TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Punctuation has been normalized. All other printer's errors have been retained.

BEATRICE BOVILLE
AND
OTHER STORIES.

BY

"OUIDA."

AUTHOR OF
"STRATHMORE," "GRANVILLE DE VIGNE," "CHANDOS,"
"IDALIA," "RANDOLPH GORDON," ETC., ETC.

Third Series.

PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1905

CONTENTS.

BEATRICE BOVILLE.

I

OF EARLSCOURT'S FIANCEE.

"To compass her with sweet observances,
To dress her beautifully and keep her true."

That, according to Mr. Tennyson's lately-published opinion, is the devoir of that deeply-to-be-pitied individual, l'homme marié. Possibly in the times of which the Idyls treat, Launcelot and Gunevere might have been the sole, exceptional mauvais sujets in the land, and woad, being the chief ingredient in the toilet-dress, mightn't come quite so expensive. But nowadays "sweet observances," rendered, I presume, by gifts from Hunt and Roskell's and boxes in the grand tier, tell on a cheque-book so severely; "keeping her true" is such an exceedingly problematical performance, to judge by Sir C. C.'s breathless work, and "dressing her beautifully" comes so awfully expensive, with crinoline and cashmeres, pink pearls, and Mechlin, and the beau sexe's scornful repudiation, not alone of a faded silk, like poor Enid's, but of the handsomest dress going, if it's damned by being "seen twice," that I have ever vowed that, plaise à Dieu, I will never marry, and with heaven's help will keep the vow better than I might most probably keep the matrimonial ones if I took them. Yet if ever I saw a woman for whom I could have fancied a man's committing that semisuicidal act, that woman was Beatrice Boville. Not for her beauty, for, except one of the loveliest figures and a pair of the most glorious eyes, she did not claim much; not for her money, for she had none; not for her birth, for on one side that was somewhat obscure; but for herself; and had I ever tried the herculean task of dressing anybody beautifully and keeping anybody true, it should have been she, but for the fact that when I knew her first she was engaged to my cousin Earlscourt. We had none of us ever dreamt he would marry, for he had been sworn to political life so long, given over so utterly to the battle-ground of St. Stephen's and the intrigues of Downing Street, that the ladies of our house were sorely wrathful when they heard that he had at last fallen in love and proposed to Beatrice Boville, who, though she was Lady Mechlin's niece, was the daughter of a West Indian who had married her mother, broken her heart, spent her money, deserted her, and never been heard of since; the more wrathful as they had no help for themselves, and were obliged to be contented with distinguishing her with refreshing appellations of a "very clever schemer," evidently a "perfect intrigante," and similar epithets with which their sex is driven for consolation under such trying circumstances. It's a certain amount of relief to us to call a man who has cut us down in a race "a stupid owl; very little in him!" but it is mild gratification to that enjoyed by ladies when they retaliate for injury done them by that delightful bonbon of a sentence, "No doubt a most artful person!" You see it conveys so much and proves three things in one—their own artlessness, their enemy's worthlessness, and their victim's folly. Being with Earlscourt at the time of his "singularly unwise, step," as they phrased it, I knew that he wasn't trapped in any way, and that he was loved irrespectively of his social rank; but where was the good of telling that to deeply-injured and perforce silenced ladies? "They knew better;" and when a woman says that, always bow to her superior judgment, my good fellow, even when she knows better than you what you did with yourself last evening, and informs you positively you were at that odious Mrs. Vanille's opera supper, though, to the best of your belief, you never stirred from the U. S. card-room; or you will be voted a Goth, and make an enemy for the rest of your natural life.

In opposition to the rest of the family, I thought (and you must know by this time, amis lecteurs, that I hardly think marriage so enjoyable an institution as some writers do, but perhaps a little like a pipe of opium, of which the dreams are better than the awakening)—I thought that he could hardly have done better, as far as his own happiness went, as I saw her standing by him one evening in the window of Lady Mechlin's rooms at Lemongenseidlitz, where we all were that August, a brilliant, fascinating woman already, though then but nineteen, noble-hearted, frank, impetuous, with something in the turn of her head and the proud glance of her eyes, that told you, you might trust her; that she was of the stuff to keep her word even to her own hinderance; that neither would she tell a lie, nor brook one imputed to her; that she might err on the side of pride, on the side of meanness never; that she might have plenty of failings, but not anything petty, low, or ungenerous among them. The evening sun fell on them as they stood, on her high, white forehead, with its chestnut hair turned off it as you see it in old pictures, which Earlscourt was touching caressingly with his hand as he talked to her. They seemed well suited, and yet—his fault was pride, an unassailable, unyielding pride; hers was pride, too, pride in her own truth and honor, which would send you to the deuce if you ever presumed to doubt either; and I wondered idly as I looked at them, whether those two prides would ever come in conflict, and if so, whether either of them would give in in such a case—whether there would be submission on one side or on both, or on neither? Such metaphysical and romantic calculations are not often my line; but as they stood together, the sun faded off, and a cold, stormy wind blew up in its stead, which, perhaps, metaphorically suggested the problem to me. As one goes through life one gets up to so many sunny, balmy, cloudless days, and so often before the night is down gets wetted to the skin by a drenching shower, that one contracts an uncomfortable habit when the sun does shine, of looking out for squalls, a fear that, sans doute, considerably damps the pleasures of the noon. But the fear is natural, isn't it, more's the pity, when one has been often caught?

I chanced to ask her that night what made her so fond of Earlscourt. She turned her fearless, flashing eyes half laughingly, half haughtily on me, the color brighter in her face:

"I should have thought you would rather have asked how could I, or any other woman whom he stooped to notice, fail to love him? There are few hearts and intellects so noble: he is as superior to you ball-room loungers, you butterfly flutterers, as the stars to that chandelier."

"Bien obligé!" laughed I. "But that is just what I meant. Most young ladies are afraid of him; you never were?"

She laughed contemptuously.

"Afraid! You do not know much of me. It is precisely his giant intellect that first drew me to him, when I heard his speech on the Austrian question. Do you remember how the Lords listened to him so quietly that you could have heard a feather fall? I like that silence of theirs when they hear what they admire, better than I do the cheers of the other house. Afraid of him! What a ludicrous idea! Do you suppose I should be afraid of any one? It is only those who are conceited or cowardly, who are timid. If you have nothing to assume, or to conceal, what cause have you to fear? I love, honor, reverence Lord Earlscourt, God knows; but fear him—never!"

"Not even his anger, if you ever incurred it?" I asked her, amused with her haughty indignation.

"Certainly not. Did I merit it, I would come to him frankly, and ask his pardon, and he would give it; if I did not deserve it, he would be the one to repent."

She looked far more attractive than many a handsomer woman, and infinitely more noble than a more tractable one. She was admirably fitted for Earlscourt, if he trusted her; but it was just possible he might some day mistrust and misunderstand her, and then there might be the devil to pay!

II.

THE FIRST SHADOW.

Lemongenseidlitz was a charming little Bad. Beatrice Boville and her aunt Lady Mechlin, Earlscourt and I, had been there six weeks. His brother peers—of whom there were scores at Lemongenseidlitz—complimented Earlscourt on his fiancée.

"So you're caught at last?" said an octogenarian minister, who was as sprightly as a schoolboy. "Well, my dear fellow, you might have gone higher, sans doute, but on my honor I don't think you could have done better."

It was the universal opinion. Beatrice was not the belle of the Bad, because there were dozens of beautiful women, and beautiful she was not; but she was more admired than any of them, and had Earlscourt wanted voices to justify his choice he would have had them, but he didn't; he was entirely independent of the opinions of others, and had he chosen to set his coronet on the brows of a peasant girl, would have cared little what any one thought or said. We all of us enjoyed that six weeks. Lady Mechlin lost to her heart's content at roulette, and was as complacent over her losses as any old dowager could be. Beatrice Boville shone best, as nice natures ever do, in a sunny atmosphere; and if she had any faults of impatient temper or pride, there was nothing to call them forth. Earlscourt, cold politician though he'd been, gave himself up entirely to the warmer, brighter existence, which he found in his new passion; and I, not being in love with anybody, made the pleasantest love possible wherever I liked. We all of us found a couleur de rose tint in the air of little Lemongenseidlitz, and I'd quite forgotten my presentiment, when, one night at the Kursaal, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand came up on the sunny horizon, and put me in mind of it.

Earlscourt came into the ball room rather late; he had been talking with some French ministers on some international project which he was anxious to effect, and asked Lady Mechlin where Beatrice was.

"She was with me a moment ago; she is waltzing, I dare say," said the old lady, whose soul was hankering after the ivory ball.

"Very likely," he answered, as he looked among the dancers for her; he was restless without her, though he would have liked none to see the weakness, for he was a man who felt more than he told. He could not see her, and went through the rooms till he found her, which was in a small anteroom alone. She started as he spoke to her, and a start being a timorous and nervous thing of which Beatrice Boville was never guilty, he drew her to him anxiously.

"My darling, has anything annoyed you?"

She answered him with her habitual candor:

"Yes; but I cannot tell you what, just now."

"Cannot tell me! and why?"

"Because I cannot. I can give no other reason. It is nothing of import to you, or you are sure I should not keep it from you."

"Yes; but I am equally sure that anything that concerns you is of import to me. To whom should you tell anything, if not to me? I do not like concealment, Beatrice."

His tone was grave; indeed, too much like reproof to a fractious child to suit Beatrice's pride. She drew away from him.

"Nor I. You must think but meanly of me if you can impute anything like concealment to me."

"How can I do otherwise? You tell me you have been annoyed, and refuse to say how, and by whom. Is that anything but concealment? If any one has offended or insulted you, I ought to be the first you came to. A woman, Beatrice, should have nothing hidden from the man who is, or will be, her husband."

