The Murder of Delicia

THE
MURDER OF DELICIA

BY

MARIE CORELLI

Author of "The Sorrows of Satan," "The Mighty Atom,"
"Barabbas," "A Romance of Two Worlds," etc.

LONDON
HUTCHINSON AND CO.
34 Paternoster Row
MDCCCXCVI

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The following slight and unelaborated sketch of a very commonplace and everyday tragedy will, I am aware, meet with the unqualified disapproval of the 'superior' sex. They will assert, with much indignant emphasis, that the character of 'Lord Carlyon' is an impossible one, and that such a 'cad' as he is shown to be never existed. Anticipating these remarks, I have to say in reply that the two chief personages in my story, namely, 'Lord Carlyon' and his wife, are drawn strictly from the life; and, that though both the originals have some years since departed from this scene of earthly contest and misunderstanding, so that my delineation of their characters can no longer grieve or offend either, the 'murder of Delicia' was consummated at the hands of her husband precisely in the way I have depicted it.

There are thousands of such 'murders' daily happening among us—murders which are not considered 'cruelty' in the eyes of the law. There are any number of women who work night and day with brain and hand to support useless and brainless husbands; women whose love never falters, whose patience never tires, and whose tenderness is often rewarded only by the most callous neglect and ingratitude. I do not speak of the countless cases among the hard-working millions whom we elect to call the 'lower classes,' where the wife, working from six in the morning till ten at night, has to see her hard earnings snatched from her by her 'better' half and spent at the public-house in strong drink, despite the fact that there is no food at home, and that innocent little children are starving. These instances are so frequent that they have almost ceased to awaken our interest, much less our sympathy. In my story I allude principally to the 'upper' ranks, where the lazy noodle of an aristocrat spends his time, first, in accumulating debts, and then in looking about for a woman with money to pay them—a woman upon whose income he can afterwards live comfortably for the rest of his worthless life. To put it bluntly and plainly, a great majority of the men of the present day want women to keep them. It is not a manly or noble desire; but as the kind of men I mean have neither the courage nor the intelligence to fight the world for themselves, it is, I suppose, natural to such inefficient weaklings that they should,—seeing the fierce heat and contest of competition in every branch of modern labour,—gladly sneak behind a woman's petticoats to escape the general fray. But the point to which I particularly wish to call the attention of the more thoughtful of my readers is that these very sort of men (when they have secured the ignoble end of their ambition, namely, the rich woman to live upon, under matrimonial sufferance) are the first to run down women's work, women's privileges, women's attainments and women's honour. The man who owes his dinner to his wife's unremitting toil is often to be heard speaking of the 'uselessness' of women, their frivolity and general incapacity. And in cases where the woman's intellectual ability is brought into play, and where the financial results of her brain work are such that they enable the husband to live as he likes, surrounded with every ease and comfort, then it is that at the clubs, or in any other place where he can give himself sublime airs of independence, he will frequently express regret, in grandiloquent terms, that there should be any women who 'want to be clever'; they are always 'unsexed.' This word 'unsexed' is always cast at brilliant women by every little halfpenny ragamuffin of the press that can get a newspaper corner in which to hide himself for the convenience of throwing stones. The woman who paints a great picture is 'unsexed'; the woman who writes a great book is 'unsexed'; in fact, whatever woman does that is higher and more ambitious than the mere act of flinging herself down at the feet of man and allowing him to walk over her, makes her in man's opinion unworthy of his consideration as woman; and he fits the appellation 'unsexed' to her with an easy callousness, which is as unmanly as it is despicable.

Now, to turn to the other side of the medal; let us see what are the occupations man graciously permits to woman without affronting her by this opprobrious epithet. In the first place, he is chiefly willing to see her on the stage. And he generally prefers the music-hall stage as the best one fitted to her 'poor' abilities. It is no particular 'fun' to him to see her rise to the histrionic height of a Rachel or a Sarah Bernhardt—the sublimity of tragedy in her eyes does not specially move him—the simulation of heartbreak in her face may possibly awake in him a curious emotion, divided between pity and astonishment,—but it does not amuse him. Nor does the exquisite grace of the finished 'comedienne' delight him entirely,—her pretty airs and graces, and her ringing laugh, are fascinating in a way, but in the huge amount of amour-propre, which swells the head of the smallest masculine noodle about town, he has an uncomfortable, lurking suspicion that she may all the while, under her charming stage-feigning, be really laughing at him and the whole of his sex generally. No! Neither the height of tragedy nor comedy in the woman on the stage really satisfy men so much as the happy medium,—the particular 'no-man's-land' of art, where nothing is demanded of her but—Body and Grin. A beautiful Body, trained to walk and look well—an affable Grin, expanding at the sight of champagne and other mundane delicacies,—these are all that is necessary. Now, if this beautiful Body be well-nigh stripped to man's gaze night after night on the boards, he will never call the woman who so exposes herself 'unsexed,' nor will he apply the word to her if she drinks too much wine and brandy. But if another woman, with quite as beautiful a body, instead of exhibiting herself half nude on the music-hall stage, prefers to keep her woman's modesty, and execute some great work of art which shall be as good and even better than anything man can accomplish, she will be dubbed 'unsexed' instantly. And I ask—Why is it that man elects to compass woman's degradation rather than her up-lifting and sanctification? It is a wrong course to adopt,—an evil course; and one that carries with it a terrible retribution in the lives of the coming generation.

I think, as I write, of a certain individual, living at the present moment in one of the most fashionable quarters of London,—a man who is generally looked upon with a considerable amount of respect by the monied and titled classes. Some years ago he married a bright little American woman for her money, and since that time he has made her life an hourly misery. She loved him,—more's the pity!—and though he does not scruple to insult her before others with an insolent brutality which is as shameful as it is disgusting,—though he will upbraid her before his servants and his guests at dinner with the harshness one might expect of a slave-driver, she endures his cruelty with patience—and why? For her children's sake. Her womanly idea is, that they should respect their father, and to that end she puts her own injuries aside and does her best and bravest to keep the household straight. Her money it is that pays for all the costly dinners and entertainments with which her husband glorifies himself before his acquaintances each London 'season,' pushing her into the background at every turn, and hanging on to the skirts of the newest fashionable demi-mondaine instead; and through her and her constant bounty alone he has attained the social position he holds. This is only one instance out of many where men, indebted to women for every honour and advancement they possess, turn and rend their 'good angels,' or torture them by every conceivable means of private malice and wickedness, which cannot come under the jurisdiction of the law. And love is so much the best part of a good woman's nature, that when she once truly gives her whole heart and soul away to a man, she finds it difficult, nay, almost impossible, to uproot that deep affection and understand that it has been, or is wasted upon him. This was the trouble and incurable wound of 'Delicia'; it is the trouble and incurable wound of thousands of women to-day.

It is perhaps scarcely necessary to touch on another grievous and ignoble phase of modern manhood which is constantly exhibited among us at the present time,—namely, the miserable position voluntarily held by certain 'noblemen' who, because they have placed themselves in the unnatural and unbecoming condition of owing everything to their wives' money, permit those wives to play fast and loose with their honour and good name, and apparently shut their eyes to the shameless infidelities which make them the by-word and contempt of all self-respecting 'commoners.' It would be a wholesome and refreshing stimulus to society if such 'blue-blooded' lacqueys could awake to the fact that manhood is better than money, and would by their own free will and choice go out to hard labour in the gold-fields or elsewhere and earn their own livelihood bravely and independently, instead of lounging and frittering their days away, the silent and inactive spectators of their wives' open and wanton degradation.

I have purposely selected the case of 'Delicia' from several more or less similar ones as a type of the fate frequently meted out by men to the women who have by their own intellectual attainments succeeded in winning fame and fortune. There are three radical errors chiefly made by the 'superior' sex in their hasty estimation of what are called 'clever' women;—the first on the question of heart; the second in the matter of permanence; and the third on the always momentous consideration of good looks. If a woman does anything out of the common in the way of art or literature, she is immediately judged by men as being probably without tenderness, without permanence in her work, and certainly without personal beauty. Now, as far as tenderness goes, a woman who thinks, who has read much and has studied human life in its various wonderful and often sad aspects, is far more able to realise the rareness and the worth of true love than the woman who has never thought or studied at all. She,—the woman thinker,—understands with full pathos the real necessity there is for being kind, patient and forbearing one with the other, since at any moment Death may sever the closest ties and put an end to the happiest dreams; and in her love—if she does love—there must needs be far more force, truth and passion than in the light emotion of the woman who lives for society alone, and flits from pleasure to pleasure like a kind of moth whose existence and feeling are but for a day. On the question of permanence in her work, she is the equal of man, as permanence in both ambition and attainment depends chiefly on temperament. A man's work or fame may be as unstable as that of any weak woman if he himself is unstable in nature. But put man and woman together,—start them both equally with a firm will and a resoluteness of endeavour, the woman's intellect will frequently outstrip the man's. The reason of this is that she has a quicker instinct and finer impulses. And lastly, on the subject of good looks,—it is not a sine qua non that a clever woman must be old and must be ugly. It sometimes happens so,—but it is not always so. She may be young and she may be lovely; nevertheless, men prefer to run after the newest barmaid or music-hall dancer, who is probably painted up to the eyes, and whose figure is chiefly the result of the corset-maker's art, under the impression that in such specimens alone of our sex will they find true beauty. Were they told that a certain artist who painted a certain great picture was a young and beautiful woman, they would never believe it; if someone volunteered the information that the sculptor whose massive marble group of classic figures adorns one of the galleries in Rome was a woman whose smile was ravishing and whose figure was a model for Psyche, they would shrug their shoulders incredulously. 'No, no!' they would say, 'Clever women are always 'unsexed,'—give me the barmaid—the shop-girl—the dancer—the 'living picture'—the aerial gymnast—give me anything rather than a pure, finely-cultured, noble-natured woman to be the mother of my sons!'

Thus things drift; badly for England, if we are to believe all we are told by scientific physiologists,—and whether these wiseacres and doom-prophets are wrong or right in their prognostications, it is certain that the true intention of Woman's destiny has not yet been carried out. She is fighting towards it,—but, if I may venture to say so, she is using her weapons wildly and in various wrong directions. It is not by opposing herself to man that she can be his real helpmeet,—neither is it by supporting him on her money, whether such money be earned or inherited. She will never make a true man of him that way. And it is not by adopting his pastimes or apeing his manners. It is by cultivating and cherishing to the utmost every sweet and sacred sentiment of womanhood,—every grace, every refinement, every beauty; by taking her share in the world's intellectual work with force, as well as with modesty, and by showing a faultless example of gentle reserve and delicate chastity. When she is like this, it is of course highly probable that she will be 'murdered' often as 'Delicia' was;—but the death of many martyrs is necessary to the establishment of a new creed.

When man begins to understand that woman is not meant to be a toy or a drudge, but a comrade,—the closest, best and truest that God has given him,—then the clouds will clear; and marriage will be a blessing instead of (as it too often proves) a curse,—and there will be few, if any, 'Delicias' to be slain, inasmuch as there will be few, if any men left, so unworthy of their manhood as to play coward and traitor to the women who trust them.

MARIE CORELLI.

July 6th, 1896.

The Murder of Delicia

CHAPTER I

A flood of warm spring sunshine poured its full radiance from the south through the large, square lattice-window of Delicia's study, flashing a golden smile of recognition on Delicia herself and on all the objects surrounding her. Gleaming into the yellow cups of a cluster of daffodils which stood up, proudly erect, out of a quaint, brown vase from Egypt, it flickered across a pearl-inlaid mandoline that hung against the wall, as though it were playing an unheard melody in delicate tremolo on the strings; then, setting a crown of light on Delicia's hair, it flung an arrowy beam at the head of Hadrian's 'Antinous,' whose curved marble lips, parted in an inscrutable, half-mocking smile, seemed about to utter a satire on the ways of women. Delicia had purchased this particular copy of the original bust in the British Museum because she imagined it was like her husband. No one else thought it in the least like him—but she did.

She had all sorts of fancies about this husband of hers—fancies both pretty and passionate—though she had none about herself. She was only a worker; one whom certain distinguished noodles on the Press were accustomed to sneer at from their unintellectual and impecunious standpoint as 'a lady novelist' not meriting the name of 'author,' and who, despite sneers and coarse jesting, was one of the most celebrated women of her time, as well as one of the wealthiest. The house she lived in, built from her own designs, furnished with every luxury and filled with valuable pictures, curios and art-treasures, was one of the material results of her brilliant brain-work; the perfectly-ordered ménage, the admirably-trained servants, the famous 'table' at which many of London's most fastidious gourmets had sat and gorged themselves to repletion, were all owing to her incessant and unwearying labour. She did everything; she paid everything, from the taxes down to the wages of the scullery-maid; she managed everything, from the advantageous disposal of her own manuscripts down to the smallest detail of taste and elegance connected with the daily serving of her husband's dinner. She was never idle, and in all her literary efforts had never yet failed to score a triumph above her compeers.

As a writer, she stood quite apart from the rank and file of modern fictionists. Something of the spirit of the Immortals was in her blood—the spirit that moved Shakespeare, Shelley and Byron to proclaim truths in the face of a world of lies—some sense of the responsibility and worth of Literature—and with these emotions existed also the passionate desire to rouse and exalt her readers to the perception of the things she herself knew and instinctively felt to be right and just for all time. The public responded to her voice and clamoured for her work, and, as a natural result of this, all ambitious and aspiring publishers were her very humble suppliants. Whatsoever munificent and glittering 'terms' are dreamed of by authors in their wildest conceptions of a literary El Dorado, were hers to command; and yet she was neither vain nor greedy. She was, strange to say, though an author and a 'celebrity,' still an unspoilt, womanly woman.

