He pulled off his doublet as he stepped into the boat; then seated himself and took the sculls.

"Has your lordship not left a horse waiting for you?" Angela inquired hesitatingly.

"My lordship's horse will find his stables before morning with the groom that has him in charge. I am going to row you home. Love expectant is bold; but disappointed love may lack courage for a solitary jaunt after midnight. Come, mistress, let us have no ceremony. We have done with that for ever—as we have done with friendship. There are thousands of women in England, all much of a pattern; and you are one of them. That is the end of our romance."

He bent to his work, and rowed with a steady stroke, and in a stubborn silence, which lasted till it was more strangely broken than such angry silence is apt to be.

The tide was still running up, and it was as much as the single oarsman could do, in that heavy boat, to hold his own against the stream.

Angela sat watching him, with her gaze rooted to that dark countenance and bare head, on which the iron-grey hair waved thick and strong, for Fareham had never consented to envelop his neck and shoulders in a mantle of dead men's tresses, and wore his own hair after the fashion of Charles the First's time. So intent was her watch, that the objects on either shore passed her like shadows in a dream. The Primate's palace on her right hand, as the boat swept round that great bend which the river makes opposite Lambeth Marsh; on her left, as they neared London, the stern grandeur of the Abbey and St. Margaret's. It was only as they approached Whitehall that she became aware of a light upon the water which was not the reflection of daybreak, and, looking suddenly up, she saw the fierce glare of a conflagration in the eastern sky, and cried—

"There is a fire, my lord!—a great fire, I doubt, in the city."

The long roof and massive tower of St Paul's stood dark against the vivid splendour of that sky, and every timber in the scaffolding showed like a black lattice across the crimson and sulphur of raging flames.

Fareham looked round, without moving his sculls from the rowlocks.

"A great fire in verity, mistress! Would God it meant the fulfilment of prophecy!"

"What prophecy, sir?"

"The end of the world, with which we are threatened in this year. God, how the flames rage and mount! Would it were the great fire, and He had come to judge us, and to empty the vials of His wrath upon profligates and seducers!"

He looked at the face opposite, radiant with reflected rose and gold, supernal in that strange light, and, oh, so calm in every line and feature, the large dark eyes meeting his with a gaze that seemed to him half indignant, half reproachful.

"Oh, what hypocrites these women are!" he told himself. "And all alike—all alike. What comedians! For acting one need not go to the Duke's or the King's. One may see it at one's own board, by one's own hearth. Acting, nothing but acting! And I thought that in the universal mass of falsehood and folly there were some rare stars, dwelling apart here and there, and that she was one of them. An idle dream! Nature has made them all in one mould, and it is but by means and opportunity that they differ."

Higher and higher rose that vast sheet of vivid colour; and now every tower and steeple was bathed in rosy light, or else stood black against the radiant sky—towers illuminated, towers in densest shadow; the slim spars of ships showing as if drawn with pen and ink on a sulphur background—a scene of surpassing splendour and terror. Fareham had seen Flemish villages blazing, Flemish citadels exploding, their fragments hurled skyward in a blue flame of gunpowder; but never this vast arch of crimson, glowing and growing before his astonished gaze, as he paddled the boat inshore, and stood up to watch the great disaster.

"God has remembered the new Sodom," he said savagely. "He punished us with pestilence, and we took no heed. And now He tries us with fire. But if it come not yonder," pointing to Whitehall, which was immediately above them, for their boat lay close to the King's landing-stage—"if, like the contagion, it stays in the east and only the citizens suffer, why, vive la bagatelle! We—and our concubines—have no part in the punishment. We, who call down the fire, do not suffer it"

Spellbound by that strange spectacle, Fareham stood and gazed, and Angela was afraid to urge him to take the boat on to Fareham House, anxious as she was to span those few hundred yards of distance, to be assured of her sister's safety.

They waited thus nearly an hour, the sky ever increasing in brilliancy, and the sounds of voices and tramp of hurrying feet growing with every minute. Whitehall was now all alive—men and women, in a careless undress, at every window, some of them hanging half out of the window to talk to people in the court below. Shrieks of terror or of wonder, ejaculations, and oaths sounding on every side; while Fareham, who had moored the boat to an iron ring in the wall by his Majesty's stairs, stood gloomy and motionless, and made no further comment, only watched the conflagration in dismal silence, fascinated by that prodigious ruin.

It was but the beginning of that stupendous destruction, yet it was already great enough to seem like the end of all things.

"And last night, in the Court theatre, Killigrew's players were making a jest of a pestilence that filled the grave-pits by thousands," Fareham muttered, as if awaking from a dream. "Well, the wits will have a new subject for their mirth—London in flames."

He untied the rope, took his seat and rowed out into the stream. Within that hour in which they had waited, the Thames had covered itself with traffic; boats were moving westward, loaded with frightened souls in casual attire, and with heaps of humble goods and chattels. Some whose houses were nearest the river had been quick enough to save a portion of their poor possessions, and to get them packed on barges; but these were the wise minority. The greater number of the sufferers were stupefied by the suddenness of the calamity, the rapidity with which destruction rushed upon them, the flames leaping from house to house, spanning chasms of emptiness, darting hither and thither like lizards or winged scorpions, or breaking out mysteriously in fresh places, so that already the cry of arson had arisen, and the ever-growing fire was set down to fiendish creatures labouring secretly at a work of universal destruction.

Most of the sufferers looked on at the ruin of their homes, paralysed by horror, unable to help themselves or to mitigate their losses by energetic action of any kind. Dumb and helpless as sheep, they saw their property destroyed, their children's lives imperilled, and could only thank Providence, and those few brave men who helped them in their helplessness, for escape from a fiery death. Panic and ruin prevailed within a mile eastward of Fareham House, when the boat ground against the edge of the marble landing-stage, and Angela alighted and ran quickly up the stairs, and made her way straight to the house. The door stood wide open, and candles were burning in the vestibule. The servants were at the eastern end of the terrace watching the fire, too much engrossed to see their master and his companion land at the western steps.

At the foot of the great staircase Angela heard herself called by a crystalline voice, and, looking up, saw Henriette hanging over the banister rail.

"Auntie, where have you been?"

"Is your mother with you?" Angela asked.

"Mother is locked in her bed-chamber, and mighty sullen. She told me to go to bed. As if anybody could lie quietly in bed with London burning!" added Papillon, her tone implying that a great city in flames was a kind of entertainment that could not be too highly appreciated.

She came flying downstairs in her pretty silken deshabille, with her hair streaming, and flung her arm round her aunt's neck.

"Ma chatte, where have you been?"

"On the terrace."

"Fi donc, menteuse! I saw you and my father land at the west stairs, five minutes ago."

"We had been looking at the fire."

"And never offered to take me with you! What a greedy pig!"

"Indeed, dearest, it is no scene for little girls to look upon."

"And when I am grown up what shall I have to talk about if I miss all the great sights?"

"Come to your room, love. You will see only too much from your windows. I am going to your mother."

"Ce n'est pas la peine. She is in one of her tempers, and has locked herself in."

"No matter. She will see me."

"Je m'en doute. She came home in a coach-and-four nearly two hours ago, with Monsieur de Malfort; and I think they must have quarrelled. They bade each other good night so uncivilly; but he was more huffed than mother."

"Where were you that you know so much?"

"In the gallery. Did I not tell you I shouldn't be able to sleep? I went into the gallery for coolness, and then I heard the coach in the courtyard, and the doors opened, and I listened."

"Inquisitive child!"

"No, I was not inquisitive. I was only vastly hipped for want of knowing what to do with myself. And I ran to bid her ladyship good morning, for it was close upon one o'clock; but she frowned at me, and pushed me aside with a 'Go to your bed, troublesome imp! What business have you up at this hour?' 'As much business as you have riding about in your coach,' I had a mind to say, mais je me tenais coy; and made her ladyship la belle Jennings' curtsy instead. She sinks lower and rises straighter than any of the other ladies. I watched her on mother's visiting-day. Lord, auntie, how white you are! One might take you for a ghost!"

Angela put the little prattler aside, more gently, perhaps, than the mother had done, and passed hurriedly on to Lady Fareham's room. The door was still locked, but she would take no denial.

"I must speak with you," she said.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE MOTIVE—MURDER.

For Lady Fareham and her sister September and October made a blank interval in the story of life—uneventful as the empty page at the end of a chapter. They spent those months at Fareham, a house which Hyacinth detested, a neighbourhood where she had never condescended to make friends. She condemned the local gentry as a collection of nobodies, and had never taken the trouble to please the three or four great families within a twenty-mile drive, because, though they had rank and consequence, they had not fashion. The haut gout of Paris and London was wanting to them.

Lord Fareham had insisted upon leaving London on the third of September, and had, his wife declared, out of pure malignity, taken his family to Fareham, a place she hated, rather than to Chilton, a place she loved, at least as much as any civilised mortal could love the country. Never, Hyacinth protested, had her husband been so sullen and ferocious.

"He is not like an angry man," she told Angela, "but like a wounded lion; and yet, since your goodness took all the blame of my unlucky escapade upon your shoulders, and he knows nothing of De Malfort's insolent attempt to carry me off, I see no reason why he should have become such a gloomy savage."

She accepted her sister's sacrifice with an amiable lightness. How could it harm Angela to be thought to have run out at midnight for a frolic rendezvous? The maids of honour had some such adventure half a dozen times in a season, and were found out, and laughed at, and laughed again, and wound up their tempestuous careers by marrying great noblemen.

"If you can but get yourself talked about you may marry as high as you choose," Lady Fareham told her sister.

* * * * *

Early in November they went back to London, and though all Hyacinth's fine people protested that the town stank of burnt wood, smoked oil, and resin, and was altogether odious, they rejoiced not the less to be back again. Lady Fareham plunged with renewed eagerness into the whirlpool of pleasure, and tried to drag Angela with her; but it was a surprise to both, and to one a cause for uneasiness, when his lordship began to show himself in scenes which he had for the most part avoided as well as reviled. For some unexplained reason he became now a frequent attendant at the evening festivities at Whitehall, and without even the pretence of being interested or amused there.

