 
 I shouted, as my horse went down in a rut. " She's like 
 Venus rising from the sea-shell ; she's like Aurora, when she 
 came down on the first ray of the dawn to Tithonus ; she's 
 like Briseis " 
 
 " Bother classics ! she's like herself, and beats 'em all hol- 
 low. She's the finest creature ever seen on earth, and I should 
 like to see the man who'd dare to say she wasn't. And — I 
 say, Simon — Ifiow much did, you lose to-night f 
 
 Erom sublimest heights I tumbled straight to bathos. The 
 cold water of Grand's query quenched my poetry, extin- 
 guished my electric lights, and sobered me like a douche bath. 
 
 " I don't know," I answered, with a sense of awe and horror 
 stealing over me ; " but I had a pony in my waistcoat-pocket 
 that the governor had just sent me ; Guatamara changed it 
 for me, and — Tm only sixpence left r 
 
 " Old boy," said Little Grand to me, the next morning, 
 after early parade, "come in my room, and let's make up some 
 despatches to the governors. You see," he continued, five 
 minutes after — " you see, we're both of us pretty well cleared 
 out ; I've only got half a pony, and you haven't a couple ot 
 fivers left. !Nfow you know they evidently play rather high 
 at the Casa di Fiori; do everything en prince, like nobs who've 
 Barclay's at their back ; and one mustn't hang fire ; horrid 
 shabby that would look. Besides, fancy seeming mean before 
 her I So I've been thinking that, though governors are a 
 screwy lot generally, if we put it to 'em clearly the sort of set 
 we've got into, and show 'em that we can't help, now that we 
 are at Eome, doing as the Eomans do, I should say they could 
 hardly help bleeding a little — eh? ISTow, listen how I've put 
 it. My old boy has a weakness for titles ; he married my 
 mother on the relationship to Viscount Twaddles (who doesn't 
 know of her existence, but who does to talk about as * our 
 cousin ') and he'd eat up miles of dirt for a chance of coming 
 to a strawberry-leaf; so I think this will touch him up beauti- 
 fully. Listen ! ain't I sublimely respectful 1 * I'm sure, my 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS, 35 
 
 dear father, yoii will be delighted to learn, that by wonderful 
 luck, or rather I ought to say Providence, I have fallen on my 
 feet in Malta, and got introduced to the very highest * (wait ! 
 let me stick a dash under very) — ' the very highest society 
 here. They are quite tip-top. To show you what style, I 
 need only mention Lord A. Fitzhervey, the Baron Guatamara, 
 and the Marcliioness St. Julian, as among my kindest friends. 
 They have been yachting in the Levant, and are now staying 
 in Malta: they are all most kind to me ; and I know you will 
 appreciate the intellectual advantages that such contact must 
 afford me ; at the same time you will understand that I can 
 hardly enter such circles as a snob, and you will wish your 
 son to comport himself as a gentleman ; but gentlemanising 
 comes uncommon dear, I can tell you, with all the care in the 
 world : and if you could let me have another couple of hun- 
 dred, I should vote you ' — a what, Simon ? — ' an out-and-out 
 brick ' is the sensible style, but I suppose * the best and 
 kindest of parents ' is the filial dodge, eh % There ! * With 
 fond love to mamma and Florie, ever your affectionate son, 
 Cosmo Grandison.' Bravo ! that's prime ; that'll bring the 
 fellows down, I take it. Here, old fellow, copy it to your 
 governor ; you couldn't have a more stunning effusion — short 
 and to the purpose, as cabinet councils ought to be and ain't. 
 Fire away, my juvenile." 
 
 I did fire away ! only I, of a more impressionable and 
 poetic nature than Little Grand, gave a certain vent to my 
 feelings in expatiating on the beauty, grace, condescension^ 
 &c. &c., of the Marchioness to my mother ; I did not mention 
 the grivois stories^ the brandy, and the hookah : I was quite 
 sure they were the sign of that delicious ease and disregard 
 of snobbish etiquette and convenances peculiar to the "Upper 
 Ten," but I thought the poor people at home, in vicarage 
 seclusion, would be too out of the world to fully appreciate 
 such revelations of our creme de la crern^; besides, my governor 
 had James's own detestation of the divine weed, and con- 
 sidered that men who "made chimneys of their mouths" 
 might just as well have the mark of the Beast at once. 
 
 Little Grand and I were hard-up for cash, and en attendant 
 the governors' replies and remittances, we had recourse to the 
 tender mercies and leather bags of napoleons, ducats, florins, 
 and doubloons of a certain Spanish Jew, one Balthazar Mira- 
 
 3—2 
 
36 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 iiores, a sluiveUed-skinned, wheezing old cove, wlio was " most 
 happy to lent anytink to his tear young shentlesmen, hut, by 
 Got ! he was as poor as Job, he was indeed !" Whether Job 
 ever lent money out on interest or not, I can't say; per- 
 haps he did, as in the finish he ended with having quadrupled 
 his cattle and lands, and all his goods — a knack usurers pre- 
 serve in full force to this day ; but all I can say is, that if he 
 was not poorer than Mr. Miraflores, he was not much to be 
 pitied, for he, miserly old shark, lived in his dark, dirty hole, 
 like a crocodile embedded in Nile mud, and crushed the bones 
 of all unwary adventurers who came within range of his great 
 bristling jaws. 
 
 Money, however. Little Grand and I got out of him in 
 plenty, only for a little bit of paper in exchange ; and at that 
 time we didn't know that though the paper tax would be 
 repealed at last, there would remain, as long as youths are 
 green and old birds cunning, a heavy and bitter tax on certain 
 bits of paper to which one's hand is put, which Mr. Glad- 
 stone, though he achieve the herculean task of making dray- 
 men take kindly to vin ordinaire, and the popping of cham- 
 pagne corks a familiar sound by cottage-hearths, will never 
 *be able to include in his budgets to come, among the Taxes 
 that are Kepealed ! 
 
 Well, we had our money from old Balthazar that morning, 
 and we played wi'^h it again that night up at the Casa di Fieri. 
 Loo this time, by way of change. Saint-Jeu said he always 
 thought it well to change your game as you change your 
 loves : constancy, whether to cards or women, was most fatigu- 
 ing. We liked Saint-Jeu very much, we thought him such a 
 funny fellow. They said they did not care to play much — of 
 course they didn't, when Guatamara had had ecarte with the 
 Grand-Duke of Chaffsandlarkstein at half a million a side, 
 and Lord Dolph had broken the bank at Homburg "just for 
 fun — no fun to old Blanc, who farms it though, you know." 
 But the Marchioness, who was doubly gracious that night, 
 told them they must play, because it amused her chers ^etits 
 amis. Besides, she said, in her pretty, imperious way she 
 liked to see it — it amused her. After that, of course, there 
 was no more hesitation : down we sat, and young Heavystone 
 with us. 
 
 The evening before we had happened to mention him, said 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 37 
 
 he was a fellow of no end of tin, though as stupid an owl as 
 ever spelt his own name wrong when he passed a military 
 examination, and the Marchioness, recalling the name, said 
 she remembered his father, and asked us to bring him to see 
 her ; which we did, fearing no rival in " old Heavy." 
 
 So down we three sat, and had the evening before over 
 again, with the cards, and the smiles, and wiles of our divinity, 
 and Saint-Jeu's stories and Fitzhervey's cognac and cigars ; 
 with this difference, that we found loo more exciting than 
 vingt-et-un. They played it so fast, too, it was like a breath- 
 less heat for the Goodwood Cup, and the Marchioness watched 
 it, leaning alternately over Grand's, and Heavy's, and my 
 chair, and saying, with such naive delight, " Oh, do take 
 miss, Cosmo ; I would risk it if I were you, Mr. Heavystone ; 
 "praij don't let my naughty brother win everything," that I'd 
 have defied the stiffest of the Stagyrites or the chilliest of 
 Galvinists to have kept their head cool with that syren voice 
 in their ear. 
 
 And La Lucrezia sat, as she had sat the night before, by the 
 open window, still and silent, the Cape jasmines and Southern 
 creepers framing her in a soft moonlight picture, contrast 
 enough to the brilliantly lighted room, echoing with laughter 
 at Saint-Jeu's stories, perfumed with Cubas and narghiles, and 
 shrining the magnificent, full-bloom, jewelled beauty of our 
 Marchioness St. Julian, with which we were as rapidly, as 
 madly, as unreasoningly, and as sentimentally in love as any 
 boys of seventeen or eighteen ever could be. What greater 
 latitude, you will exclaim, recalling certain buried-away epi- 
 sodes of your hobbedehoyism, when you addressed Latin dis- 
 tich s to. that hazel-eyed Hebe who presided over oyster patties 
 and water ices at the pastrycook's in Eton ; or ruined your 
 governor's young plantations at cutting the name of Adeliza 
 Mary, your couzin, at this day a portly person in velvet and 
 point, whom you can now call, with a thanksgiving in the stead 
 of the olden tremor, Mrs. Hector M^Cutchin % Yes, we were 
 in love in a couple of evenings. Little Grand vehemently and 
 unpoetically, I shyly and sentimentally, according to our tem- 
 peraments, and as the fair Emily stirred feud between the two 
 iS'oble Kinsmen, so the Marchioness St. Julian began to sow 
 seeds of jealousy and detestation between us, sworn allies as 
 we were. But "Ze veritable amant ne connait jpoint d!amis^' and 
 
38 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 as sooD as we began to grow jealous of each other, Little Grand 
 could have kicked me to the devil, and I could have kicked 
 ^m, with the greatest pleasure in life. 
 
 But I was shy, Little Grand was blessed with all the auda- 
 . city imaginable ; the consequence was, that when our horses 
 came round, and the Maltese who acted as cherub was going 
 to close the gates of Paradise upon us, he managed to slip into 
 the Marchioness's boudoir to get a tete-a-tete farewell, while 
 I strode up and down the verandah, not heeding Saint-Jeu, 
 who was telling a tale, to which, in any other saner moments, 
 I should have listened greedily, but longing to execute on 
 Little Grand some fierce and terrible vengeance, to which the 
 vendetta should be baby's play. Saint-Jeu left me to put his 
 arm over Heavy's shoulder, and tell him if ever he came to 
 Paris he should be transported to receive him at the Hotel de 
 Millefleurs, and present him at the Tuileries; and I stood 
 swearing to myself, and breaking off sprays of the verandah 
 creepers, when I heard somebody say, very softly and low, 
 
 " Signore, come here a moment." 
 
 It was that sweetly pretty mute whom we had barely noticed, 
 absorbed as we were in the worship of our maturer idol, leaning 
 out of the window, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, her 
 eyes sad and anxious. Of course I went to her, surprised at 
 her waking up so suddenly to any interest in me. She put 
 her hand on my coat-sleeve, and drew me down towards her. 
 
 " Listen to me a moment. I hardly know how to warn you, 
 and yet I must. I cannot sit quietly by and see you and your 
 young friends being deceived as so many have been before you. 
 Do not come here again — do not " 
 
 " Piglia mia ! are you not afraid of the night air T said the 
 Prince of Orangia MagnoKa, just behind us. 
 
 His words were kind, but there was a nasty glitter in his 
 eyes. Lucrezia answered him in passionate Italian — of which 
 I had no knowledge — with such fire in her eyes, such haughty 
 gesticulation, and such a torrent of words, that I really began 
 to think, pretty soft little dear as she looked, that she must 
 positively be a trifle out of her mind, her silence before, and 
 her queer speech to me, seemed such odd behaviour for a 
 young lady in such high society. She was turning to me again 
 when Little Grand came out into the verandah, looking flushed, 
 proud, and self-complaisant, as such a winner and slayer of 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 3^ 
 
 women would do. My hand clenched on the jasmine, I 
 thirsted to spring on him as he stood there with his provoking, 
 self-contented smile, and his confounded coxcombical air, and 
 his cursed fair curls — my hair was dust-coloured and as rehel- 
 lious as porcupine-quills — and wash out in his blood or mine — 
 A touch of a soft hand thrilled tlirough my every nerve and 
 fibre ; the Marchioness was there, and signed me to her. Lu- 
 crezia. Little Grand, and all the rest of the universe vanished 
 from my mind at the lightning of that angel smile and the 
 rustle of that moire-antique dress. She beckoned me to her 
 into the empty drawing-room. 
 
 "Augustus" (I never thought my name could sound so 
 sweet before), " tell me, what was my niece Lucrezia saying to 
 you just now T 
 
 Now I had a sad habit of telling the truth ; it was an out- 
 of-the-world custom taught me, among other old-fashioned 
 things, at home, though I soon found how inconvenient a hUise 
 modern society considers it ; and I blurted the truth out here, 
 not distinctly or gracefully though, as Little Grand would 
 have done, for I was in that state of exaltation ordinarily ex- 
 pressed as not knowing whether one is standing in one's 
 Wellingtons or not. 
 
 The Marchioness sighed. 
 
 " Ah, did she say that % Poor dear girl ! She dislikes me 
 so much, it is quite an hallucination, and yet, Augustus, I 
 have been to her like an elder sister, like a mother. Imagine 
 how it grieves me," and the Marchioness shed some tears — 
 pearls of price, thought I, worthy to drop from angel eyes — 
 "it is a bitter sorrow to me, but poor darling 1 she is not 
 responsible." 
 
 She touched her veiny temple significantly as she spoke, 
 and I understood, and felt tremendously shocked at it, that 
 the young, fair Italian girl was a fierce and cruel maniac, who 
 had the heart (oh ! most extraordinary madness did it seem to 
 me \ if / had lost my senses I could never have harmed her !) 
 to hate, absolutely hate, the noblest, tenderest, most beautiful 
 of women ! 
 
 " I never alluded to it to any one," continued the Marchio- 
 ness. ^ * Guatamara and Saint- Jeu, though such intimate friends, 
 are ignorant of it. I would rather have any one think ever so 
 badly of me, than reveal to them the cruel misfortune of my 
 sweet Lucrezia " 
 
46 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHLONESS. 
 
 How noble slie looked as she spoke ! 
 
 " But you, Augustus, you," and she smiled upon me till 1 
 grew as dizzy as after my first taste of milk-punch, " I have 
 not the courage to let you go off with any bad impression of me. 
 I have known you a very little while, it is true — ^but a few 
 hours, indeed — ^yet there are affinities of heart and soul which 
 overstep the bounds of time, and, laughing at the chill ties of 
 ordinary custom, make strangers dearer than old friends " 
 
 The room revolved round me, the lights danced up and down, 
 my heart beat like Thor's hammer, and my pulse went as fast 
 as a favourite saving the distance. Bhe speaking so to me ! 
 My senses whirled round and round like fifty thousand witches 
 on a Walpurgis Night, and down I went on my knees before 
 my magnificent idol, raving away I couldn't tell you what now — 
 the essence of everything I'd had ever read, from Ovid to 
 Alexander Smith. It must have been something frightful to 
 hear, though Heaven knows I meant it earnestly enough. 
 Suddenly I was pulled up with a jerk, as one throws an un- 
 broken colt back on his haunches in the middle of his first 
 start. / thought I heard a la/ugh. 
 
 She started up too. " Hush ! another time 1 "We may be 
 overheard." And drawing her dress from my hands, which 
 grasped it as agonisingly as a cockney grasps his saddle-bow, 
 holding on for dear life over the Burton or Tedworth country, 
 she stooped kindly over me, and floated away before / was 
 recovered from the exquisite delirium of my ecstatic trance. 
 
 She loved me ! The superb creature loved me ! There was 
 not a doubt of it ; and how I got back to the barracks that night 
 in my heavenly state of mind I could never have told. All I 
 know is, that Grand and I never spoke a word, by tacit consent, 
 all the way back ; that I felt a fiendish delight when I saw 
 his proud triumphant air, and thought how little he g-uessed, 
 
 poor fellow ! And that Dream of One Fair Woman was as 
 
 superior in rapture to the " Dream of Fair Women " as Tokey 
 to the "Fine Fruity Port" that results from damsons and a 
 decoction of sloes ! 
 
 The next day there was a grand affair in Malta to receive 
 some foreign Prince, whose name I do not remember now, 
 who called on us en route to England. Of course aU the 
 troops turned out, and there was an inspection of us, and a 
 grand luncheon and dinner, and ball, and all that sort of 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 41 
 
 thing, wliicli a month before I should have considered prime 
 fun, but which now, as it kept me out of my paradise, I 
 thought the most miserable bore that could possibly have 
 chanced. 
 
 " I say," said Heavy to me, as I was getting into harness 
 — " I say, don't you wonder Fitzhervey and the Marchioness 
 ain't coming to the palace to-day % One would have thought 
 old Stars and Garters would have been sure to ask them." 
 
 "Ask them? I should say so," I returned with immeasur- 
 able disdain. "Of course he asked them; but she told me 
 she shouldn't come, last night. She is so tired of such things. 
 She came yachting with Fitzhervey solely to try and have a 
 little quiet. She says people never give her a moment's rest 
 when she is in Paris or London. She was sorry to disappoint 
 Stars and Garters, but I don't think she likes his wife much : 
 she don't consider her good ton." 
 
 On which information Heavy lapsed into a state of pro- 
 foundest awe and wonderment, it having been one of his 
 articles of faith, for the month that we had been in Malta, that 
 the palace people were exalted demigods, whom it was only 
 permissible to worship from a distance, and a very respectful 
 distance too. Heavy had lost some twenty odd pounds the 
 night before — of course we lost, young hands as we were, un- 
 accustomed to the society of that entertaining gentleman 
 Pam — and had grumbled not a little at the loss of his gold 
 bobs. But now I could see that such a contemptibly pecuniary 
 matter was clean gone from his memory, and that he would 
 have thought the world well lost for the honour of playing 
 cards with people who could afford to disappoint old Stars 
 and Garters. 
 
 The inspection was over at last; and if any other than 
 Conran had been my senior officer, I should have come off 
 badly, in all probability, for the abominable manner in which 
 I went through my evolutions. The day came to an end 
 somehow or other, though I began to think it never would, 
 the luncheon was ended, the bigwigs were taking their sieste, 
 or otherwise occupied, and I, trusting to my absence not being 
 noticed, tore off as hard as a man can who has Cupid for his 
 Pegasus. With a bouquet as large as a drum-head, clasped 
 round with a bracelet, about which I had many doubts as to 
 the propriety of offering to the possessor of such jewellery as 
 
42 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 the Marchioness must have, yet on which I thought I might 
 venture after the scene of last night, I was soon on the veran- 
 dah of the Casa di Fiori, and my natural shyness being stimu- 
 lated into a distant resemblance of Little Grand's enviable 
 brass, seeing the windows of the drawing-room open, I pushed 
 aside the green Venetians and entered noiselessly. The room 
 did not look a quarter so inviting as the night before, though 
 it was left in precisely a similar state. I do not know how it 
 was, but those cards lying about on the floor, those sconces 
 with the wax run down and dripping over them, those emptied 
 caraffes that had diffused an odour not yet dissipated, those 
 tables and velvet couches all h tort et a travers, did not look so 
 very inviting after all, and, even to my unsophisticated senses, 
 scarcely seemed fit for a Peeress. 
 
 There was nobody in the room, and I walked through it 
 towards the boudoir ; from the open door I saw Pitzhervey, 
 Guatamara, and my Marchioness — but oh ! what horror un- 
 utterable ! doing — gue pensez-vous f Drinking bottled porter ! 
 -^and drinking bottled porter in a jpeignoir not of the clean- 
 liest, and with raven tresses not of the neatest ! 
 
 Only fancy ! she, that divine, sjpirituelle creature, who had 
 talked but a few hours before of the affinity of souls, to have 
 come down like any ordinary woman, to Guinness's stout, and 
 a checked dressing-gown and unbrushed locks ! To find your 
 prophet without his silver veil, or your Leila dead drowned 
 in a sack, or your Guinevere flown over with Sir Lancelot to 
 Boulogne, or your long-esteemed Griselda gone off with your 
 cockaded Jeames, is nothing to the torture, the unutterable 
 anguish, of seeing your angel, your divinity, your bright par- 
 ticular star, your hallowed Arabian rose, come down to — 
 Bottled Porter ! Do not talk to me of Dore, sir, or of Mr. 
 Martin's pictures; their horrors dwindle into insignificance 
 compared with the horror of finding an intimate liaison be- 
 tween one's first love and Bottled Porter ! 
 
 In my first dim, unutterable anguish, I should have turned 
 and fled; but my syren's voice had not lost all its power, 
 despite the stout and dirty dressing-gown, for she was a very 
 handsome woman, and could stand such things as well as any- 
 body. She came towards me, with her softest smile, glancing 
 at the bracelet on the bouquet, apologising slightly for her 
 n^glig^ : — " I am so indolent. I only dress for those I care 
 
LITTLE GRAI^D AND THE MARCHIONESS, \% 
 
 to please— and I never hoped to see you to-day." In short, 
 magnetising me over again, and smoothing down my outraged 
 sensibilities, till I ended by becoming almost blind {quite I 
 could not manage) to the checked robe de chambre and the 
 unbrushed bandeaux, by offering her my braceleted bouquet, 
 which was very graciously accepted, and even by sharing the 
 atrocious London porter, "that horrid stuff," she called it, 
 " how I hate it ! but it is the only thing Sir Benjamin Brodie 
 allows me, I am so very delicate, you know, my sensibilities 
 so frightfully acute !" 
 
 I had not twenty minutes to stay, having to be back at the 
 barracks, or risk a reprimand, which, happily, the checked 
 peignoir had cooled me sufficiently to enable me to recollect. So 
 
 I took my farewell one not unlike Medora's and Conran's, 
 
 Fitzhervey and Guat^mara having kindly withdrawn as soon 
 as the bottled porter was finished — and I went out of the 
 house in a very blissful state, despite Guinness and the unwel- 
 come demi-toilette, which did not accord with Eugene Sue's 
 and the Parlour Library's description of the general getting-up 
 and stunning appearance of heroines and peeresses " rechning, 
 in robes of cloud-like tissue and folds of the richest lace, on a 
 cabriole couch of amber velvet, while the air was filled with 
 the voluptuous perfume of the flower-children of the South, 
 and music from unseen choristers lulled the senses with its 
 divinest harmony," &c., &c., &c. 
 
 Bottled porter and a checked dressing-gown ! Say what 
 you like, sirs, it takes a very strong passion to overcome those, 
 I have heard men ascribe the waning of their affections after 
 the honeymoon to the constant sight of their wives — whom 
 before they had only seen making papa's coffee with an angelic 
 air and a toilette tir'ee h quatre Spingles — everlastingly coming 
 down too late for breakfast in a dressing-gown ; and, upon my 
 soul, if ever I marry, which heaven in pitiful mercy foref end! 
 and my wife make her appearance in one of those confounded 
 jpeignoirs, I will give that much-run-after and deeply-to-be- 
 pitied public character, the Divorce Judge, some more work 
 to do — I will upon my honour. 
 
 However, the peignoir had not iced me enough that time 
 to prevent my tumbling out of the house in as delicious an 
 ecstasy as if I had been eating some of Monte Cristo's " hat- 
 chis." As I went out, not looking before me, I came bang 
 
44 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS, 
 
 against the chest of somebody else, who, not admiring the 
 rencontre, hit my cap over my eyes, and exclaimed, in not the 
 most courtly manner you will acknowledge, " You cursed owl, 
 take that, then ! What are you doing here, I should like to 
 know?" 
 
 " Confound your impudence !" I retorted, as soon as my 
 ocular powers were restored, and I saw the blue eyes, fair curls, 
 and smart figure of my ancient lolaus, now my bitterest foe 
 — "confound your impertinence! what are you doing here? 
 you mean." 
 
 "Take care, and don't ask questions about what doesn't 
 concern you," returned Little Grand, with a laugh — a most 
 irritating laugh. There are times when such cachinnations 
 sting one's ears more than a volley of oaths. " Go home and 
 mind your own business, my chicken. You are a green bird, 
 and nobody minds you ; but still you'll find it as well not to 
 come poaching on other men's manors." 
 
 " Other men's manors ! Mine, if you please," I shouted, so 
 mad with him I could have floored him where he stood. 
 
 " Phew !" laughed Little Grand, screwing up his lips into 
 a contemptuous whistle, "you've been drinking too much 
 Eass, my daisy ; 'tisn't good for young heads — can't stand it. 
 Go home, innocent." 
 
 The insult, the disdainful tone, froze my blood. My heart 
 swelled with a sense of outraged dignity and injured manhood. 
 With a conviction of my immeasurable superiority of position, 
 as the beloved of that divine creature, I emancipated myself 
 from the certain sort of slavery I was generally in to Little 
 Grand, and spoke as I conceived it to be the habit of gentle- 
 men whose honour had been wounded to speak. 
 
 " Mr. Grandison, you will pay for this insult. I shall 
 expect satisfaction." 
 
 Little Grand laughed again — absolutely grinned, the audaci- 
 ous young imp — and he twelve months younger than I, too ! 
 " Certainly, sir. If you wish to be made a target of, I shall 
 be delighted to oblige you. I can't keep ladies waiting. It is 
 always Place aux dames ! with me ; so, for the present, good 
 morning !" 
 
 And off went the young coxcomb into the Casa di Piori, and 
 I, only consoled by the reflection of the different reception he 
 would receive to what mine had been ijie had a braceleted 
 
LirriE GRAND AND 7^HE MARCHIONESS, 45 
 
 bouquet, too, tlie young pretentious puppy !), started off again, 
 assuaging my lacerated feelings with the dehcious word of Satis- 
 faction. I felt myself immeasurably raised above the heads of 
 every other man in Malta — a perfect hero of romance; in fact, fit 
 to figure in my beloved Alexandre's most highly-wrought yellow- 
 papered roman, with a duel on my hands, and the love of a 
 magnificent creature like my Eudoxia Adelaida. She had 
 become Eudoxia Adelaida to me now, and I had forgiven, if 
 not forgotten, the dirty dressing-gown ; the bottled porter lay, 
 of course, at Brodie's door. K he would condemn spiritual 
 forms of life and light to the common realistic aliments of 
 horrible barmaids and draymen, she could not help it, nor I 
 either. If angels come down to earth, and are separated from 
 their natural nourishment of manna and nectar, they must take 
 what they can get, even though it be so coarse and sublunary 
 a thing as Guinness's XXX, must they not, sir ? Yes, I felt 
 very exalti^ with my affair of honour and my affair of the heart. 
 Little Grand for my foe, and my Marchioness for a love. I 
 never stopped to remember that I might be smashing with 
 frightful recklessness the Sixth and the Seventh Command- 
 ments. If Little Grand got shot, he must thank himself; he 
 should not have insulted me ; and if there was a Marquis St. 
 Julian, why — I pitied him, poor fellow ! that was aU. 
 
 Eull of these sublime sensations — grown at least three feet 
 in my varnished boots — I lounged into the ball-room, feeling 
 supreme pity for ensigns who were chattering round the door, 
 aidmiring those poor, pale garrison girls. They had not a duel 
 and a Marchioness : they did not know what beauty meant — 
 what life was ! 
 
 I did not dance — I was above that sort of thing now — there 
 was not a woman worth the trouble in the room ; and about 
 the second waltz I saw my would-be rival talking to Euthven, 
 a fellow in Ours. Little Grand did not look glum or dispirited, 
 as he ought to have done after the interview he must have had; 
 but probably that was the boy's brass. He would never look 
 beaten if you had hit him till he was black and blue. Pre- 
 sently Euthven came up to me. He was not over-used to his 
 business, for he began the opening chapter in rather schoolboy 
 fashion. 
 
 " Hallo, Gus ! so you and Little Grand have been falling 
 out. Why don't you settle it with a little mill ? A vast de^l 
 
46 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 better than pistols, Duels always seems to me no fun. Two 
 
 men stand up like fools, and " 
 
 "Mr. Euthven," said I, very haughtily, "if your principal 
 desires to apologise- 
 
 " Apologise ! Eless your soul, no ! But- 
 
 'Then," said I, cutting him uncommonly short, indeed, "you 
 can have no necessity to address yourself to me, and I beg to 
 refer you to my friend and second, Mr. Heavystone." 
 
 Wherewith I bowed, turned on my heel, and left him. 
 
 I did not sleep that night, though I tried hard, because I 
 thought it the correct thing for heroes to sleep sweetly till the 
 clock strikes the hour of their duel, execution, &c., or whatever 
 it may hap. Egmont slept, Argyle slept, Philippe Egalite, scores 
 of them, but I could not. Not that I funked it, thank Heaven 
 — I never had a touch of that — but because I was in such a 
 delicious state of excitement, self-admiration, and heroism, 
 which had not cooled when I found myself walking to the 
 appointed place by the beach with poor old Heavy, who was 
 intensely impressed by being charged with about five quires of 
 the best cream-laid, to be given to the Marchioness in case I 
 fell. Little Grand and Euthven came on the ground at almost 
 the same moment. Little Grand eminently jaunty and most 
 confoundedly handsome. We took off our caps with distant 
 ceremony; the Castilian hidalgos were never more stately; but, 
 then, what Knights of the Eound Table ever splintered spears 
 for such a woman % 
 
 The paces were measured, the pistols taken out of their case. 
 We were just placed, and Euthven, with a handkerchief in his 
 hand, had just enumerated, in awful accents, " One ! two !" — 
 the " three !"yet hovered on his lips, when we heard a laugh — 
 the third laugh that had chilled my blood in twenty-four hours. 
 Somebody's hand was laid on Little Grand's shoulder, and 
 Conran's voice interrupted the whole thing. 
 
 " Hollo, young ones ! what farce is this T 
 
 "Farce, sir !" retorted Little Grand, hotly—" farce? It is 
 no farce. It is an affair of honour, and " 
 
 " Don't make me laugh, my dear boy," smiled Conran ; " it 
 is much too warm for such an exertion. Pray, why are you 
 and your once sworn friend making popinjays of each other?" 
 
 " Mr. Grandison has grossly insulted me," I began, " and I 
 demand satisfaction. I will not stir from the ground without 
 it, and^ " 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 47 
 
 "You sharUt^^ shouted Little Grand. "Do you dare to 
 pretend I want to funk, you little contemptible " 
 
 Though it was too warm, Conran went off into a fit of 
 laughter. 
 
 I dare say our sublimity had a comic touch in it of which 
 we never dreamt. * ' My dear boys, pray don't, it is too fatiguing. 
 Come, Grand, what is it all about V 
 
 " I deny your right to question me. Major," retorted Little 
 Grand in a fury. " What have you to do with it ? I mean 
 to punish that young owl yonder — ^who didn't know how to 
 drink anything but milk-and-water, didn't know how to say 
 bo ! to a goose, till I taught him — for very abominable imper- 
 tinence, and I'll " 
 
 " My impertinence ! I like that !'^ I shouted. " It is your 
 unwarrantable, overbearing self-conceit, that makes you the 
 laughing-stock of all the mess, which " 
 
 " Silence!" said Conran's still stern voice, which subdued us 
 into involutary respect. " '^0 more of this nonsense ! Put up 
 those pistols, Euthven. You are two hot-headed, silly boys, 
 who don't know for what you are quarrelling. Live a few 
 years longer, and you won't be so eager to get into hot water, 
 and put cartridges into your best friends. Jfo, I shall not hear 
 any more about it. If you do not instantly give me your words 
 of honour not to attempt to repeat this foUy, as your senior 
 officer I shall put you under arrest for six weeks." 
 
 Alexander Dumas ! — Monte Christo ! — heroes of 
 yellow paper and pluck invincible ! I ask pardon of your 
 shades ; I must record the fact, lowering and melancholy as it 
 is, that before our senior officer our heroisim melted hke Vanilla 
 ice in the sun, our glorie^umbled to the ground like twelfth- 
 cake ornaments under children's fingers, and before the threat 
 of arrest the lions lay down like lambs. 
 
 Conran sent us back, humbled, sulky, and crestfallen, and 
 resumed his solitary patrol upon the beach, where, before the 
 sun was fairly up, he was having a shot at curlews. But if he 
 was a little stern, he was no less kind-hearted ; and in the 
 afternoon of that day, while he lay, after his siesta, smoking 
 on his little bed, I unburdened myself to him. He did not 
 laugh at me, though I saw a quizzical smile under his black 
 moustaches. 
 
 "Wha-t is your divinity's name?" he asked, when I had 
 finished. 
 
48 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS, 
 
 " Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St. Julian." 
 
 "The Marchioness St. Julian ! .Oh !" 
 
 " Do you know her T I inquired, somewhat perplexed by 
 his tone. 
 
 He smiled straight out this time. 
 
 " I don't know her, but there are a good many Peeresses in 
 Malta and Gibraltar, and along the line of the Pacific, as my 
 brother JN'ed, in the Belisarius, will tell you. I could count 
 two score such of my acquaintance off at this minute." 
 
 I wondered what he meant. I dare say he knew all the Peer- 
 age ; but that had nothing to do with me, and I thought it 
 strange that all the Duchesses, and Countesses, and Baronesses 
 should quit their country-seats and town-houses to locate them- 
 selves along the line of the Pacific. 
 
 " She's a fine woman, St. John V he went on. 
 
 " Pine !" I reiterated, bursting into a panegyric, with 
 which I won't bore you as I bored him. 
 
 " Well, you're going there to-night, you say ; take me with 
 you, and we'll see what I think of your Marchioness." 
 
 I looked at his fine figure and features, recalled certain tales 
 of his conquests, remembered that he knew Prench, Italian, 
 German, and Spanish; but, not being very able to refuse, 
 acquiesced with a reluctance I could not entirely conceal. 
 Conran, however, did not perceive it, and after mess took his 
 cap, and went with me to the Casa di Piori. 
 
 The rooms were all right again, my Marchioness was en 
 grande tenue, amber silk, black lace, diamonds, and all that 
 sort of style. Pitzhervey and the other men were in evening 
 dress^ drinking cofi'ee ; there was not a trace of bottled porter 
 anywhere, and it was all very brilliant and presentable. The 
 Marchioness St. Julian rose with the warmest efiusion, her 
 dazzling white teeth showing in the sunniest of smiles, and 
 both hands outstretched. 
 
 " Augustus, bien aime, you are rather " 
 
 " Late," I suppose she was going to say, but she stopped 
 dead short, her teeth remained parted in a stereotyped smile, 
 a blankness of dismay came over her luminous eyes. She 
 caught sight of Conran, and I imagined I heard a very low- 
 breathed " Curse the fellow !" from courteous Lord Dolph. 
 Conran came forward, however, as if he did not notice it ; 
 there was only that queer smile lurking under his moustaches. 
 
lifTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 4^ 
 
 I introduced liim to them, and the Marchioness smiled again, 
 and Fitzhervey almost resumed his wonted extreme urhaiiity. 
 Eut they were somehow or other wonderfully ill at ease — - 
 wonderfully, for people in such high society ; and I was ill at 
 ease too, from being only able to attribute Eudoxia Adelaida's 
 evident consternation at the sight of Conran to his having 
 been some time or other an old love of hers. " Ah !" thought 
 I, grinding my teeth, " that comes of loving a woman older 
 than oneself." 
 
 The Major, however, seemed the only one who enjoyed 
 himself. The Marchioness was beaming on him graciously, 
 though her ruffled feathers were not quite smoothed down, 
 and he was sitting by her with an intense amusement in his 
 eyes, alternately talking to her about Stars and Garters, which, 
 by her answers, she did not seem to know so very intimately 
 after all, and chatting with Eitzhervey about hunting, who^ 
 for a man that had hunted over every country, according to 
 his own account, seemed to confuse Tom Edge with Tom 
 Smith, the Eurton with the Tedworth, a bull-finch with an 
 ox-rail, in queer style, under Conran's cross-questioning. We 
 had been in the room about ten minutes, when a voice, 
 rich, low, sweet, rang out from some inner room, singing the 
 glorious " Inflammatus." How strange it sounded in the 
 Casa di Eiori ! 
 
 Conran started, the dark blood rose over the clear bronze of 
 his cheek. He turned sharply to the Marchioness. " Good 
 Heaven ! whose voice is that T 
 
 " My niece's," she answered, staring at him, and touching . 
 a hand-bell. " I will ask her to come and sing to us nearer. 
 She has really a lovely voice." 
 
 Conran grew pale again, and sat watching the door with 
 the most extraordinary anxiety. Some minutes went by; 
 then Lucrezia entered with the same haughty reserve which 
 her soft young face always wore when with her aunt. It 
 changed, though, when her glance fell on Conran, into the 
 wildest rapture I ever saw on any countenance. He fixed his 
 eyes on her with the look Little Grand says he's seen him 
 wear in a battle — a contemptuous smile quivering on his face. 
 
 " Sing us something, Lucrezia dear," began the Marchioness. 
 " You shouldn't be like the nightingales, and give your music 
 only to night and solitude." 
 
 4 
 
so LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 Liicrezia seemed not to hear her. She had never taken her 
 eyes off Conran, and she went, as dreamily as that dear little 
 Araina in the " Sonnambnla," to her seat under the jasmines 
 in the window. For a few minutes Conran, who didn't seem 
 to care two straws what the society in general thought of him, 
 took his leave, to the relief, apparently, of Fitzhervey and 
 Guatamara. 
 
 As he went across the verandah — ^that memorable verandah I 
 — I sitting in dudgeon near the other window, while Fitzher- 
 vey was proposing ecarte to Heavy, whom we had found there 
 on our entrance, and the Marchioness had vanished into her 
 boudoir for a moment, I saw the Eoman girl spring out after 
 him, and catch hold of his arm : 
 
 " Victor ! Victor ! for pity's sake ! — I never thought we 
 should meet like this T 
 
 " ^on did I." 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! you "svill kill me. In mercy, say some 
 kinder words !" 
 
 " I can say nothing that it would be courteous to you to 
 sayy 
 
 I couldn't have been as inflexible, whatever her sins might 
 have been, with her hands clasped on me, and her face raised 
 so close to mine. Lucrezia's voice changed to a piteous wail : 
 
 " You love me no longer, then ?' 
 
 " Love !" said Conran, fiercely — " love ! How dare you 
 speak to me of love % I held you to be fond, innocent, true 
 as Heaven : as such, you were dearer to me than life, as dear 
 as honour. I loved you with as deep a passion as ever a man 
 knew — Heaven help me ! I love you now ! How am I re- 
 \.'arded *? Ey finding you the companion of blackguards, the 
 associate of swindlers, one of the arch-intriguantes who lead 
 on youths to ruin with base smiles and devilish arts. Then 
 you dare talk to me of love !" 
 
 With those passionate words he threw her off him. She 
 fell at his feet with a low moan. He either did not hear, or 
 did not heed it ; and I, bemldered by what I heard, mechan- 
 ically went and lifted her from the ground. Lucrezia had not 
 fainted, but she looked so wild, that I believed the Mar- 
 chioness, and set her down as mad ; but then Conran must 
 be mad as well, which seemed too incredible a thing for me 
 to swallow — our cool Major mad ! 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. ^i 
 
 " Where does lie live ?" asked Lucrezia of me, in a breath^ 
 less whisper. 
 
 '' He % Who T 
 
 " Victor — your officer — Signor Conran." 
 
 " Why, he lives in Yaletta, of course." 
 
 " Can I find him there T 
 
 " I dare say, it you want him." 
 
 " Want him ! Oh Santa Maria ! is not his absence death ? 
 Can I find him?" 
 
 " Oh yes, I dare say. Anybody will show you Conran's 
 rooms." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 With that, this mysterious young lady left me, and I 
 turned in through the window again. Heavy and the men 
 were playing at lansquenet, that most perilous, rapid, and 
 bewitching of all the resistless Card Circes. There was no 
 Marchioness, and having done it once with impunity, I 
 thought I might do it again, and lifted the amber curtain that 
 divided the boudoir from the drawing-room. What did I 
 behold % Oh ! torture unexampled ! Oh ! fiendish agony ! 
 There was Little Grand — self-conceited, insulting, impertinent, 
 abominable, unendurable Little Grand — on the amber satin 
 couch, with the Marchioness leaning her head on his shoulder, 
 and looking up in his thrice-confounded face with her most 
 adorable smile, my smile, that had beamed, and, as I thought, 
 beamed only upon me ! 
 
 If Mephistopheles had been by to tempt me, I would have 
 sold my soul to have wreaked vengeance on them both. 
 Neither saw me, thank Heaven ! and I had self-possession 
 enough not to give them the cruel triumph of witnessing my 
 anguish. I withdrew in silence, dropped the curtain, and 
 rushed to bury my wrongs and sorrows in the friendly bosom 
 of the gentle night. It was my first love, and I had made a 
 fool of myself. The two are synonymous. 
 
 How I reached the barracks I never knew. All the night 
 long I sat watching the stars out, raving to them of Eudoxia 
 Adelaida, and cursing in plentiful anathemas my late Orestes. 
 How should I bear his impudent grin every mortal night of 
 my life across the mess-table % I tore up into shreds about a 
 ream of paper, inscribed with tender sonnets to my faithless 
 idol. I trampled into fifty thousand shreds a rosette off her 
 
 4—2 
 
$2 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCLUONESS, 
 
 dress, for wliicli, fool-like, I had begged tlie day before. I 
 smaslied the looking-glass, which could only show me the 
 image of a pitiful donkey. I called on Heaven to redress my 
 'svrongs. Oh ! curse it ! never was a fellow at once so utterly 
 done for and so utterly done brown ! 
 
 And in the vicarage, as I learnt afterwards, when my letter 
 was received at home, there was great glorification and pleasure. 
 My mother and the girls were enraptured at the high society 
 darling Gussy was moving in; " but then, you know, mamma, 
 dear Gussy's manners are so gentle, so gentlemanlike, they are 
 sure to please wherever he goes !" Wherewith my mother 
 cried, and dried her eyes, and cried again, over that abominable 
 letter copied from Little Grand's, and smelling of vilest tobacco. 
 
 Then entered a rectoress of a neighbouring parish, to whom 
 my mother and the girls related with innocent exultation of 
 my grand friends at Malta ; how Lord A. Fitzhervey was my 
 sworn ally, and the Marchioness St. Julian had quite taken me 
 under her wing. And the rectoress, having a son of her own, 
 who was not doing anything so grand at Cambridge, but princi- 
 pally sotting beer at a Cherryhinton public, smiled and was 
 wrathful, and said to her lord at dinner : 
 
 '* My dear, did you ever hear of a Marchioness St. Julian T 
 
 " No, my love, I beheve not — never." 
 
 " Is there one in the Peerage T 
 
 " Can't say, my dear. Look in Burke." 
 
 So the rectoress got Burke, and closed it, after deliberate 
 • inspection, with malignant satisfaction. 
 
 " I thought not. How ridiculous those St. Johns are about 
 that ugly boy Augustus. As if Tom were not worth a hundred 
 of him!" 
 
 I was too occupied with my own miseries then to think 
 about Conran and Lucrezia, though some time after I heard all 
 " about it. It seems that, a year before, Conran was on leave in 
 Eome, and at Home, loitering about the Campagna one day, he 
 made a chance acquaintance with an Italian girl, by getting 
 some flowers for her she had tried to reach and could not. 
 She was young, enthusiastic, intensely interesting, and hud 
 only an old Homan nurse, deaf as a post and purblind with 
 her. The girl was Lucrezia Da' Guari, and Lucrezia was lovely 
 as one of her own myrtle or orange flowers. Somehow or 
 other Conran went there the next day, and the next, and 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS, 53 
 
 tlie next, and so on for a good many days, and always found 
 Lucrezia. Now, Conran had at bottom a touch of unstirred 
 romance, and, moreover, his own idea of what sort of woman 
 he could love. Something in this untrained yet winning 
 Campagna flower answered to both. He was old enough to 
 trust his own discernment, and, after a month or two's walks 
 and talks, Conran, one of the proudest men going, offered him- 
 self and his name to a Eoman girl of whom he knew nothing, 
 except that she seemed to care for him as he had had a fancy 
 to be cared for all his life. It was a deucedly romantic thing — 
 however, he did it. Lucrezia had told him her father was a 
 mihtary officer, but somehow or other this father never came 
 to light, and when he called at their house — or rather rooms — 
 Conran always found him out, which lie thought queer, but, 
 on the whole, rather providential, and he set the accident down 
 to a foreigner's roaming habits. 
 
 The day Conran had really gone the length of offering to 
 make an unknown Italian his wife, he went for the first time 
 in the evening, to Da' Guari's house. The servant showed him 
 in unannounced to a brightly-lighted chamber, reeking with 
 wine and smoke, where a dozen men were playing trente et 
 quarante at an amateur bank, and two or three others were 
 gathered round what he had behoved his own fair and pure Cam- 
 pagna flower. He understood it all ; he turned away v/ith a 
 curse upon him. He wanted love and innocence^ adven- 
 turesses he could have by the score, and he was sick to death 
 of them. From that hour he never saw her again till he met 
 lier at the Casa di Fiori. 
 
 The next day I went to Conran while he was breakfasting, 
 and unburdened my mind to him. He looked ill and haggard, 
 but he listened to me very kindly, though he spoke of the 
 people at the Casa di Eiori in a hard, brief, curious manner. 
 
 *' Plenty have been taken in like you, Gus," he said. " I 
 was, years ago in my youth, when I joined the Army. There 
 are scores of such women, as I told you, down the line of the 
 Pacific, and about here; anywhere, in fact, where the army 
 and navy give them fresh pigeons to be gulled. They take 
 titles that sound grand in boys' ears, and fascinate them till 
 
 they're won all their money, and then send them to 
 
 th^ dogs. Your Marchioness St. Julian's name is Sarah 
 Briggs." 
 
.^4 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 I gave an involuntary shriek. Sarah Briggs finished me. 
 It was the death-stroke, that conld never be got over. 
 
 "She was a ballet-girl in London," continued Conran; "then, 
 when she was sixteen, married that Fitzhervey, alias Briggs, 
 alias Smith, alias what you please, and set up in her present 
 more lucrative employment with her three or four confederates. 
 Saint-Jeu was expelled from Paris for keeping a hell in the 
 Chaussee d'Antin, Fitzhervey was a leg at iN'ewmarket, Orangia 
 Magnoha a lawyer's clerk, who was had up for forgery, Gua- 
 tamara is — by another name — a scoundrel of Eome. There is 
 the history of your Maltese Peerage, Gussy. Well, you'll be 
 wider awake next time. Wait, there is somebody at my door. 
 Stay here a moment, I'll come back to you." 
 
 Accordingly, I stayed in his bedroom, where I had found 
 him writing, and he went into his sitting-room, of which, from 
 the diminutiveness of his domicile, I commanded a fuU view, 
 sit where I would. What was my astonishment to see Lu- 
 crezia ! I went to his bedroom door ; it was locked from the 
 outside, so I perforce remained where I was, to, nolens volens, 
 witness the finish of last night's interview. 
 
 Stern to the last extent and deadly pale, Conran stood, too 
 surprised to speak, and most probably at a loss for words. 
 
 Lucrezia came up to him nevertheless vsdth the abandonment 
 of youth ajid southern blood. 
 
 "Victor ! Victor ! let me speak to you. You shall listen; 
 you shall not judge me unheard." 
 
 " Signorina, I have judged you by only too ample evidence." 
 
 He had recovered himself now, and was as cool as needs be. 
 
 " I deny it. But you love me stiU T 
 
 ** Love youl More shame on me ! A laugh, a compliment, 
 a caress, a cashmere, is as much as such women as you are 
 worth. Love becomes ridiculous named in the same breath 
 with you." 
 
 She caught hold of his hand and crushed it in both her own. 
 
 " Kill me if you wiU. Death would have no sting from 
 your hand, but never speak such words to me." 
 
 His voice trembled. 
 
 " How can I choose but speak them 1 You know what I 
 believed you in Italy, and how on that belief I ofi'ered you my 
 name — a name never yet stained, never yet held unworthy. 
 I lost you, to find you in society which stamped you for eyer. 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND 7 HE MARCHIONESS. 55 
 
 A lovely fiend, holding raw boys enchained, that your associates 
 might rifle their purses with marked cards and cogged dices. 
 I hoped to have found a diamond, without spot or flaw. I 
 discovered my error too late ; it was only glass, which all men 
 were free to pick up and trample on at their pleasure." 
 
 He tried to wrench his hand away, but she would not let it go. 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! listen to me first. If you once thought me 
 worthy of your love, you may, surely, now accord me pity. I 
 shall not trouble you long. After this, you need see me no 
 more. I am going back to my old convent. You and the world 
 will soon forget me, but I shall remember you, and pray for 
 you, as dearer than my own soul." 
 
 Conran's head was bent down now, and his voice was thick, 
 as he answered briefly, 
 
 "Goon." 
 
 This scene half consoled me for Eudoxia Adelaida — (I mean, 
 
 Heavens, Sarah Briggs !) — ^it was so exquisitely romantic, 
 and Conran and Lucrezia wouldn't have done at all badly for 
 Monte Cristo and that dear little Haidee. I was fearfully 
 poetic in those days. 
 
 " When I met you in Eome," Lucrezia went on, in obedience 
 to his injunction, " two years ago, you remember I had only 
 left my convent and lived with my father but a month or two. 
 
 1 told you he was an officer. I only said what I had been 
 told, and I knew no more than you that he was the keeper of 
 a gambling house." 
 
 She shuddered as she paused, and leaned her forehead on 
 Conran's hand. He did not repulse her, and she continued 
 in her broken, simple English : 
 
 " The evening you promised me what I should have needed 
 to have been an angel to be worthy of — your love and your 
 name — that very evening when I reached home, my father bade 
 me dress for a soiree he was going to give. I obeyed him, of 
 course. I knew nothing but what he told me, and I went 
 down, to find a dozen young nobles and a few Englishmen 
 drinking and j)laying on a table covered with green cloth. 
 Some few of them came up to me, but I felt frightened ; their 
 looks, their tones, their florid compliments, were so different 
 to yours. But my father kept his eye upon me, and would 
 not let me leave. While they were leaning over my chair, 
 and whispering in my ear, you came to the door of the saloon, 
 
56 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 and I went towards you, and you looked cold and harsli, as I 
 had never seen you before, and put me aside, and turned 
 away without a word. Oh, Victor I AMiy did you not kill 
 me then % Death would have been kindness. Your Othello 
 was kinder to Desdemona ; he slew her — he did not have 
 her. From that hour I never saw you, and from that hour 
 my father persecuted me because I would never join in his 
 schemes, nor enter his vile gaming-rooms. Yet I have hved 
 with him because I could not get away. I have been too 
 carefully watched. We Italians are not free, like your happy 
 English girls. A few weeks ago we were compelled to leave 
 Eome, the young Contino di Firenze had been stilettoed 
 leaving my father's rooms, and he could stay in Italy no 
 longer. We came here, and joined that hateful woman, who 
 calls herself Marchioness St. Julian ; and, because she could 
 not bend me to her will, gives out that I am her niece, and 
 mad ! I wonder I am not mad, Victor. I wish hearts would 
 break, as the romancers make them ; but how long one suffers, 
 and lives on ! Oh, my love, my soul, my life, only say that 
 you believe me, and look kindly at me once again, then I will 
 never trouble you again, I will only pray for you. But believe 
 me, Victor. The Motlier Superior of my convent will tell 
 you it is the truth that I speak. 0, for the love of Heaven, 
 believe me ! Believe me, or I shall die !'* 
 
 It was not in the nature of man to resist her ; there was 
 truth in the girl's voice and face, if ever truth walked abroad 
 on earth. And Conran did beheve her, and told her so in a 
 few unconnected words, lifting her uj) in his arms, and vow- 
 ing, with most unrighteous oaths, that her father should never 
 have power to persecute her again as long as he himself lived 
 to shelter and take care of her. 
 
 I was so interested in my Monte Cristo and Haidee (it was 
 so like a chapter out of a book), that I entirely forgot my 
 durance vile, and my novel and excessively disgraceful, though 
 enforced, occupation of spy ; and there I stayed, alternating 
 between my interest in them and my agonies at the revela- 
 tions concerning my Eudoxia Adelaida — oh, hang it ! I 
 mean Sarah Briggs — till, after a most confounded long time, 
 Conran saw fit to take Lucrezia off, to get asylum for her 
 with the Colonel's wife for a day or two, that " those fools 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 57 
 
 might not misconstrue her." By which comprehensive 
 epithet he, I suppose, politely designated " Ours." 
 
 Then I went my ways to my own room, and there I found 
 a scented, mauve-hued, creamy billet-doux, in uncommon had 
 handwriting, though, from my miserable Eudoxia Adelaida to 
 the "friend and lover of her soul." Confound the woman ! — 
 how I swore at that daintily-perfumed and most vilely- 
 scrawled letter. To think that where that beautiful signature 
 stretched from one side to the other — " Eudoxia Adelaida St. 
 Julian " — there oiiglit to have been that short, vile, low-bred, 
 hideous Billingsgate cognomen of " Sarah Briggs !" 
 
 In the note she reproached me — the wretched hyjiocrite ! — ■ 
 for my departure the previous night, "without one farewell to 
 your Eudoxia, cruel Augustus !" and asked me to give her 
 a rendezvous at some vineyards lying a little way off the Casa 
 di Eiori, on the road to Melita. l^ow, being a foolish boy, 
 and regarding myself as having been loved and wronged, 
 whereas I had only been playing the very common roU of 
 pigeon, I could not resist the temptation of going, just to take 
 one last look of that fair, cruel face, and upbraid her with 
 being the first to sow the fatal seeds of lifelong mistrust and 
 misery in my only two fond and faithful, &c. &c. &-c. 
 
 So, at the appointed hour, just when the sun was setting 
 over the far-away Spanish shore, and the hush of night was 
 sinking over the little, rocky, peppery, military-thick, Medi- 
 terranean isle, I found myself en route to the vineyards, which, 
 till I came to Malta, had been one of my delusions. Idea pic- 
 turing them in ^vreaths and avenues, Eeality proving them 
 hop-sticks and parched earth. I drew near ; it was quite dark 
 now, the sun had gone to sleep under the blue waves, and 
 the moon was not yet up. Though I knew she was Sarah 
 Briggs, and an adventuress who had made game of me, t^vo 
 facts that one would fancy might chill the passion out of any- 
 body, so mad was I about that woman, that if I had met her 
 then and there, I should have let her wheedle me over, and 
 gone back to the Casa di Eiori with her and been fleeced 
 again : I am sure I should, sir, and so would you, if, at 
 
 eighteen, new to life, you had fallen in with Eudox 
 
 pshaw ! — with Sarah Briggs, my Marchioness St, Julian. 
 
 I drew near the vineyards , my heart beat thick. I could 
 not see. but I was certain I heard the rustle* of her dress, 
 
58 LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS, 
 
 caught tlie perfume of her hair. All her sins vanished : how 
 could I upbraid her, though she were three times over Sarah 
 Briggs ? Yes, she was coming ; I fdt her near ; an electric 
 thrill rushed through me as soul met soul. I heard a mur- 
 mured " Dearest, sweetest T I felt a warm clasp of two arms, 
 
 but a cold row of undress waistcoat-buttons came against 
 
 my face, and a voice I knew too well cried out, as I rebounded 
 from him, impelled thereto by a not gentle kick. 
 
 ** The devil ! get out ! Who the deuce are you T 
 
 We both stopped for breath. At that minute up rose the 
 silver moon, and in its tell-tale rays we glared on one another, 
 I and Little Grand. 
 
 That silence was sublime : the pause between Beethoven's 
 andante and allegro — the second before the Spanish bull 
 rushes upon the torreador. 
 
 " You little miserable wretch !" burst out Grand, slowly 
 and terribly ; " you little, mean, sneaking, spying, contempti- 
 ble milksop ! I should like to know what you mean by 
 bringing out your ugly phiz at this hour, when you used to be 
 afraid of stirring out for fear of nurse's bogies ? And to dare 
 to come lurking after me !" 
 
 " After you, Mr. Grandison !" I repeated, with grandilo- 
 quence. " Eeally you put too much importance on your own 
 movements. I came by appointment to meet the Marchioness 
 St. Julian, whom, I presume, as you are well acquainted with 
 her, you know in her real name of Sarah Briggs, and to " 
 
 " Sarah Briggs ! — you come by appointment T stammered 
 Little Grand. 
 
 " Yes, sir ; if you disbelieve my word of honour, I will 
 condescend to show you my invitation." 
 
 " You little ape !" swore Grand, coming back to his pre- 
 vious ^vrath;"it is a lie, a most abominable, unwarrantable lie ! 
 / came by appointment, sir ; you did no such thing. Look 
 there I* 
 
 And he flaunted before my eyes in the moonlight the fac- 
 simile of my letter, verbatim copy, save that in his Cosmo was 
 put in the stead of Augustus. 
 
 " Look there !" said I, giving him mine. 
 
 Little Grand snatched it, read it over once, twice, thrice, 
 then drooped his head, ^vvith a burning colour in his face, and 
 was silent, .. ■ 
 
LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 59 
 
 The " knowing hand " was done ! 
 
 We were both of us uncommonly quiet for ten minutes, 
 neither of us liked to be the first to give in. 
 
 At last Little Grand looked up and held out his hand, no 
 more nonsense about him now. 
 
 " Simon, you and I have been two great fools ; we can't 
 chaff one another. She's a cursed actress, and — let's make it 
 up, old boy." 
 
 We made it up accordingly — ^when Little Grand was not 
 conceited he was a very joUy fellow — and then I gave him 
 my whole key to the mysteries, intricacies, and charms of our 
 Casa di Eiori. We could not chaff one another, but poor 
 Little Grand was pitiably sore then, and for long afterwards. 
 He, the " old bird," the cool hand, the sharp one of Ours, to 
 have been done brown, to be the joke of the mess, the laugh of 
 all the men, down to the wcest drummer-boy ! Poor Little 
 Grand ! He was too done up to swagger, too thoroughly 
 angry with himself to swear at anybody else. He only 
 whispered to me, " Why the dickens could she want you and 
 me to meet ourselves T 
 
 " To give us a finishing hoax, I suppose" I suggested. 
 
 Little Grand drew his cap over his eyes, and hung his head 
 down in abject humiliation. 
 
 " I suppose so. What fools we have been, Simon ! And, 
 I say, I've borrowed three hundred of old Miraflores, and it's 
 all gone up at that devilish Casa ; and how I shall get it from 
 the governor, Heaven knows, for / don't." 
 
 " I'm in the same pickle, Grand," I groaned. " I've given 
 that old rascal notes of hand for two hundred pounds, and if 
 it don't drop from the clouds, I shall never pay it. Oh, I say, 
 Grand, love comes deucedly expensive." 
 
 " Ah !" said he, with a sympathetic shiver, " think what a 
 pair of hunters we might have had for the money !" With 
 which dismal and remorseful remembrance the old bird who 
 had been trapped like a young pigeon, swore mightily, and 
 withdrew into humbled and disgusted silence. 
 
 ISText morning we heard, to our comfort — ^what lots of 
 people there always are to tell us how to lock our stable 
 door when our solitary mare has been stolen — that, with a 
 gentle hint from the police, the Marchioness St. Julian, with 
 her confrhreSf had taken wing to the Ionian Isles^ where, at 
 
6o LITTLE GRAND AND THE MARCHIONESS. 
 
 Corfu or Ceplialonia, tliey will re-erect the Casa di Fiori, and 
 glide gently on again from vingt-et-un to loo, and from loo to 
 lansquenet, under eyes as young and blinded as our own. 
 They went without Lucrezia. Conran took her into his own 
 hands. Any other man in the regiment would have been 
 pretty well ridiculed at taking a bride out of the Casa di 
 Fiori ; but tbe statements made by the high-born Abbess of 
 her Eoman convert were so clear, and so to the girl's honour, and 
 he had such a way of holding his OAvn, of keeping off liber- 
 ties from himself and anything belonging to him, and was, 
 moreover, known to be of such fastidious honour, that his 
 young -wife was received as if she had been a Princess in her 
 own right. With her respected parent Conran had a brief 
 interview previous to his liight from Malta, in which, with a 
 few gentle hints, he showed that worthy it would be wiser 
 to leave his daughter unmolested for the future, and I doubt 
 if Mr. Orangia I^Iagnolia, alias Pepe Guari, would know his 
 own child in the joyous, graceful, daintily-dressed mistress of 
 Conran's handsome Parisian establishment. 
 
 Little Grand and I suffered crueUy. We were the butts of 
 the mess for many a long month afterwards, when every 
 idiot's tongue asked us on every side after the health of the 
 Marchioness St. Julian % when we were going to teach them 
 lansquenet % how often we heard from the aristocratic mem- 
 bers of the Maltese Peerage? with like delightful pleasantries, 
 which the questioners deemed high wit. We paid for it, too, 
 to that arch old screw Balthazar ; but I doubt very much if 
 the money were not well lost, and the experience well gained. 
 It cured me of my rawness and Little Grand of his self-con- 
 ceit, the only thing that had before sjooilt that good-hearted, 
 quick-tempered, and clever-brained little fellow. Oh, Pater 
 and Materfamilias, disturb not yourselves so unnecessarily 
 about the crop of wild oats which your young ones are sowing 
 broadcast. Those wild oats often spring from a good field of 
 high spirit, hot courage, and thoughtless generosity, that are 
 the sign and basis of nobler virtues to come, and from them 
 very often rise two goodly plants — Experience and piscern- 
 ment. 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROtJBLES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WORRIES OF A CHAPEKONE. 
 
 In Three Seasons, 
 season the first. — the eligible. 
 
 One of the kindest-natured j^ersons that I ever knew on this 
 earth, where kind people are as rare as black eagles or red 
 deer, is Helena, Countess of Marabout, oiee De Eoncoeur. She 
 has foibles, she has weaknesses — who amongst us has not 1 — 
 she will wear her dresses dkolletees, though she's sixty, if 
 Burke tells us truth; she will rouge and practise a thou- 
 sand other little toilette tricks ; but they are surely innocent, 
 since they deceive nobody ; and if you wait for a woman who 
 has no artifices, I am afraid you shall have to forswear the 
 sex in toto, my friends, and come grow^Hng back to your Dio- 
 genes' tub in the Albany, with your lantern still lit every day 
 of your lives. 
 
 Lady IMarabout is a very charming person. As for her 
 weaknesses, she is all the nicer for them, to my taste. I like 
 people with weaknesses myself; those without them do look 
 so dreadfully scornfully and unsympathisingly upon one from 
 the altitude of their superiority, de iouie la hauteur de sa hetisey 
 as a witty Frenchman says. Humanity was born with weak- 
 nessos. If I were a beggar I might b.ope for a coin from a 
 
62 LAD y MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 mail with some ; a man without any, I know, would shut up 
 his porte-monnaie, with an intensified click, to make me feel 
 trebly envious, and consign me to D 15 and his truncheon, 
 on the score of vagrancy. 
 
 Lady Marabout is a very charming person, despite her little 
 foibles, and she gives very pleasant little dinners, both at her 
 house in Lowndes-square and in her jointure-villa at Twicken- 
 ham, where the bad odours of the Thames are drowned in 
 the fragrance of the geraniums, piled in great heaps of red, 
 white, and variegated blossom in the flower-beds on the lawii. 
 She has been married twice, but has only one son, by her 
 first union — Carruthers of the Guards — a very good fellow, 
 whom his mother thinks perfection, though if she did know 
 certain scenes in her adored Philip's life, the good lady might 
 hesitate before she endowed her son with all the cardinal vir- 
 tues as she does at the present moment. She has no daugh- 
 ters, therefore you avlU wonder to liear that the prime misery, 
 burden, discomfort, and worry of her life is chaperonage. 
 But so it is. 
 
 Lady Marabout is the essence of good nature ; she can't 
 say No : that unpleasant negative monosyllable was never 
 heard to issue from her full, smiling, kind-looking lips : she is 
 in a high position, she has an extensive circle, thanks to her 
 own family and those of the baronet and peer she successively 
 espoused ; and some sister, or cousin, or friend, is incessantly 
 hunting her up to bring out their girls, and sell them well olf 
 out of hand ; young ladies being goods extremely Hkely to 
 hang on hand now-a-days. 
 
 "Of all troubles, the troubles of a chaperone are the 
 greatest," said Lady Marabout to me at the wedding dejeuner 
 of one of her protegees. " In the first place, one looks on at 
 others' campaigns instead of conducting them oneself; secondly, 
 it brings back one's own bright days to see the young things' 
 smiles and blushes, like that girl's just now (I do hope she'll 
 be happy !) ; and thirdly, one has aU the responsibility, and 
 gets all the blame if anything goes wrong. I'll never chape- 
 rone anybody again now I have got rid of Leila." 
 
 So does Lady Marabout say tAventy times ; yet has she in- 
 variably some young lady under her wing, whose relatives are 
 defunct, or invalided, or in India, or out of society somehow ; 
 and we all of us call her house The Yard, and her (among 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 63 
 
 ourselves) not Lady Marabout but Lady Tattersall. Tlie 
 worries she has in her chaperone's office would fill a folio, spe- 
 cially as her heart inclines to the encouragement of romance, 
 but her reason to the banishment thereof; and while her 
 tenderness sufiers if she thwarts her protegees' leanings, her 
 conscience gives her neuralgic twinges if she abets them to 
 unwise matches while under her dragonnage. 
 
 " What's the matter, mother?' asked Carruthers, one morn- 
 ing. He's very fond of his mother, and will never let any 
 one laugh at her in his hearing. 
 
 " Matter % Everything !" replied Lady Marabout, concisely 
 and comprehensively, as she sat on the sofa in her boudoir, 
 with her white ringed hands and her him ccmse/re look, and her 
 kindly pleasant eyes and her rich dress ; one could see what 
 a pretty woman she had been, and that Carruthers may thank 
 her for his good looks. " To begin with, Felicie has been so 
 stupid as to marry ; married the greengrocer (whom she will 
 ruin in a week !), and has left me to the mercies of a stupid 
 woman who puts pink with cerise, mauve with magenta, and 
 sky-blue with azureline, and has no recommendation except 
 that she is as ugly as the Medusa, and so will not tempt you 
 
 to " 
 
 • " Make love to her, as I did to Marie," laughed Carruthers. 
 " Marie was a pretty little dear ; it was very severe in you to 
 send her away." 
 
 Lady Marabout tried hard to look severe and condemnatory, 
 but failed signally : nature had formed the smooth brow and 
 the kindly eyes in far too soft a mould. 
 
 "Don't jest about it, Philip; you know it was a great 
 pain, annoyance, and scandal to me. Well ! Felicie is gone, 
 and Oakes was seen pawning some of my Mechlin the other 
 day, so I have been obliged to discharge her ; and they both 
 of them suited me so well ! Then Bijou is ill, poor little 
 pet " 
 
 " With repletion of chicken panada?" 
 
 "No; Bijou isn't such a gourmet. You judge him by 
 yourself, I suppose ; men always do ! Then Lady Hautton 
 told me last night that you were the wildest man on town, 
 and at forty " 
 
 " You think I ought to ranger 1 So I will, my dear mother, 
 some day ; but at present I am — so very comfortable ; it would 
 
^4 LADV MARABOUPS TROUBLES. 
 
 be a pity to alter ! What jDains one's friends are always at to 
 teU unpalatable things; if tliey would but be only lialf so eager 
 to teU us the pleasant ones ! I shall expect you to cut Lady 
 Hautton if she speak badly of me. I can't afford to lose your 
 worship, mother !" 
 
 " My worsliij) % How conceited you are, Philip ! As for 
 Lady Hautton, I believe she does dishke you, because you 
 did not engage yourself to Adelina, and were selected aide-de- 
 camp to Her Majesty, instead of Hautton ; still, I am afraid 
 she spoke too nearly the truth." 
 
 " Perhaps Marie has entered her service and told tales." 
 But Lady Marabout wouldn't laugh, she always looks very 
 grave about Marie. 
 
 "My worst trouble," she began hastily, "is that your 
 Aunt Honiton is too ill to come to town ; no chance of her 
 being well enough to come at all this season ; and of course 
 the charge of Valencia has devolved on me. You know how 
 I hate chaperoning, and I did so hope I should be free this 
 year; besides, Valencia is a great responsibility, very great; a 
 girl ®f so much beauty always is ; there will be sure to be so 
 many men about her at once, and your aunt will expect me to 
 .marry her so very well. It is excessively annoying." 
 
 " My poor dear mother !" cried Carruthers. " I grant you 
 are an object of pity. You are everlastingly having young 
 fillies sent you to break in, and they want such a tight hand 
 on the ribbons." 
 
 " And a tight hand, as you call it, I never had, and never 
 shall have," sighed Lady Marabout. "Valencia will be no 
 trouble to me on that score, however; she has been admirably 
 educated, knows all that is due to her position, and will never 
 give me a moment's anxiety by any imprudeitse or inadvert- 
 ence. But she is excessively handsome, and a beauty is a 
 great responsibility when she first comes out." 
 
 " Val was always a handsome child, if I remember. I dare 
 say she is a beauty now. "When is she coming up % because 
 I'll tell the men to mark the house and keep clear of it," 
 laughed Carruthers. " You're a dreadfully dangerous person, 
 mother ; you have always the best-looking girl in town with 
 you. Pulke Nugent says if he should ever want such a thing 
 as a wife when he comes into the title, he shall take a look 
 at the Marabout Yearling's Sale." 
 
lADV MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 6$ 
 
 " Abominably rude of you and your friends to talk me over 
 in your turf slang ! I wish you would come and bid at the 
 sale, Philip ; I should like to see you married — well married, 
 of course." 
 
 " My beloved mother !" cried Carruthers. " Leave me in 
 peace, if you please, and catch the others if you can. There's 
 Goodey, now ; every chaperone and debutante in London has 
 set traps for him for the last I don't know how many years ; 
 wouldn't he do for Valencia ?" 
 
 " Goodwood 1 Of course he would ; he would do for any one ; 
 the Dukedom's the oldest in the peerage. Goodwood is highly 
 eligible. Thank you for reminding me, Philip. Since Valencia 
 is coming, I must do my best for her." Which phrase meant, 
 with Lady Marabout, that she must be very lynx-eyed as to 
 settlements, and a perfect dragon to all detrimental connexions, 
 must frown with Medusa severity on all horrors of younger 
 sons, and advocate with all the weight of personal experience 
 the advantage and agremens of a good position, in all of which 
 practicalities she generally broke down, with humiliation un- 
 speakable, immediately her heart was enlisted and her sympa- 
 thies appealed to on the enemy's side. — She sighed, played 
 with her bracelets thoughtfully, and then, heroically resigning 
 herself to her impending fate, brightened up a little, and asked 
 her son to go and choose a new pair of carriage-horses for her. 
 
 To look at Lady Marabout as she sat in her amber satin 
 couch that morning, pleasant, smiling, well dressed, well look- 
 ing, with the grace of good birth and thesunninessof good nature 
 plainly written on her smooth brow and her kindly eyes, and 
 wealth — delicious little god ! — stamping itself all about her, from 
 the diamond rings on her soft white fingers to the broidered 
 shoe on the feet, of whose smallness she was still proud, one might 
 have ignorantly imagined her to be the most happy, enviable, 
 well-conditioned, easy-going dowager in the United Kingdom. 
 But appearances are deceptive, and if we believe what she con- 
 stantly asserted. Lady Marabout was very nearly worn into her 
 grave by a thousand troubles; her almshouses, whose roof 
 would eternally blow off with each high wind; her dogs, whom 
 she would overfeed ; her ladies' maids, who were hired only to 
 steal, tease, or scandalise her ; the begging-letter writers, who 
 distilled t^ars from her eyes and sovereigns from her purse. 
 
66 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 let Carrutliers disclose their liypocrisies as lie might; the bolder 
 begging-letters, written by hon. sees., and headed by names 
 with long handles, belonging to Pillars of the State and Lights 
 of the Church, which compelled her to make a miserable choice 
 between a straitened income or a remorseful conscience- — tor- 
 mented, in line, Avith worries small and large, from her ferns, 
 on which she spent a large fortune, and who drooped malici- 
 ously in their glass cases, with an ill-natured obstinacy charac- 
 teristic of desperately-courted individuals, whether of the floral 
 or the human world, to those marriageable young ladies whom 
 she took under her wing to usher into the great world, and 
 who were certain to run counter to her wishes and overthrow 
 her plans, to marry ill, or not marry at all, or do something 
 or other to throw discredit on her chaperoning abilities. She 
 was, she assured us, ])ttrie with worries, small and large, speci- 
 ally as she was so eminently sunny, affable, and radiant a looking 
 person, that all the world took their troubles to her, selected 
 her as their confidante, and made her the repository of their 
 annoyances ; but her climax of misery was to be compelled to 
 chaperone, and as a petition for some debutante to be entrusted 
 to her care was invariably made each season, and "E'o" was a 
 monosyllable into which her lips utterly refused to form them- 
 selves, each season did her life become a burden to her. There 
 was never any rest for the soul of Helena, Countess of Mara- 
 bout, till her house in Lowndes-square was shut up, and her 
 charges off her hand, and she could return in peace to her 
 jointure-villa at Twickenham, or to Carrutliers' old Hall of 
 Deepdene, and among her flowers, her birds, and her hobbies, 
 throw off for a while the weary burden of her worries as a 
 chaperone. 
 
 " Valencia will give me little trouble, I hope. So admirably 
 brought-up a girl, and so handsome as she is, will be sure to 
 marry soon, and marry well," thought Lady Marabout, self- 
 congratulatorily, as she dressed for dinner the day of her niece's 
 arrival in town, running over mentally, the qualifications and 
 attractions of Valencia Valletort, while Felicie's successor. 
 Mademoiselle Despreaux, whose crime was to put pink with 
 cerise, mauve with magenta, and sky-blue with azurehne, gave 
 the finishing touches to her toilette — " Valencia will give me 
 no trouble; she has all the De Boncoeur beauty, with the Valle- 
 tort dignity. Who would do for her ? Let me see ; eligible 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, tj 
 
 men are not abundant, and tliose that are eligible are shy of 
 being marked, as Philip would say — perhaps from being hunted 
 so much, poor things ! There is Fulke JSTugent, heir to a 
 barony, and his father is ninety — very rich, too — he would do ; 
 and Philip's friend, Caradoc, poor, I know, but their Earldom's 
 the oldest peerage patent. There is Eyre Lee, too ; I don't much 
 like the man, supercilious and empty-headed; still he's an 
 unobjectionable alliance. And there is Goodwood. Every 
 one has tried for Goodwood, and failed. I should like Valencia 
 to win him ; he is decidedly the most eligible man in town. 
 I will invite him to dinner. If he is not attracted by Valencia's 
 
 beauty, nothing can attrract him Despvtaux / cormm voiis 
 
 Ues bete ! Otez ces loanaches, de grace r 
 
 " Valencia will give me no trouble ; she will marry at once," 
 thought Lady Marabout again, looking across the dinner-table 
 at her niece. 
 
 If any young patrician might be lilcely to marry at once, 
 it was the Hon. Valencia Valletort; she was, to the most critical, 
 a beauty : her figure was perfect, her features were perfect, and 
 if you complained that her large glorious eyes were a trifle too 
 changeless in expression, that her cheek, exquisitely indepen- 
 dent of Marechale powder, Blanc de Perle, and liquid rouge, 
 though it was, rarely varied with her thoughts and feelings, 
 why, you were very exacting, my good fellow, and should 
 remember that nothing is quite perfect on the face of this earth 
 — not even a racer or a woman — and that Avhether you bid at 
 the Marabout Yearhngs' Sale or the Kawclifl'e, if you wish to 
 be pleased you'd better leave a hypercritical spirit behind you, 
 and not expect to get all points to your liking. The best filly 
 will have something faulty in temper or breeding, symmetry 
 or pace, for your friend Jack Martingale to have the fun of 
 pointing out to you when your money is paid and the filly in 
 your stall; and your wife wiU have the same, only Martingale 
 will point luT flaws out behind your back, and only hint them 
 to you with an all-expressive " JSTot allowed to smoke in the 
 dining-room now /" "A little bit of a flirt, madam — n'est-ce 
 pas, Charlie V " Eeins kept rather tight, eh, old fellow T or 
 something equally ambiguous, significant, and unpleasant. 
 
 " I must consider, Philip, I have brought out the beauty of 
 the season," said Lady Marabout to Carruthers, eyeing her 
 niece as she danced at her first ball at the Dowager-Duchess 
 
68 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 of Amandine's, and beginning to brighten up a little under 
 the weight of her responsibilities. 
 
 " I think you have, mother. Val's indisputably handsome. 
 You must tell her to make play with Goodwood or jN'ugent." 
 
 Lady Marabout unfurled her fan, and indignantly inter- 
 rupted him : 
 
 " My dear Philip ! do you suppose I would teach Valencia, 
 or any girl under my charge, to lay herself out for any man, 
 whoever or whatever he might be ? I trust your cousin would 
 not stoop to use such manoeuvres, did I even stoop to counsel 
 them. Depend on it, Philip, it is precisely those women who 
 try to ' make play,' as you call it, mth your sex that fail most 
 to charm them. It is abominable the way in which you men 
 talk, as if we all hunted you down, and would drive you to St. 
 George's nolens volensP^ 
 
 " So you would, mother," laughed Carruthers. "We ^eligi- 
 ble men' have a harder life of it than rabbits in a warren, with 
 a dozen beagles after them. From the minute we're of age, 
 we're beset with traps for the unwary, and the spring guns are 
 so dexterously covered with an inviting, innocent-looking turf 
 of courtesies and hospitalities that it's next to a moral impossi- 
 bility to escape them, let one retire into oneself, keep to mono- 
 syllables through all the courses of all the dinners and all the 
 turns of all the valses, and avoid everjrthing ' compromising,' 
 as one may. I've suffered, and can tell you. I suffer still, 
 though I believe and hope they are beginning to look on me 
 as an incurable, given over to the clubs, the coulisses, and the 
 cover-side. There's a fellow that's known still more of the 
 peines fortes et dures than I. Goodwood's coming to ask for an 
 introduction to Val, I would bet." 
 
 He was coming for that purpose, and though Lady Mara- 
 bout has so scornfully and sincerely repudiated her son's 
 counsel relative to making play with Goodwood, blandly ig- 
 norant of her own weaknesses like a good many other people. 
 Lady Marabout was not above a glow of chaperone gratifica- 
 tion when she saw the glance of admiration, which the Pet 
 Eligible of the season bestowed on Valencia Valletort. Good- 
 wood was a good-looking fellow — a clever fellow — though 
 possibly he shone best alone at a mess luncheon, in a chat 
 driving to Hornsey "Wood, round the fire in a smoking-room, 
 on a yacht deck, or anywhere where ladies of the titled world 
 
LAD y MAI^ABO Urs TROUBLES. 69 
 
 were not encountered, he having become afraid of them by- 
 dint of much persecution, as any October partridge of a set- 
 ter's nose. He was passably good-looking, ordinarily clever, 
 a very good fellow as I say, and — he was elder son of his 
 Grace of Doncaster, which fact would have made him the 
 desired of every unit of the lean sexe, had he been hideous as 
 the Veiled Prophet or brutal Gilles de Eayes. The Beauty 
 often loves the Ueast in our day, as in the days of fairy lore. 
 We see that beloved story of our petticoat days not seldom 
 acted out, and when there is no possibility of personal trans- 
 mogrification and amelioration for the Beast moreover ; only 
 — the Beauty has always had whispered in her little ear the 
 title she will win, and the revenues she will gain, and the 
 cloth of gold she will wear, if she caresses Bruin the enam- 
 oured, swears his ugly head is god-Hke, and vows fidelity 
 unswerving ! 
 
 Goodwood was no uncouth Bruin, and he had strawberry- 
 leaves in his gift ; none of your lacquered, or ormolu, or sil- 
 ver-gilt coronets, such as are cast about now-a-days with a 
 liberality that reminds one of flinging a handful of halfpence 
 from a balcony, where the nimblest beggar is first to get the 
 prize ; but of the purest and best gold ; and Goodwood had 
 been tried for accordingly by every woman he came across 
 for the last dozen years. Women of every style and every 
 order had primed all their rifles, and had their shot at him, 
 and done their best to make a centre and score themselves as 
 winner : belles and has bleus, bewitching widows and bud- 
 ding debutantes, fast young ladies who tried to capture him in 
 the hunting-field by clearing a bullfinch; saintly young 
 ladies, who illuminated missals, and hinted they would like 
 to take his conversion in hand ; brilliant women, who talked 
 at him all through a long rainy day, when Perthshire was 
 flooded, and the black-fowl unattainable ; showy women, who 
 ]pos^d for him whole evenings in their opera-boxes, whole 
 mornings in their boudoir — all styles and orders had set at 
 him, till he had sometimes sworn in his haste that all women 
 were mantraps, and that he wished to Heaven he were a 
 younger son in the Foreign Ofiice, or a poor devil in the Line, 
 or anything, rather than what he was — the Pet Eligible of 
 his day. 
 
 " Goodwood is certainly struck with her," thought Lady 
 
70 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 Marabout, as Despreaux disrobed her tbat nigbt, running 
 over with a retrogressive glance Valencia Valletort's successes 
 at her first ball. ^'' Very much struck, indeed, I should say. 
 I AviU issue cards for another ' At Home.' As for * making 
 play ' with him, as Philip terms it, of course that is only a 
 man's nonsense. Yalencia will need none of those trickeries, 
 I trust ; still, it is any one's duty to make the best alliance 
 possible for such a girl, and — dear Adeliza would be very 
 pleased." 
 
 With which amiable remembrance of her sister (whom, 
 conceiving it her duty to love. Lady Marabout persuaded her- 
 self that she did love, from a common feminine opticism that 
 there's an eleventh commandment which makes it compulsory 
 to be attached to relatives riimimrte of whatever degree of dis- 
 agreeability, though Lady Honiton was about the most odious 
 hypochondriac going, in a perpetual state of unremitting 
 battle with the whole outer world in general, and allapathists, 
 homoeopathists, and hydropathists, in especial), the most ami- 
 able lady in all Christendom bade Despreaux bring up a cup 
 of coffee an hour earlier in the morning, she had so much to 
 do ] asked if Bijou had had some panada set do^vn by his 
 basket in case he wanted something to take in the night ; 
 wished her maid good-night, and laid her head on her pillow 
 as the dawn streamed through the shutters, already settling 
 what bridal presents she should give her niece Valencia, when 
 she became present Marchioness of Goodwood and prospective 
 Duchess of Doncaster before the altar rails of St. George's. 
 
 " That's a decidedly handsome girl, that cousin of yours, 
 Phil," said Goodwood, on the pavement before her Grace 
 of Amandine's, in Grosvenor-place, at the same hour that 
 night. 
 
 " I think she is counted like me !" said Carruthers. "Of 
 course, she's handsome ; hasn't she De Boncoeui* blood in her, 
 my good fellow 1 We're all of us good-looking, always have 
 been, thank God ! If you're inclined to sacrifice. Goodwood, 
 now's your time, and my mother '11 be delighted. She's 
 brought out about half a million of debutantes, I should say, 
 in her time, and all of 'em have gone wrong, somehow; 
 wouldn't go off at all, like damp gunpowder, or would go off too 
 quick in the wrong direction, like a volunteer's rifle charge ; 
 married ignominiously or married obstinately, or never excited 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, ^i 
 
 pity in tlie breast of any man, but had to retire to single- 
 blessedness in tbe country, console themselves with piety and 
 an harmonium, and spread nets for young clerical victims. 
 Give her a triumph at last, and let her have glory for once, 
 as a chaperone, in catching you /" 
 
 Goodwood gave a little shiver, and tried to light a Manilla, 
 which utterly refused to take light, for the twelfth time in 
 half a minute. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! If the Templars* Order were extant, 
 wouldn't I take the vows and bless them ! What an un- 
 speakable comfort and protection that white cross would be 
 to us, Phil, if we could stick it on our coats, and know it 
 would say to every woman that looked at us, ' No go, my 
 pretty little dears — not to be caught !' Marriage ! I can't 
 remember any time that that word wasn't my bugbear. When 
 I was but a little chicken, some four years old, I distinctly 
 Bemember, when I was playing with little Ida Keane on the 
 terrace, hearing her mother simper to mine, 'Perhaps darling 
 Goodwood may marry my little Ida some day, who knows ?' 
 I never would play with Ida afterwards ; instinct preserved 
 me ; she's six or seven-and-thirty now, and weighs ten stone 
 I'm positive. Why ivorCt they let us alone ? The way jour- 
 nalists and dowagers, the fellows who want to write a taking 
 article, and the women who want to get rid of a taking 
 daughter, all badger us, in public and private, about marriage 
 just now, is abominable, on my life ; the affair's ows^ I should 
 say, not theirs, and to marry isn't the ultimatum of a man's 
 existence, nor anything like it." 
 
 *' I hope not ! It's more like the extinguish^T. Good- 
 night, old fellow." And Carruthers drove away in his han- 
 som, while Goodwood got into his night-brougham, thinking 
 that for the sake of the title, the evil (nuptial) day mud come, 
 sooner or later, but dashed off to forget the disagreeable 
 obligation over the supper-table of the most sparkling empress 
 of the demi-monde. 
 
 Lady Marabout had her wish ; she brought out the belle 
 of the season, and when a little time had slipped by, when 
 the Hon. Val had been presented at the first Drawing-room, 
 and shone there despite the worry, muddle, and squeeze inci- 
 dental to that royal and fashionable ceremony; and she had 
 gathered second-hand from her son what was said in the clubi^ 
 
72 lAD Y MARA^OUT^S TROUBLES. 
 
 relative to this new specimen of the Valletort beauty, she be- 
 gan to be happier under her duties than she had ever been 
 before, and wrote letters to "dearest Adeliza," brimful of 
 superlative adjectives and genuine warmth. 
 
 " Valencia will do me credit ; I shall see her engaged, be- 
 fore the end of June ; she will have only to choose," Lady 
 Marabout would say to herself some twenty times in the 
 pauses of the morning concerts, the morning parties, the 
 bazaar committees, the toilette consultations, the audiences to 
 religious beggars, whose name was Legion and rapacity un- 
 measured, the mass of unanswered correspondence whose debt 
 lay as heavily on Lady Marabout as his chains on a convict, 
 and were about as little likely to be knocked off, and all the 
 other things innumerable that made her life in the season one 
 teetotum whirl of small worries and sunshiny cares, from the mo- 
 ment she began her day, with her earliest cup of Mocha softened 
 with cream from that pet dairy of hers at Fernditton, where, 
 according to Lady Marabout, the cows were constantly in 
 articulo mortis, but the milk invariably richer than anywhere 
 else, an agricultural anomaly which presented no difficulties 
 to her reason. Like all women, she loved paradoxes, defied 
 logic recklessly, and would clear at a bound a chasm of 
 solecisms that would have kept Plato in difficulties about 
 crossing it, and in doubt about the strength of his jumping- 
 pole, all his life long. 
 
 " She will do me great credit," the semi-consoled chaperone 
 would say to herself with self congratulatory relief ; and if 
 Lady Marabout thought now and then, " I wish she were a 
 trifle — a trifle more — demonstrative," she instantly checked 
 such an ungrateful and hypercritical wish, and remembered 
 that a heart is a highly treacherous and unadvisable posses- 
 sion for any young lady, and a most happy omission in her 
 anatomy, though Lady Marabout had, she would confess to 
 herself on occasions with great self-reproach, an unworthy 
 and lingering weakness for that contraband article, for which 
 she scorned and scolded herself with the very worst success. 
 • Lady Marabout had a heart herself; to it she had had to 
 date the greatest worries, troubles, imprudences, and vexations 
 of her life; she had had to thank it for nothing, and to dislike 
 it for much ; it had made her grieve most absurdly for other 
 people's griefs ; it had given her a hundred unphilosophical 
 
LAD Y MAR ABO UT'S TRO UBLES. 73 
 
 pangs at philosophic ingratitude from people who wanted her 
 no longer; it had teased, worried, and plagued her all her 
 life long, had often interfered in the most meddling and in- 
 convenient manner between her and her reason, her comfort 
 and her prudence ; and yet she had a weakness for the same 
 detrimental organ in other people — a weakness of which she 
 could no more have cured herself than of her belief in tiie 
 detection-defying powers of liquid rouge, the potentiality of a 
 Lilliputian night-bolt against an army of burglars, the mi- 
 raculous properties of sal-volatile, the efficacy of sermons, and 
 such-like articles of faith common to feminine orthodoxy. A 
 weakness of which she never felt more ignominiously con- 
 victed and more secretly ashamed than in the presence of Miss 
 Valletort, that young lady having a lofty and magnificent dis- 
 dain for all such follies, quite unattainable to ordinary mor- 
 tals, which oppressed Lady Marabout with a humiliating 
 sense of inferiority to her niece of eighteen summers. " So 
 admirably educated ! so admirably brought up !" she would 
 say to herself over and over again ; and if heretic suggestions 
 that the stiifest trained flowers are not always the best, that 
 the upright and spotless arum-lily isn't so fragrant as the care- 
 less, brilliant, tangled clematis ; that rose-boughs, tossing free 
 in sunshine and liberty, beat hollow the most carefully-pruned 
 standard that ever won a medal at Eegent's Park, with such- 
 like allegories, arising from contemplation of her conservatory 
 or her balcony flowers, would present themselves, Lady Mar- 
 about repressed them dutifully, and gratefully thought how 
 many pounds' weight lighter became the weary burden of a 
 chaperone's responsibilities when the onerous charge had been 
 educated " on the best system." 
 
 " Goodwood's attentions are serious, Philip, say what you 
 like," said the Countess to her son, as determinedly as a theo- 
 logian states his pet points with wool in his ears, that he may 
 not hear any Satan-inspired, rational, and mathematical dis- 
 proval of them, with which you may rashly seek to soil his 
 tympana and smash his arguments — " Goodwood's intentions 
 are serious, Philip, say what you like," said her ladyship, at 
 a morning party at Kew, eating her ITeapolitan ice, compla- 
 cently glancing at the "most eligible alliance of the season," 
 who was throwing the balls at lawn-billiards, and talking be- 
 
f4 ' LADY AIARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 tween whiles to the Hon. Val with praiseworthy and promising 
 animation. 
 
 " Serious indeed, mother, if they tend matrimony-wards !" 
 smiled Carriithers. " It's a very serious time indeed for 
 unwary sparrows when they lend an ear to the call-bird, and 
 think about hopping on to the lime-twigs. I should think it's 
 from a sense of compunction for the net you've led us into, 
 that you all particularise our attentions, whenever they point 
 near St. George's, by that very suggestive little adjective 
 * serious !' Yes, I am half afraid poor Goodey is a little 
 touched. He threw over our Derby sweepstakes up at Hornsey 
 Wood yesterday to go and stifle himself in Willis's Eooms 
 at your bazaar, and buy a guinea cup of Souchong from Va- 
 lencia; and, considering he's one of the best shots in England, 
 I don't think you could have a more conclusive, if you could 
 have a more poetic, proof of devoted renunciation, /'d fifty 
 times rather get a spear in my side, a la Ivanhoe, for a woman 
 than give up a Pigeon-match, a Cup-day, or a Field night !" 
 
 " You'll never do either !" laughed Lady Marabout, who 
 made it one of her chief troubles that her son would not 
 marry, chiefly, probably, because if he had married she would 
 have been miserable, and thought no woman good enough for 
 him, would have been jealous of his wife's share of his heart, 
 and supremely wretched, I have no doubt, at his throwing 
 himself away, as she would have thought it, had his hand- 
 kerchief lighted on a Princess born, lovely as Galatea, and 
 blessed with Venus's cestus. 
 
 " Il^ever, '][)la%se a Dieu ./" responded her son piously over his 
 ice; "but if Goodwood's serious, what's Cardonnel? He^s 
 lost his head, if you like, after the Yalletort beauty." 
 
 " Major Cardonnel !" said Lady Marabout, hastily. " Oh 
 no, I don't think so. I hope not — I trust not." 
 
 " Why so 1 He's one of the finest fellows in the Service.'* 
 
 " I dare say ; but you see, my dear Philip, he's not — not 
 — desirable." 
 
 Carruthers stroked his moustaches and laughed : 
 
 " Fie, fie, mother ! if all other Belgraviennes are Mammon- 
 worshippers, I thought you kept clear of the paganism. I 
 thought your freedom from it was the only touch by which 
 your weren't ' purely feminine,' as the lady novelists say of 
 their pet bits of chiU propriety." 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLED. J5 
 
 " Worsliip Mammon ! Heaven forbid !" ejaculated Lady 
 Marabout. " But there are duties, you see, my dear ; your 
 friend is a very delightful man, to be sure ; I like him 
 excessively, and if Valencia felt any grmt preference for 
 him " 
 
 " You'd feel it ?/owr duty to counsel her to throw him over 
 for Goodwood*?" 
 
 **I never said so, Philip," interrupted Lady Marabout 
 with as near an approach to asperity as she could achieve, 
 which approach was less like vinegar than most people's best 
 honey. 
 
 " But you implied it. What are * duties ' else, and why is 
 poor Cardonnel * not desirable'?' 
 
 Lady Marabout played a little tattoo with her spoon in per- 
 plexity : 
 
 ^•' My dear Philip, you know as well as I do what I mean. 
 One might think you were a boy of twenty to hear you !" 
 
 " My dear mother, like all disputants, when beaten in 
 argument and driven into a corner, you resort to vitupera- 
 tion of your opponent !" laughed Carruthers, as he left her ^ 
 and lounged away to pick up the stick with which pretty 
 Flora Elmers had just knocked the pipe out of Aunt Sally's 
 head on to the velvet lawn of Lady George Frangipane's 
 dower-house, leaving his mother by no means tranquillised by 
 his suggestions." 
 
 " Dear me !" thought Lady Marabout, uneasily, as she 
 conversed with the Dowager-Countess of Patchouli on the 
 respective beauties of two new pelargonium seedlings, the 
 Leucadia and the Beatrice, for which her gardener had won 
 prizes the day before at the Eegent's Park show — " dear me ! 
 why is there invariably this sort of cross-purposes in every- 
 thing? It will be so grievous to lose Goodwood (and he is 
 decidedly struck with her ; when he bought that rose-bud 
 yesterday of her at the bazaar, and put it in the breast of Ms 
 waistcoat, I heard what he said, and it was no nonsense, no 
 mere flirting complaisance either) — it would be so grievous to 
 lose him ; and yet if Valencia really care for Cardonnel — and 
 sometimes I almost fancy she does — I shouldn't know which 
 way to advise. I thought it would be odd if a season could 
 pass quietly without my having some worry of this sort! 
 With fifty men always about Valencia, as they are, how can 
 
76 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 I be responsible for any mischief that might happen, though, 
 to hear Philip talk, one would really imagine it was my fault 
 that they lost their heads, as he calls it ! As if a forty-horse 
 steam-power could stop a man when he's once off down the 
 incline into love ! The more you try to pull him back the 
 more impetus you give him to go headlong down. I wish 
 Goodwood would propose, and we could settle the affair 
 definitively. It is singular, but she has had no offers hardly 
 with all her beauty. It is very singular, in my first season I 
 had almost as many as I had names on my tablets at Al- 
 mack's. But men don't marry now, they say. Perhaps 'tisn't 
 to be wondered at, though I wouldn't allow it to Philip. 
 Poor things ! they lose a very great many pleasant things by 
 it, and get nothing, I am sure, nine times out of ten, except 
 increased expenses and unwelcome worries. I don't think 
 I would have married if I'd been a man, though I'd never 
 admit it, of course, to one of them. There are plenty of 
 women who know too much of their own sex ever to wonder 
 that a man doesn't marry, though of course we don't say so ; 
 , 'twouldn't be to our interest. Sculptors might as well preach 
 iconoclasm, or wine merchants teetotahsm, as women miso- 
 ganism, however little in our hearts we may marvel at it. 
 Oh, my dear Lady Patchouli ! you praise the Leucadia too 
 kindly — you do indeed — but if you really think so much of 
 it, let me send you some slips. I shall be most happy, and 
 Penton wiU be only too proud ; it is his favourite seedling." 
 
 Carruthers was quite right. One feUow at least had lost his 
 head after the beauty of the season, and he was Cardonnel, of 
 the — Lancers, as fine a fellow, as Philip said, as any in the 
 Queen's, but a dreadful detrimental in the eyes of all chape- 
 rones because he was but the fourth son of one of the poorest 
 peers in the United Kingdom, a fact which gave him an aegis 
 from all assaults matrimonial, and a freedom from all smiles 
 and wiles, traps and gins, which Goodwood was accustomed 
 to tell him he bitterly envied him, and on which Cardonnel 
 had fervently congratulated himself, till he came under the 
 fire of the Hon. Val's large luminous eyes one night, when he 
 was levelling his glass from his stall at Lady Marabout's box, 
 to take a look at the new belle, as advised to do by that most 
 fastidious female critic. Vane Steinberg. Valencia Yalletort's 
 luminous eyes had gleamed that night under their lashes, and 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 77 
 
 pierced througli the lenses of his lorgnon. He saw her, and 
 saw nothing but her afterwards, as men looking on the sun 
 keep it on their retina to the damage and exclusion of all other 
 objects. 
 
 Physical beauty, even when it is a little bit soulless, is an 
 admirable weapon for instantaneous slaughter, and the trained 
 and pruned standard roses show a very effective mass of bloom; 
 though, as Lady Marabout's floral tastes and experiences told 
 her, they don't give one the lasting pleasure that a careless 
 bough of wild rose will do, with its untutored grace and its 
 natural fragrance. With the standard you see we keep in the 
 artificial air of the horticultural tent, and are never touched 
 out of it for a second ; its perfume seems akin to a bouquet, 
 and its destiny is, we are sure, to a parterre. The wild-rose 
 fragrance breaths of the hill-side and the woodlands, and brings 
 back to us soft touches of memory, of youth, of a fairer life 
 and a purer air than that in which we are living now. 
 
 The Hon. Val did not have as many offers as her aunt and 
 chaperone had on the first flush of her pride in her anticipated. 
 Young ladies, educated on the " best systems," are apt to be 
 a trifle wearisome, and dovHt, somehow or other, take so well 
 as the sedulous efforts of their pruners and trainers — the rare- 
 fied moral atmosphere of the conservatories, in which they are 
 carefully screened from ordinary air, and the anxiety evinced 
 lest the flower should ever forget itself, and sway naturally in 
 the wind — deserve. Eut Cardonnel had gone mad after her, 
 that perfect face of hers had done for him; and whatever Good- 
 wood might be, he was serious — he positively haunted the young 
 beauty like her own shadow — he was leaning on the rails every 
 morning of his life that she took her early ride — he sent her 
 bouquets as lavishly as if he'd been a nursery gardener. By 
 some species of private surveillance, or lover's clairvoyance, he 
 knew beforehand where she would go, and was at the concert, 
 fete, morning party, bazaar, or whatever it happened to be, as 
 surely as was Lady Marabout herself Poor Cardonnel was 
 serious, and fiercely fearful of his all-powerful and entirely 
 eligible rival ; though greater friends than he and Goodwood 
 had been, before this girl's face appeared on the world of Eel- 
 gravia, never lounged arm-and-arm into Pratt's, or strolled 
 down the " sweet shady side of Pall-Mall." 
 
 Goodwood's attentions were yery marked^ too, even to e^ea 
 
78 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 less willing to construe them so than Lady Marahout^s. Good- 
 wood himself, if chaffed on the subject, vouchsafed nothing ; 
 laughed, stroked his moustaches, or puffed his cigar, if he liap- 
 ]3ened to have that blessed resource in all difficulties, and 
 comforter under all embarrassments, between his lips at the 
 moment ; but decidedly he sought Valencia Valletort more, 
 or, to speak more correctly, he shunned her less, than he'd ever 
 done any other young lady, and one or two Sunday mornings — 
 mirabile dictuf — ^hewas positively seen at Saint Paul's, Knights- 
 bridge, in the seat behind Lady Marabout's sittings — a fact 
 which, combining as it did a brace of miracles at once, of early 
 rising and unuc:ual piety, set every Belgravienne in that fashion- 
 able sanctuary watching over the top of her illuminated prayer- 
 book, to the utter destruction of her hopes and interruption 
 of her orisons. 
 
 Dowagers began to tremble behind their fans, young ladies 
 to quake over their bouquets; the topic was eagerly discussed 
 by every woman from Clarges-street to Lowndes-square ; their 
 Graces of Doncaster smiled well pleased on Valencia — she was 
 unquestionable blood, and they so wished dear Goodwood to 
 settle ! There was whispered an awful whisper to the whole 
 female world; whispered over matutinal chocolate, and luncheon 
 Strasbourg pates, ball-supper Moets, and demi-monde-supper 
 Silleri, over Vane Steinberg's cigar and Eulalie Rosiere's 
 cigarette, over the Morning Post in the clubs, and Le Follet in 
 the boudoir, that — the Pet Eligible would — marry ! That the 
 Pet Prophecy of universal smash was going to be fulfilled could 
 hardly have occasioned greater consternation. 
 
 The soul of Lady Marabout had been disquieted ever since her 
 son's suggestions at Lady George Prangipane's morning party, 
 and she began to worry: for herself, for Valencia, for Goodwood, 
 for Cardonnel, for her responsibilties in general, and for her 
 "dearest Adeliza's" alternate opinions of her duenna qualifica- 
 tions in particular. Lady Marabout had an intense wish, an inno- 
 cent wish enough, as innocent and very similar in its way to that 
 of an Eton boy to make a centre at a rifle-contest, viz., to win 
 the Marquis of Goodwood; innocent, surely, for though neither 
 the rifle prize nor the Pet Eligible could be won without mortifica- 
 tion unspeakable to a host of unsuccessful aspirants, if we decree 
 that sort of thing sinful and selfish, as everything natural seems 
 to me to get decreed now-a-days, we may as well shut up at once; 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES 79 
 
 if '\7e may not try for the top of the pole, why erect poles at 
 all, monsieur'? If we must not do our best to pass our friend 
 and brother, we must give up climbing for ever, and go on all 
 fours placably with Don and Pontes. 
 
 Everybody has his ambition : one sighs for the Woolsack, 
 another for the Hunt Cup ; somebody longs to be First Minister, 
 somebody else pines to be first dancer; one man plumes himself 
 on a new fish-sauce, another on a fresh reform bill. A. thirsts 
 to get a single brief, B. for the time when he shall be worried 
 with no briefs at all; C. sets his hopes on being the acrobat 
 at Cremorne, D. on being the acrobat at the Tuileries ; fat bacon 
 is Hodge the hedger's summum honum^ and Johannisberg j;iw' 
 is mine ; Empedocles thinks notoriety everything, and Dio- 
 genes thinks quiet everything — each has his own reading of 
 ambition, and Lady Marabout had hers ; the Duchess of Don- 
 caster thirsted for the Garter for her husband. Lady Elmers's 
 pride was to possess the smallest terrier that ever took daisy 
 tea and was carried in a monkey-muff, her Grace of Amandine 
 slaved night and day to bring her party in and throw the 
 ministry out. Lady Marabout sighed but for one thing — to 
 win the Pet Eligible of the season, and give eclat for once to 
 one phase of her chaperone's existence. 
 
 Things were nicely in train. Goodwood was beginning to 
 bite at that very handsome fly the Hon. Val, and promised to 
 be hooked and landed without much difficulty before long, and 
 placed, hopelessly for him, triumphantly for her, in the lime- 
 basket of matrimony. Things were beautifully in train, and 
 Lady Marabout was for once flattering herself she should float 
 pleasantly through an unruffled and successful season, when 
 Carrutliers poured the one drop of amari aliquid into her cham- 
 pagne-cup by his suggestion of Cardonnel's doom. And then 
 Lady Marabout began to worry. 
 
 She who could not endure to see a fly hurt or a flower 
 pulled needlessly, had nothing for it but to worry for Cardon- 
 nel's destiny, and puzzle over the divided duties which Car- 
 ruthers had hinted to her. To reject the one man because he 
 was not well off did seem to her conscience, uncomfortably 
 awakened by Phil's innuendoes, something more mercenary 
 than she quite liked to look at ; yet to throw over the other, 
 future Duke of Doncaster, the eligible, the darling, the 
 yearned-for of all May Eair and Belgravia, seemed nothing 
 
8o LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 short of madness to inculcate to Valencia ; a positive treason 
 to that poor absent, trusting, " dearest Adeliza," who, after the 
 visions epistolarily spread out before her, would utterly refuse 
 to be comforted if Goodwood any way failed to become her 
 son-in-law, and, moreover, the heaviest blow to Lady Mara- 
 bout herself that the merciless axe of that brutal headsman 
 Contretemps could deal her. 
 
 " I do not know really what to do or what to advise," 
 would Lady Marabout say to herself over and over again (so 
 disturbed by her onerous burden of responsibilities that she 
 would let Despreaux arrange the most outrageous coiffures, 
 and, never noticing them, go out to dinner with emeralds on 
 blue velvet, or something as shocking to feminine nerves in 
 her temporary aberration), forgetting one very great point, 
 which, remembered, would have saved her all trouble, that 
 nobody asked her to do anything, and not a soul requested her 
 advice. ** But Goodwood is decidedly won, and Goodwood 
 must not be lost ; in our position we owe something to Society," 
 she would invariably conclude these mental debates with, 
 which last phrase, being of a vagueness and obscure application 
 that might have matched it with any Queen's speech or elec- 
 tional address upon record, was a mysterious balm to Lady 
 Marabout's soul, and spoke volumes to her^ if a trifle hazy to 
 you and to me. 
 
 But Lady Marabout, if she was a little bit of a sophist, had 
 not worn her eye-glass all these years without being keen- 
 sighted on some subjects, and, though perfectly satisfied with 
 her niece's conduct with Goodwood, saw certain symptoms 
 which made her tremble lest the detrimental Lancer should 
 have won greater odds than the eligible Marquis. 
 
 " Arthur Cardonnel is excessively handsome I Such very 
 good style ! Isn't it a pity they're all so poor ! His father 
 played away everything — literally everything. The sons have 
 no more to marry upon, any one of them, than if they were 
 three crossing-sweepers," said her ladyship, carelessly, driving 
 home from St. Paul's one Sunday morning. 
 
 And, watching the effect of her stray arrows, she had be- 
 held an actual flush on the beauty's fair, impassive cheek, and 
 had positively heard a smothered sigh from an admirably 
 brought-up heart, no more given ordinaiily to such weak- 
 nesses than the diamond-studded heart pendent from hfr 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. U 
 
 bracelet, the belle's heart and the bracelet's heart being 
 both formed alike, to fetch their price, and bid to do no 
 more: — ^power of volition would have been as inconvenient 
 in, and interfered as greatly with, the sale of one as of the 
 other. 
 
 " She does like him !" sighed Lady Marabout over that 
 Sabbath's luncheon wines. " It's always my fate — always ; 
 and Goodwood, never won before, will be thrown — actually 
 thrown — away, as if he were the younger son of a Nobody !" 
 which horrible waste was so terrible to her imagination that 
 Lady Marabout could positively have shed tears at the bare 
 prospect, and might have shed them, too, if the Hon. Yal, 
 the butler, two footmen, and a page had not inconveniently 
 happened to be in the room at the time, so that she was 
 driven to restrain her feelings and drink some Amontillado 
 instead. Lady Marabout is not the first person by a good 
 many who has had to smile over sherry with a breaking 
 heart. Ah ! lips have quivered as they laughed over Cham- 
 bertin, and trembled as they touched the bowl of a 
 champagne-glass. Wine has assisted at many a joyous festa 
 enough, but some that has been drunk in gaiety has caught 
 gleams, in the eyes of the drinkers, of salt water brighter 
 than its brightest sparkles : water that no other eyes can see. 
 Because we may drink Badminton laughingly when the gaze 
 of Society the Non-Sympathetic is on us, do you think we 
 must never have tasted any more bitter dregs % Va-fen, be- 
 casse ! where have you lived ? Nero does not always fiddle 
 while Eome is burning from utter heartlessness, believe 
 me, but rather — sometimes, perhaps — because his heart is 
 aching ! 
 
 " Goodwood will propose to-night, I fancy, he is so very 
 attentive," thought Lady Marabout, sitting with her sister 
 chapcrones on the cosy causeuses of a mansion in Carlton- 
 terrace, at one of the last balls of the departing season. " I 
 never saw dear Valencia look better, and certainly her waltzing 
 
 is Ah ! good evening, Major Cardonnel ! Very warm 
 
 to-night, is it not ? I shall be so glad when I am down again 
 at Fernditton. Town, in the first week of July, is really not 
 habitable." 
 
 And she furled her fan, and smiled on him with her 
 pleasant eyes, and couldn't help wishing he hadn't been on 
 
 6 
 
^2 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLE^. 
 
 the Marchioness Eondeletia's visiting list, he xijas such a 
 detrimental, and he was ten times handsomer than Good- 
 wood ! 
 
 " Will ]\Iiss Yalletort leave you soon T asked Cardonnel, 
 sitting down by her. 
 
 " Ah ! monsieur^ vous etes la /" thought Lady Marabout, as 
 she answered, like a guarded diplomatist as she was, that it 
 was not at all settled at present what her niece's post-season 
 destiny would be, whether Devon or Fernditton, or the Spas, 
 with her mother. Lady Honiton ; and then unfurled her fan 
 again, and chatted about Baden and her own indecision as to 
 whether she should go there this September. 
 
 " May I ask you a question, and will you pardon me for its 
 plainness ?" asked Cardonnel, when she'd exhausted Eaden's 
 desirable and non-desirable points. 
 
 Lady Marabout shuddered as she bent her head, and 
 thought, " The creature is never going to confide in me ! He 
 ^Yl\l win me over if he do, he looks so like his mother ! And 
 what shall I say to Adeliza ?" 
 
 " Is your niece engaged to Goodwood or not ?" 
 If ever a little fib was tempting to any lady, from Eve down- 
 ward, it was tempting to Lady Marabout now. A falsehood 
 would settle everything, send Cardonnel off the field, and 
 clear all possibility of losing the " best match of the season." 
 Besides, if not engaged to Goodwood actually to-night, Yal 
 would be, if she liked, to-morrow, or the next day, or before 
 the week was over at the furthest — would it be such a' false- 
 hood after all? She coloured, she fidgeted her fan, she longed 
 for the little fib ! — how terribly tempting it looked ! But 
 Lady Marabout is a bad hand at prevarication, and she hates 
 a lie, and she answered bravely, with a regretful twinge, ^^ En- 
 gaged? ISTo; not — — " 
 " 'Not yet ! Thank' God !" 
 
 Lady Marabout stared at him, and at the words muttered 
 imder his moustaches : 
 
 " Eeally, Major Cardonnel, I do not see why you " 
 
 " Should thank Heaven for it ? Yet I do — it is a repriei^e. 
 Lady Marabout, you and my mother were close friends ; ^vill 
 you listen to me for a second, while we are not overheard ? 
 That I have loved your niece — had the madness to love her, 
 if you will — you cannot but have seen ; that she has given 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. t% 
 
 me some reasonable encouragement it is no coxcombry to say, 
 though I have known from the first what a powerful rival I 
 had against me ! but that Valencia loves me and does not 
 love him, I believe — nay, I hiow, I have said nothing 
 decided to her ; when all hangs on a single die we shrink 
 from hazarding the throw. But I must know my fate to- 
 night. If she comes to you — as girls will, I believe some- 
 times — for countenance and council, will you stand my friend % 
 — will you, for the sake of my friendshijj with yom^ son, your 
 friendship with my mother, support my cause, and uphold 
 what I believe Valencia's heart will say in my favour T 
 
 Lady Marabout was silent : no Andalusian ever worried 
 her fan more ceaselessly in coquetry than she did in perplexity. 
 Her heart was appealed to, and when that was enlisted Lady 
 Marabout was lost ! 
 
 " But — but — my dear Major Cardonnel, you are aware " 
 
 she began and stopped. I should suppose it may be a little 
 awkward to tell a man to his face he is " not desirable !" 
 
 "I am aware that I cannot match with Goodwood. I 
 am ; but I know, also, that Goodwood's love cannot match 
 with mine, and that your niece's affection is not his. That 
 he may win her I know women too well not to fear, there- 
 fore I ask ijou to be my friend. If she refuse me, will you 
 plead for me % — if she ask for counsel, will you give such as 
 your own heart dictates (I ask no other) — and, will you re- 
 member that on Valencia's answer will rest the fate of a 
 man's lifetime T 
 
 He rose and left her, but the sound of his voice rang in 
 Lady Marabout's ears, and the tears welled into her eyes : 
 " Dear, dear ! how like he looked to his poor dear mother ! 
 But what a position to place me in ! Am I ntur to have 
 any peace T 
 
 Not at this ball, at any rate. Of all the worried chape- 
 rones and distracted duennas who hid their anxieties under 
 pleasant smiles or affable lethargy, none were a quarter so 
 miserable as Helena, Lady Marabout. Her heart and her 
 head were enlisted on opposite sides; her wishes puUed 
 one way, her sympathies another ; her sense of justice to 
 Cardonnel urged her to one side, her sense of duty to 
 *^ dearest Adeliza " urged her to the other ; her pride longed 
 for one alliance, lior lieart vearned for the other. Cardonnel 
 
 6—2 
 
84 L^D V MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 liad coniided in her and appealed to her ; sequituTf Lady 
 Marabout's honour would not allow her to go against him : 
 yet, it was nothing short of grossest treachery to poor Ade- 
 liza, down there in Devon, expecting every day to congratu- 
 late her daughter on a prospective duchy won, to counsel 
 Valencia to take one of these beggared Cardonnels, and, 
 besides — to lose all her own laurels, to lose the capture of 
 Goodwood ! 
 
 ]N"o Guelphs and Ghibelines, no Eoyalists and Imperialists, 
 ever fought so hard as Lady Marabout's divided duties. 
 
 " Valencia, Major Cardonnel spoke to me to-night," began 
 that best-hearted and most badgered of ladies, as she sat 
 before her dressing-room fire that night, alone with her niece. 
 