Just when the sunshine crowned her, as the sunshine had a way of doing at that particular hour of the morning, she was very busy finishing the last chapter of a book which had occupied all her energies during the past four months. She wrote rapidly, and the small, well-shaped, white hand that guided the pen held that dangerous intellectual weapon firmly, with a close and somewhat defiant grip, suggestive of the manner of a youthful warrior grasping a light spear and about to hurl it in the face of a foe. Her very attitude in writing indicated mental force and health; no 'literary stoop' disfigured her supple back and shoulders, no sign of 'fag' or 'brain-muddle' clouded the thoughtful yet animated expression of her features. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks delicately flushed. She had no idea of her own poetic and unique loveliness, which was utterly unlike all the various admitted types of beauty in woman. She scarcely knew that her eyes were of that divinely rare, dark violet colour which in certain lights looks almost black, that her skin was white as a snowdrop, or that her hair, in its long, glistening masses of brown-gold, was a wonder and an envy to countless numbers of her sex who presented themselves to the shrewdly-grinning gaze of the world with dyed 'fronts' and false 'back coils.' She truly never thought of these things. She had grown to understand, from current 'smart' newspaper talk, that all authoresses, without exception, were bound to be judged as elderly and plain, even hideous, in the matter of looks, according to the accepted conventional standard of 'press' ethics, and though she was perfectly aware that she was young, and not as repulsive in her personal appearance as she ought to be for the profession of letters, she took very little trouble to assert herself, and made no attempt whatever to 'show off her points,' as the slang parlance hath it, though those 'points' outnumbered in variety and charm the usual attractions of attractive women. Admirers of her genius were too dazzled by that genius to see anything but the glow of the spiritual fire burning about her like the Delphic flames around Apollo's priestess, and the dainty trifles of personality, which are ordinarily all a woman has to boast of, were in her case lost sight of. Compliments and flatteries, however, were distasteful to her, except when on rare occasions she received them from her husband. Then her sweet soul kindled within her into a warm glow of rapture and gratitude, and she wondered what she had done to deserve praise from so lordly and perfect a being.

There was something very touching as well as beautiful in the way Delicia bent her proud intellect and prouder spirit to the will of her chosen mate. For him, and for him only, she strove to add fresh glory to the lustre of her name; for him she studied the art of dressing perfectly, loving best to drape herself in soft white stuffs that clung in close, artistic folds round her light and lissom figure, and made her look like a Greuze or a Romney picture; for him she took pains to twist the rich treasure of her hair in cunning braids and love-locks manifold, arranging it in a soft cluster on her fair forehead after the fashion of the ancient Greeks, and scattering here and there one or two delicate rings about her finely-veined temples, as golden suggestions of kisses to be pressed thereon. For him she cased her little feet in fascinating brodequins of deftest Paris make; for him she moved like a sylph and smiled like an angel; for him she sang, when the evenings fell, old tender songs of love and home, in her rich, soft contralto; for him indeed she lived, breathed and—worked. She was the hiving bee—he the luxurious drone that ate the honey. And it never occurred to him to consider the position as at all unnatural.

Certainly Delicia loved her work—of that there could be no doubt. She enjoyed it with every fibre of her being. She relished the keen competition of the literary arena, where her rivals, burning with jealousy, endeavoured vainly to emulate her position; and she valued her fame as the means of bringing her into contact with all the leading men and women of her day. She was amused at the small spites and envies of the malicious and unsuccessful, and maintained her philosophical and classic composure under all the trumpery slights, ignorant censures and poor scandals put upon her by the less gifted of her own sex. Her career was one of triumph, and being sane and healthy, she enjoyed that triumph to the full. But more than triumph, more than fame or the rewards of fame, more indeed than all things in the world ever devised, measured or possessed, she loved her husband,—a strange passion for a woman in these wild days when matrimony is voted 'out of date' by certain theory-mongers, and a 'nobleman' can be found ready to give a money-bribe to any couple of notoriety-hunters who will consent to be married in church according to the holy ordinance, and who will afterwards fling a boorish insult in the face of Religion by protesting publicly against the ceremony. Delicia had been married three years, and those three years had passed by like three glittering visions of Paradise, glowing with light, colour, harmony and rapture. Only one grief had clouded the pageant of her perfect joy, and this was the death of her child, a tiny mortal of barely two months old, which had, as it were, dropped out of her arms like a withered blossom slain by sudden frost. Yet, to Delicia's dreamy and sensitive temperament, the sadness of this loss but deepened her adoration for him round whom her brilliant life twined like a luxurious vine full of blossom and fruit—the strong, splendid, bold, athletic, masterful creature who was hers—hers only! For she knew—her own heart told her this—that no other woman shared his tenderness, and that never, never had his faith to her been shaken by so much as one unruly thought!

And thus it was that Delicia often said of herself that she was the happiest woman in the world, and that her blessings were so many and so various that she was ashamed to pray. 'For how can I, how dare I ask God for anything else when I have so much?' she would inwardly reflect. 'Rather let me be constant in the giving of thanks for all the joys so lavishly bestowed upon me, which I so little deserve!' And she would work on with redoubled energy, striving after perfection in all she did, and full of a strange ardour combined with a yet stranger humility. She never looked upon her work as a trouble, and never envied those of her own sex whose absolute emptiness of useful occupation enabled them to fritter away their time in such 'delightful' amusements as bicycling, rinking, skirt-dancing and other methods of man-hunting at present in vogue among the fair feminine animals whose sole aim of existence is marriage, and after that—nullity. Her temperament was eminently practical as well as idealistic, and in the large amounts of money she annually earned she never lost a penny by rash speculation or foolish expenditure. Lavish in her hospitalities, she was never ostentatious, and though perfect in her dress, she was never guilty of the wild and wicked extravagance to which many women in her position and with her means would have yielded without taking a moment's thought. She carefully considered the needs of the poor, and helped them accordingly, in secret, and without the petty presumption of placarding her charities to the world through the medium of a 'bazaar' or hypocritical 'entertainment at the East End.' She felt the deep truth of the saying, 'Unto whom much is given, even from him shall much be required,' and gave her largesse with liberal tenderness and zeal. On one point alone did she outrun the measure of prudence in the scattering of her wealth, and this was in the consideration of her husband. For him nothing was too good, nothing too luxurious, and any wish he expressed, even by the merest chance, she immediately set herself, with pride and joy, to gratify. As a matter of fact, he had not really a penny to call his own, though his private banking account always showed a conveniently large surplus, thanks to Delicia's unfailing care. Wilfred de Tracy Gifford Carlyon, to give him all his names in full, was an officer in the Guards, the younger son of a nobleman who had, after a career of wild extravagance, died a bankrupt. He had no other profession than the military, and though a man of good blood and distinguished descent, he was absolutely devoid of all ambition, save a desire to have his surname pronounced correctly. 'Car*lee*-on,' he would say with polite emphasis, 'not Car-ly-on. Our name is an old, historical one, and like many of its class is spelt one way and pronounced another.'

Now, without ambition, the human organisation becomes rather like a heavy cart stuck fast in the mud-rut it has made for itself, and it frequently needs a strong horse to move it and set it jogging on again. In this case, Delicia was the horse; or, to put it more justly, the high-spirited mare, galloping swiftly along an open road to a destined end, and scarcely conscious of the cart she drew at such a rattling pace behind her. How indignant she would have been had she overheard any profane person using this irreverent cart simile in connection with her one supremely Beloved! Yet such was the true position of things as recognised by most people around her; and only he and she were blind to the disproportionate features of their union; she with the rare and beautiful blindness of perfect love, he with the common every-day blindness of male egotism.

That he had exceptional attractions of his own wherewith to captivate and subdue the fair sex was beyond all question. The qualities of 'race,' derived from a long ancestral line of warriors and statesmen, had blossomed out in him physically if not mentally. He had a fine, admirably-moulded figure, fit for a Theseus or a Hercules, a handsome face and a dulcet voice, rich with many gradations of persuasive and eloquent tone. Armed with these weapons of conquest, he met Delicia at the moment when her small foot had touched the topmost peak of Fame, and when all the sharp thorns and icicles of the strange crown wherewith Art rewards her chosen children were freshly set among her maiden hair. Society thought her a chilly vestal—shrank from her, indeed, somewhat in vague fear; for her divine, violet eyes had a straight way of looking through the cunningly-contrived mask of the social liar, and, like the 'Rontgen rays,' taking a full impression of the ugly devil behind it. Society refused to recognise her ethereal and half elfin type of beauty. It 'could see nothing in her.' She was to it 'a curious sort of woman, difficult to get on with,'—and behind her back it said of her the usual mysterious nothings, such as, 'Ah! one never knows what those kind of persons are!' or, 'Who was she?' and, 'Where does she get her strange ideas from?'—slobbering its five o'clock tea and munching its watercress sandwiches over these scrappy suggestions of scandal with a fine relish only known to the 'upper class' matron and the Whitechapel washerwoman. For however much apart these two feminine potentialities may be in caste, they are absolutely one in their love of low gossip and slander.

Nevertheless, the dashing Guards officer, who had been flung into an expensive regiment at the reckless whim of his late father, found several engaging qualities in Delicia, which appealed to him partly on account of their rarity, and partly because he, personally, had never been able to believe any woman capable of possessing them. Perhaps the first of the various unique characteristics he recognised in her, and marvelled at, was her total lack of vanity. He had never in all his life before met a pretty woman who attached so little importance to her own good looks; and he had certainly never come across a really 'famous' personage who wore the laurels of renown so unconsciously and unassumingly. He had once in his life had the honour of shaking hands with an exceedingly stout and florid poetess, who spoke in a deep, masculine voice, and asked him what he thought of her last book, which, by-the-bye, he had never heard of, and he had also lunched in the distinguished company of a 'sexual fictionist,' a very dirty and dyspeptic-looking man, who had talked of nothing else but the excellence and virtue of his own unsavoury productions all through the course of the meal. But Delicia!—Delicia, the envy of all the struggling, crowding climbers up Parnassus,—the living embodiment of an almost phenomenal triumph in art and letters—Delicia said nothing about herself at all. She assumed no 'airs of superiority;' she talked amusing trifles like other less brilliant and more frivolous people; she was even patient with the ubiquitous 'society idiot,' and drew him out with a tactful charm which enabled him to display all his most glaring points to perfection; but when anyone began to praise her gifts of authorship, or ventured to comment on the wide power and influence she had attained through her writings, she turned the conversation instantly, without brusquerie but with a gentle firmness that won for her the involuntary respect of even the flippant and profane.

This unpretentious conduct of hers, so exceptional in 'celebrities,' who, in these days of push-and-scramble have no scruples about giving themselves what is called in modern parlance 'any amount of side,' rather astonished the gallant 'Beauty Carlyon,' as he was sometimes nicknamed by his fellow officers; and, as it is necessary to analyse his feelings thoroughly, it must also be conceded that another of his sensations on being introduced to the woman whose opinions and writings were the talk of London, was one of unmitigated admiration mingled with envy at the thought of the fortune she had made and was still making. What!—so slight a creature, whose waist he could span with his two hands, whose slender neck could be wrung as easily as that of a singing-bird, and whose head seemed too small for its glistening weight of gold hair—she, to be the possessor of a name and fame reaching throughout every part of the British Empire, and far across the wide Atlantic, and the independent mistress of such wealth as made his impecunious mouth water! Ten thousand pounds for her last book!—paid down without a murmur, even before the work was finished!—surely 'these be excellent qualities,' he mused within himself, afterwards falling into a still more profound reverie when he heard on unimpeachable authority that the royalties alone on her already-published works brought her in an income of over five thousand a year. Her first book had been produced when she was but seventeen, though she had feigned, when asked, to be several years older, in order to ensure attention from publishers; and she had gone on steadily rising in the scale of success till now—when she was twenty-seven, and famous with a fame surpassing that of all her men contemporaries. No doubt much money had been put by during those ten triumphal years!

