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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of London Pride, by M. E. Braddon
+#3 in our series by M. E. Braddon
+
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+Title: London Pride
+       Or When the World Was Younger
+
+Author: M. E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9377]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 26, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONDON PRIDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+LONDON PRIDE
+
+OR
+
+WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNGER
+
+BY
+
+M.E. BRADDON
+
+
+_Author of "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," "ISHMAEL," ETC._
+
+
+1896
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+_CHAPTER I._ A HARBOUR FROM THE STORM
+
+_CHAPTER II._ WITHIN CONVENT WALLS
+
+_CHAPTER III._ LETTERS FROM HOME
+
+_CHAPTER IV._ THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
+
+_CHAPTER V._ A MINISTERING ANGEL
+
+_CHAPTER VI._ BETWEEN LONDON AND OXFORD
+
+_CHAPTER VII._ AT THE TOP OF THE FASHION
+
+_CHAPTER VIII._ SUPERIOR TO FASHION
+
+_CHAPTER IX._ IN A PURITAN HOUSE
+
+_CHAPTER X._ THE PRIEST'S HOLE
+
+_CHAPTER XL._ LIGHTER THAN VANITY
+
+_CHAPTER XII._ LADY FAREHAM'S DAY
+
+_CHAPTER XIII._ THE SAGE OF SAYES COURT
+
+_CHAPTER XIV._ THE MILLBANK GHOST
+
+_CHAPTER XV._ FALCON AND DOVE
+
+_CHAPTER XVI._ WHICH WAS THE FIERCER FIRE?
+
+_CHAPTER XVII._ THE MOTIVE--MURDER
+
+_CHAPTER XVIII._ REVELATIONS
+
+_CHAPTER XIX._ DIDO
+
+_CHAPTER XX._ PHILASTER
+
+_CHAPTER XXI._ GOOD-BYE, LONDON
+
+_CHAPTER XXII._ AT THE MANOR MOAT
+
+_CHAPTER XXIII._ PATIENT, NOT PASSIONATE
+
+_CHAPTER XXIV._ "QUITE OUT OF FASHION"
+
+_CHAPTER XXV._ HIGH STAKES
+
+_CHAPTER XXVI._ IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH
+
+_CHAPTER XXVII._ BRINGERS OF SUNSHINE
+
+_CHAPTER XXVIII._ IN A DEAD CALM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A HARBOUR FROM THE STORM.
+
+
+The wind howled across the level fields, and flying showers of sleet
+rattled against the old leathern coach as it drove through the thickening
+dusk. A bitter winter, this year of the Royal tragedy.
+
+A rainy summer, and a mild rainy autumn had been followed by the hardest
+frost this generation had ever known. The Thames was frozen over, and
+tempestuous winds had shaken the ships in the Pool, and the steep gable
+ends and tall chimney-stacks on London Bridge. A never-to-be-forgotten
+winter, which had witnessed the martyrdom of England's King, and the exile
+of her chief nobility, while a rabble Parliament rode roughshod over a
+cowed people. Gloom and sour visages prevailed, the maypoles were down, the
+play-houses were closed, the bear-gardens were empty, the cock-pits were
+desolate; and a saddened population, impoverished and depressed by the
+sacrifices that had been exacted and the tyranny that had been exercised
+in the name of Liberty, were ground under the iron heel of Cromwell's
+red-coats.
+
+The pitiless journey from London to Louvain, a journey of many days
+and nights, prolonged by accident and difficulty, had been spun out to
+uttermost tedium for those two in the heavily moving old leathern coach.
+Who and what were they, these wearied travellers, journeying together
+silently towards a destination which promised but little of pleasure or
+luxury by way of welcome--a destination which meant severance for those
+two?
+
+One was Sir John Kirkland, of the Manor Moat, Bucks, a notorious Malignant,
+a grey-bearded cavalier, aged by trouble and hard fighting; a soldier and
+servant who had sacrificed himself and his fortune for the King, and must
+needs begin the world anew now that his master was murdered, his own goods
+confiscated, the old family mansion, the house in which his parents died
+and his children were born, emptied of all its valuables, and left to the
+care of servants, and his master's son a wanderer in a foreign land, with
+little hope of ever winning back crown and sceptre.
+
+Sadness was the dominant expression of Sir John's stern, strongly marked
+countenance, as he sat staring out at the level landscape through the
+unglazed coach window, staring blankly across those wind-swept Flemish
+fields where the cattle were clustering in sheltered corners, a monotonous
+expanse, crossed by ice-bound dykes that looked black as ink, save where
+the last rays of the setting sun touched their iron hue with blood-red
+splashes. Pollard willows indicated the edge of one field, gaunt poplars
+marked the boundary of another, alike leafless and unbeautiful, standing
+darkly out against the dim grey sky. Night was hastening towards the
+travellers, narrowing and blotting out that level landscape, field, dyke,
+and leafless wood.
+
+Sir John put his head out of the coach window, and looked anxiously along
+the straight road, peering through the shades of evening in the hope of
+seeing the crocketed spires and fair cupolas of Louvain in the distance.
+But he could see nothing save a waste of level pastures and the gathering
+darkness. Not a light anywhere, not a sign of human habitation.
+
+Useless to gaze any longer into the impenetrable night. The traveller leant
+back into a corner of the carriage with folded arms, and, with a deep sigh,
+composed himself for slumber. He had slept but little for the last week.
+The passage from Harwich to Ostend in a fishing-smack had been a perilous
+transit, prolonged by adverse winds. Sleep had been impossible on board
+that wretched craft; and the land journey had been fraught with vexation
+and delays of all kinds--stupidity of postillions, dearth of horseflesh,
+badness of the roads--all things that can vex and hinder.
+
+Sir John's travelling companion, a small child in a cloak and hood, crept
+closer to him in the darkness, nestled up against his elbow, and pushed her
+little cold hand into his leathern glove.
+
+"You are crying again, father," she said, full of pity. "You were crying
+last night. Do you always cry when it grows dark?"
+
+"It does not become a man to shed tears in the daylight, little maid," her
+father answered gently.
+
+"Is it for the poor King you are crying--the King those wicked men
+murdered?"
+
+"Ay, Angela, for the King; and for the Queen and her fatherless children
+still more than for the King, for he has crowned himself with a crown of
+glory, the diadem of martyrs, and is resting from labour and sorrow, to
+rise victorious at the great day, when his enemies and his murderers shall
+stand ashamed before him. I weep for that once so lovely lady--widowed,
+discrowned, needy, desolate--a beggar in the land where her father was a
+great king. A hard fate, Angela, father and husband both murdered."
+
+"Was the Queen's father murdered too?" asked the silver-sweet voice out of
+darkness, a pretty piping note like the song of a bird.
+
+"Yes, love."
+
+"Did Bradshaw murder him?"
+
+"No, dearest, 'twas in France he was slain--in Paris; stabbed to death by a
+madman."
+
+"And was the Queen sorry?"
+
+"Ay, sweetheart, she has drained the cup of sorrow. She was but a child
+when her father died. She can but dimly remember that dreadful day. And now
+she sits, banished and widowed, to hear of her husband's martyrdom; her
+elder sons wanderers, her young daughter a prisoner."
+
+"Poor Queen!" piped the small sweet voice, "I am so sorry for her."
+
+Little had she ever known but sorrow, this child of the Great Rebellion,
+born in the old Buckinghamshire manor house, while her father was at
+Falmouth with the Prince--born in the midst of civil war, a stormy petrel,
+bringing no message of peace from those unknown skies whence she came, a
+harbinger of woe. Infant eyes love bright colours. This baby's eyes looked
+upon a house hung with black. Her mother died before the child was a
+fortnight old. They had christened her Angela. "Angel of Death," said the
+father, when the news of his loss reached him, after the lapse of many
+days. His fair young wife's coffin was in the family vault under the parish
+church of St. Nicholas in the Vale, before he knew that he had lost her.
+
+There was an elder daughter, Hyacinth, seven years the senior, who had been
+sent across the Channel in the care of an old servant at the beginning of
+the troubles between King and Parliament.
+
+She had been placed in the charge of her maternal grandmother, the Marquise
+de Montrond, who had taken ship for Calais when the Court left London,
+leaving her royal mistress to weather the storm. A lady who had wealth and
+prestige in her own country, who had been a famous beauty when Richelieu
+was in power, and who had been admired by that serious and sober monarch,
+Louis the Thirteenth, could scarcely be expected to put up with the shifts
+and shortcomings of an Oxford lodging-house, with the ever-present fear of
+finding herself in a town besieged by Lord Essex and the rebel army.
+
+With Madame de Montrond, Hyacinth had been reared, partly in a mediaeval
+mansion, with a portcullis and four squat towers, near the Château
+d'Arques, and partly in Paris, where the lady had a fine house in the
+Marais. The sisters had never looked upon each other's faces, Angela having
+entered upon the troubled scene after Hyacinth had been carried across the
+Channel to her grandmother. And now the father was racked with anxiety lest
+evil should befall that elder daughter in the war between Mazarin and the
+Parliament, which was reported to rage with increasing fury.
+
+Angela's awakening reason became conscious of a world where all was fear
+and sadness. The stories she heard in her childhood were stories of that
+fierce war which was reaching its disastrous close while she was in her
+cradle. She was told of the happy peaceful England of old, before darkness
+and confusion gathered over the land; before the hearts of the people were
+set against their King by a wicked and rebellious Parliament.
+
+She heard of battles lost by the King and his partisans; cities besieged
+and taken; a flash of victory followed by humiliating reverses; the King's
+party always at a disadvantage; and hence the falling away of the feeble
+and the false, the treachery of those who had seemed friends, the impotence
+of the faithful.
+
+Angela heard so often and so much of these things--from old Lady Kirkland,
+her grandmother, and from the grey-haired servants at the manor--that she
+grew to understand them with a comprehension seemingly far beyond her
+tender years. But a child so reared is inevitably older than her years.
+This little one had never known childish pleasures or play, childish
+companions or childish fancies.
+
+She roamed about the spacious gardens, full of saddest thoughts, burdened
+with all the cares that weighed down that kingly head yonder; or she stood
+before the pictured face of the monarch with clasped hands and tearful
+eyes, looking up at him with the adoring compassion of a child prone to
+hero-worship--thinking of him already as saint and martyr--whose martyrdom
+was not yet consummated in blood.
+
+King Charles had presented his faithful servant, Sir John Kirkland, with a
+half-length replica of one of his Vandyke portraits, a beautiful head, with
+a strange inward look--that look of isolation and aloofness which we who
+know his story take for a prophecy of doom--which the sculptor Bernini had
+remarked, when he modelled the royal head for marble. The picture hung in
+the place of honour in the long narrow gallery at the Manor Moat, with
+trophies of Flodden and Zutphen arranged against the blackened oak
+panelling above it. The Kirklands had been a race of soldiers since the
+days of Edward III. The house was full of war-like decorations--tattered
+colours, old armour, memorials of fighting Kirklands who had long been
+dust.
+
+There came an evil day when the rabble rout of Cromwell's crop-haired
+soldiery burst into the manor house to pillage and destroy, carrying off
+curios and relics that were the gradual accumulation of a century and a
+half of peaceful occupation.
+
+The old Dowager's grey hairs had barely saved her from outrage on that
+bitter day. It was only her utter helplessness and afflicted condition that
+prevailed upon the Parliamentary captain, and prevented him from carrying
+out his design, which was to haul her off to one of those London prisons at
+that time so gorged with Royalist captives that the devilish ingenuity of
+the Parliament had devised floating gaols on the Thames, where persons of
+quality and character were herded together below decks, to the loss of
+health, and even of life.
+
+Happily for old Lady Kirkland, she was too lame to walk, and her enemies
+had no horse or carriage in which to convey her; so she was left at peace
+in her son's plundered mansion, whence all that was valuable and easily
+portable was carried away by the Roundheads. Silver plate and family plate
+had been sacrificed to the King's necessities.
+
+The pictures, not being either portable or readily convertible into cash,
+had remained on the old panelled walls.
+
+Angela used to go from the King's picture to her father's. Sir John's was
+a more rugged face than the Stuart's, with a harder expression; but the
+child's heart went out to the image of the father she had never seen since
+the dawn of consciousness. He had made a hurried journey to that quiet
+Buckinghamshire valley soon after her birth--had looked at the baby in her
+cradle, and then had gone down into the vault where his young wife was
+lying, and had stayed for more than an hour in cold and darkness alone with
+his dead. That lovely French wife had been his junior by more than twenty
+years, and he had loved her passionately--had loved her and left her for
+duty's sake. No Kirkland had ever faltered in his fidelity to crown and
+king. This John Kirkland had sacrificed all things, and, alone with his
+beloved dead in the darkness of that narrow charnel house, it seemed to
+him that there was nothing left for him except to cleave to those fallen
+fortunes and patiently await the issue.
+
+He had fought in many battles and had escaped with a few scars; and he was
+carrying his daughter to Louvain, intending to place her in the charge of
+her great-aunt, Madame de Montrond's half sister, who was head of a convent
+in that city, a safe and pious shelter, where the child might be reared in
+her mother's faith.
+
+Lady Kirkland, the only daughter of the Marquise de Montrond, one of Queen
+Henrietta Maria's ladies-in-waiting, had been a papist, and, although Sir
+John had adhered steadfastly to the principles of the Reformed Church,
+he had promised his bride, and the Marquise, her mother, that if their
+nuptials were blessed with offspring, their children should be educated
+in the Roman faith--a promise difficult of performance in a land where a
+stormy tide ran high against Rome, and where Popery was a scarlet spectre
+that alarmed the ignorant and maddened the bigoted. And now, duly provided
+with a safe conduct from the regicide, Bradshaw, he was journeying to the
+city where he was to part with his daughter for an indefinite period. He
+had seen but little of her, and yet it seemed as hard to part thus as if
+she had prattled at his knees and nestled in his arms every day of her
+young life.
+
+At last across the distance, against the wind-driven clouds of that stormy
+winter sky, John Kirkland saw the lights of the city--not many lights or
+brilliant of their kind, but a glimmer here and there--and behind the
+glimmer the dark bulk of masonry, roofs, steeples, watch-towers, bridges.
+
+The carriage stopped at one of the gates of the city, and there were
+questions asked and answered, and papers shown, but there was no obstacle
+to the entrance of the travellers. The name of the Ursuline Convent acted
+like a charm, for Louvain was papist to the core in these days of Spanish
+dominion. It had been a city of refuge nearly a hundred years ago for all
+that was truest and bravest and noblest among English Roman Catholics, in
+the cruel days of Queen Elizabeth, and Englishmen had become the leading
+spirits of the University there, and had attracted the youth of Romanist
+England to the sober old Flemish town, before the establishment of Dr.
+Allan's rival seminary at Douai, Sir John could have found no safer haven
+for his little ewe lamb.
+
+The tired horses blundered heavily along the stony streets, and crossed
+more than one bridge. The town seemed pervaded by water, a deep narrow
+stream like a canal, on which the houses looked, as if in feeble mockery of
+Venice--houses with steep crow-step gables, some of them richly decorated;
+narrow windows for the most part dark, but with here and there the yellow
+light of lamp or candle.
+
+The convent faced a broad open square, and had a large walled garden in
+its rear. The coach stopped in front of a handsome doorway, and after the
+travellers had been scrutinised and interrogated by the portress through an
+opening in the door, they were admitted into a spacious hall, paved with
+black and white marble, and adorned with a statue of the Virgin Mother, and
+thence to a parlour dimly lighted by a small oil lamp, where they waited
+for about ten minutes, the little girl shivering with cold, before the
+Superior appeared.
+
+She was a tall woman, advanced in years, with a handsome, but melancholy
+countenance. She greeted the cavalier as a familiar friend.
+
+"Welcome to Flanders!" she said. "You have fled from that accursed country
+where our Church is despised and persecuted----"
+
+"Nay, reverend kinswoman, I have fled but to go back again as fast as
+horses and sails can carry me. While the fortunes of my King are at stake,
+my place is in England, or it may be in Scotland, where there are still
+those who are ready to fight to the death in the royal cause. But I have
+brought this little one for shelter and safe keeping, and tender usage,
+trusting in you who are of kin to her as I could trust no one else--and,
+furthermore, that she may be reared in the faith of her dead mother."
+
+"Sweet soul!" murmured the nun. "It was well for her to be taken from your
+troubled England to the kingdom of the saints and martyrs."
+
+"True, reverend mother; yet those blasphemous levellers who call us
+'Malignants' have dubbed themselves 'Saints.'"
+
+"Then affairs go no better with you in England, I fear, Sir John?"
+
+"Nay, madam, they go so ill that they have reached the lowest depth of
+infamy. Hell itself hath seen no spectacle more awful, no murder more
+barbarous, no horrider triumph of wickedness, than the crime which was
+perpetrated this day se'nnight at Whitehall."
+
+The nun looked at him wistfully, with clasped hands, as one who half
+apprehended his meaning.
+
+"The King!" she faltered, "still a prisoner?"
+
+"Ay, reverend lady, but a prisoner in Paradise, where angels are his
+guards, and saints and martyrs his companions. He has regained his crown;
+but it is the crown of martyrdom, the aureole of slaughtered saints.
+England, our little England that was once so great under the strong rule
+of that virgin-queen who made herself the arbiter of Christendom, and the
+wonder of the world----"
+
+The pious lady shivered and crossed herself at this praise of the heretic
+queen--praise that could only come from a heretic.
+
+"Our blessed and peaceful England has become a den of thieves, given over
+to the ravening wolves of rebellion and dissent, the penniless soldiery who
+would bring down all men's fortunes to their own level, seize all, eat and
+drink all, and trample crown and peerage in the mire. They have slain
+him, reverend mother, this impious herd--they gave him the mockery of a
+trial--just as his Master, Christ, was mocked. They spurned and spat upon
+him, even as our Redeemer was spurned; and then, on the Sabbath day, they
+cried aloud in their conventicles, 'Lord, hast Thou not smelt a sweet
+savour of blood?' Ay, these murderers gloried in their crime, bragged
+of their gory hands, lifted them up towards heaven as a token of
+righteousness!"
+
+The cavalier was pacing to and fro in the dimness of the convent parlour,
+with quick, agitated steps, his nostrils quivering, grizzled brows
+bent over angry eyes, his hand trembling with rage as it clutched his
+sword-hilt.
+
+The reverend mother drew Angela to her side, took off the little black silk
+hood, and laid her hand caressingly on the soft brown hair.
+
+"Was it Cromwell's work?" she asked.
+
+"Nay, reverend mother, I doubt whether of his own accord Cromwell would
+have done this thing. He is a villain, a damnable villain--but he is a
+glorious villain. The Parliament had made their covenant with the King at
+Newport--a bargain which gave them all, and left him nothing--save only his
+broken health, grey hairs, and the bare name of King. He would have been
+but a phantom of authority, powerless as the royal spectres Aeneas met in
+the under-world. They had got all from him--all save the betrayal of his
+friends. There he budged not, but was firm as rock."
+
+"'Twas likely he remembered Strafford, and that he prospered no better for
+having flung a faithful dog to the wolves," said the nun.
+
+"Remembered Strafford? Ay, that memory has been a pillow of thorns through
+many a sleepless night. No, it was not Cromwell who sought the King's
+blood--it has been shed with his sanction. The Parliament had got all, and
+would have been content; but the faction they had created was too strong
+for them. The levellers sent their spokesman--one Pride, an ex-drayman, now
+colonel of horse--to the door of the House of Commons, who arrested the
+more faithful and moderate members, imposed himself and his rebel crew
+upon the House, and hurried on that violation of constitutional law, that
+travesty of justice, which compelled an anointed King to stand before the
+lowest of his subjects--the jacks-in-office of a mutinous commonalty--to
+answer for having fought in defence of his own inviolable rights."
+
+"Did they dare condemn their King?"
+
+"Ah, madam, they found him guilty of high treason, in that he had taken
+arms against the Parliament. They sentenced their royal master to
+death--and seven days ago London saw the spectacle of judicial murder--a
+blameless King slain by the minion of an armed rabble!"
+
+"But did the people--the English people--suffer this in silence? The wisest
+and best of them could surely be assembled in your great city. Did the
+citizens of London stand placidly by to see this deed accomplished?"
+
+"They were like sheep before the shearer. They were dumb. Great God! can
+I ever forget that sea of white faces under the grey winter sky, or the
+universal groan that went up to heaven when the stroke of the axe sounded
+on the block, and men knew that the murder of their King was consummated;
+and when that anointed head with its grey hairs, whitened with sorrow, mark
+you, not with age, was lifted up, bloody, terrible, and proclaimed the head
+of a traitor? Ah, reverend mother, ten such moments will age a man by ten
+years. Was it not the most portentous tragedy which the earth has ever
+seen since He who was both God and Man died upon Calvary? Other judicial
+sacrifices have been, but never of a victim as guiltless and as noble. Had
+you but seen the calm beauty of his countenance as he turned it towards the
+people! Oh, my King, my master, my beloved friend, when shall I see that
+face in Paradise, with the blood washed from that royal brow, with the
+smile of the redeemed upon those lips!"
+
+He flung himself into a chair, covered his face with those weather-stained
+hands, which had broadened by much grasping of sword and pistol, pike and
+gun, and sobbed aloud, with a fierce passion that convulsed the strong
+muscular frame. Of all the King's servants this one had been the most
+steadfast, was marked in the black book of the Parliament as a notorious
+Malignant. From the raising of the standard on the castle-hill at
+Nottingham--in the sad evening of a tempestuous day, with but scanty
+attendance, and only evil presages--to the treaty at Newport, and the
+prison on the low Hampshire coast, this man had been his master's constant
+companion and friend; fighting in every battle, cleaving to King and Prince
+in spite of every opposing influence, carrying letters between father
+and son in the teeth of the enemy, humbling himself as a servant, and
+performing menial labours, in those latter days of bitterness and outrage,
+when all courtly surroundings were denied the fallen monarch.
+
+And now he mourned his martyred King more bitterly than he would have
+mourned his own brother.
+
+The little girl slipped from the reverend mother's lap, and ran across the
+room to her father.
+
+"Don't cry, father!" she murmured, with her own eyes streaming. "It hurts
+me to see you."
+
+"Nay, Angela," he answered, clasping her to his breast. "Forgive me that
+I think more of my dead King than of my living daughter. Poor child, thou
+hast seen nothing but sorrow since thou wert born; a land racked by civil
+war; Englishmen changed into devils; a home ravaged and made desolate;
+threatenings and curses; thy good grandmother's days shortened by sorrow
+and rough usage. Thou wert born into a house of mourning, and hast seen
+nothing but black since thou hadst eyes to notice the things around thee.
+Those tender ears should have heard only loving words. But it is over,
+dearest; and thou hast found a haven within these walls. You will take care
+of her, will you not, madam, for the sake of the niece you loved?"
+
+"She shall be the apple of my eye. No evil shall come near her that my care
+and my prayers can avert. God has been very gracious to our order--in all
+troublous times we have been protected. We have many pupils from the best
+families of Flanders--and some even from Paris, whence parents are glad to
+remove their children from the confusion of the time. You need fear nothing
+while this sweet child is with us; and if in years to come she should
+desire to enter our order----"
+
+"The Lord forbid!" cried the cavalier. "I want her to be a good and pious
+papist, madam, like her sweet mother; but never a nun. I look to her as the
+staff and comfort of my declining years. Thou wilt not abandon thy father,
+wilt thou, little one, when thou shalt be tall and strong as a bulrush, and
+he shall be bent and gnarled with age, like the old medlar on the lawn at
+the Manor? Thou wilt be his rod and staff, wilt thou not, sweetheart?"
+
+The child flung her arms round his neck and kissed him. It was her only
+answer, but that mute reply was a vow.
+
+"Thou wilt stay here till England's troubles are over, Angela, and that
+base herd yonder have been trampled down. Thou wilt be happy here, and wilt
+mind thy book, and be obedient to those good ladies who will teach thee;
+and some day, when our country is at peace, I will come back to fetch
+thee."
+
+"Soon," murmured the child, "soon, father?"
+
+"God grant it may be soon, my beloved! It is hard for father and children
+to be scattered, as we are scattered; thy sister Hyacinth in Paris, and
+thou in Flanders, and I in England. Yet it must needs be so for a while!"
+
+"Why should not Hyacinth come to us and be reared with Angela?" asked the
+reverend mother.
+
+"Nay, madam, Hyacinth is well cared for with your sister, Madame de
+Montrond. She is as dear to her maternal grandmother as this little one
+here was to my good mother, whose death last year left us a house of
+mourning. Hyacinth will doubtless inherit a considerable portion of Madame
+de Montrond's wealth, which is not insignificant. She is being brought up
+in the precincts of the Court."
+
+"A worldly and a dangerous school for one so young," said the nun, with a
+sigh. "I have heard my father talk of what life was like at the Louvre when
+the Béarnais reigned there in the flower of his manhood, newly master of
+Paris, flushed with hard-won victory, and but lately reconciled to the
+Church."
+
+"Methinks that great captain's court must have been laxer than that of
+Queen Anne and the Cardinal. I have been told that the child-king is being
+reared, as it were, in a cloister, so strict are mother and guardian. My
+only fear for Hyacinth is the troubled state of the city, given over to
+civil warfare only less virulent than that which has desolated England. I
+hear that the Fronde is no war of epigrams and pamphlets, but that men are
+as earnest and bloodthirsty as they were in the League. I shall go from
+here to Paris to see my first-born before I make my way back to London."
+
+"I question if you will find her at Paris," said the reverend mother. "I
+had news from a priest in the diocese of the Coadjutor. The Queen-mother
+left the city secretly with her chosen favourites in the dead of the night
+on the sixth of this month, after having kept the festival of Twelfth Night
+in a merry humour with her Court. Even her waiting-women knew nothing
+of her plans. They went to St. Germain, where they found the chateau
+unfurnished, and where all the Court had to sleep upon was a few loads of
+straw. Hatred of the Cardinal is growing fiercer every day, and Paris is
+in a state of siege. The Princes are siding with Mathieu Molé and his
+Parliament, and the Provincial Parliaments are taking up the quarrel. God
+grant that it may not be in France as it has been with you in your unhappy
+England; but I fear the Spanish Queen and her Italian minister scarce know
+the temper of the French people."
+
+"Alas, good friend, we have fallen upon evil days, and the spirit of revolt
+is everywhere; but if there is trouble at the French Court, there is all
+the more need that I should make my way thither, be it at St. Germain or
+at Paris, and so assure myself of my pretty Hyacinth's safety. She was so
+sweet an infant when my good and faithful steward carried her across the
+sea to Dieppe. Never shall I forget that sad moment of parting; when the
+baby arms were wreathed round my sweet saint's neck; she so soon to become
+again a mother, so brave and patient in her sorrow at parting with her
+first-born. Ah, sister, there are moments in this life that a man must
+needs remember, even amidst the wreck of his country." He dashed away a
+tear or two, and then turned to his kinswoman with outstretched hands and
+said, "Good night, dear and reverend mother; good night and good-bye. I
+shall sleep at the nearest inn, and shall be on the road again at daybreak.
+Good-bye, my soul's delight"
+
+He clasped his daughter in his arms, with something of despair in the
+fervour of his embrace, telling himself, as the soft cheek was pressed
+against his own, how many years might pass ere he would again so clasp that
+tender form and feel those innocent kisses on his bearded lips. She and
+the elder girl were all that were left to him of love and comfort, and the
+elder sister had been taken from him while she was a little child. He would
+not have known her had he met her unawares; nor had he ever felt for her
+such a pathetic love as for this guiltless death-angel, this baby whose
+coming had ruined his life, whose love was nevertheless the only drop of
+sweetness in his cup.
+
+He plucked himself from that gentle embrace, and walked quickly to the
+door.
+
+"You will apply to me for whatever money is needed for the child's
+maintenance and education," he said, and in the next moment was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WITHIN CONVENT WALLS.
+
+
+More than ten years had come and gone since that bleak February evening
+when Sir John Kirkland carried his little daughter to a place of safety, in
+the old city of Louvain, and in all those years the child had grown like
+a flower in a sheltered garden, where cold winds never come. The bud had
+matured into the blossom in that mild atmosphere of piety and peace; and
+now, in this fair springtide of 1660, a girlish face watched from the
+convent casement for the coming of the father whom Angela Kirkland had not
+looked upon since she was a child, and the sister she had never seen.
+
+They were to arrive to-day, father and sister, on a brief visit to the
+quiet Flemish city. Yonder in England there had been curious changes since
+the stern Protector turned his rugged face to the wall, and laid down that
+golden sceptre with which he had ruled as with a rod of iron. Kingly title
+would he none; yet where kings had chastised with whips, he had chastised
+with scorpions. Ireland could tell how the little finger of Cromwell had
+been heavier than the arm of the Stuarts. She had trembled and had obeyed,
+and had prospered under that scorpion rule, and England's armaments had
+been the terror of every sea while Cromwell stood at the helm; but now that
+strong brain and bold heart were in the dust, and it had taken England
+little more than a year to discover that Puritanism and the Rump were a
+mistake, and that to the core of her heart she was loyal to her hereditary
+King.
+
+She asked not what manner of man this hereditary ruler might be; asked not
+whether he were wise or foolish, faithful or treacherous. She forgot all
+of tyranny and of double-dealing she had suffered from his forbears. She
+forgot even her terror of the scarlet spectre, the grim wolf of Rome, in
+her disgust at Puritan fervour which had torn down altar-rails, usurped
+church pulpits, destroyed the beauty of ancient cathedrals. Like a woman
+or a child, she held out her arms to the unknown, in a natural recoil
+from that iron rule which had extinguished her gaiety, silenced her noble
+liturgy, made innocent pleasures and elegant arts things forbidden. She
+wanted her churches, and her theatres, her cock-pits and taverns, and
+bear-gardens and maypoles back again. She wanted to be ruled by the law,
+and not by the sword; and she longed with a romantic longing for that young
+wanderer who had fled from her shores in a fishing-boat, with his life in
+his hand, to return in a glad procession of great ships dancing over summer
+seas, eating, drinking, gaming, in a coat worth scarce thirty shillings,
+and with empty pockets for his loyal subjects to make haste and fill.
+
+Angela had the convent parlour all to herself this fair spring morning. She
+was the favourite pupil of the nuns, had taken no vows, pledged herself to
+no noviciate, ever mindful of her promise to her father. She had lived as
+happily and as merrily in that abode of piety as she could have lived in
+the finest palace in Europe. There were other maidens, daughters of the
+French and Flemish nobility, who were taught and reared within those sombre
+precincts, and with them she had played and worked and laboured at such
+studies as became a young lady of quality. Like that fair daughter of
+affliction, Henrietta of England, she had gained in education by the
+troubles which had made her girlhood a time of seclusion. She had been
+first the plaything of those elder girls who were finishing their education
+in the convent, her childishness appealing to their love and pity; and
+then, after being the plaything of the nuns and the elder pupils, she
+became the favourite of her contemporaries, and in a manner their queen.
+She was more thoughtful than her class-fellows, in advance of her years
+in piety and intelligence; and they, knowing her sad story--how she was
+severed from her country and kindred, her father a wanderer with his King,
+her sister bred up at a foreign Court--had first compassionated and then
+admired her. From her twelfth year upwards her intellectual superiority had
+been recognised in the convent, alike by the nuns and their pupils. Her
+aptitude at all learning, and her simple but profound piety, had impressed
+everybody. At fourteen years of age they had christened her "the little
+wonder;" but later, seeing that their praises embarrassed and even
+distressed her, they had desisted from such loving flatteries, and were
+content to worship her with a silent adulation.
+
+Her father's visits to the Flemish city had been few and far apart, fondly
+though he loved his motherless girl. He had been a wanderer for the most
+part during those years, tossed upon troubled seas, fighting with Condé
+against Mazarin and Anne of Austria, and reconciled with the Court later,
+when peace was made, and his friends the Princes were forgiven; an exile
+from France of his own free will when Louis banished his first cousin, the
+King of England, in order to truckle to the triumphant usurper. He had led
+an adventurous life, and had cared very little what became of him in a
+topsy-turvy world. But now all things were changed. Richard Cromwell's
+brief and irresolute rule had shattered the Commonwealth, and made
+Englishmen eager for a king. The country was already tired of him whose
+succession had been admitted with blank acquiescence; and Monk and the
+army were soon to become masters of the situation. There was hope that the
+General was rightly affected, and that the King would have his own again;
+and that such of his followers as had not compounded with the Parliamentary
+Commission would get back their confiscated estates; and that all who had
+suffered in person or pocket for loyalty's sake would be recompensed for
+their sacrifices.
+
+It was five years since Sir John's last appearance at the convent, and
+Angela's heart beat fast at the thought that he was so near. She was to see
+him this very day; nay, perhaps this very hour. His coach might have passed
+the gate of the town already. He was bringing his elder daughter with him,
+that sister whose face she had never seen, save in a miniature, and who
+was now a great lady, the wife of Baron Fareham, of Chilton Abbey, Oxon,
+Fareham Park, in the County of Hants, and Fareham House, London, a nobleman
+whose estates had come through the ordeal of the Parliamentary Commission
+with a reasonable fine, and to whom extra favour had been shown by the
+Commissioners, because he was known to be at heart a Republican. In the
+mean time, Lady Fareham had a liberal income allowed her by the Marquise,
+her grandmother, and she and her husband had been among the most splendid
+foreigners at the French Court, where the lady's beauty and wit had placed
+her conspicuously in that galaxy of brilliant women who shone and sparkled
+about the sun of the European firmament--Le roi soleil, or "the King," par
+excellence, who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a
+time of pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed
+blood ran like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife,
+stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in the
+siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, had reached the
+Flemish convent long after the acts recorded had been forgotten at Paris
+and St. Germain.
+
+Angela's heart beat fast at the thought of being restored to these dear
+ones, were it only for a short span. They were not going to carry her away
+from the convent; and, indeed, seeing that she so loved her aunt, the good
+reverend mother, and that her heart cleaved to those walls and to the holy
+exercises which filled so great a part of her life, her father, in replying
+to a letter in which she had besought him to release her from her promise
+and allow her to dedicate herself to God, had told her that, although he
+could not surrender his daughter, to whom he looked for the comfort of his
+closing years, he would not urge her to leave the Ursulines until he should
+feel himself old and feeble, and in need of her tender care. Meanwhile she
+might be a nun in all but the vows, and a dutiful niece to her kind aunt,
+Mother Anastasia, whose advanced years and failing health needed all
+consideration.
+
+But now, before he went back to England, whither he hoped to accompany the
+King and the Princes ere the year was much older, Sir John Kirkland was
+coming to visit his younger daughter, bringing Lady Fareham, whose husband
+was now in attendance upon His Majesty in Holland, where there were serious
+negotiations on hand--negotiations which would have been full of peril to
+the English messengers two years ago, when that excellent preacher and holy
+man, Dr. Hewer, of St. Gregory, was beheaded for having intelligence with
+the King, through the Marquess of Ormond.
+
+The parlour window jutted into the square over against the town hall, and
+Angela could see the whole length of the narrow street along which her
+father's carriage must come.
+
+The tall, slim figure and the fair, girlish face stood out in full relief
+against the grey stone mullion, bathed in sunlight. The graceful form was
+undisguised by courtly apparel. The soft brown hair fell in loose ringlets,
+which were drawn back from the brow by a band of black ribbon. The girl's
+gown was of soft grey woollen stuff, relieved by a cambric collar covering
+the shoulders, and by cambric elbow-sleeves. A coral and silver rosary was
+her only ornament; but face and form needed no aid from satins or velvets,
+Venetian lace or Indian filagree.
+
+The sweet, serious face was chiefly notable for eyes of darkest grey, under
+brows that were firmly arched and almost black. The hair was a dark brown,
+the complexion somewhat too pale for beauty. Indeed, that low-toned
+colouring made some people blind to the fine and regular modelling of the
+high-bred face; while there were others who saw no charm in a countenance
+which seemed too thoughtful for early youth, and therefore lacking in one
+of youth's chief attractions--gladness.
+
+The face lighted suddenly at this moment, as four great grey Flanders
+horses came clattering along the narrow street and into the square,
+dragging a heavy painted wooden coach after them. The girl opened the
+casement and craned out her neck to look at the arrival The coach stopped
+at the convent door, and a footman alighted and rang the convent bell, to
+the interested curiosity of two or three loungers upon the steps of the
+town hall over the way.
+
+Yes, it was her father, greyer but less sad of visage than at his last
+visit. His doublet and cloak were handsomer than the clothes he had worn
+then, though they were still of the same fashion, that English mode which
+he had affected before the beginning of the troubles, and which he had
+never changed.
+
+Immediately after him there alighted a vision of beauty, the loveliest of
+ladies, in sky-blue velvet and pale grey fur, and with a long white feather
+encircling a sky-blue hat, and a collar of Venetian lace veiling a bosom
+that scintillated with jewels.
+
+"Hyacinth!" cried Angela, in a flutter of delight.
+
+The portress peered at the visitors through her spy-hole, and being
+satisfied that they were the expected guests, speedily opened the
+iron-clamped door.
+
+There was no one to interfere between father and daughter, sister and
+sister, in the convent parlour. Angela had her dear people all to herself,
+the Mother Superior respecting the confidences and outpourings of love,
+which neither father nor children would wish to be witnessed even by a
+kinswoman. Thus, by a rare breach of conventual discipline, Angela was
+allowed to receive her guests alone.
+
+The lay-sister opened the parlour door and ushered in the visitors, and
+Angela ran to meet her father, and fell sobbing upon his breast, her face
+hidden against his velvet doublet, her arms clasping his neck.
+
+"What, mistress, hast thou so watery a welcome, now that the clouds have
+passed away, and every loyal English heart is joyful?" cried Sir John, in a
+voice that was somewhat husky, but with a great show of gaiety.
+
+"Oh, sir, I have waited so long, so long for this day. Sometimes I thought
+it would never come, that I should never see my dear father again."
+
+"Poor child! it would have been only my desert hadst thou forgotten me
+altogether. I might have come to you sooner, pretty one; indeed, I would
+have come, only things went ill with me. I was down-hearted and hopeless
+of any good fortune in a world that seemed given over to psalm-singing
+scoundrels; and till the tide turned I had no heart to come nigh you. But
+now fortunes are mended, the King's and mine, and you have a father once
+again, and shall have a home by-and-by, the house where you were born, and
+where your angel-mother made my life blessed. You are like her, Angela!"
+holding back the pale face in his strong hands, and gazing upon it
+earnestly. "Yes, you favour your mother; but your face is over sad for your
+years. Look at your sister here! Would you not say a sunbeam had taken
+woman's shape and come dancing into the room?"
+
+Angela looked round and greeted the lady, who had stood aside while father
+and daughter met. Yes, such a face suggested sunlight and summer, birds,
+butterflies, all things buoyant and gladsome. A complexion of dazzling
+fairness, pearly, transparent, with ever-varying carnations; eyes of
+heavenliest blue, liquid, laughing, brimming with espiéglerie; a slim
+little nose with an upward tilt, which expressed a contemptuous gaiety, an
+inquiring curiosity; a dimpled chin sloping a little towards the full round
+throat; the bust and shoulders of a Venus, the waist of a sylph, set off by
+the close-fitting velvet bodice, with its diamond and turquoise buttons;
+hair of palest gold, fluffed out into curls that were traps for sunbeams;
+hands and arms of a milky whiteness emerging from the large loose
+elbow-sleeves--a radiant apparition which took Angela by surprise. She had
+seen Flemish vraus in the richest attire, and among them there had been
+women as handsome as Helena Forment; but this vision of a fine lady from
+the court of the "roi soleil" was a revelation. Until this moment, the girl
+had hardly known what grace and beauty meant.
+
+"Come and let me hug you, my dearest Puritan," cried Hyacinth, holding out
+her arms. "Why do you suffer your custodians to clothe you in that odious
+grey, which puts me in mind of lank-haired psalm-singing scum, and all
+their hateful works? I would have you sparkling in white satin and silver,
+or blushing in brocade powdered with forget-me-nots and rosebuds. What
+would Fareham say if I told him I had a Puritan in grey woollen stuff for
+my sister? He sends you his love, dear, and bids me tell you there shall be
+always an honoured place in our home for you, be it in England or France,
+in town or country. And why should you not fill that place at once, sister?
+Your education is finished, and to be sure you must be tired of these stone
+walls and this sleepy town."
+
+"No, Hyacinth, I love the convent and the friends who have made it my home.
+You and Lord Fareham are very kind, but I could not leave our reverend
+mother; she is not so well or so strong as she used to be, and I think she
+likes to have me with her, because though she loves us all, down to the
+humblest of the lay-sisters, I am of her kin, and seem nearest to her. I
+don't want to forsake her; and if it was not against my father's wish I
+should like to end my days in this house, and to give my thoughts to God."
+
+"That is because thou knowest nought of the world outside, sweetheart,"
+protested Hyacinth. "I admire the readiness with which folks will renounce
+a banquet they have never tasted. A single day at the Louvre or the Palais
+Royal would change your inclinations at once and for ever."
+
+"She is too young for a court life, or a town life either," said Sir John.
+"And I have no mind to remove her from this safe shelter till the King
+shall be firm upon his throne, and our poor country shall have settled into
+a stable and peaceful condition. But there must be no vows, Angela, no
+renunciation of kindred and home. I look to thee for the comfort of my old
+age!"
+
+"Dear father, I will never disobey you. I shall remember always that my
+first duty is to you; and when you want me, you have but to summon me; and
+whether you are at home or abroad, in wealth and honour, or in exile and
+poverty, I will go to you, and be glad and happy to be your daughter and
+your servant."
+
+"I knew thou wouldst, dearest. I have never forgotten how the soft little
+arms clung about my neck, and how the baby lips kissed me, in this same
+parlour, when my heart was weighed down by a load of iron, and there seemed
+no ray of hope for England or me. You were my comforter then, and you will
+be my comforter in the days to come. Hyacinth here is of the butterfly
+breed. She is fair to look upon, and tender and loving; but she is ever on
+the wing. And she has her husband and her children to cherish, and cannot
+be burdened with the care of a broken-down greybeard."
+
+"Broken-down! Why, you are as brave a gallant as the youngest cavalier in
+the King's service," cried Hyacinth. "I would pit my father against Montagu
+or Buckingham, Buckhurst or Roscommon--against the gayest, the boldest of
+them all, on land or sea. Broken-down, forsooth! We will hear no such words
+from you, sir, for a score of years. And now you will want all your wits to
+take your proper place at Court as sage counsellor and friend of the
+new King. Sure he will need his father's friends about him to teach
+him state-craft--he who has led such a gay, good-for-nothing life as a
+penniless rover, with scarce a sound coat to his back."
+
+"Nay, Hyacinth, the King will have no need of us old Malignants. We have
+had our day. He has shrewd Ned Hyde for counsellor, and in that one long
+head there is craft enough to govern a kingdom. The new Court will be a
+young Court, and the fashion of it will be new. We old fellows, who were
+gallant and gay enough in the forties, when we fought against Essex and his
+tawny scarves, would be but laughable figures at the Court of a young man
+bred half in Paris, and steeped in French fashions and French follies. No,
+Hyacinth, it is for you and your husband the new day dawns. If I get back
+to my old meads and woods and the house where I was born, I will sit
+quietly down in the chimney corner, and take to cattle-breeding, and a pack
+of harriers, for the diversion of my declining years. And when my Angela
+can make up her mind to leave her good aunt she shall keep house for me."
+
+"I should love to be your housekeeper, dearest father. If it please Heaven
+to restore my aunt to health and strength, I will go to you with a heart
+full of joy," said the girl, hanging caressingly upon the old cavalier's
+shoulder.
+
+Hyacinth flitted about the room with a swift, birdlike motion, looking at
+the sacred images and prints, the _tableau_ over the mantelpiece, which
+told, with much flourish of penmanship, the progress of the convent pupils
+in learning and domestic virtues.
+
+"What a humdrum, dismal room!" she cried. "You should see our convent
+parlours in Paris. At the Carmelites, in the Rue Saint Jacques, _par
+exemple_, the Queen-mother's favourite convent, and at Chaillot, the house
+founded by Queen Henrietta--such pictures, and ornaments, and embroidered
+hangings, and tapestries worked by devotees. This room of yours, sister,
+stinks of poverty, as your Flemish streets stink of garlic and cabbage.
+Faugh! I know not which is worse!"
+
+Having thus delivered herself of her disgust, she darted upon her younger
+sister, laid her hands upon the girl's shoulders, and contemplated her with
+mock seriousness.
+
+"What a precocious young saint thou art, with no more interest in the world
+outside this naked parlour than if thou wert yonder image of the Holy
+Mother. Not a question of my husband, or my children, or of the last
+fashion in hood and mantle, or of the new laced gloves, or the French
+King's latest divinity."
+
+"I should dearly like to see your children, Hyacinth," answered her sister.
+
+"Ah! they are the most enchanting creatures, the girl a perpetual sunbeam,
+ethereal, elfish, a being of life and movement, and with a loquacity that
+never tires; the boy a lump of honey, fat, sleek, lazily beautiful. I am
+never tired of admiring them, when I have time to see them. Papillon--an
+old friend of mine has surnamed her Papillon because she is never
+still--was five years old on March 19. We were at St. Germain on her
+birthday. You should have seen the toys and trinkets and sweetmeats which
+the Court showered upon her--the King and Queen, Monsieur, Mademoiselle,
+the Princess Henrietta, her godmother--everybody had a gift for the
+daughter of La folle Baronne Fareham. Yes, they are lovely creatures,
+Angela; and I am miserable to think that it may be half a year before I see
+their sweet faces again."
