"Truly I do not know," said Lydia, puzzled; "unless it be that your colleagues have failed to recommend themselves to society by their extra-professional conduct as the others have."

"I grant you that fighting men ar'n't gentlemen, as a rule. No more were painters, or poets, once upon a time. But what I want to know is this: Supposing a fighting man has as good manners as your friends, and is as well born, why shouldn't he mix with them and be considered their equal?"

"The distinction seems arbitrary, I confess. But perhaps the true remedy would be to exclude the vivisectors and soldiers, instead of admitting the prize-fighters. Mr. Cashel Byron," added Lydia, changing her manner, "I cannot discuss this with you. Society has a prejudice against you. I share it; and I cannot overcome it. Can you find no nobler occupation than these fierce and horrible encounters by which you condescend to gain a living?"

"No," said Cashel, flatly. "I can't. That's just where it is."

Lydia looked grave, and said nothing.

"You don't see it?" said Cashel. "Well, I'll just tell you all about myself, and then leave you to judge. May I sit down while I talk?" He had risen in the course of his remarks on Lydia's scientific and military acquaintances.

She pointed to a chair near her. Something in the action brought color to his cheeks.

"I believe I was the most unfortunate devil of a boy that ever walked," he began, when he was seated. "My mother was—and is—an actress, and a tiptop crack in her profession. One of the first things I remember is sitting on the floor in the corner of a room where there was a big glass, and she flaring away before it, attitudinizing and spouting Shakespeare like mad. I was afraid of her, because she was very particular about my manners and appearance, and would never let me go near a theatre. I know very little about either my people or hers; for she boxed my ears one day for asking who my father was, and I took good care not to ask her again. She was quite young when I was a child; at first I thought her a sort of angel—I should have been fond of her, I think, if she had let me. But she didn't, somehow; and I had to keep my affection for the servants. I had plenty of variety in that way; for she gave her whole establishment the sack about once every two months, except a maid who used to bully her, and gave me nearly all the nursing I ever got. I believe it was my crying about some housemaid or other who went away that first set her abusing me for having low tastes—a sort of thing that used to cut me to the heart, and which she kept up till the very day I left her for good. We were a precious pair: I sulky and obstinate, she changeable and hot-tempered. She used to begin breakfast sometimes by knocking me to the other side of the room with a slap, and finish it by calling me her darling boy and promising me all manner of toys and things. I soon gave up trying to please her, or like her, and became as disagreeable a young imp as you'd ask to see. My only thought was to get all I could out of her when she was in a good-humor, and to be sullen and stubborn when she was in a tantrum. One day a boy in the street threw some mud at me, and I ran in crying and complained to her. She told me I was a little coward. I haven't forgiven her for that yet—perhaps because it was one of the few true things she ever said to me. I was in a state of perpetual aggravation; and I often wonder that I wasn't soured for life at that time. At last I got to be such a little fiend that when she hit me I used to guard off her blows, and look so wicked that I think she got afraid of me. Then she put me to school, telling me that I had no heart, and telling the master that I was an ungovernable young brute. So I, like a little fool, cried at leaving her; and she, like a big one, cried back again over me—just after telling the master what a bad one I was, mind you—and off she went, leaving her darling boy and blessed child howling at his good luck in getting rid of her.

"I was a nice boy to let loose in a school. I could speak as well as an actor, as far as pronunciation goes; but I could hardly read words of one syllabile; and as to writing, I couldn't make pothooks and hangers respectably. To this day, I can no more spell than old Ned Skene can. What was a worse sort of ignorance was that I had no idea of fair play. I thought that all servants would be afraid of me, and that all grown-up people would tyrannize over me. I was afraid of everybody; afraid that my cowardice would be found out; and as angry and cruel in my ill-tempers as cowards always are. Now you'll hardly believe this; but what saved me from going to the bad altogether was my finding out that I was a good one to fight. The bigger boys were given to fighting, and used to have mills every Saturday afternoon, with seconds, bottle-holders, and everything complete, except the ropes and stakes. We little chaps used to imitate them among ourselves as best we could. At first, when they made me fight, I shut my eyes and cried; but for all that I managed to catch the other fellow tight round the waist and throw him. After that it became a regular joke to make me fight, for I always cried. But the end of it was that I learned to keep my eyes open and hit straight. I had no trouble about fighting then. Somehow, I could tell by instinct when the other fellow was going to hit me, and I always hit him first. It's the same with me now in the ring; I know what a man is going to do before he rightly knows himself. The power that this gave me, civilized me. It made me cock of the school; and I had to act accordingly. I had enough good-nature left to keep me from being a bully; and, as cock, I couldn't be mean or childish. There would be nothing like fighting for licking boys into shape if every one could be cock; but every one can't; so I suppose it does more harm than good.

"I should have enjoyed school well enough if I had worked at my books. But I wouldn't study; and the masters were all down on me as an idler—though I shouldn't have been like that if they had known how to teach—I have learned since what teaching is. As to the holidays, they were the worst part of the year to me. When I was left at school I was savage at not being let go home; and when I went home my mother did nothing but find fault with my school-boy manners. I was getting too big to be cuddled as her darling boy, you understand. In fact, her treatment of me was just the old game with the affectionate part left out. It wasn't pleasant, after being cock of the school, to be made feel like a good-for-nothing little brat tied to her apron-strings. When she saw that I was learning nothing she sent me to another school at a place in the north called Panley. I stayed there until I was seventeen; and then she came one day, and we had a row, as usual. She said she wouldn't let me leave school until I was nineteen; and so I settled that question by running away the same night. I got to Liverpool, where I hid in a ship bound for Australia. When I was starved out they treated me better than I expected; and I worked hard enough to earn my passage and my victuals. But when I wad left ashore in Melbourne I was in a pretty pickle. I knew nobody, and I had no money. Everything that a man could live by was owned by some one or other. I walked through the town looking for a place where they might want a boy to run errands or to clean windows. But somehow I hadn't the cheek to go into the shops and ask. Two or three times, when I was on the point of trying, I caught sight of some cad of a shopman, and made up my mind that I wouldn't be ordered about by HIM, and that since I had the whole town to choose from I might as well go on to the next place. At last, quite late in the afternoon, I saw an advertisement stuck up on a gymnasium, and, while I was reading it, I got talking to old Ned Skene, the owner, who was smoking at the door. He took a fancy to me, and offered to have me there as a sort of lad-of-all-work. I was only too glad to get the chance, and I closed with him at once. As time went on I became so clever with the gloves that Ned matched me against a light-weight named Ducket, and bet a lot of money that I would win. Well, I couldn't disappoint him after his being so kind to me—Mrs. Skene had made as much of me as if I was her own son. What could I do but take my bread as it came to me? I was fit for nothing else. Even if I had been able to write a good hand and keep accounts I couldn't have brought myself to think that quill-driving and counting other people's money was a fit employment for a man. It's not what a man would like to do that he must do in this world, it's what he CAN do; and the only mortal thing I could do properly was to fight. There was plenty of money and plenty of honor and glory among my acquaintances to be got by fighting. So I challenged Ducket, and knocked him all to pieces in about ten minutes. I half killed him because I didn't know my own strength and was afraid of him. I have been at the same work ever since. I was training for a fight when I was down at Wiltstoken; and Mellish was my trainer. It came off the day you saw me at Clapham; that was how I came to have a black eye. Wiltstoken did for me. With all my nerve and science, I'm no better than a baby at heart; and ever since I found out that my mother wasn't an angel I have always had a notion that a real angel would turn up some day. You see, I never cared much for women. Bad as my mother was as far as being what you might call a parent went, she had something in her looks and manners that gave me a better idea of what a nice woman was like than I had of most things; and the girls I met in Australia and America seemed very small potatoes to me in comparison with her. Besides, of course they were not ladies. I was fond of Mrs. Skene because she was good to me; and I made myself agreeable, for her sake, to the girls that came to see her; but in reality I couldn't stand them. Mrs. Skene said that they were all setting their caps at me—women are death on a crack fighter—but the more they tried it on the less I liked them. It was no go; I could get on with the men well enough, no matter how common they were; but the snobbishness of my breed came out with regard to the women. When I saw you that day at Wiltstoken walk out of the trees and stand looking so quietly at me and Mellish, and then go back out of sight without a word, I'm blessed if I didn't think you were the angel come at last. Then I met you at the railway station and walked with you. You put the angel out of my head quick enough; for an angel, after all, is only a shadowy, childish notion—I believe it's all gammon about there being any in heaven—but you gave me a better idea than mamma of what a woman should be, and you came up to that idea and went beyond it. I have been in love with you ever since; and if I can't have you, I don't care what becomes of me. I know I am a bad lot, and have always been one; but when I saw you taking pleasure in the society of fellows just as bad as myself, I didn't see why I should keep away when I was dying to come. I am no worse than the dog-baker, any how. And hang it, Miss Lydia, I don't want to brag; but I never fought a cross or struck a foul blow in my life; and I have never been beaten, though I'm only a middle-weight, and have stood up with the best fourteen-stone men in the Colonies, the States, or in England."