She threw her arms around him. Her moods were variable as a child's. Perhaps this very variability Earlscourt hardly understood, for it was utterly opposed to his own character: you always found him the same; she would be all storm one moment, all sunshine the next.

"Do you suppose I would hide anything from you? Do you think for a moment I would hold back anything you had a right to know? You might look into my heart; there would be no thought or feeling there I should wish to keep from you. But if you exact confidence, so do I. Would you think of taking as your wife one you could not trust?"

He answered her a little sternly:

"No; if I once ceased to believe in your truth or honor, as I believe in my own, I should part from you forever, though God knows what it would cost me!"

"God knows what it would cost me! But I give you free leave. The instant you find a flaw in either, I am no longer worthy of your love; withdraw it, and I will never complain. But trust me you must and will; I merit your confidence, and I exact it. Look at me, Ernest. Do you believe I could ever deceive you?"

He looked into her eyes long and earnestly.

"No. When you do, your eyes will droop before mine. I trust you, Beatrice, fully, and I know you will never wrong it."

She clung to him with caressant softness, softer in her than in a meeker-spirited woman, as she whispered, 'Never!' and a man would need have been obtuse and skeptical, indeed, who could then have doubted her. And so that cloud blew over, for a time, at the least—trusted, Beatrice Boville was soft and gentle as a lamb; mistrusted or misjudged, she was fiery as a young lioness, and Earlscourt, I thought, though originally won by her intellect, held her too much as a child to fully understand her character, and to see that, though she was his darling and plaything, she was also a passionate, ardent, proud-spirited woman, stung by injustice and impatient of doubt. No two people could be more fitted to make each other's happiness, yet it struck me that it was just possible they might make each other's misery very completely, through want of comprehension on the one side, through want of explanation on the other.

"Your marriage is fixed, isn't it, Earlscourt?" asked his sister, Lady Clive Edghill, who had come to Lemongenseidlitz, and, though compelled by him, as he compelled all the rest of the family, to show Beatrice strict courtesy, disliked her, because she was not an advantageous match, was much too young in their opinion, and had no money—the gravest crimes a woman can have in the eyes of any man's relatives. "The 14th! Indeed! yours is a very short engagement!"

"Is there any reason why it should be longer?"

"O, dear, no! none that I am aware of. I wish, earnestly, my dear Earlscourt, I could congratulate you more warmly; but I can never say what I do not feel, and I had so much hoped—"

"My dear Helena, as long as I have so much reason to congratulate myself, it matters very little whether you do or do not," smiled Earlscourt. He was too much of a lion to be stung by gnats.

"I dare say. I sincerely trust you may ever have reason. But I heard some very disagreeable things about that Mr. Boville, Beatrice's father. Do you know that he was in a West India regiment, but was deprived of his commission even there?—a perfect blackleg and sharper, I understand. I suppose she has never mentioned him to you?"

"You are very much mistaken; all that Beatrice knows of him, I know; that is but little, for Lady Mechlin took her long ago, when her mother died, from such unfit guardianship. Beatrice is as open as the day—"

"Indeed! A little too frank, perhaps?"

"Too frank? That is a paradox. No one can have too much candor. It is not a virtue of your sex, but it is one, thank God! which she possesses in a rare degree, though possibly it gains her enemies where it should gain her friends."

"Still frankness may merge into indiscretion," said Helena, musingly.

"I doubt it. An indiscreet woman is never frank, for she has always the memory of silly things said and done which require concealment."

"I was merely thinking," Helena went on, regardless of a speech which she did not perhaps relish, pour cause, "merely from my deep interest in you, and my knowledge of all you will wish your wife to be, that perhaps Beatrice might be, in pure insouciance, a little too careless, a little too candid for so prominent a position as she will occupy. Last night, in passing a little anteroom in the Redoute, I saw her in such extremely earnest conversation with a man, a handsome man, about your height and age, and—"

The anteroom! Earlscourt thought, with a pang, of the start she had given when he entered it the previous night. But he was not of a jealous temperament, nor a curious one; his mind was too constantly occupied with great projects and ambitions to be capable of joining petty things together into an elaborate mosaic; he had no petitesses himself, and trifles passed unheeded. He interrupted her decidedly:

"What is there in that to build a pyramid of censure from? Doubtless it was one of her acquaintances—probably one of mine also. I should have thought you knew me better, Helena, than to attempt this gossiping nonsense with me."

"O, I say no more. I only thought you, of all men, would wish Cæsar's wife to be above—"

The gnat-strings had been too insignificant to rouse him before, but at this one his eyebrows contracted, and he rose.

"Silence! Never venture to make such a speech as that to me again. In insulting Beatrice you insult me. Unless you can mention her in terms of proper respect and reverence, never presume to speak her name to me again. Her enemies are my enemies, and, whoever they may be, I will treat them as such."

Helena was sorely frightened; if she held anybody in veneration it was Earlscourt, and she would never have ventured so far with him but for the causeless hate she had taken to Beatrice, simply because Lady Clive had decided long ago that her brother was too voué to public life ever to marry, and that her son would succeed to his title. She was sorely frightened, but she comforted herself—the little thorn she had thrust in might rankle after a while; as pleasant a consolation under failure as any lady could desire.

Beatrice was coming along the corridor as Earlscourt left Helena's rooms, which were in the same hotel as Lady Mechlin's. She was stopping to look out of one of the windows at the sunset; she did not see him at first, and he watched her unobserved, and smiled at the idea of associating anything deceitful with her—smiled still more at the idea when she came up to him, with her frank, bright, regard, lifting her face for a caress, and patting both her hands through his arm. Accustomed to chill and reserved women in his own family, her abandon had a great charm for him; but perhaps it led him into his error in holding her still as half a child.

"You have been seeing my enemy?" she said, laughingly. "Your sister does not like me, does she?"

"Not like you! Why should you think so? She may not like my marrying, perhaps, because she had decided for me that I should never do so; and no woman can bear any prophecies she makes to prove wrong."

"Very possibly that may be one reason; but she does not think me good enough for you."

Her tips curved disdainfully, and Earlscourt caught a glimpse of her in her fiery mood. He laughed at her where, with her, he had better have admitted the truth. Beatrice had too much pride to be wounded by it, and far too much good sense to measure herself by money and station.

"Nonsense, Beatrice; I should have thought you too proud to suppose such a thing," he said, carelessly.

"It is the truth, nevertheless."

"More foolish she, then; but if you and I do not, what can it signify?"

"Nothing. As long as I am worthy of you in your eyes, what others think or say is nothing to me. I honor you too much to make the gauge between us a third person's opinion; or measure you or myself by a few stops higher or lower in the social ladder. Your sister thinks me below you in rank, soit! She is right; I am quite ready to admit it; but that I am your equal in all that makes men and women equal in the sight of Heaven, I know. When she finds me unworthy of you in thought or deed, then she may call me beneath you—not till then."

Her cheeks were flushed; he could hear her quick breathings, and in her vehemence and haughty indignation she picked the petals of her bouquet de corsage to pieces and flung them away. Another time he would have thought how well her pride became her, and given her some fond reply. Just now the thorn rankled as Lady Clive had hoped, and he answered her gravely, in the tone which it was as unwise to use to her as to prick a thorough-bred colt with both spurs.

"You are quite right. Were I a king, you would be my equal as long as your heart was mine, your mind as noble, and your character as unsullied as I hope them to be now."

She turned on him rapidly with the first indignant look she had ever given to him.

"Hope! You might say know, I think!"

"I would have said 'know,' and meant it too, yesterday."

"Yesterday? What do you mean? Why am I less worthy your confidence to-day than yesterday?"

She looked wonderingly at him, her eyes full of inquiry and bewilderment. It was marvellous acting, if it was acting; yet he thought she could scarcely have so soon forgotten their scene in the anteroom the previous night. They had now come into the salon; he left her side and walked to the mantel-piece, leaning his arm on it, and speaking coldly, as he had never done to her since they first met.

"Beatrice, do not attempt to act with me. You cannot have forgotten what we said in the anteroom last night. Nothing assumed ever deceives me, and you only lower yourself in my estimation."

She clinched her hands till the rings he had given her crushed together.

"Act! assume! Great Heaven, how dare you speak such words to me?"

"Dare? You speak like an angry child, Beatrice. When you are reasonable I will answer you."

The tears welled into her eyes, but she would not let them fall.

"Reasonable? Is there anything unreasonable in resenting words utterly undeserved? Would you be calm under them yourself, Lord Earlscourt? I remember now what you mean by yesterday; I did not remember when I asked you. Had I done so I should never have simulated ignorance and surprise. Only last night you promised to trust me. Is this your trust, to accuse me of artifice, of acting, of falsehood? I would bear no such imputation from any one, still less from you, who ought to know me so well. What happiness can we have if you—"

She stopped, the tears choking her voice, but he did not see them; he only saw her indignant attitude, her flushed cheeks, her flashing eyes, and put them down to her girlish passion.

"Calm yourself, Beatrice, I beg. This sort of scene is very distasteful to me; to figure in a lover's quarrel hardly suits me. I am not young enough to find amusement in disputation and reconciliation, sparring one moment and caresses the next. My life is one of grave pursuits and feverish ambitions; I am often harassed, annoyed, worn out in body and mind. What I hoped for from you was, to borrow the gayety and brightness of your own youth, to find rest, and happiness, and distraction. A life of disputes, reproaches, and misconstruction, would be what I never would endure."

Beatrice was silent; she leaned her forehead on her arms and did not answer him. His tone stung her pride, but his words touched her heart. Her passion was always short-lived, and no evil spirit possessed her long. She rebelled against the first part of his speech with all her might, but she softened to the last. She came up to him with her hands out.