+
+"Why so long, sister?"
+
+"Because they are at the Château de Montrond, grandmother's place near
+Dieppe, and because Fareham and I are going hence to Breda to meet the
+King, our own King Charles, and help lead him home in triumph. In London
+the mob are shouting, roaring, singing, for their King; and Montagu's fleet
+lies in the Downs, waiting but the signal from Parliament to cross to
+Holland. He who left his country in a scurvy fishing-boat will go back
+to England in a mighty man-of-war, the _Naseby_--mark you, the
+_Naseby_--christened by that Usurper, in insolent remembrance of a rebel
+victory; but Charles will doubtless change that hated name. He must not be
+put in mind of a fight where rebels had the better of loyal gentlemen. He
+will sail home over those dancing seas, with a fleet of great white-winged
+ships circling round him like a flight of silvery doves. Oh, what a turn of
+fortune's wheel! I am wild with rapture at the thought of it!"
+
+"You love England better than France, though you must be almost a stranger
+there," said Angela, wonderingly, looking at a miniature which her sister
+wore in a bracelet.
+
+"Nay, love, 'tis in Paris I am an insignificant alien, though they are ever
+so kind and flattering to me. At St Germain I was only Madame de Montrond's
+grand-daughter--the wife of a somewhat morose gentleman who was cleverer
+at winning battles than at gaining hearts. At Whitehall I shall be Lady
+Fareham, and shall enjoy my full consequence as the wife of an English
+nobleman of ancient lineage and fine estate, for, I am happy to tell you,
+his lordship's property suffered less than most people's in the rebellion,
+and anything his father lost when he fought for the good cause will be
+given back to the son now the good cause is triumphant, with additions,
+perhaps--an earl's coronet instead of a baron's beggarly pearls. I should
+like Papillon to be Lady Henrietta."
+
+"And you will send for your children, doubtless, when you are sure all is
+safe in England?" said Angela, still contemplating the portrait in the
+bracelet, which her sister had unclasped while she talked. "This is
+Papillon, I know. What a sweet, kind, mischievous face!"
+
+"Mischievous as a Barbary ape--kind, and sweet as the west wind," said Sir
+John.
+
+"And your boy?" asked Angela, reclasping the bracelet on the fair, round
+arm, having looked her fill at the mutinous eyes, the brown, crisply
+curling hair, dainty, pointed chin, and dimpled cheeks. "Have you his
+picture, too?"
+
+"Not his; but I wear his father's likeness somewhere betwixt buckram and
+Flanders lace," answered Hyacinth, gaily, pulling a locket from amidst the
+splendours of her corsage. "I call it next my heart; but there is a stout
+fortification of whalebone between heart and picture. You have gloated
+enough on the daughter's impertinent visage. Look now at the father, whom
+she resembles in little, as a kitten resembles a tiger."
+
+She handed her sister an oval locket, bordered with diamonds, and held by a
+slender Indian chain; and Angela saw the face of the brother-in-law whose
+kindness and hospitality had been so freely promised to her.
+
+She explored the countenance long and earnestly.
+
+"Well, do you think I chose him for his beauty?" asked Hyacinth. "You have
+devoured every lineament with that serious gaze of yours, as if you were
+trying to read the spirit behind that mask of flesh. Do you think him
+handsome?"
+
+Angela faltered: but was unskilled in flattery, and could not reply with a
+compliment.
+
+"No, sister; surely none have ever called this countenance handsome; but it
+is a face to set one thinking."
+
+"Ay, child, and he who owns the face is a man to set one thinking. He has
+made me think many a time when I would have travelled a day's journey to
+escape the thoughts he forced upon me. He was not made to bask in the
+sunshine of life. He is a stormy petrel. It was for his ugliness I chose
+him. Those dark stern features, that imperious mouth, and a brow like the
+Olympian Jove. He scared me into loving him. I sheltered myself upon his
+breast from the thunder of his brow, the lightning of his eye."
+
+"He has a look of his cousin Wentworth," said Sir John. "I never see him
+but I think of that murdered man--my father's friend and mine--whom I have
+never ceased to mourn."
+
+"Yet their kin is of the most distant," said Hyacinth. "It is strange that
+there should be any likeness."
+
+"Faces appear and reappear in families," answered her father. "You may
+observe that curiously recurring likeness in any picture-gallery, if the
+family portraits cover a century or two. Louis has little in common with
+his grandfather; but two hundred years hence there may be a prince of the
+royal house whose every feature shall recall Henry the Great"
+
+The portrait was returned to its hiding-place, under perfumed lace and
+cobweb lawn, and the reverend mother entered the parlour, ready for
+conversation, and eager to hear the history of the last six weeks, of
+the collapse of that military despotism which had convulsed England and
+dominated Europe, and was now melting into thin air as ghosts dissolve at
+cock-crow, of the secret negotiations between Monk and Grenville, now known
+to everybody; of the King's gracious amnesty and promise of universal
+pardon, save for some score or so of conspicuous villains, whose hands were
+dyed with the Royal Martyr's blood.
+
+She was full of questioning: and, above all, eager to know whether it was
+true that King Charles was at heart as staunch a papist as his brother the
+Duke of York was believed to be, though even the Duke lacked the courage to
+bear witness to the true faith.
+
+Two lay-sisters brought in a repast of cakes and syrups and light wines,
+such delicate and dainty food as the pious ladies of the convent were
+especially skilled in preparing, and which they deemed all-sufficient for
+the entertainment of company; even when one of their guests was a rugged
+soldier like Sir John Kirkland. When the light collation had been tasted
+and praised, the coach came to the door again, and swallowed up the
+beautiful lady and the old cavalier, who vanished from Angela's sight in a
+cloud of dust, waving hands from the coach window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+LETTERS FROM HOME.
+
+
+The quiet days went by, and grew into years, and time was only marked by
+the gradual failure of the reverend mother's health; so gradual, so gentle
+a decay, that it was only when looking back on St. Sylvester's Eve that her
+great-niece became aware how much of strength and activity had been lost
+since the Superior knelt in her place near the altar, listening to the
+solemn music of the midnight Mass that sanctified the passing of the year.
+This year the reverend mother was led to her seat between two nuns, who
+sustained her feeble limbs. This year the meek knees, which had worn the
+marble floor in long hours of prayer during eighty pious years, could no
+longer bend. The meek head was bowed, the bloodless hands were lifted up in
+supplication, but the fingers were wasted and stiffened, and there was pain
+in every movement of the joints.
+
+There was no actual malady, only the slow death in life called old age. All
+the patient needed was rest and tender nursing. This last her great-niece
+supplied, together with the gentlest companionship. No highly trained
+nurse, the product of modern science, could have been more efficient than
+the instinct of affection had made Angela. And then the patient's temper
+was so amiable, her mind, undimmed after eighty-three years of life, was a
+mirror of God. She thought of her fellow-creatures with a Divine charity;
+she worshipped her Creator with an implicit faith. For her in many a waking
+vision the heavens opened and the spirits of departed saints descended from
+their abode in bliss to hold converse with her. Eighty years of her life
+had been given to religious exercises and charitable deeds. Motherless
+before she could speak, she had entered the convent as a pupil at three
+years of age, and had taken the veil at seventeen. Her father had married a
+great heiress, whose only child, a daughter, was allowed to absorb all
+the small stock of parental affection; and there was no one to dispute
+Anastasia's desire for the cloister. All she knew of the world outside
+those walls was from hearsay. A rare visit from her lovely half-sister, the
+Marquise de Montrond, had astonished her with the sight of a distinguished
+Parisienne, and left her wondering. She had never read a secular book. She
+knew not the meaning of the word pleasure, save in the mild amusements
+permitted to the convent children--till they left the convent as young
+women--on the evening of a saint's day; a stately dance of curtsyings and
+waving arms; a little childish play, dramatising some incident in the
+lives of the saints. So she lived her eighty years of obedience and quiet
+usefulness, learning and teaching, serving and governing. She had lived
+through the Thirty Years' War, through the devastations of Wallenstein, the
+cruelties of Bavarian Tilly, the judicial murder of Egmont and Horn. She
+had heard of villages burnt, populations put to the sword, women and
+children killed by thousands. She had conversed with those who remembered
+the League; she had seen the nuns weeping for Edward Campion's cruel fate;
+she had heard Masses sung for the soul of murdered Mary Stuart. She
+had heard of Raleigh's visions of conquest and of gold, setting his
+prison-blanched face towards the West, in the afternoon of life, to
+encounter bereavement, treachery, sickening failure, and go back to his
+native England to expiate the dreams of genius with the blood of a martyr.
+And through all the changes and chances of that eventful century she had
+lived apart, full of pity and wonder, in a charmed circle of piety and
+love.
+
+Her room, in these peaceful stages of the closing scene, was a haven of
+rest. Angela loved the seclusion of the panelled chamber, with its heavily
+mullioned casement facing the south-west, and the polished oak floor,
+on which the red and gold of the sunset were mirrored, as on the dark
+stillness of a moorland tarn. For her every object in the room had its
+interest or its charm. The associations of childhood hallowed them all. The
+large ivory crucifix, yellow with age, dim with the kisses of adoring lips;
+the delf statuettes of Mary and Joseph, flaming with gaudy colour; the
+figure of the Saviour and St. John the Baptist, delicately carved out of
+boxwood, in a group representing the baptism in the river Jordan, the holy
+dove trembling on a wire over the Divine head; the books, the pictures, the
+rosaries: all these she had gazed at reverently when all things were new,
+and the convent passages places of shuddering, and the service of the Mass
+an unintelligible mystery. She had grown up within those solemn walls; and
+now, seeing her kinswoman's life gently ebbing away, she could but wonder
+what she would have to do in this world when another took the Superior's
+place, and the tie that bound her to Louvain would be broken.
+
+The lady who would in all probability succeed Mother Anastasia as Superior
+was a clever, domineering woman, whom Angela loved least of all the nuns--a
+widow of good birth and fortune, and a thorough Fleming; stolid, bigoted,
+prejudiced, and taking much credit to herself for the wealth she had
+brought to the convent, apt to talk of the class-room and the chapel her
+money had helped to build and restore as "my class-room," or "my chapel."
+
+No; Angela had no desire to remain in the convent when her dear kinswoman
+should have vanished from the scene her presence sanctified. The house
+would be haunted with sorrowful memories. It would be time for her to claim
+that home which her father had talked of sharing with her in his old age.
+She could just faintly remember the house in which she was born--the moat,
+the fish-pond, the thick walls of yew, the peacocks and lions cut in box,
+of which the gardener who clipped them was so proud. Faintly, faintly, the
+picture of the old house came back to her; built of grey stone, and stained
+with moss, grave and substantial, occupying three sides of a quadrangle, a
+house of many windows, few of which were intended to open, a house of dark
+passages, like these in the convent, and flights of shallow steps, and
+curious turns and twistings here and there. There were living birds that
+sunned their spreading tails and stalked in slow stateliness on the turf
+terraces, as well as those peacocks clipped out of yew. The house lay in
+a Buckinghamshire valley, shut round and sheltered by hills and coppices,
+where there was an abundance of game. Angela had seen the low, cavern-like
+larder hung with pheasants and hares.
+
+Her heart yearned towards the old house, so distinctly pictured by memory,
+though perchance with some differences from the actual scene. The mansion
+would seem smaller to her, doubtless, beholding it with the eyes of
+womanhood, than childish memory made it. But to live there with her father,
+to wait upon him and tend him, to have Hyacinth's children there, playing
+in the gardens as she had played, would be as happy a life as her fancy
+could compass.
+
+All that she knew of the march of events during those tranquil years in
+the convent came to her in letters from her sister, who was a vivacious
+letter-writer, and prided herself upon her epistolary talent--as indeed
+upon her general superiority, from a literary standpoint, to the women of
+her day.
+
+It was a pleasure to Lady Fareham in some rare interval of solitude--when
+the weather was too severe for her to venture outside the hall door, even
+in her comfortable coach, and when by some curious concatenation she
+happened to be without visitors--to open her portfolio and prattle with
+her pen to her sister, as she would have prattled with her tongue to the
+visitors whom snow or tempest kept away. Her letters written from London
+were apt to be rare and brief, Angela noted; but from his lordship's
+mansion near Oxford, or at the Grange between Fareham and Winchester--once
+the property of the brothers of St. Cross--she always sent a budget. Few
+of these lengthy epistles contained anything bearing upon Angela's own
+existence--except the oft-repeated entreaty that she would make haste and
+join them--or even the flippant suggestion that Mother Anastasia should
+make haste and die. They were of the nature of news-letters; but the news
+was tinctured by the feminine medium through which it came, and there was
+a flavour of egotism in almost every page. Lady Fareham wrote as only a
+pretty woman, courted, flattered, and indulged by everybody about her, ever
+since she could remember, could be forgiven for writing. People had petted
+her and worshipped her with such uniform subservience that she had grown to
+thirty years of age without knowing that she was selfish, accepting homage
+and submission as a law of the universe, as kings and princes do.
+
+Only in one of those letters was there that which might be called a
+momentous fact, but which Angela took as easily as if it had been a mere
+detail, to be dismissed from her thoughts when the letter had been laid
+aside.
+
+It was a letter with a black seal, announcing the death of the Marquise de
+Montrond, who had expired of an apoplexy at her house in the Marais, after
+a supper party at which Mademoiselle, Madame de Longueville, Madame de
+Montausier, the Duchesse de Bouillon, Lauzun, St. Evremond, cheery little
+Godeau, Bishop of Vence, and half a dozen other famous wits had been
+present, a supper bristling with royal personages. Death had come with
+appalling suddenness while the lamps of the festival were burning, and the
+cards were still upon the tables, and the last carriage had but just rolled
+under the _porte cochère_.
+
+"It is the manner of death she would have chosen," wrote Hyacinth. "She
+never missed confession on the first Sunday of the month; and she was so
+generous to the Church and to the poor that her director declared she would
+have been too saintly for earth, but for the human weakness of liking fine
+company. And now, dearest, I have to tell you how she has disposed of her
+fortune; and I hope, if you should think she has not used you generously,
+you will do me the justice to believe that I have neither courted her for
+her wealth nor influenced her to my dear sister's disadvantage. You will
+consider, _très chère_, that I was with her from my eighth year until the
+other day when Fareham brought me to England. She loved me passionately in
+my childhood, and has often told me since that she never felt towards me
+as a grandmother, but as if she had been actually my mother, being indeed
+still a young woman when she adopted me, and by strangers always mistaken
+for my mother. She was handsome to the last, and young in mind and in
+habits long after youth had left her. I was said to be the image of what
+she was when she rivalled Madame de Hautefort in the affections of the late
+King. You must consider, sweetheart, that he was the most moral of men,
+and that with him love meant a passion as free from sensual taint as the
+preferences of a sylph. I think my good grandmother loved me all the better
+for this fancied resemblance. She would arrange her jewels about my hair
+and bosom, as she had worn them when Buckingham came wooing for his master;
+and then she would bid her page hold a mirror before me and tell me to look
+at the face of which Queen Anne had been jealous, and for which Cinq Mars
+had run mad. And then she would shed a tear or two over the years and the
+charms that were gone, till I brought the cards and cheered her spirits
+with her favourite game of primero.
+
+"She had her fits of temper and little tantrums sometimes, Ange, and it
+needed some patience to restrain one's tongue from insolence; but I am
+happy to remember that I ever bore her in profound respect, and that I
+never made her seriously angry but once--which was when I, being then
+almost a child, went out into the streets of Paris with Henri de Malfort
+and a wild party, masked, to hear Beaufort address the populace in the
+market-place, and when I was so unlucky as to lose the emerald cross
+given her by the great Cardinal, for whom, I believe, she had a sneaking
+kindness. Why else should she have so hated his Eminence's very much
+favoured niece, Madame de Combalet?
+
+"But to return to that which concerns my dear sister. Regarding me as her
+own daughter, the Marquise has lavished her bounties upon me almost to the
+exclusion of my own sweet Angela. In a word, dearest, she leaves you
+a modest income of four hundred louis--or about three hundred pounds
+sterling--the rental of two farms in Normandy; and all the rest of her
+fortune she bequeaths to me, and Papillon after me, including her house
+in the Marais--sadly out of fashion now that everybody of consequence is
+moving to the Place Royale--and her château near Dieppe; besides all her
+jewels, many of which I have had in my possession ever since my marriage.
+My sweet sister shall take her choice of a carcanet among those
+old-fashioned trinkets. And now, dearest, if you are left with a pittance
+that will but serve to pay for your gloves and fans at the Middle Exchange,
+and perhaps to buy you an Indian night-gown in the course of the year--for
+your Court petticoats and mantuas will cost three times as much--you have
+but to remember that my purse is to be yours, and my home yours, and that
+Fareham and I do but wait to welcome you either to Fareham House, in the
+Strand, or to Chiltern Abbey, near Oxford. The Grange near Fareham I never
+intend to re-enter if I can help it. The place is a warren of rats, which
+the servants take for ghosts. If you love water you will love our houses,
+for the river runs near them both; indeed, when in London, we almost think
+ourselves in Venice, save that we have a spacious garden, which I am told
+few of the Venetians can command, their city being built upon an assemblage
+of minuscule islets, linked together by innumerable bridges."
+
+Angela smiled as she looked down at her black gown--the week-day uniform of
+the convent school, exchanged for a somewhat superior grey stuff on Sundays
+and holidays--smiled at the notion of spending the rent of two farms upon
+her toilet. And how much more ridiculous seemed the assertion that to
+appear at King Charles's Court she must spend thrice as much! Yet she could
+but remember that Hyacinth had described trains and petticoats so loaded
+with jewelled embroidery that it was a penance to wear them--lace worth
+hundreds of pounds--plumed hats that cost as much as a year's maintenance
+in the convent.
+
+Mother Anastasia expressed considerable displeasure at Madame de Montrond's
+disposal of her wealth.
+
+"This is what it is to live in a Court, and to care only for earthly
+things!" she said. "All sense of justice is lost in that world of vanity
+and self-love. You are as near akin to the Marquise as your sister; and
+yet, because she was familiar with the one and not with the other--and
+because her vain, foolish soul took pleasure in a beauty that recalled her
+own perishable charms, she leaves one sister a great fortune and the other
+a pittance!"
+
+"Dear aunt, I am more than content----"
+
+"But I am not content for you, Angela. Had the estate been divided equally
+you might have taken the veil, and succeeded to my place in this beloved
+house, which needs the accession of wealth to maintain it in usefulness and
+dignity."
+
+Angela would not wound her aunt's feelings by one word of disparagement of
+the house in which she had been reared; but, looking along the dim avenue
+of the future, she yearned for some wider horizon than the sky, barred with
+tall poplars which rose high above the garden wall that formed the limit of
+her daily walks. Her rambles, her recreations, had all been confined within
+that space of seven or eight acres, and she thought sometimes with a sudden
+longing of those hills and valleys of fertile Buckinghamshire, which lay so
+far back in the dawn of her mind, and were yet so distinctly pictured in
+her memory.
+
+And London--that wonderful city of which her sister wrote in such glowing
+words! the long range of palaces beside the swift-flowing river, wider than
+the Seine where it reflects the gloomy bulk of the Louvre and the Temple!
+Were it only once in her life, she would like to see London--the King, the
+two Queens, Whitehall, and Somerset House. She would like to see all the
+splendour of Court and city; and then to taste the placid retirement of the
+house in the valley, and to be her father's housekeeper and companion.
+
+Another letter from Hyacinth announced the death of Mazarin.
+
+"The Cardinal is no more. He died in the day of success, having got the
+better of all his enemies. A violent access of gout was followed by an
+affection of the chest which proved fatal. His sick-room was crowded with
+courtiers and sycophants, and he was selling sinecures up to the day of his
+death. Fareham says his death-bed was like a money-changer's counter. He
+was passionately fond of hocca, the Italian game which he brought into
+fashion, and which ruined half the young men about the Court. The
+counterpane was scattered with money and playing cards, which were only
+brushed aside to make room for the last Sacraments. My Lord Clarendon
+declares that his spirits never recovered from the shock of his Majesty's
+restoration, which falsified all his calculations. He might have made his
+favourite niece Queen of England; but his Italian caution restrained him,
+and the beautiful Hortense has to put up with a new-made duke--a title
+bought with her uncle's money--to whom the Cardinal affianced her on his
+death-bed. He was a remarkable man, and so profound a dissembler that his
+pretended opposition to King Louis' marriage with his niece Olympe Mancini
+would have deceived the shrewdest observer, had we not all known that he
+ardently desired the union, and that it was only his fear of Queen Anne's
+anger which prevented it. Her Spanish pride was in arms at the notion, and
+she would not have stopped short at revolution to prevent or to revenge
+such an alliance.
+
+"This was perhaps the only occasion upon which she ever seriously opposed
+Mazarin. With him expires all her political power. She is now as much a
+cypher as in the time of the late King, when France had only one master,
+the great Cardinal. He who is just dead, Fareham says, was but a little
+Richelieu; and he recalls how when the great Cardinal died people scarce
+dared tell one another of his death, so profound was the awe in which he
+was held. He left the King a nullity, and the Queen all powerful. She was
+young and beautiful then, you see; her husband was marked for death,
+her son was an infant. All France was hers--a kingdom of courtiers and
+flatterers. And now she is old and ailing; and Mazarin being gone, the
+young King will submit to no minister who claims to be anything better
+than a clerk or a secretary. Colbert he must tolerate--for Colbert means
+prosperity--but Colbert will have to obey. My friend, the Duchesse de
+Longueville, who is now living in strict retirement, writes me the most
+exquisite letters; and from her I hear all that happens in that country
+which I sometimes fancy is more my own than the duller climate where my lot
+is now cast. Fifteen years at the French Court have made me in heart and
+mind almost a Frenchwoman; nor can I fail to be influenced by my maternal
+ancestry. I find it difficult sometimes to remember my English, when
+conversing with the clod-hoppers of Oxfordshire, who have no French, yet
+insist, for finery's sake, upon larding their rustic English with French
+words.
+
+"All that is most agreeable in our court is imitated from the Palais Royal
+and the Louvre.
+
+"'Whitehall is but the shadow of a shadow,' says Fareham, in one of his
+philosophy fits, preaching upon the changes he has seen in Paris and
+London. And, indeed, it is strange to have lived through two revolutions,
+one so awful in its final catastrophe that it dwarfs the other, yet both
+terrible; for I, who was a witness of the sufferings of Princes and
+Princesses during the two wars of the Fronde, am not inclined to think
+lightly of a civil war which cost France some of the flower of her
+nobility, and made her greatest hero a prisoner and an exile for seven
+years of his life.
+
+"But oh, my dear, it was a romantic time! and I look back and am proud to
+have lived in it. I was but twelve years old at the siege of Paris; but
+I was in Madame de Longueville's room, at the Hôtel de Ville, while the
+fighting was going on, and the officers, in their steel cuirasses, coming
+in from the thick of the strife. Such a confusion of fine ladies and armed
+men--breast-plates and blue scarves--fiddles squeaking in the salon,
+trumpets sounding in the square below!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a letter of later date Lady Fareham expatiated upon the folly of her
+sister's spiritual guides.
+
+"I am desolated, _ma mie_, by the absurd restriction which forbids you to
+profit by my New Year's gift. I thought, when I sent you all the volumes of
+la Scudèry's enchanting romance, I had laid up for you a year of enjoyment,
+and that, touched by the baguette of that exquisite fancy, your convent
+walls would fall, like those of Jericho at the sound of Jewish trumpets,
+and you would be transported in imagination to the finest society in the
+world--the company of Cyrus and Mandane--under which Oriental disguise you
+are shown every feature of mind and person in Condé and his heroic sister,
+my esteemed friend, the Duchesse de Longueville. As I was one of the first
+to appreciate Mademoiselle Scudèry's genius, and to detect behind the
+name of the brother the tender sentiments and delicate refinement of the
+sister's chaster pen, so I believe I was the first to call the Duchesse
+'Mandane,' a sobriquet which soon became general among her intimates.
+
+"You are not to read 'Le Grand Cyrus," your aunt tells you, because it is
+a romance! That is to say, you are forbidden to peruse the most faithful
+history of your own time, and to familiarise yourself with the persons and
+minds of great people whom you may never be so fortunate as to meet in the
+flesh. I myself, dearest Ange, have had the felicity to live among
+these princely persons, to revel in the conversations of the Hôtel de
+Rambouillet--not, perhaps, as our grandmother would have told you, in its
+most glorious period--but at least while it was still the focus of all that
+is choicest in letters and in art. Did we not hear M. Poquelin read his
+first comedy before it was represented by Monsieur's company in the
+beautiful theatre at the Palais Royal, built by Richelieu, when it was the
+Palais Cardinal? Not read 'Le Grand Cyrus,' and on the score of morality!
+Why, this most delightful book was written by one of the most moral women
+in Paris--one of the chastest--against whose reputation no word of slander
+has ever been breathed! It must, indeed, be confessed that Sapho is of an
+ugliness which would protect her even were she not guarded by the aegis of
+genius. She is one of those fortunate unfortunates who can walk through the
+furnace of a Court unscathed, and leave a reputation for modesty in an age
+that scarce credits virtue in woman.
+
+"I fear, dear child, that these narrow-minded restrictions of your convent
+will leave you of a surpassing ignorance, which may cover you with
+confusion when you find yourself in fine company. There are accomplishments
+without which youth is no more admired than age and grey hairs; and to
+sparkle with wit or astonish with learning is a necessity for a woman
+of quality. It is only by the advantages of education that we can show
+ourselves superior to such a hussy as Albemarle's gutter-bred duchess, who
+was the faithless wife of a sailor or barber--I forget which--and who hangs
+like a millstone upon the General's neck now that he has climbed to the
+zenith. To have perfect Italian and some Spanish is as needful as to
+have fine eyes and complexion nowadays. And to dance admirably is a gift
+indispensable to a lady. Alas! I fear that those little feet of yours--I
+hope they _are_ small--have never been taught to move in a coranto or a
+contre-danse, and that you will have to learn the alphabet of dancing at an
+age when most women are finished performers. The great Condé, while winning
+sieges and battles that surpassed the feats of Greeks and Romans, contrived
+to make himself the finest dancer of his day, and won more admiration
+in high-bred circles by his graceful movements, which every one could
+understand and admire, than by prodigies of valour at Dunkirk or
+Nordlingen."
+
+The above was one of Lady Fareham's most serious letters. Her pen was
+exercised, for the most part, in a lighter vein. She wrote of the Court
+beauties, the Court jests--practical jokes some of them, which our finer
+minds of to-day would consider in execrable taste--such jests as we read
+of in Grammont's memoirs, which generally aimed at making an ugly woman
+ridiculous, or an injured husband the sport and victim of wicked lover and
+heartless wife. No sense of the fitness of things constrained her ladyship
+from communicating these Court scandals to her guileless sister. Did they
+not comprise the only news worth anybody's attention, and relate to the
+only class of people who had any tangible existence for Lady Fareham? There
+were millions of human beings, no doubt, living and acting and suffering on
+the surface of the earth, outside the stellary circles of which Louis and
+Charles were the suns; but there was no interstellar medium of sympathy to
+convey the idea of those exterior populations to Hyacinth's mind. She knew
+of the populace, French or English, as of something which was occasionally
+given to become dangerous and revolutionary, which sometimes starved and
+sometimes died of the plague, and was always unpleasing to the educated
+eye.
+
+Masquerades, plays, races at Newmarket, dances, duels, losses at
+cards--Lady Fareham touched every subject, and expatiated on all; but she
+had usually more to tell of the country she had left than of that in which
+she was living.
+
+"Here everything is on such a small scale, _si mesquin!_" she wrote.
+"Whitehall covers a large area, but it is only a fine banqueting hall and
+a labyrinth of lodgings, without suite or stateliness. The pictures in the
+late King's cabinet are said to be the finest in the world, but they are
+a kind of pieces for which I care very little--Flemish and Dutch
+chiefly--with a series of cartoons by Raphael, which connoisseurs affect to
+admire, but which, did they belong to me, I would gladly exchange for a set
+of Mortlake tapestries.
+
+"His Majesty here builds ships, while the King of France builds palaces.
+I am told Louis is spending millions on the new palace at Versailles,
+an ungrateful site--no water, no noble prospect as at St. Germain, no
+population. The King likes the spot all the better, Madame tells me,
+because he has to create his own landscape, to conjure lakes and cataracts
+out of dry ground. The buildings have been but two years in progress, and
+it must be long before these colossal foundations are crowned with the
+edifice which Louis and his architect, Mansart, have planned. Colbert is
+furious at this squandering of vast sums on a provincial palace, while the
+Louvre, the birthplace and home of dynasties, remains unfinished.
+
+"The King's reason for disliking St. Germain--a château his mother has
+always loved--has in it something childish and fantastic, if, as my dear
+duchess declares, he hates the place only because he can see the towers of
+St. Denis from the terrace, and is thus hourly reminded of death and the
+grave. I can hardly believe that a being of such superior intelligence
+could be governed by any such horror of man's inevitable end. I would far
+sooner attribute the vast expenditure of Versailles to the common love of
+monarchs and great men for building houses too large for their necessities.
+Indeed, it was but yesterday that Fareham took me to see the palace--for I
+can call it by no meaner name--that Lord Clarendon is building for himself
+in the open country at the top of St. James's Street. It promises to be
+the finest house in town, and, although not covering so much ground as
+Whitehall, is judged far superior to that inchoate mass in its fine
+proportions and the perfect symmetry of its saloons and galleries. There is
+a garden a-making, projected by Mr. Evelyn, a great authority on trees and
+gardens. A crowd of fine company had assembled to see the newly finished
+hall and dining parlour, among them a fussy person, who came in attendance
+upon my Lord Sandwich, and who was more voluble than became his quality as
+a clerk in the Navy Office. He was periwigged and dressed as fine as his
+master, and, on my being civil to him, talked much of himself and of divers
+taverns in the city where the dinners were either vastly good or vastly
+ill. I told him that as I never dined at a tavern the subject was
+altogether beyond the scope of my intelligence, at which Sandwich and
+Fareham laughed, and my pertinacious gentleman blushed as red as the heels
+of his shoes. I am told the creature has a pretty taste in music, and is
+the son of a tailor, but professes a genteel ancestry, and occasionally
+pushes into the best company.
+
+"Shall I describe to you one of my latest conquests, sweetheart? 'Tis
+a boy--an actual beardless boy of eighteen summers; but such a boy! So
+beautiful, so insolent, with an impudence that can confront Lord Clarendon
+himself, the gravest of noblemen, who, with the sole exception of my Lord
+Southampton, is the one man who has never crossed Mrs. Palmer's threshold,
+or bowed his neck under that splendid fury's yoke. My admirer thinks no
+more of smoking these grave nobles, men of a former generation, who learnt
+their manners at the court of a serious and august King, than I do of
+teasing my falcon. He laughs at them, jokes with them in Greek or in Latin,
+has a ready answer and a witty quip for every turn of the discourse; will
+even interrupt his Majesty in one of those anecdotes of his Scottish
+martyrdom which he tells so well and tells so often. Lucifer himself could
+not be more arrogant or more audacious than this bewitching boy-lover
+of mine, who writes verses in English or Latin as easy as I can toss a
+shuttlecock. I doubt the greater number of his verses are scarce proper
+reading for you or me, Angela; for I see the men gather round him in
+corners as he murmurs his latest madrigal to a chosen half-dozen or so;
+and I guess by their subdued tittering that the lines are not over modest;
+while by the sidelong glances the listeners cast round, now at my Lady
+Castlemaine, and anon at some other goddess in the royal pantheon, I have a
+shrewd notion as to what alabaster breast my witty lover's shafts are aimed
+at.
+
+"This youthful devotee of mine is the son of a certain Lord Wilmot, who
+fought on the late King's side in the troubles. This creature went to the
+university of Oxford at twelve years old--as it were, straight from his
+go-cart to college, and was master of arts at fourteen. He has made the
+grand tour, and pretends to have seen so much of this life that he has
+found out the worthlessness of it. Even while he woes me with a most
+romantic ardour, he affects to have outgrown the capacity to love.
+
+"Think not, dearest, that I outstep the bounds of matronly modesty by this
+airy philandering with my young Lord Rochester, or that my serious Fareham
+is ever offended at our pretty trifling. He laughs at the lad as heartily
+as I do, invites him to our table, and is amused by his monkeyish tricks.
+A woman of quality must have followers; and a pert, fantastical boy is the
+safest of lovers. Slander itself could scarce accuse Lady Fareham, who has
+had soldier-princes and statesmen at her feet, of an unworthy tenderness
+for a jackanapes of seventeen; for, indeed, I believe his eighteenth
+birthday is still in the womb of time. I would with all my heart thou wert
+here to share our innocent diversions; and I know not which of all my
+playthings thou wouldst esteem highest, the falcon, my darling spaniels,
+made up of soft silken curls and intelligent brown eyes, or Rochester. Nay,
+let me not forget the children, Papillon and Cupid, who are truly very
+pretty creatures, though consummate plagues. The girl, Papillon, has a
+tongue which Wilmot says is the nearest approach to perpetual motion that
+he has yet discovered; and the boy, who was but seven last birthday, is
+full of mischief, in which my admirer counsels and abets him.
+
+"Oh, this London, sweetheart, and this Court! How wide those violet eyes
+would open couldst thou but look suddenly in upon us after supper at
+Basset, or in the park, or at the play-house, when the orange girls are
+smoking the pretty fellows in the pit, and my Lady Castlemaine is leaning
+half out of her box to talk to the King in his! I thought I had seen enough
+of festivals and dances, stage-plays and courtly diversions beyond sea; but
+the Court entertainments at Paris or St. Germain differed as much from the
+festivities of Whitehall as a cathedral service from a dance in a booth at
+Bartholomew Fair. His Majesty of France never forgets that he is a king.
+His Majesty of England only remembers his kingship when he wants a
+new subsidy, or to get a Bill hurried through the Houses. Louis at
+four-and-twenty was serious enough for fifty. Charles at thirty-four has
+the careless humour of a schoolboy. He is royal in nothing except his
+extravagance, which has squandered more millions than I dare mention since
+he landed at Dover.
+
+"I am growing almost as sober as my solemn spouse, who will ever be railing
+at the King and the Duke, and even more bitterly at the favourite, his
+Grace of Buckingham, who is assuredly one of the most agreeable men in
+London. I asked Fareham only yesterday why he went to Court, if his
+Majesty's company is thus distasteful to him. 'It is not to his company I
+object, but to his principles,' he answered, in that earnest fashion of his
+which takes the lightest questions _au grand serieux_. 'I see in him a man
+who, with natural parts far above the average, makes himself the jest of
+meaner intellects, and the dupe of greedy courtesans; a man who, trained
+in the stern school of adversity, overshadowed by the great horror of his
+father's tragical doom, accepts life as one long jest, and being, by a
+concatenation of circumstances bordering on the miraculous, restored to the
+privileges of hereditary monarchy, takes all possible pains to prove
+the uselessness of kings. I see a man who, borne back to power by the
+irresistible current of the people's affections, has broken every pledge he
+gave that people in the flush and triumph of his return. I see one who,
+in his own person, cares neither for Paul nor Peter, and yet can tamely
+witness the persecution of his people because they do not conform to a
+State religion--can allow good and pious men to be driven out of the
+pulpits where they have preached the Gospel of Christ, and suffer wives and
+children to starve because the head of the household has a conscience. I
+see a king careless of the welfare of his people, and the honour and glory
+of his reign; affecting to be a patriot, and a man of business, on the
+strength of an extravagant fancy for shipbuilding; careless of everything
+save the empty pleasure of an idle hour. A king who lavishes thousands upon
+wantons and profligates, and who ever gives not to the most worthy, but to
+the most importunate.'
+
+"I laughed at this tirade, and told him, what indeed I believe, that he is
+at heart a Puritan, and would better consort with Baxter and Bunyan, and
+that frousy crew, than with Buckhurst and Sedley, or his brilliant kinsman,
+Roscommon."
+
+From her father directly, Angela heard nothing, and her sister's allusions
+to him were of the briefest, anxiously as she had questioned that lively
+letter-writer. Yes, her father was well, Hyacinth told her; but he stayed
+mostly at the Manor Moat. He did not care for the Court gaieties.
+
+"I believe he thinks we have all parted company with our wits," she wrote.
+"He seldom sees me but to lecture me, in a sidelong way, upon my folly; for
+his railing at the company I keep hits me by implication. I believe
+these old courtiers of the late King are Puritans at heart; and that if
+Archbishop Laud were alive he would be as bitter against the sins of the
+town as any of the cushion-thumping Anabaptists that preach to the elect in
+back rooms and blind alleys. My father talks and thinks as if he had spent
+all his years of exile in the cave of the Seven Sleepers. And yet he fought
+shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest gentlemen in France--Condé,
+Turenne, Gramont, St. Evremond, Bussy, and the rest of them. But all the
+world is young, and full of wit and mirth, since his Majesty came to his
+own; and elderly limbs are too stiff to trip in our new dances. I doubt my
+father's mind is as old-fashioned, and of as rigid a shape as his Court
+suit, at sight of which my best friends can scarce refrain from laughing."
+
+This light mention of a parent whom she reverenced wounded Angela to the
+quick; and that wound was deepened a year later, when she was surprised by
+a visit from her father, of which no letter had forewarned her. She was
+walking in the convent garden, in her hour of recreation, tasting the sunny
+air, and the beauty of the many-coloured tulips in the long narrow borders,
+between two espalier rows trained with an exquisite neatness, and reputed
+to bear the finest golden pippins and Bergamot pears within fifty miles of
+the city. The trees were in blossom, and a wall of pink and white bloom
+rose up on either hand above the scarlet and amber tulips.
+
+Turning at the end of the long alley, where it met a wall that in August
+was flushed with the crimson velvet of peaches and nectarines, Angela saw a
+man advancing from the further end of the walk, attended by a lay sister.
+The high-crowned hat and pointed beard, the tall figure in a grey doublet
+crossed with a black sword-belt, the walk, the bearing, were unmistakable.
+It might have been a figure that had stepped out of Vandyke's canvas. It
+had nothing of the fuss and flutter, the feathers and ruffles, the loose
+flow of brocade and velvet, that marked the costume of the young French
+Court.
+
+Angela ran to receive her father, and could scarce speak to him, she was so
+startled, and yet so glad.
+
+"Oh, sir, when I prayed for you at Mass this morning, how little I hoped
+for so much happiness! I had a letter from Hyacinth only a week ago, and
+she wrote nothing of your intentions. I knew not that you had crossed the
+sea."
+
+"Why, sweetheart, Hyacinth sees me too rarely, and is too full of her own
+affairs, ever to be beforehand with my intentions; and, although I have
+been long heartily sick of England, I only made up my mind to come to
+Flanders less than a week ago. No sooner thought of than done. I came by
+our old road, in a merchant craft from Harwich to Ostend, and the rest of
+the way in the saddle. Not quite so fast as they used to ride that carried
+his Majesty's post from London to York, in the beginning of the troubles,
+when the loyal gentlemen along the north road would galop faster with
+despatches and treaties than ever they rode after a stag. Ah, child, how
+hopeful we were in those days; and how we all told each other it was but a
+passing storm at Westminster, which could all be lulled by a little civil
+concession here and there on the King's part! And so it might, perhaps, if
+he would but have conceded the right thing at the right time--yielded
+but just the inch they asked for when they first asked--instead of
+shilly-shallying till they got angry, and wanted ells instead of inches.
+'Tis the stitch in time, Angela, that saves trouble, in politics as well as
+in thy petticoat."
+
+He had flung his arm round his daughter's neck as they paced slowly side by
+side.
+
+"Have you come to stay at Louvain, sir?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"Nay, love, the place is too quiet for me. I could not stay in a town
+that is given over to learning and piety. The sound of their everlasting
+carillon would tease my ear with the thought, 'Lo, another quarter of an
+hour gone of my poor remnant of days, and nothing to do but to doze in the
+sunshine or fondle my spaniel, fill my pipe, or ride a lazy horse on a
+level road, such as I have ever hated.'"
+
+"But why did you tire of England, sir? I thought the King would have wanted
+you always near him. You, his father's close friend, who suffered so much
+for Royal friendship. Surely he loves and cherishes you! He must be a base,
+ungrateful man if he do not."
+
+"Oh, the King is grateful, Angela, grateful enough and to spare. He never
+sees me at Court but he has some gracious speech about his father's regard
+for me. It grows irksome at last, by sheer repetition. The turn of the
+sentence varies, for his Majesty has a fine standing army of words, but the
+gist of the phrase is always the same, and it means, 'Here is a tiresome
+old Put to whom I must say something civil for the sake of his ancient
+vicissitudes.' And then his phalanx of foppery stares at me as if I were a
+Topinambou; and since I have seen them mimic Ned Hyde's stately speech and
+manners, I doubt not before I have crossed the ante-room I have served to
+make sport for the crew, since their wit has but two phases--ordure and
+mimickry. Look not so glum, daughter. I am glad to be out of a Court which
+is most like--such places as I dare not name to thee."
+
+"But to have you disrespected, sir; you, so brave, so noble! You who gave
+the best years of your life to your royal master!"
+
+"What I gave I gave, child. I gave him youth--that never comes back--and
+fortune, that is not worth grieving for. And now that I have begun to lose
+the reckoning of my years since fifty, I feel I had best take myself back
+to that roving life in which I have no time to brood upon losses and
+sorrows."
+
+"Dear father, I am sure you must mistake the King's feelings towards you.
+It is not possible that he can think lightly of such devotion as yours."
+
+"Nay, sweetheart, who said he thinks lightly? He never thinks of me at all,
+or of anything serious under God's sky. So long as he has spending money,
+and can live in a circle of bright eyes, and hear only flippant tongues
+that offer him a curious incense of flattery spiced with impertinence,
+Charles Stuart has all of this life that he values. And for the next--a
+man who is shrewdly suspected of being a papist, while he is attached by
+gravest vows to the Church of England, must needs hold heaven's rewards and
+hell's torments lightly."
+
+"But Queen Catherine, sir--does not she favour you? My aunt says she is a
+good woman."
+
+"Yes, a good woman, and the nearest approach to a cypher to be found at
+Hampton Court or Whitehall. Young Lord Rochester has written a poem upon
+'Nothing.' He might have taken Queen Catherine's name as a synonym. She is
+nothing; she counts for nothing. Her love can benefit nobody; her hatred,
+were the poor soul capable of hating persistently, can do no one harm."
+
+"And the King--is he so unkind to her?"
+
+"Unkind! No. He allows her to live. Nay, when for a few days--the brief
+felicity of her poor life--she seemed on the point of dying, he was
+stricken with remorse for all that he had not been to her, and was kind,
+and begged her to live for his sake. The polite gentleman meant it for
+a compliment--one of those pious falsehoods that men murmur in dying
+ears--but she took him at his word and recovered; and she is there still,
+a little dark lady in a fine gown, of whom nobody takes any notice, beyond
+the emptiest formality of bent knees and backward steps. There are long
+evenings at Hampton Court in which she is scarce spoken to, save when she
+fawns upon the fortunate lady whom she began by hating. Oh, child, I should
+not talk to you of these things; but some of the disgust that has made
+my life bitter bubbles over in spite of me. I am a wanderer and an exile
+again, dear heart. I would sooner trail a pike abroad than suffer neglect
+at home. I will fight under any flag so long as it flies not for my
+country's foe. I am going back to my old friends at the Louvre, to those
+few who are old enough to care for me; and if there come a war with Spain,
+why my sword may be of some small use to young Louis, whose mother was
+always gracious to me in the old days at St. Germain, when she knew not
+in the morning whether she would go safe to bed at night. A golden age of
+peace has followed that wild time; but the Spanish king's death is like to
+light the torch and set the war-dogs barking. Louis will thrust his sword
+through the treaty of the Pyrenees if he see the way to a throne t'other
+side of the mountains."
+
+"But could a good man violate a treaty?"
+
+"Ambition knows no laws, sweet, nor ever has since Hannibal."
+
+"Then King Louis is no better a man than King Charles?"
+
+"I cannot answer for that, Angela; but I'll warrant him a better king from
+the kingly point of view. Scarce had death freed him from the Cardinal's
+leading-strings than he snatched the reins of power, showed his ministers
+that he meant to drive the coach. He has a head as fit for business as if
+he had been the son of a woollen-draper. Mazarin took pains to keep him
+ignorant of everything that a king ought to know; but that shrewd judgment
+of his taught him that he must know as much as his servants, unless he
+wanted them to be his masters. He has the pride of Lucifer, with a strength
+of will and power of application as great as Richelieu's. You will live to
+see that no second Richelieu, no new Mazarin, will arise in his reign. His
+ministers will serve him, and go down before him, like Nicolas Fouquet, to
+whom he has been implacable."
+
+"Poor gentleman! My aunt told me that when his judges sentenced him to
+banishment from France, the King changed the sentence to imprisonment for
+life."
+
+"I doubt if the King ever forgave those fêtes at Vaux, which were designed
+to dazzle Mademoiselle la Vallière, whom this man had the presumption to
+love. One may pity so terrible a fall, yet it is but the ruin of a bold
+sensualist, who played with millions as other men play with tennis balls,
+and who would have drained the exchequer by his briberies and extravagances
+if he had not been brought to a dead stop. The world has been growing
+wickeder, dearest, while this fair head has risen from my knee to my
+shoulder; but what have you to do with its wickedness? Here you are happy
+and at peace----"
+
+"Not happy, father, if you are to hazard your life in battles and sieges.