Cashel ceased. As he sat eying her wistfully, Lydia, who had been perfectly still, said musingly,

"Strange! that I should be so much more prejudiced than I knew. What will you think of me when I tell you that your profession does not seem half so shocking now that I know you to be the son of an artist, and not a journeyman butcher or a laborer, as my cousin told me."

"What!" exclaimed Cashel. "That lantern-jawed fellow told you I was a butcher!"

"I did not mean to betray him; but, as I have already said, I am bad at keeping secrets. Mr. Lucian Webber is my cousin and friend, and has done me many services. May I rest assured that he has nothing to fear from you?"

"He has no right to tell lies about me. He is sweet on you, too: I twigged that at Wiltstoken. I have a good mind to let him know whether I am a butcher or not."

"He did not say so. What he told me of you, as far as it went, is exactly confirmed by what you have said yourself. But I happened to ask him to what class men of your calling usually belonged; and he said that they were laborers, butchers, and so forth. Do you resent that?"

"I see plainly enough that you won't let me resent it. I should like to know what else he said of me. But he was right enough about the butchers. There are all sorts of blackguards in the ring: there's no use in denying it. Since it's been made illegal, decent men won't go into it. But, all the same, it's not the fighting men, but the betting men, that bring discredit on it. I wish your cousin had held his confounded tongue."

"I wish you had forestalled him by telling me the truth,"

"I wish I had, now. But what's the use of wishing? I didn't dare run the chance of losing you. See how soon you forbade me the house when you did find out."

"It made little difference," said Lydia, gravely.

"You were always friendly to me," said Cashel, plaintively.

"More so than you were to me. You should not have deceived me. And now I think we had better part. I am glad to know your history; and I admit that when you embraced your profession you made perhaps the best choice that society offered you. I do not blame you."

"But you give me the sack. Is that it?"

"What do you propose, Mr. Cashel Byron? Is it to visit my house in the intervals of battering and maiming butchers and laborers?"

"No, it's not," retorted Cashel. "You're very aggravating. I won't stay much longer in the ring now, because my luck is too good to last. I shall have to retire soon, luck or no luck, because no one can match me. Even now there's nobody except Bill Paradise that pretends to be able for me; and I'll settle him in September if he really means business. After that, I'll retire. I expect to be worth ten thousand pounds then. Ten thousand pounds, I'm told, is the same as five hundred a year. Well, I suppose, judging from the style you keep here, that you're worth as much more, besides your place in the country; so, if you will marry me, we shall have a thousand a year between us. I don't know much of money matters; but at any rate we can live like fighting-cocks on that much. That's a straight and business-like proposal, isn't it?"

"And if I refuse?" said Lydia, with some sternness.

"Then you may have the ten thousand pounds to do what you like with," said Cashel, despairingly. "It won't matter what becomes of me. I won't go to the devil for you or any woman if I can help it; and I—but where's the good of saying IF you refuse. I know I don't express myself properly; I'm a bad hand at sentimentality; but if I had as much gab as a poet, I couldn't be any fonder of you, or think more highly of you."

"But you are mistaken as to the amount of my income."

"That doesn't matter a bit. If you have more, why, the more the merrier. If you have less, or if you have to give up all your property when you're married, I will soon make another ten thousand to supply the loss. Only give me one good word, and, by George, I'll fight the seven champions of Christendom, one down and t'other come on, for five thousand a side each. Hang the money!"

"I am richer than you suppose," said Lydia, unmoved. "I cannot tell you exactly how much I possess; but my income is about forty thousand pounds."

"Forty thousand pounds!" ejaculated Cashel.

"Holy Moses! I didn't think the queen had so much as that."

He paused a moment, and became very red. Then, in a voice broken by mortification, he said, "I see I have been making a fool of myself," and took his hat and turned to go.

"It does not follow that you should go at once without a word," said Lydia, betraying nervousness for the first time during the interview.

"Oh, that's all rot," said Cashel. "I may be a fool while my eyes are shut, but I'm sensible enough when they're open. I have no business here. I wish to the Lord I had stayed in Australia."

"Perhaps it would have been better," said Lydia, troubled. "But since we have met, it is useless to deplore it; and—Let me remind you of one thing. You have pointed out to me that I have made friends of men whose pursuits are no better than yours. I do not wholly admit that; but there is one respect in which they are on the same footing as you. They are all, as far as worldly gear is concerned, much poorer than I. Many of them, I fear, are much poorer than you are."

Cashel looked up quickly with returning hope; but it lasted only a moment. He shook his head dejectedly.

"I am at least grateful to you," she continued, "because you have sought me for my own sake, knowing nothing of my wealth."

"I should think not," groaned Cashel. "Your wealth may be a very fine thing for the other fellows; and I'm glad you have it, for your own sake. But it's a settler for me. It's knocked me out of time, so it has. I sha'n't come up again; and the sooner the sponge is chucked up in my corner, the better. So good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Lydia, almost as pale as he had now become, "since you will have it so."

"Since the devil will have it so," said Cashel, ruefully. "It's no use wishing to have it any other way. The luck is against me. I hope, Miss Carew, that you'll excuse me for making such an ass of myself. It's all my blessed innocence; I never was taught any better."

"I have no quarrel with you except on the old score of hiding the truth from me; and that I forgive you—as far as the evil of it affects me. As for your declaration of attachment to me personally, I have received many similar ones that have flattered me less. But there are certain scruples between us. You will not court a woman a hundred-fold richer than yourself; and I will not entertain a prize-fighter. My wealth frightens every man who is not a knave; and your profession frightens every woman who is not a fury."

"Then you—Just tell me this," said Cashel, eagerly. "Suppose I were a rich swell, and were not a—"

"No," said Lydia, peremptorily interrupting him. "I will suppose nothing but what is."

Cashel relapsed into melancholy. "If you only hadn't been kind to me!" he said. "I think the reason I love you so much is that you're the only person that is not afraid of me. Other people are civil because they daren't be otherwise to the cock of the ring. It's a lonely thing to be a champion. You knew nothing about that; and you knew I was afraid of you; and yet you were as good as gold."

"It is also a lonely thing to be a very rich woman. People are afraid of my wealth, and of what they call my learning. We two have at least one experience in common. Now do me a great favor, by going. We have nothing further to say."

"I'll go in two seconds. But I don't believe much in YOUR being lonely. That's only fancy."

"Perhaps so. Most feelings of this kind are only fancies."

There was a pause. Then Cashel said,

"I don't feel half so downhearted as I did a minute ago. Are you sure that you're not angry with me?"

"Quite sure. Pray let me say good-bye."

"And may I never see you again? Never at all?—world without end, amen?"

"Never as the famous prize-fighter. But if a day should come when Mr. Cashel Byron will be something better worthy of his birth and nature, I will not forget an old friend. Are you satisfied now?"

Cashel's face began to glow, and the roots of his hair to tingle. "One thing more," he said. "If you meet me by chance in the street before that, will you give me a look? I don't ask for a regular bow, but just a look to keep me going?"

"I have no intention of cutting you," said Lydia, gravely. "But do not place yourself purposely in my way."

"Honor bright, I won't. I'll content myself with walking through that street in Soho occasionally. Now I'm off; I know you're in a hurry to be rid of me. So good-b—Stop a bit, though. Perhaps when that time you spoke of comes, you will be married."

"It is possible; but I am not likely to marry. How many more things have you to say that you have no right to say?"

"Not one," said Cashel, with a laugh that rang through the house. "I never was happier in my life, though I'm crying inside all the time. I'll have a try for you yet. Good-bye. No," he added, turning from her proffered hand; "I daren't touch it; I should eat you afterwards." And he ran out of the room.

In the hall was Bashville, pale and determined, waiting there to rush to the assistance of his mistress at her first summons. He had a poker concealed at hand. Having just heard a great laugh, and seeing Cashel come down-stairs in high spirits, he stood stock- still, and did not know what to think.

"Well, old chap," said Cashel, boisterously, slapping him on the shoulder, "so you're alive yet. Is there any one in the dining-room?"

"No," said Bashville.

"There's a thick carpet there to fall soft on," said Cashel, pulling Bashville into the room. "Come along. Now, show me that little trick of yours again. Come, don't be afraid. Down with me. Take care you don't knock my head against the fire-irons."

"But—"

"But be hanged. You were spry enough at it before. Come!"

Bashville, after a moment's hesitation, seized Cashel, who immediately became grave and attentive, and remained imperturbably so while Nashville expertly threw him. He sat for a moment thinking on the hearth-rug before he rose. "I see," he said, then, getting up. "Now, do it again."

"But it makes such a row," remonstrated Bashville.

"Only once more. There'll be no row this time."

"Well, you ARE an original sort of cove," said Bashville, complying. But instead of throwing his man, he found himself wedged into a collar formed by Cashel's arms, the least constriction of which would have strangled him. Cashel again roared with laughter as he released him.