"I had no right to speak so impatiently to you. God knows, to make your life happy will be my only thought, and care, and wish. If I spoke angrily, forgive me!"

Earlscourt knew that the nature so quick to acknowledge error was worth fifty unerring and unruffled ones; still he sighed as he answered her,—

"My dear child, I forgive you. But, Beatrice, there is no foe to love so sure and deadly as dissension!" And as he drew her to him and felt her soft warm lips on his, he thought, half uneasily yet, "She has never told me who annoyed her—never mentioned her companion in the anteroom last night."

Lady Clive had her wish; the thorn festered as promisingly as she could have desired. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte in quarrels as in all else. Dispute once, you are very sure to dispute again, whether with the man you hate or the woman you love.

III.

HOW PRIDE SOWED AND REAPED.

It only wanted three weeks to Beatrice Boville's marriage. We were all to leave Lemongenseidlitz together in a fortnight's time for old Lady Mechlin's house in Berks, where the ceremony was to take place.

"Earlscourt is quite infatuated," said Lady Clive to me one evening. "Beatrice is very charming, of course, but she is not at all suited to him, she is so fiery, so impetuous, so self-reliant."

"I think you are mistaken," said I. I admired Beatrice Boville—comme je vous ai dit—and I didn't like our family's snaps and snarls at her. "She may be impetuous, but, as her impulses are always generous, that doesn't matter much. She is only fiery at injustice, and, for myself, I prefer a woman who can stand up for her own rights and her friends' to one who'll sit by in—you'll call it meekness, I suppose? I call it cowardice and hypocrisy—to hear herself or them abused."

"Thank you, mon ami," said Beatrice's voice at my elbow, as Lady Clive rose and crossed the room. "I am much obliged for your defence; I couldn't help hearing it as I stood in the balcony, and I wish very much I deserved it. I am afraid, though, I cannot dispute Helena's verdict of 'fiery,' 'impetuous,'—"

"And self-reliant?" I asked her. She laughed softly, and her eyes unconsciously sought Earlscourt, who was talking to Lady Mechlin.

"Well? Not quite, now! But, by the way, why should people charge self-reliance on to one as something reprehensible and undesirable? A proper self-reliance is an indispensable ground-work to any success. If you cannot rely upon yourself, upon your power to judge and to act, you must rely upon some other person, possibly upon many people, and you become, perforce, vacillating and unstable.

'To thine own self be true,
And it shall follow, as the day the night,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'"

As she spoke a servant brought a note to her, and I noticed her cheeks grow pale as she saw the handwriting upon it. She broke it open, and read it hastily, an oddly troubled, worried look coming over her face, a look that Earlscourt could not help but notice as he stood beside her.

"Is there anything in that letter to annoy you, Beatrice?" he asked, very naturally.

She started—rather guiltily, I thought—and crushed the note in her hand.

"Whom is it from? It troubles you, I think. Tell me, my darling, is it anything that vexes or offends you?" he whispered, bending down to her.

She laughed, a little nervously for her, and tore the note into tiny pieces.

"Why do you not tell me, Beatrice?" he said again, with a shade of annoyance on his face.

"Because I would rather not," she said, frankly enough, letting the pieces float out of the window into the street below. The shadow grew darker in his face; he bent his head in acquiescence, and said no more, but I don't think he forgot either the note or her destroyal of it.

"I thought there was implicit confidence before marriage whatever there is after," sneered his sister, as she passed him. He answered her calmly:—

"I should say, Helena, that neither before nor after marriage would any man who respected his wife suffer curiosity or suspicion to enter into him. If he do, he has no right to expect happiness, and he will certainly not go the way to get it."

That was the only reply he gave Lady Clive, but her thorn No. 2 festered in him, and when he bade Beatrice good night, standing alone with her in the little drawing room, he took both her hands in his, and looked straight into her eyes.

"Beatrice, why would you not let me see that note this evening?"

She looked up at him as fearlessly and clearly.

"If I tell you why, I must tell you whom the note was from, and what it was about, and I would much rather do neither as yet."

"That is very strange. I dislike concealment of all kinds, especially from you, who so soon will be my wife. It is inconceivable to me why you should need or desire any. I thought your life was a fair open book, every line of which I might read if I desired."

Beatrice looked at him in amazement.

"So you may. Do you suppose, if I had any secret from you that I feared you should know, I could have a moment's peace in your society, or look at you for an instant as I do now? I give you my word of honor that there was nothing either in the note that concerns you, or that you would wish me to tell you. In a few days you shall know all that was in it, but I ask you as a kindness not to press me now. Surely you do not think me such a child but that you can trust me in so small a trifle. If you say I am not worthy of your confidence, you imply that I am not worthy of your love. You spoke nobly to your sister just now, Ernest; do not act less nobly to me."

He could not but admire her as she looked at him, with her fearless, unshadowed regard, her head thrown a little back, and her attitude half-commanding, half-entreating. He smiled in spite of himself.

"You are a wayward, spoiled child, Beatrice. You must have your own way?"

She gave a little stamp of her foot. She hated being called a spoiled child, specially by him, and in a serious moment.

"If I have my own way, have I your full confidence too?"

"Yes; but, my dear Beatrice, the only way to gain confidence is never to excite suspicion." And Lady Clive's thorn rankled à ravir; for even as he pressed his goodnight kisses on her lips, he thought, restlessly, "Shall we make each other happy?—am I too grave for her?—and is she too wilful for me? I want rest, not contention."

The night after that there was a bal-masqué at the Redoute. I was just coming out of my room as Beatrice came down the corridor; She had her mask in her hand, her dress was something white starred with gold, and round her hair she had a little band of pearls of Earlscourt's gift. I never saw her look better, specially when her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened as Earlscourt opened his door next mine, and met her. He did not see me, the corridor was empty, and he bent down to her with fond words and caresses.

"Do I look well?" she said, with child-like delight.

"I am so glad, Ernest, I want to do you honor."

In that mood he understood her well enough, and he pressed her against his heart with the passion that was in him, whose strength he so rarely let her see. Then he drew her hand through his arm, and led her down the stairs; and, as I laughed to find to what lengths our cold statesman could come at last, I thought Lady Clive's thorns would be innocuous, however well planted.

Earlscourt never danced; nothing but what was calm and stately could possibly have suited him; but Beatrice did, and waltzed like a Willis, (though she liked even better than that standing on his arm and talking with his friends—diplomatic, military, and ministerial—on all sorts of questions, most of which she could handle nearly as well as they;) and about the middle of the evening, while she was waltzing with some man or other who had begged to be introduced to her, Earlscourt left the ball-room for ten minutes in earnest conversation with one of the French ministers, who was leaving the next morning. As he came back again, I asked him where Beatrice was, because Powell, of the Bays, was bothering my life out to introduce him to her.

"In the ball room, isn't she? She is with Lady Mechlin, of course, if, the waltz is over."

A familiar voice stopped him.

"She is not in the ball room. Go where you found her the other night, and see if Cæsar's promised wife be above suspicion!"

I could have sworn the voice was Lady Clive's; a pink domino passed us too fast for detention, but Earlscourt's lips turned white at the subtle whisper, and he muttered a fierce oath—fiercer from him, because he's never stirred into fiery expletives. "There is some vile plot against her. I must sift it to the bottom;" and, pushing past me, he entered the ball room. Beatrice was not there; and wending his way through the crowd, he went in through several other apartments leading off to the right, and involuntarily I followed him, to see what the malicious whisper of the pink domino had meant. Earlscourt lifted the curtain that parted the anteroom from the other chamber—lifted it to see Beatrice Boville, as the pink domino had prophesied, and not alone! With her was a man, masked, but about Earlscourt's height, and seemingly about his age, who, as he saw us, let go her hand with a laugh, turned on to a balcony, which was but a yard or so from the street, and dropped on to the pave below. Beatrice started and colored, but I thought she must be the most desperate actress going, for she came up to Earlscourt with a smile, and was about to put her hand through his arm, but he signed her away from him.

"Your acting is quite useless with me. I am not to be blinded by it again. I have believed in your truth as in my own—"

"So you may still. Listen to me, Ernest!"

"Hush! Do not add falsehood to falsehood."

He spoke sternly and coldly; his pride, which was as strong as his love for her, would not gratify her by a sign of the torture within him, and even in his bitterest anger Earlscourt would never have been ungentle to a woman. That word acted like an incantation on her, the blood crimsoned her temples, her eyes literally flashed fire, and she threw back her head with the haughty, impatient gesture habitual to her.

"Falsehood? Three times of late you have used that word to me."

"And why? Because you merited it."

She stood before him, the indignant flush hotter still upon her cheeks, her lips curved into scornful anger. If she was an actress, she knew her rôle to perfection.

"Do you speak that seriously, Lord Earlscourt? Do you believe that I have lied to you?"

"God help me! What else can I believe?" he muttered, too low for her to hear it.

She asked him the question again, fiercely, and he answered her briefly and sternly,—

"I believe that all your life with me has been a lie. I trusted you implicitly, and how do you return it? By carrying on clandestine intercourse with another man, giving him interviews that you conceal from me, having letters that you destroy, doubtless receiving caresses that you take care are unwitnessed; while you dare to smile in my face, and to dupe me with child-like tenderness, and to bid me 'trust' you and believe in you! Love shared to me is worthless, and on my wife, Beatrice, no stain must rest!"

As he spoke, a dark shadow spread over her countenance, her evil spirit rose up in her, and her bright, frank, fearless face grew almost as hard and cold as his, while her teeth were set together, till her lips, usually soft and laughing, were pressed into one straight haughty line.

"Since you give me up so easily, far be it from me to dispute your will. We part from this hour, if you desire it. My honor is as dear to me as yours to you, and to those who dare to suspect it I never stoop to defend it!"