+Oh, sir, that life is too dear to us, your children, to be risked so
+lightly. You have done your share of soldiering. Everybody that ever
+heard your name in England or in France knows it is the name of a brave
+captain--a leader of men. For our sakes, take your rest now, dear sir. I
+should not sleep in peace if I knew you were with Condé's army. I should
+dream of you wounded and dying. I cannot bear to think of leaving my aunt
+now that she is old and feeble; but my first duty is to you, and if you
+want me I will go with you wherever you may please to make your home. I am
+not afraid of strange countries."
+
+"Spoken like my sweet daughter, whose baby arms clasped my neck in the day
+of despair. But you must stay with the reverend mother, sweetheart. These
+bones of mine must be something stiffer before they will consent to rest
+in the chimney corner, or sit in the shade of a yew hedge while other men
+throw the bowls. When I have knocked about the world a few years longer,
+and when Mother Anastasia is at rest, thou shalt come to me at the Manor,
+and I will find thee a noble husband, and will end my days with my children
+and grandchildren. The world has so changed since the forties, that I shall
+think I have lived centuries instead of decades, when the farewell hour
+strikes. In the mean time I am pleased that you should be here. The Court
+is no place for a pure maiden, though some sweet saints there be who can
+walk unsmirched in the midst of corruption."
+
+"And Hyacinth? She can walk scatheless through that Court furnace. She
+writes of Whitehall as if it were Paradise."
+
+"Hyacinth has a husband to take care of her; a man with a brave headpiece
+of his own, who lets her spark it with the fairest company in the town,
+but would make short work of any fop who dared attempt the insolence of a
+suitor. Hyacinth has seen the worst and the best of two Courts, and has an
+experience of the Palais Royal and St. Germain which should keep her safe
+at Whitehall."
+
+Sir John and his daughter spent half a day together in the garden and the
+parlour, where the traveller was entertained with a collation and a bottle
+of excellent Beaujolais before his horse was brought to the door. Angela
+saw him mount, and ride slowly away in the melancholy afternoon light, and
+she felt as if he were riding out of her life for ever. She went back to
+her aunt's room with an aching heart. Had not that kind lady, her mother in
+all the essentials of maternal love, been so near the end of her days, and
+so dependent on her niece's affection, the girl would have clung about her
+father's neck, and implored him to go no more a-soldiering, and to make
+himself a home with her in England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
+
+
+The reverend mother lingered till the beginning of summer, and it was on
+a lovely June evening, while the nightingales were singing in the convent
+garden, that the holy life slipped away into the Great Unknown. She died as
+a child falls asleep, the saintly grey head lying peacefully on Angela's
+supporting arm, the last look of the dying eyes resting on that tender
+nurse with infinite love.
+
+She was gone, and Angela felt strangely alone. Her contemporaries, the
+chosen friend who had been to her almost as a sister, the girls by whose
+side she had sat in class, had all left the convent. At twenty-one years of
+age, she seemed to belong to a former generation; most of the pupils had
+finished their education at seventeen or eighteen, and had returned to
+their homes in Flanders, France, or England. There had been several English
+pupils, for Louvain and Douai had for a century been the seminaries for
+English Romanists.
+
+The pupils of to-day were Angela's juniors, with whom she had nothing in
+common, except to teach English to a class of small Flemings, who were
+almost unteachable.
+
+She had heard no more from her father, and knew not where or with whom he
+might have cast in his lot. She wrote to him under cover to her sister;
+but of late Hyacinth's letters had been rare and brief, only long enough,
+indeed, to apologise for their brevity. Lady Fareham had been in London or
+at Hampton Court from the beginning of the previous winter. There was talk
+of the plague having come to London from Amsterdam, that the Privy Council
+was sitting at Sion House, instead of in London, that the judges had
+removed to Windsor, and that the Court might speedily remove to Salisbury
+or Oxford. "And if the Court goes to Oxford, we shall go to Chilton," wrote
+Hyacinth; and that was the last of her communications.
+
+July passed without news from father or sister; and Angela grew daily more
+uneasy about both. The great horror of the plague was in the air. It had
+been raging in Amsterdam in the previous summer and autumn, and a nun had
+brought the disease to Louvain, where she might have died in the convent
+infirmary but for Angela's devoted attention. She had assisted the
+over-worked infirmarian at a time of unusual sickness--for there was a good
+deal of illness among the nuns and pupils that summer--mostly engendered of
+the fear lest the pestilence in Holland should reach Flanders. Doctor and
+infirmarian had alike praised the girl's quiet courage, and her instinct
+for doing the right thing.
+
+Remembering all the nun had told of the horrors of Amsterdam, Angela
+awaited with fear and trembling for news from London; and as the summer
+wore on, every news-letter that reached the Ursulines brought tidings of
+increasing sickness in the great prosperous city, which was being gradually
+deserted by all who could afford to travel. The Court had moved first to
+Hampton Court, in June, and later to Salisbury, where again the French
+Ambassador's people reported strange horrors--corpses found lying in the
+street hard by their lodgings--the King's servants sickening. The air of
+the cathedral city was tainted--though deaths had been few as compared with
+London, which was becoming one vast lazar-house--and it was thought the
+Court and Ambassadors would remove themselves to Oxford, where Parliament
+was to assemble in the autumn, instead of at Westminster.
+
+Most alarming of all was the news that the Queen-mother had fled with
+all her people, and most of her treasures, from her palace at Somerset
+House--for Henrietta Maria was not a woman to fly before a phantom fear.
+She had seen too much of the stern realities of life to be scared by
+shadows; and she had neither establishment nor power in France equal to
+those she left in England. In Paris the daughter of the great Henry was a
+dependent. In London she was second only to the King; and her Court was
+more esteemed than Whitehall.
+
+"If she has fled, there must be reason for it," said the newly elected
+Superior, who boasted of correspondents at Paris, notably a cousin in that
+famous convent, the Visitandines de Chaillot, founded by Queen Henrietta,
+and which had ever been a centre of political and religious intrigue, the
+most fashionable, patrician, exalted, and altogether worldly establishment.
+
+Alarmed at this dismal news, Angela wrote urgently to her sister, but with
+no effect; and the passage of every day, with occasional rumours of an
+increasing death-rate in London, strengthened her fears, until terror
+nerved her to a desperate resolve. She would go to London to see her
+sister; to nurse her if she were sick; to mourn for her if she were dead.
+
+The Superior did all she could to oppose this decision, and even asserted
+authority over the pupil who, since her eighteenth year had been released
+from discipline, subject but to the lightest laws of the convent. As the
+great-niece and beloved child of the late Superior she had enjoyed all
+possible privileges; while the liberal sum annually remitted for her
+maintenance gave her a certain importance in the house.
+
+And now on being told she must not go, her spirit rose against the
+Superior's authority.
+
+"I recognise no earthly power that can keep me from those I love in their
+time of peril!" she said.
+
+"You do not know that they are in sickness or danger. My last letters from
+Paris stated that it was only the low people whom the contagion in London
+was attacking."
+
+"If it was only the low people, why did the Queen-mother leave? If it was
+safe for my sister to be in London it would have been safe for the Queen."
+
+"Lady Fareham is doubtless in Oxfordshire."
+
+"I have written to Chilton Abbey as well as to Fareham House, and I can get
+no answer. Indeed, reverend mother, it is time for me to go to those to
+whom I belong. I never meant to stay in this house after my aunt's death. I
+have only been waiting my father's orders. If all be well with my sister
+I shall go to the Manor Moat, and wait his commands quietly there. I am
+home-sick for England."
+
+"You have chosen an ill time for home-sickness, when a pestilence is
+raging."
+
+Argument could not touch the girl, whose mind was braced for battle. The
+reverend mother ceded with as good a grace as she could assume, on the top
+of a very arbitrary temper. An English priest was heard of who was about to
+travel to London on his return to a noble friend and patron in the north of
+England, in whose house he had lived before the troubles; and in this good
+man's charge Angela was permitted to depart, on a long and weary journey
+by way of Antwerp and the Scheldt. They were five days at sea, the voyage
+lengthened by the almost unprecedented calm which had prevailed all that
+fatal summer--a weary voyage in a small trading vessel, on board which
+Angela had to suffer every hardship that a delicate woman can be subjected
+to on board ship: a wretched berth in a floating cellar called a cabin,
+want of fresh water, of female attendance, and of any food but the
+coarsest. These deprivations she bore without a murmur. It was only the
+slowness of the passage that troubled her.
+
+The great city came in view at last, the long roof of St. Paul's dominating
+the thickly clustered gables and chimneys, and the vessel dropped anchor
+opposite the dark walls of the Tower, whose form had been made familiar to
+Angela by a print in a History of London, which she had hung over many an
+evening in Mother Anastasia's parlour. A row-boat conveyed her and her
+fellow-traveller to the Tower stairs, where they landed, the priest being
+duly provided with an efficient voucher that they came from a city free of
+the plague. Yes, this was London. Her foot touched her native soil for the
+first time after fifteen years of absence. The good-natured priest would
+not leave her till he had seen her in charge of an elderly and most
+reputable waterman, recommended by the custodian of the stairs. Then he
+bade her an affectionate adieu, and fared on his way to a house in the
+city, where one of his kinsfolk, a devout Catholic, dwelt quietly hidden
+from the public eye, and where he would rest for the night before setting
+out on his journey to the north.
+
+After the impetuous passage through the deep, dark arch of the bridge, the
+boat moved slowly up the river in the peaceful eventide, and Angela's eyes
+opened wide with wonder as she looked on the splendours of that silent
+highway, this evening verily silent, for the traffic of business and
+pleasure had stopped in the terror of the pestilence, like a clock that had
+run down. It was said by one who had seen the fairest cities of Europe that
+"the most glorious sight in the world, take land and water together, was to
+come upon a high tide from Gravesend, and shoot the bridge to Westminster;"
+and to the convent-bred maiden how much more astonishing was that prospect!
+
+The boat passed in front of Lord Arundel's sumptuous mansion, with its
+spacious garden, where marble statues showed white in the midst of
+quincunxes, and prim hedges of cypress and yew; past the Palace of the
+Savoy, with its massive towers, battlemented roof, and double line of
+mullioned windows fronting the river; past Worcester House, where Lord
+Chancellor Hyde had been living in a sober splendour, while his princely
+mansion was building yonder on the Hounslow Road, or that portion thereof
+lately known as Piccadilly. That was the ambitious pile of which Hyacinth
+had written, a house of clouded memories and briefest tenure; foredoomed
+to vanish like a palace seen in a dream; a transient magnificence,
+indescribable; known for a little while opprobriously as Dunkirk House, the
+supposed result of the Chancellor's too facile assistance in the surrender
+of that last rag of French territory. The boat passed before Rutland House
+and Cecil House, some portion of which had lately been converted into the
+Middle Exchange, the haunt of fine ladies and Golconda of gentlewomen
+milliners, favourite scene for assignations and intrigues; and so by Durham
+House, where in the Protector Seymour's time the Royal Mint had been
+established; a house whose stately rooms were haunted by tragic
+associations, shadows of Northumberland's niece and victim, hapless Jane
+Grey, and of fated Raleigh. Here, too, commerce shouldered aristocracy, and
+the New Exchange of King James's time competed with the Middle Exchange
+of later date, providing more milliners, perfumers, glovers, barbers, and
+toymen, and more opportunity for illicit loves and secret meetings.
+
+Before Angela's eyes those splendid mansions passed like phantom pictures.
+The westering sunlight showed golden above the dark Abbey, while she sat
+silent, with awe-stricken gaze, looking out upon this widespread city that
+lay chastened and afflicted under the hand of an angry God. The beautiful,
+gay, proud, and splendid London of the West, the new London of Covent
+Garden, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly, whose glories her sister's pen
+had depicted with such fond enthusiasm, was now deserted by the rabble of
+quality who had peopled its palaces, while the old London of the East, the
+historic city, was sitting in sackcloth and ashes, a place of lamentations,
+a city where men and women rose up in the morning hale and healthy, and at
+night-fall were carried away in the dead-cart, to be flung into the pit
+where the dead lay shroudless and unhonoured.
+
+How still and sweet the summer air seemed in that sunset hour; how placid
+the light ripple of the incoming tide; how soothing even the silence of the
+city! And yet it all meant death. It was but a few months since the fatal
+infection had been brought from Holland in a bundle of merchandise: and,
+behold, through city and suburbs, the pestilence had crept with slow and
+stealthy foot, now on this side of a street, now on another. The history of
+the plague was like a game at draughts, where man after man vanishes off
+the board, and the game can only end by exhaustion.
+
+"See, mistress, yonder is Somerset House," said the boatman, pointing to
+one of the most commanding façades in that highway of palaces. "That is the
+palace which the Queen-mother has raised from the ashes of the ruins her
+folly made, for the husband who loved her too well. She came back to us
+no wiser for years of exile--came back with her priests and her Italian
+singing-boys, her incense-bearers and golden candlesticks and gaudy rags of
+Rome. She fled from England with the roar of cannon in her ears, and the
+fear of death in her heart. She came back in pride and vain-glory, and
+boasted that had she known the English people better, she would never have
+gone away; and she has squandered thousands in yonder palace, upon floors
+of coloured woods, and Italian marbles--the people's money, mark you, money
+that should have built ships and fed sailors; and she meant to end her days
+among us. But a worse enemy than Cromwell has driven her out of the house
+that she made beautiful for herself; and who knows if she will ever see
+London again?"
+
+"Then those were right who told me that it was for fear of the plague her
+Majesty left London?" said Angela.
+
+"For what else should she flee? She was loth enough to leave, you may be
+sure, for she had seated herself in her pride yonder, and her Court was as
+splendid, and more looked up to than Queen Catherine's. The Queen-mother is
+the prouder woman, and held her head higher than her son's wife has ever
+dared to hold hers; yet there are those who say King Charles's widow has
+fallen so low as to marry Lord St. Albans, a son of Belial, who would
+hazard his immortal soul on a cast of the dice, and lose it as freely as he
+has squandered his royal mistress's money. She paid for Jermyn's feasting
+and wine-bibbing in Paris, 'tis said, when her son and his friends were on
+short commons."
+
+"You do wrong to slander that royal lady," remonstrated Angela. "She is of
+all widows the saddest and most desolate--ever the mark of evil fortune.
+Even in the glorious year of her son's restoration sorrow pursued her, and
+she had to mourn a daughter and a son. She is a most unhappy lady."
+
+"You would scarcely say as much, young madam, had you seen her in her pomp
+and power yonder. And as for Lord St. Albans, if he is not her husband--!
+Well, thou art a young innocent thing--so I had best hold my peace. Both
+palaces are empty and forsaken, both Whitehall and Somerset House. The rats
+and the spiders can take their own pleasure in the rooms that were full of
+music and dancing, card-playing and feasting, two or three months ago. Why,
+there was no better sight in London, after the dead-cart, than to watch the
+train of carriages and horsemen, carts and wagons, upon any of the great
+high-roads, carrying the people of London away to the country, as if the
+whole city had been moving in one mass like a routed army."
+
+"But in palaces and noblemen's houses surely there would be little
+danger?" said Angela. "Plagues and fevers are the outcome of hunger and
+uncleanliness, and all such evils as the poor have to suffer."
+
+"Nay, but the pestilence that walketh in darkness is no respecter of
+persons," answered the grim boatman. "I grant you that death has dealt
+hardest with the poor who dwell in crowded lanes and alleys. But now the
+very air reeks with poison. It may be carried in the folds of a woman's
+gown, or among the feathers of a courtier's hat. They are wise to go who
+can go. It is only such as I, who have to work for my grandchildren's
+bread, that must needs stay."
+
+"You speak like one who has seen better days," said Angela.
+
+"I was a sergeant in Hampden's regiment, madam, and went all through the
+war. When the King came back I had friends who stood by me, and bought me
+this boat. I was used to handle an oar in my boyhood, when I lived on
+a little bit of a farm that belonged to my father, between Reading and
+Henley. I was oftener on the water than on the land in those days. There
+are some who have treated me roughly because I fought against the late
+King; but folks are beginning to find out that the Brewer's disbanded
+red-coats can be honest and serviceable in time of peace."
+
+After passing the Queen-mother's desolate palace the boat crept along near
+the Middlesex shore, till it stopped at the bottom of a flight of stone
+steps, against which the tide washed with a pleasant rippling sound, and
+above which there rose the walls of a stately building facing south-west;
+small as compared with Somerset and Northumberland houses, midway between
+which it stood, yet a spacious and noble mansion, with a richly decorated
+river-front, lofty windows with sculptured pediments, floriated cornice,
+and two side towers topped with leaded cupolas, the whole edifice gilded by
+the low sun, and very beautiful to look upon, the windows gleaming as if
+there were a thousand candles burning within, a light that gave a false
+idea of life and festivity, since that brilliant illumination was only a
+reflected glory.
+
+"This, madam, is Fareham House," said the boatman, holding out his hand for
+his fee.
+
+He charged treble the sum he would have asked half a year ago. In this time
+of evil those intrepid spirits who still plied their trades in the tainted
+city demanded a heavy fee for their labour; and it would have been hard to
+dispute their claim, since each man knew that he risked his life, and that
+the limbs which toiled to-day might be lifeless clay to-night. There was
+an awfulness about the time, a taste and odour of death mixed with all the
+common things of daily life, a morbid dwelling upon thoughts of corruption,
+a feverish expectancy of the end of all things, which no man can rightly
+conceive who has not passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
+
+Angela paid the man his price without question. She stepped lightly from
+the boat, while he deposited her two small leather-covered trunks on the
+stone landing-place in front of the Italian terrace which occupied the
+whole length of the façade. She went up a flight of marble steps, to a door
+facing the river. Here she rang a bell which pealed long and loud over the
+quiet water, a bell that must have been heard upon the Surrey shore. Yet no
+one opened the great oak door; and Angela had a sudden sinking at the heart
+as the slow minutes passed and brought no sound of footsteps within, no
+scrooping of a bolt to betoken the opening of the door.
+
+"Belike the house is deserted, madam," said the boatman, who had moored
+his wherry to the landing-stage, and had carried the two trunks to the
+doorstep. "You had best try if the door be fastened or no. Stay!" he cried
+suddenly, pointing upwards, "Go not in, madam, for your life! Look at the
+red cross on the door, the sign of a plague-stricken house."
+
+Angela looked up with awe and horror. A great cross was smeared upon the
+door with red paint, and above it some one had scrawled the words, "Lord,
+have mercy upon us!"
+
+And the sister she loved, and the children whose faces she had never seen,
+were within that house, sick and in peril of death, perhaps dying--or dead!
+She did not hesitate for an instant, but took hold of the heavy iron ring
+which served as a handle for the door and tried to open it.
+
+"I have no fear for myself," she said to the boatman; "I have nursed the
+sick and the fever-stricken, and am not afraid of contagion--and there are
+those within whom I love. Good night, friend."
+
+The handle of the door turned somewhat stiffly in her hand, but it did
+turn, and the door opened, and she stood upon the threshold looking into a
+vast hall that was wrapped in shadow, save for a shaft of golden light that
+streamed from an oval window on the staircase. Other windows there were on
+each side of the door, shuttered and barred.
+
+Seeing her enter the house, the old Cromwellian shrugged his shoulders,
+shook his head despondently, shoved the two trunks hastily over the
+threshold, ran back to his boat, and pushed off.
+
+"God guard thy young life, mistress!" he cried, and the wherry shot out
+into the stream.
+
+There had been silence on the river, the silence of a deserted city
+at eventide; but that had seemed as nothing to the stillness of this
+marble-paved hall, where the sunset was reflected on the dark oak panelling
+in one lurid splash like blood.
+
+Not a mortal to be seen. Not a sound of voice or footstep. A crowd of gods
+and goddesses in draperies of azure and crimson, purple and orange, looked
+down from the ceiling. Curtains of tawny velvet hung beside the shuttered
+windows. A great brazen candelabrum, filled with half-consumed candles,
+stood tall and splendid at the foot of a wide oak staircase, the
+banister-rail whereof was cushioned with tawny velvet. Splendour of fabric,
+wood and marble, colour and gilding, showed on every side; but of humanity
+there was no sign.
+
+Angela shuddered at the sight of all that splendour, as if death were
+playing hide and seek in those voluminous curtains, or were lurking in the
+deep shadow which the massive staircase cast across the hall. She looked
+about her, full of fear, then seeing a silver bell upon the table, she took
+it up and rang it loudly. Upon the same carved ebony table there lay a
+plumed hat, a cane with an amber handle, and a velvet cloak neatly folded,
+as if placed ready for the master of the house, when he went abroad; but
+looking at these things closely, even in that dim light, she saw that
+cloak and hat were white with dust, and, more even than the silence, that
+spectacle of the thick dust on the dark velvet impressed her with the idea
+of a deserted house.
+
+She had no lack of courage, this pupil of the Flemish nuns, and her
+footstep did not falter as she went quickly up the broad staircase until
+she found herself in a spacious gallery, and amidst a flood of light, for
+the windows on this upper or noble floor were all unshuttered, and the
+sunset streamed in through the lofty Italian casements. Fareham House was
+built upon the plan of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, of which the illustrious
+Catherine de Vivonne was herself at once owner and architect. The
+staircase, instead of being a central feature, was at the western end of
+the house, allowing space for an unbroken suite of rooms communicating one
+with the other, and terminating in an apartment with a fine oriel window
+looking east.
+
+The folding doors of a spacious saloon stood wide open, and Angela entered
+a room whose splendour was a surprise to her who had been accustomed to
+the sober simplicity of a convent parlour and the cold grey walls of the
+refectory, where the only picture was a pinched and angular Virgin by
+Memling, and the only ornament a crucifix of ebony and brass.
+
+Here for the first time she beheld a saloon for whose decoration palaces
+had been ransacked and churches desecrated--the stolen treasures of many an
+ancestral mansion, spoil of rough soldiery or city rabble, things that had
+been slyly stowed away by their possessors during the stern simplicity of
+the Commonwealth, and had been brought out of their hiding-places and sold
+to the highest bidder. Gold and silver had been melted down in the Great
+Rebellion; but art treasures would not serve to pay soldiers or to buy
+ammunition; so these had escaped the melting-pot. At home and abroad the
+storehouses of curiosity merchants had been explored to beautify Lady
+Fareham's reception-rooms; and in the fading light Angela gazed upon
+hangings that were worthy of a royal palace, upon Italian crystals and
+Indian carvings, upon ivory and amber and jade and jasper, upon tables of
+Florentine mosaic, and ebony cabinets incrusted with rare agates, and upon
+pictures in frames of massive and elaborate carving, Venetian mirrors which
+gave back the dying light from a thousand facets, curtains and portières of
+sumptuous brocade, gold-embroidered, gorgeous with the silken semblance of
+peacock plumage, done with the needle, from the royal manufactory of the
+Crown Furniture at the Gobelins.
+
+She passed into an ante-room, with tapestried walls, and a divan covered
+with raised velvet, a music desk of gilded wood, and a spinet, on which
+was painted the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Beyond this there was the
+dining-room, more soberly though no less richly furnished than the saloon.
+Here the hangings were of Cordovan leather, stamped and gilded with
+_fleur-de-lys_, suggesting a French origin, and indeed these very hangings
+had been bought by a Dutch Jew dealer in the time of the Fronde, had
+belonged to the hated minister Mazarin, and had been sold among other of
+his effects when he fled from Paris: to vanish for a brief season behind
+the clouds of public animosity, and to blaze out again, an elderly phoenix,
+in a new palace, adorned with new treasures of art and industry that made
+royal princes envious.
+
+Angela gazed on all this splendour as one bewildered. In front of that
+gilded wall, quivering in mid-air, as if it had been painted upon the shaft
+of light that streamed in from the tall window, her fancy pictured the
+blood-red cross and the piteous legend, "Lord, have mercy on us!" written
+in the same blood colour. For herself she had neither horror of the
+pestilence nor fear of death. Religion had familiarised her mind with the
+image of the destroyer. From her childhood she had been acquainted with the
+grave, and with visions of a world beyond the grave. It was not for herself
+she trembled, but for her sister, and her sister's children; for Lord
+Fareham, whose likeness she recalled even at this moment, the grave dark
+face which Hyacinth had shown her on the locket she wore upon her neck, the
+face which Sir John said reminded him of Strafford.
+
+"He has just that fatal look," her father had told her afterwards when they
+talked of Fareham, "the look that men saw in Wentworth's face when he came
+from Ireland, and in his Majesty's countenance, after Wentworth's murder."
+
+While she stood in the dying light, wavering for a moment, doubtful which
+way to turn--since the room had no less than three tall oak doors, two of
+them ajar--there came a pattering upon the polished floor, a scampering of
+feet that were lighter and quicker than those of the smallest child, and
+the first living creature Angela saw in that silent house came running
+towards her. It was only a little black-and-tan spaniel, with long silky
+hair and drooping ears, and great brown eyes, fond and gentle, a very
+toy and trifle in the canine kingdom; yet the sight of that living thing
+thrilled her awe-stricken heart, and her tears came thick and fast as she
+knelt and took the little dog in her arms and pressed him against her
+bosom, and kissed the cold muzzle, and looked, half laughing, half crying,
+into the pathetic brown eyes.
+
+"At least there is life near. This dog would not be left in a deserted
+house," she thought, as the creature trembled against her bosom and licked
+the hand that held him.
+
+The pattering was repeated in the adjoining room, and another spaniel,
+which might have been twin brother of the one she held, came through
+the half open door, and ran to her, and set up a jealous barking which
+reverberated in the lofty room, and from within that unseen chamber on the
+other side of the door there came a groan, a deep and hollow sound, as of
+mortal agony.
+
+She set down the dog in an instant, and was on her feet again, trembling
+but alert. She pushed the door a little wider and went into the next
+apartment, a bedroom more splendid than any bed-chamber her fancy had ever
+depicted when she read of royal palaces.
+
+The walls were hung with Mortlake tapestries, representing in four great
+panels the story of Perseus and Andromeda, and the Rape of Proserpine.
+To her who knew not the old Greek fables those figures looked strangely
+diabolical. Naked maiden and fiery dragon, flying horse and Greek hero,
+Demeter and Persephone, hell-god and chariot, seemed alike demonaic and
+unholy, seen in the dim light of expiring day. The high chimney-piece, with
+its Oriental jars, blood-red and amber, faced her as she entered the room,
+and opposite the three tall windows stood the state bed, of carved ebony,
+the posts adorned with massive bouquets of chased silver flowers, the
+curtains of wine coloured velvet, heavy with bullion fringes. One curtain
+had been looped back, showing the amber satin lining, and on this bed of
+state lay a man, writhing in agony, with one bloodless hand plucking at the
+cambric upon his bosom, while with the other he grasped the ebony bed-post
+in a paroxysm of pain.
+
+Angela knew that dark and powerful face at the first glance, though the
+features were distorted by suffering. This sick man, the sole occupant of a
+deserted mansion, was her brother-in-law, Lord Fareham. A large high-backed
+armchair stood beside the bed, and on this Angela seated herself. She
+recollected the Superior's injunction just in time to put one of the
+anti-pestilential lozenges into her mouth before she bent over the
+sufferer, and took his clammy hand in hers, and endured the acrimony of his
+poisonous breath. That anxious gaze, the dark yellow complexion, and those
+great beads of sweat that poured down the pinched countenance too plainly
+indicated the disease which had desolated London. The Moslem's invisible
+plague-angel had entered this palace, and had touched the master with his
+deadly lance. That terrible Presence, which for the most part had been
+found among the dwellings of the poor, was here amidst purple and fine
+linen, here on this bed of state, enthroned in ebony and silver, hung round
+with velvet and bullion. She needed not to discover the pestilential spots
+beneath that semi-diaphanous cambric which hung loose upon the muscular
+frame, to be convinced of the cruel fact. Here, abandoned and alone, lay
+the master of the house, with nothing better than a pair of spaniels for
+his companions, and neither nurse nor watcher, wife nor friend, to help him
+towards recovery, or to comfort his passing soul.
+
+One of the little dogs leapt on the bed, and licked his master's face again
+and again, whining piteously between whiles.
+
+The sick man looked at Angela with awful, unseeing eyes, and then burst
+into a wild laugh--
+
+"See them run, the crop-headed clod-hoppers!" he cried. "Ride after
+them--mow them down--scatter the rebel clot-pols! The day is ours!" And
+then, passing from English to French, from visions of Lindsey and Rupert
+and the pursuit at Edgehill to memories of Condé and Turenne, he shouted
+with the voice that was like the sound of a trumpet, "_Boutte-selle!
+boutte-selle! Monte à cheval! monte à cheval! à l'arme, à l'arme!_"
+
+He was in the field of battle again. His wandering wits had carried him
+back to his first fight, when he was a lad in his father's company of
+horse, following the King's fortunes, breathing gunpowder, and splashed
+with human blood for the first time--when it was not so long since he had
+been blooded at the death of his first fox. He was a young man again, with
+the Prince, that Bourbon prince and hero whom he loved and honoured far
+above any of his own countrymen.
+
+"_O, la folle entreprise du Prince de Condé_," he sang, waving his hand
+above his head, while the spaniels barked loud and shrill, adding their
+clamour to his. He raved of battles and sieges. He was lying in the
+trenches, in cold and rain and wind--in the tempestuous darkness. He was
+mounting the breach at Dunkirk against the Spaniard; at Charenton in a
+hand-to-hand fight with Frondeurs. He raved of Châtillon and Chanleu, and
+the slaughter of that fatal day when Condé mourned a friend and each side
+lost a leader. Fever gave force to gesture and voice; but in the midst of
+his ravings he fell back, half fainting, upon the pillow, his heart beating
+in a tumult which fluttered the lace upon the bosom of his shirt, while
+the acrid drops upon his brow gathered thicker than poisonous dew. Angela
+remembered how last year in Holland these death-like sweats had not always
+pointed to a fatal result, but in some cases had afforded an outlet to the
+pestilential influences, though in too many instances they had served only
+to enfeeble the patient, the fire of disease still burning, while the damps
+of approaching dissolution oozed from the fevered body--flame within and
+ice without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A MINISTERING ANGEL.
+
+
+Angela flung off hood and mantle, and looked anxiously round the room.
+There were some empty phials and ointment boxes, some soiled linen rags and
+wet sponges, upon a table near the bed, and the chamber reeked with the
+odour of drugs, hartshorn and elder vinegar, cantharides, and aloes; enough
+to show that a doctor had been there, and that there had been some attempt
+at nursing the patient. But she had heard how in Holland the nurses had
+sometimes robbed and abandoned their charges, taking advantage of the
+confusions and uncertainties of that period of despair, quick and skilful
+to profit by sudden death, and the fears and agonies of relatives and
+friends, whose grief made plunder easy. She deemed it likely that one of
+those devilish women had first pretended to succour, and had then abandoned
+Lord Fareham to his fate, after robbing his house. Indeed, the open doors
+of a stately inlaid wardrobe between two windows over against the bed, and
+the confused appearance of the clothes and linen on the shelves, indicated
+that it had been ransacked by hasty hands; while, doubtless, there had been
+many valuables lying loose about a house where there was every indication
+of a careless profusion.
+
+"Alas! poor gentleman, to be left by some mercenary wretch--left to die
+like the camel in the desert!"
+
+She bent over him, and laid her hand with gentle firmness upon his
+death-cold forehead.
+
+"What! are there saints and angels in hell as well as felons and devils?"
+he cried, clutching her by the wrist, and looking up at her with distended
+eyes, in which the natural colour of the eye-ball was tarnished almost to
+blackness with injected blood.
+
+For long and lonely hours, that seemed an eternity, he had been tossing in
+a burning fever upon that disordered bed, until he verily believed himself
+in a place of everlasting torment. He had that strange, double sense
+which goes with delirium--the consciousness of his real surroundings, the
+tapestry and furniture of his own chamber, and yet the conviction that
+this was hell, and had always been hell, and that he had descended to this
+terrible under-world through infinite abysses of darkness. The glow of
+sunset had been to him the fierce light of everlasting flames; the burning
+of fever was the fire that is never quenched; the pain that racked his
+limbs was the worm that dieth not. And now in his torment there came the
+vision of a seraphic face bending over him in gentle solicitude; a face
+that brought comfort with it, even in the midst of his agony. After that
+one wild question he sank slowly back upon the pillows, and lay faint and
+weak, his breathing scarce audible. Angela laid her fingers on his wrist.
+The pulse was fluttering and intermittent.
+
+She remembered every detail of her aunt's treatment of the plague-patient
+in the convent infirmary, and how the turning-point of the malady and
+beginning of cure had seemed to be brought about by a draught of strong
+wine which the reverend mother had made her give the poor fainting creature
+at a crisis of extreme weakness. She looked about the room for any
+flask which might contain wine; but there was nothing there except the
+apothecary's phials and medicaments.
+
+It was dusk already, and she was alone in a strange house. It would seem no
+easy task to find what she wanted, but the case was desperate, and she knew
+enough of this mysterious disease to know that if the patient could not
+rally speedily from his prostrate condition the end must be near. With
+steady brain she set herself to face the difficulty--first to administer
+something which should sustain the sick man's strength, and then, without
+loss of time, to seek a physician, and bring him to that deserted bed. Wine
+was the one thing she could trust to in this crisis; for of the doses and
+lotions on yonder table she knew nothing, nor had her experience made her a
+believer in the happy influence of drugs.
+
+Her first search must be for light with which to explore the lower part of
+the house, where in pantry or stillroom, or, if not above ground, in the
+cellars, she must find what she wanted. Surely somewhere in that spacious
+bed-chamber there would be tinder-box and matches. There were a pair of
+silver candlesticks on the dressing-table, with thick wax candles burnt
+nearly to the sockets.
+
+A careful search at last discovered a tinder-box and matches in a dark
+angle of the fireless hearth, hidden behind the heavy iron dog. She struck
+a light, kindled her match, and lighted a candle, the sick man's eyes
+following all her movements, but his lips mute. As she went out of the door
+he called after her--
+
+"Leave me not, thou holy visitant--leave not my soul in hell!"
+
+"I will return!" she cried. "Have no fear, sir; I go to fetch some wine."
+
+Her errand was not done quickly. Amidst all the magnificence she had noted
+on her journey through the long suite of reception-rooms--the littered
+treasures of amber and gold, and ivory and porcelain and silver--she had
+seen only an empty wine-flask; so with quick footfall she ran down the
+wide, shallow stairs to the lower floor, and here she found herself in a
+labyrinth of passages opening into small rooms and servants' offices. Here
+there were darkness and gloom rather than splendour; though in many of
+those smaller rooms there was a sober and substantial luxury which became
+the inferior apartments of a palace. She came at last to a room which she
+took to be the butler's office, where there were dressers with a great
+array of costly Venetian glass, and a great many pieces of silver--cups,
+tankards, salvers, and other ornamental plate--in presses behind glazed
+doors. One of the glass panels had been broken, and the shelves in that
+press were empty.
+
+Wine there was none to be found in any part of the room; but a small army
+of empty bottles in a corner of the floor, and a confusion of greasy
+plates, knives, chicken bones, and other scraps, indicated that there had
+been carousing here at no remote time.
+
+The cellars were doubtless below these offices; but the wine-cellars would
+assuredly be locked, and she had to search for the keys. She opened drawer
+after drawer in the lower part of the presses, and at last, in an inner and
+secret drawer, found a multitude of keys, some of which were provided with
+parchment labels, and among these happily were two labelled "Ye great wine
+cellar, S." and "Ye smaller wine cellar, W."
+
+This was a point gained; but the search had occupied a considerable time.
+She had yet enough candle to last for about half an hour, and her next
+business was to find one of those cellars which those keys opened. She was
+intensely anxious to return to her patient, having heard how in some cases
+unhappy wretches had leapt from the bed of death and rushed out-of-doors,
+delirious, half naked, to anticipate their end by a fatal chill.
+
+On her way to the butler's office she had seen a stone archway at the head
+of a flight of stairs leading down into darkness. By this staircase she
+hoped to find the wine-cellars, and presently descended, her candlestick in
+one hand, and the two great keys in the other. As she went down into the
+stone basement, which was built with the solidity of a dungeon, she heard
+the plash of the tide, and felt that she was now on a level with the river.
+Here she found herself again in a labyrinth of passages, with many doors
+standing ajar. At the end of one passage she came to a locked door, and on
+trying her keys, found one of them to fit the lock; it was "Ye great wine
+cellar, S.," and she understood by the initial "S." that the cellar looked
+south and faced the river.
+
+She turned the heavy key with an effort that strained the slender fingers
+which held it; but she was unconscious of the pain, and wondered afterwards
+to see her hand dented and bruised where the iron had wrung it. The clumsy
+door revolved on massive hinges, and she entered a cellar so large that the
+light of her candle did not reach the furthermost corners and recesses.
+
+This cellar was built in a series of arches, fitted with stone bins, and in
+the upper part of one southward-fronting arch there was a narrow grating,
+through which came the cool breath of evening air and the sound of water
+lapping against stone. A patch of faint light showed pale against the iron
+bars, and as Angela looked that way, a great grey rat leapt through the
+grating, and ran along the topmost bin, making the bottles shiver as he
+scuttled across them. Then came a thud on the sawdust-covered stones, and
+she knew that the loathsome thing was on the floor upon which she was
+standing. She lowered her light shudderingly, and, for the first time
+since she entered that house of dread, the young brave heart sank with the
+sickness of fear.
+
+The cellar might swarm with such creatures; the darkness of the fast-coming
+night might be alive with them! And if yonder dungeon-like door were
+to swing to and shut with a spring lock, she might perish there in the
+darkness. She might die the most hideous of deaths, and her fate remain for
+ever unknown.
+
+In a sudden panic she rushed back to the door, and pushed it wider--pushed
+it to its extremest opening. It seemed too heavy to be likely to swing back
+upon its hinges; yet the mere idea of such a contingency appalled her.
+Remembering her labour in unlocking the door from the outside, she doubted
+if she could open it from within were it once to close upon that awful
+vault. And all this time the lapping of the tide against the stone sounded
+louder, and she saw little spirts of spray flashing against the bars in the
+lessening light.
+
+She collected herself with an effort, and began her search for the wine.
+Sack was the wine she had given to the sick nun, and it was that wine for
+which she looked. Of Burgundy, and claret, labelled "Clary Wine," she found
+several full bins, and more that were nearly empty. Tokay and other rarer
+wines were denoted by the parchment labels which hung above each bin; but
+it was some minutes before she came to a bin labelled "Sherris," which she
+knew was another name for sack. The bottles had evidently been undisturbed
+for a long time, for the bin was full of cobweb, and the thick coating of
+dust upon the glass betokened a respectable age in the wine. She carried
+off two bottles, one under each arm, and then, with even quicker steps than
+had brought her to that darksome place, she hastened back to the upper
+floor, leaving the key in the cellar door, and the door unlocked. There
+would be time enough to look after Lord Fareham's wine when she had cared
+for Lord Fareham himself.
+
+His eyes were fixed upon the doorway as she entered. They shone upon her in
+the dusk with an awful glassiness, as if life's last look had become fixed
+in death. He did not speak as she drew near the bed, and set the wine
+bottles down upon the table among the drugs and cataplasms.
+
+She had found a silver-handled corkscrew in the butler's room among the
+relics of the feast, and with this she opened one of the bottles, Fareham
+watching her all the time.
+
+"Is that some new alexipharmic?" he asked with a sudden rational air, which
+was almost as startling as if a dead man had spoken. "I will have no more
+of their loathsome drugs. They have made an apothecary's shop of my body. I
+would rather they let me rot by the plague than that they should poison me
+with their antidotes, or dissolve me to death with their sudorifics."
+
+"This is not a medicine, Lord Fareham, but your own wine; and I want you to
+drink a long draught of it, and then, who knows but you may sleep off your
+malady?"
+
+"Ay, sleep in the grave, sweet friend! I have seen the tokens on my breast
+that mean death. There is but one inevitable end for all who are so marked.
+'Tis like the forester's notch upon the tree. It means doom. He was king of
+the forest once, perhaps; but no matter. His time has come. Oh, Lord, thou
+hast tormented me with hot burning coals!" he cried, in a sudden access of
+pain; and in the next minute he was raving.
+
+Angela filled a beaker with the bright golden wine, and offered it to the
+sick man's lips. It was not without infinite pains and coaxing that she
+induced him to drink; but, when once his parched lips had tasted the cold
+liquor, he drank eagerly, as if that strong wine had been a draught of
+water. He gave a deep sigh of solace when the beaker was empty, for he had
+been enduring an agony of thirst through all the glare and heat of the
+afternoon, and there was unspeakable comfort in that first long drink. He
+would have drunk foul water with almost as keen a relish.
+
+He talked fast and furiously, in the disjointed sentences of delirium, for
+some little time; and then, little by little, he grew more tranquil; and
+Angela, sitting beside the bed, with her fingers laid gently on his wrist,
+marked the quieter beat of the pulse, which no longer fluttered like the
+wing of a frightened bird. Then with deep thankfulness she saw the eyelids
+droop over the bloodshot eyeballs, while the breathing grew slower and
+heavier as sleep clouded the wearied brain. The spaniels crept nearer him,
+and nestled close to his pillow, so that the man's dark locks were mixed
+with the silken curls of the dogs.
+
+Would he die in that sleep? she wondered.
+
+It was only now for the first time since she entered this unpeopled house
+that she had leisure to speculate on the circumstances which had brought
+about such loneliness and neglect, here where rank and state, and wealth
+almost without limit should have secured the patient every care and comfort
+that devoted service could lavish upon a sufferer. How was it that she
+found her sister's husband abandoned to the care of hirelings, left to the
+chances of paid service?
+
+To the cloister-reared maiden the idea of wifely duty was elevated almost
+to a religion. To father or to husband she would have given a boundless
+devotion, in sickness most of all devoted. To leave husband or father in
+a plague-stricken city would have seemed to her a crime as abominable as
+Tullia's, a treachery base as Goneril's or Regan's. Could it be that her
+sister, that bright and lovely creature, whose face she remembered as a
+sunbeam incarnate, could she have been swept away by the pestilence which
+spared neither youth nor beauty, neither the strong man nor the weakling
+child? Her heart grew heavy as lead at the thought that this stranger, by
+whose pillow she was watching, might be the sole survivor in that forsaken
+palace, and that in a few more hours he, too, would be numbered with the
+dead, in that dreadful city where Death reigned omnipotent, and where the
+living seemed but a vanishing minority, pale shadows of living creatures
+passing silently along one inevitable pathway to the pest-house or pit.
+
+That calm sleep of the plague-stricken might mean recovery, or it might
+mean death. Angela examined the potions and unguents on the table near the
+bed, and read the instructions on jars and phials. One was an alexipharmic
+draught, to be taken the last thing at night, another a sudorific, to be
+administered once in every hour.
+
+"I would not wake him to give him the finest medicine that ever physician
+prescribed," Angela said to herself. "I remember what a happy change one
+hour of quiet slumber made in Sister Monica, when she was all but dead of a
+quartan fever. Sleep is God's physic."
+
+She knelt upon a Prie-Dieu chair remote from the bed, knowing that
+contagion lurked amid those voluminous hangings, beneath that stately
+canopy with its lustrous satin lining, on which the light of the wax
+candles was reflected in shining patches as upon a lake of golden water.
+She had no fear of the pestilence; but an instinctive prudence made her
+hold herself aloof, now that there was nothing more to be done for the
+sufferer.
+
+She remained long in prayer, repeating one of those litanies which she had
+learnt in her infancy, and which of late had seemed to her to have somewhat
+too set and mechanical a rhythm. The earnestness and fervour seemed to have
+gone out of them in somewise since she had come to womanhood. The names of
+the saints her lips invoked were dull and cold, and evolved no image
+of human or superhuman love and power. What need of intercessors whose
+personality was vague and dim, whose earthly histories were made up of
+truth so interwoven with fable that she scarce dared believe even that
+which might be true? In the One Crucified was help for all sinners, gospel
+and creed, the rule of life here, the promise of immortality hereafter.
+
+The litanies to Virgin and Saints were said as a duty--a part of implicit
+obedience which was the groundwork of her religion; and then all the
+aspirations of her heart, her prayers for the sick man yonder, her fears
+for her absent sister, for her father in his foreign wanderings, went up in
+one stream of invocation to Christ the Redeemer. To Him, and Him alone, the
+strong flame of faith and love rose, like the incense upon an altar--the
+altar of a girl's trusting heart.
+
+She was so lost in meditation that she was unconscious of an approaching
+footstep in the stillness of the deserted house, till it drew near to the
+threshold of the sick-room. The night was close and sultry, so she had left
+the door open, and that slow tread had crossed the threshold by the time
+she rose from her knees. Her heart beat fast, startled by the first human
+presence which she had known in that melancholy place, save the presence of
+the pest-stricken sufferer.
+
+She found herself face to face with a middle-aged gentleman of medium
+stature, clad in the sober colouring that suggested one of the learned
+professions. He appeared even more startled than Angela at the unexpected
+vision which met his gaze, faintly seen in the dim light.
+
+There was silence for a few moments, and then the stranger saluted the lady
+with a formal reverence, as he laid down his gold-handled cane.
+
+"Surely, madam, this mansion of my Lord Fareham's must be enchanted," he
+said. "I left a crowd of attendants, and the stir of life below and above
+stairs, only this forenoon last past. I find silence and vacancy. That is
+scarce strange in this dejected and unhappy time; for it is but too common
+a trick of hireling nurses to abandon their patients, and for servants to
+plunder and then desert a sick house. But to find an angel where I left
+a hag! That is the miracle! And an angel who has brought healing, if I
+mistake not," he added, in a lower voice, bending over the speaker.