"That's the way, ain't it?" he said. "You can't catch an old fox twice in the same trap. Do you know any more falls?"

"I do," said Bashville; "but I really can't show them to you here. I shall get into trouble on account of the noise."

"You can come down to me whenever you have an evening out," said Cashel, handing him a card, "to that address, and show me what you know, and I'll see what I can do with you. There's the making of a man in you."

"You're very kind," said Bashville, pocketing the card with a grin.

"And now let me give you a word of advice that will be of use to you as long as you live," said Cashel, impressively. "You did a very silly thing to-day. You threw a man down—a fighting-man—and then stood looking at him like a fool, waiting for him to get up and kill you. If ever you do that again, fall on him as heavily as you can the instant he's off his legs. Drop your shoulder well into him, and, if he pulls you over, make play with the back of your head. If he's altogether too big for you, put your knee on his throat as if by accident. But, on no account, stand and do nothing. It's flying in the face of Providence."

Cashel emphasized these counsels by taps of his forefinger on one of Bashville's buttons. In conclusion, he nodded, opened the house-door, and walked away in buoyant spirits.

Lydia, standing year the library window, saw him pass, and observed how his light, alert step and a certain gamesome assurance of manner marked him off from a genteelly promenading middle-aged gentleman, a trudging workman, and a vigorously striding youth who were also passing by. The iron railings through which she saw him reminded her of the admirable and dangerous creatures which were passing and repassing behind iron bars in the park yonder. But she exulted, in her quiet manner, in the thought that, dangerous as he was, she had no fear of him. When his cabman had found him and driven him off she went to her desk, opened a private drawer in it, took out her falher's last letter, and sat for some time looking at it without unfolding it.

"It would be a strange thing, father," she said, as if he were actually there to hear her, "if your paragon should turn aside from her friends, the artists, philosophers, and statesmen, to give herself to an illiterate prize-fighter. I felt a pang of absolute despair when he replied to my forty thousand pounds a year with an unanswerable good-bye."

She locked up her father, as it were, in the drawer again, and rang the bell. Bashville appeared, somewhat perturbed.

"If Mr. Byron calls again, admit him if I am at home."

"Yes, madam."

"Thank you."

"Begging your pardon, madam, but may I ask has any complaint been made of me?"

"None." Bashville was reluctantly withdrawing when she added, "Mr. Byron gave me to understand that you tried to prevent his entrance by force. You exposed yourself to needless risk by doing so; and you may make a rule in future that when people are importunate, and will not go away when asked, they had better come in until you get special instructions from me. I am not finding fault; on the contrary, I approve of your determination to carry out your orders; but under exceptional circumstances you may use your own discretion."

"He shoved the door into my face, and I acted on the impulse of the moment, madam. I hope you will forgive the liberty I took in locking the door of the boudoir. He is older and heavier than I am, madam; and he has the advantage of being a professional. Else I should have stood my ground."

"I am quite satisfied," said Lydia, a little coldly, as she left the room.

"How long you have been!" cried Alice, almost in hysterics, as Lydia entered. "Is he gone? What were those dreadful noises? IS anything the matter?"

"Dancing and late hours are the matter," said Lydia, coolly. "The season is proving too much for you, Alice."

"It is not the season; it is the man," said Alice, with a sob.

"Indeed? I have been in conversation with the man for more than half an hour; and Bashville has been in actual combat with him; yet we are not in hysterics. You have been sitting here at your ease, have yon not?"

"I am not in hysterics," said Alice, indignantly.

"So much the better," said Lydia, gravely, placing her hand on the forehead of Alice, who subsided with a sniff.



CHAPTER X



Mrs. Byron, under her stage name of Adelaide Gisborne, was now, for the second time in her career, much talked of in London, where she had boon for many years almost forgotten. The metropolitan managers of her own generation had found that her success in new parts was very uncertain; that she was more capricious than the most petted favorites of the public; and that her invariable reply to a business proposal was that she detested the stage, and was resolved never to set foot upon it again. So they had managed to do without her for so long that the younger London playgoers knew her by reputation only as an old-fashioned actress who wandered through the provinces palming herself off on the ignorant inhabitants as a great artist, and boring them with performances of the plays of Shakespeare. It suited Mrs. Byron well to travel with the nucleus of a dramatic company from town to town, staying a fortnight in each, and repeating half a dozen characters in which she was very effective, and which she knew so well that she never thought about them except when, as indeed often happened, she had nothing else to think about. Most of the provincial populations received her annual visits with enthusiasm. Among them she found herself more excitingly applauded before the curtain, her authority more despotic behind it, her expenses smaller, and her gains greater than in London, for which she accordingly cared as little as London cared for her. As she grew older she made more money and spent less. When she complained to Cashel of the cost of his education, she was rich. Since he had relieved her of that cost she had visited America, Egypt, India, and the colonies, and had grown constantly richer. From this great tour she had returned to England on the day when Cashel added the laurels of the Flying Dutchman to his trophies; and the next Sunday's paper had its sporting column full of the prowess of Cashel Byron, and its theatrical column full of the genius of Adelaide Gisborne. But she never read sporting columns, nor he theatrical ones.

The managers who had formerly avoided Mrs. Byron were by this time dead, bankrupt, or engaged in less hazardous pursuits. One of their successors had lately restored Shakespeare to popularity as signally as Cashel had restored the prize ring. He was anxious to produce the play of "King John," being desirous of appearing as Faulconbridge, a part for which he was physically unfitted. Though he had no suspicion of his unfitness, he was awake to the fact that the favorite London actresses, though admirable in modern comedy, were not mistresses of what he called, after Sir Walter Scott, the "big bow wow" style required for the part of Lady Constance in Shakespeare's history. He knew that he could find in the provinces many veteran players who knew every gesture and inflection of voice associated by tradition with the part; but he was afraid that they would remind Londoners of Richardson's show, and get Faulconbridge laughed at. Then he thought of Adelaide Gisborne. For some hours after the idea came to him he was gnawed at by the fear that her performance would throw his into the shade. But his confidence in his own popularity helped his love of good acting to prevail; and he made the newly returned actress a tempting offer, instigating some journalist friends of his at the same time to lament over the decay of the grand school of acting, and to invent or republish anecdotes of Mrs. Siddons.

This time Mrs. Byron said nothing about detesting the stage. She had really detested it once; but by the time she was rich enough to give up the theatre she had worn that feeling out, and had formed a habit of acting which was as irksome to shake off as any other habit. She also found a certain satisfaction in making money with ease and certainty, and she made so much that at last she began to trifle with plans of retirement, of playing in Paris, of taking a theatre in London, and other whims. The chief public glory of her youth had been a sudden triumph in London on the occasion of her first appearance on any stage; and she now felt a mind to repeat this and crown her career where it had begun. So she accepted the manager's offer, and even went the length of reading the play of "King John" in order to ascertain what it was all about.

The work of advertisement followed her assent. Portraits of Adelaide Gisborne were displayed throughout the town. Paragraphs in the papers mentioned large sums as the cost of mounting the historical masterpiece of the national bard. All the available seats in the theatre—except some six or seven hundred in the pit and gallery—were said to be already disposed of for the first month of the expected run of the performance. The prime minister promised to be present on the opening night. Absolute archaeologic accuracy was promised. Old paintings were compared to ascertain the dresses of the period. A scene into which the artist had incautiously painted a pointed arch was condemned as an anachronism. Many noblemen gave the actor-manager access to their collections of armor and weapons in order that his accoutrement should exactly counterfeit that of a Norman baron. Nothing remained doubtful except the quality of the acting.

It happened that one of the most curious documents of the period in question was a scrap of vellum containing a fragment of a chronicle of Prince Arthur, with an illuminated portrait of his mother. It had been purchased for a trifling sum by the late Mr. Carew, and was now in the possession of Lydia, to whom the actor-manager applied for leave to inspect it. Leave being readily given, he visited the house in Regent's Park, which he declared to be an inexhaustible storehouse of treasure. He deeply regretted, he said, that he could not show the portrait to Miss Gisborne. Lydia replied that if Miss Gisborne would come and look at it, she should be very welcome. Two days later, at noon, Mrs. Byron arrived and found Lydia alone; Alice having contrived to be out, as she felt that it was better not to meet an actress—one could never tell what they might have been.

The years that had elapsed since Mrs. Byron's visit to Dr. Moncrief had left no perceptible trace on her; indeed she looked younger now than on that occasion, because she had been at the trouble of putting on an artificial complexion. Her careless refinement of manner was so different from the studied dignity and anxious courtesy of the actor-manager, that Lydia could hardly think of them as belonging to the same profession. Her voice was not her stage voice; it gave a subtle charm to her most commonplace remarks, and it was as different as possible from Cashel's rough tones. Yet Lydia was convinced by the first note of it that she was Cashel's mother. Besides, their eyes were so like that they might have made an exchange without altering their appearance.