"But, my God! Beatrice, what am I to believe?"

"Whatever you please!"

"What I please! Child, you must be mad. What can I believe, but that you are the most perfect of all actresses, that your art is the greatest of all sins, the art that clothes itself in innocence, and carries would-be truth upon its lips. Prove to me that I wrong you!"

She shook her head; the devil in her had still the victory; her eyes glittered, and her little teeth were clinched together.

"What I exact is trust without proof. I am not your prisoner, Lord Earlscourt, to be tried coldly, and acquitted if you find legal evidence of innocence; convicted, if there be a link wanting. If you choose to trust me, I have told you often your trust will never be wronged; if you choose to condemn me, do. I shall not stoop to show you your injustice."

Earlscourt's face grew dark and hard as hers, but it was wonderful how well his pride chained down all evidence of suffering; the only sign was in the hoarseness of, and quiver in, his voice.

"Say nothing more—prevarication is guilt! God forgive you, Beatrice Boville! If you loved me, and knelt at my feet, I would not make you my wife after the art and the lies with which you have repaid my trust. Thank God, you do not already bear my name and my honor in your hands!"

With those words he left her. Beatrice stood still in the same place, her lips set in one scornful line, her eyes glittering, her brow crimson, her whole attitude defiant, wronged, and unyielding. Earlscourt passed me, his face white as death, and was out of sight in a second. I waited a moment, then I followed my impulse, and went up to her.

"Beatrice, for Heaven's sake, what is all this?"

She turned her large eyes on me haughtily.

"Do you believe what your cousin does?"

I answered her as briefly:—

"No, I do not. There is some mistake here."

She seized my arm, impetuously:—

"Promise me, on your honor, never to tell what I tell to you while I live. Promise me, on your faith as a gentleman."

"On my honor, I promise. Well?"

"The man whom you saw with me to-night is my father. Lord Earlscourt chose to condemn me without inquiry; so let him! But I tell you, that you may tell him if I die before him, that he wronged me. You know Mr. Boville's—my father's—character. I had not seen him since I was a child, but when he heard of my engagement to Lord Earlscourt he found me out, and wanted to force himself on him, and borrow money of him, and—" She stopped, her face was crimson, but she went on, passionately. "All my efforts, of course, were to keep them apart, to spare my father such degradation, and your cousin such an application. I could not tell Lord Earlscourt, for he is generous as the winds, and I knew what he would have done. My note was from my father; he wanted to frighten me into introducing him to Lord Earlscourt, but he did not succeed. I would not have your cousin disgraced or pained by—Arthur, that is all my crime! No very great one, is it?" And she laughed a loud, bitter laugh, as unlike her own as the stormy shadow on her face was like the usual sunshine.

"But, great Heaven! why not have told this to Earlscourt?"

She signed me to silence with a passionate gesture.

"No! He dishonored me with suspicion; let him go. I forbid you ever to breathe a word of what I have told you to him. If he has pride, so have I. He would hold no dishonor greater than for another man to charge him with a lie. My truth is as untainted as his, and my honor as dear to me. He accused me wrongly; let him repent. I would have loved and reverenced him as never any woman yet could do; but once suspected, I could find no happiness with him. His bitter words are stamped into my heart. I shall never forget—I doubt if I shall ever forgive—them. I can bear anything but injustice or misconception. If any doubt me, they are free to do so; theirs is the sin, not mine. As he has sown so must he reap, and so must I!" A low, gasping sob choked her voice, but she stood like a little Pythoness, the pearl gleaming above her brow, her eyes unnaturally bright, the color burning in her face, her attitude what it was when he left her, defiant, wronged, unyielding. She swept away from me to a man who was coming through the other room, and he stared at her set lips and her gleaming eyes as she asked him, carelessly, "Count Avonyl, will you have the kindness to take me to Lady Mechlin?"

That was the last I saw of her. She left the Bad with her aunt as soon as the day dawned, and when I went to our hotel, I found that Earlscourt had ordered post-horses immediately he quitted the ball room, and gone—where he did not leave word. So my presentiment was verified; the pride of both had come in conflict, and the pride of neither had succumbed. How long it would sustain and satisfy them, I could not guess; but Lady Clive smiled again, as sweetly as ladies ever do when their thorns have thriven and brought forth abundant fruit. Some other time I will tell you how I saw Beatrice Boville again; but I often thought of

"Pauline, by pride
Angels have fallen ere thy time!"

when I recalled her with the pearls above her brow, and her passionate, gleaming eyes, and her fearless, scornful, haughty anguish, as she had stood before me that night when Pride v. Pride caused the wreck of both their lives.

IV.

WHERE I SAW BEATRICE BOVILLE AGAIN

I don't belong to St. Stephen's myself, thank Heaven. Very likely they would have returned me for the county when the governor departed this life had I tried them; but as I generally cut the county, from not being one of the grass countries, and as I couldn't put forward any patriotic claims like Mr. Harper Twelvetrees, (who, as he's such a slayer of vermin, thought, I suppose, that he'd try his hand at the dry-rot and the red tapeworms, which, according to cotton grumblers, are sapping the nation,) I haven't solicited its suffrages. The odds at Tattersall's interest me more than the figures of the ways and means; and Diophantus's and Kettledrum's legerdemain at Newmarket and Epsom is more to my taste than our brilliant rhetorician's with the surplus. I don't care a button about Lord Raynham and Sir C. Burrell's maids-of-all-work; they are not an attractive class, I should say, and, if they like to amuse their time tumbling out of windows, I can't see for the life of me why peers and gentlemen should rush to the rescue like Don Quixote to Dulcinea's. And as for that great question, Tea v. Paper, bohea delights the souls of old ladies and washerwomen—who destroy crumpets and character over its inebriating cups, and who will rush to crown Lord Derby's and Mr. Disraeli's brows with laurels if they ever go to the country with a teapot blazoned on their patriotic banners—more than it does mine, which prefers Bass and Burgundy, seltzer and Sillery; and, though I dare say Brown, Jones, and Robinson find the Divorce News exciting, and paper collars very showy and economical, as I myself am content with the Times and its compeers, and think, with poor Brummel, that life without daily clean linen were worthless, that subject doesn't absorb me as it does those gentlemen who find "the last tax of knowledge" so grandiloquent and useful a finishing period. So I have never stood for the county, nor essayed to stand for it, seeing that to one Bernal Osborne there are fifty prosers in St. Stephen's, and to be bored is, to a butterfly flutterer, as the young lady whose name heads this paper once obligingly called me, torture unparalleled by anything short of acid wine or the Chinese atrocities, though truly he who heads our Lower House with his vernal heart and his matchless brain were enough to make any man, coxcomb or hero, oppositionist or ministerialist, proud to sit in the same chamber with him. But there are nights now and then, of course, when I like to go to both Houses, to hear Lord Derby's rich, intricate oratory, or Gladstone's rhetoric, (which has so potent a spell even for his foes, and is yet charged so strangely against him as half a crime; possibly by the same spirit with which plain women reproach a pretty one for her beauty: what business has he to be more attractive than his compeers? of course it's a péché mortel in their eyes!) and when Mrs. Breloques, who is a charming little woman, to whom no man short of a Goth could possibly say "No" to any petition, gave me a little blow with her fan, and told me, as I valued her friendship, to get an order and take her and Gwen to hear the Lords' debate on Tuesday, when my cousin Viscount Earlscourt, one of the best orators in the Upper House, was certain to speak, of course I obliged her. Her sister Gwen, who was a girl of seventeen, barely out, and whom I wished at Jerico, (three is so odious a number, one of the triad must ever be de trop,) was wrathful with the Upper House; it in no wise realized her expectations; the peers should have worn their robes, she thought, (as if the horrors of a chamber filled with Thames odors in June wasn't enough without being bored with velvet and ermine) she would have been further impressed by coronets also; they had no business to lounge on their benches as if they were in a smoking-room; they should have declaimed like Kean, not spoken colloquially; and—in fact, they shouldn't have been ordinary men at all. I think a fine collection from Madame Tussaud's, with a touch of the Roman antique, would have been much more to Gwen's ideal, and she wasn't at all content till Earlscourt rose; he reconciled her a little, for he had a grand-seigneur air, she said, that made up for the incongruities of his dress. It was a measure that he had much at heart; he had exerted for it all his influence in the cabinet, and he was determined that the bill should pass the Lords, though the majority inclined to throw it out. As he stood now against the table, with his calm dignity of gesture, his unstrained flow of words, and his rich and ringing voice, which could give majesty to commonplace subjects, and sway even an apathetic audience as completely as Sheridan's Begum speech, every one in the House listened attentively, and each of his words fell with its due weight. I heard him with pride, often as I had done so before, though I noticed with pain that the lines in his forehead and his mouth were visibly deepened; that he seemed to speak with effort, for him, and looked altogether, as somebody had said to me at White's in the morning, as if he were wearing out, and would go down in his prime, like Canning and Pitt.

"Lord Earlscourt looks very ill—don't you think so?" said Lelia Breloques.