Fareham's appearance at Court caused more surprise than pleasure in that brilliant circle. The statue of the Comandante would scarcely have seemed a grimmer guest. He was there in the midst of laughter and delight, with never a smile upon his stern features. He was silent for the most part, or if badgered into talking by some of his more familiar acquaintances, would vent his spleen in a tirade that startled them, as the pleasant chirpings of a poultry-yard are startled by the raid of a dog. They laughed at his conversation behind his back; but in his presence, under the angry light of those grey eyes, the gloom of those bent brows, they were chilled into submission and civility. He had a dignity which made his Puritanical plainness more patrician than Rochester's finery, more impressive than Buckingham's graceful splendour. The force and vigour of his countenance were more striking than Sedley's beauty. The eyes of strangers singled him out in that gay throng, and people wanted to know who he was and what he had done for fame.

A soldier, yes, cela saute aux yeux. He could be nothing else than a soldier. A cavalier of the old school. Albeit younger by half a lifetime than Southampton and Clarendon, and the other ghosts of the troubles.

Charles treated him with chill civility.

"Why does the man come here without his wife?" he asked De Malfort. "There is a sister, too, fresher and fairer than her ladyship. Why are we to have the shadow without the sun? Yet it is as well, perhaps, they keep away; for I have heard of a visit which was not returned—a condescension from a woman of the highest rank slighted by a trumpery baron's wife—and after an offence of that kind she could only have brought us trouble. Why do women quarrel, Wilmot?"

"Why are there any men in the world, sir? If there were none, women would live together like lambs in a meadow. It is only about us they fight. As for Lady Fareham, she is adorable, though no longer young. I believe she will be thirty on her next birthday."

"And the sister? She had a wild-rose prettiness, I thought, when I saw her at Oxford. She looked like a lily till I spoke to her, and then flamed like a red rose. So fresh, so easily startled. 'Tis pity that shyness of youthful purity wears off in a week. I dare swear by this time Mrs. Kirkland is as brazen as the boldest of our young houris yonder," with a glance in the direction of the maids of honour, the Queen's and the Duchess's, a bevy of chatterers, waving fans, giggling, whispering, shoulder to shoulder with the impudentest men in his Majesty's kingdom; the men who gave their mornings to writing comedies coarser than Dryden or Etherege, and their nights to cards, dice, and strong drink; roving the streets half clad, dishevelled, wanton; beating the watch, and insulting decent pedestrians; with occasional vicious outbreaks which would have been revolting in a company of inebriated coal-heavers, and which brought these fine gentlemen before a too lenient magistrate. But were not these the manners of which St. Evremond lightly sang—

"'La douce erreur ne s'appelait point crime; Les vices delicats se nommaient des plaisirs.'"

"Mistress Kirkland has an inexorable modesty which would outlive even a week at Whitehall, sir," answered Rochester. "If I did not adore the matron I should worship the maid. Happily for the wretch who loves her I am otherwise engaged!"

"Thou insolent brat! To be eighteen years of age and think thyself irresistible!"

"Does your Majesty suppose I shall be more attractive at six and thirty?"

"Yes, villain; for at my age thou wilt have experience."

"And a reputation for incorrigible vice. No woman of taste can resist that."

"And pray who is Mrs. Kirkland's lover?"

"A Puritan baronet. One Denzil Warner."

"There was a Warner killed at Hoptown Heath."

"His son, sir. A fellow who believes in extempore prayer and republican government; and swears England was never so happy or prosperous as under Cromwell."

"And the lady favours this psalm-singing rebel?"

"I know not. For all I have seen of the two she has been barely civil to him. That he adores her is obvious; and I know Lady Fareham's heart is set upon the match."

"Why did not Lady Fareham return the Countess's visit?"

There was no need to ask what Countess.

"Be sure, sir, the husband was to blame, if there was want of respect for that lovely lady. I can answer for Lady Fareham's right feeling in that matter."

"The husband takes a leaf out of Hyde's book, and forgets that what may be passed over in the Lord Chancellor, and a man of prodigious usefulness, is intolerable in a person of Fareham's insignificance."

"Nay, sir, insignificance is scarcely the word. I would as soon call a thunderstorm insignificant. The man is a volcano, and may explode at any provocation."

"We want no such suppressed fires at Whitehall. Nor do we want long faces; as Clarendon may discover some day, if his sermons grow too troublesome."

"The Chancellor is a domestic man; as your Majesty may infer from the size and splendour of his new house."

"He is an expensive man, Wilmot I believe he got more by the sale of Dunkirk than his master did."

"In that case your Majesty cannot do better than shift all the disgrace of the transaction on to his shoulders. Dunkirk will be a sure card to play when Clarendon has to go overboard."

That incivility of Lady Fareham's in the matter of an unreturned visit had rankled deep in the bosom of the King's imperious mistress. To sin more boldly than woman ever sinned, and yet to claim all the privileges and honours due to virtue was but a trifling inconsistency in a mind so fortified by pride that it scarce knew how to reckon with shame. That she, in her supremacy of beauty and splendour, a fortune sparkling in either ear, the price of a landed estate on her neck—that she, Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine, should have driven in a windowless coach through dusty lanes, eating dirt, as it were, with her train of court gallants on horseback at her coach doors, her ladies in a carriage in the rear, to visit a person of Lady Fareham's petty quality, a Buckinghamshire Knight's daughter married to a Baron of Henry the Eighth's creation! And that this amazing condescension—received with a smiling and curtsying civility—should have been unacknowledged by any reciprocal courtesy was an affront that could hardly be wiped out with blood. Indeed, it could never be atoned for. The wound was poisoned, and would rankle and fester to the end of that proud life.

Yet on Fareham's appearance at Whitehall Lady Castlemaine distinguished with a marked civility, and even condescended, smilingly, as if there were no cause of quarrel, to inquire after his wife.

"Her ladyship is as pretty as ever, though we are all growing old," she said. "We exchanged curtsies at Tunbridge Wells the other day. I wonder how it is we never get further than smiles and curtsies? I should like to show the dear woman some more substantial civility. She is buried alive in your stately house by the river, for the want of an influential friend to show her the world we live in."

"Indeed, madam, my wife has all the pleasure she desires—her visiting-day, her friends."

"And her admirers. Rochester is always hanging about your garden, or landing from his wherry, when I go by; or, if he himself be not visible, there are a couple of his watermen on your steps."

"My Lord Rochester has a precocious wit which amuses my wife and her sister."

"And then there is De Malfort—an impertinent, second only to Gramont. He and Lady Fareham are twin stars. I have seldom seen them apart."

"Since De Malfort has the honour of being somewhat intimate with your ladyship, he has doubtless given you full particulars of his friendship for my wife. I assure you it will bear being talked about. There are no secrets in it."

"Really; I thought I had heard something about a sedan which took the wrong road after Killigrew's play. But that was the night before the fire. Good God! my lord, your face darkens as if a man had struck you. Whatever happened before the fire should have been burnt out of our memories by this time."

"I see his Majesty looking this way, madam, and I have not yet paid my respects to him," Fareham said, moving away, but a dazzling hand on his sleeve arrested him.

"Oh, your respects will keep; he has Miss Stewart giggling at his elbow. Strange, is it not, that a woman with as much brain as a pigeon can amuse a man who reckons himself both wise and witty?"

"It is not the lady who amuses the gentleman, madam. She has the good sense to pretend that he amuses her."

"And no more understands a jest than she does Hebrew."

"She is conscious of pretty teeth and an enchanting smile. Wit or understanding would be superfluous," answered Fareham, bowing his adieu to the Sultana in chief.

There was a great assembly, with music and dancing, on the Queen's birthday, to which Lord and Lady Fareham and Mistress Kirkland were invited; and again Angela saw and wondered at the splendid scene, and at this brilliant world, which calamity could not touch. Pestilence had ravaged the city, flames had devoured it—yet here there were only smiling people, gorgeous dress, incomparable jewels. The plague had not touched them, and the fire had not reached them. Such afflictions are for the common herd. Angela promenaded with De Malfort in the spacious banqueting-hall, with its ceiling of such prodigious height that the apotheosis of King James, and all the emblematical figures, triumphal cars, lions, bears and rams, corn-sheaves and baskets of fruit, which filled the panels, might as well have been executed by a sign-painter's rough-and-ready brush, as by the pencil of the great Fleming.

"We are a little kinder to Rubens at the Louvre," said De Malfort, noting her upward gaze; "for we allow his elaborate glorification of his Majesty's grandfather and grandmother about half a mile of wall. But I forgot, you have not seen Paris, nor those acres of gaudy colouring which Henri's vanity inflicted upon us. Florentine Marie, with her carnation cheeks and opulent shoulders—the Roman-nosed Bearnais, with his pointed beard and stiff ruff. Mon Dieu, how the world has changed since Ravaillac's knife snapped that valiant life! And you have never seen Paris? You look about you with wide-open eyes, and take this crowd, this ceiling, those candlebra for splendour."

"Can there be a scene more splendid?" asked Angela, pleased to keep him by her side, rather than see him devote himself to her sister; grateful for his attention in that crowd where most people were strangers, and where Lord Fareham had not vouchsafed the slightest notice of her.

"When you have seen the Louvre, you will wonder that any King, with a sense of his own consequence in the world, can inhabit such a hovel as Whitehall—this congeries of shabby apartments, the offices of servants, the lodgings of followers and dependents, soldiers and civilians—huddled in a confused labyrinth of brick and stone—redeemed from squalor only by one fine room. Could you see the grand proportions, the colossal majesty of the great Henri's palace—that palace whose costly completion sat heavy upon Sully's careful soul! Henri loved to build—and his grandson, Louis, inherits that Augustan taste."