 Valencia smiled slightly, and a faint idea crossed Lady 
 Marabout's mind that Valencia's smile was hardly a pleasant 
 one, a trifle too much like the play of moonboams on ice. 
 
 " He spoke to me about you." 
 
 « Indeed !" 
 
 " Perhaps you can guess, my dear, what he said ?" 
 
 " I am no clairvoyante, aunt ;" and Miss Val yawned a 
 little, and held out one of her long slender feet to admire it. 
 
 "Every woman, my love, becomes half a clairvoyante 
 when she is in love," said Lady Marabout, a little bit im- 
 patiently ; she hadn't been brought up on the best systems 
 herself, and though she admired the refrigeration (on prin- 
 ciple), it irritated her just a little now and then. " Did he 
 —did he say anything to yoit to-night ?" 
 
 " Oh yes !" 
 
 " And what did you answer him, my love f 
 
 " What would you advise me ?" 
 
 Lady Marabout sighed, coughed, played nervously with 
 the tassels of her peignoir, crumpled Bijou's ears with a reck- 
 less disregard to that priceless pet's feelings, and wished her- 
 self at the bottom of the Serpentine. Cardonnel had trusted 
 her, she couldn't desert him ; poor dear Adeliza had trusted 
 her, she couldn't betray her ; what was right to one would 
 be wrong to the other, and to reconcile her divided duties 
 with a Danaid's labour. Eor months she had worried her 
 life out lest her advice should be asked, and now the climax 
 was come, and asked it was. 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. Z% 
 
 " Wliat a liorrible position," thought Lady Marabout. 
 
 She waited and hesitated till the pendule had ticked off 
 sixty seconds, then she summoned her courage and spoke : 
 
 " My dear, advice in such matters is often very harmful, 
 and always very useless; plenty of people have asked my 
 counsel, but I never knew any of them take it unless it 
 chanced to chime in with their fancy. A woman's best adviser 
 is her own heart, specially on such a subject as this. But 
 before I give my opinion, may I ask if you have accepted 
 him^' 
 
 Lady Marabout's heart throbbed quick and fast as she put 
 the momentous question, with an agitation for which she 
 would have blushed before her admirably nonchalante niece ; 
 but the tug of war was coming, and if Goodwood should be 
 lost ! 
 
 " You have accepted him T she asked again. 
 
 " JSTo ! I— refused him." 
 
 The delicate rose went out of the Hon. Val's cheeks for 
 once, and she breathed quickly and shortly. 
 
 Goodwood was not lost then ! 
 
 Was she sorry — ^was she glad? Lady Marabout hardly 
 knew; like Wellington, she felt the next saddest thing after 
 a defeat is a victory. 
 
 " But you love him, Valencia T she asked, half ashamed 
 of suggesting such a weakness, to this glorious beauty. 
 
 The Hon. Val unclasped her necklet as if it were a chain 
 choking her, and her face grew white and set : the coldest 
 will feel on occasion, and all have some tender place that can 
 wince at the touch. 
 
 " Perhaps ; but such folly is best put aside at once. Cer- 
 tainly I prefer him to others, but to accept him would have 
 been madness, absurdity. I told him so !" 
 
 "You told him so ! If you had the heart to do so, 
 Valencia, he has not lost much in losing you !" burst in Lady 
 Marabout, her indignation getting the better of her judg- 
 ment, and her heart, as usual, giving the coup-de-grace to her 
 reason. " I am shocked at you ! Every tender-hearted 
 woman feels regret for aifection she is obliged to repulse, 
 even when she does not return it ; and you who love this 
 man " 
 
 " Would you have had me accept him, ^unt ?" 
 
S6 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 "Yes," cried Lady Marabout, firmly, forgetting every 
 vestige of "duty," and every possibility of dear Adeliza's 
 vengeance, " if you love him, I would, decidedly. Wlien I 
 married my dear Philip's father he. was what Cardonnel is, 
 a cavalry man, as far off his family title then as Cardonnel is 
 off his now." 
 
 " The more reason I should not imitate your imprudence, 
 my dear aunt; death might not carry off the intermediate 
 heirs quite so courteously in this case ! iN'o, I refused Major 
 Cardonnel, and I did rightly ; I should have repented it by 
 now had I accepted him. There is nothing more silly than 
 to be led away by romance. You De Boncoeurs are romantic, 
 you know ; we Yalletorts are happily free from the weakness. 
 I am very tired, aunt, so good-night." 
 
 The Hon. Yal went, the waxHght she carried shedding a 
 paler shade on her handsome face, whiter and more set than 
 usual, but held more proudly, as if it already wore the Don- 
 caster coronet ; and Lady Marabout sighed as she rang for 
 her maid. 
 
 "Of course she acted wisely, and I ought to be very 
 pleased ; but that poor dear fellow ! — his eyes are so like his 
 mother's !" 
 
 " I congratidate you, mother, on a clear field. You've 
 sent poor Arthur off very nicely," said Carruthers, the next 
 morning, paying his general visit in her boudoir before the 
 d^y began, which is much the same time in Town as in Green- 
 land, and commences, whatever almanacks may say, about two 
 or half-past p.m. " Cardonnel left this morning for Heaven 
 knows where, and is going to exchange, Shelleto tells me, 
 into the — th, wliich is ordered to Eengal, so he won't trouble 
 you much more. "When shall I be allowed to congratulate 
 my cousin as the future Duchess of Doncaster ^" 
 
 "Pray don't tease me, Philip. I've been vexed enough 
 a,bout your friend. When he came to me this mor' ing, and 
 asked me if there was no hope, and I was obliged to tell him 
 there was none, I felt wretched," said Lady Marabout, as 
 nearly pettishly as she ever said anything ; " but I am really 
 not responsible, not in the least. Besides, even you must 
 admit that Goodwood is a much more desirable alliance, and 
 if Yalencia had accepted Cardonnel, pray what would all 
 Belgravia have said 1 Why, that disappointed of Goodwood, 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 87 
 
 she took the other out of pure pique ! We owe something 
 to Society, Philip, and something to ourselves i'* 
 
 Carruthers laughed : 
 
 " Ah, my dear mother; you women will never be worth all 
 you ought to be till you leave off kow-towing to ' what will 
 be said,' and learn to defy that terrible oligarchy of the QiUm 
 dira-t-onr 
 
 "When will Goodwood proposed" wondered Lady Mara- 
 bout, fifty times a day, and Valencia Yalletort wondered too. 
 Whitebait was being eaten, and yachts being fitted, manned, 
 and victualled, outstanding Ascot debts were being settled, 
 and outstanding bills were being passed hurriedly through St. 
 Stephen's ; all the clockwork of the season was being wound 
 up for the last time previous to a long stand-still, and going 
 at a deuce of a pace, as if longing to run down and give its 
 million wheels and levers peace ; while everybody who'd any- 
 thing to settle, whether monetary or matrimonial, personal or 
 political, was making up his mind about it and getting it off 
 his hands, and some men were being pulled up by wide-awake 
 Jews to see what they were " made of," while others were 
 pulled up by adroit dowagers to know what they had " meant," 
 before the accounts of the season v/ere scored out and settled. 
 "Had Goodwood proposed*?" asked all Eelgravia. "Why 
 hadn't Goodwood proposed?' asked Lady Marabout and 
 Valencia. Twenty most favourable opportunities for the per- 
 formance of that ceremony had Lady Marabout made for him 
 " accidentally on purpose " the last fortnight ; each of those 
 times she had fancied the precious fish hooked and landed, 
 and each time she had seen him free from the hook, floatiug 
 on the surface of society. 
 
 " He must speak definitely to-morrow," thought Lady 
 Marabout. But the larvae of to-morrow burst into the butter- 
 fly of to-day, and to-day passed into the chrysalis of yester- 
 day, and Goodwood was always very nearly caught and never 
 quite ! 
 
 " Come up stairs, Philip ; I want to show you a little Paul 
 Potter I bought the other day," said Lady Marabout, one 
 morning, returning from a shopping expedition to Eegent- 
 street, meeting her son at her own door just descending from 
 his tilbury. " Lord Goodwood calling, did you say, Soames] 
 Oh^ verjr well." 
 
88 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 And Lady Marabout floated up tlie staircase, but signed to 
 ber footman to open tbe door, not of tbe drawing-room, but 
 of ber own boudoir. 
 
 ^' The Potter is in my own room, Philip ; you must come 
 in here if you wish to see it," said that adroit lady, for the 
 benefit of Soames. But when the door was shut Lady Mar- 
 about lowered her voice confidentially : " The Potter isn't 
 here, dear; I had it hung in the little cabinet through the 
 drawing-rooms, but I don't wish to go up there for a few mo- 
 ments — you understand." 
 
 Carruthers threw himself in a chair, and laughed till the 
 dogs Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore all barked in a furious 
 concert. 
 
 " I understand ! So Goody's positively coming to the point 
 up there, is he T 
 
 "No doubt he is," said Lady Marabout, reprovingly. 
 " Why else should he come in when I was not at home ? 
 There is nothing extraordinary in it. The only thing I have 
 wondered at is his having delayed so long." 
 
 " If a man had to hang himself, would you wonder he put 
 off pulling the bolt?" 
 
 " I don't see any point in j^our jests at all !" returned Lady 
 Marabout. " There is nothing ridiculous in winning such a 
 girl as Valencia." 
 
 " ISTo ; but the question here is not of winning her, but of 
 buying her. The price is a little high — a ducal coronet and 
 splendid settlements, a wedding-ring and bondage for life; 
 but he will buy her, nevertheless. Cardonnel couldn't pay 
 the first half of the price, and so he was SAvept out of the 
 auction-room. You are shocked, mother % Ah, truth is shock- 
 ing sometimes, and always maladroit ; one oughtn't to bring 
 it into ladies' boudoirs." 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Philip ! I will not have you so 
 satirical. Where do you take it from % ^Not from me, I am 
 sure ! Hark ! there is Goodwood going ! That is his step on 
 the stairs, I think ! Dear me, Philip, I wish you sympathised 
 with me a little more, for I do feel happy, and I can't help it; 
 dear Adeliza will be so gratified." 
 
 " My dear mother. Til do my best to be sympathetic ; I'll 
 go and congratulate Goodwood as he gets in his cab, if you 
 fancy I ought ; but you see, if I were in Dahomey, behoMing 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 89 
 
 the head of my best friend coming off, I couldn't quite get up 
 the amount of sympathy in their pleasure at the refreshing 
 sight the Dahomites might expect from me, and so " 
 
 But Lady Marabout missed the comparison of herself to a 
 Dahomite, for she had opened the door and was crossing to 
 the drawing-rooms, her eyes bright, her step elastic, her heart 
 exultant at the triumph of her manoeuvres. The Hon. Val 
 was playing with some ferns in an etagere at the bottom of 
 the farthest room, and responded i:o the kiss her aunt bestowed 
 on her about as much as if she had been one of the statuettes 
 on the consoles. 
 
 "Well, love. What did lie, sayf asked Lady Marabout, 
 breathlessly, with eager delight and confident anticipation. 
 
 Like drops of ice on warm rose-leaves fell each word of the 
 intensely chill and slightly sulky response on Lady Marabout's 
 heart. 
 
 " He said that he goes to Cowes to-morrow for the Eoyal 
 Yacht Squadron dinner, and then on in the Anadyomene to 
 the Spitzbergen coast for walruses. He left a P.P.C. card for 
 you." 
 
 '^ Walruses /" shrieked Lady Marabout. 
 
 " Walruses," responded the Hon. Yal. 
 
 " And said no more than that T 
 
 " ISTo more than that." 
 
 The Pet Eligible had flown off uncaught after all ! Lady 
 Marabout needed no further explanation — tout fid dit. They 
 were both silent and paralysed. Do you suppose Pompey and 
 Cornelia had much need of words when they met at Lesbos 
 after the horrible deroute of Pharsalia ? 
 
 " I'm in your mother's blackest books for ever, Phil," said 
 Goodwood to Carruthers in the express to Southampton for 
 the E.Y.C. Squadron Eegatta of that year, " but I can't help 
 it. It's no good to badger us into marriage ; it only makes us 
 double, and run to earth. I was near compromising myself 
 with your cousin, I grant, but the thing that chilled me was, 
 she's too studied. It's all got up beforehand, and goes upon 
 clockwork, and it don't interest one accordingly; the mechan- 
 ism's perfect, but we know when it will raise its hand, and 
 move its eyes, and bow its head, and when we've looked at its 
 beauty once we get tired of it. That's the fault in Yalencia, 
 
90 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 and in scores of them, and as long as they wovbt be natural, 
 why, they can't have much chance with us !" 
 
 Which piece of advice Carruthers, when he next saw his 
 mother, repeated to her, for the edification of all future de- 
 butantes, adding a small sermon of his own : 
 
 " My dear mother, I ask you, is it to be expected that we 
 can marry just to oblige women and please the newspapers % 
 Would you have me marched off to Hanover-square because 
 it would be a kindness to take one of Lady Elmer's marriage- 
 able daughters, or because a leading journal fills up an empty 
 column with farcical lamentation on our dishke to the bond- 
 age? Of course yo^i wouldn't; yet, for no better reason, 
 you'd have chained poor Goodwood, if you could have caught 
 him. Whether a man likes to marry or not is certainly his 
 own private business, though just now its made a popular 
 public discussion. Do you wonder that we shirk the institu- 
 tion % If we have not fortune, marriage cramps our energies, 
 our resources, our ambitions, loads us with petty cares, and 
 trebles our anxieties. To one who rises with such a burden 
 on his shoulders, how many sink down in obscurity, who, but 
 for the leaden weight of pecuniary difficulties with which 
 marriage has laden their feet, might have climbed the highest 
 round in the social ladder % On the other side, if we have 
 fortune, if we have the unhappy happiness to be eligible, is it 
 wonderful that we are not flattered by the worship of young 
 ladies who love us for what we shall give them, that we don't 
 feel exactly honoured by being courted for what we are worth, 
 and that we're not over-willing to give up our hberty to oblige 
 those who look on us only as good speculations'? What think 
 you, eh T 
 
 Lady Marabout looked up and shook her head mournfully : 
 " My dear Philip, you are right. I see it — I don't dispute 
 it ; but when a thing becomes personal, you know philosophy 
 becomes difficult. I have such letters from poor dear Adeliza 
 — such letters ! Of course she thinks it is all my fault, and 
 I beheve she will break entirely with me. It is so very 
 shocking. You see all Belgravia coupled their names, and 
 the very day that he went off to Cowes in that heartless, 
 abominable manner, if an announcement of the alliance as 
 arranged did not positively appear in the Comi Circular I It 
 did indeed ! I am sure Anne Hautton vras at the bottom, of 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. ^i 
 
 it ; it would be just like her. Perhaps poor Valencia cannot 
 be pitied after her treatment of Cardonnel, but it is very hard 
 on mer 
 
 Lady Marabout is right : when a thing becomes personal, 
 philosophy becomes difficult. When your gun misses fire, and 
 a fine cock bird whirrs up from the covert and takes wing un- 
 harmed, never to swell the number of your triumphs and the 
 size of your game-bag, could you by any chance find it in 
 your soul to sympathise with the bird's gratification at your 
 laortification and its own good luck % I fancy not. 
 
 k 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WOURIES OF A CHAPEKONE. 
 
 In Three Seasons. 
 
 SEASON the second. — THE OGRE. 
 
 " If there he one class I dislike more than another, it is that 
 class ; and if there be one person in town I utterly detest, it 
 is that man !" said our friend Lady Marabout, with much 
 unction, one morning, to an audience consisting of Bijou, 
 Bo-nbon, and Pandore, a cockatoo, an Angora cat, and a young 
 lady sitting in a rocking-chair, reading the magazines of the 
 month. The dogs barked, the cockatoo screamed, the cat 
 purred, a vehement affirmative, the human auditor looked up, 
 and laughed ; 
 
 " What is the class. Lady Marabout, may I ask 1" 
 *^ Those clever, detestable, idle, good-for-nothing, fashionable, 
 worthless men about town, who have not a penny to their 
 fortune, and spend a thousand a year on gloves and scented 
 tobacco — who are seen at everybody's house, and never at 
 their own — who drive horses fit for a Duke's stud, and haven't 
 money enough to keep a donkey on thistles — who have hand- 
 some faces and brazen consciences — who are positively leaders 
 of ton, and yet are glad to write feuilletons before the world 
 is up to pay their stall at the Opera — who give a guinea for a 
 bouquet, and can't pay a shilling of their just debts — I dete§^ 
 the class, my dear I" 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 93 
 
 " So it seems, Lady Marabout. I never heard you so vehe- 
 ment. And who is the particular scapegoat of this type of 
 sinners V 
 
 "ChandosCheveley." 
 
 " Chandos Cheveley % Is n't he that magnificent man Sir 
 Philip introduced to me at the Amandines' breakfast yesterday? 
 Why, Lady Marabout, his figure alone might outbalance a 
 multitude of sins !" 
 
 " He is handsome enough. Bid Philip introduce him to 
 you, my dear % I wonder ! It was very careless of him. But 
 men are, so thoughtless; they will know anybody themselves, 
 and they think we may do the same. The man called here 
 while we were driving this morning. I am glad we were out : 
 he very seldom comes to mAj house." 
 
 " But why is he so dreadful? The Amandines are tremend- 
 ously exclusive, I thought." 
 
 **0h, he goes everywhere! IS'o party is complete without 
 Chandos Cheveley, and I have heard that at September or 
 Christmas he has more invitations than he could possibly accept; 
 but he is a most objectionable man, all the same — a man every 
 one dreads to see come near her daughters. He has extreme 
 fascination of manner, but he has not a farthing ! How he 
 lives, dresses, drives the horses he does, is one of those miracles 
 of London men's lives which ii^e can never hope to puzzle out. 
 Philip says he likes him, but Philip never speaks ill of anybody, 
 except a woman now and then, who teases him; but the man 
 is my detestation — has been for years. I was annoyed to see 
 his card : it is the first time he has called this season. He 
 knows I can't endure his class or him." 
 
 With which Lady Marabout wound up a very unusually 
 lengthy and uncharitable disquisition, length and uncharitable- 
 ness being both out of her line; and Lady Cecil Ormsby rolled 
 her handkerchief into a ball, threw it across the room for 
 Bonbon, the spaniel puppy, and laughing till the cockatoo 
 screamed with delight : 
 
 " Dear Lady Marabout, do forgive me, but it is such fun to 
 hear you positively, for once, malicious ! Who is your Ogre, 
 genealogically speaking? this terrible — what's his name? — 
 Chandos Cheveley ?" 
 
 " The younger son of a younger son of one of the Marquises 
 of Danvers, I believe, my dear; an idle man about towfl, 
 
94 ^AD V MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 you know, with not a sou to be idle upon, who sets the fashion, 
 but never pays his tailor. I am never malicious, I hope, 
 but I do consider men of that stamp very objection- 
 able." 
 
 " But what is Sir Philip but a man about town T 
 
 " My son ! Of course he is a man about town. My dear, 
 what else should he be % But if Philip likes to lounge all his 
 days away in a club window, he has a perfect right ; he has 
 fortune. Chandos Cheveley is not worth a farthing, and yet 
 yawns away his day in White's as if he were a millionnaire ; 
 the one can support his far nmiU, the other cannot. There 
 are gradations in everything, my love, but in nothing more 
 than among the men, of the same set and the same style, whom 
 one sees in Pall-Mali." 
 
 " There are chestnut horses and horse-chestnuts, chevaliers 
 and chevaliers d'industrie, rois and rois d'Yvetot, Carrutherses 
 and Chandos Cheveleys?" laughed Lady Cecil. " I understand. 
 Lady Marabout. II y a femmes et femmes — men about town and 
 men about town. I shall learn all the classes and distinc- 
 tions soon. But how is one to know the sheep that may be let 
 into tlie fold from the wolves in sheep's clothing, that must 
 be kept out of it % Your Ogre is really very distinguished- 
 looking." 
 
 " Distinguished % Oh yes, my love ; but the most distin- 
 guished men are the most objectionable sometimes. I assure 
 you, my dear Cecil, I have seen an elder son whom sometimes 
 I could hardly have told from his own valet, and a younger of 
 the same family with tlie style of a D'Orsay. Why, did I not 
 this very winter, when I went to stay at Rochdale, take Fitz- 
 breguet himself, whom I had not chanced to see since he was 
 a child, for one of the men out of livery, and bid liim bring 
 Bijou's basket out of the carriage. I did indeed — /, who hate 
 such mistakes more than any one ! And Lionel, his second 
 brother, has the beauty of an Apollo and the air noble to per- 
 fection. One often sees it; it's through the doctrine of com- 
 pensation, I suppose, but it's very perplexing, and causes endless 
 emhrouilUmmtsr 
 
 " When the mammas fall in love with Lord Pitz's coronet, 
 and the daughters with Lord Lionel's face, I suppose T inter- 
 polated Lady Cecil. 
 
 " Exactly so, dear. As for knowing the sheep from the 
 
LADY MARABOUT-' S TROUBLE^, 9^ 
 
 wolves, as you call them," went on Lady Marabout, sorting her 
 embroidery silks, " you may very soon know more of Chandos 
 Cheveley's class — (this Magenta braid is good for nothing; it's 
 a beautiful colour, but it fades immediately) — you meet them 
 in the country at all fast houses, as they call them now-a-days, 
 like the Amandines' ; they are constantly invited, because they 
 are so amusing, or so dead a shot, or so good a v\^hip, and live on 
 their invitations, because they have no locale, of their own. 
 You see, all the women worth nothing admire, and all the 
 women worth anything shun, them. They have a dozen accom- 
 plishments, and not a single reliable quality; a hundred houses 
 open to them, and not a shooting-box of their own property or 
 rental. You will meet this Chandos Cheveley everywhere, 
 for instance, as though he were somebody desirable. You will 
 see him in his club window, as though he were born only to 
 read the papers; in the Eide, mounted on a much better animal 
 than Fitzbreguet, though the one pays treble the price he ought, 
 and the other, I dare say, no price at all; at Ascot, on Aman- 
 dine's or Goodwood's drag, made as much of among them all 
 as if he were an heir-apparent to the throne; and yet, my love, 
 that man hasn't a penny, lives Heaven knows where, and how 
 he gets money to keep his cab and buy his gloves is, as I say, 
 one of those mysteries of settling days, whist-tables, periodical 
 writing, Baden cou])s de honheur, and such-like fountains of such 
 men's fortunes which we can never hope to penetrate — and very 
 little we should benefit if we could ! My dearest Cecil ! if it 
 is not ten minutes to five ! We must go and drive at once." 
 
 Lady Ormsby was a great pet of Lady Marabout's; she had 
 been so from a child; so much so, that when, the year after 
 Valencia Valletort's discomfiture (a discomfiture so heavy and 
 80 public, that that young beauty was seized with a fit of filial 
 devotion, attended her mamma to Mce, and figured not in 
 Belgravia the ensuing season, and even Lady Marabout's temper 
 had been slightly soured by it, as you perceive), another terrible 
 charge was shifted on her shoulders by an appeal from the 
 guardians of the late Earl of Eosediamond's daughter for her 
 to be brought out under the Marabout wing, she had consented, 
 and surrendered herself to be again a martyr to responsibihty 
 for the sake of Cecil and Cecil's lost mother. The young lady 
 was a beauty; she was worse, she was an heiress; she was worse 
 still, she was saucy, wayward, and notable for a strong wiU of 
 
p6 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 her own — a more dangerous young tliorougli-"bred was never 
 brought to a gentler Earey; and yet she was the first charge 
 of this nature that Lady Marabout had ever accepted in the 
 whole course of her life with no misgivings and with absolute 
 pleasure. First, she was very fond of Cecil Ormsby ; secondly, 
 she longed to efface her miserable failure with Valencia by a 
 brilhant success, which should light up all the gloom of her 
 past of chaperonage; thirdly, she had a sweet and long-cherished 
 diplomacy nestling in her heart to throw her son and Lord 
 Kosediamond's daughter together, for the eventual ensnaring 
 and fettering of Carruthers, which policy nothing could favour 
 so well as having the weapon for that deadly purpose in her 
 own house through April, May, and June. 
 
 Cecil Ormsby was a beauty and an heiress — spirited, sarcastic, 
 brilliant, wilful, very proud ; altogether, a more spirited young 
 filly never needed a tight hand on the ribbons, a light but a 
 firm seat, and a temperate though judicious use of the curb to 
 make her endure being ridden at all, even over the most level 
 grass countries of life. And yet, for the reasons just mentioned, 
 Lady Marabout, who never had a tight hand upon anything, 
 who is to be thrown in a moment by any wiKul kick or deter- 
 mined plunge, who is utterly at the mercy of any filly that 
 chooses to take tlie bit between her own teeth and bolt off, 
 and is entirely incapable of using the curb, even to the most 
 ill-natured and ill-trained Shetland that ever deserved to have 
 its mouth sawed — Lady Marabout undertook the jockeyship 
 without fear. 
 
 "I dare say you wonder, after my grief with Valencia, 
 that I have consented to bring another girl out, but when I 
 heard it was poor Eosediamond's wish — his dying wish, one 
 may almost say — that Cecil should make her debut with me, 
 what Vjas I to do, my dear T she explained, half apologetically, 
 to Carruthers, when the question was first agitated. Perhaps, 
 too, Lady Marabout had in her heart been slightly sickened 
 of perfectly trained young ladies brought up on the best 
 systems, and admitted to herself that the pets of the foreign 
 houses may not be the most attractive flowers after all. 
 
 So Lady Cecil Ormsby was installed in Lowndes-square, 
 and though she was the inheritor of her mother's wealth, 
 which was considerable, and possessor of her own wit and 
 beauty, which were not inconsiderable either, and therefore a 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLED. 97 
 
 prize to fortune-hunters and a lure to misogamists, as Lady 
 Marabout knew very well how to keep the first off, and had 
 her pet project of numbering her refractory son among the 
 converted second, she rather congratulated herself than other- 
 wise in having the pleasure and eclat of introducing her; 
 and men voted the Marabout Yearlings, Sale of that season, 
 since it comprised Eosediamond's handsome daughter, as 
 dangerous as a horse-dealer's auction to a young greenhorn, or 
 a draper's " sale without reserve, at enormous sacrifice," to a 
 iady with a soul on bargains bent. 
 
 " How very odd ! Just as we have been talking of him, 
 there is that man again ! I must bow to him, I suppose ; 
 though if there he a person I dislike " said Lady Mara- 
 bout, giving a frigid little bend of her head as her barouche, 
 with its dashing roans, rolled from her door, and a tilbury 
 passed them, driving slowly through the square. 
 
 Cecil Ormsby bowed to its occupant with less severity, and 
 laughed under the sheltering shadow of her white parasol 
 fringe. 
 
 " The Ogre has a very pretty trap, though, Lady Marabout, 
 and the most delicious grey horse in it ! Such good action !" 
 
 " If its action is good, my love, I dare say it is more than 
 could be said of its master's actions. He is going to call on 
 that Mrs. Marechale, very probably; he was always there 
 last season." 
 
 And Lady Marabout shook her head and looked grave, 
 which, combined with the ever-damnatory demonstrative 
 conjunction, blackened Mrs. Marechale's moral character as 
 much as Lady Marabout could blacken any one's, she loving 
 as little to soil her own fingers and her neighbours' reputa- 
 tions with the indelible Italian chalk of scandal as any lady 
 I know ; being given, on the contrary, when compelled to 
 draw any little social croquis of a backbiting nature, to 
 sketch them in as lightly as she could, take out as many 
 lights as possible, and rub in the shadows with a very chary 
 and pitying hand, except, indeed, when she took the portrait 
 of such an Ogre as Chandos Cheveley, when I can't say she 
 was quite so merciful, specially when policy and prejudice 
 combined to suggest that it would be best (and not unjust) 
 to use the blackest Conte crayons obtainable. 
 
 The subject of it would not have denied the correctness of 
 
98 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLE^, 
 
 tlie sillioiiette Lady Marabout had snipped out for the edifi- 
 cation of Lady Cecil, had he caught a glimpse of it : he had 
 no habitation, nor was ever likely to have any, save a bache- 
 lor's suite in a back street ; he had been an idle man for the 
 last twenty years, with not a sou to be idle upon ; the springs 
 of his very precarious fortunes, his pursuits, habits, reputa- 
 tion, ways and means, were all much what she had described 
 them ; yet he set the fashion much oftener than Goodwood, 
 and Dukes and milhonnaires would follow the style of his 
 tie, or the shape of his hat ; he moved in the most brilliant 
 circles as Court. Circulars have it, and all the best houses were 
 open to him. At his Grace of Amandine's, staying there for 
 the shooting, he would alter the stud, find fault with the 
 claret, arrange a Drive for deer in the forest, and flirt 
 with her Grace herself, as though, as Lady Marabout averred, 
 he had been Heir- Apparent or Prince Eegent, who honoured 
 the Castle by his mere presence — ^Amandine all the while 
 swearing by every word he spoke, thinking nothing well done 
 without Chevcley, and submitting to be set aside in his own 
 Castle, with the greatest gratification at the extinction. 
 
 Eut that Chandos Cheveley was not worth a farthing, that 
 he was but a Bohemian on a brilliant scale, that any day he 
 might disappear from that society where he now glittered, 
 never to reappear, everybody knew ; how he floated there as 
 he did, kept his cab and his man, paid for his stall at the 
 Opera, his club fees, and all the other trifles that won't wait, 
 was an eternal puzzle to every one ignorant of how expen- 
 sively one may live upon nothing if one just gets the knack, 
 and of how far a fashionable reputation, like a cake of cho- 
 colate, will go to support Hfe when nothing more substantial 
 is obtainable. Lady Marabout had sketched him correctly 
 enough, allowing for a little poHtic bitterness thrown in to 
 counteract Carruthers's thoughtlessness in having introduced 
 him to Eosediamond's daughter (that priceless treasure for 
 whom Lady Marabout would fain have had a guard of Janis- 
 saries, if they would not have been likely to look singular 
 and come expensive) ; and ladies of the Marabout class did 
 look upon him as an Ogre, guarded their daughters from his 
 approach at a ball as carefully, if not as demonstratively, as 
 any duck its ducklings from the approach of a water-rat, did 
 not ask him to their dinners, and bowed to him chillily in 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 99 
 
 the Eing. Others regarded him as harmless, from his perfect 
 pennilessness ; what danger was there in the fascinations of a 
 man whom all Belgravia knew hadn't money enough to buy- 
 dog-skin gloves, though he always wore the best Paris laven- 
 der kid ? While others, the pretty married women chiefly, 
 from her Grace of Amandine downwards to Mrs. Marechale, 
 of Lowndes-square, flirted with him fearfully, and considered 
 Chandos Cheveley what nobody ever succeeded in disproving 
 him, the most agreeable man on town, with the finest figure, 
 the best style, and the most perfect bow, to be seen in the 
 Park any day between March and July. But then, as Lady 
 Marabout remarked on a subsequent occasion, a figure, a style, 
 and a bow are admirable and enviable things, but they're not 
 among the cardinal virtues, and don't do to live upon ; and 
 though they're very good buoys to float one on the smooth 
 sparkling sea of society, if there come a storm one may go 
 down, despite them, and become helpless prey to the sharks 
 waiting below. 
 
 "Philip certainly admires her very much; he said the 
 other day there was something in her, and that means a great 
 deal from him," thought Lady Marabout, complacently, as 
 she and Cecil Ormsby were wending their way through some 
 crowded rooms. " Of course I shall not influence Cecil to- 
 wards him j it would not be honourable to do so, since she 
 might look for a higher title than my son's ; still, if it should 
 so fall out, nothing would give me greater pleasure, and really 
 nothing would seem more natural with a little judicious ma- 
 nage " 
 
 " May I have the honour of this valse with you ?" was 
 spoken in, though not to. Lady Marabout's ear. It was a 
 soft, a rich, a melodious voice enough, and yet Lady Mara- 
 bout would rather have heard the hiss of a Cobra Capella, 
 for the footman might have caught the serpent and carried it 
 off from Cecil Ormsby's vicinity, and she couldn't very well 
 tell them to rid the reception-chambers of Chandos Cheveley. 
 
 Lady Marabout vainly tried to catch Cecil's eye, and warn 
 her of the propriety of an utter and entire repudiation of the 
 valse in question, if there were no " engaged " producible to 
 softly chill the hopes and repulse the advances of the as- 
 pirant ; but Lady Cecil's soul was obstinately bent saltatory- 
 wards; her chaperone's ocular telegram was lost upon her, 
 
 7—2 
 
too LADY MARABOUT'S Troubles. 
 
 and only canglit by the last person who should have seen it, 
 who read the message off the wires to his own amusement, 
 but naturally was not magnanimous enough to pass it on. 
 
 " I ought to have warned her never to dance with that 
 detestable man. If I could but have caught her eye even 
 now !" thought Lady Marabout, restlessly. The capella 
 would have been much the more endurable of the two ; the 
 serpent couldn't have passed its arm round Eosediamond's 
 priceless daughter and whirled her down the ball-room to the 
 music of Coote and Timney's band, as Chandos Cheveley 
 was now doing. 
 
 " Why did you not ask her for that waltz, Philip T cried 
 the good lady, almost petulantly. 
 
 Carruthers opened his eyes wide. 
 
 " My dear mother, you know I never dance ! I come to 
 balls to oblige my hostesses and look at the women, but not 
 to carry a seven-stone weight of tulle illusion and white 
 satin, going at express pace, with the thermometer at 80 deg., 
 and a dense crowd jostling one at every turn in the circle. 
 Bien oUigt ! that's not my idea of pleasure ; if it were the 
 Pyrrhic dance, now, or the Tarantella, or the Eolero, under a 
 CastiKan chestnut-tree " 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! You might have danced for once, 
 just to have kept her from Chandos Cheveley." 
 
 "Prom the best waltzer in London? Not so selfish. 
 Ask Amandine*s wife if women don't like to dance with that 
 feUow !" 
 
 " I should be very sorry to mention his name to her, or 
 any of her set," responded Lady Marabout, getting upon cer- 
 tain virtuous stilts of her own, which she was given to mount 
 on rare occasions and at distant intervals, always finding 
 them very uncomfortable and unsuitable elevations, and 
 being as glad to cast them off as a traveller to kick off the 
 echasses he hafe had to strap on over the sandy plains of the 
 Landes. 
 
 " What could possess you to introduce him to Cecil, Philip ? 
 It was careless, siUy, unlike you ; you know how I dislike 
 men of his — his — objectionable stamp," sighed Lady Mara- 
 bout, the white and gold namesakes in her coiffure softly 
 trembling a gentle sigh in the perfumy zephyr raised by the 
 rotatory whirl of the waltzers, among whom she watched 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. loi 
 
 with, a horrible fascination, as one watches a tiger heing pugged 
 out of its lair, or a deserter being led out to be shot, Chandos 
 Cheveley waltzing Eosediamond's priceless daughter down 
 the ball-room. 
 
 " He is so dreadfully handsome ! I wonder why it is that 
 men and women, who have no fortune but their faces, will be 
 so dangerously, so obstinately, so provokingly attractive as 
 one sees them so often !" thought Lady Marabout, determining 
 to beat an immediate retreat from the present salons, since 
 they were infested by the presence of her Ogre, to Lady 
 Hautton's house in Wilton-crescent. 
 
 Lady Hautton headed charitable bazaars, belonged to the 
 Cummingite nebulae, visited Homes and Hospitals (floating 
 to the bedside of luckless feminine patients to read out divers 
 edifying passages, whose effect must have been somewhat 
 neutralised to the hearers, one would imagine by the envy- 
 inspiring rustle of her silks, the flash of her rings, and the 
 chimes of her bracelets, chains, and chatelaine), looked on the 
 " Amandine set " as lost souls, and hence " did not know " 
 Chandos Cheveley — a fact which, though the Marabout and 
 Hautton antagonism was patent to all Eelgravia, served to 
 endear her all at once to her foe ! Lady Marabout, like a good 
 many other people, being content to sink personal resent- 
 ment, and make a truce with the infidels for the sake of 
 enjoying a mutual antipathy — that closest of all links of 
 union ! 
 
 Lady Marabout and Lady Hautton were foes, but they 
 were dear Helena and dear Anne, all the same ; dined at each 
 other's tables, and smiled in each other's faces. They might 
 be private foes, but they were public friends ! and Lady 
 Marabout beat a discreet retreat to the Hautton's salons — " so 
 many engagements " is so useful a plea ! — and from the Haut- 
 ton she passed on to a ball at the Duke of Doncaster's ; and, 
 as at both, if Lady Cecil Ormsby did not move " a goddess 
 from above," she moved a brilliant, sparkling, nonchalante, 
 dangerous beauty, with some of her sex's faults, all her sex's 
 witcheries, and more than her sex's mischief, holding her own 
 royally, saucily, and proudly, and Chandos Cheveley was 
 encountered no more, but happily detained at a petit souper 
 in a certain Section of the French Embassy, Lady Marabout 
 dyove homewards, in the grey of the mornipg, relieved, com- 
 
102 LADY MARABOU! 'S TROUBLES, 
 
 placent, and gratified, dozing deliciously, till she was woke up 
 Avith a start : 
 
 " Lady Marabout, what a splendid waltzer your Ogre, 
 Chandos Cheveley, is !" 
 
 Lady Marabout opened her eyes with a jerk that set her 
 feathers trembling, her diamonds scintillating, and her brace- 
 lets ringing an astonished little carillon. 
 
 " My love, how you frightened me !" 
 
 Cecil Ormsby laughed — a gay, joyous laugh, innocent of 
 having disturbed a doze, a lajDse into the human weakness of 
 which her chaperone never permitted herself to plead guilty. 
 
 " Frightened you, did 1 1 Why your Mte noire is as terri- 
 ble to you as Coeur de Lion to the Saracen children, or Black 
 Douglass to the Lowland ! And, reaUy I can't see anything 
 terrible in him ; he is excessively brilliant and agreeable, has 
 something worth hearing to say to you, and his waltzing 
 is !" 
 
 Lady Cecil Ormsby had not a word in her re23ertory — 
 though it was an enthusiastic and comprehensive one, and 
 embraced {\yq languages — sufficiently commendatory to finish 
 her sentence. 
 
 " I dare say, dear. I never denied, or heard denied, his 
 having every accomj)lishment under the sun. The only j)ity 
 is, he has nothing more substantial !" returned Lady Marabout, 
 a little bit tartly for her lips, only used to the softest (and 
 m.ost genuine) milk of roses. 
 
 Lord Eosediamond's daughter laughed a little mournfully, 
 and played with her fan. 
 
 " Poor man ! Brilliant and beggared, fashionable and 
 friendless, courted and cashiered — a sad destiny. Do you 
 know, Lady Marabout, I have half a mind to champion your 
 Ogre !" 
 
 " My love, don't talk nonsense !" said Lady Marabout, 
 hastily ; at which Lady Cecil only laughed still more softly 
 and gaily again, and sprang down as the carriage stopped in 
 Lo^vndes-square. 
 
 " Eosediamond's daughter's deucedly handsome, eh, Cheve- 
 ley ? I saw you waltzing with her last night," said Goodwood 
 at Lord's the next morning, watching a match between the 
 Household Cavalry and the Zingari Eleven. 
 
 " Yes, she is the best thing we have seen for some time." 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 103 
 
 said Cheveley, glancing round to see if tlie Marabout liveries 
 were on the ground. 
 
 " Don't let the Amandine or little Mer^chale hear you say- 
 so, or you'll have a deuce of a row," laughed Goodwood. 
 " She's worth a good deal, too ; she's all her mother's pro- 
 perty, and that's something, I know. The deaths,^ in her 
 family have kept her back two years or more, but now she is 
 out, I dare say Lady Tattersall will put her up high in the 
 market." 
 
 " JNTo doubt. Why don't you make the investment — she's 
 much more attractive than that Valletort ice statue who 
 hooked you so nearly last year % Fortescue's out ! Well done, 
 little Jimmy ! Ah ! there's the Marabout carriage. I am 
 as unwelcome to that good lady, I know, as if I were Quasi- 
 modo or Quilp, and as much to be shunned, in her estimation, 
 as Vidocq, armed to the teeth \ nevertheless, I shall go and* 
 talk to them, if only in revenge for the telegraphic warning 
 of ' dangerous ' she shot at Lady Cecil last night when I asked 
 her to waltz. Goodwood, don't you envy me my happy im- 
 munity from traps matrimonial T 
 
 " There is that man again — how provoking ! I wish we 
 had not come to see Philip's return match. He is positively 
 coming up to talk to us," thought Lady Marabout, restlessly, 
 as her Ogre lifted his hat to her. In vain did she do her 
 best to look severe, to look frigid, to chill him with a wither- 
 ing " good morning " (a little word, capable, if you notice, of 
 expressing every gradation in feeling, from the nadir of de- 
 lighted intimacy to the zero of rebuking frigidity); her coldest 
 ice was as warm as a piue-apple ice that has been melting all 
 day under a refreshment tent at a horticultural f^te ! Her 
 roU was not chilliness, and never could be ; she would have 
 beamed benign on a headsman who had led her out to instant 
 decapitation, and been no more able to help it than a peach 
 to help its bloom, or a claret its bouquet. She di4 her ut- 
 most to freeze Chandos Cheveley, but either she failed 
 signally, or he, being blessed with the brazen conscience she 
 had attributed to him, was steeled to all the tacit repulses of 
 her looks, for he leaned against the barouche door, let her 
 freeze him away as she might, and chatted to Cecil Ormsby, 
 "positively," Lady Marabout remarked to that safest con- 
 fidante, herself, " positively as if the man had been welcome 
 
104 LAD Y MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 at my house for the last ten years ! If Cecil would but second 
 me, he couldn't do it ; but she idll smile and talk with him just 
 as though he were Goodwood or Fitzbreguet ! It is very dis- 
 agreeable to be forced against one's will like this into coun- 
 tenancing such a very objectionable person ; and yet what can 
 one do !" 
 
 Which query she could by no means satisfactorily answer 
 herself, being a regular female Nerva for clemency, utterly 
 incapable of the severity with which that stern Cataline, Lady 
 Hautton, would have signed the unwelcome intruder out of 
 the way in a brace of seconds. And under Nerva's gentle 
 rule, though ISTerva was longing with all her heart to have 
 the courage to caU the lictors, and say, " Away with him !" 
 Cheveley leaned against the door of the carriage unmolested, 
 though decidedly undesired by one of its occupants, talked to 
 by Lady Cecil, possibly because she found him as agreeable as 
 her Grace of Amandine and Lillia Mer^chale had done before 
 her, possibly only from that rule of contrariety which is such 
 a pet motor-power with her sex ; and Lady Marabout reclined 
 among her cushions, tucked up in her tiger-skin in precisely 
 that state of mind in which Fuseli said to his wife, " Swear, 
 my dear, you don't know how much good it will do you," 
 dreading in herself the possible advent of the Hautton car- 
 riage, for that ancient enemy and rigid pietist, of whose keen 
 tongue and eminent vhtue she always stood secretly in awe, 
 to see tliis worthless and utterly objectionable member of that 
 fast, graceless, and " very incorrect " Amandine set, absolutely 
 en sentinelle at the door of her barouche ! 
 
 Does your best friend ever come when you want him most? 
 Doesn't your worst foe always come when you want him least 1 
 Of course, at that juncture, the Hautton carriage came on the 
 ground (Hautton was one of the Zingari Club, and maternal 
 interest brought her foe to Lord's as it had brought herself), 
 and the Hautton eye-glass, significantly and surprisedly raised, 
 said as distinctly to Lady Marabout, as though elfishly endowed 
 with vocal powers, " You allow that man acquaintance with 
 Eosediamond's daughter !" Lady Marabout was stung to the 
 soul by the deserved rebuke, but she didn't know how on earth 
 . to get rid of the sinner ! There he leaned, calmly, nonchalantly, 
 determinedly, as if he were absolutely welcome; and Lady 
 Cecil talked on to him as if he were absolutely welcome too. 
 
LAD Y MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 105 
 
 Lady Marabout felt branded in tbe eyes of all Belgravia to 
 have Cbandos Cheveley at her carriage door, the most objec- 
 tionable man of all his most objectionable class. 
 
 " It is very strange !" she thought. " I have seen that man 
 about town the last five-and-twenty years — ever since he was 
 a mere boy, taken up and petted by Adeline Patchouli for 
 some piece of witty Brummelian impudence he said to her on 
 his first introduction — and he has never sought my acquaint- 
 ance before, but always seemed to be quite aware of my dislike 
 to him and all his set. It is very grievous he should have 
 chosen the very season I have poor dear Eosediamond's daugh- 
 ter with me ; but it is always my fate — ^if a thing can happen 
 to annoy me it always will !" 
 
 With which Lady Marabout, getting fairly distracted under 
 the iron hand of adverse fate, and the ruthless surveillance of 
 the Hautton glass, invented an impromptu necessity for im- 
 mediate shopping at Lewis and Allonby's, and drove off the 
 ground at the sole moment of interest the match possessed for 
 her — ^viz. when Carruthers was rattling down Hautton's stumps, 
 and getting innings innumerable for the Household. 
 
 " Mais ce n'est que le premier pas qui coiite ;" the old pro- 
 verb's so true we wear it threadbare with repeating it ! Lady 
 Marabout might as well have stayed on Lord's ground, and not 
 lacerated her feelings by leaving at the very hour of the House- 
 hold Cavalry's triumphs, for any good that she did thereby. The 
 Hautton eye-glass had lighted on Chandos Cheveley, and 
 Chandos Cheveley's eye-glass on Eosediamond's daughter; — 
 and Cecil Ormsby arched her eyebrows, and gave her parasol 
 a little impatient shake as they quitted Lord's. 
 
 "Lady Marabout, I never could have believed you ill 
 natured; you interrupted my ball last night, and my conversa- 
 tion this morning! I shall scold you if you ever do so again. 
 And now tell me (as curiosity is a weakness incidental to all 
 women, no woman ought to refuse to relieve it in another) why 
 are you so prejudiced against that very handsome, and very 
 amusing person]" 
 
 " Prejudiced, my dear child ! I am not in the least pre- 
 judiced," returned Lady Marabout. (]!^obody ever admitted 
 to a prejudice that / ever heard. It's a plant that grows in all 
 gardens, and is sedulously matted up, watered, and strengthened; 
 but invariably disavowed by its sturdiest cultivators.) "As fb|: 
 
ic6 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 Chandos Cheveley, I merely mentioned to you what all town 
 knows about him; and the dislike I have to his class is one of 
 principle, not of prejudice." 
 
 Lady Cecil made a moue mutine : 
 
 " Oh, Lady Marabout ! if you go to 'principle/ tout est per du! 
 * Principle' has been made to bear the onus of every private 
 pique since the world began, and has had to answer for more 
 cruelties and injustice than any word in the language. The 
 Eomans flung the Christians to the lions * on principle,' and 
 the Europeans slew the Mahomedans *on principle,' and 'prin- 
 ciple' lighted the autos-da-fe, and signed to the tormentor to 
 give a turn more to the rack ! Please don't appeal to anything 
 so severe and hypocritical. Come, what are the Ogre's sins V 
 
 Lady Marabout laughed, despite the subject. 
 
 " Do you think I am a compiler of such catalogues, my love? 
 Pray do not let us talk any more about Chandos Cheveley, he 
 is very little worth it ; all I say to you is, be as cool to him as 
 you can, without rudeness, of course. I am never at home 
 when he calls, and were I you I would be always engaged 
 when he asked you to waltz ; his acquaintance can in no way 
 benefit you." 
 
 Lady Cecil gave a little haughty toss of her head, and lay 
 back in the barouche. 
 
 "J will judge of that ! I am not made for fetters of any kind, 
 you know, and I like to choose my own acquaintance as well 
 as to choose my own dresses. I cannot obey you either tliis 
 evening, for he asked me to put him on my tablets for the first 
 waltz at Lord Anisette's ball, and I consented. I had no 
 'engaged' ready, unless I had^had a falsehood ready too, and 
 you wouldn't counsel that. Lady Marabout, I am very sure?" 
 
 With that straightforward and perplexing question Cecil 
 Ormsby successfully silenced her chaperone, by planting her in 
 that disagreeable position known as between the horns of a 
 dilemma; and Lady Marabout, shrinking alike from the respon- 
 sibility of counselling a " necessary equivocation," as society 
 pohtely terms its indispensable lies, and the responsibility of 
 allowing Cecil acquaintance with the "very worst" of the Aman- 
 dine set, sighed, wondered envyingly how Anne Hautton would 
 act in her place, and almost began to wish somebody else had 
 had the onerous stewardship of that brilliant and priceless jewel 
 Eosediamond's daughter, now that the jewel threatened to b^ 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, ic; 
 
 possessed with a will of its own : — tlie greatest possible flaw in 
 a gem of pure water, which they only want to scintillate brilli- 
 antly among the bijouterie of society, and let itself be placed 
 jDassively in the setting most suitable for it that can be conceived 
 in the eyes of lady lapidaries entrusted with its sale. 
 
 "It is very odd," thought Lady Marabout; "she seems to 
 have taken a much greater fancy to that odious man than to 
 Philip, or Goodwood, or Fritz, or any one of the men who admire 
 her so much. I suppose I always am to be worried in this sort 
 of way. However, there can be no real danger ; Chandos Cheve- 
 ley is the merest butterfly flirt, and with all his faults none ever 
 accused .him of fortune-hunting. Still, they say he is wonder- 
 fully fascinating, and certainly he has the most beautiful voice 
 I ever heard; and if Cecil should ever like him at all I could 
 never forgive myself, and what should I say to General Ormsby?" 
 
 The General, Cecil's mcle and guardian, is one of the best- 
 humoured, best-tempered, and most laissez-faire men in the 
 Service, but was, for all that, a perpetual dead weight on Lady 
 Marabout's mind just then, for was not he the person to 
 whom, at the end of the season, she would have to render up 
 an account of the successes and the short-comings of her cha- 
 perone's career? 
 
 " Do you think of proposing Chandos Cheveley as a suitable 
 alliance for Cecil Ormsby, my dear Helena'?" asked Lady 
 Llautton, with that smile which was felt to be considerably 
 worse than strychnine by her foes and victims, at a house in 
 Grosvenor-place, that night. 
 
 " God forbid !" prayed Lady Marabout, mentally, as she 
 joined in the Hautton laugh, and shivered under the stab of 
 the Hautton sneer, which was an excessively sharp one. Lady 
 Hautton being one of a rather numerous class of eminent Chris- 
 tians, so panoplied in the armour of righteousness that they 
 can tread, without feeling it, on the tender feet of others. 
 
 The evening was spoiled to Lady Marabout; she felt 
 morally and guiltily responsible for an unpardonable indis- 
 cretion : — with that man waltzing with Cecil Ormsby, her 
 "graceful, graceless, gracious Grace" of Amandine visibly 
 irritated with jealousy at the sight, and Anne Hautton whis- 
 pering behind her fan with acidulated significance. Lady 
 Marabout had never been more miserable in her life ! She 
 heard on all sides admiration of Eosediamond's daughter; 
 she was gratified by seeing Goodwood^ Fitzbreguet, fuHc^ 
 
io8 LAD Y MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 I^ugent, every eligible man in tlie room, suing for a place on 
 her tablets; she had the delight of beholding Carruthers 
 positively join the negligent beauty's train ; and yet the night 
 was a night of purgatory to Lady Marabout, for Chandos 
 Cheveley had his first waltz, and several after it, and the 
 Amandine set were there to gossip, and the Hautton clique to 
 be shocked, at it. 
 
 " Soames, tell Mason, when Mr. Chandos Cheveley calls, 
 I am not at home," said Lady Marabout, at breakfast. 
 
 " Yes, my lady," said Soames, who treasured up the order, 
 and told it to Mr. Chandos Cheveley's man at the first oppor- 
 tunity, though, greatly to his honour, we must admit, he did 
 not imitate the mild formula of fib, and tell his mistress her 
 claret was not corked when it was so incontestably. 
 
 Cecil Ormsby lifted her head and looked across the table 
 at her hostess, and the steady gaze of those violet eyes, which 
 were Eosediamond's daughter's best weapons of war, so dis- 
 composed Lady Marabout, that she forgot herself sufficiently 
 to proffer Bijou a piece of bread, an unparalleled insult which 
 that canine Sybarite did not forgive all day long. 
 
 "l^ot at home, sir," said Mason, as duly directed, when 
 Cheveley's cab pulled up, a week or two after the general 
 order, at the door. 
 
 Cheveley smiled to himself as his grey had her head turned, 
 and the wheel grated off the trottoir, while he lifted his hat 
 to Cecil Ormsby, just visible between the amber curtains and 
 above the balcony flowers of one of the windows of the 
 drawing-room — quite visible enough for her return smile 
 and bow to be seen in the street by Cheveley, in the room by 
 Lady Marabout. 
 
 " Some of Lady Tattersall's generalship !" he thought, as 
 the gTey trotted out of the square. " Well ! I have no busi- 
 ness there. Cecil Ormsby is not her Grace of Amandine, 
 nor little Marechale, and the good lady is quite right to brand 
 me * dangerous' to her charge, and pronounce me * inadmis- 
 sible' to her footmen. I've very little title to resent her verdict." 
 
 " My dearest Cecil, whatever possessed you to bow to that 
 man !" cried Lady Marabout, in direst distress. 
 
 "Is it not customary to bow to one's acquaintances — I 
 thought it was T asked Lady Cecil, with demure mischief. 
 
 " But, my dear, from a window ! — and when Masgn is 
 ^ajring we are not at home !" 
 
lADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLE^. \t^ 
 
 " That isn't Mason's fib, or Mason's fault, Lady Marabout !" 
 suggested Cecil, with wicked emphasis. 
 
 " There is no falsehood or fault at all anywhere, — every- 
 body knows well enough what 'not at home' means," re- 
 turned Lady Marabout, almost pettishly. 
 
 " Oh yes," laughed the young lady, saucily. " It means 
 * I am at home and sitting in my drawing-room, but I shall 
 not rise to receive you, because you are not worth the trouble.' 
 It's a polite cut direct, and a honeyed rudeness — a bitter 
 almond wrapped up in a sugar dragee, like a good many other 
 bonbons handed about in society." 
 
 " My dear Cecil, you have some very strange ideas ; you 
 will get called satirical if you don't take care," said Lady 
 !Marabout, nervously. 
 
 Cecil Ormsby's tone worried her, and made her feel some- 
 thing as she felt when she had a restive, half-broken pair of 
 horses in her carriage, for the direction of whose next plunge 
 or next kick nobody could answer. 
 
 "And if I be— what then]" 
 
 " My dear child, you could not anyhow get a more disad- 
 vantageous reputation ! It may amuse gentlemen, though it 
 frightens half of them ; but it offends all women irremediably. 
 You see, there are so few whom it doesn't hit somewhere," 
 returned Lady Marabout, quite innocent of the neat satire of 
 her own last sentence. 
 
 Cecil Ormsby laughed, and threw herself down by her 
 chaperone's side : 
 
 " Never mind : I can bear their enmity ; it is a greater 
 compliment than their liking. The women whom women 
 love are always quiet, colourless, inoffensive — foils. Lady 
 Marabout, tell me, why did you give that general order to 
 Mason?' 
 
 " I have told you before, my dear. Because I have no 
 wish to know Mr. Chandos Cheveley," returned Lady Mara- 
 bout, as stiffly as she could say anything. " It is, as I said, 
 not from prejudice, but from prin " 
 
 " Lady Marabout, if you use that word again I will drive 
 to Uncle Ormsby's rooms in the Albany and stay with him 
 for the season ; I will, positively ! I am sure all the gentle- 
 men there will be delighted to have my society ! Pray, what 
 are your Ogre's crimes] Did you ever hear anything dis- 
 
1 td LAD Y MARABOUTS TROUBLED. 
 
 honourable, mean, ungenerous, attributed to him? Did you 
 ever bear be broke bis word, or failed to act like a gentle- 
 man, or was a defaulter at any settling day T 
 
 Lady Marabout required some explanation of what a de- 
 faulter at a settling day might be, and, on receiving it, was 
 compelled to confess that she never had heard anything of 
 that kind imputed to Chandos Cheveley : 
 
 " Of course I have not, my dear. The man is a gentleman, 
 everybody knows, however idle and improvident a one. If 
 he could be accused of anything of that kind, he would not 
 belong to such clubs, and associate with such men as he does. 
 Besides, Philip would not know him; certainly would not 
 think well of him, which I confess he does. But that is not 
 at all the question." 
 
 " Ne vous en de])laise, I think it very much and very en- 
 tirely the question," returned Lady Cecil, with a toss of her 
 haughty little head. ** If you can bring nothing in evidence 
 against a man, it is not right to send him to the galleys and 
 mark him ' Format.' " 
 
 " My dear Cecil, there is plenty in evidence against him," 
 said Lady Marabout, with a mental back glance to certain 
 stories told of the " Amandine set," " though not of that 
 kind. A man may be perfectly unexceptionable in his con- 
 duct with his men friends, but very objectionable acquaint- 
 ance for us to seek, all the same." 
 
 " Ah, I see ! Lord Goodwood may bet, and flirt, and 
 lounge his days away, and be as fast a man as he likes, and 
 it is all right ; but if Mr. Cheveley does the same it is all 
 wrong, because he is not worth forgiving." 
 
 " JN'aturally it is," returned Lady Marabout, seriously and 
 naively. " But how very oddly you put things, my love ; 
 and why you should interest yourself in this man, when every- 
 thing I tell you is to his disadvantage, I cannot imagine." 
 
 A remark that showed Lady Marabout a skilful tactician, 
 insomuch as it silenced Cecil — a performance rather difficult 
 of accomplishment. 
 
 " I am very glad I gave the order to Mason," thought that 
 good lady. "I only wish we did not meet the man in 
 society ; but it is impossible to help that. We are all cards 
 of one pack, and get shuffled together, whether we like it or 
 not. I wish Philip would pay her more attention ; he ad- 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. \\\ 
 
 tnires her, I can see, and lie can make any woman like him 
 in ten days when he takes the trouble ; hut he is so tiresome ! 
 She would be exactly suited to him ; she has all he would 
 exact — beauty, talent, good blood, and even fortune, though 
 that he would not need. The alliance would be a great hap- 
 piness to me. Well, he dines here to-night^ and he gives 
 that concert at his barracks to-morrow morning, purely to 
 please Cecil, I am sure. I think it may be brought about 
 with careful management." 
 
 With which pleasant reflection she went to drive in the 
 Ring, thinking that her maternal and duenna duties would 
 be alike well fulfilled, and her chaperone's career well finished, 
 if by any amount of tact, intrigue, finesses, and diplomacy 
 she could live to see Cecil Ormsby sign herself Cecil Car- 
 ruthers. 
 
 " If that man were only out of town !" she thought, as 
 Cheveley passed them in Amandine's mail-phaeton at the turn. 
 
 Lady Marabout might wish Cheveley were out of town — 
 and wish it devoutly she did — but she wasn't very likely to 
 have her desire gratified till the general migration shoidd 
 carry him off in its tide to the deck of a yacht, a lodge in the 
 Highlands, a German Kursaal, or any one of those myriad 
 "good houses" where nobody Avas so welcome as he, the best 
 shot, the best seat, the best wit, the best billiard player, the 
 best whist player, and the best authority on all fashionable 
 topics, of any man in England. Cheveley used to aver that 
 he liked Lady Marabout, though she detested him ; nay, that 
 he liked her for her detestation 3 he said it was cordial, sin- 
 cere, and refreshing, therefore a treat in the world of Bel- 
 gravia ; still, he didn't like her so well as to leave Town in 
 the middle of May to obhge her; and though he took her 
 hint as it was meant, and pulled up his hansom no more at 
 her door, he met her and Eosediamond's daughter at dinners, 
 balls, concerts, morning-parties innumerable. He saw them 
 in the Eing ; he was seen by them at the Opera ; he came 
 across them constantly in the gyration of London life. Mght 
 after night Lady Cecil persisted in writing his name in her 
 tablets; evening after evening a bizarre fate worried Lady 
 Marabout, by putting him on the left hand of her priceless 
 charge at a dinner-party. Day after day all the harmony of 
 a concert was marred to her ear by seeing her Ogre talking of 
 
Iti LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 
 
 Beethoven and Mozart, chamber music and bravura music in 
 Cecil's : morning after morning gall was poured into her lun- 
 cheon sherry, and wormwood mingled in her vol-au-vent, by- 
 being told, with frank mischief, by her desired daughter-in- 
 law, that she "had seen Mr. Cheveley leaning on the rails, 
 smoking," when she had taken her after-breakfast canter. 
 
 ** Chandos Cheveley getting up before noon ! He must mean 
 something unusual !" thought her chaperone. 
 
 " Helena has set her heart on securing Cecil Ormsby for 
 Carruthers. I hope she may succeed better than she did with 
 poor Goodwood last season," laughed Lady Hautton, with her 
 inimitable sneer, glancing at the young lady in question at a 
 bazaar in Willis's Eooms, selling rosebuds for anything she 
 liked to ask for them, and cigars tied up with blue ribbon a 
 guinea the half-dozen, at the Marabout stall. Lady Hautton 
 had just been paying a charitable visit to St. Cecilia's Eefuge, 
 of which she was head patroness, wliere, having floated in 
 with much benignity, been worshipped by a select little toady 
 troop, administered spiritual consolation with admirable con- 
 descension, and distributed illuminated texts for the adornment 
 of the walls and refreshment of the souls, she was naturally 
 in a Christian frame of mind towards her neighbours. Lady 
 Marabout caught the remark — as she was intended to do — 
 and thought it not quite a pleasant one ; but, my good sir, 
 did you ever know those estimable people, who spend all their 
 time fitting themselves for another world, ever take the trou- 
 ble to make themselves decently agreeable in the present one % 
 The little pleasant courtesies, afiabilities, generosities, and 
 kindnesses, that rub the edge off the flint-stones of the Via 
 Dolorosa, are quite beneath the attention of Mary the Saint, 
 and only get attended to by Martha the Worldly, poor but- 
 terfly thing ! who is fit for nothing more serviceable and pro- 
 fitable ! 
 
 Lady Marabout Imd set her heart on Cecil Ormsby's filling 
 that post of honour — of which no living woman was deserving 
 in her opinion — that of " Philip's wife ;" an individual who had 
 been, for so many years, a fond ideal, a haunting anxiety, and a 
 dreaded rival, en meme temps, to her imagination. She xms a 
 little bit of a match-maker : she had, over and over again, ar- 
 ranged the most admirable and suitable alliances ; alliances that 
 would have shamed the scepticism of the world in general, aa 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 113 
 
 to the desirability of the holy bonds, and brought every re- 
 fractory man to the steps of St. George's; alliances that would 
 have come off with the greatest eclat, but for one trifling hin- 
 drance and difficulty — namely, the people most necessary to 
 the arrangements could never by any chance be brought to 
 view them in the same light, and were certain to give her diplo- 
 macy the CTOC-en-jamhe at the very moment of its culminating 
 glory and finishing finesses. She was a little bit of a match- 
 maker — most kind-hearted women are ; the tinder they play 
 with is much better left alone, but they don't remember that ! 
 Like cliildren in a forest they think they'll hght a pretty 
 bright fire, just for fun, and never remember what a seared, 
 dreary waste that fire may make, or what a prairie conflagra- 
 tion it may stretch into before it's stopped. 
 
 " Cecil Ormsby is a terrible flirt," said Lady Hautton to 
 another lady, glancing at the rapid sale of the rosebuds and 
 cigars, the bunches of violets and the sprays of lilies of the val- 
 ley, in which that brilliant beauty was doing such thriving busi- 
 ness at such extravagant profits, while the five Ladies Hautton 
 presided solemnly over articles of gorgeous splendour, which 
 threatened to be left on hand, and go in a tombola, as igno- 
 miniously as a beauty after half a dozen seasons, left unwooed 
 and unwon, goes to the pele-mele raffle of German Bad society, 
 and is sold off at the finish to an unknown of the Line, or a 
 Civil Service fellow, with five hundred a year. 
 
 "Was Cecil a flirts" wondered Lady Marabout. Lady 
 Marabout was fain to confess to herself that she thought she 
 was — nay, that she hoped she was. If it wasn't flirting, that 
 way in which she smiled on Chandos Cheveley, sold him cigar- 
 ettes, laughed with him over the ices and nectarines he fetched 
 her, and positively invested him with the cordon d'honneur of 
 a little bouquet of Fairy roses for which twenty men sued, 
 and he (give Satan his due) did not even ask — if it wasn't 
 flirting, what was it ? Lady Marabout shivered at the sug- 
 gestion ; and though she was, on principle, excessively severe 
 on flirting, she could be very glad of what she didn't approve, 
 when it aided her, on occasion — like most other people — and 
 would so far have agreed with Talleyrand, as to welcome the 
 worst crime (of coquetry) as far less a sin than the unpardon- 
 able blunder of encouraging an Ogre ! 
 
 ♦* I can't send Cecil away from the stall, as if she were ^ 
 
 8 
 
114 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 naughty child, and I can't order the man out of Willis's 
 Rooms," thought that unhapjDy and fatally-worried lady, as she 
 presided behind her stall, an emphatic witness of the truth of 
 the poeticism that " grief smiles and gives no sign," insomuch 
 as she looked the fairest, sunniest, best-looking, and best tem- 
 pered Dowager that ever shrouded herself in Chantilly lace. 
 
 "I do think those ineligible, detrimental, objectionable 
 persons ought not to be let loose on society as they are," she 
 pondered ; "let them have their clubs and their mess break- 
 fasts, their Ascot and their IsTewmarket, their lasquenet par- 
 ties and their handicap pigeon matches, if they like ; but to 
 have them come amongst us as they do, asked everywhere if 
 they happen to have good blood and good style, free to waltz 
 and flirt and sing, and show all sorts of attention to mar- 
 riageable girls, while all the while they are no more available 
 for anything serious than if they were chib stewards or cab- 
 men — creatures that live on their fashionable aroma, and can't 
 afford to buy the very bottles of bouquets on their toilette- 
 tables — fast men, too, who, knowing they can never marry 
 themselves, make a practice of turning marriage into ridicule, 
 and help to set all the rich men more dead against it than 
 they are — to have them come promiscuously among the very 
 best people, with nothing to distinguish them as dangerous, 
 or label them as * ought to be avoided,' — it's dreadful ! it's a so- 
 cial evil ! it ouglit to be remedied ! They muzzle dogs in June, 
 why can't they label Ogres in the season? I mustn't send poor 
 little Bijou out for a walk in Kensington Gardens without a 
 string, these men ought not to go about in society without 
 restriction : a snap of Bijou's doesn't do half such mischief as 
 a smile of theirs !" 
 
 And Lady Marabout chatted across the stall to his Grace 
 of Doncaster, and entrapped him into purchases of fitting 
 ducal prodigality, and smiled on scores of people she didn't 
 know, in pleasant pro tempore expediency that had, like most 
 expediency in our day, its ultimate goal in their purses and 
 pockets, and longed for some select gendarmerie to clear 
 Willis's Eooms of her Cobra Capella, and kept an eye all the 
 while on Cecil Ormsby — Cecil, selling off everything on the 
 stall by sheer force of her bright violet eyes, receiving ten- 
 pound notes for guinea trifles, making her Bourse rise as high 
 as she liked, covtrted for a spray of mignonette as entreatingiy 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 115 
 
 as ever Law was courted in the Eue Quincampoix for Missis- 
 sippi scrip, served by a Corps d'Elite, in whom she had ac- 
 tually enlisted Carruthers, Goodwood, Fulke JSTugent, Fitz- 
 breguet, and plenty of the most desirable and most desired 
 men in town, yet of Avhich — oh the obstinacy of women ! — 
 she had actually made Chandos Cheveley, with those wicked 
 little Fairy roses in his coat, positively the captain and the 
 chief ! 
 
 " It is enough to break one's heart ;" thought Lady Mara- 
 bout, wincing under the Hautton glance, which she saw only 
 the plainer because she wouldn't see it at all, and which said 
 with horrible distinctness, " There is that man, who can 
 hardly keep his own cab, who floats on society like a pleasure 
 boat, without rudder, ballast, or anchors, of whom I have 
 told you, in virtuous indignation and Christian charity, 
 fifty thousand naughty stories, who visits that wicked notori- 
 ous little Marechale, who belongs to the Amandine set, who 
 is everything that he ought not and nothing that he ought to 
 be, who hasn't a penny he doesn't make by a well-made bet- 
 ting-book or a dashed off magazine article, — there he is flirt- 
 ing all day at your own stall with Eosediamond's daughter, 
 and you haven't the savoir faire, the strength of will, the tact, 
 the proper feeling, to stop it 1" 
 
 To all of which charges Lady Marabout humbly bent her 
 head, metaphorically speaking, and writhed, in secret, under 
 the glance of her ancient enemy, while she talked and laughed 
 with the Duke of Doncaster. C. Petronius, talking epicu- 
 reanisms and witticisms, while the life-blood was ebbing away 
 at every breath, was nothing to the suffering and the fortitude 
 of Helena, Lady Marabout, turning a smiling, sunny, tran- 
 quil countenance to the world in front of her stall, while that 
 world could see Chandos Cheveley admitted behind it ! 
 
 " I must do something to stop this !" thought Lady Mara- 
 bout, with the desperation of a Charlotte Corday. 
 
 " Is Cheveley going in for the Ormsby tin T said Aman- 
 dine to Eyre Lee. "Eest thing he could do, eh? Eut 
 Lady Tattersall and the trustees would cut up rough, I am 
 afraid." 
 
 " What does Chandos mean with that daughter of Eose- 
 diamond's V wondered her Grace, annoyedly. She had had 
 him some time in her own rose chains, and when ladies have 
 
 ^—2 
 
lit; LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 driven a lover long in that sort of harness, they could double- 
 thong him with all the might of their little hands, if they 
 fancy he is trying to hreak away. 
 
 " Is Chandos Cheveley turning fortune-hunter % I suppose 
 he would like Lady Cecil's money to pay offhis Ascot losses," 
 said Mrs. Marechale, with a malign laugh. At Ascot, the day 
 before, he had Dot gone near her carriage ; the year before he 
 had driven her down in her mail-phaeton : what would there 
 be too black to say of him now % 
 
 " I must do something to stop this !" determined Lady 
 Marabout, driving homewards, and glancing at Cecil Ormsby, 
 as that young lady lay back in the carriage, a little grave and 
 dreamy after her day's campaign— signs of the times terrifically 
 ominous to her chaperone, skilled in reading such meteorolo- 
 gical omens. But how was the drag to be put on the wheel? 
 That momentous question absorbed Lady Siarabout through 
 her toilette that evening, pursued her to dinner, haunted her 
 through two soirees, kept her wide awake all night, woke up 
 with her to her early coffee, and flavoured the potted tongue 
 and the volaille a la Eichelieu she took for her breakfast. ^^I 
 can't turn the man out of town, and I can't teU people to 
 strike him off their visiting-lists, and I can't shut Cecil and 
 myself up in this house as if it were a convent ; and, as to 
 speaking to her, it is not the slightest use. She has such a 
 way of ]Dutting things that one can never deny their truth, 
 or reason them away, as one can with other girls. Eond as I 
 am of her, she's fearfully difficult to manage. Still I owe it 
 as a sacred duty to poor Eosediamond and the General, who 
 says he places such implicit confidence in me, to interfere. 
 It is my duty ; it can't be helped. I must speak to Chandos 
 Cheveley himself. I have no right to consult my own 
 scruples when so much is at stake," valorously determined 
 Lady Marabout, resolved to follow stern moral rules, and, 
 when right was right, to let " le diable prendre le fruit." 
 
 To be a perfect woman of the world, I take it, ladies must 
 weed out early in life all such little contemptible weaknesses 
 as a dislike to wounding other people j and a perfect woman 
 of the world, therefore. Lady Marabout was not, and never 
 would be. IsTohow could she acquire Anne Hautton's invalua- 
 ble sneer — ^nohow could she imitate that estimable pietist's de- 
 lightful way of dropping little icy-barbed sentences, under 
 which I have known the bravest to shrink, frozen, out of her 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 117 
 
 path. Lady Marabout was grieved if she broke the head off 
 a flower needlessly, and she could not cure herself of the 
 same lingering folly in disliking to say a thing that pained 
 anybody ; it is incidental to the De Boncoeur blood — Car- 
 ruthers inherits it — and I have seen fellows spared through 
 it, whom he could else have withered into the depths of their 
 boots by one of his satirical mots. So she did not go to her 
 task of speaking to Chandos Cheveley, armed at all points for 
 the encounter, and taking pleasure in feeling the edge of her 
 rapier, as Lady Hautton would have done. The Cobra was 
 dangerous, and must be crushed, but Lady Marabout did not 
 very much relish setting her heel on it ; it was a glittering 
 terrible, much-to-be-feared, and much-to-be-abused serpent, — - 
 but it might feel all the same, you see. 
 
 " I dislike the man on principle, but I don't want to pain 
 him," she thought, sighing for the Hautton stern savoir faire 
 and Achilles impenetrability, and goading herself on with 
 the remembrance of duty and General Ormsby, when the op- 
 portunity she had resolved to seek presented itself accident- 
 ally at a breakfast of Lady George Frangi pane's toy villa at 
 Fulham, and she found herself comparatively alone in the 
 rose-garden with Cheveley, for once without Cecil's terrible 
 violet eyes upon her. 
 
 " Will you allow me a few words with you, Mr. Cheve- 
 ley ?" she asked, in her blandest manner — the kindly hypo- 
 crite ! 
 
 The blow must be dealt, but it might as well be softened 
 with a few chloroform fumes, and not struck savagely with an 
 iron-spiked mace. 
 
 Cheveley raised his eyes. 
 
 " With me ? With the greatest pleasure !" 
 
 " He is a mere fortune-hunter. I will not spare him, I am 
 resolved," determined Lady Marabout, as she toyed with her 
 parasol handle, remarked incidentally how unequalled Lady 
 George was in roses, especially in the tea-rose, and dealt blow 
 number one. " Mr. Cheveley, I am going to speak to you 
 very frankly. I consider frankness in all things best, my- 
 self " 
 
 Cheveley bowed, and smiled slightly. 
 
 " I wish he would answer, it would make it so much 
 easier ; he will only look at one with those eyes of his, and 
 certainly they are splendid !" thought Lady Marabout, as she 
 
iig LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 went on quickly, on the same principle as the Chasseurs 
 Indiens approach an ahattis at double quick. " Wlien Lord 
 Eosediamond died last year he, left, as probably you are aware, 
 his daughter in my sole care ; it was a great responsibility— very 
 great — and I feel, of course, tliat I shall have to answer to 
 him jR)r my discharge of it." 
 
 Lady Marabout didn't say whether Eosediamond was ac- 
 customed to visit her per medium, and hear her account of her 
 stewardship nightly through a table-claw ; but we must sup- 
 pose that he was. Cheveley bowed again, and didn't inquire, 
 not being spiritually interested. 
 
 " Why woTbt he answer?" thought Lady Marabout. " That 
 I have not been blind to your very marked attention to my 
 dear Cecil, I think you must be aware, Mr. Cheveley, and it is 
 on that subject, indeed, that I " 
 
 " Wished to speak to me % I understand !" said Cheveley, 
 as she paused, with that faint smile, half sad, half proud, that 
 perplexed Lady Marabout. " You are about to insinuate to 
 me gently that those attentions have been exceedingly dis- 
 tasteful to you, exceedingly unacceptable in me ; you would 
 remind me that Lady Cecil Ormsby is a beauty and an heir- 
 ess, and that I am a fortune-hunter, whose designs are seen 
 through and motives found out ; you would hint to me that 
 our intercourse must cease : is it not so T 
 
 Lady Marabout, cursed with that obstinate, ill-bred, unex- 
 tinguishable weakness for truth incidental and ever fatal to 
 the De Boncoeurs, couldn t say that it was not what she was 
 going to observe to him, but it was exceedingly unpleasant, 
 now it was put in such plain, uncomplimentary terms, to ad- 
 mit to the man's face that she was about to tell him he was a 
 mercenary schemer, whose attentions only sprang from a law- 
 less passion for the leaux yeux of Cecil's cassette. 
 
 She would have told him all that, and much more, with 
 greatest dignity and effect, if he hadn't anticipated her ] but 
 to have her weapon parried before it was fairly out of its sheath 
 unnerved her arm at the outset. 
 
 " What would Anne Hautton do 1 Dear me ! there never 
 was anybody perpetually placed in such wretched positions as 
 I am !" thought Lady Marabout, as she played with her 
 parasol, and murmured something not very clear relative to 
 ** responsibility " and *' not desirable," two words as infallibly 
 
LAD Y MA -RAB OUT'S TRO UBLES, \ 19 
 
 a part of Lady Marabout's stock-in-trade as a sneer at the "swells" 
 is of Punch's, How she sighed for some cold, nonchalant, bit- 
 ter sentence, 'Such as the Hautton repertoire could have supplied ! 
 How she scorned herself for her own weakness and lack of sever- 
 ity ! But she would not have relished hurting a burglar's feel- 
 ings, though she had seen him in the very act of stealing her 
 jewel-boxes, by taxing him with the theft ; and though the Ogre 
 must be crushed, the crushing began to give Lady Marabout neu- 
 ralgic twinges. She w^as no more able to say the stern things 
 she had rehearsed and resolved upon, than she was able to stab 
 him with her parasol, or strangle him with her handkerchief 
 
 " I guessed rightly what you were about to say to me !" said 
 Cheveley, who seemed somehow or other to have taken all the 
 talk into his own hands, and to have become the master of the 
 position. "I thought so. I do not wonder at your construction ; 
 I cannot blame you for your resolution. Lady Cecil has some 
 considerable fortune, they say; it is very natural that you should 
 have imagined a man like mj^self, with no wealth .save a good 
 name, which only serves to make lack of wealth more conspi- 
 cuous, incapable of seeking her society for any better, higher, 
 more disinterested motive than that of her money; it was not 
 charitable, perhaps, to decide unhesitatingly that it was impossi- 
 ble I could be drawn to her by any other attraction, that it was 
 imperative I must be dead to everything in her that gives her 
 a nobler and a higher charm ; but it was very natural, and 
 one learns never to hope for the miracle of a charitable judg- 
 ment, even from Lady Marabout 1" 
 
 "My dear Mr. Cheveley, indeed you mistake!" began Lady 
 Marabout, restlessly. That was a little bit of a story, he didn't 
 mistake at all; but Lady Marabout, collapsing like an india- 
 rubber ball under the prick of a sarcasm, shivered all over at his 
 words, his voice, his slight, sad smile. " The man is as dreadful 
 as Cecil," she thought; "he puts things so horribly clearly !" 
 
 "Mistake? I do not think I do. You have thought all 
 this, and very naturally; but now hear me for a moment. I 
 have sought Lady Cecil's society, that is perfectly true; we 
 have been thrown together in society, very often accidentally; 
 sometimes, I admit, through my own seeking. Few men could 
 be with her and be steeled against her. I have been with her 
 too much; but I sought lier at first carelessly, then irresistibly 
 and unconsciously, never with the motive you attribute to me. 
 
I2d LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 I am not as -utterly beggared as you deem me, but neitber am 
 I entirely barren of bonour. Believe me, Lady Marabout, my 
 pride alone would be amply sufficient to raise a barrier between 
 me and Cecil stronger tban any tbat could be opposed to me 
 by otbers. Yesterday I casually overboard words from Aman- 
 dine whicb showed me tbat Society, like you, has put but one 
 construction on tbe attention I have paid her — a construction 
 I might have foreseen bad I not been unconsciously fascinated, 
 and forgetful for tbe time of tbe infallible whispers of my kind 
 friends. Her fortune, I know, was never numbered among 
 her attractions for me ; so little, that now that Amandine's 
 careless words have reminded me of the verdict of Society, I 
 shall neither seek her nor see her again. Scores of men marry 
 women for their money, and their money alone, but I am not 
 one of them; with my own precarious fortunes, only escaping 
 ruin because I am not rich enough to tempt ruin, I would never 
 take advantage of any interest I may have excited in her, to 
 speak to her of a passion that the world would tell her was 
 only another name for avarice and selfishness. I dare not trust 
 myself with her longer, perhaps. I am no god to answer for 
 my self-control; but you need not fear ; I will never seek her 
 love — never even tell her of mine. I shall leave town to-morrow ; 
 what / may suffer matters not. Lady Cecil is safe from me ! 
 Whatever you may have heard of my faults, follies, or vices, 
 none ever told you, I think, that I broke my word T 
 
 " And when the man said that, my dear Philip, I assure you 
 I felt as guilty as if I had done him some horrible wrong; he 
 stood there with his head up, looking at me with his sad proud 
 eyes — and they are beautiful ! — till, positively, I could almost 
 have cried — I could, indeed, for though I don't like him on 
 priQciple, I couldn't help pitying him," said Lady Marabout, 
 in a subsequent relation of the scene to her son. " Wasn't it 
 a terrible position? I was as near as possible forgetting every- 
 thing due to poor Eosediamond, and saying to him that I 
 believed Cecil liked him and would never like anybody else, 
 but, thank Heaven ! I remembered myself, and checked myself 
 in time. If it had been anybody but Chandos Cheveley, I 
 should really have admired him, he spoke so nobly ! When he 
 lifted his hat and left me, though I ought to have been glad 
 (and I was glad, of course) that Cecil would be free from, the 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, I2i 
 
 society of anybody so objectionable and so dangerous, I felt 
 wretched for him — I did indeed. It ^5 so hard always to be 
 placed in such miserable positions !" 
 
 By which you will perceive that the triumphant crushing of 
 Lady Marabout's Cobra didn't afford her the unmixed gratifica- 
 tion she had anticipated. 
 
 " I have done what was my duty to poor Eosediamond, and 
 what General Ormsby's confidence merited," she solaced herself 
 that day, feeling uncomfortably and causelessly guilty, she hardly 
 knewAvhy, when she saw Chandos Cheveley keeping sedulously 
 with the " Amandine set," and read in Cecil's tell-tale face 
 wonder, perplexity, and regret thereat, till the Frangipane fete 
 came to an end. She had appeased the manes of the late Eose- 
 diamond, who, to her imagination, always appeared sitting up 
 aloft, keeping watch over the discharge of her chaperone's duties, 
 but she had a secret and a horrible dread that she had excited 
 the wrath of Eosediamond's daughter. She had driven her Ogre 
 off the scene, it is true, but she could not feel that she had 
 altogether come off the best in the contest. Anne Hautton had 
 congratulated her, indeed, on having " acted with decision at 
 last" but then she had marred it all by asking if Carruthers 
 was likely to be engaged to Cecil 1 And Lady Marabout had 
 been forced to confess he was not; Philip, when pressed by 
 her that very morning to be a little attentive to Cecil, having 
 shaken his head and laughed : 
 
 " She's a bewitching creature, mother, but she don't bewitch 
 me I You know what Shakspeare says of wooing, wedding, and 
 repentance. I've no fancy for the inseparable trio !" 
 
 Altogether, Lady Marabout was far from peace and tranquil- 
 lity, though the Cobra was crushed, as she drove away from the 
 Frangipane breakfast,and she was little nearer them when Cecil 
 turned her eyes upon her with a question worse to Lady Mara- 
 bout's ear than the roar of a Lancaster battery : 
 
 " What have you said to him^" 
 
 "My dear Cecil! What have I said to whom?" returned 
 Lady Marabout, with Machiavelian surprise. 
 
 " You know well enough. Lady Marabout ! What have you 
 said to him — to Mr. Cheveley *?" 
 
 Cecil's impetuosity invariably knocked Lady Marabout down 
 at one blow, as a ball knocks, down the pegs at lawn billiards. 
 She rallied after the shock, but not successfully, and tried at 
 
122 LADY MARABOUT'S troubles: 
 
 coldness and decision, as recommended by Hantton prescrip- 
 tions. 
 
 " My dear Cecil, I have said to him what I think it my duty 
 to say to him. Eesponsible as I am for you " 
 
 " Eesponsible for me. Lady Marabout? Indeed you are not. 
 I am responsible for myself!", interrupted Lady Cecil, with that 
 haughty arch of her eyebrows and that flush on her face before 
 which Lady Marabout was powerless. " What have you said 
 to him? I will know !" 
 
 "I said very little to him, indeed, my dear; he said it all 
 himself." 
 
 "What did he say himself?" 
 
 " I must tell her — she is so dreadfully persistent," thought 
 the unhappy and badgered Peeress; and tell her she did, being 
 a means of lessening the young lady's interest in the subject of 
 discussion as little judicious as she could well have hit upon. 
 
 Lady Cecil listened, silent for once, shading her face with 
 her parasol, shading the tears that gathered on her lashes and 
 rolled down her delicate flushed cheeks, at the recital of Chandos 
 Cheveley's words, from her chaperone's sight. 
 
 Lady Marabout gathered courage from the tranquillity with 
 which her recital was heard. 
 
 "You see, my love, Chandos Cheveley's own honour points 
 in the same direction with my judgment," she wound up, in 
 conclusion. " He has acted rightly at last, I allow, and if 
 you — if you have for the moment felt a tinge of warmer in- 
 terest in him — if you have been taken by the fascination of 
 his manner, and invested him with a young girl's romance, 
 you will soon see with us how infinitely better it is that you 
 should part, and how impossible it is that " 
 
 Lady Cecil's eyes flashed such fire through their tears, that 
 Lady Marabout stopped, collapsed and paralysed. 
 
 "It is by such advice as that you repay his nobility, his 
 generosity, his honour ! — it is by such words as those you 
 reward him for acting as not one man in a hundred would have 
 acted ! Hush, hush. Lady Marabout, I thought better of you !" 
 " Good Heavens ! wlure will it end V thought Lady 
 Marabout, distractedly, as Eosediam end's wayward daughter 
 sprang down at the door with a flush in her face, and a con- 
 temptuous anger in her eyes, that made Bijou, jumping on 
 her, stop, stare, and whine in canine dismay. 
 
LAD Y MARAB UTS TR UBLES. 123 
 
 "And I fancied she was listening passively!*' tlionglit 
 Lady Marabout. 
 
 " Well ! the man is gone to-day, that is one comfort. I 
 am very thankful I acted as I did," reasoned that ever-worried 
 lady in her boudoir the next morning. " I am afraid Cecil 
 is really very fond of him, there were such black shadows under 
 her eyes at breakfast, poor child ! But it is much better as 
 it is — much better. I should never have held up my head 
 again if I had allowed her to make such a disadvantageous 
 alliance. I can hardly bear to think of what would have 
 been said, even now the danger is over !" 
 
 While Lady Marabout was thus comforting herself over 
 her embroidery silks, Cecil Ormsby was pacing into the Park, 
 with old Twitters the groom, ten yards behind her, taking 
 her early ride before the world was up — it was only 
 eleven o'clock ; Cecil had been used to early rising and would 
 never leave it off, having discovered some recipe that made 
 her independent of ordinary mortals' quantum of sleep. 
 
 " Surely he will be here this morning to see me for the 
 last time," thought that young lady, as she paced up the 
 Kew Eide under the Kensington Gardens' trees, with her heart 
 beating quicldy under the gold aiglettes of her riding-jacket. 
 
 " I must see her once more, and then " thought Chandos 
 
 Cheveley, as he leaned against the rails, smoking, as he had 
 done scores of mornings before. His man had packed his 
 things ; his hansom was waiting at the gates to take him to 
 the station, and his portmanteau was lettered " Ischl." He 
 had only come to take one last look of the face that haunted 
 him as no other had ever succeeded in doing. The ring of 
 a horse's hoof fell on his ear. There she came, on her roan 
 hack, Avith the sun glancing off her chestnut hair. He looked 
 up to bow to her as she passed on, for the ride had never 
 been a rendezvous for more than a bow (Cecil's insurrectionary 
 tactics had always been carried on before Lady Marabout's 
 face,) but the roan was pulled up by him that morning for 
 the very first time, and Cecil's eyes fell on him through their 
 lashes. 
 
 " Mr. Cheveley — ^is it true you are going out of town T 
 
 " Quite true." 
 
 If her voice quivered as she asked the question, he barely 
 kept his own from doing the same as he answered it. 
 
124 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 " Will you be gone long T 
 
 " Till next season, at earliest." 
 
 His promise to Lady Marabout was hard to keep ! Ho 
 would not have trusted his strength if he had known she 
 would have done more than canter on with her usual bow 
 and smile. 
 
 Cecil was silent. The groom waited lilce a statue his ten 
 yards behind them. She played with her reins nervously, 
 the colour coming and going painfully in her face. 
 
 " Lady Marabout told me of — of some conversation you 
 had with her yesterday T 
 
 Low as the words were, Cheveley heard them, and his 
 hand, as it lay on the rails, shook like a girl's. 
 
 Cecil was silent again ; she looked at him, her eyes full 
 of unshed tears, as the colour burned in her face, and she 
 drooped her head almost to a level with her hands as they 
 played with the reins. 
 
 '' She told me— you " 
 
 She stopped again. Cecil was new to making proposals, 
 though not to rejecting them. Cheveley set his teeth to keep 
 in the words that rushed to his lips, and Cecil saw the strug- 
 gle as she bent her head lower and lower to the saddle, and 
 twisted the reins into a Gordian knot. 
 
 " Do you — must we — why should " 
 
 Fragmentary monosyllables enough, but sufficient to fell 
 his strength. 
 
 " For God's sake do not tempt me !" he muttered. " You 
 Httle know !" 
 
 " I know all !'* she whispered softly. 
 
 " You cannot ! My worthless life ! — my honour ! I could 
 not take such a sacrifice, I would not ! " 
 
 *•' But if my peace " 
 
 She could not end her phrase, yet it said enough ;— ^his 
 hand closed on hers. 
 
 " Your peace ! Good God ! in my hands ! I stay then — 
 let the world say what it likes !" 
 
 " Drive back ; I have changed my mind about going abroad 
 to-day," said Cheveley, as he got into his hansom at Albert- 
 gat.?. 
 
 " How soon she has got over it ! Girls do," thought Lady 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 125 
 
 Marabout, as Cecil Ormsby came in from ber ride with the 
 brightest bloom on her cheeks a June breeze ever fanned 
 there. She laid her hat on the table, flung her gauntlets at 
 Eijou, and threw herself on her knees bj Lady Marabout, a 
 saucy smile on ber face, though her lashes were wet. 
 
 "Dear Lady Marabout, I can forgive you now, but you will 
 never forgive me !" 
 
 Lady Marabout turned white as her point-lace cap, gave a 
 little gasp of paralysed terror, and pushed back her chair as 
 though a shell had exploded on the hearth-rug. 
 
 " Cecil ! Good Heaven ! — you don't mean " 
 
 " Yes I do," said Cecil, with a fresh access of colour, and 
 a low, soft laugh. 
 
 Lady Marabout gasped again for breath. 
 
 " General Ormsby !" was all she could ejaculate. 
 
 " General Ormsby % What of him % Did you ever know 
 - Uncle Johnnie refuse to please me ? And if my money be to 
 interfere with my happiness, and not promote it, as I conceive 
 it's my duty and purpose to do, why, I am of age in July, 
 you know, and I shall make a deed of gift of it all to the 
 Soldiers' Home or the Wellington College, and there is only 
 one person who will care for me tlunr 
 
 Lady Cecil was quite capable of carrying her threat into 
 execution, and Lady Cecil had her own way accordingly, as 
 she had had it from her babyhood. 
 
 " I shall never hold up my head again ! And what a hor- 
 rible triumph for Anne Hautton 1 I am always the victim — 
 always !" said Lady Marabout, that day two months, when 
 the last guest at Cecil Ormsby 's wedding dejeiiner had rolled 
 away from the house. " A girl who might have married any- 
 body, Philip ; she refused twenty offers this season — she did, 
 indeed ! It is heart-breaking, say what you like ; you 
 needn't laugh, it is. Why did I offer them Fernditton for 
 this month, you say, if I didn't countenance the alliance % 
 ISTonsense ! that is nothing to the purpose. Of course, I 
 seemed to countenance it to a degree, for Cecil's sake, and I 
 admire Chandos Cheveley, I confess (at least I should do, if 
 I didn't dislike his class on principle); but, say what you like, 
 Philip, it is the most terrible thing that could have happened 
 for me. Those men migU to be labelled, or muzzled, or done 
 
126 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 something with, and not be let loose on society as they are. 
 He has a noble nature, you say. I don't say anything against 
 his nature 1 She worships him ? Well, I know she does. 
 What is that to the point ? He will make her happy % I 
 am sure he will. He has the gentlest way with her possible. 
 But how does that console me> ? Think what you feel when 
 an outsider, as you call it, beats all the favourites, upsets all 
 your betting-books, and carries off the Doncaster Cup, and 
 then realise, if you've any humanity in you, what we feel 
 under such a trial as this is to me ! Only to think what Anne 
 Hautton will always say !" 
 
 Lady Marabout is not the only person to whom the first 
 thought, the most dreaded ghost, the ghastliest skeleton, the 
 direst aggravation, the sharpest dagger-thrust, under all trou- 
 bles, is the remembrance of that one omnipotent ogre — " Qu'en 
 
 DIRA-T-ON T 
 
 " Laugh at her mother," counselled Carruthers ; and amis 
 ledeurSj I pass on his advice to you as the best and sole bow- 
 string for strangling the ogre in question, which is the grim* 
 mest we have in all Bogeydouk 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE. 
 
 In Three Seasons. 
 
 SEASON the third. THE CLIMAX. 
 
 " My dear Philip, the most unfortunate thing has happened," 
 said Lady Marabout, one morning ; " really the greatest 
 contretemps that could have occurred. I suppose I never am 
 to be quiet !" 
 
 " What's the row now, madre carissima T asked her son. 
 
 " It is no row, but it is an annoyance. You have heard 
 me speak of my poor dear friend Mrs. Montolieu ; you know 
 she married unhappily, poor thing, to a dreadful creature, 
 something in a West India Regiment — nobody at all. It is 
 very odd and it is very wrong, and there must be a great mis- 
 take somewhere, but certainly most marriages are unhappy." 
 
 " And yet you are always recommending the institution ! 
 
 "WThat an extraordinary obstinacy and opticism, my dear 
 mother f I suppose you do it on the same principle as nurses 
 recommend children nasty medicines, or as old Levett used to 
 tender me dry biscuit sans confiture : * 'Tisn't so nice as mar- 
 malade, I know, Master Philip, but then, dear, it's so whole- 
 some V " 
 
 "Hold your tongue, Philip," cried Lady Marabout; "I 
 don't mean it in that sense at all, and you know I don't. If 
 poor Lilla Motolieu \s unhappy, I am sure it is all her 
 
128 . LAD Y MAR ABO UT'S TRO UBLES, 
 
 abominable odious husband's fault; she is the sweetest 
 creature possible. But she has a daughter, and concerning 
 that daughter she wrote to me about a month ago, and — ^I 
 never was more vexed in my life — she wants me to l3ring her 
 out this season." 
 
 " A victim again ! My poor dear mother, you certainly 
 deserve a Belgravian testimonial ; you shall have a statue set 
 up in Lowndes-square commemorative of the heroic endurance 
 of a chaperone's existence, subscribed for gratefully by the 
 girls you married well, and penitentially by the girls you 
 couldn't marry at all." 
 
 Lady Marabout laughed a little, but sighed again : 
 
 " * It is fun to you, but it is death to me ' " 
 
 " As the women say when we flirt with them," interpo- 
 lated Carruthers. 
 
 " You see, poor dear Lilla didn't know what to do. There 
 she is, in that miserable island with the unpronounceable 
 name that the man is governor of ; shut out of aU society, 
 with nobody to marry this girl to if she had her there, except 
 their secretary, or a West Indian planter. Of course, no 
 mother would ruin her daughter's j)rospects, and take her 
 into such an out-of-the-world corner. She knew no one so 
 weU as myself, and so to me she applied. She is the sweetest 
 creature ! I would do anything to oblige or please her, but 
 I can't help being very sorry she has pounced upon me. And 
 I don't the least know what this girl is Hke, not even whether 
 she is presentable. I dare say she was petted and spoiled in 
 that lazy, luxurious, tropical life when she was little, and she 
 has been brought up the last few years in a convent in France, 
 the very last education / should choose for a girl. Fancy, if 
 I should find her an ignorant, unformed hoyden, or a lethargic, 
 overgrown child, or an artificial French girl, who goes to con- 
 fession every day, and carries on twenty undiscoverable love 
 affairs — fancy, if she should be ugly, or awkward, or brusque, 
 or gauche, as ten to one she will be — fancy, if I find her 
 utterly unpresentable ! — what in the world shall I do !" 
 
 " Decline her," suggested Carruthers. " I wouldn't have 
 a horse put in my tilbury that I'd never seen, and risk driv- 
 ing a spavined, wall-eyed, under-bred brute through the Park ; 
 and I suppose the ignominy of the debut would be to you 
 much what the ignominy of such a turn-out would be to me/* 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 129 
 
 " Decline lier ? I can't, my dear Philip ! I agreed to liave 
 her a month ago. I have never seen you to tell you till now, 
 you know j you've been so sworn to I^ewmarket all through 
 the Spring Meetings. Decline her ? she comes to-night !" 
 
 " Comes to-night T laughed Carruthers. " All is lost then. 
 We shall see the Countess of Marabout moving through 
 London society with a West Indian, who has a skin like 
 Othello ; has as much idea of manners as a housemaid that 
 suddenly turns out an heiress, and is invited by people to 
 whom she yesterday carried up their hot water ; reflects in- 
 delible disgrace on her chaperone by gaucheries unparalleled ; 
 throws glass or silver missiles at Soames's head when he 
 doesn't wait upon her at luncheon to her liking, as she has 
 been accustomed to do at the negroes '* 
 
 " Philip, pray don't !" cried Lady Marabout, piteously. 
 
 " Or, we shall welcome under the Marabout wing a young 
 lady fresh from convent walls and pensionnaire flirtations, 
 who astonishes a dinner-party by only taking the first course, 
 on the score of jours maigres and conscientious scruples ; who 
 is visit*ed by reverends peres from Parm-street, and fills your 
 drawing-room with High Church curates, whom she tries to 
 draw over from their 'mother's' to their 'sister's ' open arms; 
 who goes every day to early morning mass instead of taking 
 an early morning canter, and who, when invited to sing at a 
 soiree musicale, begins ' Sancta Maria adorata !' " 
 
 " Philip, don't r cried Lady Marabout. " Bark at him, 
 Bijou, the heartless man 1 It is as likely as not little Mon- 
 tolieu may realise one of your horrible sketches. Ah, Philip, 
 you don't know what the worries of a chaperone are !" 
 
 " Thank Heaven, no !" laughed Carruthers. 
 
 " It is easy to make a joke of it, and very tempting, I dare 
 say — one's woes always are amusing to other people, they 
 don't feel the smart themselves, and only laugh at the grimace 
 it forces from one — but I can tell you, Philip, it is anything 
 but a pleasant prospect to have to go about in society with a 
 girl one may be ashamed of !— I don't know anything more 
 trying ; I would as soon wear paste diamonds as introduce a 
 girl that is not perfectly good style." 
 
 " But why not have thought of all this in time T 
 
 Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou's 
 ears mth a sigh. 
 
 9 
 
130 LADY MAR ABO UT'S TRO UBLES, 
 
 " My dear PMlip, if everybody always thought of things 
 in time, would there be any follies committed at all? It's 
 precisely because repentance comes too late, that repentance 
 is such a horrible wasp, with such a merciless sting. Besides, 
 could I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy as she is with 
 that bear of a man T 
 
 "I never felt more anxious in my life," thought Lady 
 Marabout, as she sat before the fire in her drawing-room — 
 it was a chilly April day — stirring the cream into her pre- 
 prandial cup of tea, resting one of her small satin-slippered 
 feet on Bijou's back, while the firelight sparkled on the Dres- 
 den figures, the statuettes, the fifty thousand costly trifles, in 
 which the Marabout rooms equalled any in Belgravia. " I 
 never felt more anxious — not on any of Philip's dreadful 
 yachting expeditions, nor even when he went that perilous 
 exploring tour into Arabia Deserta, I do think. If she slioiild 
 be unpresentable — and then poor dear Lilla's was not much 
 of a match, and the girl will not have a sou, she tells me 
 frankly ; I can hardly hope to do anything for her. There 
 is one thing, she will not be a responsibility like Valencia or 
 Cecil, and what would have been a bad match for tlum will 
 be a good one for her. She must accept the first offer made 
 her, if she have any at aU, which will be very doubtful ; few 
 Benedicts bow to Beatrices now-a-days, unless Beatrice is a 
 good * investment,' as they call it. She will soon be here. 
 That is the carriage now stopped, I do think. How anxious 
 I feel ! Really it can't be worse for a Turkish bridegroom 
 never to see his wife's face till after the ceremony than it is 
 for one not to have seen a girl till one has to introduce her. 
 If she shouldn't be good style !" 
 
 And Lady Marabout's heart palpitated, possibly propheti- 
 cally, as she set down her little Sevres cup and rose out of 
 her arm-chair, with Bijou shaking his silver collar and bells, 
 to welcome the new inmate of Lowndes-square, with her 
 sunny snule and her kindly voice, and her soft beaming eyes, 
 which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady Mara- 
 bout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded 
 her purse, or an executioner who had led her out to capital 
 punishment, and now made her radiate, warm and bright, on 
 a guest whose advent she dreaded. Hypocrisy you say. I^ot 
 a bit of it ! H}^ocrisy may be eminently courteous, but. 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 131 
 
 take my word for it, it's never cordial ! There are natures 
 who throw such golden rays around them naturally, as there 
 are others who think brusquerie and acidity cardinal virtues, 
 and deal them out as points of conscience; are there not 
 sunbeams that shine kindly alike on fragrant violet tufts and 
 barren brambles, velvet lawns and muddy trottoirs % are there 
 not hail-clouds that send jagged points of ice on all the world 
 pele-mele, as mercilessly on the broken rose as on the granite 
 boulder % 
 
 "She is good style, thank Heaven !" thought Lady Mara- 
 bout, as she went forward, with her white soft hands, their 
 jewels flashing in the light, outstretched in welcome. " My 
 dear child, how much you are like your mother ! You must let 
 me be fond of you for her sake, first, and then — for your own !" 
 
 The conventional thought did not make the cordial utter- 
 ance insincere. The two ran in couples — we often drive such, 
 pairs, every one of us — and if tluij entail insincerity, Veritas, 
 ml 3 ! 
 
 " Madre mia, I called to inquire if you have survived the 
 anxiety of last night, and to know what jeime sauvage or fair 
 religieuse you may have had sent you for the galvanising of 
 Eelgravia?" said Carruthers, paying his accustomed visit in 
 his mother's boudoir, and throwing macaroons at Bijou's nose. 
 
 " My dear Philip, I hardly know ; she puzzles me. She's 
 what, if she were a man, I should classify as a detrimental." 
 
 " Is she awkward *?" 
 
 " !N"ot in the least. Perfect manners, wherever she learned 
 them." 
 
 " Brusque r 
 
 " Soft as a gazelle. Yery like her mother." 
 
 *^ Brown?" 
 
 " Pair as that statuette, with a beautiful bloom ; lovely 
 gold hair, too, and hazel eyes." 
 
 "What are the short-comings, then*?" 
 
 " There are none ; and it's that that puzzles me. She's 
 been six years in that convent, and yet, I do assure you, 
 her style is perfect. She's hardly eighteen, but she's the air 
 of the best society. She is — a — well, almost nobody, as 
 people rank now, you know, for poor dear Lilla's marriage 
 was not what she should have made, but the girl might be a 
 yoyal duke's daughter for manner." 
 
 9—2 
 
132 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 *' A premature artificial femme du monde ? Bab ! nothing 
 ]nore odious," said Carrutliers, poising a macaroon on Pan- 
 dore's nose. "Make ready! — present! — fire! Tliere's a 
 good dog !" 
 
 " 1^0, nothing of that sort : very natural, frank, vivacious. 
 Toothing artificial about her ; very charming indeed ! Eut 
 she might be a young Countess, the queen of a monde, rather 
 than a young girl just out of a French convent; and, you 
 know, my dear Philip, that sort of wit and nonchalance may 
 be admirable for Cecil Cheveley, assured of her position, but 
 they're dangerous to a girl like this Flora Montolieu : they 
 will make people remark her and ask who she is, and try to 
 pull her to pieces, if they don't find her somebody they dare 
 not hit. I would much rather she were of the general ordi- 
 nary pattern, pleasing, but nothing remarkable, well-bred, 
 but nothing to envy, thoroughly educated, but monosyllabic 
 in society ; such a girl as that passes among all the rest, suits 
 mediocre men (and the majority of men are mediocre, you 
 know, my dear Phihp), and pleases women because she is a 
 nice girl, and no rival ; but this little Montolieu " 
 
 And Lady Marabout sighed with a prescience of comin*; 
 troubles, while Carruthers laughed and rose. 
 
 " Will worry your life out ! I must go, for I have to sit 
 in court-martial at two (for a mere trifle), a deuced bore to 
 us, but le service oblige /), so I shall escape introduction to 
 your little Montolieu to-day. Why uill you fill your house 
 with girls, my dear mother 1 — it is fifty times more agreeable 
 when you are reigning alone. Henceforth, I can't come in to 
 lunch with you without going through the formula of a mild 
 flirtation — women think you so ill-natured if you don't flirt a 
 little with tbem, that amiable men like myself haven't 
 strength of mind to refuse. You should keep your house an 
 open sanctuary for me, when you know I've no other in 
 London except when I retreat into White's and the U.S. !" 
 
 "She puzzles me!" pondered Lady IMarabout, as Des- 
 preaux disrobed her that night. " I always am to be 
 puzzled, I think ! I never can have one of those quiet, 
 mediocre, well-mannered, remarkable-for-nothing girls, who 
 have no idiosyncrasies and give nobody any trouble ; one 
 marries them safely to some second-rate man ; nobody ad- 
 mires them; and nobody dislikes them ; they're to society 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 133 
 
 wliat neutral tint is among body-colours, or ratlier what 
 greys are among dresses, inoffensive, unimpeacliable, always 
 look ladylike, but never look brilliant ; colourless dresses are 
 very useful, and so are characterless girls ; and I dare say the 
 draper would tell us tbe greys in the long run are the easiest 
 to sell as the girls are to marry ; they please the common- 
 place taste of the generality, and do for every-day wear ! 
 Flora Montolieu puzzles me; she is very charming, very 
 striking, very lovable, but she puzzles me ! I have a pre- 
 sentiment that that child will give me a world of anxiety, an 
 infinitude of trouble !" 
 
 And Lady Marabout laid her head on tlie pillow, not the 
 happier that Flora Montolieu was lying asleep in the room 
 next her, dreaming of the wild-vine shadows and the night- 
 blooming flowers of her native tropics, under the rose-cur- 
 tains of her new home in Lowndes-square, already a burden 
 on the soul and a responsibility on the mind of that home's 
 most genial and generous mistress. 
 
 " If she were a man I should certainly call her a detri- 
 mental," said Lady Marabout, after a more deliberate study 
 of her charge. " You know, my dear Philip, the sort of man 
 one calls detrimental ; attractive enough to do a great deal of 
 damage, and ineligible enough to make the damage very un- 
 acceptable : handsome and winning, but a younger son, or a 
 something nobody wants ; a delightful flirtation, but a terrible 
 alliance ; you know what I mean ! Well, that is just what 
 this little Montolieu is in our sex; I am quite sure it is 
 what she will be considered ; and if it be bad for a man, it is , 
 very much worse for a woman ! Everybody will admire her, 
 and nobody will marry her ; I have a presentiment of it !" 
 
 With which prophetical melange of the glorious and the 
 inglorious for her charge's coming career. Lady Marabout 
 sighed, and gave a little shiver, such as 
 
 Sur des maux ignores nous fait gemir d'avance, 
 
 as Delphine Gay well phrased it. And she floated out of 
 her boudoir to the dining-room for luncheon, at which un- 
 formal and pleasant meal Carruthers chanced to stay, criticise 
 a new dry sherry, and take a look at this unsalable young 
 filly of the Marabout Yearling Sales. 
 
 " I don't know about her being detrimental, mother, nor 
 
134 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLE^, 
 
 about her being little ; she is more than middle height/* 
 laughed he; "but I vow she is the prettiest thing you've 
 had in your list for some time. You've had much greater 
 beauties, you say % Well, perhaps so ; but I bet you any 
 money she will make a sensation." 
 
 " I am sure she will," reiterated Lady Marabout despair- 
 ingly. " I have no doubt she will have a brilliant season ; 
 there is something very piquante, taking, and uncommon 
 about her ; but who will marry her at the end of it T 
 
 Carruthers shouted with laughter. 
 
 " Heaven forbid that I should attempt to prophesy ! I 
 would undertake as readily ta say who'll be the owner of the 
 winner of the Oaks ten years hence ! I can tell vou who 
 wo^n " 
 
 "Yourself; because you'll never marry anybody at all," 
 cried Lady Marabout. "Well! I must say I should not 
 wish you to renounce your misogamistic notions here. The 
 Montolieus are not at all what you should look for; and a 
 child like Flora would be excessively ill suited to you. If I 
 could see you married, as I should desire, to some vf onian of 
 weight and dignity, five or six-and-twenty, fit for you in 
 every way " 
 
 " D& grace, de grace ! My dear mother, the mere sketch 
 will kill me if you insist on finishing it ! Be reasonable ! 
 Can anything be more comfortable, more tranquil, than I am 
 now? I swing through life in a rocking-chair; if I'm a 
 trifle bored now and then, it's my heaviest trial. I float 
 ♦ as pleasantly on the waves of London life, in my way, as 
 the lotus-eaters of poetry on the Ganges in theirs ; and 
 ijovjd have the barbarity to introduce into my complacent 
 existence the sting of matrimony, the phosphorus of 
 Hymen's torch, the symbolical serpent of a wedding-ring 1 — 
 for shame !" 
 
 Lady Marabout laughed despite herself, and the solemnity, 
 in her eyes, of the subject. 
 
 "I should like to see you happily married, for all that, 
 though I quite despair of it now ; but perhaps you are right." 
 
 " Of course I am right ! Adam was tranquil and un- 
 worried till fate sent him a wife, and he was typical of the 
 destinies of his descendants. Those who are wise take 
 warning; those who are not, neglect it, and repent. Lady 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 13S 
 
 Hautton et C'® are very fond of twisting scriptural obscurities 
 into Hypes.' There! s a type plain as day, and salutary to 
 mankind, if detrimental to women !" 
 
 "• Philip, you are abominable I don't be so wicked !" cried 
 Lady Marabout, enjoying it all the more because she was a 
 little shocked at it, as your best women will on occasion; 
 human nature is human nature everywhere, and the female 
 heart gives pleasurable little pulses at the sight of forbidden 
 iruits now, as in the days of Eve. 
 
 " Who's that Miss Montolieu with your mother this year, 
 Phil^" dozens of men asked Carruthers that season, across 
 the mess-table, in the smoking-room of the Guards, in the 
 Eide or the Eing, in the doorways of ball-rooms, or anywhere 
 where such-like questions are asked and new pretty women 
 discussed, 
 
 " What is it in her that takes so astonishingly?" wondered 
 Lady Marabout, who is, like most women, orthodox on all 
 points, loving things by rule, worrying if they go out of the 
 customary routine, and was therefore quite incapable of re- 
 conciling herself to so revolutionary a fact as a young lady 
 being admired who was not a beauty, and sought while she 
 was detrimental in every way. It was " out of the general 
 rule," and your orthodox people hate anything " out of the 
 general run," as they hate their prosperous friends : the force 
 of hatred can no further go ! Flora Montolieu's crime in 
 Eelgravia was much akin to the Eonapartes' crimes to the 
 Eourbons. Thrones must be filled legitimately if not worthily, 
 in the eyes of the orthodox people, and this Petit Caporal of 
 Lady Marabout's had no business to reign where the heredi- 
 tary Princesses and all the other noble lines failed to sway 
 the sceptre. Lady Marabout, belonging to the noble lines 
 herself, agreed in her heart with them, and felt a little bit 
 guilty to have introduced this democratic and unwelcome 
 element into society. 
 
 Flora Montolieu "took," as people say of bubble com- 
 panies, meaning that they will pleasantly ruin a million or 
 two : or of new fashions, meaning that they will become 
 general with the many and, sequiiur, unwearable with the 
 few. She had the brilliance and grace of one of her own 
 tropical flowers, with something piquante and attractive about 
 her that one had to leave nameless, but that was all the more 
 
i36 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 charming for that very fact perhaps ; full of life and anima- 
 tion, but soft as a gazelle, as her chaperone averred ; not cha- 
 racterless, as Lady Marabout fondly desired (on the same 
 principle, I suppose, as a timid whip likes a horse as spirit- 
 less as a riding-school hack), but gifted with plenty of very 
 marked character, so much, indeed, that it rather puzzled her 
 cwmeriste, 
 
 " Girls shouldn't have marked character ; they should be 
 clay that one can mould, not a self-chiselled statuette, that 
 will only go into its own niche, and won't go into any other. 
 This little Montolieu would make just such a woman as 
 Vittoria Colonna or Madame de Sable, but one doesn't want 
 those qualities in a girl who is but a single little ear in the 
 wheat-sheaf of society, and whom one wants to marry off, 
 but can't expect to marry well. Her poor mother, of course, 
 will look to me to do something advantageous for her, and I 
 verily believe she is that sort of girl that will let me do no- 
 thing," thought Lady Marabout, already beginning to worry, 
 as she talked to Lady George Trangipane at a breakfast in 
 Palace Gardens, and watched Flora Montolieu, with Car- 
 ruthers on her left and Greenwood on her right, amusing 
 them both, to all semblance, and holding her own to the 
 Lady Hauttons' despite, who held their own so excessively 
 chilHly and loftily that no ordinary mortals cared to approach 
 them, but, beholding them, thought involuntarily of the 
 stately icebergs off the Spitzbergen coast, only that the ice- 
 bergs could melt or explode when their time came, and the 
 time was never known when the Hautton service could be 
 moved to anger or melt to any sunshine whatever. At least, 
 whether their maids or their mother ever beheld the first of 
 the phenomena, far be it from me to say, but the world never 
 saw either. 
 