As I answered her, I heard a sharp-wrung sigh, and I looked for the first time at the lady next me. I saw a delicate profile, lips compressed and colorless, chestnut hair that I had last seen with his pearls gleaming above it: I saw, en deux mots, Beatrice Boville for the first time since that night eight months before, when she had stood before me in her passion and her pride. She never took her eyes off Earlscourt while he spoke, and I wondered if she regretted having lost him for a point of honor. Had she grown indifferent to him, that she had come to his own legislative chamber, or was her love so much stronger than her pride that she had sought to see him thus rather than not see him at all? When his speech was closed, and he had resumed his place on the benches, she leaned back, covering her eyes with her hand for a moment: and, as I said aloud (more for her benefit than Mrs. Breloques's) my regret that Earlscourt would wear himself out, I was afraid, in his devotion to public life, Beatrice started at the sound of my voice, turned her head hastily, and her face was colorless enough to tell me she had not gratified her pride without some cost. Of course I spoke to her; she had been a favorite of mine always, and I had often wished to come across her again; but beyond learning that she was with Lady Mechlin in Lowndes Square, and had been spending the winter at Pau for her aunt's health, I had no time to hear more, for Lelia, having only come for Earlscourt's speech, bade me take her to her carriage, while Beatrice and her party remained for the rest of the debate; but the rencontre struck me as so odd, that I believe it occupied my thoughts more than Mrs. Breloques liked, who got into her carriage in not the best of humors, and asked me if I was going in for public life that I'd grown so particularly unamusing. We're always unamusing to one woman if we're thinking at all about another.

"Do you know who was at the House to-night, Earlscourt, to hear your speech?" I asked him, as I met him, a couple of hours afterwards, in one of the passages, as he was leaving the House. He had altered much in eight months; he stooped a little from his waist; he looked worn, and his lips were pale. Men said his stamina was not equal to his brain; physicians, that he gave himself too much work and too little sleep. I knew he was more wrapped in public life than ever; that in his place in the government he worked unwearyingly, and that he found time in spare moments for intellectual recreation that would have sufficed for their life's study for most men. Still, I thought possibly there might be a weakness still clinging round his heart, though he never alluded to it; a passion which, though he appeared to have crushed it out, might be sapping his health more than all his work for the nation.

"Do you mean any one in particular? Persigny said he should attend, but I did not see him."

"No, I meant among the ladies. Beatrice Boville was in the seat next me." I had no earthly business to speak of her so abruptly, for when I had seen him for the first time after he left the Bad when Parliament met that February, he had forbidden me ever to mention her name to him, and no allusion to her had ever passed his lips. The worn, stern gravity, that had become his habitual expression, changed for a moment; bullet-proof he might be, but my arrow had shot in through the chain links of his armor; a look of unutterable pain, eagerness, anxiety, passion, passed over his face; but, whatever he felt, he subdued it, though his voice was broken as he answered me:—

"Once for all, I bade you never speak that name to me. Without being forbidden, I should have thought your own feeling, your own delicacy, might—"

"Have checked me? O, hang it, Earlscourt, listen one second without shutting a fellow up. I never broached the subject before, by your desire; but, now I have once broken the ice, I must ask you one question: Are you sure you judged the girl justly? are you sure you were not too quick to slan—"

He pressed his hand on his chest and breathed heavily as I spoke, but he wouldn't let me finish.

"That is enough. Would any man sacrifice what he held dearest wantonly and without proof? She is dear to me now. You are the only living being so thoughtless or so merciless as to force her name upon me, and rake up the one folly, the one madness, the one crowning sorrow of my life. See that you never dare bring forward her name again."

He went out before me into the soft night air. His carriage was waiting; he entered it, threw himself back on its cushions, and was driven off before I had time to break my word of honor to Beatrice Boville, which I felt sorely tempted to do just then. Who among the thousands that heard his briliant speech that night, or read it the next morning, who saw him pass in his carriage, and had him pointed out to them as the finest orator of his day, or dined with him at his ministerial dinners at his house in Park Lane, would have believed that, with all his ambition, fame, honors, and attainments, the one cross, the one shadow, the one dark thread, in the successful stateman's life, was due to a woman's hand, and that underneath all his strength lay that single weakness, sapping and undermining it?

"Did you see that girl Boville at the House last night?" Lady Clive (who had smiled most sweetly ever since her thorns had brought forth their fruit—her son would be his heir—Earlscourt would never marry now!) said to me, the next day, at one of the Musical Society concerts. "Incredible effrontery, wasn't it, in her, to come and hear Earlscourt's speech? One would have imagined that conscience and delicacy might have made her reluctant to see him, instead of letting her voluntarily seek his own legislative chamber, and listen coolly for an hour and a half to the man whom she misled and deceived so disgracefully."

I laughed to think how long a time a woman's malice will flourish, n'importe how victorious it may have been in crushing its object, or how harmless that object may have become.

"You are very bitter about her still, Lady Clive. Is that quite fair? You know you were so much obliged to her for throwing Earlscourt away. You want Horace to come in for the title, don't you?" Which truism being unpalatable, Lady Clive averred that she had no wish on earth but for Earlscourt's happiness; that of course she naturally grieved for his betrayal by that little intrigante, but that had his marriage been a well-advised one, nobody would have rejoiced more, etc., etc., and bade me be silent and listen to Vieuxtemps, both of which commands I obeyed, pondering in my own mind whether I should go and call in Lowndes Square or not: if anybody heard of it, they would think it odd for me alone, of all the family, to continue acquainted with a girl whom report (circulated through Lady Clive) said had used Earlscourt so ill, and wrong constructions might get put upon it; but, thank God! I never have considered the qu'en dira-t-on. If constructions are wrong, to the deuce with them! they matter nothing to sensible people; and the man who lives in dread of "reports" will have to shift his conduct as the old man of immortal fable shifted his donkey, and won't ever journey in any peace at all. If anybody remarked my visiting Lowndes Square, I couldn't help it: I wanted to see Beatrice Boville again, and to Lowndes Square, after the concert, I drove my tilbury accordingly, which, as that turn-out is known pretty tolerably in those parts, I should be wisest to leave behind me when I don't want my calls noticed. By good fortune, I saw Beatrice alone. They were going to drive in the Park, and she was in the drawing room, dressed and waiting for her aunt. She was not altered: at her age sorrow doesn't tell physically as it does at Earlscourt's. In youth we have Hope; later on we know that of all the gifts of Pandora's box none are so treacherous and delusive as the one that Pandora left at the bottom. True, Beatrice had none of that insouciant, shadowless brightness that had been her chief charm at Lemongenseidlitz, but she was one of those women whose attractions, dependent on fascination, not on beauty, grow more instead of less as time goes on. She met me with a trace of embarrassment; but she was always self-possessed under any amount of difficulties, and stood chatting, a trifle hurriedly, of all the subjects of the year, of anything, I dare say, rather than of that speech the night before, or of the secret of which I was her sole confidant. But I was not going to let her off so easily. I had come there for a definite purpose, and was not going away without accomplishing it. I was afraid every second that Lady Mechlin might come down, or some visitor enter, and as she sat in a low chair among the flowers in the window, leant towards her, and plunged into it in medias res.

"Miss Boville, I want you to release me from my promise."

She looked up, her face flushing slightly, but her lips and eyes shadowed already with that determined pride and hauteur that they had worn the last time I had seen her. She did not speak, but played with the boughs of a coronella near her.

"You remember" (I went on speaking as briefly as possible, lest the old lady's toilet should be finished, and our tête-à-tête cut short) "I gave you my word of honor never to speak again of what you told me in the Kursaal last autumn until you gave me leave; that leave I ask you for now. Silence lies in the way of your own happiness, I feel sure, and not alone of yours. If you give me carte blanche, you may be certain I shall use it discreetly and cautiously. You made the prohibition in a moment of heat and passion; withdraw it now—believe me, you will never repent."

The flush died out of her cheeks as I spoke; but her little, white teeth were set together as they had been that night, and she answered me bitterly,—

"You ask what is impossible; I cannot, in justice to myself, withdraw it. I would never have told you, but that I deemed you a man of honor, whom I could trust."

"I do not think I have proved myself otherwise, Beatrice. I have kept my word to you, when I have been greatly tempted to break it, when I have doubted whether it were either right or wise to stand on such punctilio, when greater stakes were involved by my silence. Surely, if you once had elevated mind enough to comprehend and admire such a man as Earlscourt, and be won by the greatness of his intellect to prefer him to younger rivals, it is impossible you can have lowered your taste and found any one to replace him. No woman who once loved Earlscourt could stoop to an inferior man, and almost all men are his inferiors; it is impossible you can have grown cold towards him."

She turned her eyes upon me luminous with her old passion—the color hot in her cheeks, and her attitude full of that fiery pride which became her so infinitely well.

"I changed!—I grown cold to him! I love him more than all the world, and shall do to my grave. Do you think that any who heard him last night could glory in him as I did? Did you think any physical torture would not have been easier to bear than what I felt when I saw his face once more, and thought of what we should have been to one another, and of what we are? We women have to act, and smile, and wear a calm semblance, while our hearts are bursting; and so you fancy that we never feel."

"But, great Heavens! Beatrice, if you love Earlscourt like this, why not give me leave to tell him? Why not write to him yourself? A word would clear you, a word restore you to him. Your anger, your pride, he would forgive in a moment."

I'm a military man, not a diplomatist, or I shouldn't have added that last sentence.

She rose, and looked at me haughtily and amazedly.

"It is I who have to forgive, not he. I wronged him in no way; he wronged me bitterly. He dared to misjudge, to suspect, to insult me. I shall never stoop to undeceive him. He gave me up without a trial. I never will force myself upon him. He thanked God I was not his wife—could I seek to be his wife after that? Love him passionately I do, but forgive him I do not! I forbid you, on your faith as a gentleman, ever to tell him what I told you that night. I trusted to your honor; I shall hold you dishonored if you betray me."

Just as she paused an open carriage rolled past. I looked down mechanically; in it was Earlscourt lying back on his cushions, returning, I believe, from a Cabinet Council. There, in the street, stood my tilbury, with the piebald Cognac that everybody in Belgravia knew. There, in the open window, stood Beatrice and I; and Earlscourt, as he happened to glance upwards, saw us both! His carriage rolled on; Beatrice grew as white as death, and her lips quivered as she looked after him; but Lady Mechlin entered, and I took them down to their barouche.