Mrs. Byron, coming to the point without delay, at once asked to see the drawing. Lydia brought her to the library, were several portfolios were ready for inspection. The precious fragment of vellum was uppermost.

"Very interesting, indeed," said Mrs. Byron, throwing it aside after one glance at it, and turning over some later prints, while Lydia, amused, looked on in silence. "Ah," she said, presently, "here is something that will suit me exactly. I shall not trouble to go through the rest of your collection, thank you. They must do that robe for me in violet silk. What is your opinion of it, Miss Carew? I have noticed, from one or two trifles, that your taste is exquisite."

"For what character do you intend the dress?"

"Constance, in 'King John.'"

"But silk was not made in western Europe until three hundred years after Constance's death. And that drawing is a sketch of Marie de Medicis by Rubens."

"Never mind," said Mrs. Byron, smoothly. "What does a dress three hundred years out of date matter when the woman inside it is seven hundred years out? What can be a greater anachronism than the death of Prince Arthur three months hence on the stage of the Panopticon Theatre? I am an artist giving life to a character in romance, I suppose; certainly not a grown-up child playing at being somebody out of Mrs. Markham's history of England. I wear whatever becomes me. I cannot act when I feel dowdy."

"But what will the manager say?"

"I doubt if he will say anything. He will hardly venture to press on me anything copied from that old parchment. As he will wear a suit of armor obviously made the other day in Birmingham, why—!" Mrs. Byron shrugged her shoulders, and did not take sufficient interest in the manager's opinion to finish her sentence.

"After all, Shakespeare concerned himself very little about such matters," said Lydia, conversationally.

"No doubt. I seldom read him."

"Is this part of Lady Constance a favorite one of yours?"

"Troublesome, my dear," said Mrs. Byron, absently. "The men look ridiculous in it; and it does not draw."

"No doubt," said Lydia, watching her face. "But I spoke rather of your personal feeling towards the character. Do you, for instance, like portraying maternal tenderness on the stage?"

"Maternal tenderness," said Mrs. Byron with sudden nobleness, "is far too sacred a thing to be mimicked. Have you any children?"

"No," said Lydia, demurely. "I am not married."

"Of course not. You should get married. Maternity is a liberal education in itself."

"Do you think that it suits every woman?"

"Undoubtedly. Without exception. Only think, dear Miss Carew, of the infinite patieuce with which you must tend a child, of the necessity of seeing with its little eyes and with your own wise ones at the same time, of bearing without reproach the stabs it innocently inflicts, of forgiving its hundred little selfishnesses, of living in continual fear of wounding its exquisite sensitiveness, or rousing its bitter resentment of injustice and caprice. Think of how you must watch yourself, check yourself, exercise and develop everything in you that can help to attract and retain the most jealous love in the world! Believe me, it is a priceless trial to be a mother. It is a royal compensation for having been born a woman."

"Nevertheless," said Lydia, "I wish I had been born a man. Since you seem to have thought deeply into these problems, I will venture to ask you a question. Do you not think that the acquirement of an art demanding years of careful self-study and training—such as yours, for example—is also of great educational value? Almost a sufficient discipline to make one a good mother?"

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Byron, decidedly. "People come into the world ready-made. I went on the stage when I was eighteen, and succeeded at once. Had I known anything of the world, or been four years older, I should have been weak, awkward, timid, and flat; it would have taken me twelve years to crawl to the front. But I was young, passionate, beautiful, and indeed terrible; for I had run away from home two years before, and been cruelly deceived. I learned the business of the stage as easily and thoughtlessly as a child learns a prayer; the rest came to me by nature. I have seen others spend years in struggling with bad voices, uncouth figures, and diffidence; besides a dozen defects that existed only in their imaginations. Their struggles may have educated them; but had they possessed sufficient genius they would have had neither struggle nor education. Perhaps that is why geniuses are such erratic people, and mediocrities so respectable. I grant you that I was very limited when I first came out; I was absolutely incapable of comedy. But I never took any trouble about it; and by and by, when I began to mature a little, and to see the absurdity of most of the things I had been making a fuss about, comedy came to me unsought, as romantic tragedy had come before. I suppose it would have come just the same if I had been laboring to acquire it, except that I would have attributed its arrival to my own exertions. Most of the laborious people think they have made themselves what they are—much as if a child should think it had made itself grow."

"You are the first artist I ever met," said Lydia, "who did not claim art as the most laborious of all avocations. They all deny the existence of genius, and attribute everything to work."

"Of course one picks up a great deal from experience; and there is plenty of work on the stage. But it in my genius which enables me to pick up things, and to work on the stage instead of in a kitchen or laundry."

"You must be very fond of your profession."

"I do not mind it now; I have shrunk to fit it. I began because I couldn't help myself; and I go on because, being an old woman, I have nothing else to do. Bless me, how I hated it after the first month! I must retire soon, now. People are growing weary of me."

"I doubt that. I am bound to assume that you are an old woman, since you say so; but you must be aware, flattery apart, that you hardly seem to have reached your prime yet."

"I might be your mother, my dear. I might be a grand mother. Perhaps I am." There was a plaintive tone in the last sentence; and Lydia seized the opportunity.

"You spoke of maternity then from experience, Miss Gisborne?"

"I have one son—a son who was sent to me in my eighteenth year."

"I hope he inherits his mother's genius and personal grace."

"I am sure I don't know," said Mrs. Byron, pensively. "He was a perfect devil. I fear I shock you, Miss Carew; but really I did everything for him that the most devoted mother could do; and yet he ran away from me without making a sign of farewell. Little wretch!"

"Boys do cruel things sometimes in a spirit of adventure," said Lydia, watching her visitor's face narrowly.

"It was not that. It was his temper, which was ungovernable. He was sulky and vindictive. It is quite impossible to love a sulky child. I kept him constantly near me when he was a tiny creature; and when he got too big for that I spent oceans of money on his education. All in vain! He never showed any feeling towards me except a sense of injury that no kindness could remove. And he had nothing to complain of. Never was there a worse son."

Lydia remained silent and grave. Mrs. Byron looked rather beside her than at her. Suddenly she added,

"My poor, darling Cashel" (Lydia suppressed a start), "what a shame to talk of you so! You see, I love him in spite of his wickedness." Mrs. Byron took out her handkerchief, and Lydia for a moment was alarmed by the prospect of tears. But Miss Gisborne only blew her nose with perfect composure, and rose to take her leave. Lydia, who, apart from her interest in Cashel's mother, was attracted and amused by the woman herself, induced her to stay for luncheon, and presently discovered from her conversation that she had read much romance of the Werther sort in her youth, and had, since then, employed her leisure in reading every book that came in her way without regard to its quality. Her acquirements were so odd, and her character so unreasonable, that Lydia, whose knowledge was unusually well organized, and who was eminently reasonable, concluded that she was a woman of genius. For Lydia knew the vanity of her own attainments, and believed herself to be merely a patient and well-taught plodder. Mrs. Byron happening to be pleased with the house, the luncheon, and Lydia's intelligent listening, her unaccountable natural charm became so intensified by her good-humor that Lydia became conscious of it, and began to wonder what its force might have been if some influence—that of a lover, for instance—had ever made Mrs. Byron ecstatically happy. She surprised herself at last in the act of speculating whether she could ever make Cashel love her as his father must, for a time at least, have loved her visitor.

When Lydia was alone, she considered whether she was justified in keeping Mrs. Byron apart from her son. It seemed plain that at present Cashel was a disgrace to his mother, and had better remain hidden from her. But if he should for any reason abandon his ruffianly pursuits, as she had urged him to do, then she could bring about a meeting between them; and the truant's mother might take better care of him in the future, besides making him pecuniarily independent of prize-fighting. This led Lydia to ask what new profession Cashel could adopt, and what likelihood there was of his getting on with his mother any better than formerly. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming. So she went back to the likelihood of his reforming himself for her sake. On this theme her imagination carried her so far from all reasonable probability, that she was shaking her head at her own folly when Bashville appeared and announced Lord Worthington, who came into the room with Alice. Lydia had not seen him since her discovery of the true position of the tenant he had introduced to her, and he was consequently a little afraid to meet her. To cover his embarrassment, he began to talk quickly on a number of commonplace topics. But when some time had elapsed, he began to show signs of fresh uneasiness. He looked at his watch, and said,

"I don't wish to hurry you, ladies; but this affair commences at three."

"What affair?" said Lydia, who had been privately wondering why he had come.

"The assault-at-arms. King What's-his-name's affair. Webber told me he had arranged that you should come with me."

"Oh, you have come to take us there. I had forgotten. Did I promise to go?"

"Webber said so. He was to have taken you himself; but, failing that, he promised to do a good thing for me and put me in his place. He said you particularly wanted to go, hang him!"

Lydia then rose promptly and sent for her carriage. "There is no hurry," bhe said. "We can drive to St. James's Hall in twelve minutes."