 " Well, Miss Montolieu, how do you like our life here?" 
 Carruthers was asking. " Which is preferable — Eelgravia or 
 St. Denis?" 
 
 " Oh, Belgravia, decidedly," laughed Lady Marabout's 
 charge. " I think your life charming. All change, excite- 
 ment, gaiety, who would not like it?" 
 
 " Nobody — that is not fresh to it !" 
 
 " Fresh to it ? Ah ! are you one of the class who find no 
 "beauty in anything unless it is new ? If so, do not charge 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 13^ 
 
 the blame on to the thing, as your tone implies; take it 
 rather to yourself and your own fickleness." 
 
 " Perhaps I do," smiled Carrutkers. " But whether one- 
 self or * the thing' is to blame, the result's much the same — 
 satiety ! Wait tOl you have had two or three seasons, and 
 then tell me if you find this mill-wheel routine, these circus 
 gyrations, so delightful ! We are the performing stud, who 
 go round and round in the hippodrome, day after day for 
 show, till we are sick of the whole programme, knowing our 
 white stars are but a daub of paint, and our gay spangles only 
 tinfoil. You are a little pony just joined to the troupe, and 
 just pleased with the glitter of the arena. Wait till youVe 
 had a few years of it before you say whether going through 
 the same hoops and passing over the same sawdust is so very 
 amusing." 
 
 " If I do not, I shall desert the troupe, and form a circus 
 of my own, less mechanical and more enjoyable." 
 
 " /Z J out souffrir pour etre belle, il faut soiiffrir encore plus 
 pour eire a la model" said Goodwood, on her right, while 
 Lady Egidia Hautton thought, " How bold that little Mon- 
 tolieu is ! " and her sister. Lady Feodorowna, wondered what 
 her cousin Goodwood could see there. 
 
 "I do not see the necessity," interrupted Flora, "and I 
 certainly would never bow to the / il faut.' I would make 
 fashion follow me; I would not follow fashion." ("That 
 child talks as though she were the Duchess of Amandine," 
 thought Lady Marabout, catching fragmentary portions across 
 the table, the Marabout oral and oracular organs being always 
 conveniently multiplied when she was armed cap-a-pie as a 
 chaperone.) " Sir Philip, you talk as if you belonged to the 
 ' nothing-is-new, and nothing-is-true, and it-don't-signify' class. 
 I should have thought you were above the nil admirari affec- 
 tation." 
 
 " He admires, as we all do, when we find something that 
 compels our liom-age," said Goodwood, with an emphasis that 
 would have made the hearts of any of the Hereditary Princesses 
 palpitate with gratification, but at which the ungrateful Petit 
 Caporal only glanced at him a little surprisedly with her large 
 hazel eyes, as though she by no means saw the point of the 
 speech. 
 
 Carruthers laughed. 
 
Ij8 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 ^^Ml admirari? Oh no. I enjoy life, but then it is 
 thanks to the clubs, my yacht, my cigar-case, my stud, a 
 thousand things, — not thanks at all to Eelgravia." 
 
 " Complimentary to the Belgraviennes !" cried Flora, with 
 a shrug of her shoulders. " They have not known how to 
 amuse you, then?" 
 
 "Ladies never do amuse us," sighed Carruthers. "Tantjpis 
 four nous r 
 
 "Are you going to Lady Patchouli's this evening?" asked 
 Goodwood. 
 
 " I believe we are. I think Lady Marabout said so." 
 
 "Then I shall exert myself, and go too. It will be a 
 terrible bore — balls always are. But to waltz with you I will 
 try to encounter it ! " 
 
 Flora Montolieu arched her eyebrows, and gave him a little 
 disdainful glance. 
 
 " Lord Goodwood, do not be so sure that I shall waltz at 
 all Avith you. If you take vanity for wit, / cannot accept 
 discourtesy as compliment !" 
 
 " Well hit, little lady !" thought Carruthers, with a mental 
 bravissima. 
 
 " What a speech !" thought Lady Marabout, across the 
 table, as shocked as though a footman had dropped a cascade 
 of iced hock over her. 
 
 " You got it for once. Goodwood," laughed Carruthers, as 
 they drove away in his tilbury. " You never had such a 
 sharp brush as that." 
 
 " By Jove, no ! Positively it was quite a new sensation — 
 refreshing, indeed ! One grows so tired of the women who . 
 agree with one eternally. She's charming, on my word. Who 
 is she, Phil % In an heraldic sense, I mean." 
 
 " My dear child, what could possess you to answer Lord 
 Goodwood like that ?" cried Lady Marabout, as her barouche 
 rolled down Palace Gardens. 
 
 " Possess me % The Demon of Mischief, I suppose." 
 
 " But, my love, it was a wonderful compliment from him !" 
 
 " Was it ? I do not see any compliment in those vain im- 
 pertinent, Brummelian amour-propreisms. I must coin the 
 word, there is no good one to express it." 
 
 " But, my dear Flora, you knoAV he is the Marquis of 
 Goodwood, the Duke of Doncaster's son ! It is not as if he 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 139 
 
 Were a boy in the Lancers, or an unfledged '^eUi maitre from 
 the Foreign Office- " 
 
 "Were he her Majesty's son, he should not gratify his 
 vanity at my expense ! If he expected me to be flattered by 
 his condescension, he mistook me very much. He has been 
 allowed to adopt that tone, I suppose ; but from a man. to a 
 woman a chivalrous courtesy is due, though the man be an 
 emperor." 
 
 " Perhaps so — of course ; but that is their tone now-a- 
 days, my love, and you cannot alter it. I always say the 
 Eegency-men inaugurated it, and their sons and grandsons 
 out-Herod Herod. But to turn a tide, or to be a wit with im- 
 punity, a woman wants to occupy a prominent and unassailable 
 position. Were you the Duchess of Amandine you might say 
 that sort of thing, but a young girl just out must not — indeed she 
 must not ! The Hauttons heard you, and the Hauttons are very 
 merciless people; perfectly bred themselves, and pitiless on the 
 least infringment of the convenances. Besides, ten to one you 
 may have gained Goodwood's ill will; and he is a man whose 
 word has immense weight, I assure you." 
 
 "I do not see anything remarkable in him to give him 
 weight," said the literal and unimpressible little Montolieu. 
 "He is a commonplace person to my taste, neither so brilliant 
 nor so handsome by a great deal as many gentlemen I see — as 
 Philip, for instance. Lady Marabout !" 
 
 " As my son ! JSTo, my love, he is not; very few men have 
 Philip's talents and person," said Lady Marabout, consciously 
 molliiied and propitiated, but going on, nevertheless, with a 
 Spartan impartiality highly laudable. "Goodwood's rank^ 
 however, is much higher than Philip's (at least it stands so, 
 though really the Carruthers are by far the older, dating as far 
 back as Ethelbert 11. , while the Doncaster family are literally 
 unknown till the fourteenth century, when Gervaise d'Ascotte 
 received the acolade before Ascalon from Godfrey de Bouillon): 
 Goodwood has great weight, my dear, in the best circles. A 
 compliment from him is a great compliment to any woman, and 
 the sort of answer you gave him " 
 
 " Must have been a great treat to him, dear Lady Marabout, 
 if every one is in the habit of kow-towing before him. Princes, 
 you know, are never so happy as when they can have a little 
 bit of nature ; and my speech must have been as refreshing to 
 
140 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 Lord Goodwood as the breath of his Bearnese breezes and the 
 freedom of his Pyrenean forests were to Henri Quatre after 
 the court etiquette and the formal ceremonial of Paris." 
 
 "I don't know about its being a treat to him, my dear; it 
 was more likely to be a shower-bath. And your illustration 
 isn't to the point. The Bearnese breezes were Henri Quatre's 
 native air, and might be pleasant to him; but the figurative 
 ones are not Goodwood's, and I am sure cannot please him." 
 
 " But Lady Marabout, I do not want to please him !" per- 
 sisted the young lady, perversely. " I don't care in the least 
 what he thinks, or what he says of me !" 
 
 " Dear me, how oddly things go !" thought Lady Marabout. 
 " There was Valencia, one of the proudest girls in England, his 
 equal in every way, an acknowledged beauty, who would have 
 said the dust on the trottoir was diamonds, and worn turquoises 
 on azureline, or emeralds on rose, I verily believe, if such opti- 
 cisms and gaucheries had been Goodwood's taste; and here is 
 this child — for whom the utmost one can do will be to secure a 
 younger son out of the Civil Service, or a country member — 
 cannot be made to see that he is of an atom more importance 
 than Soames or Mason, and treats him with downright non- 
 chalant indifference. What odd anomalies one sees in every- 
 thing !" 
 
 "Who is that young lady with you this season?" Lady 
 Hautton asked, smiling that acidulated smile with which that 
 amiable saint always puts long questions to you of which she 
 knows the answer would be fdne forte et dure. " Not the 
 daughter of that horrid John Montolieu, who did all sorts of 
 dreadful things, and was put into a West India regiment ? In- 
 deed ! that man? Dear me ! Married the sister of your incum- 
 bent at Fernditton? Ah, really! — very singular! But how do 
 you come to have brought out the daughter V 
 
 At all of which remarks Lady Marabout winced, and felt 
 painfully guilty of a gross democratic dereliction from legitimate 
 and beaten paths, conscious of having sinned heavily in the 
 eyes of the world and Lady Hautton, by bringing within the 
 sacred precincts of Belgravia the daughter ofsimauvais sujet in a 
 West India corps, and a sister of a perpetual curate. The world 
 was a terrible dragon to Lady Marabout; to her imagination 
 it always appeared an incarnated and omniscient bugbear, Argus- 
 eyed, and with all its hundred eyes relentlessly fixed on her, spy- 
 
■ LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 141 
 
 ing out each item of lier short-comings, every little flaw in tlio 
 Marabout diamonds, any spur-made tear in her Honiton flounces, 
 any crease in her train at a Drawing-room, any l^se-majest6 
 against the royal rule of conventionalities, any glissade on the 
 polished oak floor of society, though like a good many other 
 people she often worried herself needlessly; the flaws, tears, 
 creases, high treasons, and false glissades being fifty to one too 
 infinitesimal or too unimportant to society for one of the hun- 
 dred eyes (vigilant and unwinking though I grant they are) 
 to take note of them. The world was a terrible bugbear to 
 Lady Marabout, and its special impersonation was Anne Haut- 
 ton. She disliked Anne Hautton; she didn't esteem her; she 
 knew her to be a narrow, censorious, prejudiced, and strongly 
 malicious lady ; but she was the personification of the World to 
 Lady Marabout, and had weight and terror in consequence. 
 Lady Marabout is not the first person who has burnt incense 
 and bowed in fear before a little miserable clay image she cor- 
 dially despised, for no better reason — for the self-same reason, 
 indeed. 
 
 " She evidently thinks I ought not to have brought Flora out; 
 and perhaps I shouldn't; though, poor little thing, it seems very 
 hard she may not enjoy society — fitted for society, too, as she 
 is — just because her father is in a West India regiment, and poor 
 Lilla was only a clergyman's daughter. Goodwood really seems 
 to admire her. I can never forgive him for his heartless flirta- 
 tion with Valencia; but if he icere, to be won by a Montolieu, 
 what would the Hauttons say'?" 
 
 And sitting against the wall, with others of her sisterhood, . 
 at a ball, a glorious and golden vision rose up before Lady 
 Marabout's eyes. 
 
 If the unknown, unwelcome, revolutionary little MontoHeu 
 should go in and win where the Lady Hauttons had tried and 
 failed through five seasons — if this little tropical flower should 
 be promoted to the Doncaster conservatory, where all the stately 
 stephanotises of the peerage had vainly aspired to bloom — if 
 this Petit Caporal should be crowned with the Doncaster diadem, 
 that all the legitimate rulers had uselessly schemed to place on 
 their brows! The soul' of Lady Marabout rose elastic at the 
 bare prospect — it would be as great a triumph for a chaperone 
 as for a general to conquer a valuable position with a handful 
 of boy recruits. 
 
142 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 
 
 If it should be ! Anne Hautton would have nothing to say 
 after that! 
 
 And Lady Marabout, thongli she was the most amiable lady 
 in Christendom, was not exempt from a feeling of longing for 
 a stone to roll to the door of her enemy's stronghold, or a 
 flourish of trumpets to silence the boastful and triumphant fan- 
 fare that was perpetually sounding at sight of her defeats, from 
 her opponent's ramparts. 
 
 "Wild, visionary, guiltily scheming, sinfully revolutionary 
 seemed such a project in her eyes. Still, how tempting ! It 
 would be a terrible blow to Valencia, who'd tried for Goodwood 
 fruitlessly, to be eclipsed by this unknown Flora; it would be a 
 terrible blow to their Graces of Doncaster, who held nobody 
 good enough, heraldically speaking, for their heir-apparent, to 
 see him give the best coronet in England to a bewitching little 
 interloper, sans money, birth, or rank. " They wouldn't like it, 
 of course; I shouldn't like it for Philip, for instance, though 
 she's a very sweet little thing; all the Ascottes would be very 
 vexed, and all the Yalle torts would never forgive it; but it would 
 be such a triumph over Anne Hautton !" pondered Lady Mara- 
 bout, and the last clause carried the day. Did you ever know 
 private pique fail to carry the day over public charity? 
 
 And Lady Marabout glanced with a glow of prospective 
 triumph, which, though erring to her Order was delicious to her 
 individuality, at Goodwood waltzing with the little MontoHeu a 
 suspicious number of times, while LadyEgidia Hautton was con- 
 demned to his young brother, Seton Ascotte, and Lady Eeodo- 
 rowna danced positively with nobody better than their own 
 county member, originally a scion of Goodwood's bankers! 
 Could the force of humiliation further go? Lady Hautton sat 
 smiling and chatting, but the tiara on her temples was a figurative 
 thorn crown, and Othello's occupation was gone. When a lady's 
 daughters are dancing with an unavailable cadet of twenty, and 
 a parvenu, only acceptable in the last extremities of despair, 
 what good is it for her to watch the smiles and construe the 
 attentions'? 
 
 "We shall see who triumphs now," thought Lady Marabout, 
 with a glow of pleasure, for which her heart reproached her a 
 moment afterwards. "It is very wrong," she thought; "if those 
 poor girls don't marry, one ought to pity them; and as for her — 
 going through five seasons, with a fresh burden of responsibility 
 
LADY MARABOUT S TROUBLES. 143 
 
 leaving the sclioolroom, and added on your hands each year, 
 must sour the sweetest temper; it would do mine, I am sure. 
 I dare say, if I had had daughters, I should have been ten 
 times more worried even than I am." 
 
 Which she would have been, undoubtedly, and the eligi- 
 bles on her visiting-list ten times more too ! Men wouldn't 
 have voted the Marabout dinners and soirees so pleasant as 
 they did, under the sway of that sunshiny hostess, if there 
 had been Lady Maudes and Lady Marys to exact attention, 
 and lay mines under the Auxerre carpets, and man-traps 
 among the epergne flowers of Lowndes-square. !Nor would 
 Lady Marabout have been the same ; the sunshine couldn't 
 have shone so brightly, nor the milk of roses flowed so mildly 
 under the weight and wear of marriageable but unmarried 
 daughters ; the sunshine would have been fitful, the milk of 
 roses curdled at best. And no wonder ! Those poor women ! 
 they have so much to go through in the world, and play but 
 such a monotonous role, taken at its most brilliant and best, 
 from first to last, from cradle to grave, from the berceaunettes 
 in which they commence their existence to the mausoleum in 
 which they finish it. If they do get a little bit soured when 
 they have finished their own game, and have to sit at the 
 card-tables, wide awake, however weary, vigilant however 
 drowsy, alert however bored to death, superintending the hands 
 of the fresh players, surreptitiously suggesting means for se- 
 curing the tricks, keeping a dragon's eye out for revokes, and 
 bearing all the brunt of the blame if the rubber be lost — • 
 if they do get a little bit soured, who can, after all greatly 
 wonder % 
 
 " That's a very brilhant little thing, that girl Montolieu," 
 said Goodwood, driving over to Hornsey Wood, the morning 
 after, with Carruthers and some other men, in his drag. 
 
 "A. deuced pretty waltzer !" said St. Lys, of the Bays; 
 " turn her round in a square foot." 
 
 "And looks very well in the saddle ; sits her horse better 
 than any woman in the Eide, except Eosalie Eosiere, and 
 as she came from the Cirque Olympique originally, one don't 
 count lierj' said Fulke JSTugent. " I do like a woman to ride 
 well, I must say. I promised your mother to take a look at 
 the Marabout Yearlings' Sale, Phil, if ever I wanted the never- 
 desirable and ever-burdensome article she has to offer, And if 
 
144 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 anything could tempt me to pay the price she asks, I think it 
 would be that charming Montolieu." 
 
 " She's the best thing Lady Tattersall ever had on hand," 
 said Goodwood, drawing his whip over his olf-wheeler's back. 
 "You know, Phil — gently, gently, Coronet! — what spoilt 
 your handsome cousin was, as I said, that it was all mechan- 
 ism ; perfect mechanism, I admit, but all artificial, pre-arranged, 
 put together, wound up to smile in this place, bow in that, 
 and frown in the other ; clockwork every inch of it ! Now — 
 so-ho. Zouave! confound you, wovit you be quiet 1 — little 
 Montoheu hasn't a bit of artifice about her : 'tisn't only that 
 you don't know what she's going to say, but that slie doesn't 
 either ; and whether it's a smile or a frown, a jest or a re- 
 proof, it's what the moment brings out, not what's planned 
 beforehand." 
 
 " The hard hit you had the other day seems to have piqued 
 your interest," said Carruthers, smoothing a loose leaf of his 
 Manilla.' 
 
 " ^N'aturally. The girl didn't care a button about my com- 
 pliment (I only said it to try her), and the plucky answer she 
 gave me amused me immensely. Anything unartificial and 
 frank is as refreshing as hock-and-seltzer after a field-day — 
 one likes it, don't you know T 
 
 " Wonderfully eloquent you are. Goody. If you come 
 out like that in St. Stephen's, we shan't know you, and the 
 ministerialists will look down in the mouth with a ven- 
 geance !" 
 
 " Don't be satirical, Phil ! If I admire Mademoiselle Flora, 
 what is it to you, pray *?" 
 
 "!N'o thing at all," said Carruthers, with unnecessary rapidity 
 of enunciation. 
 
 " My love, what are you going to wear to-night ? The 
 Bishop of Bonviveur is coming. He was a college friend of 
 your poor uncle's ; knew your dear mother before she married. 
 I want you to look your very best and charm him, as you 
 certainly do most people," said Lady Marabout. Adroit in- 
 triguer ! The bishop was going, sans doute ; the bishop loved 
 good wine, good dinners, and good society, and found all 
 three in Lowndes-square, but the bishop was entirely un- 
 available for purposes matrimonial, having had three wives, 
 and being held tight in hand by a fourth ; however, a bishop 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLE^. 145 
 
 is a convenient piece to cover your king, in cliess, and the 
 bishop served admirably just then in Lady Marabout's moves 
 as a locum tenens for Goodwood. Flora Montolieu, in her in- 
 nocence, made herself look her prettiest for her mother's old 
 friend, and Flora Montolieu was conveniently ready, looking 
 her prettiest, for her chaperone's Pet Eligible, when Good- 
 wood — who hated to dine anywhere in London except at the 
 clubs, the Castle, or the Guards' mess, and was as difficult to 
 get for your dinners as birds'-nests soup or Tokay pur — entered 
 the Marabout drawing-rooms. 
 
 "Anne Hautton will see he dined here to-night, in the 
 Morning Post to-morrow morning, and she will know Mora 
 must attract him very unusually. What will she, and Egidia, 
 Feodorowna say?" thought Lady Marabout, with a glow of 
 pleasure, which she was conscious was uncharitable and sinful, 
 and yet couldn't repress, let her try how she might. 
 
 Li scheming for the future Duke of Doncaster for John 
 Montolieu's daughter, she felt much as democratically and 
 treasonably guilty to her order as a Prince of the blood might 
 feel heading a Chartist emeute ; but then, suppose the Chartist 
 row was that Prince's sole chance of crushing an odious foie, 
 as it was the only chance for her to hamiliate the Hautton, 
 don't you think it might look tempting? Judge nobody, 
 my good sir, till you've been in similar circumstances your- 
 self — a golden rule, which might with advantage employ those 
 illuminating colours with which ladies employ so much of 
 their time just now. Eemembering it, they might hold their 
 white hands from flinging those sharp flinty stones, that surely 
 suit them so ill, and that soil their lingers in one way quite 
 as much as they soil the victim's bowed head in another. 
 Illuminate the motto, mesdames and demoiselles ! Perhaps 
 you luill do that — on a smalt ground, with a gold Persian 
 arabasque round, and impossible flowers twined in and out of 
 the letters ; but, remember it ! — pardon ! It were asking too 
 much. 
 
 " My dear Philip, did you notice how very marked Good- 
 wood's attentions were to Flora last night?" asked Lady Mara- 
 bout, the morning after, in one of her most sunshiny and 
 radiant moods, as Carruthers paid her his general matutinal 
 call in her boudoir. 
 
 " Marked r 
 
 10 
 
146 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLE!^, 
 
 "Yes, marked! Why do you repeat it in that tone] If 
 they wer& marked, there is nothing to be ridiculed that I see. 
 They were very marked indeed, especially for him ; he's such 
 an unimpressible, never-show-anything man. I wonder you 
 did not notice it !" 
 
 " My dear mother !" said Carruthers, a little impatiently, 
 brushing up the Angora cat's ruff the wrong way with his 
 cane, " do you suppose I pass my evenings noticing the atten- 
 tions other men may see fit to pay to young ladies T 
 
 " Well — don't be impatient. You never used to be," said 
 Lady Marabout. "'If you were in my place just for a night or 
 two, or any other chaperone's, you'd be more full of pity. 
 Eut people never vnll sympathise with anything that doesn't 
 touch themselves. The only chords that strike the key-note 
 in anybody is the chord that sounds * self ;' and that is the 
 reason why the world is as full of crash and tumult as Beetho- 
 ven's ' Storm.' " 
 
 " Quite right, my dear mother !" 
 
 " Of course it's quite right. I always think you have a 
 great deal of sympathy for a man, Philip, even for people you 
 don't harmonize with — (you could sympathise with that child 
 Mora, yesterday, in her rapturous dehght at seeing that Coc- 
 coloba Uvifera in the Patchouli conservatory, because it re- 
 minded her of her West Indian home, and yo-u care nothing 
 whatever about flowers, nor yet about the West Indies, I 
 should suppose) — but you never will sympathise ivith me. 
 You know how many disappointments and grievances and 
 vexations of every kind I have had the last ten, twenty, ay, 
 thirty, forty seasons — ever since I had to chaperone your Aunt 
 Eleanore, almost as soon as I was married, and was worried, 
 more than anybody ever njas worried, by her coquetrieB and her 
 inconsistencies and her vacillations — so badly as she married, 
 too, at the last ! Those flirting beauties so often do ; they 
 throw away a hundred admirable chances and put up with a 
 A^Tetched dernier ressort ; — ^let a thousand salmon break away 
 from the line out of their carelessness, and end by being glad 
 to land a little minnow. I don't know when I haven't been 
 worried by chaperoning. Flora Montolieu is a great anxiety, 
 a great difficulty, little detrimental that she is !" 
 
 " Detrimental ! 'What an odd word you choose for her." 
 
 " I don't choose it for her ; she is it," returned Lady 
 Marabout, deeidedly. 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 14J 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " How so ! Why, my dear Phillip, I told you the very 
 first day she came. How so ! when she is John Montolieu's 
 daughter, when she has no birth to speak of, and not a far- 
 thing to her fortune." 
 
 " If she were Jack Ketch's daughter you could not speak 
 much worse. Her high-breeding miglit do credit to a 
 Palace ; I only wish one found it in all Palaces ! and I never 
 knew you before measure people by their money." 
 
 '^My dear Philip, no more I do. I can't bear you when 
 you speak in that tone ; it's so hard and sarcastic and unlike 
 you. I don't know what you mean either. I should have 
 thought a man of the world like yourself knew well enough 
 what I intend when I say Flora is a detrimental. She has a 
 sweet temper, very clever, very lively, very charming, as 
 any one knows by the number of men that crowd about her, 
 but a detrimental she is -" 
 
 "Poor little heart !" muttered Carruthers in his beard, too 
 low for his mother to hear. 
 
 " — ^And yet I am quite positive that if she herself act 
 judiciously, and it is well managed for her. Goodwood may 
 be won before the season is over," concluded Lady Marabout. 
 
 Carruthers, not feeling much interest, it is presumed, in 
 the exclusively feminine pursuit of match-making, returned 
 no answer, but played with Bijou's silver bells, and twisted 
 his own tawny moustaches. 
 
 " I am quite positive it mmj he, if properly managed," 
 reiterated Lady Marabout. " You might second me a little, 
 Philip." 
 
 "/^ Good Heavens I my dear mother, what are you 
 thinking of? I would sooner turn torreador, and throw 
 lassos over bulls at Madrid, than help you to fling nuptial 
 cables over poor devils in Belgravia. Twenty to one ! I'm 
 going to the Yard to look at a bay filly of Cope Fielden's, 
 and then on to a mess-luncheon of the Bays." 
 
 " Must you go ?" said his mother, looking lovingly on him. 
 " You look tired, Philip. Don't you feel well?" 
 
 "Perfectly; but Cambridge had us out over those con- 
 founded WormwoocJ. Scrubs this morning, and three hours 
 in this June sun, in our harness, makes one swear. If it 
 •were a sharp brush, it would put life into one ; as it is, it 
 
148 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 only inspires one with an intense suffering from boredom, and 
 an intense desire for hock-and-seltzer." 
 
 "I am very glad you liaven't a sharp brush as you call 
 it, for all that," said Lady Marabout. " It might be very 
 pleasant to you, Philip, but it wouldn't be quite so much so 
 to me. I wish you would stay to luncheon." 
 
 " IN'ot to-day, thanks ; I have so many engagements." 
 
 " You have been very good in coming to see me this 
 season — even better than usual. It is very good of you, 
 ■with aU your amusements and distractions. You have given 
 me a great many days this month," said Lady Marabout 
 gratefully. " Anne Hautton sees nothing of Hautton, she 
 says, except at a distance in Pali-Mall or the Park, all the 
 season through. Pancy if I saw no more of you ! Do you 
 know, Philip, I am almost reconciled to your never marrying. 
 I have never seen anybody I should like at all for you, un- 
 less you had chosen Cecil Ormsby — Cecil Cheveley I mean ; 
 and I am sure I should be very jealous of your Avife if you 
 had one. I couldn't help it." 
 
 " Eest tranquil, my dear mother ; you will never be put to 
 the test !'* said Carruthers, with a laugh, as he bid her good 
 morning. 
 
 " Perhaps it h best he shouldn't marry : I begin to think 
 so," mused Lady Marabout, as the door closed on him. " I 
 used to wish it very much for some things. He is the last of 
 his name, and it seems a pity ; there ought to be an heir for 
 Peepdene; but still marriage is such a lottery (he is right 
 enough there, though I don't admit it to him : it's a tombola 
 where there is one prize to a million of blanks ; one can't help 
 seeing that, though, on principle, I never allow it to him or 
 any of his men), and if Philip had any woman Avho didn't 
 appreciate him, or didn't understand him, or didn't make him 
 happy, how wretched / should be ! I have often jDictured 
 Philip's wife to myself, I have often idealised a sort of woman 
 I should like to see him marry, but it's very improbable I 
 shall ever meet my ideal realised ; one never do€S ! And, 
 after all, whenever I have fancied, years ago, he miglit be 
 falling in love, I have always felt a horrible dread lest she 
 shoukln't be worthy of him — a jealous fear of her that I 
 could not conquer. It's much better as it is ; there is no 
 Tomaii good enough for him." 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 149 
 
 With whicli compliment to Carruthers at her sex's expense 
 Lady Marabout returned to weaving her pet projected toils 
 for the ensnaring of Goodwood, for whom also, if asked, I 
 dare say the Duchess of Doncaster would have averred on 
 }ier part, looking through tier maternal Claude glasses, no 
 woman is good enough either. When ladies have daughters 
 to marry, men always present to their imaginatiolis a battalion 
 of worthless, decalogue-smashing, utterly unreliable indivi- 
 duals, amongst whom there is not one fit to be trusted or fit 
 to be chosen ; but when their sons are the candidates for the 
 holy bond, they view all women through the same foggy and 
 non-embellishing medium, which, if it does not speak very 
 much for their unprejudiced discernment, at least speaks to the 
 oft-disputed fact of the equality of merit in the sexes, and 
 would make it appear that, in vulgar parlance, there must be 
 six of the one and half a dozen of the other. 
 
 " Plora, soft and careless, and rebellious as she looks, is 
 ambitious, and has set her heart on winning Goodwood, I do 
 believe, as much as ever poor Valencia did. True, she takes 
 a different plan of action, as Philip would call it, and treats 
 him with gay, nonchalante indifference, which certainly seems 
 to pique him more than ever my poor niece's beauty and 
 quiet deference to his opinions did ; but that is because she 
 reads him better, and knows more cleverly how to rouse him. 
 She has set her heart on winning Goodwood I am certain, 
 ambitious as it seems. How eagerly she looked out for the 
 Elues yesterday at that Hyde Park inspection — though I am 
 sure Goodwood does not look half so handsome as Philip 
 does in harness, as they call it ; Philip is so much the finer 
 man ! I will just sound her to-day — or to-night as we come 
 back from the Opera," thought Lady Marabout one morniug. 
 
 Things were moving to the very best of her expectations. 
 Learning experience from manifold failures. Lady Marabout 
 had laid her plans this time with a dexterity that defied dis- 
 comfiture : seconded by both the parties primarily necessary 
 to the accomplishment of her manoeuvres, with only a little 
 outer-world opposition to give it piquancy and excitement, 
 she felt that she might defy the fates to checkmate her here. 
 This should be her Marathon and Lemnos, which, simply 
 reverted to, should be sufficient to secure her immunity from 
 the attacks of any feminine Xantippuq w]io should try tP 
 
150 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 rake up her failures and tarnisli lier glory. To win Good- 
 wood with a nobody's daughter would be a feat as wonderful 
 in its way as for Miltiades to have passed " in a single day 
 and with a north wind," as Oracle exacted, to the conquest 
 of the Pelasgian Isles j and Lady Marabout longed to do it, 
 as you, my good sir, may have longed in your day to take a 
 king in check with your only available pawn, or win one of 
 the ribands of the turf with a little filly that seemed to gene- 
 ral judges scarcely calculated to be in the first flight at the 
 Chester Consolation Scramble. 
 
 Things were beautifully in train ; it even began to dawn 
 on the perceptions of the Hauttons, usually very slow to open 
 to anything revolutionary and unwelcome. Her Grace of 
 Doncaster, a large, lethargic, somnolent dowager, rarely awake 
 to anything but the interests and restoration of the old ultra- 
 Tory party in a Utopia, always dreamed of and never realised, 
 like many other Utopias political and poetical, public and 
 personal, had turned her eyes on Flora Montolieu, and asked 
 her son the question inevitable, " Who is she T to which 
 Goodwood had replied with a devil-may-care recklessness and 
 a headlong indefiniteness which grated on her Grace's ears, 
 and imparted her no information whatever : " One of Lady 
 Tattersall's yearlings, and the most charming creature / ever 
 met. You know that % Why did you ask me, then ? You 
 know all I do, and all I care to do ! " — a remark that made 
 the Duchess msh her very dear and personal friend, Lady 
 Marabout, were comfortably and snugly interred in the 
 mausoleum at Eernditton, rather than alive in the flesh in 
 Belgravia, chaperoning young ladies whom nobody knew, 
 and who were not to be found in any of Sir B. Burke's triad 
 of volumes. 
 
 Belgravia, and her sister Mayfair, wondered at it, and talked 
 over it, raked the parental Montolieu lineage mercilessly, and 
 found out, from the Bishop of Bonviveur and Sauceblanche, 
 that the uncle on the distaff side had been only a Tug at 
 Eton, and had lived and died at Eernditton a perpetual 
 curate and nothing else — not even a dean, not even a rector ! 
 Goodwood coiildnt be serious, settled the coteries. But the 
 more hints, innuendoes, questions, and adroitly concealed but 
 simply suggested animadversion Lady Marabout received, the 
 greater was her glory, the warmer her complacency, when she 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 151 
 
 saw her Little Montolieu, who was not little at all, leading, as 
 she undoubtedly did lead, tlie most desired eligible of the 
 day captive in her chains, sent bouquets by him, begged for 
 waltzes by him, followed by him at the Eide, riveting his 
 lorgnon at the Opera, monopolising his attention — though, 
 clever little intriguer, she knew too well how to pique him 
 ever to let him monopolise hers. 
 
 " She certainly makes play, as Philip would call it, admir- 
 ably with Goodwood," said Lady Marabout, admiringly at a 
 morning party, stirring a cup of Orange Pekoe, yet with a 
 certain irrepressible feeling that she should almost prefer so 
 very young a girl not to be quite so adroit a schemer at seven- 
 teen. " That indifference and nonchalance is the very thing 
 to pique and retain such a courted fastidious creature as 
 Goodwood; and she knows it, too. I^ow a clumsy casual 
 observer might even fancy that she liked some others — even 
 you, Philip, for instance — much better; she talks to you 
 much more, appeals to you twice as often, positively teases 
 you to stop and lunch or come to dinner here, and really told 
 }/ou the other night at the Opera she missed you when you 
 didn't come in the morning ; but to anybody who knows any- 
 thing of the world, it is easy enough to see which way her 
 inclinations (yes, I do hope it is inclination as well as ambi- 
 tion — I am not one of those who advocate pure manages de 
 convenance ; I don't think them right, indeed, though they are 
 undoubtedly very' expedient sometimes) turn. I do not think 
 anybody ever could prove me to have erred in my quick- 
 sightedness in those affairs. I may have been occasionally 
 mistaken in other things, or been the victim of adverse and 
 unforeseen circumstances which were beyond my control, 
 and betrayed me ; but I know no one can read a girl's heart 
 more quickly and surely than I, or a man's either for that 
 matter." 
 
 " Oh, we all know you are a clairvoyante in heart episodes, 
 my dear mother ; they are the one business of your life !" 
 smiled Carruthers, setting down his ice, and lounging across 
 the lawn to a group of cedars, where Flora ]\Iontolieu stood 
 playing at croquet, and who, like a scheming adventuress a,s 
 she was, immediately verified Lady Marabout's words, and 
 piqued Goodwood a entrance by avowing herself tired of the 
 game, and entering with animated verve into the prophecies 
 
152 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 for Ascot with Carrutliers, whose bay filly Sunbeam, sister 
 to Wild-Falcon, was entered to run for the Queen's Cup. 
 
 " "What an odd smile that was of Philip's," thought Lady 
 Marabout, left to herself and her Orange Pekoe. " He has 
 been very intimate with Goodwood ever since they joined the 
 Elues, cornets together, three-and-twenty years ago; surely he 
 can't have heard him drop anything that would make him 
 fancy he was not serious r 
 
 ) An idle fear, which Lady Marabout dismissed contemptu- 
 ously from her mind when she saw how entirely Goodwood 
 — in defiance of the Hautton's sneer, the drowsy Duchess's 
 unconcealed frown, all the comments sure to be excited in 
 feminine minds, and all the chaff likely to be elicited from 
 masculine lips at the mess-table, and in the U.S., and in the 
 Guards' box before the curtain went up for the ballet — 
 vowed himself to the service of the little detrimental through- 
 out that morning party, and spoke a temporary adieu, whose 
 tenderness, if she did not exactly catch, Lady Marabout could 
 at least construe, as he pulled up the tiger-skin over Flora's 
 dainty dress, before the Marabout carjiage rolled down the 
 Pulham-road to town. At which tenderness of farewell Car- 
 rutliers — steeled to all such weaknesses himself — ^gave a dis- 
 dainful glance and a contemptuous twist of his moustaches, as 
 ho stood by the door talking to his mother. 
 
 " You too, Phil T said Goodwood, with a laugh, as the 
 carriage rolled away. 
 
 Carruthers stared at him haughtily, as he will stare at his 
 best friends if they touch his private concerns more nearly 
 than he likes ; a stare which said disdainfully, " I don't un- 
 derstand you," and thereby told the only lie to which Carru- 
 thers ever stooped in the whole course of his existence. 
 
 Goodwood laughed again. 
 
 " If you poach on my manor lure^ I shall kill you, Phil ; so 
 gave, a vous r 
 
 " You are in an enigmatical mood to-day ! I can't say I 
 see much wit in your riddles," said Carruthers, with his 
 grandest and most contemptuous air, as he lit his Havannah. 
 
 " Confound that fellow ! Pd rather have had any other 
 man in London for a rival ! Twenty and more years ago how 
 he cut me out with that handsome Yirginie Peauderose, that 
 W§ w^re both such mad boys after in Paris, However, it 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 153 
 
 will be odd if / can't win tlie day here. A Goodwood re- 
 jected — pooh ! There isn't a woman in England that would 
 do it I" thought Goodwood, as he drove down the Eulham- 
 road. 
 
 " ' His manor !' Who's told him it's his ? And if it he, 
 what is that to me T thought Carruthers, as he got into his 
 tilbury. " Philip, yovJre not a fool like the rest of them, 1 
 hope 1 You've not forsworn yourself surely ? Pshaw ! — non- 
 sense ! — impossible !" 
 
 " Certainly she lias something very charming about her. 
 If I were a man I don't think I could resist her," thought 
 Lady Marabout, as she sat in her box in the grand tier, tenth 
 from the Queen's, moving her fan slowly, lifting her lorgnon 
 now and then, listening vaguely to the music of the second 
 act of the " Barbiere," for probably about the two hundredth 
 time in her life, and looking at Flora Montolieu, sitting op- 
 posite to her. 
 
 " The women are eternally asking me who she is. I don't 
 care a hang who, but she's the prettiest thing in London," said 
 Pulke l^ugent, which was the warmest praise that any living 
 man about town remembered to have heard fall from his lips, 
 which limited themselves religiously to one legitimate lauda- 
 tion, which is a superlative now-a-days, though Mr. Lindley 
 Murray, if alive, wouldn't, perhaps, receive or recognise it as 
 such : " Not bad-looking." 
 
 " It isn't who a woman is, it's what she is, that's the ques- 
 tion, I take it," said Goodwood, as he left the Guards' box to 
 visit the Marabout. 
 
 " By George !" laughed JSTugent to Carruthers, " Goody 
 must be serious, eh, Phil 1 He don't care a button for little 
 Bibi ; he don't care even for Zerlina. When the ballet be- 
 gins I verily believe he is thinking less of the women before 
 him than of the woman who has left the house ; and if a fel- 
 low can give more ominous signs of being ^ serious,' as the 
 women phrase it, I don't know 'em, do you T 
 
 " I don't know much about that sort of thing at all!" mut- 
 tered Carruthers, as he went out to follow Goodwood to the 
 Marabout box. 
 
 That is an old, old story, that of the fair Emily stirring - 
 feud between Palamon and Arcite. It has been acted out 
 iftany a time since Beaun^ont and Fletche^ liyed and wrqt© 
 
i54 :.ADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 their twin-tliouglits and won their twiu-laurels ; but the bars 
 that shut the kinsmen in their prison-walls, the ivy-leaves 
 that filled in the rents of their prison-stones, were not more 
 entirely and blissfully innocent of the feud going on within, 
 and the battle foaming near them, than the ealm, complacent 
 soul of Lady Marabout was of the rivalry going on close be- 
 side her for the sake of little Montolieu. 
 
 She certainly thought Philip made himself specially brilli- 
 ant and agreeable that night ; but then that was nothing new, 
 he was famous for talking well, and lil?:ed his mother enough 
 not seldom to shower out for her some of his very best things ; 
 certainly she thought Goodwood did not shine by the con- 
 trast, and looked, to use an undignified word, rather cross 
 than otherwise ; but then nobody did, shine beside Philip, and 
 she knew a reason that made Goodwood pardonably cross at 
 the undesired presence of his oldest and dearest chum. Even 
 8lu almost wished Philip away. If the presence of her idol- 
 ised son could have been unwelcome to her at any time, it 
 was so that night. 
 
 " It isn't like Philip to monopolise her so, he who has so 
 much tact usually, and cares nothing for girls himself," thought 
 Lady Marabout ; "he must do it for mischief, and yet that 
 isn't like him at all ; it's very tiresome, at any rate." 
 
 And with that skilful diplomacy in such matters, on which, 
 if it was sometimes overthrown. Lady Marabout not unjustly 
 plumed herself, she dexterously entangled Carruthers in con- 
 versation, and during the crash of one of the choruses, whis- 
 pered, as he bent forward to pick up her fan, which she had 
 let drop, " Leave Plora a little to Goodwood ; he has a right 
 — ^he spoke decisively to her to-day." 
 
 Carruthers bowed his head, and stooped lower for the fan. 
 
 He left her accordingly to Goodwood till the curtain fell 
 after the last act of the " Earbiere ;" and Lady Marabout con- 
 gratulated herself on her own adroitness. " There is nothing 
 like a little tact," she thought ; " what would society be with- 
 out the guiding genius of tact, I wonder? One dreadful 
 Donnybrook Pair !" 
 
 But, someway or other, despite all her tact, or because her 
 son inlierited that valuable quality in a triple measure to her- 
 self, someway, it was Goodwood who led her to her carriage, 
 and Carruthers who led the little Montolieu. 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 155 
 
 " Terribly lUe of Philip ; how very unlike him !" mused 
 Lady Maraboul}, as she gathered her burnous round her. 
 
 Carruthers talked and laughed as he led Flora Montolieu 
 through the passages, more gaily, perhaps, than usual. 
 
 " My mother has told me some news to-night. Miss Mon- 
 tolieu," he said carelessly. " Am I premature in proffering 
 you my congratulations % But even if I be so, you will not 
 refuse the privilege to an old friend — to a very sincere friend 
 — and will allow me to be the first to wish you happiness T 
 
 Lady Marabout's carriage stopped the way. Mora Monto- 
 lieu coloured, looked full at him, and went to it, without 
 having time to answer his congratulations, in which the keen- 
 est-sighted hearer would have failed to detect anything beyond 
 every-day friendship and genuine indifference. The most 
 truthful men will make the most consummate actors when 
 spurred up to it. 
 
 " My dear child, you look ill to-night ; I am glad you have 
 no engagements," said Lady Marabout, as she sat down before 
 the dressing-room fire, toasting her little satin-shod foot — she 
 has a weakness for fire even in the hottest weather — while 
 Flora Montolieu lay back in a low chair, crushing the roses 
 mercilessly. " You do feel well % I should not have thought 
 so, your face looks so flushed, and your eyes so preternaturally 
 dark. Perhaps it is the late hours ; you were not used to 
 them in Prance, of course, and it must be such a change to 
 this life from your unvarying conventual routine at St. Denis. 
 My love, what was it Lord Goodwood said to you to-day T 
 
 " Do not speak to me of him, Lady Marabout, I hate his 
 name !" 
 
 Lady Marabout started with an astonishment that nearly 
 upset the cup of coffee she was sipping. 
 
 " Hate his name? My dearest Flora, why, in Heaven's name'?" 
 
 Flora did not answer ; she pulled the roses off her hair as 
 though they had been infected with Brinvilliers' poison. 
 
 *• What has he done T 
 
 " He, has done nothing !" 
 
 " Who has done anything, then T 
 
 " Oh, no one — no one has done anytliing, but — I am sick 
 of Lord Goodwood's name — tired of it !" 
 
 Lady Marabout sat almost speechless with surprise. 
 
 '' Tired of it, my dear Flora !" 
 
IS6 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 
 
 Little Montolieu laiiglied : 
 
 "AVell, tired of it, perhaps from hearing him praised so 
 often, as the Athenian trader grew sick of Aristides, and the 
 Jacobin of Washington's name. Is it unpardonably hetero- 
 dox to say so T 
 
 Lady Marabout stirred her coffee in perplexity : 
 
 " jMy dear child, pray don't speak in that way ; that's like 
 Philip's tone Avhen he is enigmatical and sarcastic, and worries 
 me. I really cannot in the least understand you about Lord 
 Goodwood, it is quite incomprehensible to me. I thought I 
 overlieard him to-day at Lady George's concert speak very 
 definitely to you indeed, and when he was interrupted by the 
 Duchess before you could give him his reply, I thought I 
 heard him say he should call to-morrow morning to know 
 your ultimate decision. Was I right T 
 
 " Quite right." 
 
 " He really proposed marriage to you to-day T 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And yet you say you are sick of his name T 
 
 "Does it follow, imperatively, Lady Marabout, that be-^ 
 cause the Sultan throws his handkerchief it must be picked 
 up with humility and thanksgiving T asked Flora Montolieu, 
 furling and unfurling her fan with an impatient rapidity that 
 threatened entire destruction of its ivory and feathers, with 
 their Watteau-like group elaborately painted on them — as 
 prefly a toy of the kind as could be got for money, which 
 had been given lier by Carruthers one day in payment of 
 some little bagatelle of a bet. 
 
 " Sultan ! — Humility !" repeated Lady Marabout, scarcely 
 crediting her senses. " My dear Flora, do you know what 
 you are saying % You must be jesting ! There is not a 
 woman in England who would be insensible to the honour of 
 Goodwood's i^roposals. You are jesting, Flora !" 
 
 " I am not, indeed !" 
 
 " You mean to say, you could positively think of rejecting 
 him*?" cried Lady Marabout, rising from her chair in the 
 intensity of her amazement, convinced that she was the vic- 
 tim of some horrible hallucination. 
 
 " Why should it surprise you if I did T 
 
 " Why f repeated Lady Marabout, indignantly. " Do you 
 ftsls: me v)hy ? You must be a child indeed, gr a consummato 
 
LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. IJ) 
 
 actress, to put such a question; excuse me, my dear, if I 
 speak a little strongly : you perfectly bewilder me, and I con- 
 fess I cannot see your motives or your meaning in the least. 
 You have made a conquest such as the proudest women in 
 the peerage have vainly tried to make j you have one of the 
 highest titles in the country offered to you ; you have won a 
 man whom everybody declared would never be won; you 
 have done this, pardon me, without either birth or fortune 
 on your own side, and then you speak of rejecting Goodwood 
 — Goodwood, of all the men in England ! You cannot be 
 serious, Flora, or, if you are you must be mad !" 
 
 Lady Marabout spoke more hotly than Lady Marabout had 
 ever spoken in all her life. Goodwood absolutely won — 
 Goodwood absolutely " come to the point " — the crowning 
 humiliation of the Hauttons positively within her grasp — 
 her Marathon and Lemnos actually gained ! and all to be lost 
 and flung away by the unaccountable caprice of a wayward 
 child ! It was sufficient to exasperate a saint, and a saint 
 Lady Marabout never pretended to be. 
 
 Flora Montolieu toyed recklessly with her fan. 
 
 " You told Sir Philip this evening, I think of *^ 
 
 " I hinted it to him, my dear, yes. Philip has known all 
 along how much I desired it, and as Goodwood is one of his 
 oldest and most favourite friends, I knew it would give him 
 sincere pleasure both for my sake and Goodwood's, and yours 
 too, for I think Philip likes you as much as he ever does any 
 young girl — better, indeed; and I could not imagine — I 
 could not dream for an instant — that there was any doubt of 
 your acceptation, as, indeed, there cannot be. You have been 
 jesting to worry me. Flora !" 
 
 Little Montolieu rose, threw her fan aside, as if its ivory 
 stems had been hot iron, and leaned against the mantel-piece. 
 
 " You advise me to accept Lord Goodwood, then, Lady 
 Marabout r' 
 
 " My love, if you need my advice, certainly ! — sucli an 
 alliance will never be proffered to you again ; the brilliant 
 position it will place you in I surely have no need to point 
 out !" returned Lady Marabout. " The little hypocrite !" she 
 mused, angrily, " as if her own mind were not fully made up 
 — as if any girl in Europe would hesitate over accepting the 
 Poncaster coronet — as if a nameless Montolieu could doubt 
 
158 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES. 
 
 for a moment her own delight at "being created MarcMoness 
 of Goodwood ! Such a triumph as thai — why I wouldn't 
 credit any woman who pretended she wasn't dazzled by it !" 
 
 ^'I thought you did not approve of marriages of convenience 1" 
 
 Lady Marabout played a tattoo — slightly perplexed tattoo — 
 with her spoon in her Sevres saucer. 
 
 " 1^0 more I do, my dear — ^that is, under some circumstances; 
 it is impossible to lay down a fixed rule for everything ! Mar- 
 riages of convenience — well, perhaps not; but as I understand 
 these words, they mean a mere business affair, arranged as they 
 are in Prance, without the slightest regard to the inclinations 
 of either; merely regarding whether the incidents of fortune, 
 birth, and station are equal and suitable. Marriages d& co7ive- 
 nance are when a parvenu barters his gold for good blood, or 
 where an ancienne princesse mends her fortune with a nouveau 
 riche, profound indifference, meanwhile, on each side. I dx) not 
 call this so; decidedly not! Goodwood must be very deej)ly 
 attached to you to have forgotten his detestation of marriage, 
 and laid such a title as his at your feet. Have you any idea 
 of the weight of the Dukes of Doncaster in the country? Have 
 you any notion of what their rent-roll is? Have you any 
 conception of their enormous influence, their very high place, 
 the magnificence of their seats? Helmsley almost equals Wind- 
 sor ! All these are yours if you will ; and you affect to hesitate — " 
 
 " To let Lord Goodwood buy me." 
 
 "Buy you? Your phraseology is as strange as my son's!" 
 
 " To accept him only for his coronet and the rent-roll, his posi- 
 tion and his Helmsley, seems not a very grateful and flattering 
 return for his preference?" 
 
 " I do not see that at all," said Lady Marabout, irritably. Is 
 there anything more annoying than to have unwelcome truths 
 thrust in our teeth? " It is not as though he were obvious to 
 you — a hideous man, a coarse man, a cruel man, whose very 
 presence repelled you. Goodwood is a man quite attractive 
 enough to merit some regard, independent of his position, you 
 have an affectionate nature, you would soon grow attached to 
 him " 
 
 Flora Montolieu shook her head. 
 
 " And, in fact," she went on, warming with her subject, and 
 speaking all the more determinedly because she was speaking 
 a little against her conscience, and wholly for her inclinations, 
 
Lady MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 15^ 
 
 "my dear Flora, if you need persuasion — whicli you must pardon 
 me if I doubt your doing in your heart, for I cannot credit any 
 woman as "being insensible to the suit of a future Duke of Don- 
 caster, or invulnerable to the honour it does her — if you need 
 persuasion, I should think I need only refer to the happiness 
 it will afford your poor dear mother, amidst her many trials, to 
 hear of so brilliant a triumph for you. You are proud^ — Good- 
 wood will place you in a position where pride may be indulged 
 with impunity, nay, with advantage. You are ambitious — what 
 can flatter your ambition more than such an offer? You are 
 clever — as Goodwood's wife you may lead society like Madame 
 de Eambouillet, or immerse yourself in political intrigue like 
 the Duchess of Devonshire. It is an offer which places within 
 your reach everything most dazzling and attractive, and it is one, 
 my dear Flora, which you must forgive me if I say a young girl 
 of obscure rank, as rank goes, and no fortune whatever, should 
 pause before she lightly rejects. You cannot afford to be fasti- 
 dious as if you were an heiress or a lady-in-your-own-right." 
 
 That was as ill-natured a thing as the best-natured lady in 
 Christendom ever said on the spur of self-interest, and it stung 
 Flora Montolieu more than her hostess dreamed. 
 
 The colour flushed into her face and her eyes flashed : 
 
 " You have said sufficient, Lady Marabout. I accept the 
 Marquis to-morrow." 
 
 And taking up her fan and her opera-cloak, leaving the dis- 
 carded roses unheeded on the floor, she bade her chaperone good 
 night, and floated out of the dressing-room, while Lady Mara- 
 bout sat stirring the cream in a second cup of coffee, a good 
 deal puzzled, a little awed by the t)dd turn affairs had taken, 
 with a shght feeling of guilt for her own share in the transac- 
 tion, an uncomfortable dread lest the day should ever come when 
 Flora should reproach her for having persuaded her into the 
 marriage, a comfortable conviction that nothing but good could 
 come of such a brilliant and enviable alliance, and, above all 
 other conflicting feelings, one delicious, dominant, glorified 
 security of triumph over the Hauttons, mere etfilles. 
 
 But when morning dawned, Lady Marabout's horizon seemed 
 cleared of all clouds, and only radiant with unshadowed sun- 
 shine. Goodwood was coming, and coming to be accepted. 
 
 She seemed already to read the newspaper paragraphs an- 
 nouncing his capture and Flora's conquest, already to hear the 
 
l63 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 
 
 Hauttons* enforced congratulations, already to see tlie nuptial 
 party gathered round the altar-rail of St. George's. Lady Mara- 
 bout had never felt in a sunnier, more light-hearted mood, never 
 more completely at peace with herself and all the world as she 
 sat in her boudoir at her writing-table, penning a letter which 
 began : 
 
 *' My deaeest Lilla, — ^What happiness it gives me to con- 
 gratulate you on the brilliant future opening to your sweet 
 Flora " 
 
 And which would have continued, no doubt, with similar 
 eloquence if it had not been interrupted by Soames opening the 
 door and announcing " Sir Philip Carruthers," who walked in, 
 touched his mother's brow with his moustaches, and went to 
 stand on the hearth with his arm on the mantelpiece. 
 
 "My dear Philip, you never congratulated me last night; pray 
 do so now !" cried Lady Marabout, delightedly, wiping her pen 
 on the pennon, which a small ormolu knight obligingly carried 
 for that useful purpose. Ladies always wipe their pens as 
 religiously as they bolt their bedroom doors, believe in cosmetics, 
 and go to church on a Sunday. 
 
 " Was your news of last night true, then?" asked Carruthers, 
 bending forward to roll Bijou on its back with his foot. 
 
 "That Goodwood had spoken definitively to her? Perfectly. 
 He proposed to her yesterday at the Frangipane concert — not at 
 the concert of course, but afterwards, when they were alone for 
 a moment in the conservatories. The Duchess interrupted them 
 — did it on purpose — and he had only time to whisper hurriedly 
 he should come this morning to hear his fate. I dare say he 
 felt tolerably secure of it. Last night I naturally spoke to Flora 
 about it. Oddly enough, she seemed positively to think at 
 first of rejecting him — rejecting him! — only fancy the mad- 
 ness ! Between ourselves, I don't think she cares anything 
 about him, but with such an alliance as that, of course I felt 
 it my bounden duty to counsel her as strongly as I could 
 to accept the unequalled position it proffered her. Indeed, it 
 could have been only a girl's waywardness, a child's caprice to 
 pretend to hesitate, for she is very ambitious and very clever, 
 and I would never believe that any woman — and she less than any 
 — ^would be proof against such dazzling prospects. It would be 
 absurd, you know, Philip. Whether it was hypocrisy or a real 
 
LADV MARABOUT'S TROUBIES. i6i 
 
 reluctance, because she doesn't feel for him the idealic love she 
 dreams of, I ddn't know, but I put it before her in a way that 
 plainly showed her all the brilliance of the proffered portion, 
 and before she bade me good night I had vanquished all her 
 
 scruples, if she had any, and I am able to say " 
 
 " Good God, what have you done'?" 
 
 " Done?" re-echoed Lady Marabout, vaguely terrified. " Cer- 
 tainly I persuaded her to accept him. She has accepted him 
 probably; he is here now ! I should have been a strange person 
 indeed to let any young girl in my charge rashly refuse such 
 an offer." 
 
 " You induced her to accept him ! God forgive you !" 
 Lady Marabout turned pale as death, and gazed at him with 
 undefinable terror: 
 
 ** Philip ! You do not mean " 
 
 " Great Heavens 1 have you never seen, mother- 
 
 He leaned his arms on the marble, with his forehead bowed 
 upon them, and Lady Marabout gazed at him still, as a bird 
 at a basilisk. 
 
 " Philip, Philip ! what have I done? How could I tell?" she 
 murmured, distractedly, tears welling into her eyes. *^ If I had 
 only known ! But how could I dream that child had any 
 fascination for you? How could I fancy " 
 
 ^' Hush! IN'o, you are in no way to blame. You could not 
 know it. / barely knew it till last night," he answered, gently. 
 
 " Philip loves her, and / have made her marry Goodwood !" 
 thought Lady Marabout, agonised, remorseful, conscience- 
 struck, heart-broken in a thousand ways at once. The cli- 
 max of her woes was reached, life had no greater bitterness 
 for her left; her son loved, and loved the last woman in 
 England she would have had him love; that woman was 
 given to another, and she had been the instrument of wreck- 
 ing the life to save or serve which she would have laid dov/n 
 her own in glad and instant sacrifice ! ,Lady Marabout 
 bowed her head under a grief, before which the worries sj 
 great before, the schemes but so lately so precious, the small 
 triumphs just now so all-absorbing, shrank away into their 
 due insignificance. Philip suffering, and suffering through 
 her ! Self glided far away from Lady Marabout's memory 
 then, and she hated herself, more fiercely than the gentle- 
 hearted soul had ever hated any foe, for her own criminal 
 
 11 
 
l62 LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES, 
 
 share in bringing tliis Tinforeseen terrific blow on lier beloved 
 one's head. 
 
 " Philip, my dearest, what can I do T she cried, distract- 
 edly ! " if I had thought — ^if I had guessed " 
 
 " Do nothing. A woman who could give herself to a man 
 whom she did not love should be no wife of mine, let me suf- 
 fer what I might." 
 
 " But / persuaded her, Philip ! Mine is the blame !" 
 
 His lips quivered painfully : 
 
 " Had she cared for me as — I may have fancied, she had 
 not been so easy to persuade. She has not much force of 
 character, where she wills. He is here now you say ; I can- 
 not risk meeting him just yet. Leave me for a little while ; 
 leave me — I am best alone." 
 
 Gentle though he always was to her, his mother knew him 
 too well ever to dispute his will, and the most bitter tears 
 Lady Marabout had ever known, ready as she was to weep 
 for other people's woes, and rarely as she had had to weep for 
 any of her own, choked her utterance and blinded her eyes 
 as she obeyed and closed the door on his solitude. Philip — 
 her idolised Philip — that ever her house should have sheltered 
 this creature to bring a curse upon him I that ever she should 
 have brought this tropical flower to poison the air for the only 
 one dear to her. 
 
 " I am justly punished," thought Lady Marabout, humbly 
 and penitentially — " justly. I thought wickedly of Anne 
 Hautton. I did not do as I would be done by. I longed to 
 enjoy their mortification. I advised Flora against my own 
 conscience and against hers. I am justly chastised ! But 
 that lie shoidd suffer through me, that my fault has fallen on 
 his head, that my Philip, my nolDle Philip, should love and 
 
 not be loved, and that / have brought it on him Good 
 
 Heaven ! what is that T 
 
 " That " was a man whom her eyes being misty with tears. 
 Lady Marabout had brushed against, as she ascended the 
 staircase, ere she perceived him, and who, passing on with a 
 muttered apology, was down in the hall and out of the door 
 Mason held ojDen before she had recovered the shock of the 
 rencontre, much before she had a possibility of recognising him 
 through the mist aforesaid. 
 
 A fear, a hope, a joy, a dread, one so woven with another 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 163 
 
 there was no disentangling them, sprang up like a ray of light 
 in Lady Marabont's heart — a possibility dawned in her ; to be 
 rejected is an impossibility'? Lady Marabout crossed the 
 ante-room, her heart throbbing tumultuously, spurred on to 
 noble atonement and reckless self-sacrifice, if fate allowed 
 them. 
 
 She opened the drawing-room door ; Flora Montolieu was 
 alone. 
 
 " Mora, you have seen Goodwood T 
 
 She turned, her own face as pale and her own eyes as dim 
 as Lady Marabout's. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You have refused him.** 
 
 Flora Montolieu misconstrued her chaperone's eagerness, " 
 and answered haughtily enough : 
 
 " I have told him that indifference would be too poor a re- 
 turn for his affections to insult him with it, and that I would 
 not do him the injury of repaying his trust by falsehood and 
 deception. I meant what I said to you last night ; I said it 
 on the spur of pain, indignation, no matter what; but I could 
 not keep my word when the trial came." 
 
 Lady Marabout bent down and kissed her, with a fervent 
 gratitude that not a little bewildered the recipient. 
 
 " My dear child ! thank God ! little as I thought to say so. 
 Flora, tell me, you love some one else T 
 
 " Lady Marabout, you have no right " 
 
 " Yes, I have a right — the strongest right ! Is not that 
 other my son V 
 
 Flora Montolieu looked up, then dropped her head and 
 burst into tears — tears that Lady Marabout soothed then, 
 tears that Carruthers soothed, yet more effectually still, ^nq 
 minutes afterwards. 
 
 " That I should have sued that little Montolieu, and sued to 
 her for Philip !" mused Lady Marabout. " It is very odd. 
 Perhaps I 'get used to being crossed and disappointed and 
 trampled on in every way and by everybody ; but certainly, 
 though it is most contrary to my wishes, though a child like 
 that is the last person I should ever have chosen or dreamt of 
 as Philip's wife, though it is a great pain to me, and Anne 
 Hautton of course will be delighted to rake up everything she 
 
 11—2 
 
164 LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES. 
 
 can aLout the Montolieus ; and it is heart-breaking when on^ 
 thinks how a Carruthers might marry, how the Carruthers 
 always liave> married, rarely any but ladies-in-their-own-right 
 for countless generations, still it is very odd, but I certainly 
 feel happier than ever I did in my life, annoyed as I am and 
 grieved as I am. It is heart-breaking — (that horrid John Mon- 
 tolieu ! I wonder what relation one stands in legally to the 
 father of one's son's wife ; I will ask Sir Eitzroy Kelly ; not 
 that the Montolieus are likely to come to England) — it is very 
 sad when one thinks who Philip might have married ; and 
 yet she certainly is infinitely charming, and she really appre- 
 ciates and understands bim. If it were not for what Anne 
 Hautton will always say, I could really be pleased ! To 
 think what an anxious hope, what a dreadful ideal, Philip's 
 wife has always been to me ; and now, just as I had got re- 
 conciled to his determined bachelor preferences, and had 
 grown to agree with him that it was best he shouldn't marry, 
 he goes and falls in love with this child ! Everything is at 
 cross-purposes in life, I think ! There is only one thing I am 
 resolved upon — I will never chaperone anybody again." 
 
 And she kept her vow. ]S'"one can christen her Lady Tat- 
 tersall any longer with point, for there are no yearling sales 
 in that house in Lowndes-square, whatever there be in the 
 other domiciles of that fashionable quarter. Lady Marabout 
 has shaken that burden off her shoulders, and moves in bliss- 
 ful solitude and tripled serenity through Belgravia, relieved 
 of responsibility, and w^earing her years as lightly, losing the 
 odd trick at her whist as sunnily, and beaming on the world 
 in general as radiantly as any dowager in the English Peer- 
 age. 
 
 That she was fully reconciled to Carruthers' change of re- 
 solve was shown in the fact that when Anne Hautton turned 
 to her, on the evening of his marriage-day, after the dinner to 
 which Lady Marabout had bidden all her friends, and a good 
 many of her foes, with an amiable murmur : 
 
 " I am so grieved for you, dearest Helena — I know w^hat 
 your disappointment must be ! — what should / feel if Hautton 
 
 Your helle-fille is charming, certainly, very lovely ; but 
 
 then — such a connexion ! You have my deepest sympathies ! 
 I always told you how wrong you were when you fancied 
 Goodwood admired little Montolieu — I beg her pardon, I 
 
LADY MARABOUTS TROUBLES, 165 
 
 mean Lady Carruthers — but you will give your imagination 
 such reins !" 
 
 Lady Marabout smiled, calmly and amusedly, felt no pang, 
 aud — thought of Philip. 
 
 I take it things must be very rose-coloured with us when 
 we can smile sincerely on our enemies, and defeat their stings 
 gimply because we feel them not. 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 PENDANT TO A PASTEL BY LA TOUPv. 
 
 I HAVE, among others hanging on my wall, a pastel of La 
 Tour's; of the artist-lover of Julie Fel, of the monarch of 
 pastellistes, the touch of whose crayons was a " brevet of wit 
 and of beauty," and on whose easel bloomed afresh the laugh- 
 ing eyes, the brilliant tints, the rose-hued lips of all the love- 
 liest women of the "Eegne Galant," from the princesses of 
 the Blood of the House of Bourbon to the princesses of the 
 green-room of the Comedie-Fran9aise. Painted in the days 
 of Louis Quinze, the light of more than a century having 
 fallen on its soft colours to fade and blot them with the icy 
 brush of time, my pastel is still fresh, still eloquent. The 
 genius that created it is gone — ^gone the beauty that inspired 
 it — but the picture is deathless ! It shows me the face of a 
 woman, of a beautiful woman, else, be sure she would not 
 have been honoured by the crayons of La Tour; her full 
 southern lips are parted with a smile of triumph; a chef- 
 d'oeuvre of coquetry, a head-dress of lace and pearls and little 
 bouquets of roses is on her unjDowdered hair, which is ar- 
 ranged much like Julie Pel's herself in the portrait that 
 hangs, if I remember right, at the Musee de Saint Quentin ; 
 and her large eyes are glancing at you with languor, mahce, 
 victory, all commingled. At the back of the picture is writ- 
 ten " MUe. Thargelie Dumarsais f the letters are faded and 
 yellow, but the pastel is living and laughing yet, through the 
 divine touch of the genius of La Tour. With its perfume of 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. i67 
 
 dead glories, with its odour of the Beau Siecle, the pastel 
 hangs on my wall, living reHc of a huried age, and sometimes 
 in my mournful moments the full laughing lips of my pastel 
 will part, and breathe, and speak to me of the distant past, 
 when Thargelie Dumarsais saw all Paris at her feet, and was 
 not humbled then as now by being only valued and remem- 
 bered for the sake of the talent of La Tour. My beautiful 
 pastel gives me many confidences. I will betray one to you-— 
 a single leaf from a life of the eighteenth century. 
 
 THE FIRST MORNING. 
 
 In the heart of Lorraine, nestled down among its woods, 
 stood an old chateau that might have been the chateau of the 
 Sleeping Beauty of fairy fame, so sequestered it stood amidst 
 its trees chained together by fragrant fetters of honeysuckle 
 and wild vine, so undisturbed slept the morning shadows on 
 the wild thyme that covered the turf, so unbroken was the 
 silence in which the leaves barely stirred, and the birds folded 
 their wings and hushed their song till the heat of the noon- 
 day should be passed. Beyond the purple hills stretching up 
 in the soft haze of distance in the same province of laughing, 
 luxurious, sunht Lorraine, was Luneville, the Luneville of 
 Stanislaus, of Montesquieu, of Voltaire, of Henault, of Bouf- 
 flers, a Versailles in miniature, even possessing a perfect re- 
 plica of Pompadour in its own pretty pagan of a Marquise. 
 Within a few leagues was Lu.neville, but the echo of its mots 
 and madrigals did not reach over the hills, did not profane 
 the sunny air, did not mingle with the vintage-song of the 
 vine-dressers, the silver babble of the woodland brook, the 
 hushed chant of the Ave Maria, the vesper bells chimed from 
 the churches and monasteries, which made the sole music 
 known or heard in this little valley of Lorraine. 
 
 The chateau of Grand Charmille stood nestled in its woods, 
 grey, lonely, still, silent as death, yet not gloomy, for white 
 pigeons circled above its pointed towers, brilliant dragon-flies 
 fluttered above the broken basin of the fountain that sang as 
 gaily as it rippled among the thyme as though it fell into a 
 marble cup, and bees hummed their busy happy buzz among 
 the jessamine that clung to its ivy-covered walls — ^walls built 
 
i68 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE, 
 
 long before Lorraine had ceased to "be a kingdom and a po"^er, 
 long before a craven and effeminated Yalois had dared to kick 
 the dead body of a slaughtered Guise. ISTot gloomy with the 
 golden light of a summer noon playing amidst the tangled 
 boughs and on the silvered lichens; not gloomy, for under 
 the elm-boughs on the broken stone steps that led to the foun- 
 tain, her feet half buried in violet-roots and wild thyme, lean- 
 ing her head on her hand as she looked into the water, where 
 the birds flew down to drink, and fluttered their wings fear- 
 less of her pressnce, was a young girl of sixteen — and if women 
 sometimes darken lives, it must be allowed that they always 
 illumine landscapes ! 
 
 Aline, when Boufflers saw her in the spring morning, in all 
 the grace of youth and beauty, unconscious of themselves, 
 made not a prettier picture than this young dreamer under the 
 elm-boughs of the Lorraine woods, as she bent over the water, 
 watching it bubble and splash from the fountain-spout, and 
 hide itself with a rippling murmur under the broad green 
 reeds and the leaves of the water-lily. She was a charming 
 picture : a brunette with long ebon tresses, with her lashes 
 drooping over her black, languid, almond-shaped eyes, a smile 
 on her half-pouted lips, and all the innocence and dawning 
 beauty of her sixteen years about her, while she sat on the 
 broken steps, now brushing the water-drops off the violets, now 
 weaving the reeds into a pretty, useless toy, now beckoning 
 the birds that came to peck on the rose-sprays beside her. 
 
 " Favette ! where are your dreams V 
 
 Favette, the young naiad of the Lorraine elm-woods, looked 
 up, the plait of rushes dropping from her hands, and a warm 
 sudden blush tinging her cheeks and brow with a tint like 
 that on the damask rose leaves that had fallen into the water, 
 and floated there like delicate shells. 
 
 " Mon Dieu, Monsieur Leon, how you frightened me !" 
 
 And like a startled fawn, or a young bird glancing round 
 at a rustle amidst the leaves, Favette sprang up, half shy, half 
 smiling, all her treasures gathered from the woods — of flowers, 
 of mosses, of berries, of feathery grasses, long ivy-sprays — 
 falling from her lap on to the turf in unheeded disorder. 
 
 " / frightened you, Favette i Surely not. Are you sorry 
 to see me, then T 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE^ 169 
 
 " Sony % Oil no, Monsieur Leon !" and Favette glanced 
 througli lier thick curled lashes, slyly yet archly, and began 
 to braid again her plait of rushes. 
 
 " Come, tell me, then, what and whom you were dreaming 
 of, ma mie, as you looked down into the water % Tell me, 
 Favette. You have no secrets from your playmate, your 
 friend, your brother?" 
 
 Favette shook her head, smiling, and plaited her rushes a 
 tort et a travers, the blush on her cheeks as bright as that on 
 the cups of the rose-leaves that the wind shook down in a 
 fresh shower into tbe brook. 
 
 " Come, tell me, mignonne. Was it — of me ?" 
 
 " Of you ? Well, perhaps — yes !" 
 
 It was first love that whispered in Favette's pretty voice 
 those three little words ; it was first love that answered in his, 
 as he threw himself down on the violet-tufted turf at her feet, 
 as Boufilers at Aline's. 
 
 " Ah, Favette, so should it be ! for every hope, every dream, 
 every thought oimine, is centred in and coloured by you." 
 
 " Yet you can leave me to-day," pouted Favette, witii a sigh 
 and a moue mutine, and gathering tears in her large gazelle eyes. 
 
 " Leave you ? Would to Heaven I were not forced ! But 
 against a king's will what power has a subject? !N'one are 
 too great, none are too lowly, to be touched by that iron hand 
 if they provoke i.ts grasp. Vincennes yawns for those who 
 dare to think, For-l'Eveque for those who dare to jest. Mon- 
 sieur de Voltaire was sent to the Bastille for merely defending 
 the truth and his own honour against De Eohan-Chabot. 
 Who am I, that I should look for better grace ?" 
 
 Favette struck him with her plaited rushes, a reproachful 
 little blow. 
 
 "Monsieur Vincennes — Monsieur Voltaire — who are they? 
 I know nothing of those stupid people !" 
 
 He smiled, and fondly stroked her hair. 
 
 " Little darling ! The one is a prison that manacles the 
 deadly crimes of Free Speech and Free Thought ; the other 
 a man who has suffered for both, but loves both still, and 
 will, sooner or later, help to give both to the world " 
 
 "Ah, you think of your studies, of your ambitions, of 
 your great heroes ! You think nothing of me, save to call 
 me a little darling. You are cruel^ Monsieur Leon !" 
 
I70 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE, 
 
 And Favette twisted lier hand from his grasp with petu- 
 lant sorrow, and dashed away her tears — the tears of sixteen 
 — as bright and free from bitterness as the water drops on the 
 violet bells. 
 
 " I cruel — and to you ! My heart must indeed be badly 
 echoed by my lips, if you have cause to fancy so a single 
 moment. Cruel to you % Favette, Favette ! is a man ever 
 cruel to the dearest thing in his life, the dearest name in his 
 thoughts % If I smiled I meant no sneer ; I love you as you 
 are, mignonne ; the picture is so fair, one touch added, or one 
 touch effaced, w^ould mar the whole in my eyes. I love you 
 as you are ! with no kuowledge but what the good sisters 
 teach you in their convent solitude, and what the songs of 
 the birds, the voices of the flowers, whisper to you of their 
 woodland lore. I love you as you are ! Every morning 
 when I am far away from you, and from Lorraine, I shall 
 think of you gathering the summer roses, calling the birds 
 about you, bending over the fountain to see it mirror your 
 own beauty ; every evening I shall think of you leaning from 
 the window, chanting softly to yourself the Ora pro nobis, 
 while the shadows deepen, and the stars we have so often 
 watched together come out above the pine-hills. Favette, 
 Favette ! exile will have the bitterness of death to me : to 
 give me strength to bear it, tell me that you love me more 
 dearly than as the brother you have always called me ; that 
 you will so love me when T shall be no longer here beside you, 
 but shaU have to trust to memory and fidelity to guard for 
 me in absence the priceless treasure of your heart T 
 
 Favette's head drooped, and her hands played nervously 
 with the now torn and twisted braid of rushes : he saw her 
 heart beat under its muslin corsage, like a bee caught and 
 caged in the white leaves of a lily ; and she glanced at him 
 under her lashes with a touch of naive coquetry. 
 
 " If I tell you so, what gage have I, Monsieur Leon, that 
 a few months gone by, you will even remember it % In those 
 magnificent cities you will soon forget Lorraine; with the 
 grandes dames of the courts you will soon cease to care for 
 Favette r' 
 
 " Look in my eyes, Favette, they alone can answer you as 
 I would answer ! Till we meet again none shaU supplant 
 you for an hour, none rob you of one thought ; you have my 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 171 
 
 first love, you will liave my last. Favette, you believe 
 me r 
 
 ^' Yes — I believe !" murmured Favette, resting her large 
 eyes fondly on liim. " We will meet as we part, though you 
 are the swallow, free to take flight over the seas to foreign 
 lands, and I am the violet, that must stay where it is rooted 
 in the Lorraine woods !" 
 
 *^ Accept the augury," he whispered, resting his lips upon 
 her low smooth brow. " Does not the swallow ever return 
 to the violet, holding it fairer than all the gaudy tropical 
 flowers that may have tempted him to rest on the wing and 
 delay his homeward flight % Does not the violet ever welcome 
 him the same, in its timid winning spring-tide loveliness, when 
 he returns to, as when he quitted, the only home he loves 1 
 Believe the augury, Eavette ; we shall meet as we part !" 
 
 And they believed the augury, as they believed in life, in 
 love, in faith ; they who were beginning all, and had proved 
 none of the treacherous triad ! 
 
 What had he dreamed of in his solitary ancestral woods 
 fairer than this Lorraine violet, that had grown up with him, 
 side by side, since he, a boy of twelve, gathered heaths from 
 the clefts of the rocks that the little child of six years old cried 
 for and could not reach 1 What had she seen that she loved 
 half so well as M. le Chevalier from the Castle, whom her 
 uncle, the Cure, held as his dearest and most brilliant pupil, 
 whose eyes always looked so lovingly into hers, and whose 
 voice was always lavishing fond names on his petite Favette? 
 
 They believed the augury, and were happy even in the 
 sweet sorrow of parting — sorrow that they had never known 
 before — as they sat together in the morning sunlight, while 
 the v»^ater bubbled among the violet tufts, among the grasses 
 and wild thyme, and the dragon-flies fluttered their gre«n and 
 gold and purple wings amidst the tendrils of the vines, and 
 the rose-leaves, drifted gently by the wind, floated down the 
 brook, till they were lost in deepening shadow under the 
 drooping boughs. 
 
 IL 
 
 THE SECOND MORNING. 
 
 " Savez-vous que Favart va ecrire une nouvelle com6die— 
 La Chercheuse d'Esprit?" 
 
172 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 
 
 " Yraiment 1 II doit bien ecrire cela, car il s'occupe tou- 
 joiirs a la clurcJier, et n'arrive jamais a le trouver !" 
 
 The mot had true feminine malice, but the lips that spoke 
 it were so handsome, that had even poor Favart himself, the> 
 poet-pastrycook who composed operas and comedies while he 
 made meringues and fanfreluches, and dreamed of libretti 
 while he whisked the cream for a supper, been within 
 hearing, they would have taken the smart from the sting; 
 and, as it was, the hit only caused echoes of softly-tuned 
 laughter, for the slightest words of those lips it was the 
 fashion through Paris just then to bow to, applaud, and re- 
 echo. 
 
 Before her Psyche, shrouded in cobweb lace, powdered by 
 Martini, gleaming with pearls and emeralds, scented with 
 most delicate amber, making her morning toilette, and re- 
 ceiving her morning levee according to the fashion of the day, 
 sat the brilhant satirist of poor Favart. The iiielle was 
 crowded ; three marshals, De Eichelieu, Lowendal, and Mau- 
 rice de Saxe ; a j)i'ince, De Soubise ; a poet, Claude Dorat ; 
 an abb6, Voisenon ; a centenarian. Saint- Aulaire ; peers un- 
 counted, De Bievre, De Caylus, De Yillars, D'Etissac, Duras, 
 D'Argenson — a crowd of others — surrounded and superin- 
 tended her toilette, in a glittering troop of courtiers and gen- 
 tlemen. Dames d'atours (for she had her maids of honour as 
 well as Marie Leczinska) handed her flacons of perfume, or 
 her numberless notes on gold salvers, chased by Eeveil ; the 
 ermine beneath her feet, humbly sent by the Eussian ambas- 
 sador — far superior to what the Czarina sent to Madame de 
 Mailly — ^had cost two thousand louis ; her bedroom outshone 
 in luxury any at Versailles, Choisy, or La Muette, with its 
 Venetian glass, its medallions of Pragonard, its plaques of 
 Sevres, its landscapes of Watteau, framed in the carved and 
 gilded wainscotting ; its Chinese lamps, swinging by garlands 
 of roses ; its laughing Cupids, buried under flowers, pain.ted 
 in fresco above the alcove ; its hangings of velvet, of silk, of 
 lace; its cabinets, its screens, its bonbonnieres, its jeweh 
 boxes, were costly as those of the Marquises de Pompadour 
 or De Prie. 
 
 Who was she? — a Princess of the Blood, a Duchess of 
 Prance, a mistress of the King ? 
 
 Lords of the chamber obeyed her wishes, ministers signed 
 
-A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZ^, 173 
 
 lettres de cachet, at her instance : " ces messieurs" la Queue 
 de la Eegence, had their rendezvous at her suppers ; she had 
 a country villa that eclipsed Trianon ; she had fetes that out- 
 shone the fetes at Versailles ; she had a " droit de chasse " in 
 one of the royal districts ; she had the first place on the easels 
 of Coypel, Lancret, Pater, Yanloo, La Tour; the first place 
 in the butterfly odes of Crebillon le Gai, Claude Dorat, 
 Voisenon. 
 
 Who was she 1 — the Queen of France ? l^o ; much more — 
 the Queen of Paris ! 
 
 She was Thargelie Dumarsais ; matchless as Claire Clairon, 
 beautiful as Madeleine Gaussin, resistless as Sophie Arnould, 
 great as Adrienne Lecouvreur. She was a Power in France 
 — for was she not the Empress of the ComMie 1 If Madame 
 Lenormand d'Etioles ruled the government at "Versailles, 
 Mademoiselle Thargelie Dumarsais ruled the world at Paris ; 
 and if the King's favourite could sign her enemies, by a smile, 
 to the Eastile, the Court's favourite could sign hers, by a 
 frown, to For-l'Eveque. 
 
 The foyer was nightly filled while she played in Zaire, or 
 Polyeucte, or Les Foiles Amour euses, with a court of princes 
 and poets, marshals and marquises, beaux esprit and abbes 
 galants ; and mighty nobles strewed with bouquets the path 
 from her carriage to the coulisses : bouquets that she trod on 
 with nonchalant dignity, as though flowers only bloomed to 
 have the honour of dying under her foot. Louis Quinze 
 smilingly humoured her caprices, content to wait until it was 
 her pleasure to play at his private theatre ; dukes, marquises, 
 viscounts, chevahers, vied who should ruin himself most 
 magnificently and most utterly for her ; and lovers the most 
 brilliant and the most flattering, from Eichelieu, Eio de 
 Euelles, to Dorat, poet of boudoir-graces and court-Sapphos, 
 left the titled beauties of Versailles for the self-crowned Em- 
 press of the Frangais. She had all Paris for her clientela, 
 from Versailles to the Caveau ; for even the women she de- 
 posed, the actors she braved, the journalists she consigned to 
 For-rEveque, dared not raise their voice against the idol of 
 the hour. A Queen of France ? Bah ! Pray what could 
 Maria Leczinska, the pale, dull pietiest, singing canticles in 
 her private chapel, compare for power, for sway, for courtiers, 
 
tU ^ STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. . 
 
 for brilliant sovereignty, for unrivalled triumpli, with Thar* 
 gelie Dumarsais, the Queen of the Theatre % 
 
 Eavishingly beautiful looked the matchless actress as she 
 sat before her Psyche, flashing oeillades, on the brilliant group 
 who made every added aigrette, every additional bouquet of the 
 coiffure, every little mouche, every touch to the already per- 
 fect toillette, occasion for flattering simile and soft-breathed 
 compHment ; ravishingly beautiful, as she laughed at Maurice 
 de Saxe, or made a disdainful moue at an impromptu couplet 
 of Dorat's, or gave a blow of her fan to Eichelieu, or asked 
 Saint- Aulaire what he thought of Vanloo's portrait of her as 
 Bodugune ; ravishingly beautiful, with her charms that dis- 
 dained alike rouge and marechale powder, and were matchless 
 by force of their own colouring, form, and voluptuous lan- 
 guor, when, her toilette finished, followed by her glittering 
 crowd, she let Eichelieu lead her to his carriage. 
 
 There was a review of Guards on the plain at Sablons that 
 morning, a fete afterwards, at which she would be surrounded 
 by the most brilliant staff of an Army of Noblesse, and 
 Eichelieu was at that moment the most favoured of her troop 
 of lovers. M. le Due, as every one knows, never sued at 
 court or coulisse in vain, and the love of Thargelie Dumarsais, 
 though perhaps with a stronger touch of romance in it than 
 was often found in the atmosphere of the foyer, was, like the 
 love of her time and her class, as inconstant and vivacious, 
 now setthng here, now lighting there, as any butterfly that 
 fluttered among the limes at Trianon. Did not the jest-lov- 
 ing parterre ever salute with gay laughter two lines in a baga- 
 telle comedy of the hour — 
 
 Oui TAmour papillonne, sans entraves, k son gre ; 
 Charge longtemps de fers, de soie ni§me, il mourrait ! — 
 
 when spoken by Thargelie Dumarsais — laughter that hailed 
 her as head priestess of her pleasant creed, in a city and a 
 century where the creed was universal ? 
 
 " Ah ! bonjour ! You have not seen her before, have you, 
 semi-Englishman ? You have found nothing like her in the 
 foggy isles, I wager you fifty louis V cried one of Thargelie 
 Dumarsais's court, the Marquis de la Thorilliere, meeting a 
 friend of his who had arrived in Paris only the day before, 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. \% 
 
 M. le Chevalier de Tallemont des E^aux, as Eiclielieu's cortege 
 rolled away, and the Marquis crossed to his own carriage. 
 
 " Her % Whom % I have not been in Paris for six years, 
 you know. "What can I tell of its idoLs, as I remember of old 
 that they change every hour T 
 
 " True ! but, bon Dieu ! not to know La Dumarsais ! 
 What it must be to have been buried in those benighted 
 Britannic. Isles ! Did you not see her in Eichelieu's carriage?" 
 
 " JS^o. I saw a carriage driving oif with such an escort and 
 such fracas, that I thought it could belong to nobody less than 
 to Madame Lenormand d'Etioles ; but I did not observe it 
 any further. Who is this beauty I ought to have seen ?" 
 
 '^ Thargelie Dumarsais, for whom we are all ruining our- 
 selves with the prettiest grace in the world, and for whom you 
 will do the same when you have been once to the Fran^ais ; 
 that is, if you have the good fortune to attract her eyes and 
 please her fancy, which you may do, for the fogs have agreed 
 with you, Leon ! — I should not wonder if you become the 
 fashion, and set the women raving of you as * leur zer zeva- 
 lier!'" 
 
 " Thanks for the prophecy, but I shall not stay long enough 
 to fulfil it, and steal your myrtle crowns. I leave again to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " Leave, ? Sapristi ? See what it is to have become half 
 English, and imbibed a taste for spleen and solitude ! Have 
 you written another satire, or have you learned such barbar- 
 ism as to dislike Paris ?" 
 
 " I^either ; but I leave for Lorraine to-morrow. It is fiNQ 
 years since I saw my old pine-woods." 
 
 " Dame ! it is ten years since / saw the wilds of Bretagne, 
 and I will take good care it shall be a hundred before I see 
 them again. Hors de Paris, c'est kors du monde. Come with 
 me to La Dumarsais's petit souper to-night, and you will soon 
 change your mind." 
 
 " My good Armand, you have not been an exile, as I have ; 
 you little know how I long for the very scent of the leaves, the 
 very smell of the earth at Grand Charmille ! But bah ! I 
 talk in Hebrew to you. You have been lounging away your 
 days in titled beauties' petifs salons, making butterfly verses, 
 learning their broidery, their lisp, and their perfumes, talking 
 to their parrots, and using their cosmetiques, till you care for 
 
f^^ A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 
 
 no air but what is musk-scented ! But what of tliis Buniar- 
 sais of yours — -does she equal Lecouvreur?" 
 
 " Eclipses her I — with Paris as with Maurice de Saxe. 
 Thargelie Dumarsais is superb, mon cher — unequalled, unri- 
 valled ! We have had nothing like her for beauty, for grace, 
 for talent, nor pardieu ! for extravagance ! She ruined me 
 last year in a couple of months. Eichelieu is in favour just 
 now — with what woman is he not ? Thargelie is very fond 
 of the Marshals of France ! Saxe is fettered to her hand and 
 foot, and the Duchesse de Bouillon hates her as rancorously 
 as she does Adrienne. Come and see her play Phhdre to- 
 night, and you will renounce Lorraine. I will take you to 
 supper with her afterwards ; she will permit any friend of 
 mine entry, and then, generous man that I am, I shall have 
 put you en chemin to sun yourself in her smiles and ingratiate 
 yourself in her favour. Don't give me too much credit for 
 the virtue though, for I confess I should like to see Eiche- 
 lieu supplanted." 
 
 " Does his reign threaten to last long, then?" 
 
 The Marquis shrugged his shoulders, and gave his badine 
 an expressive whisk. 
 
 " Dieu sait ! we are not prophets in Paris. It would be as 
 easy to say where that weathercock may have veered to-mor- 
 row, as to predict where La Dumarsais's love may have lighted 
 ere a month ! 'ViHiere are you going, may I ask?" 
 
 " To see Lucille de Yaudreuil, I knew her at Luneville ; 
 she and Madame de Boufflers were warm friends till Stanis- 
 laus, I believe, found Lucille's eyes lovelier than Madame la 
 Marquise deemed fit, and then they quarrelled, as women ever 
 do, with virulence in exact proportion to the ardour of their 
 friendship." 
 
 " As the women quarrel at Choisy for notre maitre ! They 
 will be friends again when both have lost the game, like 
 Louis de Mailly and the Duchesse de Chateauroux. The poor 
 Duchess ! Pitz- James and Maurepas, Chatillon and Bouillon, 
 Ecchefoucauld and the Pere Perussot, all together, were too 
 strong for her. All the gossip of that Metz affair reached 
 you across the water, I suppose ! Those pests of Jesuits ! if they 
 want him to be their Very Christian King, and to cure him 
 of his worship of Cupidon, they will have to pull down all the 
 stones of La Muette and the Pare aux Cerfs ! What good is 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 177 
 
 it to kill one poor woman when women are as plentiful as 
 roses at Versailles 1 And now let me drive you to Madame de 
 Vaudreuil ; iishe do not convert you from your fancy for Lor- 
 raine this morning, Thargele Dumarsais will to-night." 
 
 '^ Mon zer zevalier, Paris est adorable/ Vans n'etes pas 
 scieux en wulant le quitter, z'en suis sHre /" cried the Comtesse 
 de Vaudreuil, in the pretty lisp of the day, a charming little 
 blonde, patched and powdered, nestled in a chair before a fire 
 of perfumed wood, teasing her monkey Zulme with a fan of 
 Pater's, and giving a pretty little sign of contempt and disbe- 
 lief with some sprays of jessamine employed in the chastise- 
 ment of offenders more responsible and quite as audacious as 
 Zulme. 
 
 Her companion, her " zer zevalier," was a young man of 
 seven-and-twenty, with a countenance frank, engaging, nobly 
 cast, far more serious, far more thoughtful in its expression, 
 than was often seen in that laughing and mocking age. Exiled 
 when a mere boy for a satirical pamphlet which had provoked 
 the wrath of the Censeur Eoyal, and might have cost him the 
 Bastille but for intercession from Lun^ville, he had passed his 
 youth less in pleasure than in those philosophical and political 
 problems then beginning to agitate a few minds ; which were 
 developed later on in the " Encyclopedia," later still in the 
 Assemblee J^ationale. Voltaire and Helvetius had spoken 
 well of him at Madame de Geoffrin's; Claudine de Tencin 
 had introduced him the night before in her brilliant salons ; 
 the veteran Eontenelle had said to him ; " Monsieur, comme 
 censeur royal je refusal mon approbation a votre brochure ; comme 
 homme libre je vous en fSlicite" — all that circle was prepared to 
 receive him well, the young Chevalier de Tallemont might 
 make a felicitous season in Paris if he chose, with the romance 
 of his exile about him, and Madame de Vaudreuil smiling 
 kindly on him. 
 
 " The country !" she cried ; " the country is all very charm- 
 ing in eclogues and pastorals, but out of them it is a desert 
 of ennui ! What can you mean, Leon, by leaving Paris 
 to-morrow? Ah, mechant, there must be something we do 
 not see, some love besides that of the Lorraine woods !" 
 
 " Madame, is there not my father T 
 
 " Bien zoli ! But at your age men are not so filial. There 
 is some other reason — but what ? Any love you had there 
 
 12 
 
178 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZEl 
 
 five years ago lias hardly any attractions now. Five years ! 
 Ma foi, five months is an eternity that kills the warmest 
 passion !" 
 
 "May there not be -some love, madame, that time only 
 strengthens T 
 
 "I never heard of it if there be. It would be a very 
 dreary affair, I should fancy, smouldering, smouldering on 
 and on like an ill-lit fire, i^obody would thank you for it, 
 rnon cher, here ! Come, what is your secret ? Tell it me." 
 
 Leon de Tallemont smiled; the smile of a man who has 
 happy thoughts, and is indifferent to ridicule. 
 
 "Madame, one can refuse you nothing! My secret*? It 
 is a very simple one. The greatest pang of my enforced exile 
 was the parting from one I loved; the greatest joy of my 
 return is that I return to her." 
 
 " Bon Dim ! comme c'est drole ! Here is a man talking to 
 me of love, and of a love not felt for me ./" thought Madame 
 la Comtesse, giving him a soft glance of her beautiful blue 
 eyes. " You are a very strange man. You have lived out 
 of France till you have grown wretchedly serious and eccentric. 
 Loved this woman for five years % Leon ! Leon ! you are tell- 
 ing me a fairy tale. Who is she, this enchantress % She must 
 have some mysterious magic. Tell me — quick !" 
 
 " She is no enchantress, madame, and she has no magic 
 save the simple one of having ever been very dear to me. 
 We grew up together at Grande CharmiUe ; she was the 
 orphan niece of the Priest, a fond, innocent, laughing child, 
 fresh and fair, and as untouched by a breath of impure air 
 as any of the violets in the valley. She was scarcely out of 
 the years of childhood when I left her, with beauty whose 
 sweetest grace of all was its own unconsciousness. Through 
 my five long years of exile I have remembered Favette as I 
 saw her last under the elm-boughs in the summer light, her 
 eyes dim with the tears of our parting, her young heart 
 heaving with its first grief. I have loved her too weU for 
 others to have power to efface or to supplant her ; of her only 
 have I thought, of her only have I dreamed, holding her but 
 the dearer as the years grew further from the hour of our 
 separation, nearer to the hour of our reunion. I have heard 
 no word of her since we parted ; but of what value is love 
 without trust and fidelity in trial % The beauty of her child- 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE 179 
 
 hood may have merged into the beauty of womanhood, but I 
 fear no other change in Favette. As we parted so we vowed 
 to mee^ and I beheve in her love as in my own. I know 
 that I shall find my Lorraine violet, without stain or soil. 
 Madame, Favette is still dearer to me now, Heaven help me, 
 than five years ago. Eive years — five years — true ! it is an 
 eternity ! Yet the bitterness of the past has faded for ever 
 from me now^ and I only see — the future !" 
 
 Madame de Yaudreuil listened in silence ; his words stirred 
 in her chords long untouched, never heard amidst the mots, 
 the madrigals, the laughter of her world of Paris, Versailles, 
 and Choisy. She struck him a little blow with her jessamine- 
 sprays, with a mist gathering over her lovely blue eyes. 
 
 " Hush, hush, Leon ! you speak in a tongue unknown 
 here. A word of the heart amongst us sounds a word of a 
 Gaulois out of fashion — forbidden." 
 
 Ill 
 
 MIDNIGHT. 
 
 The Frangais was crowded. Thargelie Dumarsais, great in 
 Uledre, Chimene, Inh, as in ^'Ninette a la Coiir^^ '' Les Mois- 
 sonneurs,'^ or " Annette et Luhin" was playing in " FhedreJ^ 
 Louis Quinze was present, with all the powdered marquises, 
 the titled wits, the glittering gentlemen of the Court of Ver- 
 sailles ; but no presence stayed the shout of adoration with 
 which the parterre welcomed the idol of the hour, and Louis 
 le Bien-aime (des femmes !) himself added his royal quota to 
 the ovation, and threw at her feet a diamond, superb as any 
 in his regalia. It was whispered that the Most Christian 
 King was growing envious of his favourite's favour with La 
 Dumarsais, and would, ere long, supersede him. 
 
 The foyer was filled with princes of the blood, marshals of 
 France, dukes, marquises, the elite of her troop of lovers ; lords 
 and gentlemen crowded the passages, flinging their bouquets 
 for her carpet as she passed ; and poor scholars, young poets, 
 youths without a sou — amongst them Diderot, Gilbert, Jean- 
 Jacques Eousseau — pressed forward to catch a glimpse, by 
 the light of the links, of this beauty, on which only the eyes 
 of grands seigneurs who could dress Cupidon in a court 
 
 12—2 
 
i8o A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 
 
 habit parfile d^or were allowed to gaze closely, as she left the 
 Frangais, after her unmatched and uninterrupted triumphs, 
 and went to her carriage with Eichelieu. The suppers of 
 Thargehe Dumarsais were renowned through Paris; they 
 equalled in magnificence the suppers of the Eegency, rivalled 
 them for licence, and surpassed them for wit. All the world 
 might dock to her fetes, where she undisguisedly sought to 
 surpass the lavishness of Versailles, even by having showers 
 of silver flung from her mndows to the people in the streets 
 below ; but to her soujpers a huis clos only a chosen few were 
 admitted, and men would speak of having supped with La 
 Dumarsais as boastfully as women of having supped with 
 the King at Choisy. 
 
 " What you have lost in not seeing her play Phhdre! Hel- 
 vetius would have excused you ; all the talk of his salons is 
 not worth one glance at La Dumarsais. Mon ami ! you will 
 be converted to Paris when once you have seen her," said 
 the Marquis de la ThoriUiere, as his carriage stopped in the 
 Chauss^e d'Antin. 
 
 L^on de Tallemont laughed, and thought of the eyes that 
 would brighten at his glance, and the heart that would beat 
 against his own once more under the vine shadows of Lor- 
 raine. IsTo new magic, however seductive, should have strength 
 tOsShake iiis allegiance to that Memory : and true to his violet 
 in Lorraine, he defied the Queen of the Foyer. 
 
 " We are late, but that is always a more pardonable fault 
 than to be too early," said the Marquis as they were ushered 
 across the vestibule, through several salons, into the supper- 
 room, hung with rich tapestries of " Les ]N'ymphes au Bain," 
 " Diane Chasseresse," and " Apollon et Daphne ;" with gilded 
 consoles, and rosewood bufi'ets, enamelled with medallion 
 groups, and crowded with Sevres and porcelaine de Saxe, 
 while Venetian mirrors at each end of the salle reflected the 
 table, with its wines and fruits, and flowers, its gold dishes and 
 Bohemian glass. The air was heavily perfumed, and vibrat- 
 ing Avith laughter. The guests were EicheHeu, Bievre, Saxe, 
 D'Etissac, Montcrif, and lovely Marie Camargo, the queen of 
 the coulisses who introduced the "short skirts" of the ballet, 
 and upheld her innovation so staunchly amidst the outcries 
 of scandalised Jansenists and journalists. But even Marie 
 Camargo herseK paled — and would have paled even had she 
 
*A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. iSi 
 
 been, wliat she was not, in tlie first flush of her youth — 
 before the superb beauty, the languid voluptuousness, the 
 sensuous grace, the southern eyes, the full lips, like the open 
 leaves of a damask rose, melting yet mocking, of the most 
 beautiful and most notorious woman of a day in which beauty 
 and notoriety were rife, the woman with the diamond of Louis 
 Quinze sparkling in the light upon her bosom, whom Vei^ 
 sailles and Paris hailed as Thargelis Dumarsais. 
 
 The air, scented with amber, rang with the gay echoes of a 
 stanza of Dorat's, chanted by Marie Camargo ; the " Cupids 
 and Bacchantes," painted in the panels of Sevres, seemed to 
 laugh in sympathy with the revel over which they presided : 
 the light flashed on the King's diamond, to which Eichelieu 
 pointed, with a wicked whisper ; for the Marshal was getting 
 tired of his own reign, and his master might pay his court 
 when he would. Thargelie Dumarsais, more beautiful still at 
 her jpetit sou'per than at her petit- lever, with her hair crowned 
 with roses, true flowers of Venus that might have crowned 
 Aspasia, looked up laughingly as her lacqueys ushered in le 
 Marquis de la Thorilliere and Le Chevalier de Tallemont. 
 
 " M. le Marquis," cried the actress, " you are late ! It 
 is an impertinence forbidden at my court. I shall sup in 
 future with barred doors, like M. d' Orleans ; then all you 
 late-comers " 
 
 Through the scented air, through the echoing laughter, 
 stopping her own words, broke a startled bitter cry : 
 
 " Mon Dieu, c'est Favette /" 
 
 Thargelie Dumarsais shrank back in her rose velvet fauteuil 
 as though the blow of a dagger had struck her ; the colour 
 fled from her lips, and underneath the delicate rouge on her 
 cheeks ; her hand trembled as it grasped the king's aigrette. 
 
 " Favette— Favette ! Who calls me that r 
 
 It was a forgotten name, the name of a bygone life, that 
 fell on her ear with a strange familiar chime, breaking in on 
 the wit, the licence, the laughter of her midnight supper, as 
 the subdued and mournful sound of vesper bells might fall 
 upon the wild refrains and noisy drinking-songs of bacchana- 
 lian melody. 
 
 A surprised silence fell upon the group, the laughter hushed, 
 the voices stopped ; it was a strange interruption tor a mid- 
 night supper. Thargelie Dumarsais invohmtarily rose, her 
 
l82 ^ A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 
 
 lips white, her eyes fixed, her hand clasped convulsively on 
 the King's diamond.^ A vague, speechless terror held mastery 
 over her, an awe she could not shake off had fastened upon 
 her, as though the dead had risen from their graves, and come 
 thither to rebuke her for the past forgotten, the innocence lost. 
 The roses in her hair, the flowers of revel, touched a cheek 
 blanched as though she beheld some unearthly thing, and the 
 hand that lay on the royal jewel shook and trembled. 
 
 "Favette? Favette*?" she echoed again. "It is so many 
 years since I heard that name !" 
 
 Her guests sat silent still, comprehending nothing of this 
 single name which had such power to move and startle her. 
 Eichelieu alone, leaning back in. his chair, leisurely picked 
 out one of his brandy-cherries, and waited as a man waits for 
 the next scene at a theatre : 
 
 " Is it an unexpected tragedy, or an arranged comedy, ma 
 ch^re? Ought one to cry or to laugh? Give me the mot 
 dJwdre r 
 
 His words broke the spell, and called Thargelie Dumarsais 
 back to the world about her. Actress by profession and by 
 nature, she rallied with a laugh, putting out her jewelled hand 
 with a languid glance from her long almond-shaped eyes. 
 
 " A friend of early years, my dear Due, that is all. Ah, 
 Monsieur de Tallemont, what a strange rencontre ! When 
 did you come to Paris'? I scarcely knew you at the first 
 moment : you have so long been an exile, one may pardon- 
 ably be startled by your apparition, and take you for a ghost ! 
 I suppose you never dreamed of meeting Favette Fontanie 
 under my nom de theatre ? Ah ! how we change, do we not, 
 Leon ? Time is so short, we have no time to stand still ! 
 Marie, ma chere, give Monsieur le Chevalier a seat beside 
 you — ^he cannot be happier placed !" 
 
 Leon de Tallemont heard not a word that she spoke ; he 
 stood like a man stunned and paralysed by a sudden and 
 violent blow, his head bowed, a mortal pallor changing his 
 face to the hues of death, the features that were a moment 
 before bright, laughing, and careless, now set in mute and 
 rigid anguish. 
 
 " Tavette ! Favette !" he murmured, hoarsely, in the vague 
 dreamy agony with which a man calls wildly and futilely on 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. 183 
 
 the beloved dead to come back to him from the silence and 
 horror of the grave. 
 
 " Peste !" laughed Eichelieu. " This cast-off lover seems a 
 strange fellow ! Does he not know that absent people have 
 never the presumption to dream of keeping their places, but 
 learn to give them • graciously up ! — shall I teach him the 
 lesson % If he have his sixteen quarterings, a prick of my 
 sword will soon punish his impudence !" 
 
 The jeer fell unheeded on Leon de Tallemont's ear ; had he 
 heard it, the flippant sneer would have had no power to sting 
 him then. Eegardless of the men around the supper-table, 
 he grasped Thargelie Dumarsais's hands in his : 
 
 " This is how we meet !" 
 
 She shrank away from his glance, terrified, she scarce knew 
 why, at the mute anguish upon his face. 
 
 Perhaps for a moment she realised how utterly she had 
 abused the love and wrecked the life of this man ; perhaps 
 with his voice came back to her thronging thoughts of guile- 
 less days, memories ringing through the haze of years, as dis- 
 tant chimes ring over the water from lands we have quitted, 
 reaching us when we have floated far away out to sea — 
 memories of an innocent and untroubled life, when she had 
 watched the woodland flowers open to the morning sun, and 
 listened to the song of the brooks murmuring over the violet 
 roots, and heard the sweet evening song of the birds rise to 
 heaven under the deep vine shadows of Lorraine. 
 
 One moment she was silent, her eyes falling, troubled and 
 guilty, beneath his gaze ; then she looked up, laughing gaily, 
 and flashing on him her languid, lustrous glance. 
 
 " You look like a somnambulist, mon ami ! Did nobody 
 ever tell you, then, how Mme. de la Vrilliere carried me off 
 from Lorraine, and brought me in her train to Paris, till, 
 when Favette Fontanie was tired of being petted like the 
 spaniel, the monkey, and the parrot, she broke away from 
 Madame la Marquise, and made, after a little probation at the 
 Foire St. Laurent, her appearance at the Fran9ais as Thargelie 
 Dumarsais? Allons done! have I lost my beauty, that you 
 look at me thus *? You should be reminding me of the pro- 
 verb, * On revient toujours a ses premiers amours P Surely, 
 Thargelie Dumarsais will be as attractive to teach such a lesson 
 as that little peasant girl, Favette, used to be ? Bah^ Leon ! 
 
i84 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE, 
 
 Can I not love you as well again in Paris as I once loved you 
 at Grande Charmille! And — who knows? — perhaps I will !" 
 
 She leaned towards him — ^her breath fanning his cheek, her 
 scented hair brushing his lips, her eyes meeting his with elo- 
 quent meaning, her lips parted with the resistless witchery of 
 that melting and seductive souiire d'amour to which they 
 were so admirably trained. He gazed down on her, breath- 
 less, silence-stricken — gazed down on the sorceress beauty to 
 which the innocent loveliness of his Lorraine flower had 
 changed. Was this woman, with the rouge upon her cheeks, 
 the crimson roses in her hair, the mocking light in her eyes, 
 the wicked laugh on her lips, the diamond glittering like a 
 serpent's eye in her bosom — was she the guileless child he had 
 left weeping, on the broken steps of the fountain, tears as 
 pure as the dew in the violet-bells, with the summer sunlight 
 streaming round her, and no shade on her young brow darker 
 than the fleeting shadow flung from above by the fleeting vine- 
 leaves 1 A cry broke once more from his lips : 
 
 " Would to God I had died before to-night !" 
 
 Then he lifted his head, with a smile upon his face — a smile 
 that touched and vaguely terrified all those who saw it — the 
 smile of a breaking heart. 
 
 " I thank you for your proff'ered embraces, but /am faithful. 
 I love but one, and I have lost her; Favette is dead ! I know 
 nothing of Thargelie Dumarsais, the Courtesan." 
 
 He bowed low to her and left her — ^never to see her face 
 again. 
 
 A silence fell on those he had quitted, even upon Eichelieu ; 
 perhaps even he reahsed that all beauty, faith, and joy were 
 stricken from this man's life ; and — ^reality of feeling was an 
 exile so universally banished from the gay salons of the Dix- 
 huitieme Si^cle, that its intrusion awed them, as by the un- 
 wonted presence of some ghostly visitant. 
 
 Thargelie Dumarsais sat silent — ^her thoughts had flown 
 away once more from her brilliant supper-chamber to the 
 fountain at Grande Charmille ; she was seeing the dragon- 
 flies flutter among the elm-boughs, and the water ripple over 
 the wild thyme ; she was feeling the old priest's good-night 
 kiss upon her brow, and her own hymn rise and mingle with 
 the chant of the vesper choir ; she was hearing the song of 
 the forest birds echo in the Lorraine woods, and a fond voice 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUINZE. i§5 
 
 whisper to her, " Fear not, Favette ! — we shall meet as we 
 part !" 
 
 Eichelieu took up his Dresden saucer of cherries once mori 
 with a hurst of laughter. 
 
 " Viola un drole I — this fellow takes things seriously. 
 What fools there are in this world ! It will he a charming 
 little story for Versailles. Dieu ! how Louis will laugh when 
 I tell it him ! I fear though, ma chere, that the * friend of 
 your childhood ' will make you lose your reputation hy his 
 impolitic epithets !" 
 
 "When one has nothing, one can lose nothing — eh, ma 
 chere ^" laughed Marie Camargo. "Monsieur le Due, she 
 does not hear us " 
 
 " '^0, VinfideUr cried Eichelieu. " Mademoiselle ! I see 
 plainly you love this rude lover of bygone days better than 
 you do us ? — is it not the truth !" 
 
 " Chut ! nobody asks for truths in a polite age !" laughed 
 Thargelie Dumarsais, shaking off unwelcome memories once 
 for all, and looking down at the King's diamond gleaming in 
 the light — the diamond that prophesied to her the triumph 
 of the King's love. 
 
 " Naturally," added La Camargo. " My friend, I shall die 
 with envy of your glorious jewel. Dieu I comrM U brille f* 
 
"DEADLY DASH/^ 
 
 A STORY TOLD ON THE OFF DAY. 
 
 On the ofF-day after the Derby everyhody, except the great 
 winners, is, it mil be generally admitted, the resigned prey 
 to a certain gentle sadness, not to say melancholy, that will 
 only dissipate itself under a prolonged regimen of S. and B., 
 Seidlitz well dashed with Amontillado, or certain heavenly 
 West Indian decoctions ; — this indisposition, I would suggest, 
 we should call, delicately and dubiously, Epsomitis. It will 
 serve to describe innumerable forms and degrees of the re- 
 actionary malady. 
 
 There is the severest shape of aU, "dead money," that 
 covers four figures, dropped irretrievably, and lost to the 
 " milkers ;" lost always you say because of a cough, or be- 
 cause of a close finish, or because of a something dark, or 
 because of a strain in the practising gallops, or because of a 
 couple of brutes that cannoned just at the start ; and never, 
 of course, because the horse you had fancied was sheerly and 
 simply only fit for a plater. There is the second severe form, 
 when you awake with a cheerful expectation of a summons 
 for driving " at twelve miles an hour " (as if that wasn't 
 moderate and discreet !) and for thereby smashing a green- 
 grocer's cart into the middle of next week, and running a 
 waggonette into an omnibus, as you came back from the 
 Downs, of which you have no more remembrance than that 
 there was a crash, and a smash, and a woman's screams, and 
 a man's " d — n the swells !" and a tintamarre of roaring con- 
 ductor and bellowing greengrocer, and infuriated females, 
 through which you dashed somehow with a cheer — more 
 
*' DEADLY DASH:^ i§7 
 
 shame for you — and a most inappropriate VAfriccdne chorus 
 from the men on your drag. There is the milder form, which 
 is only the rueful recollection of seeing, in a wild ecstasy, the 
 chesnut with the white blaze sweep with his superb stride to 
 the front, and of having, in your moment of rapturous grati- 
 tude to the red and blue, rushed, unintentionally, during the 
 discussion of Fortnum and Mason's hamper, into a promise 
 to take Euphrosyne Brown to, Eaden in August, where you 
 know very well she will cost you more than all your sums 
 netted through Gladiateur. There are slenderer touches of 
 the malady, which give you, over your breakfast coffee, a cer- 
 tain dolorous meditation as to how you could have been such 
 a fool as to have placed all your trust in Danebury, or to have 
 put in a hole through Spring Cottage just what your yacht 
 costs for three months ; which makes you wonder why on 
 earth you took that lot of actresses on to the hill, and threw 
 money enough away on them in those wages of idiotcy (or 
 wages of sin, as your uncle the dean would translate it), of 
 cashmeres, eau de Cologne, gloves, and bracelets, to have pur- 
 chased those two weight carriers offered you at 600/. tlie pair, 
 and dirt cheap at that -, or which makes you only dully and 
 headachily conscious that you drank champagne up on the 
 box-seat as if you were a young fellow from Eton, and now 
 pay for the juvenile folly, as you know you deserve to do, 
 when that beautiful white Burgundy at your club, or your 
 own cool perfect claret at home, seems to stare you in the 
 face and ask, " Why did you crack all those bottles of Dry 
 on the Downs T 
 
 There are symptoms and varieties innumerable of the ma- 
 lady that I propose shall be known henceforward as Ep- 
 somitis ; therefore, the off-day finds everybody more or less 
 slightly done up and mournful. Twenty-four hours and the 
 Oaks, if properly prepared for by a strictly medicinal course of 
 bMes-gueules, as the Chasseurs say, smoked perseveringly, 
 will bring all patients round on the Friday ; but during the 
 twenty-four hours a sense that all on and off the course is 
 vanity and vexation of spirit will generally and somnolently 
 predominate in the universal and fashionable disease of Ep- 
 somitis. 
 
 One off-day, after the magnificent victory of Monarque's 
 unrivalled son, an acquaintance of mine, suffering consider- 
 
i§8 *' DEADL V DASH. ^' 
 
 ably from these symptoms, souglit my philosophy and my 
 prescriptions. A very sharp irritant for Epsomitis may be 
 administered in the form of " I told yon so ! It's all your 
 own fault !" But this species of blister and douche bath 
 combined is rarely given unless the patient be mad enough to 
 let his wife, if he unluckily have one, learn what ails him. 
 As far as I was concerned, I was much too sympathetic with 
 the sufferer to be down upon him with the triumphant re- 
 minder that I had cautioned him all along not to place his 
 trust in Eussley. I, instead, prescribed him cool wines, and 
 led him on to talk of other people's misfortunes, the very 
 best way to get reconciled with your own. We talked of old 
 times, of old memories, of old acquaintance, in the twilight, 
 between Derby and Oaks. We got a little melancholy ; too 
 much champagne is always productive on the morrow of a 
 gently sentimental tinge, and a man is always inclined to 
 look on the world as a desert when he has the conviction 
 that he himself has been made a fool in it. Among other 
 names, that of Deadly Dash came up between us. What 
 had become of him? I did not know; he did. He told 
 me ; and I will tell it here, for the story is of the past now. 
 