"You are determined not to release me from my promise?" I asked Beatrice, as I pulled up the tiger-skin over her flounces.

She shook her head.

"Certainly not; and I should think you are too much of a gentleman not to hold a promise sacred."

Pride and determination were written in every line of her face, in the very arch of her eyebrows, the very form of her brow, the very curve of her lips—a soft, delicate face enough otherwise, but as expressive of indomitable pride as any face could be. And yet, though I swore at her as I drove Cognac out of the square, I couldn't help liking her all the better for it, the little Pythoness! for, after all, it was natural and very intelligible to me—she had been misjudged and wrongly suspected, and the noblest spirits are always the quickest to rebel against injustice and resent false accusation.

V.

HOW IN PERFECT INNOCENCE I PLAYED THE PART OF A RIVAL.

The season whirled and spun along as usual. They were having stormy debates in the Lower House, and throwing out bills in the Upper; stifled by Thames odors one evening, and running down to Epsom the next morning; blackguarding each other in parliamentary language—which, on my honor, will soon want duels revived to keep it within decent breeding, if Lord Robert Cecil and others don't learn better manners, and remember the golden rule that "He alone resorts to vituperation whose argument is illogical and weak." We, luckier dogs, who weren't slaves to St. Stephen's, nor to anything at all except as parsons and moralists, with whom the grapes sont verts et bons pour des goujats, said to our own worldly vitiated tastes and evil leanings, spent our hours in the Ring and the coulisses, White's and the United, crush balls and opera suppers, and swore we were immeasurably bored, though we wouldn't have led any other life for half a million. The season whirled along. Earlscourt devoted himself more entirely than ever to public life; he filled one of the most onerous and important posts in the ministry, and appeared to occupy himself solely with home politics and foreign politics. Lady Mechlin, only a baronet's widow, though she had very tolerable society of her own, was not in his monde; and Beatrice Boville and he, with only Hyde Park Corner between them, might as well, for any chance of rapprochement, have been severally at Spitzbergen and Cape Horn. Two or three times they passed each other in Pall-Mall and the Ride; but Earlscourt only lifted his hat to Lady Mechlin, and Beatrice set her little teeth together, and wouldn't have solicited a glance from him to save her life. Earlscourt was excessively distant to me after seeing my tilbury at her door; no doubt he thought it strange for me to have continued my intimacy with a woman who had wronged him so bitterly. He said nothing, but I could see he was exceedingly displeased; and the more I tried to smooth it with him, the more completely I seemed to set my foot in it. It was exceedingly difficult to touch on any obnoxious subject with him; he was never harsh or discourteous, but he could freeze the atmosphere about him gently, but so completely, that no mortal could pierce through it; and, fettered by my promise to her and his prohibition to me, I hardly knew how to bring up her name. As the Fates would have it, I often met Beatrice myself, at the Regent Park fêtes, at concerts, at a Handel Festival at Sydenham, at one or two dinner parties; and, as she generally made way for me beside her, and was one of those women who are invariably, though without effort, admired and surrounded in any society, possibly people remarked it—possibly our continued intimacy might have come round to Earlscourt, specially as Lady Clive and Mrs Breloques abused me roundly, each à sa mode, for countenancing that "abominable intrigante." I couldn't help it, even if Earlscourt took exception at me for it. I knew the girl was not to blame, and I took her part, and tried my best to tame the little Pythoness into releasing me from my promise. But Beatrice was firm; had she erred, no one would have acknowledged and atoned for it quicker, but innocent and wrongly accused, she kept silent, coûte que coûte, and in my heart I sympathized with her. Nothing stings so sharply, nothing is harder to forgive, than injustice; and, knowing herself to be frank, honorable, and open as the day, his charge of falsehood and deception rankled in her only more keenly as time went on. Men ran after her like mad; she had more of them about her than many beauties or belles. There was a style, a charm, a something in her that sent beauties into the shade, and by which, had she chosen, she could soon have replaced Earlscourt. Still, it needed to be no Lavater to see, by the passionate gleam of her eyes and the haughty pride on her brow, that Beatrice Boville was not happy.

"Why will you let pride and punctilio wreck your own life, Beatrice?" I asked her, in a low tone, as we stood before one of Ed. Warren's delicious bits of woodland in the Water-Color Exhibition, where we had chanced to meet one day. "That he should have judged you as he did was not unnatural. Think! how was it possible for him to guess your father was your companion? Remember how very much circumstances were against you."

"Had they been ten times more against me, a man who cared for me would have believed in me, and stood by me, not condemned me on the first suspicion. It was unchivalrous, ungenerous, unjust. I tell you, his words are stamped into my memory forever. I shall never forgive them."

"Not even if you knew that he suffered as much and more than you do?"

She clinched her hands on the rolled-up catalogue with a passionate gesture.

"No; because he misjudged me. Anything else I would have pardoned, though I am no patient Griselda, to put up tamely with any wrong; but that I never could—I never would!"

"I regret it, then. I thought you too warm and noble-hearted a woman to retain resentment so long. I never blamed you in the first instance, but I must say I blame you now."

She laughed, a little contemptuously, and glanced at me with her haughtiest air; and on my life, much as it provoked one, nothing became her better.

"Blame me or not, as you please—your verdict will be quite bearable, either way. I am the one sinned against. I can have nothing explained to Lord Earlscourt. Had he cared for me, as he once vowed, he would have been less quick then to suspect me, and quicker now to give me a chance of clearing myself. But you remember he thanked God I had not his name and his honor in my hands. I dare say he rejoices at his escape."

She laughed again, turning over the catalogue feverishly and unconsciously. Those were the words that rankled in her; and it was not much wonder if, to a proud spirit like Beatrice Boville's, they seemed unpardonable. As I handed her and Lady Mechlin into their carriage when they left the exhibition, Earlscourt, as ill luck would have it, passed us, walking on to White's, the fringe of Beatrice's parasol brushed his arm, and a hot color flushed into her cheeks at the sudden rencontre. By the instinct of courtesy he bowed to her and Lady Mechlin, but passed up Pall-Mall without looking at Beatrice. How well society drills us, that we meet with such calm impassiveness in its routine those with whom we have sorrowed and joyed, loved and hated, in such far different scenes!

Their carriage drove on, and I overtook him as he went up Pall-Mall. He was walking slowly, with his hand pressed on his chest, and his lips set together, as if in bodily pain. He looked at me, as I joined him, with an annoyed glance of unusual irritation for him, for he was always calm and untroubled, punctiliously just, and though of a proud temper, never quick to anger.

"You passed that girl wonderfully coldly, Earlscourt," I began, plunging recklessly into the thick of the subject.

"Coldly!" he repeated, bitterly. "It is very strange that you will pursue me with her name. I forbade you to intrude it upon me; was not that sufficient?"

"No; because I think you judged her too harshly."

"Think so, if you please, but never renew the topic to me. If she gives you her confidence, enjoy it. If you choose, knowing what you do, to be misled by her, be so; but I beg of you to spare me your opinions and intentions."

"But why? I say you do misjudge her. She might err in impatience and pride; but I would bet you any money you like that you would prove her guilty of no indelicacy, no treachery, no underhand conduct, though appearances might be against her."

"Might be! You select your words strangely; you must have some deeper motive for your unusual blindness. I desire, for the last time, that you cease either the subject to me, or your acquaintance with me, whichever you prefer."

With which, he went up the steps of White's, and I strolled on, amazed at the fierce acrimony of his tone, utterly unlike anything I had ever heard from him, wished their pride to the devil, called myself a fool for meddling in the matter at all, and went to have a quiet weed in the smoking-room of the U. S. to cool myself. I was heartily sick of the whole affair. If they wanted it cleared, they must clear it themselves—I should trouble myself no more about it. Yet I couldn't altogether dismiss Beatrice's cause from my mind. I thought her, to say the truth, rather harshly used. I liked her for her fearless, truthful, impassioned character. I liked her for the very courage and pride with which she preferred to relinquish any chance of regaining her forfeited happiness, rather than stoop to solicit exculpation from charges of which she knew she was innocent. Perhaps, at first, she did not consider sufficiently Earlscourt's provocation, and perhaps, now, she was too persisting in her resentment of it; still I liked her, and I was sorry to see her, at an age when life should have been couleur de rose, to one of her gay and insouciant nature, with a weary, passionate look on her face that she should not have had for ten years to come—a look that was rapidly hardening into stern and contemptuous sadness.

"You tell me I am too bitter," she said to me one day, "how should I be otherwise? I, who have wronged no one, and have never in my life done anything of which I am ashamed, am called an intrigante by Lady Clive Edghill, and get ill-will from strangers, and misconstructions from my friends, merely because, thinking no harm myself, it never occurs to me that circumstances may look against me; and, hating falsehood, I cannot lie, and smile, and give soft words where I feel contempt and indignation. Mrs. Breloques yonder, with whom les présens ont toujours raison, and les absens ont toujours tort, who has honeyed speeches for her bitterest foes, and poisoned arrows (behind their back) for her most trusting friends, who goes to early matins every morning, and pries out for a second all over the top of her prayer-book, who kisses 'darling Helena,' and says she 'never looked so sweetly,' whispering en petit comité what a pity it is, when Helena is so passée, she will dress like a girl just out—she is called the sweetest woman possible—so amiable! and is praised for her high knowledge of religion. You tell me I am too bitter. I think not. Honesty does not prosper, and truth is at a miserable discount; straightforward frankness makes a myriad of foes, and adroit diplomacy as many friends. If you make a prettily-turned compliment, who cares if it is sincere? if you hold your tongue where you cannot praise, because you will not tell a conventional falsehood, the world thinks you very ill-natured, or odiously satirical. Society is entirely built upon insincerity and conventionality, from the wording of an acceptance of a dinner invitation, where we write 'with much pleasure,' thinking to ourselves 'what a bore!' to the giant hypocrisies daily spoken without a blush from pulpit and lecturn, and legitimatized both as permissible and praiseworthy. To truth and unconventionality society of course is adverse; and whoever dares to uphold them must expect to be hissed, as Paul by the Ephesians, because he shivered their silver shrines and destroyed the craft by which they got their wealth."