"Hut we have to go to Islington, to the Agricultural Hall. There will be cavalry charges, and all sorts of fun."

"Bless me!" said Lydia. "Will there be any boxing?"

"Yes," said Lord Worthington, reddening, but unabashed. "Lots of it. It will be by gentlemen, though, except perhaps one bout to show the old king our professional form."

"Then excuse me while I go for my hat," said Lydia, leaving the room. Alice had gone some time before to make a complete change in her dress, as the occasion was one for display of that kind.

"You look awfully fetching, Miss Goff," Lord Worthington said, as he followed them to the carriage. Alice did not deign to reply, but tossed her head superbly, and secretly considered whether people would, on comparison, think her overdressed or Lydia underdressed. Lord Worthington thought they both looked their best, and reflected for several seconds on the different styles of different women, and how what would suit one would not do at all for another. It seemed to him that Miss Carew's presence made him philosophical.

The Agricultural Hall struck Alice at first sight as an immense barn round which heaps of old packing-cases had been built into race-course stands, scantily decorated with red cloth and a few flags. She was conducted to a front seat in one of these balconies, which overhung the tan-strewn arena. Just below her were the palisades, ornamented at intervals with evergreens in tubs, and pressed against from without by a crowd who had paid a shilling apiece for the privilege of admission. She remarked that it was little to the credit of the management that these people should be placed so close beneath her that she could hear their conversation; but as Lydia did not seem to share her disgust, she turned her attention to the fashionable part of the audience. On the opposite side of the arena the balconies seemed like beds of flowers in bloom, blacknesses formed here and there by the hats and coats of gentlemen representing the interspaces of clay. In the midst of the flowers was a gaudy dais, on which a powerfully-built black gentleman sat in a raised chair, his majestic impassivity contrasting with the overt astonishment with which a row of savagely ugly attendant chiefs grinned and gaped on either side of him.

"What a pity we are not nearer the king!" said Alice. "I can hardly see the dear old fellow."

"You will find these the best seats for seeing the assault. It will be all right," said Lord Worthington.

Lydia's attention was caught by something guilty in his manner. Following a furtive glance of his, she saw in the arena, not far from her, an enclosure about twenty feet square, made with ropes and stakes. It was unoccupied, and there were a few chairs, a basin, and a sponge, near it.

"What is that?" she asked.

"That! Oh, that's the ring."

"It is not a ring. It is square."

"They call it the ring. They have succeeded in squaring the circle."

Here there was a piercing bugle-call, and a troop of cavalry trotted into the arena. Lydia found it pleasant enough to sit lazily admiring the horses and men, and comparing the members of the Olympian Club, who appeared when the soldiers retired, to the marble gods of Athens, and to the Bacchus or David of Michael Angelo. They fell short of the Greek statues in refinement, and of the Italian in impressiveness as they vaulted over a wooden horse, and swung upon horizontal bars, each cheapening the exploits of his forerunner by out-doing them. Lord Worthington, who soon grew tired of this, whispered that when all that rubbish was over, a fellow would cut a sheep in two with a sword, after which there would be some boxing.

"Do you mean to say," said Lydia, indignantly, "that they are going to turn a sheep loose and hunt it on horseback with swords?"

Lord Worthington laughed and said yes; but it presently appeared that by a sheep was meant a lean carcass of mutton. A stalwart sergeant cut it in half as a climax to slicing lemons, bars of lead, and silk handkerchiefs; and the audience, accustomed to see much more disgusting sights in butchers' shops, liberally applauded him.

Two gentlemen of the Olympian Club now entered the enclosure which Lord Worthington called the ring. After shaking hands with one another as well as their huge padded gloves permitted, they hugged themselves with their right arms as if there were some danger of their stomachs falling out if not held tightly in, and danced round one another, throwing out and retracting their left fists like pawing horses. They were both, as Lydia learned from the announcement of their names and achievements by the master of the ceremonies, amateur champions. She thought their pawing and dancing ridiculous; and when they occasionally rushed together and scuffled, she could distinguish nothing of the leading off, stopping, ducking, countering, guarding, and getting away to which Lord Worthington enthusiastically invited her attention, and which elicited alternate jeers and applause from the shilling audience below. She laughed outright when, at the expiration of three minutes, the two dropped supine into chairs at opposite corners of the ring as if they had sustained excessive fatigue. At the end of a minute, some one hoarsely cried "Time!" and they rose and repeated their previous performance for three minutes more. Another minute of rest followed; and then the dancing and pawing proceeded for four minutes, after which the champions again shook hands and left the arena.

"And is that all?" said Lydia.

"That's all," said Lord Worthington. "It's the most innocent thing in the world, and the prettiest."

"It does not strike me as being pretty," said Lydia; "but it seems as innocent as inanity can make it." Her mind misgave her that she had ignorantly and unjustly reproached Cashel Byron with ferocity merely because he practised this harmless exercise.

The show progressed through several phases of skilled violence. Besides single combats between men armed in various fashions, there were tilts, tent-peggings, drilling and singlestick practice by squads of British tars, who were loudly cheered, and more boxing and vaulting by members of the club. Lydia's attention soon began to wander from the arena. Looking down at the crowd outside the palisades, she saw a small man whom she vaguely remembered, though his face was turned from her. In conversation with him was a powerful man dressed in a yellow tweed suit and green scarf. He had a coarse, strong voice, and his companion a shrill, mean one, so that their remarks could be heard by an attentive listener above the confused noise of the crowd.

"Do you admire that man?" said Lord Worthington, following Lydia's gaze.

"No. Is he anybody in particular?"

"He was a great man once—in the days of the giants. He was champion of England. He has a special interest for us as the preceptor of a mutual friend of ours."

"Please name him," said Lydia, intending that the mutual friend should be named.

"Ned Skene," said Lord Worthington, taking her to mean the man below. "He has done so well in the colonies that he has indulged himself and his family with a trip to England. His arrival made quite a sensation in this country: last week he had a crowded benefit, at which he sparred with our mutual friend and knocked him about like a baby. Our mutual behaved very well on the occasion in letting himself be knocked about. You see he could have killed old Skene if he had tried in earnest."

"Is that Skene?" said Lydia, looking at him with an earnest interest that astonished Lord Worthington. "Ah! Now I recognize the man with him. He is one of my tenants at the Warren Lodge—I believe I am indebted to you for the introduction."

"Mellish the trainer?" said Lord Worthington, looking a little foolish. "So it is. What a lovely bay that lancer has!—the second from the far end."

But Lydia would not look at the lancer's horse. "Paradise!" she heard Skene exclaim just then with scornful incredulity. "Ain't it likely?" It occurred to her that if he was alluding to his own chance of arriving there, it was not likely.

"Less likely things have happened," said Mellish. "I won't say that Cashel Byron is getting stale; but I will say that his luck is too good to last; and I know for a fact that he's gone quite melancholy of late."

"Melancholy be blowed!" said Skene. "What should he go melancholy for?"

"Oh, I know," said Mellish, reticently.

"You know a lot," retorted Skene with contempt. "I s'pose you mean the young 'oman he's always talking to my missis about."

"I mean a young woman that he ain't likely to get. One of the biggest swells in England—a little un with a face like the inside of a oyster-shell, that he met down at Wiltstoken, where I trained him to fight the Flying Dutchman. He went right off his training after he met her—wouldn't do anything I told him. I made so cock-sure that he'd be licked that I hedged every penny I had laid on him except twenty pound that I got a flat to bet agin him down at the fight after I had changed my mind. Curse that woman! I lost a hundred pound by her."

"And served you right, too, you old stupid. You was wrong then; and you're wrong now, with your blessed Paradise."

"Paradise has never been licked yet."

"No more has my boy."

"Well, we'll see."

"We'll see! I tell you I've seed for myself. I've seed Billy Paradise spar; and it ain't fighting, it's ruffianing: that's what it is. Ruffianing! Why, my old missis has more science."

"Mebbe she has," said Mellish. "But look at the men he's licked that were chock full of science. Shepstone, clever as he is, only won a fight from him by claiming a foul, because Billy lost his temper and spiked him. That's the worst of Billy; he can't keep his feelings in. But no fine-lady sparrer can stand afore that ugly rush of his. Do you think he'll care for Cashel's showy long shots? Not he: he'll just take 'em on that mahogany nut of his, and give him back one o' them smashers that he settled poor Dick Weeks with."

"I'll lay you any money he don't. If he does, I'll go back into the ring myself, and bust his head off for it." Here Skene, very angry, applied several epithets to Paradise, and became so excited that Mellish had to soothe him by partially retracting his forebodings, and asking how Cashel had been of late.