"You were telling us of a new palace at Versailles——"

"A royal city in stone—white—dazzling—grandiose. The mortar was scarcely dry when I was there in March; but you should have seen the mi-careme ball. The finest masquerade that was ever beheld in Europe. All Paris came in masks to see that magnificent spectacle. His Majesty allowed entrance to all—and those who came were feasted at a banquet which only Rabelais could fairly describe. And then with our splendour there is an elegant restraint—a decency unknown here. Compare these women—Lady Shrewsbury yonder, Lady Chesterfield, the fat woman in sea-green and silver—Lady Castlemaine, brazen in orange velvet and emeralds—compare them with Conde's sister, with the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Princess Palatine——"

"Are those such good women?"

"Humph! They are ladies. These are the kind of women King Charles admires. They are as distinct a race as the dogs that lie in his bed-chamber, and follow him in his walks, a species of his own creation. They do not even affect modesty. But I am turning preacher, like Fareham. Come, there is to be an entertainment in the theatre. Roxalana has returned to the stage—and Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, is to perform."

They followed the crowd, and De Malfort remained at Angela's side till the end of the performance, and attended her to the supper-table afterwards. Fareham watched them from his place in the background. He stood ever aloof from the royal focus, the beauty, and the wit, the most dazzling jewels, the most splendid raiment. He was amidst the Court, but not of it.

Yes; the passion which these two entertained for each other was patent to every eye; but had it been an honourable attachment upon De Malfort's side, he would have declared himself before now. He would not have abandoned the field to such a sober suitor as Denzil. Henri de Malfort loved her, and she fed his passion with her sweetest smiles, the low and tender tones of the most musical voice Fareham had ever listened to.

"The voice that came to me in my desolation—the sweetest sound that ever fell on a dying man's ear," he thought, recalling those solitary days and nights in the plague year, recalling those vanished hours with a fond longing, "that arm which shows dazzling white against the purple velvet of his sleeve is the arm that held up my aching head, in the dawn of returning reason; those are the eyes that looked down upon mine, so pitiful, so anxious for my recovery. Oh, lovely angel, I would be a leper again, a plague-stricken wretch, only to drink a cup of water from that dear hand—only to feel the touch of those light fingers on my forehead! There was a magic in that touch that surpassed the healing powers of kings. There was a light as of heaven in those benignant eyes. But, oh, she is changed since then. She is plague-stricken with the contagion of a profligate age. Her wings are scorched by the fire of this modish Tophet She has been taught to dress and look like the women around her—a little more modest—but after the same fashion. The nun I worshipped is no more."

Some one tapped him on the shoulder with an ostrich fan. He turned, and saw Lady Castlemaine close at his elbow.

"Image of gloom, will you lead me to my rooms?" she asked, in a curious voice, her dark blue eyes deepened by the pallor that showed through her rouge.

"I shall esteem myself too much honoured by that office," he answered, as she took his arm and moved quickly, with hurried footsteps, through the lessening throng.

"Oh, there is no one to dispute the honour with you. Sometimes I have a mob to hustle me to my lodgings, borne on the current of their adulation—sometimes I move through a desert, as I do to-night. Your face attracted me—for I believe it is the only one at Whitehall as gloomy as my own—unless there are some of my creditors, men to whom I owe gaming debts."

It was curious to note that subtle change in the faces of those they passed, which Barbara Palmer knew so well—faces that changed, obedient to the weathercock of royal caprice—the countenances of courtiers who even yet had not learnt justly to weigh the influence of that imperial favourite, or to understand that she ruled their King with a power which no transient fancy for newer faces could undermine. A day or two in the sulks, frowns and mournful looks for gossip Pepys to jot down in his diary, and the next day the sun would be shining again, and the King would be at supper with "the lady."

Perhaps Lady Castlemaine knew that her empire was secure; but she took these transient fancies moult serieusement. Her jealous soul could tolerate no rival—or it may be that she really loved the King. He had given himself to her in the flush of his triumphant return, while he was still young enough to feel a genuine passion. For her sake he had been a cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he had squandered his people's money, and outraged every moral law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical temperament there was no medium between hatred and love.

"You will sup with me, Fareham?" she said, as he waited on the threshold of her lodgings, which were in a detached pile of buildings, near the Holbein Gateway, and looking upon an enclosed and somewhat gloomy garden.

"Your ladyship will excuse me. I am expected at home."

"What devil! Perhaps you think I am inviting you to a tete-a-tete. I shall have some company, though the drove have gone to the Stewarts' in a hope of getting asked to supper—which but a few of them can realise in her mean lodgings. You had better stay. I may have Buckhurst, Sedley, De Malfort, and a few more of the pretty fellows—enough to empty your pockets at basset."

"Your ladyship is all goodness," said Fareham, quickly.

De Malfort's name had decided him. He followed his hostess through a crowd of lackeys, a splendour of wax candles, to her saloon, where she turned and flashed upon him a glorious picture of mature loveliness, her complexion the peach in its ripest bloom, the orange sheen of her velvet mantua shining out against a background of purple damask curtains embroidered with gold.

The logs blazed and roared in the wide chimney. Warmth, opulence, hospitality, were all expressed in the brilliantly lighted room, where luxurious fauteuils, after the new French fashion, stood about, ready to receive her ladyship's guests.

These were not long waited for. There was no crowd. Less than twenty men, and about a dozen women, were enough to add an air of living gaiety to the brilliancy of light and colour. De Malfort was the last who entered. He kissed her ladyship's hand, looked about him, and recognised Fareham with open wonder.

"An Israelite in the house of Dagon!" he said, sotto voce, as he approached him. "What, Fareham, have you given your neck to the yoke? Do you yield to the charm which has subjugated such lighter natures as Villiers and Buckhurst?"

"It is only human to love variety. You have discovered the charm of youth and innocence."

"Do you think it needs a modish Columbus to discover that? We all worship innocence, were it but for its rarity, as we esteem a black pearl or a yellow diamond above a white one. Jarni, but I am pleased to see you here! It is the most human thing I have known of you since you recovered of the contagion; for you have been a gloomier man from that time."

"Be assured I am altogether human—at least upon the worser side of humanity."

"How dismal you look! Upon my soul, Fareham, you should fight against that melancholic habit. Her ladyship is in the black sulks. We are in for a pleasant evening. Yet, if we were to go away, she would storm at us to-morrow; call us sycophants and time-servers, swear she would hold no further commerce with any manjack among our detestable crew. Well, she is a magnificent termagant. If Cleopatra was half as handsome, I can forgive Antony for following her to ruin at Actium."

"There is supper in the music-room, gentlemen," said Lady Castlemaine, who was standing near the fire in the midst of a knot of whispering women.

They had been abusing the fair Frances, and ridiculing old Rowley, to gratify their hostess. She knew them by heart—their falsehood and hollowness. She knew that they were ready, every one of them, to steal her royal lover, had they but the chance of such a conquest; yet it solaced her soreness to hear Miss Stewart depreciated even by those false lips—"She was too tall." "Her Britannia profile looked as if it was cut out of wood." "She was bold, bad, designing." "It was she who would have the King, not the King who would have her."

"You are too malicious, my dearest Price," said Lady Castlemaine, with more good humour than had been seen in her countenance that evening. "Buckhurst, will you take Mrs. Price to supper? There are cards in the gallery. Pray amuse yourselves."

"But will your ladyship neither sup nor play?" asked Sedley.

"My ladyship has a raging headache. What devil! Did I not lose enough to some of you blackguards last night? Do you want to rook me again? Pray amuse yourselves, friends. No doubt his Majesty is being exquisitely entertained where he is; but I doubt if he will get as good a supper as you will find in the next room."

The significant laugh which concluded her speech was too angry for mirth, and the blackness of her brow forbade questioning. All the town knew next day that she had contrived to get the royal supper intercepted and carried off, on its way from the King's kitchen to Miss Stewart's lodgings, and that his Majesty had a Barmecide feast at the table of beauty. It was a joke quite in the humour of the age.

The company melted out of the room; all but Fareham, who watched Lady Castlemaine as she stood by the hearth in an attitude of hopeless self-forgetfulness, leaning against the lofty sculptured chimney-piece, one slender foot in gold-embroidered slipper and transparent stocking poised on the brazen fender, and her proud eyelids lowered as if there was nothing in this world worth looking at but the pile of ship's timber, burning with many-coloured flames upon the silver andirons.

In spite of that sullen downward gaze she was conscious of Fareham's lingering.

"Why do you stay, my lord?" she asked, without looking up. "If your purse is heavy there are friends of mine yonder who will lighten it for you, fairly or foully. I have never made up my mind how far a gentleman may be a rogue with impunity. If you don't love losing money you had best eat a good supper and begone."

"I thank you, madam. I am more in the mood for cards than for feasting."

She did not answer him, but clasped her hands suddenly before her face and gave a heart-breaking sigh. Fareham paused on the threshold of the gallery, watching her, and then went slowly back, bent down to take the hand that had dropped at her side, and pressed his lips upon it, silently, respectfully, with a kind of homage that had become strange of late years to Barbara Palmer. Adorers she had and to spare, toadeaters and flatterers, a regiment of mercenaries; but these all wanted something of her—kisses, smiles, influence, money. Disinterested respect was new.

"I thought you were a Puritan, Lord Fareham."

"I am a man; and I know what it is to suffer the hell-fire of jealousy."

"Jealousy, yes! I never was good at hiding my feelings. He treats me shamefully. Come, now, you take me for an abandoned profligate woman, a callous wanton. That is what the world takes me for; and, perhaps, I have deserved no better of the world. But whatever I am 'twas he made me so. If he had been true, I could have been constant. It is the insolence of abandonment that stings; the careless slights, scarce conscious that he wounds. Before the eyes of the world, too, before wretches that grin and whisper, and prophesy the day when my pride shall be in the dust. It is treat ment such as this that makes women desperate; and if we cannot keep him we love, we make believe to love some one else, and flaunt our fancy in the deceiver's face. Do you think I cared for Buckingham, with his heart of ice; or for such a snipe as Jermyn; or for a low-born rope-dancer? No, Fareham; there has been more of rage and hate than of passion in my caprices. And he is with Frances Stewart to-night. She sets up for a model of chastity, and is to marry Richmond next month. But we know, Fareham, we know. Women who ride in glass coaches should not throw stones. I will have Charles at my feet again. I will have my foot upon his neck again. I cannot use him too ill for the pain he gives me. There, go—go! Why did you tempt me to lay my heart bare?"