Beatrice was right; her truth and fearlessness were her enemies with most people, even with the man who had loved her best. Had she been ready with an adroit falsehood and a quick excuse, Earlscourt's suspicions would never have been raised as they were by her frank admission that there was something she would rather not tell him, and her innocent request to be trusted. That must have been some very innocent and unworldly village schoolmaster, I should say, who first set going that venerable proverb, "Honesty is the best policy." He must have known comically little of life. A diplomatist who took it as his motto would soon come to grief, and ladies would soon stone out of their circles any woman bête enough to try its truth among them. There is no policy at greater discount in the world, and straightforward and candid people stand at very unequal odds with the rest of humanity; they are the one morsel of bread to a hogshead of sack, the handful of Spartans against a swarm of Persians, and they get the brunt of the battle and the worst of the fight.

VI.

HOW PRIDE BOWED AND FELL.

Beyond meeting Earlscourt at White's, or, for an hour, at the réunion of some fair leader of ton, I scarcely saw him that season, for he was more and more devoted to public life. He looked wretchedly ill, and his physicians said if he wished to live he must go to the south of France in July, and winter at Corfu; but he paid them no heed; he occupied himself constantly with political and literary work, and grudged the three or four hours he gave to sleep that did him little good.

"Will you get me admittance to the Lords to-morrow night?" Beatrice asked me, one morning, when I met her in the Ride. I looked at her surprised.

"To the Lords? Of course, if you wish."

"I do wish it." Her hands clinched on her bridle, and the color flushed into her face, for Earlscourt just then passed us, riding with one of his brother ministers. He looked at us both, and his face changed strangely, though he rode on, continuing his conversation with the other man, while I went round the turn with Beatrice and the other fellows who were about her; le fruit défendu is always most attractive, and Beatrice's profound negligence of them all made them more mad about her than all the traps and witcheries, beguilements and attractions, that coquettes and beauties set out for them. She rode beautifully; and a woman who does sit well down on her saddle, and knows how to handle her horse, never looks better than en Amazone. Earlscourt met her three times at the turn of the Ride; and though you would not have told that he was passing any other than an utter stranger, I think it must have struck him that he had lost much in losing Beatrice Boville. I was riding on her off-side each time when we passed him. As I say, I never, thank God! have cared a straw for the qu'en dira-t-on? and if people remarked on my intimacy with my cousin's cast off fiancée, so they might, but to Earlscourt I wished to explain it more for Beatrice's sake than my own; and as I rode out by Apsley House afterwards, I overtook him, and went up to Piccadilly with him, though his manner was decidedly distant and chill, so pointedly so that it would have been rude, had he not been too entirely a disciple of Chesterfield to be ever otherwise than courteous to his deadliest foe; but, disregarding his coldness, I said what I intended to say, and began an explanation that I considered only due to him.

"I beg your pardon, Earlscourt, for intruding on you a topic you have forbidden, but I shall be obliged to you to listen to me a moment. I wish to tell you my reasons for what, I dare say, seems strange to you, my continued intimacy with—"

But I was not permitted to end my sentence; he divined what I was about to say, and stopped me, with a cold, wearied air.

"I understand; but I prefer not to hear them. I have no desire to interfere with your actions, and less to be troubled with your motives. Of course, you choose your friendships as you please. All I beg is, that you obey the wish I expressed the other day, and intrude the subject no more upon me."

And he bade me good morning, urged his mare into a sharp canter, and turned down St. James's Street. How little those in the crowd, who looked at him as he rode by, pointing him out to the women with them as Viscount Earlscourt, the most eloquent debater in the Lords, the celebrated foreign minister, author, and diplomatist, guessed that a woman's name could touch and sting him as nothing else could do, and that under the calm and glittering upper-current of his life ran a dark, slender, unnoticed thread that had power to poison all the rest! Those women, mon ami!—if we do satirize them a little bit now and then, are we doing any more than taking a very mild revenge? Don't they make fools of the very best and wisest of us, play the deuce with Cæsar as with Catullus, and make Achilles soft as Amphimachus?

The next morning I met Beatrice at a concert at the Marchioness of Pursang's. Lady Pursang would not have been, vous concevez, on the visiting list of Lady Mechlin, as she was one of the crème de la crème, but she had met Beatrice the winter before at Pau, had been very delighted with her, and now continued the acquaintance in town. I happened to sit next our little Pythoness, who looked better, I think, that morning, than ever I saw her, though her face was set into that disdainful sadness which had become its habitual expression. She liked my society, and sought it, no doubt, because I was the only link between her and her lost past; and she was talking with me more animatedly than usual, thanking me for having got her admittance to the Lords that night, during a pause in the concert, when Earlscourt entered the room, and took the seat reserved for him, which was not far from ours. Music was one of his passions, the only délassement, indeed, he ever gave himself now; but to-day, though ostensibly he listened to Alboni and Arabella Goddard, Hallé and Vieuxtemps, and talked to the marchioness and other women of her set, in reality he was watching Beatrice, who, her pride roused by his presence, laughed and chatted with me and other men with her old gay abandon, and, impervious to déréglement though he was, I fancy even he felt it a severe trial of his composure when Lady Pursang, who had been the last five years in India with her husband, and who was ignorant of or had forgotten the name of the girl Earlscourt was to have married the year before, asked him, when the concert was over, to let her introduce him to her, yet Beatrice Boville, bringing him in innocent cruelty up to that little Pythoness, with whom he had parted so passionately and bitterly ten months before! Happy for them that they had that armor which the Spartans called heroism, the stoics philosophy, and we—simply style good breeding, or they would hardly have gone through that ordeal as well as they did when she introduced them to each other as strangers!—those two who had whispered such passionate love words, given and received such fond caresses, vowed barely twelve months before to pass their lifetime together! Happy for them they were used to society, or they would hardly have bowed to each other as calmly and admirably as they did, with the recollection of that night in which they had parted so bitterly, so full as it was in the minds of both. Beatrice was standing in one of the open windows of the little cabinet de peinture almost empty, and when the marchioness moved away, satisfied that she had introduced two people admirably fitted to entertain one another, Earlscourt, with people flirting and talking within a few yards of him, was virtually alone with Beatrice—for there is, after all, no solitude like the solitude of a crowd—and then, for the first time in his life, his self-possession forsook him. Beatrice was silent and very pale, looking out of the window on to the Green Park, which the house overlooked, and Earlscourt's pride had a hard struggle, but his passion got the better of him, malgré lui, and he leaned towards her.

"Do you remember the last night we were together?"

She answered him bitterly. She had not forgiven him. She had sometimes, I am half afraid, sworn to revenge herself.

"I am hardly likely to forget it, Lord Earlscourt."

He looked at her longingly and wistfully; his pride was softened, that granite pride, hitherto so unassailable! and he bent nearer to her.

"Beatrice! I would give much to be able to wash out the memories of that night—to be proved mistaken—to be convicted of haste, of sternness—"

The tears rushed into her eyes.

"You need only have given one little thing—all I asked of you—trust!"

"Would to God I dare believe you now! Tell me, answer me, did I judge you too harshly? Love at my age never changes, however wronged; it is the latest, and it only expires with life itself. I confess to you, you are dearer to me still than anything ever was, than anything ever will be. Prove to me, for God's sake, that I misjudged you! Only prove it to me; explain away what appeared against you, and we may yet—"

He stopped; his voice trembled, his hand touched hers, he breathed short and fast. The Pythoness was very nearly tamed; her eyes grew soft and melting, her lips trembled; but pride was still strong in her. At the touch of his hand it very nearly gave way, but not wholly; it was there still, tenacious of its reign. She set her little teeth obstinately together, and looked up at him with her old hauteur.

"No, as I told you then, you must believe in me without proof. I have not forgotten your bitter words, nor yet forgiven them. I doubt if I ever shall. You roused an evil spirit in me that night, Lord Earlscourt, which you cannot exorcise at a moment's notice. Remember what was your own motto, 'An indiscreet woman is never frank,'—yet from my very frankness you accused me of indiscretion, and of far worse than indiscretion—"

"My God! if I accused you falsely, Beatrice, forgive me!"

He must have loved her very much to bow his pride so far as that. He was at her feet—at her mercy now; he, whom she had vainly sued, sued her; but a perverse, fiery devil in her urged her to take her own revenge, compelled her to throw away her own peace.

"You should have asked me that ten months ago; it is too late now."

His face dyed white, his eyes filled with passionate anguish. He crushed her hand in his.

"Too late! Great Heavens! Answer me, child, I entreat you—I beseech you—is it 'too late' because report is true that you have replaced me with your cousin—that you are engaged to Hervey? Tell me truth now, for pity's sake. I will be trifled with no longer."

Beatrice threw back her haughty little head contemptuously, though ladies don't sneer at the idea of being liées with me generally, I can assure you. Her heart throbbed triumphantly and joyously. She had conquered him at last. The man of giant intellect and haughty will had bowed to her. She held him by a thread, he who ruled the fate of nations!—and she loved him so dearly! But the Pythoness was not wholly tamed, and she could not even yet forget her wrongs.

"You told me before I spoke falsehoods to you, Lord Earlscourt; my word would find no more credence now."