+
+"I am no angel, sir, but a weak, erring mortal," answered the girl,
+gravely. "For pity's sake, kind doctor--since I doubt not you are my lord's
+physician--tell me where are my dearest sister, Lady Fareham, and her
+children. Tell me the worst, I entreat you!"
+
+"Sweet lady, there is no ill news to tell. Her ladyship and the little ones
+are safe at my lord's house in Oxfordshire, and it is only his lordship
+yonder who has fallen a victim to the contagion. Lady Fareham and her girl
+and boy have not been in London since the plague began to rage. My lord
+had business in the city, and came hither alone. He and the young Lord
+Rochester, who is the most audacious infidel this town can show, have been
+bidding defiance to the pestilence, deeming their nobility safe from a
+sickness which has for the most part chosen its victims among the vulgar."
+
+"His lordship is very ill, I fear, sir?" said Angela interrogatively.
+
+"I left him at eleven o'clock this morning with but scanty hope of
+finding him alive after sundown. The woman I left to nurse him was his
+house-steward's wife, and far above the common kind of plague-nurse. I did
+not think she would turn traitor."
+
+"Her husband has proved a false steward. The house has been robbed of plate
+and valuables, as I believe, from signs I saw below stairs; and I suppose
+husband and wife went off together."
+
+"Alack! madam, this pestilence has brought into play some of the worst
+attributes of human nature. The tokens and loathly boils which break out
+upon the flesh of the plague-stricken are less revolting to humanity than
+the cruelty of those who minister to the sick, and whose only desire is to
+profit by the miseries that surround them; wretches so vile that they have
+been known wilfully to convey the seeds of death from house to house, in
+order to infect the sound, and so enlarge their area of gains. It was an
+artful device of those plunderers to paint the red cross on the door, and
+thus scare away any visitor who might have discovered their depredations.
+But you, madam, a being so young and fragile, have you no fear of the
+contagion?"
+
+"Nay, sir, I know that I am in God's hand. Yonder poor gentleman is not the
+first plague-patient I have nursed. There was a nun came from Holland to
+our convent at Louvain last year, and had scarce been one night in the
+house before tokens of the pestilence were discovered upon her. I helped
+the infirmarian to nurse her, and with God's help we brought her round. My
+aunt, the reverend mother, bade me give her the best wine there was in the
+house--strong Spanish wine that a rich merchant had given to the convent
+for the use of the sick--and it was as though that good wine drove the
+poison from her blood. She recovered by the grace of God after only a
+few days' careful nursing. Finding his lordship stricken with such great
+weakness, I ventured to give him a draught of the best sack I could find in
+his cellar."
+
+"Dear lady, thou art a miracle of good sense and compassionate bounty. I
+doubt thou hast saved thy sister from widow's weeds," said Dr. Hodgkin,
+seated by the bed, with his fingers on the patient's wrist, and his massive
+gold watch in the other hand. "This sound sleep promises well, and the
+pulse beats somewhat slower and steadier than it did this morning. Then
+the case seemed hopeless, and I feared to give wine--though a free use of
+generous wine is my particular treatment--lest it should fly to his brain,
+and disturb his intellectuals at a time when he should need all his senses
+for the final disposition of his affairs. Great estates sometimes hang upon
+the breath of a dying man."
+
+"Oh, sir, but your patient! To save his life, that would sure be your first
+and chiefest thought?"
+
+"Ay, ay, my pretty miss; but I had other measures. Apollo twangs not ever
+on the same bowstring. Did my sudorific work well, think you?"
+
+"He was bathed in perspiration when first I found him; but the sweat-drops
+seemed cold and deadly, as if life itself were being dissolved out of him."
+
+"Ay, there are cases in which that copious sweat is the forerunner of
+dissolution; but in others it augurs cure. The pent-up poison which is
+corrupting the patient's blood finds a sudden vent, its virulence is
+diluted, and if the end prove fatal, it is that the patient lacks power to
+rally after the ravages of the disease, rather than that the poison kills.
+Was it instantly after that profuse sweat you gave him the wine, I wonder?"
+
+"It was as speedily as I could procure it from the cellar below."
+
+"And that strong wine, given in the nick of time, reassembled Nature's
+scattered forces, and rekindled the flame of life. Upon my soul, sweet
+young lady, I believe thou hast saved him! All the drugs in Bucklersbury
+could do no more. And now tell me what symptoms you have noted since you
+have watched by his bed; and tell me further if you have strength to
+continue his nurse, with such precautions as I shall dictate, and such help
+as I can send you in the shape of a stout, honest, serving-wench of mine,
+and a man to guard the lower part of your house, and fetch and carry for
+you?"
+
+"I will do everything you bid me, with all my heart, and with such skill as
+I can command."
+
+"Those delicate fingers were formed to minister to the sick. And you will
+not shrink from loathsome offices--from the application of cataplasms, from
+cleansing foul sores? Those blains and boils upon that poor body will need
+care for many days to come."
+
+"I will shrink from nothing that may be needful for his benefit. I should
+love to go on nursing him, were it only for my sister's sake. How sorry she
+would feel to be so far from him, could she but know of his sickness!"
+
+"Yes, I believe Lady Fareham would be sorry," answered the physician,
+with a dry little laugh; "though there are not many married ladies about
+Rowley's court of whom I would diagnose as much. Not Lady Denham, for
+instance, that handsome, unprincipled houri, married to a septuagenarian
+poet, who would rather lock her up in a garret than see her shine at
+Whitehall; or Lady Castlemaine, whose husband has been uncivil enough to
+show discontent at a peerage that was not of his own earning; or a dozen
+others I could name, were not such scandals as these Hebrew to thine
+innocent ear."
+
+"Nay, sir, my sister has written of Court scandals in many of her letters,
+and it has grieved me to think her lot should be cast among people of
+whose reckless doings she tells me with a lively wit that makes sin seem
+something less than sin."
+
+"There is no such word as 'sin' in Charles Stuart's Court, my dear young
+lady. It is harder to achieve bad repute nowadays than it was once to be
+thought a saint. Existence in this town is a succession of bagatelles.
+Men's lives and women's reputations drift down to the bottomless pit upon
+a rivulet of epigrams and chansons. You have heard of that Dance of Death,
+which was one of the nervous diseases of the fifteenth century--a malady
+which, after beginning with one lively caperer, would infect a whole
+townspeople, and send an entire population curvetting and prancing,
+until death stopped them. I sometimes think, when I watch the follies at
+Whitehall, that those graceful dancers, sliding upon pointed toe through a
+coranto, amid a blaze of candles and star-shine of diamonds, are capering
+along the same fatal road by which St. Vitus lured his votaries to the
+grave. And then I look at Rowley's licentious eye and cynical lip, and
+think to myself, 'This man's father perished on the scaffold; this man's
+lovely ancestress paid the penalty of her manifold treacheries after
+sixteen years' imprisonment; this man has passed through the jaws of death,
+has left his country a fugitive and a pauper, has returned as if by a
+miracle, carried back to a throne upon the hearts of his people; and behold
+him now--saunterer, sybarite, sensualist--strolling through life without
+one noble aim or one virtuous instinct; a King who traffics in the pride
+and honour of his country, and would sell her most precious possessions,
+level her strongest defences, if his cousin and patron t'other side the
+Channel would but bid high enough.' But a plague on my tongue, dear lady,
+that it must always be wagging. Not one word more, save for instructions."
+
+Dr. Hodgkin loved talking even better than he loved a fee, and he allowed
+himself a physician's licence to be prosy; but he now proceeded to give
+minute directions for the treatment of the patient--the poultices and
+stoups and lotions which were to reduce the external indications of the
+contagion, the medicines which were to be given at intervals during the
+night. Medicine in those days left very little to Nature, and if patients
+perished it was seldom for want of drugs and medicaments.
+
+"The servant I send you will bring meat and all needful herbs for making a
+strong broth, with which you will feed the patient once an hour. There are
+many who hold with the boiling of gold in such a broth, but I will not
+enter upon the merits of aurum potabile as a fortifiant. I take it that in
+this case you will find beef and mutton serve your turn. I shall send you
+from my own larder as much beef as will suffice for to-night's use; and
+to-morrow your servant must go to the place where the country people sell
+their goods, butchers' meat, poultry, and garden-stuff; for the butchers'
+shops of London are nearly all closed, and people scent contagion in any
+intercourse with their fellow-citizens. You will have, therefore, to look
+to the country people for your supplies; but of all this my own man will
+give you information. So now, good night, sweet young lady. It is on the
+stroke of nine. Before eleven you shall have those who will help and
+protect you. Meanwhile you had best go downstairs with me, and lock and
+bolt the great door leading into the garden, which I found ajar."
+
+"There is the door facing the river, too, by which I entered."
+
+"Ay, that should be barred also. Keep a good heart, madam. Before eleven
+you shall have a sturdy watchman on the premises."
+
+Angela took a lighted candle and followed the physician through the great
+empty rooms, and down the echoing staircase; under the ceiling where Jove,
+with upraised goblet, drank to his queen, while all the galaxy of the Greek
+pantheon circled his imperial throne. Upon how many a festal procession
+had those Olympians looked down since that famous house-warming, when
+the colours were fresh from the painter's brush, and when the third
+Lord Fareham's friend and gossip, King James, deigned to witness the
+representation of Jonson's "Time Vindicated," enacted by ladies and
+gentlemen of quality, in the great saloon, a performance which--with the
+banquet and confectionery brought from Paris, and "the sweet waters which
+came down the room like a shower from heaven," as one wrote who was
+present at that splendid entertainment, and the _feux d'artifice_ on the
+river--cost his lordship a year's income, but stamped him at once a fine
+gentleman. Had he been a trifle handsomer, and somewhat softer of speech,
+that masque and banquet might have placed Richard Revel, Baron Fareham,
+in the front rank of royal favourites; but the Revels were always a
+black-visaged race, with more force than comeliness in their countenances,
+and more gall than honey upon their tongues.
+
+It was past eleven before the expected succour arrived, and in the interval
+Lord Fareham had awakened once, and had swallowed a composing draught,
+having apparently but little consciousness of the hand that administered
+it. At twenty minutes past eleven Angela heard the bell ring, and ran
+blithely down the now familiar staircase to open the garden door, outside
+which she found a middle-aged woman and a tall, sturdy young man, each
+carrying a bundle. These were the nurse and the watchman sent by Dr.
+Hodgkin. The woman gave Angela a slip of paper from the doctor, by way of
+introduction.
+
+"You will find Bridget Basset a worthy woman, and able to turn her hand to
+anything; and Thomas Stokes is an honest, serviceable youth, whom you may
+trust upon the premises, till some of his lordship's servants can be sent
+from Chilton Abbey, where I take it there is a large staff."
+
+It was with an unspeakable relief that Angela welcomed these humble
+friends. The silence of the great empty house had been weighing upon her
+spirits, until the sense of solitude and helplessness had grown almost
+unbearable. Again and again she had watched Lord Fareham turn his feverish
+head upon his pillow, while the parched lips moved in inarticulate
+mutterings; and she had thought of what she should do if a stronger
+delirium were to possess him, and he were to try and do himself some
+mischief. If he were to start up from his bed and rush through the empty
+rooms, or burst open one of yonder lofty casements and fling himself
+headlong to the terrace below! She had been told of the terrible things
+that plague-patients had done to themselves in their agony; how they had
+run naked into the streets to perish on the stones of the highway; how
+they had gashed themselves with knives; or set fire to their bed-clothes,
+seeking any escape from the torments of that foul disease. She knew that
+those burning plague-spots, which her hands had dressed, must cause a
+continual anguish that might wear out the patience of a saint; and as the
+dark face turned on the tumbled pillow, she saw by the clenched teeth and
+writhing lips, and the convulsive frown of the strongly marked brows,
+that even in delirium the sufferer was struggling to restrain all unmanly
+expressions of his agony. But now, at least, there would be this strong,
+capable woman to share in the long night watch; and if the patient grew
+desperate there would be three pair of hands to protect him from his own
+fury.
+
+She made her arrangements promptly and decisively. Mrs. Basset was to stay
+all night with her in the patient's chamber, with such needful intervals of
+rest as each might take without leaving the sick-room; and Stokes was
+first to see to the fastening of the various basement doors, and to assure
+himself that there was no one hidden either in the cellars or on the ground
+floor; also to examine all upper chambers, and lock all doors; and was
+then to make himself a bed in a dressing closet adjoining Lord Fareham's
+chamber, and was to lie there in his clothes, ready to help at any hour of
+the night, should help be wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BETWEEN LONDON AND OXFORD.
+
+
+Three nights and days had gone since Angela first set her foot upon the
+threshold of Fareham House, and in all that time she had not once gone out
+into the great city, where dismal silence reigned by day and night, save
+for the hideous cries of the men with the dead-carts, calling to the
+inhabitants of the infected houses to bring out their dead, and roaring
+their awful summons with as automatic a monotony as if they had been
+hawking some common necessary of life--a dismal cry that was but
+occasionally varied by the hollow tones of a Puritan fanatic, stalking,
+gaunt and half clad, along the Strand, and shouting some sentence of fatal
+bodement from the Hebrew prophets; just as before the siege of Titus there
+walked through the streets of Jerusalem one who cried, "Woe to the wicked
+city!" and whose voice could not be stopped but by death.
+
+In those three days and nights the worst symptoms of the contagion were
+subjugated. But the ravages of the disease had left the patient in a
+state of weakness which bordered on death; and his nurses were full of
+apprehension lest the shattered forces of his constitution should fail even
+in the hour of recovery. The violence of the fever was abated, and the
+delirium had become intermittent, while there were hours in which the
+sufferer was conscious and reasonable, in which calmer intervals he would
+fain have talked with Angela more than her anxiety would allow.
+
+He was full of wonder at her presence in that house; and when he had been
+told who she was, he wanted to know how and why she had come there. By what
+happy accident, by what interposition of Providence, had she been sent to
+save him from a hideous death?
+
+"I should have died but for you," he said. "I should have lain here till
+the cart fetched my putrid carcase. I should be rotting in one of their
+plague-pits yonder, behind the old Abbey."
+
+"Nay, indeed, my lord, your good doctor would have discovered your desolate
+condition, and would have brought Mrs. Basset to nurse you."
+
+"He would have been too late. I was drifting out to the dark sea of death.
+I felt as if the river were bearing me so much nearer to that unknown sea
+with every ripple of the hurrying tide. 'Twas your draught of strong wine
+snatched me back from the cruel river, drew me on to _terra firma_ again,
+renewed my consciousness of manhood, and that I was not a weed to be washed
+away. Oh, that wine! Ye gods! what elixir to this parched, burning throat!
+Did ever drunkard in all Alsatia snatch such fierce joy from a brimmer?"
+
+Angela put her finger on her lip, and with the other hand drew the silken
+coverlet over the sick man's shoulders.
+
+"You are not to talk," she said, "you are to sleep. Slumber is to be your
+diet and medicine after that good soup at which you make such a wry face."
+
+"I would swallow the stuff were it Locusta's hell-broth, for your sake."
+
+"You will take it for wisdom's sake, that you may mend speedily, and go
+home to my sister," said Angela.
+
+"Home, yes! It will be bliss ineffable to see flowery pastures and wooded
+hills after this pest-haunted town; but oh, Angela, mine angel, why dost
+thou linger in this poisonous chamber where every breath of mine exhales
+infection? Why do you not fly while you are still unstricken? Truly the
+plague-fiend cometh as a thief in the night. To-day you are safe. To-night
+you may be doomed."
+
+"I have no fear, sir. You are not the first plague-patient I have nursed."
+
+"And thou fanciest thyself pestilence-proof! Sweet girl, it may be that the
+divine lymph which fills those azure veins has no affinity with poisons
+that slay rude mortals like myself."
+
+"Will you ever be talking?" she said with grave reproach, and left him to
+the care of Mrs. Basset, whose comfortable and stolid personality did not
+stimulate his imagination.
+
+She had a strong desire to explore that city of which she had yet seen so
+little, and her patient being now arrived at a state of his disorder when
+it was best for him to be tempted to prolonged slumbers by silence and
+solitude, she put on her hood and gloves and went out alone to see the
+horrors of the deserted streets, of which nurse Basset had given her so
+appalling a picture.
+
+It was four o'clock, and the afternoon was at its hottest; the blue of a
+cloudless sky was reflected in the blue of the silent river, where, instead
+of the flotilla of gaily painted wherries, the procession of gilded barges,
+the music and song, the ceaseless traffic of Court and City, there was only
+the faint ripple of the stream, or here and there a solitary barge
+creeping slowly down the tide with ineffectual sail napping in the sultry
+atmosphere.
+
+That unusual calm which had marked this never-to-be-forgotten year, from
+the beginning of spring, was yet unbroken, and the silent city lay like a
+great ship becalmed on a tropical ocean; the same dead silence; the same
+cruel, smiling sky above; the same hopeless submission to fate in every
+soul on board that death-ship. How would those poor dying creatures,
+panting out their latest breath in sultry, airless chambers, have welcomed
+the rush of rain, the cool freshness of a strong wind blowing along those
+sun-baked streets, sweeping away the polluted dust, dispersing noxious
+odours, bringing the pure scents of far-off woodlands, of hillside heather
+and autumn gorse, the sweetness of the country across the corruption of
+the town. But at this dreadful season, when storm and rain would have been
+welcomed with passionate thanksgiving, the skies were brass, and the ground
+was arid and fiery as the sands of the Arabian desert, while even the grass
+that grew in the streets, where last year multitudinous feet had trodden,
+sickened as it grew, and faded speedily from green to yellow.
+
+Pausing on the garden terrace to survey the prospect before she descended
+to the street, Angela thought of that river as her imagination had depicted
+it, after reading a letter of Hyacinth's, written so late as last May; the
+gay processions, the gaudy liveries of watermen and servants, the gilded
+barges, the sound of viol and guitar, the harmony of voices in part songs,
+"Go, lovely rose," or "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" the beauty and the
+splendour; fair faces under vast plumed hats, those picturesque hats which
+the maids of honour snatched from each other's heads with giddy laughter,
+exchanging head-gear here on the royal barge, as they did sometimes walking
+about the great rooms at Whitehall; the King with his boon companions
+clustered round him on the richly carpeted daïs in the stern, his courtiers
+and his favoured mistresses; haughty Castlemaine, empres, regnant over the
+royal heart, false, dissolute, impudent, glorious as Cleopatra when her
+purple sails bore her down the swift-flowing Cydnus; the wit and folly
+and gladness. All had vanished like the visions of a dreamer; and there
+remained but this mourning city, with its closed windows and doors, its
+watchmen guarding the marked houses, lest disease and death should hold
+communion with that poor remnant of health and life left in the infected
+town. Would that fantastic vision of careless, pleasure-loving monarch and
+butterfly Court ever be realised again? Angela thought not. It seemed to
+her serious mind that the glory of those wild years since his Majesty's
+restoration was a delusive and pernicious brightness which could never
+shine again. That extravagant splendour, that reckless gaiety had borne
+beneath their glittering surface the seeds of ruin and death. An angry
+God had stretched out His hand against the wicked city where sin and
+profaneness sat in the high places. If Charles Stuart and his courtiers
+ever came back to London they would return sobered and chastened, taught
+wisdom by adversity. The Puritan spirit would reign once more in the land,
+and an age of penitence and Lenten self-abasement would succeed the orgies
+of the Restoration; while the light loves of Whitehall, the noble ladies,
+the impudent actresses, would vanish into obscurity. Angela's loyal young
+heart was full of faith in the King. She was ready to believe that his sins
+were the sins of a man whose head had been turned by the sudden change from
+exile to a throne, from poverty to wealth, from dependence upon his
+Bourbon cousin and his friends in Holland to the lavish subsidies of a
+too-indulgent Commons.
+
+No words could paint the desolation which reigned between the Strand and
+the City in that fatal summer, now drawing to its melancholy close. More
+than once in her brief pilgrimage Angela drew back, shuddering, from the
+embrasure of a door, or the inlet to some narrow alley, at sight of death
+lying on the threshold, stiff, stark, unheeded; more than once in her
+progress from the New Exchange to St Paul's she heard the shrill wail of
+women lamenting for a soul just departed. Death was about and around her.
+The great bell of the cathedral tolled with an inexorable stroke in the
+summer stillness, as it had tolled every day through those long months of
+heat, and drought, and ever-growing fear, and ever-thickening graves.
+
+Eastward there rose the red glare of a great fire, and she feared that some
+of those old wooden houses in the narrower streets were blazing, but on
+inquiry of a solitary foot passenger, she learnt that this fire was one of
+many which had been burning for three days, at street corners and in open
+spaces, at a great expense of sea-coal, with the hope of purifying the
+atmosphere and dispersing poisonous gases--but that so far no amelioration
+had followed upon this outlay and labour. She came presently to a junction
+of roads near the Fleet ditch, and saw the huge coal-fire flaming with a
+sickly glare in the sunshine, tended by a spectral figure, half-clad and
+hungry-looking, to whom she gave an alms; and at this juncture of ways a
+great peril awaited her, for there sprang, as it were, out of the very
+ground, so quickly did they assemble from neighbouring courts and alleys,
+a throng of mendicants, who clustered round her, with filthy hands
+outstretched, and shrill voices imploring charity. So wasted were their
+half-naked limbs, so ghastly and livid their countenances, that they might
+have all been plague-patients, and Angela recoiled from them in horror.
+
+"Keep your distance, for pity's sake, good friends, and I will give you all
+the money I carry," she exclaimed, and there was something of command in
+her voice and aspect, as she stood before them, straight and tall, with
+pale, earnest face.
+
+They fell off a little way, and waited till she scattered the contents of
+her purse--small Flemish coin--upon the ground in front of her, where they
+scrambled for it, snarling and scuffling with each other like dogs fighting
+for a bone.
+
+Hastening her footsteps after the horror of that encounter, she went by
+Ludgate Hill to the great cathedral, keeping carefully to the middle of the
+street, and glancing at the walls and shuttered casements on either side of
+her, recalling that appalling story which the Italian choir-mistress at the
+Ursulines had told her of the great plague in Milan--how one morning the
+walls and doors of many houses in the city had been found smeared with some
+foul substance, in broad streaks of white and yellow, which was believed to
+be a poisonous compost carrying contagion to every creature who touched
+or went within the influence of its mephitic odour; how this thing had
+happened not once, but many times; until the Milanese believed that Satan
+himself was the prime mover in this horror, and that there were a company
+of wretches who had sold themselves to the devil, and were his servants and
+agents, spreading disease and death through the city. Strange tales were
+told of those who had seen the foul fiend face to face, and had refused his
+proffered gold. Innocent men were denounced, and but narrowly escaped being
+torn limb from limb, or trampled to death, under the suspicion of being
+concerned in this anointing of the walls, and even the cathedral benches,
+with plague-poison; yet no death, that the nun could remember, had ever
+been traced directly to the compost. It was a mysterious terror which
+struck deep into the hearts of a frightened people, so that at last,
+against his better reason, and at the repeated prayer of his flock, the
+good Archbishop allowed the crystal coffin of St. Carlo Borromeo to be
+carried in solemn procession, upon the shoulders of Cardinals, from end to
+end of the city--on which occasion all Milan crowded into the streets,
+and clustered thick on either side of the pompous train of monks and
+incense-bearers, priests and acolytes. But soon there fell a deeper despair
+upon the inhabitants of the doomed city; for within two days after this
+solemn carrying of the saintly remains the death-rate had tripled and there
+was scarce a house in which the contagion had not entered. Then it was said
+that the anointers had been in active work in the midst of the crowd, and
+had been busiest in the public squares where the bearers of the crystal
+coffin halted for a space with their sacred load, and where the people
+clustered thickest. The Archbishop had foreseen the danger of this
+gathering of the people, many but just recovering from the disease, many
+infected and unconscious of their state; but his flock saw only the
+handiwork of the fiend in this increase of evil.
+
+In Protestant London there had been less inclination to superstition; yet
+even here a comet which, under ordinary circumstances, would have appeared
+but as other comets, was thought to wear the shape of a fiery sword
+stretched over the city in awful threatening.
+
+Full of pity and of gravest, saddest thoughts, the lonely girl walked
+through the lonely town to that part of the city where the streets were
+narrowest, a labyrinth of lanes and alleys, with a church-tower or steeple
+rising up amidst the crowded dwellings at almost every point to which the
+eye looked. Angela wondered at the sight of so many fine churches in this
+heretical land. Many of these city churches were left open in this day of
+wrath, so that unhappy souls who had a mind to pray might go in at will,
+and kneel there. Angela peered in at an old church in a narrow court,
+holding the door a little way ajar, and looking along the cold grey nave.
+All was gloom and silence, save for a monotonous and suppressed murmur
+of one invisible worshipper in a pew near the altar, who varied his
+supplicatory mutterings with long-drawn sighs.
+
+Angela turned with a shudder from the cold emptiness of the great grey
+church, with its sombre woodwork, and lack of all those beautiful forms
+which appeal to the heart and imagination in a Romanist temple. She thought
+how in Flanders there would have been tapers burning, and censors swinging,
+and the rolling thunder of the organ pealing along the vaulted roof in the
+solemn strains of a _Dies Irae_, lifting the soul of the worshipper into
+the far-off heaven of the world beyond death, soothing the sorrowful heart
+with visions of eternal bliss.
+
+She wandered through the maze of streets and lanes, sometimes coming back
+unawares to a street she had lately traversed, till at last she came to a
+church that was not silent, for through the open door she heard a voice
+within, preaching or praying. She hesitated for a few minutes on the
+threshold, having been taught that it was a sin to enter a Protestant
+church; and then something within her, some new sense of independence and
+revolt against old traditions, moved her to enter, and take her place
+quietly in one of the curious wooden boxes where the sparse congregation
+were seated, listening to a man in a Geneva gown, who was preaching in a
+tall oaken pulpit, surmounted by a massive sounding-board, and furnished
+with a crimson velvet cushion, which the preacher used with great effect
+during his discourse, now folding his arms upon it and leaning forward to
+argue familiarly with his flock, now stretching a long, lean arm above it
+to point a denouncing finger at the sinners below, anon belabouring it
+severely in the passion of his eloquence.
+
+The flock was small, but devout, consisting for the most part of
+middle-aged and elderly persons in sombre attire and of Puritanical aspect;
+for the preacher was one of those Calvinistic clergy of Cromwell's time who
+had been lately evicted from their pulpits, and prosecuted for assembling
+congregations under the roofs of private citizens, and had shown a noble
+perseverance in serving God in circumstances of peculiar difficulty. And
+now, though the Primate had remained at his post, unfaltering and unafraid,
+many of the orthodox shepherds had fled and left their sheep, being too
+careful of their own tender persons to remain in the plague-stricken town
+and minister to the sick and dying; whereupon the evicted clergy had
+in some cases taken possession of the deserted pulpits and the silent
+churches, and were preaching Christ's Gospel to that remnant of the
+faithful which feared not to assemble in the House of God.
+
+Angela listened to a sermon marked by a rough eloquence which enchained her
+attention and moved her heart. It was not difficult to utter heart-stirring
+words or move the tender breast to pity when the Preacher's theme was
+death; with all its train of attendant agonies; its partings and farewells;
+its awful suddenness, as shown in this pestilence, where a young man
+rejoicing in his health and strength at noontide sees, as the sun slopes
+westward, the death-tokens on his bosom, and is lying dumb and stark at
+night-fall; where the joyous maiden is surprised in the midst of her mirth
+by the apparition of the plague-spot, and in a few hours is lifeless
+clay. The Preacher dwelt upon the sins and follies and vanities of the
+inhabitants of that great city; their alacrity in the pursuit of pleasure;
+their slackness in the service of God.
+
+"A man who will give twenty shillings for a pair of laced gloves to
+a pretty shopwoman at the New Exchange, will grudge a crown for the
+maintenance of God's people that are in distress; and one who is not hardy
+enough to walk half a mile to church, will stand for a whole afternoon in
+the pit of a theatre, to see painted women-actors defile a stage that was
+evil enough in the late King's time, but which has in these latter days
+sunk to a depth of infamy that it befits not me to speak of in this holy
+place. Oh, my Brethren, out of that glittering dream which you have dreamt
+since his Majesty's return, out of the groves of Baal, where you have sung
+and danced, and feasted, worshipping false gods, steeping your benighted
+souls in the vices of pagans and image-worshippers, it has pleased the God
+of Israel to give you a rough waking. Can you doubt that this plague, which
+has desolated a city, and filled many a yawning pit with the promiscuous
+dead, has been God's way of chastening a profligate people, a people caring
+only for fleshly pleasures, for rich meats and strong wines, for fine
+clothing and jovial company, and despising the spiritual blessings that
+the Almighty Father has reserved for them that love Him? Oh, my afflicted
+Brethren, bethink you that this pestilence is a chastisement upon a blind
+and foolish people; and if it strikes the innocent as well as the guilty,
+if it falls as heavily upon the spotless virgin as upon the hoary sinner,
+remember that it is not for us to measure the workings of Omnipotence with
+the fathom-line of our earthly intellects; or to say this fair girl should
+be spared, and that hoary sinner taken. Has not the Angel of Death ever
+chosen the fairest blossoms? His business is to people the skies rather
+than to depopulate the earth. The innocent are taken, but the warning is
+for the guilty; for the sinners whose debaucheries have made this world so
+polluted a place that God's greatest mercy to the pure is an early death.
+The call is loud and instant, a call to repentance and sacrifice. Let each
+bear his portion of suffering with patience, as under that wise rule of
+a score years past each family forewent a weekly meal to help those who
+needed bread. Let each acknowledge his debt to God, and be content to have
+paid it in a season of universal sorrow."
+
+And then the Preacher turned from that awful image of an angry and avenging
+God to contemplate Divine compassion in the Redeemer of mankind--godlike
+power joined with human love. He preached of Christ the Saviour with a
+fulness and a force which were new to Angela. He held up that commanding,
+that touching image, unobscured by any other personality. All those
+surrounding figures which Angela had seen crowded around the godlike form,
+all those sufferings and virtues of the spotless Mother of God were ignored
+in that impassioned oration. The preacher held up Christ crucified, Him
+only, as the fountain of pity and pardon. He reduced Christianity to its
+simplest elements, primitive as when the memory of the God-man was yet
+fresh in the minds of those who had seen the Divine countenance and
+listened to the Divine voice; and Angela felt as she had never felt before
+the singleness and purity of the Christian's faith.
+
+It was the day of long sermons, when a preacher who measured his discourse
+by the sands of an hour-glass was deemed moderate. Among the Nonconformists
+there were those who turned the glass, and let the flood of eloquence flow
+on far into the second hour. The old man had been preaching a long time
+when Angela awoke as from a dream, and remembered that sick-chamber where
+duty called her. She left the church quietly and hurried westward, guided
+chiefly by the sun, till she found herself once more in the Strand; and
+very soon afterwards she was ringing the bell at the chief entrance of
+Fareham House. She returned far more depressed in spirits than she went
+out, for all the horror of the plague-stricken city was upon her; and,
+fresh from the spectacle of death, she felt less hopeful of Lord Fareham's
+recovery.
+
+Thomas Stokes opened the great door to admit that one modest figure, a door
+which looked as if it should open only to noble visitors, to a procession
+of courtiers and court beauties, in the fitful light of wind-blown torches.
+Thomas, when interrogated, was not cheerful in his account of the patient's
+health during Angela's absence. My lord had been strangely disordered; Mrs.
+Basset had found the fever increasing, and was "afeared the gentleman was
+relapsing."
+
+Angela's heart sickened at the thought. The Preacher had dwelt on the
+sudden alternations of the disease, how apparent recovery was sometimes the
+precursor of death. She hurried up the stairs, and through the seemingly
+endless suite of rooms which nobody wanted, which never might be inhabited
+again perhaps, except by bats and owls, to his lordship's chamber, and
+found him sitting up in bed, with his eyes fixed on the door by which she
+entered.
+
+"At last!" he cried. "Why did you inflict such torturing apprehensions upon
+me? This woman has been telling me of the horrors of the streets where
+you have been; and I figured you stricken suddenly with this foul malady,
+creeping into some deserted alley to expire uncared for, dying with your
+head upon a stone, lying there to be carried off by the dead-cart. You must
+not leave this house again, save for the coach that shall fetch you to
+Oxfordshire to join Hyacinth and her children--and that coach shall start
+to-morrow. I am a madman to have let you stay so long in this infected
+house."
+
+"You forget that I am plague-proof," she answered, throwing off hood and
+cloak, and going to his bedside, to the chair in which she had spent many
+hours watching by him and praying for him.
+
+No, there was no relapse. He had only been restless and uneasy because of
+her absence. The disease was conquered, the pest-spots were healing fairly,
+and his nurses had only to contend against the weakness and depression
+which seemed but the natural sequence of the malady.
+
+Dr. Hodgkin was satisfied with his patient's progress. He had written to
+Lady Fareham, advising her to send some of her servants with horses for his
+lordship's coach, and to provide for relays of post-horses between London
+and Oxfordshire, a matter of easier accomplishment than it would have been
+in the earlier summer, when the quality were flying to the country, and
+post-horses were at a premium. Now there were but few people of rank or
+standing who had the courage to stay in town, like the Archbishop, who had
+not left Lambeth, or the stout old Duke of Albemarle, at the Cockpit, who
+feared the pestilence no more than he feared sword or cannon.
+
+Two of his lordship's lackeys, and his Oxfordshire major-domo and clerk of
+the kitchen, arrived a week after Angela's landing, bringing loving letters
+from Hyacinth to her husband and sister. The physician had so written as
+not to scare the wife. She had been told that her husband had been ill, but
+was in a fair way to recovery, and would post to Oxfordshire as soon as he
+was strong enough for the journey, carrying his sister-in-law with him,
+and lying at the accustomed inn at High Wycombe, or perchance resting two
+nights and spending three days upon the road.
+
+That was a happy day for Angela when her patient was well enough to start
+on his journey. She had been longing to see her sister and the children,
+longing still more intensely to escape from the horror of that house, where
+death had seemed to lie in ambush behind the tapestry hangings, and where
+few of her hours had been free from a great fear. Even while Fareham was on
+the high-road to recovery there had been in her mind the ever-present dread
+of a relapse. She rejoiced with fear and trembling, and was almost afraid
+to believe physician and nurse when they assured her that all danger was
+over.
+
+The pestilence had passed by, and they went out in the sunshine, in the
+freshness of a September morning, balmy, yet cool, with a scent of flowers
+from the gardens of Lambeth and Bankside blowing across the river. Even
+this terrible London, the forsaken city, looked fair in the morning light;
+her palaces and churches, her streets of heavily timbered houses, their
+projecting windows enriched with carved wood and wrought iron--streets that
+recalled the days of the Tudors and even suggested an earlier and rougher
+age, when the French King rode in all honour, albeit a prisoner, at his
+conqueror's side; or later, when fallen Richard, shorn of all royal
+dignity, rode abject and forlorn through the city, and caps were flung up
+for his usurping cousin. But oh, the horror of closed shops and deserted
+houses, and pestiferous wretches running by the coach door in their
+poisonous rags, begging alms, whenever the horses went slowly, in those
+narrow streets that lay between Fareham House and Westminster!
+
+To Angela's wondering eyes Westminster Hall and the Abbey offered a new
+idea of magnificence, so grandly placed, so dignified in their antiquity.
+Fareham watched her eager countenance as the great family coach, which had
+been sent up from Oxfordshire for his accommodation, moved ponderously
+westward, past the Chancellor's new palace, and other new mansions, to the
+Hercules Pillars Inn, past Knightsbridge and Kensington, and then northward
+by rustic lanes, and through the village of Ealing to the Oxford road.
+
+The family coach was as big as a small parlour, and afforded ample room for
+the convalescent to recline at his ease on one seat, while Angela and the
+steward, a confidential servant with the manners of a courtier, sat side by
+side upon the other.
+
+They had the two spaniels with them, Puck and Ganymede, silky-haired little
+beasts, black and tan, with bulging foreheads, crowded with intellect, pug
+noses so short as hardly to count for noses, goggle eyes that expressed
+shrewdness, greediness, and affection. Puck snuggled cosily in the soft
+lace of his lordship's shirt; Ganymede sat and blinked at the sunshine from
+Angela's lap. Both snarled at Mr. Manningtree, the steward, and resented
+the slightest familiarity on his part.
+
+Lord Fareham's thoughtful face brightened with its rare smile--half amused,
+half cynical--as he watched Angela's eager looks, devouring every object on
+the road.
+
+"Those grave eyes look at our London grandeurs with a meek wonder,
+something as thy namesake an angel might look upon the splendours of
+Babylon. You can remember nothing of yonder palace, or senate house, or
+Abbey, I think, child?"
+
+"Yes, I remember the Abbey, though it looked different then. I saw it
+through a cloud of falling snow. It was all faint and dim there. There were
+soldiers in the streets, and it was bitter cold; and my father sat in the
+coach with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands. And
+when I spoke to him, and tried to pull his hands away--for I was afraid of
+that hidden face--he shook me off and groaned aloud. Oh, such a harrowing
+groan! I should have thought him mad had I known what madness meant; but I
+know not what I thought. I remember only that I was frightened. And later,
+when I asked him why he was sorry, he said it was for the King."
+
+"Ay, poor King! We have all supped full of sorrow for his sake. We have
+cursed and hated his enemies, and drawn and quartered their vile carcases,
+and have dug them out of the darkness where the worms were eating them. We
+have been distraught with indignation, cruel in our fury; and I look back
+to-day, after fifteen years, and see but too clearly now that Charles
+Stuart's death lies at one man's door."
+
+"At Cromwell's? At Bradshaw's?"
+
+"No, child; at his own. Cromwell would have never been heard of, save in
+Huntingdon Market-place, as a God-fearing yeoman, had Charles been strong
+and true. The King's weakness was Cromwell's opportunity. He dug his own
+grave with false promises, with shilly-shally, with an inimitable talent
+for always doing the wrong thing and choosing the wrong road. Open not so
+wide those reproachful eyes. Oh, I grant you, he was a noble king, a king
+of kings to walk in a royal procession, to sit upon a daïs under a velvet
+and gold canopy, to receive ambassadors, and patronise foreign painters,
+and fulfil all that is splendid and stately in ideal kingship. He was an
+adoring husband--confiding to simplicity--a kind father, a fond friend,
+though never a firm one."
+
+"Oh, surely, surely you loved him?"
+
+"Not as your father loved him, for I never suffered with him. It was those
+who sacrificed the most who loved him best, those who were with him to the
+end, long after common sense told them his cause was hopeless; indeed, I
+believe my father knew as much at Nottingham, when that luckless standard
+was blown down in the tempest. Those who starved for him, and lay out
+on barren moors through the cold English nights for him, and wore their
+clothes threadbare and their shoes into holes for him, and left wife and
+children, and melted their silver and squandered their gold for him--those
+are the men who love his memory dearest, and for whose poor sakes we of the
+younger generation must make believe to think him a saint and a martyr."
+
+"Oh, my lord, say not that you think him a bad man!"
+
+"Bad! Nay, I believe that all his instincts were virtuous and honourable,
+and that--until the whirlwind of those latter days in which he scarce knew
+what he was doing--he meant fairly by his people, and had their welfare at
+heart. He might have done far better for himself and others had he been a
+brave bad man like Wentworth--audacious, unscrupulous, driving straight
+to a fixed goal. No, Angela, he was that which is worse for mankind--an
+obstinate, weak man. A bundle of impulses, some good and some evil; a man
+who had many chances, and lost them all; who loved foolishly and too well,
+and let himself be ruled by a wife who could not rule herself. Blind
+impulse, passionate folly were sailing the State ship through that sea of
+troubles which could be crossed but by a navigator as politic, profound,
+and crafty as Richelieu or Mazarin. Who can wonder that the Royal Charles
+went down?"
+
+"It must seem strange to you, looking back from the Court, as Hyacinth's
+letters have painted it--to that time of trouble?"
+
+"Strange! I stand in the crowd at Whitehall sometimes, amidst their masking
+and folly, their frolic schemes, their malice, their jeering wit and
+riotous merriment, and wonder whether it is all a dream, and I shall wake
+and see the England of '44, the year Henrietta Maria vanished--a discrowned
+fugitive, from the scene where she had lived to do harm. I look along the
+perspective of painted faces and flowing hair, jewels, and gay colours,
+towards that window through which Charles I. walked to his bloody death,
+suffered with a kingly grandeur that made the world forget all that was
+poor and petty in his life; and I wonder does anyone else recall that
+suffering or reflect upon that doom. Not one! Each has his jest, and his
+mistress--the eyes he worships, the lips he adores. It is only the rural
+Put that feels himself lost in the crowd whose thoughts turn sadly to the
+sad past."
+
+"Yet whatever your lordship may say----"
+
+"Tush, child, I am no lordship to you! Call me brother, or Fareham;
+and never talk to me as if I were anything else than your brother in
+affection."
+
+"It is sweet to hear you say so much, sir," she answered gently. "I have
+often envied my companions at the Ursulines when they talked of their
+brothers. It was so strange to hear them tell of bickering and ill-will
+between brother and sister. Had God given me a brother, I would not quarrel
+with him."
+
+"Nor shall thou quarrel with me, sweetheart; but we will be fast friends
+always. Do I not owe thee my life?"
+
+"I will not hear you say so; it is blasphemy against your Creator, who
+relented and spared you."
+
+"What! you think that Omnipotence, in the inaccessible mystery of Heaven,
+keeps the muster-roll of earth open before Him, and reckons each little
+life as it drops off the list? That is hardly my notion of Divinity. I
+see the Almighty rather as the Roman poet saw Him--an inexorable Father,
+hurling the thunderbolt our folly has deserved from His red right hand, yet
+merciful to stay that hand when we have taken our punishment meekly. That,
+Angela, is the nearest my mind can reach to the idea of a personal God. But
+do not bend those pencilled brows with such a sad perplexity. You know,
+doubtless, that I come of a Catholic family, and was bred in the old faith.
+Alas! I have conformed ill to Church discipline. I am no theologian, nor
+quite an infidel, and should be as much at sea in an argument with Hobbes
+as with Bossuet. Trouble not thy gentle spirit for my sins of thought or
+deed. Your tender care has given me time to repent all my errors. You
+were going to tell my lordship something, when I chid you for excess of
+ceremony--"
+
+"Nay, sir--brother, I had but to say that this wicked Court, of which my
+father and you have spoken so ill, can scarcely fail to be turned from its
+sins by so terrible a visitation. Those who have looked upon the city as I
+saw it a week ago can scarce return with unchastened hearts to feasting and
+dancing and idle company."
+
+"But the beaux and belles of Whitehall have not seen the city as my brave
+girl saw it," cried Fareham.
+
+"They have not met the dead-cart, nor heard the groans of the dying, nor
+seen the red cross upon the doors. They made off with the first rumour of
+peril. The roads were crowded with their coaches, their saddle-horses,
+their furniture and finery; one could scarce command a post-horse for love
+or money. 'A thousand less this week,' says one. 'We may be going back to
+town and have the theatres open again in the cold weather.'"
+
+They dined at the Crown, at Uxbridge, which was that "fair house at the end
+of the town" provided for the meeting of the late King's Commissioners with
+the representatives of the Parliament in the year '44. Fareham showed his
+sister-in-law a spacious panelled parlour, which was that "fair room in
+the middle of the house" that had been handsomely dressed up for the
+Commissioners to sit in.
+
+They pushed on to High Wycombe before night-fall, and supped _tête-à-tête_
+in the best room of the inn, with Fareham's faithful Manningtree to bring
+in the chief dish, and the people of the house to wait upon them. They were
+very friendly and happy together, Fareham telling his companion much of his
+adventurous life in France, and how in the first Fronde war he had been on
+the side of Queen and Minister, and afterwards, for love and admiration of
+Condé, had joined the party of the Princes.
+
+"Well, it was a time worth living in--a good education for the boy-king,
+Louis, for it showed him that the hereditary ruler of a great nation has
+something more to do than to be born, and to exist, and to spend money."
+
+Lord Fareham described the shining lights of that brilliant court with a
+caustic tongue; but he was more indulgent to the follies of the Palais
+Royal and the Louvre than he had been to the debaucheries of Whitehall.
+
+"There is a grace even in their vices," he said. "Their wit is lighter, and
+there is more mind in their follies. Our mirth is vulgar even when it is
+not bestial. I know of no Parisian adventure so degrading as certain pranks
+of Buckhurst's, which I would not dare mention in your hearing. We imitate
+them, and out-herod Herod, but we are never like them. We send to Paris for
+our clothes, and borrow their newest words--for they are ever inventing
+some cant phrase to startle dulness--and we make our language a foreign
+farrago. Why, here is even plain John Evelyn, that most pious of pedants,
+pleading for the enlistment of a troop of Gallic substantives and
+adjectives to eke out our native English!"
+
+Fareham told Angela much of his past life during the freedom of that long
+_tête-à-tête_, talking to her as if she had indeed been a young sister from
+whom he had been separated since her childhood. That mild, pensive manner
+promised sympathy and understanding, and he unconsciously inclined to
+confide his thoughts and opinions to her, as well as the history of his
+youth.
+
+He had fought at Edgehill as a lad of thirteen, had been with the King at
+Beverley, York, and Nottingham, and had only left the Court to accompany
+the Prince of Wales to Jersey, and afterwards to Paris.
+
+"I soon sickened of a Court life and its petty plots and parlour
+intrigues," he told Angela, "and was glad to join Condé's army, where my
+father's influence got me a captaincy before I was eighteen. To fight under
+such a leader as that was to serve under the god of war. I can imagine Mars
+himself no grander soldier. Oh, my dear, what a man! Nay, I will not call
+him by that common name. He was something more or less than man--of another
+species. In the thick of the fight a lion; in his dominion over armies,
+in his calmness amidst danger, a god. Shall I ever see it again, I
+wonder--that vulture face, those eyes that flashed Jove's red lightning?"