"He's not been taking care of himself as he oughter," said Skene, gloomily. "He's showing the London fashions to the missis and Fanny—they're here in the three-and-sixpenny seats, among the swells. Theatres every night; and walks every day to see the queen drive through the park, or the like. My Fan likes to have him with her on account of his being such a gentleman: she don't hardly think her own father not good enough to walk down Piccadilly with. Wants me to put on a black coat and make a parson of myself. The missis just idolizes him. She thinks the boy far too good for the young 'oman you was speaking of, and tells him that she's only letting on not to care for him to raise her price, just as I used to pretend to be getting beat, to set the flats betting agin me. The women always made a pet of him. In Melbourne it was not what I liked for dinner: it was always what the boy 'ud like, and when it 'ud please him to have it. I'm blest if I usen't to have to put him up to ask for a thing when I wanted it myself. And you tell me that that's the lad that's going to let Billy Paradise lick him, I s'pose. Walker!"

Lydia, with Mrs. Byron's charm fresh upon her, wondered what manner of woman this Mrs. Skene could be who had supplanted her in the affections of her son, and yet was no more than a prize-fighter's old missis. Evidently she was not one to turn a young man from a career in the ring. Again the theme of Cashel's occupation and the chances of his quitting it ran away with Lydia's attention. She sat with her eyes fixed on the arena, without seeing the soldiers, swordsmen, or athletes who were busy there; her mind wandered further and further from the place; and the chattering of the people resolved itself into a distant hum and was forgotten.

Suddenly she saw a dreadful-looking man coming towards her across the arena. His face had the surface and color of blue granite; his protruding jaws and retreating forehead were like those of an orang-outang. She started from her reverie with a shiver, and, recovering her hearing as well as her vision of external things, became conscious of an attempt to applaud this apparition by a few persons below. The man grinned ferociously, placed one hand on a stake of the ring, and vaulted over the ropes. Lydia now remarked that, excepting his hideous head and enormous hands and feet, he was a well-made man, with loins and shoulders that shone in the light, and gave him an air of great strength and activity.

"Ain't he a picture?" she heard Mellish exclaim, ecstatically. "There's condition for you!"

"Ah!" said Skene, disparagingly. "But ain't HE the gentleman! Just look at him. It's like the Prince of Wales walking down Pall Mall."

Lydia, hearing this, looked again, and saw Cashel Byron, exactly as she had seen him for the first time in the elm vista at Wiltstoken, approaching the ring with the indifferent air of a man going through some tedious public ceremony.

"A god coming down to compete with a gladiator," whispered Lord Worthington, eagerly. "Isn't it, Miss Carew? Apollo and the satyr! You must admit that our mutual friend is a splendid-looking fellow. If he could go into society like that, by Jove, the women—"

"Hush," said Lydia, as if his words were intolerable.

Cashel did not vault over the ropes. He stepped through them languidly, and, rejecting the proffered assistance of a couple of officious friends, drew on a boxing-glove fastidiously, like an exquisite preparing for a fashionable promenade. Having thus muffled his left hand so as to make it useless for the same service to his right, he dipped his fingers into the other glove, gripped it between his teeth, and dragged it on with the action of a tiger tearing its prey. Lydia shuddered again.

"Bob Mellish," said Skene, "I'll lay you twenty to one he stops that rush that you think so much of. Come: twenty to one!"

Mellish shook his head. Then the master of the ceremonies, pointing to the men in succession, shouted, "Paradise: a professor. Cashel Byron: a professor. Time!"

Cashel now looked at Paradise, of whose existence he had not before seemed to be aware. The two men advanced towards the centre of the ring, shook hands at arm's-length, cast off each other's grasp suddenly, fell back a step, and began to move warily round one another from left to right like a pair of panthers.

"I think they might learn manners from the gentlemen, and shake hands cordially," said Alice, trying to appear unconcerned, but oppressed by a vague dread of Cashel.

"That's the traditional manner," said Lord Worthington. "It is done that way to prevent one from holding the other; pulling him over, and hitting him with the disengaged hand before he could get loose."

"What abominable treachery!" exclaimed Lydia.

"It's never done, you know," said Lord Worthington, apologetically. "Only it might be."

Lydia turned away from him, and gave all her attention to the boxers. Of the two, Paradise shocked her least. He was evidently nervous and conscious of a screwed-up condition as to his courage; but his sly grin implied a wild sort of good-humor, and seemed to promise the spectators that he would show them some fun presently. Cashel watched his movements with a relentless vigilance and a sidelong glance in which, to Lydia's apprehension, there was something infernal.

Suddenly the eyes of Paradise lit up: he lowered his head, made a rush, balked himself purposely, and darted at Cashel. There was a sound like the pop of a champagne-cork, after which Cashel was seen undisturbed in the middle of the ring, and Paradise, flung against the ropes and trying to grin at his discomfiture, showed his white teeth through a mask of blood.

"Beautiful!" cried Skene with emotion. "Beautiful! There ain't but me and my boy in the world can give the upper cut like that! I wish I could see my old missis's face now! This is nuts to her."

"Let us go away," said Alice.

"That was a very different blow to any that the gentlemen gave," said Lydia, without heeding her, to Lord Worthington. "The man is bleeding horribly."

"It's only his nose," said Lord Worthington. "He's used to it."

Meanwhile Cashel had followed Paradise to the ropes.

"Now he has him," chuckled Skene. "My boy's got him agin the ropes; and he means to keep him there. Let him rush now, if he can. See what it is to have a good judgment."

Mellish shook his head again despondently. The remaining minutes of the round were unhappy ones for Paradise. He struck viciously at his opponent's ribs; but Cashel stepped back just out of his reach, and then returned with extraordinary swiftness and dealt him blows from which, with the ropes behind him, he had no room to retreat, and which he was too slow to stop or avoid. His attempts to reach his enemy's face were greatly to the disadvantage of his own; for Cashel's blows were never so tremendous as when he turned his head deftly out of harm's way, and met his advancing foe with a counter hit. He showed no chivalry and no mercy, and revelled in the hardness of his hitting; his gloves either resounding on Paradise's face or seeming to go almost through his body. There was little semblance to a contest: to Lydia there was nothing discernible but a cruel assault by an irresistible athlete on a helpless victim. The better sort among the spectators were disgusted by the sight; for, as Paradise bled profusely, and as his blood besmeared the gloves and the gloves besmeared the heads and bodies of both combatants, they were soon stained with it from their waists upward. The managers held a whispered consultation as to whether the sparring exhibition had not better be stopped; but they decided to let it proceed on seeing the African king, who had watched the whole entertainment up to the present without displaying the least interest, now raise his hands and clap them with delight.

"Billy don't look half pleased with hisself," observed Mellish, as the two boxers sat down. "He looks just like he did when he spiked Shepstone."

"What does spiking mean?" said Lydia.

"Treading on a man's foot with spiked boots," replied Lord Worthington. "Don't be alarmed; they have no spikes in their shoes to-day. It is not my fault that they do such things, Miss Carew. Really, you make me feel quite criminal when you look at me in that way."

Time was now called; and the pugilists, who had, by dint of sponging, been made somewhat cleaner, rose with mechanical promptitude at the sound, Cashel had hardly advanced two steps when, though his adversary seemed far out of his reach, he struck him on the forehead with such force as to stagger him, and then jumped back laughing. Paradise rushed forward; but Cashel eluded him, and fled round the ring, looking back derisively over his shoulder. Paradise now dropped all pretence of good-humor. With an expression of reckless ferocity, he dashed at Cashel; endured a startling blow without flinching, and engaged him at close quarters. For a moment the falling of their blows reminded Lydia of the rush of raindrops against a pane in a sudden gust of wind. The next moment Cashel was away; and Paradise, whose blood was again flowing, was trying to repeat his manoeuvre, to be met this time by a blow that brought him upon one knee. He had scarcely risen when Cashel sprang at him; dealt him four blows with dazzling rapidity; drove him once more against the ropes; but this time, instead of keeping him there, ran away in the manner of a child at play. Paradise, with foam as well as blood at his lips, uttered a howl, and tore off his gloves. There was a shout of protest from the audience; and Cashel, warned by it, tried to get off his gloves in turn. But Paradise was upon him before he could accomplish this, and the two men laid hold of one another amid a great clamor, Lord Worthington and others rising and excitedly shouting, "Against the rules! No wrestling!" followed by a roar of indignation as Paradise was seen to seize Cashel's shoulder in his teeth as they struggled for the throw. Lydia, for the first time in her life, screamed. Then she saw Cashel, his face fully as fierce as Paradise's, get his arm about his neck; lift him as a coal-heaver lifts a sack, and fling him over his back, heels over head, to the ground, where he instantly dropped on him with his utmost weight and impetus. The two were at once separated by a crowd of managers, umpires, policemen, and others who had rushed towards the ring when Paradise had taken off his gloves. A distracting wrangle followed. Skene had climbed over the palisade, and was hurling oaths, threats, and epithets at Paradise, who, unable to stand without assistance, was trying to lift his leaden eyelids and realize what had happened to him. A dozen others were trying to bring him to his senses, remonstrating with him on his conduct, or trying to pacify Skene. Cashel, on the other side, raged at the managers, who were reminding him that the rules of glove-fighting did not allow wrestling and throwing.