Taking all these matters into consideration, it was not to be wondered at that the penniless Guardsman thought often and deeply concerning the possibilities and advantages of Delicia as a wife, and that, during the time he formed one of the house-party among whose members she was the most honoured guest, he should seize every opportunity of making himself agreeable to her. He began to study her from a physical point of view, and very soon discovered in her a charm which was totally unlike the ordinary attractiveness of ordinary women. In strict fairness to him, it must be admitted that his realisation of Delicia's fine and delicate nature was due to distinctly sincere feeling on his part, and was not inspired by any ulterior thought of Mammon. He liked the way she moved; her suave, soft step and the graceful fold and flow of her garments pleased him; and once, when she raised her eyes suddenly to his in quick response to some question, he was startled and thrilled by the glamour and sweet witchery of those dark purple orbs, sparkling with such light as can only be kindled from a pure soul's fire. Gradually he, six feet of man, nobly proportioned, with a head which might be justly termed classic, even heroic, though it lacked certain bumps which phrenology deems desirable for human perfection—fell desperately in love, and here his condition must be very positively emphasised, lest the slightest doubt be entertained of it hereafter. To speak poetically, the fever of love consumed him with extraordinary violence night and day; and the strongest form of that passion known to men, namely, the covetous greed of possession, roused him to the employment of all his faculties in the task of subduing the Dian-like coldness and crystalline composure of Delicia's outward-seeming nature to that tenderness and warmth so eminently desirable in a woman who is, according to the dictum of old Genesis, meant to be a man's helpmate, though the antique record does not say she is to be so far helpful as to support him altogether. Among the various artful devices Carlyon brought to his somewhat difficult attack on the ivory castle of a pure, studious and contemplative maidenhood, were a Beautiful Sullenness,—a Dark Despair,—and a Passionate Outbreak—the latter he employed at rare intervals only. When the Beautiful Sullenness was upon him he had a very noble appearance; the delicate, proud curve of his upper lip was prominent,—his long, silky lashes, darkly drooping, gave a shadow of stern sweetness to his eyes; and Delicia, glancing at him timidly, would feel her heart beat fast, like the fluttering wing of a frightened bird, if he chanced to raise those eyes from their musing gloom and fix them half-ardently, half-reproachfully on her face. As for the Dark Despair, the sublimity of aspect he managed to attain in that particular mood could never be described in ordinary language; perhaps, in the world's choicest galleries of art, one might find such a wronged and suffering greatness in the countenance of one of the sculptured gods or heroes, but surely not elsewhere. However, it was the Passionate Outbreak,—the lightning-like fury and determination of mere manhood, springing forth despite the man himself, and making havoc of all his preconceived intentions, that won his cause for him at last. The moment came—the one moment which, truly speaking, comes but once to any human life; the pre-ordained, divine moment, brief as the sparkle of foam on a breaking wave,—the glimpse of Heaven that vanishes almost before we have looked upon it. It was a night never to be forgotten—by Delicia, at least; a night when Shakespeare's elves might have been abroad, playing mischief with the flowers and scattering wonder-working charms upon the air—a true 'Midsummer Night's Dream' which descended, full-visioned in silver luminance, straight from Paradise for Delicia's sake. She was, at that time, the guest of certain 'great' people; the kind of 'great' who say they 'must have a celebrity or two, you know!—they are such queer, dear things!' Delicia, as a 'queer, dear thing,' was one of the celebrities thus entertained, and Pablo de Sarasate, also as a 'queer, dear thing,' was another. A number of titled and 'highly-connected' personages, who had the merit of being 'queer' without being in the least 'dear,' made up the rest of the party. The place they were staying at was a lordly pile, anciently the 'summer pleasaunce' and favourite resort of a great Norman baron in the days of Richard the Lion-hearted, and the grounds extending round and about it were of that deep-shadowed, smooth-lawned and beautifully sylvan character which only the gardens of old, historic English homes possess. Up and down, between a double hedge of roses, and under the radiance of a golden harvest moon, Delicia moved slowly with Carlyon at her side; and from the open drawing-room windows of the house floated the pure, penetrating voice of Sarasate's violin. Something mystic in the air; something subtle in the scent of the roses; a stray flash of light on the falling drops of the fountain close by, which perpetually built and unbuilt again its glittering cupola of spray, or some other little nothing of the hour, brought both man and woman to a sudden pause,—a conscious pause, in which they each fancied they could hear their own hearts beating loudly above the music of the distant violin. And the man,—the elected son of Mars, who had never yet lifted his manhood to the height of battle, there to confront horror upon horror, shock upon shock,—now sprang up full-armed in the lists of love, and, strong with a strength he had hardly been aware of as existing in himself before, he swiftly and boldly grasped his prize.

'Delicia!' he whispered—'Delicia, I love you!'

There was no audible answer. Sarasate's violin discoursed suitable love-passages, and the moon smiled as if she would have spoken, but Delicia was silent. She had no need of speech—her eyes were sufficiently eloquent. She felt herself drawn with a passionate force into her lover's strong arms, and clasped firmly, even jealously, to his broad breast; and like a dove, which after long journeyings finds its home at last, she thought she had found hers, and folding her spirit-wings, she nestled in and was content.

Clinging to this great and generous protector who thus assumed the guardianship of her life, she marvelled innocently at her own good fortune, and asked herself what she had done to deserve such ineffable happiness. And he? He too, at this particular juncture, may be given credit for nobler emotions than those which ordinarily swayed him. He was really very much in love; and Love, for the time being, governed his nature and made him a less selfish man than usual. When he held Delicia in his arms, and kissed her dewy lips and fragrant hair for the first time, he was filled with a strange ecstasy, such as might have moved the soul of Adam when, on rising from deep sleep, he found embodied Beauty by his side as 'help-meet' through his life for ever. He was conscious that in Delicia he had won not only a sweet woman, but a rare intelligence; a spirit far above the average,—a character tempered and trained to finest issues,—and from day to day he studied the grace of her form, the fairness of her skin, the lustre of her eyes, with an ever-deepening intensity of delight which imparted a burning, masterful ardour to the manner of his wooing, and brought her whole nature into a half-timid, half-joyous subjection—the kind of subjection which might impel a great queen to take off her crown and lay it at the feet of some splendid warrior, in order that he might share her throne and kingdom. And in this case the splendid warrior was only too ready to accept the offered sovereignty. Certainly he loved Delicia; loved her with very real and almost fierce passion,—the passion that leaps up like a tall, bright flame, and dies down to a dull ember; but he could hardly be altogether insensible to the advantages he personally gained by loving her. He could not but exult at the thought that he, with nothing but his handsome appearance and good birth to recommend him, had won this woman whose very name was a lode-star of intellectual attraction over half the habitable globe, and, in the very midst of the ardent caresses he lavished upon her, he was unable to entirely forget the fortune she had made, and which she was adding to every day. Then she was charming in herself, too—lovely, though not at all so according to the accepted 'music-hall' standard of height and fleshy prominence; she was more like the poet's dream of 'Kilmeny in Fairyland' than the 'beauty' of eighteenpenny-photograph fame; but she was, as Carlyon himself said, 'as natural as a rose—no paint, no dye, no purchased hair cut from the heads of female convicts, no sickly perfumes, no padding, nothing in the least artificial about her.' And hearing this, his particular 'chum' in the Guards Club said,—

'Lucky dog! You don't deserve such a "draw" in the matrimonial lottery!'

And Carlyon, smiling a superior smile, looked in a conveniently near mirror, and replied,—

'Perhaps not! But—'

A flash of the fine eyes, and a touch of the Beautiful Sullenness manner finished the sentence. It was evident that the gallant officer was not at all in doubt as to his own value, however much other folks might be disposed to consider the pecuniary and other advantages of his marriage as altogether exceeding his merits.

Yet, on the whole, most people, with that idiotic inconsistency which characterises the general social swarm, actually pitied him when they heard what was going to happen. They made round eyes of astonishment, shook their heads and said, 'Poor Carlyon!' Why they made round eyes or shook their heads, they could not themselves have explained, but they did so. 'Poor,' Carlyon certainly was; and his tailor's bill was an appalling one. But 'they,'—the five-o'clock-tea gossips, knew nothing about the tailor's bill—that was a private affair,—one of those indecent commonplaces of life which are more or less offensive to persons of high distinction, who always find something curiously degrading in paying their tradesmen. 'They' saw Carlyon as he appeared to them—superb of stature, proud of bearing, and Greekly 'god-like' of feature—and that he was always irreproachably dressed was sufficient for them, though not for the unpaid tailor who fitted him so admirably. Looking at him in all his glory, 'they' shuddered at the thought that he—this splendid specimen of manhood—was actually going to marry a—what?

'A novelist, my dear! just think of it!' feebly screamed Mrs Tooksey over her Queen Anne silver teapot. 'Poor Wilfred Carlyon! Such a picturesque figure of a man! How awful for him!'

And Mrs Snooksey, grabbing viciously at muffin, chorused, 'Dreadful, isn't it! A female authoress!'—this, with a fine disregard of the fact that an authoress is generally a female. 'No doubt steeped in ink and immorality! Poor Carlyon! My mother knew his father!'

This remark of Mrs Snooksey's had evidently some profound bearing on the subject, because everybody looked politely impressed, though no one could see where the point came in.

'She's ugly, of course!' tittered Miss Spitely, nervously conscious that once—once, at a ball—Carlyon had picked up her fan, and wishing she had 'gone in' for him then. 'Authoresses always are, aren't they?'

'This one isn't,' put in the One Man, who through some persecuting fate always manages to turn up in a jaded and gloomy condition at these kind of 'afternoon teas.' 'She's pretty. That's the worst of it. Of course she'll lead Carlyon a devil of a life!'

'Of course!' groaned Mrs Snooksey and Mrs Tooksey in melancholy duet. 'What else can you expect of a—of a public character? Poor, dear Carlyon! One cannot help feeling sorry for him!'

So on, and in such wise, the jumble of humanity which is called 'society' gabbled, sniggered and sneered; nevertheless, despite dismal head-shakings and dreary forebodings, 'poor, dear Carlyon' carried out his intention, and married Delicia in the presence of one of the most brilliant assemblages of notabilities ever assembled at a wedding. The marriage of a Guards officer is always a pretty sight, but when the fame of Delicia was added to the fame of the regiment, it was no wonder the affair created a sensation and a flutter in the world of fashionable news and ladies' pictorials. Delicia astonished and irritated several members of her own sex by the extreme simplicity of her dress on the occasion. She always managed somehow, quite unintentionally, to astonish and irritate her sweet 'sisters' in womanhood, who, forced to admit her intellectual superiority to themselves, loved her accordingly. Thus her very wedding garment was an affront to them, being only a classic gown of softly-draped white silk crêpe-de-chine, without any adornment of either lace or flowers. Then her bridal veil was a vexatious thing, because it was so unusually becoming—it was made of white chiffon, and draped her, like a moonlight mist, from head to foot, a slender chaplet of real orange-blossoms being worn with it. And that was all—no jewels, no bouquet—she only carried a small ivory prayer-book with a plain gold cross mounted on the cover. She looked the very picture of a Greek vestal virgin, but in the eyes of the fashion-plate makers there was a deplorable lack of millinery about her. What would God think of it! Could anything be more irreverent than for a woman of position and fortune to take her marriage-vows before the altar of the Most High without wearing either a court train or diamonds! And the bridesmaids made no great 'show'—they were only little girls, none of them over ten years of age. There were eight of these small damsels, clad in blush-pink like human roses, and very sweet they looked following the lissom, white-veiled form of Delicia as she moved with her own peculiarly graceful step and ethereal air between the admiring rows of the selected men of her husband's regiment, who lined either side of the chancel in honour of the occasion. The ceremony was brief; but those who were present somehow felt it to be singularly impressive. There was a faint suggestion of incongruity in the bridegroom's eloquently-pronounced declaration—'With all my worldly goods I thee endow,' which provoked one of his brother officers to profanely whisper in the ear of a friend, 'By Jove! I don't think he's got anything to give her but his hair-brushes. They were a present; but most of his other things are on tick!'

This young gentleman's unbecoming observations were promptly quashed, and the holy ordinance was concluded to the crashing strains of Mendelssohn. A considerably large crowd, moved by feelings of sincere appreciation for the union of the professions of War and Literature, waited outside the church to give the bride a cheer as she stepped into her carriage, and some of them, hustling a little in advance of the policemen on duty, and peering up towards the entrance of the sacred edifice, were rewarded by seeing the Most Distinguished Personage in the realm, smiling his ever-cordial smile, and shaking hands with the fair 'celebrity' just wedded. At this sight a deafening noise broke out from the throats of the honest 'masses,' a noise which became almost tumultuous when the Distinguished Personage walked by the side of the newly-married pair down the red-carpeted pavement from the church to the nuptial carriage-door, and lifted his hat again and again to the 'huzzas' which greeted him. But the Distinguished Personage did not get all the applause by any means. Delicia got the most of it, and many of the crowd pelted her with flowers which they had brought with them for the purpose. For she was one of the few 'beloved women' that at rare intervals are born to influence nations—so few they are and so precious in their lives and examples that it is little wonder nations make much of them when they find them. There were people in the crowd that day who had wept and smiled over Delicia's writings, and who had, through her teaching, grown better, happier and more humane men and women; and there was a certain loving jealousy in these which grudged that she should stoop from her lofty height of fame, to marry, like any other ordinary woman. They would have had her exempt from the common lot, and yet they all desired her happiness. So in half-gladness, half-regret, they cheered her and threw roses and lilies at her, for it was the month of June; and she with her veil thrown back, and the sunshine glinting on her gold hair, smiled bewitchingly as she bowed right and left to the clamorous throng of her assembled admirers; then, with her glorious six feet of husband, she stepped into her carriage and drove away to the sound of a final cheer. The Distinguished Personage got into his brougham and departed. The brilliantly-attired guests dispersed slowly, and with much chatting and gaiety, in their different directions, and all was over. And the One Man whose earthly lot it was to appear at various 'afternoon teas,' stood under the church portico and muttered gloomily to an acquaintance,—

'Fancy that simple-looking creature being actually the famous Delicia Vaughan! She isn't in the least like an authoress—she's only a woman!' Whereat the acquaintance, whose intellectual resources were somewhat limited, smiled and murmured,—

'Oh, well, when it came to that, you know, you couldn't expect a woman to be anything else, could you? The idea was certainly that authoresses should be—well! a sort of no-sex, ha-ha-ha!—plenty of muscle about them, but scrappy as to figure and doubtful in complexion, with a general air of spectacled wisdom—yes, ha-ha! Well, if it came to that, you know, it must be owned Miss Vaughan—beg her pardon!—Mrs Carlyon, was not by any means up to the required mark. Ha-ha-ha! Graceful little woman, though; very fascinating—and as for money—whew-w! Beauty Carlyon has fallen on his feet this time, and no mistake! Ha-ha! Good-morning!'

With this, he and the One Man nodded to each other and went in opposite directions. The verger of the church came out, glowered suspiciously at stragglers, picked up a few bridal flowers from the red carpet, and shut the church gates. There had been a wedding, he said condescendingly to one or two nursemaids who had just arrived breathlessly on the scene, wheeling perambulators in front of them, but it was over; the company had gone home. The Distinguished Personage had gone home too. Thus there was nothing to see, and nothing to wait for. Depart, disappointed nursemaids! The vow that binds two in one—that ties Intellect to Folly, Purity to Sensuality, Unselfishness to Egotism—has been taken before the Eternal; and, so far as we can tell, the Eternal has accepted it. There is nothing more to be said or done—the sacrifice is completed.