"Dearest lady, believe me, I respect your candour. My heart bleeds for your wrongs. So beautiful, so high above all other women in the capacity to charm! Ah, be sure such loveliness has its responsibilities. It is a gift from Heaven, and to hold it cheap is a sin."

"There is nothing in this life can be held too cheap. Beauty, love—all trumpery! You would make life a tragedy. It is a farce, Fareham, a farce; and all our pleasures and diversions only serve to make us forget what worms we are. There, go—to cards—to supper—as you please. I am going to my bed-chamber to rest this throbbing head. I may return and take a hand at cards by-and-by, perhaps. Those fellows will game and booze till daylight."

Fareham opened the door for her, as she went out, regal in port and air. She had moved him to compassion, even while she owned herself a wanton. To love passionately—and to see another preferred! There is a brotherhood in agony, that brings even opposite natures into sympathy. He passed into the gallery, a long low room, hung with modern tapestries, richly coloured, voluptuous in design. Clusters of wax tapers in gilded sconces lit up those Paphian pictures. There were several tables, at which the mixed company were sitting. Piles of the new guineas, fresh from his Majesty's Mint, shone in the candle-light. At some tables there was a silent absorption in the game, which argued high play, and the true gambler's spirit; at others mirth reigned—talk, laughter, animated looks. One of the noisiest was the table at which De Malfort was the most conspicuous figure; his periwig the highest, his dress the most sumptuous, his breast glittering with orders. His companions were Sir Ralph Masaroon, Colonel Dangerfield, an old Malignant, who had hibernated during the Protectorate, and had never left his own country, and Lady Lucretia Topham, a visiting acquaintance of Hyacinth's.

"Come here, Fareham," cried De Malfort; "there is plenty of room for you. I'll wager Lady Lucretia will pass you her hand, and thank you for taking it."

"Lady Lucretia is glad to be quit of such dishonest company," said the lady, tossing her cards upon the table, and rising in a cloud of powder and perfume, and a flutter of lace and brocade. "If I were ill-humoured I would say you marked the cards! but as I'm the soul of good nature, I'll only swear you are the luckiest dog in London."

"You are the soul of good nature, and I am the luckiest dog in the universe when you smile upon me," answered De Malfort, without looking up from his cards, as the lady posed herself gracefully at the back of his chair, leaning over his shoulder to watch his play. "I would not limit the area to any city, however big."

Fareham seated himself in the chair the lady had vacated, and gathered up the cards she had abandoned. He took a handful of gold from his pocket, and put it on the table at his elbow, all with a somewhat churlish silence, that escaped notice where everybody was loquacious. De Malfort went on fooling with Lady Lucretia, whose lovely hand and arm, her strongest point, descended upon a card now and then, to indicate the play she deemed wisest.

Once he caught the hand and kissed it in transit.

"Wert thou as wise as this hand is fair it should direct my play; but it is only a woman's hand, and points the way to perdition."

Fareham had been losing steadily from the moment he took up Lady Lucretia's cards; and his pile of jacobuses had been gradually passed over to De Malfort's side of the table. He had emptied his pockets, and had scrawled two or three I.O.U.'s upon scraps of paper torn from a note-book. Yet he went on playing, with the same immovable countenance. The room had emptied itself, the rest of the visitors leaving earlier than their usual hour in that hospitable house. Perhaps because the hostess was missing; perhaps because the royal sun was shining elsewhere.

Lackeys handed their salvers of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and the players refreshed themselves occasionally with a brimmer of clary; but no wine brightened Fareham's scowling brow, or changed the glooiay intensity of his outlook.

"My cards have brought your lordship bad luck," said Lady Lucretia, who watched De Malfort's winnings with an air of personal interest.

"I knew my risk before I took them, madam. When an Englishman plays against a Frenchman he is a fool if he is not prepared to be rooked."

"Fareham, are you mad?" cried De Malfort, starting to his feet. "To insult your friend's country, and, by basest implication, your friend."

"I see no friend here. I say that you Frenchmen cheat at cards—on principle—and are proud of being cheats! I have heard De Gramont brag of having lured a man to his tent, and fed him, and wined him, and fleeced him while he was drunk." He took a goblet of claret from the lackey who brought his salver, emptied it, and went on, hoarse with passion. "To the marrow of your bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and trust you. Seducers, tricksters, poltroons!"

The footman was at De Malfort's elbow now. He snatched a tankard from the salver, and flung the contents across the table, straight at Fareham's face.

"This bully forces me to spoil his Point de Venise," he said coolly, as he set down the tankard. "There should be a law for chaining up rabid curs that have run mad without provocation."

Fareham sprang to his feet, black and terrible, but with a savage exultation in his countenance. The wine poured in a red stream from his point-lace cravat, but had not touched his face.

"There shall be something redder than Burgundy spilt before we have done!" he said.

"Sacre nom, nous sommes tombes dans un antre de betes sauvages!" exclaimed Masaroon, starting up, and anxiously examining the skirts of his brocade coat, lest that sudden deluge had caught him.

"None of your —— French to show your fine breeding!" growled the old cavalier. "Fareham, you deserved the insult; but one red will wash out another. I'm with your lordship."

"And I'm with De Malfort," said Masaroon. "He had more than enough provocation."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, no bloodshed!" cried Lady Lucretia; "or, if you are going to be uncivil to each other, for God's sake get me to my chair. I have a husband who would never forgive me if it were said you fought for my sake."

"We will see you safely disposed of, madam, before we begin our business," said Colonel Dangerfield, bluntly. "Fareham, you can take the lady to her chair, while Masaroon and I discuss particulars."

"There is no need of a discussion," interrupted Fareham, hotly. "We have nothing to arrange—nothing to wait for. Time, the present; place, the garden, under these windows; weapons, the swords we wear. We shall have no witnesses but the moon and stars. It is the dead middle of the night, and we have the world all to ourselves."

"Give me your rapier, then, that I may compare it with the Count's. You are satisfied, monsieur? 'Tis you that are the offender, and Lord Fareham has the choice of weapons."

"Let him choose. I will fight him with cannon—or with soap-bubbles," answered De Malfort, lolling back in his chair, tilted at an angle of forty-five, and drumming a gay dance tune with his finger-tips on the table. "'Tis a foolish imbroglio from first to last: and only his lordship and I know how foolish. He came here to provoke a quarrel, and I must indulge him. Come, Lady Lucretia"—he turned to his fair friend, as he unbuckled his sword and flung it on the table—"it is my place to lead you to your chair. Colonel, you and your friend will find me below stairs in front of the Holbein Gate."

"You are forgetting your winnings," remonstrated the lady, pointing to the pile of gold.

"The lackeys will not forget them when they clear the room," answered De Malfort, putting her hand through his arm, and leaving the money on the table.

Ten minutes later Fareham and De Malfort were standing front to front in the glare of four torches, held by a brace of her ladyship's lackeys who had been impressed into the service, and the colder light of a moon that rode high in the blue-black of a wintry heaven. There was not a sound but the ripple of the unseen river, and the distant cry of a watchman in Petty France, till the clash of swords began.

It was decided after a brief parley that the principals only should fight. The quarrel was private. The seconds placed their men on a piece of level turf, five paces apart. They were bare-headed, and without coat or vest, the lace ruffles of their shirt-sleeves rolled back to the elbow, their naked arms ghastly white, their faces suggesting ghost or devil as the spectral moonlight or the flame of the flambeaux shone upon them.

"You mean business, so we may sink the parade of the fencing saloon," said Dangerfield. "Advance, gentlemen."

"A pity," murmured Masaroon, "there is nothing prettier than the salute a la Francaise."

Dangerfield handed the men their swords. They were nearly similar in fashion, both flat-grooved blades, with needle points, and no cutting edge, furnished with shell-guards and cross-bars in the Italian style, and were about of a length.

The word was given, and the business of engagement proceeded slowly and warily, for a few moments that seemed minutes; and then the blades were firmly joined in carte, and a series of rapid feints began, De Malfort having a slight advantage in the neatness of his circles, and the swiftness of his wrist play. But in these preliminary lounges and parries, he soon found he needed all his skill to dodge his opponent's point; for Fareham's blade followed his own, steadily and strongly, through every turn.

De Malfort had begun the fight with an insolent smile upon his lips, the smile of a man who believes himself invincible, while Fareham's countenance never changed from the black anger that had darkened it all that night. It was a face that meant death. A man who had never been a duellist, who had raised his voice sternly against the practice of duelling, stood there intent upon bloodshed. There could be no mistake as to his purpose. The quarrel was an artificial quarrel—the object was murder.

De Malfort, provoked at the unexpected strength of Fareham's fence, attempted a partial disarmament, after the deadly Continental method. Joining his opponent's blade near the point, from a wide circular parry, he made a rapid thrust in seconde, carrying his forte the entire length of Fareham's blade, almost wrenching the sword from his grasp; and then, in the next instant, reaching forward to his fullest stretch, he lunged at his enemy's breast, aiming at the vital region of the heart; a thrust that must have proved fatal had not Fareham sprung aside, and so received the blow where the sword only grazed his ribs, inflicting a flesh-wound that showed red upon the whiteness of his shirt. Dangerfield tore off his cravat, and wanted to bind it round his principal's waist; but Fareham repulsed him, and lashed into hot fury by the Frenchman's uncavalier-like ruse, met his adversary's thrusts with a deadly purpose, which drove De Malfort to reckless lunging and riposting, and the play grew fast and fierce, while the rattle of steel seemed never likely to end. Suddenly, timing his attack to the fraction of a second, Fareham dropped on his left knee, and planting his left hand upon the ground, sent a murderous thrust home under De Malfort's guard, whose blade passed harmlessly over his adversary's head as he crouched on the sward.