"Rules be d—-d," Lydia heard him shouting. "He bit me; and I'll throw him to—" Then everybody spoke at once; and she could only conjecture where he would throw him to. He seemed to have no self-control: Paradise, when he came to himself, behaved better. Lord Worthington descended into the ring and tried to calm the hubbub; but Cashel shook his hand fiercely from his arm; menaced a manager who attempted to call him sternly to order; frantically pounded his wounded shoulder with his clenched fist, and so outswore and outwrangled them all, that even Skene began to urge that there had been enough fuss made. Then Lord Worthington whispered a word more; and Cashel suddenly subsided, pale and ashamed, and sat down on a chair in his corner as if to hide himself. Five minutes afterwards, he stepped out from the crowd with Paradise, and shook hands with him amid much cheering. Cashel was the humbler of the two. He did not raise his eyes to the balcony once; and he seemed in a hurry to retire. But he was intercepted by an officer in uniform, accompanied by a black chief, who came to conduct him to the dais and present him to the African king; an honor which he was not permitted to decline.

The king informed him, through an interpreter, that he had been unspeakably gratified by what he had just witnessed; expressed great surprise that Cashel, notwithstanding his prowess, was neither in the army nor in Parliament; and finally offered to provide him with three handsome wives if he would come out to Africa in his suite. Cashel was much embarrassed; but he came off with credit, thanks to the interpreter, who was accustomed to invent appropriate speeches for the king on public occasions, and was kind enough to invent equally appropriate ones for Cashel on this.

Meanwhile, Lord Worthington had returned to his place. "It is all settled now," he said to Lydia. "Byron shut up when I told him his aristocratic friends were looking at him; and Paradise has been so bullied that he is crying in a corner down-stairs. He has apologized; but he still maintains that he can beat our mutual friend without the gloves; and his backers apparently think so too, for it is understood that they are to fight in the autumn for a thousand a side."

"To fight! Then he has no intention of giving up his profession?"

"No!" said Lord Worthington, astonished. "Why on earth should he give it up? Paradise's money is as good as in his pocket. You have seen what he can do."

"I have seen enough. Alice, I am ready to go as soon as you are."

Early in the following week Miss Carew returned to Wiltstoken. Miss Goff remained in London to finish the season in charge of a friendly lady who, having married off all her own daughters, was willing to set to work again to marry Alice sooner than remain idle.



CHAPTER XI



Alice was more at her ease during the remnant of the London season. Though she had been proud of her connection with Lydia, she had always felt eclipsed in her presence; and now that Lydia was gone, the pride remained and the sense of inferiority was forgotten. Her freedom emboldened and improved her. She even began to consider her own judgment a safer guide in the affairs of every day than the example of her patroness. Had she not been right in declaring Cashel Byron an ignorant and common man when Lydia, in spite of her warning, had actually invited him to visit them? And now all the newspapers were confirming the opinion she had been trying to impress on Lydia for months past. On the evening of the assault-at-arms, the newsmen had shouted through the streets, "Disgraceful scene between two pugilists at Islington in the presence of the African king." Next day the principal journals commented on the recent attempt to revive the brutal pastime of prize-fighting; accused the authorities of conniving at it, and called on them to put it down at once with a strong hand. "Unless," said a clerical organ, "this plague-spot be rooted out from our midst, it will no longer be possible for our missionaries to pretend that England is the fount of the Gospel of Peace." Alice collected these papers, and forwarded them to Wiltstoken.

On this subject one person at least shared her bias. Whenever she met Lucian Webber, they talked about Cashel, invariably coming to the conclusion that though the oddity of his behavior had gratified Lydia's unfortunate taste for eccentricity, she had never regarded him with serious interest, and would not now, under any circumstances, renew her intercourse with him. Lucian found little solace in these conversations, and generally suffered from a vague sense of meanness after them. Yet next time they met he would drift into discussing Cashel over again; and he always rewarded Alice for the admirable propriety of her views by dancing at least three times with her when dancing was the business of the evening. The dancing was still less congenial than the conversation. Lucian, who had at all times too much of the solemnity of manner for which Frenchmen reproach Englishmen, danced stiffly and unskilfully. Alice, whose muscular power and energy were superior to anything of the kind that Mr. Mellish could artificially produce, longed for swift motion and violent exercise, and, even with an expert partner, could hardly tame herself to the quietude of dancing as practised in London. When waltzing with Lucian she felt as though she were carrying a stick round the room in the awkward fashion in which Punch carries his baton. In spite of her impression that he was a man of unusually correct morals and great political importance, and greatly to be considered in private life because he was Miss Carew's cousin, it was hard to spend quarter-hours with him that some of the best dancers in London asked for.

She began to tire of the subject of Cashel and Lydia. She began to tire of Lucian's rigidity. She began to tire exceedingly of the vigilance she had to maintain constantly over her own manners and principles. Somehow, this vigilance defeated itself; for she one evening overheard a lady of rank speak of her as a stuck-up country girl. The remark gave her acute pain: for a week afterwards she did not utter a word or make a movement in society without first considering whether it could by any malicious observer be considered rustic or stuck-up. But the more she strove to attain perfect propriety of demeanor, the more odious did she seem to herself, and, she inferred, to others. She longed for Lydia's secret of always doing the right thing at the right moment, even when defying precedent. Sometimes she blamed the dulness of the people she met for her shortcomings. It was impossible not to be stiff with them. When she chatted with an entertaining man, who made her laugh and forget herself for a while, she was conscious afterwards of having been at her best with him. But she saw others who, in stupid society, were pleasantly at their ease. She began to fear at last that she was naturally disqualified by her comparatively humble birth from acquiring the well-bred air for which she envied those among whom she moved.

One day she conceived a doubt whether Lucian was so safe an authority and example in matters of personal deportment as she had hitherto unthinkingly believed. He could not dance; his conversation was priggish; it was impossible to feel at ease when speaking to him. Was it courageous to stand in awe of his opinion? Was it courageous to stand in awe of anybody? Alice closed her lips proudly and began to be defiant. Then a reminiscence, which had never before failed to rouse indignation in her, made her laugh. She recalled the scandalous spectacle of Lucian's formal perpendicularity overbalanced and doubled up into Mrs. Hoskyn's gilded arm-chair in illustration of the prize-fighter's theory of effort defeating itself. After all, what was that caressing touch of Cashel's hand in comparison with the tremendous rataplan he had beaten on the ribs of Paradise? Could it be true that effort defeated itself—in personal behavior, for instance? A ray of the truth that underlay Cashel's grotesque experiment was flickering in her mind as she asked herself that question. She thought a good deal about it; and one afternoon, when she looked in at four at-homes in succession, she studied the behavior of the other guests from a new point of view, comparing the most mannered with the best mannered, and her recent self with both. The result half convinced her that she had been occupied during her first London season in displaying, at great pains, a very unripe self-consciousness—or, as she phrased it, in making an insufferable fool of herself.

Shortly afterwards, she met Lucian at a cinderella, or dancing-party concluding at midnight. He came at eleven, and, as usual, gravely asked whether he might have the pleasure of dancing with her. This form of address he never varied. To his surprise, she made some difficulty about granting the favor, and eventually offered him "the second extra." He bowed. Before he could resume a vertical position a young man came up, remarked that he thought this was his turn, and bore Alice away. Lucian smiled indulgently, thinking that though Alice's manners were wonderfully good, considering her antecedents, yet she occasionally betrayed a lower tone than that which he sought to exemplify in his own person.

"I wish you would learn to reverse," said Alice unexpectedly to him, when they had gone round the room twice to the strains of the second extra.

"I DO reverse," he said, taken aback, and a little indignant.

"Everybody does—that way."

This silenced him for a moment. Then he said, slowly, "Perhaps I am rather out of practice. I am not sure that reversing is quite desirable. Many people consider it bad form."

When they stopped—Alice was always willing to rest during a waltz with Lucian—he asked her whether she had heard from Lydia.

"You always ask me that," she replied. "Lydia never writes except when she has something particular to say, and then only a few lines."

"Precisely. But she might have had something particular to say since we last met."

"She hasn't had," said Alice, provoked by an almost arch smile from him.

"She will be glad to hear that I have at last succeeded in recovering possession of the Warren Lodge from its undesirable tenants."

"I thought they went long ago," said Alice, indifferently.

"The men have not been there for a month or more. The difficulty was to get them to remove their property. However, we are rid of them now. The only relic of their occupation is a Bible with half the pages torn out, and the rest scrawled with records of bets, recipes for sudorific and other medicines, and a mass of unintelligible memoranda. One inscription, in faded ink, runs, 'To Robert Mellish, from his affectionate mother, with her sincere hope that he may ever walk in the ways of this book.' I am afraid that hope was not fulfilled."

"How wicked of him to tear a Bible!" said Alice, seriously. Then she laughed, and added, "I know I shouldn't; but I can't help it."