 " Deadly Dash ! what a shot he was ! Never missed," 
 said my friend, whose own gun is known well enough at 
 Hornsey-wood House ; therewith falling into a reverie, tinged 
 with a Jacques-like gloom of Epsomitis in its severest form, 
 from which he awoke to tell me slowly, between long draughts 
 of iced drinks what I write now. I alter his tale in nothing, 
 gave in filling in with words the gaps and blanks that he 
 made, all-eloquent in his halting oratory, by meditative, plain- 
 tive, moralising puffs from his tonic, the hriile-gueuU^ and an 
 occasional appeal to my imagination in the customary formula 
 of " Oh, bother ! — you understand — all the rest of it, you 
 know," which, though it tells everything over claret, is not so 
 clear a mode of relation in type. For all else here the story 
 is as he gave it to me. 
 
 " Deadly Dash !" It was a fatal sounding sobriquet, and had 
 a fatal fascination for many, for me as well as the rest, when I 
 was in my salad days and joined the old — th, among whose 
 Light Dragoons it was so signally and ominously famous. The 
 nickname had a wide significance; "Ae always kills" was said 
 
" DEADL V dash:' 189 
 
 with twofold truth, in twofold meaning of Dash; in a haniere 
 duel he would wheel lightly, aim carelessly, and send the ball 
 straight as any arrow through heart or lung, just as he fancied, in 
 the neatest style anybody could dream of; and in an intrigue he 
 took just the same measures, and hit as invariably with the self- 
 same skill and the self-same indifference. " He always kills," 
 applied equally to either kind of affair, and got him his sobri- 
 quet, which he received with as laughing an equanimity as a 
 riding man gets the Gilt Vase, or a " lover of the leash" the 
 Eavensworth Stakes, or the Puppy Cup and Goblet. He was 
 proud of it, and had only one regret, that he lived in the dead 
 days of the duel, and could only go out when he was on French 
 soil. In dare-devilry of every sort he out-Heroded Herod, and 
 distanced any who were mad enough to try the pace with him 
 in that steeple-chase commonly called " going to the bad." It 
 was a miracle how often he used to reach the stage of " complete 
 ruin" that the Prince de Soubise once sighed for as an un- 
 attainable paradise ; and picked himself up again, without a hair 
 turned, as one may say, and started off with as fresh a pace as 
 though nothing had knocked him over. Other men had got his 
 speed sometimes; but nobody could ever equal his stay. For 
 an "out and out goer" there was nobody like Deadly Dash; 
 and though only a Captain of Horse, with few " expectations," 
 he did what Dukes daren't have done, and lived at a faster rate 
 than all the elder sons in the kingdom put together. Dash had 
 the best bow and the brightest wits, the lightest morals and the 
 heaviest debts of any sabreiir in the Service; very unscrupulous 
 feUows were staggered at Ms devil-me-care vices; and as for 
 reputation, — "a deuced pleasant fellow. Dash," they used to say 
 at the Curragh, in the Guards' Club, at Thatched House anni- 
 versary dinners, in North Indian cantonments, in Brighton 
 barrack rooms, or in any of the many places where Deadly Dash 
 was a household word; "a very pleasant fellow; no end *fit* 
 always, best fun in life over the olives when you get him in the 
 humour; shoot you dead though next morning, if he want, and 
 you be handy for him in a neat snug little Bad; make some 
 devil of a mot on you too afterwards, just as pleasantly as if he 
 were offmng you a Lopez to smoke !" 
 
 Now, that was just the sort of celebrity that made me mad 
 to see the owner of it; there wasn't a living being, except that 
 year's favourite out of the Whitewall establishment, that I was 
 
190 ** DEADL Y DASH. " 
 
 half so eager to look at, or so reverent when I thouglit of, as "the 
 Killer." I was very young then. I had gone through a classic 
 course of yellow covers from Jeffs' and Eolandi's, and I had a 
 vague impression that a man who had had a dozen harrihe affairs 
 abroad, and been '^enfant" to every lovely lionne of his day, must 
 of necessity be like the heroes of Delphine Demirep's novels, 
 who had each of them a " je ne sais quoi de farouche et de her 
 dans ses grands yeux noirs, et toute la revelation d'une ame usee, 
 mais dominee par des passions encore inepuisables, ecrite sur son 
 sombre et pale visage," &c., &c., in the Demirep's most telling 
 style. 
 
 I don't know quite what I expected to see in the Killer, but 
 I think it was a sort of compound of Monte Christo, Mephisto- 
 pheles, and Murat mixed in one; what I did see was a shght 
 delicate man, with a face as fair and soft as a girl's, the gentlest 
 possible manners, and a laugh like music. Deadly Dash had 
 led a life as bad as he could lead, had lit his cigar without a 
 tremor in the ^vrist, on many grey mornings, while his adversary 
 lay dying hard among the red rank grasses, had gamed so deep 
 twenty-four hours at a stretch that the most reckless galerie in 
 Europe held their breath to watch his play; had had a tongue 
 of silver for his intrigues and a nerve of steel for his vendetta; 
 had lived in reckless rioting and drunk deep; but the Demirep 
 would not have had him at any price in her romance; he looked 
 so simple and quietly thorough-bred, he was so utterly guiltless 
 of all her orthodox traits. The gentlest of mortals was Deadly 
 Dash; when you first heard his sweet silvery voice, and his 
 laughter as light and airy as a woman's, you would never believe 
 how often abroad there a dead man had been left to get stiff and 
 cold among the clotted herbage, while the Killer went out of the 
 town by the early express, smoking and reading the "Charivari," 
 and sipping some cold Curagoa punch out of his flask. 
 
 " Of course !" growled a man to me once in the Guards' smok - 
 ing-room, an order of the Scots FusiHers to Montreal having 
 turned him misanthrope. " Did Mephistopheles ever come out 
 in full harness, with horns and tail complete, eh? Not such a 
 fool. He looked like a gentleman, and talked like a wit. Would 
 the most dunder-headed Cain in Christendom, I should be glad 
 to know, be such an ass as to go about town with the brand on 
 his forehead, when he could turn down Bond-street any day and 
 get a dash of the ladies' pearl powder? Who ever shows any- 
 
'' DEADL y dash:' 191 
 
 thing now, my good fellow? Not that Dash ' paints/ to give 
 the deuce his due — except himself a little blacker even than 
 he is; he don't cant; he couldn't cant; not to save his life, I 
 believe. But as to his bewitching you, almost as bad as he does 
 the women, I know all about that. I used to swear bv him 
 till " 
 
 "Tillwhatr 
 
 " Till he cut a brother of mine out with Rachel, and shot him 
 in the woods of Chantilly for flaring-up rough at the rivalry. 
 Charlie was rather a good fellow, and Dash and I didn't speak 
 after that, you see. Great bore; bosh too, perhaps. Dash brews 
 the best Curagoa punch in Europe, and if he name you the win- 
 ning mount for the Granby, you may let the talent damn you as 
 
 they like. Still you know, as he killed Charlie " and the 
 
 Guardsman stuck a great cheeroot in his mouth, in doubt as to 
 whether, after all, it wasn't humbug, and an uncalled-for sacrifice, 
 rather than scenic and sentimental, to drop an expert at Cura9oa 
 brew, and a sure prophet for Croxton Park, just because, in a 
 legitimate fashion, he had potted your brother and relieved your 
 entail; — on the whole, a friendly act rather than otherwise? 
 " Keep clear of the Killer, though, young one," he added, as he 
 sauntered out. "He's like that cheetah cub of Berkeley's; soft 
 as silk, you know,jpa//6 de velours, and what d'ye call 'em, and all 
 the rest of it, but deucedly deadly to deal with." 
 
 I did know : it was the eternal refrain that was heard on all 
 sides ; from the wily Jews through whose meshes he slipped ; 
 the unhappy duns who were done by him ; the beauties who 
 were bewitched by him; the hosts and husbands who, having 
 him down for the pheasants, found him poach other preserves 
 than those of the cover sides; the women who had their charac- 
 ters shattered by a silvery sneer from a voice that was as soft, 
 in its murderous slander, as in its equally murderous wooing; 
 and all the rest, who, in some shape or another, owed ruin to 
 that Apollo Apolly on — Deadly Dash. Euin which at last became 
 so wide and so deep, that even vice began to look virtuous when 
 his name was mentioned (vice always does when she thinks you 
 are really cleared out), and men of his own corps and his own 
 club began to get shy of having the Killer's arm linked in theirs 
 too often down Pall Mall, for its wrist was terribly steady in 
 either Hazard, whether of the yard of green table or the twenty 
 yards of green turf. 
 
192 * ' DEADL V DASH. " 
 
 At last the crisis came : the Killer killed one too many; a Eus- 
 sian Prince in the Bois de Yincennes, Id a quarrel about a pretty- 
 wretched little chorus-singer of the Cafe Alcazar, who took their 
 fancies both at once. The mondes thought it terribly wicked, 
 not the deed, you know, but the audacity of a cavalry man's 
 having potted a Yery Serene High Mightiness. In a Duke, 
 all these crimes and crimcons, though as scarlet, would have 
 been held but the crimson gold-dotted fruit adorning the straw- 
 berry-leaves; Deadly Dash, a Light Dragoon, whose name was 
 signed to plenty of " floating httle bills," could not bid high 
 enough to purchase his pardon from Society, which says to its 
 sinners with austere front of virtue, " Oblivion cannot be hired 
 — unless," adds Society, dropping to mellowest murmur her 
 whisper, " unless you can give us a premium !" So Dash, with 
 a certain irresistible though private pressure upon him from the 
 Horse Guards — sent in his papers to sell. What had been done 
 so often could not now be done again; the first steeple-chaser 
 in the Service could not at last even save his stake, but was 
 finally, irretrievably, struck out. 
 
 Certainly the fellow was a bad fellow, and deserved his 
 crash, so far; he had no scruples, and no conscience; he 
 spared neither woman nor man ; of remorse he had never felt 
 a twinge, and if you were in his path he would pick you off 
 some way or other as indifferently as if you were one of the 
 pigeons at Hornsey. And yet, he had been kind to me, 
 though I was a young one ; mth his own variable Free Lance 
 sort of liberality, the man would give his last sou to get you 
 out of any difiicidty, and would carry off your mistress, or 
 beggar you at chicken-hazard, with the self-same pleasant air 
 the next day : and I could not help being sorry that things 
 had come to this pass with him. He shot so superbly ! Put 
 him where you would, in a warm corner while the bouquets 
 of pheasant were told off ; in a punt, while a square half-mile 
 of wild ducks whirred up from the marshes ; in a dark forest 
 alley in Transylvania, while the great boar rushed down 
 through the twilight, foaming blood and roaring fury; in a still 
 Indian night with the only target here and there a dusky head 
 diving amidst the jhow jungle three hundred yards away: put 
 him where you would, he was such a magnificent shot ! The 
 sins of a Frankenstein should not have lost such a marksman 
 as Deadly Dash to the Service. 
 
*" DEADLY DASIV 
 
 193 
 
 Lut tlie authorities thouglit otherwise ; they M-ere not opon 
 to the fact, that the man who had been out in more harnere 
 affairs, and had won more Grand Military stakes than any 
 other, should, by all laws of war-policy, have had his blackest 
 transgressions forgiven him, till he could have been turned to 
 account against Ghoorkas, Maories, or Caffres. Tlie authorities 
 instead made him send in his papers, not knowing the grand 
 knack of turning a scamp into a hero — a process that requires 
 some genius and some clairvoyance in the manipulator — and 
 Deadly Dash, with his lightest and airiest laugh, steamed 
 down channel one late autumn night, marked, disgraced, and 
 outlawed, for creditors by the score were after him, knowing 
 very well that he and his old gay lawless life, and his own 
 wild pleasant world, and his old lands yonder in the green 
 heart of the grass countries that had gone rood by rood to the 
 Hebrews, were all divorced for ever, with a great gulf between 
 them that could never close. 
 
 So he dropped out of the Service, out of the country, out 
 of remembrance, out of regret ; nobody said a De Profundis 
 over him, and some men breathed the freer. We can rarely 
 be sure of any who will be sorry to miss us ; but we can 
 always be certain of some to be glad we are gone. And in 
 the Killer's case these last were legion. Here and there were 
 one or two who owed him a wayward, inconstant bizarre fit 
 of generosity ; but there were on the other hand hundreds 
 who owed him nothing less than entire ruin. 
 
 So Deadly Dash went with nobody to regret him and no- 
 body to think of him for a second, after the nine hours* 
 wonder in the clubs and the mess-rooms that his levanting 
 " under a cloud" occasioned; and so the old sobriquet that 
 had used to have so signal a notoriety, dropped out of men's 
 mouths and was forgotten. Where he was gone no one knew; 
 and, to be sure, no one asked. Metaphorically, he was gone 
 to the devil ; and when a man takes that little tour, if he fur- 
 nish talk for a day he has had very distinguished and length- 
 ened obsequies as friendship goes in this world. Now and 
 then, in the course of half a dozen years, I remembered him, 
 when I looked up at the head of a Eoyal over my mantel- 
 piece, with thirteen points, that he had stalked once in Ayr- 
 shire and given to me ; but nobody else gave a thought to 
 the Killer. Time passed, and whether he had been killed 
 
 13 
 
194 " DEADL V DASH. " 
 
 iiglitiiig iu Chili or Bolivia, shot himself at Homburg, become 
 Mussulman and entered the Sultan's army, gone to fight with 
 the Kabyles and Bedouins, turned brigand for the Neapolitan 
 Bourbons, or sunk downward by the old well-worn stage, so 
 sadly and so often travelled, into an adventurer living by the 
 skill of his ^carte and the dread surety of his shot, we did 
 not know ; we did not care. When Society has given a man 
 the sack, it matters uncommonly little whether he has given 
 himself a shroud. 
 
 Seven or eight years after the name of Deadly Dash had 
 ceased to be heard among cavalry men, and quoted on all 
 things " horsey," whether of the flat or of the ridge and fur- 
 row, I was in the Confederate States, on leave for a six months' 
 tour there. It was after Lee's raid across the border and the 
 days of Gettysburgh. I had run the blockade in a fast-built 
 clipper, and pushed on at once into the heart of Virginia, to 
 be in the full heat of whatever should come on the cards ; 
 cutting the cities rather, and keeping as much as I could to 
 the camps and the woods, for I wanted to see the real thing 
 in the rough. In my relish for adventure, however, I was a 
 trifle, as it proved, too foolhardy. 
 
 Starting alone one day to cross the thirty miles or so that 
 parted me from the encampment of some Virginian Horse, 
 with no other companions than a very weedy-looking steel 
 grey and a brace of revolvers, I fairly " lost tracks," and had 
 not a notion of my way out of a wilderness of morass and 
 forest, all glowing with the scarlet and the green of the Indian 
 summer. Here and there were beautiful wild pools and lakes 
 shut in by dense vegetation, so dense that at noon it was dark 
 as twilight, and great table-lands of rock jutted out black and 
 rugged in places ; but chiefly as far as was to be seen stretched 
 the deep entangled woodland, with nothing else to break it, 
 brooding quietly over square leagues of swamp. The orioles 
 were singing their sweetest, wildest music overhead ; sign of 
 war there was none, save, to be sure, now and then when I 
 came on a black, arid circle where a few charred timbers 
 showed where a hut had been burnt down and deserted, or 
 my horse shied and snorted uneasily, and half stumbled over 
 some shapeless log on the ground — a log that when you looked 
 closer was the swollen shattered body of a man who had died 
 hard, with the grass wrenched up in his fingers that the ants 
 
" DEADL V DASH, " 195 
 
 had eaten bare, and the hollows of his eyes staring open 
 where the carrion birds had plucked the eyeballs out. And 
 near him there were sure to be, half sunk in swamp, or cleaned 
 to skeletons by the eagles and hawks, five, or ten, or twenty 
 more, lying nameless and unburied there, where they had fallen 
 in some scuffle with pickets, or some stray cavalry skirmish, 
 to be told off as ** missing," and to be thought of no more. 
 These groups I came upon more than once rotting among the 
 rich Virginian soil, while the scarlet and purple weight of 
 blossoming boughs swayed above, and the bright insect life 
 fluttered humming around them ; they were the only highway 
 marks through the wooded wilderness. 
 
 So lonely was it mile after mile, and so little notion had I 
 of either the way in or the way out, that the hallali ! of a 
 boar-hunt, or the sweet mellow tongues of the honnds when 
 they have found in the coverts at home, were never brighter 
 music to me than the sharp crack of rifles and the long sullen 
 roll of musketry as they suddenly broke the silence, while I 
 rode along, firing from the west that lay on my left. The 
 grey, used to powder, pointed his ears and quickened his pace. 
 Though a weedy, fiddle-headed beast, his speed was not bad, 
 and I rattled him over the ground, crashing through under- 
 growth and wading through pools, with all my blood up at 
 the tune of those ringing cheery shots ; the roar growing louder 
 and louder with every moment, and the sulphur scent of the 
 smoke borne stronger and stronger down on the wind, till the 
 horse broke pUe-mele through the network of parasites ; dashed 
 downward along a slope of dank herbage, slipping at every 
 step, and with his hind-legs tucked under him ; and shot, like 
 a run-in for a race, on to a green plateau, where the skirmish 
 was going on in hot earnest. 
 
 A glance told me how the land lay. A handful of Southern 
 troopers held their own with tremendous difliculty against 
 three divisions of Federal infantry, whom they had unexpect- 
 edly encountered, as the latter were marching across the pla- 
 teau with some batteries of foot artillery, — the odds were 
 probably scarcely less than five to one. The Southerners 
 were fighting magnificently, as firm in their close square of 
 four hundred as the Consular Guard at Marengo, but so sur- 
 rounded by the Northern host that they looked like a little 
 island circled round by raging breakers. Glancing down on 
 
 13—2 
 
196 •* DEADL Y DASW 
 
 tlie plain as my horse scoured and slid along the incline, the 
 nucleus of Southerners looked hopelessly lost amidst the belch- 
 ing fire and pressing columns of the enemy. The whole was 
 surrounded and hidden by the whirling clouds of dust and 
 smoke that swirled above in a white heavy mist ; but through 
 this the sabres flashed, the horses' heads reared, maddened 
 ;ind foam-covered, like so many bas-rehefs of Bucephalus, the 
 lean rifle-barrels glittered, and for a moment I saw the Southern 
 leader, steady as a rock in the centre, hewing like a trooper 
 right and left, and with a grey heron's feather floating from 
 his sombrero, a signal that seemed as well known and as closely 
 followed as the snowy plume of Murat. 
 
 To have looked on at this and not have taken a share in it, 
 one would have been a stone, not a man, and much less a 
 cavaby-man ; I need not tell you that I smashed the grey 
 across the plateau, hurled him into the thick of the melee, 
 dashed somehoiv through the Federal ranks, and was near the 
 grey plume and fighting for the Old Dominion before you 
 could have shouted a stave of '^ Dixie." I was a " non-com- 
 batant," I was a " neutral " — delicate Anglo-euphemism for 
 coward, friends to neither and traitor to both ! — I was on a 
 tour of observation, and had no business to fire a shot for one 
 or the other perhaps, but I forgot all that, and with the bri- 
 dle in my teeth and a pistol in each hand, I rode down to 
 give one blow the more for the weak side. 
 
 How superbly that Grey Feather fought ! — keeping his men 
 well up round liim, though saddle after saddle was emptied, 
 and horse after horse tore riderless out of the ranks, or reeled 
 over on their heads, spurting blood, he sat like a statue, he 
 fought like a Titan, his sabre seemed flashing unceasingly in 
 the air, so often was it raised to come down again like light- 
 ning through a sword-arm, or lay ojDcn a skull to the brains ; 
 the shots ploughed up the earth round him, and rattled Hke 
 hail through the air, a score of balls were aimed at him alone, 
 a score of sabres crossed his own ; but he was cool as St. 
 Lawrence ice, and laid the men dead in struggling heaps un- 
 der his charger's hoofs : only to fight near the man was a 
 glorious intoxication ; you seemed to " breath blood " till you 
 got drunk with it. 
 
 The four hundred had been mowed down to two. I did 
 as good work as I could, having wrenched a sword out of 
 
'* DEADL Y dash:' 197 
 
 sbnie dead trooper's hand ; but I was only one, and the Nor- 
 therners counted by thousands. Come out of it alive I never 
 expected to do ; but I vow it was the happiest day of my life 
 — the pace was so splendidly fast ! The Grey Feather at 
 last glanced anxiously round ; his men stuck like death to 
 him, ready to be hewed down one by one, and die game ; his 
 teeth were set tight, and his eyes had a flash in them like 
 steel. " Charge ! and cut through !" he shouted, his voice 
 rolling out like a clarion, giving an order that it seemed could 
 be followed by nothing short of supernatural aid. The South- 
 rons thought otherwise; they only heard to obey; they 
 closed up as steadily as though they were a squadron on 
 parade, despite the great gaps between them of dying chargers, 
 and of heaped-up killed and wounded, that broke their ranks 
 like so much piled stones and timber ; they halted a moment, 
 the murderous fire raking them right and left, front and rear ; 
 then, with that dense mass of troops round them, they 
 charged ; shivered the first line that wedged them in ; 
 pierced by sheer force of impetus the columns that opened fire 
 in their path ; wrenched themselves through as through the 
 steel jaws of a trap, and swept out on to the green level of 
 the open plateau, with a wild rallying Virginian shout that 
 rings in my ears now ! 
 
 I have been in a good many hot things in my time ; but I 
 never knew anything that for pace and long odds could be 
 anything near to that. 
 
 I had kept with them through the charge with no other 
 scratch than a shoulder-cut ; and I had been close to their 
 chief through it all. When we were clean out on the plains 
 beyond pursuit — for the Union-men had not a squadron of 
 cavalry, though their guns at long range belched a storm in 
 our wake — ^he turned in his saddle without checking his 
 mare's thundering gallop, and levelled his rifle that was slung 
 at his side. " I'll have the General, anyhow," he said, quietly 
 taking aim — still without checking his speed — at the knot 
 of stafl'-officers that now were scarce more than specks in a 
 blurred mass of mist. He fired ; and the centre figure in that 
 indistinct and fast-vanishing group fell from the saddle, while 
 the yell of fury that the wind faintly floated nearer told 
 us that the shot had been deadly. The Grey Feather laughed, 
 a careless airy laugh of triumph, while he swept on at topmost 
 
198 " DEADL V DASIi:' 
 
 pace ; a little more, and we should dive down into tlie dark 
 aisles of grand forest trees and cavernous ravines of timLcr 
 roads, safe from all pursuit ; a second, and we should reacli 
 the green core of the safe and silent woods, the cool shelter of 
 mountain-backed lakes, the sure refuge of tangled coverts. It 
 was a guinea to a shilling that we gained it ; it was all but 
 won ; a moment's straight run-in, and we should have it ! 
 But that moment was not to be ours. 
 
 Out of the narrow cleft of a valley on the left, all screened 
 with hanging tumbled foHage, and dark as death, there pour- 
 ed suddenly across our front a dense body of Federal troopers 
 and Horse Artillery, two thousand strong at the least, full gallop, 
 to join the main army. We were surrounded in a second, in a 
 second overpowered by sheer strength of numbers; only two 
 hundred of us, many sorely wounded, and on mounts that 
 were jaded and ridden out of all pace, let us fight as we would, 
 what could we do against fresh and picked soldiers, swarm- 
 ing down on us like a swarm of hornets, while in our rear 
 was the main body tlirough which we had just cut our way % 
 That the little desperate band " died hard," I need not say ; 
 but the vast weight of the fresh squadrons pressed our little 
 knot in as if between the jaws of a trap, crushing it like grain 
 between two iron weights. The Grey Feather fought like all the 
 Knights of the Eound Table merged in one, till he streamed 
 with blood from head to foot, and his sabre was hacked and 
 bent like an ash-stick, as did a man near him, a tall superb 
 Virginian, handsome as any Vandyke or Velasquez picture. 
 At last both the Grey Feather and he went down, not by 
 death — it would not come to them — ^but literally hurled out 
 of their stirrup-leathers by crowding scores who poured on 
 them, hamstrung or shot their horses, and made them them- 
 selves prison ers-not, however, till the assailants lay heaped ten 
 deep about their slaughtered chargers. For myself, a blow 
 from a sabre, a second afterwards, felled me like so much 
 wood. I saw a whirling blaze of sun, a confused circling 
 eddy of dizzy colour, forked flames, and flashes of light, and 
 I knew no more, till I opened my eyes in a dark, square, un- 
 healthy wooden chamber, with a dreamy but settled convic- 
 tion that I was dead, and in the family vault, far away under 
 the green old elms of Warwickshire, with the rooks cawing 
 above my head. 
 
** DEADL V dash:' t§^ 
 
 As tiie delusion dissipated and tlie mists cleared, I saw 
 through the uncertain light a face that was strangely but 
 vaguely familiar to me, connected somehow with incoherent 
 memories of life at home, and yet unknown to me. It was 
 bronzed deeply, bearded, with flakes of grey among the fair- 
 ness of the hair, much aged, much worn, scarred and stained 
 just now with the blood of undressed wounds and the dust 
 of the combat, for there was no one merciful enough there to 
 bring a stoup of water ; it was rougher, darker, sterner, and 
 yet, with it all, nobler, too, than the face that I had known. 
 I lay and stared blankly at it ; it was the face of the South- 
 ern Leader of the morning, who sat now, on a pile of straw, 
 looking wearily out to the dying sun, one amongst a group of 
 twenty, prisoners all, like myself I moved, and he turned 
 his eyes on me ; they had laid me down there as a " gone 
 coon," and were amazed to see me come to life again. As our 
 eyes met I knew him — he was Deadly Dash. 
 
 The old name left my lips with a shout as strong as a half 
 killed man can give. It seemed so strange to meet him there, 
 captives together in the Unionists' hands ! It struck him 
 with a sharp shock. England and he had been divorced so 
 long. I saw the blood leap to his forehead, and the light into 
 his glance ; then, with a single stride, he reached the straw I 
 lay on, holding my hands in his, looking on me with the 
 kindly eyes that had used to make me like the Killer, and 
 greeting me with a warmth that was only damped and dark- 
 ened by regret that my battle done for fair Virginia had laid 
 me low, a prisoner with himself, and that we should meet 
 thus, in so sharp an hour of adversity, with nothing before 
 us but the Capitol, the Carroll prison, or worse. Yet thus we 
 did meet once more, and I knew at last what had been the 
 fate of Deadly Dash, whom England had outlawed as a 
 scoundrel, and the New World had found a hero. 
 
 Though suffering almost equally himself, he tended me with 
 the kindliest sympathy; he came out of his own care to 
 ponder how possible it might be to get me eventual freedom 
 as a tourist and a mere accidental sharer in the fray ; he was 
 interested to hear all that I would tell him of my own affairs 
 and of his old friends in England, but of himself he would 
 not speak ; he simply said he had been fighting for the Con- 
 federacy ever since the war had begun ; and I saw that he 
 
2d6 *' DEADL V DASH. '* 
 
 strove in vain to shake off a deep heart-broken gloom that 
 seemed to have settled on him, doubtless, as I thought, from 
 the cruel defeat of the noon, and the hopeless captivity into 
 which he, the most restless and the most daring soldier that 
 ever saw service, was now flung. 
 
 I noticed, too, that every now and then while he sat be- 
 side me, talking low — for there were sentinels both in and 
 out the rude outhouse of the farm that had been turned into 
 our temporary prison — ^his eyes wandered to the gallant Vir- 
 ginian who had been felled down with himself, and who, 
 covered like himself with blood and dust, and with his broken 
 left arm hanging shattered, lay on the bare earth in a far-off 
 corner motionless and silent, with his lips pressed tight under 
 their long black moustaches, and such a mute unutterable 
 agony in his eyes as I never saw in any human face, though 
 I have seen deaths enough in the field and the sick-ward. 
 The rest of the Confederate captives were more ordinary 
 men (although from none was a single word of lament ever 
 wrenched) ; but this superb Virginian excited my interest, 
 and I asked his name, in that sort of languid curiosity at 
 passing things which comes with weakness, of the Killer, 
 whose glance so incessantly wandered towards him. 
 
 " Stuart Lane," he answered, curtly, and added no more ; 
 but if I ever saw in this world hatred, passionate, ungovern- 
 able, and intense, I saw it in the Killer's look as his glance 
 flashed once more on to the motionless form of the handsomest, 
 bravest, and most dauntless officer of his gallant regiment 
 that he had seen cut to pieces there on that accursed plateau. 
 
 " A major of yours T I asked him. " Ah, I thought so ; 
 he fought magnificently. How wretched he looks, though he 
 is too proud to show it !" 
 
 " He is thinking of — of his bride. He married three weeks 
 ago." 
 
 The words were simple enough, and spoken very quietly ; 
 but there was an unsteadiness, as of great effort, over them ; 
 and the heel of his heavy spurred jack-boot crashed into the 
 dry mud with a grinding crush, as though it trod terrible 
 memories down. Was it a woman who was between these 
 two comrades in arms and companions in adversity % I won- 
 dered if it were so, even in that moment of keen and heavy 
 anxiety for us all, as I looked at the face that bent very 
 
^ DEADLY r^ASti,''' S6i 
 
 kindly over the straw to which a shot in the knee and a 
 deep though not dangerous shoulder-wound bound me. It 
 was very different to the face of eight or nine years before — 
 browner, harder, graver far ; and yet there was a look as if 
 " sorrow had passed by there," and swept the old heartless- 
 ness and gay callousness away, burning them out in its fires. 
 Silence fell over us in that wretched outshed where we 
 were huddled together. I was hot with incipient fever, and 
 growing light-headed enough, though I knew what passed 
 before me, to speak to Dash once or twice in a dreamy idea 
 that we were in the Shires watching the run-in for the 
 " Soldiers' Blue Eiband." The minutes dragged very drearily 
 as the day wore itself away. There were the sullen mono- 
 tcfnous tramp of the sentinels to and from, and, from without, 
 the neighing of horses, the bugle calls, the roll of the drums, 
 the challenge of outposts — all the varied, endless sounds of a 
 camp ; for the farm-house in whose shed we were thrown 
 was the head-quarters p'O tern, of the Federal General who 
 commanded the Divisions that had cost the Killer's handful 
 of Horse so fearfully dear. We were prisoners, and escape 
 was impossible. All arms of course had been removed from 
 us ; most, like myself, were too disabled by wounds to have 
 been able to avail ourselves of escape had it been possible ; 
 and the guard was doubled both in and out the shed ; there 
 was nothing before any of us but the certainty of imprison- 
 ment in all its horrors in some far-off fortress or obscure gaol. 
 There was the possible chance that, since certain officers on 
 whom the JS'ortherners set great store had lately fallen into 
 Southern hands, an exchange might be effected : yet, on the 
 other side, graver apprehensions still existed, since we knew 
 that the General into whose camp we had been brought had 
 proclaimed his deliberate purpose of shooting the three next 
 Secessionist officers who fell into his power, in requital for 
 three of his own officers who had been shot, or were said to 
 have been shot, by a Southern raider. We knew very well 
 that, the threat made, it would be executed ; and each of us, 
 as the sun sank gradually down through the hot skies that 
 were purple and stormy after the burning day, knew too, that 
 it might never rise again to greet q>\\y sight. ]N"one of us 
 would have heeded whether a ball would hit or miss us in 
 the open, in a fair fight, in a man-to-man struggle; but the 
 
±(yt . ^'DEADL V DASH. '' 
 
 "boldest and most careless amidst us felt it very bitter to die 
 like dogs, to die as prisoners. 
 
 Even Deadly Dash, coolest, most hardened, most devil- 
 may-care of soldiers and of sinners, sat with his gaze fastened 
 on the slowly sinking light in the west with the shadow of a 
 great pain upon his face, while every now and then his glance 
 wandered to Stuart Lane, and a quick, irrepressible shudder 
 shook him whenever it did so. The Virginian never moved; 
 no sign of any sort escaped him ; but the passionate misery 
 that looked out of his eyes I never saw equalled, except, 
 perhaps, in the eyes of a stag that I once shot in Wallachia, 
 and that looked up with just such a look before it died. He 
 was thinking, no doubt, of the woman he loved — wooed 
 amidst danger, won amidst calamity, scarcely possessed ere 
 lost for ever ; — thinliing of her proud beauty, of her bridal 
 caress, that would never again touch his lips, of her fair life 
 that would perish with the destruction of his. 
 
 Exhaustion from the loss of blood made everything pass 
 dreamily, and yet with extraordinary clearness, before me. 
 I felt in a wakening dream, and had no sense whatever of 
 actual existence, and yet the whole scene was so intensely 
 vital and vivid to me, that it seemed burned into my very 
 brain itself. It was like the phantasmagoria of delirium, 
 utterly impalpaple, but yet intensely real. I had no power to 
 act or resist, but I seemed to have ten times redoubled power 
 to see and hear and feel ; I was aware of all that passed with 
 a hundred-fold more susceptibility to it than I ever felt in 
 health. I remember a total impossibility that came on me to 
 decide whether I was dreaming or was actually awake. Twi- 
 light fell, night came ; there was a change of sentries, and a 
 light, set up in a bottle, shed a glittering, feeble, yellow gleam 
 over the interior of the shed, on the dark Eembrandt faces of 
 the Southerners and on the steel of the guards' bayonets. 
 And I recollect that the Killer, who sat by the tossed straw 
 on which they had flung me, laughed the old, low, sweet, 
 half-insolent laugh that I had known so well in early days. 
 ** II faut souffrir pour etre beau ! We are picturesque, at any 
 rate, quite Salvatoresque ! Little Dickey would make a good 
 thing of us if he could paint us now. He is alive, I sup- 
 pose]" 
 
 I answered him I believe in the affirmative ; but the name 
 
« ' DEADL y dash:' 263 
 
 of that little Bohemian of the Brush, who had used to he 
 our hutt and proUge in England, added a haze the more to 
 my senses. By this time I had difficulty to hold together 
 the thread of how, and when, and why I had thus met again 
 the face that looked out on me so strangely famiharly in the 
 dull, sickly trembling of the feeble light of this black noisome 
 shed in the heart of Federal Divisions. 
 
 Through that haze I heard the challenp^e of the sentries ; 
 I saw a soldier prod with his bayonet a young lad who had 
 fainted from hemorrhage, and whom he swore at for sham- 
 ming. I was conscious of the entrance of a group of officers 
 whom I knew afterwards to be the l!^orthern General and his 
 staff, who came to look at their captives. I knew, but only 
 dreamily, still, that these men were the holders of our fate, 
 and would decide on it then and there. I felt a listless in- 
 difference, utter and opium-like, as to what became of me, and 
 I remember that Stuart Lane, and Dash himself, rose together, 
 and stood looking with a serene and haughty disdain down 
 on the conquerors who held their lives in the balance — ^with- 
 out a trace of pain upon their faces now. I remember how 
 like they looked to stags that turn at bay; like the stags, 
 outnumbered, hunted down, with the blood of open wounds 
 and the dust of the long chase on them ; but, like the deer, 
 too, uncowed, and game to the finish. 
 
 Very soon their doom was given. Seven were to be sent 
 back with a flag of truce to be exchanged for the seven Fe- 
 deral officers they wanted out of the Southerners' hands, ten 
 were to be transmitted to the prisons of the North, — three 
 were to be shot at day-dawn in the reprisal before named. 
 The chances of life and of death were to be drawn for by 
 lottery, and at once. 
 
 l!^ot a sound escaped the Virginians, and not a muscle of 
 their English Leader's face moved : the prisoners, to a man, 
 heard impassively, with a grave and silent dignity, that they 
 were to throw the die in hazard, with death for the croupier 
 and life for the stake. 
 
 The General and his staff waited to amuse themselves with 
 personally watching the turns of this new Rouge et Noir ; 
 gambling in lives was a little refreshing change that sultry, 
 dreary, dun-coloured night, camped amongst burnt-out farms 
 and wasted corn-lands. 
 
f 64 ^ •* DEADL Y dash:' 
 
 Slips of paper with " exchange," " death," and " imprisoil- 
 nient " written on them in the nunihers needed were made 
 ready, rolled up, and tossed into an empty canteen ; each man 
 was required to come forward and draw, I alone excepted 
 because I was an officer of the British Army. I remember 
 passionately arguing that they had no right to exempt me, 
 since I had been in the fray, and had killed three men on my 
 own hook, and would have killed thirty more had I had the 
 chance ; but I was perhaps incoherent in the fever that was 
 fast seizing all my limbs from the rack of undressed wounds ; 
 at any rate, the Northerners took no heed save to force me 
 into silence, and the drawing began. As long as I live I 
 shall see that night in remembrance with hideous distinctness : 
 the low blackened shed with its foetid odours from the cattle 
 lately foddered there ; the yellow light flaring dully here and 
 there ; the glisten of the cruel rifles ; the heaps of stra;w and 
 hay soaked with clotted blood ; the group of Union Officers 
 standing near the doorway; and the war-worn indomitable 
 faces of the Southerners, with the fairer head and slighter form 
 of their English Chief standing out slightly in front of all. 
 
 The Conscription of Death commenced ; a Federal private 
 took the paper from each man as he drew it, and read the 
 word of destiny aloud. Not one amongst them faltered or 
 paused one moment ; each went, — even those most exhausted, 
 most in agony, — with a calm and steady step, as they would 
 have marched up to take the Flag of the Stars and Bars from 
 Lee or Longstreet. Not one waited a second's breath before 
 he plunged his hand into the fatal lottery. 
 
 Deadly Dash was the first called : there was not one sha- 
 dow of anxiety upon his face ; it was calm without eflbrt, 
 careless without bravado, simply, entirely indifferent. They 
 took his paper and read the words of safety and of life — 
 *' Exchange." Then, for one instant, a glory of hope flashed 
 like the sun into his eyes — to die the next ; die utterly. 
 
 Three followed him, and they all drew the fiat for deten- 
 tion ; the fifth called was Stuart Lane. 
 
 Let him have suffered as he would, he gave no sign of it 
 now ; he approached with his firm, bold cavalry step, and his 
 head haughtily lifted ; the proud, fiery, dauntless, Cavalier of 
 ideal and of romance. Without a tremor in his wrist he 
 drew his paper out and gave it. 
 
" DEADL Y dash:' 20$ - 
 
 One word alone fell distinct on the silence like the hiss of 
 a shot through the night — " Death /" 
 
 He howed his head slightly as if in assent, and stepped 
 backward — still without a sign. 
 
 His English Chief gave him one look — it was that of mer- 
 ciless exultation, of brutal joy, of dark, Cain-like, murderous 
 hate ; but it passed, passed quickly : Dash's head sank on 
 his chest, and on his face there was the shadow, I think, of a 
 terrible struggle — the shadow, I know, of a great remorse. 
 He strove with his longing greed for this man's destruction ; 
 he knew that he thirsted to see him die. 
 
 The Virginian stood erect and silent : a single night and 
 the strong and gallant life, the ardent passions, the chivalrous 
 courage to do and dare, and the love that was in its first fond 
 hours, would all be quenched in him as though they had 
 never been ; but he was a soldier, and he gave no sign that 
 his death-warrant was not as dear to him as his bridal-night 
 had been. Even his conquerors cast one glance of admira- 
 tion on him ; it was only his leader who felt for him no pang 
 of reverence and pity. 
 
 The lottery continued; the hazard was played out; life and 
 death were scattered at reckless chance amidst the twenty who 
 were the playthings of that awful gaming ; all had been done 
 in perfect silence on the part of the condemned; not one seemed 
 to think or to feel for himself, and in those who were sent out 
 to their grave not a grudge lingered against their comrades of 
 happier fortune. Deadly Dash, whose fate was release, alone 
 stood with his head sunk, thoughtful and weary. 
 
 The three condemned to execution were remanded to separate 
 and solitary confinement, treated already as felons for that one 
 short night which alone remained to them. As his guards re- 
 moved him, Stuart Lane paused slightly, and signed to his chief 
 to approach him; he held out his hand to Dash, and his voice 
 was very low, though it came to my ear where they stood beside 
 me: "We were rivals once, but we may be friends now. As 
 you have loved her, be pitiful to her when you tell her of my 
 death, — God knows it may be hers ! As you have loved her, feel 
 what it is to die without one last look on her face !'' 
 
 Then, and then only, his bronze cheek grew white as a 
 woman's, and his whole frame shook with one great silent sob; 
 his guard forced him on, and his listener had made him no pro- 
 
2o6 **DEADL V dash:* 
 
 mise, no farewell; neither had he taken his hand. He had heard 
 in silence, with a dark and evil gloom alone upon him. 
 
 The Federal General sharply summoned him from his musing, 
 as the chief of those to be exchanged on the morrow under a 
 white flag of parley; there were matters to he stated to and to 
 be arranged with him. 
 
 " I will only see you alone. General," he answered, curtly. 
 
 The Northerner stared startled, and casting a glance over the 
 redoubtable leader of horse, whose grey feather had become 
 known and dreaded, thought of possible assassination. Deadly 
 Dash laughed his old light, ironic, contemptuous laugh. 
 
 " A wounded unarmed man can scarcely kill you ! Have as 
 many of your staff about you as you please, but let none of my 
 Virginians be present at our interview." 
 
 The !N"ortherners thought he intended to desert to them, or betray 
 some movement of importance, and assented; and he went out 
 with them from the cattle-shed into the hot, stormy night, and 
 the Southerners who were condemned to death and detention 
 looked after him with a long, wistful, dog-like look. They had 
 been with him in so many spirit-stirring days and nights of peril, 
 and they knew that never would they meet again. He had given 
 not one of them a word of adieu; he had killed too many to be 
 touched by his soldiers' loss. "Who could expect pity from 
 Deadly Dash? 
 
 An hour passed; I was removed under a guard to a some- 
 what better lodging in the granary, where a surgeon hastily 
 dressed my wounds, and left me on a rough pallet with a jug of 
 water at my side, and the sentinel for my only watcher, bidding 
 me "sleep." Sleep! I could not have slept for my ransom. 
 Though life had hardened me, and made me sometimes, as I fear, 
 callous enough, I could not forget those who were to die when the 
 sun rose; specially, I could not forget that gallant Virginian to 
 whom life was so precious, yet who gave himself with so calm a 
 fortitude to his fate. The rivalry, I thought, must be deep and 
 cruel, to make the man from whom he had won what they both 
 loved turn from him in hatred, even in such extremity as his. 
 On the brink of a comrade's grave, feud might surely have been 
 forgotten. 
 
 All that had just passed was reeling deliriously through my 
 brain, and I was panting in the sheer irritation and exhaustion 
 of gunshot wounds, when through the gloom Dash entered 
 
''DEADLY dash:' 207 
 
 the granary, closely guarded, but allowed to be with me on 
 account of our common country. IS'ever was I more thankful 
 to see a familiar face from home than to see his through the 
 long watches of that burning, heavy, interminable night. He 
 refused to rest; he sat by me tending me as gently as a woman, 
 though he was suffering acutely himself from the injuries re- 
 ceived in the course of the day; he watched me unweariedly, 
 though often and often his gaze and his thoughts wandered far 
 from me, as he looked out through the open granary door, past 
 the form of the sentinel, out to the starry solemn skies, the deep 
 woods, and the dark silent land over which the stars were brood- 
 ing, large and clear. 
 
 Was he thinking of the Virginian whose life would die out 
 for ever with the fading of those stars, or of the woman whom 
 he had lost, whose love was the doomed soldier's, and would 
 never be his own, though the grave closed over his rival with 
 the morrow's sun? Dreamily, half unconsciously, in the excite- 
 ment of fever, I asked him of her of whom I knew nothing : 
 
 " Did you love that woman so well?" 
 
 His eyes were still fixed on the distant darkening skies, and 
 he answered quietly, as though rather to his own thoughts than 
 my words: " Yes; I love her — as I never loved in that old life 
 in England ; as we never love but once, I think." 
 
 "And she?" 
 
 "And she — has but one thought in the world — Am." 
 
 His voice, as he answered, now grated with dull^ dragging 
 misery over the words. 
 
 " Had she so much beauty that she touched you like this?" 
 
 He smiled slightly, a faint, mournful smile, unutterably sad. 
 
 "Yes; she is very lovely, but her beauty is the least rare 
 charm. She is a woman for whom a man woiild live his greatest, 
 and if he cannot live for her — ^may — die." 
 
 The utterance was very slow, and seemed to lie on me like 
 a hand on my lips compelling me to silence; he had forgotten 
 all, except his memory of her, and where he sat with his eyes 
 fixed outward on the drifting clouds that floated across the stars^ 
 I saw his lips quiver once, and I heard him murmur half aloud : 
 " My darling ! My darling ! You will know how I loved you 
 iUn " 
 
 And the silence was never broken between us, but he sat 
 motionless thus all the hours through, lookiog out at the deep 
 
2o8 " DEADL y DASW 
 
 still woods, and the serene and lustrous skies, till the first 
 beams of the sun shone over the hills in the east, and I 
 shuddered, where I lay, at its light; — ^for I knew it was the 
 signal of death. 
 
 Then he arose, and bent towards me, and the kindly eyes of 
 old looked down on mine. 
 
 " Dear old fellow, the General expects me at dawn. I must 
 leave you just now; say good-bye." 
 
 His hand closed on mine, he looked on me one moment 
 longer, a little lingeringly, a little wistfully, then he turned and 
 went out with his guard; went out into the young day that was 
 just breaking on the world. 
 
 I watched his shadow as it faded, and I saw that the sun had 
 risen wholly ; and I thought of those who were to die with the 
 morning light. 
 
 All was very calm for awhile ; then the beat of a drum rolled 
 through the quiet of the dawn, and the measured tramp of armed 
 men sounded audibly; my heart stood still, my lips felt parched 
 — I knew the errand of that column marching so slowly across 
 the parched tm^f. A little while longer yet, and I heard the sharp 
 ring of the ramrods being withdrawn, and the dull echo of the 
 charge being rammed down: with a single leap, as thought the bul- 
 lets were through me, I sprang weak as I was, from my wretched 
 pallet, and staggered to the open doorway, leaning there against 
 the entrance, powerless and spell-bound. I saw the file of soldiers 
 loading; I saw the empty coffm-shells; I saw three men standing 
 bound, their form distinct against the clear, bright haze of 
 morning, and the fresh foliage of the woods. Two of them 
 were Virginians, but the third was not Stuart Lane. 
 
 With a great cry I sprang forward, but the guards seized my 
 arms and held me, helpless as a woman, in their gripe. He whom 
 we had called Deadly Dash heard, and looked up and smiled. 
 His face was tranquil and full of light, as though the pure peace 
 of the day shone there. 
 
 The gripe of the sentinels held me as if in fetters of iron : the 
 world seemed to rock and reel under me, a sea of blood seemed 
 eddying before my eyes; the young day was dawning, and 
 murder was done in its early hours, and I was held there to look 
 on — its witness, yet powerless to arrest it ! I heard the formula 
 — so hideous then ! — " Make ready !" — ^'' Present !" — " 1^'ire !" I 
 saw the long line of steel tubes belch out their smoke raad flame. 
 
" Deadl V dash:' 209 
 
 I heard tlie sullen eclio of tlie report roll down from tlie moim- 
 tains above. When the mist cleared away, the three figures 
 stood no longer clear against the sunlight; they had fallen. 
 
 With the mad violence of desperation, I wrenched myself 
 from my guards, and staggered to him where he lay; he was not 
 quite dead yet; the balls had passed though his lungs, but he 
 breathed still; his eyes were unclosed and the gleam of a 
 last farewell came in them. He smiled slightly, faintly, once 
 more. 
 
 " She will know how I loved her now. Tell her I died for 
 her," he said, softly, while his gaze looked upwards to the golden 
 sun-rays rising in the east. 
 
 And with these words life passed away, the smile still linger- 
 ing gently on his lips; — and I knew no more, for I fell like 
 a man stunned down by him where he was stretched be- 
 side the grave that they had hewn for him ere he was yet 
 dead. 
 
 I knew when I saw him there, as well as I knew by detail 
 long after, that he had offered his life for Stuart Lane's, and 
 that it had been accepted; the Virginian, ignorant of the sacri- 
 fice made for him, had been sent to the Southern lines during 
 the night, told by the Northerners that he was pardoned on his 
 parole to return in his stead a distinguished Federal ofiicer 
 lately captured by him. He knew nothing, dreamt nothing, 
 of the exchange by which his life was given back to the woman 
 who loved him, when his English Leader died in his place as 
 the sun rose over the fresh summer world, never again to rise 
 for those whose death-shot rang sullen and shrill through its 
 silence. 
 
 So Deadly Dash died, and his grave is nameless and unknown 
 there under the shadow of the great Virginian forests. He was 
 outlawed, condemned, exiled, and the world would see no good 
 in him; sins were on him heavily, and vices lay darkly at his 
 door; but when I think of that grave in the South, where 
 the grass grows so rankly now, and only the wild deer pauses, 
 I doubt if there was not that in him which may well shame 
 the best amongst us. We never knew him j ustly till he perished 
 there. 
 
 And my friend who told me this said no more, but took up 
 
 U 
 
210 ** DEADL V DASH}' 
 
 his hrule-gueule regretfully. The story is given as lie gave itj 
 and the States could whisper from the depths of their silent 
 woods many tales of sacrifice as generous, of fortitude as great. 
 That when he had related it he was something ashamed of hav- 
 ing felt it so much, is true; and you must refer the unusual 
 weakness, as he did, to the fact that he told it on the off-day of 
 the Derby, after having put a cracker on Wild Charlie. A suffi- 
 cient apology for any number of frailties ! 
 
THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING; 
 
 OB, 
 
 COACHES AND COUSINSHIP. i 
 
 " Where the devil shall I go this Long 1 Paris is too hot j 
 the inside of my adorable Chateau des Fleurs would give one 
 a lively idea of the feelings of eels in a frying-pan. Eome*s 
 only fit to melt down pufly cardinals, as jocks set themselves 
 before the kitchen fire preparatory to the Spring Meetings. 
 In Switzerland there's nothing fit to eat. Spain might be the 
 ticket — the Andalusians are a good-looking lot, but they 
 haven't a notion of beer. Scotland I daren't enter, because I 
 know I should get married under their rascally laws. I'd go 
 to the Bads, but the Y. P.'s fillies say they mean to do 'em 
 this summer, and I won't risk meeting them if I know it ; 
 the baits they set to catch the unsuspecting are quite frightful. 
 Wliere the devil shall I go V* 
 
 So spoke Sydenham Morton, whilom Captain of Eton, now 
 in due course having passed up to King's, discussing ham-pie 
 and audit, devils and coffee, while the June s^""^ streamed 
 through the large oriel windows. 
 
 " To the devil, I fear, if you only find your proper frater- 
 nity," said a man, coming in. Oak was never sported by 
 Sydie, except when he was rattling certain little squares of 
 ivory in boxes lined with green felt. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Iveane, is that you^ Come in." 
 
 The permission was needless, insomuch as Keane was already 
 in and down on a rocking-chair. 
 
 14—2 
 
iii THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKING. 
 
 " One o'clock, and only just begun your breakfast ! I liav6 
 finisbed more tban lialf my day's Avork." 
 
 " I dare say," answered Sydie ; " but one sliining ligbt like 
 you, monseigneur, is enough for a college. "Why should I 
 exert m^^self % I swore I hadn't four marks a year, and I've 
 my fellowship for telling the furbelow. "We all go in for the 
 dolce here, except j^ou, and you're such a patent machine for 
 turning out Q.E.D.s by the dozen, that you can no more help 
 working than the bedmaker can help taking my tea and say- 
 ing the cat did it, and * May she never be forgiven if she ever 
 so much as looked at that there blessed lock.' I say, find a 
 Q.E.D. for me to the most vexatious problem, where I'm to 
 go this Long T 
 
 " Go a quiet reading tour ; mark out a regular plan, and 
 travel somewhere rugged and lonely, with not a crinoline, or 
 a trout-stream, or a pack of hounds within a hundred miles ; 
 the middle of Stonehenge, for example, or with the lighthouse 
 men out at the Smalls or Eddy stone. You'd do wonders 
 when you came back, Sydie." 
 
 Sydie shook his head and puffed gravely at his pipe. 
 
 " Thank you, sir. Cramming's not my line. As for history, 
 I don't see anything particularly interesting in the blackguard- 
 isms of men all dust and ashes and gelatine now ; if I were 
 the Prince of Wales, I might think it my duty to inquire into 
 the characters of my grandfathers ; but not being that indivi- 
 dual, I find the Derby list much more suited to my genius. 
 As for the classics, they won't help me to ask for my dinner 
 at Tortoni's, nor to ingratiate myself with the women at the 
 Maison Doree ; and I prefer following Ovid's counsels, and 
 enjoying the Falernian of life represented in these days by 
 milk-punch, to plodding through the De Officiis. As for 
 mathematics, it may be something very grand to draw triangles 
 and circles till A meets B because G is as long as D ; but I 
 know, when I did the same operation in chalk when I was a 
 smaU on the nursery floor, my nurse (who might have gone 
 along with the barbarian who stuck Archimedes) called me 
 an idle brat. Well, I say, about the Long ? Where are you 
 going, most grave and reverend seignior T 
 
 " AYhere there are no impertinent boys, if there be such a 
 paradise on earth," rejoined Keane, lighting his pipe. " I go 
 to my moor, of course, for the 12th, but until then I haven't 
 
THE GENERALS MATCH-MAKING. 213 
 
 made up my mind. I think I shall scamper over South 
 America ; I want freshening up, and I've a great fancy to see 
 those buried cities, not to mention a chance of buffalo hunting." 
 " Travelling's such a bore," interrupted Sydie, stretching 
 himself out like an india-rubber tube. " Talk of the cherub 
 that's always sitting up aloft to watch over poor Jack, there 
 are always ten thousand demons watching over the life of any 
 luckless ^othen; there are the custom-house men, whose 
 natural prey he becomes, and the hotel-keepers who fasten, on 
 him to suck his life-blood, and there are the mosquitoes, and 
 other things less minute but not less agonising; and there 
 are guides and muleteers, and waiters and ciceroni — oh, hang 
 it ! travelling's a dreadful bore, if it were only for the inevit- 
 able widow with four daughters whom you've danced with 
 once at a charity ball, who rushes up to you on the Boule- 
 vards or a Ehine steamer, and tacks herself on to you, and 
 whom it's well for you if you can shake off when you scatter 
 tlie dust of the city from the sole of your foot." 
 " You can't chatter, can you?" 
 
 " Yes ; my frsenum was happily cut when I was a baby. 
 Fancy what a loss the world would have endured if it hadn't 
 been ! " said Sydie, lazily shutting his half-closed blue eyes. 
 " I say, the governor has been bothering my life out to go 
 down to St. Crucis ! he's an old brick, you know, and has the 
 primest dry in the kingdom. I wish you'd come, will you % 
 There's capital fishing and cricketing, and you'd keep me com- 
 pany. Do. You shall have the best mount in the kingdom, 
 and the General will do you no end of good on Hippocrates' 
 rule — contrarieties cure contrarieties !" 
 
 " I'll think about it ; but you know I prefer solitude gene- 
 rally ; misanthropical, I admit, but decidedly lucky for me, 
 as my companions through life will always be my ink-stand, 
 my terrier, and my papers. I have never wished for any 
 other yet, and I hope I never shall. Are you going to smoke 
 and drink audit on that sofa all day T 
 
 "No," answered Sydie, "I'm going to take a turn atbeer 
 and Brown's for a change. WeU, I shall take you down with 
 me on Tuesday, sir, so that's settled." 
 
 Keane laughed, and after some few words on the business 
 that had brought him thither, went across the quad to his 
 own rooms to plunge into the intricacies of rourrier and 
 
214 ^HE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING, 
 
 Laplace, or give the vigour of his brain to stuffing some young 
 goose's empty head, or cramming some idle young dog with 
 ballast enough to carry him through the shoals and quicksands 
 of his Greats. 
 
 Gerald Keane was a mathematical Coach, and had taken 
 high honours — a rare thing for a Kingsman to do, for are 
 they not, by their own confession, the laziest disciples of the 
 Dolce in the whole of Granta, invariably bumped and caught 
 out, and from sheer idleness letting other men beat Lord's and 
 shame the Oxford Eleven, and graduate with Double Firsts, 
 while they lie perdus in the shades of Holy Henry] Keane, 
 however, was the one exception to the rule. He was dread- 
 fully wild, as ladies say, for his first term or two, though 
 equally eloquent at the Union ; then his family, exulting in 
 the accuracies of their prophecies regarding his worthlessness, 
 and somebody else daring him to go in for honours, his pluck 
 was put up, and he set himself to work to show them all what 
 he could do if he chose. Once roused to put out his powers, 
 he liked using them ; the bother of the training over, it is no 
 trouble to keep place as stroke-oar ; and now men pointed him 
 out in the Senate House, and at the Senior Fellows' table, and 
 he bid fair to rank with the writer on Jasher and the author 
 of the Inductive Sciences. 
 
 People called him very cold. It was popularly averred that 
 he had no more feeling than Eoubilliac's or Thorwaldsen's 
 statues; but as he was a great favourite with the under- 
 grads, and always good-natured to them, there were a few men 
 who doubted the theory, though lie never tried to refute or 
 dispute it. 
 
 Of all the young fellows, the one Keane liked the best, and 
 to whom he was kindest, was Sydenham Morton — Sydie to 
 everybody in Granta, from the little fleuriste opposite in King's 
 Parade, to the V. P.'s wife, who petted him because his uncle 
 was a millionaire — ^the dearest fellow in the world, according 
 to all the Cambridge young ladies — the darling of all the 
 milliner and confectioner girls in Trumpington-street and Petty 
 Cury — the best chap going among the kindred spirits, who got 
 gated, and lectured and rusticated, for skying over to New- 
 market, or pommelling bargees, or taking a lark over at Cherry- 
 hinton — the best-dressed, fastest, and most charming of Can- 
 tabs, as he himself would gravely assure you. 
 
THE GENERAVS MA TCH-MAKING. 215 
 
 They were totally dissimilar, and far asunder in position ; 
 but an affair on the slope of the Matterhorn, when the boy 
 had saved the elder man's life, had riveted attachment between 
 them, and bridged over the difference of their academical rank. 
 
 The Commencement came and went, with its speeches, and 
 its H.E.H. Chancellor, and its pretty women gliding among 
 the elms of ^Neville's Court (poor Leslie Ellis's daily haunt), 
 filling the grim benches of the Senate House, and flitting 
 past the carved benches of King's Chapel. Granta was hence- 
 forth a desert to all Cambridge belles ; they could walk down 
 Trumpington- street without meeting a score of little straw 
 hats, and Trumpington-street became as odious as Sahara ; the 
 " darling Backs" were free to them, and; of course, they who, 
 by all relations, from those of Genesis to those of Vanity 
 Fair, have never cared, save for fruit dSjendu, saw nothing to 
 admire in the trees, and grass, and river, minus outriggers 
 and collegians. There was a general exodus : Masters' red 
 hoods, Fellows Commoners' gold-lace. Fellows' gown and 
 mortar boards, morning chapel surplices, and under grads' 
 straw hats and cut-away coats, all vanished from court and 
 library, street and cloister. Cambridge was empty; the married 
 Dons and their families went off to country-houses or Ehine 
 steamers ; Fellows went touring with views to mediaeval archi- 
 tecture, Eoman remains, Greek inscriptions, Paris laisser aller, 
 or Norwegian fishing, according to their tastes and habits; 
 under-grads scattered themselves over the face of the globe, 
 and were to be found in knots of two or three calling for stout 
 in Vefour's, kicking up a row with Austrian gendarmerie, 
 chalking up effigies of Eomba on Italian walls, striding up 
 every mountain from Skiddaw to the Pic du Midi, burrowing 
 like rabbits in a warren for reading purposes on Dartmoor, 
 kissing sunny-haired Gretchens in German hostelries, swing- 
 ing through the Vaterland with knapsacks and sticks, doing 
 a walking tour — in fact, swarming everywhere with their im- 
 possible French, and hearty voices, and lithe English muscle, 
 Granta marked on them as distinctly as an M.E. waistcoat 
 marks an Anglican, or utter ignorance of modern politics a 
 ^' great classic." 
 
 Cambridge had emptied itself of the scores of naughty 
 boys that lie in the arms of Mater, and on Tuesday Keane 
 and Sydie were shaking and rattling over those dreadful ner- 
 
2i6 THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING, 
 
 vous Eastern Counties tenders, tlirough that picturesque and 
 beautiful country that does permutations with such laudable 
 perseverance on pollards, fens, and flats — flats, fens, and pol- 
 lards — at the snail's pace that, according to the G.E.E., we 
 must believe to be " express." 
 
 " I wrote and told the governor you were coming down 
 with me, sir," said Sydie, hanging up his hat. " I didn't tell 
 him what a trouble I had to make you throw over South 
 America for a fortnight, and come and taste his curry at the 
 Eeeches. You'll lilie the old boy ; he's as hot and choleric, 
 and as genial and good-hearted, as any old brick that ever 
 walked. He was born as sweet-tempered and soft-mouthed 
 as mamma when an eldest son waltzes twice with Adeliza, 
 and the pepper's been put into him by the curry-powder, 
 the gentleman-like transportation, and the unlimited command 
 over black devils, enjoyed by gentlemen of the H.E.I.C.S." 
 
 " A nabob uncle," thought Keane. " Oh, I see, yellow, 
 dyspeptic, always boring one with * How to govern India,' and 
 recollections of * When I served with l^apier.' What a fool 
 I was to let Sydie persuade me to go. A month in Lima and 
 the Pampas would be much pleasanter." 
 
 " He came over last year," continued Sydie, in blissful igno- 
 rance, " and bought the Beeches, a very jolly place, only he's 
 crammed it with everything anybody suggested, and tried 
 anything that any farmer recommended, so that the house 
 and the estate present a peculiar compendium of all theories 
 of architecture, and a general exhibition of all sorts of tastes. 
 He's his hobbies ; pouncing on and apprehending small boys 
 is one of 'em, for which practice he is endeared to the youth 
 of St. Crucis as the * old cove,' the Injian devil, and like 
 afi'ectionate cognomens. But the general's weak point is me — 
 me and little Fay." 
 
 " His mare, I suppose ?" 
 
 " His mare ! — bless my heart, no ! — his mare !" And Sydie 
 lay back, and laughed silently. " His mare ! By George ! 
 what would she say % She's a good deal too lively a young 
 lady to run in harness for anybody, though she's soft-mouthed 
 enough when she's led. Mare ! No, Eay's his niece — my 
 cousin. Her father and my father went to glory when we 
 were both smalls, and left us in legacy to the General, and a 
 pretty pot of n^oney the legacy has cost him," 
 
THE GENERAL'S MA TCH-MAKING. 2 1 7 
 
 " Your cousin, indeed ! The name's more like a mare's 
 than a girl's," answered Keane, thinking to himself. "A 
 cousin ! I just wish I'd known that. One of those Indian 
 girls, I bet, tanned brown as a berry, flirts a outrance, has 
 run the gauntlet of all the Calcutta balls, been engaged to men 
 in all the Arms, talks horridly broad Anglo-Indian-English. 
 I know the style." 
 
 The engine screamed, and pulled up at the St. Crucis 
 station, some seventy miles farther on, lying in tlie midst of 
 Creswickian landscapes, with woodlands, and cottages, and 
 sweet fresh stretches of meadow-land, such as do one's heart 
 good after hard days and late nights in dust and gaslight. 
 
 " Deuced fine points," said Sydie, taking the ribbons of a 
 high-stepping bay that had brought one of the neatest pos- 
 sible traps to take him and Keane to the Eeeches, and spring- 
 ing, in all his glory, to the box, than which no imperial 
 throne could have offered to him one-half so delightful a 
 seat. " Governor never keeps screws. What a crying shame 
 we're not allowed to keep the sorriest hack at King's. That 
 comes of gentlemen slipping into shoes that were meant for 
 beggars. Hallo ! there are the old beech-trees ; I vow I can 
 almost taste the curry and dry from looking at them." 
 
 In dashed the bay through the park-gates, sending the 
 shingle flying up in small simooms, and the rooks cawing in 
 supreme surprise from their nests in the branches of the beech- 
 trees. 
 
 "Hallo, my ancient, how are you^" began Sydie to the 
 butler, while that stately person expanded into a smile of 
 welcome. " Down, dog, down ! 'Pon my life, the old place 
 looks very jolly. What have you hung all that armour up 
 for ; — to make believe our ancestors dwelt in these marble 
 halls ? How devilish dusty I am. Where's the General ? 
 Didn't know we were coming till next train. Fay ! Eay ! 
 where are you 1 Ashton, where's Miss Morton T 
 
 "Here, Sydie dear," cried the young lady in question, 
 rushing across the hall with the most ecstatic delight, and 
 throwing herself into the Cantab's arms, who received hei 
 with no less cordiality, and kissed her straightway, regardless 
 of the presence of Keane, the butler, and Harris. 
 
 " Oh, Sydie," began the young lady, breathlessly, " I'm 
 
2i8 THE GENERAL' S MATCH-MAKING. 
 
 so deliglited you're come. There's tlie arcliery fete, and a 
 pic-nic at Shallowton, and an election ball over at Coverdale, 
 and I want you to dance with me, and to try the new billiard- 
 table, and to come and see my aviary, and to teach me pistol- 
 shooting (because Julia Dupuis can shoot splendidly, and 
 talks of joining the Eifles), and to show me how to do Euclid, 
 and to amuse me, and to play mtli me, and to tell me which is 
 
 the prettiest of Snowdrop's pups to be saved, and to ." 
 
 She stopped suddenly, and dropped from enthusiastic tirade 
 to subdued surprise, as she caught sight of Keane for the first 
 time. " Oh, Sydie, why did you not introduce me to your 
 friend % How rude I have been !" 
 
 " Mr. Keane, my cousin, the torment of my existence, Miss 
 Morton in public. Little Fay in private hfe. There, you know 
 one another now. I can't say any more. Do tell me where 
 the governor is." 
 
 " Mr. Keane, what can you think of me T cried Fay. " Any 
 friend of Sydenham's is most welcome to the Beeches, and 
 my uncle will scold me frightfully for giving you such a re- 
 ception. Please do forgive me, I was so delighted to see my 
 cousin." 
 
 "Which I can fully enter into, having a weakness for Sydie 
 myself," smiled Keane. " I am sure he is very fortunate in 
 being the cause of such an excuse." 
 
 Keane said it ipar complaisance, but rather carelessly ; young 
 ladies, as a class, being one of his aversions. He looked at 
 Fay Morton, however, and saw she was not an Indianised 
 girl after all. She was not yellow, but, au contraire, had 
 waving fair hair, long dark eyes, and a mischievous, sunny 
 face — 
 
 A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, 
 And sweet as English air could make her. 
 
 *' Where's the governor, Fay T reiterated Sydie. 
 
 " Here, my dear boy. Thought of your old uncle the first 
 thing, Sydie ? God bless my soul, how well you look ! 
 Confound you, why didn't you tell me what train you were 
 coming by ? Devil take you, Ashton, why's there no fire in 
 the hall ? Thought it was warm, did you ) Hum ! more fool 
 you then." 
 
THE GENERA VS MA TCH-MAKING. 219 
 
 " Uncle dear," said Miss Fay, " here is Sydie's friend, Mr* 
 Keane ; you are being as rude as I have been." 
 
 The General, at this conjuration, swung sharp round, a 
 stout, hale, handsome old fellow, with grey moustaches and a 
 high colour, holding a spade in his hand and clad in a linen 
 coat. 
 
 " Bless my soul, sir," cried the General, shaking Keane's 
 hand with the greatest possible energy, " charmed to see you — 
 delighted, ^pon my honour ; only hope you're come to stay 
 till Christmas ; there are plenty of bachelors' dens. Devil 
 take me ! of what was I thinking % I was pleased to see that 
 boy, I suppose. More fool I, you'll say, a lazy, good-for- 
 nothing young dog like him. Don't let me keep you stand- 
 ing in the hall. Cursed cold, isn't it % and there's Little Fay 
 in muslin % Ashton, send some hot water into the west room 
 
 for Mr. — Mr. Confound you, Sydie, why didn't you tell 
 
 — I mean, introduce me % — Mr. Keane. Luncheon will be 
 on the table in ten minutes. Like curry, Mr. Keane ? There, 
 get along, Sydie, you foolish boy ; you can tallc to Fay, after 
 luncheon." 
 
 " Sydie," whispered Fay, an hour before dinner, when she 
 had teased the Cantab's life out of him till he had consented 
 to pronounce judgment on the puppies, "Avhat a splendid head 
 that man has you brought with you ; he'd do for Plato, with 
 that grand calm brow and lofty unapproachable look. Who 
 is her 
 
 " The greatest philosopher of modern times," responded 
 her cousin, solemnly. " A condensation of Solon, Thales, 
 Plutarch, Seneca, Cicero, LucuUus, Bion, Theophrastes and 
 Co. ; such a giant of mathematical knowledge, and all other 
 knowledge, too, that every day, when he passes under Bacon's 
 Gate, we are afraid the old legend will come to pass, and it 
 will tumble down as flat as a pancake ; a homage to him, but 
 a loss to Cambridge." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Miss Fay impatiently. , " (I like that 
 sweet little thing with the black nose best, dear.) Who is 
 he? What is he? How old is he? What's his name? 
 Where does he live ?" 
 
 " Gently, young woman," cried Sydie. " He is Tutor and 
 Fellow of King's and a great gun besides ; he's some twenty- 
 ftve years older than you. His name on the rolls is Gerald, 
 
220 THE GENERAL'S MA TCH-MAKING. 
 
 I believe, and he dwells in the shadow of Mater, beyond the 
 icach of my cornet ; for which fact, not being musically in- 
 clined, he is barbarian enough to return thanks daily in 
 chapel." 
 
 " I am sorry he is come. It was stupid of you to bring 
 him." 
 
 " Wherefore, ma coiisine ? Are you afraid of him ? You 
 needn't be. Young ladies are too insignificant atoms of crea- 
 tion for him to criticise. He'll no more expect sense from you 
 than from Snowdrop and her pups." 
 
 " Afraid !" repeated Fay, with extreme indignation. " I 
 shoidd like to see any man of whom I should feel afraid ! If 
 he doesn't like fun and nonsense, I pity him ; but if he de- 
 spise me ever so much for it, I shall enjoy myself before him, 
 and in spite of him. I was sorry you brought him, because 
 he will take you away when I want you all to myself ; and 
 he looks so haughty, that " 
 
 " You are afraid of him, Tay, and won't own iti" 
 
 " I am not,''' reiterated Fay, impetuously ; " and I will 
 smoke a cigar with him after dinner, to show you I am not 
 one bit." 
 
 " I bet you six pair of gloves you do no such thing, young 
 lady." 
 
 " Done. Do keep the one with a black nose, Sydie ; and 
 yet that little liver-coloured darling is too pretty to be killed. 
 Suppose we save them all ? Snowdrop will be so pleased." 
 
 Whereon Fay kissed all the little snub noses with the deep- 
 est affection, and was caught in the act by Keane and the 
 General. 
 
 *' There's that child with her arms full of dogs," said the 
 General, beaming with satisfaction at sight of his niece. "She's 
 a little spoilt, wilful thing. She's an old bachelor's pet, and 
 you must make allowances. I call her the fairy of the 
 Beeches, God bless her ! She nursed me last winter, when I 
 was at death's door from these cursed cold winds, sir, better 
 than Miss Nightingale could have done. What a devilish 
 climate it is ; never two days alike. I don't wonder English- 
 women are such icicles, poor things ; they're frost-bitten from 
 their cradle upwards." 
 
 " India warms them up. General, doesn't it?" 
 
THE GENERAL'S MAfCH-MAKlNG. I'll 
 
 The General shook with laughter. 
 
 " To be sure, to be sure ; if prudery's the fashion, they'll 
 "Vvear it, sir, as they would patches of hair powder ; but they're 
 always uncommonly glad to leave it off and lock it out of 
 sight when they can. What do you think of the kennels % I 
 say, Sydie, confound you, why did you bring any traps down 
 Avith you % Haven't room for 'em ; not for one. Couldn't 
 cram a tilbury into the coach-house." 
 
 "A trap, governor'?" said Sydie, straightening his back 
 after examination of the pups ; " can't keep even a wall-eyed 
 cab-horse ; wish I could." 
 
 "Where's your drag, then?" demanded the General. 
 
 " My drag % Don't I just wish I had one, to offer my 
 bosom friend the V.P. a seat on the box. Calvert, of Trinity, 
 tooled us over in his to the Spring Meetings, and his greys 
 are the sweetest pair of goers — the leaders especially — that 
 ever you saw in harness. We came back 'cross country, to 
 get in time for hall, and a pretty mess we made of it, for we 
 broke the axle, and lamed the off-wheeler, and " 
 
 "But, God TdIcss my soul !" stormed the General, excited 
 beyond measure, "you wrote me word you were going to 
 bring a drag down with you, and of course T supposed you 
 meant what you said, and I had Harris in about it, and he 
 swore the coach-house was as full of traps as ever it could 
 hold, so I had my tax- cart and Fay's phaeton turned into one 
 of the stalls, and then, after all, it's comes out you've never 
 brought it ! Devil take you, Sydie, why can't you be more 
 thoughtful- 
 
 " But my dear governor- 
 
 " ISTonsense ; don't talk to me !" cried the General, trying 
 to w^ork himself into a passion, and diving into the recesses of 
 six separate pockets one after another. " Look here, sir ; I sup- 
 pose you'll believe your own words % Here it is in black and 
 white. — *P.S. I shall bring my Coach down with me.' There, 
 what do you say now? Confound you, what arc you laugh- 
 ing at 1 I don't see anything to laugh at. In my day, young 
 fellows didn't make fools of old men in this way. Bless my 
 soul ! why the devil don't you leave off laughing, and talk a 
 little common sense? The thing's plain enough.— ^ P. S. / 
 shall bring my Coach dovm tvith me.' " 
 
 " So I have," said Sydie, screaming with laughter. " Look 
 
^22 THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING, 
 
 at him — ^lie's a first-rate Coacli, too ! Wlieels always oiled, 
 and ready for any road ; always going up hill, and never 
 caught coming do^vn ! started at a devil of a pace, and now 
 keeps ahead of all other vehicles on all highways. A first- 
 class Coach, that will tool me through the tortuous lanes and 
 treacherous pitfalls of the Greats with flying colours. My 
 Coach ! Bravo, General ! that's the best bit of fun I've had 
 since I dressed up like Sophonisba Briggs, and led the V.P. 
 a dance all round the quad, every hair on his head standing 
 erect in his virtuous indignation at the awful morals of his 
 college.'' 
 
 "Eh, whaf?" grunted the General, light beginning to 
 dawn upon him. " Do you mean Mr. Keane ? Hum ! how's 
 one to be uj) to all your confounded slang % How could I 
 know % Devil take you, Sydie, why can't you write common 
 English % You young fellows talk as bad jargon as Sepoys. 
 You're sure I'm delighted to see you, Mr. Keane, though I did 
 make the mistake." 
 
 " Thank you. General," said Keane ; " but it's rather cool 
 of you. Master Sydie, to have forced me on to your uncle's 
 hands without his wish or his leave." 
 
 " JN'ot at all, not at all," swore the General, with vehement 
 cordiality. "I gave him carte blanche to ask whom he 
 would, and unexpected guests are always most welcome ; not 
 that you were unexpected though, for I told that boy to be 
 sure and bring somebody down here " 
 
 " And have had the tax-cart and my phaeton turned out to 
 make comfortable quarters for him," said Miss Fay, with a 
 glance at the Coach to see how he took chaff, " and I only 
 hope Mr. Keane may like his accommodation." 
 
 " Perhaps, Miss Morton," said Keane, smiling, ** I shall 
 like it so well that you will have to say to me as poor Voltaire 
 to his troublesome abbe, ' Don Quichotte prenait les auberges 
 pour les chateaux, mais vous avez pris les chateaux pour les 
 auberges.' " 
 
 "Tiresome man," thought Fay. "I wish Sydie hadn't 
 brought him here ; but I shall do as I always do, however 
 grand and supercilious he may look. He has lived among all 
 those men and books till he has grown as cold as granite. 
 What a pity it is people don't enjoy existence as I do !" 
 
 " You are thinl?:ing. Miss Morton," said Keane, as he 
 
THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING. ±i% 
 
 Walked on beside her, with an amused glance at lier face, 
 which was expressive enough of her thoughts, '^ that if your 
 uncle is glad to see me, you are not, and that Sydie was very 
 stupid not to bring down one of his kindred spirits instead 
 
 of Don't disclaim it now ; you should veil your face if 
 
 you wish your thoughts not to be read." 
 
 " I was not going to disclaim it," said Fay, quickly looking 
 up at him with a rapid glance, half penitence, half irritatiou. 
 "I always tell the truth; but I was not thinking exactly 
 that ; I don't want any of Sy die's friends — I detest boys — 
 but I certainly was thinking that as you look down on every- 
 thing that we all delight in, I fancied you and the Beeches 
 will hardly agree. If I am rude, you must not be angry ; 
 you wanted me to tell you the truth." 
 
 Keane smiled again. 
 
 " Do I look down on the things you delight in ^ I hardly 
 know enough of you, as we have only addressed about six 
 syllables to each other, to be able to judge what you like and 
 what you don't like ; but certainly I must admit, that caress- 
 ing the little round heads of those puppies yonder, which 
 seemed to afford you such extreme rapture, would not be any 
 source of remarkable gratification to me." 
 
 !Fay looked up at him and laughed. 
 
 " Well, I am fond of animals as you are fond of books. Is 
 it not an open question whether the live dog or sheep-skin is 
 not as good as the dead Morocco or Eussian leather T 
 
 "Is it an open question, whether Macaulay's or Arago's 
 brain weighs no more than a cat's or a puppy's T 
 
 " Brain !" said impudent little Fay ; " are your great men 
 always as honest and as faithful as my poor little Snowdrop % 
 I have an idea that Sheridan's brains were often obscured by 
 brandy ; that Eichelieu had the weakness to be prouder of 
 his bad poems than his magnificent policies ; and that Pope 
 and Byron had the folly to be more tenacious of a glance at 
 their physical defect than an onslaught on their noblest works. 
 I could mention a good many other instances where brain was 
 not always a voucher for corresponding strength of character." 
 
 Keane was surprised to hear a sensible speech from this 
 volatile little puss, and honoured her by answering her se- 
 riously. 
 
 " Say, rather, Miss Morton, that those to whom many 
 
ii4 ™^ GENERAVS MA TCH-MAI^MG. 
 
 temptations fall should have many excuses made. Where 
 the brain preponderates, excelling the creative faculty and 
 rapid thought, there will the sensibilities be proportionately 
 acute. The vivacity and vigorous life which produced the 
 rapid flow of Sheridan's eloquence led him into the dissipa- 
 tion which made him end his days in a sj)unging-house. 
 Men of cooler minds and natures must not presume to judge 
 him. They had not his temptation; they cannot judge of 
 his fault. Eichelieu, in all probability, amused himself with 
 his verses as he amused himself with his white kitten and its 
 cork, as a delassement ; had he piqued himself u23on his poetry 
 as they say, he would have turned poetaster instead of poli- 
 tician. As for the other two, you must remember that Pope's 
 deformity made him a subject of ridicule to the woman he was 
 fool enough to worship, and Byron, poor fellow, was over-sus- 
 ceptible on all points, or he would scarcely have allowed the 
 venomed arrows from the Scotch Ee viewers to wound him, nor 
 would he have cared for the desertion of a wife who was to 
 him like ice to fire. When you are older, you will learn that it 
 is very dangerous and unjust to say this thing is. right, that 
 wrong, that feeling wise, or this foolish; for all temperaments 
 are different, and the same circumstances may produce very 
 different effects. Your puppies will grow up with dissimilar 
 characters ; how much more so, then, must men V 
 
 INIiss Fay was quiet for a minute, then she flashed her mis- 
 chievous eyes on him. 
 
 " Certainly ; but then, by your own admission, you have 
 no right to decide that your love for mathematics is wise, and 
 my love for Snowdrop foolish ; it may be quite au contraire. 
 Perhaps, after all, I may have * chosen the better part.' " 
 
 " Fay, go in and dress for dinner," interrupted the General, 
 trotting up ; " your tongue would run on for ever if nobody 
 stopped it ; you're no exception to your sex on that point. 
 Is she r 
 
 Keane laughed. 
 
 " Perhaps Miss Morton's fr?enum, like Sydie's, was cut too 
 far in her infancy, and therefore she has been * unbridled' 
 ever since." 
 
 " In all things !" cried little Fay. " ]N'obody has put the 
 curb on me yet, and nobody ever shall." 
 
 "Don't be too sure, Fay," cried Sydie* "Parey does 
 
THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKING. 225 
 
 bonders with, the wildest fillies. Somehody may bring you 
 down on your knees yet." 
 
 " You'll have to see to that, Sydie," laughed the General. 
 
 '* Come, get along, child, to your toilette. I never have my 
 soup cold and my curry overdone. To wait for his dinner is 
 a stretch of good-nature and patience that ought not to be 
 expected of any man." 
 
 The soup was not cold nor the curry overdone, and the 
 dinner was pleasant enough, in the long dining-room, with 
 the June sun streaming in through its bay-windows from out 
 the brilliant-coloured garden, and the walls echoing with the 
 laughter of Sydie and his cousin, the young lady keeping 
 true to her avowal of "not caring for Plato's presence." 
 " Plato," however, listened quietly, peeling his peaches with 
 tranquil amusement ; for if the girl talked nonsense, it was 
 clever nonsense, as rare, by the way, and quite as refreshing 
 as true wit. 
 
 " My gloves are safe ; you're too afraid of him. Pay," whis- 
 pered Sydie, bending forward to give her some hautboys. 
 
 '•Am \T cried Miss Pay, with a moue of supreme con- 
 tempt. Neither the whisper nor the mono, escaped Keane, as 
 he talked with the governor on model drainage. 
 
 "Where's my hookah. Pay*?" asked the General, after 
 dessert. " Get it, will you, my pet T 
 
 " Yoila !" cried Miss Pay, lifting the narghile from the 
 sideboard. Then taking some cigars off the mantelpiece, she 
 put one in her own mouth, struck a fusee, and, handing the 
 case to Keane, said, with a saucy smile in her soft briglit 
 eyes, though, to tell the truth, she was a little bit afraid of 
 taking liberties with him : 
 
 " If you are not above such a sublunary indulgence, will 
 you have a cigar with me T 
 
 " With the greatest pleasure," said Keane, with a grave 
 bow ; " and if you would like to further rival George Sand, 
 I shall be very happy to give you the address of my tailor." 
 
 " Thank you exceedingly ; but as long as crinoline is the 
 type of the sex that are a little lower than the angels, and 
 ribbon-ties the seal of those but a trifle better than Mephis- 
 topheles, I don't think I will change it," responded Little 
 Pay, contemptuously, as she threw herself down on a couch 
 with an indignant defiant glance, and pufted at her Manilla. 
 
 15 
 
ii26 THE GENERA VS MATCH-MAKINC. 
 
 " I liat& him, Sydie," said the little lady, vehemently, that 
 night. 
 
 " Do you, dear," answered the Cantab ; '* you see, youVe 
 never had anybody to be afraid of, or had any man neglect 
 you before." 
 
 " He may neglect me if he please, I am sure I do not care," 
 rejoined Fay, disdainfully ; " only I do wish, Sydie, that you 
 had never brought him here to make us all uncomfortable." 
 
 " He don't make me uncomfortable, quite otherwise ; nor 
 yet the governor ; you're the only victim. Fay." 
 
 Fay saw little enough of Keane for the next week or two. 
 He was out all day with Sydie trout-fishing, or walking over 
 his farms with the General, or sitting in the study reading, 
 and writing his articles for the Cambridge Journal, Leonville^s 
 Mathematical Journal, or the Westminster Revieiv. But when 
 she was with him, there was no mischief within her reach 
 that Miss Fay did not perpetrate. Keane, to tease her, would 
 condemn — so seriously that she believed him — all that she 
 loved the best ; he would tell her that he admired quiet do- 
 mestic women ; that he thought girls should be very subdued 
 and retiring ; that they should work well, and not care much 
 for society; at all of which, being her extreme antipodes. 
 Little Fay would be vehemently wrathful. She would get 
 on her pony without any saddle in her evening dress, and ride 
 him at the five-bar gate in the stable-yard ; she would put on 
 Sydie's smoking-cap, and look very pretty in it, and take a 
 Queen's on the divan of the smoking-room, reading BelVs Life, 
 and asking Keane how much he would bet on the October ; 
 she would spend all the morning making -svreaths of roses, 
 dressing herself and the puppies up in them, inquiring if it 
 was not a laudable and industrious occupation. There was 
 no nonsense or mischief Fay would not imagine and forthwith 
 commit, and anything they wanted her not to do she would 
 do straightway, even to the imperilling of her own life and 
 limb. She tried hard to irritate or rouse " Plato," as she 
 called him, but " Plato" was not to be moved, and treated her 
 as a spoilt child, whom he alone had sense enough to resist. 
 
 " It will be great folly for you to attempt it. Miss Morton. 
 Those horses are not fit to be driven by any one, much less 
 by a woman," said Keane, quietly, one morning. 
 
 They were in the stable-yard, and chanced to be alone when 
 
THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING, ^i; 
 
 a new purchase of tlie governor*s — two scarcely broken in 
 thorough-bred colts — were brought with a new mail-phaeton 
 into the yard, and Miss Fay forthwith announced her resolu- 
 tion of driving them round the avenue. The groom that came 
 with them told her they were almost more than he could ma- 
 nage, their own coachman begged and implored, Keane reasoned 
 quietly, all to no purpose. The rosebud had put out its little 
 wilful thorns; Keane's words added fuel to fire. Up she 
 sprang, looking the daintiest morsel imaginable perched up on 
 that very exalted box-seat, told the horrified groom to mount 
 behind, and started them off, lifting her hat with a graceful 
 bow to "Plato," who stood watching the phaeton with his 
 arms folded and his cigar in his mouth. 
 
 Soon after, he started in the contrary direction, for the avenue 
 circled the Beeches in an oval of four miles, and he knew he 
 should meet her coming back. He strolled along under the 
 pleasant shadow of the great trees, enjoying the sunset and 
 the fresh air, and capable of enjoying them still more but for 
 an inward misgiving. His presentiment was not without its 
 grounds. He had walked about a mile and a-half round the 
 avenue when a cloud of dust told him what was up, and in 
 the distance came the thorough-breds, broken away as he had 
 prophesied, tearing along with the bits between their teeth, 
 Little Fay keeping gallantly hold of the ribbons, but as power- 
 less over the colts, now they had got their heads, as the groom 
 leaning from the back seat. 
 
 On came the phaeton, bumping, rattling, oscillating, threat- 
 ening every second to be turned over. Keane caught one 
 glance of Fay's face, resolute and pale, and of her little hands 
 grasping the ribbons, till they were cut and bleeding with the 
 strain. There was nothing for it but to stand straight in the 
 animals* path, catch their heads, and throw them back on 
 their haunches. Luckily, his muscles were like iron — luckily, 
 too, the colts had come a long way, and were not fresh. He 
 stood like a rock, and checked them; running a very close 
 risk of dislocating his arms with the shock, but saving Little 
 Fay from destruction. The colts stood trembling, the groom 
 jumped out and caught the reins, Keane amused himself 
 silently with the mingled penitence, vexation, shame, and re- 
 bellion visible in the little lady's face. 
 
 " Well/' said he, quietly, " as you were so desirous of break- 
 
 15—2 
 
228 THE GENERADS MATCH-MAKING. 
 
 jng yoiir neck, will you ever forgive me for defeating your 
 purpose ?" 
 
 " Pray don't !" cried Fay, passionately. " I do thank you 
 so much for saving my life ; I think it so generous and brave 
 of you to have rescued me at such risk to yourself. I feel that 
 I can never he grateful enough to you, but don't talk in that 
 way. I know it was silly and self-willed of me." 
 
 " It was ; that fact is obvious." 
 
 " Then I shall make it more so," cried Miss Fay, with her 
 old wilfulness. " I do feel very grateful, and I would tell you 
 so, if you would let me ; but if you think it has made me 
 afraid, you are quite wrong, and so you shall see." 
 
 And before he could interfere, or do more than mechanically 
 spring up after her, she had caught the reins f^om the groom, 
 and started the trembling colts off again. But Keane put his 
 hand on the ribbons. 
 
 " Foolish child ; are you mad T he said, so gravely yet so 
 gently that Fay let them go, and let him drive her back to 
 the stable-yard, where she sprang out, and rushed away to 
 her own room, terrified the governor with a few vehement 
 sentences, which gave him a vague idea that Keane was mur- 
 dered and both Fay's legs broken, and then had a private cry 
 all to herself, with her arms round Snowdrop's neck, curled 
 up in one of the drawing-room windows, where she had not 
 been long when the General and Keane passed through, not 
 noticing her, hidden as slio was in curtains, cushions, and 
 flowers. 
 
 "She's a little wilful thing, Keane," the General was saying, 
 "but you mustn't think the worse of her for that." 
 
 " I don't. I am sick of those conventional young ladies 
 who agree with everything one says to them — who keep all 
 the frowns for mothers and servants, and are as serene as a 
 cloudless sky abroad, smile blandly on all alike, and haven't 
 an opinion of their own." 
 
 " Fay's plenty of opinions of her own," chuckled the Gene- 
 ral ; " and she tells 'em pretty freely, too. Bless the child, 
 she's not ashamed of any of her thoughts, and never will be." 
 
 " I hope not. Your little niece can do things that no other 
 young lady could, and they are so pretty in her that it would 
 be a thousand pities for her to grow one atom less natural and 
 wilful. Grapes growing wild are charming — grapes trained to 
 
THE GENERAL' S MA TCH-MAKING. 229 
 
 a stalve are ruined. I assure you, if I were you, I would not 
 scold lier for driving those colts to-day. High spirits and love 
 of fun led her on, and the courage and presence of mind she 
 displayed are too rare among her sex for us to do right in 
 checking them." 
 
 "To be sure, to be sure," assented the governor, gleefully. 
 " God bless the child ! she's one among a thousand, sir. Cognac, 
 not milk-and-water. There's the dinner-bell; confound it." 
 
 Wliereat the General made his exit, and Keane also ; and 
 Fay kissed the spaniel A\itli even more passionate attachment 
 than ordinary. 
 
 " Ah, Snowdrop, I don't hate him any more ; he is a darl- 
 ing !" 
 
 One glowing August morning Keane was in the study pon- 
 dering whether he would go to his moor or not. The General 
 had besought him to stay. His gamekeeper wrote him that 
 it was a horridly bad rainy season in Inverness-shire ; the trout 
 and the rabbits were very good sport in a mild way here. Al- 
 together, Keane felt half disposed to keep where he was, when 
 a shadow fell across his paper, and, as he looked up, he saw 
 in the open window the English rosebud. 
 
 "Is it not one of the open questions, Mr. Keane," asked 
 Fay, " whether it is very wise to spend all this glorious morn- 
 ing shut out of the sight of the sun-rays and the scent of the 
 flowers T 
 
 " How have you been spending it, then ?" 
 
 ^^ Putting bouquets in all the rooms, cleaning my aviary, 
 talking to the puppies, and reading Jocelyn under the limes 
 in the shrubberies — all very puerile, but all very pleasant. 
 Perhaps if you descended to a lazy day like that now and then, 
 you might be none the worse 1" 
 
 " Is that a challenge % "Will you take me under the 
 limes r' 
 
 " ]N"o, indeed ! I do not admit men who despise them to 
 my gardens of Armida, any more than you would admit me 
 into your Schools. I have as great a scorn for a sceptic as you 
 have for a tyro." 
 
 "Pardon me. I have no scorn for a tyro. But you 
 would not come to the Academe ! you dislike * Plato ' too 
 much." 
 
 Fay looked up at him half shyly, half raischievouslv. 
 
230 THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKING. 
 
 " Yes, I do dislike you, when you look down on me as 
 Eichelieu niiglit have looked down on his kitten." 
 
 " Liking to see its play *?" said Keane, half sadly. "Contrast- 
 ing its gay insouciance with his own toil and turmoil, regret- 
 ting, perhaps, the time when trifles made his joy as they did 
 his kitten's % If I were to look on you so, there would not be 
 much to offend you." 
 
 " You do not think so of me, or you would speak to me as 
 if I were an intelligent being, not a silly little thing." 
 
 " How do you know I think you silly % " 
 
 " Because you thinlc all women so." 
 
 " Perhaps : but then you should rather try to redeem m^e 
 from my error in doctrine. Come let us sign a treaty of 
 peace. Take me under the limes. I want some fresh au' 
 after writing all day ; and in payment I will teach you Euclid, 
 as you vainly beseeched your cousin to do yesterday." 
 
 "Will you?" cried Fay, eagerly. Then she threw back 
 her head. "-I never am won by bribes." 
 
 " !N'or yet by threats % What a difficult young lady you 
 are. Come show me your shrubbery sanctum now you have 
 invaded mine." 
 
 The English rosebud laid aside its wilful thorns, and Fay, 
 a little less afraid of he.r Plato, and therefore a little less de- 
 fiant to him, led him over the grounds, filled his hands with 
 flowers, showed him her aviary, read some of Jocelyn to him, 
 to show him, she said, that Lamaitine was better than the 
 Oedipus in Coloneus, and thought, as she dressed for dinner, 
 " I wonder if he does despise me — he has such a beautiful 
 face, if he were not so haughty and cold ! " 
 
 The next day Keane gave her an hour of Euclid in the 
 study. Certainly the Coach had never had such a pretty pupil ; 
 and he wished every dull head he had to cram v/as as intelli- 
 gent as this fair-haired one. Pay was quick and clever ; she 
 was stimulated, moreover, by his decree concerning the 
 stupidity of all women; she really worked as hard as any 
 young man studying for degrees when they supposed her fast 
 asleep in bed, and she got over the Pons Asinorum in a stylo 
 tliat fairly astonished her tutor. 
 
 The Coach did not disHke his occupation either ; it did him 
 good, after his life of solitude and study, something as the 
 Idtten and cork did Eichelieu good after his cabinets and 
 
THE GENERA VS MA7 CH-MAKING. 231 
 
 councils ; and Little Fay, with her flowers and fun, mischief 
 and impudence, and that winning wilfulness which it amused 
 him gradually to tame down, unbent the chillness which had 
 grown upon him. He was the better for it, as a man after 
 hard study or practice is the better for some fresh sea-breezes^ 
 and some days of careless dolce. 
 
 " Well, Fay, have you had another poor devil flinging him- 
 self at your feet by means of a postage-stamp?" said Sydie 
 one morning at breakfast. *'You can't disguise anything 
 from me, your most interested, anxious, and near and dear 
 relative. Whenever the governor looks particularly stormy 
 I see the signs of the times, that if I do not forthwith remove 
 your dangerously attractive person, all the bricks, spooneys, 
 swells, and do-nothings in the county will speedily fill the 
 Hanwell wards to overflowing." 
 
 " Don't talk such nonsense, Sydie," said Fay, impatiently, 
 with a glance at Keane, as she handed him his chocolate. 
 
 " Ah ! deuce take the fellows," chucMed the General. 
 Love, devotion, admiration ! What a lot of stuff they do 
 write. I wonder, if Fay were a little beggar, how much of it 
 all would stand the test 1 But we know a trick worth two of 
 that. Try those sardines, Keane. House is let, Fay — eh? 
 House is let ; nobody need apply. Ha, ha !" 
 
 And the General took some more curry, laughing till he 
 was purple, while Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she 
 was rarely guilty ; Sydie smiled, and Keane picked out his 
 sardines with calm deliberation. 
 
 "Hallo! God bless my soul!" burst forth the General 
 again. " Devil take me ! I'll be hanged if I stand it ! Con- 
 found 'em all ! I do call it hard for a man not to be able to 
 sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens ! what will come 
 to the country, if all those little devils grow up to be food for 
 Calcraft ? He's actually pulling the bark off the trees, as I 
 live ! Excuse me, I canJt sit still and see it." 
 
 Wherewith the General bolted from his chair, darted 
 through the window, upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a 
 stand of flowers in his exit, and bolted breathlessly across the 
 park with the poker in his hand. 
 
 "Bless his old heart! Ain't he a brick?" shouted Sydie. 
 " Do excuse me, Fay, I must go and hear him. blow up that 
 
232 THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKING, 
 
 boy sky-high, and give him a shilling for tuck afterwards \ it 
 will be so rich." 
 
 The Cantab made his exit, and Fay busied herself calming 
 the kittens* minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniuma. 
 Keane read his Tiyms for ten minutes, then looked up. 
 
 "Miss Morton, where is your tongue? I have not heard 
 it for a quarter of an hour, a miracle that has never happened 
 in the two months I have been at the Beeches." 
 
 " You do not want to hear it." 
 
 "What! am I in mauvais odeur again"?" smiled Keane. 
 " I thought we were good friends. Have you found the 
 Q.E.D. to the problem I gave you"?" 
 
 "To be sure !" cried Fay, exultantly. And kneeling down 
 by him, she went through the whole thing in exceeding 
 triumph. 
 
 " You are a good child," said her tutor, smiling, in himself 
 amazed at this volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. 
 " I think you will be able to take your degree, if you like. 
 Come, do you hate me now, Fay?" 
 
 " 1^0," said Fay, a little shyly. " I never hated you, I 
 always admired you ; but I was afraid of you, though I would 
 never confess it to Sydie." 
 
 " !N"ever be afraid of me," said Keane, putting his hand on 
 hers as it lay on the arm of his chair. " You have no cause. 
 You can do things few girls can ; but they are pretty in you, 
 where they might be — not so pretty in others. / like them 
 at the least. You are very fond of your cousin, are you not?" 
 
 " Of Sydie ? Oh, I love him dearly ! " 
 
 Keane took his hand away, and rose, as the General trotted 
 in : 
 
 " God bless my soul, Keane, how warm it is ! Confound- 
 edly hot without one's hat, I can tell you. Had my walk 
 all for nothing, too. That cursed little idiot wasn't trespass- 
 ing after all. Stephen had set him to spud out the daisies, 
 and I'd thrashed the boy before I'd listen to him. Devil take 
 him!" 
 
 August went out and September came in, and Keane 
 stayed on at the Beeches. They were pleasant days to them 
 all, knocking over the partridges right and left, enjoying a 
 cold luncheon under the luxuriant hedges, and going home 
 for a dinner, full of laughter, and talk, and good cookery ; and 
 
THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKING^ 233 
 
 Fay's songs afterwards, as mid and sweet in their way as a 
 goldfinch's on a hawthorn spray. 
 
 " You like Little Fay, don't you, Keane ?" said the General, 
 as they went home one evening. 
 
 Keane looked startled for a second. 
 
 " Of course," he said, rather haughtily. " That Miss Mor- 
 ton is very charming every one must admit." 
 
 " Bless her little heart ! She's a wild little filly, Keane ; 
 but she'll go better and truer than your quiet broken-in ones, 
 who wear the harness so respectably, and are so wicked and 
 vicious in their minds. And what do you think of my boy?" 
 asked the General, pointing to Sydie, who was in front. 
 "How does he stand at Cambridge V 
 
 " Sydie % Oh, he's a nice young fellow. He is a great 
 favourite there, and he is — the best things he can be — gener- 
 ous, sweet-tempered, and honourable " 
 
 "To be sure," echoed the General, rubbing his hands, 
 " He's a dear boy — a very dear boy. They're both exactly 
 all I wished them to be, dear children ; and I must say I am 
 delighted to see 'em carrying out the plan I had always made 
 for 'em from their childhood." 
 
 " Being what. General, may I ask?" 
 
 " Why, any one can see, as plain as a pikestaff, that they're 
 in love with each other," said the General, glowing with satis- 
 faction ; " and I mean them to be married and happy. They 
 dote on each other, Keane, and I shan't put any obstacles in 
 their way. Youth's short enough, Heaven knows; let 'em 
 enjoy it, say I, it don't come back again. Don't say anything 
 to him about it ; I want to have some fun with him. They've 
 settled it all, of course, long ago ; but he hasn't confided in 
 me, the sly dog. Trust an old campaigner, though, for twig- 
 ging an affaire de coeur. Bless them both, they make me 
 feel a boy again. We'll have a gay wedding, Keane ; mind 
 you come down for it. I dare say it'll be at Christmas." 
 
 Keans walked along, drawing his cap over his eyes. The 
 sun vras setting full in his face. 
 
 ^^ Well, what sport T cried Eay, running up to them. 
 
 " Pretty fair," said Keane, coldly, as he passed her. 
 
 It was an hour before the dinner-bell rang. Then he came 
 down cold and calm, particularly brilliant in conversation, 
 more courteous, perhaps, to her than ever, but the frost ha4 
 
234 THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKING 
 
 gathered round liim that the sunny atmosphere of the Eeeches 
 had melted ; and Fay, though she tried to tease, and to coax, 
 and to win him, could not dissipate it. She felt him an im- 
 measurable distance from her again. He was a learned, 
 haughty, grave philosopher, and she a little naughty child. 
 
 As Keane went up-stairs that night, he heard Sydie talking 
 in the hall. 
 
 " Yes, my worshipped Fay, I shall be intensely and utterly 
 miserable away from the light of your eyes ; but, nevertheless, 
 I must go and see Kingslake from John's next Tuesday, be- 
 cause I've promised ; and let one idolise your divine self ever 
 so much, one can't give up one's larks, you know." 
 
 Keane ground his teeth with a bitter sigh and a fierce oath. 
 
 " Little Fay, I would have loved you more tenderly than 
 that !" 
 
 He went in and threw himself on his bed, not to sleep. 
 For the first time for many years he could not summon sleep 
 at his will. He had gone on petting her and amusing him- 
 self, thinking of her only as a winning, wayward child. ^Now 
 he woke with a shock to discover, too late, that she had 
 stolen from him unawares the heart he had so long refused to 
 any Avoman. With his high intellect and calm philosophy, 
 after his years spent in severe science and cold solitude, the 
 hot well-springs of passion had broken loose again. He 
 longed to take her bright life into his own grave and cheerless 
 one ; he longed to feel her warm young heart beat with his 
 own, icebound for so many years \ but Little Fay was never 
 to be his. 
 
 In the bedroom next to him the General sat, with his feet 
 in his shppers and his dressing-gown round him, smoking his 
 last cheroot before a roaring fire, chuckling complacently over 
 his own thoughts. 
 
 "To be sure, we'll have a very gay wedding, such as the 
 county hasn't seen in all its blessed days," he muttered, with 
 supreme satisfaction. " Sydie shall have this place. What 
 do I want with a great town of a house like this, big enough 
 for a barrack % I'll take that shooting-box that's to let four 
 miles off ; that'll be plenty large enough for me and my old 
 chums to smoke in and chat over bygone times, and it will 
 do our hearts good — freshen us up a bit to see those young 
 things enjoying themselves. My Little Fay will be the 
 
THE GENERAL'S MA TCII-MAKING, 235 
 
 prettiest bride that ever was seen. Silly young things to 
 suppose I don't see through them. Trust an old soldier ! 
 However, love is blind, they say. How could they have 
 helped falling in love with one another ? and who'd have the 
 heart to part 'em, I should like to know T 
 
 Keane stayed that day : the next, receiving a letter which 
 afforded a true though a slight excuse to return to Cambridge, 
 he went, the General, Fay, and Sydie believing him gone only 
 for a few days, he knowing that he would never set foot in 
 the Beeches again. He went back to his rooms, whose dark 
 monastic gloom in the dull October day seemed to close round 
 him like an iron shroud. Here, with his books, his papers, 
 his treasures of intellect, science and art, his ^^ mind a king- 
 dom " to him, he had spent many a happy day, with his brain 
 growing only clearer and clearer as he followed out a close 
 reasoning or clenched a subtle analysis. Now, for the sake of a 
 mischievous child but half his age, he shuddered as he entered. 
 
 " Well, my dear boy," began the General one day after 
 dinner, " I've seen your game, though you thought I didn't. 
 How do you know, you young dog, that I shall give my con- 
 sent r' 
 
 "Oh, bother, governor, I know you will," cried Sydie, 
 aghast ; " because, you see, if you let me have a few cool 
 hundreds I can give the men such slap-up wines — and it's 
 my last year. General." 
 
 " You sly dog !" chuckled the governor, "I'm not talking 
 of your wine-merchant, and you know I'm not. Master Sydie. 
 It's no good playing hide-and-seek with me ; I can always see 
 through a millstone when Cupid is behind it ; and there's no 
 need to beat round the bush with me, my boy. I never gave 
 my assent to anything with greater delight in my life ; I've 
 always meant you to marry Fay, and " 
 
 " Marry Fay !" shouted Sydie. "' Good Heavens ! gover- 
 nor, what next T And the Cantab threw himself back and 
 laughed till he cried, and Snowdrop and her pups barked 
 furiously in a concert of excited sympathy. 
 
 "Why, sir, why? — ^why, because — devil take you, Sydie 
 — I don't know what you are laughing at, do you?" cried the 
 General, starting out of his chair. 
 
 " Yes, I do, governor ; you're labouring under a most c|e- 
 licious delusion," 
 
236 THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING. 
 
 " Delusion ! — eli ? — what % Why, bless my soul, I don't 
 think you know what you are saying, Sydie T stormed the 
 General. 
 
 " Yes, I do ; you've an idea — how you got it into your 
 head Heaven knows, but there it is — you've an idea that Fay 
 and I are in love with one another ; and I assure you you 
 were never more mistaken in your life." 
 
 Seeing the General standing bolt upright staring at him, 
 and looking decidedly ajDoplectic, Sydie made the matter a 
 little clearer. 
 
 *' Fay and I would do a good deal to oblige you, my be- 
 loved governor, if we could get up the steam a little, but I'm 
 afraid we really can not. Love ain't in one's own hands, you 
 see, but a skittish mare, that gets her head, and takes the bit 
 between her teeth, and bolts off with you wherever she likes. 
 Is it possible that two people who broke each other's toys, 
 and teased each other's lives out, and caught the measles of 
 each other, from their cradle upwards, should fall in love with 
 each other when they grow up ? Besides, I don't intend to 
 marry for the next twenty years, if I can help it. I couldn't 
 afford a milliner's bill to my tailor's, and I should be ruined 
 for life if I merged my bright particular star of a self into a 
 respectable, lark-shunnicg, bill-paying, shabby-hatted family 
 man. Good Heavens, what a train of horrors comes with the 
 bare idea !" 
 
 " Do you mean to say, sir, you won't marry your cousin T 
 shouted the General. 
 
 " Bless your dear old heart, no, governor — ten times over, 
 no ! I wouldn't marry anybody, not for half the universe." 
 
 " Then I've done with you, sir — I wash my hands of you !" 
 shouted the General, tearing up and down the room in a 
 quick march, more beneficial to his feelings than his carpet. 
 " You are an ungrateful, unprincipled, shameless young man, 
 and are no more worthy of the affection and the interest I've 
 been fool enough to waste on you than a tom-cat. You're an 
 abominably selfish, ungrateful, unnatural boy ; and though 
 you are poor Phil's son, I will tell you my mind, sir ; and I 
 must say I think your conduct with your cousin, making love 
 to her — desperate love to her — winning her affections, poor 
 unhappy child, and then making a jest of her and treating it 
 "Vvith a laugh, is disgraceful, svH' -disgraceful, do you hear*?'* 
 
THE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKlkC. 23^ 
 
 "Yes, I hear, General," cried Sydie, convulsed with 
 laughter; "but Fay cares no more for me than for those 
 geraniums. We are fond of one another, in a cool, cousinly 
 sort of way, but " 
 
 " Hold your tongue !" stormed the General. " Don't dare 
 to say another word to me about it. You know well enough 
 that it has been the one delight of my life, and if you'd had 
 any respect or right feeling in you, you'd marry her to-morrow." 
 
 " She wouldn't be a party to that. Few women are blind to 
 my manifold attractions; but Fay's one of 'em. Look here, gover- 
 nor," said Sydie, laying his hand affectionately on the General's 
 shoulder, " did it never occur to you that though the pretty 
 castle's knocked down, there may be much nicer bricks left to 
 build a new one*? Can't you see that Fay doesn't care two 
 buttons about me, but cares a good many diamond studs about 
 somebody CISC'?" 
 
 " ^N'o thing has occurred to me but that you and she are two 
 heartless, selfish, ungrateful chits. Hold your tongue, sir!" 
 
 "Eut, General " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, sir; don't talk to me I tell you. In love 
 with somebody else % I should like to see him show his face 
 here. Somebody she's talked to for five minutes at a race-ball, 
 and proposed to her in a corner, thinking to get some of my 
 money. Some swindler, or Italian refugee, or blackleg, I'd be 
 bound — taken her in, made her think him an angel, and will 
 persuade her to run away with him. I'll set the police round 
 the house — I'll send l^er to school in Paris. What fools men 
 are to have anything to do with women at all ! You seem in 
 their confidence; who's the fellow?" 
 
 " A man very like a swindler or a blackleg — Keane !" 
 
 " Iveane !" shouted the General, pausing in the middle of his 
 frantic march. 
 
 ** Keane," responded Sydie. 
 
 " Keane !" shouted the General again. " God bless my soul, 
 she might as well have fallen in love with the man in the moon. 
 Why couldn't she like the person I had chosen for her*?" 
 
 *' If one can't guide the mare oneself, 'tisn't likely the governors 
 can for one," muttered Sydie. 
 
 " Poor dear child ! fallen in love with a man who don't care 
 a button for her, eh ! Humph ! — that's always the way with 
 Women — ;lose the good chances, and fling themselves at a man's 
 
as^ THE GENERAL^ S MATCH-MAKiMG. 
 
 feet who cares no more for their tomfoolery of worship than he 
 cares for the blacking on his boots. Devil take young people, 
 what a torment they are ! The ungrateful little jade, how dare 
 she go and smash all my plans like that ! and if I ever set my 
 heart on anything, I set it on that match. Keane! he'll no 
 more love anybody than the stone cherubs on the terrace. He's 
 a splendid head, but his heart's every atom as cold as granite. 
 Love her? l^ot a bit of it. When I told him you were going to 
 marry her (I thought you would, and so you will, too, if you've the 
 slightest particle of gratitud-e or common sense in either of you), 
 he Hstened as quietly and as calmly as if he had been one of the 
 men in armour in the hall. Love, indeed ! To the devil with 
 love, say I ! It's the head and root of everything that is mis- 
 chievous and bad." 
 
 "Wait a bit, uncle," cried Sydie; "you told him all about 
 your precious match-making, eh ! And didn't he go off like a 
 shot two days after, when we meant him to stay on a month 
 longer] Can't you put two and two together, my once wide- 
 awake governor % 'Tisn't such a difficult operation." 
 
 " No, I can't !" shouted the General; "I don't know anything, 
 I don't see anything, I don't believe in anything, I hate everj^- 
 body and everything, I tell you; and I'm a great fool for having 
 ever set my heart on any plan that wanted a woman's con- 
 currence — 
 
 For if she will she will, you may depend on't, 
 
 And if she won't she won't, and there's an end on't." 
 
 Wherewith the General stuck his wide-awake on fiercely, 
 and darted out by the bay-window to cool himself. Half 
 way across the lawn, he turned sharp round, and came back again. 
 
 " Sydie, do you fancy Keane cares a straw for that child?" 
 
 " I can't say. It's possible." 
 
 " Humph ! Well, can't you go and see? That's come of those 
 mathematical lessons. What a fool I was to allow her to be so 
 much with him!" growled the General, with many grunts and 
 haK-audible oaths, swinging round again, and trotting through 
 the window as hot and peppery as his own idolised curry. 
 
 Keane was sitting writing in his room at King's some few 
 days after. The backs looked dismal with theb leafless, sepia- 
 coloured trees; the streets were full of sloppy mud and dripping 
 under-grads' umbrellas; his own room looked sombre and dark, 
 without any sunshine on his heavy oak bookcases, and massive 
 
THE GENERAVS MATCH-MAKINC. ^39 
 
 library-table, and dark bronzes. His ■ pen moved quickly, bis 
 head was bent over the paper, his mouth sternly set, and his 
 forehead paler and more severe than ever. The gloom in his 
 chambers had gathered round him himself, when his door was 
 burst open, and Sydie dashed in and threw himself down in a 
 green leather arm-chair. 
 
 " Well, sir, here am I back again. Just met the Y.P. in the 
 quad, and he was so enchanted at seeing me, that he kissed me 
 on both cheeks, flung off his gown, tossed up his cap, and per- 
 formed a ^a5 dJextase on the spot. Isn't it delighful to be so 
 beloved? Granta looks very delicious to-day, I must say — 
 about as refreshing and lively as an acidulated spinster going 
 district-visiting in a snow-storm. And how are you, most 
 noble lord?' 
 
 " Pretty weU.'^ 
 
 " Only that? Thought you were all muscle and iron. I say, 
 ■what do you think the governor has been saying to me?" 
 
 "HowcanlteUr 
 
 " Tell ! JSTo, I should not have guessed it if I'd tried for a 
 hundred years ! By George ! nothing less than that I should 
 marry Fay. What do you think of that, sir?" 
 
 Keane traced Greek unconsciously on the margin of his Times, 
 For the life of him, with all his self-command, he could not 
 have answered. 
 
 " Marry Fay ! IP^ shouted Sydie. " Ye gods, what an idea ! 
 I never was so astonished in all my days. Marry Little Fay ! — 
 the governor must be mad, you know." 
 
 " You will not marry your cousin ?" asked Keane, tranquilly, 
 though the rapid glance and involuntary start did not escape 
 Sydie's quick eyes. 
 