All this had happened three years ago, yet Delicia, writing peacefully as usual in the quiet seclusion of her study, remembered every incident of her wedding as though it were only yesterday. Happiness had made the time fly on swift wings, and her dream of love had as yet lost nothing of its heavenly glamour. Her marriage had caused no very perceptible change in her fortunes—she worked a little harder and more incessantly, that was all. Her husband deserved all the luxuries and enjoyments of life that she could give him—so she considered—and she was determined he should never have to complain of her lack of energy. Her fame steadily increased—she was at the very head and front of her profession—people came from far and near to have the privilege of seeing her and speaking with her, if only for a few minutes. But popular admiration was nothing to her, and she attached no importance whatever to the daily tributes she received, from all parts of the world, testifying to her genius and the influence her writings had upon the minds of thousands. Such things passed her by as the merest idle wind of rumour, and all her interests were concentrated on her work—first, for the work's own sake, and next, that she might be a continual glory and exhaustless gold mine to her husband.

Certainly Carlyon had nothing to desire or to complain of in his destiny. A crowned king might have envied him; unweighted with care, no debts, no difficulties, a perpetual balance at his banker's, a luxurious home, arranged not only with all the skill that wealth can command, but also with the artistic taste that only brains can supply; a lovely wife whose brilliant endowments were the talk of two continents, and last, but not least, the complete unfettered enjoyment of his own way and will. Delicia never played the domestic tyrant over him; he was free to do as he liked, go where he would and see whom he chose. She never catechised him as to the nature of his occupations or amusements, and he, on his part, was wise enough to draw a line between a certain 'fast set' he personally favoured, and the kind of people he introduced to her, knowing well enough that were he to commit the folly of bringing some 'shady' character within his wife's circle of acquaintance, it would be only once that the presence of such a person would be tolerated by her. For she had very quick perceptions; and though her disposition was gentleness itself, she was firmly planted in rectitude, and managed to withdraw herself so quietly and cleverly from any contact with social swindlers and vulgar nouveaux riches, that they never had the ghost of a chance to gain the smallest footing with her. Unable to obtain admittance to her house, they took refuge in scandal, and invented lies and slanders concerning her, all of which fell flat owing to her frankly open life of domestic peace and contentment. Sneers and false rumours were inserted about her in the journals; she ignored them, and quietly lived them down, till finally the worst thing anyone could find to say of her was that she was 'idiotically in love' with her own husband.

'She's a perfect fool about him!' exclaimed the Tookseys and Snookseys, angrily. 'Everybody knows Paul Valdis is madly in love with her. It's only she who never seems to see it!' 'Perhaps she does not approve of the French fashion of having a lover as well as a husband,' suggested a Casual Caller of the male sex. 'Though it is now la mode in England, she may not like it. Besides, Paul Valdis has been "madly in love," as you call it, a great many times!'

The Tookseys and Snookseys sighed, shivered, rolled up their eyes and shrugged their shoulders. They were old and ugly and yellow of skin; but their hearts had a few lively pulsations of evil left in them still, and they envied and marvelled at the luck of a woman—a literary female, too, good heavens! to think of it!—who not only had the handsomest man in town for a husband, but who could also have the next handsomest—Paul Valdis, the great actor—for a lover, if she but 'dropped the handkerchief.'

And while 'society' thus talked, Delicia worked, coining money for her husband to spend as he listed. She reserved her household expenses, and took a moderate share of her earnings for her own dress, but all the rest was his. He drove 'tandem' in the Row with two of the most superb horses ever seen in that fashionable thoroughfare. In the early spring mornings he was seen cantering up and down on a magnificent Arab, which for breed and action was the envy of princes. He had his own four-in-hand coach, which he drove to Ranelagh, Hurlingham, and the various race meetings of the year, with a party of 'select' people on top—the kind of 'select' whom Delicia never knew or cared to know, consisting of actresses, betting men, 'swells about town,' and a sprinkling of titled dames, who had frankly thrown over their husbands in order to drink brandy privately, and play the female Don Juan publicly. Occasionally a 'candid friend,' moved by a laudable desire to make mischief between husband and wife, would arrive, full-armed at all points with gossip, and would casually remark to Delicia,—

'Oh, by the way, I saw your husband at Ranelagh the other day with—well!—some rather odd people!' To which Delicia would reply tranquilly, 'Did you? I hope he was amusing himself.' Then with a straight, half-disdainful look of her violet eyes at the intruding meddler, she would add, 'I know what you mean, of course! But it is a man's privilege to entertain himself in his own fashion, even with "odd" people if he likes. "Odd" people are always infinitely diverting, owing to their never being able to recognise their own abnormal absurdity. And I never play spy on my husband. I consider a wife who condescends to become a detective as the most contemptible of creatures living.'

Whereupon the 'candid friend,' vexed and baffled, would retire behind an entrenchment of generalities, and afterwards, at 'afternoons' and social gatherings, would publicly opine that, 'It was most probable Mrs Carlyon was carrying on a little game of her own, as she seemed so indifferent to her husband's goings-on. She was a deep one, oh, yes! very deep! She knew a thing or two!—and perhaps, who could tell?—Paul Valdis had his own reasons for specially "fixing" her with his dark, passionate eyes whenever she appeared in her box at the theatre where he was playing the chief character in an English version of "Ernani."

It was true enough that Delicia was hardly ever seen at the places her husband most frequented, but this happened because he was fond of racing and she was not. She disliked the senseless, selfish and avaricious side of life so glaringly presented at the favourite 'turf' resorts of the 'swagger' set, and said so openly.

'It makes me think badly of everybody,' she declared once to her husband, when he had languidly suggested her 'turning up' at the Oaks. 'I begin to wonder what was the use of Christ dying on the cross to redeem such greedy, foolish folk. I don't want to despise my fellow-creatures, but I'm obliged to do it when I go to a race. So it's better I should stay at home and write, and try to think of them all as well as I can.'

And she did stay at home very contentedly; and when he was absent with a party of his own particular 'friends,' dispensing to them the elegant luncheon and champagne which her work had paid for, she was either busy with some fresh piece of literary labour, or else taking her sweet presence into the houses of the poor and suffering, and bringing relief, hope and cheerfulness, wherever she went. And on the morning when the sunshine placed a crown on her head, and hurled a javelin of light full in the cold eyes of the marble Antinous, she was in one of her brightest, most radiant moods, satisfied with her lot, grateful for the blessings which she considered were so numerous, and as unconscious as ever that there was anything upside down in the arrangement which had resulted in her being obliged to 'love, honour, obey,' keep, and clothe, six feet of beautiful man, by her own unassisted toil, while the said six feet of beautiful man did nothing but enjoy himself.

The quaint 'Empire' clock, shaped as a world, with a little god of love pointing to the hours numbered on its surface, chimed two from its golden bracket on the wall before she laid down her pen for the day. Then, rising, she stretched her fair, rounded arms above her head, and smiled at the daffodils in the vase close by—bright flowers which seemed fully conscious of the sunshine in that smile. Anon, she moved into the deep embrasure of her wide lattice window, where, stretched out at full length, lay a huge dog of the St Bernard breed, winking lazily with one honest brown eye at the sunbeams that danced about him.

'Oh, Spartan, you lazy fellow!' she said, putting her small foot on his rough, brown body, 'aren't you ashamed of yourself?'

Spartan sighed, and considered the question for a moment, then raised his noble head and kissed the point of his mistress's broidered shoe.

'It's lunch-time, Spartan,' continued Delicia, stooping down to pat him tenderly. 'Will master be home to luncheon, or not, Spartan? I'm afraid not, old boy. What do you think about it?'

This inquiry roused Spartan to an attitude of attention. He got up, sat on his big haunches, and yawned profoundly; then he appeared to meditate, conveying into his fine physiognomy an expression of deep calculation that was almost human.

'No, Spartan,' went on Delicia, dropping on one knee and putting her arm round him, 'we mustn't expect it. We generally lunch alone, and we'll go and get what the gods have provided for us in the dining-room, at once—shall we?'

But Spartan suddenly pricked his long ears, and rose in all his lion-like majesty, erect on his four handsome legs; then he gave one deep bark, turning his eyes deferentially on his mistress as one who should say, 'Excuse me, but I hear something which compels my attention.'

Delicia, her hand on the dog's neck, listened intently; her breath came and went, then she smiled, and a lovely light irradiated her face as the velvet portière of her study door was hastily pushed aside, and her husband, looking the very incarnation of manly beauty in his becoming riding-gear, entered abruptly.

'Why, Will, how delightful!' she exclaimed, advancing to meet him, 'you hardly ever come home to lunch. This is a treat!'

She clung to him and kissed him. He held her round the waist a moment, gazing at her with the involuntary admiration her grace and intelligence always roused in him, and thinking for the hundredth time how curious it was that she should be so entirely different to other women. Then, releasing her, he drew off his gloves, threw them down, and glanced at the papers which strewed her writing-table.

'Finished the book?' he queried, with a smile.

'Yes, all but the last few sentences,' she replied. 'They require careful thinking out. It doesn't do to end with a platitude.'

'Most books end so,' he said carelessly. 'But yours are always exceptions to the rule. People are never tired of asking me how you do it. One fellow to-day said he was sure I helped you to write the strong parts.'

Delicia smiled a little.

'And what did you say?'

'Why, of course I said I didn't—couldn't write a line to save my life!' he responded, with a laugh. 'But you know what men are! They never can bring themselves to believe in the reality of a woman's genius.'

The musing smile still lingered on Delicia's face.

'Genius is a big thing,' she said. 'I do not assume to possess it. But it is curious to see how very many quite ungifted men announce their own claims to it, while indignantly denying all possibility of its endowment to women. However, one must have patience; it will take some time to break men of their old savagery. For centuries they treated women as slaves and cattle; it may take other centuries before they learn to treat them as their equals.'

Carlyon looked at her, half-wonderingly, half-doubtfully.

'They won't give them full academic honours yet,' he said, 'which I think is disgracefully unfair. And the Government won't give them titles of honour in their own right for their services in Science, Art or Literature, which they ought to have, in my opinion. And this brings me round to the news which sent me galloping home to-day as soon as I heard it. Delicia, I can give you a title this morning!'

She raised her eyebrows a little.

'Are you joking, Will?'

'Not a bit of it. You've heard me speak of my brother Guy, Lord Carlyon?'

She nodded.

'Well, when my father died a bankrupt, of course Guy had what he could get out of the general wreck, which was very little, together with the title. The title was no use to him, he having no means to keep it up. He went off to Africa, gold-hunting, under an assumed name, to try and make money out there—and—and now he's dead of fever. I can't pretend to be very sorry, for I never saw much of him after we left school, and he was my senior by five years. Anyhow, he's gone—and so—in fact—I'm Lord Carlyon!'

He made such a whimsical attempt to appear indifferent to the honour of being a lord, while all the time it was evident he was swelling with the importance of it, that Delicia laughed outright, and her violet eyes flashed with fun as she dropped him a demure curtsey.

'My lord, allow me to congratulate your lordship!' she said. 'By my halidame, good my lord, I am your lordship's very humble servant!'

He looked a trifle vexed.

'Don't be nonsensical, Delicia!' he urged. 'You know I never expected it. I always thought Guy would have married. If he had, and a son had been born to him, of course that son would have had the title. But he remained a bachelor to the end of his days, and so the luck has fallen to me. Aren't you rather pleased about it? It's a nice thing for you, at anyrate.'

Delicia gave him a bright glance of humorous surprise.

'A nice thing for me? My dear boy, do you really think so? Do you really and truly imagine I care about a title tacked on to my name? Not a bit of it! It will only attract a few extra snobs round me at parties, that's all. And to my public I am always Delicia Vaughan; they won't even give me the benefit of your name, Will, because somehow they prefer the one by which they knew and loved me first.'

A faint suggestion of the Beautiful Sullenness manner clouded Carlyon's face.

'Oh, of course, you swear by your public!' he said, a trifle crossly. 'But whatever you may think of it, I'm glad the title has come my way. It's a good thing—it gives me a status.'

She was silent, and stood quietly beside him, stroking Spartan's head. Not a thought of the status she herself gave her husband by her world-wide fame crossed her mind, and the reproach that might have leaped to the lips of a less loving woman than she was—namely, that the position she had won by her own brilliant intellect far outweighed any trumpery title of heritage—never once occurred to her brain. But all the same, something in the composed grace of her attitude conveyed the impression of that fact to Carlyon silently, and with subtle force; for he was conscious of a sudden sense of smallness and inward shame.

'Yet after all,' she said presently, with a playful air, 'it isn't as if you were a brewer, you know! So many brewers and building contractors become lords nowadays, that somehow I always connect the peerage with Beer and Bricks. I suppose it's very wrong, but I can't help it. And it will seem odd to me at first to associate you with the two B's—you are so different to the usual type.'

He smiled,—well pleased to see her eyes resting upon him with the tender admiration to which he had become accustomed.

'Is luncheon ready?' he asked, after a brief pause, during which he was satisfied that he looked his best and that she was fully aware of it.

'Yes; let us go down and partake thereof,' she answered gaily. 'Will you tell the servants, or shall I?'

'Tell the servants what?' he demanded, with a slight frown.

She turned her pretty head over her shoulder laughingly.

'Why, to call you for the future "My Lord," or "m'lud." Which shall it be?'

She looked charmingly provocative; his momentary ill-humour passed, and he flung an arm round her waist and kissed her.

'Whichever you please,' he said. 'Anyway you are, as you always have been, "my" lady!'