+
+"Your own face changes when you speak of him," said Angela, awe-stricken
+at that fierce energy which heroic memories evoked in Fareham's wasted
+countenance.
+
+"Nay, you should have seen the change in _his_ face when he flung off the
+courtier for the captain. His whole being was transformed. Those who knew
+Condé at St. Germain, at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, at the Palais Royal,
+knew not the measure or the might of that great nature. He was born to
+conquer. But you must not think that with him victory meant brute force. It
+meant thought and patience, the power to foresee and to combine, the
+rapid apprehension of opposing circumstances, the just measure of his own
+materials. A strict disciplinarian, a severe master, but willing to work at
+the lowest details, the humblest offices of war. A soldier, did I say? He
+was the Genius of modern warfare."
+
+"You talk as if you loved him dearly."
+
+"I loved him as I shall never love any other man. He was my friend as
+well as my General. But I claim no merit in loving one whom all the world
+honoured. Could you have seen princes and nobles, as I saw them when I
+was a boy at Paris, standing on chairs, on tables, kneeling, to drink his
+health! A demi-god could have received no more fervent adulation. Alas!
+sister, I look back at those years of foreign service and know they were
+the best of my life!"
+
+They started early next morning, and were within half a dozen miles of
+Oxford before the sun was low. They drove by a level road that skirted the
+river; and now, for the first time, Angela saw that river flowing placidly
+through a rural landscape, the rich green of marshy meadows in the
+foreground, and low wooded hills on the opposite bank, while midway across
+the stream an islet covered with reed and willow cast a shadow over the
+rosy water painted by the western sun.
+
+"Are we near them now?" she asked eagerly, knowing that her
+brother-in-law's mansion lay within a few miles of Oxford.
+
+"We are very near," answered Fareham; "I can see the chimneys, and the
+white stone pillars of the great gate."
+
+He had his head out of the carriage, looking sunward, shading his eyes with
+his big doe-skin gauntlet as he looked. Those two days on the road, the
+fresh autumn air, the generous diet, the variety and movement of the
+journey, had made a new man of him. Lean and gaunt he must needs be for
+some time to come; but the dark face was no longer bloodless; the eyes had
+the fire of health.
+
+"I see the gate--and there is more than that in view!" he cried excitedly.
+"Your sister is coming in a troop to meet us, with her children, and
+visitors, and servants. Stop the coach, Manningtree, and let us out."
+
+The post-boys pulled up their horses, and the steward opened the coach
+door and assisted his master to alight. Fareham's footsteps were somewhat
+uncertain as he walked slowly along the waste grass by the roadside,
+leaning a little upon Angela's shoulder.
+
+Lady Fareham came running towards them in advance of children and friends,
+an airy figure in blue and white, her fair hair flying in the wind, her
+arms stretched out as if to greet them from afar. She clasped her sister to
+her breast even before she saluted her husband, clasped her and kissed her,
+laughing between the kisses.
+
+"Welcome, my escaped nun!" she cried. "I never thought they would let thee
+out of thy prison, or that thou wouldst muster courage to break thy bonds.
+Welcome, and a hundred times, welcome. And that thou shouldst have nursed
+and tended my ailing lord! Oh, the wonder of it! While I, within a hundred
+miles of him, knew not that he was ill, here didst thou come across seas to
+save him! Why, 'tis a modern fairy tale."
+
+"And she is the good fairy," said Fareham, taking his wife's face between
+his two hands and bending down to kiss the white forehead under its cloud
+of pale golden curls, "and you must cherish her for all the rest of your
+life. But for her I should have died alone in that great gaudy house, and
+the rats would have eaten me, and then perhaps you would have cared no
+longer for the mansion, and would have had to build another further west,
+by my Lord Clarendon's, where all the fine folks are going--and that would
+have been a pity."
+
+"Oh, Fareham, do not begin with thy irony-stop! I know all your organ
+tones, from the tenor of your kindness to the bourdon of your displeasure.
+Do you think I am not glad to have you here safe and sound? Do you think I
+have not been miserable about you since I knew of your sickness? Monsieur
+de Malfort will tell you whether I have been unhappy or not."
+
+"Why, Malfort! What wind blew you hither at this perilous season, when
+Englishmen are going abroad for fear of the pestilence, and when your
+friend St Evremond has fled from the beauties of Oxford to the malodorous
+sewers and fusty fraus of the Netherlands?"
+
+"I had no fear of the contagion, and I wanted to see my friends. I am in
+lodgings in Oxford, where there is almost as much good company as there
+ever was at Whitehall."
+
+The Comte de Malfort and Fareham clasped hands with a cordiality which
+bespoke old friendship; and it was only an instinctive recoil on the part
+of the Englishman which spared him his friend's kisses. They had lived in
+camps and in courts together, these two, and had much in common, and much
+that was antagonistic, in temperament and habits, Malfort being lazy and
+luxurious, when no fighting was on hand; a man whose one business, when not
+under canvas, was to surpass everybody else in the fashion and folly of
+the hour, to be quite the finest gentleman in whatever company he found
+himself.
+
+He was a godson and favourite of Madame de Montrond, who had numbered his
+father among the army of her devoted admirers. He had been Hyacinth's
+playfellow and slave in her early girlhood, and had been _l'ami de la
+maison_ in those brilliant years of the young King's reign, when the
+Farehams were living in the Marais. To him had been permitted all
+privileges that a being as harmless and innocent as he was polished and
+elegant might be allowed, by a husband who had too much confidence in his
+wife's virtue, and too good an opinion of his own merits to be easily
+jealous. Nor was Henri de Malfort a man to provoke jealousy by any superior
+gifts of mind or person. Nature had not been especially kind to him. His
+features were insignificant, his eyes pale, and he had not escaped that
+scourge of the seventeenth century, the small-pox. His pale and clear
+complexion was but slightly pitted, however, and his eyelids had
+not suffered. Men were inclined to call him ugly; women thought him
+interesting. His frame was badly built from the athlete's point of view;
+but it had the suppleness which makes the graceful dancer, and was an
+elegant scaffolding on which to hang the picturesque costume of the day.
+For the rest, all that he was he had made himself, during those eighteen
+years of intelligent self-culture, which had been his engrossing occupation
+since his fifteenth birthday, when he determined to be one of the finest
+gentlemen of his epoch.
+
+A fine gentleman at the Court of Louis had to be something more than a
+figure steeped in perfumes and hung with ribbons. His red-heeled shoes, his
+periwig and cannon sleeves, were indispensable to fashion, but not
+enough for fame. The favoured guest of the Hotel de Rambouillet, and of
+Mademoiselle de Scudèry's "Saturdays," must have wit and learning, or at
+least that capacity for smart speech and pedantic allusion which might pass
+current for both in a society where the critics were chiefly feminine.
+Henri de Malfort had graduated in a college of blue-stockings. He had grown
+up in an atmosphere of gunpowder and _bouts rimés_. He had stormed the
+breach at sieges where the assault was led off by a company of violins,
+in the Spanish fashion. He had fought with distinction under the finest
+soldiers in Europe, and had seen some of his dearest friends expire at his
+side.
+
+Unlike Gramont and St. Évremond, he was still in the floodtide of royal
+favour in his own country; and it seemed a curious caprice that had led him
+to follow those gentlemen to England, to shine in a duller society, and
+sparkle at a less magnificent court.
+
+The children hung upon their father, Papillon on one side, Cupid on the
+other, and it was in them rather than in her sister's friend that Angela
+was interested. The girl resembled her mother only in the grace and
+flexibility of her slender form, the quickness of her movements, and the
+vivacity of her speech. Her hair and eyes were dark, like her father's, and
+her colouring was that of a brunette, with something of a pale bronze under
+the delicate carmine of her cheeks. The boy favoured his mother, and was
+worthy of the sobriquet Rochester had bestowed upon him. His blue eyes,
+chubby cheeks, cherry lips, and golden hair were like the typical Cupid
+of Rubens, and might be seen repeated _ad libitum_ on the ceiling of the
+Banqueting House.
+
+"I'll warrant this is all flummery," said Fareham, looking down at the girl
+as she hung upon him. "Thou art not glad to see me."
+
+"I am so glad that I could eat you, as the Giant would have eaten Jack,"
+answered the girl, leaping up to kiss him, her hair flying back like a
+dark cloud, her nimble legs struggling for freedom in her long brocade
+petticoat.
+
+"And you are not afraid of the contagion?"
+
+"Afraid! Why, I wanted mother to take me to you as soon as I heard you were
+ill."
+
+"Well, I have been smoke-dried and pickled in strong waters, until Dr.
+Hodgkin accounts me safe, or I would not come nigh thee. See, sweetheart,
+this is your aunt, whom you are to love next best to your mother."
+
+"But not so well as you, sir. You are first," said the child, and then
+turned to Angela and held up her rosebud mouth to be kissed. "You saved my
+father's life," she said. "If you ever want anybody to die for you let it
+be me."
+
+"Gud! what a delicate wit! The sweet child is positively _tuant_,"
+exclaimed a young lady, who was strolling beside them, and whom Lady
+Fareham had not taken the trouble to introduce by name to any one, but who
+was now accounted for as a country neighbour, Mrs. Dorothy Lettsome.
+
+Angela was watching her brother-in-law as they sauntered along, and she saw
+that the fatigue and agitation of this meeting were beginning to affect
+him. He was carrying his hat in one hand, while the other caressed
+Papillon. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead, and his
+footsteps began to drag a little. Happily the coach had kept a few paces in
+their rear, and Manningtree was walking beside it; so Angela proposed that
+his lordship should resume his seat in the vehicle and drive on to his
+house, while she went on foot with her sister.
+
+"I must go with his lordship," cried Papillon, and leapt into the coach
+before her father.
+
+Hyacinth put her arm through Angela's, and led her slowly along the grassy
+walk to the great gates, the Frenchman and Mrs. Lettsome following; and
+unversed as the convent-bred girl was in the ways of this particular world,
+she could nevertheless perceive that in the conversation between these two,
+M. de Malfort was amusing himself at the expense of his fair companion. His
+own English was by no means despicable, as he had spent more than a year,
+at the Embassy immediately after the Restoration, to say nothing of his
+constant intercourse with the Farehams and other English exiles in France;
+but he was encouraging the young lady to talk to him in French, which was
+spoken with an affected drawl, that was even more ridiculous than its
+errors in grammar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AT THE TOP OF THE FASHION.
+
+
+Nothing could have been more cordial than Lady Fareham's welcome to her
+sister, nor were it easy to imagine a life more delightful than that at
+Chilton Abbey in that autumnal season, when every stage of the decaying
+year clothed itself with a variety and brilliancy of colouring which made
+ruin beautiful, and disguised the approach of winter, as a court harridan
+might hide age and wrinkles under a yellow satin mask and flame-coloured
+domino. The Abbey was one of those capacious, irregular buildings in which
+all that a house was in the past and all that it is in the present are
+composed into a harmonious whole, and in which past and present are so
+cunningly interwoven that it would have been difficult for any one but an
+architect to distinguish where the improvements and additions of yesterday
+were grafted on to the masonry of the fourteenth century. Here, where the
+spacious plate-room and pantry began, there were walls massive enough for
+the immuring of refractory nuns; and this corkscrew Jacobean staircase,
+which wound with carved balusters up to the garret story, had its
+foundations in a flight of Cyclopean stone steps that descended to the
+cellars, where the monks kept their strong liquors and brewed their beer.
+Half of my lady's drawing-room had been the refectory, and the long
+dining-parlour still showed the groined roof of an ancient cloister; while
+the music-room, into which it opened, had been designed by Inigo Jones, and
+built by the last Lord Fareham. All that there is of the romantic in this
+kind of architectural patchwork had been enhanced by the collection of old
+furniture that the present possessors of the Abbey had imported from Lady
+Fareham's château in Normandy, and which was more interesting though less
+splendid than the furniture of Fareham's town mansion, as it was the result
+of gradual accumulation in the Montrond family, or of purchase from the
+wreck of noble houses, ruined in the civil war which had distracted France
+before the reign of the Béarnais.
+
+To Angela the change from an enclosed convent to such a house as Chilton
+Abbey, was a change that filled all her days with wonder. The splendour,
+the air of careless luxury that pervaded her sister's house, and suggested
+costliness and waste in every detail, could but be distressing to the pupil
+of Flemish nuns, who had seen even the trenchers scraped to make soup for
+the poor, and every morsel of bread garnered as if it were gold dust. From
+that sparse fare of the convent to this Rabelaisian plenty, this plethora
+of meat and poultry, huge game pies and elaborate confectionery, this
+perpetual too much of everything, was a transition that startled and
+shocked her. She heard with wonder of the numerous dinner tables that were
+spread every day at Chilton. Mr. Manningtree's table, at which the Roman
+Priest from Oxford dined, except on those rare occasions when he was
+invited to sit down with the quality; and Mrs. Hubbock's table, where the
+superior servants dined, and at which Henriette's dancing-master considered
+it a privilege to over-eat himself; and the two great tables in the
+servants' hall, twenty at each table; and the _gouvernante_, Mrs. Priscilla
+Goodman's table in the blue parlour upstairs, at which my lady's English
+and French waiting-women, and my lord's gentlemen ate, and at which
+Henriette and her brother were supposed to take their meals, but where they
+seldom appeared, usually claiming the right to eat with their parents. She
+wondered as she heard of the fine-drawn distinctions among that rabble of
+servants, the upper ranks of whom were supplied by the small gentry--of
+servants who waited upon servants, and again other servants who waited on
+those, down to that lowest stratum of kitchen sluts and turnspits, who
+actually made their own beds and scraped their own trenchers. Everywhere
+there was lavish expenditure--everywhere the abundance which, among that
+uneducated and unthoughtful class, ever degenerates into wanton waste.
+
+It sickened Angela to see the long dining-table loaded, day after day, with
+dishes that were many of them left untouched amidst the superabundance,
+while the massive Cromwellian sideboard seemed to need all the thickness
+of its gouty legs to sustain the "regalia" of hams and tongues, pasties,
+salads and jellies. And all this time _The Weekly Gazette_ from London
+told of the unexampled distress in that afflicted city, which was but the
+natural result of an epidemic that had driven all the well-to-do away, and
+left neither trade nor employment for the lower classes.
+
+"What becomes of that mountain of food?" Angela asked her sister, after
+her second dinner at Chilton, by which time she and Hyacinth had become
+familiar and at ease with each other. "Is it given to the poor?"
+
+"Some of it, perhaps, love; but I'll warrant that most of it is eaten in
+the offices--with many a handsome sirloin and haunch to boot."
+
+"Oh, sister, it is dreadful to think of such a troop! I am always meeting
+strange faces. How many servants have you?"
+
+"I have never reckoned them. Manningtree knows, no doubt; for his wages
+book would tell him. I take it there may be more than fifty, and less than
+a hundred. Anyhow, we could not exist were they fewer."
+
+"More than fifty people to wait upon four!"
+
+"For our state and importance, _chérie_. We are very ill-waited upon. I
+nearly died last week before I could get any one to bring me my afternoon
+chocolate. The men had all rushed off to a bull-baiting, and the women
+were romping or fighting in the laundry, except my own women, who are too
+genteel to play with the under-servants, and had taken a holiday to go and
+see a tragedy at Oxford. I found myself in a deserted house. I might have
+been burnt alive, or have expired in a fit, for aught any of those over-fed
+devils cared."
+
+"But could they not be better regulated?"
+
+"They are, when Manningtree is at home. He has them all under his thumb."
+
+"And he is an honest, conscientious man?"
+
+"Who knows? I dare say he robs us, and takes a _pot de vin_ wherever 'tis
+offered. But it is better to be robbed by one than by an army; and if
+Manningtree keeps others from cheating he is worth his wages."
+
+"And you, dear Hyacinth. Do you keep no accounts?"
+
+"Keep accounts! Why, my dearest simpleton, did you ever hear of a woman of
+quality keeping accounts--unless it were some lunatic universal genius like
+her Grace of Newcastle, who rises in the middle of the night to scribble
+verses, and who might do anything preposterous. Keep accounts! Why, if you
+was to tell me that two and two make five I couldn't controvert you, from
+my own knowledge."
+
+"It all seems so strange to me," murmured Angela.
+
+"My aunt supervised all the expenditure of the convent, and was unhappy if
+she discovered waste in the smallest item."
+
+"Unhappy! Yes, my dear innocent. And do you think if I was to investigate
+the cost of kitchen and cellar, and calculate how many pounds of meat each
+of our tall lackeys consumes per diem, I should not speedily be plagued
+into grey hairs and wrinkles? I hope we are rich enough to support their
+wastefulness. And if we are not--why, _vogue la galère_--when we are ruined
+the King must do something for Fareham--make him Lord Chancellor. His
+Majesty is mighty sick of poor old Clarendon and his lectures. Fareham has
+a long head, and would do as well as anybody else for Chancellor if he
+would but show himself at Court oftener, and conform to the fashion of the
+time, instead of holding himself aloof, with a Puritanical disdain for
+amusements and people that please his betters. He has taken a leaf out of
+Lord Southampton's book, and would not allow me to return a visit Lady
+Castlemaine paid me the other day, in the utmost friendliness: and to
+slight her is the quickest way to offend his Majesty."
+
+"But, sister, you would not consort with an infamous woman?"
+
+"Infamous! Who told you she is infamous? Your innocency should be ignorant
+of such trumpery tittle-tattle. And one can be civil without consorting, as
+you call it."
+
+Angela took her sister's reckless speech for mere sportiveness. Hyacinth
+might be careless and ignorant of business, but his lordship doubtless knew
+the extent of his income, and was too grave and experienced a personage to
+be a spendthrift. He had confessed to seven and thirty, which to the girl
+of twenty seemed serious middle-age.
+
+There were musicians in her ladyship's household--youths who played
+lute and viol, and sang the dainty, meaningless songs of the latest
+ballad-mongers very prettily. The warm weather, which had a bad effect
+upon the bills of mortality, was so far advantageous that it allowed these
+gentlemen to sing in the garden while the family were at supper, or on
+the river while the family were taking their evening airing. Their newest
+performance was an arrangement of Lord Dorset's lines--"To all you ladies
+now on land," set as a round. There could scarcely be anything prettier
+than the dying fall of the refrain that ended every verse:--
+
+    "With a fa, la, la,
+    Perhaps permit some happier man
+    To kiss your hand or flirt your fan,
+    With a fa, la, la."
+
+The last lines died away in the distance of the moonlit garden, as the
+singers slowly retired, while Henri de Malfort illustrated that final
+couplet with Hyacinth's fan, as he sat beside her.
+
+"Music, and moonlight, and a garden. You might fancy yourself amidst the
+grottoes and terraces of St. Germain."
+
+"I note that whenever there is anything meritorious in our English life
+Malfort is reminded of France, and when he discovers any obnoxious feature
+in our manners or habits he expatiates on the vast difference between the
+two nations," said his lordship.
+
+"Dear Fareham, I am a human being. When I am in England I remember all I
+loved in my own country. I must return to it before I shall understand the
+worth of all I leave here--and the understanding may be bitter. Call your
+singers back, and let us have those two last verses again. 'Tis a fine
+tune, and your fellows perform it with sweetness and brio."
+
+The song was new. The victory which it celebrated was fresh in the minds
+of men. The disgrace of later Dutch experiences--the ships in the Nore
+ravaging and insulting--was yet to come. England still believed her
+floating castles invincible.
+
+To Angela's mind the life at Chilton was full of change and joyous
+expectancy. No hour of the day but offered some variety of recreation, from
+battledore and shuttlecock in the _plaisance_ to long days with the hounds
+or the hawks. Angela learnt to ride in less than a month, instructed by the
+stud-groom, a gentleman of considerable importance in the household; an old
+campaigner, who had groomed Fareham's horses after many a battle, and
+many a skirmish, and had suffered scant food and rough quarters without
+murmuring; and also with considerable assistance and counsel from Lord
+Fareham, and occasional lectures from Papillon, who was a Diana at ten
+years old, and rode with her father in the first flight. Angela was soon
+equal to accompanying her sister in the hunting-field, for Hyacinth liked
+following the chase after the French rather than the English fashion,
+affecting no ruder sport than to wait at an opening of the wood, or on
+the crest of a common, to see hounds and riders sweep by; or, favoured
+by chance now and then, to signal the villain's whereabouts by a lace
+handkerchief waved high above her head. This was how a beautiful lady who
+had hunted in the forests of St. Germain and Fontainebleau understood
+sport; and such performances as this Angela found easy and agreeable. They
+had many cavaliers who came to talk with them for a few minutes, to tell
+them what was doing or not doing yonder where the hounds were hidden in
+thicket or coppice; but Henri de Malfort was their most constant attendant.
+He rarely left them, and dawdled through the earlier half of an October
+day, walking his horse from point to point, or dismounting at sheltered
+corners to stand and talk at Lady Fareham's side, with a patience that made
+Angela wonder at the contrast between English headlong eagerness, crashing
+and splashing through hedge and brook, and French indifference.
+
+"I have not Fareham's passion for mud," he explained to her, when she
+remarked upon his lack of interest in the chase, even when the music of the
+hounds was ringing through wood and valley, now close beside them, anon
+diminishing in the distance, thin in the thin air. "If he comes not home
+at dark plastered with mire from boots to eyebrows he will cry, like
+Alexander, 'I have lost a day.'"
+
+Partridge-hawking in the wide fields between Chilton and Nettlebed was more
+to Malfort's taste, and it was a sport for which Lady Fareham expressed a
+certain enthusiasm, and for which she attired herself to the perfection of
+picturesque costume. Her hunting-coats were marvels of embroidery on atlas
+and smooth cloth; but her smartest velvet and brocade she kept for the
+sunny mornings, when, with hooded peregrine on wrist, she sallied forth
+intent on slaughter, Angela, Papillon, and De Malfort for her _cortége_, an
+easy-paced horse to amble over the grass with her, and the Dutch falconer
+to tell her the right moment at which to slip her falcon's hood.
+
+The nuns at the Ursuline Convent would scarcely have recognised their
+quondam pupil in the girl on the grey palfrey, whose hair flew loose under
+a beaver hat, mingling its tresses with the long ostrich plume, whose
+trimly fitting jacket had a masculine air which only accentuated the
+womanliness of the fair face above it, and whose complexion, somewhat too
+colourless within the convent walls, now glowed with a carnation that
+brightened and darkened the large grey eyes into new beauty.
+
+That open-air life was a revelation to the cloister-bred girl. Could this
+earth hold greater bliss than to roam at large over spacious gardens,
+to cross the river, sculling her boat with strong hands, with her niece
+Henriette, otherwise Papillon, sitting in the stern to steer, and scream
+instructions to the novice in navigation; and then to lose themselves in
+the woods on the further shore, to wander in a labyrinth of reddening
+beeches, and oaks on which the thick foliage still kept its dusky green; to
+emerge upon open lawns where the pale gold birches looked like fairy trees,
+and where amber and crimson toadstools shone like jewels on the skirts of
+the dense undergrowth of holly and hawthorn? The liberty of it all, the
+delicious feeling of freedom, the release from convent rules and convent
+hours, bells ringing for chapel, bells ringing for meals, bells ringing
+to mark the end of the brief recreation--a perpetual ringing and drilling
+which had made conventual life a dull machine, working always in the same
+grooves.
+
+Oh, this liberty, this variety, this beauty in all things around and about
+her! How the young glad soul, newly escaped from prison, revelled and
+expatiated in its freedom! Papillon, who at ten years old, had skimmed
+the cream off all the simple pleasures, appointed herself her aunt's
+instructress in most things, and taught her to row, with some help from
+Lord Fareham, who was an expert waterman; and, at the same time, tried
+to teach her to despise the country, and all rustic pleasures, except
+hunting--although in her inmost heart the minx preferred the liberty of
+Oxfordshire woods to the splendour of Fareham House, where she was cooped
+in a nursery with her _gouvernante_ for the greater part of her time, and
+was only exhibited like a doll to her mother's fine company, or seated upon
+a cushion to tinkle a saraband and display her precocious talent on the
+guitar, which she played almost as badly as Lady Fareham herself, at whose
+feeble endeavours even the courteous De Malfort laughed.
+
+Never was sister kinder than Hyacinth, impelled by that impulsive sweetness
+which was her chief characteristic, and also, it might be, moved to lavish
+generosity by some scruples of conscience with regard to her grandmother's
+will. Her first business was to send for the best milliner in Oxford, a
+London Madam who had followed her court customers to the university town,
+and to order everything that was beautiful and seemly for a young person of
+quality.
+
+"I implore you not to make me too fine, dearest," pleaded Angela, who was
+more horrified at the milliner's painted face and exuberant figure than
+charmed by the contents of the baskets which she had brought with her in
+the spacious leather coach--velvets and brocades, hoods and gloves, silk
+stockings, fans, perfumes and pulvilios, sweet-bags and scented boxes--all
+of which the woman spread out upon Lady Fareham's embroidered satin bed,
+for the young lady's admiration. "I pray you remember that I am accustomed
+to have only two gowns--a black and a grey. You will make me afraid of my
+image in the glass if you dress me like--like--"
+
+She glanced from her sister's _décolleté_ bodice to the far more appalling
+charms of the milliner, which a gauze kerchief rather emphasised than
+concealed, and could find no proper conclusion for her sentence.
+
+"Nay, sweetheart, let not thy modesty take fright. Thou shalt be clad as
+demurely as the nun thou hast escaped being--
+
+    'And sable stole of Cyprus lawn
+    Over thy decent shoulders drawn.'
+
+We will have no blacks, but as much decency as you choose. You will mark
+the distinction between my sister and your maids of honour, Mrs. Lewin. She
+is but a _débutante_ in our modish world, and must be dressed as modestly
+as you can contrive, to be consistent with the fashion."
+
+"Oh, my lady, I catch your ladyship's meaning, and your ladyship's
+instructions shall be carried out as far as can be without making a savage
+of the young lady. I know what some young ladies are when they first come
+to Court. I had fuss enough with Miss Hamilton before I could persuade her
+to have her bodice cut like a Christian. And even the beautiful Miss Brooks
+were all for high tuckers and modesty-pieces when I began to make for them;
+but they soon came round. And now with my Lady Denham it is always, 'Gud,
+Lewin, do you call that the right cut for a bosom? Udsbud, woman, you
+haven't made the curve half deep enough.' And with my Lady Chesterfield it
+is, 'Sure, if they say my legs are thick and ugly, I'll let them know my
+shoulders are worth looking at. Give me your scissors, creature,' and then
+with her own delicate hand she will scoop me a good inch off the satin,
+till I am fit to swoon at seeing the cold steel against her milk-white
+flesh."
+
+Mrs. Lewin talked with but little interruption for the best part of an hour
+while measuring her new customer, showing her pattern-book, and exhibiting
+the ready-made wares she had brought, the greater number of which Hyacinth
+insisted on buying for Angela--who was horrified at the slanderous
+innuendoes that dropped in casual abundance from the painted lips of the
+milliner; horrified, too, that her sister could loll back in her armchair
+and laugh at the woman's coarse and malignant talk.
+
+"Indeed, sister, you are far too generous, and you have overpowered me with
+gifts," she said, when the milliner had curtsied herself out of the room;
+"for I fear my own income will never pay for all these costly things. Three
+pounds, I think she said, was the price of the Mazarine hood alone--and
+there are stockings and gloves innumerable."
+
+"Mon Ange, while you are with me your own income is but for charities
+and vails. I will have it spent for nothing else. You know how rich the
+Marquise has made me--while I believe Fareham is a kind of modern Croesus,
+though we do not boast of his wealth, for all that is most substantial
+in his fortune comes from his mother, whose father was a great merchant
+trading with Spain and the Indies, all through James's reign, and luckier
+in the hunt for gold than poor Raleigh. Never must you talk to me of
+obligation. Are we not sisters, and was it not a mere accident that made me
+the elder, and Madame de Montrond's _protegée_?"
+
+"I have no words to thank you for so much kindness. I will only say I am so
+happy here that I could never have believed there was such full content on
+this sinful earth."
+
+"Wait till we are in London, Angélique. Here we endure existence. It is
+only in London that we live."
+
+"Nay, I believe the country will always please me better than the town.
+But, sister, do you not hate that Mrs. Lewin--that horrid painted face and
+evil tongue?"
+
+"My dearest child, one hates a milliner for the spoiling of a bodice or the
+ill cut of a sleeve--not for her character. I believe Mrs. Lewin's is among
+the worst, and that she has had as many intrigues as Lady Castlemaine. As
+for her painting, doubtless she does that to remind her customers that she
+sells alabaster powder and ceruse."
+
+"Nay, if she wants to disgust them with painted faces she has but to show
+her own."
+
+"I grant she lays the stuff on badly. I hope, if I live to have as many
+wrinkles, I shall fill them better than she does. Yet who can tell what a
+hideous toad she might be in her natural skin? It may be Christian charity
+that induces her to paint, and so to spare us the sight of a monster.
+She will make thee a beauty, Ange, be sure of that. For satin or velvet,
+birthday or gala gowns, nobody can beat her. The wretch has had
+thousands of my money, so I ought to know. But for thy riding-habit and
+hawking-jacket we want the firmer grip of a man's hand. Those must be made
+by Roget."
+
+"A Frenchman?"
+
+"Yes, child. One only accepts British workmanship when a Parisian artist is
+not to be had. Clever as Lewin is, if I want to eclipse my dearest enemy
+on any special occasion I send Manningtree across the Channel, or ask De
+Malfort to let his valet--who spends his life in transit like a king's
+messenger--bring me the latest confection from the Rue de Richelieu."
+
+"What infinite trouble about a gown--and for you who would look lovely in
+anything!"
+
+"Tush, child! You have never seen me in 'anything.' If ever you should
+surprise me in an ill gown you will see how much the feathers make the
+bird. Poets and play-wrights may pretend to believe that we need no
+embellishment from art; but the very men who write all that romantic
+nonsense are the first to court a well-dressed woman. And there are few of
+them who could calculate with any exactness the relation of beauty to its
+surroundings. That is why women go deep into debt to their milliners,
+and would sooner be dead in well-made graveclothes than alive in an
+old-fashioned mantua."
+
+Angela could not be in her sister's company for a month without discovering
+that Lady Fareham's whole life was given up to the worship of the trivial.
+She was kind, she was amiable, generous, even to recklessness. She was
+not irreligious, heard Mass and went to confession as often as the hard
+conditions of an alien and jealously treated Church would allow, had never
+disputed the truth of any tenet that was taught her--but of serious views,
+of an earnest consideration of life and death, husband and children,
+Hyacinth Fareham was as incapable as her ten-year-old daughter. Indeed, it
+sometimes seemed to Angela that the child had broader and deeper thoughts
+than the mother, and saw her surroundings with a shrewder and clearer eye,
+despite the natural frivolity of childhood, and the exuberance of a fine
+physique.
+
+It was not for the younger sister to teach the elder, nor did Angela deem
+herself capable of teaching. Her nature was thoughtful and earnest: but she
+lacked that experience of life which can alone give the thinker a broad
+and philosophic view of other people's conduct. She was still far from the
+stage of existence in which to understand all is to pardon all.
+
+She beheld the life about her with wonder and bewilderment. It was so
+pleasant, so full of beauty and variety; yet things were said and done that
+shocked her. There was nothing in her sister's own behaviour to alarm her
+modesty; but to hear her sister talk of other women's conduct outraged all
+her ideas of decency and virtue. If there were really such wickedness in
+the world, women so shameless and vile, was it right that good women should
+know of them, that pure lips should speak of their iniquity?
+
+She was still more shocked when Hyacinth talked of Lady Castlemaine with a
+good-humoured indulgence.
+
+"There is something fine about her," Lady Fareham said one day, "in spite
+of her tempers and pranks."
+
+"What!" cried Angela, aghast, having thought these creatures unrecognised
+by any honest woman, "do you know her--that Lady Castlemaine of whom you
+have told me such dreadful things?"
+
+"C'est vrai. J'en ai dit des raides. Mon Ange, in town one must needs know
+everybody, though I doubt that after not returning her visit t'other day, I
+shall be in her black books, and in somebody else's. She has never been one
+of my intimates. If I were often at Whitehall, I should have to be friends
+with her. But Fareham is jealous of Court influences; and I am only allowed
+to appear on gala nights--perhaps not a half-dozen times in a season. There
+is a distinction in not showing one's self often; but it is provoking to
+hear of the frolics and jollities which go on every day and every night,
+and from which I am banished. It mattered little while the Queen-mother
+was at Somerset House, for her Court ranked higher--and was certainly more
+refined in its splendour--than her son's ragamuffin herd. But now she is
+gone, I shall miss our intellectual _milieu_, and wish myself in the Rue
+St. Thomas du Louvre, where the Hôtel du Rambouillet, even in its decline,
+offers a finer style of company than anything you will see in England."
+
+"Sister, I fear you left half your heart in France."
+
+"Nay, sweet; perhaps some of it has followed me," answered Hyacinth, with
+a blush and an enigmatic smile. "_Peste_! I am not a woman to make a fuss
+about hearts! There is not a grain of tragedy in my composition. I am like
+that girl in the play we saw at Oxford t'other day. Fletcher's was it, or
+Shakespeare's? 'A star danced, and under that was I born.' Yes, I was born
+under a dancing star; and I shall never break my heart--for love."
+
+"But you regret Paris?"
+
+"_Hélas_! Paris means my girlhood; and were you to take me back there
+to-morrow you could not make me seventeen again--and so where's the use? I
+should see wrinkles in the faces of my friends; and should know that they
+were seeing the same ugly lines in mine. Indeed, Ange, I think it is my
+youth I sigh for rather than the friends I lived with. They were such merry
+days: battles and sieges in the provinces, parliaments disputing here and
+there; Condé in and out of prison--now the King's loyal servant, now in
+arms against him; swords clashing, cannon roaring under our very windows;
+alarm bells pealing, cries of fire, barricades in the streets; and amidst
+it all, lute and theorbo, _bouts rimés_ and madrigals, dancing and
+play-acting, and foolish practical jests! One could not take the smallest
+step in life but one of the wits would make a song about it. Oh, it was a
+boisterous time! And we were all mad, I think; so lightly did we reckon
+life and death, even when the cannon slew some of our noblest, and the
+finest saloons were hung with black. You have done less than live,
+Angélique, not to have lived in that time."
+
+Hyacinth loved to ring the changes on her sister's name. Angela was too
+English, and sounded too much like the name of a nun; but Angélique
+suggested one of the most enchanting personalities in that brilliant
+circle on which Lady Fareham so often rhapsodised. This was the beautiful
+Angélique Paulet, whose father invented the tax called by his name, La
+Paulette--a financial measure, which was the main cause of the first Fronde
+war.
+
+"I only knew her when she was between fifty and sixty," said Lady Fareham,
+"but she hardly looked forty; and she was still handsome, in spite of her
+red hair. _Trop doré_, her admirers called it; but, my love, it was as red
+as that scullion's we saw in the poultry yard yesterday. She was a reigning
+beauty at three Courts, and had a crowd of adorers when she was only
+fourteen. Ah, Papillon, you may open your eyes! What will you be at
+fourteen? Still playing with your babies, or mad about your shock dogs, I
+dare swear!"
+
+"I gave my babies to the housekeeper's grand-daughter last year," said
+Papillon, much offended, "when father gave me the peregrine. I only care
+for live things now I am old."
+
+"And at fourteen thou wilt be an awkward, long-legged wench that will
+frighten away all my admirers, yet not be worth the trouble of a compliment
+on thine own account."
+
+"I want no such stuff!" cried Papillon. "Do you think I would like a French
+fop always at my elbow as Monsieur de Malfort is ever at yours? I love
+hunting and hawking, and a man that can ride, and shoot, and row, and
+fight, like father or Sir Denzil Warner--not a man who thinks more of his
+ribbons and periwig and cannon-sleeves than of killing his fox or flying
+his falcon."
+
+"Oh, you are beginning to have opinions!" sighed Hyacinth. "I am indeed an
+old woman! Go and find yourself something to play with, alive or dead. You
+are vastly too clever for my company."
+
+"I'll go and saddle Brownie. Will you come for a ride, Aunt Angy?"
+
+"Yes, dear, if her ladyship does not want me at home."
+
+"Her ladyship knows your heart is in the fields and woods. Yes, sweetheart,
+saddle your pony, and order your aunt's horse and a pair of grooms to take
+care of you."
+
+The child ran off rejoicing.
+
+"Precocious little devil! She will pick up all our jargon before she is in
+her teens."
+
+"Dear sister, if you talk so indiscreetly before her----"
+
+"Indiscreet! Am I really so indiscreet? That is Fareham's word. I believe
+I was born so. But I was telling you about your namesake, Mademoiselle
+Paulet. She began to reign when Henri was king, and no doubt he was one of
+her most ardent admirers. Don't look frightened! She was always a model of
+virtue. Mademoiselle Scudèry has devoted pages to painting her perfections
+under an Oriental alias. She sang, she danced, she talked divinely. She did
+everything better than everybody else. Priests and Bishops praised her. And
+after changes and losses and troubles, she died far from Paris, a spinster,
+nearly sixty years old. It was a paltry finish to a life that began in a
+blaze of glory."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SUPERIOR TO FASHION.
+
+
+At Oxford Angela was so happy as to be presented to Catharine of Braganza,
+a little dark woman, whose attire still bore some traces of its original
+Portuguese heaviness; such a dress--clumsy, ugly, infinitely rich and
+expensive--as one sees in old portraits of Spanish and Netherlandish
+matrons, in which every elaborate detail of the costly fabric seems to have
+been devised in the research of ugliness. She saw the King also; met him
+casually--she walking with her brother-in-law, while Lady Fareham and her
+friends ran from shop to shop in the High Street--in Magdalen College
+grounds, a group of beauties and a family of spaniels fawning upon him as
+he sauntered slowly, or stopped to feed the swans that swam close by
+the bank, keeping pace with him, and stretching long necks in greedy
+solicitation.
+
+The loveliest woman Angela had ever seen--tall, built like a
+goddess--walked on the King's right hand. She carried a heap of broken
+bread in the satin petticoat which she held up over one white arm, while
+with her other hand she gave the pieces one by one to the King. Angela
+saw that as each hunch changed hands the royal fingers touched the lady's
+tapering finger-tips and tried to detain them.
+
+Fareham took off his hat, bowed low in a grave and stately salutation, and
+passed on; but Charles called him back.
+
+"Nay, Fareham, has the world grown so dull that you have nothing to tell us
+this November morning?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I fear that my riverside hermitage can afford very little
+news that could interest your Majesty or these ladies."
+
+"A fox gone to ground, an otter killed among your reeds, or a hawk in the
+sulks, is an event in the country. Anything would be a relief from the
+weekly total of London deaths, which is our chief subject of conversation,
+or the General's complaints that there is no one in town but himself to
+transact business, or dismal prophecies of a Nonconformist rebellion that
+is to follow the Five Mile Act."
+
+The group of ladies stared at Angela in a smiling silence, one haughtier
+than the rest standing a little aloof. She was older, and of a more
+audacious loveliness than the lady who carried broken bread in her
+petticoat; but she too was splendidly beautiful as a goddess on a painted
+ceiling, and as much painted perhaps.
+
+Angela contemplated her with the reverence youth gives to consummate
+beauty, unaware that she was admiring the notorious Barbara Palmer.
+
+Fareham waited, hat in hand, grave almost to sullenness. It was not for him
+to do more than reply to his Majesty's remarks, nor could he retire till
+dismissed.
+
+"You have a strange face at your side, man. Pray introduce the lady,"
+said the King, smiling at Angela, whose vivid blush was as fresh as Miss
+Stewart's had been a year or two ago, before she had her first quarrel with
+Lady Castlemaine, or rode in Gramont's glass coach, or gave her classic
+profile to embellish the coin of the realm--the "common drudge 'tween man
+and man."
+
+"I have the honour to present my sister-in-law, Mistress Kirkland, to your
+Majesty." The King shook hands with Angela in the easiest way, as if he had
+been mortal.
+
+"Welcome to our poor court, Mistress Kirkland. Your father was my father's
+friend and companion in the evil days. They starved together at Beverley,
+and rode side by side through the Warwickshire lanes to suffer the
+insolence of Coventry. I have not forgotten. If I had I have a monitor
+yonder to remind me," glancing in the direction of a middle-aged gentleman,
+stately, and sober of attire, who was walking slowly towards them. "The
+Chancellor is a living chronicle, and his conversation chiefly consists in
+reminiscences of events I would rather forget"
+
+"Memory is an invention of Old Nick," said Lady Castlemaine. "Who the deuce
+wants to remember anything, except what cards are out and what are in?"
+
+"Not you, Fairest. You should be the last to cultivate mnemonics for
+yourself or for your friends. Is your father in England, sweet mistress?"
+
+Angela faltered a negative, as if with somebody else's voice--or so it
+seemed to her. A swarthy, heavy-browed man, wearing a dark-blue ribbon and
+a star--a man with whom his intimates jested in shameless freedom--a man
+whom the town called Rowley, after some ignominious quadruped--a man who
+had distinguished himself neither in the field nor in the drawing-room by
+any excellence above the majority, since the wit men praised has resolved
+itself for posterity into half a dozen happy repartees. Only this! But he
+was a King, a crowned and anointed King, and even Angela, who was less
+frivolous and shallow than most women, stood before him abashed and
+dazzled.
+
+His Majesty bowed a gracious adieu, yawned, flung another crust to the
+swans, and sauntered on, the Stewart whispering in his ear, the Castlemaine
+talking loud to her neighbour, Lady Chesterfield, this latter lady very
+pretty, very bold and mischievous, newly restored to the Court after exile
+with her jealous husband at his mansion in Wales.
+
+They were gone; Charles to be button-holed by Lord Clarendon, who waited
+for him at the end of the walk; the ladies to wander as they pleased
+till the two-o'clock dinner. They were gone, like a dream of beauty and
+splendour, and Fareham and Angela pursued their walk by the river, grey in
+the sunless November.
+
+"Well, sister, you have seen the man whom we brought back in a whirlwind
+of loyalty five years ago, and for whose sake we rebuilt the fabric of
+monarchical government. Do you think we are much the gainers by that
+tempest of enthusiasm which blew us home Charles the Second? We had
+suffered all the trouble of the change to a Republic; a life that should
+have been sacred had been sacrificed to the principles of liberty. While
+abhorring the regicides, we might have profited by their crime. We might
+have been a free state to-day, like the United Provinces. Do you think we
+are better off with a King like Rowley, to amuse himself at the expense of
+the nation?"
+
+"I detest the idea of a Republic."
+
+"Youth worships the supernatural in anointed kings. Think not that I am
+opposed to a constitutional monarchy, so long as it works well for the
+majority. But when England had with such terrible convulsions shaken
+off all those shackles and trappings of royalty, and when the ship, so
+lightened, had sailed so steadily with no ballast but common sense, does it
+not seem almost a pity to undo what has been done--to begin again the long
+procession of good kings and bad kings, foolish or wise--for the sake of
+such a man as yonder saunterer?" with a glance towards the British Sultan
+and his harem.
+
+"England was never better governed than by Cromwell," he continued. "She
+was tranquil at home and victorious abroad, admired and feared. Mazarin,
+while pretending to be the faithful friend of Charles, was the obsequious
+courtier of Oliver. The finest form of government is a limited despotism.
+See how France prospered under the sagacious tyrant, Louis the Eleventh,
+under the soldier-statesman, Sully, under pure reason incarnate in
+Richelieu. Whether you call your tyrant king or protector, minister or
+president, matters nothing. It is the man and not the institution, the mind
+and not the machinery that is wanted."
+
+"I did not know you were a Republican, like Sir Denzil Warner."
+
+"I am nothing now I have left off being a soldier. I have no strong
+opinions about anything. I am a looker on; and life seems little more
+real to me than a stage play. Warner is of a different stamp. He is an
+enthusiastic in politics--godson of Horn's--a disciple of Milton's, the son
+of a Puritan, and a Puritan himself. A fine nature, Angela, allied to a
+handsome presence."
+
+Sir Denzil Warner was their neighbour at Chilton, and Angela had met him
+often enough for them to become friends. He had ridden by her side with
+hawk and hound, had been one of her instructors in English sport, and
+had sometimes, by an accident, joined her and Henriette in their boating
+expeditions, and helped her to perfect herself in the management of a pair
+of sculls.
+
+"Hyacinth has her fancies about Warner," Fareham said presently, as they
+strolled along.
+
+There was a significance in his tone that the girl could not mistake; more
+especially as her sister had not been reticent about those notions to which
+Fareham alluded.
+
+"Hyacinth has fancies about many things," she said, blushing a little.
+
+Fareham noted the slightness of the blush.
+
+"I verily believe that handsome youth has found you adamant," he said,
+after a thoughtful silence. "Yet you might easily choose a worse suitor.
+Your sister has often the strangest whims about marriage-making; but in
+this fancy I did not oppose her. It would be a very suitable alliance."
+
+"I hope your lordship does not begin to think me a burden on your
+household," faltered Angela, wounded by his cold-blooded air in disposing
+of her. "When you and my sister are tired of me I can go back to my
+convent."