 "Marry! I! By George, no! She wouldn't have me, and 
 I'm sure I wouldn't have her. She is a dear little monkey, 
 and I'm very fond of her, but I wouldn't put the halter round 
 my neck for any woman going. I don't like vexing the General, 
 but it would be really too great a sacrifice merely to oblige him." 
 
 " She cares nothing for you, then?" 
 
 " Nothing? Well, I don't know. Yes, in a measure, she 
 does. If I should be taken home on a hurdle one fine morning, 
 she'd shed some cousinly tears over my inanimate body; but 
 as for the other thing, not one bit of it. 'Tisn't likely. We're 
 a great deal too like one another, too full of devilry and careless- 
 
ft40 THE GENERA VS MATCH-MAKING, 
 
 jaess, to assimilate. Isn't it the delicious contrast and fiz of the 
 sparkling acid of divine lemons with the contrariety of the fiery 
 spirit of beloved rum that makes the delectable union known 
 and worshipped in our symposia under the blissful name of 
 PUNCH % Marry Little Fay ! By Jove, if all the governor's 
 match-making was founded on no better reasons for success, it 
 is a small marvel that he's a bachelor now ! Ey George it's 
 time for hall!" 
 
 And the Cantab took himself off, congratulating himself on 
 the adroit manner in which he had cut the Gordian knot that 
 the General had muddled up so inexplicably in his unpropitious 
 match-making. 
 
 Keane lay back in his chair some minutes, very still; then 
 he rose to dine in hall, pushing away his books and papers, 
 as if throwing aside with them a dull and heavy weight. The 
 robins sang in the leafless backs, the sun shone out on the sloppy 
 streets; the youth he thought gone for ever was come back to 
 him. Oh, strange stale story of Hercules and Omphale, old as 
 the hills, and as eternal ! Hercules goes on in his strength 
 slaying his Hydra and his Laomedon for many years, but he 
 comes at last, whether he like it or not, to his Omphale, at 
 whose feet he is content to sit and spin long golden threads of 
 pleasure and of passion, while his lion's skin is moth-eaten and 
 his club rots away. 
 
 Little Fay sat curled up on the study hearth-rug, reading a 
 book her late guest had left behind him — a very light and enter- 
 taining volume, being Delolme " On the Constitution," but 
 which she preferred, I suppose, to " What Will He Do With 
 It?' or the "Feuilles d'Automne," for the sake of that clear 
 autograph, " Gerald Keane, King's Coll.," on its fly-leaf. A 
 pretty picture she made, with her handsome spaniels; and she was 
 so intent on what she was reading — the fly-leaf, by the way — 
 that she never heard the opening of the door, till a hand drew 
 away her book. Then Fay started up, oversetting the puppies 
 one after another, radiant and breatMess. 
 
 Keane took her hands and drew her near him. 
 
 " You do not hate me now, then *?" 
 
 Fay put her head on one side with her old wilfulness. 
 
 " Yes I do — when you go away without any notice, and 
 hardly bid me good-bye. Yoa would not have left one of 
 your men pupils so unceremoniously.'' 
 
THE GENERAL'S MA TCH-MAKING. 241 
 
 Keane smiled involuntarily, and drew her closer. 
 
 " If yon do not hate me, will you go a step farther — and 
 love me? Little Fay, my own darling, will you come and 
 brighten my life % It has been a saddened and a stern one, 
 but it shall never throw a shade on yours." 
 
 The wild little filly was conquered — at least, she came to 
 hand docile and subdued, and acknowledged her master. 
 She loved him, and told him so with that frankness and 
 fondness which would have covered faults far more glaring 
 and weighty than Little Eay's. 
 
 " But you must never be afraid of me," whispered Keane, 
 some time after. 
 
 " Oh no." 
 
 " And you do not wish Sydie had never brought me here 
 to make you all uncomfortable." 
 
 "Oh, please don't!" cried Fay, plaintively. "I was a 
 child then, and I did not know what I said." 
 
 " ' Then,' being three months ago, may I ask what you 
 are now?" 
 
 "A child still in knowledge, but your child," whispered 
 Fay, lifting her face to his, "to be petted and spoiled, and 
 never found fault with, remember !" 
 
 " My little darling, who would have the heart to find fault 
 with you, whatever your sins?" 
 
 "God bless my soul, what's this?" cried a voice in the 
 doorway. 
 
 There stood the General in wide-awake and shooting-coat, 
 with a spade in one hand and a watering-pot in the other, too 
 astonished to keep his amazement to himself. Fay would 
 fain have turned and fled, but Keane smiled, kept one arm 
 round her, and stretched out his hand to the governor. 
 
 " General, I came once uninvited, and I am come again. 
 Will you forgive me ? I have a great deal to say to you, but 
 I must ask you one question first of aU. Will you give me 
 your treasure?" 
 
 " Eh 1 Immph ! What ? Well — I suppose — yes," ejaculated, 
 the General, breathless from the combined effects of amaze- 
 ment and excessive and vehement gardening. " But bless my 
 soul, Keane, I should as soon have thought of ens of the 
 stone cherubs, or that bronze Milton ; never mind, one lives 
 and learns. Mind , devil take me, what am I talking about ? 
 
 16 
 
242 7 HE GENERAL'S MATCH-MAKING. 
 
 I don't mind at all ; I'm very happy, only I'd set my heart 
 on — ^you know what. More fool I. Eay, yon little imp, 
 come here. Are yon fairly broken in by Keane, then f 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Fay, with her old mischief, bnt a nevv^ 
 blnsh, *^ as he has promised never to nse the cnrb." ^ 
 
 •^ God bless yon, then, my little pet," cried the General, 
 kissing her some fifty times. Then he langhed till he cried, 
 and dried his eyes and laughed again, and grunted and 
 growled, and shook both Keane's hands vehemently. " I was 
 a great fool, sir, and I dare say you've managed much better. 
 I did set my heart on the boy, you know, but it can't be 
 helped now, and I don't wish it should. Be kind to her, 
 that's all ; for though she mayn't bear the curb, the whip 
 from anybody she cares about would break her heart. She's 
 a dear child, Keane — a very dear child. Be kind to her, that's 
 all" 
 
 On the evening of January 13th, beginning the Lent Term, 
 Mr. Sydenham Morton sat in his own rooms with half a 
 dozen spirits like himself, a delicious aroma surrounding them 
 of Maryland and rum-punch, and a rapid flow of tallt making- 
 its way through the dense atmosphere. 
 
 " To think of Granite Keane being caught!" shouted one 
 young fellow ; " I should as soon have thought of the Pyra- 
 mids walking over to the Sphinx, and marrying her." 
 
 " Poor devil ! I pity him," sneered Henley of Trinity, aged 
 nineteen. 
 
 " He don't require much pity, my dear fellow ; I think he's 
 pretty comfortable," rejoined Sydie. " He did, to be sure, 
 when he was trying to beat sense into your brain-box, but 
 that's over for the present." 
 
 "Come tell us about the wedding," said Somerset of 
 King's. " I was so sorry I couldn't go down." 
 
 " Well," began Sydie, stretching his legs and putting down 
 his pipe, " she — the she was dressed in white tulle and " 
 
 " Bother the dress. Go ahead !" 
 
 " The dress was no bother, it was the one subject in life to 
 the Avomen. You must listen to the dress, because I asked 
 the prettiest girl there for the description of it to enlighten 
 your minds, and it was harder to learn than six books of 
 Horace. The bridesmaids wore tarlatane a la Princesse Ste- 
 
THE GEMERAVS MATCH-MAKING, 243 
 
 pliatiie,trois jupes bouillonnees, jupe dessous de soie glacee,guir- 
 landes couleur des yeux imperiaux d'Eugenie, corsets decolletes 
 garnis de ruches de ruban du " 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, hold your tongue !" cried Somerset, 
 " that jargon's T^orse than the Yahoos'. The dead languages 
 are bad enough to learn, but women's living language of 
 fashion is ten hundred times worse. The twelve girls were 
 dressed in blue and white, and thought themselves angels — 
 we understand. Cut along." 
 
 " Gunter was prime," continued Sydie, " and the governor 
 was prime, too — splendid old buck : only when he gave her 
 away he was very near saying, * Devil take it ! ' which might 
 have had a novel, but hardly a solemn effect. Little Fay 
 was delightful — for all the world like a bit of incarnated sun- 
 shine. Keane was granite all over, except his eyes, and they 
 were lava ; if we hadn't, for our own preservation, let him 
 put her in a carriage and started 'em off, he might have be- 
 come dangerous, after the manner of Etna, ice outside and 
 red-hot coals within. The bridesmaids' tears must have 
 washed the church for a week, and made it rather a damp 
 affair. One would scarcely think women were so anxious to 
 marry, to judge from the amount of grief they get up at a 
 friend's sacrifice. It looks uncommonly like envy; but it 
 isTbt^ we're sure ! The ball was like most other balls : alter- 
 nate waltzing and flirtation, a vast lot of nonsense talked, 
 and a vast lot of champagne drunk — Cupid running about in 
 every direction, and a tremendous run on all the amatory 
 poets — Browning and Tennyson being worked as hard as 
 cab-horses, and used up pretty much as those quadrupeds — 
 dandies suffering seK-inflicted torture from tight boots, and 
 saying like Cranmer, when he held his hand in the fire, that 
 it was rather agreeable than otherwise, considering it drew 
 admiration — spurs getting entangled in ladies' dresses, and 
 ladies making use thereof for a display of amiability, which 
 the dragoons are very much mistaken if they fancied con- 
 tinued into private life — girls beheving all the pretty things 
 said to them — men going home and laughing at them all — 
 wallflowers very black, women engaged ten deep very sun- 
 shiny — ^the governor very glorious, and my noble self very 
 fascinating. And now," said Sydie, taking up his pipe, " pass 
 the punch, old boy, and never say I can't talk ! " 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON^HEAD; 
 
 OB, 
 
 A DOUBLED-DOWN LEAF IN A MAN'S LiF±i. 
 
 I WAS dining with, a friend, in his house on the Lung' Amo 
 (he fills, never mind what post in the British Legation), 
 where I was passing an autumn month. The night was op- 
 pressively hot ; a still, sultry sky brooded over the city, and 
 the stars shining out from a purple mist on to the Campanile 
 near, and the slopes of Bellosguardo in the distance. It was 
 intensely hot; not all the iced wines on his table could 
 remove the oppressive warmth of the evening air, which made 
 both him and me think of evenings we had spent together 
 in the voluptuous lassitude of the East, in days gone by, 
 when we had travelled there, fresh to life, to new impressions, 
 to all that gives " greenness to the grass, and glory to the 
 flower." 
 
 The Arno ran on under its bridge, and we leaned out of 
 the balcony where we were sitting and smoking, while I 
 tossed over, without thinking much of what I was doing, a 
 portfolio of his sketches. Position has lost for art many 
 good aitists since Sir George Beaumont : my friend is one of 
 them ; his sketches are masterly ; and had he been a vagrant 
 Bohemian instead of an English peer, there might have been 
 pictures on the walls of the R.A. to console one for the mere- 
 tricious daubs and pet vulgarities of nursery episodes, hideous 
 babies, and third-class carriage interiors, which make one's 
 accustomed annual visit to the rooms that once saw the beau- 
 
THE S7VRY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 245 
 
 ties of Eeynolds, and Wilson, and Lawrence, a positive mar- 
 tyrdom to anybody of decent refinement and educated taste. 
 The portfolio stood near me, and I took out a sketch or two 
 now and then between the pauses of our conversation, looking 
 lazily up the river, while the moonlight shone on Dante's 
 city, that so long forgot, and has, so late, remembered him. 
 
 "Ah ! what a pretty face this is ! Who's the original"?" I 
 asked him, drawing out a female head, done with great finish 
 in pastel, under which was written, in his own hand, " Flo- 
 relle." It was a face of great beauty, with a low Greek brow 
 and bronze-dark hair, and those large, soft, liquid eyes that 
 you only see in a Southern, and that looked at you from the 
 sketch with an earnest, wistful regard, half childlike, half 
 impassioned. He looked up, glanced at the sketch, and 
 stretched out his hand hastily, but I held it away from him. 
 " I want to look at it ; it is a beautiful head ; I wish we had 
 the original here now. Who is she T 
 
 As I spoke — holding the sketch up where the light from 
 the room mthin fell on what I had no doubt was a likeness 
 of some fair face that had beguiled his time in days gone by, 
 a souvenir of one of his loves more lasting than souvenirs of 
 such episodes often are, if merely trusted to that inconstant 
 capricieuse. Memory — I might have hit him with a bullet 
 rather than asked him about a mere etude a deux crayons, 
 for he shuddered, and drank off some white Hermitage 
 quickly. 
 
 " I had forgotten that was in the portfolio," he said, hur- 
 riedly, as he took it from me and put it behind him, with its 
 face against the wall, as though it had been the sketch of a 
 Medusa. 
 
 " What do you take it away for ? I had not half done 
 looking at it. Who is the original T 
 
 " One I don't care to mention." ^ 
 
 " Because T 
 
 " Because the sight of that picture gives me a twinge of 
 what I ought to be hardened against — regret." 
 
 " Eegret ! Is any woman worth that T 
 
 " She was.^' 
 
 " I don't believe it ; and I fancied you and I thought alike 
 on such points. Of all the women for whom we feel twinges 
 of conscience or self-reproach in melancholy moments, how 
 
M^ THE STORY OB A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 many lovedj us ? Moralists and poets sentimentalise over it, 
 and make it a stalking-horse whereby to magnify our sins and 
 consign us more utterly to perdition, while tliey do for them- 
 selves a little bit of poetic morality cheaply ; but in reality 
 there are uncommonly few women who can love, to begin 
 with, and in the second, vanity, avarice, jealousy, desires for 
 pretty toilettes, one or other, or all combined, have quite as 
 much to do with their ^ sacrifice ' for us as anything." 
 
 " Quite true ; but — there are women and women, perhaps, 
 and it was not of that sort of regret that I spoke." 
 
 "Of what sort then?" 
 
 He made me no reply : he broke the ash off his Manilla, 
 and smoked silently some moments, leaning over the balcony 
 and watching the monotonous flow of the Arno, with deeper 
 gloom on his face than I remembered to have seen there any 
 time before. I was sorry I had chanced to light upon a 
 sketch that had brought him back such painful recollections 
 of whatever kind they might be, and I smoked too, sending 
 the perfumed tobacco out into the still sultry night that was 
 brooding over Florence. 
 
 "Of what sort?" said he, abruptly, after some mdnutes' 
 pause. " Shall I tell you 1 Then you can tell me whether I 
 was a fool who made one grand mistake, or a sensible man of 
 the world who kept himself from a grand folly. I have been 
 often in doubt myself." 
 
 He leaned back, his face in shadow, so that I could not 
 see it, while the Arno's ebb and flow was making mournful 
 river-music under our windows ; — the purple glories of the 
 summer night deepened round Giotto's Tower, where, in 
 centuries past, the Immortal of Florence had sat dreaming of 
 the Paradiso, the mortals passing by whispering him as " the 
 man who had seen hell;" and the light within the room 
 shone on the olives and grapes, the cut glass and silver claret- 
 jugs, the crimson Montepulciano and the white Hermitage, on 
 the table, as he told me the story of the head in crayons. 
 
 " Two years ago I went into the south of France. I was 
 
 Charge d'Afiaires at then, you remember, and the 
 
 climate had told upon me. I was not over well, and some- 
 body recommended me the waters of Eaux Bonnes. The 
 waters I put little faith in, but in the air of the Pyrenees, in 
 the change from diplomacy to a life en rase camjpagne, 1 put 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 24J 
 
 mucli, and I went to Eaux Bonnes accordingly, for July and 
 August,, with a vow to forswear any society I might find at 
 the baths — I had had only too much of society as it was — 
 and to spend my days in the mountains with my sketching- 
 hlock and my gun. But I did not like Eaux Bonnes ; it was 
 intensely warm. There were several people who knew me 
 really; no end of others who got hold of my name, and 
 wanted me to join their riding parties, and balls, and pic- 
 nics. That was not what I wanted, so I left the place and 
 went to Luz, hoping to find solitude there. That valley of 
 Luz — you know it 1 — is it not as lovely as any artist's dream 
 of Arcadia, in the evening, when the sunset light has passed 
 off the meadows and corn-lands of the lower valley, and just 
 lingers golden and rosy on the crests of the mountains, while 
 the glowworms are coming out among the grasses, and the 
 lights are being lit in the little homesteads nestling among 
 their orchards one above another on the hill-sides, and its 
 hundred streams are rushing down the mountains and under 
 the trees, foaming, and tumbling, and rejoicing on their way ! 
 When I have had my fill of ambition and of pleasure, I shall 
 go and live at Luz, 1 think." 
 
 " PFhen /" 
 
 " Well ! you are quite right to repeat it ironically ; that 
 time will never come, I dare say, and why should if? I am 
 not the stuff to cogitate away my years in country solitudes. 
 If prizes are worth winning, they are worth working for till 
 one's death ; a man should never give up the field while he 
 has life left in him. Well ! I went to Luz, and spent a plea- 
 sant week or so there, knocking over a few chamois or izards, 
 or sketching on the sides of the Pic du Midi, or Tourmalet, 
 but chiefly lying about under the great beech-trees in the 
 shade, listening to the tinkle of the sheep-bells, like an idle 
 fellow, as I meant to be for the time I had allotted myself. 
 One day " 
 
 He stopped and blew some whiffs from his Manilla into the 
 air. He seemed to linger over the prelude to his story, and 
 shrink from going on with the story itself, I thought ; and he 
 smothered a sigh as he raised himself. 
 
 " How warm the night is ; we shall have a tempest. Eeach 
 me that wine, there's a good fellow. 'No, not the Amontillado, 
 the Chateau Margaux, please ; one can't drink hot dry wino^ 
 
i^^ THE STORY 01^ A CRA YON-HE A3. 
 
 such a niglit as tliis. But to satisfy your curiosity about tliis 
 crayon study. — One day I thought I would go to Gavarnie. 
 I had heard a good deal, of course, about the great marble 
 wall, and the mighty waterfalls, the rocks of Marbore, and 
 the Breche de Eoland, but, as it chanced, I had never been 
 up to the Cercle, nor, indeed, in that part of the Midi at all, 
 so I went. The gods favoured me, I remember : there were 
 no mists, the sun was brilliant, and the great amphitheatre 
 was for once unobscured ; the white marble flashing brown 
 and purple, rose and golden, in the light ; the cascades tumb- 
 ling and leaping down into the gigantic basin ; the vast plains 
 of snow glittering in the sunshine ; the twin rocks standing 
 in the clear air, straight and fluted as any two Corinthian 
 columns hewn and chiselled by man. Good Heaven ! before 
 a scene like Gavarnie, what true artist must not fling away 
 his colours and his brushes in despair and disgust with his own 
 puerility and impotence % What can be transferred to canvas 
 of such a scene as that % What does the best beauty of Claude, 
 the grandest sublimity of Salvator, the greatest power of 
 Poussin, look beside Nature when she reigns as she reigns at 
 Gavarnie % I am an art worshipper, as you know : but there 
 are times in my life, places on earth, that make me ready to 
 renounce art for ever ! 
 
 " The day was beautiful, and thinking I knew the country 
 pretty well, I took no guides. I hate them when I can possibly 
 dispense with them. But the mist soon swooped down over 
 the Cercle, and I began to wish I had one when I turned 
 ^ my horse's head jack again. You know the route, of course ] 
 Through the Chaos — Heaven knows it is deserving of its 
 name ; — down the break-neck little bridle-path, along the Gave, 
 and over the Scia bridge to St. Sauveur. You know it % Then 
 you know that it is much easier to break your neck down it 
 than to find your way by it, though by some hazard I did not 
 break my neck, nor the animal's knees either, but managed to 
 get over the bridge without falling into the torrent, and to 
 pick my way safely down into more level ground ; once there, 
 I thought I should easily enough find my way to St. Sauveur, 
 but I was mistaken : the mist had spread over the valley, a 
 heavy storm had come up, and somehow or other I lost the 
 way, and could not tell where I was, whether St. Sauveur 
 was to the left or the right, behind me or in front of me. 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAb. 24^ 
 
 The liorse, a miserable little ' Pyrenean beast, was too fright- 
 ened by the lightning to take the matter into his hands as 
 he had done on the road through the Chaos, and I saw no- 
 thing for it but to surrender and come to grief in any way 
 the elements best pleased ; swearing at myself for not having 
 stayed at the inn at Gavarnie or Gedre ; wishing myself at 
 the vilest mountain auberge that ever sheltered men and 
 mules pele-mele ; and calling myself hard names for not hav- 
 ing listened to my landlady's dissuasions of that morning as 
 I left her door, from my project of going to Gavarnie without 
 a guide, which seemed to her the acme of all she had ever 
 known or heard of English strangers' fooleries. The storm 
 only increased, the great black rocks echoing the roll of the 
 thunder, and the Gave lashing itself into fury in its narrow 
 bed j happily I was on decently level ground, and the horse 
 being, I suppose, tolerably used to storms like it, I pushed 
 him on at last, by dint of blows and conjurations combined, 
 to where, in the flashes of the lightning, I saw what looked 
 to me like the outline of a homestead : it stood in a cleft 
 between two shelving sides of rock, and a narrow bridle- 
 path led up to it, through high yews and a tangled wilderness 
 of rhododendrons, boxwood, and birch — one of those green 
 slopes, so common in the Pyrenees, that look in full sunlight 
 doubly bright and Arcadian-like, from the contrast of the 
 dark, bare, perpendicular rocks that shut them in. I could 
 see but little of its beauty then in the fog that shrouded both 
 it and me, but I saw the shape and semblance of a house, 
 and urging the horse up the ascent, thundered on its gate- 
 panels with my whip-handle till the rocks round echoed. 
 
 "There was no answer, and I knocked a little louder, 
 if possible, than before. I was wet to the skin with that 
 wretched storm, and swore not mildly at the inhospitable roof 
 that would not admit me under it. I knocked again, in- 
 clined to pick up a bit of granite and beat the panel in ; and 
 at last a face — an old woman's weather-beaten face, but with 
 black Southern eyes that had lost little of their fire with age — 
 looked through a grating at me and asked me what I wanted. 
 
 " * I want shelter if you can give it me,' I answered her. 
 * I have lost my way coming from Gavarnie, and am drenched 
 through. I will pay you liberally if you will give an asylum 
 till the weather clears.' 
 
2^6 THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD, 
 
 " Her eyes blazed like coals through, the little grille. 
 
 " ' M'sieu, we take no money here — ^have you mistaken it 
 for an inn ? Come in if you want shelter, in Heaven's name ! 
 The Holy Virgin forbid we should refuse refuge to any !* 
 
 " And she crossed herself and uttered some conjurations to 
 Mary to protect them from all wolves in sheep's clothing, and 
 guard their dwellings from all harm, by which I suppose she 
 thought I spoke fairly and looked harmless, but might pos- 
 sibly be a thief or an assassin, or both in one. She unlocked 
 the gate, and calling to a boy to take my horse into a shed, 
 admitted me under a covered passage-way into the house, 
 which looked like part, and a very ruined part, too, of what 
 had probably been, in the times of Henri Quatre and his 
 grandfather, a feudal chateau fenced by natural ramparts from 
 the rocks that surrounded ii, shutting in the green slope on 
 which it stood, with only one egress, the pass through which 
 I had ascended, into the level plain below. She marshalled 
 me through this covered way into an interior passage, dark 
 and vaulted, cheerless enough, and opened a low oak door, 
 ushering me into a chamber, bare, gloomy, yet with some- 
 thing of lost grandeur and past state lingering about its great 
 hearth, its massive walls, its stained windows, and its ragged 
 tapestry hangings. The woman went up to one of the win- 
 dows and spoke with a gentleness to which I should have 
 never thought her voice could have been attuned with its 
 harsh patois. 
 
 " ^ ]\Ion enfant, v'la un m'sieu Stranger qui vient chercher 
 un abri pour un petit pen. Yeux-tu lui parler ?' 
 
 " The young girl she spoke to turned, rose, and, coming for- 
 ward, bade me welcome with the grace, simplicity, and the 
 naive freedom from embarrassment of a child, looking up 
 
 in my face with her soft clear eyes. She was like . l!^o 
 
 matter ! you have seen that crayon-head, it is but a bad 
 portrayal of a face whose expression Eaphael and Sassoferrato 
 themselves would have failed to render in its earnest, inno- 
 cent, elevated regard. She was very young — 
 
 Standing with reluctant feet 
 Where the brook and river meet^ 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet. 
 
 Good Heavens, I am quoting poetry ! what will you think of 
 me, to have gone back to the Wertherian and Tennysonian 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 2^1 
 
 days so far as to repeat a triplet of Longfellow's % No man 
 quotes those poets after his salad days, except in a moment of 
 weakness. Caramba ! why has one any weaknesses at all % 
 we ought not to have any ; we live in an atmosphere that 
 would kill them all if they were not as obstinate and in- 
 destructible as all other weeds whose seeds will linger and 
 peer up and spoil the ground, let one root them out ever so ! 
 I owed you an apology for that lapse into Longfellow, and I 
 have made it. Am I to go on with this story T 
 
 He laughed as he spoke, and his laugh was by no means 
 heartfelt. I told him to go on, and he lighted another 
 Manilla and obeyed me, while the Arno murmured on its 
 way, and the dusky, sultry clouds brooded nearer the earth, 
 and the lights were lit in the distant windows of the palace 
 of the Marchese Acqua d'Oro, that fairest of Florentines, who 
 rouges so indiscriminately and flirts her fan so inimitably, to 
 one of whose balls we were going that night. 
 
 He settled himself back in his chair, with his face darkened 
 again by the shadow cast on it from the pillar of the balcony ; 
 and took his cigar out of his mouth. 
 
 " She looked incongruous in that bare and gloomy room, 
 out of place with it, and out of keeping with the old woman — 
 a French peasant woman, weather-beaten and bronzed, such 
 as you see any day by the score riding to market or sitting 
 knitting at their cottage doors. It was impossible that the 
 girl could be either daughter or grand-daughter, or any rela- 
 tion at all to her. In that room she looked more as one of 
 these myrtles might do, set down in the stifling gloomy 
 horrors of a London street than anything else, save that in 
 certain traces about the chamber, as I told you, there were 
 relics of a faded grandeur which harmonised better with her. 
 I can see her now, as she stood there with a strange foreign 
 grace, an indescribable patrician delicacy mingled with ex- 
 treme youthfulness and naivete, like an old picture in costume, 
 like one of Eaphael's child-angels in face — poor little Florelle ! 
 
 " 'You would stay till the storm is over, monsieur? you 
 are welcome to shelter if you will,' she said, coming forward 
 to me timidly yet frankly. * Cazot tells me you are a 
 stranger, and our mountain storms are dangerous if you 
 have no guide.' 
 
 " I did not know who Cazot was, but I presumed her 
 
2S2 THE STORY OP A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 to be tlie old woman wlio seemed to be porteress, mistress, 
 domestic, cameriste, and all else in her single person, but 
 I thanked her for her permitted shelter, and accepted her 
 invitation to remain till the weather had cleared, as you 
 can imagine. When you have lost your way any asylum 
 is grateful, however desolate and tumble-down. They 
 made me welcome, she and the old peasant woman, with 
 that simple, unrestrained, unostentatious hospitality which 
 is after all the true essence of good breeding, and of which 
 your parvenu knoAvs nothing, when he keeps you waiting, 
 and shows you that you are come at an inapropos moment, in 
 his fussy fear lest everything should not be comme il faut to 
 do due credit to him. Old Cazot set before me some simple 
 refreshment, a grillade de chdtaignes, some maize and milk, 
 and a dish of trout just caught in the Gave below, while 
 I looked at my chatelaine, marvelling how that young delicate 
 creature could come to be shut up with an old peasant 
 on a remote hill-side. I did my best to draw her out 
 and learn her history ; she was shy at first of a complete 
 stranger, as was but natural, but I spoke of Gavarnie, of 
 the beauty of the Pyrenees, or Tourmalet, and the Lac 
 Bleu, and, warming with enthusiasm for her bhthplace, the 
 giri forgot that I was a foreign tourist, unknown to her, 
 and indebted to her for an hour's shelter, and before my 
 impromptu supper Avas over I had drawn from her, by a 
 few questions, which she was too much of a child and had 
 too little to conceal not to answer with a child's ingenuous- 
 ness, the whole of her short history, and the explanation 
 of her anomalous position. Her name was Elorelle de 
 I'Heris, a name once powerful enough among the nobles of 
 the JVIidi, and the old woman, Madame Cazot, was her 
 father's foster-sister. Of her family, beggared in common 
 with the best aristocracy of France, none were now left; 
 they had dwindled and fallen away, till of the once great 
 house of L'Heris this child remained alone its representative ; 
 her mother had died in her infancy, and her father, either 
 too idle or too broken-hearted to care to retrieve his fortunes, 
 lived the life of a hermit among these ruins where I now 
 found his daughter, educating her liimself till his death, 
 which occurred when she was only twelve years old, leaving 
 her to poverty and obscurity, and such protection and com- 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 253 
 
 panionsliip as her old nurse Cazot could afford her. Such 
 was the story Florelle de I'Heris told me as I sat there 
 that evening, waiting till the clouds should clear and the 
 mists roll off' enough to let me go to St. Sauveur — a story 
 told simply and pathetically, and which Cazot, sitting 
 knitting in a corner, added to by a hundred gesticulations, 
 expletives, appeals to the Virgin, and prolix addenda, glad, 
 I dare say, of any new confidant, and disposed to regard me 
 with gratitude for my sincere praises of her fried trout. 
 It was a story which seemed to me to suit the delicate 
 beauty of the flower I had found in the wilderness, and read 
 more like a chapter of some versified novellette, like * Lucille,' 
 than a hona fide, page out of the book of one's actual life, 
 especially in a life like mine, of essentially material pleasures 
 and emphatically substantial and palpable ambitions. But 
 there ar& odd stories in real life ! — strange pathetic ones, 
 too — stranger, often, than those that found the plot and 
 underplot of a novel or the basis of a poem ! but when such 
 men as I come across them they startle us, they look bizarre 
 and unlike all the other leaves of the book that glitter 
 with worldly aphorisms, philosophical maxims, and pungent 
 egotisms, and we would fain cut them out; they have 
 the ring of that Arcadia whose golden gates shut on 
 us when we outgrew boyhood, and in which, en revanche, 
 we have sworn ever since to disbelieve — keeping our 
 word sometimes, perhaps to our own hindrance — Heaven 
 knows ! 
 
 ^' I stayed as long as I could that evening, till the 
 weather had cleared up so long, and the sun was shining 
 again so indisputably, that I had no longer any excuse 
 to linger in the dark tapestried room, with the chestnuts 
 sputtering among the wood-ashes, and Madame Cazot's 
 needles clicking one continual refrain, and the soft gazelle 
 eyes of my young chatelaine glancing from my sketches to 
 me with that mixture of shyness and fearlessness, innocence 
 and candour, which gave so great a charm to her manner. 
 She was a new study to me, both for my palette and my 
 mind — a pretty fresh toy to amuse me while I should stay 
 in the IMidi. I was not going to leave without making 
 sure of a permission to return. I wanted to have that face 
 among my pastels, and when I had thanked her for her 
 
254 THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 shelter and her welcome, I told her my name, and asked 
 her leave to come again where I had been so kindly 
 received. 
 
 " ' Come again, monsieur % Certainly, if you care to 
 come. But you will find it a long way from Luz, I fear,' 
 she said, naively, looking up at me with her large clear 
 fa^^Ti-like eyes — eyes so cloudless and untroubled then — as she 
 let me take her hand, and bade me adieu et bonsoir. 
 
 " I reassured her on that score, you can fancy, and left her 
 standing in the deep embrazured window, a great stag-hound 
 at her feet, and the setting sun, all the brighter for its past 
 eclipse, bathing her in light. I can always see her in memory 
 
 as I saw her then, poor child ! Faugh ! How hot the 
 
 night is ! Can't we get more air anyhow % 
 
 '^ ' If you come again up here, m'sieu, you will be the first 
 visitor the Md de T Aigle has seen for four years,' said old 
 Cazot, as she showed me out through the dusky vaulted 
 passage. She was a cheerful, garrulous old woman, strong in 
 her devotion to the De I'Heris of the bygone past ; stronger 
 even yet in her love for their single orphan representative 
 of the beggared present. ' Visitors ! Is it likely we 
 should have any, m'sieur? Those that would suit me 
 would be bad company for Ma'amselle Florelle, and those 
 that should seek her never do. I recollect the time, m'sieu, 
 when the highest in all the departments were glad to come 
 to the bidding of a De I'Heris ; but generations have gone 
 since then, and lands and gold gone too, and, if you cannot 
 feast them, what care people for you % That is true in the 
 Pyrenea'?, m'sieu, as well as in the rest of the world. I have 
 not lived eighty years without finding out that. If my 
 child out yonder were the heiress of the De I'Heris, there 
 would be plenty to court and seek her ; but she lives in 
 these poor broken-down ruins with me, an old peasant woman, 
 to care for her as best I can, and not a soul takes heed of 
 her save the holy women at the convent, where, maybe, she 
 will seek refuge at last.' 
 
 " She let me out at the gate where I had thundered for 
 admittance two hours before, and giving her my thanks 
 for her hospitality — money she would not take — I wished 
 her good day, and rode down the bridle-path to St. Sauveur, 
 and onwards to Luz, thinking at intervals of that fair 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 25S 
 
 young life that had but just sprung up, and was already 
 destined to wither away its bloom in a convent. Any 
 destiny would be better to proffer to her than that. She 
 interested me already by her childlike loveliness and her 
 strange solitude of position, and I thought she would while 
 away some of the long summer hours during my stay in 
 the Midi, when I was tired of chamois and palette, and my 
 lazy dolce under the beech-wood shades. At any rate she 
 was newer and more charming than the belles of Eaux 
 Bonnes. 
 
 " The next morning I remembered her permission and my 
 promise, and I rode out through the town again, up the 
 mountain-road to the Md de I'Aigle ; glad of anything 
 that gave me an amusement and a pursuit. I never wholly 
 appreciate the fax niente, I think ; perhaps I have lived too 
 entirely in the world — and a world ultra-cold and courtly, 
 too — to retain much patience for the meditative life, the life 
 of trees and woods, sermons in stones, and monologues in 
 mountains. I am a restless, ambitious man; I must have 
 a pursuit be it of a great aim or a small, or I grow weary, 
 and my time hangs heavily on hand. Already having found 
 riorelle de I'Heris among these hills reconciled me more to 
 my loro tempo banishment from society, excitement, and 
 pleasure, and I thanked my good fortune for having lighted 
 upon her. She was very lovely, and I always care more for 
 the physical than the intellectual charms of any woman. I 
 do not share some men's visionary requirements on their 
 mental score; I ask but materiid beauty, and am content 
 with it. 
 
 " I rode up to the Nid de I'Aigle : by a clearer light it stood 
 on a spot of great picturesquene^, and before the fury of the 
 revolutionary peasantry had destroyed what was the then 
 habitable and stately chateau, must have been a place of con- 
 siderable extent and beauty, and in the feudal times, fenced 
 in by the natural ramparts of its shelving rocks, no doubt all 
 but impregnable. There were but a few ruins now that held 
 together and had a roof over them — the part where Madame 
 Cazot and the last of the De I'Heris lived ; it was perfectly 
 solitary ; there was nothing to be heard round it but the foam- 
 ing of the river, the music of the sheep-bells from the flocks 
 that fed in the clefts and on the slopes of grass-land, and the 
 
256 THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 shout of some sheplierd-boy from the path below : but it was 
 as beautiful a spot as any in the Pyrenees, with its overhang* 
 ing beech-woods, its wilderness of wild flowers, its rocks 
 covered with that soft grey moss whose tint defies one to re- 
 peat it in oil or water-colours, and its larches and beeches 
 drooping over into the waters of the Gave. In such a home, 
 with no companions save her father, old Cazot, and her great 
 staghound, and, occasionally, the quiet recluses of St. Marie 
 Purificatrice, with everything to feed her native poetry and 
 susceptibility, and nothing to teach her anything of the actual 
 and ordinary world, it were inevitable that the character of 
 Plorelle should take its colouring from the scenes around her, 
 and that she should grow up singularly childlike, imaginative, 
 and innocent of all that in any other life she would unavoid- 
 ably have known. "Well educated she was, through her father 
 and the nuns, but it was a semi-religious and peculiar educa- 
 tion, of which the chief literature had been the legendary and 
 sacred poetry of France and Spain, the chief amusement copy- 
 ing the illuminated missals lent her by the nuns, or joining 
 in the choral services of the convent ; an education that taught 
 her nothing of the world from which she was shut out, and 
 encouraged all that was self-devoted, visionary, and fervid in 
 her nature, leaving her at seventeen as unconscious of evil as 
 the youngest child. I despair of making you imagine what 
 Plorelle then was. Had I never met her, I should have be- 
 lieved in her as little as yourself, and would have discredited 
 the existence of so poetic a creation out of the world of fiction ; 
 her ethereal dehcacy, her sunny gaiety when anything amused 
 her, her intense sensitiveness, pained in a moment by a harsh 
 word, pleased as soon by a kind one, her innocence of all the 
 blots and cruelties, artifices and evils, of that world beyond 
 her Md de I'Aigle, made a character strangely new to me, 
 and strangely T\dnning, but which to you I despair of portray- 
 ing : I could not have imagined it. Had I never seen her, 
 and had I met with it in the pages of a novel, I should have 
 put it aside as a graceful but impossible conception of romance. 
 " I went up that day to the Md de I'Aigle, and Plorelle 
 received me with pleasure ; perhaps Madame Cazot had in- 
 stilled into her some scepticism that ^ a grand seigneur,' as the 
 woman was pleased to term me, would trouble himself to ride 
 up the mountains from Luz merely to repeat his thanks for an 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 257 
 
 hou/s shelter and a supper of roasted chesnuts. She was a 
 simple-minded, good-hearted old woman, who had lived all her 
 life among the rocks and rivers of the Hautes-Pyrenees, her 
 longest excursion a market-day to Luz or Eagneres. She 
 looked on her young mistress and charge as a child— in truth, 
 riorelle was but little more — and thought my visit paid simply 
 from gratitude and courtesy, never dreaming of attributing it 
 to * cette beaute hereditaire des L'Heris,' which she was proud 
 of boasting was an inalienable heirloom to the family. 
 
 " I often repeated my visits ; so often that in a week or so 
 the old ruined chateau grew a natural resort in the long summer 
 days, and Florelle watched for my coming from the deep 
 arched window where I had seen her first, or from under the 
 boughs of the great copper-beech that grew before the gate, 
 and looked for me as regularly as though I were to spend my 
 lifetime in the valley of Luz. Poor child ! I never told her 
 my title, but I taught her to call me by my Christian name. 
 It used to sound very pretty when she said it, with her long 
 Southern pronunciation — prettier than it ever sounds now from 
 the lips of Beatrice Acqua d'Oro yonder, in her softest moments, 
 when she plays at sentiment. She had a great natural talent 
 for art, hitherto uncultivated, of course, save by such instruc- 
 tions as one of the women at the convent, skilful in illuminat- 
 ing, had occasionally given her. I amused myself with teach- 
 ing her to transfer to paper and canvas the scenery she loved 
 so passionately. I spent many hours training this talent of 
 hers, that was of very unusual calibre, and, with due culture, 
 might have ranked her with Elisabetta Sirani or Eosa Bonheur. 
 Sitting with her in the old room, or under the beech-trees, or 
 by the side of the torrents that tore down the rocks into the 
 Gave, it pleased me to draw out her unsullied thoughts, to 
 spread her mind out before me like a book — a pure book enough, 
 God knows, with not even a stain of the world upon it — to 
 make her eyes glisten and glow and dilate, to fill them with 
 tears or laughter at my will, to wake up her young life from 
 its unconscious, untroubled, childish repose to a new happi- 
 ness, a new pain, which she felt but could not translate, which 
 dawned in her face for me, but never spoke in its true language 
 to her, ignorant then of its very name — it amused me. Bah ! 
 our amusements are cruel sometimes, and costly too ! 
 
 " Ifc was at that time I took the head in pastels which you 
 
 17 
 
£58 THE STQRY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 liare seen, and she asked me, in innocent admiration of its 
 loveliness, if she was indeed like that % — This night is awfully 
 oppressive. Is that water in that carafFe "^ Is it iced ? Push 
 it to me. Thank you. 
 
 " I was always welcome at the Kid de TAigle. Old Cazot, 
 with the instinct of servants who have lived with people of 
 birth till they are as proud of their master's heraldry as thougJi 
 it were their own, discerned that I was of the same rank as 
 her adored House of De I'Heris — if indeed she admitted any 
 equal to them — and with all the cheery familiarity of a French- 
 woman treated me with punctilious deference, being as tho- 
 roughly imbued with respect and adoration for the aristocracy 
 as any of those who died for the white lilies in the Place de 
 la Eevolution. And Plorelle — Plorelle watched for me, and 
 counted her hours by those I spent with her. You are sure 
 I had not read and played with women's hearts so long — 
 women, too, with a thousand veils and evasions and artifices, 
 of which she was in pure ignorance even of the existence — 
 without having this heart, young, unworn, and unoccupied, 
 under my power at once, plastic to mould as wax, ready to 
 receive any impressions at my hands, and moulded easily to 
 my will. Florelle had read no love-stories to help her to 
 translate this new life to which I awoke her, or to put her on 
 her guard against it. I went there often, every day at last, 
 teaching my pupil the art which she was only too glad and too 
 eager to learn, stirring her vivid imagination with descriptions 
 of that brilliant outside world, of whose pleasures, gaieties, 
 and pursuits she was as ignorant as any little gentian flower on 
 the rocks ; keeping her spell-bound with glimpses of its life, 
 which looked to her like fairyland, bizarre bal masque though 
 it be to us ; and pleasing myself with awakening new thoughts, 
 new impressions, new emotions, which swept over her tell-tale 
 face like the lights and shades over meadow-land as the sun 
 fades on and off it. She was a new study, a new amusement 
 to me, after the women of our world, and I beguiled my time 
 with her, not thoughtlessly, as I might have done, not too 
 hastily, as I should have done ten years before, but pleased 
 mth my new amusement, and more charmed with Plorelle 
 than I at first knew, though I confess I soon wished to make 
 her love me, and soon tried my best to make her do so — an 
 easy task when one has had some practice in the rose-hued 
 
THE STORY OF A OR A YON-BEAD. 259 
 
 atmosphere of tlie boudoir, among thfi most difficile and tlie 
 most brilliant coquettes of Europe 1 Florelle, -with, a nature 
 singularly loving, and a ndnd singularly imaginative, with no 
 rival for me even in her fancy, soon lavished on me all the 
 love of which her impassioned and poetic character was capable. 
 She did not know it, but I did. She loved me, poor child ! — 
 love more pure, unselfish, and fond than I ever won before, 
 than I shall ever win again. 
 
 " Basta ! why need you have lighted on that crayon-head, 
 and make me rake up this story ? I loathe looking at the past. 
 What good ever comes of it ? A wise man lives only in his 
 present. * La vita e appunto una memoria, uaa speranza, un 
 punto,' writes the fool of a poet, as though the bygone memo- 
 ries and the unrealised hopes were worth a straw ! It is that 
 very present instant' that he despises which is available, and 
 in which, when we are in our senses, we absorb ourselves, know- 
 ing that that alone will yield a fruit worth having. What are 
 the fruits of the others ? only Dead Sea apples that crumble 
 into ash. 
 
 " I knew that Plorelle loved me ; that I, and I alone, filled 
 both her imagination and her heart. I would not precipitately 
 startle her into any avowal of it. I liked to see it dawn in her 
 face and gleam in her eyes, guilelessly and unconsciously. It 
 was a new pleasure to me, a new charm in that book of Woman 
 of which I had thought I knew every phase, and had exhausted 
 every reading. I taught Florelle to love me, but I would not 
 give her a name to my teaching till she found it herself. I 
 returned it 1 Oh yes, I loved her, selfishly, as most people, men 
 or women, do love, let them say what they will ; very selfishly, 
 perhaps — a love that was beneath her — a love for which, had 
 she seen into my heart, she might have disdained, and hated 
 me, if her soft nature could have been moved to so fierce a thing 
 as hate — a love that sought its own gratification, and thought 
 nothing of her welfare — a love not worthy of her, as I some- 
 times felt then, as I believe now. 
 
 " I had been about six weeks in the Pyrenees since the day 
 I lost myself en route from Gavarnie ; most of the clays I had 
 spent three or four hours, often more, at the !N"id de I'Aigle, 
 giving my painting lessons to Florelle, or being guided by her 
 among the beech-wooded and mountain passes near her home. 
 The dreariest fens and fiats might have gathered interest from 
 
 17—2 
 
26o THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 sucli a guide, and the glorious "beauties of the Midi, well suited 
 to her, gained additional poetry from her impassioned love for 
 them, and her fond knowledge of all their legends, superstitions, 
 histories,, and associated memories, gathered from the oral lore 
 of the peasantry, the cradle songs of Madame Cazot, and the 
 stories of the old chronicles of the South. Heavens ! what a 
 wealth of imagination, talent, genius, lay in her if / had not 
 destroyed it ! 
 
 " At length the time drew near when my so-called sojourn 
 at the Baths must end. One day Florelle and I were out sketch- 
 ing, as usual ; she sat under one of the great beeches, within a 
 few feet of one of the cascades that fell into the Gave du Pau, 
 and I lay on the grass by her, looking into those clear gazelle 
 eyes that met mine so brightly and trustfully, watching the pro- 
 gress of her brush, and throwing twigs and stones into the spray 
 of the torrent. I can remember the place as though it were 
 yesterday, the splash of the foam over the rocks, the tinkle of 
 the sheep-bells from the hills, the scent of the wild flowers grow- 
 ing round, the glowing golden light that spread over the wood- 
 lands, touching even the distant crest of Mont Aigu and the 
 Pic du Midi. Strange how some scenes will stamp themselves 
 on the camera of the brain never to be effaced, let one try all 
 that one may. 
 
 " There, that morning, I for the first time since we had met, 
 spoke of leaving Luz, and of going back to that life which I had 
 so often amused her by describing. Happy in her present, 
 ignorant of how soon the scenes so familiar and dear to her 
 would tire and pall on me, and infinitely too much of a child 
 to have looked beyond, or speculated upon anything which I 
 had not spoken of to her, it had not presented itself to her that 
 this sort of life could not go on for ever ; that even she would 
 not reconcile me long to the banishment from my own world, 
 and that in the nature of things we must either become more to 
 each other than we were now, or part as strangers, whom chance 
 had thrown together for a little time. She loved me, but, as I 
 say, so innocently and uncalculatingly, that she never knew it 
 till I spoke of leaving her ; then she grew very pale, her eyes 
 filled with tears, and shunned mine for the first time, and, as 
 an anatomist watches the quiver of pain in his victim, so I 
 watched the suffering of mine. It was her first taste of the 
 bitterness of life, and while I inflicted the pain I smiled at it, 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON^HEAD, 261 
 
 pleased in my egotism to see tlie power I had over her. It was 
 cruel, I grant it, but in confessing it I only confess to what 
 nine out of ten men have felt, though they conceal or deny it. 
 
 " * You will miss me, Florelle *?' I asked her. She looked at 
 me reproachfully, wistfully, piteously, the sort of look I have 
 seen in the eyes of a dying deer ; too bewildered by this sud- 
 den mention of my departure to answer in words. ISTo answer 
 was needed with eyes so eloquent as hers, but I repeat it again. 
 I knew I gave pain, but I knew too, I should soon console her. 
 Her lips quivered, and the tears gathered in her eyes; she had 
 not known enough of sorrow to have learnt to dissemble it. 
 I asked her if she loved me so much that she was unwilling to 
 bid me farewell. For the first time her eyes sank beneath mine, 
 and a hot painful colour flushed over her face. Poor child ! if 
 ever I have been loved by any woman, I was loved by her. 
 Then I woke her heart from its innocent peaceful rest, with 
 words that spoke a language utterly new to her. I sketched 
 to her a life with me that made her cheeks glow, and her lips 
 quiver, and her eyes grow dark. She was lovelier in those 
 moments than any art could ever attempt to picture ! She loved 
 me, and I made her tell me so over and over again. She put 
 her fate unhesitatingly into my hands, and rejoiced in the pas- 
 sion I vowed her, little understanding how selfishly I sought 
 her, little thinking, in her ignorance of the evil of the world, 
 that while she rejoiced in the fondness I lavished on her, and 
 worshipped me as though I were some superior unerring god- 
 like being, she was to me only a new toy, only a pursuit of the 
 hour, a plaything, too, of which I foresaw I should tire ! Isn't 
 it Benjamin Constant who says, 'Malheureux I'homme qui, dans 
 le commencement d'un amour, prevoit avec une precision cruelle 
 rheure oil il en sera lasse "? 
 
 " As it happened, I had made that morning an appointment 
 in Luz with some men I knew, who happened to be passing 
 through it, and had stopped there that day to go up the Pic du 
 Midi the next, so that I could spend only an hour or two with 
 Florelle. I took her to her home, parted with her for a few 
 hours, and went down the path. I remember how she stood 
 looking after me under the heavy grey stone- work of the gate- 
 way, the tendrils of the ivy hanging down and touching her 
 hair that glistened in the sunshine as she smiled me her adieu x. 
 My words had translated, for the first time, all the newly-dawned 
 
262 THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD, 
 
 emotions that had lately stirred in her heart, while she knew 
 not their name. 
 
 " I soon lost sight of her through a sharp turn of the bridle- 
 path round the rocks, and went on my way thinking of my new 
 love, of how completely I held the threads of her fate in my 
 hands, and how entirely it lay in my power to touch the chords 
 of her young heart into acute pain or into as acute pleasure with 
 one word of mine — of how utterly I could mould her character, 
 her life, her fate, whether for happiness or misery, at my will. 
 I loved her well enough, if only for her unusual beauty, to feel 
 triumph at my entire power, and to feel a tinge of her own 
 poetry and tenderness of feeling stirring in me as I went on 
 under the green, drooping, fanlight boughs of the pines, think- 
 ing of Florelle de THeris.' 
 
 '•' * M'sieu ! permettez-moi vous parle un p'tit moti' 
 
 " Madame Cazot's patois made me look up, almost startled 
 for the moment, though there was nothing astonishing in her 
 appearance there, in her accustomed spot under the shade of a 
 mountain-ash and a great boulder of rock, occupied at her usual 
 task, washing linen in the Gave, as it foamed and rushed over 
 its stones. She raised herself from her work and looked up at 
 me, shading her eyes from the light — a sunburnt, ^vrinkled, 
 hardy, old woman, with her scarlet capulet, her blue cloth 
 jacket, and her brown woollen petticoat, so strange a contrast 
 to the figure I had lately left under the gateway of the Nid de 
 TAigle, that it was difficult to believe them even of the same 
 sex or country. 
 
 " She spoke with extreme deference, as she always did, but 
 so earnestly, that I looked at her in surprise, and stopped to 
 hear what it might be she had to say. She was but a peasant 
 woman, but she had a certain dignity of manner for all that, 
 caught, no doubt, from her long service with, and her pride in, 
 the De THeris. 
 
 " ' M'sieu, I have no right, perhaps, to address you ; you 
 are a grand seigneur, and I but a poor peasant woman, 
 j^evertheless, I must speak. I have a charge to which I 
 shall have to answer in the other world to God and to my 
 master. M'sieu, pardon me what I say, but you love Ma'am- 
 sellePlorelle]' 
 
 " I stared at the woman, astonished at her interference and 
 annoyed at her presumption, and motioned her aside with my 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD, 263 
 
 stick. But she placed herself in the path — a narrow path — 
 on which two people could not have stood without one or 
 other going into the Gave, and stopped me resolutely and re- 
 spectfully, shading her eyes from the sun, and looking steadily 
 at my face. 
 
 ** * M'sieu, a little while ago, in the gateway yonder, when 
 you parted with Ma'amselle Florelle, I was coming out be- 
 hind you to bring my linen to the river, and I saw you take 
 her in your arms and kiss her many times, and whisper to 
 her that you would come again " ce soir !" Then, m'sieu, I 
 knew that you must love my little lady, or, at least, must 
 have made her love you. I have thought her — living always 
 with her — ^but a beautiful child still ; but you have found her 
 a beautiful woman, and loved her, or taught her love, m'sieu. 
 Pardon me if I wrong your honour, but my master left her 
 in my charge, and I am an ignorant old peasant, ill-fitted for 
 such a trust ; but is this love of yours such as the Sieur de 
 I'Heris, were he now on earth, would put his hand in your 
 own and thank you for, or is it such that he would wash out 
 its insult in your blood or his ? 
 
 " Her words amazed me for a moment, first at the presump- 
 tion of an interference of which I had never dreamt, next at 
 the iron firmness with which this old woman, nothing daunted, 
 spoke, as though the blood of a race of kings ran in her 
 veins. I laughed a little at the absurdity of this cross-ques- 
 tioning from her to me, and not choosing to bandy words 
 with her, bade her move aside ; but her eyes blazed lilie fire ; 
 she stood firm as the earth itself. 
 
 " * M'sieu, answer me ! You love Ma'amselle riorelle— 
 you have asked her in marriage f 
 
 " I smiled involuntarily : 
 
 " * My good woman, men of my class don't marry every 
 pretty face they meet ; we are not so fond of the institution. 
 You mean well, I know ; at the same time, you are deucedly 
 impertinent, and I am not accustomed to interference. Have 
 the goodness to let me pass, if you please/ 
 
 " But she would not move. She folded her arms across 
 her chest, quivering from head to foot with passion, her deep- 
 set eyes flashed like coals under her bushy eyebrows. 
 
 " * M'sieu, I understand you well enough. The house of 
 the L'Heris is fallen, ruined, and beggared, and you deem 
 
264 THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 dishonour may approach it unrelDuked and unrevenged* 
 Listen to me, m'sieu ; I am but a woman, it is true, and old, 
 "but I swore by Heaven and Our Lady to the Sieur de I'Heris, 
 when he lay dying yonder, years ago, that I would serve the 
 child he left, as my forefathers had served his in peace and 
 war for centuries, and keep and guard her as best I might 
 dearer than my own heart's blood. Listen to me. Before 
 this love of yours shall breathe another word into her ear to 
 scorch and sully it ; before your lips shall ever meet hers 
 again ; before you say again to a De I'Heris poor and power- 
 less, what you would never have dared to say to a De I'Heris 
 rich and powerful, I will defend her as the eagles by the Md 
 de I'Aigle defend their young. You shall only reach her 
 across my dead body !' 
 
 " She spoke with the vehemence and passionate gesticula- 
 tion of a Southern ; in her patois, it is true, and with rude 
 eloquence, but there was an odd timhre of pathos in her voice, 
 harsh though it was, and a certain wild dignity about her 
 through the very earnestness and passion that inspired her. 
 I told her she was mad, and would have put her out of my 
 path, but, planting herself before me, she laid hold of my 
 arm so firmly that I could not have pushed forwards without 
 violence, which I would not have used to a woman, and a 
 woman, moreover, as old as she was. 
 
 " ' Listen to one word more, m'sieu. I know not what title 
 you may bear in your own country, but I saw a coronet upon 
 your handkerchief the other day, and I can tell you are a 
 grand seigneur — you have the air of it, the manner. M'sieu, 
 you can have many women to love you ; cannot you spare 
 this one % you must have many pleasures, pursuits, enjoyments 
 in your world, can you not leave me this single treasure? 
 Think, m'sieu ! If Ma'amselle Florelle loves you now, she 
 will love you only the dearer as years go on ; and you^ you 
 will tire of her, weary of her, want change, fresh beauty, new 
 excitement — you must know that you will, or why should 
 you shrink from the bondage of marriage % — you will weary 
 of her ; you will neglect her first and desert her afterwards ; 
 what will be the child's life tlim ? Think ! You have done 
 her cruel harm enough now with your wooing words, why 
 will you do her more ? What is your love beside hers ? If 
 you have heart or conscience you cannot dare to contrast them 
 
The story oP a crayon-heaD, 26s 
 
 together ; she would give up everything for you and you would 
 give up nothing 1 M'sieu, MoreUe is not like the women of 
 your world ; she is innocent of evil as the holy saints ! those 
 who meet her should guard her from the knowledge, and not 
 lead her to it. Were the Sieur de I'Heris living now, were 
 her House as powerful as I have known them, would you 
 have dared or dreamt of seeking her as you do now 1 M'sieu, 
 he who wrongs trust, betrays hospitality, and takes advantage 
 of that very purity, guilelessness, and want of due protection 
 which should be the best and strongest appeal to every man 
 of chivalry and honour — he, whoever he be, the De I'Heris 
 ^ould have held, as what he is, a coward ! Will you not 
 now have pity upon the child, and let her go V 
 
 " I have seldom been moved in, never been swayed from, 
 any pursuit or any purpose, whether of love, or pleasure, or 
 ambition ; but something in old Cazot's words stirred me 
 strangely, more strangely still from the daring and singularity 
 of the speaker. Her intense love for her young charge gave 
 her pathos, eloquence, and even a certain rude majesty, as 
 she spoke ; her bronzed wrinkled features worked with emo- 
 tions she could not repress, and hot tears fell over her hard 
 cheeks. I felt that what she said was true ; that as surely as 
 the night follows the day would weariness of it succeed to 
 my love for Florelle, that to the hospitality I had so readily 
 received I had, in truth, given but an ill return, and that I 
 had deliberately taken advantage of the very ignorance of the 
 world and faith in me which should have most appealed to 
 my honour. I knew what she said was true, and this epithet 
 of 'coward' hit me harder from the lips of a woman, on 
 whom her sex would not let me avenge it, with whom my 
 conscience would not let me dispute it, than it would have 
 done from any man. / called a coward by an old peasant 
 woman ! absurd idea enough, wasn't it 1 It is a more absurd 
 one still that I could not listen to her unmoved, that her 
 words touched me — how or why I could not have told — 
 stirred up in me something of weakness, unselfishness, or 
 chivalrousness — I know not what exactly — that prompted 
 me for once to give up my own egotistical evanescent passions 
 and act to Florelle as though all the males of her house were 
 on earth to make me render account of my acts. At old 
 Cazot's words I shrank for once from my own motives and 
 
^66 THE STORY OF A CRA YON-HEAD, 
 
 my own desires, shrank from classing Florelle with the cocottes 
 of my world, from bringing her down to their level and their 
 life. 
 
 " ' You will have pity on her, m'sieu, and go?' asked old 
 Cazot, more softly, as she looked in my face. 
 
 " I did not answer her, but put her aside out of my way, 
 went down the mountain-path to where my horse was left 
 cropping the grass on the level ground beneath a plane-tree, 
 and rode at a gallop into Luz without looking back at the 
 grey-turreted ruins of the JSTid de TAigle. 
 
 "And I left Luz that night without seeing Florelle de 
 THeris again — a tardy kindness — one, perhaps, as cruel as the 
 cruelty from which old Cazot had protected her. Don't you 
 think I was a fool, indeed, for once in my life, to listen to an 
 old woman's prating ! Call me so if you like, I shall not 
 dispute it ; we hardly know when we are fools, and when 
 wise men ! Well 1 I have not been much given to such weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 " I left Luz, sending a letter to Florelle, in which I bade 
 her farewell, and entreated her to forget me — an entreaty 
 which, while I made it, I felt would not be obeyed — one 
 which, in the selfishness of my heart, I dare say, I hoped 
 might not be. I went back to my old diplomatic and social 
 life, to my customary pursuits, amusements, and ambitions, 
 turning over the leaf of my life that contained my sojourn in 
 the Pyrenees, as you turn over the page of a romance to which 
 you will never recur. I led the same life, occupied myself 
 with my old ambitions, and enjoyed my old pleasures ; but I 
 could not forget Florelle as wholly as I wished and tried to 
 do. I had not usually been troubled with such memories ; 
 if unwelcome, I could generally thrust them aside ; but Flo- 
 relle I did not forget ; the more I saw of other women the 
 sweeter and brighter seemed by contrast her sensitive, delicate 
 nature, unsullied by the world, and unstained by artifice and 
 falsehood. The longer time went on, the more I regretted 
 having given her up — ^perhaps on no better principle than 
 that on which a child cares most for the toy he cannot have ; 
 joerhaps, because^ away from her, I realised that I had lost the 
 purest and the strongest love I had ever won. In the whirl 
 of my customary life I sometimes wondered how she had re- 
 ceived my letter, and how far the iron had burnt into her 
 
THE STORY OF A CRA YON-HEAD. 267 
 
 young heart — wondered if slie had joined the Sisters of Sainte 
 Marie Purificatrice, or still led her solitary life among the 
 rocks and beechwoods of Md de TAigle. I often thought of 
 her, little as the life I led was conducive to regretful or ro- 
 mantic thoughts. At length, my desire to see her again grew 
 ungovernable. I had never been in the habit of refusing 
 myself what I wished; a man is a fool who does, if his 
 wishes are in any degree attainable. And at the end of the 
 season I went over to Paris, and down again once more into 
 the Midi. I reached Luz, lying in the warm golden Pyre- 
 nean light as I had left it, and took once more the old familiar 
 road up the hills to the Md de I'Aigle. There had been no 
 outward change from the year that had flown by ; there 
 drooped the fanhke branches of the pines ; there rushed the 
 Gave over its rocky bed ; there came the silvery sheep-bell 
 chimes down the mountain-sides ; there, over hill and wood, 
 streamed the mellow glories of the Southern sunlight. There 
 is something unutterably painful in the sight of any place 
 after one's lengthened absence, wearing the same smile, lying 
 in the same sunlight. I rode on, picturing the flush of glad- 
 ness that would dawn in Plorelle's face at the sight of me, 
 thinking that Mme. Cazot should not part me from her again, 
 even, I thought, as I saw the old grey turrets above the beech- 
 woods, if I paid old Cazot's exacted penalty of marriage ! I 
 loved Florelle more deeply than I had done twelve months 
 before. ^ L'absence allument les grandes passions et eteignent 
 les petites,' they say. It had been the reverse with me. 
 
 " I rode up the bridle-path and passed through the old gate- 
 way. There was an unusual stillness about the place ; nothing 
 but the roar of the torrent near, and the songs of the birds in 
 the branches speaking in the summer air. My impatience to 
 see Plorelle, or to hear her, grew ungovernable. The door 
 stood open. I groped my way through the passage and pushed 
 open the door of the old room. Under the oriel Avindow, 
 where I had seen her first, she lay on a little couch. I saw 
 her again — but how ? My God ! to the day of my death I 
 shall never forget her face as I saw it then ; it was turned 
 from me, and her hair streamed over her pillows, but as the 
 sunlight fell upon it, I knew well enough what was written 
 there. Old Cazot, sitting by the bed with her head on her 
 arms, looked up, and came towards me, forcing me back. 
 
268 THE STORY OP A CRA YON-HE A b. 
 
 " ' You are come at last to see her die. Look on your work — - 
 look well at it — and tlien go ; witli my curse upon you !* 
 
 " I shook off her grasp, and forcing my way towards the 
 window, threw myseK down by Florelle's bed ; till then I 
 never knew how well I loved her. My voice awoke her from 
 her sleep, and, with a wild cry of joy, she started up, weak as 
 she was, and threw her arms round my neck, clinging to me 
 with her little hands, and crying to me deliriously not to leave 
 her while she lived — to stay with her till death should take 
 her ; where had I been so long % why had I come so late % So 
 late I — those piteous words ! As I held her in my arms, un- 
 conscious from the shock, and saw the pitiless marks that 
 disease, the most hopeless and the most cruel, had made on 
 the face that I had left fair, bright, and full of life as any 
 child's, I felt the full bitterness of that piteous reproach, * Why 
 had I come so late *?' 
 
 " What need to tell you more ? Florelle de THeris was 
 dying, and I had killed her. The child that I had loved so 
 selfishly had loved me with all the concentrated tenderness of 
 her isolated and impassioned nature ; the letter I wrote bid- 
 ding her farewell had given her her death-blow. They told 
 me that from the day she received that letter everything lost 
 its interest for her. She would sit for hours looking down 
 the road to Luz, as though watching wea Jly for one who never 
 came, or kneeling before the pictures I had left as before some 
 altar, praying to heaven to take care of me, and bless me, and 
 let her see me once again before she died. Consumption had 
 killed her mother in her youth; during the chill winter at 
 the Nid de TAigle the hereditary disease settled upon her. 
 When I found her she was dying fast. All the medical aid, 
 all the alleviations, luxuries, resources, that money could pro- 
 cure, to ward off the death I would have given twenty years 
 of my life to avert, I lavished on her, but they were useless ; 
 for my consolation they told me that, used a few months ear- 
 lier, they would have saved her ! She lingered three weeks, 
 fading away like a flower gathered before its fullest bloom. 
 Each day was torture to me. I knew enough of the disease 
 to know from the first there was no hope for her or me. Those 
 long terrible night-hours, when she lay with her head upon 
 my shoulder, and her little hot thin hands in mine, while I 
 listened, uncertain whether every breath was not the last, or 
 
THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 269 
 
 whether life was not already fled ! By God ! I cannot think 
 of them ! 
 
 " One of those long summer nights Florelle died : happy 
 with me, loving and forgiving me to the last ; speaking to the 
 last of that reunion in which she, in her innocent faith, he- 
 lieved and hoped, according to the promise of her creed ! — 
 died with her hands clasped round my neck, and her eyes 
 looking up to mine, till the last ray of light was quenched in 
 them — died while the morning dawn rose in the east and cast 
 a golden radiance on her face, the herald of a day to which 
 she never woke !" 
 
 There was a dead silence between us ; the Arno splashed 
 against the wall below, murmuring its eternal song beneath its 
 bridge, while the dark heavy clouds drifted over the sky with 
 a sullen roll of thunder. He lay back in his chair, the deep 
 shadow from the balcony pillar hiding his face from me, and 
 his voice quivered painfully as he spoke the last words of his 
 story. He was silent for many minutes, and so was I, regret- 
 ting that my careless question had unfolded a page out of his 
 life's history written in characters so painful to him. Such 
 skeletons dwell in the hearts of most ; hands need be tender 
 that disentomb them and drag out to daylight ashes so mourn- 
 ful and so grievous, guarded so tenaciously, hidden so jealously. 
 Each of us is tender over his own, but who does not think his 
 brother's fit subject for jest, for gibe, for mocking dance of 
 death? 
 
 He raised himself with a laugh, but his lips looked white 
 as death as he drank down a draught of the Hermitage. 
 
 " Well ! what say you : is the maxim right, y-a-t-il femmes 
 et femmes? Caramba ! why need you have pitched upon that 
 portfolio ? — There are the lights in the Acqua d'Oro's palace ; 
 we must go, or we shall get into disgrace." 
 
 We went, and Beatrice Acqua d'Oro talked very ardent Ita- 
 lian to him, and the Comtesse Bois de Sandal remarked to me 
 
 what a brilliant and successful man Lord was, but how 
 
 unimpressionable ! — as cold and as glittering as ice. Nothing 
 had ever majle him feel, she was quite certain, pretty compli- 
 mentary nonsense though he often talked. What would the 
 Marchesa and the Comtesse have said, I wonder, had I told 
 them of that little grave under the Pyrenean beech- woods ? 
 
270 THE STORY OF A CRAYON-HEAD. 
 
 So much does tlie world know of any of us ! In the lives of 
 all men are doubled-down pages written on in secret, folded 
 out of sight, forgotten as they make other entries in the diary, 
 never read by their fellows, only glanced at by themselves in 
 some midnight hour of solitude. 
 
 Basta ! they are painful reading, my friends. Don't you find 
 them so % Let us leave the skeletons in the closet, the pictures 
 in the portfolio, the doubled-down pages in the locked diary, 
 and go to Beatrice Acqua d'Oro's, where the lights are burn- 
 ing gaily. What is Madame Bois de Sandal, nee Dashwood, 
 singing in the music-room % 
 
 The tender grace of a day that is dead 
 Will never come back to me ! 
 
 That is the burden of many songs sung in this world, for 
 some dead flowers strew most paths, and grass grows over 
 myriad graves, and many leaves are folded down in many lives, 
 I fear. And — retrospection is very idle, my good fellow, and 
 regret is as bad as the tic, and flirting is deucedly pleasant ; 
 the white Hermitage we drank to-night is gone, we know, but 
 are there no other bottles left of wine every whit as good % 
 Shall we waste our time sighing after spilt lees % Surely not. 
 And yet — ah me !— the dead fragrance of those virtues that 
 yielded us the golden nectar of our youth ! 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR; 
 
 OR, 
 
 "NOT AT ALL A PROPER PERSOK" 
 
 Bon ami, do you consider the possession of sisters an agree- 
 able addition to anybody's existence 1 I hold it very intensely 
 the reverse. Who puts a man down so spitefully as his sisters ] 
 Who refuses so obstinately to see any good in the ISTazarene 
 they have known from their nurseries 1 Who snubs him so 
 contumaciously, when he's a little chap in jackets and they 
 young ladies already out ? Who worries him so pertinaciously 
 to marry their pet friend, " who has ten thousand a year, dear ! 
 Eed hair 1 I'm sure she has not ! It's the most lovely auburn ! 
 But you never see any beauty in refined women !" Who, if 
 you incline towards a pretty little ineligible, rakes up so 
 laboriously every scrap of gossip detrimental to her, and 
 pours into your ear the delightful intelligence that she has 
 been engaged to Powell of the Greys, is a shocking flirt, wears 
 false teeth, is full five years older than she says she is, and 
 has most objectionable connexions 1 Who, I should like to 
 know, does any and all of these things, my good fellow, so 
 amiably and unremittingly as your sisters 1 till — some day of 
 grace, perhaps — you make a telling speech at St. Stephen's, 
 and fling a second-hand aroma of distinction upon them ; or 
 marry a co-heiress and lady-in-her-own-right, and they raffolent 
 of that charming creature, speculating on the desirability of 
 being invited to your house when the men are down for 
 September. Then, what a dear feUow you become ! they 
 
272 THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR, 
 
 always were, so fond of you ! a little wild ! oh yes ! but they 
 are so glad you are changed, and think more seriously now ! 
 it was only from a rml interest in your welfare that they used 
 to grieve, &c., &c. 
 
 My sisters were my natural enemies, I remember, when I 
 was in the daisy age and exposed to their thraldom ; they were 
 so blandly superior, so ineffably condescending, and wielded, 
 with such smiling dexterity, that feminine power of torture 
 known familiarly as " nagging !" ]N'ow, of course, they leave 
 me in peace ; but from my earliest to my emancipated years 
 they were my natural enemies. I might occasionally excite 
 the enmity, it is possible. I remember, when I was aged 
 eight, covering Constance, a stately brunette, with a mortify- 
 ing amount of confusion, by askiug her, as she welcomed a 
 visitor with effusion, why she said she was delighted to see 
 her, when she had cried, " There's that odious woman again !" 
 as we saw the carriage drive up. I have a criminal recollection 
 of taking Gwendolina's fan, fresh from Howell and James's, 
 and stripping it of its gold-powdered down before her face 
 ere she could rush to its rescue, as an invaluable medium in 
 the manufacture of May-flies. I have also a dim and guilty 
 recollection of saying to the Hon. George Cursitt, standing 
 then in the interesting position of my prospective brother-in- 
 law, " Mr. Cursitt, Agneta doesn't care one straw for you. I 
 heard her saying so last night to Con ; and that if you weren't 
 so near the title, she would never have accepted you ;" which 
 revelation inopportunely brought that desirable alliance to an 
 end, and Olympian thunders on my culprit's head. 
 
 I had my sins, doubtless, but they were more than avenged 
 on me ; my sisters were my natural enemies, and I never 
 knew of any man's who weren't so, more or less. Ah ! my 
 good sirs, those domesticities are all of them horrid bores, 
 and how any man, happily and thrice blessedly free from 
 them, can take the very worst of them voluntarily on his 
 head by the Gate of Marriage (which differs thus remarkably 
 from a certain Gate at Jerusalem, that at the one the camels 
 kneel down to be lightened of all their burdens ere they can 
 pass through it ; at the other, the poor human animal kneels 
 down to be loaded with all Ms ere he is permitted to enter), 
 does pass my comprehension, I confess. I might amply avenge 
 the injuries of my boyhood received from mesdemoiselles mes 
 
The beauty oe viCq b'AZVR, 27 j 
 
 muTB. Could I not tell Gwendolina of the pot of money 
 dropped by lier caro sposo over the Cesarewitch Stakes^? 
 Could I not intimate to Agneta where her Eight Honourable 
 lord and master spent the small hours last night, when popu- 
 larly supposed to be nodding on the Treasury benches in the 
 service of the state ? Could I not rend the pride of Con- 
 stance, by casually asking monsieur her husband, as I sip her 
 coffee in her drawing-room this evening, who was that very 
 pretty blonde with him at the Crystal Palace yesterday % the 
 blonde being as well known about town as any other star of 
 the demimonde. Of course I could : but I am magnanimous ; 
 I can too thoroughly sympathise with those poor fellows. My 
 vengeance would recoil on innocent heads, so I am magnani- 
 mous and silent. 
 
 My sisters have long ceased to be mesdemoiselles, they have 
 become mesdames, in that transforming crucible of marriage 
 in which, assuredly, all that glitters is not gold, but in which 
 much is swamped, and crushed, and fused with uncongenial 
 metal, and from which the elixir of happiness but rarely 
 exhales, whatever feminine alchemists, who patronise the 
 hymeneal furnace, may choose to assure us to the contrary. 
 My sisters are indisputably very fine women, and develop in 
 full bloom all those essential qualities which their moral and 
 mental trainers sedulously instilled into them when they were 
 limited to the schoolroom and thorough-bass, Garcia and an 
 ^* expurgated" Shakspeare, the society of Mademoiselle Collet- 
 monte and Fraulein von Engel, and the occasional refection of a 
 mild, religious, and respectably-twaddhng fiction of the milk- 
 and-water, pious-tendency, nursery-chronicling, and grammar- 
 disregarding class, now-a-days indited for the mental improve- 
 ment of a common-place generation in general, and growing 
 young ladies in particular. My sisters are women of the 
 world to perfection ; indeed, for talent in refrigerating with 
 a glance ; in expressing disdain of a toilette or a ton by an up- 
 raised eye-brow ; in assuming a various impenetrable plait-il ? 
 expression at a moment's notice ; in sweeping past intimate 
 friends with a charming unconsciousness of their existence, 
 when such unconsciousness is expedient or desirable ; in re- 
 ducing an unwished-for intrader into an instantaneous and 
 agonising sense of his own de trop-ism and insignificance — 
 in all such accomplishments and acquirements necessary to 
 
 18 
 
474 '^^^ BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYM. 
 
 existence in all proper worlds, I think they may be matched 
 with the best-bred lady to be found any day, from April to 
 August, between Berkeley-square and Wilton-crescent. Con- 
 stance, now Lady Marechale, is of a saintly turn, and touched 
 with fashionable fanaticism, pets evangelical bishops and ragged 
 school-boys, drives to special services, and is called our noble 
 and Christian patroness by ]Dhysicians aurd hon. sees., holds 
 doctrinal points and strong tracts, mixed together in equal 
 proportion, an infallible chloride of lime for the disinfec'tance 
 of our polluted globe, and appears to receive celestial tele- 
 grams of indisputable veracity and charming acrimony con- 
 cerning the destiny of the vengeful contents of the Seven 
 Yials. Agneta, now Mrs. Albany Protocol, is a Cabinet 
 Ministress, and a second Duchesse de Longueville (in her 
 own estimation at the least); is "strengthening her party" 
 when she issues her dinner invitations, whispers awfully of a 
 " crisis" when even penny-paper leaders can't get up a breeze, 
 and spends her existence in "pushing" poor Protocol, who, 
 thorough Englishman that he is, considers it a point of honour 
 to stand still in all paths with praiseworthy Britannic obstinacy 
 and opticism. Gwendolina, now Lady Prederic Parniente, is a 
 butterfly of fashion, has delicate health, affects dilettanteism, 
 is interested by nothing, has many other charming minauderies, 
 and lives in an exclusive circle — so tremendously exclusive, 
 indeed, that it is possible that she may at last draw the cordon 
 sanitaire so very tight, that she will be left alone with tha 
 pretty woman her mirrors reflect. 
 
 They have each of them attained to what the world calls a 
 " good position " — an eminence the world dearly reveres ; if 
 you can climb to it, do ; never mind what dirt may cling to 
 your feet, or what you may chance to pull down in your as- 
 cent, no questions will be asked you at the top, when you 
 wave your flag victoriously from a plateau at a good eleva- 
 tion. They haven't all their ambitions — who has? If a 
 fresh Alexander conquered the world he would fret out his 
 life for a standing-place to be able to try Archimedes' little 
 experiment on his newly-won globe. Lady Marechale dies 
 for entrance to certain salons which are closed to her ; she is 
 but a Baronet's wife, and though so heavenly-minded, has 
 some weaknesses of earth. Mrs. Protocol grieves because shft 
 thinks a grateful country ought to wreathe her lord's brow 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYI^. 2?5 
 
 with laurels — Anglic^, strawberry-leaves — and tlie country re- 
 mains ungrateful, and tlie brows bare. Lady Frederic frets 
 beca'ase her foe and rival, Lady Maria Fitz-Sachet, has foot- 
 men an inch taller than her own. They haven't all their 
 ambitions satisfied. We are too occupied with kicking our dear 
 friends and neighbours down off the rounds of the social lad- 
 der to advance ourselves always perhaps as entirely as we 
 otherwise might do. Eut still they occupy " unexceptionable 
 positions," and from those fortified and impregnable citadels 
 are very severe upon those who are not, and very jealous of 
 those who are, similarly favoured by fortune. When St. 
 Peter lets ladies through the celestial portals, he'll never 
 please them unless he locks out all their acquaintance, and 
 indulges them with a gratifying peep at the rejected candi- 
 dates. 
 
 The triad regard each other after the manner of ladies ; 
 that is to say, Lady Marechale holds Mrs. Protocol and Lady 
 Frederic " frivolous and worldly ;" Lady Frederic gives them 
 both one little supercilious expressive epithet; ^' precieuses ;^* 
 Mrs. Protocol considers Lady Marechale a " pharisee," and 
 Lady Frederic a " butterfly ;" — in a word, there is that charm- 
 ing family love to one another which ladies so delight to 
 evince, that I suppose we must excuse them for it on the plea 
 that 
 
 'Tis their nature to ! 
 which Dr. Watts puts forward so amiably and grammatically 
 in excuse for the bellicose propensities of the canine race, but 
 which is never remembered by priest or layman in extenua- 
 tion of the human. 
 
 They dislike one another — relatives always do — still, the 
 three Arms will combine their Horse, Line, and Field Bat- 
 teries in a common cause and against a common enemy ; the 
 Saint, the Politician, and the Butterfly have several rallying- 
 points in common, and when it comes to the question of ex- 
 tinguishing an ineligible, of combining a sneer with a smile, 
 of blending the unexceptionably-courteous with the indescrib- 
 ably-contemptuous, of calmly shutting their doors to those 
 who won't aggrandise them, and blandly throwing them 
 open to those who will, it would be an invidious task to give 
 the golden apple, and decide vfhich of the three ladies most 
 distingnishes herself in such social prowess. 
 
 io — J 
 
2;6 THE BEAUTY OF VI CQ D'AZYk, 
 
 [N'eed I say that I dorUt see very mucli of them ?— sevei^ 
 strictures on society in general, with moral platitudes, over 
 the luncheon wines at Lady Marechale's ; discourse redolent 
 of blue-books, with vindictive hits at Protocol and myself for 
 our disinclination to accept a " mission," and our levity of 
 life and opinions at " a period so full of social revolutions 
 and wide-spread agitation as the present," through the soup 
 and fish at Agneta's ; softly hissed acerbities and languidly 
 yawned satires on the prettiest women of my acquaintance, 
 over the coffee at Lady Frederic's ; are none of them particu- 
 larly inviting or alluring. And as they or similar conversa- 
 tional confections are invariably included in each of the three 
 ladies' entertainments en 'ptiiU comite, it isn't wonderful if I 
 forswear their drawing-rooms. Cheres dames, you complain, 
 and your chosen defenders for you, that men don't affect your 
 society now-a-days save and except when making love to you. 
 It isn't our fault, indeed : you bore us, and — what can we do 1 
 — ^^ve shrink as naturally and pardonably from voluntary 
 boredom as from any other voluntary suffering, and shirk an 
 air redolent of ennui from the same principle as we do an air 
 redolent of diphtheria. Self-preservation is a law of nature, 
 and female society consists too exclusively of milk-and-water, 
 dashed here and there with citric acid of malice, to be either 
 a recherche or refreshing beverage to palates that have tasted 
 warmer spices or more wholesome tonics. 
 
 So I don't see much of my triad of sisters unless accident- 
 ally, but last August I encountered them by chance at Vicq 
 d'Azyr. Do you know Vicq d'Azyr % No ? All right ! 
 when it is known universally it will be spoilt : it will soon be 
 fashionable, dyspeptic, artificial, like the crowds that will flock 
 to it ; its warm, bubbling springs will be gathered into long 
 upright glasses, and quaffed by yellow-visaged gi^oups ; brass 
 bands will bray where now the thrushes, orioles, and night- 
 ingales have the woodlands to themselves ; cavalcades of 
 hired hacks will cut up its thyme-covered turf, and young 
 ladies will sketch in tortured outline and miserable washes 
 the glorious sweep of its mountains, the crimson tints of its 
 forests, the rush of its tumbling torrents, the golden gleam of 
 IlS southern sun. Yicq d'Azyr will be a Spa, and will be 
 spoilt j dyspepsia and bronchia, vanities and flirtations, cares 
 and conquests, physicians and intrigantes, real marchionesses 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 277 
 
 puffing under asthma, fictitious marquises strewing chaff for 
 pigeons, monde and demi-monde, grandes dames and dames 
 d'industrie will float into it, a mighty army of butterflies with 
 a locust power of destruction : Vicq d'Azyr will be no more, 
 and in its stead we shall have — a Fashionable Bath. Yicq 
 d'Azyr, however, is free yd from the hand of the spoiler, and 
 is charming — its vine-clad hills stretching up in sunny slopes ; 
 its little homesteads nestling on the mountains' sides among 
 the pines that load the air with their rich heavy perfume ; its 
 torrents foaming down the ravines, flinging their snowy 
 spray far over the boughs of arbutus and mountain-ash that 
 bend across the brinks of their rushing courses ; its dark-eyed 
 peasant girls that dance at sunset under the linden-trees like 
 living incarnations of Florian's pastorals ; its sultry brilliant 
 summer nights, when all is still, when the birds are sleeping 
 among the ilex-leaves, and the wind barely stirs the tangled 
 boughs of the woodland ; when night is down on the moun- 
 tains, wrapping hill and valley, crag and forest in one soft 
 purple mist, and the silence around is only broken by the 
 mystic music of the rushing waters, the soft whir of the night- 
 birds' wings, or the distant chime of a village clock faintly 
 
 tolling through the air : Caramba, messieurs ! I beg your 
 
 pardon ! I don't know why I poetise on Yicq d'Azyr. / 
 went there to slay, not to sketch, with a rifle, not with a sty- 
 lus, to kill izzards and chamois, not to indite a poem a la 
 mode, with double-barrelled adjectives, no metre, and a " pur- 
 pose;" nor to add my quota to the luckless loaded walls of 
 the Academy by a pre-Eaphaelite landscape of arsenical green, 
 with the efi'ete trammels of perspective gallantly disregarded, 
 and trees like Dr. Syntax's wife, "roundabout and rather 
 squat," with just tAvo-dozen-and-seven leaves apiece for liberal 
 allowance. I went to Vicq d'Azyr, amongst other places, last 
 Augiist, for chamois-hunting with Dunbar, of the Queen's 
 Bays, taking up our abode at the Toison d'Or, whither all 
 artists, tourists, men who come for the sport, women who 
 come for its scenery, or invahds who come for its waters 
 (whose properties, miserabile dictu ! are just being discovered 
 as a panacea for every human ill — from a migraine to an '* in- 
 curable pulmonary affliction "), seek accommodation if they 
 can have it, since it is the only hotel in the place, though a 
 vpry good one; is adorned with a balcony running round 
 
278 THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 
 
 the lioiise, twined and buried in honeysuckle and wild 
 clematis, which enchants young ladies into instant promotion 
 of it into their sketch-books; and gives you, what is of 
 rather more importance, and what makes you ready to admire 
 the clematis when, under gastronomic exasperation, you might 
 swear at it as a harbour for tarantule — an omelette, I assure 
 you, well-nigh as well cooked as you have it at Mivart's or 
 Meurice's. 
 
 At the Toison d'Or we took up our abode, and at the 
 Toison d'Or we encountered my two elder sisters, Constance 
 and Agneta, travelling for once on the same road, as they 
 had left Paris together, and were together going on to the 
 fashionable capital of a fashionable little toy duchy on the 
 other side of the Ehine, when they should have finished 
 with the wilder beauties and more unknown charms of 
 Vicq dAzyr and its environs. Each lady had her little 
 train of husband, courier, valet, lady's-maid, small dog, 
 and giant jewel-box. I have put the list in the inverse 
 ratio of their importance, I believe. Your husband versus 
 your jewel-box? Of course, my dear madam; absurd! 
 "What's the value of a little simple gold ring against a 
 dozen glittering circlets of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and 
 garnets 1 
 
 Each lady was bent on recruiting herself at Vicq d'Azyr 
 after the toils of the season, and of shining apres with all 
 the brilliance that a fair share of beauty, good positions, 
 and money, fairly entitled them to expect, at the little Court 
 of — we ^vill call it Lemongenseidlitz — dominated by its 
 charming Duchess, Princess Helene of Lemongenseidlitz- 
 Phizzstrelitz, the loveliest and most volage of all minor 
 royalties. Each lady was strongly opposed to whatever the 
 other wished; each thought the weather "sultry" when 
 the other thought it " chilly," and vice versa. Each con- 
 sidered her own ailments " unheard-of suffering, dear ! — I 
 could never make any one feel !" &c., &;c. — and assured you, 
 with mild disdain, that the other's malady was "purely 
 nervous, entirely exaggerated, but she will dwell on it so much, 
 poor darling !" Each related to you how admirably they 
 would have travelled if her counsel had been followed, and 
 described how the other would take the direction of everything, 
 would confuse poor Chanderlos, the courier, till he hardly 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VI CQ D'AZYR. 279 
 
 knew where lie was, and would take the night express out of 
 pure unkindness just because she knew how ill it always 
 made her (the speaker) feel to be torn across any country the 
 whole night at that dreadful pace ; each was dissatisfied with 
 everything, pleased with nothing, and bored, as became ladies 
 of good degree ; each found the sun too hot or the wind too 
 cold, the mists too damp or the air too dry, and both com- 
 bined their forces to worry their ladies'-maids, find fault with 
 the viands, drive their lords to the registering of an oath 
 never to travel with women again, welcome us benignly, since 
 they thought we might amuse them, and smile their sunniest 
 on Dunbar — he's heir prospective to the Gwinne Marquisate, 
 and Lady Marqueterie, the Saint, is not above keeping one 
 eye open for worldly distinctions, while Mrs. Albany Protocol, 
 though a Eadical, is, like certain others of the ultra-Liberal 
 party, not above a personal kow-towing before those " ridicu- 
 lous and ought-to-be-exploded conservative institutions" — 
 Eank and Title. 
 
 At the Toison d'Or, I say, when, after knocking over 
 izzards ad lihitum in another part of the district, we descended 
 one evening into the valley where Yicq d'Azyr lies nestled in 
 the sunset light, with the pretty vendangeuses trooping down 
 from the sloping vineyards, and the cattle winding homewards 
 down the hill-side paths, and the vesper-bells softly chiming 
 from the convent tower rising yonder above its woods of 
 linden and acacia — at the Toison d'Or, just alighting with the 
 respective suites aforesaid, and all those portable embarrass- 
 ments of books, tiger-skin rugs, flacons of bouquet, travelliQg- 
 bags warranted to carry any and everything that the most 
 fastidious can require en route from Piccadilly to Peru, with 
 which ladies do love to encumber and embitter their own 
 persons and their companions' lives, we met, as I have told 
 you, mesdames, mes soeurs. 
 
 " What ! Dear me, how very singular ! !N"ever should 
 have dreamt of meeting yoit ; so much too quiet a place, I 
 should have thought. E'o Kursaal here ? Come for sport — 
 oh ! Take Spes, will you % Poor little dear, he's been 
 barking the whole way because he couldn't see out of the 
 window. Ah, Major Dunbar, charmed to see you ! What 
 an amusing rencontre, is it nof?" and Lady Marechale, 
 slightly out of temper for so eminent a Christian at the com- 
 
«8o THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR, 
 
 mencement of her greeting, smootlied down her ruffled feathers 
 and turned smilingly on Dunbar. I have said he will be one 
 day Marquis of Gwinne. 
 
 " By George, old fellow ! you in this out-of-the-way place ! 
 That's all right. Sport good here^ Glad to hear if? The 
 deuce take me, if ever I am lured into travelling in a 
 ^j^artk carree again.", 
 
 And Marechale raised his eyebrows, and whispered con- 
 fidentially to me stronger language than I may commit to 
 print, though, considering his provocation, it was surely as 
 pardonable as Uncle Toby's. 
 
 "The thing I dislike in this sort of hotels and places is 
 the admixture of people with whom one is obliged to come 
 in contact," said Constance, putting up her glass as she 
 entered the long low room where the humble table d'h6te 
 of the Toison d'Or was spread. Lady Marechale talks 
 sweetly of the equality of persons in the sight of Heaven, 
 but I never heard her recognise the same upon* the soil of 
 earth. 
 
 " Exactly ! One may encounter such very objectionable 
 characters ! / wished to dine in our own apartments, but 
 Albany said no ; and he is so positive you know ! This place 
 seems miserably primitive," responded Agneta. Mrs. Protocol 
 pets Eouges and Eepublicans of every country, talks liberalism 
 like a feminine Sieyes or John Bright, projects a Eeform Bill 
 that shall bear the strongest possible family resemblance to the 
 Decrets du 4 Aout and considers "social distinctions odious 
 between man and man ;" but her practice is scarcely consistent 
 with her theory, seeing that she is about as tenacious and re- 
 sentful of objectionable contact as a sea-anemone. 
 
 "Who is that, I wonder?' whispered Lady Marechale, 
 acidulating herself in readiness, after the custom of English 
 ladies when catching sight of a stranger whom they " don't 
 know." 
 
 " I wonder ! All alone — ^how very queer !" echoed Mrs. 
 Protocol, drawing her black lace shawl around her with that 
 peculiar movement which announces a woman's prescience of 
 something antagonistic to her, that is to be repelled d^avance, 
 as surely as a hedgehog's transfer of itself into a prickly ball 
 denotes a sense of a coming enemy, and a need of caution and 
 self-protection. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 281 
 
 "Who is that deucedly handsome woman?" whispered 
 Marechale to me. 
 
 " What a charming creature !" echoed Dunbar. 
 The person referred to was the only woman at the table 
 d'hote besides my sisters — a sister tourist, probably; a hand- 
 some — nay more, a beautiful woman, about eight- and-twenty, 
 distinguished-looking, brilliant, with a figure voluptuously 
 perfect as was ever the Princess Borghese's. To say a woman 
 looks a lady, means nothing in our day. " That young lady 
 will wait on you, sir," says the shopman, referring to the 
 shop woman who will show you your gloves. "Hand the 
 'errings to that lady, Joe," you hear a fishmonger cry, as you 
 pass his shop door, referring by his epithet to some Mrs. 
 Gamp or Betsy Prigg in search of that piscatory cheer at his 
 stall. Heaven forbid we should give the abused and degenerate 
 title to any woman deserving of the name ! Generalise a 
 thing, and it is vulgar. " A gentleman of my acquaintance," 
 says Spriggs, an auctioneer and house-agent, to Smith, a col- 
 lector of the water-rate. " A man I know," says Pursang, 
 one of the Cabinet, to Greville Tempest, who is heir to a 
 Dukedom, and has intermarried with a royal house. The reason 
 is plain enough. Spriggs thinks it necessary to inform Smith, 
 who otherwise might remain ignorant of so signal a fact, that 
 he actually does know a gentleman, or rather what he terms 
 such. Pursang knows that Tempest would never suspect him 
 of being lie with men who were anything else ; the one is 
 proud of the fine English, the other is content with the simple 
 phrase ! Heaven forbid, I say, we should, now-a-days, call 
 any woman a lady who is veritably such ; let us fall back on 
 the dignified, definite, courtly last-century name of gentle- 
 woman. I should be glad to see that name revived ; it draws 
 a line that snobbissimi cannot pass, and has a grand simplicity 
 about it that will not attract Spriggs, Smith, and Spark, and 
 Mesdames S., leurs femmes. 
 
 Our sister-tourist, then, at the Toison d'Or, looked, to ni} 
 eyes at the least, much more than a " lady," she looked an 
 aristocrate jusqiiJau bout des ongles, a beautiful, brilliant, dazzling 
 brunette, with lovely hazel eyes, flashing like a tartaret falcon's 
 under their arched pencilled eyebrows, quite an unhoped god- 
 send in Vicq d'Azyr, where only stragglers resort as yet, though 
 —alas for my Arcadia — my sister's pet physician, who seul 
 
2S2 THE BEAUTY OF VI CQ D'AZYR. 
 
 them tliitlier, is about, I believe, to publish a wort, entitled 
 " The Water-Spring in the Wilderness; or, A Scamper through 
 Spots Unknown," which will do a little advertising of himself 
 opportunely, and send hundreds next season to iiivade the wild 
 woodlands and sunny valleys he inhumanly drags forth into the 
 gas-glare of the world. 
 
 The brilliant hazel eyes were opposite to me at dinner, and 
 were, I confess, more attractive to me than the stewed pigeons, 
 the crisp frog-legs, and the other viands prepared by the (consi- 
 dering we were in the heart of one of the most remote provinces) 
 really not bad cook of the Toison d'Or. Lady Marechale and 
 Mrs. Protocol honoured her with that stare by which one woman 
 knows so well how to destroy the reputation of another without 
 speech ; they had taken her measurement by some method of 
 feminine geometry unknown to us, and the result was apparently 
 not favourable to her, for over the countenances of the two ladies 
 gathered that expression of stiff dignity and virtuous disdain, 
 in the assuming of which, as I have observed before, they are 
 inimitable proficients. " Evidently not a proper person !" was 
 YvTitten on every one of their lineaments. Constance and 
 Agneta had made up their minds with celerity and decision as 
 to her social status, with, it is to be presumed, that unerring 
 instinct which leads their sex to a conclusion so instantaneously, 
 that, according to a philosopher, a woman will be at the top 
 of the staircase of Eeasoning by a single spring, while a man 
 is toiling slowly up the first few steps. 
 
 " You are intending to remain here some days, madame T 
 asked the fair stranger, with a charming smile, of Lady Mare- 
 chale — a pleasant little overture to chance ephemeral acquaint- 
 ance, such as a table d'hote surely well warrants. 
 
 But the pleasant little overture was one to which Lady Mare- 
 chale was far too English to respond. With that inimitable 
 breeding for which our countrymen and women are continentally 
 renowned, she bent her head with stately stiffness, indulged her- 
 self with a haughty stare at the offender, and turned to Agneta, 
 to murmur in English her disgust with the cuisine, of the really 
 unoffending Toison d'Or. 
 
 " Poor Spes would eat nothing. Fenton must make him 
 some panada. But perhaps there was nothing better than goat's 
 milk in the house 1 What could Dr. Berkeley be thinking of] 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 2S3 
 
 He described the place quite as though it were a second Meurice's 
 or Badisclier Hof !" 
 
 A look of amusement glanced into the sparkling, yet languid 
 eyes of my opposite neighbour. 
 
 " English !" she murmured to herself, with an almost imper- 
 ceptible but sufficiently scornful elevation of her arched eye- 
 brows, and a slight smile, just showing her white teeth, as I 
 addressed her in French ; and she answered me with the ease, 
 the aplomb, the ever suave courtesy of a woman of the world, 
 with that polish which gives the mosfc common subjects a brilli- 
 ance never their own, and that vivacity which confers on the 
 merest trifles a spell to amuse and to charm. She was certainly 
 a very lovely creature, and a very charming one, too ; frank, 
 animated, witty, with the tone of a woman who has seen the 
 world and knows it. Dunbar adored her, at first sight ; he is 
 an inflammable fellow, and has been ignited a thousand times 
 at far less provocation. Marecliale prepared for himself fifty 
 conjugal orations by the recklessness with which, under th^e 
 very eyes of madame, he devoted himself to another woman. 
 Even Albany Protocol, dull, somnolent, and superior to such 
 weaknesses, as becomes a president of many boards and a chair- 
 man of many committees, opened his eyes and glanced at her; 
 and some young Cantabs and artists at the other end of the table 
 stopped their own conversation, envying Dunbar and myself, 
 I believe, for our juxtaposition with the helU inconnue; while 
 my sisters sat trifling with the wing of a pigeon, in voluntary 
 starvation (they would have had nothing to complain of, you will 
 see, if they had suffered themselves to dine well 1), with strong 
 disapprobation marked upon their lineaments, of this lovely 
 vivacious unknown, whoever she might be, talking exclusively 
 to each other, with a certain expression of sarcastic disdain and 
 offended virtue, hinting far more forcibly than words that they 
 thought already the "very worst" of her. 
 
 So severe, indeed, did they look, that Dunbar, who is a good- 
 natured fellow, and thinks — and thinks justly — that Constance 
 and Agneta are very fine women, left me to discuss Hoffmann, 
 Heine, and the rest of Germany's satirical poets, with my opposite 
 neighbour, and endeavoured to thaw my sisters; a very difficult 
 matter when once those ladies are iced. He tried Paris, but 
 only elicited a monosyllabic remark concerning its weather ; he 
 tri^ Vicq dAzyr, and was rewarded for his trouble by a wither- 
 
284 THE BEAUTY OF VI CQ D'AZYR. 
 
 ing sarcasm on the unlucky Toison d'Or; he tried chit-chat on 
 mutual acquaintances, and the unhappy people he chanced to 
 name were severally dismissed with a cutting satire appended 
 to each. Lady Marechale and Mrs. Protocol were in one of 
 those freezing and unassailable moods in which they sealed a truce 
 with one another, and, combining their forces against a common 
 foe, dealt out sharp, spherical, hard-hitting little bullets of speech 
 from behind the abatis in which they entrenched themselves. 
 
 At last he, in despair, tried Lemongenseidlitz and the ladies 
 thawed slightly — their anticipations from that fashionable little 
 quarter were couleur de rose. They would meet there people 
 of the best monde, all their dearest — that is of course their most 
 fashionable — friends ; the dear Duchess of Frangipane, the 
 Millamonts those charming people, M. le Marquis de Croix-et- 
 Cordon, Sir Henry Pullinger, Mrs. Merivale-Delafield, were all 
 there; that delightful person, too, the Graf von Eosenlau, who 
 amused them so much at Baden last year, was, as of course Dun- 
 bar knew, Master of the Horse to the Prince of Lemongenseid- 
 litz-Phizzstrelitz ; they would be well received at the Court. 
 Which last thing, however, they did not say, though they might 
 imply, and assuredly fully thought it ; since Lady Marechale 
 already pictured herself gently awakening his Serene Highness 
 to the spiritual darkness of his soul in legitimatising gaming- 
 tables in his duchy, and Mrs. Protocol already beheld herself 
 closeted with his First Minister, giving that venerable Metter- 
 nich lessons in political economy, and developing to him a system 
 for filling his beggared treasury to overflowing, without taxing 
 the people a kreutzer — a problem which, though it might have 
 perplexed Kaunitz, Colbert, Pitt, Malesherbes, Talleyrand, and 
 Palmerston put together, offered not the slightest difficulty to 
 her enterprising intellect. Have I not said that Sherlock states 
 women are at the top of the staircase while we are toiling up 
 the first few steps 1 
 
 "TheDuchess — Princess Helene — is a lovely woman, I think. 
 Winton saw her at the Tuileries last winter, and raved about 
 her beauty," said Dunbar, finding he had hit at last on an 
 acceptable subject, and pursuing it with more zeal than discre- 
 tion ; for if there be one thing, I take it, more indiscreet than 
 another, it is to praise woman to woman. 
 
 Constance coughed and Agneta smiled, and both assented. 
 
 " Oh yes — very lovely, they believed 1" 
 
fHE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR, ^8 J 
 
 " And very lively — up to everything I think I have heard," 
 went on Dunbar, blandly, unconscious of the meaning of cough, 
 smile, and assent. 
 
 "Very lively !" sighed the Saint. 
 
 " Very lively !" smiled the Politician. 
 
 " As gay a woman as Marie Antoinette," continued Dunbar, 
 too intent on the truffles to pay en meme temps much heed 
 to the subject he was discussing. " She's copied the Trianon, 
 hasn't she % — has fetes and pastorals there, acts in comedies 
 herself, shakes off etiquette and ceremonial as much as she 
 can, and all that sort of thing, I believe T 
 
 Lady Marechale leaned back in her chair, the severe virtue 
 and dignified censure of a British matron and a modern Lucretia 
 expressed in both attitude and countenance. 
 
 " A second Marie Antoinette % — too truly and unfortunately 
 so, I have heard ! Levity in any station is sufficiently repre- 
 hensible, but when exhibited in the persons of those whom 
 a higher power has placed in exalted positions, it is most deeply 
 to be deplored. The evil and contagion of its example become 
 incalculable ; and even when, which I believe her excusers 
 are wont to assert of Princess Helene, it is merely traceable to 
 an over-gaiety of spirit and an over-carelessness of comment 
 and censure, it should be remembered that we are enjoined to 
 abstain from every appearance of evil !" 
 
 With which Constance shook out her phylacteries, repre- 
 sented by the thirty-guinea brocade-silk folds of her skirt (a 
 dress I heard her describe as " very plain ! — serviceable for 
 travelling"), and glanced at my opposite neighbour with a look 
 which said, ** You are evidently not a proper person, but you 
 hear for once what a proper person thinks !" 
 
 Our charming companion did hear it, for she apparently 
 understood English very well. She laughed a little — a sweet, 
 low, ringing laugh — (I was rather in love with her, I must 
 say — I am still) — and spoke with a slight pretty accent. 
 
 " True, madame ! but ah ! what a pity your St. Paul did 
 not advise, too, that people should not go by appearances, and 
 think evil where evil is not !" 
 
 Lady Marechale gave stare number two, with a curl of her 
 lip, and bent her head stiffly. 
 
 ■ " What a very strange person !" she observed to Agneta, in 
 a murmur, meant, like a stage aside, to be duly heard and ap- 
 
2^6 THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 
 
 predated by the audience. And yet my sisters are thouglit 
 very adniirably-TDred -women, too ! But then, a woman alone 
 — a foreigner, a stranger — surely no one would exact courtesy 
 to such from "ladies of position*?" 
 
 " Have you ever seen Princess Helene, the Duchess of 
 Lemongenseidlitz, may I askl" Marechale inquired, hastily, 
 to cover his wife's sneer. He's a very good fellow, and finds 
 the constant and inevitable society of a saint slightly trying, 
 and a very heavy chastisement for a few words sillily said one 
 morning in St. George's. 
 
 " I have seen her, monsieur — yes !" 
 
 " And is she a second Marie Antoinette V 
 
 She laughed gaily, showing her beautiful white teeth. 
 
 " Ah, bah, monsieur ! many would say that is a great deal 
 too good a comparison for her ! A second Louise de Savoie — 
 a second Duchesse de Chevreuse — nay, a second Lucrezia 
 Borgia, some would tell you. She likes pleasure — who does 
 not, though, except those with whom * les raisins sont trop 
 verts et bons pour des goujats T " 
 
 " What an insufferably bold person!" murmured Constance. 
 
 " Yery disagreeable to meet this style of people !" returned 
 Agneta. 
 
 And both stiffened themselves with a little more starch, and 
 we know that British vrheats produce the stiffest starch in the 
 world ! 
 
 " Who, indeed !" cried Marechale, regardless of madame's 
 frown. " You know this for truth, then, of Princess Helene?" 
 
 "Ah, bah, monsieur! who knows any thing for truth"?" laughed 
 the lovely brunette. "The world dislikes truth so much, it 
 is obliged to hide itself in out-of-the-way corners, and very 
 rarely comes to light. iN'obody knows the truth about her. 
 Some think her, as you say, a second Marie Antoinette, who 
 is surrendered to dissipation and levity, cares for nothing, and 
 would dance and laugh over the dead bodies of the people. 
 Others judge her as others judged Marie Antoinette; discredit 
 the gossip, and think she is but a lively woman, who laughs 
 at forms, likes to amuse herself, and does not see why a court 
 should be a prison ! The world likes the darker picture best ; 
 let it have it ! I do not suppose it will break her heart !" 
 
 And the fair stranger laughed so sweetly that every man at 
 the dinner-table fell in love with her on the spot ; and Lady 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR, 2§7 
 
 Marechale and Mrs. Protocol sat throughout the remainder of 
 the meal in frozen dignity and unbreakable silence, while the 
 lovely brunette talked with and smiled on us all with enchant- 
 ing gaiety, wit, and abandon, chatting on all sorts of topics of 
 the day. 
 
 Dinner over, she was the first to rise from the table, and 
 bowed to us with exquisite grace and that charming smile of 
 hers, of which the sweetest rays fell upon me, I swear, whether 
 you consider the oath an emanation of personal vanity or not, 
 my good sir. My sisters returned her bow and her good even- 
 ing to them with that pointed stare which says so plainly, " You 
 are not my equal, how dare you insult me by a courtesy T 
 
 And scarce!}^ had we begun to sip our coffee up-stairs in the 
 apartments Chanderlos had secured for the miladies Anglaises, 
 than the duo upon her began as the two ladies sat with Spes be- 
 tween them on a sofa beside one of the windows opening on 
 the balcony that ran round the house. A chance inadvertent 
 assent of Dunbar's, a propos of — oh, sin unpardonable ! — the 
 beauty of the incognita's eyes, touched the valve and un- 
 loosened the hot springs that were seething below in silence. 
 " A handsome woman ! — oh yes, a gentleman's beauty, I dare 
 say! — but a very odd person!" commenced Mrs. Protocol. 
 " A very strange person !" assented Lady Marechale. *^ Yery 
 free manners !" added Agneta. " Quite Prench !" chorused 
 Constance. " She has diamond rings — paste, no doubt !" said 
 the Politician. " And rouges — the colour's much too lovely 
 to be natural!" sneered the Saint. "Paints her eyebrows, 
 too !" " ISTot a doubt — and tints her lashes !" " An adven- 
 turess, I should say !" *' Or worse !" " Evidently not a proper 
 person !" " Certainly not !" 
 
 Through the soft mellow air, hushed into evening silence, 
 the words reached me, as I walked through the window on to 
 the balcony, and stood sipping my coffee and looking lazily 
 over the landscape, wrapped in sunset haze, over the valley 
 where the twilight shadows were deepening, and the mountains 
 that were steeped yet in rose-hued golden radiance from the 
 rays that had sunk behind them. 
 
 " My dear ladies," I cried, involuntarily, " can't you find 
 anything a little more kindly to say of a stranger who has 
 never done you any harm, and who, fifty to one, will never 
 cross your path again 1" 
 
58S THE BEAVTY OF VICQ D'AZYR, 
 
 " Bravo !" echoed Marecliale, who has never gone as quietly 
 in the matrimonial break as Protocol, and indeed will never 
 be thoroughly broken in — *^ bravo ! women are always studying 
 to make themselves attractive ; it's a pity they don't put down 
 among the items a trifle of generosity and charity, it would 
 embellish them wonderfully." 
 
 Lady Marechale beat an injured tattoo with the spoon on 
 her saucer, and leaned back with the air of a martyr, and 
 drawing in her lips with a smile, whose inimitable sneer any 
 lady might have envied — ^it was quite priceless ! 
 
 " It is the first time. Sir George, I should presume, that a 
 husband and a brother were ever heard to unite in upbraiding 
 a wife and a sister with her disinclination to associate with, or 
 her averseness to countenance, an improper person !" 
 
 " An improper person !" I cried. " But, my dear Constance, 
 who ever told you that this lady you are so desperately bitter 
 upon has any fault at all, save the worst fault in her own sex's 
 eyes — that of beauty? I see nothing in her ; her manners are 
 perfect ; her tone " 
 
 " You must pardon me if I decline taking your verdict on 
 so delicate a question," interrupted Lady Marechale, with 
 withering satire. " Very possibly you see nothing objection- 
 able in her — nothing at least that you would call so ! Your 
 views and mine are sufficiently different on every subject, and 
 the women with whom I believe you have chiefly associated 
 are not those calculated to give you very much appreciation 
 for the more refined classes of our sex ! Very possibly the 
 person in question is what you and Sir George too, perhaps, 
 find charming ; but you must excuse me if I really cannot, to 
 oblige you, stoop to countenance any one whom my intuition 
 and my knowledge of the world both declare so very evidently 
 what she should not be. She will endeavour, most probably, 
 if she remain here, to push herself into our acquaintance, but 
 if you and my husband should choose to insult us by favour- 
 ing her eftbrts, Agneta and I, happily, can guard ourselves from 
 the objectionable companionship into which those who sJiould 
 be our protectors would wish to force us !" 
 
 With which Lady Marechale, with a little more martyrdom 
 and an air of extreme dignity, had recourse to her flacon of 
 Viola Montana, and sank among the soft cushions, a model 
 pf outraged and SparHn virtue. I set down my coffee-cup, 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR, 389 
 
 and lounged out again to the peace of the balcony ; Marechale 
 shrugged his shoulders, rose, and followed me. Lo ! on the 
 part of the balcony that ran under her windows, leaning on 
 its balustrade, her white hand, white as the flowers, playing 
 with the clematis tendrils, the "paste" diamond flashing in 
 the last rays of the setting sun, stood our " dame d'industrie 
 — or worse ! " She was but a few feet farther on ; she must 
 have heard Lady Mare'chale's and Mrs. Protocol's duo on her 
 demerits ; she had heard it, without doubt, for she was 
 laughing gaily and joyously, laughter that sparkled all over 
 her riane, face, and flashed in her bright falcon eyes. Laugh- 
 ing still, she signed me to her. I need not say that the sign 
 was obeyed. 
 
 " Chivalrous knight, I thank you ! You are a Bayard of 
 chivalry ; you defend the absent ! What a miracle, mon 
 Dieu ! Tell your friends from me not to speak so loudly 
 when their windows are open ; and for yourself, rest assured 
 your words of this evening will not be forgotten." 
 
 " I am happy, indeed, if I have been fortunate enough to 
 obtain a chance remembrance, but do not give me too much 
 praise for so simple a service ; the clumsiest Cimon would be 
 stirred into chivalry under such inspiration as I had " 
 
 The beautiful hazel eyes flashed smilingly on me under 
 their lashes. {Those lashes tinted? Heaven forgive the 
 malice of women !) She broke off a sprig of the clematis, 
 with its long slender leaves and fragrant starry flowers, and 
 gave it to me : 
 
 •^ Tenez mon ami, if ever you see me again, show me that 
 faded flower, and I shall remember this evening at Yicq 
 d'Azyr. l!^ay, do not flatter yourself — do not thrust it in 
 your breast ; it is no gage d' amour ! it is only a reward for 
 loyal service, and a souvenir to refresh my own memory, 
 which is treacherous sometimes, though not in gratitude to 
 those who serve me. Adieu, mon Bayard — et bon soir ! " 
 
 But I retained the hand that had given me my clematis- 
 spray. 
 
 " Meet you again ! But will that not be to-morrow ■? If I 
 am not to see you, as your words threaten, till the clematis 
 be faded and myself forgotten, let me at least, I beseech you, 
 know where, who, by what name " 
 
 She drew her hand away with something of a proud sui** 
 
 19 
 
290 THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 
 
 prised gesture ; tlien she laughed again, that sweet, ringing, 
 mocking laugh : 
 
 " ]^o, no, Bayard, it is too much to ask ! Leave the future 
 to hazard ; it is always the best philosophy. Au revoir ! 
 Adieu — perhaps for a day, perhaps for a century !" 
 
 And the bewitching mystery floated away from me and 
 through the open window of her room. You will imagine 
 that my "intuition" did not lead me to the conclusion to 
 which Lady Marechale's led her, or assuredly should I have 
 followed the donor of the clematis, despite her prohibition. 
 Even with my " intuition " pointing where it did, I am not 
 sure what I might have done if, in her salon I had not 
 caught sight of a valet and a lady's-maid in waiting with 
 her coffee, and they are not such spectators as one generally 
 selects. 
 
 The servants closed her windows and drew down their 
 Venetian blinds, and I returned to my coffee. Whether the 
 two ladies within had overheard her conversation as she had 
 heard theirs, I cannot say, but they looked trebly refrigerated, 
 and congealed themselves into the chilliest human ice that is 
 imaginable, and comported themselves towards me fully and 
 distantly as though I had brought a dozen ballet-girls in to 
 dinner with them, or introduced them to my choicest acquaint- 
 ance from the Chateau des Fleurs. 
 
 " A man's taste is so pitiably low ! " remarked Lady Mare- 
 chale, in her favourite stage aside to Mrs. Protocol ; to which 
 that other lady responded, ^* Disgracefully so !" 
 
 Who vjas my lovely unknown with the bright falcon eyes 
 and the charming laugh, with her strange freedom that yet 
 was not^ somehow, free, and her strange fascination % I bade 
 my man ask Chanderlos her name — couriers know every- 
 thing generally^but neither Mills nor Chanderlos give me 
 any information. The people of the house did not know, or 
 said they did not; they only knew she had servants in 
 attendance who came with her, who revealed nothing, and 
 paid any price for the best of everything. Are impertinent 
 questions ever asked where money is plentiful ? 
 