CHAPTER II

Delicia was perfectly right when she said that her new distinction would draw 'extra snobs' around her. A handle to one's name invariably attracts all the social 'runaways,'—in the same fashion that mischievous street-boys are attracted to bang at a particularly ornate and glittering door-knocker and then scamper off in hiding before any servant has time to answer the false summons. People who are of old and good family themselves think nothing of titles, but those who have neither good birth, breeding nor education, attach a vast amount of importance to these placards of rank, and can never refrain from an awe-stricken expression of countenance when introduced to a duke, or with-hold the regulation 'royalty-dip' when in the presence of some foreign 'princess,' who, as a matter of fact, has no right to 'royalty' honours at all. Delicia had met a great many such small dignitaries, but she never curtsied to any of them, whereat their petty vanity was wounded, and they thought, 'These authors have bad manners.' She read their thoughts and smiled, but did not care. She reserved her salutations for Royalty itself, not for the imitation of it. And now that she was a 'ladyship,' she obtained a good deal of amusement out of the study of character among her various 'friends' who envied and grudged her the trumpery honour. The Tookseys and Snookseys of society could scarcely contain themselves for spite when they learned that for the future they would have to speak of the 'female authoress' as Lady Carlyon. The Casual Caller and the One Man began to allude to her as 'Delicia, Lady Carlyon,' rolling the sweet, quaint name of 'Delicia' on their tongues with a keener sense of enjoyment than usual in its delicate flavour, thereby driving the Tookseys and Snookseys into a more feverish condition then ever. Paul Valdis heard the news suddenly, when he was dressing for his part as Ernani, on an evening when Royalty had announced its 'gracious' intention of being present to see him do it. And there would appear to have been something not altogether incorrect in the rumour that he was 'madly in love' with Delicia, for he turned very white and lost command of his usual equable temper in an altercation with his 'dresser,' whom he dismissed abruptly with something like an oath.

'"Lady" Carlyon!' he said to himself, staring at his own classic face and brilliant, dark eyes in the little mirror which dominated his 'make-up' table. 'And I no more than mime!—stage-puppet and plaything of the public! Wait, though! I am something more! I am a MAN!—in heart and soul and feeling! a man, which my "Lord" Carlyon is not!'

And he played that night, not for Royalty, which clapped its lavender kid gloves at him in as much enthusiastic approval as Royalty ever shows, but for her new 'ladyship,' who sat in a box overlooking the stage, dressed in pure white with a knot of lilies at her bosom, dreamily unconscious that Ernani was anything but Ernani, or that Valdis was putting his own fiery soul into Victor Hugo's dummy, and making it live, breathe and burn with a passionate ardour never equalled on the stage, and of which she, Delicia, was the chief inspiration.

Delicia was, in very truth, curiously unconscious of the excitement and unrest she always managed to create around herself unintentionally. Her strong individuality was to blame, but she was as unaware of the singular influence she exerted as a rose is unaware of the fragrance its sheds. Everything she did was watched and commented upon—her manners, her dress, her gestures, the very turn of her head, and the slow, supple movements of her body. And society was for ever on the lookout for a glance, a sigh, a word which might indicate the 'dropping of the handkerchief' to Paul Valdis. But the closest espionage failed to discover anything compromising in Delicia's way of life or daily conduct. This caused the fury of the Tookseys and Snookseys to rage unabatedly, while, so far as Delicia herself was concerned, she had no thought beyond the usual two subjects which absorbed her existence—her work and her husband. Her title made no sort of difference to her in herself—'Delicia Vaughan' was still the charmed name wherewith she 'drew' her public, many of whom scarcely glanced at the 'Lady Carlyon' printed in small type between brackets, underneath the more famous appellation on the title-pages of all her books. And in her own mind she was more amused than edified by the flunkey-like attention shown to her 'ladyship' honours.

'How nice for you,' said a female acquaintance to her on one of her visiting days, 'to have a title! Such a distinction for literature, isn't it?'

'Not at all!' answered Delicia, tranquilly, 'It is a distinction for the title to have literature attached to it!'

The female acquaintance started violently.

'Dear me!' and she tittered; 'You really—er—excuse me! seem to have a very good opinion of yourself!'

Delicia's delicate brows drew together in a proud line.

'You mistake,' she said; 'I have no good opinion of myself at all, but I have of Literature. Perhaps you will more clearly understand what I mean if I remind you that there have been several Lord Byrons, but Literature makes it impossible to universally recognise more than one. Literature can add honour to the peerage, but the peerage can never add honour to Literature—not, at any rate, to what I understand as Literature.'

'And what is your definition of Literature, Lady Carlyon, may I ask?' inquired a deferential listener to the conversation.

'Power!' replied Delicia, closing her small, white hand slowly and firmly, as though she held the sceptre of an empire in its grasp. 'The power to make men and women think, hope and achieve; the power to draw tears from the eyes, smiles from the lips of thousands; the power to make tyrants tremble, and unseat false judges in authority; the power to strip hypocrisy of its seeming fair disguise, and to brand liars with their name writ large for all the world to see!'

The female acquaintance got up, disturbed in her mind. She did not like the look of Delicia's violet eyes which flashed like straight shafts of light deep into the dark recesses of her soul.

'I must be going,' she murmured. 'So sorry! It's quite delightful to hear you talk, Lady Carlyon, you are so very eloquent!—but I have another call to make—he-he-he!—good afternoon!'

But the Deferential Listener lingered, strangely moved.

'I wish there were more writers who felt as you do, Lady Carlyon!' he said gently. 'I knew you first as Delicia Vaughan, and loved your books—'

'I hope you will try and love them still,' she said simply. 'There is no difference, I assure you, between Delicia Vaughan and Lady Carlyon; they are, and always will be, the same working woman!'

She gave him her hand in parting; he stooped low, kissed it and went. Left alone with the great dog, Spartan, she sat looking musingly up at the glossy, spreading leaves of the giant palm that towered up to the ceiling from a painted Sèvres vase in the middle of her drawing-room, and almost for the first time in her life a faint shadow of trouble and uneasiness clouded her bright nature.

'How I do hate humbug!' she thought. 'It seems to me that I have had to put up with so much more of it lately than I ever had before; it's this wretched title, I suppose. I wish I could dispense with it altogether; it does not please me, though it pleases Will. He is so good-natured that he does not seem able to distinguish between friends, and others who are mere toadies. It would be a good thing for me if I had the same unsuspecting disposition; but, most unfortunately, I see things as they are—not as they appear to be.'

And this was true. She did see things clearly and comprehensively always;—except in one direction. There she was totally blind. But in her blindness lay all her happiness, and though the rose-coloured veil of illusion was wearing thin, no rent had yet been made in it.

It was her 'at home' day, and she sat waiting resignedly for the callers who usually flocked to her between five and six in the afternoon. The two people who had come and gone, namely, the Female Acquaintance and the Deferential Listener, had been chance visitors out of the ordinary run. And it was only half-past four when a loud ring at the bell made Spartan growl and look to his mistress for orders to bite, if necessary.

'Quiet, Spartan!' said Delicia, gently. 'We are "at home" to-day, you know! You mustn't bark at anybody.'

Spartan rolled his eyes discontentedly. He hated 'at home' days, and he went off in a far corner of the drawing-room, where there was a convenient bear-skin rug to lie on; there he curled himself up to sleep. Meanwhile the visitor who had rung the bell so violently was announced—'Mrs Lefroy,'—and Delicia rose, with a slightly weary and vexed air, as a handsome woman, over-dressed and over-powdered, entered the room; her white teeth bared to view in the English 'society smile.'

'My dear!' she exclaimed, 'how delightful you look, and what a perfectly lovely room! I have seen it often before, of course, and yet it seems to me always lovelier! And you, too!—what a sweet gown! Oh, my dear, I have such fun to tell you; I know you didn't expect to see me! I got away from the Riviera much sooner than I thought I should. All my money went at Monte Carlo in the most frightfully rapid way, and so I came back to town—one can have larks in town as well as anywhere else, without the temptation of that dear, wicked, fascinating Casino! And, my dear, nothing is talked of but your book; everybody's waiting for it with the greatest impatience—it's finished, isn't it? In the hands of the publishers! How delightful! And, of course, you have got loads of money for it? How nice for you, and for that glorious-looking husband of yours! And you are looking so well! No tea, dearest, thank you! Oh, I really must take off my cloak a moment—thanks! Is there anyone else coming to-day? Oh, of course, you always have crowds! That is why I want to tell you what fun we had last night; Lord Carlyon never expected we should see him, you know!'

Delicia looked up from the tea tray whither she had moved on the impulse of hospitality. She had not spoken; she knew Mrs Lefroy of old, and was aware that it was better to let her have her talk out.

'Of course,' went on Mrs Lefroy, 'you have heard of Marina, the new dancer—the girl who appears on the stage like a hooded cobra, and gradually winds herself out of her serpent-skin into a woman with scarcely any clothes on, and dances about among a lot of little snakes of fire, done with electricity? The one that all the men are going mad over, on account of her wonderful legs?'

Delicia, with a slight movement, more of regret than offence, nodded.

'Well, we were having supper at the Savoy last night, and what do you think, my dear!' And here Mrs Lefroy clasped her well-gloved hands together in a kind of slander-mongering ecstasy. 'Who should come in and sit down at the very next table, but Lord Carlyon and this very Marina!'

Delicia turned round slowly, her eyes shining, and a smile on her mouth.

'Well?' she said.

Mrs Lefroy's nose reddened through the powder, and she tossed her head.

'Well? Is that all you say—well? I should certainly find some more forcible observation than that, if I heard of my husband taking the Marina to supper at the Savoy!'

'Would you?' said Delicia, smiling. 'But then, you see, I am not you, and your husband is not my husband. There's all the difference! Besides, men are free to amuse themselves in their own way, provided they wrong no one by doing so.'

'With "creatures" like Marina?' inquired Mrs Lefroy, with a wide smile. 'Really, my dear, you are extremely tolerant! Do you know that even Paul Valdis, an actor—and you wouldn't think he was particular—would not be seen with the Cobra person!'

'Mr Valdis chooses his own associates, no doubt, to please his own taste,' said Delicia, quietly. 'It is nothing to me whether he would be seen with the Cobra person, as you call her, or whether he would not. If my husband likes to talk to her, there must be something clever about her, and something nice, too, I should imagine. All dancers are not demons.'

'My poor Delicia!' exclaimed Mrs Lefroy. 'Really, you are too unsuspicious and sweet for anything! If you would only let me open your eyes a little—'

'The Duke and Duchess of Mortlands,' announced the maid-in-waiting at this juncture; and the conversation was broken off for the reception of a very stately old lady and a very jolly old gentleman. The old gentleman took a cup of tea, and bowed so often to Delicia over it that he spilt some drops of tea down his waistcoat, while his portly spouse spread cake-crumbs profusely over the broad expanse known to dressmakers and tailors as the 'bust measurement.' They were charming old people, though untidy; and being of an immensely ancient family, their ancestors having had something to do with the Battle of Crecy, they admired Delicia for herself and her brilliant gifts alone, even to the forgetting of her married name occasionally, and to the calling of her 'Miss Vaughan,' for which slip they instantly apologised. Numbers of people now began to arrive, and Delicia's drawing-rooms were soon full. A famous Swedish cantatrice came among others, and in her own pleasant way offered to sing a 'Mountain Melody' of her native land. Her rich voice was still pealing through the air when there was a slight stir and excitement among the silent listeners to the music, and Paul Valdis entered unannounced. He stood near the door till the song that was being sung had ended, then he advanced towards Delicia, who greeted him with her usual simple grace, and showed no more effusion towards him than she had shown to the old duke who had spilt his tea. He was pale and somewhat absent-minded; though he talked generalities with several people present, much as he disliked talking generalities. Now and then he became gloomy and curt of speech, and at such moments, Mrs Lefroy, watching him, felt that she would have given worlds to stay on and hide herself somewhere behind a curtain that she might see how he was going to comport himself after the gabbling crowd had gone. But she had already stayed more than an hour—she would get no more chance of talking to Delicia—she was obliged to go home and dress for a dinner-party that evening; so finally she reluctantly made the best of a bad business, and glided up to her hostess to say good-bye.

'So sorry to be going!' she murmured. 'I really wish I could have a few minutes' private talk with you! But you are such a busy woman!'

'Yes, I am!' agreed Delicia, smiling. 'However, opportunities for talking scandal always turn up sometime or other—don't you find it so?'

Mrs Lefroy was not quite proof against this delicate home-thrust. She felt distinctly angry. But there was no time to show it. She forced a smile and went—determining within herself that some day she would shake the classic composure of the 'female authoress' to its very foundations, and make of her a trembling, weak, jealous woman like many others whom she knew who were blessed with husbands like Lord Carlyon.

Gradually the 'after-tea' crowd dispersed, and Delicia was left alone with only one remaining visitor—Paul Valdis. The dog Spartan rose from the corner where he had lain peacefully retired from view during the crush of visitors, and advancing majestically, with wagging tail, laid a big head caressingly on the actor's knee. Valdis patted him and spoke out his thought involuntarily.

'One, at least, out of your many friends, is honest, Lady Carlyon,' he said.

Delicia, somewhat fatigued with the business of receiving her guests, had seated herself in a low arm-chair, her head leaning back on a cushion, and now she looked round, slightly smiling. 'You mean Spartan?' she said, 'or yourself?'

'I mean Spartan,' he replied, with a touch of passion; 'A dog may be honest without offence to the world in general, but a man must never be honest, unless he wishes to be considered a fool or a madman, or both.'