"The incident strikes me rather as being pathetic," said Lucian, who liked to show that he was not deficient in sensibility. "One can picture the innocent faith of the poor woman in her boy's future, and so forth."

"Inscriptions in books are like inscriptions on tombstones," said Alice, disparagingly. "They don't mean much."

"I am glad that these men have no further excuse for going to Wiltstoken. It was certainly most unfortunate that Lydia should have made the acquaintance of one of them."

"So you have said at least fifty times," replied Alice, deliberately. "I believe you are jealous of that poor boxer."

Lucian became quite red. Alice trembled at her own audacity, but kept a bold front.

"Really—it's too absurd," he said, betraying his confusion by assuming a carelessness quite foreign to his normal manner. "In what way could I possibly be jealous, Miss Goff?"

"That is best known to yourself."

Lucian now saw plainly that there was a change in Alice, and that he had lost ground with her. The smarting of his wounded vanity suddenly obliterated his impression that she was, in the main, a well-conducted and meritorious young woman. But in its place came another impression that she was a spoiled beauty. And, as he was by no means fondest of the women whose behavior accorded best with his notions of propriety, he found, without at once acknowledging to himself, that the change was not in all respects a change for the worse. Nevertheless, he could not forgive her last remark, though he took care not to let her see how it stung him.

"I am afraid I should cut a poor figure in an encounter with my rival," he said, smiling.

"Call him out and shoot him," said Alice, vivaciously. "Very likely he does not know how to use a pistol."

He smiled again; but had Alice known how seriously he entertained her suggestion for some moments before dismissing it as impracticable, she would not have offered it. Putting a bullet into Cashel struck him rather as a luxury which he could not afford than as a crime. Meanwhile, Alice, being now quite satisfied that this Mr. Webber, on whom she had wasted so much undeserved awe, might be treated as inconsiderately as she used to treat her beaux at Wiltstoken, proceeded to amuse herself by torturing him a little.

"It is odd," she said, reflectively, "that a common man like that should be able to make himself so very attractive to Lydia. It was not because he was such a fine man; for she does not care in the least about that. I don't think she would give a second look at the handsomest man in London, she is so purely intellectual. And yet she used to delight in talking to him."

"Oh, that is a mistake. Lydia has a certain manner which leads people to believe that she is deeply interested in the person she happens to be speaking to; But it is only manner—it means nothing."

"I know that manner of hers perfectly well. But this was something quite different."

Lucian shook his head reproachfully. "I cannot jest on so serious a matter," he said, resolving to make the attempt to re-establish his dignity with Alice. "I think, Miss Groff, that you perhaps hardly know how absurd your supposition is. There are not many men of distinction in Europe with whom my cousin is not personally acquainted. A very young girl, who had seen little of the world, might possibly be deceived by the exterior of such a man as Byron. A woman accustomed to associate with writers, thinkers, artists, statesmen, and diplomatists could make no such mistake. No doubt the man's vulgarity and uncouth address amused her for a moment; but—"

"But why did she ask him to come to her Friday afternoons?"

"A mere civility which she extended to him because he assisted her in some difficulty she got into in the streets."

"She might as well have asked a policeman to come to see her. I don't believe that was it."

Lucian at that moment hated Alice. "I am sorry you think such a thing possible," he said. "Shall we resume our waltz?"

Alice was not yet able to bear an implication that she did not understand society sufficiently to appreciate the distance between Lydia and Cashel.

"Of course I know it is impossible," she said, in her old manner. "I did not mean it."

Lucian found some difficulty in gathering from this what she did mean; and they presently took refuge in waltzing. Subsequently, Alice, fearing that her new lights had led her too far, drew back a little; led the conversation to political matters, and expressed her amazement at the extent and variety of the work he performed in Downing Street. He accepted her compliments with perfect seriousness; and she felt satisfied that she had, on the whole, raised herself in his esteem by her proceedings during the evening. But she was mistaken. She knew nothing of politics or official work, and he knew the worthlessness of her pretended admiration of his share in them, although he felt that it was right that she should revere his powers from the depths of her ignorance. What stuck like a burr in his mind was that she thought him small enough to be jealous of the poor boxer, and found his dancing awkward.

After that dance Alice thought much about Lucian, and also about the way in which society regulated marriages. Before Miss Carew sent for her she had often sighed because all the nice men she knew of moved in circles into which an obscure governess had no chance of admission. She had received welcome attentions from them occasionally at subscription balls; but for sustained intimacy and proposals of marriage she had been dependent on the native youth of Wiltstoken, whom she looked upon as louts or prigs, and among whom Wallace Parker had shone pre-eminent as a university man, scholar, and gentleman. And now that she was a privileged beauty in society which would hardly tolerate Wallace Parker, she found that the nice men were younger sons, poor and extravagant, far superior to Lucian Webber as partners for a waltz, but not to be thought of as partners in domestic economy. Alice had experienced the troubles of poverty, and had never met with excellence in men except in poems, which she had long ago been taught to separate from the possibilities of actual life. She had, therefore, no conception of any degree of merit in a husband being sufficient to compensate for slender means of subsistence. She was not base-minded; nothing could have induced her to marry a man, however rich, whom she thought wicked. She wanted money; but she wanted more than money; and here it was that she found supply failing to answer the demand. For not only were all the handsome, gallant, well-bred men getting deeply into debt by living beyond smaller incomes than that with which Wallace Parker had tempted her, but many of those who had inherited both riches and rank were as inferior to him, both in appearance and address, as they were in scholarship. No man, possessing both wealth and amiability, had yet shown the least disposition to fall in love with her.

One bright forenoon in July, Alice, attended by a groom, went to the park on horseback. The Row looked its best. The freshness of morning was upon horses and riders; there were not yet any jaded people lolling supine in carriages, nor discontented spectators sitting in chairs to envy them. Alice, who was a better horsewoman than might have been expected from the little practice she had had, appeared to advantage in the saddle. She had just indulged in a brisk canter from the Corner to the Serpentine, when she saw a large white horse approaching with Wallace Parker on its back.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, expertly wheeling his steed and taking off his hat at the same time with an intentional display of gallantry and horsemanship. "How are you, Alice?"

"Goodness!" cried Alice, forgetting her manners in her astonishment. "What brings you here; and where on earth did you get that horse?"

"I presume, Alice," said Parker, satisfied with the impression he had made, "that I am here for much the same reason as you are—to enjoy the morning in proper style. As for Rozinante, I borrowed him. Is that chestnut yours? Excuse the rudeness of the question."

"No," said Alice, coloring a little. "This seems such an unlikely place to meet you."

"Oh, no. I always take a turn in the season. But certainly it would have been a very unlikely place for us to meet a year ago."

So far, Alice felt, she was getting the worst of the conversation. She changed the subject. "Have you been to Wiltstoken since I last saw you?"

"Yes. I go there once every week at least."

"Every week! Janet never told me."

Parker implied by a cunning air that he thought he knew the reason of that; but he said nothing. Alice, piqued, would not condescend to make inquiries. So he said, presently,

"How is Miss Thingumbob?"

"I do not know any one of that name."

"You know very well whom I mean. Your aristocratic patron, Miss Carew."

Alice flushed. "You are very impertinent, Wallace," she said, grasping her riding-whip. "How dare you call Miss Carew my patron?"

Wallace suddenly became solemn. "I did not know that you objected to be reminded of all you owe her," he said. "Janet never speaks ungratefully of her, though she has done nothing for Janet."

"I have not spoken ungratefully," protested Alice, almost in tears. "I feel sure that you are never tired of speaking ill of me to them at home."

"That shows how little you understand my real character. I always make excuses for you."

"Excuses for what? What have I done? What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't mean anything, if you don't. I thought from your beginning to defend yourself that you felt yourself to be in the wrong."

"I did not defend myself; and I won't have you say so, Wallace."

"Always your obedient, humble servant," he replied, with complacent irony.

She pretended not to hear him, and whipped up her horse to a smart trot. The white steed being no trotter, Parker followed at a lumbering canter. Alice, possessed by a shamefaced fear that he was making her ridiculous, soon checked her speed; and the white horse subsided to a walk, marking its paces by deliberate bobs of its unfashionably long mane and tail.

"I have something to tell you," said Parker at last.

Alice did not deign to reply.

"I think it better to let you know at once," he continued. "The fact is, I intend to marry Janet."

"Janet won't," said Alice, promptly, retorting first, and then reflecting on the intelligence, which surprised her more than it pleased her.

Parker smiled conceitedly, and said, "I don't think she will raise any difficulty if you give her to understand that it is all over between US."

"That what is all over?"

"Well, if you prefer it, that there never has been anything between us. Janet believes that we were engaged. So did a good many other people until you went into high life."

"I cannot help what people thought."

"And they all know that I, at least, was ready to perform my part of the engagement honorably."

"Wallace," she said, with a sudden change of tone; "I think we had better separate. It is not right for me to be riding about the park with you when I have nobody belonging to me here except a man-servant."