De Malfort fell heavily in the arms of the two seconds, who both sprang to his assistance.

"Is it fatal?" asked Fareham, standing motionless as stone, while the other men knelt on either side of De Malfort.

"I'll run for a surgeon," said Masaroon. "There's a fellow I know of this side the Abbey—mends bloody noses and paints black eyes," and he was off, running across the grass to the nearest gate.

"It looks plaguily like a coffin," Dangerfield answered, with his hand on the wounded man's breast. "There's throbbing here yet; but he may bleed to death, like poor Lindsey, before surgery can help him. You had better run, Fareham. Take horse to Dover, and get across to Calais or Ostend. You were devilish provoking. It might go hard with you if he was to die."

"I shall not budge, Dangerfield. Didn't you hear me say I wanted to kill him? You might guess I didn't care a cast of the dice for my life when I said as much. Let them find it murder, and hang me. I wanted him out of the world, and don't care how soon I follow."

"You are mad—stark, staring mad!"

The wounded man raised himself on his elbow, groaning aloud in the agony of movement, and beckoned Fareham, who knelt down beside him, all of a piece, like a stone figure.

"Fareham, you had better run; I have powerful friends. There'll be an ugly stir if I die of this bout. Kiss me, mon ami. I forgive you. I know what wound rankled; 'twas for your wife's sister you fought—not the cards."

He sank into Dangerfield's arms, swooning from loss of blood, as Masaroon came back at a run, bringing a surgeon, an elderly man of that Alsatian class which is to be found out of bed in the small hours. He brought styptics and bandages, and at once set about staunching the wound.

While this was happening a curtain had been suddenly pulled aside at an upper window in Lady Castlemaine's lodgings, showing a light within. The window was thrown open, and a figure appeared, clad in a white satin night-gown that glistened in the moonlight, with a deep collar of ermine, from which the handsomest face in London looked across the garden, to the spot where Fareham, the seconds, and the surgeon were grouped about De Malfort.

It was Lady Castlemaine. She leant out of the window and called to them.

"What has happened? Is any one hurt? I'll wager a thousand pounds you devils have been fighting."

"De Malfort is stabbed!" Masaroon answered.

"Not dead?" she shrieked, leaning farther out of the window.

"No; but it looks dangerous."

"Bring him into my house this instant! I'll send my fellows to help. Have you sent for a surgeon?"

"The surgeon is here."

The radiant figure vanished like a vision in the skies; and in three minutes a door was heard opening, and a voice calling, "John, William, Hugh, Peter, every manjack of you. Lazy devils! There's been no time for you to fall asleep since the company left. Stir yourselves, vermin, and out with you!"

"We had best levant, Fareham," muttered Dangerfield, and drew away his principal, who went with him, silent and unresisting, having no more to do there; not to fly the country, however, but to walk quietly home to Fareham House, and to let himself in at the garden door, known to the household as his lordship's.



CHAPTER XVIII.

REVELATIONS.

Lord Fareham stayed in his own house by the Thames, and nobody interfered with his liberty, though Henri de Malfort lay for nearly a fortnight between life and death, and it was only in the beginning of December that he was pronounced out of danger, and was able to be removed from Lady Castlemaine's luxurious rooms to his own lodgings. Scandal-mongers might have made much talk of his lying ill in her ladyship's house, and being tenderly nursed by her, had not Lady Castlemaine outlived the possibility of slander. It would have been as difficult for her name to acquire any blacker stain as for a damaged reputation to wash itself white. The secret of the encounter had been faithfully kept by principals and seconds, De Malfort behaving with a chivalrous generosity. He appeared, indeed, as anxious for his antagonist's safety as for his own recovery.

"It was a mistake," he said, when Masaroon pressed him with home questions. "Every man is mad once in his life. Fareham's madness took an angry turn against an old friend. Why, we slept under the same blanket in the trenches before Dunkirk; we rode shoulder to shoulder through the rain of bullets at Chitillon; and to pick a trumpery quarrel with a brother-in-arms!"

"I wonder the quarrel was not picked earlier," Masaroon answered bluntly. "Your courtship of the gentleman's wife has been notorious for the last five years."

"Call it not courtship, Ralph. Lady Fareham and I are old playfellows. We were reared in the pays du tendre, Loveland—the kingdom of innocent attachments and pure penchants, that country of which Mademoiselle Scudery has given us laws and a map. Your vulgar London lover cannot understand platonics—the affection which is satisfied with a smile or a madrigal. Fareham knows his wife and me better than to doubt us."

"And yet he acted like a man who was madly jealous. His rudeness at the card-table was obvious malice afore-thought. He came resolved to quarrel."

"Ay, he came to quarrel—but not about his wife."

Pressed to explain this dubious phrase, De Malfort affected a fit of languor, and would talk no more.

The town was told that the Comte de Malfort was ill of a quartain fever, and much was said about his sufferings during the Fronde, his exposure to damp and cold in the sea-marshes by Dunkirk, his rough fare and hard riding through the war of the Princes. This fever, which hung about him so long, was an after-consequence of hardship suffered in his youth—privations faced with a boyish recklessness, and which he had paid for with an impaired constitution. Fine ladies in gilded chairs, and vizard-masks in hackney coaches, called frequently at his lodgings in St. James's Street to inquire about his progress. Lady Fareham's private messenger was at his door every morning, and brought a note, or a book, or a piece of new music from her ladyship, who had been sternly forbidden to visit her old friend in person.

"You grow every day a gloomier tyrant!" Hyacinth protested, with more passion in her voice and mien than ever her husband had known. "Why should I not go to him when he is ill—dangerously ill—dying perhaps? He is my old, old friend. I remember no joy in life that he did not share. Why should I not go to him in his sorrow?"

"Because you are my wife, and I forbid you. I cannot understand this passion. I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as you suffered your lap-dogs—the trivial appendage of a fine lady's state. Had I supposed that there was anything serious in your liking—that you could think him worth anger or tears—should have ordered your life differently, and he would have had no place in it."

"Tyrant! tyrant!"

"You astound me, Hyacinth! Would you dispute the favours of a fop with your young sister?"

"With my sister!" she cried, scornfully.

"Ay, with your sister, whom he has courted assiduously; but with no honourable motive! I have seen his designs."

"Well, perhaps you are right. He may care for Angela—and think her too poor to marry."

"He is a traitor and a villain——"

"Oh, what fury! Marry my sister to Sir Denzil, and then she will be safe from all pursuit! He will bury her alive in Oxfordshire—withdraw her for ever from this wicked town—like poor Lady Yarborough in Cornwall."

"I will never ask her to marry a man she cannot love."

"Why not? Are not you and I a happy couple? And how much love had we for each other before we married? Why I scarce knew the colour of your eyes; and if I had met you in the street, I doubt if I should have recognised you! And now, after thirteen years of matrimony, we are at our first quarrel, and that no lasting one. Come, Fareham, be pleasant and yielding. Let me go and see my old playfellow. I am heartbroken for lack of his company, for fear of his death."

She hung upon him coaxingly, the bright blue eyes looking up at him—eyes that had so often been compared to Madame de Longueville's, eyes that had smiled and beamed in many a song and madrigal by the parlour poets of the Hotel de Rambouillet. She was exquisitely pretty in her youthful colouring of lilies and roses, blue eyes, and pale gold hair, and retained at thirty almost all the charms and graces of eighteen.

Fareham took her by both hands and held her away from him, severely scrutinising a face which he had always been able to admire as calmly as if it had been on canvas.

"You look like an innocent woman," he said, "and I have always believed you a good woman; and have trusted my honour in your keeping—have seen that man fawning at your feet, singing and sighing in your ear, and have thought no evil. But now that you have told me, as plainly as woman can speak to man, that this is the man you love, and have loved all your life, there must needs come an end to the sighing and singing. You and Henri de Malfort must meet no more. Nay, look not such angry scorn. I impute no guilt; but between innocence and guilt there need be but one passionate hour. The wife goes out an honest woman, able to look her husband in the face as you are looking at me; the wanton comes home, and the rest of her life is a shameful lie. And the husband awakes some day from his dream of domestic peace to discover that he has been long the laughing-stock of the town. I will be no such fatuous husband, Hyacinth. I will wait for no second warning."

Lady Fareham submitted in silence, and with deep resentment. She had never before experienced a husband's authority sternly exercised. She had been forbidden the free run of London play-houses, and some of the pleasures of Court society; but then she had been denied with all kindness, and had been allowed so many counterbalancing extravagances, pleasures, and follies, that it would have been difficult for her to think herself ill-used.

She submitted angrily, passionately regretting the man whose presence had long been the brightest element in her life. Her cheek paled; she grew indifferent to the amusements which had been her sole occupation; she sulked in her rooms, equally avoiding her children and their aunt; and, indeed, seemed to care for no one's society except Mrs. Lewin's. The Court milliner had business with her ladyship every day, and was regaled with cakes and liqueurs in her ladyship's dressing-room.

"You must be very busy about new gowns, Hyacinth," her husband said to her one day at dinner. "I meet the harridan from Covent Garden on the stairs every morning."

"She is not a harridan, whatever that elegant word may mean. And as for gowns, it would be wiser for me to order no new ones, since it is but likely I shall soon have to wear mourning for an old friend."

She looked at her husband, defying him. He rose from the table with a sigh, and walked out of the room. There was war between them, or at best an armed neutrality. He looked back, and saw that he had been blind to the things he should have seen, dull and unobservant where he should have had sense and understanding.

"I did not care enough for my honour," he thought. "Was it because I cared too little for my wife? It is indifference, and not love, that is blind."

Angela saw the cloud that overshadowed Fareham House with deepest distress; and yet felt herself powerless to bring back sunshine. Her sister met her remonstrances with scorn.