She regarded him intently for a moment. Her artistic eye quickly took note of the attractive points of his face and figure, and, with the perception of a student of character, she appreciated the firm and manly lines of the well-shaped hand that rested on Spartan's head, but it was with the admiration which she would have given to a fine picture more readily than to a living being. Something, however, troubled her as she looked, for she saw that he was suppressing some strong emotion in her presence, and her first thought was that the English version of 'Ernani' was going to prove a failure.

'You speak bitterly, Mr Valdis,' she said, after a pause, 'and yet you ought not to do so, considering the brilliancy of your position and your immense popularity.'

'Does a brilliant position and immense popularity satisfy a man, do you think?' he asked, not looking at her, but keeping his gaze on the honest brown eyes of Spartan, who, with the quaint conceit of a handsome dog who knows his own value, went on wagging his tail, under the impression that the conversation was addressed to him alone. 'Though I suppose it ought to satisfy an actor, who, by some folks, is considered hardly a man at all. But if we talk of position and popularity, you far outbalance me in honours—and are you satisfied?'

'Perfectly!' and Delicia smiled full into his eyes; 'I should, indeed, be ungrateful if I were not.'

He made a slight movement of impatience.

'Ungrateful! How strange that word sounds from your lips! Why use it at all? You are surely the last person on earth who should speak of gratitude, for you owe no one anything. You have worked for your fame,—worked harder than anyone I know,—and you have won it; you have given out the treasures of your genius to the public, and they reward you by their love and honour; it is a natural sequence of cause and effect. There is no reason why you should be grateful for what is merely the just recognition of your worth.'

'You think not?' said Delicia, still smiling. 'Ah, but I cannot quite agree with you! You see there have been so many who have toiled for fame and never won it,—so many who have poured out the "treasures of their genius," to quote your own words, on a totally unappreciative world which has never recognised them till long after they are dead. And that is why I consider one cannot be too grateful for a little kindness from one's fellow-creatures while one is living; though, if you ask the Press people, they will tell you it's a very bad sign of your quality as an author if you succeed. The only proofs of true genius are, never to sell one's books at all, die burdened with debts and difficulties, and leave your name and fame to be glorified by a posterity whom you will never know!'

Valdis laughed; and Delicia, her eyes sparkling with fun, rose from her chair and took up a newspaper from one of the side tables close by.

'Listen!' she said. 'This appears in yesterday's Morning Chanticleer, apropos of your humble servant—"The rampant lady-novelist, known as Delicia Vaughan, is at it again. Not content with having married 'Beauty' Carlyon of the Guards, who has just stepped into his deceased brother's titled shoes and is now Lord Carlyon, she is about to issue a scathing book on the manners and morals of the present age, written, no doubt, in the usual hysterical style affected by female poseurs in literature, whose works appeal chiefly to residents up Brixton and Clapham way. We regret that 'Lady' Carlyon does not see the necessity of 'assuming dignity,' even if she hath it not, on her elevation, through her husband, to the circles of the 'upper ten.'" There, what do you think of that?' she asked gaily, as she flung the journal down.

Valdis had risen, and stood confronting her with frowning brow and flashing eyes. 'Think of it!' he said angrily, 'Why, that I should like to horse-whip the dirty blackguard who wrote it!'

Delicia looked up at him in genuine amazement.

'Dear me!' she exclaimed playfully. 'But why so fierce, friend Ernani? This is nothing—nothing at all to what the papers generally say of me. I don't mind it in the least; it rather amuses me, on the whole.'

'But don't you see how they mistake the position?' exclaimed Valdis, impetuously. 'Don't you see that they are giving your husband all the honour of elevation to the circles of the upper ten; as if you were not there already by the merit of your genius alone! What would Lord Carlyon be without you, even were he twenty times a lord! He owes everything to you, and to your brain-work; he is nothing in himself, and less than nothing! There,—I have gone too far!'

Delicia stood very still; her face was pale, and her beautiful eyes were cold in their shining as the gleam of stars in frosty weather.

'Yes, you have gone too far, Mr Valdis,' she said, 'and I am sorry—for we were friends.'

She laid the slightest little emphasis on the word 'were,' and the strong heart of the man who loved her sank heavily with a forlorn sense of misery. But the inward rage that consumed him to think that she—the patient, loving woman, who coined wealth by her own unassisted work, while her husband spent the money and amused himself with her earnings—should be publicly sneered at as a nothing, and her worser-half toadied and flattered as if he were a Yankee millionaire in his own right, was stronger than the personal passion he entertained for her, and his manful resentment of the position could not be repressed.

'I am sorry too, Lady Carlyon,' he said hoarsely, avoiding her gaze, 'for I do not feel I can retract anything I have said.'

There was a silence. Delicia was deeply displeased; yet with her displeasure there was mingled a vague sense of uneasiness and fear. She found it difficult to maintain her self-possession; there was something in the defiant look and attitude of Valdis that almost moved her to give way to a sudden, undignified outburst of anger. She was tempted to cry out to him, 'What is it you are hiding from me? There is something—tell me all you know!'

But she bit her lips hard, and laid her hand on Spartan's collar to somewhat conceal its trembling. Thus standing, she bent her head with grave grace and courtesy.

'Good-bye, Mr Valdis!'

He started, and looked at her half imploringly. The simple words were his dismissal, and he knew it. Because he had, in that unguarded moment, spoken a word in dispraise of the glorious six feet of husband, the doors of Delicia's house would henceforth be closed to him, and the fair presence of Delicia herself would be denied to his sight. It was a blow—but he was a man, and he took his punishment manfully.

'Good-bye, Lady Carlyon,' he said. 'I deserve little consideration at your hands, but I will ask you not to condemn me altogether as a discourteous churl and boor, till—till you know a few things of which you are now happily ignorant. Were I a selfish man, I should wish you to be enlightened speedily concerning these matters; but being, God knows! your true friend'—here his voice trembled—'I pray you may remain a long time yet in the purest paradise known on earth—the paradise of a loving soul's illusion. My hand shall not destroy one blossom in your fairy garden! In old days of chivalry, beautiful and beloved women had champions to defend their honour and renown, and fight for them if needful; and though the old days are no longer with us, chivalry is not quite dead, so that if ever you need a champion—heavens! what am I saying? No wonder you look scornful! Lady Delicia Carlyon to need the championship of an actor! The thing is manifestly absurd! You, in your position, can help me by your influence, but I can do nothing to help you—if by chance you should ever need help. I am talking wildly, and deepening my offences in your eyes; perhaps, however, you will think better of me some day. And so good-bye again—I cannot ask you to forgive me. If ever you desire to see me once more, I will come at your command—but not till then.'

Inflexibly she stood, without offering him her hand in farewell. But he desperately caught that hand, and kissed it with the ardour of an Ernani and Romeo intermingled, then he turned and left the room. Delicia listened to his retreating footsteps as he descended the stairs and passed into the hall below, then she heard the street door close. A great sigh of relief broke from her lips; he was gone,—this impertinent actor who had presumed to say that her husband was 'nothing, and less than nothing'—he was gone, and he would probably never come back. She looked down at Spartan, and found the dog's eyes were turned up to hers in inquiring wonder and sadness. As plainly as any animal could speak by mere expression, he was saying,—

'What is the matter with Valdis? He is a friend of mine, and why have you driven him away?'

'Spartan, dear,' she said, drawing him towards her, 'he is a very conceited man, and he says unkind things about our dear master, and we do not intend to let him come near us any more! These great actors always get spoilt, and think they are lords almighty, and presume to pass judgment on much better men than themselves. Paul Valdis is being so run after and so ridiculously flattered that he will soon become quite unbearable.'

Spartan sighed profoundly; he was not entirely satisfied in his canine mind. He gave one or two longing and wistful glances towards the door, but his wandering thoughts were quickly recalled to his immediate surroundings by the feeling of something warm and wet dropping on his head. It was a tear,—a bright tear, fallen from the beautiful eyes of his mistress,—and in anxious haste he pressed his rough body close against her with a mute caress of inquiring sympathy. In very truth Delicia was crying,—quietly and in a secret way, as though ashamed to acknowledge her emotion even to herself. As a rule, she liked to be able to give a reason for her feelings, but on this occasion she found it impossible to make any analysis of the cause of her tears. Yet they fell fast, and she wiped them away quickly with a little filmy handkerchief as fine as a cobweb, which Spartan, moved by a sudden desire to provide her with some harmless distraction from melancholy, made uncouth attempts to secure as a plaything. He succeeded so far in his clumsy gambols as to bring the flicker of a smile on her face at last, whereat he rejoiced exceedingly, and wagged his tail with a violence that threatened to entirely dislocate that useful member. In a few minutes she was quite herself again, and when her husband returned to dinner, met him with the usual beautiful composure that always distinguished her bearing, though there was an air of thoughtful resolve about her which accentuated the delicate lines of her features and made her look more intellectually classic than ever. When she took her seat at table that evening, her statuesque serenity, combined with her fair face, steadfast eyes, and rich hair knotted loosely at the back of her well-shaped head, gave her so much the aspect of something far superior to the ordinary run of mortal women, that Carlyon, fresh from a game of baccarat, where he had lost over three hundred pounds in a couple of hours, was conscious of a smarting sense of undefinable annoyance.

'I wish you could keep our name out of the papers,' he said suddenly, when dessert was placed before them, and the servants had withdrawn; 'it is most annoying to me to see it constantly cropping up in all manner of vulgar society paragraphs.'

She looked at him steadfastly.

'You used not to mind it so much,' she answered, 'but I am sorry you are vexed. I wish I could remedy the evil, but unfortunately I am quite powerless. When one is a public character, the newspapers will have their fling; it cannot possibly be helped; but if one is leading an honest life in the world, and has no disgraceful secrets to hide, what does it matter after all?'

'I think it matters a great deal,' he grumbled, as he carefully skinned the fine peach on his plate, and commenced to appreciate its flavour. 'I hate to have my movements forestalled and advertised by the Press. And, as far as you are concerned, I am sure I heartily wish you were not a public character.'

She opened her eyes a little.

'Do you? Since when? Since you became Lord Carlyon? My dear boy, if a trumpery little handle to your name is going to make you ashamed of your wife's reputation as an author, I think it's a great pity you ever succeeded to the title.'

'Oh, I know you don't care a bit about it,' he said, keeping his gaze on the juicy peach; 'but other people appreciate it.'

'What other people?' queried Delicia, laughing. 'The droll little units that call themselves "society?" I daresay they do appreciate it—they have got nothing else to think or talk about but "he" and "she" and "we" and "they." And yet poor old Mortlands, who was here this afternoon, forgot all about this same wonderful title many times, and kept on calling me "Miss Vaughan." Then he apologised, and said in extenuation, that to add a "ladyship" to my name was "to gild refined gold and paint the lily." That quotation has often been used before under similar circumstances, but he gave it quite a new flavour of gallantry.'

'The Mortlands family dates back to about the same period as ours,' said Carlyon, musingly.

'As ours? Say as yours, my dear lord!' returned Delicia, gaily, 'for I am sure I do not know where the Vaughans come from. I must go down to the Heralds' College and see if I cannot persuade someone in authority there to pick me out an ancestor who did great deeds before the Carlyons ever existed! Ancestral glory is such a question with you now, Will, that I almost wish I were the daughter of a Chicago pork-packer.'

'Why?' asked Carlyon, a trifle gloomily.

'Why, because I could at any rate get up a past "Pilgrim Father" if necessary. A present-day reputation is evidently not sufficient for you.'

'I think the old days were best,' he said curtly.

'Yes? When the men kept the women within four walls, as cows are kept in byres, and gave them just the amount of food they thought they deserved, and beat them if they were rebellious? Well, perhaps those times were pleasant, but I am afraid I should never have appreciated them. I prefer to see things advancing—as they are—and I like a civilisation which includes the education of women as well as of men.'

'Things are advancing a great deal too quickly, in my opinion,' said Carlyon, languidly, pouring out a glass of the choice claret beside him. 'I should be inclined to vote for a little less rapid progress, in regard to women.'

'Yet only the other day you were saying what a shame it was that women could not win full academic honours like men; and you even said that they ought to be given titles, in reward for their services to Science, Art and Literature,' said Delicia. 'What has made you change your opinion?'

He did not look up at her, but absently played with the crumbs on the table-cloth.

'Well, I am not sure that it is the correct thing for women to appear very prominently in public,' he said.

A momentary contraction of Delicia's fine brows showed that a touch of impatience ruffled her humour. But she restrained herself, and said with perfect composure,—

'I am afraid I don't quite follow your meaning, unless, perhaps, your words apply to the new dancer, La Marina?'

He gave a violent start, and with a sudden movement of his hand upset his wine glass. Delicia watched the red wine staining the satiny whiteness of the damask table-cloth without any exclamation or sign of annoyance. Her heart was beating fast, because through her drooping lashes she saw her husband's face, and read there an expression that was strange and new to her.

'Oh, I know what has happened,' he said fiercely, and with almost an oath, as he strove to wipe off the drops of Chateau Lafite that soiled his cuff as well as the table-cloth. 'That woman Lefroy has been here telling tales and making mischief! I saw her, with her crew of social rowdies, at the Savoy the other night....'

'And she saw you!' interpolated Delicia, smiling.

'Well, what if she did?' he snapped out irritably. 'I was introduced to La Marina by Prince Golitzberg—you know that German fellow—and he asked me to take her off his hands. He had promised her a supper at the Savoy, and at the last moment he was sent for to go to his wife, who was seized with sudden illness. I could not refuse to oblige him; he's a decent sort of chap. Then, of course, as luck would have it, in comes that spoil-sport of a Lefroy and makes all this rumpus!'

'My dear Will!' expostulated Delicia, in gentle amazement, 'what are you talking about? Where is the rumpus? What has Mrs Lefroy done? She simply mentioned to me to-day that she had seen you at the Savoy with this Marina, and there the matter ended, and, as far as I am concerned, there it will for ever end.'