 I was dressing the next morning something later than 
 usual, when I heard the roll of a carriage in the court-yard 
 below. I looked through the half-open j)ersiennes with a 
 eenii-presentiment that it was my sweet foreigner who waa 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VI CQ l^AZYR, t<^i 
 
 leaving ere I could presume on my clematis or improve our 
 acquaintance. True enough, she it was, leaving Yicq d'Azyr 
 in a travelling carriage, with handsome roans and servants in 
 imperial-blue liveries. Who the deuce could she be ? 
 
 *'Well, Constance," said I, as I bade Lady Marechale good 
 morning, " your lUe noire won't ' press herself into your ac- 
 quaintance,' as you were dreading last night, and won't ex- 
 cite Marechale and me to any more high treason. Won't you 
 chant a Te Deum? She left this morning." 
 
 " So I perceived," answered Lady Marechale, frigidly ; by 
 which I suppose she had not been above the weakness of look- 
 ing through her persiennes. 
 
 '*What a pity you and Agneta agitated yourselves with 
 such unnecessary alarm ! It must have cost you a great deal 
 of eau-de-cologne and sal-volatile, I am afraid last night. 
 Do you think she contaminated the air of the salle-a-manger, 
 because I will order Mills to throw some disinfectant about 
 before you go down." 
 
 " I have no inclination to jest upon a person of that stamp," 
 rejoined Lady Marechale, with immense dignity, settling her 
 turquois wristband-studs. 
 
 " ' That stamp of persons V What 1 Do you think she is 
 an adventuress, an intrigante, or ' worse ' still, then? I hoped 
 her dashing equipage might have done something towards 
 cleansing her character. Wealth is a universal purifier gene- 
 rally." 
 
 "Flippant impertinence !" murmured Lady Marechale, dis- 
 gustedly, to Mrs. Protocol, as she swept onwards down the 
 staircase, not deigning me a glance, much less a response, 
 stiffening herself with a little extra starch of Lucretian virtue 
 and British-matronly dignity, which did not grow limp again 
 throughout breakfast, while she found fault with the choco- 
 late, considered the jpetits pains execrable, condemned the 
 sardines as uneatable, petted Spes, kept Marechale and me at 
 Coventry, and sighed over their enforced incarceration, by Dr. 
 Berkeley's orders in Yicq d'Azyr, that kept them in this stu- 
 pid place away from Lemongenseidlitz. 
 
 Their anticipations from Lemongenseidlitz were charmingly 
 golden and rose-tinted. They looked forward to consolidat- 
 ing their friendship with the dear Duchess in its balmy air, 
 to improving a passing acquaintance into an intimate one 
 
 19—2 
 
igi THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 
 
 with tliat charming person the Baroness Liebenfrauenmilch, 
 Mistress of the Eobes to Princess Helene, and to being very 
 intimate at the Court, while the Pullingers (their bosom 
 friends and very dear rivals) would be simply presented, and 
 remain in chagrin, uninvited to the state balls and palace 
 festivities. And what more delightful than that last clause] 
 for what sauce invented, from Careme to Soyer, flavours our 
 own flats so deliciously, I should like to know, as thinking 
 that our beloved next-door neighbour is doomed to a very dry 
 cutlet. 
 
 As Perette, in a humbler fashion, built visions from the pot 
 of milk, so mesdames mes soeurs, from the glittering court 
 and capital of Lemongenseidlitz, erected brilliant chateaux en 
 Espagne of all their sayings and doings in that fashionable 
 little city whither they were bound, and into which they had 
 so many invaluable passports. They were impatient to be 
 journeying from our humble, solitary valley, and after a 
 month of Yicq d'Azyr, they departed for their golden land, 
 and I went with them, as I had slain izzaids almost ad nan- 
 seam, and Dunbar's expiration of leave had taken him back 
 to Dubhn. 
 
 It was five o'clock when we reached its Eeidenscher Hof, 
 nine when we had finished dinner. It was stupid work yawn- 
 ing over coffee and Galignani. What was to be done ] Mare- 
 chale proposed the Opera, and for the first time in his life was 
 unopposed by his wife. Constance was in a suave, benignant 
 mood ; she was thinking of her Graf von Eosenlau, of the 
 Pullingers, and of the sweet, adroit manner in which she 
 would — when she had captivated him and could proffer such 
 hints — awaken his Serene Highness to a sense of his moral 
 guilt in not bringing to instant capital punishment every agent 
 in those Satanus-farmed banks that throve throughout liis 
 duchy. Lady Marechale and Mrs. Protocol assented, and to 
 the little miniature gaily-decorated Opera House we drove. 
 They were in the middle of the second act of "Ernani." 
 "Ernani" was stale to us all, and we naturally lorgne'd the 
 boxes in lieu of the stage. I had turned my glass on the left- 
 hand stage-box, and was going steadily round, when a faint 
 cry of dismay, alarm, amazement, horror, broke, muffled and 
 Jow, from mesdames mes soeurs. Their lorgnons were riveted 
 )u one spot ; their cheeks were blanched ; their hands wero 
 
THE BEAUTY OF VICQ D'AZYR. 293 
 
 tremtilous ; if they had beheld a spiritual visitant, no con- 
 sternation more profound, more intense, could have seized both 
 with its iron hand. My sisters too ! the chilliest, the calmest, 
 the most impenetrable, the most unassailable of mortals ! 
 
 "And we called her, in her hearing, not a proper person !" 
 gasped Lady Marechale. 
 
 " We thought her a lorette ! an intrigante ! a dame d'indus- 
 trie !" echoed Mrs. Protocol. 
 
 " Who wore paste jewels !" 
 
 " Who came from the Eue Breda !" 
 
 " Who wanted to know us !" 
 
 " Whom we wouldn't know !" 
 
 I turned my Yoightlander where their Yoightlanders turned; 
 there, in the royal box, leaning back in the fauteuil that marked 
 her rank, there, with her lovely hazel eyes, her witching smile, 
 her radiant beauty, matchless as the pearls gleaming above her 
 brow, there sat ^'the adventuress — or worse!" of Yicq d' Azyr ; 
 the " evidently a not proper person" of my discerning sisters — 
 H.S.H. Princess Helene, Grand-Duchess of Lemongenseidlitz- 
 Phizzstrelitz ? Great Heavens ! how had we never guessed her 
 before % How had we never divined her identity % How had 
 we never remembered all we had heard of her love of laisser- 
 aller, her taste for adventure, her delight in travelling, when 
 she could, unattended and incognita % How had we never put 
 this and that together, and penetrated the metamorphosis % 
 
 " And I called her not a proper person /" gasped Lady Mare- 
 chale, again shrinking back behind the azure curtains; the 
 projectiles she had shot with such vindictive severity, such 
 delighted acrimony, from the murderous mortar of malice, re- 
 coiling back upon her head for once, and crushing her to 
 powder. What reception would they have now at the Court ? 
 Yon Eosenlau would be powerless ; the Pullingers themselves 
 would be better off ! Perette's pot of milk was smashed and 
 spilt ! " Adieu, veau, vache, cochon, couvee !" 
 
 Y^lien the pitcher lies shivered into fragments, cind the milk 
 is spilt, you know, poor Perette's dreams are shivered and spilt 
 with them. " I have not seen you at the palace yet?' asked 
 her Grace of Frangipane. " We do not see you at the Court, 
 mesdames?' asked M. de la Croix-et-Cordons. "How did it 
 happen you were not at the Duchess's ball last night ?' asked 
 
^4 THE BE A UTY OF VI CQ D'AZ YR. 
 
 " those odious Pullingers." And wliat had my sister to say 
 in reply ? My clematis secured me a charming reception — 
 how charming I don't feel called upon to reveal — hut Princess 
 Hel^ne. with that calm dignity which easily replaced, when 
 she chose, her witching abandon, turned the tahles upon her 
 detractors, and taught them how dangerous it may be to speak 
 ill — of the wrong people. 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE; 
 PEKDANT TO A PORTKAIT BY MIGNARB. 
 
 She was snrpassingly fair, Madame la Marquise. Mignard's 
 portraits of her may fully rival his far-famed Portrait aux 
 Amours. One of them has her painted as Yenus Yictrix, in 
 the fashion of the day ; one of them as herself, as Leontine 
 Opportune de Yivonne de Eennecourt, Marquise de la Eiviere, 
 with her creve-cceurs, and her diamonds, and her gay smile, 
 showing her teeth, white and gleaming as the pearls min- 
 gled with her curls a la mode Montespan. Kot Louise de 
 la Beaume-le-Blanc, when the elm-boughs of St. Germain first 
 flung their shadow on her golden head, before it bent for the 
 Carmelite veil before the altar in the Eue St. Jacques ; not 
 Henriette d'Angleterre, when she listened to the trouveres' 
 romances sung under her balcony at St. Cloud, before her 
 young life was quenched by the hand of Morel and the order 
 of Monsieur ; not Athenais de Mortemart, when the liveries 
 of lapis lazuli blue dashed through the streets of Paris, and 
 the outriders cleared her path with their whips, before the 
 game was lost, and the iron spikes were fastened inside the 
 Montespan bracelets ; — none of them, her contemporaries and 
 acquaintances, eclipsed in loveliness Madame la Marquise. 
 Had she but been fair instead of dark, the brown Bourbon 
 eyes would have fallen on her of a surety; she would have 
 outshone the lapis lazuli liveries with a royal guard of scarlet 
 and gold, and her friend Athenais would have hated her as 
 that fair lady hated " la sotte Pontanges" and " Saint Main- 
 tenon 3 for their sex, in all ages, have remembered the sage's 
 
296 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE, 
 
 precept, ^' Love as thougli you will one day hate," and invari- 
 ably carry about with them, ready for need, a little essence of 
 the acid of Malice, to sour in an instant the sugared cream of 
 their loves and their friendships, if occasion rise up and the 
 storm-cloud of rivalry loom in the horizon. 
 
 She was a beauty, Madame la Marquise, and she knew it, 
 as she leaned out over the balcony of her chateau of Petite 
 Foret, that lay close to Clagny, under the shadow of the wood 
 of Vnie d'Avr^e, outside the gates of Versailles, looking down 
 on her bosquets, gardens, and terraces designed by Le ]^6tre ; 
 for though she was alone, and there was nothing but her little 
 dog Osmin to admire her white skin, and her dark eyes, and 
 her beautiful hands and arms, and her diamond pendants that 
 glittered in the moonlight, she smiled, her flashing triumphant 
 smile, as she whispered to herself, "He is mine — mine ! Bah! 
 how can he help himself?" and pressed the ruby agraffe on 
 her bosom with the look of a woman who knew no resistance, 
 and brooked no reluctance to worship at her shrine. 
 
 ^Nothing ever opposed Madame la Marquise, and life went 
 smoothly on with her. If Bossuet ever reproved her, it was 
 in those anatMmes caches sous desfleurs dJoranger in which that 
 politic priest knew how to deal when expedient, however 
 haughty and relentless to the world in general. M. le 
 Marquis was not a savage eccentricity like M. de Pardail- 
 lon de Gondran, would never have dreamt of imitating the 
 eccentricity of going into mourning, but if the Bourbon eye 
 had fallen on his wife, would have said, like a loyal peer of 
 Prance, that all his household treasures were the King's. 
 Disagreeables fled before the scintillations of her smiles, as 
 the crowd fled before her gilded carriage and her Planders 
 horses ; and if ever a little fit of piety once in a while came 
 over her, and Conscience whispered a mal a propos word in 
 her delicate ear, she would give an enamelled lamp to Sainte 
 Marie Eeparatrice, by the advice of the Comtesse de Soubise 
 and the Princesse de Monaco (who did such expiatory things 
 themselves, and knew the comfort they afforded), and emerge 
 from her repentance one of the most radiant of all the brilliant 
 butterflies that fluttered their gorgeous wings in the Jardin de 
 Plore under the sunny skies of Versailles. 
 
 The moonlight glittered on the fountains, falling with mea- 
 sured splash into their marble basins ; the lime-leaves, faintly 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. ^97 
 
 stirred by the sultry breezes, perfnined the night with their 
 voluptuoas fragrance, and the roses, twining round the carved 
 and gilded balustrade, shook off their bowed heads drops of 
 dew, that gleamed brightly as the diamonds among the curls 
 of the woman who leaned above, resting her delicately rouged 
 cheek on her jewelled hand, alone — a very rare circumstance 
 with the Marquise de la Eiviere. Osmin did not admire the 
 rare solitude, for he rattled his silver bells and barked — an 
 Italian greyhound's shrill, fretful bark — as his quick ears 
 caught the distant sound of steps coming swiftly over the turf 
 below, and his mistress smiled as she patted his head : 
 
 " Ah, Osmin ! — ^here he is !" 
 
 A man came out from under the heavy shadow of limes and 
 chesnuts, whose darkness the moon's rays had no power to 
 pierce, crossed the lawn just under the balcony, and, coming 
 up the terrace steps, stood near her — a man young, fair, hand- 
 some, whose age and form the uniform of a Captain of the 
 Guards would have suited far better than the dark robes of a 
 priest, which he wore ; his lips were pressed closely together, 
 and his face was pale with a pallor that consorted painfully 
 Avith the warm passionate gleam of his eyes. 
 
 " So ! You are late in obeying my commands, monsieur." 
 
 Surely no other man in France would have stood silent 
 beside her, under the spell of her dazzling glances, with such 
 a picture before him as Madame la Marquise, in her azure 
 silk and her point d'Angleterre, with her diamond pen- 
 dants shaking among her hair, and her arched eyebrows 
 lifted imperiously *? But he did ; his lips pressed closer, his 
 eyes gleaming brighter. She changed her tone ; it was soft, 
 seductive, reproachful, and the smile on her lips was ten- 
 der — as tender as it ever could be with the mockery that 
 always lay under it; and it broke at last the spell that 
 bound him, as she whispered, " Ah 1 Gaston, you love me 
 no longer !" 
 
 "Not love you? God !" 
 
 They were but five words, but they told Madame la Marquise 
 of a passion such as she had never roused, despite all her 
 fascinations and intrigues, in the lovers that crowded round 
 her in the salons within, or at Versailles, over the trees yonder 
 where love was gallantry, and all was light comedy, with 
 nothing so foolish as tragedy known. 
 
298 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 
 
 He clasped her hands so closely that the sharp points of the 
 diamond rings cut his own, though he felt them not. 
 
 "Not love you? Great Heaven! Not love you] Near 
 you I forget my oath, my vows, my God ! — I forget all, save 
 you, whom I adore, as, till I met you, I adored my Church. 
 Torture endured with you were dearer than Paradise won 
 alone ! Once with you, I have no strength, you how me to 
 your will as the ivind hows the Hme-leaf. Oh ! woman, 
 woman ! could you have no mercy, that mth crowds round 
 you, daily worshipping your shghtest smile, you must needs 
 bow me clown before your glance, as you bow those who have 
 no oaths to bind them, no need to scourge themselves in mid- 
 night solitude for the mere crime of Thought % Had you no 
 mercy, that with all hearts yours, you must have mine to sear 
 it and destroy it % Have you not lives enough vowed to you, 
 that you seek to blast mine for ever] I was content, untroubled, 
 till I met you ; no woman's glance stirred my heart, no woman's 
 eyes haunted my vigils, no woman's voice came in memory 
 between my soul and prayer ! "What devil tempted you to 
 throw your spells over me — could you not leave one man in 
 peace ]" 
 
 ' ' Ah bah ! the tempted love the game of temptation generally 
 full as well as the tempters !" thought Madame la Marquise, 
 with an inward laugh. 
 
 Why did she allow such language to go unrebukcd ] Why 
 did she, to whom none dared to breathe any but words the 
 most polished, and love vows the most honeyed, permit her- 
 self to be addressed in such a strain ] Possibly it was very 
 new to her, such energy as this, and such an outbreak of 
 passion amused her. At any rate she only drew her hands 
 away, and her brilliant brown eyes filled with tears ; — tears 
 were to be had at "Versailles when needed, even her friend 
 Montespan knew how to use them as the worst weapons 
 against the artillery of the Eveque de Condom — and her 
 heart heaved under the filmy lace. 
 
 '•' Ah, Gaston ! what words ! ^ What devil tempted me ]' 
 I know scarcely whether love be angel or devil; he seems 
 either or both ! But you love me little, unless in that 
 name you recognise a plea for every madness and every 
 thought !" 
 
 The scarlet blood flushed over his face, and his eyes shone 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 299 
 
 and gleamed like fire, while lie clenclied his hands in a mortal 
 anguish. 
 
 " Angel or devil % Ay ! which indeed % The one when it 
 comes to us, the other when it leaves us ! You have roused 
 love in me I shall bear to my grave ; but what gage have I 
 that you give it me back % How do I know but that even 
 now you are trifling with me, mocking at me, smiling at the 
 beardless priest who is unlearned in all the gay gallantries of 
 libertine churchmen and soldierly courtiers % My Heaven ! 
 how know, as I stand beside you, whether you pity or disdain 
 me, love or scorn me T 
 
 The passionate words broke in a torrent from his lips, 
 stirred the stillness of the summer eve with a fiery anguish 
 little akin to it. 
 
 "Do I not love your 
 
 Her answer was simple; but as Leontine de Eennecourt 
 spoke it, leaning her cheek against his breast, with her eyes 
 dazzling as the diamonds in her hair, looking up into his by the 
 light of the stars, they had an eloquence far more dangerous 
 than speech, and delirious to the senses as magician's per- 
 fumes. His lips hngered on hers, and she felt the loud fast 
 throbs of the heart she had won as he bent over her, pressing 
 her closer and closer to him — vanquished and conquered, as 
 men in all ages and of all creeds have been vanquished and 
 conquered by women, all other thoughts fleeing away into 
 oblivion, all fears dying out, all vows forgotten in the warm, 
 living life of passion and of joy^, that, for the first time 
 in a brief life, flooded his heart with its golden voluptuous 
 light.. 
 
 " You love me % So be it," he murmured ; " but beware 
 what you do ! my life lies in your hands, and you must be 
 mine till death parts us T 
 
 " Till my fancy change rather !" thought Mad-ame la 
 Marquise, as she put her jewelled hand on his lips, her hair 
 softly brushing his cheek, with a touch as soft, and an 
 odour as sweet, as the leaves of one of the roses twining 
 below. 
 
 Two men strolling below under the limes of Petit Eoret — 
 discussing the last scandals of Versailles, talking of the 
 ascendancy of La Fontanges, of the Spanish dress his Majesty 
 had reassumed to please her, of the Erinvilliers' Poudre do 
 
300 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE, 
 
 Succession, of the new cliateati given to Pere de la Chaise, 
 of D'Aubigny's last extravagance and Lauzun's last mot, and 
 the last gossip about Bossuet and Mademoiselle de Mauleon, 
 and all the chit-chat of that varied day, glittering with wit 
 and prolific of poison — glanced up to the balcony by the light 
 of the stars. 
 
 "That cursed priest!'* muttered the younger, le Yicomte 
 de Saint-Ehx, as he struck the head off a lily with liis deli- 
 cate cane. 
 
 " In a fool's paradise ! Ah-ha ! Madame la Marquise 1" 
 laughed the other — the old Due de Clos-Vougeot — taking a 
 chocolate sweetmeat out of his emerald-studded bohbonniere 
 as they walked on, while the lime-blossoms shook off in the 
 summer night wind and dropped dead on the grass beneath, 
 laughing at the story of the box D'Artagnan had found in 
 Lauzun's rooms when he seized his papers, containing the 
 portraits of sixty women of high degree who had worshipped 
 the resistless Captain of the Guard, with critical and historical 
 notices penned under each ; notices D'Artagnan and his aide 
 could not help indiscreetly retailing, in despite of the Bourbon 
 command of secrecy — secrecy so necessary where sixty beauties 
 . and saints were involved ! 
 
 " A fool's Paradise !" said the Due de Clos Yougeot, tap- 
 ping his bonbonniere, enamelled by Petitot : the Due was old, 
 and knew women well, and knew the value and length of a 
 paradise dependent on that most fickle of butterflies — female 
 fidelity; he had heard JSTinon de Lenclos try to persuade 
 Scarron's wife to become a coquette, and Scarron's wife in 
 turn beseech Ninon to discontinue her coquetries ; had seen 
 that, however different their theories and practice, the result 
 was the same ; and already guessed right, that if Paris had 
 been universally won by the one, its monarch would eventually 
 be won by the other. 
 
 " A fool's paradise !" 
 
 The courtier was right, but the priest, had he heard him, 
 would never have believed j his heaven shone in those daz- 
 zKng eyes : till the eyes closed in death, his heaven was safe ! 
 He had never loved, he had seen nothing of women ; he had 
 come straight from the monastic gloom of a Dominican abbey, 
 in the very heart of the South, down in Languedoc, where 
 costly missals were his only idol, and rigid pietists, profoundly 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 30! 
 
 ignorant of tlie ways and thoughts of their brethren of Paris, 
 had reared him up in anchorite rigidity, and scourged his 
 mind with iron philosophies and stoic-like doctrines of self- 
 mortification that would have repudiated the sophistries and 
 ingenuities of Sanchez, Escobar, and Mascarenhas, as sugges- 
 tions of the very Master of Evil himself. From, the ascetic 
 gloom of that Languedoc convent he had been brought 
 straight, by superior will, into the glare of the life at Ver- 
 sailles, that brilliant, gorgeous, sparkling, bizarre life, scintil- 
 lating with wit, brimful of intrigue, crowded with the men 
 and women who formed the Court of that age and the History 
 of the next ; where he found every churchman an aWe galanty 
 and heard those who performed the mass jest at it with those 
 who attended it ; where he found no lines marked of right 
 and wrong, but saw them all fused in a gay, tangled web of 
 two court colours — Expediency and Pleasure. A life that 
 dazzled and tired his eyes, as the glitter of light in a room 
 dazzles and tires the eyes of a man who comes suddenly in 
 from the dark night air, till he grew giddy and sick, and in 
 the midst of the gilded salons, or soft confessions of titled 
 sinners, would ask himself if indeed he could be the same 
 man who had sat calm and grave with the mellow sun stream- 
 ing in on his missal-page in the monastic gloom of the Lan- 
 guedoc abbey but so few brief months before, when all this 
 world of Yersailles was unknown ? The same man 1 Truly 
 not — never again the same, since Madame la Marquise had 
 bent her brown eyes upon him, been amused with his singular 
 difference from all those aiound her, had loved him as women , 
 loved at Yersailles, and bowed him down to her feet, before he 
 guessed the name of the forbidden language that stirred in his 
 heart and rushed to his Hps, untaught and unbidden. 
 
 " A fool's paradise !" said the Due, sagaciously tapping his 
 gold bonbonniere. But many a paradise like it has dawned 
 and faded, before and since the Versailles of Louis Quatorze. 
 
 He loved, and Madame la Marquise loved him. Through 
 one brief tumult of struggle he passed : struggle between the 
 creed of the Dominican abbey, where no sin would have been 
 held so thrice accursed, so unpardonable, so deserving of the 
 scourge and the stake as this — and the creed of the Bourbon 
 Court, where churchmen's gallantries were every-day gossip ; 
 where the Abbe de IX^T^Lk, ere he founded the saintly gloom 
 
i6i A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZM. 
 
 of La Trappe, scandalised town and court as mncli as Laiizun; 
 where the Pere de la Chaise smiled complacently on La Fon- 
 tanges' ascendancy ; where three nobles rushed to pick up the 
 handkerchief of that royal confessor, who washed out with 
 holy water the royal indiscretions, as you wash off grains of 
 dust with perfumed water ; where the great and saintly Bishop 
 of Condom could be checked in a rebuking harangue, and 
 have the tables turned on him by a mischievous reference to 
 Mademoiselle de Mauleon ; where life was intrigue for church- 
 men and laymen alike, and where the abbe's rochet and the 
 cardinal's scarlet covered the same vices as were openly bla- 
 zoned on the gold aiglettes of the Garde du Corps and the 
 costly lace of the Chambellan du Koi. A storm, brief and 
 violent as the summer storms that raged over Yersailles, was 
 roused between the conflicting thoughts at war within him, 
 between the principles deeply rooted from long habit and stern 
 belief, and the passions sprung up unbidden with the sudden 
 growth and gorgeous glow of a tropical flower — a storm, brief 
 and violent, a struggle, ended that night, when he stood on 
 the balcony with the woman he loved, felt her lips upon his, 
 and bowed down to her feet delirious and strengthless. * * 
 
 " I have won my wager with Adeline ; I have vanquished 
 mon lean De Launay," thought Madame la Marquise, smiling, 
 two days after, as she sat, en neglige, in her broidered chair, 
 pulling Osmin's ears, and stirring the frothy chocolate handed 
 to her by her negro, Azor, brought over in the suite of the 
 African embassy from Adra, full of monkeyish espieglerie, 
 and covered with gems — a priceless dwarf, black as ink, and 
 but two feet high, who could match any day with the Queen's 
 little Moor. "He amuses me with his vows of eternal love. 
 Eternal love 1 — how de trop we should find it, here in Yer- 
 sailles ! But it is amusing enough to play at for a season. 
 JS'o, that is not half enough — he adores ! This poor Gaston !" 
 
 So in the salons of Versailles, and in the world, where M- 
 non reigned, by the Court ladies, while they loitered in the 
 new-made gardens of Marly, among other similar things jested 
 of, was this new amour of Madame de la Eiviere for the 
 young Pere de Launay. " She was always eccentric, and he 
 was very handsome, and would have charming manners if he 
 were not so grave and so silent," the women averred ; while 
 the young nobles swore that these meddling churchmen had 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 363 
 
 always the best luck, whether in amatory conquest, or on fat 
 lands and rich revenues. What the Priest of Languedoc 
 thought a love that would outlast life, and repay him for 
 peace of conscience and heaven both lost, was only one of 
 the passing bubbles of gossip and scandal floating for an hour, 
 amidst myriads like it, on the glittering, fast-rushing, diamond- 
 bright waters of life at Yersailles 1 
 
 A new existence had dawned for him ; far away in the dim 
 dusky vista of forgotten things, though in reality barely dis- 
 tant a few short months, lay the old life in Languedoc, vague 
 and unremembered as a passed dream ; with its calm routine, 
 its monastic silence, its unvarying alternations of study and 
 prayer, its iron-bound thoughts, its rigid creed. It had sunk 
 away as the peaceful grey twilight of a summer's night sinks 
 away before the fiery burst of an artificial illumination, and a 
 new life had dawned for him, radiant, tumultuous, conflicting, 
 delicious — that dazzled his eyes with the magnificence of 
 boundless riches and unrestricted extravagance ; that charmed 
 his intellect with the witty coruscations, the polished esprit, 
 of an age unsurpassed for genius, grace, and wit \ and that 
 swayed alike his heart, his imagination, and his passions with 
 the subtle intoxication of this syren of Love, whose forbidden 
 song had never before, in faintest echo, fallen on his ear. 
 
 Far away in the dim, lifeless, pulseless past, sank the 
 memory of the old Dominican abbey, of all it had taught 
 him, of all it had exacted, in its iron, stoical, merciless creed. 
 A new life had arisen for him, and Gaston de Launay, waking 
 from the semi-slumber of the living death he had endured in 
 Languedoc, and liked because he knew no other, was happy 
 ■ — happy as a prisoner is in the wild dehght with which he 
 welcomes the sunlight after lengthened imprisonment, happy 
 as an opium-eater is in the delicious delirium that succeeds 
 the lulling softness of the opiate. 
 
 " He loves me, poor Gaston ! Bah ! • But how strangely 
 he talks ! If love were this fiery, changeless, earnest thing 
 with us that it is with him, what in the world should we do 
 with it % We should have to get a lettre de cachet for it, and 
 forbid it the Court ; send it in exile to Pignerol, as they have 
 just done Lauzun. Love in earnest? We should lose the 
 best spice for our wine, the best toy for our games, and, mon 
 Dieu ! what embroilments there would be ! Love in earnest 1 
 Bagatelle ! Louise de la Yalli^re shows us the folly of that .• 
 
304 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE, 
 
 but for its Quixotisms she would now be at Vaujours, instead 
 of buried alive in that Eue St. Jacques, with nothing to do 
 but to weep for ^Louison/ count her beads, and listen to M. 
 de Condom's merciless eloquence ! Like the king, 
 
 J'aime qu'on m'aime, mais avec de Tesprit. 
 
 People have no right to reproach each other with inconstancy ; 
 one's caprices are not in one's own keeping ; and one can no 
 more help where one's fancy blows, than that lime-leaf can 
 help where the breeze chooses to waft it. But poor Gaston ! 
 how make him comprehend that T thought Madame la Mar- 
 quise, as she turned, and smiled, and held out her warm 
 jewelled hands, and listened once again to the words of the 
 man who was in her power as utterly as the bird in the power 
 of the snake when it has once looked up into the fatal eyes 
 that lure it to its doom. 
 
 " You will love me ever?" he would ask, resting his lips on 
 her white low brow. 
 
 " Ever !" would softly answer Madame la Marquise. 
 
 And her lover believed her : should his deity lie % He 
 believed her ! What did he, fresh from the solitude of his 
 monastery, gloomy and severe as that of the Trappist abbey, 
 with its perpetual silence, its lowered glances, its shrouded 
 faces, its ever-present " memento mori," know of women's faith, 
 of women's love, of the sense in which they meant that vow 
 '' for ever" % He believed her and never asked what would 
 be at the end of a path strewn with such odorous flowers. 
 Alone, it is true, in moments when he paused to think, he 
 stood aghast at the abyss into which he had fallen, at the sin 
 into which, a few moments before, haughty and stern in 
 virtue against the temptation that had never entered his path, 
 he would have defied devils in legion to have lured him, 
 yet into which he had now plunged at the mere smile of a 
 woman ! Out of her presence, out of her spells, standing by 
 himself under the same skies that had brooded over his days 
 of peace in Languedoc, back on his heart, with a sickening 
 anguish, would come the weight of his sin ; the burden of 
 his broken oaths, the scorch of that curse eternal which, by 
 his creed, he held drawn down on him here and hereafter ; and 
 Gaston de Lannay would struggle again against this idolatrous 
 passion, which had come with its fell delusion betwixt him 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 305 
 
 and his God ; struggle — vainly, idly — struggle, only to hug 
 closer the sin he loved while he loathed ; only to drink deeper 
 of the draught whose voluptuous perfume was poison ; only 
 to forget all, forsake all, dare all, at one whisper of her voice, 
 one glance of her eyes, one touch of the lips whose caress 
 he held would be bought by a curse through eternity. 
 
 Few women love aught " for ever," save, perchance, dia- 
 monds, lace, and their own beauty, and Madame la Marquise 
 was not one of those few ; certainly not — she had no desire 
 to make herself singular in her generation, and could set 
 fashions much more likely to find disciples, without reverting 
 to anything so eccentric, plebeian, and out of date. Love 
 one for ever ! She would have thought it as terrible waste 
 of her fascinations, as for a jewel to shine in the solitude of 
 its case, looked on by only one pair of eyes, or for a priceless 
 enamel, by Petitot, to be only worn next the heart, shrouded 
 away from the light of day, hidden under the folds of linen 
 and lace. 
 
 " Love one for ever T — Madame la Marquise laughed at 
 the thought, as she stood dressed for a ball, after assisting at 
 the representation of a certain tragedy, called " Berenice" (in 
 which Mesdames Deshoulieres and De Sevigne, despite their 
 esprit, alone of all Paris and the Court could see no beauty), 
 and glanced in the mirror at her radiant face, her delicate 
 skin, her raven curls, with their pendants shaking, her snow- 
 white arms, and her costly dress of the newest mode, its 
 stomacher gleaming one mass of gems. " Love one for ever? 
 The droll idea ! Is it not enough that I have loved him 
 once?" 
 
 It was more than enough for his rivals, who bitterly envied 
 him ; courtly abbes, with polished smiles, and young chanoines, 
 with scented curls and velvet toques, courtiers, who piqued 
 themselves on reputations only second to Lauzun's, and men 
 of the world, who laughed at this new caprice of Madame la 
 Marquise, alike bore no good-will to this Languedoc priest, 
 and gave him a significant sneer, or a compliment that roused 
 his blood to fire, and stung him far worse than more open 
 insult, when they met in the salons, or crossed in the corri- 
 dors, at Versailles or Petite Poret. 
 
 " Those men ! those men ! Should he ever lose her to any 
 one of them T he would think over and over again, clench- 
 
 20 
 
3o6 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 
 
 ing his hand, in impotent agony of passion that he had not 
 the sword and the license of a soldier to strike them on the 
 lips with his glove for the smile with which they dared to 
 speak her name ; to make them wash out in blood under the 
 trees, before the sun was up, the laugh, the sneer, the dehcate 
 satire, which were worse to bear than a blow to the man who 
 could not avenge them. 
 
 " Pardieu ! Madame must be very unusually faithful to 
 her handsome Priest : she has smiled on no other for two 
 months ! "What unparalleled fidelity !" said the Yicomte de 
 Saint-Elix, with petulant irritation. 
 
 " Jealous, Leonce T laughed the old Due, whom he spoke to, 
 tapping the medallion portrait on his bonbonniere. " Take 
 comfort : when the weather has been so long fixed, it is always 
 near a change. Ah, M. de Launay overhears ! He looks as if 
 he would slay us. Very unchristian in a priest !" 
 
 Gaston de Launay overheard, as he stood by a croisee at 
 Petite Foret, playi-ng with Osmin — he liked even the dog, since 
 the hand he loved so often lay on its slender neck, and toyed 
 with its silver chain — and, sworn as he was to the service of 
 his Church, sole mistress as his Church had been, till Leontine 
 de Eennecourt's eyes had lured him to his desertion of her, 
 apostate in his own eyes as such a thought confessed him to 
 have 'grown, he now loathed the garb of a priest, that bound his 
 hands from vengeance, and made him powerless before insult 
 as a woman. Pierce, ruthless longing for revenge upon these 
 men seized on him ; devilish desires, the germ of which till 
 that hour he never dreamt slumbered within him, woke up 
 into dangerous, vigorous life. Had he lived in the world, its 
 politic reserve, its courtly sneer, its light gallantries, that passed 
 the time and flattered vanity, its dissimulated hate that smiled 
 while plotting, and killed with poisoned bon-bons, would never 
 have been learnt by him; and having long lived out of it, having 
 been suddenly plunged into its whirl, not guessing its springs, 
 ignorant of its diplomacies, its suave lies termed good breeding, 
 its light philosophies, he knew nothing of the wisdom with 
 which its wise men forsook their loves and concealed their 
 hatreds. Both passions now sprang up in him at one birth, both 
 the stronger for the long years in which a chill, artificial, but 
 unbroken calm, had chained his very nature down, and fettered 
 into an iron monotony, an unnatural and colourless tranquillity, 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 307 
 
 a character originally impetuous and vivid, as the frost of a 
 winter chill into one cold, even, glassy surface, the rapids of a 
 tumultuous river. With the same force and strength with 
 which, in the old days in Languedoc, he had idolised and 
 served his Church, sparing himself no mortifrcation, believing 
 every iota of her creed, carrying out her slightest rule with merci- 
 less self-examination, so — the tide once turned the other way — 
 so the priest now loved, so he now hated. 
 
 "He is growing exigeant, jealous, presuming; he amuses me 
 no longer — ^he wearies. I must give him his conge," thought 
 Madame la Marquise. " This play at eternal passion is very 
 amusing for awhile, but like all things, gets tiresome when it 
 has lasted some time. What does not % Poor Gaston, it is his 
 provincial ideas, but he will soon rub such follies off, and find, 
 like us all, that sincerity is troublesome, ever dc trop, and never 
 profitable. He loves me — but bah ! so does Saint-Elix, so do 
 they all, and a jealous husband like M. de iN'esmond, le drolef 
 could scarcely be worse than my young De Launay is growing !" 
 
 And Madame la Marquise glanced at her face in the mirror, 
 and wished she knew Madame de Maintenon's secret for the 
 Bruvagelndien; wished she had oneof thec/e/5 defaveur to admit 
 her to the Grande Salle du Parlement ; wished she had the cou- 
 Q'onned\4grvppinehGifTieiid Athenaishad just shown her; wished 
 Le Brun were not now occupied on the ceiling of the ELing's 
 Grande Galerie, and were free to paint the frescoes of her own 
 new-built chapel, wished a thousand unattainable things, as spoilt 
 children of fortune will do, and swept down her chateau stair- 
 case a little out of temper — she could not have told why — to 
 receive her guests at a fete given in honour of the marriage of 
 Mademoiselle de Blois and the Prince de Conti. 
 
 There was the young Comte de Yermandois, who would recog- 
 nise in the Dauphin no superiority save that of his elder brother ; 
 there was " le petit bossu" Prince Eugene, then soliciting the 
 rochet of a Bishop, and equally ridiculed when he sought a 
 post in the army; there was M. de Louvois, who had just signed 
 the order for the Dragonades; there was the Palatine de Baviere, 
 with her German brusquerie, who had clumsily tried to insult 
 Madame de Montespan by coming into the salon with a great 
 turnspit, led by a similar ribbon and called by the same name, 
 in ridicule of the pet Montespan poodle; there was La Montes- 
 pan herself, with her lovely gold hair, her dove's eyes, and her 
 
 20—2 
 
308 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 
 
 serpent's tongue ; there was Madame de Sevigne and Madame 
 de Grignan, the I)uchesse de Eichelieu and the Duchesse de 
 Lesdiguieres ; there was Bussy Eabutin and Hamilton. Who 
 was there not that was brilliant, that was distinguished, that 
 was high in rank and famed in wit at the fete of Madame la 
 Marquise? — Madame la Marquise, who floated through the 
 crowd that glittered in her salon and gardens, who laughed and 
 smiled, showing her dazzling white teeth, who had a little 
 Cupid gleaming with jewels (emblematic enough of Cupid as 
 he was known at Versailles) to present the Princesse de Conti 
 with a bridal bouquet whose flowers were of pearls and whosfe 
 leaves were of emeralds ; who piqued herself that the magnifi- 
 cence of her fete was scarcely eclipsed by His Majesty himself; 
 who yielded the palm neither to La Valliere's lovely daughter, 
 nor to her friend Ath^nais, nor to any one of the beauties who 
 shone with them, and whose likeness by Mignard laughed down 
 from the wall where it hung, matchless double of her own match- 
 less self. 
 
 The priest of Languedoc watched her, the relentless fangs 
 of passion gnawing his heart, as the wolf the Spartan. For 
 the first time he was forgotten ! His idol passed him care- 
 lessly, gave him no glance, no smile, but lavished a thousand 
 coquetries on Saint-Elix, on De Eohan-Soubise, on the boy 
 Vermandois — on any who sought them. Once he addressed 
 her. Madame la Marquise shrugged her snow-white shoulders, 
 and arched her eyebrows with petulant irritation, and turned 
 to laugh gaily at Saint-Elix, who was amusing her, and La 
 Montespan, and Madame de Thianges, with some gay mis- 
 chievous scandal concerning Madame de Lesdiguieres and the 
 Archbishop of Paris; for scandals, if not wholly new, are 
 ever diverting when concerning an enemy, specially when 
 dressed and served up with the piquant sauce of wit. 
 
 ** 1 no longer then, madame, lead a dog's life in jealousy of 
 this priest," whispered Saint-Elix, after other whispers, in the 
 ear of Madame la Marquise. The Vicomte adored her, not 
 truly in Languedoc fashion, but very warmly — a la mode de 
 Versailles. 
 
 The Marquise laughed : 
 
 "Perhaps not! You know I bet Mme. de Montevreau 
 that I would conquer him. I have won now. Hush ! He 
 is close. There will be a tragedy, mon ami ! " 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZK 309 
 
 ** M. le Vicomte, if you have the honour of a noble, the 
 heart of a man, you fight me to-night, /seek no shelter under 
 my cloth!" 
 
 Saint-Elix turned as he heard the words, laughed scorn- 
 fully, and signed the speaker away with an insolent sneer. 
 
 " Bah ! Reverend Phre I we do not fight with women and 
 churchmen !" 
 
 The fete was ended at last, the lights that had gleamed 
 among the limes and chestnuts had died out, the gardens and 
 salons were emptied and silent, the little Cupid had laid aside 
 his weighty jewelled wings, the carriages with their gorgeous 
 liveries, their outriders, and their guards of honour, had rolled 
 from the gates of Petite Foret to the Palace of Versailles. 
 Madame la Marquise stood alone once more in the balcony of 
 her salons, leaning her white arms on its gilded balustrade, 
 looking down on to the gardens beneath, silvered with the 
 breaking light of the dawn, smiling, her white teeth gleaming 
 between her parted rose-hued lips, and thinking of what? 
 Who shall say 1 
 
 Still, still as death lay the gardens below, that an hour 
 ago had been peopled with a glittering crowd, re-echoing with 
 music, laughter, witty response, words of intrigue. Where 
 the lights had shone on diamonds and pearl-broidered trains^ 
 on softly rouged cheeks, and gold-laced coats, on jewelled 
 swords and broideries of gold, the grey hue of the breaking 
 day now only fell on the silvered leaves of the limes, the 
 turf wet with dew, the drooped heads of the Provence roses ; 
 and Madame la Marquise, standing alone, started as a step 
 through the salon within broke the silence. 
 
 " Madame, will you permit me a word now r' 
 
 Gaston de Launay took her hands off the balustrade, and 
 held them tight in his, while his voice sounded, even in his 
 own ears, strangely calm, yet strangely harsh : 
 
 "Madame, you love me no longer *?'' 
 
 " Monsieur, I do not answer questions put to me in such a 
 manner." 
 
 She would have drawn her hands away, but he held them 
 in a fierce grasp till her rings cut his skin as they had done 
 once before. 
 
 " J^o trifling ! Answer — yes or no 1" 
 
 "Well! *no/ then, monsieur. Since you will have the 
 
310 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUA T0R2,E. 
 
 truth, do not blame me if you find it uncomplimentary and 
 unacceptable." 
 
 He let go her hands and reeled back, staggered as if struck 
 by a shot. 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! it is true — you love me no longer ! And 
 you tell it me thus r 
 
 Madame la Marquise, for an instant, was silenced and 
 touched ; for the words were uttered with the faint cry of a 
 man in agony, and she saw, even by the dim twilight of da^vn, 
 how livid his lips turned, how ashy grey grew the hue of his 
 face. But she smiled, playing with Osmin's new collar of 
 pearls and coral. 
 
 " Tell it you ' thus %' I would not have told it you ' thus/ 
 monsieur, if you had been content with a hint, and had not 
 evinced so strong a desire for candour undisguised ; but if 
 people will not comprehend a delicate suggestion, they must 
 be wounded by plainer truths — it is their own fault.*- Did 
 you think I was like a little shepherdess in a pastoral, to play 
 the childish game of constancy without variations % Had 
 you presumption enough to fancy you could amuse me for 
 ever " 
 
 He stopped her, his voice broken and hoarse, as he gasped 
 for breath. 
 
 "Silence! Woman, have you no mercy*? For you — for 
 such as you — I have flung away heaven, steeped myself in 
 sin, lost my church, my peace, my all — ^forfeited all right to 
 the reverence of my fellows, all hope for the smile of my 
 God ! For you — for such as you — I have become a traitor, 
 a hypocrite, an apostate, whose prayers are insults, whose pro- 
 fessions are lies, whose oaths are perjury ! At your smile, I 
 have flung away eternity ; for your kiss, I have risked my 
 life here, my life hereafter ; for your love I held no price 
 too vast to pay; weighed with it, honour, faith, heaven, 
 all seemed valueless — all were forgotten ! You lured me 
 from tranquil calm, you broke in on the days of peace which 
 but for you were unbroken still, you haunted my prayers, you 
 placed yourself between Heaven and me, you planned to con- 
 quer my anchorite's pride, you wagered you would lure me 
 fcom my priestly vows, and yet you have so little mercy, that 
 when your bet is won, when your amusement grows stale, 
 when the victory grows valueless, you can turn on me with 
 words like these without one self-reproach?" 
 
A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE, 3lt 
 
 "Ma foi, monsieur! it is you who may reproach yourself, 
 not I," cried his hearer insolently. "Are you so very pro- 
 vincial still, that you are ignorant that when a lover has 
 ceased to please he has to blame his own lack of power to 
 retain any love he may have won, and is far too well bred 
 to utter a complaint? Your language is very new to me. 
 Most men, monsieur, would be grateful for my slightest pre- 
 ference; I permit none to rebuke me for either giving or with- 
 drawing it." 
 
 The eyes of Madame la Marquise sparkled angrily, and the 
 smile on her lips was a deadly one, full of irony, full of 
 malice. As he beheld it, the scales fell at last from the eyes 
 of Gaston de Launay, and he saw what this woman was 
 whom he had worshipped with such mad, blind, idolatrous 
 passion. 
 
 He bowed his head with a low, broken moan, as a man 
 stunned by a mortal blow ; while Madame la Marquise stood 
 playing with the pearl-and-coral chain, and smiling the ma- 
 licious and mischievous smile that showed her white teeth, as 
 they are shown in the portrait by Mignard. 
 
 " Comme les hommes sont fous I " laughed Madame la Mar- 
 quise. 
 
 He lifted his eyes, and looked at her as she stood in the 
 faint light of the dawn, with her rich dress, her gleaming 
 diamonds, her wicked smile, her matchless beauty ; and the 
 passion in him broke out in a bitter cry : 
 
 " God help me ! my sin has brought home its curse !" 
 
 He bent over her, his burning lips scorching her own like 
 fire, holding her in one last embrace, that clasped her in a 
 vice of iron she had no power to break. 
 
 " Angel ! devil! temptress ! This for what I have deemed 
 thee — that for what thou art !" 
 
 He flung her from him with unconscious violence, maddened 
 with pain, as a man by the blow that has blinded him, and 
 left her — lying where she fell. 
 
 The grey silvery dawn rose, and broke into the warmth and 
 sunlight of a summer day; the deer nestled in their couches 
 under the chequered shadows of the woodlands round, and 
 the morning chimes were rung in musical cadence from the 
 campanile of the chateau; the Provence roses tossed their 
 
312 A STUDY A LA LOUIS QUATORZE. 
 
 delicate heads, joyously shaking the dew off their scented 
 petals ; the blossoms of the limes fell in a fragrant shower on 
 to the turf below, and the boughs, swayed softly by the wind, 
 brushed their leaves against the sparkling waters of the foun- 
 tains ; the woods and gardens of Petite Foret lay, bright and 
 laughing, in the mellow sunshine of the new day to which 
 the world was waking. And with his face turned up to the 
 sky, clasped in his hand a medallion enamel, on which was 
 painted the head of a woman, the grass and ferns where he 
 had fallen stained crimson with his life-blood, lay a dead man, 
 while in his bosom nestled a little dog, moaning piteous, plain- 
 tive cries, and vainly seeking its best to wake him to the day 
 that for him would never dawn. 
 
 When her household, trembling, spread the news that the 
 dead priest had been found lying under the limes, slain by his 
 own hand, and it reached Madame la Marquise in her private 
 chambers, she was startled, shocked, wept, hiding her radiant 
 eyes in her broidered handkerchief, and called Azor, and bade 
 him bring her her flask of scented waters, and bathed her 
 eyes, and turned them dazzling bright on Saint-Elix, and 
 stirred her chocolate, and asked the news. *' On pent etre emue 
 aiix larmes et aimer le chocolat" thought Madame la Marquise, 
 with her friend Montespan : — while, without, under the wav- 
 ing shadow of the linden boughs, with the sunlight streaming 
 round him, the little dog nestling in his breast, refusing to be 
 comforted, lay the man whom she had murdered. 
 
 The portrait by Mignard still hangs on the walls of the cha- 
 teau, and in its radiant colours Madame la Marquise still lives, 
 fair type of her age, smiling her victorious smile, with the 
 diamonds shining among her ihair, and her brilliant eyes flash- 
 ing defiance, irony, and coquetry as of yore, when she reigned 
 amidst the beauties of Versailles ; — and in the gardens beyond, 
 in the summer nights, the lime boughs softly shake their 
 fragrant flowers on the turf, and the moonlight falls in hushed 
 and mournful calm, streaming through the network of the 
 boughs on to the tangled mass of violets and ferns that has 
 grown u«p in rank luxuriance over the spot where Gaston de 
 Launay died. 
 
A LINE IN THE "DAILY/* 
 
 WHO DID IT, AND WHO WAS DONE BY IT. 
 
 " Lieutenant-Colonel Fairlie's troop of Horse Artillery is 
 ordered to Norwich to replace the 12th Lancers, en route to 
 Bombay." Those three lines in the papers spread dismay into 
 the souls of [N'orfolk young ladies, and no less horror into ours, 
 for we were very jolly at Woolwich, could run up to the Clubs 
 and down to Epsom, and were far too material not to prefer 
 ball-room belles to bluebells, strawberry-ice to fresh hautboys, 
 the sparkle of champagne-cup to all the murmurs of the brooks, 
 and the flutter of ballet-girls' wings to all the rustle of forest 
 leaves. But, unha^Dpily, the Ordnance Office is no more given 
 to considering the feelings of their Royal Gunners than the 
 Horse Guards the individual desires of the two other Arms ; 
 and off we went to Norwich, repining bitterly, or, in modern 
 English, swearing hard at our destinies, creating an immense 
 sensation with our 6-pounders, as we flatter ourselves the 
 Royals always contrive to do, whether on fair friends or fierce 
 foes, and were looked upon spitefully by the one or two young 
 ladies whose hearts were gone eastwards with the Twelfth, 
 smilingly by the one or two hundred who, having fruitlessly 
 laid out a great deal of tackle on the Twelfth, proceeded to 
 manufacture fresh flies to catch us. 
 
 We soon made up, I think, to the Norwich girls for the 
 loss of the Twelfth. They set dead upon Fairlie, our captain, 
 a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and a C.B. for "services in India," 
 where he had rivalled Norman Ramsay's ancient fame at Euen- 
 tes d'Onor had had a ball put in his hip, and had come home 
 
314 ^ J'J^E IN THE ''DAILY}' 
 
 again to be worshipped by tbe women for bis romantic repu- 
 tation. ' They made an immense deal, too, of Levison Courte- 
 nay, the beauty of the troop, and called Belle in consequence ; 
 who did not want any flummery or flirtation to increase his 
 opinion of himself, being as vain of his almond eyes as any 
 girl just entered as the favourite for the season. There were 
 Tom Gower, too, a capital fellow, with no nonsense about him, 
 who made no end of chaff of Belle Courtenay ; and Little Nell, 
 otherwise Harcourt Poultenay JSTelson, who had by some mi- 
 racle escaped expulsion both from Carshalton and the College ; 
 and wire, humble serviteur Phil Hardinge, first lieutenant, and 
 one or two other fellows, who having cut dashing figures at 
 our Woolwich reviews, cantering across Blackheath Common, 
 or waltzing with dainty beauties, down our mess-room, made 
 the Artillery welcome in that city of shawls and oratorios, where, 
 according to the Gazetteer, no virtuous person ought to dwell, 
 that volume, with characteristic lucidity, pronouncing its streets 
 " ill disposed." 
 
 The Clergy asked us to their rectories — a temptation we were 
 often proof against, there being three noticeable facts in rec- 
 tories,^ that the talk is always slow, " the Church" being pre- 
 sent, and having much the same chilling effect as the presence 
 of a chaperone at a tete-a-iete ; the daughters generally ugly, 
 and, from leading the choir at morning services, perfectly con- 
 vinced that they sing like Clara JS'ovello, and that the harmo- 
 nium is a most delightful instrument ; and, last and Avorst, the 
 wines are almost always poor, except the port which the re- 
 verend host drinks hmiself, but which, Dieu merci ! we rarely 
 or never touch. 
 
 The County asked us, too ; and there we went for good hock, 
 tolerable-looking women, and first-rate billiard-tables. Por the 
 first month we were in [N'orfolk we voted it unanimously the 
 most infernally slow and hideous county going ; and I dare 
 say we made ourselves uncommonly disagreeable, as people, if 
 they are not pleased, be they ever so well bred, have a knack 
 of doing. 
 
 Things were thus quiescent and stagnant, when Pairlie one 
 night at mess told us a bit of news. 
 
 '' Old fellows, whom do you think I met to-day]" 
 
 " How should we know 1 Cut along." 
 
 " The Swan and her Cygnets." 
 
A LINE IN THE '* DAILY*' 315 
 
 " The Vanes ■? Oh, bravo !" was shouted at a chorus, for 
 the dame and demoiselles in question we had known in town 
 that winter, and a nicer, pleasanter, faster set of women I 
 never came across. " What's bringing them down here, and 
 how's Geraldine T ^ 
 
 " Yane's come into his baronetcy, and his place is close by 
 !N"orwich," said Fairlie ; " his wife's health has been bad, and 
 so they left town early ; and Geraldine is quite well, and 
 counting on haymaking, she informed me." 
 
 " Come, that is good news," said Belle, yawning. " There'll 
 be one pretty woman in the county, thank Heaven ! Poor 
 little Geraldine ! I must go and call on her to-morrow." 
 
 "She has existed without your calls. Belle," said Fairlie, 
 dryly, " and don't look as if she pined after you." 
 
 " My dear fellow, how should you know T said Belle, in 
 no wise disconcerted. "A little rouge soon makes 'em look 
 well, and as for smiles, they'll smile while they're dying for 
 you. Little Vane and I were always good friends, and shall 
 be again — if I care." 
 
 " Conceited owl !" said Fairlie, under his moustaches. "I'm 
 sorry to hurt your feelings, then, but your pretty * friend' 
 never asked after you." 
 
 "I dare say not," said Belle, complacently. " Where a 
 woman's most interested she's always quietest, and Geral- 
 dine " 
 
 "Lady Vane begged me to tell you you -svill always be 
 welcome over there, old fellows," said Fairlie, remorselessly 
 cutting him short. "Perhaps we shall find something to 
 amuse us better than these stiltified Chapter dinners." 
 
 The Vanes of whom we talked were uncommonly pleasant 
 people whom we had known at Lee, where Vane, a Q.C., 
 then resided, his prospective baronetcy being at that time 
 held by a third or fourth cousin. Fairlie had known the 
 family since his boyhood; there were four daughters, tall 
 gi^aceful women, who had gained themselves and mother the 
 nickname of The Swan and her Cygnets ; and then there were 
 twins, a boy of eighteen, who'd just left Eton ; and the girl 
 Geraldine, a charming young lady, whom Belle admired more 
 warmly than that dandy often admired anybody besides him- 
 self, and vfhom Fairlie liked cordially, having had many a 
 familiar bit of fun with her, as he had known her ever since he 
 
3t6 A LINE IN THE ''DAILYJ^ 
 
 was a dashing cadet, and she made her debut in life in the first 
 column of the Times, Her sisters were handsome women; 
 but Geraldine was bewitching. A very pleasant family they 
 were, and a vast acquisition to us. Miss Geraldine flirted to 
 a certain extent with us all, but chiefly with the Colonel, 
 whenever he was to be had, those two having a very free-and- 
 easy, familiar style of intercourse, owing to old acquaintance ; 
 and Belle spent two hours every evening on his toilette when 
 we were going to dine there, and vowed she was a " deuced 
 pretty little puss. Perhaps she might — ^he wasn't sure, but 
 perhaps (it would be a horrid sacrifice), if he was with her 
 much longer, he wasn't sure she mightn't persuade him to 
 take compassion upon her, he was so weak where women were 
 concerned !'' 
 
 " What a conceit !" said Fairlie thereat, with a contemp- 
 tuous twist of his moustaches and a shrug of his shoulders to 
 me. " I must say, if I were a woman, I shouldn't feel over- 
 flattered by a lover who admired his own beauty first, and 
 mine afterwards. ISTot that I pretend to understand women." 
 
 By which speech I argued that his old playmate Geraldine 
 hadn't thrown hay over the Colonel, and been taught billiards 
 by him, and ridden his bay mare over the park in her evening 
 dress, without interesting him slightly ; and that — though I 
 don't think he knew it — he was deigning to be a trifle jealous 
 of his Second Captain, the all-mighty conqueror Belle. 
 
 '* What fools they must be that put in these things !" 
 yawned Belle one morning, reading over his breakfast coffee 
 in the Daily Fryer one of those " advertisements for a wife " 
 that one comes across sometimes in the papers, and that make 
 us, like a good many other things, agree with Goldsmith : 
 
 Reason, they say, belongs to man, 
 
 But let them prove it if they can j 
 
 Wise Aristotle and Smiglicious, 
 
 By ratiocinations specious, 
 
 H ave strove to prove with great precision, 
 
 With definition and division, 
 
 Homo est ratione prseditum, 
 
 But for my soul I cannot ere lit 'em. 
 
 " What fools they must be !" yawned Belle, wrapping his 
 dressing-gown round him, and coaxing his perfumy whiskers 
 under his velvet smoking-cap. Belle was always inundated 
 by smoking-caps in clotii and velvet, silk and beaas^ with 
 
A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:' 317 
 
 blue tassels, and red tassels, and gold tassels, embroidered and 
 filigreed, rounded and pointed ; be bad tbem sent to bim by 
 tbe dozen, and pretty good cbaff he made of tbe donors. 
 " Awful fools % The idea of advertising for a wife, wben tbe 
 only difficulty a man bas is to keep from being tricked into 
 taking one. I bet you, if I did like tbis owl here, I sbould 
 have a hundred answers ; and if it were known to be I '* 
 
 " Little Geraldine's self for a candidate, eh T asked Tom 
 Gower. 
 
 " Very possible," said Belle, with a self-complacent smile. 
 " She's a fast little thing, don't check at much, and she's 
 deucedly i-n love with me, poor little dear — almost as much 
 trouble to me as Julia Sedley was last season. That girl all 
 but proposed to me ; she did, indeed. Never was nearer com- 
 ing to grief in my life. What will you bet me that, if I 
 advertise for a wife, I don't hoax lots of women V 
 
 " I'll bet you ten pounds," said I, " that you don't hoax 
 one !" 
 
 " Done !" said Belle, stretching out his hand for a dainty 
 memorandum-book, gift of the identical Julia Sedley afore- 
 said, and entering the bet in it — " done ! If I'm not asked 
 to walk in the Close at noon and look out for a pink bonnet 
 and a black lace cloak, and to loiter up the market-place till I 
 come across a black hat and blue muslin dress ; if I'm not 
 requested to call at No. 20, and to grant an interview at JSTo. 
 84 ; if I'm not written to by Agatha A. with hazel, and Be- 
 linda B. with black, eyes — all coming after me like flies after 
 a sugar-cask, why you shall have your ten guineas, my boy, 
 and my colt into the bargain. Come write out the advertise^ 
 ment, Tom — I can't, it's too much trouble; draw it mild, 
 that's all, or the letters we shall get will necessitate an addi- 
 tional Norwich postman. By George, what fun it will be to 
 do tbe girls ! Cut along, Tom, can't you T 
 
 " All right," said Gower, pushing away his coffee-cup, and 
 drawing the ink to him. " Head it ^Marriage,' of course ^" 
 
 " Of course. That word's as attractive to a woman as the 
 belt to a prize-fighter, or a pipe of port to a college fellow." 
 
 " * Marriage. — A Bachelor ' " 
 
 " Tell 'em a military man ; all girls have tbe scarlet fever." 
 
 " Very well — * an Officer in the Queen's, of considerable 
 personal attractions' " 
 
3i8 A LINE IN THE ''DAILY.'' 
 
 ••' My dear fellow, pray don't !" expostulated Belle, in ex- 
 treme alarm j " we shall have such swarms of 'em I" 
 
 " JN'o, no ! we must say that," persisted Gower — " ' perso- 
 nal attractions, aged eight-and-twenty ' " 
 
 " Can't you put it, * in the flower of his age,' or his ' sixth 
 lustre?' It's so much more poetic." 
 
 " ' — the flower of his age,' then \^*i}hat'll leave 'em a wide 
 range from twenty to fifty, according to their taste), ' is de- 
 sirous of meeting a young lady of beauty, talent, and good 
 family,'— eh r' 
 
 " Yes. All women think themselves beauties, if they're as 
 ugly as sin. Milliners and confectioner girls talk Anglo- 
 French, and rattle a tin-kettle piano after a fashion, and any- 
 body buys a ' family ' for half-a-crown at the Heralds' Ofiice 
 — so fire away." 
 
 " ' — who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart 
 and sympathetic soul, will accord him the favour of a letter 
 or an interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life.' " 
 
 " A step — like one on thin ice — very sure to bring a man 
 to grief," interpolated Belle. "Say something about pro- 
 perty; those soul-and-spirit young ladies generally keep a 
 look-out for tin, and only feel an elective afiinity for a lot of 
 debentures and consols." 
 
 " * The advertiser being a man of some present and still 
 more prospective wealth, requu^es no fortune, the sole objects 
 of his search being love and domestic felicity.' Domestic 
 felicity — how horrible ! Don't it sound exactly like the end 
 of a lady's novel, where the unlucky hero is always brought 
 to an untimely end in a ^ sweet cottage on the banks of the 
 lovely Severn' r' 
 
 *^ ' Domestic felicity' — bah ! What are you writing about T , 
 yawned Belle. " I'd as soon take to teetotalism ; however, 
 it'll tell in the advertisement. Bravo, Tom, that will do. 
 Address it to ^ L.C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, St. 
 Giles-street, I^orwich.' Miss Patty '11 take the letters in for 
 me, though not if she knew their errand. Tip seven and six- 
 pence with it, and send it to the Daily Fryer. ^ 
 
 We did send it to the BaUy, and in that broadsheet we all 
 of us read it two mornings after. 
 
 MARRIAGE. — A Bachelor, an Officer of the Queens, of consider- 
 able personal attractions, and in the flower of his age, is desirous 
 
A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:' 319 
 
 of meeting a young lady of beauty, accomplishments, and good 
 family, who, feeling as he does the want of a kindred heart and 
 sympathetic soul, will accord him the favour either of a letter or an 
 interview, as a preliminary to the greatest step in life. The advertiser 
 being a man of some present and still more prospective wealth, re- 
 quires no fortune, the sole objects of his search being love and 
 domestic felicity. Address, L.C., care of Mrs. Greene, confectioner, 
 St . Giles-street, Norwich. 
 
 "Whose advertisement do you imagine that is T saidFairlie, 
 showing the Daily to Geraldine, as he sat with her and her 
 sisters under some lilac and larch trees in one of the meadows 
 of Fern Chase, Avhich had had the civility, Geraldine said, to 
 yield a second crop of hay expressly for her to have the 
 pleasure of making it. She leaned down towards him as he 
 lay on the grass, and read the advertisement, looking un- 
 commonly pretty in her dainty muslin dress, with its flutter- 
 ing mauve ribbons, and a wreath she had just twisted up, of 
 bluebells and pinks and white heaths which Fairlie had 
 gathered as he lay, put on her bright hair. We called her 
 a little flirt, but I think she was an unintentional one ; at 
 least her agaceries were, all as unconscious as they were — her 
 worst enemies {i.e. plain young ladies) had to allow — un- 
 affected. 
 
 " How exquisitely sentimental ! Is it yours T she asked, 
 with demure mischief. 
 
 " Mine 1" echoed Eairlie, with supreme scorn. 
 
 " It's some one's here, because the address is at Mrs. 
 Greene's. Come, tell me at once, monsieur." 
 
 " The only fool in the artiUery," said Fairle, curtly : " Belle 
 Courtenay." 
 
 " Captain Courtenay !" echoed Geraldine, with a little flush 
 on her cheeks, caused, .perhaps, by the quick glance the 
 Colonel shot at her as he sjDoke. 
 
 " Captain Courtenay'" said Katherine Yane. " Why, what 
 can he want with a wife "? I thought he had Vemharras de choix 
 offered him in that line ; at least, so he makes out himself." 
 
 " I dare say," said Fairlie, drylyj "it's for a bet he's made, 
 to see how many women he can hoax, I believe." 
 
 " How can you tell it is a hoax ?" said Geraldine, throwing 
 cowslips at her greyhound. "It may be some medium of 
 intercourse with some one he really cares for, and who may 
 understand his meaning." 
 
320 A LINE IN THE ''DAILY," 
 
 " Perhaps yon are in his confidence, Geraldine, or perhaps 
 yon are thinking of answering it yourself?" 
 
 " Perhaps," said the young lady, waywardly, making the 
 cowslip into a ball; *' there might be worse investments. 
 Your hete noire is strikingly handsome ; he is the perfection 
 of style ; he is going to be Equerry to the Prince ; his mother 
 is just married again to Lord Chevenix ; he did not name 
 half his attractions in that line in the Daily ^ 
 
 With which Geraldine rushed across the meadow after the 
 greyhound and the cowslip ball, and Fairlie lay quiet, pluck- 
 ing up the heaths by the roots. He lay there still, when the 
 cowslip ball struck him a soft fragrant blow against his lips, 
 and knocked the Cuba from between his teeth. 
 
 " Why don't you speak T asked Geraldine plaintively. 
 *^ You are not half so pleasant to play with as you were before 
 you went to India, and I was seven or eight, and you had 
 La Grace, and battledore and shuttlecock, and cricket, and all 
 sorts of games with me in the old garden at Charlton." 
 
 He might have told her she was much less dangerous then 
 than now ; he was not disposed to flatter her, however. So 
 he answered her quietly, 
 
 " I preferred you as you were then." 
 
 " Indeed !" said Geraldine, with a hot colour in her cheeks. 
 " I do not think there are many who would indorse your 
 complimentary opinion." 
 
 " Possibly," said Fairlie, coldly. 
 
 She took up her cowslips, and hit him hard with them 
 several times. 
 
 " Don't speak in that tone. If you dislike me, you can say 
 so in warmer words, surely." 
 
 Pairlie smiled malgre lui. 
 
 " What a child you are, Geraldine ! but a child that is a 
 very mischievous coquette, and has learned a hundred tricks 
 and agaceries of which my little friend of seven or eight 
 knew nothing. I grant you were not a quarter so charming, 
 but you were, I am afraid — more true." 
 
 Geraldine was ready to cry, but she was in a passion, never- 
 theless ; such a hot and short-lived passion as all women of 
 any spirit can go into on occasion, when they are unjustly 
 suspected. 
 
 ** If you choose to think so of me you may," she said, 
 
A LINE IN THE *' DAILY:* 321 
 
 witli immeasurable hauteur, sweeping away from him, her 
 mauve ribbons fluttering disdainfully. ^* I, for one, shall not 
 try to undeceive you." 
 
 The next night we all went up to the ball at the Vanes', to 
 drink Ehenish, eat ices, quiz the women, flirt with the pretty 
 ones in corners, lounge against doorways, criticise the feet in 
 the waltzing as they passed us, and do, in fact, anything but 
 what we went to do — dance — according to our custom in such 
 scenes. 
 
 The Swan and her Cygnets looked very stunning; they 
 " made up well," as ladies say when they cannot deny that 
 another is good-looking, but qualify your admiration by an 
 assurance that she is shockingly plain in the morning, and 
 owes all to her milliner and maids. Geraldine, who, by 
 the greatest stretch of scepticism, could not be supposed " made 
 up," was bewitching, with her sunshiny enjoyment of every- 
 thing, and her untiring waltzing, going for all the world like 
 a spinning-top, only a top tires, and she did not. Belle, who 
 made a principle of never dancing except under extreme 
 coercion by a very pretty hostess, could not resist her, and 
 Tom Gower, and Little ^N'ell, and all the rest, not to mention 
 half I^orfolk, crowded round her ; all except Fairlie, who 
 lea-ned against the doorway, seeming to talk to her father or 
 the members, or anybody near, but watching ^the young lady 
 for all that, who flirted not a little, having in her mind the 
 scene in the paddock of yesterday, and wishing, perhaps, to 
 show him that if he did not admire her more than when she 
 was eight, other men had better taste. 
 
 She managed to come near him towards the end of the 
 evening, sending Belle to get her an ice. 
 
 " Well," she said, with a comio3l^itie d'elle-mime, " do you 
 dislike me so much that you don't mean to dance with me at 
 all 1 Not a single waltz all night ]" 
 
 "What time have you had to give me *?" said Fairlie, coldly. 
 " You have been surrounded all the evening." 
 
 " Of course I have. I am not so disagreeable to other gen- 
 tlemen as I am to you! But I could have made time for you 
 if you had only asked for it. At your own ball last week 
 you engaged me beforehand for six waltzes." 
 
 Fairlie relented towards her. Despite her flirting, he thought 
 she did not care for Belle after all. 
 
 21 
 
322 A LINE IN THE " DA IL K." 
 
 "Well," he said, smiling, **will you give me one after 
 supper T 
 
 " You told me you shouldn't dance, Colonel Fairlie," said 
 Katherine Yane, smiling. 
 
 ^' One can't tell what one mayn't do under temptation," said 
 Fairlie, smiling too. " A man may change his mind, you 
 know." 
 
 " Oh yes," cried Geraldine ; " a man may change his mind, 
 and we are expected to be eminently grateful to him for his 
 condescension; but if we change our minds, how severely 
 we are condemned for vacillation : * So weak !' ' Just like 
 women !' * Never like the same thing two minutes, poor 
 things !' " 
 
 " You don't like the same thing two minutes, Geraldine," 
 laughed Fairlie ; " so I dare say you speak feelingly." 
 
 " I changeable ! I am constancy itself !" 
 
 "Are you? You know what the Italians say of azure 
 eyes?' 
 
 ** But I don't believe it, monsieur !" cried Geraldine : 
 
 ** Blue eyes beat black fifty to seven, 
 For black's of hell, but blue's of heaven !" 
 
 " I beg your pardon, mademoiselle," laughed Eairlie : 
 
 ** Done, by the odds, it is not true ! 
 One devil's black, but scores are blue !" 
 
 He whirled her off into the circle in the midst of our laughter 
 at their ready wit. Soon after he bid her good night, but he 
 found time to whisper as he did so, 
 
 " You are more like my little Geraldine to-night !" 
 
 The look he got made him determine to make her his little 
 Geraldine before much more time had passed. At least, he 
 drove us back to Norwich in what seemed very contented 
 silence, for he smoked tranquilly and let the hordes go their 
 own pace — two certain indications that a man has pleasant 
 thoughts to accompany him. 
 
 I do not think he listened to Belle's, and Gower's, and my 
 conversation, not even when Belle took his weed out of his 
 mouth and announced the important fact : " Hardinge ! my 
 ten guineas, if you please. I've had a letter !" 
 
 " What ! an answer % By Jove !" 
 
 " Of course, an answer. I tell you all the pretty women ip 
 
A LINE IN THE '* DAILY.** 323 
 
 tlie city will know my initials, and send after me. I only 
 hope they will be pretty, and then one may liave a good deal 
 of fun. I was in at Greene's this morning having mock-turtle, 
 and talking to Patty (she's not bad looking, that little girl, 
 only she drops her ^ h's ' so. I'm like that fellow — what's 
 his name ? — in the ' Peau de Chagrin ;' I don't admire my 
 loves in cotton prints), when she gave me the letter. I left it 
 on my dressing-table^ but you can see it to-morrow. It's a 
 horrid red daubed-looking seal, and no crest; but that she 
 mightn't use for fear of being found out, and the writing is 
 disguised, but that it would be. She says she has the three 
 requisites ; but where's the woman that don't think herself 
 Sappho and Galatea combined 1 And she was nineteen last 
 March. Poor little devil ! she little thinks how she'll be done. 
 I'm to meet her on the Yarmouth road at two, and to look out 
 for a lady standing by the first milestone. Shall we go, Tom ? 
 It may lead to something amusing, you know, though certainly 
 it won't lead to marriage." 
 
 " Oh ! we'll go, old fellow," said I. " Deuce take you. 
 Belle ! what a lucky fellow you are with the women." 
 
 "Luckier than I want to be," yawned Belle. "It's a horrid 
 bore to be so set upon. One may have too much of a good 
 thing, you know." 
 
 At two the day after, having refreshed ourselves with a light 
 luncheon at Mrs. Greene's, of lobster salad and pale ale. Belle, 
 Gower, and I buttoned our gloves and rode leisurely up the road. 
 
 " How my heart palpitates !" said Belle, stroking his mous- 
 taches with a bored air. " How can I tell, you know, but 
 what I may be going to see the arbiter of my destiny. Men 
 have been tricked into all sorts of tomfoolery by their com- 
 passionate feelings. And then — if she should squint or have 
 a turn-up nose ! Good Heavens ! what a fearful idea ! I've 
 often wondered when I've seen men with ugly wives how they 
 could have been cheated into taking 'em ; they couldn't have 
 done it in their senses, you know, nor yet with their eyes 
 open. You may depend they took 'em to church in a state 
 of coma from chloroform. Ton my word I feel quite nervous. 
 You don't think the girl will have a parson and a register hid 
 behind the milestone, do you^" 
 
 " If she should, it won't be legal without a hcense, thanks 
 to the fools who turn Hymen into a tax-gatherer, and won't 
 
 21—2 
 
324 A LINE IN THE '' DAILY:" 
 
 let a fellow make love without lie asks leave of the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury," said Gower. " Hallo, Eelle, here's the mile- 
 stone, but Where's the lady T 
 
 " Virgin modesty makes her unpunctual," said Belle, putting 
 up his eye-glass. 
 
 " Hang modesty !" swore Tom. " It's past two, and we left 
 a good quarter of that salad uneaten. Confound her !" 
 
 " There are no signs of her," said I. " Did she tell you her 
 dress, BeUe?" 
 
 " ^ot a syllable about it ; only mentioned a milestone, and 
 one might have found a market-woman sitting on t'jat." 
 
 " Hallo ! here's something feminine. Oh, good gracious ! this 
 can't be it, it's got a brown stuff dress on, and a poke straw bon- 
 net and a green veil. ^No, no, Belle. If you married her, that 
 Vjould be a case of chloroform." 
 
 But the horrible brown stuff came sidling along the road with 
 that peculiar step belonging to ladies of a certain age, charac- 
 terised by Patty Greene as " tipputting," sweeping up the dust 
 with its horrible folds, making straight en route, for BeUe, who 
 was standing a little in advance of us. ^Nineteen ! Good 
 Heavens i she must have been fifty if she was a day, and under 
 her green veil was a chestnut front — yes, decidedly, a front — 
 and face yellow as a Canadian's, and wrinkled as Madame Pipe- 
 let's, made infinitely worse by that sweet maiden simper and 
 assumed juvenility common to vieilles filles. Up she came to- 
 wards poor Belle, who involuntarily retreated step by step till 
 he had backed against the milestone, and could get no further, 
 while she smiled up in his handsome face, and he stared down 
 in her withered one, with the most comical expression of sur- 
 prise, dismay, and horror that had ever appeared on our "beau- 
 ty's" impassive features. 
 
 " Are you — the — the — L. C. T demanded the maiden of ten 
 lustres, casting her eyes to the ground with virgin modesty. 
 
 " Ia C. ar My dear madam, I don't quite understand . 
 
 you," faltered Belle, taken aback for once in his life. 
 
 " Was it not you," faltered the fair one, shaking out a pocket- 
 handkerchief that sent a horrible odour of musk to the olfactory 
 nerves of poor Belle, most fastidious connoisseur in perfumes, 
 "who advertised for a kindred heart and sympathetic soul !" 
 
 " Eeally, my good lady," began BeUe, still too aghast by the 
 chestnut front to recover his self-possession. 
 
A LINE IN THE *' DAILY." 325 
 
 " Becailse," simpered his inamorata, too agitated by her own 
 feelings to hear his horrible appellative, keeping him at bay 
 there with the fatal milestone behind him and the awful brown 
 stuff in front of him — " because I, too, have desired to meet with 
 some elective affinity, some spirit-tie that might give me all those 
 more subtle sympathies which can never be found in the din and 
 bustle of the heartless world ; I, too, have pined for the objects 
 of your search — love and domestic happiness. Oh, blessed 
 words, surely we might — ^might we not ? ^^ 
 
 She paused, overcome with maidenly confusion, and buried 
 her face in the musk-scented handkerchief. Tom and I, where 
 we stood perdus, burst into uncontrollable shouts of laughter. 
 Poor Belle gave one blank look of utter terror at the tout en- 
 semble of brown stuff, straw poke, and chestnut front. He forgot 
 courtesy, manners, and everything else ; his lips were parted, 
 with his small white teeth glancing under his silky moustaches, 
 his sleepy eyes were open wide, and as the maiden lady dropped 
 her handkerchief, and gave him what she meant to be the softest 
 and most tender glance, he turned straight round, sprang on his 
 bay, and rushed down the Yarmouth road as if the whole of the 
 dignitaries of the church and law were tearing after him to force 
 him nolens volens into carrying out the horrible promise in his 
 cursed line in the Daily. What was Tom's and my amaze- 
 ment to see the maiden lady seat herself astride on the mile- 
 stone, and join her cachinnatory shouts to ours, fling her green 
 veil into a hawthorn-tree, jerk her bonnet into our faces, kick 
 off her brown stuff into the middle of the road, tear off her chest- 
 nut front and yellow mask, and perform a frantic war-dance on 
 the roadside turf !N"o less a person than that mischievous mon- 
 key and inimitable mimic Little Nell ! 
 
 " You young demon !" shouted Gower, shrieking with laugh- 
 ter till he cried. " A pretty fellow you are to go tricking your 
 senior officer like this. You little imp, how can you tell but 
 what I shall court-martial you to-morrow T 
 
 " JSTo, no, you won't T cried Little Nell, pursuing his frantic 
 dance. " Wasn't it prime! wasn't it glorious? wasn't it worth 
 the Kohinoor to see 1 You won't go and peach, when I've just 
 given you a better farce than all old Buckstone's ? By Jove ! 
 Belle's face at my chestnut front ! This'll be one of his prime 
 conquests, eh ? I say, old fellows, when Charles Mathews goes 
 to glory, don't you think I might take his place, and beat him 
 hollow, too T 
 
326 A LINE IN THE '' DAILY P 
 
 Wlien we got back to barracks we found Belle prostrate on 
 his sofa, heated, injured, crestfallen, solacing himself with 
 Seltzer-and-water, and swearing away anything but mildly at 
 that " wretched old woman." He bound us over to secrecy, 
 which, with Little Nell's confidence in our minds, we naturally 
 promised. Poor Belle ! to have been made a fool of before 
 two was humihation more than sufficient for our all-conquering 
 lion. For one who had so often refused to stir across a ball- 
 room to look at a Court beauty, to have ridden out three miles 
 to see an old maid of fifty with a chestnut front ! The insult 
 sank deep into his soul, and threw him into an abject melan- 
 choly, which hung over him all through mess, and was not 
 dissipated till a letter came to him from Mrs. Greene's, when 
 we were playing loo in Fairlie's room. That night Fairlie was 
 in gay spirits. He had called at Fern Chase that morning, 
 and though he had not been able to see Geraldine alone, he had 
 passed a very pleasant couple of hours there, playing pool 
 with her and her sisters, and had been as good friends as ever 
 with his old playmate. 
 
 *' Well, Belle," said he, feehng good-natured even with him 
 that night, "did you get any good out of your advertisement] 
 Did your lady turn out a very pretty one T 
 
 " JTo ; deuced ugly, like the generality," yawned poor 
 Belle, giving me a kick to remind me of my promise. Little 
 Nell was happily about the city somewhere with Pretty Face, 
 or the boy would scarcely have kept his countenance. 
 
 " What amusement you can find in hoaxing silly women," 
 said Fairlie, " is incomprehensible to me. However, men's 
 tastes differ, happily. Here comes another epistle fDr you, 
 Belle ; perhaps there's better luck for you there." 
 
 " Oh ! I shall have no end of letters. I shan't answer any 
 more. I think it such a deuced trouble. Diamonds trumps, 
 eh T said Belle, laying the note down till he should have 
 leisure to attend to it. Poor old fellow ! I dare say he was 
 afraid of another onslaught from maiden ladies. 
 
 "Come, Belle," said Glenville ; "come Belle, open your 
 letter ; we're all impatience. If you won't go, I will in your 
 place." 
 
 " Do, my dear fellow. Take care you're not pounced down 
 upon by a respectable papa for intentions, or called to account 
 by a fierce brother with a stubbly beard," said Belle, lazily 
 
A LINE IM THE '' DAILVy 32? 
 
 taking up tlie letter. As lie did so, the melanclioly indolence 
 on his face changed to eagerness. 
 
 " The deuce ! the Yane crest !" 
 
 *' A note of invitation, probably!" suggested Gower. 
 
 " Would they send an invitation to Patty Greene's? I tell 
 you it's addressed to L. C," said Belle, disdainfully, opening 
 the letter, leaving its giant deer couchant intact. " I thought 
 it very likely ; I expected it, indeed — poor little dear ! I 
 oughtn't to have let it out. Ain't you jealous, old fellows 1 
 Little darling ! Perhaps I may be tricked into matrimony 
 after all. I'd rather a presentiment that advertisement would 
 come to something. There, you may all look at it, if you like." 
 
 It was a dainty sheet of scented cream-laid, stamped with 
 the deer couchant, such as had brought us many an invitation 
 down from Pern Chase, and on it was written, in delicate 
 caligraphy : 
 
 " G. V. understands the meaning of the advertisement, and 
 will meet L. G. at the entrance of Pern Wood, at eleven 
 o'clock to-morrow morning." 
 
 There was a dead silence as we read it ; then a tremendous 
 buzz. Cheaply as we held women, I don't think there was 
 one of us who wasn't surprised at Geraldine's doing any clan- 
 destine thing like this. He sat with a look of indolent triumph, 
 curling his perfumed moustaches, and looking at the littie 
 autograph, which gave us evidence of what he often boasted — 
 Geraldine Vane's regard. 
 
 " Let me look at your note," said Pairlie, stretching out his 
 hand. 
 
 He soon returned it, with a brief, " Yery comphmentary 
 indeed !" 
 
 When the men left, I chanced to be last, having mislaid my 
 cigar-case. As I looked about for it, Pairlie addressed me in 
 the same brief, stern tone between his teeth with which he 
 spoke to Belle. 
 
 " Hardinge, you made this absurd bet with Courtenay, did 
 you not % Is this note a hoax upon him T 
 
 " ]^ot that I know of — it doesn't look like it. You see 
 there is the Yane crest, and the girl's own initials." 
 
 " Yery true." He turned round to the window again, and 
 leaned against it, looking out into the dawn, with a look upon 
 his face that I was very sorry to see. 
 
32S A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:' 
 
 " But it is not like Geraldine," I began. " It may be a trick. 
 Somebody may have stolen their paper and crest — it's possible. 
 I tell you what I'll do to find out ; I'll follow Belle to-morrow, 
 and see who does meet him in Fern Wood." 
 
 " Do," said Fairhe, eagerly. Then he checked himself, and 
 went on tapping an impatient tattoo on the shutter. " You see, 
 I have known the family for years — ^known her when she was a 
 little child. I should be sorry to think that one of them could 
 be capable of such " 
 
 Despite his self-command he could not finish his sentence. 
 Geraldine was a great deal too dear to him to be treated in seem- 
 ing carelessness, or spoken lightly of, however unwisely she 
 might act. I found my cigar case. His laconic " Good night !" 
 told me he would rather be alone, so I closed the door and left 
 him. 
 
 The morning was as sultry and as clear as a July day could be, 
 when Belle lounged down the street, looking the perfection of a 
 gentleman, a trifle less bored and hlase than ordinary, en route to 
 his appointment at Fern Wood (a sequestered part of the Yane 
 estate), where trees and lilies of the valley grew wild, and where 
 the girls were accustomed to go for pic-nics or sketching. As 
 soon as he had turned a corner, Gower and I turned it too, 
 and with perseverance worthy a better cause Tom and I fol- 
 lowed Belle in and out and down the road which led to Fern 
 Wood — a flat, dusty, stony two miles — on which, in the 
 blazing noon of a hot midsummer day, nothing short of Sa- 
 tanic coercion, or love of Geraldine Vane, would have induced 
 our beauty to immolate himself, and expose his delicate com- 
 plexion. 
 
 " I bet you anything, Tom," said I, confidently, " that this 
 is a hoax, Hke yesterday's. Geraldine will no more meet 
 Belle there than all the Ordnance Office." 
 
 " WeU, we shall see," responded Gower. " Somebody might 
 get the note-paper from the bookseller, and the crest seal through 
 the servants, but they'll hardly get Geraldine there bodily 
 against her will." 
 
 We waited at the entrance of the wood, shrouded ourselves 
 in the wild hawthorn hedges, while we could still see BeUe — 
 of course we did not mean to be near enough to overhear him 
 —who paced up and down the green alleys under the firs and 
 
A LINE Il\r THE ''DAILY,'' 32^ 
 
 larches, rendered doubly dark by the evergreens, brambles, 
 and honeysuckles, 
 
 which, ripened by the sun, 
 Forbade the sun to enter. 
 
 He paced up and down there a good ten minutes, prying 
 about with his eye-glass, but unable to see very far in the 
 tangled boughs, and heavy dusky light of the untrimmed 
 wood. Then there was the flutter of something azure among 
 the branches, and Gower gave vent to a low whistle of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " By George, Hardinge ! there's Geraldine, Well! I didn't 
 think she'd have done it. You see they're all alike if they 
 get the opportunity." 
 
 It was Geraldine herseK — it was her fluttering mushn, her 
 abundant folds, her waving ribbons, her tiny sailor hat, and 
 her little veil, and under the veil her face, with its delicate 
 tinting, its pencilled eyebrows, and its undulating bright- 
 coloured hair. There was no doubt about it; it was Geraldine. 
 I vow I was as sorry to have to tell it to Fairlie as if I'd had 
 to tell him she was dead, for I knew how it would cut him to 
 the heart to know not only that she had given herself to his 
 rival, but that his little playmate, whom he had thought 
 truth, and honesty, and daylight itself, should have stooped 
 to a clandestine interview, arranged through an advertisement ! 
 Their retreating figures were soon lost in the dim woodland, 
 and Tom and I turned to retrace our steps. 
 
 "]N"o doubt about it now, old fellow?" quoth Gower, 
 
 " iN'o, confound her !" swore I. 
 
 " Confound her 1 Et jpourquoi ? Hasn't she a right to do 
 what she likes?" 
 
 " Of course she has, the cursed little flirt ; but she'd no 
 earthly business to go making such love to Fairlie. It's a 
 rascally shame, and I don't care if I tell her so myself." 
 
 " She'll only say you're in love with her too," was Gower's 
 sensible response. " I'm not surprised myself I always said 
 she was an out-and-out coquette." 
 
 I met Fairlie coming out of his room as I went up to mine. 
 He looked as men will look when they have not been in bed 
 all night, and have watched the sun up with painful thoughts 
 for their companions. 
 
336 A LINE IN THE ''DAILY.''' 
 
 " You have been " lie began ; then stopped short, un- 
 willing or unable to put the question into words. 
 
 " After Belle % Yes. It is no hoax, Geraldine met him 
 herself." 
 
 I did not relish telling him, and therefore told it, in all pro- 
 bability, bluntly, and blunderingly — tact, like talk, having, 
 they say, been given to women. A spasm passed over his 
 face. "j&6r5e//.''" he echoed. Until then I do not think he 
 had realised it as even possible. 
 
 " Yes, there was no doubt about it. What a wretched 
 little coquette she must have been ; she always seemed to 
 make such game of Eelle " 
 
 Eut Fairlie, saying something about his gloves that he had 
 left behind, had gone back into his room again before I had 
 half done my sentence. When Eelle came back, about half 
 an hour afterwards, with an affected air of triumph, and for 
 once in his life of languid sensations really well contented, 
 Gower and I poured questions upon him, as, done up with 
 the toil of his dusty walk, and horrified to find himself so 
 low bred as to be hot, he kicked off his varnished boots, im- 
 bibed Seltzer, and fanned himself with a periodical before he 
 could find breath to answer us. 
 
 " Was it Geraldine r 
 
 " Of course it was Geraldine," he said, yawning. 
 
 "And will she marry you, Eelle?" 
 
 " To be sure she will. I should like to see the woman that 
 wouldn't," responded Eelle, shutting his eyes and nesthng 
 down among the cushions. " And what's more, I've been 
 fool enough to let her make me ask her. Give me some more 
 sherry, Phil ; a man wants support under such circumstances. 
 The deuce if I'm not as hot as a ploughboy ! It was very 
 cruel of her to call a fellow out with the sun at the meridian ; 
 she might as well have chosen twilight. Eut, I say, you fel- 
 • lows, keep the secret, will you % she don't want her family to 
 get wind of it, because they're bothering her to marry that old 
 cove. Mount Trefoil, with his sixty years and his broad acres, 
 and wouldn't let her take anybody else if they knew it j she's 
 under age, you see." 
 
 " Eut how did she know you were L. C. ?" 
 
 *• Fairlie told her, and the dear little vain thing imme- 
 diately thought it was an indirect proposal to herself, and 
 
A UNE IN THE ''DAILY}' %%X 
 
 answered it ; of course I didn't undeceive her. She raffoles 
 of me — it'll be almost too much, of a good thing, I'm afraid. 
 She's deuced prudish, too, much more than I should have 
 thought she'^ have been ; but I vow she'd only let me kiss her 
 hand, and that was gloved." 
 
 " I hate prudes," said Gower; * they've always much more 
 devilry than the open-hearted ones. Yidelicet — here's your 
 young lady stiff enough only to give you her hand to kiss, and 
 yet she'll lower herself to a clandestine correspondence and 
 stolen interviews — a condescension I don't think I should 
 admire in my wife." 
 
 " Love, my dear fellow, oversteps all — what d'ye call ^em 
 — boundaries," said Belle, languidly. "What a bore! I 
 shall never be able to wear this coat again, it's so ingrained 
 with dust ; little puss, why didn't she wait till it was cooler?" 
 
 " Did you fix your marriage-day]" asked Tom rather con- 
 temptuously. 
 
 "Yes, I was very weak!" sighed Belle; "but you see she's 
 uncommonly pretty, and there's Mount Trefoil and lots of 
 men, and, I fancy, that dangerous fellow Fairlie, after her; so 
 we hurried matters. We've been making love to one another 
 all these three months, you know, and fixed it so soon as 
 Thursday week. Of course she blushed, and sighed, and put 
 her handkerchief to her eyes, and all the rest of it, en regie ; 
 but she consented, and I'm to be sacrificed. But not a word 
 about it, my dear fellows ! The Yanes are to be kept in 
 profoundest darkness, and to lull suspicion, I'm to go there 
 scarcely at all until then, and when I do, she'll let me know 
 when she will be out, and I'm to call on her mother then. 
 She'll write to me, and put the letters in a hollow tree in the 
 wood, where I'm to leave my answers, or, rather, send 'em ; 
 catch me going over that road again ! Don't give me joy, old 
 boys. I know I'm making a holocaust of myself, but deuce 
 take me if I can help it — she is so deuced pretty !" 
 
 Fairlie was not at mess that night. jS'obody knew where 
 he was. I learnt, long months afterwards, that as soon as I had 
 told him of Geraldine's identity, he, still thirsting to disbe- 
 lieve, reluctant to condemn, catching at straws to save his 
 idol from being shattered as men in love will do, had thrown 
 himself across his horse and torn off to Tem Dell to see 
 whether or no Geraldine was at home. 
 
3ji A LINE IN THE '' DAILY.^' 
 
 His heart beat faster and thicker as he entered the draw- 
 ing-room than it had done before the lines of Ferozeshah, or 
 in the giant semicircle at Sobraon ; it stood still as in the far 
 end of the room, lying back on a low chair, sat Geraldine, her 
 gloves and sailor hat lying on her lap. She sprang up to 
 welcome him with her old gay smile. 
 
 " Good God ! that a child like that can be such an accom- 
 plished actress !" thought Fairlie, as he just touched her hand. 
 
 "Have you been out to-day?" he asked suddenly. 
 
 " You see I have." 
 
 "Prevarication is conviction," thought Fairlie, with a 
 deadly chill over him. 
 
 " Where did you go, love ?" asked mamma. 
 
 " To see Adela Ferrers ; she is not well, you know, and I 
 came home through part of the wood to gather some of the 
 anemones ; I don't mean anemones, they are over — lilies of 
 the valley." 
 
 She spoke hurriedly, glancing at Fairlie all the time, who 
 never took his iron gaze off her, though all the beauty and 
 glory was draining away from his life with every succeeding 
 proof that stared him in the face with its cruel evidence. 
 
 At that minute Lady Vane was called from the room to 
 give some directions to her head gardener about some flowers, 
 over which she was particularly choice, and Fairlie and Ge- 
 raldine were left in dead silence, with only the ticking of the 
 timepiece and the chirrup of the birds outside the open win- 
 dows to break its heavy monotony. 
 
 Fairlie bent over a spaniel, rolling the dog backwards and 
 forwards on the rug. 
 
 Geraldine stood on the rug, her head on one side, in her 
 old pretty attitude of plaintiveness and defiance, the bright 
 sunshine falling round her and playing on her gay dress and 
 fair hair — a tableau lost upon the Colonel, who, though he 
 had risen too, was playing sedulously with the dog. 
 
 " Colonel Fairlie, what is the matter with you % How un- 
 kind you are to-day !" 
 
 Fairlie was roused at last, disgusted that so young a girl 
 could be so accomplished a liar and actress, sick at heart that 
 he had been so deceived, mad with jealousy, and that devil 
 in him sent courtesy flying to the winds. 
 
 " Pardon, me, Miss Vane, you waste your coquetries on me. 
 
A LINE IN THE '' DAILYP 333 
 
 Unliappily I know their value, and am not likely to be duped 
 by tbeni." 
 
 Geraldine's face flushed as deep a rose hue as the geraniums 
 nodding their heads in at the windows. 
 
 " Coquetries % — duped % What do you mean ?" 
 " You know well enough what. All I warn you is, never 
 try them again on me — never come near me any more with 
 your innocent smiles and your lying lips, or, by Heaven, Ge- 
 raldine Vane, I may say what I think of you in plainer words 
 than suit the delicacy of a lady's ears !" 
 
 Geraldine's eyes flashed fire; from rose-hued as the gera- 
 niums she changed to the dead white of the Guelder roses 
 beside them. 
 
 " Colonel Fairlie, you are mad, I think ! If you only 
 
 came here to insult me ^" 
 
 " I had better leave % I agree with you. Good morning." 
 Wherewith Fairlie took his hat and whip, bowed himself 
 out, and throwing himself across his horse, tore away many 
 miles beyond !N"orwich, I should say, and rode into the stable- 
 yard at twelve o'clock that night, his horse with every hair 
 wringing and limb trembling at the headlong pace he had 
 been ridden ; such a midnight gallop as only Mazeppa, or a 
 Border rider, or Turpin racing for his life, or a man vainly 
 seeking to leave behind him some pursuing ghost of memory 
 or passion, ever took before. 
 
 We saw little of him for the next few days. Luckily for 
 him, he was employed to purchase several strings of Suflblk 
 horses for the corps, and he rode about the country a good 
 deal, and went over to IN^ewmarket, and to the Bury horse 
 fair, inspecting the cattle, glad, I dare say, of an excuse to 
 get away. 
 
 " I feel nervous, terribly nervous ; do give me the Seltzer 
 and hock, Tom. They wonder at the fellows asking for beer 
 before their execution. I don't ; and if a fellow wants it to 
 keep his spirits up before he's hanged, he may surely want it 
 before he's married, for one's a swing and a crash, and it's all 
 over and done most likely before you've time to know any- 
 thing about it ; but the other you walk into so deliberately, 
 superintend the sacrifice of yourself, as it were, like that old 
 cove Seneca; feel yourself rolling down-hill like Eegulus, 
 with all the horrid nails of th^ * domesticities ' pricking you 
 
334 A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:' 
 
 in every corner ; see all the sunshine of life, as jDoets have 
 it, fading, sweetly but surely, from your grasp, and Death, 
 alias the Matrimonial Black Cap, coming down ruthlessly on 
 your devoted heads. I feel low — shockingly low. Pass me 
 the Seltzer, Tom, do !" 
 
 So spake Geraldine's sposo that was to be, on the evening 
 before his marriage-day, lying on his sofa in his Cashmere 
 dressing-gown, his gold embroidered slippers, and his velvet 
 smoking-cap, puffing largely at his meerschaum, and unbosom- 
 ing his private sentiments and emotions to the (o-n this score) 
 sufficiently sympathetic listeners, Gower and me. 
 
 " I don't pity you !" said Tom, contemptuously, who had 
 as much disdain for a man who married as for one who bought 
 gooseberry for champagne, or Cape for comet hock, and did 
 not know the difference — " I don't pity you one bit. You've 
 put the curb on yourself; you can't complain if you get 
 driven where you don't like." 
 
 " But, my dear fellow, can one help it T expostulated Belle, 
 pathetically. " When a little winning, bewitching, attrac- 
 tive little animal like that takes you in hand, and traps you 
 as you catch a pony, holding out a sieve of oats, and coaxing 
 you, and so-ho-ing you till she's fairly got the bridle over 
 your head, and the bit between your teeth, what is a man 
 to dor 
 
 " Eemember that as soon as the bib is in your mouth, she'll 
 never trouble herself to give you any oats, or so-ho you softly 
 any more, but will take the whip hand of you, and not let 
 you have the faintest phantom of a will of your own ever 
 again," growled the misogamistic Tom. 
 
 " Catch a man's remembering while it's any use," was 
 Belle's very true rejoinder. " After he's put his hand to a 
 little bill, he'll remember it's a very green thing to do, but he 
 don't often remember it before, I fancy. IsTo, in things like 
 this, one can't help oneself; one's time is come, and one goes 
 down before fate. K anybody had told me that I should 
 grow as spoony about any woman as I have about that little 
 girl Geraldine, I'd have given 'em the lie direct ; I would, 
 indeed ! But then she made such desperate love to me, took 
 such a deuced fancy to me, you see ; else, after all, the woman 
 
 I might have chosen By George ! I wonder what Lady 
 
 Con, and the little Bosanquet, and poor Honoria, and aJl the 
 rest of 'em will say?" 
 
A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:* 335 
 
 "Whatr said Gower; "say ^Poor dear fellow' to you, 
 and * Poor girl, I pity her !* to your wife. So you're going to 
 elope with Miss Geraldine ? A man's generally too ready to 
 marry his daughters, to force a fellow to carry them off by 
 stealth. Besides, as Bulwer says somewhere, * Gentlemen 
 don't run away with the daughters of gentlemen.' " 
 
 " Pooh, nonsense ! all's fair in love or war," returned Belle, 
 going into the hock and Seltzer to keep up his spirits. 
 " You see, she's afraid, her governor's mind being so set on 
 old Mount Trefoil and his baron's coronet ; they might offer 
 some opposition, put it off till she was one-and-twenty, you 
 know — and she's so distractedly fond of me, poor little thing, 
 that she'd die under the probation, probably — and I'm sure I 
 couldn't keep faithful to her for two mortal years. Besides, 
 there's something amusing in eloping ; the excitement of it 
 keeps up one's spirits ; whereas, if I were marched to church 
 with so many mourners — I mean groomsmen — I should feel 
 I was rehearsing my own obsequies likeCharles V., and should 
 funk it, ten to one I should. 'Eo ! I like eloping : it gives 
 the certain flavour of forbidden fruit, which many things, 
 besides pure water, want to 'give them a relish.' " 
 
 " Let's see how's the thing to be managed T asked Gower. 
 " Beyond teUing me I was to go with you, consigned igno- 
 miniously to the rumble, to witness the ceremony, I'm not 
 very clear as to the programme." 
 
 « Why, as soon as it's dawn," responded Belle, with lei- 
 surely whiffs of his meerschaum, ** I'm to take the carriage 
 up to the gate at Pern Wood — this is what she tells me in 
 her last note ; she was coming to meet me> but just as she 
 was dressed her mother took her to call on some people, and 
 she had to resort to the old hollow tree. The deuce is in it, 
 I think, to prevent our meeting ; if it weren't for the letters 
 and her maid we should have been horribly put to it for com- 
 munication. — I'm to take th© carriage, as I say, and drive up 
 there, where she and her maid will be waiting. We drive 
 away, of course, catch the 8*15 train, and cut off to town, and 
 get married at the Eegeneration, Piccadilly, where a fellow 
 I know very well will act the priestly Calcraft. The thing 
 that bothers me most of all is getting up so early. I used to 
 hate it so awfully when I was a young one at the college. I hke 
 to have my bath, and my coffee, and my paper leisurely, and 
 
336 A LINE IN THE " DAIL K" 
 
 saunter through my dressing, and get up when the day's 
 warmed for me. Early parade's one of the crying cruelties of 
 the service ; I always turn in again after it, and regard it as a 
 hideous nightmare. I vow I couldn't give a greater test of 
 my devotion than by getting up at six o'clock to go after her 
 — deuced horrible exertion ! I'm quite certain that my linen 
 won't be aired, nor my coffee fit to drink, nor Perkins with 
 his eyes half open, nor a quarter of his wits about him. Six 
 o'clock ! By George ! nothing should get me up at that un- 
 earthly hour except my dear, divine, delicious httle demon 
 Geraldine ! But she's so deuced fond of me, one must make 
 sacrifices for such a little darling." 
 
 With which sublimely unselfish and heroic sentiment the 
 bridegroom-elect drank the last of his hock and Seltzer, took 
 his pipe out of his lips, flung his smoking cap lazily on to his 
 Skye's head, who did not relish the attention, and rose lan- 
 guidly to get into his undress in time for mess. 
 
 As Belle had to get up so frightfully early in the morning, 
 he did not think it worth while to go to bed at all, but asked 
 us all to vingt-et-un in his room, where, with the rattle of 
 half-sovereigns and the flow of rum-punch, he kept up his cour- 
 age before the impending doom of matrimony. Belle was 
 really in love with Geraldine, but in love in his own particu- 
 lar way, and consoled himself for his destiny and her absence 
 by what I dare say seems to mademoiselle, fresh from her 
 perusal of "Aurora Leigh" or " Lucille," very material com- 
 forters indeed. But, if truth were told, I am afraid mademoi- 
 selle would find, save that from one or two fellows here and 
 there who go in for love as they go in for pig-sticking or tiger- 
 hunting, with all their might and main, wagering even their 
 lives in the sport, the Auroras and Lucilles are very apt to have 
 their charms supplanted by the points of a favourite, their 
 absence made endurable by the aroma of Turkish tobacco, 
 and their last fond admonishing words, spoken with such per- 
 suasive caresses under the moonlight and the limes, against 
 those " horrid cards, love," forgotten that very night under 
 the glare of gas, while the hands that lately held their own 
 so tenderly, clasped well-nigh with as much affection the un- 
 precedented luck '* two honours and five trumps'?" 
 
 Man's love is of man's life a thing apart. 
 Byron was right ; and if we go no deeper, how can it well b^ 
 
A LIME IN THE ''DAILY}' 337 
 
 otherwise, "vvhen we have our stud, our pipe, our Pytchley, our 
 ^Newmarket, our club, our coulisses, our Mabille, and our Ep- 
 som, and they — oh, Heaven help them — ^have no distraction, 
 but a needle or a novel ! The Fates forbid that our agr miens 
 should be less, but I dare say, if they had a vote in it, 
 they'd try to get a trifle more. So Belle put his " love apart," 
 to keep (or to rust, whichever you please) till six a.m. that 
 morning, when, having by dint of extreme physical exertion 
 got himself dressed, saw his valet pack his things with the 
 keenest anxiety relative to the immaculate folding of his coats 
 and the safe repose of his shirts, and at last was ready to go 
 and fetch the bride his line in the Baily had procured him. 
 
 As Belle went down the stairs with Gower, who should 
 come too, with his gun in his hand, his cap over his eyes, and 
 a pointer following close at his heels, but Fairlie, going out to 
 shoot over a friend's manor. 
 
 Of course he knew that Belle had asked fo]' and obtained 
 leave for a couple of months, but he had never heard for what 
 purpose : and possibh^, as he saw him at such an unusual hour, 
 going out, not in his usual travelling guise of a wide-awake 
 and a Maude, but with a delicate lavender tie and a toilet of 
 the most unexceptionable art, the purport of his journey flashed 
 fully on his mind, for his face grew as fixed and unreadable as 
 if he had had on the iron mask. Belle, guessing as he did 
 that Fairlie would not have disliked to have been in his place 
 that n^prning, was both too kind-hearted and infinitely too 
 much of a gentleman to hint at his own triumph. He laughed, 
 and nodded a good morning. 
 
 " Off early, you see, Fairlie ; going to make the most of my 
 leave. 'Tisn't very often we can get one : our corps is deuced 
 stiff and strict compared to the Guards and the Cav«alry." 
 
 ** At least our strictness keeps us from such disgraceful scenes 
 as som'e of the other regiments have shown up of late," answered 
 Fairlie between his teeth. 
 
 " Ah ! well, perhaps so ; still, strictness ain't pleasant, you 
 know, when one's the victim." 
 
 '' Certainly not." 
 
 " And, therefore, we should never be hard upon others.*' 
 
 *^ I perfectly agree with you." 
 
 " There's a good fellow. Well, I must be off; I've no tim6 
 for philosophising. Good-bye, Colonel." 
 
 22 
 
338 A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:' 
 
 " Good-bye — a safe journey." 
 
 But I noticed that he held the dog's collar in one hand and 
 the gun in the other, so as to have an excuse for not offering 
 that poignee de moAn which ought to be as sure a type of friend- 
 ship, and as safe a guarantee for good faith, as the Bedouin 
 Arab's salt. 
 
 Belle nodded him a farcAvell, and lounged down the steps 
 and into the carriage just as Eairlie's man brought his mare 
 round. 
 
 Fairhe turned on to me with unusual fierceness, for generally 
 he was very calm, and gentle, and impassive in manner. 
 
 " Where is he gone T 
 
 I could not help but tell him, reluctant though I was, for I 
 guessed pretty well what it would cost him to liear it. He did 
 not say one word while I told him, but bent over Marquis, 
 drawing the dog's leash tighter, so that I might not see his 
 face, and without a sign or a reply he was out of the barracks, 
 across his mare's back, and rushing away at a mad gallop, as 
 if he would leave thought, and memory, and the curse of love 
 for a worthless woman behind him for ever. 
 
 His man stood looking at the gun Fairlie had thrown to him 
 with a puzzled expression. 
 
 '' Is the Colonel gone mad?" I heard him say to himself. 
 " The devil's in it, I think. He used to treat his things a 
 little carefuUer than this. As I live, he's been and gone and 
 broke the trigger !" 
 
 The devil wasn't in it, but a woman waSy an individual that 
 causes as much mischief as any Asmodeus, Belph^gor, or Me- 
 IDhistopheles. Some fair unknown correspondents assured me 
 the other day, in a letter, that my satire on women was " a 
 monstrous libel." All I can say is, that if it he a libel, it is 
 like many a one for which one pays the highest, and which 
 sounds the blackest — a libel that is true ! 
 
 While his rival rode away as recklessly as though he was 
 riding for his life, the gallant bridegroom — as the Court ^Cir- 
 cular would have it — rolled on his way to Fern Wood, while 
 Gower, very amiably occupying the rumbl'e, smoked, and bore 
 his position philosophically, comforted by the recollection that 
 Geraldine's French maid was an uncommonly good-looking, 
 coquettish little person. 
 
 They rolled on, and speedily the postilion pulled up, accord- 
 
A LINE m THE " DAIL K** %%t^ 
 
 ing to order, before the white five-bar gate, its paint blistering 
 in the hot summer dawn, and the great fern-leaves and long 
 grass clinging up round its posts, still damp with the six o'clock 
 dew. JFive minutes passed — ten minutes — a quarter of an hour. 
 Poor Belle got impatient. Twenty minutes — five-and-twenty — 
 thirty. Belle couldn't stand, it. He began to pace up and down 
 the turf, soiling his boots frightfully with the long wet grass, 
 and rejecting all Tom's offers of consolation and a cigar-case. 
 
 "Confound it!" cried poor Belle, piteously, "I thought 
 women were always ready to marry. I know, when I went 
 to turn off Lacquers of the Eifies at St. George's j his bride had 
 been waiting for him half an hour, and was in an awful state 
 of mind, and all the other brides as well, for you know they 
 always marry first the girl that gets there first, and all the 
 other poor wretches were kept on tenterhooks too. Lacquers 
 had lost the ring, and found it in his waistcoat after all ! I 
 say, Tom, devil take it, where can she be % It's forty minutes, 
 as I live. We shall lose the train, you know. She's never 
 prevented coming, surely. I think she'd let me hear, don't 
 you % She could send Justine to me if she couldn't come by 
 any wretched chance. Good Heavens, Tom, what shall I do ?' 
 
 " Wait and don't worry," was Tom's laconic and common- 
 sense advice ; about the most irritating probably to a lover's 
 feelings that could pretty well be imagined. Belle swore at 
 him in stronger terms than he generally exerted himself to use. 
 but was pulled up in the middle of them by the sight of 
 Geraldine and Justine, followed by a boy bearing his bride's 
 dainty trunks. 
 
 On came Geraldine in a travelling-dress : Justine following 
 after her, with a brilliant smile, that showed all her white teeth, 
 at " Monsieur Torm," for whom she had a very tender friend- 
 ship, consolidated by certain half-sovereigns and French phrases 
 whispered by Gower after his dinners at Fern Chase. 
 
 Belle met Geraldine with all that tender em^re55eme?i^ which 
 he knew well how to put into his slightest actions ; but the 
 young lady seemed already almost to have begun repenting 
 her hasty step. She hung her head down, she held a hand- 
 kerchief to her bright eyes, and to Belle's tenderest and most 
 ecstatic whispers she only answered by a convulsive pressure 
 of the arm, into which he had drawn her left hand, and a 
 half-smothered sob from her heart's depths. 
 
 22—2 
 
340 A LINE IN THE ''DAILY.'' 
 
 Belle thouglit it all natural enough under the circumstances. 
 He knew women always made a point of impressing upon you 
 that they are making a frightful sacrifice for your good when 
 they condescend to accept you, and he whispered what tender 
 consolation occurred to him as best fitted for the occasion, 
 thanked her, of course, for all the rapture, &c., &c., assured 
 her of his life-long devotion — you know the style — and lifted 
 her into the carriage, Geraldine only responding with broken 
 sighs and stifled sobs. 
 
 The boxes were soon beside Belle's valises, Justine soon be- 
 side Gower, the postilion cracked his whip over his out-sider, 
 Perkins refolded his arms, and the carriage rolled down the 
 lane. 
 
 Gower was very well contented with his seat in the rumble. 
 Justine was a very dainty little Frenchwoman, with the 
 smoothest hair and the whitest teeth in the world, and she 
 and " Monsieur Torm" were eminently good friends, as I have 
 told you, though to-day she was very coquettish and wilful, 
 and laughed a apropos de bottes at Gower, say what Chaumiere 
 compliments he might. 
 
 " Ma chere et charmante petite," expostulated Tom, " tes 
 moues mutines sont ravissantes, mais je t'avoue que je pr^f^re 
 tes -" 
 
 "Tais-toi, b^casse !" cried Justine, giving him a blow with 
 her parasol, and going off into what she would have called 
 eclats de rire. 
 
 " Mais ecoute-moi, Justine," whispered Tom, piqued by her 
 perversity ; " je raffole de toi ! je t'adore, sur ma parole ! 
 
 je Hallo ! what the devil's the matter 1 Good gracious ! 
 
 Deuce take it ! " 
 
 Well might Tom call on his Satanic Majesty to explain 
 what met his eyes as he gave vent to all three ejaculations 
 and maledictions. !No less a sight than the carriage door fly- 
 ing violently open. Belle descending with a violent impetus, 
 his face crimson, and his hat in his hand, clearing the hedge 
 at a bound, plunging up to his ankles in mud on the other 
 side of it, and starting across country at the top of his speed, 
 rushing frantically straight over the heavy grasa-land as if he 
 had just escaped from Hanwell, and the whole hue and cry 
 of keepers and policemen was let loose at his heels. 
 ^ " Good Heavens ! By Jove ! Belle, Belle, I say, stop ! Are 
 
A LINE IN THE ''DAILY.'' 341 
 
 you mad ? What's happened ] What's the row ? I say — 
 the devil!" 
 
 Eut to his incoherent but very natural exclamations poor 
 Tom received no answer. Justine was screaming with laugh- 
 ter, the postilion was staring, Perkins swearing, Belle, flying 
 across the country at express speed, rapidly diminishing into 
 a small black dot in the green landscape, while from inside 
 the carriage, from Geraldine, from the deserted bride, peals 
 of laughter, long, loud, and uproarious, rang out in the sum- 
 mer stillness of the early morning. 
 
 " Ey Jupiter ! but this is most extraordinary. The deuce 
 is in it. Are they both gone stark staring mad ?" asked Tom 
 of his Cuba, or the blackbirds, or the hedge-cutter afar of, or 
 anything or anybody that might turn out so amiable as to 
 solve his problem for him. 
 
 1^0 reply being given him, however, Tom could stand it no 
 longer. Down he sprang, jerked the door open again, and 
 put his head into the carriage. 
 
 "Hallo, old boy, done green, ehl Pity 'tisn't the 1st of 
 April !" cried Geraldine, with ienewed screams of mirth from 
 the interior. 
 
 " Eh? What? What did you say, Miss Yane?" ejaculated 
 Gower, fairly staggered by this extraordinary answer of a 
 young girl, a lady, and a forsaken bride. 
 
 " What did I say, my dear fellow ? Why, that you're done 
 most preciously, and that I fancy it'll be a deuced long time 
 before your delectable friend tries his hand at matrimony 
 again, that's all. Done ! oh, by George, he is done, and no 
 mistake. Look at me, sir, ain't I a charming bride ?" 
 
 With which eloquent language, Geraldine took off her hat, 
 pulled down some false braids, pushed her hair off her fore- 
 head, shook her head like a water-dog after a bath, and grinned 
 in Gower's astonished eyes — not Geraldine, but her twin- 
 brother, Pretty Pace ! 
 