"Do you take the part of a tyrant against your own flesh and blood?" she asked. "I have been too tame a slave. To keep me away from the Court while I was young and worth looking at—to deny me amusements and admiration which are the privilege of every woman of quality—to forbid me the play-house, and make a country cousin of me by keeping me ignorant of modern wit. I am ashamed of my compliance."

"Nay, dearest, was it not an evidence of his love that he should desire you to keep your mind pure as well as your face fair?"

"No, he has never loved me. It is only a churlish jealousy that would shut me up in a harem like a Turk's wife, and part me from the friend I like best in the world—with the purest platonic affection."

"Hyacinth, don't be angry with me for being out of the fashion; but indeed I cannot think it right for a wife to care for the company of any other man but her husband."

"And my husband is so entertaining! Sure any woman might be content with such gay company—such flashes of wit—such light raillery!" cried Hyacinth, scornfully, walking up and down the room, plucking at the lace upon her sleeves with restless hands, her bosom heaving, her eyes steel-bright with anger. "Since his sickness last year, he has been the image of melancholy; he has held himself aloof from me as if I had had the pestilence. I was content that it should be so. I had my children and you, and one who loved me better, in his light way, than any of you—and I could do without Lord Fareham. But now he forbids me to see an old friend that is dangerously ill, and every drop of blood in my veins boils in rebellion against his tyranny!"

It was in the early dusk, an hour or so after dinner. Angela sat silent in the shadow of a bay window, quite as heavy-hearted as her sister—sorry for Hyacinth, but still sorrier for Hyacinth's husband, yet feeling that there was treachery and unkindness in making him first in her thoughts. But surely, surely he deserved a better wife than this! Surely he deserved a wife's love—this man who stood alone among the men she knew, hating all evil things, honouring all things good and noble! He had been unkind to her—cold and cruel—since that fatal night. He had let her understand that all friendship between them was at an end for ever, and that she had become despicable in his sight; and she had submitted to be scorned by him, since it was impossible that she should clear herself. She had made her sisterly sacrifice for a sister who regarded it very lightly; to whose light fancy that night and all it involved counted but as a scene in a comedy; and she could not unmake it. But having so sacrificed his good opinion whose esteem she valued, she wanted to see some happy result, and to save this splendid home from shipwreck.

Suddenly, with a passionate impulse, she went to her sister, and put her arms round her and kissed her.

"Hyacinth, you shall not continue in this folly," she cried, "to fret for that shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose element is the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talking about. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister, you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing to him, am wretched when I see him ill-used. Indeed, Hyacinth, you are acting like a wicked wife. You should never have wished to see De Malfort again, after the peril of that night. You should have known that he had no esteem for you, that he was a traitor—that his design was the wickedest, cruellest——"

"I don't pretend to know a man's mind as well as you—neither De Malfort's nor my husband's. You have needed but the experience of a year to make you wise enough in the world's ways to instruct your elders. I am not going to be preached to——Hark!" she cried, running to the nearest window, and looking out at the river, "that is better than your sermons."

It was the sound of fiddles playing the symphony of a song she knew well—one of De Malfort's, a French chanson, her latest favourite, the words adapted from a little poem by Voiture, "Pour vos beaux yeux."

She opened the casement, and Angela stood beside her looking down at a boat in which several muffled figures were seated, and which was moored to the terrace wall.

There were three violins and a 'cello, and a quartette of singing-boys with fair young faces smiling in the light of the lamps that hung in front of Fareham's house.

The evening was still, and mild as early autumn, and the plash of oars passing up and down the river sounded like a part of the music—

"Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair, Love does on both her lips for ever stray, And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there; In all her outward parts love's always seen; But, oh, he never went within."

It was a song of Cowley's, which De Malfort had lately set to music, and to a melody which Hyacinth especially admired.

"A serenade! Only De Malfort could have thought of such a thing. Lying ill and alone, he sends me the sweetest token of his regard—my favourite air, his own setting—the last song I ever heard him sing. And you wonder that I value so pure, so disinterested a love!" protested Hyacinth to her sister, in the silence at the end of the song.

"Sing again, sweet boys, sing again!" she cried, snatching a purse from her pocket, and flinging it with impetuous aim into the boat.

It hit one of the fiddlers on the head, and there was a laugh, and in a trice the largesse was divided and pocketed.

"They are from his Majesty's choir; I know their voices," said Hyacinth, "so fresh, and pure. They are the prettiest singers in the chapel. That little monkey with the cherub's voice is Purcell—Dr. Blow's favourite pupil—and a rare genius."

They sang another song from De Malfort's repertoire, an Italian serenade, which Hyacinth had heard in the brilliant days before her marriage, when the Italian Opera was still a new thing in Paris. The melody brought back the memory of her happy girlhood with a rush of sudden tears.

The little concert lasted for something less than an hour, with intervals of light music, dances and marches, between the singing. Boats passed and repassed. Strange voices joined in a refrain now and then, and the sisters stood at the open window enthralled by the charm of the music and the scene. London lay in ruins yonder to the east, and Sir Matthew Hale and other judges were sitting at Clifford's Inn to decide questions of title and boundary, and the obligation to rebuild; but here in this western London there were long ranges of lighted windows shining through the wintry mists, wherries passing up and down with lanterns at their prows, an air of life and gaiety hanging over that river which had carried so many a noble victim to his doom yonder, where the four towers stood black against the starlit greyness, unscathed by fire, and untouched by time.

The last notes of a good-night song dwindled and died, to the accompaniment of dipping oars, as the boat moved slowly along the tideway, and lost itself among other boats—jovial cits going eastward, from an afternoon at the King's theatre, modish gallants voyaging westward from play-house or tavern, some going home to domesticity, others intent upon pleasure and intrigue, as the darkness came down, and the hour for supper and deeper drinking drew near. And who would have thought, watching the lighted windows of palace and tavern, hearing those joyous sounds of glee or catch trolled by voices that reeked of wine—who would have thought of the dead-cart, and the unnumbered dead lying in the pest pits yonder, or the city in ruins, or the King enslaved to a foreign power, and pledged to a hated Church? London, gay, splendid, and prosperous, the queen-city of the world as she seemed to those who loved her—could rise glorious from the ashes of a fire unparalleled in modern history, and to Charles and Wren it might be given to realise a boast which in Augustus had been little more than an imperial phrase.



CHAPTER XIX.

DIDO.

The armed neutrality between man and wife continued, and the domestic sky at Fareham House was dark and depressing. Lady Fareham, who had hitherto been remarkable for a girlish amiability of speech which went well with her girlish beauty, became now the height of the mode for acidity and slander. The worst of the evil speakers on her ladyship's visiting-day flavoured the China tea with no bitterer allusions than those that fell from the rosy lips of the hostess. And, for the colouring of those lips, which once owed their vermeil tint only to nature, Lady Fareham was now dependent upon Mrs. Lewin, as well as for the carnation of cheeks that looked pallid and sunken in the glass which reflected the sad mourning face.

Mrs. Lewin brought roses and lilies in her queer little china pots and powder boxes, pencils and brushes, perfumes and washes without number. It cost as much to keep a complexion as to keep a horse. And Mrs. Lewin was infinitely useful at this juncture, since she called every day at St. James's Street, to carry a lace cravat, or a ribbon, or a flask of essence to the invalid languishing in lodgings there, and visited by all the town, except Fareham and his wife. De Malfort had lain for a fortnight at Lady Castlemaine's house, alternately petted and neglected by his fair hostess, as the fit took her, since she showed herself ever of the chameleon breed, and hovered betwixt angel and devil. His surgeon told him in confidence that when once his wound was healed enough to allow his removal, the sooner he quitted that feverish company the better it would be for his chance of a speedy convalescence. So, at the end of the second week, he was moved in a covered litter to his own lodgings, where his faithful valet, who had followed his fortunes since he came to man's estate, was quite capable of nursing him.

The town soon discovered the breach between Lord Fareham and his friend—a breach commented upon with many shoulder-shrugs, and not a few coarse innuendoes. Lady Lucretia Topham insisted upon making her way to the sick man's room, in the teeth of messages delivered by his valet, which, even to a less intelligent mind than Lady Lucretia's, might have conveyed the fact that she was not wanted. She flung herself on her knees by De Malfort's bed, and wept and raved at the brutality which had deprived the world of his charming company—and herself of the only man she had ever loved. De Malfort, fevered and vexed at her intrusion, and at this renewal of fires long burnt out, had yet discretion enough to threaten her with his dire displeasure if she betrayed the secret of his illness.

"I have sworn Dangerfield and Masaroon to silence," he said. "Except servants, who have been paid to keep mute, you are the only other witness of our quarrel; and if the story becomes town talk, I shall know whose busy tongue set it going—and then—well, there are things I might tell that your ladyship would hardly like the world to know."

"Traitor! If your purse has accommodated me once in a way when luck has been adverse——"

"Oh, madam, you cannot think me base enough to blab of a money transaction with a lady. There are secrets more tender—more romantic."

"Those secrets can be easily denied, wretch. However, I know you would not injure me with a husband so odious and tyrannical that I stood excused in advance for inconstancy when I stooped to wed country manners and stubborn ignorance. Indeed, mon ami, if you will but take pains to recover, I will never breathe a word about the duel; but if—if—" a sob indicated the tragic possibility which Lady Lucretia dared not put into words—"I will do all that a weak woman can do to get Fareham hanged for murder. There has never been a peer hanged in England, I believe. He should be the first."

"Dear soul, there need be no hanging! I have been on the mending hand for a week, or my doctors would not have let you upstairs. There, go, my pretty Lucrece; but if your milliner or your shoemaker is pressing, there are a few jacobuses in the right-hand drawer of yonder escritoire, and you may as well take them as leave them for my valet to steal. He is one of those excellent old servants who make no distinctions, and he robs me as freely as he robbed my father before me."