'That is all nonsense!' said Carlyon, still wiping his cuff. 'You know you are put out, or you wouldn't look at me in the way you do!'

Delicia laughed.

'What way am I looking?' she demanded merrily. 'Pray, my dear boy, don't be so conceited as to imagine I mind your taking the Marina, or any amount of Marinas, to supper at the Savoy, if that kind of thing amuses you! Surely you don't suppose that I bring myself into comparison with "ladies" of Marina's class, or that I could be jealous of such persons? I am afraid you do not know me yet, Will, though we have spent such happy years together! You have neither fathomed the depth of my love, nor taken the measure of my pride! Besides,—I trust you!' She paused. Then rising from the table, she handed him the little silver box containing his cigars. 'Smoke off your petulance, dear boy!' she said, 'and join me upstairs when you are ready. We go to the Premier's reception to-night, remember.'

Her hand rested for a moment on his shoulder with a caressing touch; anon, humming a little tune under her breath, and followed by Spartan, who never let her go out of his sight for a moment if he could help it, she left the room. Ascending the staircase, she stopped on the threshold of her study and looked in with a vague air, as though the place had suddenly grown unfamiliar. There, immediately facing her, smiled the pictured lineaments of Shakespeare, that immortal friend of man; her favourite books greeted her with all the silent yet persuasive eloquence of their well-known and deeply-honoured titles; the electric lights, fitted up to represent small stars in the ceiling, were not turned on, and only the young moon peered glimmeringly through the lattice window, shedding a pale lustre on the marble features of the 'Antinous.' Standing quite still, she gazed at all these well-known objects of her daily surroundings with a curious sense of strangeness, Spartan staring up wonderingly at her the while.

'What is it that is wrong with me?' she mused. 'Why do I feel as if I were suddenly thrust out of my usual peace, and made to take a part in the common and mean disputes of petty-minded men and women?'

She waited another minute, then apparently conquering whatever emotion was at work within her, she pressed the ivory handle which diffused light on all visible things, and entered the room with a quiet step and a half-penitent look, as of regret for having given offence to some invisible spirit-monitor.

'Oh, you dear, dear friends!' she said, approaching the bookshelves, and softly apostrophising the volumes ranged there as if they were sentient personages, 'I am afraid I do not consult you half enough! You are always with me, ready to give me the soundest advice on any subject under the sun; advice founded on sage experience, too! Tell me something now, out of your stores of wisdom, to stop this foolish little aching at my heart—this irritating, selfish, suspicious trouble which is quite unworthy of me, as it is unworthy of anyone who has had the high privilege of learning great lessons from such teachers as you are! It is not as if I were a woman whose sole ideas of life are centred on dress and domesticity, or one of those unhappy, self-tormenting creatures who cannot exist without admiration and flattery; I am, I think and hope, differently constituted, and mean to try for great things, even if I never succeed in attaining them. But in trying for greatness, one must not descend to littleness—save me from this danger, my dear old-world comrades, if you can, for to-night I am totally unlike myself. There are thoughts in my brain that might have excited Xantippe, but which should never trouble Delicia, if to herself Delicia prove but true!'

And she raised her eyes, half smiling, to the meditative countenance of Shakespeare. 'Excellent and "divine Williams," you must excuse me for fitting your patriotic line on England to my unworthy needs; but why would you make yourself so eminently quotable?' She paused, then took up a book lying on her desk. 'Here is an excellent doctor for a sick, petulant child such as I am—Marcus Aurelius. What will you say to me, wise pagan? Let me see,' and opening a page at random, her eyes fell on the words, 'Do not suppose you are hurt, and your complaint ceases. Cease your complaint and you are not hurt.'

She laughed, and her face began to light up with all its usual animation.

'Excellent Emperor! What a wholesome thrashing you give me! Anything more?' And she turned over a few pages, and came upon one of the imperial moralist's most coolly-dictatorial assertions. 'What an easy matter it is to stem the current of your imagination, to discharge a troublesome or improper thought, and at once return to a state of calm!'

'I don't know about that, Marcus,' she said. 'It is not exactly an "easy" matter to stem the current of imagination, but certainly it's worth trying;' and she read on, 'To-day I rushed clear out of misfortune, or rather, I threw misfortune from me; for, to speak the truth, it was not outside, and never came any nearer than my own fancy.'

She closed the book smilingly—the beautiful equanimity of her disposition was completely restored. She left her pretty writing den, bidding Spartan remain there on guard—a mandate he was accustomed to, and which he obeyed instantly, though with a deep sigh, his mistress's 'evenings out' being the chief trouble of his otherwise enviable existence. Delicia, meantime, went to dress for the Premier's reception, and soon slipped into the robe she had had designed for herself by a famous firm of Indian embroiderers;—a garment of softest white satin, adorned with gold and silver thread, and pearls thickly intertwined, so as to present the appearance of a mass of finely-wrought jewels. A single star of diamonds glittered in her hair, and she carried a fan of natural lilies, tied with white ribbon. Thus attired, she joined her husband, who stood ready and waiting for her in the drawing-room. He glanced up at her somewhat shamefacedly.

'You look your very best this evening, Delicia,' he said.

She made him a sweeping curtsey, and smiled.

'My lord, your favouring praise doth overwhelm me!' she answered. 'Is it not meet and right that I should so appear as to be deemed worthy of the house of Carlyon!

He put his arm round her waist and drew her to him. It was curious, he thought, how fresh her beauty seemed! And how the men in his 'set' would have burst into a loud guffaw of coarse laughter if any of them had thought that such was his opinion of his wife's charm—his own wife, to whom he had been fast wedded for over three years! According to the rules of 'modern' morality, one ought in three years to have had enough of one's lawful wife, and find a suitable 'soul' wherewith to claim 'affinity.'

'Delicia,' he said, playing idly with the lilies of her fan, 'I am sorry you were vexed about the Marina woman—'

She interrupted him by laying her little white-gloved fingers on his lips.

'Vexed? Oh, no, Will, not vexed. Why should I be? Pray don't let us talk about it any more; I have almost forgotten the incident. Come! It's time we started!'

And in response to the oddly penitent, half-sullen manner of the 'naughty boy' he chose to assume, she kissed him. Whereupon he tried that one special method of his, which had given him the victory in his wooing of her, the Passionate Outbreak; and murmuring in his rich voice that she was always the 'one woman in the world,' the 'angel of his life,' and altogether the very crown and summit of sweet perfection, he folded her in his arms with all a lover's fervour. And she, clinging to him, forgot her doubts and fears, forgot the austere observations of Marcus Aurelius, forgot the triumphs of her own intellectual career, forgot everything, in fact, but that she was the blindly-adoring devotee of a six-foot Guardsman, whom she had herself set up as a 'god' on the throne of the Ideal, and whom she worshipped through such a roseate cloud of sweet self-abnegation that she was unable to perceive how poor a fetish her idol was after all—made of nothing but the very commonest clay!

CHAPTER III

The smoking-room of the 'Bohemian' was full of a motley collection of men of the literary vagabond type—reporters, paragraphists, writers of penny dreadfuls, reeled off tape-wise from the thin spools of smoke-dried masculine brains; stray actors, playwrights anxious to translate the work of some famous foreigner and so get fastened on to his superior coat-tails, 'adapters' desirous of dramatising some celebrated novel and pocketing all the profits, anxious 'proposers' of new magazines looking about for 'funds' to back them up, and among all these an extremely casual sprinkling of the brilliant and successful workers in art and literature, who were either honorary members, or who had allowed their names to stand on the committee in order to give 'prestige' to a collection which would otherwise be termed the 'rag-tag and bob-tail' of literature. The opinions of the 'Bohemian,'—the airily idiotic theories with which the members disported themselves, and furnished food for laughter to the profane—were occasionally quoted in the newspapers, which of course gave the club a certain amount of importance in its own eyes, if in nobody else's. And the committee put on what is called a considerable amount of 'side'; now and then affecting to honour some half-and-half celebrity by asking him to a Five-Shilling dinner, and dubbing him the 'guest of the evening,' he meantime gloomily taking note of the half-cold, badly-cooked poorness of the meal, and debating within himself whether it would be possible to get away in time to have a chop 'from the grill' somewhere on his way home. The 'Bohemian' had been a long time getting started, owing to the manner in which the gentlemen who were 'in' persistently black-balled every new aspirant for the honours of membership. The cause of this arose from the chronic state of nervous jealousy in which the 'Bohemians' lived. To a certain extent, and as far as their personal animosities would permit, they were a 'Mutual Admiration Society,' and dreaded the intrusion of any stranger who might set himself to discover 'their tricks and their manners.' They had a lawyer of their own, whose business it was to arrange the disputes of the club, should occasion require his services, and they also had a doctor, a humorous and very clever little man, who was fond of strolling about the premises in the evening, and taking notes for the writing of a medical treatise to be entitled 'Literary Dyspepsia, and the Passion of Envy considered in its Action on the Spleen and Other Vital Organs,' a book which he justly considered would excite a great deal of interest among his professional compeers. But in spite of the imposing Committee of Names, the lawyer and the doctor, the 'Bohemian' did not pay. It struggled on, hampered with debts and difficulties, like most of its members. It gave smoking-concerts occasionally, for which it charged extra, and twice a year it admitted ladies to its dinners, during which banquets speeches were made distinctly proving to the fair sex that they had no business at all to be present. Still, with every advantage that a running fire of satirical comment could give it in the way of notoriety, the 'Bohemian' was not a prosperous concern; and no Yankee Bullion-Bag seemed inclined to take it up or invest in the chances of its future. A more sallow, sour, discontented set of men than were congregated in the smoking-room on the particular evening now in question could hardly be found anywhere between London and the Antipodes, and only the little doctor, leaning back in a lounge-chair with his neatly-shaped little legs easily crossed, and a smile on his face, seemed to enjoy his position as an impartial spectator of the scene. His smile, however, was one of purely professional satisfaction; he was making studies of a 'subject' in the person of a long-haired 'poet,' who wrote his own reviews. This son of the Muses was an untidy, dirty-looking man, and his abundant locks irresistibly reminded one of a black goat-skin door-mat, worn in places where reckless visitors had wiped their muddy boots thereon. No doubt this poet washed occasionally, but his skin was somewhat of the peculiar composition complained of by Lady Macbeth—'All the perfumes of Arabia' would neither cleanse nor 'sweeten' it.

'Jaundice,' murmured the little doctor, pleasantly; 'I'll give him a year, and he'll be down with its worst form. Too much smoke, too much whisky, combined mentally with conceit, spite, and the habitual concentration of the imagination on self; and no gaiety, wit or kindness to temper the mixture. All bad for the health—as bad as bad can be! But, God bless my soul, what does it matter? He'd never be missed!'

And he rubbed his hands jubilantly, smiling still.

Meanwhile the rhymester thus doomed was seated at a distant table and writing of himself thus,—

'If Shelley was a poet, if Byron was a poet, if we own Shakespeare as a king of bards and dramatists, then Mr Aubrey Grovelyn is a poet also, eminently fitted to be the comrade of these immortals. Inspired thought, beauty of diction, ease and splendour of rhythm distinguish Aubrey Grovelyn's muse as they distinguish Shakespeare's utterances; and in bestowing upon this gifted singer the praise that is justly due to him, we feel we are rendering a service to England in being among the first to point out the glorious promise and value of a genius who is destined to outsoar all his contemporaries in far-reaching originality and grandeur of design.'

Finishing this with a bold dash, he put it in an envelope and addressed it to the office of the journal on which he was employed and known, simply as Alfred Brown. Mr Alfred Brown was on the staff of that journal as a critic; and as Brown he praised himself in the person of Aubrey Grovelyn. The great editor of the journal, being half his time away shooting, golfing, or otherwise amusing himself, didn't know anything about either Grovelyn or Brown, and didn't care. And the public, seeing Grovelyn described as a Shakespeare, promptly concluded he must be a humbug, and avoided his books as cautiously as though they had been labelled 'Poison.' Hence Brown-Aubrey-Grovelyn's chronic yellow melancholy—his poems wouldn't 'sell.' He crammed his eulogistic review of his own latest production into his pocket, and went over to the doctor, from whose cigar he kindled his own.

'Have you seen the papers this evening?' he asked languidly, dropping into a chair next to the club's 'Galen,' and running one skinny hand through his door-mat curls.

'I have just glanced through them,' replied the doctor, indifferently. 'I never do read anything but the telegrams.'

The poet raised his eyebrows superciliously.

'So? You don't allow your mind to be influenced by the ebb and flow of the human tide of events,' he murmured vaguely. 'But I should have thought you would have observed the ridiculous announcement concerning the new book by that horrid woman, Delicia Vaughan. It is monstrous! A sale of one hundred thousand copies; it's an infernal lie!'

'It's a damnation truth!' said a pleasant voice, suddenly, in the mildest of accents; and a good-looking man with a pretty trick of twirling his moustache, and an uncomfortable way of flashing his eyes, squared himself upright in front of both physician and poet. 'I'm the publisher, and I know!'

There was a silence, during which Mr Grovelyn smiled angrily and re-arranged his door-mat. 'When,' proceeded the publisher, sweetly, 'will you enable me to do the same thing for you, Mr Grovelyn?'

The doctor, whose name was Dalley, laughed; the poet frowned.

'Sir,' said Grovelyn, 'my work does not appeal to this age, which is merely prolific in the generating of idiots; I trust myself and my productions to the justice of posterity.'