 " Do you know me now, old boy ?" asked the Etonian, 
 with demoniacal delight — " do you know me now? Haven't 
 I chiselled him — ^haven't I tricked him — haven't I done him 
 as green as young gooseberries, and as brown as that bag ? Do 
 you fancy he'll boast of his conquests again, or advertise for 
 another wife ? So you didn't know how I got Gary Clements,, 
 of the Ten Bells, to write the letters for me ? and Justine to 
 
342 A LINE IN THE '' DAILY :\ 
 
 dress me in Geraldine's things % You know they always did 
 say they couldn't tell her from me; I've proved it now, eh? — 
 rather ! Oh, by George, I never had a better luck ! and not 
 a creature guesses it, not a soul, save Justine, [N'ell, and me ! 
 By Jupiter, Gower, if you'd heard that unlucky Belle go on 
 swearing devotion interminable, and enough love to stock all 
 Mudie's novels % But I never dare let him kiss me, though 
 my beard is down, confound it ! Oh ! what jolly fun it's 
 been, Gower, no words can tell. I always said he shouldn't 
 marry her ; he'll hardly try to do it now, I fancy ! "What a 
 lark it's been ! I couldn't have done it, you know, without 
 that spicy little French girl — she did my hair, and got up my 
 crinoline, and stole Geraldine's dress, and tricked me up alto- 
 gether, and carried my notes to the hollow oak, and took all 
 my messages to Belle. Oh, Jupiter ! what fun it's been. If 
 Belle isn't gone clean out of his senses, it's very odd to me. 
 When he was going to kiss me, and whispered, * My dearest, 
 my darling, my wife !' I just took off my hat and grinned in his 
 face, and said, ' Ain't this a glorious go % * Oh ! by George, 
 Gower, I think the fun will kill me !" 
 
 And the wicked little dog of an Etonian sank back among 
 the carriage cushions stifled Vvith his laughter. Gower stag- 
 gered backwards against a roadside tree, and stood there with 
 his lips parted and his eyes wide open, bewildered, more than 
 that cool hand had ever been in all his days, by the extraor- 
 dinary finish of poor Belle's luckless wooing ; the postilion 
 rolled off his saddle in cachinnatory fits at the little monkey's 
 narrative ; Perkins, like a soldier as he was, utterly impassive 
 to all surrounding circumstances, shouldered a vaHse and 
 dashed at quick march after his luckless master ; Justine 
 clapped her plump French gloved fingers with a million ma 
 Fois ! and mon Dieus ! and Ciels ! and far away in the 
 grey distance sped the retreating figure of poor BeUe, with the 
 license in one pocket and the wedding-ring in the other, fly- 
 ing as if his life depended on it, from the shame, and the 
 misery, and the horror of that awful sell, drawn on his luck- 
 less head by that ill-fated line in the Daily. 
 
 While Belle drove to his hapless wooing, FairHe galloped 
 on and on. Where he went he neither knew nor cared. He 
 had ridden heedlessly along, and the grey, left to her own de- 
 vices, had taken the road to which her head for the last four 
 
A LINE IN THE '' DAlLVr 343 
 
 months liad been so often turned — the road leading to Fern 
 Chase, and about a mile from the Yane estate lost her left hind 
 shoe, and came to a dead stop of her own accord, after having 
 been ridden for a couple of hours as hard as if she had been 
 at the Grand Military. Fairlie tlirew himself off the saddle, 
 and, leaving the bridle loose on the mare's neck, who he knew 
 would not stray a foot away from him, he flung himself on 
 the grass, under the cool morning shadows of the roadside 
 trees, no sound in the quiet country round him breaking in 
 on his weary thoughts, till the musical ring of a pony's hoofs 
 came pattering down the lane. He never heard it, however, 
 nor looked up, till the quick trot slackened and then stopped 
 beside him. 
 
 " Colonel Fairlie!'^ 
 
 '* Good Heavens ! Geraldine !" 
 
 " Well," she said, with tears in her eyes and petulant anger 
 in her voice, " so you have never had the grace to come and 
 apologise for insulting me as you did last week T 
 
 " For mercy's sake do not trifle with me." 
 
 ^' Trifle ! IS'o, indeed," interrupted the young lady. " Your 
 behaviour was no trifle, and it will be a very long time before . 
 I forgive it, if ever I do." 
 
 " Stay — wait a moment." 
 
 *^ How can you ask me, when, ^n^ days ago, you bid me 
 never come near you with my cursed coquetries again T asked 
 Geraldine, trying, and vainly, to get the bridle out of his 
 grasp. 
 
 " God forgive me ! I did not know what I said. What I 
 had heard was enough to madden a colder man than I. Is it 
 untrue r' 
 
 "Is what untrue ^" 
 
 " You know well enough. Answer me, is it true or not % '* 
 
 "How can I tell what you mean"? You talk in enigmas. 
 Let me go." 
 
 " I will never let you go till you have answered me." 
 
 "How can I answer you if I don't know what you mean*?" 
 retorted Geraldine, half laughing. 
 
 "Do not jest. Tell me, yes or no, are you going to marry 
 that cursed fool?" 
 
 "What 'cursed fool?' Your language is not elegant, 
 Colonel Fairlie !" said Geraldine^ with demure mischief, 
 
344 A LINE IN THE '' DAlLVr 
 
 " Eelle ! Would you have met him ? Did you intend to 
 elope with him?" 
 
 Geraldine's eyes, always large enough, grew larger, and a 
 darker blue still, in extremest astonishment. 
 
 " Belle ! — elope with him? What, are you dreaming? Are 
 you mad?" 
 
 "Almost," said Fairlie, recklessly. "Have you misled him, 
 then — tricked him ? Do you care nothing for him ? Answer 
 me, for Heaven's sake, Geraldine ! " 
 
 "I know nothing of what you are talking!" said Geraldine, 
 with her surprised eyes wide open still. "Oblige me by leav- 
 ing my pony's head. I shall be too late home." 
 
 " You never answered his advertisement, then T 
 
 " The very question insults me ! Let my pony go." 
 
 '* You never met him in Fern Wood — never engaged your- 
 self to him — never corresponded with him ?" 
 
 " Colonel Fairlie, you have no earthly right to put such 
 questions to me," interrupted Geraldine, with her hot geranium 
 colour in her cheeks and her eyes flashing fire. " I honour 
 the report, whoever circulated it, far more than it deserves, by 
 condescending to contradict it. Have the kindness to unhand 
 my pony, and allow me to continue my ride." 
 
 " You shall not go," said Fairlie as passionately as she, "till 
 you ha^e answered me one more question : Can you, will you 
 ever forgive me ?" 
 
 " !N'o," said Geraldine, with an impatient shake of her head, 
 but a smile nevertheless under the shadow of her hat. 
 
 " Not if you know it was jealousy of him which maddened 
 me, love for you which made me speak such unpardonable 
 words to you ? — not if I tell you how perfect was the tale I 
 was told, so that there was no link wanting, no room for doubt 
 or hope? — not if I tell you what tortures I had endured in losing 
 you — what bitter punishment I have already borne in crediting 
 the report that you were secretly engaged to my rival — would 
 you not forgive me then ?" 
 
 " No," whispered the young lady perversely, but smiling 
 still, the geraniums brighter in her cheeks, and her eyes fixed 
 •n the bridle. 
 
 Fairlie dropped the reins, let go her hand, and left her free 
 to ride, if she would, away from him. 
 
 " Will you leave me, Geraldine ? Not for this momiug 
 
A LINE IN THE ''DAILY:' 345 
 
 only, remember, nor for to-day, nor for this year, but— for 
 everf' 
 
 " 1^0 !" It was a very different " ]N"o " tliis time. 
 
 ** Will you forgive me, then, my darling T 
 
 Her fingers clasped his hand closely, and Geraldine looked 
 at him under her hat; her eyes so like an April day, with their 
 tears, and their tender and mischievous smile, were so irre- 
 sistibly provocative that Fairlie took his pardon for granted, 
 and thanked her in the way that seemed to him at once most 
 eloquent and most satisfactory. 
 
 If you wish to know what became of Belle, he fled across 
 the country to the railway station, and spent his leave Heaven 
 knows where — in sackcloth and ashes, I suppose — meditating 
 on his frightful sell. We saw nothing more of him ; he could 
 hardly show in [N'orwich again with all his laurels tumbled 
 in the dust, and his trophies of conquest laughing-stocks for 
 all the troop. He exchanged into the Z battery going out to 
 India, and I never saw or heard of him till a year or two ago, 
 when he landed at Portsmouth, a much wiser and pleas ant er 
 man. The lesson, joined to the late campaign under Sir 
 Colin, had done him a vast amount of good ; he had lost his 
 conceit, his vanity, his affectation, and was what ^N'ature meant 
 him to be — a sensible, good hearted fellow. As luck would 
 have it. Pretty Face, who had joined the Eleventh, was there 
 too, and Fairlie and his wife as well, and Belle had the good 
 sense to laugh it over with them, assuring Geraldine, however, 
 that no one had eclipsed the G. Y. whom he had once hoped 
 had answered his memorable advertisement. He has grown 
 wiser, and makes a jest of it now ; it may be a sore j)oint 
 still, I cannot say — nobody sees it ; but, whether or no, in 
 the old city of i^orwich, and in our corps, from Cadets to 
 Colonels, nobody forgets The Line in th^ "Daily;" who did 
 
 IT, AND WHO WAS DONE BY IT, 
 
FITZ'S ELECTION; 
 
 OR 
 
 BLUE AND YELLOW. 
 
 There was to "be an Election. The Lords and Commons 
 hadn't hit it ; one hon. gentleman had blackguarded another 
 hon. gentleman ; the big schoolboys of St. Stephen's had 
 thrown stones at each other, and as they all lived in glass 
 houses, the practice was dangerous ; the session had not bene- 
 fitted the country — so far as the country could see — one bit ; 
 the Times opined that the nation was going to the dogs, and 
 suggested that parliament should dissolve. The Times is Caesar 
 now-a-days, so parliament obeyed, broke itself up, and appealed 
 to the country — i.e. set the Carlton and Eeform counting up 
 their money, the lawyers quarrelling for all the dirty work, 
 and the 10/. voters looking out for XXX and fivers ; and the 
 country responded promptly, loving a tussle as dearly as a 
 beagle, by sharpening its bowie-knives for the contest, wonder- 
 ing who would buy its votes the highest, and hunting up its 
 stock of Blue and Yellow banners. 
 
 " So the governor wants me to stand for Cantitborough. 
 I'm not sure I won't. I'm confoundedly tired of this life year 
 after year. ' Perhaps the election will give me a little fun. 
 What do you say '?" began my cousin Eitz one morning, lying 
 reading the Field and drinking strong coffee with brandy in it 
 by way of breakfast, when I called on him in his chambers in 
 the Albany. " I want something to do. The town's so con- 
 foundedly Tory, there'll be no end of opposition. We shall 
 set them altogether by the ears, the Blues and Yellows won't 
 speak for years^ and I shall be written up in the Cantitborough 
 
FITZ'S ELECTION. 347 
 
 Post as a Leveller, a Socialist, a Sceptic, a Democrat, and all 
 the delicious names that the slow coaches call anybody who's 
 a little wide awake and original. Yes, I think I'll put up 
 for it." 
 
 " Who contests it with you. T 
 
 " There are three of 'em," answered Fitz ; " one an old 
 Indian, Tory out-and-out, worth a million, and consequently 
 worshipped by his neighbours, at whom, I believe, when 
 heated with overmuch curry and cognac, he swears more 
 than is customary in these polite times. The next is a boy, 
 just one-and-twenty — you know him, Cockadoodle's son.^ He 
 was in petticoats the other day, but, as his father's an Earl, 
 he's to be transplanted from the nursery to the Commons with- 
 out any intermediate education. The other is that sneaking 
 thing, that compromise between right and wrong, that hybrid 
 animal, a Liberal Conservative. You know him too, Le Hoop 
 Smith \ that creature who made his tin by wool, or something 
 horrid, and bought Foxley, and set up as the patriarchal father 
 of his people, in the new-fangled country squire style, with 
 improved drainage, model cottages, prize labourers, and all 
 the rest .of it. Two of us must go to the wall. I shall like 
 the fight, and you'll do the chief of the canvassing, mind. All 
 I engage to do is to kiss any pretty women there may be in 
 the place." 
 
 " You're very kind, taking the fun and giving me the work. 
 I suppose you know you'll have to shake hands with every one 
 of the Great Unwashed T 
 
 " Brutes !" rejoined Titz, who was popularly supposed to 
 be a Socialist and Democrat; " I'll see them all hanged first!" 
 
 " And you must joke with the butchers, and have a glass 
 with the coalheavers, and make friends with the sweeps." 
 
 " I'd sooner lose my election," rejoined the EepubHcan. 
 
 " And you must kiss a baby or two." 
 
 The horror, loathing, and disgust expressed on Fitz's face 
 were as good to see as " Eox and Cox." 
 
 *' ]^ot to get the premiership ! Faugh ! I'd lose my seat fifty 
 times over. Of all the loathsome ideas ! If you've nothing 
 pleasanter to suggest, you'd better get out of the room, if you 
 please." 
 
 "" Thank you. Don't you remember the sensation Mr. Samuel 
 Slumkey produced by like caresses in Pickwick T 
 
348 Firrs ELECTION. 
 
 " Pickwick go to the devil, and you too ! I shall do nothing 
 more than give them my tin, as everything is bought and sold 
 no\f-a-days, and tell them I shall vote for free trade, cheap 
 divorces, marriage with whoever one likes, religious toleration 
 — in fact, for liberty, for everything and everybody. Then, if 
 they don't like my opinions, they can have the Liberal Con- 
 servative instead. / shan't care two straws." 
 
 " Admirably philosophic ! It's lucky you're not going to 
 try the county. The farmers and clericals wouldn't have you 
 at any price. You cut at the root of their monopoly — corn- 
 laws and tithes, church-rates and protection. However, the 
 more fight the more fun. We shall be like a couple of terriers 
 in a barn full of rats. When shall we go down T 
 
 " Tuesday. I shall go to Hollywood, it's a snug little box, 
 and so much closer the town than the governor's ; and as he's 
 so ill, he won't want the bother of us. I mean to have little 
 Beauclerc as my agent; he was with me at Eton, and is the 
 sharpest dog in Lincoln's Inn. That's enough business for to- 
 day. I'm now going to Tattersall's to look at a roan filly to 
 run tandem T\dth Eumpunch; then I'm to meet my Lady 
 Frisette in the Square Gardens at two ; and at seven dine 
 at the Castle with Grouse and some other men. So ring the 
 bell for Soames, and order the cab round, there's a good 
 boy." 
 
 My cousin (Eandolph Fitzhardinge, according to the register 
 and his visiting cards, but to ns and to everybody briefly Eitz) 
 is a fine, tall, handsome fellow, a trifle bronzed, and more than 
 a trifle blase, aquiline features, a devil-may-care expression, 
 and a figure not beat in the Guards. He has been amusing 
 himself about in the world ever since he left Christ Church, 
 ten years ago, and as he will come into 12,000Z. a year when- 
 ever his father leaves him to reign in his stead, has not thought 
 himself necessitated to do more than live in the Albany, hunt 
 with the Pytchley, lounge in the " bay-window," habituate 
 the coulisses, and employ all the other ingenious methods 
 for killing time invented by men about town. He is a good 
 old fellow; the best oar in the Blue Jersey B.C., the firmest 
 seat and the lightest hand in the county, as good a batsman 
 as any in the Zingari Eleven (and these cover a multitude of 
 sins), the cleverest sailor in the whole K.Y. Y. Squadron, quite 
 ^ble to be his own captain were he not too lazy to so far exept 
 
FITZ'S ELECTION, 549 
 
 himself, and, moreover, is as clear-headed, generous-heaitel, 
 and high-spirited a man as any on earth. 
 
 Tuesday came, and Fitz (leaving Lady Frisette dissolved in 
 tears in her houdoir, which tears, no douht, were dried as soon 
 as his hack was turned, as heing no longer necessary, and de- 
 structive to rouge and heauty), with Beauclerc and myself — 
 and Eumpunch and the new filly in a horse-box — put himself 
 in the express for Pottleshire. 
 
 We had a carriage to ourselves, and of course, as soon as we 
 were out of Paddington, took out our pipes and began to enjoy 
 a quiet smoke. 
 
 " I do wish," began Pitz, opening the window and taking 
 off his cap, for it was a hot June afternoon, " they'd keep a 
 carriage, as they do in Venice, for the muffs that can't stand 
 the sweet odours of regalia, and not sacrifice us by boxing us 
 up without a weed for four, six, perhaps twelve hours, or else 
 making us pay 5Z. for other people's olfactory fancies. I won- 
 der somebody don't take it up. They write a lot of nonsense 
 about this nuisance and that evil, that they're great idiots to 
 notice at all ; but if they would write up the crying injustice 
 to smokers on British railways, there'd be something like a 
 case — the Woolwich flogging's nothing to it."* 
 
 " Wait till we've got the election, and then send a letter to 
 the Times about it, signed 'M.P.,' or a 'Lover of Justice,'" 
 said Beauclerc, the barrister, a cute little fellow, fast as a tele- 
 graph, and sharp as a ferret's bite. 
 
 *' I'll get up a petition rather, signed by all smokers, and 
 addressed to all the directors. I think we're pretty safe for 
 to-day. I don't fancy the express stops at more than a couple 
 of stations between this and Cantitborough so we are not likely 
 to have any women to bore us. I detest travelling with wo- 
 men," said Fitz, looking out of the window as if he dreaded 
 an advent of feminines along the telegraph wires. " You have 
 to put out your pipe, offer them your Punchy and squeeze into 
 nothing to make room for their skirts. Let's look at the Brad- 
 shaw. No ! we only stop twice : thought so. It will cer- 
 tainly be odd if we can't keep the carriage to ourselves." 
 
 * This has been done since Fitz suggested it. But the smokers' 
 grievance is little abated . Perhaps ladies fear smoking-carriages like 
 smoking-rooms will be too often preferred to their fair selves, and 
 they will have to travel from Dan to Beersheba in miserable solitude ! 
 
350 FITZ'S ELECTJOK ' 
 
 With which unchivalrous sentiment Fitz poked up his pipe, 
 cut the paper with his ticket, and settled himself comfortably. 
 Twenty minutes after, the engine gave a shriek, which woke 
 him out of his serenity. 
 
 " Here's Bottleston, confound it !" cried Fitz. " I know the 
 place — there's never anybody but a farmer or two for the second 
 class. JS^o fear of crinoline out of these wilds." 
 
 Fitz made rather too sure. As we hissed, and whistled, and 
 panted, and puffed into the station, what should we see on the 
 platform but six women — absolutely six — talking and laugh- 
 ing together, with a maid and a lot of luggage cased up, after 
 the custom of females, in brown hoUand, as if the boxes had 
 put on smock-frocks by mistake. Fitz swore mildly, puffed 
 an enormous cloud to frighten them, and leaned forward to 
 show as if the carriage was full. Not a bit of use was it — 
 with the instinctive obstinacy of her sex, up to our very door 
 came one of the fatal half dozen. 
 
 " There's room in here, Timbs," she said, with the supremest 
 tranquillity, motioning to her maid to put in the hundred 
 things — bouquet, dressing-case, book, travelling-bag, and Hea- 
 ven knows what, with which young ladies will cumber them- 
 selves on a journey of haK an hour. 
 
 " The perfume is extremely like that of a tobacco-shop, 
 where there is license to smoke on the premises," whispered 
 the intruder to one of her companions, with a significant glance 
 at us. 
 
 The whistle screamed — the young ladies bid each other good- 
 bye with frantic haste and great enthusiasm — the train started, 
 throwing the maid into Beau's arms, who (as she was thirty 
 and red-haired) was not grateful for the accident, and her mis- 
 tress seated herself opposite Fitz and began to pay great at- 
 tention to a poodle imprisoned in a basket, and very prone to 
 rebel against his incarceration. 
 
 "That little brute will yap all the way, I suppose?" mut- 
 tered Fitz, looking supremely haughty and stiltified. 
 
 The dog's owner glanced up quickly. " Dauphin never an- 
 noys any one." 
 
 Fitz, cool as he was, looked caught, bent his head, and put- 
 ting his pipe in his pocket with a sigh, stuck his glass in his 
 eye and calmly criticised the young lady. She was decidedly 
 good style, with large bright hazel eyes and hair to match, 
 
FiTrs ELECTION, 35! 
 
 beautifully dressed, too, in black laces and dark azure silks. 
 She was pretty enough to console Beau for the loss of his 
 smoke, and even Fitz thawed a little, and actually went the 
 length of offering her (with his grandest air, though) the Satur- 
 day he was reading. After a time he dropped a monosyllable 
 or two about the weather ; she was ready enough to talk — I 
 hate that " silent system" of John Bull and his daughters — 
 and in half an hour Fitz had examined and admired the poodle, 
 and was forgetting his lost pipe in chatting with the poodle's 
 mistress, when he somehow or other got upon the general elec- 
 tion. . 
 
 '^We are all excitement," laughed the young lady. "It 
 is quite delightful to have anything to stir up this unhappy 
 county. I have only lived in it six months, but I am sure it 
 is the dullest place in the world — the IsTorth Pole couldn't be 
 worse." 
 
 " Is it indeed T said Fitz. " Pray can you tell me who are 
 the candidates T 
 
 " General Salter, Mr. Fitzhardinge, Lord Yerdant, and a Mr. 
 Smith — Le Hoop Smith, I mean ; I beg his pardon !" 
 
 " May I ask whom you favour with your good wishes T 
 
 " They are none of them worth much, I fancy," she an- 
 swered. " Mr. Fitzhardinge, I understand, is the only clever 
 one ; but everybody says he is good for nothing." 
 
 " Xot exactly the man to be a member, then," observed 
 Fitz, gravely, stroking the poodle. "What is said against 
 him?" 
 
 "Idon^t know. They call him extravagant, sceptic, socialist, 
 republican — in fact, there is no name they don't give him. 
 I think he would do the Shire good for that very reason ; it 
 wants something original." 
 
 " Then you are a Eadical," smiled Fitz. 
 
 She smiled too. 
 
 " It is treason for me to say so j we are all Blue h ouirance. 
 Ah ! here is Cantitborough.^' 
 
 It was Cantitborough ; that neat, clean, quiet, antiquated 
 town, that always puts me in mind of an old maid dressed 
 for a party ; that slowest and dreariest of boroughs, where 
 the streets are as full of grass as an acre of pasture-land, and 
 the inhabitants are driven to ring their own door-bells lest 
 they should rust from disuse. 
 
3S2 PlWS ELECTIOJ^. 
 
 The train stopped, and Eitz looked as disgusted at losing 
 his travelling companion as he had done at her first appear- 
 ance, and stared with "Who the devil are you?" plainly- 
 written on his face, at a young fellow who met her on the 
 platform. Fitz was before him, though, in handing her 
 and the poodle out, and went to look after her luggage, for 
 motives of his own, as you may guess. He was very gra- 
 ciously thanked for his trouble, had a pretty bow to repay 
 him, and saw the poodle and its mistress off with her un- 
 known cavalier (a brother, probably, from the don't carish 
 way that he met her) before he got on a dog-cart and tooled 
 ^s down the road to Hollywood, a snug little box two miles 
 from Cantitborough, left him by Providence, impersonated by 
 a godfather, with eight or nine hundred a year. 
 
 " Of course you improved the occasion, Fitz, and saw the 
 name on the boxes T said Beau, as we drove along. 
 
 " Of course. It's Barnardiston. I never heard of it in the 
 county, did you, Fan % She ought to be a lady, by her style 
 and her voice ; what a touchstone of birth voice is ! I wonder 
 who that young fool was who met her T 
 
 " Why of necessity a fool because he chanced to be in your 
 way T laughed Beau. " He was a Cantab, I guess, by his 
 cut ; Cambridge is always stamped on those little straw hats 
 and fast coats, as Balmoral boots indicate a strong-minded 
 young woman, earrings out of their bonnets, girls that want 
 one to look at 'em, Quaker colours and sunshades, girls who 
 can't go in for the attractive line, so have sought refuge in 
 the district visiting. Bless your heart, I always know a 
 woman by her dress." 
 
 " What do you say to Daupliin's owner, then V 
 
 " Possibly coquettish ; fast enough to be pleasant ; not ilist 
 enough to be bold ; good taste, but not a notion of economy ; 
 knows she's pretty feet, and is too wise to disfigure them," 
 promptly responded little Beau. 
 
 " Bravo !" said Pitz, " that's just my style. We'll fish the 
 girl up, and show her that if I'm * good for nothing' in all 
 the other capacities of life, I'm first-rate at a flirtation ; can't 
 live without one, indeed, and I don't see why one should try, 
 since, as the women are never easy but when we're making 
 love to them, it would be a want of charity not to oblige 
 them Here we are, By Jove 1 I hope they'll have iced 
 the wine properly." 
 
Firrs ELECTION. 353 
 
 " Soames/* said Fitz to his man, wlien lie had discussed 
 the champagne, which ?(;(X5 iced as cold as a "wallflower's" 
 answer when you ask if she had enjoyed her ball — "Soames, 
 go over this evening to Cantitborough, and find out for me 
 if there are any people called Barnardiston living anywhere 
 there, and bring me word all about them." 
 
 " Certainly, sir." 
 
 And that night, when we were smoking out on the lawn, 
 Soames, who had often sped on like errands, made his report. 
 There was a Barnardiston flre^ a gentleman of independent 
 fortune, living at the Larches \ a Barnardiston mire, over whom 
 he tyrannised greatly ; a son, who was at John's ; two small 
 boys, and two daughters, one, Glencora, who was engaged to 
 the perpetual curate of St. Hildebrande's, and one, Caroline, 
 who, as far as Soames could hear, was not engaged to any- 
 body at all. 
 
 " !Now, by George !" said Fitz, puffing his regalia in the 
 moon's face, " Dauphin's mistress is a vast lot too good for 
 that pursy little Low Church fellow at St. Hildebrande's. 
 I wonder if it is she ? Glencora sounds more like her than 
 Caroline." 
 
 " Calm your mind, old fellow," said Beau ; " our beauty isn't 
 engaged to a parson, take my word for it. I always know 
 the betrothed of the Church at a glance. They're getting in 
 training to take interest in the distribution of flannel petti- 
 coats and brown-papered tracts ; they cast their eyes away 
 from good-looking fellows, for fear they should be tempted 
 to compare blue ties with white chokers ; they wear already 
 the Lady Bountiful head of the parish air ; they try to in- 
 flate themselves with big talk on the duties of a clergyman's 
 wife, but in their secret souls are already weighed down by 
 the dreadful decree that * deacons' wives must be grave, not 
 slanderous ; sober, faithful in all things ;' as if women would 
 not just as soon be put in -N'ewgate for life as denied their 
 natural food — scandal and flirtation. INTo ! take comfort, Fitz, 
 your love of the railway carriage is no parson's fiancee, I'll 
 Bwear." 
 
 Upon my honour I never knew a funnier contrast in my 
 iife than the candidates for the borough ; and when I saw 
 them all four on the Market Hill, I never laughed more at 
 old Buckstone. There was first, of course, little Verdant, 
 
 23 
 
354 
 
 PUTS ELECTIONS 
 
 long, lanky, and meek-looking, like all tlie Cockadoodles, sitting 
 forward on his horse's neck, as if he were afraid of tumbling 
 off. There was his brother Conservative, Le Hoop Smith, 
 bland, sweet smiling, and for all the world like a tabby cat 
 on its best behaviour, in a gorgeous turn-out, with his arms, 
 fished up by the Heralds*-office, blazoned on the panels as 
 big as a signpost. Then, on a fat, white shooting pony was 
 Salter, the old feUow of the H.E.I.C.S., as round as a pump- 
 kin and as yeUow as a buttercup, who'd have thought nothing 
 of lashing the independent electors as he'd flogged his Sepoys, 
 and who, not being able to do that, swore at them vigorously ; 
 and then, last of aU, was Fitz, haughty, dashing, " distingue'^ 
 (as the shop people say of a 2^. 6d cotton print), and sitting 
 down on his thorough-bred as if they were both cast together 
 in bronze. There was no doubt of Yerdant's coming in ; the 
 fact of his being the son of the only live Earl near Cantit- 
 borough secured that The tradesmen were for Salter, because 
 he eat much and paid well. The clergy and professions were 
 for Le Hoop Smith, because he was such a pious, poetical, 
 
 spotless creature ; and for Fitz Well, poor Fitz had the 
 
 women, and one or two enlightened individuals, on his side. 
 A very small hap'orth of bread to a whole ocean of sack 
 were all the constituents he seemed likely to gain, though 
 Beau and other agents set to work as hard as steam-engines, 
 and I canvassed perseveringly : the Socialist had a profound 
 contempt in practice for the Canaille, whom in theory he dig- 
 nified into the People ; and despite his opinion that all men 
 were equal, was not at all prepared to suffer familiarity from 
 his unwashed brethren. If you have ever had the ill luck, 
 as I have had, to bo in a small spiteful country town in elec- 
 tion time, when everybody is spitting and swearing like cats 
 on the tiles, you can fancy what Cantitborough was at this 
 period of its liistory. We stirred its utmost depths. The 
 best hotel was a Blue committee-room ; its second best was 
 a YeUow committee-room. Big wigs talked loud of their 
 principles ; gamins flaunted rag flags in the gutters ; mys- 
 terious strangers haunted its tap-rooms. Mr. Brown cut Mr. 
 Green because he was YeUow. Mrs. A. dropped her bosom 
 friend, Mrs. B., because she was Blue. The Town Council 
 was divided against itself, and, consequently, couldn't stand 
 straight on its legs (a charge^ by the way, often brought 
 
MTZ'S ELECTION, 355 
 
 against its members individually). Mary, tlie kitclien-maid, 
 "vrould no longer " walk along" with James the milkman, be- 
 cause he was all for that " hugly Smith." Cobblin, the shoe- 
 maker, Avas surprised by seeing two fivers lying snug in the 
 heel of a Wellington ; and Chalice, the rector, was startled 
 by a gentle hint that the Deanery of Turtlefat might be 
 vacant. 
 
 '^ Who do you think I'm going to solicit the vote from this 
 morning T said Fitz at breakfast two or three mornings after. 
 
 " Pottler, of the Three Kings, I hope," said Beau, helping 
 himself to a devil, " if you do what you ought." 
 
 "The Three Kings be shot!" said Fitz. "The barmaid 
 there is as ugly as sin, and forty, I'm certain. He's not an 
 eye to trade to keep her ; a pretty face at a bar disposes of 
 numberless shilling glasses." 
 
 " Old Hops, then, and do remember to tell him his beer is 
 better than Bass's," said Beau, whose refractory client gave him 
 no end of trouble. 
 
 " What ! that stuff, full of jack % Oh ! confound it, I can't 
 humbug like that ; 'tisn't in my line, especially with those 
 riffraff." 
 
 " The devil take your pride !" retorted Beau. " How do you 
 expect to get along with your election, when it's such a piece 
 of work to make you shake hands with even a respectable 
 butcher or " 
 
 " Pah ! hold your tongue !" cried the Eadical, glancing at 
 his own white fingers. " I like the hydra-headed to have all 
 the bread he wants, but I can't bear touching his dirty hands. 
 I'm sure I make love to the women, Beau, though, with most 
 exemplary perseverance " 
 
 " Eather too perseveringly," growled the exigeant Beau. " I 
 don't think it tells well with the fathers, and I'm quite sure it 
 influences husbands the wrong way. You're unexceptionable 
 with your equals, but Eumpunch himself isn't more unmanage- 
 able than you are with your inferiors. I always notice if a 
 gentleman — I mean a thorough-bred one — takes up democracy, 
 and all that, opinions, the more exclusive, as sure as a gun, 
 does he grow in his actions. He may put on the honnd rouge, 
 with the people, but he'll always expect the people to doff 
 theirs to him. Well, it's human nature, I suppose ; we're all 
 
 anomalies " 
 
 23—2 
 
35^ Firrs ELECTION, 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, don't begin to moralise, Beau," said 
 !Fitz. " Of all the abominations that pester the earth, the 
 didactic style is the worst. Well ! will you come with me to 
 the Larches'?" 
 
 " The where T shouted Beau, in amazement. 
 
 " The Larches ; the Barnardistons' place." 
 
 Beau dropped some cutlet, en route to his lips, off his fork, 
 in staring at Fitz. " Are you mad % Why he's on Verdant's 
 committee." 
 
 " What of that % I've walked about ten entire days to meet 
 his daughter, and haven't met her : sequitur, I shall call there." 
 
 Beau gave a grunt of wonder and disgust. " Of all the cool 
 hands, I do think you're the very coolest." 
 
 " Of course I am. Have you only now found it out % Eing 
 the bell, and order the horses." 
 
 " Well," said Beau, with a touching air of resignation, " if 
 you'd keep quiet, and do as you're told, I'd bring you in 
 as sure as this beer's Brighton Tipper ; but since you will act 
 for yourself, why, if you lose your election, / wash my hands 
 of it." 
 
 Up to the Larches rode Fitz and I, a pretty house of very 
 white stone, and with very green Venetians, that tried hard 
 to look like an Italian villa on a small scale, and failed signally 
 — standing in its grounds at the west end of Cantitborough. 
 
 " There she is," whispered Fitz, as we paced up the carriage 
 drive. True enough, stooping over a bed of verbena, garden- 
 ing sedulously, with Dauphin barking furiously round her, in 
 ecstatic delight, was our late travelling companion. At the 
 sound of our horses' hoofs the poodle rushed at us, after the man- 
 ner of small dogs, and his mistress turned round to see the cause 
 of his irritation. Off went Titz's hat, and he bowed to his 
 saddle-bow. At the same moment a young lady came out of 
 a French window, and called " Cora !" Dauphin's mistress 
 threw down her trowel, obeyed the summons, and went into 
 the house ; not without a bow to Fitz, though. " The devil ! 
 she is Glencora, and engaged to that owl then," swore Fitz. 
 '^ I say, she hasn't one bit the cut of a parson's future, has she % 
 Upon my word it's a pity — horrid waste of good material — to 
 throw her into the Church's arms ! iN'ever mind, though ; it 
 will be the more fun for me. I shan't only have a flirtation, 
 but the fun of making him jealous." 
 
Firrs ELECTION. 357 
 
 '* Glad you take it so philosophically, but it won't do you 
 much good in the borough to flirt with their pet. preacher's 
 fiancee." 
 
 " Hold your tongue. If I prefer a flirtation to a seat in the 
 Commons, mayn't I indulge my preference T said the candi- 
 date for Cantitborough, throwing his bridle to Soames, as a 
 Buttons, that one wanted a microscope to see clearly, opened 
 the door, and ushered us into the library of the hottest out- 
 and-out Tory in the county. 
 
 There sat old Earnardiston in state, a tall, plethoric-looking 
 fellow, the very embodiment of conservatism, orthodoxy, and 
 British prejudice. It was as good as a play to see his face 
 when the Eadical candidate was shown in, and to see Fitz, 
 with his most nonchalant yet most courtly air, address him, 
 and solicit kis vote, as if in perfect ignorance that Lord Ver- 
 dant's proposer, the Bluest of Blues, Barnardiston, who looked 
 on free-trade as treason to the commonwealth, and on the ballot 
 as a device of Satan, was not perfectly dJ accord with himself 
 upon politics. The old gentleman, of course, proceeded to bow 
 us out with a good deal of grandiloquent bosh about his prin- 
 ciples, which he was evidently very injured to think had not 
 been too widely known to have prevented Fitz's intrusion. Fitz 
 was non-plussed ; his call did not promise to be very produc- 
 tive. The old Tory was unpropitious, and there was no sign 
 of the girls whatever. He was just going to take his leave in 
 despair, when, as luck would have it, down came all at once 
 such a shower of hailstones, such claps of thunder, such a 
 conflict of the elements, as the novel-writers say, that, out of 
 common courtesy, the old boy, though it was plain to see that 
 he looked on us as a brace of the most impudent scoundrels 
 he had ever come across, was obliged to ask us if we would 
 wait till it was over. Fitz thanked him, and said he would, 
 in his pleasant, easy manner, as if he and the great Tory wei^e 
 the best possible friends ; and (very stiffly, though) Barnardis- 
 ton, fairly let in for the entertainment of the da,ngerous sceptic 
 and socialist, asked us to go into the drawing-room. 
 
 " Bravo ! brass and pluck always win," whispered Fitz aside 
 to me, as the door was opened, and we saw the identical Cora 
 feeding a brace of love-birds in the window, her sister, quite 
 unlike her — a stout, square, business-looking girl — writing dis- 
 trict papers, with a lot of tracts round her, and their mamma 
 reading in a dormeuse, 
 
358 Firrs ELECTION, 
 
 Breathing an inward prayer for the continuance of tlie tliiin- 
 derstorm, !Fitz sat himself down (just under the love-birds), 
 and proceeded to make himself agreeable — especially to the 
 betrothed of the incumbent of St. Hildebrande's. You would 
 have thought him the enfant de la maison for the last ten years 
 at least, to hear him talk news and literature with madame, 
 fun and ornithology with mademoiselle, utterly regardless that 
 Barnardiston was keeping a gloomy silence, and the district 
 collector looking glum on her sister's vivacious chat, probably 
 mth the eye of a belle-soeur to the absent Whitechurch's in- 
 terests. He amused them so well, and was so well amused 
 himself, that the sun had stared him in the face for full twenty 
 minutes, and the birds were telling everybody the storm was 
 gone, before Fitz thought proper to find out that it was " be- 
 ginning to clear up" — a fact so undeniable that he had nothing 
 for it but to make his adieux, after offering to lend Mrs. Bar- 
 nardiston some book or other she wanted ; and Avhen the lodge 
 gates closed behind us, Fitz had a good shout of laughter. 
 
 "JSTow, then, didn't I manage that gloriously?' 
 
 ** Yes ! I never doubted your powers of impudence yet ; 
 but whether your election " 
 
 " Confound my election ! It was worth losing fifty votes 
 only to see that old boy's face when I asked for his support ; 
 and, by George ! isn't she pretty ? To see all that going to 
 Whitechurch is rather a trial of one's patience. What in the 
 world was she thinking of to throw herself away on him 1 A 
 little flirtation will be only common humanity to her. Did 
 you see how mischievous she looked when she saw me ? The 
 *good for nothing' was lurking in her mind, I bet you." 
 
 " In pleasant contrast with the good in everything of her 
 future sposo. The cardinal virtues ain't relished by women." 
 
 Fitz laughed as he pricked Eumpunch into a gallop. " I 
 must have some fun with her. I won't quite spoil her matri- 
 monial speculations, though, for I shan't be inclined to put it 
 au sSrieux, like the Eev. Augustine. Confound it, there's 
 Jimmy ! What in the world is he doing here V 
 
 " Hallo, old boy ! how are you ?" said the man thus apostro- 
 phised, Jimmy Villars, a friend of Fitz's. " I've heard lots 
 about you, Eandolph. You're turning Cantitborough upside 
 down, and I'm come to help you." 
 
 "That's right. JS'obody more welcome. Where are you 
 st^;y ing f 
 
FirrS ELECTION. 359 
 
 " At the Levisons' — you know them. ]^o ? Then you shall 
 immediately. Levison is a great yachting man. Yes, to be 
 sure ; BonniebelUs owner ; thought you knew him by name. 
 Western of Ireland Club, you remember. He's married now; 
 a very pleasant girl hooked and finished him. They're county 
 people and thorough-going Liberals, so you won't frighten 'em, 
 though they are connected with that Arch-Blue old Barnard- 
 iston." 
 
 " By Jove !" thought Fitz, " 4f a man take luck by the horns, 
 don't it always favour him V Introduce me, then, Jimmy," 
 he said aloud ; "I want a little fun. I'm bored to death with 
 committees, canvassing, meetings, dinners, speechifying and 
 letter-writing. Then the Cantitburghers are such awful owls, 
 and one's aims and ends do seem so small when one's mixed 
 up with the bigotry of prejudice and the tomfoolery of party, 
 that I'm growing heartily sick of the whole thing already.'* 
 
 Poor Beau was distracted. Fitz had been a refractory client 
 enough before, so far as obstinately speaking his mind, telling 
 the truth, tilting against his voters' opinions, and entirely re- 
 fusing to " butter " anybody, went ; but after he met Jimmy 
 Villafs, Beau had ten times more trouble, for while little 
 Verdant was calling at every house and conquering them all 
 with his title, and Le Hoop Smith was giving to all the chari- 
 ties, and quoting the " Christian Year " largely to the clergy, 
 and Salter was delighting the ten-pound men with coarse jokes, 
 and flinging guineas and stout away recklessly, Fitz, ten to 
 one, was either bothering poor Beau not to bribe, instead of 
 letting things go on quietly; or talking rationalism and liberal- 
 ism high over the head of some startled constituent (who came 
 off from the interview with the decision that Mr. Fitzhardinge 
 was eminently "dangerous"); or playing billiards, and going 
 eel-netting with Villars and the Levisons ; or sitting in Edith 
 Levison's drawing room with her and her cousin, Glencora 
 Barnardiston. ISTevertheless, Beau, the sharp est- witted, neatest- 
 handed agent that ever lived, worked away with the settled 
 despair of a man baling water out of a leaking ship with a 
 teacup, and really grew quite worried and anxious in his per- 
 sonal appearance, toihng for the devil-may-care Eadical, for 
 whom, ever since Fitz pounded him on their first introduction 
 at Eton, he had always entertained a sort of dogged attach- 
 ment, something, he used to say, like that of an aged grand* 
 
36o FirrS ELECTION. 
 
 mother for tlie "poor dear boy" who plagues her life out 
 with crackers, and goes more wrong than all his brothers put 
 together. 
 
 The Levisons were, as Jimmy had promised, very pleasant 
 people ; and as soon as we were introduced to him, made Fitz 
 and me, and Beau too, if he had had time for such puerilities, 
 welcome to Elm Court, Levison's place, just four miles from 
 Cantitborough, whenever we liked to go there. We went 
 pretty often, for Levison's wife was a merry little thing, and 
 generally had one or two choice spirits like herself driven over 
 to spend the day ; among them her cousin and favourite, the 
 fiancee of the Eev. Augustine Whitechurch, a fat, sleek man 
 of large Easter offerings, and touching testimonials ; of good 
 family, and wide (Cantitborough) fame, whom everybody 
 j)raised, though nobody liked, as a sort of voucher for their 
 own religion. I have seen a good many serpents and rabbits, 
 rats and beagles, doves and tiger-cats chained together, but I 
 never saw any pair who seemed to be more uncongenial than 
 Cora and her pretendu. She was lively, witty, high-spirited, 
 and loved mischief as much as she hated Dorcas meetings, 
 missionary reports, and interesting converted beggars, while 
 he was Low Church — i.e,, looked upon life as a miserable pil- 
 grimage that it was our duty to make with the hardest possi- 
 ble peas in our shoes ; wanted a wife the embodiment of that 
 dreadful individual, Hannah More's " Lucilla," and worried 
 poor Cora's very life out with animadversions on her pursuits, 
 amusements, and friends. He came sometimes with her to 
 Elm Court, where he and Eitz took an instantaneous dislike 
 to each other, and kept each other at bay like a cat and a 
 spaniel. 
 
 " Do you think you will win your election, Eitz T asked 
 Villars one evening after dining there, and we were strolling 
 over the grounds afterwards in the twilight. 
 
 " Haven't an idea, my dear fellow," responded Eitz, cheer- 
 fully, " and am not sure that I wish ; for the Cantitburghers 
 are such awful idiots that to represent them faithfully I should 
 be compelled to buy a pair of ass's ears, like Bottom, which 
 might produce a peculiar sensation in the House." 
 
 " Especially," smiled Cora, " as the cap would fit so many 
 of its members." 
 
 " ThosQ that are ' good for nothing' included," 
 
FirrS ELECTION, 361 
 
 She laughed and coloured. 
 
 " Oh, I had hoped you had not recognised me. "What a 
 shame to keep it secret all this time. I might have been beg- 
 ging your pardon in a long oration every time we met. I shall 
 take care how I talk to strangers again in a train." 
 
 " Pray don't. I'm exceptional in my taste, I know, but I 
 do like truths sometimes, even if they hit hard. Don't you*?" 
 
 " Yes ; but I fancy my truth didn't hit you severely at all. 
 I think I told you you were condemned as a sceptic, a socialist, 
 and a republican : and, since all clever men have been classed 
 into one of the tliree, you sjjould be super-excellent to combine 
 the trio." 
 
 Fitz laughed. 
 
 " I am quite content to be condemned by Cantitborough to 
 any amount, so long as y(M don't find me utterly * good for 
 nothing.'" 
 
 She looked up at him merrily. 
 
 " Certainly; you are good for waltzing, billiards, and Ger- 
 man songs ; those are all the duties I require of you, so I don't 
 ask any further." 
 
 " I only wish you required more," said Fitz, softly. " I am 
 sorry you think of me as a passing acquaintance, chatted with 
 in a ball-room, and parted from without regret, to meet no 
 more in the eddies of society." 
 
 " I never said that I considered you so," interrupted Cora, 
 hurriedly, snapping the roses off their stems as they walked 
 along. 
 
 " But you implied it ; and if you knew the pain your light 
 words cause you would not speak them." 
 
 She was silent, so was he. It was part of Fitz's code of 
 warfare to leave his sentences to bear their fruit. 
 
 " Glencora, you are extremely imprudent to be out in this 
 damp atmosphere in such a light evening dress," said the Eev. 
 Augustine at her elbow. 
 
 " This exquisite evening ! Thank you for your care, but I 
 don't belong to the sanitary-mad individuals," replied Miss 
 Glen, impatiently. " I never cloak up, so never take cold ; 
 if I do, I will apply to you for some of those extraordinary 
 little hundreds and thousands you carry in the morocco case, 
 and physic the parish with, in alternate doses of texts and 
 globules," 
 
362 FITTS ELECTION. 
 
 " All ! do you believe in those little comfits, Mr. White- 
 church," said Eitz, taking up the warfare. " You save the 
 souls and the bodies en meme temps — a very nice arrange- 
 ment, I dare say. It must be delightful to practise the two 
 healing arts at once ; and then, if you should ever chance to 
 mistreat a case, it wouldn't so much matter, because you'd 
 have made sure your patient was * fit' to die, whether he were 
 willing or not. Homoeopathy's a capital thing for trade. I'm 
 very glad to see it spreading ; they say the undertakers bid 
 fair to be some of the wealthiest men in the kingdom through 
 it, and the sugar-bakers thrive amazingly." 
 
 " It requires no wit to jest upon deep subjects," said Wliite- 
 church, loftily. " The holiest topic, the gravest matter, can 
 of course be turned into ridicule." 
 
 " If it is weak, certainly." 
 
 " ISTo, sir ! ]^ot if it is weak, but if its opponents are 
 bigoted and coarse-mouthed. Eidicule was thrown upon Moses's 
 divining-rod " 
 
 *' And he turned it into a serpent, and made it eat up all the 
 other rods, which was ingenious, if not Christian." 
 
 " All the borough are acquainted with your latitudinarian 
 opinions, Mr. Fitzhardinge." 
 
 " Are they T laughed Eitz. " They must be rather a treat 
 to Cantitborough, after aU the Conservative oratory it has ex- 
 pended on it. Ey the way, Mr. Whitechurch, that election 
 sermon of yours last jSunday was an admirable hit. I heard 
 Lord Cockadoodle say that he wished old Ewen would kick 
 off, and leave Dunslope in his gift." 
 
 Whitechurch coloured. The sermon was a gross piece of 
 toadyism, and though he did keep his affections on things 
 above, he couldn't help sometimes taking a glance downwards, 
 where the fat living of Dunslope was among the prominent 
 points that caught his eye. 
 
 Cora sighed quickly, turned round, and said something 
 about going into the house. 
 
 "Do," said Eitz, bending towards her. "Let us go and try 
 those German airs." 
 
 Go they did, and Eitz's comet, which he played as well as 
 Koenig, sent out its sweet notes in a concert of sweet sounds, 
 which was anything but harmonious to the ears of the incum- 
 bent of St. Hildebrande as he walked up and down before 
 
FITZ'S ELECTION, 363 
 
 the dramiig-room windows, listening to Caroline, who, regard- 
 ing him already as a brother, took the liveliest interest in his 
 parochial business affairs, doubtless with the kindly view of 
 covering her sister's short-comings in that line. ; 
 
 "Poor dear Cora!" I heard her sigh, as she passed me' 
 when I was smoking on the terrace with Jimmy. " Don't be 
 annoyed with her, Augustine. She does flirt a little, perhaps, 
 but they say all pretty women do. I'm not tempted, you 
 know ; I am plain and unpretending ; but, thank Heaven ! 
 my thoughts are not fixed on this world, or on men's idle ad- 
 miration. Don't be vexed with her j she is thoughtless, I am 
 afraid." 
 
 " But I am extremely annoyed," said the parson's dicta- 
 torial tones. " I spoke to her the other day about fixing the 
 time for our marriage. I require a wife ; I cannot attend to 
 the schools, and the cook wastes a great deal ; but she put me 
 off — would give me no answer. I am not to be treated so 
 lightly ; and as for her dancing, and singing, and tiding with 
 those idle men, especially with that wild dissolute Fitzhard- 
 inge, it is intolerable, unbearable, most indecorous " 
 
 " I know it is very sad," chimed in the gentle Cary. 
 " But dear Glen never had any due sense of the responsible 
 position your wife will occupy. She is careless, worldly " 
 
 Here they went out of hearing, and I was no further en- 
 lightened, but went into the drawing-room, where they were 
 all playing vingt-et-un, and called to me to join them ; and I 
 thought, as I saw Cora, with her large hazel eyes full of ani- 
 mation. Verdant gazing at her sentimentally on her left, and 
 Fitz discoursing with eloquent glances and facile compliment 
 on her right, her light laugh ringing through the room, and 
 her merry talk keeping all going, that it was a thousand 
 pities for her to be imprisoned in the sombre atmosphere of 
 St. Hildebrande's rectory, under the cheerless regime of St. 
 Hildebrande's incumbent, whose gloomy doctrine would in- 
 fallibly silence the laughter, hush-hush the jest, burn the 
 cards, interdict the waltzing — ^in short, crush all the native 
 song out of the poor bird he had netted. 
 
 " I say, old boy," said I, when we were having a pipe that 
 night in the dining-room at Hollywood, " make hay while 
 the sun shines ; you won't have much longer to flirt." 
 
 *' Why not?" said Fitz, sharply. 
 
364 FirrS ELECTION, 
 
 " Because Wliitecliurch wants to get married ; not fiom any 
 particular penchant for the state, or any fresh access of love, 
 hut hecause his girls* schools want looking after, and his 
 cook's ruining him." 
 
 " The fool !" ejaculated Fitz, with a giant cloud of Turkish ; 
 " why doesn't he go to the register-office, and hire a seamstress 
 and a housekeeper*?" 
 
 " Possibly because a wife will combine both, and be cheaper. 
 Bamardiston will give his daughters twenty thousand pounds 
 each if he likes his sons-in-law. Fancy Cora arming herself 
 with needles and thread, and teaching half a dozen charity- 
 girls to make pocket-handkerchiefs for Ojibbeways, and 
 going into her kitchen to see that dear Augustine's curry is 
 peppered to a T, or that the cook doesn't encourage the police- 
 man " 
 
 " Faugh ! Be quiet, can't you ?" growled Fitz, in intense 
 disgust. " You might talk with just as much coolness of 
 Eumpunch being set to run in a costermonger's cart. The 
 idea ! What on earth could make her accept him?" 
 
 " First offer," interrupted Beau ; " couldn't tell she'd get 
 another." 
 
 " Pooh ! nonsense ; at her age girls ain't hard up in that 
 way. If she were thirty she might have been desperate; very 
 rusty hooks are snapped up when there's no longer a chance 
 of silver ones ; but at nineteen " 
 
 " Hooks of all kinds are snapped at by all ages," interrupted 
 Beau again, " and you've said so scores of times, Fitz, when it 
 suited you, and your perceptions weren't cloiided. Heaven 
 knows why the Clergy trouble themselves to tell women at 
 the end of the marriage-service not to be afraid, with any 
 amazement ; there never was more heedless waste of words, 
 for I never knew any of the crinolines who didn't catch at a 
 wedding ring as Eover catches at a mutton-bone." 
 
 *• I have, though," muttered Fitz. " Some women send 
 away troops of fellows." 
 
 ^* It does puzzle me," said I, **how Glen, with the pick of 
 the county, could choose that parson. She don't like him, I 
 fancy." 
 
 "Like him !" cried Fitz, with immeasurable scorn ; "how 
 should she % An ugly brute, with the pluck of a chicken." 
 
 " Don't call your spiritual pastors and masters bad names, 
 
Firrs ELEC TION, 365 
 
 Pitz/* said Beau. " You keep me in hourly terror, for if you 
 have a row with the Cantitburgers' pet preacher it'll be all up 
 with your election." 
 
 " I shan't have a row with him," sneered !Fitz, with much 
 contempt. " I flirt with her because she amuses me, but if 
 she likes the man, she's welcome to him for me." 
 
 Though she was so very welcome to him, I heard Fitz in 
 his room (the room is next to mine, and the walls are lath 
 and plaster) mutter to himself as he undressed, " What on 
 earth makes her take that fool?" a question to which I do 
 not suppose either his pipe or his bed-candle, or Eover, who 
 always sleeps by his bedside, or the harvest moon that was 
 looking through the window, vouchsafed him any reply. 
 
 The Larches was, of course, forbidden ground to Titz. He 
 did call there with the book for Mrs. Barnardiston, and was 
 received very cordially by that lady, but in the evening found 
 a note from the old Tory, thanking him for his courtesy, but 
 saying that at least until the " coming important contest " was 
 decided, he thought acquaintance, since their opinions were 
 so opposite, had better not continue. That was a settler ; 
 Fitz could not push himself in after that, especially as Fitz 
 would not make himself cheap for a kingdom. JSTevertheless, 
 he would find occasion to ride past the Larches, Cora being 
 given to amateur gardening, which generally consisted in 
 gathering the flowers, or throwing guelder-roses at Dauphin, 
 and a very pretty sight she was when she was so occupied, 
 though Caroline considered it childish, and Whitechurch 
 waste of time. By Jove ! if one may not dawdle a little time 
 on the road gathering the flowers one finds in life — and pre- 
 cious few there are ! — what earthly use, I wonder, do the 
 flowers grow there for % 
 
 Past the Larches we were riding one evening after dinner, 
 having spent all the day in election business that had bored 
 us both to death, and very slowly was Eumpunch pacing 
 under the shadow of the shrubberies that divided that strong- 
 hold of " Blue " opinion from the high road. J ast opposite a 
 break in the laburnums and hawthorns that gave a view 
 through a white gate into the garden, Eumpunch had, or was 
 supposed to have, a nasty stone in his foot — a stone that a 
 man who adored horseflesh as Fitz did was bound to look 
 after. The stone took some moments to find — indeed, I am 
 
3S6 FITZ'S ELECTION. 
 
 Tincertain that it was found after all — but while Fitz was 
 examining the off hoof, through the trees we perceived 
 Whitechurch and his betrothed. Whitechurch looked more 
 pompous than usual, and the serene brow that the ladies of 
 his parish raved about was certainly contracted. Cora looked 
 excited, and rather ready to cry. They drew near the gate, 
 not being able to see us for the trees, and we caught the 
 clergyman's last words — very stiff and icy they were, too. 
 
 " You will think over what I have said, Glencora, and I 
 expect you to pay some attention to it. Good-night." 
 
 She gave not the slightest response. Wliitechurch swung 
 the gate open, and passed down the road with his back to us. 
 Cora stood still, with her eyes on the ground, in a reverie ; 
 then she caught Dauphin up, kissed him, burst into tears as 
 she bent over the dog, and walked away through the trees. 
 I glanced at Fitz. His teeth were set like a m.astiff's, and he 
 looked after Whitechurch as if he longed to deliver from his 
 left shoulder and floor the retreating figure. 
 
 " You'd have improved the occasion better than that, Y\izT 
 
 " Curse the fellow !" muttered the Eadical candidate. " I 
 just msh I had him out for a couple of rounds on a quiet 
 morning — a hypocritical idiot, that'll worry all her young life 
 out of her." 
 
 With which disconnected remark, and sundry smothered 
 curses, the sight of the farewell having seemingly stirred him 
 into mighty wrath, Fitz sprang on Eumpunch. When he got 
 home he vented it in pipes and whisky, and Beau looked at 
 him as a man might look on a pet hound that he feared was 
 going in for hydrophobia. 
 
 "Something's come to Fitz," said Eeau, anxiously, "for 
 he's just signed me a large cheque without a word; and I know 
 he wouldn't have given it to me to corrupt the people with 
 without some bother, if he'd known what he was doing." 
 
 " I'm going over to Levison's, Beau," said he at breakfast 
 next day. " We're to drive to the Chase, for a sketching party ; 
 will you come T 
 
 " \T growled Beau. " I should think I've something better 
 to do ; if I hadn't, the figure at your poU would be a 0. The 
 idea of a man's coming down to stand for a borough, and then 
 going spending all his time mth a set of women ! I've no 
 patience with you." 
 
Pirrs ELECTIOI^. 36? 
 
 " Haven't you, old fellow?" laughed Fitz. "Patience is a 
 virtue, and as no lawyer has any virtues at all, I suppose we 
 can't wonder at you. I did begin enunciating my opinions, 
 but you stopped my mouth." 
 
 " Opinions ! Pray what have they to do with an election?" 
 retorted Beau. " One would take you for a boy of twenty, 
 talking as if you didn't know everything going on on the face 
 of the earth was an affair of pounds, shillings, and pence. 
 Who the devil cares two straws what opinions you have 1 
 Can't you keep 'em quiet, if you will have such things? They 
 hinder a man shockingly. If he's a taste for 'em, he shoidd 
 lock 'em up in his study. You want to get returned " 
 
 " Don't care a hang about it," cried Pitz. 
 
 " — for Cantitborough ?" continued Beau, too irate to mind 
 the interruption ; _" and if you do, you should make up your 
 mind to give your money to me and your agents with your 
 eyes shut, as a verger takes a Christmas-box, and to put the 
 stopper for a time on all that liberaHst and rationalist stuff. 
 It's all very sensible when shared with the esprits forts ; but 
 it don't sell just now — it must wait another century or two. 
 If you want to get on with the world, you mustn't frighten it 
 by drawing Truth out of her well ; for the world at present is 
 a very great baby, and Truth is its bogy, and makes it run 
 away. But you're as wilful as an unbroke colt, and one might 
 as well talk to this reindeer tongue as to you. So get along to 
 your sketching party ; you're out of mischief there." 
 
 With which oration, delivered with the spurt of a cham- 
 pagne cork, Beau pushed his plate away, drank a glass of Bass, 
 and ordered a dog-cart to drive into the town, while his obsti- 
 nate client put his block and his moist colour-box in his pocket, 
 and took his cap to walk over to Elm Court. A nicer place 
 to flirt in than that Chase, with its soft turfy seats, and its 
 thick shadowy woodlands, and its picturesque distance, as an 
 excuse for sketching, it was impossible to find. Pitz was very 
 great at sketching ; he made a sketching tour once with one 
 of the " Associates," but to-day the outline of Dauphin's nose 
 was all achieved, for he was chiefly busy mixing Cora's colours, 
 fetching her water, telling her how to tone down this, and 
 deepen that, till Well, I didn't envy the Reverend Augus- 
 tine, as his lady-love sat at the roots of an old beech, a little 
 apart from the rest of us, with Pitz lying full length on tho 
 
36S FITZ'S ELECTION, 
 
 turf beside her, as handsome a dog as ever turned a girl's head 
 with his pretty speeches. 
 
 Glencora was very shy and quiet with him that day ; she, 
 who generally talked nineteen to the dozen. I was listening 
 to the " Princess," which Yillars was reading aloud to Mrs. 
 Levison and another fair one, but it really did bore me to such 
 a degree that I was obliged to get out of sound to where I 
 could light a pipe without offending female nerves. I was 
 near Fitz, who was smoking — permitted the indulgence by 
 Cora, who has no nonsense about her — and I caught the end 
 of his sentence as he lay looking up at her, and gathering the 
 ferns with his left hand. Fitz has a quiet way of flirting, but 
 it's a very effective one. 
 
 " ]N'o ; I don't wish to win the election," he was saying. 
 " My views have changed since I came down here." 
 
 " What % has Cantitborough air turned you Blue T 
 
 "Not exactly; but since, when I leave Cantitborough, I 
 shall be forgotten as a mere acquaintance by those who have 
 made the place dear to me, I shall never set foot in it again. 
 Isn't it old JN'orth, in the ' !N'octes,' who says, * there are places 
 in this earth that we shudder to revisit, haunted by images too 
 beautiful to be endured' % I feel the truth of that now." 
 
 " By George !" thought I, " Fitz is growing very serious. 
 Won't poor Cora credit it all, and never dream it will be talked 
 in the same strain to some new listener next month !" 
 
 "Will you give me that sketch?" Fitz went on, after a 
 pause, in which the ferns had come to considerable grief. " It 
 is much to ask, but I should like some memorial of days that 
 I shall never forget, though you will." 
 
 "Do you think I shall ever forget themf* 
 
 The temptation to revenge yesterday's scene was too sweet 
 to be resisted. Fitz drew her down towards him. " WiU you 
 promise me that " 
 
 But Cora sprang up, scattering her materials to the four 
 winds. " Hush, hush, you must not speak so to me ; you do 
 not know " 
 
 What he didn't know never appeared, for Mrs. Levison 
 turned her head over her shoulders, saying, 
 
 " Glen, darhng, have you any ultramarine ? I can't find 
 mine." 
 
 Glen went towards her, and Fitz rose with a worried, anxious 
 
FITZ'S ELECTION, 369 
 
 look on liis face, very different to the fun his love affairs gene- 
 rally brought him. 
 
 "Why did your cousin engage herself to Mr. Wliitechurch'?" 
 asked he, point blank, of Mrs. Levison, finding himself alono 
 with her for two minutes before dinner that night. 
 
 ** Ah ; isn't it a pity*? a dreadful man like that, who'll think 
 it sinful for her to waltz or go to the Opera. If Gerald wouldn't 
 let me waltz, or have a box, I would sue for a separation to 
 morrow." 
 
 " But why accept him T said Fitz, impatiently. 
 
 " That was all my uncle's doing," answered Edith. " He's 
 terribly mean, you know, without the slightest reason to be 
 so. Glencora came home from school at seventeen. Augus- 
 tine proposed for her. My uncle thought it a good match, 
 and ordered her to accept him \ her mamma begged her not to 
 go against her papa. Poor Cora, as thoughtless as my canary- 
 bird, never knew the misery she was making for herself, and 
 consented. She has been miserable ever since ! They've been 
 engaged two years; and," continued Edith, with immense 
 energy, "Mr. Eitzhardinge, I'd as soon see her joining the 
 Poor Clares as wearing orange-blossoms for thai man ! " 
 
 So would Eitz, probably, on the well-known principle of the 
 dog in the manger ; a very natural principle, especially when 
 one has a fancy to eat the straw oneself. He did not say so. 
 however. 
 
 Whitechurch came to dine that night at Elm Court* The 
 dinner was not so lively as usual, for Eitz and Cora, generally 
 the fastest hitters in the tennis-ball of conversation, migh^. have 
 been Gog and Magog set down at the table for any amusement 
 they afforded the society. 
 
 After dinner at Elm Court we were wont to take our cigars 
 about in the grounds instead of over the wine in the glorious 
 sultry August evenings. Levison went after his wife — he was 
 still actually in love with her — Eitz lighted an Havannah and 
 strolled off by himself, and Jimmy and I sat down in a Eobin- 
 son Crusoe hut to have a chat about the Cambridge Eight, the 
 October meetings, and other subjects we had in common. Yil- 
 lars was just telling me how it was that Long Eortesque hap- 
 pened to make such a pot of money on the Cesarewitch, when, 
 through the thick shrubs and young trees that surrounded our 
 smoking-room, I caught a glimpse of Cora's pink dress aa 
 
 24 
 
370 FirrS ELECTION, 
 
 blie stood in earnest talk with someloody or other invisible 
 to us. 
 
 " Oh ! hang it, Jimmy," said I, " there's another love-scene 
 going on ; let's get out of the way." 
 
 " Keep still, young one, rather," retorted Yillars, " or you 
 may just wallc into the middle of it, and smash all the fun. 
 Is it that dear little pet, and Pitz making a fool of himself 
 about her? It's abominable to listen, but, boxed up here, 
 one can't help it. Fitz would soon shoot us if we walked 
 out in his face and spoiled sport. Besides, we shan't hear 
 anything new; love-scenes are all alike." 
 
 This, however, seemed far from being a love-scene. Cora 
 was speaking impetuously and hurriedly. 
 
 " I have acted very wrongly, I know I have. A girl always 
 does, if she engages herself where she cannot give her affec- 
 tion. I beg your pardon for having misled you. I blame 
 myself very much for not having spoken frankly to you long 
 ago, and asked you to release me from an engagement I can 
 never fulfil." 
 
 " It is a pity you did not think so long ago," replied White- 
 church, sententiously. 
 
 " It is a pity. I wish to Heaven I had." 
 
 " I dare say you do ! You say very justly that we are ill 
 suited to each other ; our tastes, and aims, and pursuits are 
 utterly alien. I was lured, I confess, by your personal attrac- 
 tions. I trusted that the good seed, once sown, might flourish 
 in so fair a soil ; but I was deceived. You have only fore- 
 stalled me in the rupture of our engagement. I confess that 
 I dared not take a helpmate out of Philistia, and I have 
 learned that there are treasures elsewhere superior to the 
 ephemeral charms of mere exterior beauty." 
 
 " I am rejoiced to hear it," retorted Cora, haughtily. " Our 
 want of congeniality cannot have struck you more forcibly 
 than it has done me. You will, at least, do me the justice to 
 admit that I never simulated an affection I could not feel.'* 
 
 '^ Certainly ; we part in peace, and shall, I trust, meet again 
 on perfectly friendly terms." 
 
 " He'll take Cary, mark my word," said Yillars, as the in- 
 cumbent of St. Hildebrande's raised his hat, and left her. 
 " AU her district visiting and ragged school teaching hasn't 
 been without an eye to business, I'll bet," 
 
FITZS election: 371 
 
 Cora, fancying herself alone, threw herself down on a turf 
 se;it under a mountain-ash, looking pretty enough, with the 
 sunset lighting up her bright dress and uncovered hair, while 
 she sat in thought, out of which Dauphin, by the application 
 of a cold nose, the wagging of a short tail, and many im- 
 patient barks, vainly tried to rouse her. 
 
 "Pretty she looks, don't she?" whispered Villars. *'Do 
 for the Sleeping Beauty, if her eyes were shut. Why don't 
 Fitz play the Knight's part "i" 
 
 He'd scarcely spoken vfhen the scent of an Havaimah floated 
 to us on the evening wind, and along the shrubbery path came 
 Fitz, with his arms folded, and his eyes on the ground. 
 Dauphin ran up to him in an ecstatic state of welcome. Cora 
 started up, her cheeks flushing as bright-hued as the sky, 
 and said something highly unintelligible about its going to 
 rain, which, seeing there wasn't a cloud in the heavens, seemed 
 looking far into futurity indeed. Fitz didn't answer her with 
 regard to her atmospheric prophecies, but, throwing away his 
 cigar into the middle of an oleander, he began where he had 
 left off in the morning. 
 
 " Cora, my darling," he murmured, " I beseech you listen 
 to me ! I seem never to have hated or to have loved till now. 
 For Heaven's sake, free yourself from those accursed ties, and 
 give yourself to me " 
 
 "The deuce !" muttered Jimmy, when Glencora had whis- 
 pered that she was free, and the Eadical candidate had pledged 
 himself with every vow under the sun to the great Blue's 
 daughter, and they had strolled away among the shrubberies, 
 ** since Fitz has got up the steam and come it au serieux like 
 this, a spavined 'bus horse may enter itself for the Derby. 
 A pretty fellow he is to come canvassing ; but one might have 
 been sure wliat sort of an election Ae'd try for when hazel 
 eyes like those were in the way." 
 
 I suppose Fitz found this style of canvassing more to his 
 taste, for the harvest moon was high in the heavens, and the 
 nightingale was jug-jugging in the cool woodlands, and the 
 ladies had sung two or three songs after the coffee, before he 
 and Cora walked in through the bay-window. 
 
 To see Beau's face when Fitz told him he had turned out 
 Whitechurch ! 
 
 " Well, I do think you're gone clean mad, Randolph," he 
 
372 Firrs ELECTION, 
 
 "began, wlien lie recovered his first breathless horror. " To fly 
 in the face of the borough like that — to steal their pet parson's 
 fiancee — to outwit their most influential householder — to get 
 yourself called every name they can lay their tongues to — 
 how the deuce do you think that's likely to forward your 
 election T 
 
 Fitz lay back and laughed without stopping for five minutes. 
 
 " You may laugh," growled Beau. " You won't laugh when 
 you see four thousand five hundred pounds six shillings and 
 eightpence gone, and nothing to show for it." 
 
 " That's your fault," put in Fitz, " for spending such a lot 
 on unholy purposes. What sort of a face would you show 
 before an Election Committee T 
 
 "I should like to know," continued Beau, more furious 
 every word he uttered, " what a woman is worth to lose an 
 election for? Women are as cheap as green peas, but you 
 won't find free boroughs as easy to come by. A pretty row 
 we shall have in the town ! Won't the Blues print placards 
 about you ! Won't there just be choice epithets chalked after 
 your name on the walls ! Won't the Cantitborough Post catch 
 hold of it, and rake up every one of your love aflairs ; and 
 pretty nice ones some of 'em are, since I was called in to settle 
 'em ! Won't old Blue Bar move heaven and earth to keep you 
 out ! Well, all I can say is, that you're more fit for a private 
 asylum than a rational hustings." 
 
 With which final philippic Beau flung himself out of the 
 room, too irate to hear Fitz call after him. 
 
 " Take my compliments to the editor of the CanUtborough 
 Post, and ask him to be so kind as to print, next week, in the 
 biggest capitals he has, that I consider a touch of Cora's lips 
 worth a premiership ! Don't forget, Beau? And, I say, you 
 may add, too, that Blue and Yellow are two of the primary 
 colours, and intended to unite from earliest memory." 
 
 Beau was quite right. The Blues were frantic with delight 
 at being able to damage the Yellow member, who, somehow, 
 had been making ground in spite of them ; and Barnardiston 
 was furious, not because Whitechurch was thrown oybt, for 
 Whitechurch had turned his affections towards the good working 
 qualities of Caroline, but because the man he hated worst in 
 the whole county — ^handsome, reckless, bold, republican Fitz — 
 had cheated him out of the chance of a coronet. The very day 
 
FITZS ELECTION, 373 
 
 Cora accepted Eandolpli she refused little Lord Vel^dant, and 
 so enraged was the great Tory, that he told Cora to leave his 
 roof, and sent Fitz's letters back unopened. Cora, who, having 
 her mamma on her side, however, did not mind it much, took 
 refuge with Edith Levison, Levison himself being indignant 
 with Barnardiston for his foUy; and in the sultry summer 
 days and the long summer evenings Fitz and Miss Glen passed 
 many a pleasant hour under the shady trees of Elm Court, 
 while in the little bigoted, quarrelling, peppery town, four 
 miles off, the Cantitborough men were blackening his name in 
 committee-rooms, and the Cantitborough women were pulling 
 her to smithereens at their tea-fights. 
 
 The day that beats the Derby for stirring English phlegm 
 into mad excitement — ^the day when Blue and Yellow ride 
 rampant against each other — the day when the demon of Party 
 breaks loose — when the Unwashed smash each other's heads 
 to their full satisfaction, when voters are locked up in durance 
 vile and plied with hocussed grog, and turn hither and thither 
 by distracted cabs — when men work, and wear, and quarrel, 
 and growl, and swear by a bit of blue ribbon, as if it were 
 the sole stay of the country, and grasp at a yellow banner as 
 though it were the mainstay of liberty — the election-day 
 dawned on Cantitborough, the sun shining extra bright, a.s 
 if laughing with its jolly round face at the baby play these 
 little pigmies below fancied of such universal importance. 
 
 The nomination day arrived, and each separate Cantit- 
 burgher uprose from his bed with the solemn conviction, that 
 the destinies of England hung on his own individual hands. 
 Beau splashed through his bath with the rapidity of a water- 
 dog, brushed his whiskers as hastily as a Cantab too late for 
 chapel, and dressed himself in much the same eager excite- 
 ment as a Cornet harnessing for his first parade. 
 
 " Seven o'clock, and that fellow not up !" growled Beau, 
 performing a fanfaronade on his candidate's door. 
 
 " What the devil are you making that row for T responded 
 Fitz. " Why carUt you take things quietly T 
 
 '* If I had, I wonder how you'd stand," swore Beau, " on 
 the poll to-day % l^oi up ! when Smith, and Salter, and Ver- 
 dant will be in the town by nine, full fig, and all your com- 
 mittee will be looking out for you at half-past at the Ten Bells !" 
 
 Fitz lauc]jhed. 
 
374 FITZ'S ELECTION, 
 
 "You get your "breakfast, and go into Cantittorough, wlieiiier 
 I*m np or not. And, I say, Beau, send Soames to me, and 
 order some one to saddle Eumpunch, will you T 
 
 " Go into Cantitborough without liim I He's certainly mad," 
 muttered Beau, in soliloquy. Being, however, of a philosophic 
 turn of mind, he and I ate a good breakfast, though ungraced 
 by the presence of our host. " Why is that fellow so late T 
 he asked fifty times to each cup of coffee. "Eight o'clock, by 
 Jove ! and we shall be a mortal hour getting into procession 
 and going to the town. Do ring the bell — ring it loud. Thank 
 you. James, go and see if your master is up." 
 
 " Can't make anybody hear, sir," said James, returning. 
 
 " JSTot hear % Bless my soul, it's very extraordinary !" said 
 Beau, looking the picture of unutterable worry and woe. ^ ^ Fitz 
 must have taken an overdose of opium. Confound him ! 
 What did he get in love for'? I'll call him myself." 
 
 Up went Beau and battered at the door, with not the 
 slightest success. 
 
 " I say, Fitz ! Eitz ! are you deaf, or dead, or what T 
 shouted Beau, forgetting that in the event of either hypothesis 
 Fitz would be the last person calculated to give him an 
 answer. 
 
 "Grod bless me !'^ cried Beau, bursting the door open, 
 "where are you'? If ever there was a wayward, obstinate, 
 
 provoking " Beau stopped in astonishment too great for 
 
 speech. The room was empty, the bed empty, Fitz, Eover, 
 and Soames departed, all the drawers open, a portmanteau on 
 the floor, and shirts, and coats, and brushes, and boots tossed 
 about as when a man has packed in a hurry and left behind 
 all the things he will not want. " Bolted, by Heaven !" cried 
 Beau. " Where's he gone % What's he done % He is mad — 
 he must be mad ! Send the servants off everywhere ! Where, 
 in the devil's name, can he be flown % Oh, curse it, what ^s 
 to be done V 
 
 That was more than I could tell him. We did send the men 
 everywhere, but they could not find their master, nor Soames 
 either. Beau had a faint idea of dragging the pond, in case 
 Fitz had thrown himseK into a watery grave ; but then it was 
 not probable that Soames was immolated as well. IS'ine o'clock 
 struck ; there were the Yellow men with the Yellow banners, 
 and the Yellow ribbons, and the Yellow agents, and the Yel- 
 
Firrs ELECTION. 375 
 
 low band, and no Yellow candidate ! In tliat half-honr I am 
 sure poor Beau lost as much flesh as a jockey before the 
 Derby. " Well, we must go," said he, in sheer desperation. 
 " Perhaps he'll turn up in the town j if not, we must tell 'em 
 he's seriously ill. By George ! I wish he'd been at York 
 before he brought me on such a fool's errand." 
 
 Into Cantitborough we rode, with many shouts and enthusi- 
 astic rushes out from the cottages we passed ; and into the 
 market-place we went with great row and glory, save that we 
 were a procession without a head. There was little Yerdant, 
 meeker than ever after Cora's rejection, looking like a noodle, 
 with his father and a galaxy of titles at the head of his pro- 
 cession ; and there was Le Hoop Smith, bland and smiling, at 
 the head of his ; and fat, yellow old Salter at the head of his. 
 But where was Fitz — the handsome, dashing Fitz, whom the 
 women were crowded to admire and the mob to cheer? — who, 
 thanks to untiring Beau, was grown popular even in Blue 
 Cantitborough? And when the Blues saw not Eumpunch 
 and his rider, were they not frantic with triumph % and were 
 not Fitz's committee in an agony of wonder and dread, and 
 the women in a state of bemoaning agony and woe, and the 
 mob in a frantic fit of excitement and indignation, after the 
 custom of mobs from all ages downwards % And was not Beau 
 — poor Beau — distracted in his own mind, and worried like a 
 fox with fifty packs after him — more inimitably cool, and con- 
 fident, and matchless, than any man could possibly be pictured, 
 when he set the mayor's hair straight upon end with an ac- 
 count of the frightful attack of cholera that had seized poor 
 Fitz in the morning; distracted the committee with assu- 
 rances that he had left their candidate as blue as the lapis- 
 lazuli ring on his finger, and in mortal danger of his life ; 
 appealed so touchingly to the enlightened men of Cantitborough 
 not to allow the unfortunate invalid's cause to be injured ; 
 and conducted himself altogether so brilliantly, that the Blues 
 whispered in knots in dismay % 
 
 Yes, Beau was magnificent that day, I confess, though ho 
 did push me aside as a thundering muff when I made a mis- 
 take, and told one of the committee my cousin had broken 
 his ankle the night before — yes. Beau was glorious, I admit. 
 
 The proceedings began with the crier's bell and the mayor's 
 oration, which was entirely unheard from calls from the crowd 
 
37^ FITZS ELECTION^. 
 
 of " Go it, old Baldhead !" " Speak up, old Malt-and-Hops !" 
 " How many nine gallons did Salter order T and like personal 
 allusigns to his occupation. Then uprose old Barnardiston, 
 who was not very cordially received, for the simple reason 
 that he was the hardest magistrate on the bench ; however, 
 the Blues cheered him to the skies when he proposed as a fit- 
 ting representative for the free, loyal, honourable, enlightened, 
 and all the rest of it borough, the son of the noble and generous 
 House of Cockadoodle, the benefactors and patrons of Cantit- 
 borough. After his seconder came two out-and-out Blues, 
 who proposed the gentle and intellectual Le Hoop Smith, of 
 Hooping Hall, Pottleshire ; and two more, who put forward 
 that public-spirited, benevolent and large-hearted gentleman, 
 Curry Salter, late of the Bengal Infantry; and then two 
 Liberals arose, in a \7ild storm of mad cheers and savage yells, 
 to offer to the borough, as a member, Ealph Fitzhardinge, 
 Esq., of Hollywood and Evensdale, who had been most un- 
 happily stricken down by illness at the very moment he was 
 mounting his horse, to come and have the honour of address- 
 ing them in person. 
 
 And now up got little Beau, as plucky as a game-cock, and 
 began to tell them how it was that he was compelled to take 
 their candidate's place. So ingeniously did he apologise for 
 Eitz ; so delightfully did lie set the crowd screaming at his 
 witticisms ; so mercilessly did he show up his opponents' weak 
 points; so admirably did he describe Eitz's opinions much 
 better than Fitz would have done himself, who would have 
 talked Mill and Comte and frightened them with his daring ; 
 so pathetically did he implore them not to let the great Liberal 
 cause be prejudiced by an unavoidable accident, that the mob 
 cheered him, as if he had been the Queen and they Etonians, 
 hurrahed for Eitzhardinge till their throats were hoarse, and 
 even some determine^ Blues were caused to waver in their 
 minds. The hands clad in kid, doeskin, silk, cashmere, or 
 dirt, as it might chance, that lifted themselves out from the 
 tumultuous sea of shouting, struggling, fighting Blues and 
 Yellows, were declared in favour of Lord Verdant and Ran- 
 dolph Eitzhardinge ! Beau's triumph was magnificent ; it 
 smashed hollow all the mural crowns that ever were manufac- 
 tured ; and it was worth a guinea to see him in it, mercurial 
 as quicksilver, rapid as a champagne cork, sharp as a ferret on 
 
nrZ'S ELECTION. 377 
 
 his foes, and winning as a widow bent on conquest to his friends, 
 haranguing these, arguing with those, thanking a fat council- 
 man, and pledging a thin churchwarden, talking up for the 
 Queen and down for the Pope, agreeing with everybody and 
 offending none, telling them poor Fitz was Prussian Blue when 
 he left him, and rapidly progressing towards Indigo, but had 
 now taken a favourable turn, as he had just heard by a mes- 
 senger, thanks be to, &c., &c. 
 
 Yes, Beau was grand on that day, and never more effective 
 than when, at twelve o'clock at night, having shaken the 
 last hand, and drunk the last glass, and talked the last solemn 
 talk with the solemn committee, he sprang on his horse in the 
 Ten Bells yard to tear over to Hollywood to see how his poor 
 friend was. He had just his foot in the stirrup, and I was on 
 my hack, receiving no end of condolences for my cousin's 
 most ill-timed attack from three or four of the principal of the 
 committee, when a hand was laid on my knee, and an awful 
 voice, which I knew only too well, said, in tones, the fac- 
 simile of the first tragedian's at the Eoyal Grecian, 
 
 " Sir, you are a scoundrel and a liar ! " 
 
 "Hallo!" said I, " mild language ! I am used to gentle- 
 men, not to Billingsgate. What the devil do you mean " 
 
 " What do \jou mean, sir," stormed Mr. Barnardiston, " by 
 daring to come before an assembly of upright, loyal. God-fear- 
 ing citizens with a lie on your lips % What do you mean by 
 joining in a vile plot to trick a whole community, and rob a 
 parent of a child " 
 
 **Take care, old gentleman; you're talking libel," inter- 
 rupted Beau, pleasantly. " The cognac's been too much for 
 you. Go home and sleep it off, for it don't do for the Eomans 
 to see their pet Cincinnatus a little the worse for " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, sir," screamed Barnardiston, purple ' 
 with rage, "or, by Heaven, I'll find a way to make you ! 
 How dared you come here — both of you — and teU the whole 
 borough that the cursed villain you call friend and cousin — " 
 
 " Gently, gently, my dear sir ; remember how you com- 
 promise yourself," put in Beau, with most solicitous courtesy. 
 
 "The consummate rascal," pursued Barnardiston, fiercer 
 than ever, waxing into sarcasm — "I mean the honourable 
 gentleman, the noble-hearted, high-spirited Liberal candidate, 
 who has sneaked out of a contest in which he knew he could 
 
3^)3 FITZ'S ELECTION. 
 
 not win, and ordered his obliging agent and his boy-cousin to 
 chicane a whole town with some garbled folly of the cholera 
 to screen his private marriage with the daughter of one whom 
 her father would sooner see " 
 
 " Eh % — what % — ^what did you say % Married ! " cried 
 Beau, nonplussed for once in his life. 
 
 " Ay, sir ; married. And you know it as well as I, despite 
 your admirable acting, which would do credit to Mr. Fechter," 
 sneered the Arch-Blue. 
 
 "By Heaven, if I had known!" swore Beau, furiously; 
 then stopped and changed his tone. " Married, you say, and 
 to your daughter*?" he yawned, with all the languid insolence 
 in life. " Well, I congratulate you. You must feel uncom- 
 monly pleased ; it is a much higher match than you could 
 have looked for." 
 
 Barnardiston was perfectly black in the face. He turned 
 himself, with his back to us, and began to harangue the com- 
 mittee-men, who looked scared out of their lives : 
 
 " Fellow-citizens ! " 
 
 "Ah! that's the correct style," said Beau; "it's so beau- 
 tifully patriotic." 
 
 " Men of Cantitborough, I appeal to you. Judge between 
 me and the honourable gentleman you have chosen to repre- 
 sent you. "VYe have been separated by politics, but we are 
 old fellow-townsmen, aud you will give me a patient hearing. 
 Mr. ritzhardinge comes down to canvass a borough which has 
 only heard of him before through wildness and follies which 
 disgrace his name. He meets a girl — a young girl, an inno- 
 cent girl — who is betrothed of her own will to one of the 
 purest-minded, sweet-natured men that ever breathed, a man 
 whom you have crowned with the honour of your reverence 
 and esteem " 
 
 "And Easter offerings, with which he buys the whisky 
 that makes his inspiration," interpolated Beau. 
 
 " A man whom you all revere and love, and whose heart 
 is locked up in this young girl's affections " 
 
 " Or her possible twenty thousand pounds." 
 
 " What does this villain — I can use no milder term, gen- 
 tlemen — do, but seduce these pure and fond affections from 
 the holy man who once held them ; woo her, win her, per- 
 suade her to break off the ties of her engagement, and fetter 
 
PITZ'^S ELECTION, m 
 
 herself anew to him. I refuse my conseut, because I know 
 Mr. Fitzhardinge's character too well to peril my child's hap- 
 piness in his keeping " 
 
 " Because you thought Yerdant was hanging after her," 
 interrupted Beau. 
 
 " I reject his suit. What does he do ? He induces her to 
 brave me with all the open disobedience which cuts so keenly 
 to a father's heart " 
 
 " Turn on Lear — a quotation will save you no end of trou- 
 ble !" said Beau, kindly. 
 
 " He persuades her to go and reside " 
 
 " When you'd turned her out of your house.'* 
 
 " To reside with people to whom I have the most marked 
 objection " 
 
 " Why did you court Levison so hard, then, to take your 
 pretty niece*?" 
 
 ^'The most marked objection. I distinctly forbid her 
 marriage. She wants two years of her majority ; and so this 
 scoundrel ! Passion gets the better of me, sirs !" 
 
 " Or Cockadoodle's comet wine does." 
 
 " When I tell you that Mr. Eitzhardinge takes the day of 
 his nomination — the day he knew I should be tied to town 
 endeavouring to serve my country's interests — to marry my 
 poor child privately, with no witnesses but the Levisons, in 
 the church at Elm Court, at ten o'clock this morning, I need 
 comment no further on the miserable trick by which you, 
 gentlemen, and all the rest of Cantitborough, have been duped 
 to-day. I only ask you, as fellow-townsmen, once private 
 friends, and always, I hope, friends in the common cause of 
 truth and honour, to side with me, and never allow this de- 
 stroyer of home peace, this unprincij^led breaker of every 
 public and domestic law, to represent in the senate of our na- 
 tion this free, loyal, and Protestant borough." 
 
 " Gentlemen, hear my version," began Beau. 
 
 " Will you listen to a villain's tooll " pursued Barnardiston. 
 
 " I give you my honour " cried Beau. 
 
 *^ What is his honour worth V shouted Barnardiston. 
 
 "Will you hear me?" 
 
 " Will you believe him V 
 ^ Tumultuous was the scene, frightful the commotion, terrific 
 the tempest of Blue and Yellow which raged over devoted 
 
38b FITZ'S ELECTIOI^. 
 
 Cantitborougli ; Blues and Yellows swarmed into tlie Ten 
 Bells yard ; Blues and Yellows surged round mine and Beau's 
 horses; Blues and Yellows asked frantically what was the 
 row, and carrying off but an unintelligible version, proceeded, 
 as the next best plan, to kick up a row on their own account. 
 They screamed, and shouted, and pummelled each others' 
 shoulders, and punched each others' heads, and hissed, and 
 yelledp and swore, and cudgelled, and 
 
 Fought as only men can fight who know no reason why. 
 
 In vain the Yellow agent tried to speak. Every elegant mis- 
 sile that the dark night could allow to come to hand was 
 pelted at him and me ; in vain the Blue leaders tried to turn 
 the tumult to account ; the mob, who being in a mood to 
 pelt, would have pelted the moon could they have got at her, 
 forced them to retreat, covered with much obloquy and still 
 more rotten eggs. Smash, crash, went half the windows in 
 the place ; ladies rushed from their couches in nightcaps and 
 hysteria ; policemen turned and fled, or used their truncheons 
 in some private grudge ; not a Town and Gown row, even 
 with Fighting Bob or the first of the Eancy in surplice and 
 mortar-board to help us, ever beat it ; and at last, in sheer 
 desperation, having satiated ourselves with enough hard hit- 
 ting to last a twelvemonth, Beau and I set spurs to our horses, 
 and knocking down, at a low computation, some three hun- 
 dred men and boys, fought our way out of the town, and 
 galloped on to Hollywood in silence. 
 
 "By Heaven!" said Beau, through his set teeth, as he 
 threw himself down at last in the arm-chair of the dining- 
 room, thoroughly done up for the first time in his life — " by 
 Heaven ! if I'd known Fitz was such a fool, I'd have seen 
 him at the devil before he'd made one of me too. The elec- 
 tion's lost, smashed, ruined. I may as well withdraw his 
 name from the poll. To go and disgrace himself before all 
 the county ; to go and offend his constituents, and his county, 
 and everything worth considering, from a ridiculous fancy for 
 a little flirt whom he'll be wishing at Jericho in twelve 
 months' time — four thousand pounds fifteen shillings and 
 eightpence gone for nothing ! I'm a cool man — a very cool 
 man, generally — but I confess this does get the better of me. 
 How shall I ever forget, or how will all Cantitborough forget, 
 my being brought down here only to tell a parcel of lies, and 
 
FirrS ELECTION. 381 
 
 not succeed tlirough tliem, even'? By Jupiter!" and Beau 
 sprang up from his chair and dashed his hand down on the 
 table with an impetus that made the bottles and glasses on it 
 leap up terrified into the air — " by Jupiter ! I swear I'll never 
 speak to your madman of a cousin, or to his confounded wife, 
 as long as I live — never ! I, the sharpest dog in all Lincoln's 
 Inn, to be done green like this !" 
 
 With which pathetic summary poor Beau fell back again 
 into his chair, and opened his lips no more that night. The 
 morrow dawned ; the poU was opened ; Beau, like a plucky 
 soldier, sticking to his colours as long as there was a rag of 
 them left, rode into Cantitborough early, and I with him, and 
 made his way to the polling-booth in the midst of the yells, 
 and shouts, and fiendish exclamations, and laughter, and deri- 
 sion of the mob, who swarmed through the streets still strewn 
 with the debris of the midnight conflict. In vain did Beau 
 seek a hearing from his chief constituents ; in vain did he try 
 to gather round him the committee ; in vain did he try to rally 
 round him even a few straggling troopers to make a stand with 
 him in this Thermopylaean fix. In vain I The Cantitburghers had 
 been duped, and when did ever Christian live with magnanimity 
 enough to pardon that? The news of Fitz's marriage had 
 spread throughout the town ; the ladies were furious against 
 Cora for having wedded the only handsome man who had been 
 seen in Cantitborough for the last ten years. They made their 
 husbands, and sons, and fathers, solemnly promise to with- 
 draw their vote from such a wicked creature, and the husbands, 
 and sons, and fathers, some liking to buy religious reputation 
 cheap by siding with the pet parson, and others having Eitz's 
 money already in their pockets, determining to hold virtuously 
 aloof from the contest, vowed the required vow, and the tide of 
 public adoration set steadily in for Verdant and Le Hoop Smith. 
 
 The committees sat in their respective rooms, the mob round 
 the booth danced, and shouted, and yelled, in utter contempt 
 of police, the Peelers being liors de combat from the past night's 
 fray ; Beau, and two or three staunch Liberals, stood firm, with 
 anxious visage and hearts sunk to zero. The tower clock struck 
 four — the poll was closed — the votes stood thus : 
 
 Verdant ...... 550 
 
 Le Hoop Smith • • • . 310 
 
 Salter 200 
 
 Fitzhardingft , .... 6 
 
382 Firrs ELECTION. 
 
 Great vvas the exultatioB, great tlie clamour, that arose. 
 You do not need to be told how the Blue banners waved^ and 
 the Blue band, inflamed with triumph and stout, began to 
 play, and the Blue members bowed down to the ground, and 
 thanked the noble, intelligent, and generous community which 
 had returned them as their representatives; how the Blues 
 insulted the Yellows with frightful contumely, and how the 
 Yellows, few in flesh but strong in spirit, returned the com- 
 pliment; and how the Yellow banners struck up the Blue 
 banners when the triumphal procession formed, and Blue heads 
 went down under Yellow fists, and Yellow heroes collapsed 
 beneath Blue boots, and the remaining half of the windows 
 were smashed ; and how the uproar was at its height, when 
 into the market-place, spuiTing on Eumpunch, flecked with 
 foam, came the head and root of it, my brother Fitz, as hand- 
 some, as devil-may-care, and as cool as ever. 
 
 Louder grew the yells, wilder the shouts, fiercer the row ; 
 up in the air flew the eggs and the mud and the sticks and 
 the stones, and all the popular missiles of the Great Unwashed ; 
 but steady as a rock stood Eumpunch under Fitz's curb, and 
 firm as a rock sat Fitz himself, in the midst of it. There's 
 nothing like pluck for pleasing or awing the canaille ; it is the 
 one thing they will appreciate and revere. Their shouts hushed 
 for a second, and they stopped in their onslaught upon him. 
 He took advantage of it, and held up his hand : " Men, listen 
 to me for a minute !" 
 
 They did listen to him, and Fitz went on : 
 
 " I hear I have lost my election. I am sorry for it, but 1 
 could scarcely expect otherwise ; and if I have preferred secur- 
 ing an election of another kind, I hope the constituents of 
 Cantitborough are all too gallant and chivalric gentlemen to 
 disagree with me." Here uprose immense cheering from a 
 few, and laughter even from the enraged community. " I can't 
 alter your decision now, but I'll try to merit a different one 
 next time I contend for the honour of representing you. I 
 have no right to ask any favour at your hands ; but, never- 
 theless, I am going to ask two : the first, that you will clear 
 my cousin, and my agent and friend of any imputation of 
 knowing the true cause of my absence, and any deliberate in- 
 tention of concealing it by a lie. The other is, that there 
 may be no disunion or bloodshed on my behalf, and no broken 
 
Firrs ELECTION. 3S3 
 
 heads caused tlirough my fault. Let us all agree to differ ; 
 let the victorious go to their homes without insulting the vaii 
 quished, and the vanquished without quarrelling with the 
 conquerors for justly earned success. Let us all part in good 
 will, and let my friends go to the Ten Eells and drink my 
 health and that of my bride, if they will be so kind, with 
 three times three !" 
 
 It was a queer election speech, and without precedent, cer- 
 tainly, but in the little antiquated borough it told admirably. 
 Never before was seen such an election, without doubt ; but, 
 ' somehow or other, Fitz, going into a new track, and doing such 
 a thing as had never been done, got, all of a sudden, more 
 heartily cheered, applauded, and hurrahed, than the successful 
 candidates themselves. The gentlemen of the town sneered, 
 and ridiculed, and fumed about his speech being most illegal, 
 most unprecedented, most absurd ; but the Unwashed, only 
 looking at the pluck, and the manliness of tone, and the flow- 
 ing taps of the Ten Bells, cheered him vociferously, and would 
 have had the polling done over again if they could. 
 
 Beau stood looking on, with his brow knit lilce a Jupiter 
 Tonans, and turned into the Ten Bells with a grunt. 
 
 " That fellow should have lived in the middle ages, with all 
 his confounded folly. And yet, devil take him, why can't one 
 hate him r 
 
 "Will you forgive me, old boy?" laughed Fitz, following 
 him into a private room t^'/enty minutes after. 
 
 " Get out !" growled Beau, yet looking lovingly on him never- 
 theless. " A pretty fellow you are ! making yourself look like 
 a fool and everybody else. I should have thought you more 
 a man of sense than to run mad after a mere pretty face. Four 
 thousand five hundred pounds fifteen shillings and eightpence 
 gone for nothing !" 
 
 " Never mind, old fellow," laughed Fitz. " Barnardiston 
 would have scented the ceremony, and forbidden it, on any 
 other day ; and as to waiting till she was of age, quite out of 
 the question. If her face is not better to look at than the 
 
 Speaker's, why " 
 
 " Spare me that, spare me that !" cried Beau. "I'll forgive 
 you, but I really can't stand Jier praises." 
 
 ** Come and look at her, and you'll soon forgive her," said 
 Fitz, taking out his watch. " I've made an immense sacrifice 
 
384 FITZ'S ELECTION, 
 
 to you, Beau, in leaving lier at one o'clock to ride over to this 
 little owl of a town, whose animadversions are much more 
 honour than its praise. She's at Sandslope — you know, that 
 place by the sea, ten miles from here. I took her there yes- 
 terday, and now I must gallop back to her, or she'll be think- 
 ing the Blues and Yellows have eaten me up ; and I say. Beau, ' 
 don't be vexed, dear old boy. I will canvass for the next elec- 
 tion in earnest ; and when you come over to Sandslope (we 
 don't want you just yet), if you don't say that Cora is excuse 
 enough for anything, why you'll be made of granite." 
 
 " Hum !" grunted Beau, " I shall always hate her. But that 
 don't matter ; give my compliments to her (not my congratu- 
 lations, for she'll find out that to have you for a husband is 
 no matter for felicitation), and tell her that my sister the other 
 day walked down Kegent-street with * Chaste and Elegant, 
 2/. IO5.* on her cloak, and that I hope she'll ticket herself the 
 same, ' Mrs. Eandolph Fitzhardinge, value 4500/. 155. M.^ for 
 she has cost you that to a certainty." 
 
 Apparently Fitz still thinks her worth it, for he has never 
 regretted his hasty step. She did look excuse enough for any- 
 thing when we saw her a week or two after, when she asked 
 Beau's pardon so prettily and penitentially for the mischief 
 she had done, that Beau, being the very reverse of a stoic, 
 forgave her her sins, only made her solemnly promise to leave 
 Fitz unmolested when next he stood for a free borough. Beau 
 was made amiable, too, that morning, by hearing that Le Hoop 
 Smith would be petitioned against for bribery, and that Bar- 
 nardiston was akeady rumoured to repent having treated so 
 cavalierly such a high match for his daughter. 
 
 Caroline married Whitechurch ; they quarrel night and day 
 at home, but abroad, administer, in amicable concert enough, 
 very big texts and very small globules to their unlucky pa- 
 rishioners. Beau is supremely happy just at present, Fitz 
 having procured for him a recordership, long the object of his 
 desires. And Fitz % Well, Fitz wrote to me this June that 
 he was going yachting in the Levant, with Cora and "three 
 or four oilier pleasant fellows," that Cora is as bright as a sun- 
 beam, and agrees with him in thinking the sherbet, laughter, 
 and delicious bays of the Ionian Isles much better than the 
 odours of the Thames in the senatorial halls of St. Stephen's. 
 
FITZ'S ELECTION. 385 
 
 But though they make a jest of it, and think the one elec^ 
 tion well won and the other well lost, I doubt if Cantitborougli 
 has ever forgotten, or will ever forget, the strangest contest 
 that an enlightened borough of the enlightened nineteenth 
 century ever beheld, and if the Cantitburghers will ever cease 
 discussing in news, and drawing, and tap-room the memorable 
 strife of Blue and Yellow. 
 
« REDEEMED.'* 
 
 AN EPISOPE WITH THE CONFEDERATE HORSE. 
 
 Bertie "Winton had got the Gold Yase. 
 
 The Sovereign, one of the best horses that ever had a dash 
 of the Godolphin hlood in him, had led the first flight over 
 the ridge-and-furrow, cleared the fences, trying as the shire- 
 thorn could make them, been lifted over the sttffest doubles 
 and croppers, passed the turning-flags, and been landed at the 
 straight run-in with the stay and pace for which his breed 
 was famous, enrapturing the fancy, who had piled capfuls of 
 money on him, and getting the Soldiers' Blue Eiband fi'om the 
 Guards, who had stood crackers on little Benyon's mount — 
 Ben, who is as pretty as a girl, with his jQetites mains blanches, 
 riding like any professional. 
 
 Now, I take it — and I suppose there are none who will dis- 
 agree with me — that there are few things pleasanter in this 
 ]2e than to stand, in the crisp winter's morning, winner of 
 the Grand Military, having got the Gold Vase for the old 
 corps against the best mounts in the Service. 
 
 life must look worth having to you, when you have come 
 over those black, barren pastures and rugged ploughed lands, 
 where the field floundered helplessly in grief, with Brixworth 
 brook yawning gaunt and wide beneath you, and the fresh 
 cold north wind blowing full in your teeth, and have ridden 
 in at the distance alone, while the air is rent by the echoing 
 shouts of the surging crowd, and the best riding men are left 
 "nowhere" behind. Life must look pleasant to you, if it 
 has been black as thunder the night before. NTeverthelesS; 
 
''redeemed:' 387 
 
 wliere Bertie Winton sat, having brought the Sovereign in, 
 ■winner of the G. M., with that superb bay's head a Httle 
 drooped, and his flanke steaming, but scarce a hair turned, 
 while the men who had won pots of money on him crowded 
 round in hot congratulation, and he drank down some Cura^oa 
 punch out of a pocket pistol, with his habitual soft, low, 
 languid laugh, he had that in his thoughts which took the 
 flavour out of the Cura^oa, and made the sunny, cheery 
 winter's day look very dull and grey to him. For Eertie, 
 sitting thero while tha cheers reeled round him like mad, 
 with a singularly handsome, reckless face, long tawny mous- 
 taches, tired blue eyes, and a splendid length and strength of 
 limb, knew that this was the last day of the old times for 
 him, and that he had sailed terribly near the wind of- — dis- 
 honour. 
 
 He had been brought to envisager his position a little of 
 late, and had seen that it was very bad indeed — as bad as it 
 could be. He had run through all his own fortune from his 
 mother, a good one enough, and owed almost as much again 
 in bills and one way and another. He had lost heavily on 
 the turf, gamed deeply, travelled with the most expensive 
 adventuresses of their day, startled town with all its worst 
 crim. cons, j had every vice under heaven, save that he drank 
 not at all ; and now, having shot a Kussian prince at Baden 
 the August before, about Lilla Lis, had received on the night 
 just passed, from the Horse Guards, a hint, which was a com- 
 mand, that his absence was requested from her Majesty's Ser- 
 vice — a mandate which, politely though inexorably couched, 
 would have taken a more forcible and public form but for 
 the respect in which his father, old Lion Winton, as he was 
 called, was held by the Army and the authorities. And 
 Bertie, who for five-and-thirty years had never thought at all, 
 except on things that pleasured him, and such bagatelles as 
 harrihre duels abroad, delicately-spiced intrigues, bills easily 
 renewed, the cru of wines, and the siege of women, found 
 himself pulled up with a rush, and face to face with nothing 
 less than ruin. 
 
 " I'm up a tree, Melcombe,'' he said to a man of his own 
 corps that day as he finished a great cheroot before mounting. 
 
 " Badly r 
 
 " Well, yes. It'll be smash this time, I suppose." 
 
 25—2 
 
388 *' REDEEMED."* 
 
 " Eother ! That's hard lines." 
 
 " It's rather a bore," he answered, with a little yawn, as he 
 got into saddle ; and that was all he ever said then or after- 
 wards on the matter ; hut he rode the Sovereign superbly over 
 the barren wintry grass-land, and landed him winner of the 
 Blue Eiband for all that, though Black Care, for the first time 
 in his life, rode behind him and weighted the race. 
 
 Poor Bertie ! nobody would have believed him if he had 
 said so, but he had been honestly and truly thinking, for 
 some brief time past, whether it would not be possible and 
 worth while tor him to shake himself free of this life, of 
 which he was growing heartily tired, and make a name for 
 himself in the world in some other fashion than by winging 
 Eussians, importing new dancers, taking French women to 
 the Bads, scandalising society, and beggaring himself. He had 
 begun to wonder whether it was not yet, after all, too late, 
 
 and whether if when down had come the request from 
 
 the Horse Guards for him to sell out, and the rush of all his 
 creditors upon him, and away for ever went all his stray 
 shapeless fancies of a possible better future. And — consola- 
 tion or aggravation, whichever it be — he knew that he had 
 no one, save himself, to thank for it ; for no man ever had 
 a more brilliant start in the race of life than he, and none 
 need have better running over the course, had he only kept 
 straight or put on the curb as he went down hill. Poor 
 Bertie ! you must have known many such lives, or I can't 
 tell where your own has been spent ; lives which began so 
 brilliantly that none could rival them, and which ended — 
 God help them ! — so miserably and so pitifully that you do 
 not think of them without a shudder still ? 
 
 Poor Bertie ! — a man of a sweeter temper, a more generous 
 nature, a more lavish kindliness, never lived. He had the 
 most verir'atile talents and the gentlest manners in the world ; 
 and yet here he was, having fairly come to ruin, and very 
 nearly to disgrace. 
 
 It was little wonder that his father, looking at him and think- 
 ing of all he might have been, and all he might have done, 
 was lashed into a terrible bitterness of passionate grief, and 
 hurled words at him of a deadly wrath, in the morning that 
 followed on the Grand Military. Fiery as his comrades the 
 Napiers, of a stern code as a soldier, and a lofty honour as a 
 
•* REDEEMED. " 385 
 
 man, haughty in pride and swift to passion, old Sir Lionel 
 was stung to the quick by his son's fall, and would have sooner, 
 by a thousand-fold, have followed him to his grave, than have 
 seen him live to endure that tacit dismissal from the service 
 of the country — the deepest shame, in his sight, that could 
 have touched his race. 
 
 " I knew you were lost to morality, but I did not know till 
 now that you were lost to honour !" said the old Lion, with 
 such a storm of passion in him that his words swept out, acrid 
 and unchosen, in a very whirlwind. " I knew you had vices, 
 I knew you had follies, I knew you wasted your substance 
 with debtors and gamblers like yourself, on courtesans and 
 gaming-tables, in Parisian enormities, and vaunted libertinage, 
 but I did not think that you were so utterly a traitor to your 
 blood as to bring disgrace to a name that never was approached 
 by shame until you bore it !" 
 
 Bertie's face flushed darkly, then he grew very pale. The 
 indolence with which he lay back in an ecarte chair did not 
 alter, however, and he stroked his long moustaches a little 
 with his habitual gentle indijfferentism. 
 
 "It is all over. Pray do not give it that tremendous 
 earnestness," he said quietly. '^ Nothing is ever worth that ; 
 and I should prefer it if we kept to the language of gentle- 
 men !" 
 
 " The language of gentlemen is for gentlemen," retorted the 
 old man, with fiery vehemence. His heart was cut to the 
 core, and all his soul was in revolt against the degradation to 
 his name that came in the train of his heir's ruin. " When a 
 man has forgot that he has been a gentleman, one may be par- 
 doned for forgetting it also ! You may have no honour left 
 for your career to shame ; / have — and, by God, sir, from this 
 hour you are no son of mine. I disown you — I know you no 
 longer ! Go and drag out all the rest of a disgraced life in any 
 idleness that you choose. If you were to lie dying at my feet, 
 I would not give you a crust !" 
 
 Eertie raised his eyebrows slightly. 
 
 " Soit ! But would it not be possible to intimate this 
 quietly % A scene is such very bad style — always exhausting, 
 too !" 
 
 The languid calmness, the soft nonchalance of the tone, 
 were like oil upon flame to the old Lion's heart, lashed to fury 
 
390 ^' redeemed:^ 
 
 and embittered with pain as it was. A heavier oath than 
 print will bear broke from him with a deadly imprecation, as 
 he paced the library with swift, uneven steps. 
 
 " It had been better if your ' style ' had been less and your 
 decency and your honour greater ! One word more is all you 
 will ever hear from my lips. The title must come to you ; 
 that, unhappily, is not in my hands to prevent. It must be 
 yom^s when I die, if you have not been shot in some gambling 
 brawl or some bagnio abroad before then ; but you will remem- 
 ber, not a shilling of money, not a rood of the land are en- 
 tailed ; and, by the Heaven above us, every farthing, every 
 acre shall be willed to the young children. You are disin- 
 herited, sir — disowned for ever — if you died at my feet ! JSTow 
 go, and never let me see your face again." 
 
 As he spoke, Bertie rose. 
 
 The two men stood opposite to each other — singularly alike 
 in form and feature, in magnificence of stature, and distinction 
 of personal beauty, save that the tawny gold of the old Lion's 
 hau' was flaked with white, and that his blue eyes were bright 
 as steel, and flashing fire, while the younger man's were very 
 worn. His face, too, was deeply flushed and his lips quivered, 
 while his son's were perfectly serene and impassive as he 
 listened, without a muscle twitching, or even a gleam of anxiety 
 coming into his eyes. 
 
 They were of difi'erent schools. 
 
 Bertie heard to the end ; then bowed with a languid grace. 
 " It will be fortunate for Lady Winton's children ! Make her 
 my compliments and congratulations. Good day to you." 
 
 Their eyes met steadily once — that was all ; then the door 
 of the library closed on him ; Bertie knew the worst ; he was 
 face to face with beggary. As he crossed the hall the entrance 
 to the conservatories stood open ; he looked through, paused 
 a moment, and then went in. On a low chair, buried among 
 the pyramids of blossom^ sat a woman reading, aristocrat to 
 to the core, and in the earliest bloom of her youth, for she was 
 scarcely eighteen, beautiful as the morning, with a delicate 
 thorough-bred beauty, dark lustrous eyes, arched pencilled 
 brows, a smile like sunshine, and lips as sweet as they were 
 proud. She was Ida Deloraine, a ward of Sir Lionel's, and a 
 cousin of his young second wife's. 
 
 Bertie went up to her and held out his hand. 
 
'^redeemed:' 391 
 
 ** Lady Ida, I am come to wish you good-bye." 
 
 She started a Httle and looked up. 
 
 " Good-bye ! Are you going to town?" 
 
 " Yes — a little farther. Will you give me that camellia by 
 way of hon voyage, ?" 
 
 A soft warmth flushed her face for a moment ; she hesitated 
 slightly, toying with the snowy blossom ; then she gave it 
 him. He had not asked it like a love gage. 
 
 He took it, and bowed silently over her hand. 
 
 " You will find it very cold," said Lady Ida, with a trifle 
 of embarrassment, nestling herself in her dormeuse in her 
 warm bright nest among the exotics. 
 
 He smiled — a very gentle smile. 
 
 " Yes, I am frozen out. Adieu !" 
 
 He paused a moment, looking at her — the brilliant picture 
 framed in flowers ; then, without another word, he bowed 
 again and left her, the woman he had learned too late to love, 
 and had lost by his own folly for ever. 
 
 "Frozen out? What could he mean? — there is no frost," 
 thought Lady Ida, left alone in her hothouse warmth among 
 the white and scarlet blossoms, a little startled, a little dis- 
 appointed, a little excited with some vague apprehension, she 
 could not have told why; while Bertie Winton went on out into 
 the cold grey winter's morning from the old ITorthamptonshire 
 hall that would know him no more, with no end so likely for 
 him as that which had just been prophesied — a shot in a 
 gambling hell. 
 
 Facilis descensus Averni — and he was at the bottom of the 
 
 pit. Well, the descent had been very pleasant. Bertie set 
 
 his teeth tight, and let the waters close over his head and 
 
 shut him out of sight. He knew that a man who is down. 
 
 has nothing more to do with the world, save to quietly accept 
 
 — oblivion. 
 
 # # # ' # # * 
 
 It was a hot summer night in Secessia. 
 
 The air was very heavy, no wind stirring the dense woods 
 crowning the sides of the hills or the great fields of trodden 
 maize trampled by the hoofs of cavalry and the tramp of 
 divisions. The yellow corn waved above the earth where the 
 dead had fallen like wheat in harvest-time, and the rice grew 
 but the richer and the faster because it was sown in soil where 
 
392 ''REDEEMED." 
 
 slaughtered thousands rotted, unsepulchred and unrecorded. 
 The shadows were black from the reared mountain range that 
 rose frowning in the moonlight, and the stars were out in 
 southern brilliancy, shining as calmly and as luminously as 
 though their rays did not fall on graves crammed full with 
 dead, on flaming homesteads, crowded sick-wards, poisonous 
 waters that killed their thousands in deadly rivalry with shot 
 and shell, and vast battalions sleeping on their arms in wheat- 
 fields and by river-swamps, in opposing camps, and before 
 beleaguered cities, where brethren warred with brethren, and 
 Virginia was drenched with blood. There was no sound, save 
 now and then the challenge of some distant picket or the 
 faint note of a trumpet-call, the roar of a torrent among the 
 hills, or the monotonous rise and fall from miles away in the 
 interior, of the negroes' funeral song, " Old Joe " — more pa- 
 thetic, somehow, when you catch it at night from the far dis- 
 tance echoing on the silence as you sit over a watch-fire, or 
 ride alone through a ravine, than many a grander requiem. 
 
 It was close upon midnight, and all was very still ; for they 
 were in the heart of the South, and on the eve of a perilous 
 enterprise, coined by a bold brain and to be carried out by a 
 bold hand. 
 