"Mrs. Lewin is always pressing," sighed Lady Lucretia. "She made me a gown like that of Lady Fareham's, for which you were all eyes. I ordered the brocade to please you; and now I am wearing it when you are not at Whitehall. Well, as you are so kind, I will be your debtor for another trifling loan. It is wicked to leave money where it tempts a good servant to dishonesty. Ah, Henri"—she was pocketing the gold as she talked—"if ten years of my life could save you ten days of pain and fever, how gladly would I give them to you!"

"Ah, douce, if there were a market for the exchange of such commodities, what a roaring trade would be done there! I never loved a woman yet but she offered me her life, or an instalment of it."

"I have emptied your drawer," laughing coyly. "There is just enough to keep Lewin in good humour till you are well again, and we can be partners at basset."

"It will be very long before I play basset in London."

"Oh, but indeed you will soon be well."

"Well enough to change the scene, I hope. It needs change of places and persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see a play by Moliere's company, as only they can act, instead of the loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit and charm in the original is transmuted to coarseness and vulgarity. When I leave this bed, Lucrece, it will be for Paris."

"Why, it will be ages before you are strong enough for such a journey."

"Oh, I will risk that. I hate London so badly, that to escape from it will work a miraculous cure for me."

* * * * *

An armed neutrality! Even the children felt the change in the atmosphere of home, and nestled closer to their aunt, who never changed to them.

"Father mostly looks angry," Henriette complained, "and mother is always unhappy, if she is not laughing and talking in the midst of company; and neither of them ever seems to want me. I wish I was grown up, so that I could be maid of honour to the Queen or the Duchess, and live at Whitehall. Mademoiselle told me that there is always life and pleasure at Court."

"Your father does not love the Court, dearest, and mademoiselle should be wiser than to talk to you of such things, when she is here to teach you dancing and French literature."

"Mademoiselle" was a governess lately imported from Paris, recommended by Mademoiselle Scudery, and full of high-flown ideas expressed in high-flown language. All Paris had laughed at Moliere's Precieuses Ridicules; but the Precieuses themselves, and their friends, protested that the popular farce was aimed only at the low-born imitators of those great ladies who had originated the school of superfine culture and romantic aspirations.

"Sapho" herself, in tracing her own portrait with a careful and elaborate pencil, told the world how shamefully she had been imitated by the spurious middle-class Saphos, who set up their salons, and vied with the sacred house of Rambouillet, and the privileged coterie of the Rue de Temple.

Lady Fareham had not ceased to believe in her dear, plain, witty Scudery, and was delighted to secure a governess of her choosing, whereby Papillon, who loved freedom and idleness, and hated lessons of all kinds, was set down to write themes upon chivalry, politeness, benevolence, pride, war, and other abstractions; or to fill in bouts-rimes, by way of enlarging her acquaintance with the French language, which she had chattered freely all her life. Mademoiselle insisted upon all the niceties of phraseology as discussed in the Rue Saint Thomas du Louvre.

There had been a change of late in Fareham's manner to his sister-in-law, a change refreshing to her troubled spirit as mercy, that gentle dew from heaven, to the criminal. He had been kinder; and though he spent very few of his hours with the women of his household, he had talked to Angela somewhat in the friendly tone of those fondly remembered days at Chilton, when he had taught her to row and ride, to manage a spirited palfrey and fly a falcon, and had been in all things her mentor and friend. He seemed less oppressed with gloom as time went on, but had his sullen fits still, and, after being kind and courteous to wife and sister, and playful with his children, would leave them suddenly, and return no more to the saloon or drawing-room that evening. Yet on the whole the sky was lightening. He ignored Hyacinth's resentment, endured her pettishness, and was studiously polite to her.

* * * * *

It was on Lady Fareham's visiting-day, deep in that very severe winter, that some news was told her which came like a thunder-clap, and which it needed all the weak soul's power of self-repression to suffer without swooning or hysterics.

Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, gorgeous in velvet and fur, her thickly painted countenance framed in a furred hood, entered fussily upon a little coterie in which Masaroon, vapouring about the last performance at the King's theatre, was the principal figure.

"There was a little woman spoke the epilogue," he said, "a little creature in a monstrous big hat, as large and as round as a cart-wheel, which vastly amused his Majesty."

"The hat?"

"Nay, it was woman and hat. The thing is so small it might have been scarce noticed without the hat, but it has a pretty little, insignificant, crumpled face, and laughs all over its face till it has no eyes, and then stops laughing suddenly, and the eyes shine out, twinkling and dancing like stars reflected in running water, and it stamps its little foot upon the stage in a comic passion—and—nous verrons. It sold oranges in the pit, folks tell me, a year ago. It may be selling sinecures and captaincies in a year or two, and putting another shilling in the pound upon land."

"Is it that brazen little comedy actress you are talking of, Masaroon?" Lady Sarah asked, when she had exchanged curtsies with the ladies of the company, and established herself on the most comfortable tabouret, near Lady Fareham's tea-table; "Mrs. Glyn—Wynn—Gwyn? I wonder a man of wit can notice such a vulgar creature, a she-jack-pudden, fit only to please the rabble in the gallery."

"Ay, but there is a finer sort of rabble—a rabble of quality—beginning with his Majesty, that are always pleased with anything new. And this little creature is as fresh as a spring morning. To see her laugh, to hear the ring of it, clear and sweet as a skylark's song! On my life, madam, the town has a new toy; and Mrs. Gwyn will be the rage in high quarters. You should have seen Castlemaine's scowl when Rowley laughed, and ducked under the box almost, in an ecstasy of amusement at the huge hat."

"Lady Castlemaine's brow would thunder-cloud if his Majesty looked at a fly on a window-pane. But she has something else to provoke her frowns to-day."

"What is that, chere dame?" asked Hyacinth, snatching a favourite fan from Sir Ralph, who was teasing one of the Blenheims with African feathers that were almost priceless.

"The desertion of an old friend. The Comte de Malfort has left England."

Lady Fareham turned livid under her rouge. Angela ran to her and leant over her, upon a pretence of rescuing the fan and chiding the dogs; and so contrived to screen her sister's change of complexion from the malignity of her dearest friends.

"Left England! Why, he is confined to his bed with a fever!" Hyacinth said faintly, when she had somewhat recovered from the shock.

"Nay, it seems that he began to go abroad last week, but would see no company, except a confidential friend or so. He left London this morning for Dover."

"No doubt he has business in Burgundy, where his estate is, and at Paris, where he is of importance at the Court," said Hyacinth, as lightly as she could; "but I'll wager anything anybody likes that he will be in London again in a month."

"I'll take you for those black pearls in your ears, ma mie," said Lady Sarah. "His furniture is to be sold by auction next week. I saw a bill on the house this afternoon. It is sudden! Perhaps the Castlemaine had become too exacting!"

"Castlemaine!" faltered Hyacinth, agitated beyond her power of self-control. "Why, what is she to him more than she is to other men?"

"Very little, perhaps," said Sir Ralph, and then everybody laughed, and Hyacinth felt herself sitting among them like a child, understanding nothing of their smiles and shrugs, the malice in their sly interchange of glances.

She sat among them feeling as if her heart were turned to stone. He had left the country without even bidding her farewell—her faithful slave, upon whose devotion she counted as surely as upon the rising of the sun. Whatever her husband might do to separate her from this friend of her girlhood, she had feared no defection upon De Malfort's part. He would always be near at hand, waiting and watching for the happier days that were to smile upon their innocent loves. She had written to him every day during his illness. Good Mrs. Lewin had taken the letters to him, and had brought her his replies. He had not written so often, or at such length, as she, and had pleaded the languor of convalescence as his excuse; but all his billets-doux had been in the same delicious hyperbole, the language of the Pays du Tendre. She sat silent while her visitors talked about him, plucking a reputation as mercilessly as a kitchen wench plucks a fowl. He was gone. He had left the country deep in debt. It was his landlord who had stuck up that notice of a sale by auction. Tailors and shoemakers, perruquiers and perfumers were bewailing his flight.

So much for the sordid side of things. But what of those numerous affairs of the heart—those entanglements which had made his life one long intrigue?

Lady Sarah sat simpering and nodding as Masaroon whispered close in her ear.

Barbara? Oh, that was almost as old as the story of Antony and Cleopatra. She had paid his debts—and he had paid hers. Their purse had been in common. And the handsome maid of honour? Ah, poor silly soul! That was a horrid, ugly business, and his Majesty's part in it the horridest. And Mrs. Levington, the rich silk mercer's wife? That was a serious attachment. It was said that the husband attempted poison, when De Malfort refused him the satisfaction of a gentleman. And the poor woman was sent to die of ennui and rheumatism in a castle among the Irish bogs, where her citizen husband had set up as a landed squire.

The fine company discussed all these foul stories with gusto, insinuating much more than they expressed in words. Never until to-day had they spoken so freely of De Malfort in Lady Fareham's presence; but the story had got about of a breach between Hyacinth and her admirer, and it was supposed that any abuse of the defaulter would be pleasant in her ears. And then, he was ruined and gone; and there is no vulture's feast sweeter than to banquet upon a departed rival's character.

Hyacinth listened in dull silence, as if her sensations were suddenly benumbed. She felt nothing but a horrible surprise. Her lover—her platonic lover—that other half of her mind and heart—with whom she had been in such tender sympathy, in unison of spirit, so subtle that the same thoughts sprang up simultaneously in the minds of each, the same language leapt to their lips, and they laughed to find their words alike. It had been only a shallow woman's shallow love—but trivial woes are tragedies for trivial minds; and when her guests had gradually melted away, dispersing themselves with reciprocal curtsies and airy compliments, elegant in their modish iniquity as a troop of vicious fairies—Hyacinth stood on the hearth where they had left her, a statue of despair.

Angela went to her, when the stately double doors had closed on the last of the gossips and lackeys, and they two were alone amidst the spacious splendour. The younger sister hugged the elder to her breast, and kissed her, and cried over her, like a mother comforting her disappointed child.