+
+"What! Return to those imprisoning walls; immure your sweet youth in a
+cloister? Not for the Indies. I would not suffer such a sacrifice. Tired of
+you! I--so deeply bound! I who owe you my life! I who looked up out of a
+burning hell of pain and madness and saw an angel standing by my bed! Tired
+of you! Indeed you know me better than to think so badly of me were it but
+in one flash of thought. You can need no protestations from me. Only, as
+a young and beautiful woman, living in an age that is full of peril for
+women, I should like to see you married to a good and true man--such as
+Denzil Warner."
+
+"I am sorry to disappoint you," Angela answered coldly; "but Papillon and
+I have agreed that I am always to be her spinster aunt, and am to keep her
+house when she is married, and wear a linsey gown and a bunch of keys at my
+girdle, like Mrs. Hubbuck, at Chilton."
+
+"That's just like Henriette. She takes after her mother, and thinks that
+this globe and all the people upon it were created principally for her
+pleasure. The Americas to give her chocolate, the Indian isles to sweeten
+it for her, the ocean tides to bring her feathers and finery. She is her
+own centre and circumference, like her mother."
+
+"You should not say such an ill thing of your wife, Fareham," said Angela,
+deeply shocked. "Hyacinth is not one to look into the heart of things. She
+has too happy a disposition for grave backward-reaching thoughts; but I
+will swear that she loves you--ay--almost to reverence."
+
+"Yes, to reverence, to over much reverence, perhaps. She might have given a
+freer, fonder love to a more amiable man. I have some strain of my unhappy
+kinsman's temper, perhaps--the disposition that keeps a wife at a distance.
+He managed to make three wives afraid of him; and it was darkly rumoured
+that he killed one."
+
+"Strafford--a murderer! No, no."
+
+"Not by intent. An accident--only an accident. They who most hated him
+pretended that he pushed her from him somewhat roughly when she was least
+able to bear roughness, and that the after consequences of the blow were
+fatal. He was one of the doomed always, you see. He knew that himself, and
+told his bosom friend that he was not long-lived. The brand of misfortune
+was upon him even at the height of his power. You may read his destiny in
+his face."
+
+They walked on in silence for some time, Angela depressed and unhappy. It
+seemed as if Fareham had lifted a mask and shown her his real countenance,
+with all the lines that tell a life history. She had suspected that he was
+not happy; that the joyous existence amidst fairest surroundings which
+seemed so exquisite to her was dull and vapid for him. She could but think
+that he was like her father, and that action and danger were necessary to
+him, and that it was only this rustic tranquillity that weighed upon his
+spirits.
+
+"Do not for a moment believe that I would speak slightingly of your
+sister," Fareham resumed, after that silent interval. "It were indeed an
+ill thing in me--most of all to disparage her in your hearing. She is
+lovely, accomplished, learned even, after the fashion of the Rue St. Thomas
+du Louvre. She used to shine among the brightest at the Scudèrys' Saturday
+parties, which were the most wearisome assemblies I ever ran away from. The
+match was made for us by others, and I was her betrothed husband before I
+saw her. Yet I loved her at first sight. Who could help loving a face
+as fair as morning over the eastward hills, a voice as sweet as the
+nightingales in the Tuileries garden? She was so young--a child almost; so
+gentle and confiding. And to see her now with Papillon is to question which
+is the younger, mother or daughter. Love her? Why, of course I love her. I
+loved her then. I love her now. Her beauty has but ripened with the passing
+years; and she has walked the furnace of fine company in two cities, and
+has never been seared by fire. Love her! Could a man help loving beauty,
+and frankness, and a natural innocence which cannot be spoiled even by the
+knowledge of things evil, even by daily contact with sin in high places?"
+
+Again there was a silence, and then, in a deeper tone, after a long sigh,
+Fareham said--
+
+"I love and honour my wife; I adore my children; yet I am alone, Angela,
+and I shall be alone till death."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Oh yes, you do; you understand as well as I who suffer. My wife and I love
+each other dearly. If she have a fit of the vapours, or an aching tooth, I
+am wretched. But we have never been companions. The things that she loves
+are charmless for me. She is enchanted with people from whom I run away. Is
+it companionship, do you think, for me to look on while she walks a coranto
+or tosses shuttlecocks with De Malfort? Roxalana is as much my companion
+when I admire her on the stage from my seat in the pit. There are times
+when my wife seems no nearer to me than a beautiful picture. If I sit in a
+corner, and listen to her pretty babble about the last fan she bought at
+the Middle Exchange, or the last witless comedy she saw at the King's
+Theatre, is that companionship, think you? I may be charmed to-day--as I
+was charmed ten years ago--with the silvery sweetness of her voice, with
+the graceful turn of her head, the white roundness of her throat. At least
+I am constant. There is no change in her or in me. We are just as near and
+just as far apart as when the priest joined our hands at St. Eustache. And
+it must be so to the end, I suppose; and I think the fault is in me. I am
+out of joint with the world I live in. I cannot set myself in tune with
+their new music. I look back, and remember, and regret; yet hardly know why
+I remember or what I regret."
+
+Again a silence, briefer than the last, and he went on:--
+
+"Do you think it strange that I talk so freely--to you--who are scarce more
+than a child, less learned than Henriette in worldly knowledge? It is a
+comfort sometimes to talk of one's self; of what one has missed as well as
+of what one has. And you have such an air of being wise beyond your years;
+wise in all thoughts that are not of the world--thoughts of things of which
+there is no truck at the Exchanges; which no one buys or sells at Abingdon
+fair. And you are so near allied to me--a sister! I never had a sister of
+my own blood, Angela. I was an only child. Solitude was my portion. I
+lived alone with my tutor and _gouvernante_--a poor relation of my
+mother's--alone in a house that was mostly deserted, for Lord and Lady
+Fareham were in London with the King, till the troubles brought the Court
+to Christchurch, and them to Chilton. I have had few in whom to confide.
+And you--remember what you have been to me, and do not wonder if I trust
+you more than others. Thou didst go down to the very grave with me, didst
+pluck me out of the pit. Corruption could not touch a creature so lovely
+and so innocent Thou didst walk unharmed through the charnel-house.
+Remembering this, as I ever must remember, can you wonder that you are
+nearer to me than all the rest of the world?"
+
+She had seated herself on a bench that commanded a view of the river, and
+her dreaming eyes were looking far away along the dim perspective of mist
+and water, bare pollard willows, ragged sedges. Her head drooped a little
+so that he could not see her face, and one ungloved hand hung listlessly at
+her side.
+
+He bent down to take the slender hand in his, lifted it to his lips, and
+quickly let it go; but not before she had felt his tears upon it. She
+looked up a few minutes later, and the place was empty. Her tears fell
+thick and fast. Never before had she suffered this exquisite pain--sadness
+so intense, yet touching so close on joy. She sat alone in the
+inexpressible melancholy of the late autumn; pale mists rising from the
+river; dead leaves falling; and Fareham's tears upon her hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IN A PURITAN HOUSE.
+
+
+How quickly the days passed in that gay household at Chilton! and yet every
+day of Angela's life held so much of action and emotion that, looking back
+at Christmas time to the three months that had slipped by since she had
+brought Fareham from his sick bed to his country home, she could but
+experience that common feeling of youth in such circumstances. Surely
+it was half a lifetime that had lapsed; or else she, by some subtle and
+supernatural change, had become a new creature.
+
+She thought of her life in the Convent, thought of it much and deeply on
+those Sunday mornings when she and her sister and De Malfort and a score or
+so of servants crept quietly to a room in the heart of the house where a
+Priest, who had been fetched from Oxford in, Lady Fareham's coach, said
+Mass within locked doors. The familiar words of the service, the odour of
+the incense, brought back the old time--the unforgotten atmosphere, the
+dull tranquillity of ten years, which had been as one year by reason of
+their level monotony.
+
+Could she go back to such a life as that? Go back! Leave all she loved? At
+the mere suggestion her trembling hand was stretched out involuntarily to
+clasp her niece Henriette, kneeling beside her. Leave them--leave those
+with whom and for whom she lived? Leave this loving child--her sister--her
+brother? Fareham had told her to call him "Brother." He had been to her as
+a brother, with all a brother's kindness, counselling her, confiding in
+her.
+
+Only with one person at Chilton Abbey had she ever conversed as seriously
+as with Fareham, and that person was Sir Denzil Warner, who at five and
+twenty was more serious in his way of looking at serious things than most
+men of fifty.
+
+"I cannot make a jest of life," he said once, in reply to some flippant
+speech of De Malfort's; "it is too painful a business for the majority."
+
+"What has that to do with us--the minority? Can we smooth a sick man's
+pillow by pulling a long face? We shall do him more good by tossing him a
+crown, if he be poor; or helping to build him a hospital by the sacrifice
+of a night's winnings at ombre. Long faces help nobody; that is what you
+Puritans will never consider."
+
+"No; but if the long faces are the faces of men who think, something may
+come of their thoughts for the good of humanity."
+
+Denzil Warner was the only person who ever spoke to Angela of her religion.
+With extreme courtesy, and with gentle excuses for his temerity in touching
+on so delicate a theme, he ventured to express his abhorrence of the
+superstitions interwoven with the Romanist's creed. He talked as one who
+had sat at the feet of the blind poet--talked sometimes in the very words
+of John Milton.
+
+There was much in what he said that appealed to her reason; but there was
+no charm in that severer form of worship which he offered in exchange for
+her own. He was frank and generous; he had a fine nature, but was too much
+given to judging his fellow-men. He had all the arrogance of Puritanism
+superadded to the natural arrogance of youth that has never known
+humiliating reverses, that has never been the servant of circumstance. He
+was Angela's senior by something less than four years; yet it seemed to her
+that he was in every attribute infinitely her superior. In education, in
+depth of thought, in resolution for good, and scorn of evil. If he loved
+her--as Hyacinth insisted upon declaring--there was nothing of youthful
+impetuosity in his passion. He had, indeed, betrayed his sentiments by no
+direct speech. He had told her gravely that he was interested in her, and
+deeply concerned that one so worthy and so amiable should have been brought
+up in the house of idolaters, should have been taught falsehood instead of
+truth.
+
+She stood up boldly for the faith of her maternal ancestors.
+
+"I cannot continue your friend if you speak evil of those I love, Sir
+Denzil," she said. "Could you have seen the lives of those good ladies of
+the Ursuline Convent, their unselfishness, their charity, you must needs
+have respected their religion. I cannot think why you love to say hard
+words of us Catholics; for in all I have ever heard or seen of the lives
+of the Nonconformists they approach us far more nearly in their principles
+than the members of the Church of England, who, if my sister does not paint
+them with too black a brush, practise their religion with a laxity and
+indifference that would go far to turn religion to a jest."
+
+Whatever Sir Denzil's ideas might be upon the question of creed--and he
+did not scruple to tell Angela that he thought every Papist foredoomed to
+everlasting punishment--he showed so much pleasure in her society as to
+be at Chilton Abbey, and the sharer of her walks and rides, as often as
+possible. Lady Fareham encouraged his visits, and was always gracious to
+him. She discovered that he possessed the gift of music, though not in
+the same remarkable degree as Henri de Malfort, who played the guitar
+exquisitely, and into whose hands you had but to put a musical instrument
+for him to extract sweetness from it. Lute or theorbo, viola or viol di
+gamba, treble or bass, came alike to his hand and ear. Some instruments he
+had studied; with some his skill came by intuition.
+
+Denzil Warner performed very creditably upon the organ. He had played on
+John Milton's organ in St. Bride's Church, when he was a boy, and he had
+played of late in the church at Chalfont St. Giles, where he had visited
+Milton frequently, since the poet had left his lodgings in Artillery Walk,
+carrying his family and his books to that sequestered village in the
+shelter of the hills between Uxbridge and Beaconsfield. Here from the lips
+of his sometime tutor the Puritan had heard such stories of the Court as
+made him hourly expectant of exterminating fires. Doubtless the fire would
+have come, as it came upon Sodom and Gomorrah, but for those righteous
+lives of the Nonconformists, which redeemed the time; quiet, god-fearing
+lives in dull old city houses, in streets almost as narrow as those which
+Milton remembered in his beloved Italy; streets where the sun looked in for
+an hour, shooting golden arrows down upon the diamond-paned casements, and
+deepening the shadow of the massive timbers that held up the overlapping
+stories, looked in and bade "good night" within an hour or so, leaving
+an atmosphere of sober grey, cool, and quiet, and dull, in those obscure
+streets and alleys where the great traffic of Cheapside or Ludgate sounded
+like the murmur of a far-off sea.
+
+Pious men and women worshipped the implacable God of the Puritans in the
+secret chambers of those narrow streets; and those who gathered together
+in these days--if they rejected the Liturgy of the Church of England--must
+indeed be few, and must meet by stealth, as if to pray or preach after
+their own manner were a crime. Charles, within a year or so of his general
+amnesty and happy restoration, had made such worship criminal; and now the
+Five Mile Act, lately passed at Oxford, had rendered the restrictions and
+penalties of Nonconformity utterly intolerable. Men were lying in prison
+here and there about merry England for no greater offence than preaching
+the gospel to a handful of God-fearing people. But that a Puritan tinker
+should moulder for a dozen years in a damp jail could count for little
+against the blessed fact of the Maypole reinstated in the Strand, and five
+play-houses in London performing ribald comedies, till but recently, when
+the plague shut their doors.
+
+Milton, old and blind, and somewhat soured by domestic disappointments, had
+imparted no optimistic philosophy to young Denzil Warner, whose father he
+had known and loved. The fight at Hopton Heath had made Denzil fatherless;
+the Colonel of Warner's horse riding to his death in the last fatal charge
+of that memorable day.
+
+Denzil had grown up under the prosperous rule of the Protector, and
+his boyhood had been spent in the guardianship of a most watchful
+and serious-minded mother. He had been somewhat over-cosseted and
+apron-stringed, it may be, in that tranquil atmosphere of the rich widow's
+house; but not all Lady Warner's tenderness could make her son a milksop.
+Except for a period of two years in London, when he had lived under the
+roof of the great Republican, a docile pupil to a stern but kind master,
+Denzil had lived mostly under the open sky, was a keen sportsman, and loved
+the country with almost as sensitive a love as his quondam master and
+present friend, John Milton; and it was perhaps this appreciation of rural
+beauty which had made a bond of friendship between the great poet and the
+Puritan squire.
+
+"You have a knack of painting rural scenes which needs but to be joined
+with the gift of music to make you a poet," he said, when Denzil had been
+expatiating upon the landscape amidst which he had enjoyed his last bout of
+falconry, or his last run with his half-dozen couple of hounds. "You are
+almost as the power of sight to me when you describe those downs and
+valleys whose every shape and shadow I once knew so well. Alas, that I
+should be changed so much and they so little!"
+
+"It is one thing, sir, to feel that this world is beautiful, and another
+to find golden words and phrases which to a prisoner in the Tower could
+conjure up as fair a landscape as Claude Lorraine ever painted. Those
+sonorous and mellifluous lines which you were so gracious as to repeat to
+me, forming part of the great epic which the world is waiting for, bear
+witness to the power that can turn words into music, and make pictures out
+of the common tongue. That splendid art, sir, is but given to one man in
+a century--or in several centuries; since I know but Dante and Virgil who
+have ever equalled your vision of heaven and hell."
+
+"Do not over-praise me, Denzil, in thy charity to poverty and affliction.
+It is pleasing to be understood by a youth who loves hawk and hound better
+than books; for it offers the promise of popular appreciation in years to
+come. Yet the world is so little athirst for my epic that I doubt if I
+shall find a bookseller to give me a few pounds for the right to print a
+work that has cost me years of thought and laborious revision. But at least
+it has been my consolation in the long blank night of my decay, and has
+saved me many a heart-ache. For while I am building up my verses, and
+engraving line after line upon the tablets of memory, I can forget that
+I am blind, and poor, and neglected, and that the dear saint I loved was
+snatched from me in the noontide of our happiness."
+
+Denzil talked much of John Milton in his conversations with Angela, during
+those rides or rambles, in which Papillon was their only chaperon. Lady
+Fareham sauntered, like her royal master; but she rarely walked a mile at a
+stretch; and she was pleased to encourage the rural wanderings that brought
+her sister and Warner into a closer intimacy, and promised well for the
+success of her matrimonial scheme.
+
+"I believe they adore each other already," she told Fareham one morning,
+standing by his side in the great stone porch, to watch those three
+youthful figures ride away, aunt and niece side by side, on palfrey and
+pony, with Denzil for their cavalier.
+
+"You are always over-quick to be sure of anything that suits your own
+fancy, dearest," answered Fareham, watching them to the curve of the
+avenue; "but I see no signs of favour to that solemn youth in your sister.
+She suffers his attentions out of pure civility. He is an accomplished
+horseman, having given all his life to learning how to jump a fence
+gracefully; and his company is at least better than a groom's."
+
+"How scornfully you jeer at him!"
+
+"Oh, I have no more scorn than the Cavalier's natural contempt for the
+Roundhead. A hereditary hatred, perhaps."
+
+"You say such hard things of his Majesty that one might often take you to
+be of Sir Denzil's way of thinking."
+
+"I never think about the King. I only wonder. I may sometimes express my
+wonderment too freely for a loyal subject."
+
+"I cannot vouch for Angela, but I will wager that he is deep in love,"
+persisted Hyacinth.
+
+"Have it your own way, sweetheart. He is dull enough to be deep in debt, or
+love, or politics, anything dismal and troublesome," answered his lordship,
+as he strolled off with his spaniels; not those dainty toy dogs which had
+been his companions at the gate of death, but the fine liver-and-black
+shooting dogs that lived in the kennels, and thought it doghood's highest
+privilege to attend their lord in his walks, whether with or without a gun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His lordship kept open Christmas that year at Chilton Abbey, and there
+was great festivity, chiefly devised and carried out by the household,
+as Fareham and his wife were too much of the modern fashion, and too
+cosmopolitan in their ideas, to appreciate the fuss and feasting of an
+English Christmas. They submitted, however, to the festival as arranged for
+them by Mr. Manningtree and Mrs. Hubbuck--the copious feasting for servants
+and dependents, the mummers and carolsingers, the garlands and greenery
+which disguised the fine old tapestry, and made a bower of the vaulted
+hall. Everything was done with a lavish plenteousness, and no doubt the
+household enjoyed the fun and feasting all the more because of that
+dismal season of a few years back, when all Christmas ceremonies had been
+denounced as idolatrous, and when the members of the Anglican Church had
+assembled for their Christmas service secretly in private houses, and as
+much under the ban of the law as the Nonconformists were now.
+
+Angela was interested in everything in that bright world where all things
+were new. The children piping Christmas hymns in the clear cold morning
+enchanted her. She ran down to kiss and fondle the smaller among them, and
+finding them thinly clad promised to make them warm cloaks and hoods as
+fast as her fingers could sew. Denzil found her there in the wide snowy
+space before the porch, prattling with the children, bare-headed, her soft
+brown hair blown about in the wind; and he was moved, as a man must needs
+be moved by the aspect of the woman that he loves caressing a small child,
+melted almost to tears by the thought that in some blessed time to come she
+might so caress, only more warmly, a child whose existence should be their
+bond of union.
+
+And yet, being both shy and somewhat cold of temperament, he restrained
+himself, and greeted her only as a friend; for his mother's influence was
+holding him back, urging him not to marry a Papist, were she ever so lovely
+or lovable.
+
+He had known Angela for nearly three months, and his acquaintance with her
+had reached this point of intimacy, yet Lady Warner had never seen her.
+This fact distressed him, and he had tried hard to awaken his mother's
+interest by praises of the Fareham family and of Angela's exquisite
+character; but the Scarlet Spectre came between the Puritan lady and the
+house of Fareham.
+
+"There is nothing you can tell me about this girl, upon whom I fear you
+have foolishly set your affection, which can make me forget that she has
+been nursed and swaddled in the bondage of a corrupt Church, taught to
+worship idols, and to cherish lying traditions, while the light of God's
+holy word has been made dark for her."
+
+"She is young enough to embrace a purer creed, and to walk by the clearer
+light that leads your footsteps, mother. If she were my wife I should not
+despair of winning her to think as we do."
+
+"And in all the length of England was there no young woman of right
+principles fit to be thy wife, that thou must needs fall into the snare of
+the first Popish witch who set her lure for thee?"
+
+"Popish witch! Oh, mother, how ill you can conceive the image of my dear
+love, who has no witchcraft but beauty, no charm so potent as her truth and
+innocency!"
+
+"I know them--these children of the Scarlet Woman--and I know their works,
+and the fate of those who trust them. The late King--weak and stubborn
+as he was--might have been alive this day, and reigning over a contented
+people, but for that fair witch who ruled him. It was the Frenchwoman's
+sorceries that wrought Charles's ruin."
+
+"If thou wouldst but see my Angela," pleaded the son, with a caressing arm
+about his mother's spare shoulders.
+
+"Thine! What! is she thine--pledged and promised already? Then, indeed,
+these white hairs will go down with sorrow to the grave."
+
+"Mother, I doubt if thou couldst find so much as a single grey hair in that
+comely head of thine," said the son; and the mother smiled in the midst of
+her affliction.
+
+"And as for promise--there has been none. I have said no word of love; nor
+have I been encouraged to speak by any token of liking on the lady's part.
+I stand aloof and admire, and wonder at so much modesty and intelligence in
+Lady Fareham's sister. Let me bring her to see you, mother?"
+
+"This is your house, Denzil. Were you to fill it with the sons and
+daughters of Belial, I could but pray that your eyes might be opened
+to their iniquity. I could not shut these doors against you or your
+companions. But I want no Popish women here."
+
+"Ah, you do not know! Wait until you have seen her," urged Denzil, with the
+lover's confidence in the omnipotence of his mistress's charms.
+
+And now on this Christmas Day there came the opportunity Denzil had been
+waiting for. The weather was cold and bright, the landscape was blotted out
+with snow; and the lake in Chilton Park offered a sound surface for the
+exercise of that novel amusement of skating, an accomplishment which Lord
+Fareham had acquired while in the Low Countries, and in which he had
+been Denzil's instructor during the late severe weather. Angela, at her
+brother-in-law's entreaty, had also adventured herself upon a pair of
+skates, and had speedily found delight in the swift motion, which seemed
+to her like the flight of a bird skimming the steely surface of the frozen
+lake, and incomparable in enjoyment.
+
+"It is even more delightful than a gallop on Zephyr," she told her sister,
+who stood on the bank with a cluster of gay company, watching the skaters.
+
+"I doubt not that; since there is even more danger of getting your neck
+broken upon runaway skates than on a runaway horse," answered Hyacinth.
+
+After an hour on the lake, in which Denzil had distinguished himself by his
+mastery of the new exercise, being always at hand to support his mistress
+at the slightest indication of peril, she consented to the removal of her
+skates, at Papillon's earnest entreaty, who wanted her aunt to walk with
+her before dinner. After dinner there would be the swift-coming December
+twilight, and Christmas games, snap-dragon and the like, which Papillon,
+although a little fine lady, reproducing all her mother's likes and
+dislikes in miniature, could not, as a human child, altogether disregard.
+
+"I don't care about such nonsense as Georgie does," she told her aunt,
+with condescending reference to her brother; "but I like to see the others
+amused. Those village children are such funny little savages. They stick
+their fingers in their mouths and grin at me, and call me 'Your annar,' or
+'Your worship,' and say 'Anan' to everything. They are like Audrey in the
+play you read to me."
+
+Denzil was in attendance upon aunt and niece.
+
+"If you want to come with us, you must invent a pretty walk, Sir Denzil,"
+said Papillon. "I am tired of long lanes and ploughed fields."
+
+"I know of one of the pleasantest rambles in the shire--across the woods
+to the Grange. And we can rest there for half an hour, if Mrs. Angela will
+allow us, and take a light refreshment."
+
+"Dear Sir Denzil, that is the very thing," answered Papillon, breathlessly.
+"I am dying of hunger. And I don't want to go back to the Abbey. Will there
+be any cakes or mince pies at the Grange?"
+
+"Cakes in plenty, but I fear there will be no mince pies. My mother does
+not love Christmas dainties."
+
+Henriette wanted to know why. She was always wanting the reason of things.
+A bright inquiring little mind, perpetually on the alert for novelty; an
+imitative brain like a monkey's; hands and feet that know not rest; and
+there you have the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel, _alias_ Papillon.
+
+They crossed the river, Angela and Denzil each taking an oar, while
+Papillon pretended to steer, a process which she effected chiefly by
+screaming.
+
+"Another lump of ice!" she shrieked. "We shall be swamped. I believe the
+river will be frozen before Twelfth Night, and we shall be able to dance
+upon it. We must have bonfires and roast an ox for the poor people. Mrs.
+Hubbuck told me they roasted an ox the year King Charles was beheaded.
+Horrid brutes--to think that they could eat at such a time! If they had
+been sorry they could not have relished roast beef."
+
+Hadley Grange, commonly known as the Grange, was in every detail the
+antithesis of Chilton Abbey. At the Abbey the eye was dazzled, the mind was
+bewildered, by an excess of splendour--an over-much of everything gorgeous
+or beautiful. At the Grange sight and mind were rested by the low tone of
+colour, the quaker-like precision of form. All the furniture in the house
+was Elizabethan, plain, ponderous, the conscientious work of Oxfordshire
+mechanics. On one side of the house there was a bowling green, on the
+other a physic garden, where odours of medicinal herbs, camomile, fennel,
+rosemary, rue, hung ever on the surrounding air. There was nothing modern
+in Lady Warner's house but the spotless cleanliness; the perfume of last
+summer's roses and lavender; the polished surface of tables and cabinets,
+oak chests and oak floors, testifying to the inexorable industry of rustic
+housemaids. In all other respects the Grange was like a house that had just
+awakened from a century of sleep.
+
+Lady Warner rose from her high-backed chair by the chimney corner in the
+oak parlour, and laid aside the book she had been reading, to welcome her
+son, startled at seeing him followed by a tall, fair girl in a black mantle
+and hood, and a little slip of a thing, with bright dark eyes and small
+determined face, pert, pointed, interrogative, framed in swansdown--a small
+aërial figure in a white cloth cloak, and a scarlet brocade frock, under
+which two little red shoes danced into the room.
+
+"Mother, I have brought Mrs. Angela Kirkland and her niece to visit you
+this Christmas morning."
+
+"Mrs. Kirkland and her niece are welcome," and Lady Warner made a deep
+curtsy, not like one of Lady Fareham's sinking curtseys, as of one near
+swooning in an ecstasy of politeness, but dignified and inflexible,
+straight down and straight up again.
+
+"But as for Christmas, 'tis one of those superstitious observances which I
+have ever associated with a Church I abhor."
+
+Denzil reddened furiously. To have brought this upon his beloved!
+
+Angela drew herself up, and paled at the unexpected assault. The brutality
+of it was startling, though she knew, from Denzil's opinions, that his
+mother must be an enemy of her faith.
+
+"Indeed, madam, I am sorry that anybody in England should think it an ill
+thing to celebrate the birthday of our Redeemer and Lord," she said.
+
+"Do you think, young lady, that foolish romping games, and huge chines of
+beef, and smoking ale made luscious with spices and roasted pippins, and
+carol-singing and play-acting, can be the proper honouring of Him who was
+God first and for ever, and Man only for one brief interval in His eternal
+existence? To keep God's birthday with drunken rioting! What blasphemy! If
+you can think that there is not more profaneness than piety in such sensual
+revelries--why, it is that you do not know how to think. You would have
+learnt to reason better had you known that sweet poet and musician, and
+true thinker, Mr. John Milton, with whom it was my privilege to converse
+frequently during my husband's lifetime, and afterwards when he
+condescended to accept my son for his pupil, and spent three days and
+nights under this roof."
+
+"Mr. Milton is still at Chalfont, mother. So you may hope to see him again
+with a less journey than to London," said Denzil, seizing the first chance
+of a change in the conversation; "and here is a little Miss to whom I have
+promised a light collation, with some of your Jersey milk."
+
+"Mistress Kirkland and her niece shall have the best I can provide. The
+larder will furnish something acceptable, I doubt not, although I and my
+household observe this day as a fast."
+
+"What, madam, are you sorry that Jesus Christ was born to-day?" asked
+Papillon.
+
+"I am sorry for my sins, little mistress, and for the sins of all mankind,
+which nothing but His blood could wash away. To remember His birth is to
+remember that He died for us; and that is why I spend the twenty-fifth of
+December in fasting and prayer."
+
+"Are you not glad you are to dine at the Abbey to-day, Sir Denzil?" asked
+Papillon, by way of commentary.
+
+"Nay, I put no restraint on my son. He can serve God after his own manner,
+and veer with every wind of passion or fancy, if he will. But you shall
+have your cake and draught of milk, little lady, and you too, Mistress
+Kirkland, will, I hope, taste our Jersey milk, unless you would prefer a
+glass of Malmsey wine."
+
+"Mrs. Kirkland is as much an anchorite as yourself, mother. She takes no
+wine."
+
+Lady Warner was the soul of hospitality, and particularly proud of her
+dairy. When kept clear of theology and politics she was not an ill-natured
+woman. But to be a Puritan in the year of the Five Mile Act was not to
+think kindly of the Government under which she lived; while her sense of
+her own wrongs was intensified by rumours of over-indulgence shown to
+Papists, and the broad assertion that King and Duke were Roman Catholic at
+heart, and waited only the convenient hour to reforge the fetters that had
+bound England to Rome.
+
+She was fond of children, most of all of little girls, never having had a
+daughter. She bent down to kiss Henriette, and then turned to Angela with
+her kindest smile--
+
+"And this is Lady Fareham's daughter? She is as pretty as a picture."
+
+"And I am as good as a picture--sometimes, madam," chirped Papillon.
+"Mother says I am _douce comme un image._"
+
+"When thou hast been silent or still for five minutes," said Angela, "and
+that is but seldom."
+
+A loud hand-bell summoned the butler, and an Arcadian meal was speedily set
+out on a table in the hall, where a great fire of logs burnt as merrily as
+if it had been designed to enliven a Christmas-keeping household. Indeed
+there was nothing miserly or sparing about the housekeeping at the Grange,
+which harmonised with the sombre richness of Lady Warner's grey
+brocade gown, from the old-fashioned silk mercer's at the sign of the
+Flower-de-luce, in Cheapside. There was liberality without waste, and a
+certain quiet refinement in every detail, which reminded Angela of the
+convent parlour and her aunt's room--and contrasted curiously with the
+elegant disorder of her sister's surroundings.
+
+Papillon clapped her hands at sight of the large plum cake, the jug of
+milk, and bowl of blackberry conserve.
+
+"I was so hungry," she said, apologetically, after Denzil had supplied her
+with generous slices of cake, and large spoonfuls of jam. "I did not know
+that Nonconformists had such nice things to eat."
+
+"Did you think we all lay in gaol to suffer cold and hunger for the faith
+that is in us, like that poor preacher at Bedford?" asked Lady Warner,
+bitterly. "It will come to that some day, perhaps, under the new Act."
+
+"Will you show Mistress Kirkland your house, mother, and your dairy?"
+Denzil asked hurriedly. "I know she would like to see one of the neatest
+dairies in Oxfordshire."
+
+No request could be more acceptable to Lady Warner, who was a housekeeper
+first and a controversialist afterwards. Inclined as she was to rail
+against the Church of Rome--partly because she had made up her mind upon
+hearsay, chiefly Miltonian, that Roman Catholicism was only another name
+for image-worship and martyr-burning, and partly on account of the favour
+that had been shown to Papists, as compared with the cruel treatment of
+Nonconformists--still there was a charm in Angela's gentle beauty against
+which the daughterless matron could not steel her heart. She melted in the
+space of a quarter of an hour, while Denzil was encouraging Henriette to
+over-eat herself, and trying to persuade Angela to taste this or that
+dainty, or reproaching her for taking so little; and by the time the child
+had finished her copious meal, Lady Warner was telling herself how dearly
+she might have loved this girl for a daughter-in-law, were it not for that
+fatal objection of a corrupt and pernicious creed.
+
+No! Lovely as she was, modest, refined, and in all things worthy to be
+loved, the question of creed must be a stumbling-block. And then there were
+other objections. Rural gossip, the loose talk of servants, had brought a
+highly coloured description of Lady Fareham's household to her neighbour's
+ears. The extravagant splendour, the waste and idleness, the late hours,
+the worship of pleasure, the visiting, the singing, and dancing, and
+junketing, and worst of all, the too-indulgent friendship shown to a
+Parisian fopling, had formed the subject of conversation in many an
+assembly of pious ladies, and hands and eyebrows had been uplifted at the
+iniquities of Chilton Abbey, as second only to the monstrous goings-on of
+the Court at Oxford.
+
+Almost ever since the Restoration Lady Warner had been living in meek
+expectancy of fire from heaven; and the chastisement of this memorable year
+had seemed to her the inevitable realisation of her fears. The fiery rain
+had come down--impalpable, invisible, leaving its deadly tokens in burning
+plague spots, the forerunners of death. That the contagion had mostly
+visited that humbler class of persons who had been strangers to the
+excesses and pleasures of the Court made nothing against Lady Warner's
+conviction that this scourge was Heaven's vengeance upon fashionable vice.
+Her son had brought her stories of the life at Whitehall, terrible pictures
+of iniquity, conveyed in the scathing words of one who sat apart, in a
+humble lodging, where for him the light of day came not, and heard with
+disgust and horror of that wave of debauchery which had swept over the city
+he loved, since the triumph of the Royalists. And Lady Warner had heard the
+words of Milton, and had listened with a reverence as profound as if the
+blind poet had been the prophet of Israel, alone in his place of hiding,
+holding himself aloof from an idolatrous monarch and a wicked people.
+
+And now her son had brought her this fair girl, upon whom he had set his
+foolish hopes, a Papist, and the sister of a woman whose ways were the
+ways of--! A favourite scriptural substantive closed the sentence in Lady
+Warner's mind.
+
+No; it might not be. Whatever power she had over her son must be used
+against his Papistical syren. She would treat her with courtesy, show her
+house and dairy, and there an end. And so they repaired to the offices,
+with Papillon running backwards and forwards as they went along, exclaiming
+and questioning, delighted with the shining oak floors and great oak chests
+in the corridor, and the armour in the hall, where, as the sacred and
+central object, hung the breastplate Sir George Warner wore when he fell at
+Hopton Heath, dinted by sword and pike, as the enemy's horse rode him down
+in the _melée_. His orange scarf, soiled and torn, was looped across the
+steel cuirass. Papillon admired everything, most of all the great cool
+dairy, which had once been a chapel, and where the piscina was converted to
+a niche for a polished brass milk-can, to the horror of Angela, who could
+say no word in praise of a place that had been created by the profanation
+of holy things. A chapel turned into a storehouse for milk and butter! Was
+this how Protestants valued consecrated places? An awe-stricken silence
+came upon her, and she was glad when Denzil remembered that they would have
+barely time to walk back to the Abbey before the two o'clock dinner.
+
+"You keep Court hours even in the country," said Lady Warner. "I dined half
+an hour before you came."
+
+"I don't care if I have no dinner to-day," said Papillon; "but I hope I
+shall be able to eat a mince pie. Why don't you love mince pies, madam?
+He"--pointing to Denzil--"says you do not."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE PRIEST'S HOLE.
+
+
+Denzil dined at the Abbey, where he was always made welcome. Lady Fareham
+had been warmly insistent upon his presence at their Christmas gaieties.
+
+"We want to show you a Cavalier's Christmas," she told him at dinner, he
+seated at her side in the place of honour, while Angela sat at the other
+end of the table between Fareham and De Malfort. "For ourselves we care
+little for such simple sports: but for the poor folk and the children Yule
+should be a season to be remembered for good cheer and merriment through
+all their slow, dull year. Poor wretches! I think of their hard life
+sometimes, and wonder they don't either drown themselves or massacre us."
+
+"They are like the beasts of the field, Lady Fareham. They have learnt
+patience from the habit of suffering. They are born poor, and they die
+poor. It is happy for us that they are not learned enough to consider the
+inequalities of fortune, or we should have the rising of want against
+abundance, a bitterer strife, perhaps, than the strife of adverse creeds,
+which made Ireland so bloody a spectacle for the world's wonder thirty
+years ago."
+
+"Well, we shall make them all happy this afternoon; and there will be a
+supper in the great stone barn which will acquaint them with abundance for
+this one evening at least," answered Hyacinth, gaily.
+
+"We are going to play games after dinner!" cried Henriette, from her place
+at her father's elbow.
+
+His lordship was the only person who ever reproved her seriously, yet she
+loved him best of all her kindred or friends.
+
+"Aunt Angy is going to play hide-and-seek with us. Will you play, Sir
+Denzil?"
+
+"I shall think myself privileged if I may join in your amusements."
+
+"What a courteous speech! You will be cutting off your pretty curly hair,
+and putting on a French perruque, like his"--pointing to De Malfort.
+"Please do not. You would be like everybody else in London--and now you are
+only like yourself--and vastly handsome."
+
+"Hush, Henriette! you are much too pert," remonstrated Fareham.
+
+"But 'tis the very truth, father. All the women who visit mother paint
+their faces, so that they are all alike; and all the men talk alike,
+so that I don't know one from t'other, except Lord Rochester, who is
+impudenter and younger than the others, and gives me more sugar-plums and
+pays me prettier compliments than anybody else."
+
+"Hold your tongue, mistress! A dinner-table is no place for pert children.
+Thy brother there has better manners," said her father, pointing to the
+cherubic son and heir, whose ideas were concentrated upon a loaded plate of
+red-deer pasty.
+
+"You mean that he is greedier than I," retorted Papillon. "He will eat till
+he won't be able to run about with us after dinner; and then he will sprawl
+upon mother's satin train by the fire, with Ganymede and Phosphor, and she
+will tell everybody how good and gentle he is, and how much better bred
+than his sister. And now, if people are _ever_ going to leave off eating,
+we may as well begin our games before it is quite dark. Perhaps _you_ are
+ready, auntie, if nobody else is."
+
+Dinner may have ended a little quicker for this speech, although Papillon
+was sternly suppressed, and bade to keep silence or leave the table. She
+obeyed so far as to make no further remarks, but expressed her contempt for
+the gluttony of her elders by several loud yawns, and bounced up out of her
+seat, like a ball from a racket, directly the little gentleman in black
+sitting near his lordship had murmured a discreet thanksgiving. This
+gentleman was the Roman Catholic priest from Oxford, who had said Mass
+early that morning in the muniment room, and had been invited to his
+lordship's table in honour of the festival.
+
+Papillon led all the games, and ordered everybody about. Mrs. Dorothy
+Lettsome, the young lady who was sorry she had not had the honour to be
+born in France, was of the party, with her brother, honest Dan Lettsome, an
+Oxfordshire squire, who had been in London only once in his life, to see
+the Coronation, and had nearly lost his life, as well as his purse
+and jewellery, in a tavern, after that august ceremonial. This bitter
+experience had given him a distaste for the pleasures of the town which his
+poor sister deplored exceedingly; since she was dependent upon his coffers,
+and subject to his authority, and had no hope of leaving Oxfordshire unless
+she were fortunate enough to find a town-bred husband.
+
+These two joined in the sports with ardour, Squire Dan glad to be moving
+about, rather than to sit still and listen to music which he hated, or to
+conversation to which he could contribute neither wit nor sense, unless the
+kennel or the gun-room were the topic under discussion. The talk of a lady
+and gentleman who had graduated in the salons of the Hôtel de Rambouillet
+was a foreign language to him; and he told his sister that it was all one
+to him whether Lady Fareham and the Mounseer talked French or English,
+since it was quite as hard to understand 'em in one language as in t'other.
+
+Papillon, this rustic youth adored. He knew no greater pleasure than to
+break and train a pony for her, to teach her the true knack of clearing a
+hedge, to explain the habits and nature of those vermin in whose lawless
+lives she was deeply interested--rats, weasels, badgers, and such-like--to
+attend her when she hunted, or flew her peregrine.
+
+"If you will marry me, sweetheart, when you are of the marrying age, I
+would rather wait half a dozen years for you than have the best woman in
+Oxfordshire that I know of at this present."
+
+"Marry you!" cried Lord Fareham's daughter. "Why, I shall marry no one
+under an earl; and I hope it will be a duke or a marquis. Marchioness is
+a pretty title: it sounds better than duchess, because it is in three
+syllables--mar-chion-ess," with an affected drawl. "I am going to be very
+beautiful. Mrs. Hubbuck says so, and mother's own woman; and I heard that
+painted old wretch, Mrs. Lewin, tell mother so. 'Eh, gud, your la'ship, the
+young miss will be almost as great a beauty as your la'ship's self!' Mrs.
+Lewin always begins her speeches with 'Eh, gud!' or 'What devil!' But I
+hope I shall be handsomer than _mother_" concluded Papillon, in a tone
+which implied a poor opinion of the maternal charms.
+
+And now on this Christmas evening, in the thickening twilight of the
+rambling old house, through long galleries, crooked passages, queer
+little turns at right angles, rooms opening out of rooms, half a dozen
+in succession, Squire Dan led the games, ordered about all the time by
+Papillon, whom he talked of admiringly as a high-mettled filly, declaring
+that she had more tricks than the running-horse he was training for
+Abingdon races.
+
+De Malfort, after assisting in their sports for a quarter of an hour with
+considerable spirit, had deserted them, and sneaked off to the great
+saloon, where he sat on the Turkey carpet at Lady Fareham's feet, singing
+chansonettes to his guitar, while George and the spaniels sprawled beside
+him, the whole group making a picture of indolent enjoyment, fitfully
+lighted by the blaze of a yule log that filled the width of the chimney.
+Fareham and the Priest were playing chess at the other end of the long low
+room, by the light of a single candle.
+
+Papillon ran in at the door and ejaculated her disgust at De Malfort's
+desertion.
+
+"Was there ever such laziness? It's bad enough in Georgie to be so idle;
+but then,_ he_ has over-eaten himself."
+
+"And how do you know that I haven't over-eaten myself, mistress?" asked De
+Malfort.
+
+"You never do that; but you often drink too much--much, much, much too
+much!"
+
+"That's a slanderous thing to say of your mother's most devoted servant,"
+laughed De Malfort. "And pray how does a baby-girl like you know when a
+gentleman has been more thirsty than discreet?"
+
+"By the way you talk--always French. Jarni! ch'dame, n'savons joui d'
+n'belle s'rée--n'fam-partie d'ombre. Moi j'ai p'du n'belle f'tune,
+p'rol'd'nneur! You clip your words to nothing. Aren't you coming to play
+hide-and-seek?"
+
+"Not I, fair slanderer. I am a salamander, and love the fire."
+
+"Is that a kind of Turk? Good-bye. I'm going to hide."
+
+"Beware of the chests in the gallery, sweetheart," said her father, who
+heard only this last sentence, as his daughter ran past him towards the
+door. "When I was in Italy I was told of a bride who hid herself in an old
+dower-chest, on her wedding-day--and the lid clapped to with a spring and
+kept her there for half a century."
+
+"There's no spring that ever locksmith wrought that will keep down
+Papillon," cried De Malfort, sounding a light accompaniment to his words on
+the guitar strings, with delicatest touch, like fairy music.
+
+"I know of better hiding-places," answered the child, and vanished, banging
+the great door behind her.
+
+She found her aunt with Dorothy Lettsome and her brother and Denzil in
+the gallery above stairs, walking up and down, and listening with every
+indication of weariness to the Squire's discourse about his hunters and
+running-horses.
+
+"Now we are going to have real good sport!" cried Papillon. "Aunt Angy and
+I are to hide, and you three are to look for us. You must stop in this
+gallery for ten minutes by the French clock yonder--with the door shut. You
+must give us ten minutes' law, Mr. Lettsome, as you did the hare the other
+day, when I was out with you--and then you may begin to look for us.
+Promise."
+
+"Stay, little miss, you will be outside the house belike, roaming lord
+knows where; in the shrubberies, or the barns, or halfway to Oxford--while
+we are made fools of here."
+
+"No, no. We will be inside the house."
+
+"Do you promise that, pretty lady?"
+
+"Yes, I promise."
+
+Mrs. Dorothy suggested that there had been enough of childish play, and
+that it would be pleasanter to sit in the saloon with her ladyship, and
+hear Monsieur de Malfort sing.
+
+"I'll wager he was singing when you saw him just now."
+
+"Yes, he is always singing foolish French songs--and I'm sure you can't
+understand 'em."
+
+"I've learnt the French ever since I was as old as you, Mistress
+Henriette."
+
+"Ah! that was too late to begin. People who learn French out of books know
+what it looks like, but not what it sounds like."
+
+"I should be very sorry if I could not understand a French ballad, little
+miss."
+
+"Would you--would you, really?" cried Papillon, her face alight with impish
+mirth. "Then, of course, you understand this--
+
+    Oh, la d'moiselle, comme elle est sot-te,
+    Eh, je me moque de sa sot-ti-se!
+    Eh, la d'moiselle, comme elle est bê-te,
+    Eh, je m'ris de sa bê-ti-se!"
+
+She sang this impromptu nonsense _prestissimo_ as she danced out of the
+room, leaving the accomplished Dorothy vexed and perplexed at not having
+understood a single word.
+
+It was nearly an hour later when Denzil entered the saloon hurriedly, pale
+and perturbed of aspect, with Dorothy and her brother following him.
+
+"We have been hunting all over the house for Mrs. Angela and Henriette,"
+Denzil said, and Fareham started up from the chess-table, scared at the
+young man's agitated tone and pallid countenance. "We have looked in every
+room--"
+
+"In every closet," interrupted Dorothy.
+
+"In every corner of the staircases and passages," said Squire Dan.
+
+"Can your lordship help us? There may be places you know of which we do not
+know?" said Denzil, his voice trembling a little. "It is alarming that they
+should be so long in concealment. We have called to them in every part of
+the house."