'Then you must appeal to posterity's publishers as well, mustn't he, Mr Granton?' suggested Doctor Dalley, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, addressing the publisher, who, being the head of a wealthy and influential firm, was regarded by all the penniless scribblers in the 'Bohemian' with feelings divided betwixt awe and fear.

'He must, indeed!' said Granton. 'Personally, I prefer to speculate in Delicia Vaughan, now Lady Carlyon. Her new book is a masterpiece; I am proud to be the publisher of it. And upon my word, I think the public show capital taste in "rushing" for it.'

'Pooh, she can't write!' sneered Grovelyn. 'Did you ever know a woman who could?'

'I have heard of George Eliot,' hinted Dalley.

'An old hen, that imagined it could crow!' said the poet, with intense malignity. 'She'll be forgotten as though she never existed, in a little while; and as for that Vaughan woman, she's several grades lower still, and ought only to be employed for the London Journal!'

Granton looked at him, and bit his lips to hide a smile.

'It strikes me you'd rather like to stand in Lady Carlyon's shoes, all the same, Mr Grovelyn,' he said.

Grovelyn laughed, with such a shrill sound in the laughter, that Dr Dalley immediately made a mental note entitled 'Splenetic Hysteria,' and watched him with professional eagerness.

'Not I,' he exclaimed. 'Everybody knows her husband writes more than half her books!'

'That's a lie!' said a full, clear voice behind them. 'Her husband is as big an ass as you are!'

Grovelyn turned round fiercely, and confronted Paul Valdis. There was a silence of surprise and consternation. Several men rose from various parts of the room, and came to see what was going on. Dr Dalley rubbed his hands in delightful anticipation of a 'row,' but no one spoke or moved to interfere. The two men, Grovelyn and Valdis, stood face to face; the one mean-featured, with every movement of his body marked by a false and repulsive affectation, the other a manly and heroic figure distinguished by good looks and grace of bearing, with the consciousness of right and justice flashing in his eyes.

'You accuse me of telling a lie, Mr Valdis,' hissed Grovelyn, 'and you call me an ass!'

'I do,' retorted Valdis, coolly. 'It is certainly a lie that Lord Carlyon writes half his wife's books. I had a letter from him once, and found out by it that he didn't known how to spell, much less express himself grammatically. And of course you are an ass if you think he could do anything in the way of literature; but you don't think so—you only say so out of pure jealousy of a woman's fame!'

'You shall answer for this, Mr Valdis!' exclaimed Grovelyn, the curls of his door-mat coiffure bristling with rage. 'By Heaven, you shall answer for it!'

'When you please, and how you please,' returned Valdis, composedly; 'Now and here, if you like, and if the members permit fighting on the club premises.'

Exclamations of 'No, no!' mingled with laughter, partially drowned his voice. Everyone at the 'Bohemian' knew and dreaded Valdis; he was the most influential person on the committee, and the most dangerous if offended.

'Lady Carlyon's name is hardly fitted to be a bone of contention for us literary and play-acting dogs-in-the-manger,' he continued. 'She does not write verse, so she is not in your way, Mr Grovelyn, nor will she interfere with your claim on posterity. She is not an actress, so she does not rob me of any of my honours as an actor, and I think we should do well to magnanimously allow her the peaceful enjoyment of her honestly-earned reputation, without grouping ourselves together like dirty street-boys to try and throw mud at her. Our mud doesn't stick, you know! Her book is an overwhelming success, and her husband will doubtless enjoy all the financial profits of it.'

He turned on his heel and looked over some papers lying on the table. Grovelyn touched his arm; there was an evil leer on his face.

'The pen is mightier than the sword, Mr Valdis!' he observed.

'Ay, ay! That means you are going to blackguard me in the next number of the ha'penny Clarion? Be it so! Truth shall not budge for a ha'porth of slander!'

He resumed his perusal of the papers, and Grovelyn walked away slowly, his eyes fixed on the ground, and a brooding mischief in his face.

'You should never ruffle the temper of a man who has liver complaint, Valdis,' said Dr Dalley, cheerfully, drawing his chair up to the table where the handsome actor still leaned. 'All evil humours come from the troubles of that important organ, and I am sure, if I could only meet a would-be murderer in time, I could save him from the committal of his intended wicked deed by a dose—quite a small dose—of suitable medicine!'

Valdis laughed rather forcedly.

'Could you? Then you'd better attend to Grovelyn without delay. He's ripe for murder—with the pen!'

Dr Dalley rubbed his well-shaven, rounded chin meditatively.

'Is he? Well, perhaps he is; I really shouldn't wonder! Curiously enough, now I come to think of it, he has certain points about him that are synonymous with a murderer's instinct—phrenologically and physiologically speaking, I mean. It is rather strange he should be a poet at all.'

'Is he a poet?' queried Valdis, contemptuously; 'I never heard it honestly admitted. One does not acknowledge a man as a poet simply because he has a shock head of very dirty hair.'

'My dear Valdis,' expostulated the little doctor, amiably, 'you really are very bitter, almost violent in your strictures upon the man, who to me is one of the most interesting persons I have ever met! Because I foresee his death—due to very complex and entertaining complications of disease—in the space of—let me see! Well, suppose we say eighteen months! I do not think we shall have any chance of an autopsy. I wish I could think it likely, but I am afraid—' Here Dr Dalley shook his head, and looked so despondent concerning the slender hope he had of dissecting Grovelyn after death, that Valdis laughed heartily, and this time unrestrainedly.

'You forget, there's the new photography; you could photograph his interior while he's alive!'

'By Jove! I never thought of that!' cried the doctor, joyfully; 'Of course! I'll have it done when the disease has made a little more progress. It will be extremely instructive!'

'It will,' said Valdis. 'Especially if you reproduce it in the journals, and call it "Portrait of a Lampooner's Interior under Process of Destruction by the Microbes of Disappointment and Envy."

'Good! good!' chuckled Dalley, 'And, my dear Valdis, how would you like a photo entitled, "Portrait of a Distinguished Actor's Imaginative Organism consumed by the Fires of a Hopeless Love?"'

Valdis coloured violently, and anon grew pale.

'You are an old friend of mine, Dalley,' he said slowly, 'but you may go too far!'

'So I may, and so I have!' returned the little doctor, penitently, and with an abashed look. 'Forgive me, my dear boy; I've been guilty of a piece of impertinence, and I'm sorry! There! But I should like a few words with you alone, if you don't mind. It's Sunday night; you can't go and be "Ernani." Will you waste a few minutes of your company on me—outside these premises, where the very walls have ears?'

Valdis assented, and in a few minutes they left the club together. With their departure there was a slight stir among the men in the room, who were reading, smoking, and drinking whisky and water.

'I wish she'd take up with him!' growled one man, whose head was half hidden behind a Referee. 'Why the devil doesn't she play the fool like other women?'

'Whom are you speaking of?' inquired a stout personage, who was busy correcting his critical notes on a new play which had been acted for the first time the previous evening.

'Delicia Vaughan—Lady Carlyon,' answered the first man. 'Valdis is infatuated with her. Why she doesn't go over to him, I can't imagine; a writing female need not be more particular than a dancing female, I should say they're both public characters, and Carlyon has thrown himself down as a free gift at the feet of La Marina, so there's no obstacle in the way, except the woman's own extraordinary "cussedness."

'What good would it do you that she should "go over," as you call it, to Valdis?' inquired the stout scribbler, dubiously, biting the end of his pencil.

'Good? Why, none to me in particular,' said the other, 'but it would drag her down! Don't you see? It would prove to the idiotic public, that is just now running after her as if she were a goddess, that she is only the usual frail stuff of which women are made. I should like that! I confess I should like it! I like women to keep in their places—'

'That is, on the down grade,' suggested the stout gentleman, still dubiously.

'Of course! what else were they made for? La Marina, who kicks up her skirts, and hits her nose with the point of her big toe, is far more of a woman, I take it, and certainly more to the taste of a man, than the insolent, brilliant, superior Delicia Vaughan!'

'Oh! You admit she is brilliant and superior?' said the stout critic, with a smile. 'Well, you know that's saying a great deal! I'm an old-fashioned man—'

'Of course you are!' put in a young fellow, standing near. 'You like to believe there may be good women,—real angels,—on earth; you like to believe it, and so do I!'

He was a fresh-coloured youth, lately come up to London from the provinces to try his hand at literature; and the individual with the Referee, who had started the conversation, glanced him over with the supremest contempt.

'I hope your mother's in town to take care of you, you ninny,' he said. 'You're a very callow bird!'

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

'Am I? Well, all the same, I'd rather honour women than despise them.'

The stout critic looked up from his notebook approvingly.

'Keep that up as long as you can, youngster,' he said. 'It won't hurt you!'

A silence followed; the man with the Referee spoke not another word, and the fresh-coloured provincial, getting tired of the smoke and the general air of egotistical self-concentration with which each member of the club sat fast in his own chosen chair, absorbed in his own chosen form of inward meditation, took a hasty departure, glad to get out into the cool night air. His way home lay through a part of Mayfair, and at one of the houses he passed he saw a long line of carriages outside and a brilliant display of light within. Some fashionable leader of society was holding a Sunday evening reception; and moved by a certain vague interest and curiosity, the young reporter lingered for a moment watching the gaily-dressed women passing in and out. While he yet waited, a dignified butler appeared on the steps and murmured something in the ear of a gold-buttoned commissionaire, who thereupon shouted vociferously,—

'Lady Car-ly-on's carriage! This way!'

And as an elegant coupé, drawn by two spirited horses drove swiftly up in response to the summons, a woman wrapped in a soft, white mantilla of old Spanish lace, and holding up her silken train with one hand, came out of the house with a gentleman, evidently her host, who was escorting her to the carriage. The young man from the country leaned eagerly forward and caught sight of a proud, delicate face illumined by two dark violet eyes, a flashing glimpse of beauty that vanished ere fully seen. But it was enough to make him who had been called a 'callow bird' wax suddenly indignant with certain self-styled celebrities he had just left behind at the 'Bohemian.'

'What beasts they are!' he muttered; 'what cads! Thank God they'll never be famous; they're too mean! To fling their dirty spite at a woman like that! It's disgusting! Wait till I get a chance; I'll "review" their trash for them!'

And warmed by the prospect of this future vengeance, the 'callow bird' went home to roost.

CHAPTER IV

Some days after the war of words between Valdis and Aubrey Grovelyn at the 'Bohemian,' Delicia was out shopping in Bond Street, not for herself, but for her husband. She had a whole list of orders to execute for him, from cravats and hosiery up to a new and expensive 'coach-luncheon-basket,' to which he had taken a sudden fancy; and besides this, she was looking about in all the jeweller's shops for some tasteful and valuable thing to give him as a souvenir of the approaching anniversary of their marriage day. Pausing at last in front of one glittering window, she saw a rather quaint set of cuff-studs which she thought might possibly answer her purpose, and she went inside the shop to examine them more closely. The jeweller, not knowing her personally, but judging from the indifferent way in which she took the announcement of his rather stiff prices, that she must be a tolerably rich woman, began to show her some of his most costly pieces of workmanship, hoping thereby to tempt her into the purchase of something for herself. She had no very great love for jewels, but she had for artistic design, and she gratified the jeweller by her intelligent praise of some particularly choice bits, the merits of which could only be fully recognised by a quick eye and cultivated taste.

'That is a charming pendant,' she said, taking up a velvet case, in which rested a dove with outspread wings, made of the finest diamonds, carrying in its beak the facsimile of a folded letter in finely-wrought gold, with the words, 'Je t'adore ma mie!' set upon it in lustrous rubies. 'The idea is graceful in itself, and admirably carried out.'

The jeweller smiled.

'Ah, that's a very unique thing,' he said, 'but it's not for sale. It has been made to special order for Lord Carlyon.'

A faint tremor passed over Delicia like the touch of a cold wind, and for a moment the jewels spread out on the glass counter before her danced up and down like sparks flying out of a fire, but she maintained her outward composure. And in another minute she smiled at herself, wondering why she had been so startled, for, of course, her husband had ordered this pretty piece of jewellery as a gift for her, on the very anniversary she was preparing to celebrate by a gift to him! Meanwhile the jeweller, who was of an open mind, and rather fond of confiding bits of gossip to stray customers, took the diamond dove out of its satin-lined nest, and held it up in the sunlight to show the lustre of the stones.

'It's a lovely design!' he said enthusiastic-ally; 'It will cost Lord Carlyon a little over five hundred pounds. But gentlemen of his sort never mind what they pay, so long as they can please the lady they are after. And the lady in this case isn't his lordship's wife, as you may well suppose!'

He sniggered, and one of his eyelids trembled as though it were on the point of a profane wink. Delicia regarded him with a straight, clear look.

'Why should I suppose anything of the sort?' she queried calmly. 'I should, on the contrary, imagine that it was just the tasteful gift a man would wish to choose for his wife.'

The jeweller made a curious little bow over his counter, implying deference towards Delicia's unsuspicious nature.

'Would you really?' he said. 'Well, now, as a matter of fact, in our trade, when we get special orders from gentlemen for valuable jewels, they are never by any chance intended for the gentlemen's wives. Of course it is not our business to interfere with, or even comment upon the actions of our customers; but as far as our own artistic work goes, it often pains us—yes, I may say it pains us—to see some of our finest pieces being thrown away on dancers and music-hall singers, who don t really know how to appreciate them, because they haven't the taste or culture for it. They know the money's worth of jewels—oh, you may trust them for that. And whenever they want to raise cash, why, of course their jewels come handy. But it's not satisfactory to us as a firm, for we take a good deal of pride in our work. This dove, for instance,' and again he dangled the pendant in the sunbeams, 'It's a magnificent specimen of diamond-setting, and of course we, as the producers of such a piece, would far rather know it was going to Lady Carlyon than to La Marina.'