 It was in the narrow neck of a valley, pent up between 
 rocky shelving ridges, anywhere you will between Maryland 
 and Georgia — ^for he who did this thing would not care to 
 have it too particularly drawn out from the million other 
 deeds of " derring-do " that the mighty story of the Great 
 War has known and buried. Eight hundred Confederate 
 Horse, some of Stuart's Cavalry, had got driven and trapped 
 and caged up in this miserable defile, misled and intercepted; 
 with the dense mass of a Federal army marching on their 
 rear, within them by bare fifteen miles, and the forward route 
 through the crammed defile between the hills, by which 
 alone they could regain Lee's forces, dammed up by a deep, 
 rapid, though not broad river ; by a bridge strongly fortified 
 and barricaded ; and on the opposite bank, by some Federal 
 corps a couple of thousand strong, well under cover in rifle- 
 pits and earthworks, thrown up by keen woodsmen and untun- 
 ing trench-diggers. It was close peril, deadly as any that 
 Secesisa had seen, here in the hot still midnight, with the 
 columns of the Federal divisions within them by eight hours' 
 
''REDEEMED,'^ 393 
 
 liiarch, stretching out and taking in all the land to the rear 
 in the sweep of their semicircular wings ; while in front rose, 
 black and shapeless in the deep gloom of the rocks above, the 
 barricades upon the bridge, behind which two thousand riJ9.es 
 were ready to open fire at the first alarm from the Federal 
 guard. And alone, without the possibility of aid, caged in 
 among the trampled corn and maize that filled the valley, 
 imprisoned between the two Federal forces as in the iron 
 jaws of a trap, the handful of Southern troopers stood, reso- 
 lute to sell their lives singly one by one, and at a costly price, 
 and perish to a man, rather than fall alive into the hands of 
 their foes. 
 
 When the morning broke they would be cut to pieces, as 
 the chaff is cut by the whirl of the steam wheels. They knew 
 that. Well, they looked at it steadily ; it had no terrors for 
 them, the Cavaliers of Old Virginia, so that they died with 
 their face to the front. There was but one chance left for 
 escape ; aid there could be none ; and that chance was so 
 desperate, that even to them — reckless in daring, living 
 habitually between life and death, and ever careless of the 
 issue — it looked like madness to attempt it. But one among 
 them had urged it on their consideration — urged it with pas- 
 sionate entreaty, pledging his own life for its success ; and 
 they had given their adhesion to it, for his name was famous 
 through the Confederacy. 
 
 He had won his spurs at Manasses, at Antietam, at Chan- 
 cellorsville ; he had been in every headlong charge with 
 Stuart ; he had been renowned for the most dashing Border 
 raids and conspicuous staff service of any soldier in Secessia ; 
 he had galloped through a tempest of the enemy^s balls, and 
 swept along their lines to reconnoitre, riding back through the 
 storm of shot to Lee, as coolly as though he rode through a 
 summer shower at a review; and his words had weight 
 with men who would have gone after him to the death. He 
 stood now, the only man dismounted, in true Virginian uni- 
 form ; a rough riding-coat, crossed by an undressed chamois 
 belt, into which his sabre and a brace of revolvers were thrust, 
 a broad Spanish sombrero shading his face, great Hessians 
 reaching above his knee, and a long silken golden-coloured 
 beard sweeping to his waist — a keen reconnoitrer, a daring 
 raider, a superb horseman, and a soldier heart and soul. 
 
394 ''redeemed:' 
 
 When lie had laid before them the solitary chance of the 
 perilous enterprise that he had planned, each man of the eight 
 hundred had sought the post of danger for himself ; but there 
 he was, inexorable — what he had proposed he alone would 
 execute. The Federals were ignorant of their close vicinity, 
 for their near approach had been unheard, the trodden maize 
 and rice, and the angry foaming of the torrent above, deaden- 
 ing the sound of their horses' hoofs; and the Union-men, 
 satisfied that the " rebels " were entrapped beyond escape, 
 were sleej)ing securely behind their earthworks, the passage 
 of the river blockaded by their barricade, while the South- 
 erners were drawn up close to the head of the bridge in sec- 
 tions of threes, screened by the intense shadow of the over-, 
 hanging rocks ; shadow darker from the brilliance of the full 
 summer moon that, shining on the enemy's encampment, and 
 on the black boiling waters thundering through the ravine. 
 was shut out from the defile by the leaning pine-covered walls 
 of granite. It was terribly still, that awful silence, only filled 
 with the splashing of the water and the audible beat of the 
 [Federal sentinel's measured tramp, as they were drawn up 
 there by the bridge head ; and though they had cast them- 
 selves into the desperate effort with the recklessness of men 
 for whom death waited surely on the morrow, it looked a 
 madman's thought, a madman's exploit, to them, as their 
 leader laid aside his sword and pistols, and took up a small 
 barrel of powder, part of some ammunition carried off from some 
 sappers' and miners' stores in the raid of the past day, the 
 sight of which had brought to remembrance a stray, half-for- 
 gotten story told him in boyhood of one of Soult's Army — 
 the story on which he was about to act now. 
 
 " For God's sake, take care ! " whispered the man nearest 
 him ; and though he was a veteran who had gone through 
 the hottest of the campaign since Bull's Eun, his voice shook, 
 and was husky as he spoke. 
 
 The other laughed a little — a slight, soft, languid laugh. - 
 " All right, my dear fellow," he whispered back. " There's 
 nothing in it to be alarmed at ; a Frenchman did it in the 
 Peninsula, you know. Only if I get shot, or blown up, and 
 the alarm be given, do you take care to bolt over and cut your 
 way through in the first of the rush, that's all." 
 
 Then, without more words, he laid himself down at full 
 
''REDEEMED.'' 395 
 
 length with a cord tied round his ankle, that they might 
 know his progress, and the cask of gunpowder, swathed in 
 green cloth, that it should roll without noise along the ground; 
 and, creeping slowly on his way, propelling the barrel with 
 his head, and guiding it by his hands, was lost to their sight 
 in the darkness. By the string, as it uncoiled through their 
 hands, they could tell he was advancing ; that was all. 
 
 The chances were as a million to one that his life would 
 pay the forfeit for that perilous and daring venture j a single 
 shot and he would be blown into the air a charred and shape- 
 less corpse ; one spark on that rolling mass that he pushed 
 before him, and the explosion would hurl him upwards in the 
 silent night, mangled, dismembered, blackened, lifeless. But 
 his nerve was not the less cool, nor did his heart beat one 
 throb the quicker, as he crept noiselessly along in the black 
 shade cast by the parapet of the bridge, with the tramp of the 
 guard close above on his ear, and rifles ready to be levelled on 
 him from the covered earthworks if the faintest sound of his 
 approach or the dimmest streak of moonlight on his moving 
 body told the Federals of his presence. He had looked death 
 in the teeth most days through the last live years ; it had 
 no power to quicken or slacken a single beat of his pulse as 
 he propelled himself slowly forward along the black, rugged, 
 uneven ground, and on to the passage of the bridge, as 
 coolly, as fearlessly, as he would have crept through the heather 
 and bracken after the slot of a deer on the moorside at home. 
 
 He heard the challenge and the tramp of the sentinel on 
 the opposite bank ; he saw the white starlight shine on the 
 barrels of their breech-loaders as they paced to and fro in the 
 stillness, filled with the surge and rush of the rapid waters 
 beneath him. Shrouded in the gloom, he dragged himself 
 onward with slow and painful movement, stretched out on the 
 ground, urging himself forward by the action of his limbs so 
 cautiously that, even had the light been on him, he could 
 scarcely have been seen to move, or been distinguished from 
 the earth on which he lay. Eight hundred lives hung on the 
 coolness of his own ; if he were discovered, they were lost. 
 And, without haste, without excitation, he drew himself along 
 under the parapet until he came to the centre of the bridge, 
 placed the barrel close against the barricades, uncovered the 
 head of the cask, and took his way back by the same labori- 
 
396 *^ redeemed:' 
 
 ous, tedious way, until lie reached tlie Yirginian Troopers 
 gathered together under the shelving rocks. 
 
 A deep hoarse murmur rolling down the ranks, the re- 
 pressed cheer they dared not give aloud, welcomed him and 
 the dauntless daring of his act ; man after man pressed for- 
 ward entreating to take his place, to share his peril \ he gave 
 it up to none, and three times more went back again on that 
 deadly journey, until sufficient powder for his purpose was 
 lodged under the Federal fortifications on the bridge. Two 
 hours went by in that slow and terrible passage ; then, for the 
 last time, he wound a saucisson round his body serpent-wise, 
 and with that coil of powder curled around him, took his way 
 once more in the same manner through the hot, dark, heavy 
 night. 
 
 And those left behind in the impenetrable gloom, ignorant 
 of his fate, knowing that with every instant the crack of the 
 rifles might roll out on the stillness, and the balls pierce that 
 death-snake twisted round his limbs, and the rocks echo with 
 the roar of the exploding powder, blasting him in the rush of 
 its sheet of fire and stones, sat mute and motionless in their 
 saddles, vdth a colder chiU in their bold blood, and a tighter 
 fear at their proud hearts, than the Cavaliers of the South 
 would have known for their own peril, or than he knew for his. 
 
 Another half-hour went by — an eternity in its long drawn- 
 out suspense — then in the darkness under the rocks his form 
 rose up amongst them. 
 
 "Eeady?"-— "Eeady." 
 
 The low whisper passed all but inaudible from man to man. 
 He took back his sabre and pistols and thrust them into his 
 belt, then stooped, struck a slow match, and laid it to the end 
 of the saucisson, whose mouth he had fastened to the barrels 
 on the bridge, and rapidly as the lightning, flung himself 
 across the horse held for him, and fell into line at the head of 
 the troop. 
 
 There was a moment of intense silence while the fire crept 
 up the long stick of the match ; then the shrill, hissing, snake- 
 like sound that none who have once heard ever forget, rushed 
 through the quiet of the night, and with a roar that startled 
 all the sleeping echoes of the hills, the explosion followed; the 
 columns of flame shooting upward to the starlit sky, and cast- 
 ing their crimson luiid light on the black brawling waters, on 
 
'* REDEEMED,"* 397 
 
 the rugged towering rocks, on the gnarled trunks of the lofty 
 pines, and on the wild, picturesque forms and the bold, swarthy, 
 Spanish-like faces of the Confederate raiders. "With a shock 
 that shook the earth till it rocked and trembled under them, 
 the pillar of smoke and fire towered aloft in the hush of the 
 midnight, blasting and hurling upward, in thunder that pealed 
 back from rock to rock, lifeless bodies, mangled limbs, smoul- 
 dering timbers, loosened stones, dead men flung heavenward 
 like leaves whirled by the wind, and iron torn up and bent 
 like saplings in a storm, as the mass of the barricades quivered, 
 oscillated, and fell with a mighty crash, while the night was 
 red with the hot glare of the flame, and filled with the deafen- 
 ing din. 
 
 The Federals, sleeping under cover of their intrenchments, 
 woke by that concussion as though heaven and earth were 
 meeting, poured out from pit and trench, from salient and 
 parallel, to see their fortifications and their guard blown up, 
 while the skies were lurid with the glow of the burning bar- 
 ricades, and the ravine was filled with the yellow mist of the 
 dense and rolling smoke. Confused, startled, demoralised, they 
 ran together like sheep, vainly rallied by their oflicers, some 
 few hundred opening an aimless desultory fire from behind 
 their works, the rest rushing hither and thither, in that inextri- 
 cable intricacy, and nameless panic, which doom the best regi- 
 ments that were ever under arms, when once they seize them. 
 
 "Charge!" shouted the Confederate leader, his voice ringing 
 out clear and sonorous above the infernal tempest of hissing, 
 roaring, shrieking, booming sound. 
 
 With that resistless impetus with which they had, over and 
 over again, broken through the granite mass of packed squares 
 and bristling bayonets, the Southerners, raising their wild war- 
 whoop, thundered on to the bridge, which, strongly framed of 
 stone and iron, had withstood the shock, as they had foreseen : 
 and while the fiery glare shone, and the seething flame hissed, 
 on the boiling waters below, swept, full gallop over the torn 
 limbs, the blackened bodies, the charred wood, the falling 
 timbers, the exploding powder, with which the passage of the 
 bridge was strewn, and charged through the hellish din, the 
 lurid fire, the heavy smoke, at a headlong pace, down into the 
 Federal camp. 
 
 A thousand shots fell like hail amongst them, but not a saddle 
 
39S ''.redeemed:' 
 
 was emptied, not even a trooper was touched ; and with their 
 
 line unbroken, and the challenge of their war-shout pealing 
 
 out upon the uproar, they rode through the confusion, worse 
 
 confounded, and cutting their wajr-through shot and sabre, 
 
 through levelled rifles, and through piled earthworks, with 
 
 their horses breathing fire, and the roar of the opening musketry 
 
 pealing out upon their rear, dashed on, never drawing rein, down 
 
 into the darkness of the front defile, and into the freshness of 
 
 the starry summer night, saved by the leader that they loved, 
 
 and — FREE ! 
 
 * * # * * . * 
 
 " Tarnation cheeky thing to do. Guess they ain't wise to 
 rile us that way," said a Federal general from Fremont, as. 
 they discussed this exploit of the Eight Hundred at the Federal 
 head-quarters. 
 
 " A splendid thing !" said an English visitor to the I^orthern 
 camp, who had come for a six months' tour to see the war for 
 himself, having been in his own time the friend of Paget, 
 and Yivian, and Londonderry, the comrade of Picton, of Mac- 
 kinnon, and of Arthur Wellesley. " A magnificent thing ! I 
 remember Bouchard did something the same sort of thing at 
 Amarante, but not half so pluckily, nor against any such odds. 
 Who's the fellow that led the charge % I'd give anything to 
 see him and tell him what I think of it. How Will Napier 
 would have loved him, by George !" 
 
 " Who's the d — d rebel, Jed T said the General, taking his 
 gin-sling. 
 
 " Think he's an Englishman. We'd give ten thousand dol- 
 lars for him, alive or dead : he's fifty devils in one, that /know," 
 responded the Colonel of Artillery, thus appealed to, a gentle- 
 manlike, quiet man, educated at West Point. 
 
 " God bless 'the fellow ! I'm glad he's English !" said the 
 English visitor, heartily, forgetting his Federal situation and 
 companions. " Who is he % Perhaps I know the name T 
 
 '\Should say you would. It's the same as your own— Winton. 
 Bertie Winton, they call him. Maybe he's a relative of yours !" 
 
 The blood flushed the Englishman's face hotly for a second ; 
 then a stern dark shadow came on it, and his lips set tight. 
 
 " I have no knowledge of him," he said, curtly. 
 
 " Haven't you now % That's curious. Some said he W£^s a 
 son of yours," pursued the Colonel, 
 
''redeemed:' 399 
 
 The old Lion flung back his silvery mane with his haughtiest 
 iniiDeriousness. 
 - " ITo, sir ; he's no son of mine." 
 
 Lord Winton sat silent, the dark shadow still upon his face. 
 For five years no rumour even had reached him of the man he 
 had disowned and disinherited ; he had believed him dead — 
 shot, as he had predicted, after some fray in a gaming-room 
 abroad ; and now he heard of him thus in the war news of the 
 American camp ! His denial of him was not less stern, nor his 
 refusal to acknowledge even his name less peremptory, because, 
 with all his wrath, his bitterness, his inexorable passion, and 
 his fierce repudiation of him as his son, a thrill of pleasure 
 stirred in him that the man still lived — a proud triumph swept 
 over him, through all his dark thoughts, at the magnificent 
 dash and daring of a deed wholly akin to him. 
 
 Bertie, a listless man about town, a dilettante in pictures, 
 wines, and women, spending every moment that he could in 
 Paris, gentle as any young beauty, always bored, and never 
 roused out of that habitual languid indolent indifferentism 
 which the old man, fiery and impassioned himself as the ]^a- 
 piers, held the most damnable effeminacy with which the pre- 
 sent generation emasculates itself, had been incomprehensible, 
 antagonistic, abhorrent to him. Bertie, the Leader of the Eight 
 Hundred, the reckless trooper of the Virginian Horse, the head 
 of a hundred wild night raids, the hero of a score of brilliant 
 charges, the chief in the most daring secret expeditions, and 
 the most intrepid cavalry skirmishes of the South, was far 
 nearer to the old Lion, who had in him all the hot fire of 
 Crawford's school, with the severe simplicity of Wellington's 
 stern creeds. " He is true to his blood at last !" he muttered, 
 as he tossed back his silky white hair, while his blue flashing 
 eyes ranged over the far distance where the Southern lines lay, 
 with something of eager restlessness ; " he is true to his blood 
 at last !" 
 
 There was fighting some days later in the Shenandoah 
 Valley. 
 
 Longstreet's corps, with two regiments of cavalry had at- 
 tacked Sheridan's divisions, and the struggle was hot and 
 fierce. The day was warm, and a brilliant sun poured down 
 into th« green cornland and woodland wealth of the valley as 
 the Southern divisions came up to the attack in beautiful pre- 
 
400* *' redeemed:' ^ 
 
 cision, and liurled themselves with tremendous 4lan on the 
 right front of the Federals, who, covered by their hastily 
 thrown-up breastworks, opened a deadly fire that raked the 
 whole Confederate line as they advanced. Men fell by the 
 score under the murderous mitraille, but the ranks closed up 
 shoulder to shoulder, without pause or wavering, only mad- 
 dened by the furious storm of shot, as the engagement became 
 general and the white rolling clouds of smoke poured down 
 the valley, and hid conflict and combatants from sight, the 
 thunder of the musketry pealing from height to height ; while 
 in many places men were fighting literally face to face and 
 hand to hand in a de^h-stiuggle — rare in these days, when 
 the duello of artillery and the rivalry of breech-loaders begins, 
 decides, and ends most battles. 
 
 On Longstreet's left, two squadrons of Virginian Cavalry 
 were drawn up, waiting the order to advance, and passionately 
 impatient of delay as regiment after regiment were sent up 
 to the attack and were lost in the whirling cloud of dust and 
 smoke, and they were kept motionless in reserve. At their 
 head was Bertie Winton, unconscious that, on a hill to the 
 right, with a group of Federal commanders, his father was 
 looking down on that struggle in the Shenandoah. Bertie 
 was little altered, save that on his face there was a sterner look, 
 and in his eyes a keener and less listless glance ; but the old 
 languid grace, the old lazy gentleness, were there still. They 
 were part of his nature, and nothing could kill them in him. 
 In the five years that had gone by none whom he had known 
 in Europe had ever heard a word of him or from him ; he had 
 cut away all the moorings that bound him to his old life, and 
 had sought to build up his ruined fortunes, like the penniless 
 soldier that he was, by his 3worc!. alone. So far he had suc- 
 ceeded : he had made his name famous throughout the States 
 as a bold and unerring cavalry leader, and had won the per- 
 sonal friendship and esteem of the Chiefs of the Southern 
 Confederacy. The five years had been filled with incessant 
 adventures, with ever-present peril, with the din of falling 
 citadels, with the rush of headlong charges, with daring raids 
 in starless autumn nights, with bivouacs in trackless western 
 forests, with desert-thirst in parching summer heats, with 
 winters of such frozen roofless misery as he had never even 
 dreamed — ^five year* of ceaseless danger, of frecj^uent sufferingi 
 
''REDEEMED,'' 401 
 
 of habitual renunciation ; but five years of life — real, vivid, 
 unseliisli — and Bertie was a better man for them. What he 
 had done at the head of Eight Hundred was but a sample of 
 whatever he did whenever duty called, or opportunity offered, 
 in the service of the South ; and no man was better known 
 or better trusted in all Lee's divisions than Bertie Winton, 
 who sat now at the head of his regiment, waiting Longstreet's 
 orders. An aide galloped up before long. 
 
 " The General desires you to charge and break the enemy's 
 square to the left. Colonel." 
 
 Bertie bowed with the old Pall Mall grace, turned, and gave 
 the word to advance. Like greyhounds loosed from leash, the 
 squadrons thundered down the slope, and swept across the 
 plain in magnificent order, charging full gallop, riding straight 
 down on the bristling steel and levelled rifles of the enemy's 
 kneeling square. They advanced in superb condition, in 
 matchless order, coming on with the force of a whirlwind 
 across the plain ; midway they were met by a tremendous volley 
 poured direct upon them ; half their saddles were emptied ; the 
 riderless chargers tore, snorting, bleeding, terrified out of the 
 ranks ; the line was broken ; the Virginians wavered, halted, 
 all but recoiled ; it was one of those critical moments when 
 hesitation is destruction. Bertie saw the danger, and with a 
 shout to the men to come on, he spurred his horse through 
 the raking volley of shot, while a shot struck his sombrero, 
 leaving his head bare, and urging the animal straight at the 
 Federal front, lifted him in the air as he would have done 
 before a fence, and landed him in the midst of the square, 
 down on the points of the levelled bayonets. With their fierce 
 war-cheer ringing out above the sullen uproar of the firing, his 
 troopers followed him to a man, charged the enemy's line, 
 broke through the packed mass opposed to them, cut their 
 way through into the centre, and hewed their enemies down 
 as mowers hew the grass. Longstreet's work was done for him ; 
 the Federal square was broken, never again to rally. 
 
 But the victory was bought with a price ; as his horse fell, 
 pierced and transfixed by the crossed steel of the bayonets, a 
 dozen rifles covered the Confederate leader ; their shots rang 
 ou', and Bertie Winton reeled from his saddle and sank down 
 beneath the press as his Qwn Southerners charged above him 
 in the rush of the onward attack. On an eminence to the 
 
402 " REDEEMED J* 
 
 riglit, throtigli his race-glass, his father watched the engage- 
 ment, his eyes seldom withdrawn from the Virginian cavalry, 
 where, for aught he knew, one of his own blood and name 
 might be — memories of Salamanca and Quatre Bras, of Moodkee 
 and Ferozeshah, stirring in him, while the fire of his dead youth 
 thrilled through his veins with the tramp of the opposing 
 divisions, and he roused like a war-horse at the scent of the 
 battle, as the white shroud of the smoke rolled up to his feet, 
 and the thunder of the musketry echoed through the valley. 
 Through his glass, he saw the order given to the troopers held 
 in reserve ; he saw the magnificent advance of that charge in 
 the morning light ; he saw the volley poured in upon them ; 
 and he saw them under that shock reel, stagger, waver, and 
 recoil. The old soldier knew well the critical danger of that 
 ominous moment of panic and of confusion ; then, as the Con- 
 federate Colonel rode out alone and put his horse at that leap ' 
 on to the line of steel, into the bristling square, a cry loud 
 as the Virginian battle-shout broke from him. For when the 
 charger rose in the air, and the sun shone full on the uncovered 
 head of the Southern leader, he knew the fair English features 
 that no skies could bronze, and the fair English hair that blew 
 in the hot wind. He looked once more upon the man he had 
 denied and had drowned ; and, as Bertie Winton reeled and 
 fell, his father, all unarmed, and non-combatant as he was, 
 drove the spurs into his horse's flanks, and dashing down the 
 steep hill-side, rode over the heaps of slain, and through the 
 pools of gore into the thick of the strife. 
 
 With his charger dead under him, beaten down upon one 
 knee, his sword-arm shivered by a bullet, while the blood poured 
 from his side where another shot had lodged, Bertie knew that 
 his last hour had come, as the impetus of the charge broke 
 above him — as a great wave may sweep over the head of a 
 drowning man — and left him in the centre of the foe. Kneel- 
 ing there, while the air was red before his sight, that was fast 
 gTOwing blind from the loss of blood, and the earth seemed 
 to reel and rock under him, he still fought to desperation, his 
 sabre in his left hand ; he knew he could not hold out more 
 than a second longer, but while he had strength he kept at bay. 
 
 His life was not worth a moment's purchase — when, with a 
 shout that rang over the field, the old Lion rode down through 
 the carnage to his rescue, his white hair iioating in the wind, 
 
''redeemed:\ 403 
 
 his azure eyes flasKing with war-fire, his holster-pistol levelled ; 
 spurred his horse through the struggle, trampled aside all that 
 opposed him, dashed untouched through the cross-fire of the 
 bullets, shot through the brain the man whose rifle covered 
 his son who had reeled down insensible, and stooping, raised 
 the senseless body, lifted him up by sheer manual strength 
 to the level of his saddle-bow, laid him across his holsters, 
 holding him up with his right hand, and, while the Federals 
 fell asunder in sheer amazement at the sudden onslaught, and 
 admiration of the old man's daring, plunged the rowels into his 
 horse, and, breaking through the reeking slaughter of the battle- 
 field, rode back, thus laden with his prisoner, through the inces- 
 sant fire of the cannonade up the heights to the Federal lines. 
 
 " If you were to lie dying at my feet !" — his father remem- 
 bered those words, that had been spoken five years before in 
 the fury of a deadly passion, as Bertie lay stretched before him 
 in his tent, the blood flowing from the deep shot-wound in 
 his side, his eyes closed, his face livid, and about his lips a 
 faint and ghastly foam. 
 
 Had he saved him too late % had he too late repented % 
 
 His heart had yearned to him when, in the morning light, 
 he had looked once more upon the face of his son, as the Vir- 
 ginian Horse had swept on to the shock of the charge ; and all 
 of wrath, of hatred, of bitterness, of dark, implacable, unforgiving 
 vengeance were quenched and gone for ever from his soul as he 
 stooped over him where he lay at his feet, stricken and sense- 
 less in all the glory of his manhood. He only knew that he 
 loved the man — he only knew that he would have died for 
 him, or died with him. 
 
 Bertie stirred faintly, with a heavy sigh, and his left hand 
 moved towards his breast. Old Sir Lion bent over him, while 
 his voice shook terribly, like a woman's. 
 
 " Bertie ! My God ! don't you know me f 
 
 He opened his eyes and looked wearily and dreamily around; 
 he did not know what had passed, nor where he was ; but a 
 faint light of wonder, of pleasure, of recognition, came into 
 his eyes, and he smiled — a smile that was very gentle and 
 very wistful. 
 
 ** I am glad of that — ^before I die ! Let us part friends — • 
 mw. They will tell you I have — ^redeemed — the name." 
 
 The words died slowly and with difliculty on his lips, and 
 
 26—2 
 
404 ''REDEEMED^ 
 
 as his father's hand closed upon his in a strong grasp of ten- 
 derness and reconciliation, his lids closed, his head fell back, 
 and a deep-drawn, laboured sigh quivered through all his frame ; 
 and Lion Winton, bowing down his grand white crest, wept 
 with the passion of a woman. For he knew not whether the 
 son he loved was living or dead — he knew not whether he was 
 not at the last too late. 
 
 ^ # 4^ # # # 
 
 Three months further on, Lady Ida Deloraine sat in her 
 warm bright nest among the exotics, gazing out upon the sunny- 
 lawns and the green woodlands of ^Northamptonshire. Highest 
 names and proudest titles had been pressed on her through the 
 live years that had gone, but her loveliness had been unwon, 
 and was but something more thoughtful, more brilliant, more 
 exquisite still than of old. The beautiful warmth that had 
 never come there through all these years was in her cheeks 
 now, and the nameless lustre was in her eyes, which all those 
 Avho had wooed her, had never wakened in their antelope bril- 
 liancy, as she sat looking outward at the sunlight ; for in her 
 hands lay a camellia, withered, colourless, and yellow, and eyes 
 gazed down upon the marvellous beauty of her face which had 
 remembered it in the hush of Virginian forests, in the rush of 
 headlong charges, in the glare of bivouac fires, in the silence 
 of night pickets, and in tlie din of falling cities. 
 
 And Bertie's voice, as he bent over her, was on her ear. 
 
 " That flower has been on my heart night and day ; and 
 since we parted I have never done that which would have 
 been insult to your memory. I have tried to lead a better and 
 a purer life ; I have striven to redeem my name and my honour ; 
 I have done all I could to wash out the vice and the vileness 
 of my past. Through all the years we have been severed I 
 have had no thought, no hope, except to die more worthy of 
 you ; but now — oh, my God ! — if you knew how I love you, 
 
 if you knew how my love alone saved me " 
 
 ^ His words broke down in the great passion that had been 
 his redemption ; and as she lifted her eyes upward to his own, 
 soft with tears that gathered but did not fall, and lustrous with 
 the light that had never come there save for him, he bowed his 
 head over her, and as his lips met hers, he knew that the re- 
 deemed life he laid at her feet was dearer to her than lives, 
 more stainless, but less noblv won. 
 
THE MARQUISES TACTICS; 
 
 OB, 
 
 LORD GLEN'S WAGEPw. 
 
 " My dear Cyril, why don't you marry T asked tlie Marquis 
 of Glenallerton of his second son. 
 
 St. Albans, lying on his sofa in his rooms in Albemarle- 
 street, smoking a hookah, and drinking hock and Seltzer, 
 looked up, stared, and laughed. 
 
 " Why don't I marry ? My dear governor, you shouldn't 
 ask point-blank questions like that. Please remember one's 
 nerves. Why don't I? Because, though Pascal says, 'Vhommc 
 rCest ni bete ni angej I think he is most irrevocably and undeni- 
 ably hUe when he assumes the matrimonial fetters !" 
 
 " Of course," responded the Marquis, familiarly known as 
 Lord Glen. " We all know that : marriage is a social arrange- 
 ment and inconvenience, like the income-tax, and one conforms 
 to it as such. I'm not asking you to go and fall in love and 
 crown a thousand follies with an irremediable one ; God for- 
 bid ! with all your absurdities you are too much a man of the 
 
 world to make me fear that. I was merely thinking- You're 
 
 near thirty, ain't you?" 
 
 " Eight-and-thirty, last January." 
 
 " Very well. You have mene la vie lo your heart's content ; 
 you are most shockingly indolent ; your debts are very heavy ; 
 you will bet, and on the most unlikely events, too — as if you 
 were a millionaire like Crowndiamonds. I think, considering 
 you are a younger son, and will get nothing, more from me, 
 
4o6 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 
 
 that a good marriage, far from being a folly, would show greater 
 wisdom than I should give you credit for after your tomfoolery 
 at Wilverton — the idea of losing a borough that your family 
 have had in their pocket for ages, for a pack of rubbish about 
 ' not bribing ! ' Bacon took bribes, however they try to smooth 
 it over as ^ fees,' and Walpole gave 'em. Do you set yourself 
 above fhem^ pray?" 
 
 " Certainly not ; one was a lawyer, and had the devil to 
 sharpen his wits ; the other was a toper, and did very shrewd 
 things in his cups. But don't worry me about it, pray. I 
 assure you it wasn't any bosh about honour or virtue that 
 made me refuse to bribe the Wilvertonians ; it was only lazi- 
 ness on my word ; I hated the bore of St. Stephen's, and didn't 
 know how else to get rid of the affair. Indolence is hereditary 
 and chronic in me. I can't help it." 
 
 " Well, well, you lost the election, so there's an end of it," 
 said the Marquis, impatiently, in happy ignorance of the sneer 
 on his son's lips, " but with regard to your marrying. Well, 
 don't you think you could do if?" 
 
 " Decidedly I could do it," replied St. Albans, with a glance 
 at himself in an opposite mirror. 
 
 " Then do do it. You have only to choose ; any woman 
 would have you. I don't mean a nouvelle riche; you shouldn't 
 ally us with a parvenue to save yourself from starving ; but 
 such as Lady Elma Eer " 
 
 " !Not for an El Dorado ! She is eight-and-twenty, is freckled, 
 and has red hair " 
 
 " Pray, what does beauty matter in a wife ? You will have 
 plenty of beauties left elsewhere, won't you T 
 
 " I hope so ; but I shouldn't be able to enjoy them, for one 
 tete-a-tete with a freckled woman would have killed me." 
 
 " Talk sense," interrupted old Glen, angrily. " One would 
 think you had no brains, Cyril. Look at it rationally. Is 
 there anything for you but to make a rich marriage?" 
 
 St. Albans took a few silent puffs from his hookah with a 
 profound sigh, and answered not. 
 
 " I can give you no money, and you have a terrible taste 
 for expensive pleasures; you have lived at double the rate 
 your brothers have for the last fifteen years. Go on as you 
 are now, you must go to the dogs your own way; I can't 
 help you; I'm en route there myself. Marry an heiress. 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 407 
 
 yoiir difficulties are cleared, and you can liave your pleasures 
 h wire, gre. As for wanting beauty in your wife — one would 
 think you were twenty ! Your mother was plain ; she had 
 good blood and money, but she was remarkably plain ; you 
 take all your beauty from me. I^ow there is Avarina Sans- 
 reproche, most unobjectionable in every way, will be Earoness 
 Turquoise and Malachite in her own right ; not exactly pretty, 
 perhaps, but very good style : a woman who would never do 
 a silly thing, or make a dubious acquaintance. Her mother, 
 I know, would not object to the alliance ; in fact, you need 
 only be a little rational and passive, and I could arrange it 
 for you ; the mere whisper of an engagement with her would 
 quiet those Jews in a moment. Are you listening, Cyril?" 
 
 St. Albans yawned and stretched himself a little more com- 
 fortably : 
 
 " Most attentively, sir ; but you must really excuse my 
 answering ; it's too warm to talk." 
 
 " Well, say yes or no, if that's not too much exertion. You 
 are in a perfect Gordian knot of difficulties. Do you see any 
 way of cutting it but the one I propose T 
 
 His son yawned again, sighed, and took .a long whiff of his 
 perfumed hubble-bubble : 
 
 " My dear governor, if you will make me speak — no, I 
 don't see any other way; I vdsh I did, because really the 
 trouble of thinking is odious ; the day's so much too close to 
 do anything but drink Seltzer." 
 
 " You admit you don't see any other way of getting out 
 of your labyrinth of debts, and going on smoothly in the 
 future r' 
 
 St. Albans shut his eyes and shifted his cushions : 
 
 " I said I didn't — ^pray don't worry. I dare say I could 
 get a very good living as model to the artist fellows ; they 
 want handsome men, and I've no doubt my hand alone 
 would bring in a very fair sum. But you'd think that rather 
 derogatory to the family, you see ; so that career isn't open to 
 me." 
 
 Lord Glen laughed, and rose from his chair : 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Cyril, but go and call in Wilton- crescent. 
 Think over what I have said, and act like a practical man for 
 once, if you can. You must marry Avarina, for I can tell you 
 for your comfort that book-makers are beginning to back 
 
4o8 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS 
 
 Coronation very confidently, and that I know on good autho- 
 rity Cradoc hasn't himself the confidence in Grey Eoyal that 
 you fancy; that mare will no more win the Cup than your 
 Park hack." 
 
 With which consolatory last hit the Marquis shut the door, 
 and went down-stairs to his brougham, while St. Albans, letting 
 fall the mouthpiece of his hookah, dropped his head on his 
 hands with a bitter sigh : 
 
 " If she doesn't win I shall be ruined. What a fool I have 
 been to mesh myself in such a net of debts and entangle- 
 ments ! How I shall get out of them, God knows. And now 
 he wants me to patch up my fortunes by marriage. Avarina 
 Sansreproche ! Faugh ! — the Queen's Bench were better than 
 that. He is right — I am going to the dogs, and dragging 
 others with me, too. By Jove ! if he knew all, poor old 
 fellow, it would bring on a fit, or he would console himself by 
 cutting me in Pall Mall. I can't go on long like this; yet, 
 Heaven knows what I had better do. Marry Avarina Sans- 
 reproche ! Faugh !" 
 
 His rooms were the most luxurious in any bachelor house 
 in town ; his breakfast was served in a silver and Dresden 
 service fit for a young Princess; piles of rose, green, and 
 cream hued little notes, and a swarm of invitation cards to all 
 the best houses, lay on his writing-table; he belonged to 
 the best set, drove the best horses, and was a member of 
 the best clubs in London ; but for all that St. Albans, as he 
 leaned his head on his hands, with a very real and unmis- 
 takable sigh, and dropped the languid, bored tone he had 
 used about liis difficulties to his father, had about as much 
 worry just then on his shoulders as any man going in 
 London. 
 
 " Marry !" he said to himself, picking up his hookah 
 again. " What on earth put that into his head % What's 
 the time — two? I'll order the tilbury, and go and see her 
 again." 
 
 /* I want Cyril to marry," said Lord Glen, that same 
 morning, in one of the windows of the Conservative, to me 
 and Charlie de Yesci, another Coldstreamer, and St. Albans' 
 special friend — " I want him to marry : you're a good deal 
 with him ; do your best to persuade him, there's a good 
 fellow," 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 409 
 
 " You want him to marry, sir? "What for, in the name of 
 Heaven '? St. Albans is the last man in the world to suit 
 that sort of harness, and I thought you " 
 
 " Were the last man to advocate it % Of course I am. At 
 the same time, if you're going to the deuce, you must put on 
 any drag that'll keep the wheels from going down hill, must 
 you not % You know Cyril's extravagance as well as I do. 
 The best thing in the vf orld would be for him to marry well, 
 and the alliance I desire for him is Avarina Sansreproche. 
 I have reason to believe, too, that Lady Turquoise is as in- 
 clined to the arrangement as myself. I^othing can be 
 more suitable. She is three -and -twenty, eminently good 
 style " 
 
 " As cold as a statue, sir !" 
 
 The Marquis took a pinch out of his enamelled tabatiere 
 with a picture of Clara d'Ische by Mignard. 
 
 " The most desirable thing a wife can be. Secures you 
 from all scandal !" 
 
 " But not at aU fit for Cyril !'' 
 
 "I hardly apprehend you. Fit for himl I am not 
 asking them to raffole of each other — he is a man of the 
 world, she is a woman of good sense — I merely want them 
 to marry. I think she is admirably fitted for Cyril. She 
 has good blood, great fortune ; he would be exacting, indeed, 
 to ask more." 
 
 " Perhaps ; for all that, sir, I doubt if you will ever 
 bring St. Albans round to think with you. Miss Sans- 
 reproche isn't pretty enough to please him, and I am sure 
 he will hate being tied, however light you may make his 
 fetters." 
 
 " What will you bet me that I, being allowed to manage it 
 as I find best, shall see Cyril married within — let me see — I 
 will say by the end of the season T 
 
 I laughed : 
 
 " Very well, sir. I don't know anything about it, but I 
 would bet you twenty guineas that by the end of the season 
 you'll see no such thing. My dear Lord ! — St. Albans will 
 no more let himself be married than I shall." 
 
 Lord Glen entered the wager duly in his mem. -book. 
 
 " You will lose, my good fellow. He will marry when I 
 wish hin^. IJe must. He lives very gaily and expensively. 
 
4IO THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 
 
 I don't expect him to do otherwise. But you know lie lia5 
 nothing — we never have; the racaille get all the money in 
 these democratic days. So you and Bellaysse tied at Hornsey 
 Wood yesterday 1 You shot off the ties early ; Delamere told 
 me the sun was so in your eyes you could hardly mark the 
 birds." 
 
 " What were you doing with yourself yesterday at noon ? 
 I thought you never went out before two, and I positively 
 called at twelve, because I particularly wanted to see you, 
 and your man said you weren't at home," said Lord Glen- 
 allerton, in a considerably injured tone, two days after in the 
 smoking-room of the Guards' Club. 
 
 St. Albans dropped his eye-glass and laid down the 
 paper. 
 
 " My dear governor, if you will call on men at barbarian 
 hours you must expect valets who have a decent idea of the 
 blessings of slumber and peace to tell a mild fib in their 
 masters' service. You don't really mean you would have had 
 the heart to get me up at noon, do you V 
 
 " Certainly I should. You can get up early at Glen- 
 Albans to go after deer, surely you can get up early in tovv^n 
 to talk to me. It is seldom enough I want the trouble of 
 seeing you. But your man said positively you were out. I 
 asked him if he meant ' ISTot visible,' and he said no, you were 
 not at home." 
 
 " Stupid fool !" said Cyril, sotto voce, as he took his 
 cigarette out of his mouth. '^ J3on phre! is it possible I 
 should remember so far back as yesterday what I did 
 with myself. Be reasonable ! I have lived — ^let me see— 
 thirty-one, thirty-two — positively thirty-four hours since 
 then !" 
 
 The Marquis looked at him, took out his snuff-box, and 
 shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " You can leave your memory behind you sometimes, my 
 good fellow, as completely and conveniently as a bribed wit- 
 ness ! / don't want to know what you did with yourself. 
 Heaven forbid ! I came to advise you to hedge as much as 
 possible. From all I hear, I am certain Grey Eoyal is very 
 unsafe. Kone of that breed ever had any pace in them yet. 
 Listen a minute, Cyril^ and take counsel, if you can." 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 411 
 
 Witli wliich lie dropped his voice, and detailed some 
 chronique scandaleiise of the unsoundness of Grey Eoyal, 
 ^jecond favourite for the Ascot Cup, which was going the 
 round of some Turf circles, and altering the odds at the 
 Eooms. 
 
 " I have warned you. I have said my last word about that 
 cursed mare," said the Marquis, as he rose. *' You will come 
 to my house to-night, Cyril?" 
 
 " Do you want me dreadfully ? Can't you let me off?" 
 
 " No ; it is very odd if you cannot spare an hour to show 
 yourself in my rooms. I do not choose that every one in town 
 should be seen at my parties but you, and that my sons should 
 shun my house alone of anybody in London. Faineant is 
 abroad, I don't speak of him ; and Julian I have done with 
 long ago. He has taken up the patriotic and philanthropic 
 clap-trap, let him keep to it. It is so excessively low ! I 
 don't know what we should have thought in the Eegency of 
 men who ought to be gentlemen, lecturing as if they were 
 the drunken cobblers of a Methodist gathering, and pottering 
 about Eagged Schools to get a little vulgar toadying, and head- 
 ing Social Movements as if they were Chartists or Sensation- 
 alists — it is so horridly low all that ! But you, you are a man 
 of good taste and good breeding, Cyril ; it hurts me that you 
 should never be seen at my house." 
 
 That speech was quite true. If Lord Glen likes anybody 
 it is his second son, who has his wit, his beauty, and is, as 
 the Marquis will complacently tell us, " exactly what I was 
 forty years ago." But it was a craftily timed speech for all 
 that, and St. Albans fell into the trap ; he looked kindly at 
 his father, and drank some hock and Seltzer. 
 
 " I'll come, governor ! " 
 
 "The deuce, I never remembered that woman !" said St. 
 Albans, under his breath, on the top of the staircase of his 
 father's house in Berkley- square. " That's what he bothered 
 me to come here for, and I never thought of her ! " 
 
 I, remembering the Marquis's wager, followed his glance, 
 which was through the doorway, into the Marquis's salons, 
 where all the crem& de la crime were gathering and comming- 
 ling ; and there, among other young Belgraviennes, saw Ava- 
 rina Sansreproche, the subject of the Marquis's diplomacy, the 
 future Lady Cyril St, Albans, and sole heiress prospective to 
 
412 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 
 
 lier mother's barony of Turquoise and Malacliite. She was 
 what we call by complaisance a fine girl : she was not hand- 
 some, or interesting, or brilliant, but she was clever, dressed 
 well of course, and was eminently good style, as Lord Glen 
 averred ; she was very cold in manner, and rumour said of 
 not the sweetest temper ; but she had a distinguished air, and 
 from her height and figure told well in a ball-room. 
 
 Altogether, considering how good an alliance she would be, 
 she was not a woman to merit the disdainful and disgusted 
 tone with which St. Albans murmured his uncomplimentary 
 words on the staircase as he caught sight of her at his father's 
 ball, which made me smile as I heard them, to think how 
 little likely the Marquis was to win his bet and shackle his 
 son with matrimonial handcuffs, with all his skill at diplo- 
 macy, and his Eochefoucaldean knowledge of men and their 
 weaknesses. 
 
 Avarina looked very well that night, and her mother smiled 
 her most gracious smile v/hen St. Albans drew near them, 
 and stopped to say a few words to them before passing on. 
 True, the future Baroness might have looked for an elder 
 rather than a younger son, but the St. Albans were one of 
 the oldest and noblest houses in the Peerage. A cadet of 
 that family was preferable to the head of many others, and 
 Lord Glenallerton was leader in the Upper House of that 
 great political party to which Lady Turquoise, as vehement an 
 intriguer as Madame de Longueville or the Duchess of Devon- 
 shire, belonged heart and soul. Cyril was his favourite son ; 
 he did not care about Faineant, who was plain, like the late 
 Lady Glen, and had never been in his good graces for that rea- 
 son, the Marquis rating beauty as highly as any woman. His 
 third son, Julian, he had, as he said, done with long ago, 
 Julian being an M.P., and taking a utilitarian and educating- 
 of-the-masses line, which was naturally the antipodes of all his 
 predilections, and disgusted him too much for remonstrance ; 
 but Cyril always pleased him : his manner, his air, his tastes, 
 his person, his way of life, were all in accordance with all his 
 father's views of what a gentleman and a St. Albans ought to 
 be. Cyril was his favourite son, and therefore did he and 
 Lady Turquoise tacitly agree — perhaps, even, in a little bou- 
 doir conference, admit to each other their agreement — in the 
 choice of an alliance for Avarina. 
 
THE MARQUIS'S rACTlCS. 413 
 
 " Cyril, you entreated me to be your envoy, and I have liad 
 the happiness to succeed in my embassy. Miss Sansreproche 
 has done you the honour to reserve you a place on her tablets," 
 said the clever old Lord, with that gallant grace of air which 
 had gained him so many bonnes fortunes, and won him so 
 brilliant a reputation in the old Eegency days with Alvanley 
 and Pierrepoint. Men of condition, as Walter Scott says, 
 never show what they feel, let them be startled, bewildered, 
 or dismayed as they may, or, for a certainty, St. Albans would 
 have shown his amazement at his father's adroit invention. 
 " For a he gracefully told, commend me to the governor!" he 
 thought, as, hon gre mal gre, he bowed his thanks to Avarina 
 for an honour he had certainly been most innocent of solicit- 
 ing. 
 
 Cootes and Tinney^s band were playing the Dinorah Quad- 
 rilles, and he had to give her his arm and lead her to the ball- 
 room, let in for it as neatly as any man could be, while the 
 Marquis stroked a little moth off his Blue Eiband with an 
 inward smile of complacency. His first minor move in di- 
 plomacy had succeeded, and perhaps St. Albans, though ib 
 bored him just then, would thank him afterwards. "When 
 one is drowning, one is grateful to anybody that flings us a 
 rope, however tarred and rough a one. 
 
 "Hallo, old fellow, you are leaving early. Avarina Sans-^ 
 reproche won't be flattered, will she?" said I, as, about an 
 hour afterwards, having three or four other places to go to 
 that night, I left Lord Glen's, and met St. Albans just going 
 to his cab. 
 
 "Avarina Sansreproche be hanged !" said he, between his 
 teeth, as he stopped to light a Manilla. " Marry merely for 
 money — buy freedom from my difficulties with that girl's gold, 
 how low my father must think that I have sunk ! Live on your 
 wife's money ! Good God, what lower degradation could there 
 
 " Lots of men do it, though, old fellow, and think it none, 
 when there's no better way of clearing themselves out of their 
 difficulties." 
 
 " Exactly," said St. Albans, in his ordinary languid tone, 
 with his pet semi-yawn, semi-sigh ; " but only think of the 
 horror of having to hear settlements read, and the worry of 
 going through the marriage ceremony ! It's far better of tha 
 
4 14 THE MARQUIS'S TAC71CS, 
 
 two to go to tlie dogs quietly and gently, in a pleasant way, 
 than to put tlie matrimonial drag on the wheels, and avoid 
 Cerberus only to fall into the hug of Hecate. I've no scruples 
 about anything, except about worrying myself. I don't care 
 how low I sink, but you must please line the pit with rose- 
 leaves. I wouldn't mind selling myself to the devil at all if 
 that gentleman were in that style of trade now, and paid 
 handsomely, but I couldn't sell myself to a wife — ^indeed I 
 couldn't ; marriage is an awful price to pay for a little mone- 
 tary security. Fancy a woman who'd think she had a right 
 over you, and who'd persist in bothering you, and lecturing 
 you, and ferreting out were you went ! It's better to give 
 Leoni Levi cent, per cent, than to go through the ennui of a 
 honeymoon. Fancy doing rural felicity, and raptures, and all 
 the rest of it, and having to make love to the same woman 
 one whole month long ! I'd rather go to a IN'eapolitan prison. 
 Why, a week of it would kill me. Milner, drive as fast as 
 you can," said St. Albans, flinging his fusee into the gutter, 
 and getting into his hansom. 
 
 " Are you going to La Eonbonniere's ? If you are, we can 
 go together." 
 
 " La Eonbonniere's % No. I rarely go there now." 
 
 " What for % Have you quarrelled T 
 
 The Comtesse de la Eonbonniere was a very charming little 
 woman, and St. Albans had found no boudoir so attractive, 
 and no opera suppers so agreeable, as those in her Section of 
 the French embassy. 
 
 " Quarrelled % ^Tot at all ! Eut we idolised each other 
 last season ; it's in the nature of things that we're tired of one 
 another this ! Good night. Drive fast, Milner !" 
 
 "Whereto, my Lord?" 
 
 " To Eichmond !" 
 
 His hansom dashed round the corner at a pace that might 
 have won a trotting-match, and I got into my own cab, and 
 drove off to a ball at Carlton House-terrace, thinking that, with 
 Cyril's views of marriage, the old Lord, with all his diplomacy, 
 was not very likely to win his bet, and persuade his son to 
 enter the holy bond, St. Albans being about the last man in 
 town to assume the matrimonial fetters, or endure them when 
 they were on. He was in the Coldstream Guards ; he was a 
 man sworn to pleasure, and to pleasure alone ; he led a gay, 
 
THE MARQUi^S TACTICS. 41S 
 
 easy, agreeable, extravagant life ; was a leader of fashion, and 
 a referee at clubs ; hated worry, loved luxury, was utterly un- 
 used to any restrictions, and was the very last sort of person 
 to be coaxed, driven, coerced, propelled, or led in any way 
 into the shackles Lord Glen proposed for him. Eut great is 
 the might of money, and when you have Euin on one side of 
 you and Hanover-square on the other, there is no knowing 
 what you may do, mon ami, or which of the evils you may 
 fancy the lesser ', so, with all the odds in my favour, I hardly 
 felt sure of winning the bet I had made. 
 
 " You must marry, Cyril," said old Glen, imperatively, as, 
 meeting the Coldstreamer in St. James's-street the next morn- 
 ing between two and three, he walked down there with him. 
 
 " My dear governor so we must all die, but the obligation 
 isn't an agreeable one ; why refer to it 1 Positively, you're as 
 cruel as a priest laying the skull and cross-bones right on the 
 top of one's rose chaplets. The idea of bringing up horrid 
 topics on a cool pleasant May morning like this !" 
 
 The Marquis gave a little growl and a contemptuous sneer. 
 
 " I thought you were a man of the world." 
 
 " Did you 1 Far from it. I'm a most innocent and un- 
 sophisticated person ; no man more so ; but merit's always 
 misjudged." 
 
 Lord Glen gave a short laugh of amusement, as well he 
 might. 
 
 " I thought you were a man of the world, too much of one 
 not to know that such a very unimportant step as marriage 
 can matter nothing in our ranks. If your wife be in a bad 
 temper, you have nothing to do but to leave her ; if she begin 
 a quarrel, go and dine at White's or the Guards'; if she bother 
 you very much, have a separate establishment. You are not 
 like a man of the middle class with a limited income, resting 
 on a clientela who viser all his actions, and would desert him 
 if he tried to get a little liberty, or openly infringed their pet 
 clap-trap of the domesticities. Be sensible, Cyril ; of all the 
 married men we know, on which of them has his wife any in- 
 fluence? Which of them allows her to trouble him the least ? 
 Of course not ; he is in the world, she is in the world : they 
 go their own ways, and neither troubles the other. So will 
 you and Avarina ; she is far too sensible a woman to want a 
 lover's devotion from you, or any of that nonsense, you may 
 
4i6 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 
 
 keep it for Madame de la Bonbonniere; slie is a Frencliwoinan, 
 and lilies sentiment. I perfectly understand your reluctance : 
 you are a man of pleasure, naturally you dislike anything 
 that may interfere with or limit your pleasure, but, believe 
 me, in seventy-eight years I have seen a little of life, Cyril*! 
 marriage will not make the slightest diiference to you ; you 
 will live in Belgrave-square instead of Albemarle-street, that 
 is all." 
 
 St. Albans listened and walked on in silence. 
 
 *' You must marry," reiterated the Marquis. " Grey Eoyal 
 Las no more pa'ce in her than a cab-horse ; what could possess 
 you, my dear boy, to venture so much on that miserable 
 chestnut T 
 
 St. Albans drew his breath hard, and turned paler for a 
 second. 
 
 "You recommend me to marry, governor]" he said after a 
 pause. 
 
 ** I do, most decidedly." 
 
 "Very well, I'll think about itj don't v/orry meany more," 
 said St. Albans, languidly. " Taugh ! how that fellow that 
 passed us was scented with musk ! Are you going into 
 White's? lam." 
 
 I have always liked the Marquis myself y he has no deep 
 feelings to trouble him, he is an egotistical and worldly old 
 gentleman ; he sometimes tilts with the most amiable un- 
 consciousness against your tenderest wounds, and makes you 
 writhe without ever noticing it ; but I always liked him, always 
 shall ; he is very clever, very amusing, ever good natured, 
 ever hospitable, and is as fond of his second son, in his own 
 way, as he could be of any one. I should be very glad if 
 anj^body would tell me why novelists always fancy it necessary 
 to make their characters either good or bad, quite one, or quite 
 the other; the majority of people about in the world are, it seems 
 to me, neither the one nor the other exclusively, but a mixture 
 of both, as the Mocha your valet brings you up in the morn- 
 ing is coffee and chicory equally mixed. Five people out of 
 six have no marked characters at all, and the generality one 
 meets could neither be taxed with any remarkable vice nor 
 honoured for any remarkable virtue ; they would ruin your 
 peace with their malice, but would not touch you with a dag- 
 ger for the world, and are capable neither of a positively noble 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 4tt 
 
 action nor of a positively bad one. You must have force of 
 character for the extreme of both good and evil. Half the 
 people in society are like my friend Lord Glen, who would 
 have been insulted, no person more so, had you asked him to 
 do anything dishonourable ; but could see nothing degrading 
 in the advice he gave his son, honestly thinking it was the 
 best St. Albans could receive and follow, to make a rich mar- 
 riage, that he might quiet his creditors now, and live on his 
 wife's money afterwards. 
 
 ** I shall win, my dear fellow," said he to me at a morning 
 party at Eulham, as he stood stirring the cream in a cup of 
 Souchong under a great chestnut tree on the lawn, where the 
 band was playing Trovatore airs and new waltzes, and we were 
 eating ISTeapolitan ices, flirting, and playing croquet or lawn 
 billiards with some hundred or so of our kind in the grounds 
 of Lady Eosediamonds' bijou of a dower-house. I followed 
 his glance, which was to where Avarina sat, looking more 
 animated than usual, and talking to St. Albans. 
 
 "Do you think so, sir? I hope not. Wealth is the best 
 of all blessings. Heaven knows, but, my dear Lord, he's the 
 last fellow in the world to be put into bondage, even for that. 
 The idea of St. Albans married !" 
 
 ** I was just such a man as Cyril at his age, and / married, 
 but I can assure you I made the fetters so light I did not know 
 I wore them. Any sensible man may, if he likes. Cyril will 
 marry Avarina, and will thank me very much for having made 
 him the alliance. I knew I should bring him round to my 
 views ; he is a sensible fellow, really, though he has a few 
 strange Quixotic ideas, like those about his election. I cannot 
 imagine where he has got them ; the St. Albans were never 
 romantic, nor the Dormers either, acd romance is such a very 
 queer thing to linger in a man who has lived as my son has 
 done. He will marry Avarina, hon garpn, and I am very glad 
 of it — very glad." And the Marquis finished his tea, and turned 
 to Lady Eosediamonds in the best possible spirits at the coming 
 success of his diplomacy. 
 
 " Dine with me to-night V he asked, when Avarina and her 
 mother were rolling back to Eelgravia. " And you, Cyril T 
 
 *^I, sir*?" said St. Albans. ** Thanks, no. I'm engaged for 
 this evening.'* 
 
 *^ Ah, no doubt ; where to, may I ask ]" 
 
4i8 THE MARQUI^S TACTICS, 
 
 I dare say Lord Glen liad a fond hope that the answer 
 would be Wilton-crescent, but it wasn't; it was brief enough: 
 "Eichmond.'* 
 
 " Eichmond ? A man dinner, or a boating party, or what ? 
 You are always dining at Eichmond, it seems to me \ you were 
 there on Monday, and yesterday too \ with all the best houses 
 in town open to you, I wonder you take the trouble to go all 
 the way down there with a few men, or a few little dancers. 
 Yesterday you threw over the Duchess's dinner for some Eich- 
 mond affair. I have no business with what you do with your- 
 self, of course, but it is unlike you, and bad taste, you are 
 generally so very exclusive. Won't you be back in time for 
 Protocol's reception to-night T 
 
 St. Albans shook his head. 
 
 *' My dear governor, why should I go to Protocol's % The 
 atmosphere will be at 70 deg. I should be crushed as usual, 
 and should only reach the green drawing-room and the Coun- 
 tess after three hours' steady toil. I've done so many of these 
 things, please don't ask me ; my health's too delicate to stand 
 the fatigues of an assembly just yet again." 
 
 " Yery odd," said Lord Glen to himself, as the Coldstreamer 
 drove off, nodding a good-bye to his father. " Last season 
 ,Cyril was at every reception in town ; he is surely never losing 
 his taste for good society !" 
 
 I don't suppose the Marquis liked Avarina Sansreproche, 
 as he had a special contempt for any but very lovely women, 
 save for matrimonial aUiances. The St. Albans women and 
 men are a family of great beauty, and have been famed for it 
 for many generations ; and Lord Glen sets the greatest possi- 
 ble store on it, both in himself and others, therefore I don't 
 suppose he had any particular admiration for his future daugh- 
 ter-in-law ; but if he made love for himself in the Eegency days 
 half so gracefully and gallantly as he now made it for his son, 
 the reputation he won when he was Viscount Faineant was 
 not to be wondered at. And if St. Albans was rather lax in 
 his courtship, the Marquis did his best to cover and make up 
 for his short-comings. St. Albans, though I suppose recon- 
 ciled, was hardly as enchanted as his father; I fancied, now and 
 then, there came over his face a look of genuine worry ; and 
 he was less in society than usual, which, considering he was a 
 man whom you met everywhere each season, and lived in the 
 
fUE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 41^ 
 
 liigliest and gayest mondes, was only traceable to one cause not 
 complimentary to Miss Sansreproche — that lie did not care to 
 have more of her society than he was forced, till he should be 
 linked to her for life. But Avarina bore it heroically ; she 
 went on her ways, showing herself with her equable grace of 
 manner at concerts, and dinners, balls, and dejeuners. She 
 was evidently, as Lord Glen said, a sensible woman, who nei- 
 ther gave nor expected any romantic nonsense ; and though 
 she smiled pleasantly when she and the Guardsman met in 
 the Eide, or at the Opera, or any of the numerous balls, din- 
 ners, and assemblies, she smiled just ^s pleasantly at me, or 
 at the old Duchess of Lapislazuli, or at her terrier Azer. She 
 did not seem to want St. Albans' attention, which was parti- 
 cularly lucky, for he did not seem inclined to pay it, but let 
 that part of the affair devolve on his father. The rumour of 
 their engagement got among the on dits of town, and one 
 morning, in the club, I read, among other fashionable intelli- 
 gence, " It is rumoured that a matrimonial alliance is projected 
 between Lord Cyril St. Albans, of the Coldstreams, second son 
 of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Glenallerton, and the Hon. 
 Avarina Sansreproche, only daughter and sole heiress of the 
 Baroness of Turquoise and Malachite and the late Hon. George 
 Sansreproche." 
 
 The old Lord standing by me pointed to the paragraph, 
 smiled, and took out his enamelled box. 
 
 "Never bet with an old diplomatist !" 
 
 "Is it settled then?" 
 
 "Of course!" 
 
 The Marquis gave me a glance that said, " Bo you suppose 
 anything /undertook could fail to be?" 
 
 "Has St. Albans positively proposed to her, sir?" 
 
 " Proposed ? No, I believe not ; but the affair is quite ar- 
 ranged, and perfectly understood by every one. Lady Tur- 
 quoise and I " 
 
 " Then there is no hope for him?" 
 
 " No fear, you mean 1 No, the marriage is ^s certain as if 
 it had already taken place, and it will be the best step of his 
 life." 
 
 " Well, my Lord, I hope it may : but, on my life, for St. 
 Albans to marry seems as bad as for him to shoot himself. He's 
 
 the last man in the world- ^" 
 
 27—2 
 
4id THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 
 
 The Marquis slirugged his shoulders, and tapped his box-lid 
 amusedly. 
 
 " You men of the present generation are strange fellows ! 
 You speak of a good alliance made from social and sensible 
 motives as dolefully as if it were a miserable, infatuated love- 
 match. Cyril will marry, and will thank me very much for 
 my advice. I told you I should win ; there was never any 
 doubt about it." 
 
 St. Albans was sitting in the bay-window of the Guards' 
 Club half an hour after, when I went there, reading the morn- 
 ing papers, and, as his *eyes fell on the paragraph that con^ 
 cerned himself, something suspiciously like a sneer went over 
 his face. I suppose he thought it was an announcement of 
 his own sale, similar to the announcement of the sale of a 
 lioble and costly Hbrary by Christie, or of a chestnut two-year- 
 old by Tattersail. 
 
 " So you are really going in for marriage, St. Albans?" said 
 Brabazon of the Grenadiers. 
 
 St. Albans looked up for a moment, as if he were positively 
 startled by the very innocent and natural query; then he 
 yawned behind his paper, stroked his moustaches and stretched 
 himself : 
 
 << My good fellow, if I were going to be hanged to-morrow, 
 would you think it good taste to remind me of my doom?" 
 
 " By George ! I wish Avarina heard you. Is that paragTaph 
 true ? You married ! Jupiter ! who will credit it ? You're a 
 fit fellow to take matrimonial vows, certainly. Your wife will 
 little know what a Tartar she has caught ! if she heard some 
 stories I could tell her ! " 
 
 St. Albans smiled a little : 
 
 " Even if you did, Charlie, I would bet you my wife would 
 like me better, with all my faults, than any creature (if there 
 be one) without any at all. My dear fellow, you forget you 
 talk to the most attractive man in town." 
 
 He spoke the first words half sadly, but the last in his own 
 light, languid way, with a gay laugh. Brabazon laughed too, 
 and began to talk of the latest odds for the Ascot Cup next 
 week. 
 
 " Grey Royal hasn't a chance with Coronation and Beau 
 Sire ; she'll never win. I never knew one of Capel Caradoo's 
 horses that did," said Wyndham, contemptuously. 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 421 
 
 " Grey Eoyal ! I believe you. She's a clever-looking little 
 mare, but she wouldn't win the Consolation Scramble," added 
 Tom Yane. " She'll let you in heavily, St. Albans, take my 
 word." 
 
 St. Albans laughed : 
 
 " Yery likely. Most things feminine betray confidence, 
 whether equine or human. But I'm resigned. Where's the 
 good of worrying % It never makes anything better ; there's 
 nothing worth vexing oneself about under the sun ; it only 
 makes lines in your forehead, and spoils your good looks. The 
 governor's Tin Epicurean, and so am I ; we never bother our- 
 selves; if things go smoothly, well and good; if they don't, 
 we turn our backs on them." 
 
 " What a lucky dog that is," said Erabazon to me, as St. 
 Albans went out of the club. " N"othing troubles him ; his 
 life's one long round of delicious far niente, except, I suppose, 
 he's deep with the Jews ; but if they know he's going to marry 
 into such a lot of tin as the Sansreproches, they'll let him 
 alone fast enough." 
 
 St. Albans went home to the Albany, drank down some iced 
 water, and threw himself into an ecarte-chair, worry enough on 
 him, now that he was alone and could give reins to it. 
 
 " By Heaven ! if that mare only win, I will never bet again, 
 I swear," he mused, in his solitude. " If she lose, I must sell 
 my horses and everything available, pay the debts of honour 
 as best I may, and leave England. My father is right : I live 
 at the rate of a man with thirty thousand a year, and if I lose 
 on that race, God knows what I am to do ! And I have drawn 
 her into my fate as weU ! She loves me : she would endure 
 anything on earth for me. But she knows nothing of the 
 world ; she little dreams what it is for a man of pleasure to 
 have ruin stare him in the face, and threaten to rob him of all 
 his luxuries, pleasures, appliances, all he values, even perhaps 
 to his good name. Poverty, I verily believe, would be bearable 
 to her with me ; but, God hePf) her, I am too spoiled by the 
 world to reach her standard, or learn her unselfishness." 
 
 Ascot week came, and Grey Eoyal won ! beating Corona- 
 tion, who had been winner of the Two Thousand the year 
 before, and Beau Sire, who had been second at the Derby, 
 throwing everybody out of their calculations, and gaining the 
 Red Eiband of the Turf for Capel Caradoc ; giving the lie to 
 
422 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 
 
 all lier foes' predictions, and proving herself worthy of lier few 
 staunch friends' trust, like a well-bred, clever, unpretending 
 little chestnut as she was. Grey Koyal won, and so by her 
 did St. Albans. 
 
 He drove me down on the Cup Day, and never had I seen 
 him so agitated about the issue of a race. He always betted 
 considera>bly, and always took his gains or his losses with that 
 light philosophy arising from the mixture in his character of 
 generosity and carelessness, sweet temper and indolence, which 
 he had practised all his life ; -but that day it deserted him. 
 He was very pale ; he looked anxious and agitated ; and as 
 for the last ten yards Coronation and Grey Eoyal held neck 
 by neck together, I heard his quick, loud breathings, that told 
 how much was at stake for him on the issue of the race. 
 ' Grey Eoyal won, the Marquis was fain to confess he had been 
 in the wrong, and his son looked like a man who had received 
 a reprieve from the gallows or the guillotine, and drove us back 
 to town in spirits too genuinely gay to. be forced or assumed. 
 "So that chestnut of Caradoc's beat, after all!" said the 
 Marquis to me on the Heath. " I am glad she did- I know 
 Cyril has risked a great deal of money upon her, and if he 
 have won considerably he can free himself of one or two of 
 his more pressing debts before his marriage. But I dare say 
 you know more of how his affairs stand than I do." 
 
 " St. Albans, you must dine with us at the Star arid Garter 
 to-morrow," said Brabazon, as we drove home. " You must. 
 iN'o, hang it ! we won't let you off. You're beginning to grow 
 unsociable. That's what comes of being an engaged man, or 
 next door to it. There won't be any women, so Avarina can't 
 be scandahsed if she hears of it." 
 
 St. Albans laughed : 
 
 " My dear fellow, I shouldn't mind scandalising Miss Sans- 
 reproche in the least." 
 
 " As a preface to what she'll have to encounter afterwards, 
 eh? Well, that's only fair. You'U come then, Cyril? I'U 
 call for you at half-past seven, if you like T 
 
 "Very well, do." 
 
 He didn't seem over-willing, I thought, despite the pre- 
 ference Wsf. lather had accused him of giving to Eichmond 
 dinners o"vtr private ones. "Whether he was or not, however, 
 ^Prabazon took him and me up at AYhite's the next day, and 
 
THE MARQUIS S TACTICS, 423 
 
 the Marquis nodded his son a good-humoured adieu from the 
 bay-window. 
 
 " Cyril asked me what time he could see me alone to-mor- 
 row," he thought, complacently, as he returned to his papers. 
 " To tell me he has proposed to Avarina, no doubt ! Ah ! adroit 
 management always succeeds. It is only your bunglers who 
 fail — your maladroits, who push the thing too far, or do not 
 push it far enough.** 
 
 Brabazon's dinner was a very pleasant one. He had about 
 ten or a dozen men, and we were as comfortable as men ever 
 are when alone. We could talk what we liked, we could smoke 
 when we would, we had not to rake up current chit-chat for 
 Lady Adeliza nor go through an examination in chamber- 
 music for Miss Concerto ; it was a pleasant dinner from the 
 fish to the move, which did not inaugurate the exit of ladies, 
 but the entrance of coffee, and a lounge at the windows to scent 
 the honeysuckles and drink iced waters. 
 
 "I say," said Brabazon, suddenly, " do you remember that 
 girl we saw as we came back from Telfer's boating party % You 
 clo % Well, I told you I'd find out something about her % I 
 sent Evans down to inquire what he could, but he's such a 
 fool, he only brought me word that the house was called Brooke 
 Lodge, as if I cared a hang for the name of the flace ! I must 
 ferret her out somehow. She was such a pretty creature ! If 
 I see her in that garden again, I'll speak to her, I vow, for all 
 she flew away as if we were ogres." 
 
 *^ How do you know your acquaintance will be desired or 
 accepted T said St. Albans from another window. 
 
 I looked at him surprised. There was a flush of annoyance 
 on his face, and he pulled down his left wristband impatiently. 
 Brabazon laughed : 
 
 " What a shocking fellow you are, St. Albans ! Can't you 
 let one talk of any one woman without wanting to appropriate 
 her % Poor Avarina ! But do you know my little beauty T 
 
 " What may her name be*?" said St. Albans, with his teeth 
 set hard on his cigarette. 
 
 " Marchmont, I think ; I mean to find out more about her. 
 She's too good to be lost, if attainable; she's the loveliest 
 thing, on my honoar, and you know " 
 
 St. Albans stroked his moustache impatiently, an angry flush 
 mounting over his forehead. I had never seen him look so 
 irritated in his life. 
 
424 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 
 
 " I know one thing, tliat if you want to be home in time 
 for Lady Wentworth's theatricals, you must start. ' It is ten 
 o'clock," he said, looking at his watch, and flinging his cigarette 
 into the garden below. 
 
 We did want to be in time for Lady Wentworth's, so we 
 broke up and drove homewards. St. Albans chose the back 
 ^eat, and was unusually silent, smoking, and entering but little 
 into mine andBrabazon's conversation, which was chiefly on the 
 score of the beauty whom we had seen a few days before, when 
 we were on the river. She had been throwing a stick into the 
 water, towards which her garden sloped down, for her dog to 
 fetch ; her face had caught Brabazon's eye, and pleased him 
 so well that he couldn't forget it, and being an inflammable 
 fellow, had sworn to see it again, which appeared to him toler- 
 ably practicable^ as, by all his servant could hear, she seemed 
 to be living alone, and to be rather a mysterious young lady 
 altogether, going by the name of Miss Marchmont. He was 
 destined to keep his oath. Just as we drove out of Eich- 
 mond we passed the palings of a garden, with laburnums and 
 lilacs nodding their heads over them in the summer moon- 
 light, and leaning on the top rail of the little iron gate stood 
 this identical woman : the June evening was well-nigh as bright 
 as day, and very fair and striking she certainly looked in it. 
 
 " By George !" cried Brabazon, who was a devil-may-care 
 young fellow, and that night, thanks to his having won by 
 Grey Eoyal, in the mood for any sort of mischief, " there's my 
 little beauty, I vow, looking for somebody — for me, perhaps. 
 By Jove, I will go and ask her !" 
 
 " Stop ! Good God ! are you mad T began St. Albans, in 
 a tone I'd never heard from him in his life ; but before the 
 words were off his lips, Brabazon pulled up, flung the reins to 
 me, jumped down, and with a laugh, lifting his hat, went up 
 to the gate. The girl stood as if uncertain in the dusky light 
 whether he were the person, whoever he was, whom she ex- 
 pected or not ; but before he could speak to her, St. Albans 
 sprang down and caught hold of his arm. 
 
 " Take care what you say !" 
 
 The other looked up and laughed : 
 
 " Hallo ! I beg your pardon, St. Albans. I didn't know I 
 was poaching on your manor ; couldn't tell, could 1 1 The 
 deuce ! I fancied you'd some proprietorship in " 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 425 
 
 " Be silent, for Heaven's sake ! She is my wife /" 
 
 Erabazon stared aghast. 
 
 " Your wife ! Good God ! I thought Avarina " 
 
 " Is nothing to me ; never was, never will be. This is my 
 wife. Our marriage has been secret, owing to many reasons, 
 but it must be secret no longer now insult has once approached 
 her," said St. Albans, as he turned and beckoned to me, in 
 his old languid, indolent style. " It's a queer place for an in- 
 troduction, twelve o'clock at night at a garden gate, I must 
 say, but will you allow me to present you to Lady Cyril St. 
 Albans?" 
 
 " I told Cyril twelve o'clock, and it is twenty to one ; but 
 he is never punctual. He might as well come at once ; he 
 knows I shaU be delighted to hear his news, though I know 
 what it will be. If you set to work adroitly you are safe to 
 
 succeed ; skilful diplomacy always ^Ah ! there you are at 
 
 last. Good morning," said the Marquis, next morning, look- 
 ing up from his breakfast in his house in Berkeley-square, await- 
 ing the interview his son had requested. 
 
 St. Albans tossed himself into an easy-chair, laid his head 
 back on the cushion, and stroked an infinitesimal terrier. 
 
 " Good morning, governor. I'm come to speak to you, 
 please." 
 
 " Speak, my dear fellow," smiled the Marquis graciously. 
 " I can guess your errand, but go on." 
 
 " Did I understand you rightly, sir, that you wished me to 
 marry T 
 
 " Quite rightly. I do wish you — most earnestly.'* 
 
 " You think I couldn't do better T 
 
 *' Decidedly I do. You have my full concurrence." 
 
 " I'm glad to hear that, because it's troublesome to dispute, 
 and you know I am always happy to please you. Will you 
 come and be introduced to my wife, then V 
 
 The Marquis laughed and stirred his chocolate. 
 
 " My dear Cyril, I congratulate you most warmly ; you 
 have acted most wisely ; believe me, it will be the happiest 
 step of your life." 
 
 " I think it will !" 
 
 " I know it will. I could not tell you how much I myself 
 ^m pleased. Of course you have said nothing about time yet, 
 
426 THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS. 
 
 but if I might advise, I should hurry it on as much as posh 
 sible. Your Jews ^^ 
 
 " I have hurried it on. I went through the ceremony, and 
 bore it nobly, I assure you, a month ago." 
 
 The Marquis stared. ^'Went through the ceremony? 
 Pardon me, I don't quite understand your jest. What do 
 you mean T 
 
 " I mean, bon pere, that I am married T 
 
 " Good Heavens ! Avarina would never — — " 
 
 ^' Avarina has nothing to do with it. My dear governor, 
 I'm very sorry, but I had anticipated your advice. Don't be 
 vexed, governor, she will do the St. Albans credit; surely 
 you can trust my taste. I was married the day you coun- 
 selled me first. We have had to keep it private, because of 
 those deuced Jews ; but there is no longer any need. I won 
 enough at Ascot to quiet the most troublesome, and I am able 
 to proclaim it, and introduce her now. Don't go into a fit, my 
 dear father, for God's sake ! I know you meant all kindness, 
 but had I never met Yiolet, neither you nor any man would 
 have made me sell myself for money " 
 
 " Viold ./" gasped the Marquis, white and breathless. 
 
 " Poor Marchmont's daughter — his only child, indeed. Do 
 you remember him — a man in the Bays, who ran through 
 every sou and cut to Prance ? I met her in Paris this spring 
 under very singular circumstances — romantic ones if you like. 
 JN"o matter to relate them now ; her father was dead ; she was 
 only seventeen, alone and unhappy with some wretched 
 Prench people ; and, in a word," said St. Albans, nestling into 
 his chair and resuming his old tone, " she pleased me, and I 
 was so dreadfully afraid of your fettering me one day to some 
 red-haired woman with money, that I married her in Paris, 
 and gave her a right to protect me." 
 
 Lord Glenallerton gasped for breath, then rose, his indigna* 
 tion too great to be uttered. He looked at his son with deep, 
 mournful, contemptuous pity. 
 
 " Seventeen — alone — ^unprotected — and you married her.*' 
 
 St. Albans rose too : 
 
 " Yes, my Lord, I married her ! Good for very little I 
 may be, but I did not utterly abuse trust innocently and 
 entirely placed in me." 
 
 The Marquis waved his hand to the door. 
 
THE MARQUIS'S TACTICS, 427 
 
 " I decline to express my opinion of your conduct, or I 
 should be obliged to use words I should regret to use to a man 
 who bears my name. You will see your own folly in time 
 without any enlightenment from me. I need not say I wish 
 our acquaintance to cease from to-day. May I trouble you to 
 leave me? — Married a woman without a farthing ! Good 
 God ! And he calls himself a man of the world !" amirmured 
 the Marquis as the door closed on his son ; and he sank back 
 in his arm-chair, crushed, paralysed, and speechless, at the 
 ruin of all his diplomacy. 
 
 And so our wager was drawn ! The Maequis's Tactics 
 were the best joke of that season ; but Eocliefoucauldean, 
 philosopher though he might be, I believe their failure rankled 
 more cruelly in Lord Glen's breast than any lack of success at 
 a European congress or a meeting of the Powers. He had 
 never been foiled before — and he had made a fool of himself 
 to so many ! As for cutting St. Albans, he was too good- 
 natured to do that, and in his heart liked his son too well to 
 be able to sit in the same club window many days without 
 speaking to him. He considers him an 'enfant ;perdu, a wasted 
 alliance — ^in a word, a very great fool — but told him so one day 
 with much unction, regretted that romantic element in his 
 character to which his downfall was to be attributed with 
 deep pathos, and was reconciled to him for ever afterwards. 
 He had some slight consolation when Faineant returned from 
 Athens, in wedding him to Avarina Sansreproche ; and if you 
 asked him which he preferred of his two daughters-in-law, he 
 would tell you — and possibly persuade himself that he told 
 the truth — that he admires and respects tEie future Baroness 
 of Turquoise and Malachite de tout son cceur^ and has never 
 pardoned " Cyril's Folly," as he terms the other ; but as Lady 
 Faineant grows decidedly plainer as years roll on, and it is 
 Violet St. Albans with whom he laughs, jokes, and tells his 
 Eegency stories, and at whom he looked most complacently 
 at the Drawing-room, when they were both presented " on 
 their marriage," the next season, I have my doubts as to his 
 veracity. 
 
i 
 
 SIR GALAHAD^S RAID: 
 
 AN ADVENTUHE ON THE SWEET WATERS. 
 
 For the punishment of my sins may the gods never again 
 send me to Pera ! That I might have plenty on my shoulders 
 I am frankly willing to concede ; all I protest is, that when 
 one submissively acknowledges the justice of one's future 
 terminating in Tophet, it comes a little hard to get purgatory 
 in this world into the bargain. Purgatory lies ;perdu for one 
 all over the earth. I have had fifty times more than my 
 share already, and the gout still remains an untried ex- 
 perience, a Gehenna grimly waiting to avenge every morsel 
 of white truffle and every glass of comet claret with which 
 I innocently solace my frail mortality. Purgatory ! — I have 
 been chained in it fifty times ; et vous ? 
 
 When you rush to a Chancellerie, with the English Arms 
 gorgeous above its doorway, on the spur of a frightfully mys- 
 terious and autocr^ic telegram, that makes it life or death to 
 catch the train for England in ten minutes, and have time 
 enough to smoke about two dozen very big cheroots, cooling 
 your heels in the bureau, and then hear (when properly tor- 
 tured into the due amount of frantic agony for the intelli- 
 gence to be fully appreciated) that his Excellency is gone 
 
 snipe shooting to , and that the Eirst Secretary is in his 
 
 bath, and has given orders not to be disturbed ; your infor- 
 mant languidly pricking his cigar with his toothpick, and 
 politely intimating by his eyebrows that you and your neces- 
 sities may go to the deuce; — what's that? When you are 
 doing the sanitary at Weedon, by some hideous conjunction 
 of evil destinies, in the very Ducal week itself, and thinking 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 429 
 
 of the nisli with which Tom Alcroft will land the filly, or the 
 close finish with which Fordham will get the cup, while you 
 are not there to see, are sorely tempted to realise the Parisian 
 vision of Anglo suicide, and load the apple-trees with sus- 
 pended human fruit ; — what's that ? When, having got leave, 
 and established yourself in cozy hunting quarters, with some 
 cattle not to be beat in stay, blood, and pace, close to a kill- 
 ing pack that never score a blank day, there falls a bitter, 
 black frost, locking the country up in iron bonds, and making 
 every bit of ridge and furrow like a sheet of glass ; — what's 
 that"? 
 
 Bah ! I could go on ad infinitum, and cite " circles of pur- 
 gatory'' in which mortal man is doomed to pass his time, be- 
 side which Dante's Caina, Antenora, and Ptolomea sink into 
 insignificance. But of all Purgatories, chiefest in my memory, 
 is Pera. Pera in the old Crimean time — Pera the " beau- 
 tiful suburb" of fond "fiction" — Pera, with the dirt, the fleas, 
 the murders, the mosquitoes, the crooked streets, the lying 
 Greeks, the stench, the hubbub, the dulness, and the everlast- 
 ing " Bono Johnny." 
 
 " Call a dog Hervey, and I shall love him," said Johnson, 
 so dear was his friend to him : — " call a dog Johnny, and I 
 shall kick him," so abominable grew that word in the eternal 
 Turkish jabber ! Tell me, prettiest, softest-voiced, most 
 beguiling, feminine ^othen, in as romantic periods as you 
 will, of bird-like feluccas darting over the Bosphorus, of 
 curled caiques gliding through fragrant water- weeds ; of Ara- 
 bian Nights reproduced, when up through the darkness peal 
 the roll of the drums calling the Faithful to prayers ; of the 
 nights of Eamadan, with the starry clusters of light gleaming 
 all down Stamboul, and flashing, firefly-like, through the dark 
 citron groves ; — tell me of it as you will, I don't care : you 
 may think me a Goth, ce wJest lien egal, and you were not in 
 cavalry quarters at Pera. I wasn't exacting ; I did not mind 
 having ants in my jam, nor centipedes in my boots, nor a shirt 
 in six months, nor bacon for a luxury that strongly resembled 
 an old file rusted by sea-water, nor any little trifle of that sort 
 up in the front ; all that is in the fortune of war : but I confess 
 that Pera put me fairly out of patience, specially when a certain 
 trusty friend of mine, who has no earthly fault, that I wot of, 
 except that of perpetually looking at life through a Claude 
 
436 SIR GALAHAD'S RAlb, 
 
 glass (which is the most aggravating opticism to a dispassionate 
 and unblinded mind that the world holds), 2(<'0?^Z6? poetise upon 
 it, or at least on the East in general, which came pretty much 
 to the same thing. 
 
 The sun poured down on me till (conscience, probably) I 
 remembered the scriptural threat to the wicked, "their brains 
 shall boil in their skulls like pots;" — Sir Galahad, as I will 
 call him, would murmur to himself, with his cheroot in his 
 teeth, Manfred's salut to the sun, looking as lovingly at it as 
 any eagle. Mosquitoes reduced me to the very borders of 
 madness — Sir Galahad would placidly remark, how Buckland 
 would revel here in all those gorgeous beetles. A Greek told 
 crackers till I had to double-thong him like a puppy — Sir 
 Galahad would shout to me to let the fellow alone, he looked 
 so deuced picturesque, he must have him for a study. I made 
 myself wretched in a ticklish caique, the size of a cockle-shell, 
 where, when one was going full harness to the Great Effendi's, 
 it was a moral impossibility to be doubled without one's sash 
 swinging into the water, one's sword sticking over the side, 
 and the liveliest sensation of cramp pervading one's body — 
 Sir Galahad, blandly indifferent, would discourse, with superb 
 Euskin obscurity, of " tone," and " colouring," and " harmon- 
 ised light," while he looked down the Golden Horn, for he was 
 a little Art-mad, and painted so well that if he had been a pro- 
 fessional the hanging committee would have shut him out to 
 a certainty. 
 
 ;N'ow he was a good fellow, a hmu sahreur, who had fetched 
 some superb back strokes in the battery at Balaclava, who 
 could send a line spinning, and land a horse in a gentleman 
 rider's race, and pot the big game, and lead the first flight 
 over ]N"orthamptonshire doubles at home, as well as a man 
 wants to do ; but I put it to any dispassionate person whether 
 this persistent poetism of his, flying in the face of facts and of 
 fleas, was not enough to make anybody swear in that mosquito- 
 purgatorio of Pera ? 
 
 Sir Galahad was a capital fellow, and the men would have 
 gone after him to the death ; the fair, frank, handsome face, 
 a little womanish perhaps, was very pleasant to look at, and 
 he got the Victoria not long ago for a deed that would suit 
 Arthur's table ; but in Pera, I avow, he made me swear hard, 
 and if he would just have set his heel on his Claude glass, 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 431 
 
 cursed the Turks, and growled refreshingly, I should have loved 
 him better. He was philosophic and he was poetic ; and the 
 combination of temperaments lifted him in a mortifying alti- 
 tude above ordinary humanity, that was baked, broiled, grum- 
 bling, savage, bitten, fleeced, and holding its own against 
 miserable rats, Greeks, and Bono Johnnies, with an Aristides 
 thieving its last shirt, and a Pisistratus getting drunk at its 
 case-bottle ! That sublime serenity of his in Pera ended in 
 making me unholy and ungenerous ; if he would but have 
 sworn once at the confounded country I should have borne it, 
 but he never did, and I longed to see him out of temper, I 
 pined and thirsted to get him disenchanted. " Tout vient a 
 ^oint, a qui salt attendre" they say, a motto, by the way, that 
 might be written over the Horse Guards for the comfort of 
 gloomy souls, when, in the words of the Psalmist, " Promotion' 
 cometh neither from the south, nor from the east, nor from 
 the west" — by which lament one might conclude David of 
 Israel to have been a sufferer by the Purchase-system ! 
 
 " Delicious ! " said Sir Galahad, sending a whiff of Turkish 
 tobacco into the air one morning after exercise, when he and I, 
 having ridden out a good many miles along the Sweet Waters, 
 turned the horses loose, bought some grapes and figs of an old 
 Turk, dispossessed him of his bit of cocoa-matting, and flung 
 ourselves under a plane-tree. And the fellow looked round 
 him through his race-glass at the cypress woods, the mosques 
 and minarets, the almond thickets, the " soft creamy distance," 
 as he called it in his argot d! atelier, and the Greek fishermen 
 near, drawing up a net full of silvery prismatic fishes, with a 
 relish absolutely exasperating. Exasperating — when the sun 
 was broiling one's brain through the linen, and there wasn't a 
 drop of Eass or Soda-and-B to be got for love or money, and 
 one thought thirstily of days at home in England, with the 
 birds whirring up from the stubble in the cool morning, and 
 the cold punch uncorked for luncheon, under the home woods 
 fringing the open. 
 
 " One wants Hunt to catch that bit of colour," murmured 
 Sir Galahad, luxuriously eyeing a mutilated Janissary's tomb 
 covered with scarlet creepers. 
 
 "Hunt be hanged !" said I (meaning no disrespect to that 
 eminent Pre-Eaphaelite, whose "Light of the World" I took 
 at first si^ht to be a policeman going his night rounds, and 
 
43^ SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 
 
 come out in his shirt by mistake ; by the way, it is a droll 
 idea to symbolise the " light of the world" by a watchman 
 with a dark lantern, lux in tenehras with a vengeance !) " Give 
 me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall, and the devil may take 
 the Sweet Waters. What's the Feast of Eairam beside the 
 Derby Day, or your confounded colouring beside a well-done 
 cutlet ■? What's lemonade by Brighton Tipper, and a veiled 
 bundle by a pretty blonde, and an eternity of Stamboul by 
 an hour of Piccadilly ?'' 
 
 Sir Galahad smiled superior, and shied a date at me. 
 
 " Goth ! can't you be content to feed like the Patriarchs, and 
 live like an idylf' 
 
 " No ! I'd rather feed like a Parisian, and live an idler ! , 
 ^ Eat grapes if you choose ; I agree with Brillat-Savarin, and 
 don't like my wine in pills." 
 
 " My good fellow, you're all prose." 
 
 " And you're all poetry You're as bad as that pretty little 
 commissariat girl who lisjDed me to death last night at the Em- 
 bassy with platitudes of bosh about the * poetry of marriage.' " 
 
 " The deuce !" said Sir Galahad, with a whistle, " that must 
 be like most other poetry now-a-days — uncommon dull prose, 
 shced up in uneven lengths ! Didn't you tell her so ?" 
 
 " Couldn't ; I should have pulled the string for a shower- 
 bath of sentiment ! When a woman's bolted on romance you 
 only make the pace worse if you gall her with the curb of 
 common sense. When romance is in, reason's out — excuse 
 the personality!" 
 
 He didn't hear me ; he was up like a retriever who scents a 
 wild duck or a water-rat among the sedges, for sweeping near 
 us with soft gliding motion, as pretty as a toy and as graceful 
 as a swan, came a caique, with the "svife of a Pacha of at least 
 a hundred tails in it, to judge by the costliness of her exquisite 
 attire. I^ow, women were not rare, but then they were always 
 veiled, which is like giving a man a nugget he mustn't take 
 out of the quartz, a case of champagne he mustn't undo, a 
 cover-side he is never to beat, a trout stream in which he must 
 never fling a fly ; and Sir Galahad, whose loves were not, I 
 admit, quite so saintly as Arthur's code exacted, lost his head 
 in a second as the caique drifted past us, and, raising herself 
 on her cushions, the Leilah Duda or Salya within it, glanced 
 towards the myrtle screen that half hid us, with the divinest 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 433 
 
 antelope eyes in the world, andletting the silver gauze folds of her 
 veil float half aside, showed ns the beautiful warm bloom, the 
 proud lips, and the chestnut tresses braided with pearls and 
 threaded with gold, of your genuine Circassian beauty. Shade 
 of Don Juan ! what a face it was ! 
 
 A yataghan might have been at his throat, a bowstring at 
 his neck, eunuchs might have slaughtered, and Pachas have 
 impaled him, Galahad would have seen more of that loveliness; 
 headlong he plunged down the slope, crushing through the 
 almond thickets and scattering the green tree frogs right and 
 left ; the caique was just rounding past as he reached the 
 water's edge, and the beauty's veil was drawn in terror of her 
 guard. But as the little cockle-shell, pretty and ticklish as a 
 nautilus, was moored to a broad flight of marble stairs, the 
 Circassian turned her head towards the place where the Un- 
 believer stood in the sunlight — ^her eyes were left her, and 
 with them women speak in an universal tongue. Then the 
 green lattice gate shut, the white impenetrable walls hid her 
 from sight, and Sir Galahad stood looking down the Sweet 
 Waters in a sort of beatific vision, in love for the 1360th time 
 in his life. And certainly he had never been in love -with 
 better reason; for is there anything on earth so divine as your 
 antelope-eyed and gold-haired Circassian? 
 
 " I shall be inside those walls or know the reason why," 
 said he, whom two gazelle eyes had fired and captured, there 
 by the side of the sunny Sweet Waters, where the lazy air was 
 full of syringa and rose odours, and there was no sound but 
 the indolent beating of the tired oars on the ripples. 
 
 *' Which reason you will rapidly find," I suggested, " in a 
 knock on the head from the Faithful !" 
 
 "Well ! a very picturesque way of coming to grief; to go 
 ojff the scene in the sick- wards, from raki and fruit, would be 
 common-place and humiliating, but to die in a serail, stabbed 
 through and through by green-eyed jealousy, would be 
 piquant and refreshing to the last degree ; do you really 
 think there's a chance of it "?" said Galahad, rather anxiously 
 — the eager wistful anxiety of a man who, athirst for the 
 forest, hears of the rumoured slot of an outlying deer — ^while 
 he shouted the Greek fisherman to him, and learned, after 
 sore travail through a slough of mixed Italian, Turkish, and 
 Albanian, that the white palace, with its green lattice and its 
 
 28 
 
434 
 
 S/J? GALAHAD'S RAID. 
 
 hanging gardens, belonged to a rich merchant of Constantino- 
 ple, and that this veiled angel was the favonrite of his harem, 
 Leilah Derran, a recent purchase in Circassia, and the queen 
 of the Anderiin. 
 
 " The old rascal !" swore Galahad, in his wrath, which 
 was not, however, I think, caused by any particular Chris- 
 tian disgust at polygamy. " A fat old sinner, I'll be bound, 
 who sits on his divan puffing his chibouque and stuffing his 
 sweetmeats, as yellow as Beppo, and as round as a ball. Bah ! 
 what pearls before swine ! It's enough to make a saint 
 swear. Those heavenly eyes ! . . . ." And Galahad 
 went into a somewhat earthly reverie, coloured with a thirsty 
 jealousy of the purchaser and the possessor of this Circassian 
 gazelle, as he rode reluctantly back towards Pera. 
 
 The Circassian was in his head, and did not get out again. 
 He let himself be bewitched by that lovely face wliich had 
 flashed on him for a second, and began to feel himself as ag- 
 grieved by that innocent and unoffending Turkish lord of 
 hers, as if the nnlucky gentleman had stolen his own pro- 
 perty ! The antelope eyes had looked softly and hauntingly 
 sad, moreover ; I demonstrated to him that it was nothing 
 more than the way that the eye-lashes drooped, but nobody 
 in love (very few people out of it) have any taste for logic ; 
 he was simply disgusted with my realism, and saw an instant 
 vision for himself of this loveliest of slaves, captive in a bazaar 
 and sold into the splendid bondage of the harem as into an 
 inevitable fate, mournful in her royalty as a nightingale ia a 
 cage, stifled with roses, and as little able to escape as the 
 bird. A vision which intoxicated and enraptured Sir Gala- 
 had, who, in the teeth of every abomination of Pera, had been 
 content to see only what he wished to see, and had maintained 
 that the execrable East, to make it the East of Hafiz and all the 
 poets, only wanted — available Haidees ! "Hang it ! I think 
 it's nothing hut Hades ;" said an Aide, overhearing that state- 
 ment one night, as we stumbled out of a half-cafe, haK-gamb- 
 ling-booth pandemonium into the crooked, narrow, pitch-dark 
 street, where dogs were snarling over offal, jackals screaming, 
 Turkish bands shrieking, cannon booming out the hour of 
 prayer, women yelHng alarms of fire, a Zouave was spitting 
 a Greek by way of practice, and an Irishman had just 
 potted a Dalmatian, in as brawling, rowing, pestiferous, 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 435 
 
 tinodorous an earthly Gehenna as men ever succeeded in 
 making. 
 
 Sir Galahad was the least vain of mortals ; nevertheless, 
 being as well-beloved by the " maidens and young widows " 
 for his fair handsome face as Harold the Gold-haired, he 
 would have been more than mortal if he had not been toler- 
 ably confident of "killing," and luxuriously practised in 
 that pleasant pastime. That if he could once get the ante- 
 lope eyes to look at him, they would look lovingly before 
 long, he was in comfortable security ; but how to get into a 
 presence, which it was death for an Unbeliever and a male 
 creature to approach, was a knottier question, and the diffi- 
 culty absorbed him. There were several rather telling Eng- 
 lishwomen out there, with whom he had flirted faute d& 
 mieux, at the cavalry balls we managed to get up in Pera, at 
 the Embassy costume-ball, on board the yacht-decks in the 
 harbour, and in pic-nics to Therapia or the Monastery. Eut 
 they became as flavourless as twice-told tales and twice-warmed 
 entremets besides the new piquance, the delicious loveliness, 
 the divine difficulty of this captive Circassian. That he had 
 no more earthly business to covet her than he had to covet 
 the unlucky Turkish trader's lumps of lapis-lazuli and agate, 
 never occurred to him ; the stones didn't tempt him, you see, 
 but the beauty did. That those rich, soft, unrivalled Eastern 
 charms, " merely born to bloom and drop,'^ should be caged 
 from the world and only rejoice the eyes of a fat old opium- 
 soddened Stamboul merchant, seemed a downright reversal of 
 all the laws of nature, a tampering with the balance of just 
 apportion that clamoured for redress ; but like most other 
 crying injustice, the remedy was hard to compass. 
 
 Day after day he rode down to the same place on the Sweet 
 Waters on the chance of the caique's passing; and, sure 
 enough, the caique did pass nine times out of ten, and, when 
 opportunity served for such a hideous Oriental crime not to 
 be too perilous, the silver gauze floated aside unveiling a 
 face as fair as the morning, or, when that was impossible, the 
 eyes turned on him shyly and sadly in their lustrous appeal, 
 as though mutely bewailing such cruel captivity. Those 
 eyes said as plainly as language could speak that the lovely 
 Favourite plaintively resisted her bondage, and thought the 
 Erank with his long fair beard, and his six feet of height, 
 
 28—2 
 
436 SIR GALAHAD'S RAID, 
 
 little short of an angel of light, though he might be an in- 
 fidel. 
 
 Given — ^hot languid days, nothing to do, sultry air heavy 
 with orange and rose odours, and those " silent passages," re- 
 peating themselves every time that Leilah Derran's caique 
 glided past the myrtle screen, where her Giaour lay ;perdu, 
 the result is conjectural ; though they had never spoken a 
 word they had both fallen in love. Voiceless amourettes have 
 their advantages : — when a woman speaks, how often she 
 snaps her spell ! For instance, when the lips are divine bub 
 the utterance is slangy, when the mouth is adorably rosebud 
 but what it says is most horribly horsy ! 
 
 A tender pity, too, gave its spur to his passion ; he saw 
 that, all Queen of the Serail though she might be, this fet- 
 tered gazelle was not happy in her rose-chains, and to Gala- 
 had, who had a wonderful twist of the knight-errant, and 
 lived decidedly some eight centuries too late, no wiliest temp- 
 tation would have been so fatal as this. 
 
 He swore to get inside those white inexorable walls, and he 
 kept his oath : one morning the latticed door stood ajar, with 
 the pomegranates and the citrons nodding through the open- 
 ing ; he flung prudence to the winds and peril to the devil, 
 and entered the forbidden ground where it was death for any 
 man, save the fat Omar himself, to be found. The fountains 
 were falling into marble basins, the sun was tempered by the 
 screen of leaves, the lories and humming-birds were flying 
 among the trumpet-flowers, altogether a most poetic and pleasant 
 place for an erratic adventure ; more so stiU when, as he went 
 farther, he saw reclining alone by the mosaic edge of a foun- 
 tain his lovely Circassian unveiled. With a cry of terror she 
 sprang to her feet, graceful as a startled antelope, and casting 
 the silver shroud about her head, would have fled ; but the 
 scream was not loud enough to give the alarm — perhaps she 
 attuned it so — and flight he prevented. Such Turkish as he had 
 he poured out in passionate eloquence, his love declaration only 
 made the more piquant by the knowledge that in a trice the 
 gardens might swarm with the Mussulman's guards and a 
 scimitar smite his head into the fountain. But the danger he 
 disdained, la belle Leilah remembered ; rebuke him she did not, 
 nor yet call her eunuchs to rid her of this terrible Giaour, 
 but the antelope eyes filled with piteous tears, and she prayed 
 
SJI^ GALAHAD'S RAID. 437 
 
 him begone — if lie were seen here, in the gardens of the 
 women, it were his death, it were hers ! Her terror at the 
 infidel was outweighed by her fear for his peril ; how hand- 
 some he was with his blue eyes and fair locks, after the bald, 
 black-browed, yellow, obese little Omar ! 
 
 '• Let me see again the face that is the light of my soul and 
 I will obey thee ; thou shalt do with thy slave as thou wilt !" 
 whispered Galahad in the most impassioned and poetical Turkish 
 he could muster, thinking the style of Hafiz understood better 
 here than the style of Belgravia, while the almond-eyed Leilah 
 trembled like a netted bird under his look and his touch, con- 
 scious, pretty creature, that were it once known that a Giaour 
 had looked on her, poison in her coffee or a sullen plunge by 
 night into the Bosphorus, would expiate the insult to the 
 honour of Omar, a master whom she piteously hated. She let 
 her veil float aside, nevertheless, blushing like a sea-shell under 
 the shame of an unbeliever's gaze — a genuine blush that is 
 banished from Europe — his eyes rested on the lovely youth of 
 her face, his cheek brushed the 
 
 Loose train of her amber dropping hair, 
 
 his lips met her own ; then, with a startled stifled cry, his coy 
 gazelle sprang away, lost in the aisles of the roses, and Galahad 
 quitted the dangerous precincts, in safety so far, not quite clear 
 whether he had been drinking or dreaming, and of convic- 
 tion thatPera had changed into Paradise. Porhe was in love 
 with two things at once : a romance and a woman ; and an 
 anchorite would fairly have lost his head after the divine dawn 
 of beauty in Leilah Derran. 
 
 The morrow, of course, found him at the same place, at the 
 same hour, hoping for a similar fortune, but the lattice door 
 was shut, and defied all force ; he was just about to try scaling 
 the high slippery walls by the fibres of a clinging fig-tree, when 
 a negress, the sole living thing in sight, beckoned him, a hideous 
 Abyssinian enough for a messenger of Eros ; a grinning good- 
 natured black, who had been bought in the same bazaar and 
 of the same owner as the lovely Circassian, to whose service 
 she was sworn. She told him by scraps of Turkish, and signs, 
 that Leilah had bidden her watch for and warn him, that it 
 were as much as both their lives were worth for him to be seen 
 again in the women's gardens, or anywhere i;iear her preseuce \ 
 
43S SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 
 
 that the merchant Omar was a monster of jealousy, and that 
 the rest of the harem, jealous of her supremacy and of the 
 unusual libeity her ascendancy procured her, would love nothing 
 so well as to compass her destruction. Further meeting with 
 her infidel lover she pronounced impossible, unless he would 
 see her consigned to the Bosphorus ; an ice avalanche of in- 
 telligence, which, falling on the tropical Eden of his passion, 
 had the effect, as it was probably meant that it should have, 
 of drowning the lingering remnant of prudence and sanity that 
 had remained to him after his lips had once touched the ex- 
 quisite Eastern's. 
 
 Under the circumstances the negress was his sole hope and 
 chance ; he pressed her into his service, and made her Mer- 
 cury and mediatrix in one. She took his messages, sent in 
 the only alphabet the pretty gazelle could read, i.e,, flowers, 
 plotted against her owner with true Eastern finesse, wrought 
 on the Circassian's tenderness for the Giaour, and her terrified 
 hatred of her grim lord Omar, and threw herself into the in- 
 trigue with the avidity of all womanhood, be it black or be 
 it white, for anything on the face of the earth that has the 
 charm of being forbidden. The affair was admirably en train, 
 and Galahad was profoundly happy ; he was deliciously in love 
 — a pleasant spice as difficult to find in its full flavour as 
 it is to bag a sand grouse ; — and had an adventure to amuse 
 him that might very likely cost him his head, and might fairly 
 claim to rise into the poetic. The only reward he received (or 
 ever got, for that matter) for the Balaclava brush, where he 
 cut down three gunners, and had a ball put in his hip, had 
 been a cavil raised by a critic, not there, of doubt whether 
 he had ever ridden inside the lines at all ; but his Circassian 
 would have recompensed him at once for a score years of Cher- 
 sonnesus campaigning, and unprofessional chroniclers : he was 
 perfectly happy, and his soft, careless, couleur de rose enjoy- 
 ment of the paradise was aggravating to behold — when one 
 was in Pera, and the heat broiled alive every mortal thing 
 that wasn't a negro, and Bass was limited, and there were no 
 Dailies, and one thought even lovingly and regretfully of the 
 old "beastly shells," that had at least this merit, that they 
 scattered bores when they burst ! 
 
 " Old fellow ! — want something to do T he asked me one 
 day. I nodded, being silent and savage from having had to 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 439 
 
 dance attendance on the Sultan at an Embassy reception. 
 Peace to his manes now ! but I know I wished him heartily 
 in Eblis at that time. 
 
 " Come with me to-night then, if you don't mind a proba- 
 bility of being potted by a True Believer," went on Leilah 
 Derran's lover, going into some golden water Soyer had sent 
 me. 
 
 " For the big game ? Like it of all things ; but you know 
 I'm tied by the leg here." 
 
 Galahad laughed. " Oh, I only want you an hour or two. 
 I've got six days' leave for the pigs and the deer ; but the 
 hills won't see much of me, I'm going to make a raid in the 
 rose-gardens. It may be hot work, so I thought you would 
 like it." 
 
 Of course I did, and asked the programme, which Sir Galahad, 
 as lucidly as a man utterly in love can tell anything, unfolded 
 me. Fortune favoured him : it was the night of the Feast of 
 Eairam, when aU the world of Turkey lights its lamps and 
 turns out ; he had got leave under pretext of a shooting trip 
 into Koumelia, but the game he was intent on was the cap- 
 tive Circassian, who in the confusion and tintamarrie attendant 
 on Bairam, was to escape to him by the rose-gardens, and being 
 carried off as swiftly as Syrian stalKons could take them, 
 would be borne away by her infidel lover on board a yacht 
 belonging to a man whom he knew who was cruising in the 
 Bosphorus, which would steam them away down the Dar- 
 danelles before the Turk had a chance of getting in chase. 
 iSTothing could be better planned for everybody but the luck- 
 less Mussulman who was to be robbed — and the whole thing 
 had a fine flavour about it of dash and difficulty, of piquance 
 and poetry, of jMediseval errantry and Oriental colouring, that 
 put Leilah's Giaour most deliciously in his element, setting 
 apart the treasure that he would carry off in that rich, soft, 
 antelope-eyed, bright-haired Circassian loveliness which made 
 all the dreams in Lalla Eookh and Don Juan look pale. 
 
 So his raid was planned, and I agreed to go with him 
 to cover the rear in case of pursuit, which was likely enough 
 to be hot and sharp, for the Moslems, for all their apathy, 
 lack the philosophic gratitude which your British husband 
 usually exhibits towards his despoiler — but, then, to be sure, 
 an Englishman can't make a fresh purchase unless he's first 
 
440 SIJ^ GALAHAD'S RAID. 
 
 robbed of the old ! Nigbt came ; and the nights, I am forced 
 to admit, have a witching charm of their own in the East that 
 the West never knows. The Commander of the Eaithful went 
 to prayer, with the roar of cannon and the roll of drums pealing 
 down the Golden Horn, and along the cypress-clad valleys. 
 The mosques and minarets, starred and circled with a myriad 
 of lamps, gleamed through the dark foliage, and were mirrored 
 in the silvery sheet of the waves. The caiques, as they swept 
 along, left tracks of light in the phosphor-lit waves, and while 
 the chant of the Muezzin rang through the air, the children of 
 Allah, from one end of the Bosphorus to the other, held festival 
 on thf> most holy eve of Bairam. A splendid night for a lyric 
 of Swinburne's ! — a superb scene for an amorous adventure ! 
 And as we mingled amongst the crowds of the Faithful, swarm- 
 ing with their painted lanterns, their wild music, their gorge- 
 ous colours, their booming guns, in street and caique, on land 
 ' and sea, Sir Galahad, though an infidel, had certainly entered 
 the Seventh Heaven. He had never been more intensely in 
 love in his life ; and, if the fates should decree that the dogs of 
 Islam should slay him at her feet in the sanctuary of her rose- 
 paradise, was ready to say, in his pet poet's words, with the 
 last breath of his lips. 
 
 It was ordained to be so, sweet, and best 
 Comes now beneath thine eyes and on thy breast. 
 Still kiss me ! Care not for the cowards ! Care 
 Only to put aside thy beauteous hair 
 My blood will hurt ! 
 
 In the night of the feast all the world was astir, Franks and 
 Moslems, believers and unbelievers, and we made our way 
 through the press unwatched to where Omar's house was illu- 
 mined, the cressets and wreaths, and stars of light sparkling 
 through the black foliage. Under the walls, hidden by a 
 gToup of planes, we fastened the stallions in readiness, and 
 Galahad, at the latticed door, gave the signal word, "Kef," low 
 whispered. The door unclosed, and, true to her tryst, in the sil- 
 very Bosphorus moonlight, crouching in terror and shame, 
 was the veiled and trembling Circassian. 
 
 But not in peace was her capture decreed to be made; scarce 
 had the door flown open, when the shrill yell of " Allah hu ! 
 Allah hu !" sung through the air ; and from the dark aisles of 
 the gardens poured Mussulmans, slaves^ and eunuchSj the 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 441 
 
 Turk with a shoal at his back, giving the alarm with hideous 
 hellowings, while their drawn scimitars flashed in the white 
 starlight, and their cries filled the air with their din. " Make 
 off while I hold the gate !'* I shouted to Galahad, who, catching 
 Leilah Derran in his arms "before the Moslems could he nigh us, 
 held her close with one hand, while with his right he levelled 
 his revolver, as I did, and backed — facing the Turks. At sight 
 of the lean shining barrels, the Moslems paused in their rush 
 for a second — only a second ; the next, shouting to Allah till 
 the minarets gave back the echo, they sprang at us, their curled 
 naked yataghans whirling above their heads, their jetty eye- 
 balls flaming like tigers' on the spring. Our days looked num- 
 bered j — I gave them the contents of one barrel, and in the 
 moment's check we gained the outside of the gardens ; the 
 swarm rushed after us, their shots flying wide, and whistling 
 with a shrill hiss harmlessly past ; we reserved further fire, 
 not wishing to kill, if we could manage to cut our way through 
 without bloodshed, and backed to the plane-trees, where the 
 horses were waiting. There was a moment's blind but breath- 
 less struggle, swift and indistinct to remembrance as a flash of 
 lightning ; the Turks swarmed around us, while we beat them 
 off, and hurled them asunder somehow. Omar sprang like a 
 rattlesnake on to his spoiler, his yataghan circling viciously in 
 the air, to crash down upon Galahad's skull, who was encum- 
 bered by the clinging embrace of his stolen Circassian. I 
 straightened my left arm with a remnant of *' science '' that 
 savoured more of old Cambridge than of Crimean custom; 
 the Moslem went down like an ox, and keeping the yelling 
 pack at bay with the levelled death-dealer, I threw myself 
 into saddle just as Galahad flung himself on his stallion, and 
 the Syrians, fleet as Arab breeding could make them, tore 
 down the beach in the rich Eastern night, while the balls 
 shrieked through the air past our ears, and the shouts of our 
 laughter, with the salute of a ringing English cheer in victorious 
 farewell, answered the howls of our distanced and baffled pur- 
 suers. 
 
 Sir Galahad's Eaid was a triumph ! 
 
 On we went through the hot fragrant air, through the silvery 
 moonlight, through the deep shade of cypress and pine woods; 
 on we went through gorge, and ravine, and defile, through 
 stretches of sweet wild lavender, of shining sands, of trampled 
 
442 SIR GALAHAD'S RAlb, 
 
 rose-fields, with tlie pliosplior-lit sea gleaming beside us, and 
 the Islam Feast of Bairam left far distant behind. On and on 
 — while the glorious night itself was elixir, and one shouted 
 to the starry silence Eobert Browning's grand challenge — 
 
 How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit to employ 
 All the heart, and the soul, and the senses, for ever in joy ! 
 
 That ride was superb ! 
 
 We never drew rain till some ten miles further on, where 
 we saw against the clear skies the dark outline of the yacht 
 with a blue light burning at her mast-head, the signal selected; 
 then Galahad checked the good Syrian, who had proved pace 
 as fleet as the "wild pigeon blue" is ever vouched in the 
 desert, and bent over his prize, who, through that long ride, 
 had been held close to his breast, with her arms wound about 
 him, and the beautiful veiled face bowed on his heart. The 
 moon was bright as day, and he stooped his head to uplift 
 the envious veil, and see the radiant beauty that never again 
 would be shrouded, and to meet once more the lips which his 
 own had touched before but in one single caress ; he bowed 
 his head, and I thought that my disinterested ungrudging 
 friendship made the friendships of antiquity look small; when 
 
 an oath that chilled my blood rang through the night and 
 
 over the seas, startling the echoes from rock and hill; the 
 veiled captive reeled from the saddle with a wailing scream, 
 hurled to earth by the impetus with which his arms loosed 
 her from him and away into the night, without word or sign, 
 plunging headlong down the dark defile, riding as men may 
 ride from a field that reeks with death, far out of sight into 
 the heart of the black dank woods his Syrian bore Sir Gala- 
 had. And lo ! in the white moonlight, against the luminous 
 sea, slowly there rose before me, unveiled and confessed — 
 . THE Is'egress ! 
 
 The history of that night we never learnt. Whether Leilah 
 Derran herself played the cruel trick on her Giaour lover (but 
 this lie, always .scouted), whether Omar liimself was a man of 
 grim humour, whether the Abyssinian, having bet«ayed her 
 mistress, was used as a decoy-bird, dressed like the Circassian, 
 to lure the infidels into the rose-gardens where the Eaithful 
 intended to despatch them hastily to Eblis — no one knows. 
 We could never find out. The negress escaped me before my 
 
SIR GALAHAD'S RAID. 443 
 
 surprise let me stay her, and the fray made the place too hot 
 for close investigation. !N"or do I know where Galahad tore 
 in that wild night-ride, whose spur was the first maddened 
 pain and rage of shame that his life had tasted. I never 
 heard where he spent the six days of his absence ; but when 
 he joined us again, six weeks in the sick-wards would not 
 have altered him more ; all he said to me was one piteous 
 phrase — " For God's sake don't tell the fellows !" — and I never 
 did ; I liked him well enough not to make chaff of him. Un- 
 holily had I thirsted to see him disenchanted, ungenerously 
 had I pined to see him goaded out of temper : I had my wish 
 and I don't think I enjoyed it. I saw him at last in passion 
 that I had much to do to tame down from a deadly vengeance 
 that would have rung through the Allied Armies ; and I saw 
 him loathe the East, curse romance, burn all the poets with 
 Hafiz at their head, and shun a woman's beauty like the pes- 
 tilence. To this day I believe that the image of Leilah Der- 
 ran haunts his memory, and that a certain remorse consumes 
 him for his lost gazelle, whom he always thought paid penalty 
 for their love under the silent waves of the Eosphorus, 
 with those lost ones whose souls, according to the faith of 
 Stamboul, flit ceaselessly above its waters, in the guise of its 
 white-winged imrestful sea-gulls. He is far enough away just 
 now — in which of the death-pots where we are simmering and 
 frittering away in little wretched driblets men and money 
 that would have sufficed Caesar or Scipio to conquer an Empire, 
 matters not to his story. When he reads this, he will remem- 
 ber the bitterest night of his life, and the fiasco that ended 
 Sib Galahad's Eaid ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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CHATTO ^ WIND US, PICCADILLY, 27 
 
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CHATTO 6- WINDUS, PICCADILLY, 
 
 29 
 
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CHATTO dr- WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 31 
 
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32 CHATTO ^ WINDUS, PICCADILLY, 
 
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