+
+Fareham hurried to the door, taking instant alarm--anxious, pale, alert.
+
+"Come!" he said to the others. "The oak chests in the music-room--the great
+Florentine coffer in the gallery? Have you looked in those?"
+
+"Yes; we have opened every chest."
+
+"Faith, to see Sir Denzil turn over piles of tapestries, you would have
+thought he was looking for a fairy that could hide in the folds of a
+curtain!" said Lettsome.
+
+"It is no theme for jesting. I hate these tricks of hiding in strange
+corners," said Fareham. "Now, show me where they left you."
+
+"In the long gallery."
+
+"They have gone up to the roof, perhaps."
+
+"We have been in the roof," said Denzil.
+
+"I have scarcely recovered my senses after the cracked skull I got from one
+of your tie-beams," added Lettsome; and Fareham saw that both men had
+their doublets coated with dust and cobwebs, in a manner which indicated a
+remorseless searching of places unvisited by housemaids and brooms.
+
+Mrs. Dorothy, with a due regard for her dainty lace kerchief and ruffles,
+and her cherry silk petticoat, had avoided these loathly places, the abode
+of darkness, haunted by the fear of rats.
+
+Fareham tramped the house from cellar to garret, Denzil alone accompanying
+him.
+
+"We want no posse comitatus," he had said, somewhat discourteously. "You,
+Squire, had best go and mend your cracked head in the eating-parlour with
+a brimmer or two of clary wine; and you, Mrs. Dorothy, can go and keep her
+ladyship company. But not a word of our fright. Swoons and screaming would
+only hinder us."
+
+He took Mrs. Lettsome's arm, and led her to the staircase, pushing the
+Squire after her, and then turned his anxious countenance to Denzil.
+
+"If they are not to be found in the house, they must be found outside the
+house. Oh, the folly, the madness of it! A December night--snow on the
+ground--a rising wind--another fall of snow, perhaps--and those two afoot
+and alone!"
+
+"I do not believe they are out-of-doors," Denzil answered. "Your daughter
+promised that they would not leave the house."
+
+"My daughter tells the truth. It is her chief virtue."
+
+"And yet we have hunted in every hole and corner," said Denzil, dejectedly.
+
+"Hole!" cried Fareham, almost in a shout. "Thou hast hit it, man! That one
+word is a flash of lightning. The Priest's Hole! Come this way. Bring your
+candle!" snatching up that which he had himself set down on a table, when
+he stood still to deliberate. "The Priest's Hole? The child knew the secret
+of it--fool that I was ever to show her. God! what a place to hide in on a
+winter night!"
+
+He was halfway up the staircase to the second story before he had uttered
+the last of these exclamations, Denzil following him.
+
+Suddenly, through the stillness of the house, there sounded a faint far-off
+cry, the shrill thin sound of a child's voice. Fareham and Warner would
+hardly have heard it had they not been sportsmen, with ears trained to
+listen for distant sounds. No view-hallo sounding across miles of wood and
+valley was ever fainter or more ethereal.
+
+"You hear them?" cried Fareham. "Quick, quick!"
+
+He led the way along a narrow gallery, about eight feet high, where people
+had danced in Elizabeth's time, when the house was newly converted to
+secular uses; and then into a room in which there were several iron chests,
+the muniment room, where a sliding panel, of which the master of the house
+knew the trick, revealed an opening in the wall. Fareham squeezed himself
+through the gap, still carrying the tall iron candlestick, with flaring
+candle, and vanished. Denzil followed, and found himself descending a
+narrow stone staircase, very steep, built into an angle of the great
+chimney, while as if from the bowels of the earth there came, louder at
+every step, that shrill cry of distress, in a voice he could not doubt was
+Henriette's.
+
+"The other is mute," groaned Fareham; "scared to death, perhaps, like a
+frightened bird." And then he called, "I am coming. You are safe, love;
+safe, safe!" And then he groaned aloud, "Oh, the madness, the folly of it!"
+
+Halfway down the staircase there was a sudden gap of six feet, down which
+Fareham dropped with his hands on the lowest stair, Denzil following; a
+break in the continuity of the descent planned for the discomfiture of
+strangers and the protection of the family hiding-place.
+
+Fareham and Denzil were on a narrow stone landing at the bottom of the
+house; and the child's wail of anguish changed to a joyous shriek, "Father,
+father!" close in their ears. Fareham set his shoulder against the heavy
+oak door, and it burst inwards. There had been no question of secret spring
+or complicated machinery; but the great, clumsy door dragged upon its rusty
+hinges, and the united strength of the two girls had not served to pull it
+open, though Papillon, in her eagerness for concealment in the first fever
+of hiding, had been strong enough to push the door till she had jammed it,
+and thus made all after efforts vain.
+
+"Father!" she cried, leaping into his arms, as he came into the room, large
+enough to hold six-men standing upright; but a hideous den in which to
+perish alone in the dark. "Oh, father! I thought no one would ever find us.
+I was afraid we should have died like the Italian lady--and people would
+have found our skeletons and wondered about us. I never was afraid before.
+Not when the great horse reared as high as a house--and her ladyship
+screamed. I only laughed then--but to-night I have been afraid."
+
+Fareham put her aside without looking at her.
+
+"Angela! Great God! She is dead!"
+
+No, she was not dead, only in a half swoon, leaning against the angle of
+the wall, ghastly white in the flare of the candles. She was not quite
+unconscious. She knew whose strong arms were holding her, whose lips were
+so near her own, whose head bent suddenly upon her breast, leaning against
+the lace kerchief, to listen for the beating of her heart.
+
+She made a great effort to relieve his fear, understanding dimly that he
+thought her dead; but could only murmur broken syllables, till he carried
+her up three or four stairs, to a secret door that opened into the garden.
+There in the wintry air, under the steely light of wintry stars, her senses
+came back to her. She opened her eyes and looked at him.
+
+"I am sorry I have not Papillon's courage," she said.
+
+"Tu m'as donné une affreuse peur--je te croyais morte," muttered Fareham,
+letting his arms drop like lead as she released herself from their support.
+
+Denzil and Henriette were close to them. They had come to the open door
+for fresh air, after the charnel-like chill and closeness of the small
+underground chamber.
+
+"Father is angry with me," said the girl; "he won't speak to me."
+
+"Angry! no, no;" and he bent to kiss her. "But oh, child, the folly of it!
+She might have died--you too--found just an hour too late."
+
+"It would have taken a long time to kill me," said Papillon; "but I was
+very cold, and my teeth were chattering, and I should soon have been
+hungry. Have you had supper yet?"
+
+"Nobody has even thought of supper."
+
+"I am glad of that. And I may have supper with you, mayn't I, and eat what
+I like, because it's Christmas, and because I might have been starved to
+death in the Priest's Hole. But it was a good hiding-place, tout de meme.
+Who guessed at last?"
+
+"The only person who knew of the place, child. And now, remember, the
+secret is to be kept. Your dungeon may some day save an honest man's life.
+You must tell nobody where you were hid."
+
+"But what shall I say when they ask me? I must not tell them a story."
+
+"Say you were hidden in the great chimney--which is truth; for the Priest's
+Hole is but a recess at the back of the chimney. And you, Warner," turning
+to Denzil, who had not spoken since the opening of the door, "I know you'll
+keep the secret."
+
+"Yes. I will keep your secret," Denzil answered, cold as ice; and said no
+word more.
+
+They walked slowly round the house by the terrace, where the clipped yews
+stood out like obelisks against the bleak bright sky. Papillon ran and
+skipped at her father's side, clinging to him, expatiating upon her
+sufferings in the dust and darkness. Denzil followed with, Angela, in a
+dead silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+LIGHTER THAN VANITY.
+
+
+"I think father must be a witch," Henriette said at dinner next day, "or
+why did he tell me of the Italian lady who was shut in the dower-chest,
+just before Angela and I were lost in"--she checked herself at a look from
+his lordship--"in the chimney?"
+
+"It wants no witch to tell that little girls are foolish and mischievous,"
+answered Fareham.
+
+"You ladies must have been vastly black when you came out of your
+hiding-place," said De Malfort. "I should have been sorry to see so much
+beauty disguised in soot. Perhaps Mrs. Kirkland means to appear in the
+character of a chimney at our next Court masquerade. She would cause as
+great a stir as Lady Muskerry, in all her Babylonian splendour; but for
+other reasons. Nothing could mitigate the Muskerry's ugliness; and no
+disguise could hide Mrs. Angela's beauty."
+
+"What would the costume be?" asked Papillon.
+
+"Oh, something simple. A long black satin gown, and a brick-dust velvet
+hat, tall and curiously twisted, like your Tudor chimney; and a cluster of
+grey feathers on the top, to represent smoke."
+
+"Monsieur le Comte makes a joke of everything. But what would father have
+said if we had never been found?"
+
+"I should have said that they are right who swear there is a curse upon all
+property taken from the Church, and that the ban fell black and bitter upon
+Chilton Abbey," answered his lordship's grave deep voice from the end of
+the table, where he sat somewhat apart from the rest, gloomy and silent,
+save when directly addressed.
+
+Her ladyship and De Malfort had always plenty to talk about. They had the
+past as well as the present for their discourse, and were always sighing
+for the vanished glories of their youth--at Paris, at Fontainebleau, at St.
+Germain. Nor were they restricted to the realities of the present and the
+memories of the past; they had that wider world of unreality in which to
+circulate; they had the Scudèry language at the tips of their tongues,
+the fantastic sentimentalism of that marvellous old maid who invented the
+seventeenth-century hero and heroine; or who crystallised the vanishing
+figures of that brilliant age and made them immortal. All that little
+language of toyshop platonics had become a natural form of speech with
+these two, bred and educated in the Marais, while it was still the select
+and aristocratic quarter of Paris.
+
+To-day Hyacinth and her old playfellow had been chattering like children,
+or birds in an aviary, and with little more sense in their conversation;
+but at this talk of the Church's ban, Hyacinth stopped in her prattle and
+was almost serious.
+
+"I sometimes think we shall have bad luck in this house," she said, "or
+that we shall see the ghosts of the wicked monks who were turned out to
+make room for Fareham's great-grandfather."
+
+"Tush, child! what do you know of their wickedness, after a century?"
+
+"They were very wicked, I believe, for it was one of those quiet little
+monasteries where the monks could do all manner of evil things, and raise
+the devil, if they liked, without anybody knowing. And when Henry the
+Eighth sent his Commissioners, they were taken by surprise; and the altar
+at which they worshipped Beelzebub was found in a side chapel, and a
+wax figure of the King stuck with arrows, like St. Sebastian. The Abbot
+pretended it _was_ St. Sebastian; but nobody believed him."
+
+"Nobody wanted to believe him," said Fareham. "King Henry made an example
+of Chilton Abbey, and gave it to my worthy ancestor, who was a fourth
+cousin of Jane Seymour's, and had turned Protestant to please his royal
+master. He went back to the Church of Rome on his death-bed, and we Revels
+have been Papists ever since. I wish the Church joy of us!"
+
+"The Church has neither profit nor honour from you," said his wife, shaking
+her fan at him. "You seldom go to Mass; you never go to confession."
+
+"I would rather keep my sins to myself, and atone for them by the pangs of
+a wounded conscience. That is too easy a religion which shifts the burden
+of guilt on to the shoulders of a stipendiary priest, and walks away from
+the confessional absolved by the payment of a few extra prayers."
+
+"I believe you are either an infidel or a Puritan."
+
+"A cross between the two, perhaps--a mongrel in religion, as I am a mongrel
+in politics."
+
+Angela looked up at him with sad eyes--reproachful, yet full of pity. She
+remembered his wild talk, semi-delirious some of it, all feverish and
+excited, during his illness, and how she had listened with aching heart to
+the ravings of one so near death, and so unfit to die. And now that the
+pestilence had passed him by, now that he was a strong man again, with half
+a lifetime before him, her heart was still heavy for him. She who sat in
+the theatre of life as a spectator had discovered that her sister's husband
+was not happy. The trifles that delighted Hyacinth left Fareham unamused
+and discontented; and his wife knew not that there was anything wanting to
+his felicity. She could go on prattling like a child, could be in a fever
+about a fan or a bunch of ribbons, could talk for an hour of a new play or
+the contents of the French _Gazette_, while he sat gloomy and apart.
+
+The sympathy, the companionship that should be in marriage was wanting
+here. Angela saw and deplored this distance, scarce daring to touch so
+delicate a theme, fearful lest she, the younger, should seem to sermonise
+the elder; and yet she could not be silent for ever while duty and religion
+urged her to speak.
+
+At Chilton Abbey the sisters were rarely alone. Papillon was almost always
+with them; and De Malfort spent more of his life in attendance upon Lady
+Fareham than at Oxford, where he was supposed to be living. Mrs. Lettsome
+and her brother were frequent guests; and coach-loads of fine people
+came over from the court almost every day. Indeed, it was only Fareham's
+character--austere as Clarendon's or Southampton's--which kept the finest
+of all company at a distance. Lady Castlemaine had called at Chilton in her
+coach-and-four early in July; and her visit had not been returned--a slight
+which the proud beauty bitterly resented: and from that time she had lost
+no opportunity of depreciating Lady Fareham. Happily her jests, not over
+refined in quality, had not been repeated to Hyacinth's husband.
+
+One January afternoon the longed-for opportunity came. The sisters were
+sitting alone in front of the vast mediaeval chimney, where the Abbots of
+old had burnt their surplus timber--Angela busy with her embroidery frame,
+working a satin coverlet for her niece's bed; Hyacinth yawning over
+a volume of Cyrus; in whose stately pages she loved to recognise the
+portraits of her dearest friends, and for which she was a living key.
+Angela was now familiar with the famous romance, which she had read with
+deepest interest, enlightened by her sister. As an eastern story--a record
+of battles and sieges evolved from a clever spinster's brain, an account of
+men and women who had never lived--the book might have seemed passing dull;
+but the story of actual lives, of living, breathing beauty, and valour that
+still burnt in warrior breasts, the keen and clever analysis of men and
+women who were making history, could not fail to interest an intelligent
+girl, to whom all things in life were new.
+
+Angela read of the siege of Dunkirk, where Fareham had fought; of the
+tempestuous weather; the camp in the midst of salt marshes and quicksands,
+and all the sufferings and perils of life in the trenches. He had been
+in more than one of those battles which mademoiselle's conscientious pen
+depicted with such graphic power, the _Gazette_ at her elbow as she wrote.
+The names of battles, sieges, Generals, had been on his lips in his
+delirious ravings. He had talked of the taking of Charenton, the key to
+Paris, a stronghold dominating Seine and Marne; of Clanleu, the brave
+defender of the fortress; of Châtillon, who led the charge--both killed
+there--Châtillon, the friend of Condé, who wept bitterest tears for a loss
+that poisoned victory. Read by these lights, the "Grand Cyrus" was a book
+to be pored over, a book to bend over in the grey winter dusk, reading
+by the broad blaze of the logs that flamed and crackled on wrought-iron
+standards. Just as merrily the blaze had spread its ruddy light over the
+room when it was a monkish refectory, and when the droning of a youthful
+brother reading aloud to the fraternity as they ate their supper was the
+only sound, except the clattering of knives and grinding of jaws.
+
+Now the room was her ladyship's drawing-room, bright with Gobelins
+tapestry, dazzling with Venetian mirrors, gaudy with gold and colour, the
+black oak floor enlivened by many-hued carpets from our new colony of
+Tangiers. Fareham told his wife that her Moorish carpets had cost the
+country fifty times the price she had paid for them, and were associated
+with an irrevocable evil in the existence of a childless Queen; but that
+piece of malice, Hyacinth told him, had no foundation but his hatred of the
+Duke, who had always been perfectly civil to him.
+
+"Of two profligate brothers I prefer the bolder sinner," said Fareham.
+"Bigotry and debauchery are an ill mixture."
+
+"I doubt if his Majesty frets for the want of an heir," remarked De
+Malfort. "He is not a family man."
+
+"He is not a one family man, Count," answered Fareham.
+
+Fareham and De Malfort were both away on this January evening. Papillon was
+taking a dancing lesson from a wizened old Frenchman, who brought himself
+and his fiddle from Oxford twice a week for the damsel's instruction. Mrs.
+Priscilla, nurse and _gouvernante_, attended these lessons, at which the
+Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel gave herself prodigious airs, and was
+indeed so rude to the poor old professor that her aunt had declined to
+assist at any more performances.
+
+"Has his lordship gone to Oxford?" Angela asked, after a silence broken
+only by her sister's yawns.
+
+"I doubt he is anywhere rather than in such good company," Hyacinth
+answered, carelessly. "He hates the King, and would like to preach at him,
+as John Knox did at his great-grandmother. Fareham is riding, or roving
+with his dogs, I dare say. He has a gloomy taste for solitude."
+
+"Hyacinth, do you not see that he is unhappy?" Angela asked, suddenly, and
+the pain in her voice startled her sister from the contemplation of the
+sublime Mandane.
+
+"Unhappy, child! What reason has he to be unhappy?"
+
+"Ah, dearest, it is that I would have you discover. 'Tis a wife's business
+to know what grieves her husband."
+
+"Unless it be Mrs. Lewin's bill--who is an inexorable harpy--I know of no
+act of mine that can afflict him."
+
+"I did not mean that his gloom was caused by any act of yours, sister. I
+only urge you to discover why he is so sad."
+
+"Sad? Sullen, you mean. He has a fine, generous nature. I am sure it is not
+Lewin's charges that trouble him. But he had always a sullen temper--by
+fits and starts."
+
+"But of late he has been always silent and gloomy."
+
+"How the child watches him! Ma très chère, that silence is natural. There
+are but two things Fareham loves--the first, war; the second, sport. If he
+cannot be storming a town, he loves to be killing a fox. This fireside life
+of ours--our books and music, our idle talk of plays and dances--wearies
+him. You may see how he avoids us--except out-of-doors."
+
+"Dear Hyacinth, forgive me!" Angela began, falteringly, leaving her
+embroidery frame and moving to the other side of the hearth, where she
+dropped on her knees by her ladyship's chair, and was almost swallowed up
+in the ample folds of her brocade train. "Is it not possible that Lord
+Fareham is pained to see you so much gayer and more familiar with Monsieur
+de Malfort than you ever are with him?"
+
+"Gayer! more familiar!" cried Hyacinth. "Can you conceive any creature
+gay and familiar with Fareham? One could as soon be gay with Don Quixote;
+indeed, there is much in common between the knight of the rueful
+countenance and my husband. Gay and familiar! And pray, mistress, why
+should I not take life pleasantly with a man who understands me, and in
+whose friendship I have grown up almost as if we were brother and sister?
+Do you forget that I have known Henri ever since I was ten years old--that
+we played battledore and shuttlecock together in our dear garden in the Rue
+de Touraine, next the bowling-green, when he was at school with the Jesuit
+Fathers, and used to spend all his holiday afternoons with the Marquise?
+I think I only learnt to know the saints' days because they brought me my
+playfellow. And when I was old enough to attend the Court--and, indeed,
+I was but a child when I first appeared there--it was Henri who sang my
+praises, and brought a crowd of admirers about me. Ah, what a life it was!
+Love in the city, and war at the gates: plots, battles, barricades! How
+happy we all were! except when there came the news of some great man
+killed, and walls were hung with black, where there had been a thousand wax
+candles and a crowd of dancers. Châtillon, Chabot, Laval! _Hélas_, those
+were sad losses!"
+
+"Dear sister, I can understand your affection for an old friend, but I
+would not have you place him above your husband; least of all would I have
+his lordship suspect that you preferred the friend to the husband----"
+
+"Suspect! Fareham! Are you afraid I shall make Fareham jealous, because
+I sing duets and cudgel these poor brains to make _bouts rimés_ with De
+Malfort? Ah, child, how little those watchful eyes of yours have discovered
+the man's character! Fareham jealous! Why, at St. Germain he has seen me
+surrounded by adorers; the subject of more madrigals than would fill a big
+book. At the Louvre he has seen me the--what is that Mr. What's-his-name,
+your friend's old school-master, the Republican poet, calls it--'the
+cynosure of neighbouring eyes.' Don't think me vain, ma mie. I am an old
+woman now, and I hate my looking-glass ever since it has shown me my
+first wrinkle; but in those days I had almost as many admirers as Madame
+Henriette, or the Princess Palatine, or the fair-haired Duchess. I was
+called la belle Anglaise."
+
+It was difficult to sound a warning-note in ears so obstinately deaf to
+all serious things. Papillon came bounding in after her dancing-lesson--
+exuberant, loquacious.
+
+"The little beast has taught me a new step in the coranto. See, mother,"
+and the slim small figure was drawn up to its fullest, and the thin little
+lithe arms were curved with a studied grace, as Papillon slid and tripped
+across the room, her dainty little features illumined by a smirk of
+ineffable conceit.
+
+"Henriette, you are an ill-bred child to call your master so rude a name,"
+remonstrated her mother, languidly.
+
+"'Tis the name you called him last week when his dirty shoes left marks
+on the stairs. He changes his shoes in my presence," added Papillon,
+disgustedly. "I saw a hole in his stocking. Monsieur de Malfort calls him
+Cut-Caper."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+LADY FAREHAM'S DAY.
+
+
+A month later the _Oxford Gazette_ brought Lady Fareham the welcomest news
+that she had read for ever so long. The London death-rate had decreased,
+and his Majesty had gone to Hampton Court, attended by the Duke and Prince
+Rupert, Lord Clarendon, and his other indispensable advisers, and a retinue
+of servants, to be within easy distance of that sturdy soldier Albemarle,
+who had remained in London, unafraid of the pestilence; and who declared
+that while it was essential for him to be in frequent communication with
+his Majesty, it would be perilous to the interests of the State for him to
+absent himself from London; for the Dutch war had gone drivelling on ever
+since the victory in June, and that victory was not to be supposed final.
+Indeed, according to the General, there was need of speedy action and a
+considerable increase of our naval strength.
+
+Windsor had been thought of in the first place as a residence for the King;
+but the law courts had been transferred there, and the judges and their
+following had overrun the town, while there was a report of an infected
+house there. So it had been resolved that his Majesty should make a brief
+residence at Hampton Court, leaving the Queen, the Duchess, and their
+belongings at Oxford, whither he could return as soon as the business of
+providing for the setting out of the fleet had been arranged between him
+and the General, who could travel in a day backwards and forwards between
+the Cockpit and Wolsey's palace.
+
+When this news came they were snowed up at Chilton. Sport of all kinds had
+been stopped, and Fareham, who, in his wife's parlance, lived in his boots
+all the winter, had to amuse himself without the aid of horse and hound;
+while even walking was made difficult by the snowdrifts that blocked
+the lanes, and reduced the face of Nature to one muffled and monotonous
+whiteness, while all the edges of the landscape were outlined vaguely
+against the misty greyness of the sky.
+
+Hyacinth spent her days half in yawning and sighing, and half in idle
+laughter and childish games with Henriette and De Malfort. When she was gay
+she was as much a child as her daughter; when she was fretful and hipped,
+it was a childish discontent.
+
+They played battledore and shuttlecock in the picture-gallery, and my lady
+laughed when her volant struck some reverend judge or venerable bishop a
+rap on the nose. They sat for hours twanging guitars, Hyacinth taking her
+music-lesson from De Malfort, whose exquisite taste and touch made a guitar
+seem a different instrument from that on which his pupil's delicate fingers
+nipped a wiry melody, more suggestive of finger-nails than music.
+
+He taught her, and took all possible pains in the teaching, and laughed at
+her, and told her plainly that she had no talent for music. He told her
+that in her hands the finest lute Laux Maler ever made, mellowed by three
+centuries, would be but wood and catgut.
+
+"It is the prettiest head in the world, and a forehead as white as Queen
+Anne's," he said one day, with a light touch on the ringletted brow, "but
+there is nothing inside. I wonder if there is anything here?" and the same
+light touch fluttered for an instant against her brocade bodice, at the
+spot where fancy locates the faculty of loving and suffering.
+
+She laughed at his rude speeches, just as she laughed at his flatteries--as
+if there were safety in that atmosphere of idle mirth. Angela heard and
+wondered, wondering most perhaps what occupied and interested Lord Fareham
+in those white winter days, when he lived for the greater part alone in his
+own rooms, or pacing the long walks from which the gardeners had cleared
+the snow. He spent some of his time indoors, deep in a book. She knew as
+much as that. He had allowed Angela to read some of his favourites, though
+he would not permit any of the new comedies, which everybody at Court was
+reading, to enter his house, much to Lady Fareham's annoyance.
+
+"I am half a century behind all my friends in intelligence," she said,
+"because of your Puritanism. One tires of your everlasting gloomy
+tragedies--your _Broken Hearts_ and _Philasters_. I am all for the genius
+of comedy."
+
+"Then satisfy your inclinations, and read Molière. He is second only to
+Shakespeare."
+
+"I have him by heart already."
+
+The _Broken Heart_ and _Philaster_ delighted Angela; indeed, she had read
+the latter play so often, and with such deep interest, that many passages
+in it had engraved themselves on her memory, and recurred to her sometimes
+in the silence of wakeful nights.
+
+That character of Bellario touched her as no heroine of the "Grand Cyrus"
+had power to move her. How elaborately artificial seemed the Scudèry's
+polished tirades, her refinements and quintessences of the grand passion,
+as compared with the fervid simplicity of the woman-page--a love so humble,
+so intense, so unselfish!
+
+Sir Denzil came to Chilton nearly every day, and was always graciously
+received by her ladyship. His Puritan gravity fell away from him like a
+pilgrim's cloak, in the light air of Hyacinth's amusements. He seemed to
+grow younger; and Henriette's sharp eyes discovered an improvement in his
+dress.
+
+"This is your second new suit since Christmas," she said, "and I'll swear
+it is made by the King's tailor. Regardez done, madame! What exquisite
+embroidery, silver and gold thread intermixed with little sparks of garnets
+sewn in the pattern! It is better than anything of his lordship's. I wish I
+had a father who dressed well. I'm sure mine must be the shabbiest lord at
+Whitehall. You have no right to be more modish than monsieur mon père, Sir
+Denzil."
+
+"Hold that insolent tongue, p'tit drôle!" cried the mother. "Sir Denzil is
+younger by a dozen years than his lordship, and has his reputation to make
+at Court, and with the ladies he will meet there. I hope you are coming to
+London, Denzil. You shall have a seat in one of our coaches as soon as the
+death-rate diminishes, and this odious weather breaks up."
+
+"Your ladyship is all goodness. I shall go where my lode-star leads,"
+answered Denzil, looking at Angela, and blushing at the audacity of his
+speech.
+
+He was one of those modest lovers who rarely bring a blush to the cheek of
+the beloved object, but are so poor-spirited as to do most of the blushing
+themselves.
+
+A week later Lady Fareham could do nothing but praise that severe weather
+which she had pronounced odious, for her husband, coming in from Oxford
+after a ride along the road, deep with melting snow, brought the news of a
+considerable diminution in the London death-rate; and the more startling
+news that his Majesty had removed to Whitehall for the quicker despatch of
+business with the Duke of Albemarle, albeit the bills of mortality recorded
+fifteen hundred deaths from the pestilence in the previous week, and
+although not a carriage appeared in the deserted streets of the metropolis
+except those in his Majesty's train.
+
+"How brave, how admirable!" cried Hyacinth, clapping her hands in the
+exuberance of her joy. "Then we can go to London to-morrow, if horses and
+coaches can be made ready. Give your orders at once, Fareham, I beseech
+you. The thaw has set in. There will be no snow to stop us."
+
+"There will be floods which may make fords impassable."
+
+"We can avoid every ford--there is always a _détour_ by the lanes."
+
+"Have you any idea what the lanes will be like after two feet deep of snow?
+Be sure, my love, you are happier twanging your lute by this fireside than
+you would be stuck in a quagmire, perishing with cold in a windy coach."
+
+"I will risk the quagmires and the windy coach. Oh, my lord, if you ever
+loved me let us set out to-morrow. I languish for Fareham House--my
+basset-table, my friends, my watermen to waft me to and fro between
+Blackfriars and Westminster, the mercers in St. Paul's Churchyard, the
+Middle Exchange. I have not bought myself anything pretty since Christmas.
+Let us go to-morrow."
+
+"And risk spoiling the prettiest thing you own--your face--by a
+plague-spot."
+
+"The King is there--the plague is ended."
+
+"Do you think he is a God, that the pestilence will flee at his coming?"
+
+"I think his courage is godlike. To be the first to return to that
+abandoned city."
+
+"What of Monk and the Archbishop, who never left it?"
+
+"A rough old soldier! A Churchman! Such lives were meant to face danger.
+But his Majesty! A man for whom existence should be one long holiday?"
+
+"He has done his best to make it so; but the pestilence has shown him that
+there are grim realities in life. Don't fret, dearest. We will go to town
+as soon as it is prudent to make the move. Kings must brave great hazards;
+and there is no reason that little people like us should risk our lives
+because the necessities of State compel his Majesty to imperil his."
+
+"We shall be laughed at if we do not hasten after him."
+
+"Let them laugh who please. I have passed through the ordeal, Hyacinth. I
+don't want a second attack of the sickness; nor would I for worlds that you
+or your sister should run into the mouth of danger. Besides, you can lose
+little pleasure by being absent; for the play-houses are all closed, and
+the Court is in mourning for the French Queen-mother."
+
+"Poor Queen Anne!" sighed Hyacinth. "She was always kind to me. And to
+die of a cancer--after out-living those she most loved! King Louis would
+scarcely believe she was seriously ill, till she was at the point of death.
+But we know what mourning means at Whitehall--Lady Castlemaine in black
+velvet, with forty thousand pounds in diamonds to enliven it; a concert
+instead of a play, perhaps; and the King sitting in a corner whispering
+with Mrs. Stewart. But as for the contagion, you will see that everybody
+will rush back to London, and that you and I will be laughing-stocks."
+
+The next week justified Lady Fareham's assertion. As soon as it was known
+that the King had established himself at Whitehall, the great people came
+back to their London houses, and the town began to fill. It was as if a God
+had smiled upon the smitten city, and that healing and happiness radiated
+from the golden halo round that anointed head. Was not this the monarch of
+whom the most eloquent preacher of the age had written, "In the arms of
+whose justice and wisdom we lie down in safety"?
+
+London flung off her cerements--erased her plague-marks. The dead-cart's
+dreadful bell no longer sounded in the silence of an afflicted city.
+Coffins no longer stood at every other door; the pits at Finsbury, in
+Tothill Fields, at Islington, were all filled up and trampled down; and the
+grass was beginning to grow over the forgotten dead. The Judges came back
+to Westminster. London was alive again--alive and healed; basking in the
+sunshine of Royalty.
+
+Nowhere was London more alive in the month of March than at Fareham
+House on the Thames, where the Fareham liveries of green and gold showed
+conspicuous upon his lordship's watermen, lounging about the stone steps
+that led down to the water, or waiting in the terraced garden, which was
+one of the finest on the river. Wherries of various weights and sizes
+filled one spacious boathouse, and in another handsome stone edifice with
+a vaulted roof Lord Fareham's barge lay in state, glorious in cream colour
+and gold, with green velvet cushions and Oriental carpets, as splendid as
+that blue-and-gold barge which Charles had sent as a present to Madame, a
+vessel to out-glitter Cleopatra's galley, when her ladyship and her friends
+and their singing-boys and musicians filled it for a voyage to Hampton
+Court.
+
+The barge was used on festive occasions, or for country voyages, as to
+Hampton or Greenwich; the wherries were in constant requisition. Along
+that shining waterway rank and fashion, commerce and business, were moving
+backwards and forwards all day long. That more novel mode of transit, the
+hackney coach, was only resorted to in foul weather; for the Legislature
+had handicapped the coaching trade in the interests of the watermen, and
+coaches were few and dear.
+
+If Angela had loved the country, she was not less charmed with London
+under its altered aspect. All this gaiety and splendour, this movement and
+brightness, astonished and dazzled her.
+
+"I am afraid I am very shallow-minded," she told Denzil when he asked her
+opinion of London. "It seems an enchanted place, and I can scarcely believe
+it is the same dreadful city I saw a few months ago, when the dead were
+lying in the streets. Oh, how clearly it comes back to me--those empty
+streets, the smoke of the fires, the wretched ragged creatures begging for
+bread! I looked down a narrow court, and saw a corpse lying there, and
+a child wailing over it; and a little way farther on a woman flung up a
+window, and screamed out, 'Dead, dead! The last of my children is dead! Has
+God no relenting mercy?'"
+
+"It is curious," said Hyacinth, "how little the town seems changed after
+all those horrors. I miss nobody I know."
+
+"Nay, madam," said Denzil, "there have only died one hundred and sixty
+thousand people, mostly of the lower classes; or at least that is the
+record of the bills; but I am told the mortality has been twice as much,
+for people have had a secret way of dying and burying their dead. If your
+ladyship could have heard the account that Mr. Milton gave me this morning
+of the sufferings he saw before he left London, you would not think the
+visitation a light one."
+
+"I wonder you consort with such a rebellious subject as Mr. Milton," said
+Hyacinth. "A creature of Cromwell's, who wrote with hideous malevolence and
+disrespect of the murdered King, who was in hiding for ever so long after
+his Majesty's return, and who now escapes a prison only by the royal
+clemency."
+
+"The King lacks only that culminating distinction of having persecuted the
+greatest poet of the age in order to stand equal to the bigots who murdered
+Giordano Bruno," said Denzil.
+
+"The greatest poet! Sure you would not compare Milton with Waller?"
+
+"Indeed I would not, Lady Fareham."
+
+"Nor with Cowley, nor Denham--dear cracked-brained Denham?"
+
+"Nor with Denham. To my fancy he stands as high above them as the pole-star
+over your ladyship's garden lamps."
+
+"A pamphleteer who has scribbled schoolboy Latin verses, and a few short
+poems; and, let me see, a masque--yes, a masque that he wrote for Lord
+Bridgewater's children before the troubles. I have heard my father talk of
+it. I think he called the thing _Comus_."
+
+"A name that will live, Lady Fareham, when Waller and Denham are shadows,
+remembered only for an occasional couplet."
+
+"Oh, but who cares what people will think two or three hundred years hence?
+Waller's verses please us now. The people who come after me can please
+themselves, and may read _Comus_ to their hearts' content. I know his
+lordship reads Milton, as he does Shakespeare, and all the cramped old
+play-wrights of Elizabeth's time. Henri, sing us that song of Waller's,
+'Go, lovely rose.' I would give all Mr. Milton has written for that
+perfection."
+
+They were sitting on the terrace above the river in the golden light of
+an afternoon that was fair and warm as May, though by the calendar 'twas
+March. The capricious climate had changed from austere winter to smiling
+spring. Skylarks were singing over the fields at Hampstead, and over the
+plague-pits at Islington, and all London was rejoicing in blue skies and
+sunshine. Trade was awakening from a death-like sleep. The theatres were
+closed; but there were plays acted now and then at Court. The New and the
+Middle Exchange were alive with beribboned fops and painted belles.
+
+It was Lady Fareham's visiting-day. The tall windows of her saloon were
+open to the terrace, French windows that reached from ceiling to floor,
+like those at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and which Hyacinth had substituted
+for the small Jacobean casements, when she took possession of her husband's
+ancestral mansion. Saloon and terrace were one on a balmy afternoon like
+this; and her ladyship's guests wandered in and out at their pleasure. Her
+lackeys, handing chocolate and cakes on silver or gold salvers, were so
+many as to seem ubiquitous; and in the saloon, presided over by Angela,
+there was a still choicer refreshment to be obtained at a tea-table, where
+tiny cups of the new China drink were dispensed to those who cared for
+exotic novelties.
+
+"Prythee, take your guitar and sing to us, were it but to change the
+conversation," cried Hyacinth; and De Malfort took up his guitar and began,
+in the sweetest of tenors, "Go, lovely rose."
+
+He had all her ladyship's visitors, chiefly feminine, round him before he
+had finished the first verse. That gift of song, that exquisite touch upon
+the Spanish guitar, were irresistible.
+
+Lord Fareham landed at the lower flight of steps as the song ended, and
+came slowly along the terrace, saluting his wife's friends with a grave
+courtesy. He brought an atmosphere of silence and restraint with him, it
+seemed to some of his wife's visitors, for the babble that usually follows
+the end of a song was wanting.
+
+Most of Lady Fareham's friends affected literature, and professed
+familiarity with two books which had caught the public taste on opposite
+sides of the Channel. In London people quoted Butler, and vowed there was
+no wit so racy as the wit in "Hudibras." In Paris the cultured were all
+striving to talk like Rochefoucauld's "Maxims," which had lately delighted
+the Gallic mind by the frank cynicism that drew everybody's attention to
+somebody else's failings.
+
+"Himself the vainest of men, 'tis scarce wonderful that he takes vanity to
+be the mainspring that moves the human species," said De Malfort, when some
+one had found fault with the Duke's analysis.
+
+"Oh, now we shall hear nothing but stale Rochefoucauldisms, sneers at love
+and friendship, disparagement of our ill-used sex! Where has my grave
+husband been, I wonder?" said Hyacinth. "Upon my honour, Fareham, your brow
+looks as sombre as if it were burdened with the care of the nation."
+
+"I have been with one who has to carry the greater part of that burden, my
+lady, and my spirits may have caught some touch of his uneasiness."
+
+"You have been prosing with that pragmatical personage at Dunkirk--nay, I
+beg the Lord Chancellor's pardon, Clarendon House. Are not his marbles
+and tapestries much finer than ours? And yet he began life as a sneaking
+lawyer, the younger son of a small Wiltshire squire----"
+
+"Lady Fareham, you allow your tongue too much licence----"
+
+"Nay, I speak but the common feeling. Everybody is tired of a Minister who
+is a hundred years behind the age. He should have lived under Elizabeth."
+
+"A pretty woman should never talk politics, Hyacinth."
+
+"Of what else can I talk when the theatres are closed, and you deny me the
+privilege of seeing the last comedy performed at Whitehall? Is it not rank
+tyranny in his lordship, Lady Sarah?" turning to one of her intimates, a
+lady who had been a beauty at the court of Henrietta Maria in the beginning
+of the troubles, and who from old habit still thought herself lovely and
+beloved. "I appeal to your ladyship's common sense. Is it not monstrous to
+deprive me of the only real diversion in the town? I was not allowed to
+enter a theatre at all last year, except when his favourite Shakespeare or
+Fletcher was acted, and that was but a dozen times, I believe."
+
+"Oh, hang Shakespeare!" cried a gentleman whose periwig occupied nearly as
+much space against the blue of a vernal sky as all the rest of his dapper
+little person. "Gud, my lord, it is vastly old-fashioned in your lordship
+to taste Shakespeare!" protested Sir Ralph Masaroon, shaking a cloud of
+pulvilio out of his cataract of curls. "There was a pretty enough play
+concocted t'other day out of two of his--a tragedy and comedy--_Measure for
+Measure_ and _Much Ado about Nothing_, the interstices filled in with the
+utmost ingenuity. But Shakespeare unadulterated--faugh!"
+
+"I am a fantastical person, perhaps, Sir Ralph; but I would rather my
+wife saw ten of Shakespeare's plays--in spite of their occasional
+coarseness--than one of your modern comedies."
+
+"I should revolt against such tyranny," said Lady Sarah. "I have always
+appreciated Shakespeare, but I adore a witty comedy, and I never allowed my
+husband to dictate to me on a question of taste."
+
+"Plays which her Majesty patronises can scarcely be unfit entertainment for
+her subjects," remarked another lady.
+
+"Our Portuguese Queen is an excellent judge of the niceties of our
+language," said Fareham. "I question if she understands five sentences in
+as many acts."
+
+"Nor should _I_ understand anything low or vulgar," said Hyacinth.
+
+"Then, madam, you are best at home, for the whole entertainment would be
+Hebrew to you."
+
+"That cannot be," protested Lady Sarah; "for all our plays are written by
+gentlemen. The hack writers of King James's time have been shoved aside. It
+is the mark of a man of quality to write a comedy."
+
+"It is a pity that fine gentlemen should write foul jests. Nay, it is a
+subject I can scarce speak of with patience, when I remember what the
+English stage has been, and hear what it is; when I recall what Lord
+Clarendon has told me of his Majesty's father, for whom Shakespeare was
+a closet companion, who loved all that was noblest in the drama of the
+Elizabethan age. Time, which should have refined and improved the stage,
+has sunk it in ignominy. We stand alone among nations in our worship of the
+obscene. You have seen plays enough in Paris, Hyacinth. Recall the themes
+that pleased you at the Marais and the Hôtel de Bourgogne; the stories of
+classic heroism, of Christian fortitude, of manhood and womanhood lifted
+to the sublime. You who, in your girlhood, were familiar with the austere
+genius of Corneille----"
+
+"I am sick of that Frenchman's name," interjected Lady Sarah. "St. Évremond
+was always praising him, and had the audacity to pronounce him superior to
+Dryden; to compare _Cinna_ with the _Indian Queen_."
+
+"A comparison which makes one sorry for Mr. Dryden," said Fareham. "I have
+heard that Condé, when a young man, was affected to tears at the scene
+between Augustus and his foe."
+
+"He must have been very young," said Lady Fareham. "But I am not going to
+depreciate Corneille, or to pretend that the French theatre is not vastly
+superior to our own. I would only protest that if our laughter-loving King
+prefers farce to tragedy, and rhyme to blankverse, his subjects should
+accommodate themselves to his taste, and enjoy the plays he likes. It is a
+foolish prejudice that deprives me of such a pleasure. I could always go in
+a mask."
+
+"Can you put a mask upon your mind, and preserve that unstained in an
+atmosphere of corruption? Indeed, your ladyship does not know what you
+are asking for. To sit and simper through a comedy in which the filthiest
+subjects are discussed in the vilest language; to see all that is foolish
+or lascivious in your own sex exaggerated with a malignant licence, which
+makes a young and beautiful woman an epitome of all the vices, uniting the
+extreme of masculine profligacy with the extreme of feminine silliness.
+Will you encourage by your presence the wretches who libel your sex? Will
+you sit smiling to see your sisters in the pillory of satire?"
+
+"I should smile as at a fairy tale. There are no such women among my
+friends----"
+
+"And if the satire hits an enemy, it is all the more pungent," said Lady
+Sarah.
+
+"An enemy! The man who can so write of women is your worst enemy. The day
+will come, perhaps, long after we are dust, when the women in _Epsom Wells_
+will be thought pictures from life. 'Such an one,' people will say, as
+they stand to read your epitaph, 'was this Lady Sarah, whose virtues are
+recorded here in Latin superlatives. We know her better in the pages of
+Shadwell.'"
+
+Lady Sarah paled under her rouge at that image of a tomb, as Fareham's
+falcon eye singled her out in the light-hearted group of which De Malfort
+was the central figure, sitting on the marble balustrade, in an easy
+impertinent attitude, swinging his legs, and dandling his guitar. She was
+less concerned at the thought of what posterity might say of her morals
+than at the idea that she must inevitably die.
+
+"Not a word against Shad," protested Sir Ralph. "I have roared with
+laughter at his last play. Never did any one so hit the follies of town and
+country. His rural Put is perfection; his London rook is to the very life."
+
+"And if the generality of his female characters conduct themselves badly
+there is always one heroine of irreproachable morals," said Lady Sarah.
+
+"Who talks like a moral dragoon," said Fareham.
+
+"Oh, dem, we must have the play-houses!" cried Masaroon. "Consider how dull
+town is without them. They are the only assemblies that please quality and
+riffraff alike. Sure 'tis the nature of wit to bubble into licentiousness,
+as champagne foams over the rim of a glass; and, after all, who listens to
+the play? Half the time one is talking to some adventurous miss, who will
+swallow a compliment from a stranger if he offer it with a china orange.
+Or, perhaps, there is quarrelling; and all our eyes and ears are on the
+scufflers. One may ogle a pretty actress on the stage; but who listens to
+the play, except the cits and commonalty?"
+
+"And even they are more eyes than ears," said Lady Sarah, "and are gazing
+at the King and Queen, or the Duke and Duchess, when they should be
+'following an intrigue by Shadwell or Dryden."
+
+"Pardieu!" exclaimed De Malfort, "there are tragedies and comedies in the
+boxes deeper and more human than anything that is acted on the stage. To
+watch the Queen, sitting silent and melancholy, while Madame Barbara lolls
+across half a dozen people to talk to his Majesty, dazzling him with her
+brilliant eyes, bewildering him by her daring speech. Or, on other nights
+to see the same lady out of favour, sitting apart, with an ivory shoulder
+turned towards Royalty, scowling at the audience like a thunder-cloud."
+
+"Well, it is but natural, perhaps, that such a Court should inspire such a
+stage," returned Fareham, "and that for the heroic drama of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, Webster, Massinger, and Ford, we should have a gross caricature
+of our own follies and our own vices. Nay, so essential is foulness to the
+modern stage that when the manager ventures a serious play, he takes care
+to introduce it with some filthy prologue, and to spice the finish with a
+filthier epilogue."
+
+"Zounds, Fareham!" cried Masaroon, "when one has yawned or slept through
+five acts of dull heroics, one needs to be stung into wakefulness by a
+high-spiced epilogue. For my taste your epilogue can't be too pungent
+to give a flavour to my oysters and Rhenish. Gud, my lord, we must have
+something to talk about when we leave the play-house!"