He looked at her, dropped her hand, and turned away, before Beatrice could detain him. Five minutes after he left the house. Little as I guessed it, he was jealous of me—I! who never in my own life rivalled any man who wished to marry! Beatrice had fully revenged herself. I wonder if she enjoyed it quite as much as she had anticipated, as she stood where he had left her looking out on the Green Park?

I went with Beatrice and her party to the Lords that night; it was the tug of war for the bill which Earlscourt was so determined should pass, and a great speech was expected from him. We were not disappointed. When he rose he spoke with effort, and his oratory suffered from the slight hoarseness of his voice, for half the beauty of his rhetoric lay in the flexibility and music of his tones; still, it was emphatically a great speech, and Beatrice Boville listened to it breathlessly, with her eyes fixed on the face—weary, worn, but grandly intellectual—of the man whom Europe reverenced, and she—a girl of twenty!—ruled. Perhaps her heart smote her for the lines she had added there; perhaps she felt her pride misplaced to him, great as he was, with his stainless honor and unequalled genius; perhaps she thought of how, with all his strength, his hand had trembled as it touched hers; and how, with all her love, she had been wilful and naughty to him a second time. His voice grew weaker as he ended, and he spoke with visible effort; still it was one of his greatest political triumphs: his bill passed by a large majority, and the papers, the morning after, filled their leading articles with admiration of Viscount Earlscourt's speech. But before those journals were out, Earlscourt was too ill almost to notice the success of his measures: as he left the House, the presiding devil of beloved Albion, that plays the deuce with English statesmen as with Italian cantatrices,—the confounded east wind,—had caught him, finished what over-exertion had begun, and knocked him over, prostrated with severe bronchitis. What pity it is that the body will levy such cruel black mail upon the mind; that a gust of wind, a horse's plunge, the effluvia of a sewer, the carelessness of a pointsman, can destroy the grandest intellect, sweep off the men whose genius lights the world, as ruthlessly as a storm of rain a cloud of gnats, and strike Peel and Canning, Macaulay and Donaldson, in the prime of their power, as heedlessly as peasants little higher than the brutes, dull as the clods of their own valley, who stake their ambitions on a surfeit of fat bacon, and can barely scrawl their names upon a slate!

Unconscious that Earlscourt's jealousy had fastened so wrongly upon me, I was calling upon Beatrice late the next morning, ignorant myself of his illness, when his physician, who was Lady Mechlin's too, while paying her a complimentary visit, regretted to me my cousin's sudden attack.

"Lord Earlscourt would speak last night," he began. "I entreated him not; but those public men are so obstinate; to-day he is very ill—very ill indeed, though prompt measures stopped the worst. He has risen to dictate something of importance to his secretary; he would work his brain if he were dying; but it has taken a severe hold on him, I fear. I shall send him somewhere south as soon as he can leave the house, which will not be for some weeks. He would be a great loss to the country. We have not such another foreign minister. But I admit to you, Major Hervey—though of course I do not wish it to go further—that I do think very seriously of Lord Earlscourt's state of health."

Beatrice heard him as she sat at her Davenport; her face grew white, and her eyes filled with great anguish. She thought of his words to her only the day before, and of how her pride had repelled him a second time. I saw her hand clinch on the pen she was playing with, and her teeth set tight together, her habitual action under any strong emotion, thinking to herself, no doubt, "And my last words to him were bitter ones!"

When the physician had left, I went up to her.—

"Beatrice, you must let me tell him now!"

She did not answer, but her hand clinched tighter on the pen-handle.

"His life is in your hands; for God's sake relinquish your pride."

But her pride was strong in her, and dear to her still, strong and dear as her love; and the two struggled together. Earlscourt had bowed his pride to her; but she had not yielded up her own, and it cost her much to yield it even now. All the Pythoness in her was not tamed yet. She was silent—she wavered—then her great love for him vanquished all else. She rose, white as death, her passionate eyes full of unshed tears, the bitterest, yet the softest, Beatrice Boville had ever known.

"Take me to him. No one shall tell him but myself."

Earlscourt was lying on a couch in his library; he had been unable to dictate or to write himself, for severe remedies had prostrated him utterly, and he could not speak above his breath, though he was loath to give up, and acknowledge himself as ill as he was. His eyes were closed, his forehead knitted together in pain, and his labored breathing told plainly enough how fiercely his foe had attacked him, and that it was by no means conquered yet. He had not slept all night, and had fallen into a short slumber now, desiring his attendants to leave him. I bade the groom of the chambers let us enter unannounced, and, opening the door myself, signed to Beatrice to go in, while her aunt and I waited in the anteroom. She stopped a moment at the entrance; her pride had its last struggle; but he turned restlessly, with a weary sigh, and by that sigh the Pythoness was conquered. Beatrice went forward and fell on her knees beside his sofa, bending down till her lips touched his brow, and her hot tears fell on his hands.

"I was too proud last night to tell you you misjudged me. I have no pride now. I am your own—wholly your own. I never loved, I never should love, any but you. I forgive you now. O, how could you ever doubt me? Lord Earlscourt—Ernest—may we not yet be all we once were to one another?"

Awakened by her kisses on his brow, bewildered by her sudden appearance, he tried to rise, but sank back exhausted. He did not disbelieve her now. He had no voice to speak to her, no strength to answer her; but he drew her down closer and closer to him, as she knelt by him, and, as her heart beat once more against his, the little Pythoness, tamed at last, threw her arms round him and sobbed like a child on his breast. And so—Beatrice Boville took her best Revenge!—while I shut the library door, invited Lady Mechlin to inspect Earlscourt's collection of French pictures, and asked what she thought of Punch this week.

I don't know what his physicians would have said of the treatment, as they'd recommended him "perfect quiet;" all I do know is, that though Earlscourt went to the south of Europe as soon as he could leave the house, Beatrice Boville went with him; and he took his place on the benches and in the cabinet this season, without any trace of bronchia, or any sign of wearing out.

Lady Clive, I regret to say, "does not know" Lady Earlscourt: anything for her beloved brother she would do, were it possible; but she hopes we understand that, for her daughters' sakes, she feels it quite impossible to countenance that "shocking little intrigante."

A LINE IN THE "DAILY."

A LINE IN THE "DAILY."

WHO DID IT, AND WHO WAS DONE BY IT.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Fairlie's troop of Horse Artillery is ordered to Norwich to replace the 12th Lancers, en route to Bombay."—Those three lines in the papers spread dismay into the souls of Norfolk young ladies, and no less horror into ours, for we were very jolly at Woolwich, could run up to the Clubs and down to Epsom, and were far too material not to prefer ball-room belles to bluebells, strawberry-ice to fresh hautboys, the sparkle of champagne-cups to all the murmurs of the brooks, and the flutter of ballet-girls' wings to all the rustle of forest-leaves. But, unhappily, the Ordnance Office is no more given to considering the feelings of their Royal Gunners than the Horse Guards the individual desires of the two other Arms; and off we went to Norwich, repining bitterly, or, in modern English, swearing hard at our destinies, creating an immense sensation with our 6-pounders, as we flatter ourselves the Royals always contrive to do, whether on fair friends or fierce foes, and were looked upon spitefully by the one or two young ladies whose hearts were gone eastwards with the Twelfth, smilingly by the one or two hundred who, having fruitlessly laid out a great deal of tackle on the Twelfth, proceeded to manufacture fresh flies to catch us.

We soon made up, I think, to the Norwich girls for the loss of the Twelfth. They set dead upon Fairlie, our captain, a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel, and a C. B. for "services in India," where he had rivalled Norman Ramsay at Fuentes d'Onor, had had a ball put in his hip, and had come home again to be worshipped by the women for his romantic reputation. They made an immense deal, too, of Levison Courtenay, the beauty of the troop, and called Belle in consequence; who did not want any flummery or flirtation to increase his opinion of himself, being as vain of his almond eyes as any girl just entered as the favorite for the season. There were Tom Gower, too, a capital fellow, with no nonsense about him, who made no end of chaff of Belle Courtenay; and Little Nell, otherwise Harcourt Poulteney Nelson, who had by some miracle escaped expulsion both from Carshalton and the College; and votre humble serviteur Phil Hardinge, first lieutenant; and one or two other fellows, who having cut dashing figures at our Woolwich reviews, cantering across Blackheath Common, or waltzing with dainty beauties down our mess-room, made the Artillery welcome in that city of shawls and oratorios, where according to the Gazetteer, no virtuous person ought to dwell, that volume, with characteristic lucidity, pronouncing its streets "ill-disposed."

The Clergy asked us to their rectories—a temptation we were often proof against, there being three noticeable facts in rectories, that the talk is always slow, "the Church" being present, and having much the same chilling effect as the presence of a chaperone at a tête-à-tête; the daughters generally ugly, and, from leading the choir at morning services, perfectly convinced that they sing like Clara Novello, and that the harmonium is a most delightful instrument; and, last and worst, the wines are almost always poor, except the port which the reverend host drinks himself, but which, Dieu merci! we rarely or never touch.

The County asked us, too; and there we went for good hock, tolerable-looking women, and first-rate billiard-tables. For the first month we were in Norfolk we voted it unanimously the most infernally slow and hideous county going; and I dare say we made ourselves uncommonly disagreeable, as people, if they are not pleased, be they ever so well bred, have a knack of doing.

Things were thus quiescent and stagnant, when Fairlie one night at mess told us a bit of news.

"Old fellows, whom do you think I met to-day?"

"How should we know? Cut along."

"The Swan and her Cygnets."

"The Vanes? Oh, bravo!" was shouted at a chorus, for the dame and demoiselles in question we had known in town that winter, and a nicer, pleasanter, faster set of women I never came across. "What's bringing them down here, and how's Geraldine?"