"Don't heed that shameful talk, dearest. No character is safe with them. Be sure Monsieur de Malfort is not the reprobate they would make him. You have known him nearly all your life. You know him too well to judge him by the idle talk of the town."

"No, no; I have never known him. He has always worn a mask. He is as false as Satan. Don't talk to me—don't kiss me, child. You have smeared my face horribly with your kisses and tears. Your pity drives me mad. How can you understand these things—you who have never loved any one? What can you know of what women feel? There, silly fool! you are trembling as if I had hit you," as Angela withdrew her arms suddenly, and stood aloof. "I have been a virtuous wife, sister, in a town where scarce one woman in ten is true to her marriage vows. I have never sinned against my husband; but I have never loved him. Henri had my heart before I knew what the word, love meant; and in all these years we have loved each other with the purest, noblest affection—at least he made me believe my love was reciprocated. We have enjoyed a most exquisite communion of thought and feeling. His letters—you shall read his letters some day—so noble, so brilliant—all poetry, and chivalry, and wit. I lived upon his letters when fate parted us. And when he followed us to England, I thought it was for my sake that he came—only for me. And to hear that he was her lover—hers—that woman! To know that he came to me—with sweetest words upon his lips—knelt to kiss the tips of my fingers—as if it were a privilege to die for—from her arms, from her caresses—the wickedest woman in England—and the loveliest!"

"Dear Hyacinth, it was a childish dream—and you have awakened! You will live to be glad of being recalled from falsehood to truth. Your husband is worth fifty De Malforts, did you but know it. Oh, dearest, give him your heart who ought to be its only master. Indeed he is worthy. He stands apart—an honourable, nobly thinking man in a world that is full of libertines. Be sure he deserves your love."

"Don't preach to me, child! If you could give me a sleeping-draught that would blot out memory for ever—make me forget my childhood in the Marais—my youth at St. Germain—the dances at the Louvre—all the days when I was happiest: why, then, perhaps, you might make me in love with Lord Fareham."

"You will begin a new life, sister, now De Malfort is gone."

"I will never forgive him for going!" cried Hyacinth, passionately. "Never—never! To give me no note of warning! To sneak away like a thief who had stolen my diamonds! To fly for debt, too, and not come to me for money! Why have I a fortune, if not to help those I love? But—if he was that woman's lover—I will never see his face again—never speak his name—never—from the moment I am convinced of that hellish treason—never! Her lover! Lady Castlemaine's! We have laughed at her, together! Her lover! And there were other women those spiteful wretches talked about just now—a tradesman's wife! Oh, how hateful, how hateful it all is! Angela, if it is true, I shall go mad!"

"Dearest, to you he was but a friend—and though you may be sorry he was so great a sinner, his sins cannot concern your happiness——"

"What! not to know him a profligate? The man to whom I gave a chaste woman's love! Angela, that night, in the ruined abbey, I let him kiss me. Yes, for one moment I was in his arms—and his lips were on mine. And he had kissed her—the same night perhaps. Her tainted kisses were on his lips. And it was you who saved me! Dear sister, I owe you more than life—I might have given myself to everlasting shame that night. God knows! I was in his power—her lover—judging all women, perhaps, by his knowledge of that——"

The epithet which closed the sentence was not a word for a woman's lips; but it was wrung from the soreness of a woman's wounded heart.

Hyacinth flung herself distractedly into her sister's arms.

"You saved me!" she cried, hysterically. "He wanted me to go to Dover with him—back to France—where we were so happy. He knelt to me, and I refused him; but he prayed me again and again; and if you had not come to rescue me, should I have gone on saying no? God knows if my courage would have held out. There were tears in his eyes. He swore that he had never loved any one upon this earth as he loved me. Hypocrite! Deceiver—liar! He loved that woman! Twenty times handsomer than ever I was—a hundred times more wicked. It is the wicked women that are best loved, Angela, remember that. Oh, bless you for coming to save me! You saved Fareham's life in the plague year. You saved me from everlasting misery. You are our guardian angel!"

"Ah, dearest, if love could guard you, I might deserve that name——"

* * * * *

It was late in the same evening that Lady Fareham's maid came to her bed-chamber to inquire if she would be pleased to see Mrs. Lewin, who had brought a pattern of a new French bodice, with her humble apologies for waiting on her ladyship so late.

Her ladyship would see Mrs. Lewin. She started up from the sofa where she had been lying, her forehead bound with a handkerchief steeped in Hungary water. She was all excitement.

"Bring her here instantly!" she said, and the interval necessary to conduct the milliner up the grand staircase and along the gallery seemed an age to Hyacinth's impatience.

"Well? Have you a letter for me?" she asked, when her woman had retired, and Mrs. Lewin had bustled and curtsied across the room.

"In truly, my lady; and I have to ask your ladyship's pardon for not bringing it early this morning, when his honour gave it to me with his own hand out of 'his travelling carriage. And very white and wasted he looked, dear gentleman, not fit for a voyage to France in this severe weather. And I was to carry you his letter immediately; but, eh, gud! your ladyship, there was never such a business as mine for surprises. I was putting on my cloak to step out with your ladyship's letter, when a coach, with a footman in the royal undress livery, sets down at my door, and one of the Duchess's women had come to fetch me to her Highness; and there I was kept in her Highness's chamber half the morning, disputing over a paduasoy for the Shrove Tuesday masquerade—for her Highness gets somewhat bulky, and is not easy to dress to her advantage or to my credit—though she is a beauty compared with the Queen, who still hankers after her hideous Portuguese fashions——"

"And employs your rival, Madame Marifleur——"

"Marifleur! If your ladyship knew the creature as well as I do, you'd call her Sally Cramp."

"I never can remember a low English name. Marifleur seems to promise all that there is of the most graceful and airy in a ruffled sleeve and a ribbon shoulder-knot."

"I am glad to see your ladyship is in such good spirits," said the milliner, wondering at Lady Fareham's flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes.

They were brilliant with a somewhat glassy brightness, and there was a touch of hysteria in her manner. Mrs. Lewin thought she had been drinking. Many of her customers ended that way—took to cognac and ratafia, when choicer pleasures were exhausted and wrinkles began to show through their paint.

Hyacinth was reading De Malfort's letter as she talked, moving about the room a little, and then stopping in front of the fireplace, where the light from two clusters of wax candles shone down upon the finely written page.

Mrs. Lewin watched her for a few minutes, and then produced some pieces of silk out of her muff.

"I made so bold as to bring your ladyship some patterns of Italian silks which only came to hand this morning," she said. "There is a cherry-red that would become your ladyship to the T."

"Make me a gown of it, my excellent Lewin—and good night to you."

"But sure your ladyship will look at the colour? There is a pattern of amber with gold thread might please you better. Lady Castlemaine has ordered a Court mantua——"

Lady Fareham rang her hand-bell with a vehemence that suggested anger.

"Show Mrs. Lewin to her coach," she said shortly, when her woman appeared. "When you have done that you may go to bed; I want nothing more to-night."

"Mrs. Kirkland has been asking to see your ladyship."

"I will see no one to-night. Tell Mrs. Kirkland so, with my love."

She ran to the door when the maid and milliner were gone, and locked it, and then ran back to the fireplace, and flung herself down upon the rug to read her letter.

"Cherie, when this is handed to you, I shall be sitting in my coach on the dull Dover road, with frost-clouded windows and a heart heavier than your leaden skies. Loveliest of women, all things must end; and, despite your childlike trust in man's virtue, you could scarce hope for eternity to a bond that was too strong for friendship and too weak for love. Dearest, had you given yourself that claim upon love and honour which we have talked of, and which you have ever refused, no lesser power than death should have parted us. I would have dared all, conquered all, for my dear mistress. But you would not. It was not for lack of fervid prayers that the statue remained a statue; but a man cannot go on worshipping a statue for ever. If the Holy Mother did not sometimes vouchsafe a sign of human feeling, even good Catholics would have left off kneeling to her image.

"Or, shall I say, rather, that the child remains a child—fresh, and pure, and innocent, and candid, as in the days when we played our jeu de volant in your grandmother's garden—fit emblem of the light love of our future years. You remained a child, Hyacinth, and asked childish love-making from a man. Dearest, accept a cruel truth from a man of the world—it is only the love you call guilty that lasts. There is a stimulus in sin and mystery that will fan the flame of passion and keep love alive even for an inferior object. The ugly women know this, and make lax morals a substitute for beauty. An innocent intrigue, a butterfly affection like ours, will seldom outlive the butterfly's brief day. Indeed, I sometimes admire at myself as a marvel of constancy for having kept faith so long with a mistress who has rewarded me so sparingly.

"So, my angel, I am leaving your foggy island, my cramped London lodgings, and extortionate London tradesmen, on whom I have squandered so much of my fortune that they ought to forgive me for leaving a margin of debt, which I hope to pay the extortioners hereafter for the honour of my name. I doubt if I shall ever revisit England. I have tasted all London pleasures, till familiarity has taken the taste out of them; and though Paris may be only London with a difference, that difference includes bluer skies, brighter streets and gardens, and all the originals of which you have here the copies. There, at least, I shall have the fashion of my peruke and my speech at first hand. Here you only adopt a mode when Paris begins to tire of it.

"Farewell, then, dearest lady, but let it be no tragical or eternal parting, since your fine house in the Rue de Touraine will doubtless be honoured with your presence some day. You have only to open a salon there in order to be the top of the mode. Some really patrician milieu is needed to replace the antique court of the dear old Marquise, and to extinguish the Scudery, whose Saturdays grow more vulgar every week. Yes, you will come to Paris, bringing that human lily, Mrs. Angela, in your train; and I promise to make you the fashion before your house has been open a month. The wits and Court favourites will go where I bid them. And though your dearest friend, Madame de Longueville, has retired from the world in which she was more queenly than the Queen, you will find Mademoiselle de Montpensier as faithful as ever to mundane pleasures, and, after having refused kings and princes, slavishly devoted to a colonel of dragoons who does not care a straw for her.