+
+"His lordship is spoilt; we are all spoilt for London after having lived in
+the most exquisite city in the world," drawled Mrs. Danville, one of Lady
+Fareham's particular friends, who had been educated at the Visitandines
+with the Princess Henrietta, now Duchess of Orleans. "Who can tolerate the
+coarse manners and sea-coal fires of London after the smokeless skies and
+exquisite courtesies of Parisian good company in the Rue St. Thomas du
+Louvre--a society so refined that a fault in grammar shocks as much as a
+slit nose at Charing Cross? I shudder when I recall the Saturdays in the
+Rue du Temple, and compare the conversations there, the play of wit and
+fancy, the elaborate arguments upon platonic love, the graceful raillery,
+with any assembly in London--except yours, Hyacinth. At Fareham House we
+breathe a finer air, although his lordship's esprit moqueur will not allow
+us any superiority to the coarse English mob."
+
+"Indeed, Mrs. Danville, even your prejudice cannot deny London fine
+gentlemen and wits," remonstrated Sir Ralph. "A court that can boast a
+Buckhurst, a Rochester, an Etherege, a Sedley----"
+
+"There is not one of them can compare with Voiture or Godeau, with Bussy or
+St. Évremond, still less with Scarron or Molière," said De Malfort. "I have
+heard more wit in one evening at Scarron's than in a week at Whitehall. Wit
+in France has its basis in thought and erudition. Here it is the sparkle
+and froth of empty minds, a trick of speech, a knack of saying brutal
+things under a pretence of humour, varnishing real impertinence with mock
+wit. I have heard Rowley laugh at insolences which, addressed to Louis,
+would have ensured the speaker a year in the Bastille."
+
+"I would not exchange our easy-tempered King for your graceful despot,"
+said Fareham. "Pride is the mainspring that moves Louis' self-absorbed
+soul. His mother instilled it into his mind almost before he could speak.
+He was bred in the belief that he has no more parallel or fellow than the
+sun which he has chosen for his emblem. And then, for moral worth, he is
+little better than his cousin, Louis has all Charles's elegant vices, plus
+tyranny."
+
+"Louis is every inch a King. Your easy-tempered gentleman at Whitehall is
+only a tradition," answered De Malfort. "He is but an extravagantly paid
+official, whose office is a sinecure, and who sells something of his
+prerogative every session for a new grant of money. I dare adventure, by
+the end of his reign, Charles will have done more than Cromwell to increase
+the liberty of the subject and to demonstrate the insignificance of kings."
+
+"I doubt the easy-tempered sinecurist who trusts the business of the State
+to the nation's representatives will wear longer than your officious
+tyrant, who wants to hold all the strings in his own fingers."
+
+"He may do that safely, so long as he has men like Colbert for puppets----"
+
+"Men!" cried Fareham. "A man of so rare an honesty must not be thought of
+in the plural. Colbert's talent, probity, and honour constitute a phoenix
+that appears once in a century; and, given those rare qualities in the man,
+it needs a Richelieu to inspire the minister, and a Mazarin to teach him
+his craft, and to prepare him for double-dealing in others which his
+own direct mind could never have imagined. Trained first by one of the
+greatest, and next by one of the subtlest statesmen the world has ever
+seen, the provincial woollen-draper's son has all the qualities needed to
+raise France to the pinnacle of fortune, if his master will but give him a
+free hand."
+
+"At any rate, he will make Jacques Bonhomme pay handsomely for his
+Majesty's new palaces and new loves," said De Malfort. "Colbert adores the
+King, and is blind to his follies, which are no more economical than the
+vulgar pleasures of your jovial Rowley."
+
+"Who takes four shillings in every country gentleman's pound to spend
+on the pleasures of London," interjected Masaroon. "Royalty is plaguey
+expensive."
+
+The company sighed a melancholy assent.
+
+"And one can never tell whether the money they squeeze out of us goes to
+build a new ship, or to pay Lady Castlemaine's gambling debts," said Lady
+Sarah.
+
+"Oh, no doubt the lady, as Hyde calls her, has her tithes," said De
+Malfort. "I have observed she always flames in new jewels after a subsidy."
+
+"Royal accounts should be kept so that every tax-payer could look into
+them," said Masaroon. "The King has spent millions. We were all so
+foolishly fond of him in the joyful day of his restoration that we allowed
+him to wallow in extravagance, and asked no questions; and for a man who
+had worn threadbare velvet and tarnished gold, and lived upon loans and
+gratuities from foreign princes and particulars, it was a new sensation to
+draw _ad libitum_ upon a national exchequer."
+
+"The exchequer Rowley draws upon should be as deep and wide as the river
+Pactolus; for he is a spendthrift by instinct," said Fareham.
+
+"Yet his largest expenditure can hardly equal his cousin's drain upon the
+revenue. Mansart is spending millions on Versailles, with his bastard
+Italian architecture, his bloated garlands and festoons, his stone lilies
+and pomegranates. Charles builds no palaces, initiates no war----"
+
+"And will leave neither palace nor monument; will have lived only to have
+diminished the dignity and importance of his country. Restored to kingdom
+and power as if by a miracle, he makes it his chief business to show
+Englishmen how well they could have done without him," said Denzil Warner,
+who had been hanging over Angela's tea-table until just now, when they both
+sauntered on to the terrace, the lady's office being fulfilled, the little
+Chinese teapot emptied of its costly contents, and the tiny tea-cups
+distributed among the modish few who relished, or pretended to relish, the
+new drink.
+
+"You are a Republican, Sir Denzil, fostered by an arrant demagogue!"
+exclaimed Masaroon, with a contemptuous shake of his shoulder ribbons. "You
+hate the King because he is a King."
+
+"No, sir, I despise him because he is so much less than a King. Nobody
+could hate Charles the Second. He is not big enough."
+
+"Oh, dem, we want no meddlesome Kings to quarrel with their neighbours, and
+set Europe by the ears! The treaty of the Pyrenees may be a fine thing for
+France; but how many noble gentlemen's lives it cost, to say nothing of the
+common people! Rowley is the finest gentleman in his kingdom, and the most
+good-natured. Eh, gud, sirs! what more would you have?"
+
+"A MAN--like Henry the Fifth, or Oliver Cromwell, or Elizabeth."
+
+"Faith, she had need possess the manly virtues, for she must have been
+an untowardly female--a sour, lantern-jawed spinster, with all the
+inclinations but none of the qualities of a coquette."
+
+"Greatness has the privilege of small failings, or it would scarce
+be human. Elizabeth and Julius Caesar might be excused some harmless
+vanities."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The spring evenings were now mild enough for promenading St. James's Park,
+and the Mall was crowded night after night by the finest company in London.
+Hyacinth walked in the Mall, and appeared occasionally in her coach in
+Hyde Park; but she repeatedly reminded her friends how inferior was the
+mill-round of the Ring to the procession of open carriages along the Cours
+la Reine, by the side of the Seine; the splendour of the women's dress,
+outshone sometimes by the extravagant decoration of their coaches and the
+richness of their liveries; the crowds of horsemen, the finest gentlemen in
+France, riding at the coach doors, and bandying jests and compliments with
+Beauty, enthroned in her triumphal chariot. Gay, joyous sunsets; light
+laughter; delicate feasting in Renard's garden, hard by the Tuileries. To
+remember that fairer and different scene was to recall the freshness of
+youth, the romance of a first love.
+
+Here in the Mall there was gaiety enough and to spare. A crowd of fine
+people that sometimes thickened to a mob, hustled by the cits and
+starveling poets who came to stare at them.
+
+Yet, since St. James's Park was fashion's favourite promenade, Lady Fareham
+affected it, and took a turn or two nearly every evening, alighting from
+her chair at one gate and returning to it at another, on her way to rout
+or dance. She took Angela with her; and De Malfort and Sir Denzil were
+generally in attendance upon them, Denzil's devotion stopping at nothing
+except a proposal of marriage, for which he had not mustered courage in a
+friendship that had lasted half a year.
+
+"Because there was one so favoured as Endymion, am I to hope for the moon
+to come down and give herself to me?" he said one day, when Lady Fareham
+rebuked him for his reticence. "I know your sister does not love me; yet I
+hang on, hoping that love will come suddenly, like the coming of spring,
+which is ever a surprise. And even if I am never to win her, it is
+happiness to see her and to talk with her. I will not spoil my chance by
+rashness; I will not hazard banishment from her dear company."
+
+"She is lucky in such an admirer," sighed Hyacinth. "A silent, respectful
+passion is the rarest thing nowadays. Well, you deserve to conquer, Denzil;
+and if my sister were not of the coldest nature I ever met in woman she
+would have returned your passion ages ago, when you were so much in her
+company at Chilton."
+
+"I can afford to wait as long as the Greeks waited before Troy," said
+Denzil; "and I will be as constant as they were. If I cannot be her lover I
+can be her friend, and her protector."
+
+"Protector! Nay, surely she needs no protector out-of-doors, when she has
+Fareham and me within!"
+
+"Beauty has always need of defenders."
+
+"Not such beauty as Angela's. In the first place, her charms are of no
+dazzling order; and in the second, she has a coldness of temper and an
+old-fashioned wisdom which would safeguard her amidst the rabble rout of
+Comus."
+
+"There I believe you are right, Lady Fareham. Temptation could not touch
+her. Sin, even the subtlest, could not so disguise itself that her purity
+would not take alarm. Yes; she is like Milton's lady. The tempter could
+not touch the freedom of her mind. Sinful love would wither at a look from
+those pure eyes."
+
+He turned away suddenly and walked to the window.
+
+"Denzil! Why, what is the matter? You are weeping!"
+
+"Forgive me!" he said, recovering himself. "Indeed, I am not ashamed of a
+tributary tear to virtue and beauty like your sister's."
+
+"Dear friend, I shall not be happy till I call you brother."
+
+She gave him both her hands, and he bent down to kiss them.
+
+"I swear you are losing all your Anabaptist stiffness," she said,
+laughingly. "You will be ruffling it in Covent Garden with Buckhurst and
+his crew before long."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE SAGE OF SAYES COURT.
+
+
+One of Angela's letters to her convent companion, the chosen friend and
+confidante of childhood and girlhood, Léonie de Ville, now married to the
+Baron de Beaulieu, and established in a fine house in the Place Royale,
+will best depict her life and thoughts and feelings during her first London
+season.
+
+"You tell me, chère, that this London, which I have painted in somewhat
+brilliant colours, must be a poor place compared with your exquisite city;
+but, indeed, despite all you say of the Cours la Reine, and your splendour
+of gilded coaches, fine ladies, and noble gentlemen, who ride at your coach
+windows, talking to you as they rein in their spirited horses, I cannot
+think that your fashionable promenade can so much surpass our Ring in Hyde
+Park, where the Court airs itself daily in the new glass coaches, or outvie
+for gaiety our Mall in St. James's Park, where all the world of beauty and
+wit is to be met walking up and down in the gayest, easiest way, everybody
+familiar and acquainted, with the exception of a few women in masks, who
+are never to be spoken to or spoken about. Indeed, my sister and I have
+acquired the art of appearing neither to see nor to hear objectionable
+company, and pass close beside fine flaunting masks, rub shoulders with
+them even--and all as if we saw them not. It is for this that Lord Fareham
+hates London. Here, he says, vice takes the highest place, and flaunts in
+the sun, while virtue blushes, and steals by with averted head. But though
+I wonder at this Court of Whitehall, and the wicked woman who reigns
+empress there, and the neglected Queen, and the ladies of honour, whose bad
+conduct is on every one's lips, I wonder more at the people and the life
+you describe at the Louvre, and St. Germain, and Fontainebleau, and your
+new palace of Versailles.
+
+"Indeed, Léonie, the world must be in a strange way when vice can put on
+all the grace and dignity of virtue, and hold an honourable place among
+good and noble women. My sister says that Madame de Montausier is a woman
+of stainless character, and her husband the proudest of men; yet you tell
+me that both husband and wife are full of kindness and favours for that
+unhappy Mlle. de la Vallière, whose position at Court is an open insult to
+your Queen. Have Queens often been so unhappy, I wonder, as her Majesty
+here, and your own royal mistress? One at least was not. The martyred King
+was of all husbands the most constant and affectionate, and, in the opinion
+of many, lost his kingdom chiefly through his fatal indulgence of Queen
+Henrietta's caprices, and his willingness to be governed by her opinions in
+circumstances of difficulty, where only the wisest heads in the land
+should have counselled him. But how I am wandering from my defence of this
+beautiful city against your assertion of its inferiority! I hope, chère,
+that you will cross the sea some day, and allow my sister to lodge you in
+this house where I write; and when you look out upon our delightful river,
+with its gay traffic of boats and barges passing to and fro, and its
+palaces, rising from gardens and Italian terraces on either side of the
+stream; when you see our ancient cathedral of St. Paul; and the Abbey of
+St. Peter, lying a little back from the water, grand and ancient, and
+somewhat gloomy in its massive bulk; and eastward, the old fortress-prison,
+with its four towers; and the ships lying in the Pool; and fertile
+Bermondsey with its gardens; and all the beauty of verdant shores and
+citizens' houses between the bridge and Greenwich, you will own that London
+and its adjacent villages can compare favourably with any metropolis in the
+world.
+
+"The only complaint one hears is of its rapid growth, which is fast
+encroaching upon the pleasant fields and rustic lanes behind the Lambs
+Conduit and Southampton House; and on the western side spreading so rapidly
+that there will soon be no country left between London and Knightsbridge.
+
+"How I wish thou couldst see our river-terrace on my sister's visiting-day,
+when De Malfort is lolling on the marble balustrade, singing one of your
+favourite chansons to the guitar which he touches so exquisitely, and when
+Hyacinth's fine lady friends and foppish admirers are sitting about in the
+sunshine! Thou wouldst confess that even Renard's garden can show no gayer
+scene.
+
+"It was only last Tuesday that I had the opportunity of seeing more of the
+city than I had seen previously--and at its best advantage, as seen from
+the river. Mr. Evelyn, of Sayes Court, had invited my sister and her
+husband to visit his house and gardens. He is a great gardener and
+arboriculturist, as you may have heard, for he has travelled much on the
+Continent, and acquired a world-wide reputation for his knowledge of trees
+and flowers.
+
+"We were all invited--the Farehams, and my niece Henriette; and even I,
+whom Mr. Evelyn had seen but once, was included in the invitation. We were
+to travel by water, in his lordship's barge, and Mr. Evelyn's coach was to
+meet us at a landing-place not far from his house. We were to start in the
+morning, dine with him, and return to Fareham House before dark. Henriette
+was enchanted, and I found her at prayers on Monday night praying St.
+Swithin, whom she believes to have care of the weather, to allow no rain on
+Tuesday.
+
+"She looked so pretty next morning, dressed for the journey, in a light
+blue cloth cloak embroidered with silver, and a hood of the same; but she
+brought me bad news--my sister had a feverish headache, and begged us to go
+without her. I went to Hyacinth's room to try to persuade her to go with
+us, in the hope that the fresh air along the river would cure her headache;
+but she had been at a dance overnight, and was tired, and would do nothing
+but rest in a dark room all day--at least, that was her resolve in the
+morning; but later she remembered that it was Lady Lucretia Topham's
+visiting-day, and, feeling better, ordered her chair and went off to
+Bloomsbury Square, where she met all the wits, full of a new play which had
+been acted at Whitehall, the public theatres being still closed on account
+of the late contagion.
+
+"They do not act their plays here as often as Molière is acted at the
+Hôtel de Bourgogne. The town is constant in nothing but wanting perpetual
+variety, and the stir and bustle of a new play, which gives something for
+the wits to dispute about. I think we must have three play-wrights to one
+of yours; but I doubt if there is wit enough in a dozen of our writers to
+equal your Molière, whose last comedy seems to surpass all that has gone
+before. His lordship had a copy from Paris last week, and read the play to
+us in the evening. He has no accent, and reads French beautifully, with
+spirit and fire, and in the passionate scenes his great deep voice has a
+fine effect.
+
+"We left Fareham House at nine o'clock on a lovely morning, worthy this
+month of May. The lessening of fires in the city since the warmer weather
+has freed our skies from sea-coal smoke, and the sky last Tuesday was bluer
+than the river.
+
+"The cream-coloured and gold barge, with twelve rowers in the Fareham
+green velvet liveries, would have pleased your eyes, which have ever loved
+splendour; but you might have thought the master of this splendid barge too
+sombre in dress and aspect to become a scene which recalled Cleopatra's
+galley. To me there is much that is interesting in that severe and serious
+face, with its olive complexion and dark eyes, shadowed by the strong,
+thoughtful brow. People who knew Lord Stafford say that my brother-in-law
+has a look of that great, unfortunate man--sacrificed to stem the rising
+flood of rebellion, and sacrificed in vain. Fareham is his kinsman on
+the mother's side, and may have perhaps something of his powerful mind,
+together with the rugged grandeur of his features and the bent carriage of
+his shoulders, which some one the other day called the Stratford stoop.
+
+"I have been reading some of Lord Stafford's letters, and the account
+of his trial. Indeed he was an ill-used man, and the victim of private
+hatred--from the Vanes and others--as much as of public faction. His trial
+and condemnation were scarce less unfair--though the form and tribunal may
+have been legal--than his master's, and indeed did but forecast that most
+unwarrantable judgment. Is it not strange, Léonie, to consider how much of
+tragical history you and I have lived through that are yet so young? But
+to me it is strangest of all to see the people in this city, who abandon
+themselves as freely to a life of idle pleasures and sinful folly--at
+least, the majority of them--as if England had never seen the tragedy of
+the late monarch's murder, or been visited by death in his most horrible
+aspect, only the year last past. My sister tells every one, smiling, that
+she misses no one from the circle of her friends. She never saw the red
+cross on almost every door, the coffins, and the uncoffined dead, as I saw
+them one stifling summer day, nor heard the shrieks of the mourners in
+houses where death was master. Nor does she suspect how near she was to
+missing her husband, who was hanging between life and death when I found
+him, forsaken and alone. He never talks to me of those days of sickness and
+slow recovery; yet I think the memory of them must be in his mind as it is
+in mine, and that this serves as a link to draw us nearer than many a real
+brother and sister. I am sending you a little picture which I made of him
+from memory, for he has one of those striking faces that paint themselves
+easily upon the mind. Tell me how you, who are clever at reading faces,
+interpret this one.
+
+"Hélas, how I wander from our excursion! My pen winds like the river which
+carried us to Deptford. Pardon, chèrie, sije m'oublie trop; mais c'est si
+doux de causer avec une amie d'enfance.
+
+"At the Tower stairs we stopped to take on board a gentleman in a very fine
+peach-blossom suit, and with a huge periwig, at which Papillon began to
+laugh, and had to be chid somewhat harshly. He was a very civil-spoken,
+friendly person, and he brought with him a lad carrying a viol. He is an
+officer of the Admiralty, called Pepys, and, Fareham tells me, a useful,
+indefatigable person. My sister met him at Clarendon House two years ago,
+and wrote to me about him somewhat scornfully; but my brother respects him
+as shrewd and capable, and more honest than such persons usually are. We
+were to fetch him to Sayes Court, where he also was invited by Mr. Evelyn;
+and in talking to Henriette and me, he expressed great regret that his wife
+had not been included, and he paid my niece compliments upon her grace and
+beauty which I could but think very fulsome and showing want of judgment in
+addressing a child. And then, seeing me vexed, he hoped I was not jealous;
+at which I could hardly command my anger, and rose in a huff and left him.
+But he was a person not easy to keep at a distance, and was following me to
+the prow of the boat, when Fareham took hold of him by his cannon sleeve
+and led him to a seat, where he kept him talking of the navy and the great
+ships now a-building to replace those that have been lost in the Dutch War.
+
+"When we had passed the Pool, and the busy trading ships, and all the noise
+of sailors and labourers shipping or unloading cargo, and the traffic of
+small boats hastening to and fro, and were out on a broad reach of the
+river with the green country on either side, the lad tuned his viol, and
+played a pretty, pensive air, and he and Mr. Pepys sang some verses by
+Herrick, one of our favourite English poets, set for two voices--
+
+    "'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
+    Old Time still is a-flying;
+    And this same flower that smiles to-day,
+    To-morrow will be dying."
+
+The boy had a voice like Mere Ursule's lovely soprano, and Mr. Pepys a
+pretty tenor; and you can imagine nothing more silvery sweet than the union
+of the two voices to the staccato notes of the viol, dropping in here and
+there like music whispered. The setting was Mr. Pepys' own, and he seemed
+overcome with pride when we praised it. When the song was over, Fareham
+came to the bench where Papillon and I were sitting, and asked me what I
+thought of this fine Admiralty gentleman, whereupon I confessed I liked the
+song better than the singer, who at that moment was strutting on the deck
+like a peacock, looking at every vessel we passed as if he were Neptune,
+and could sink navies with a nod.
+
+"Misericorde! how my letter grows! But I love to prattle to you. My sister
+is all goodness to me; but she has her ideas and I have mine; and though I
+love her none the less because our fancies pull us in opposite directions,
+I cannot talk to her as I can write to you; and if I plague you with too
+much of my own history you must not fear to tell me so. Yet if I dare judge
+by my own feelings, who am never weary of your letters--nay, can never
+hear enough of your thoughts and doings--I think you will bear with my
+expatiations, and not deem them too impertinent.
+
+"Mr. Evelyn's coach was waiting at the landing-stage; and that good
+gentleman received us at his hall door. He is not young, and has gone
+through much affliction in the loss of his dear children--one, who died
+of a fever during that wicked reign of the Usurper Cromwell, was a boy
+of gifts and capacities that seemed almost miraculous, and had more
+scholarship at five years old than my poor woman's mind could compass were
+I to live till fifty. Mr. Evelyn took a kind of sad delight in talking to
+Henriette and me of this gifted child, asking her what she knew of this
+and that subject, and comparing her extensive ignorance at eleven with his
+lamented son's vast knowledge at five. I was more sorry for him than I
+dared to say; for I could but think this dear overtaught child might have
+died from a perpetual fever of the brain as likely as from a four days'
+fever of the body; and afterwards when Mr. Evelyn talked to us of a manner
+of forcing fruits to grow in strange shapes--a process in which he was
+greatly interested--I thought that this dear infant's mind had been
+constrained and directed, like the fruits, into a form unnatural to
+childhood. Picture to yourself, Léonie, at an age when he should have been
+chasing butterflies or making himself a garden of cut-flowers stuck in the
+ground, this child was labouring over Greek and Latin, and all his dreams
+must have been filled with the toilsome perplexities of his daily tasks. It
+is happy for the bereaved father that he takes a different view, and that
+his pride in the child's learning is even greater than his grief at having
+lost him.
+
+"At dinner the conversation was chiefly of public affairs--the navy, the
+war, the King, the Duke, and the General. Mr. Evelyn told Fareham much of
+his embarrassments last year, when he had the Dutch prisoners, and the sick
+and wounded from the fleet, in his charge; and when there was so terrible
+a scarcity of provision for these poor wretches that he was constrained to
+draw largely on his own private means in order to keep them from starving.
+
+"Later, during the long dinner, Mr. Pepys made allusions to an unhappy
+passion of his master and patron, Lord Sandwich, that had diverted his mind
+from public business, and was likely to bring him to disgrace. Nothing was
+said plainly about this matter, but rather in hints and innuendoes, and my
+brother's brow darkened as the conversation went on; and then, at last,
+after sitting silent for some time while Mr. Evelyn and Mr. Pepys
+conversed, he broke up their discourse in a rough, abrupt way he has when
+greatly moved.
+
+"'He is a wretch--a guilty wretch--to love where he should not, to hazard
+the world's esteem, to grieve his wife, and to dishonour his name! And yet,
+I wonder, is he happier in his sinful indulgence than if he had played a
+Roman part, or, like the Spartan lad we read of, had let the wild-beast
+passion gnaw his heart out, and yet made no sign? To suffer and die, that
+is virtue, I take it, Mr. Evelyn; and you Christian sages assure us that
+virtue is happiness. A strange kind of happiness!'
+
+"'The Christian's law is a law of sacrifice,' Mr. Evelyn said, in his
+melancholic way. 'The harvest of surrender here is to be garnered in a
+better world.'
+
+"'But if Sandwich does not believe in the everlasting joys of the heavenly
+Jerusalem--and prefers to anticipate his harvest of joy!' said Fareham.
+
+"'Then he is the more to be pitied,' interrupted Mr. Evelyn.
+
+"'He is as God made him. Nothing can come out of a man but what his
+Maker put in him. Your gold vase there will not turn vicious and produce
+copper--nor can all your alchemy turn copper to gold. There are some of us
+who believe that a man can live only once, and love only once, and be happy
+only once in that pitiful span of infirmities which we call life; and that
+he is wisest who gathers his roses while he may--as Mr. Pepys sang to us
+this morning.'
+
+"Mr. Evelyn sighed, and looked at my brother with mild reproof.
+
+"'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
+miserable,' he said. 'My lord, when those you love people the Heavenly
+City, you will begin to believe and hope as I do.'
+
+"I have transcribed this conversation at full length, Léonie, because it
+gives you the keynote to Fareham's character, and accounts for much that is
+strange in his conduct. Alas, that I must say it of so noble a man! He is
+an infidel! Bred in our Church, he has faith neither in the Church nor
+in its Divine Founder. His favourite books are metaphysical works by
+Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza. I have discovered him reading those pernicious
+writings whose chief tendency is to make us question the most blessed
+truths our Church has taught us, or to confuse the mind by leading us to
+doubt even of our own existence. I was curious to know what there could
+be in books that so interested a man of his intelligence, and asked to be
+allowed to read them; but the perusal only served to make me unhappy. This
+daring attempt to reduce all the mysteries of life to a simple sum in
+arithmetic, and to make God a mere attribute in the mind of man, disturbed
+and depressed me. Indeed, there can be no more unhappy moment in any life
+than that in which for the first time a terrible 'if' flashes upon the
+mind. _If_ God is not the God I have worshipped, and in whose goodness I
+rest all my hopes of future bliss; _if_ in the place of an all-powerful
+Creator, who gave me my life and governs it, and will renew it after the
+grave, there is nothing but a quality of my mind, which makes it necessary
+to me to invent a Superior Being, and to worship the product of my own
+imagination! Oh, Léonie, beware of these modern thinkers, who assail the
+creed that has been the stronghold and comfort of humanity for sixteen
+hundred years, and who employ the reason which God has given them to
+disprove the existence of their Maker. Fareham insists that Spinoza is a
+religious man--and has beautiful ideas about God; but I found only doubt
+and despair in his pages; and I ascribe my poor brother's melancholic
+disposition in some part to his study of such philosophers.
+
+"I wonder what you would think of Fareham, did you see him daily and
+hourly, almost, as I do. Would you like or dislike, admire or scorn him?
+I cannot tell. His manners have none of the velvet softness which is the
+fashion in London--where all the fine gentlemen shape themselves upon the
+Parisian model; yet he is courteous, after his graver mode, to all
+women, and kind and thoughtful of our happiness. To my sister he is all
+beneficence; and if he has a fault it is over-much indulgence of her whims
+and extravagances--though Hyacinth, poor soul, thinks him a tyrant because
+he forbids her some places of amusement to which other women of quality
+resort freely. Were he my husband, I should honour him for his desire to
+spare me all evil sounds and profligate company; and so would Hyacinth,
+perhaps, had she leisure for reflection. But in her London life, surrounded
+ever with a bevy of friends, moving like a star amidst a galaxy of great
+ladies, there is little time for the free exercise of a sound judgment,
+and she can but think as others bid her, who swear that her husband is a
+despot.
+
+"Mrs. Evelyn was absent from home on a visit; so after dinner Henriette and
+I, having no hostess to entertain us, walked with our host, who showed
+us all the curiosities and beauties of his garden, and condescended to
+instruct us upon many interesting particulars relating to trees and
+flowers, and the methods of cultivation pursued in various countries. His
+fig trees are as fine as those in the convent garden at Louvain; and,
+indeed, walking with him in a long alley, shut in by holly hedges of which
+he is especially proud, and with orchard trees on either side, I was taken
+back in fancy to the old pathway along which you and I have paced so often
+with Mother Agnes, talking of the time when we should go out into the
+world. You have been more than three years in that world of which you then
+knew so little, but it lacks still a quarter of one year since I left that
+quiet and so monotonous life; and already I look back and wonder if I ever
+really lived there. I cannot picture myself within those walls. I cannot
+call back my own feelings or my own image at the time when I had never seen
+London, when my sister was almost a stranger to me, and my sister's husband
+only a name. Yet a day of sorrow might come when I should be fain to find
+a tranquil retreat in that sober place, and to spend my declining years in
+prayer and meditation, as my dear aunt did spend nearly all her life. May
+God maintain us in the true faith, sweet friend, so that we may ever have
+that sanctuary of holy seclusion and prayer to fly to--and, oh, how
+deep should be our pity for a soul like Fareham's, which knows not the
+consolations nor the strength of religion, for whom there is no armour
+against the arrows of death, no City of Refuge in the day of mourning!
+
+"Indeed he is not happy. I question and perplex myself to find a reason for
+his melancholy. He is rich in money and in powerful friends; has a wife
+whom all the world admires; houses which might lodge Royalty. Perhaps it is
+because his life has been over prosperous that he sickens of it, like one
+who flings away from a banquet table, satiated by feasting. Life to him may
+be like the weariness of our English dinners, where one mountain of food is
+carried away to make room on the board for another; and where after people
+have sat eating and drinking for over an hour comes a roasted swan, or a
+peacock, or some other fantastical dish, which the company praise as a
+pretty surprise. Often, in the midst of such a dinner, I recall our sparing
+meals in the convent; our soup maigre and snow eggs, our cool salads and
+black bread--and regret that simple food, while the reeking joints and
+hecatombs of fowl nauseate my senses.
+
+"It was late in the afternoon when we returned to the barge, for Mr. Pepys
+had business to transact with our host, and spent an hour with him in his
+study, signing papers, and looking at accounts, while Papillon and I roamed
+about the garden with his lordship, conversing upon various subjects, and
+about Mr. Evelyn, and his opinions and politics.
+
+"'The good man has a pretty trivial taste that will keep him amused and
+happy till he drops into the grave--but, lord! what insipid trash it all
+seems to the heart on fire with passion!' Fareham said in his impetuous
+way, as if he despised Mr. Evelyn for taking pleasure in bagatelles.
+
+"The sun was setting as we passed Greenwich, and I thought of those who had
+lived and made history in the old palace--Queen Elizabeth, so great, so
+lonely; Shakespeare, whom his lordship honours; Bacon, said to be one of
+the wisest men who have lived since the Seven of Greece; Raleigh, so brave,
+so adventurous, so unhappy! Surely men and women must have been made of
+another stuff a century ago; for what will those who come after us remember
+of the wits and beauties of Whitehall, except that they lived and died?
+
+"Mr. Pepys was somewhat noisy on the evening voyage, and I was very glad
+when he left the barge. He paid me ridiculous compliments mixed with scraps
+of French and Spanish, and, finding his conversation distasteful, he
+insisted upon attempting several songs--not one of which he was able to
+finish, and at last began one which for some reason made his lordship
+angry, who gave him a cuff on his head that scattered all the scented
+powder in his wig; on which, instead of starting up furious to return the
+blow, as I feared to see him, Mr. Pepys gave a little whimpering laugh,
+muttered something to the effect that his lordship was vastly nice, and
+sank down in a corner of the cushioned seat, where he almost instantly fell
+asleep.
+
+"Henriette and I were spectators of this scene at some distance, I am glad
+to say, for all the length of the barge divided us from the noisy singer.
+
+"The sun went down, and the stars stole out of the deep blue vault, and
+trembled between us and those vast fields of heaven. Papillon watched their
+reflection in the river, or looked at the houses along the shore, few and
+far apart, where a solitary candle showed here and there. Fareham came and
+seated himself near us, but talked little. We drew our cloaks closer, for
+the air was cold, and Papillon nestled beside me and dropped asleep. Even
+the dipping of the oars had a ghostly sound in the night stillness; and we
+seemed so melancholy in this silence, and so far away from one another,
+that I could but think of Charon's boat laden with the souls of the dead.
+
+"Write to me soon, dearest, and as long a letter as I have written to you.
+
+"À toi de coeur,
+
+"ANGELA."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE MILLBANK GHOST.
+
+
+One of the greatest charms of London has ever been the facility of getting
+away from it to some adjacent rustic or pseudo-rustic spot; and in 1666,
+though many people declared that the city had outgrown all reason, and was
+eating up the country, a two-mile journey would carry the Londoner from
+bricks and mortar to rusticity, and while the tower of St Paul's Cathedral
+was still within sight he might lie on the grass on a wild hillside,
+and hear the skylark warbling in the blue arch above him, and scent
+the hawthorn blowing in untrimmed hedge-rows. And then there were the
+fashionable resorts--the gardens or the fields which the town had marked as
+its own. Beauty and wit had their choice of such meeting-grounds between
+Westminster and Barn Elms, where in the remote solitudes along the river
+murder might be done in strict accordance with etiquette, and was too
+seldom punished by law.
+
+Among the rendezvous of fashion there was one retired spot less widely
+known than Fox Hall or the Mulberry Garden, but which possessed a certain
+repute, and was affected rather by the exclusives than by the crowd. It was
+a dilapidated building of immemorial age, known as the "haunted Abbey,"
+being, in fact, the refectory of a Cistercian monastery, of which all other
+remains had disappeared long ago. The Abbey had flourished in the lifetime
+of Sir Thomas More, and was mentioned in some of his familiar epistles.
+The ruined building had been used as a granary in the time of Charles the
+First; and it was only within the last decade that it had been redeemed
+from that degraded use, and had been in some measure restored and made
+habitable for the occupation of an old couple, who owned the surrounding
+fields, and who had a small dairy farm from which they sent fresh milk into
+London every morning.
+
+The ghostly repute of the place and the attraction of new milk, cheese
+cakes, and syllabubs, had drawn a certain number of those satiated
+pleasure-seekers who were ever on the alert for a new sensation, among whom
+there was none more active or more noisy than Lady Sarah Tewkesbury. She
+had made the haunted Abbey in a manner her own, had invited her friends
+to midnight parties to watch for the ghost, and to morning parties to eat
+syllabubs and dance on the grass. She had brought a shower of gold into the
+lap of the miserly freeholder, and had husband and wife completely under
+her thumb.
+
+Doler, the husband, had fought in the civil war, and Mrs. Doler had been
+a cook in the Fairfax household; but both had scrupulously sunk all
+Cromwellian associations since his Majesty's return, and in boasting, as he
+often did boast, of having fought desperately and been left for dead at the
+battle of Brentford, Mr. Doler had been careful to suppress the fact that
+he was a hireling soldier of the Parliament. He would weep for the martyred
+King, and tell the story of his own wounds, until it is possible he had
+forgotten which side he had fought for, in remembering his personal prowess
+and sufferings.
+
+So far there had been disappointment as to the ghost. Sounds had been heard
+of a most satisfying grimness, during those midnight and early morning
+watchings; rappings, and scrapings, and scratching on the wall, groanings
+and meanings, sighings and whisperings behind the wainscote; but nothing
+spectral had been seen; and Mrs. Doler had been severely reprimanded by her
+patrons and patronesses for the unwarrantable conduct of a spectre which
+she professed to have seen as often as she had fingers and toes.
+
+It was the phantom of a nun--a woman of exceeding beauty, but white as the
+linen which banded her cheek and brow. There was a dark story of violated
+oaths, priestly sin, and the sleepless conscience of the dead, who could
+not rest even in that dreadful grave where the sinner had been immured
+alive, but must needs haunt the footsteps of the living, a wandering shade.
+Some there were who disbelieved in the traditions of that living grave,
+and who even went so far as to doubt the ghost; but the spectre had an
+established repute of more than a century, was firmly believed in by all
+the children and old women of the neighbourhood, and had been written about
+by students of the unseen.
+
+One of Lady Sarah's parties took place at full moon, not long after the
+visit to Deptford, and Lord Fareham's barge was again employed, this time
+on a nocturnal expedition up the river to the fields near the haunted
+Abbey, to carry Hyacinth, her sister, De Malfort, Lord Rochester, Sir Ralph
+Masaroon, Sir Denzil Warner, and a bevy of wits and beauties--beauties who
+had, some of them, been carrying on the beauty-business and trading in eyes
+and complexion for more than one decade, and who loved that night season
+when paint might be laid on thicker than in the glare of day.
+
+The barge wore a much more festive aspect under her ladyship's management
+than when used by his lordship for a daylight voyage like the trip to
+Deptford. Satin coverlets and tapestry curtains had been brought from
+Lady Fareham's own apartments, to be flung with studied carelessness over
+benches and tabourets. Her ladyship's singing-boys and musicians were
+grouped picturesquely under a silken canopy in the bows, and a row of
+lanterns hung on chains festooned from stem to stern, pretty gew-gaws, that
+had no illuminating power under that all-potent moon, but which glittered
+with coloured light like jewels, and twinkled and trembled in the summer
+air.
+
+A table in the stern was spread with a light collation, which gave an
+excuse for the display of parcel-gilt cups, silver tankards, and Venetian
+wine-flasks. A miniature fountain played perfumed waters in the midst of
+this splendour; and it amused the ladies to pull off their long gloves, dip
+them in the scented water, and flap them in the faces of their beaux.
+
+The distance was only too short, since Lady Fareham's friends declared the
+voyage was by far the pleasanter part of the entertainment. Denzil, among
+others, was of this opinion, for it was his good fortune to have secured
+the seat next Angela, and to be able to interest her by his account of the
+buildings they passed, whose historical associations were much better known
+to him than to most young men of his epoch. He had sat at the feet of a man
+who scoffed at Pope and King, and hated Episcopacy, but who revered all
+that was noble and excellent in England's past.
+
+"Flams, mere flams!" cried Hyacinth, acknowledging the praises bestowed on
+her barge; "but if you like clary wine better than skimmed milk you had
+best drink a brimmer or two before you leave the barge, since 'tis odds
+you'll get nothing but syllabubs and gingerbread from Lady Sarah."
+
+"A substantial supper might frighten away the ghost, who doubtless parted
+with sensual propensities when she died," said De Malfort. "How do we watch
+for her? In a severe silence, as if we were at church?"
+
+"Aw would keep silence for a week o' Sawbaths gin Aw was sure o' seeing a
+bogle," said Lady Euphemia Dubbin, a Scotch marquess's daughter, who had
+married a wealthy cit, and made it the chief endeavour of her life to
+ignore her husband and keep him at a distance.
+
+She hated the man only a little less than his plebeian name, which she had
+not succeeded in persuading him to change, because, forsooth, there had
+been Dubbins in Mark Lane for many generations. All previous Dubbins had
+lived over their warehouses and offices; but her ladyship had brought
+Thomas Dubbin from Mark Lane to my Lord Bedford's Piazza in the Convent
+Garden, where he endured the tedium of existence in a fine new house in
+which he was afraid of his fine new servants, and never had anything to eat
+that he liked, his gastronomic taste being for dishes the very names of
+which were intolerable to persons of quality.
+
+This evening Mr. Dubbin had been incorrigible, and had insisted on
+intruding his clumsy person upon Lady Fareham's party, arguing with a dull
+persistence that his name was on her ladyship's billet of invitation.
+
+"Your name is on a great many invitations only because it is my misfortune
+to be called by it," his wife told him. "To sit on a barge after ten
+o'clock at night in June--the coarsest month in summer--is to court
+lumbago; and all I hope is ye'll not be punished by a worse attack than
+common."
+
+Mr. Dubbin had refused to be discouraged, even by this churlishness from
+his lady, and appeared in attendance upon her, wearing a magnificent
+birthday suit of crimson velvet and green brocade, which he meant to
+present to his favourite actor at the Duke's Theatre, after he had
+exhibited himself in it half a dozen times at Whitehall, for the benefit
+of the great world, and at the Mulberry Garden for the admiration of the
+_bona-robas_. He was a fat, double-chinned little man, the essence of good
+nature, and perfectly unconscious of being an offence to fine people.
+
+Although not a wit himself, Mr. Dubbin was occasionally the cause of wit in
+others, if the practice of bubbling an innocent rustic or citizen can be
+called wit. Rochester and Sir Ralph Masaroon, and one Jerry Spavinger,
+a gentleman jockey, who was a nobody in town, but a shining light at
+Newmarket, took it upon themselves to draw the harmless citizen, and, as a
+preliminary to making him ridiculous, essayed to make him drunk.
+
+They were clustered together in a little group somewhat apart from the
+rest of the company, and were attended upon by a lackey who brought a full
+tankard at the first whistle on the empty one, and whom Mr. Dubbin, after
+a rapid succession of brimmers, insisted on calling "drawer." It was very
+seldom that Rochester condescended to take part in any entertainment on
+which the royal sun shone not, unless it were some post-midnight marauding
+with Buckhurst, Sedley, and a band of wild coursers from the purlieus of
+Drury Lane. He could see no pleasure in any medium between Whitehall and
+Alsatia.
+
+"If I am not fooling on the steps of the throne, let me sprawl in
+the gutter with pamphleteers and orange-girls," said this precocious
+profligate. "I abhor a reputable party among your petty nobility, and if
+I had not been in love with Lady Fareham off and on, ever since I cut my
+second teeth, I would have no hand in such a humdrum business as this."
+
+"There's not a neater filly in the London stable than her ladyship," said
+Jerry, "and I don't blame your taste. I was side-glassing her yesterday in
+Hi' Park, but she didn't seem to relish the manoeuvre, though I was wearing
+a Chedreux peruke that ought to strike 'em dead."
+
+"You don't give your peruke a chance, Jerry, while you frame that ugly phiz
+in it."
+
+"Why not buffle the whole company, my lord?" said Masaroon, while Mr.
+Dubbin talked apart with Lady Euphemia, who had come from the other end of
+the barge to warn her husband against excess in Rhenish or Burgundy. "You
+are good at disguises. Why not act the ghost and frighten everybody out of
+their senses?"
+
+"Il n'y a pas de quoi, Ralph. The creatures have no sense to be robbed
+of. They are second-rate fashion, which is only worked by machinery. They
+imitate us as monkeys do, without knowing what they aim at. Their women
+have virtuous instincts, but turn wanton rather than not be like the maids
+of honour; and because we have our duels their men murder each other for
+a shrugged shoulder or a casual word. No, I'll not chalk my face or smear
+myself with phosphorus to amuse such trumpery. It was worth my pains to
+disguise myself as a German Nostradamus, in order to fool the lovely
+Jennings and her friend Price--who won't easily forget their adventures
+as orange-girls in the heart of the city. But I have done with all such
+follies."
+
+"You are growing old, Wilmot. The years are telling upon your spirits."
+
+"I was nineteen last birthday, and 'tis fit I should feel the burden of
+time, and think of virtue and a rich wife."
+
+"Like Mrs. Mallet, for example."
+
+"Faith, a man might do worse than win so much beauty and wealth. But the
+creature is arrogant, and calls me 'child;' and half the peerage is after
+her. But we'll have our jest with the city scrub, Ralph; not because I bear
+him malice, but because I hate his wife. And we'll have our masquerading
+some time after midnight; if you can borrow a little finery."
+
+Mr. Dubbin was released from his lady's _sotto voce_ lecture at this
+instant, and Lord Rochester continued his communication in a whisper, the
+Honourable Jeremiah assenting with nods and chucklings, while Masaroon
+whistled for a fresh tankard, and plied the honest merchant with a glass
+which he never allowed to be empty.
+
+The taste for masquerading was a fashion of the time, as much as combing a
+periwig, or flirting a fan. While Rochester was planning a trick upon the
+citizen, Lady Fareham was whispering to De Malfort under cover of the
+fiddles, which were playing an Italian pazzemano, an air beloved
+by Henrietta of Orleans, who danced to that music with her royal
+brother-in-law, in one of the sumptuous ballets at St. Cloud.
+
+"Why should they be disappointed of their ghost," said Hyacinth, "when it
+would be so easy for me to dress up as the nun and scare them all? This
+white satin gown of mine, with a few yards of white lawn arranged on my
+head and shoulders----"
+
+"Ah, but you have not the lawn at hand to-night, or your woman to arrange
+your head," interjected De Malfort quickly. "It would be a capital joke;
+but it must be for another occasion and choicer company. The rabble
+you have to-night is not worth it. Besides, there is Rochester, who is
+past-master in disguises, and would smoke you at a glance. Let me arrange
+it some night before the end of the summer--when there is a waning moon. It
+were a pity the thing were done ill."
+
+"Will you really plan a party for me, and let me appear to them on the
+stroke of one, with my face whitened? I have as slender a shape as most
+women."
+
+"There is no such sylph in London."
+
+"And I can make myself look ethereal. Will you draw the nun's habit for me?
+and I will give your picture to Lewin to copy."
+
+"I will do more. I will get you a real habit."
+
+"But there are no nuns so white as the ghost."
+
+"True, but you may rely upon me. The nun's robes shall be there, the
+phosphorous, the blue fire, and a selection of the choicest company to
+tremble at you. Leave the whole business to my care. It will amuse me to
+plan so exquisite a jest for so lovely a jester."
+
+He bent down to kiss her hand, till his forehead almost touched her knee,
+and in the few moments that passed before he raised it, she heard him
+laughing softly to himself, as if with irrepressible delight.
+
+"What a child you are," she said, "to be pleased with such folly!"
+
+"What children we both are, Hyacinth! My sweet soul, let us always be
+childish, and find pleasure in follies. Life is such a poor thing, that if
+we had leisure to appraise its value we should have a contagion of suicide
+that would number more deaths than the plague. Indeed, the wonder is, not
+that any man should commit _felo de se_, but that so many of us should take
+the trouble to live."
+
+Lady Sarah received them at the landing-stage, with an escort of fops and
+fine ladies; and the festival promised to be a success. There was a better
+supper, and more wine than people expected from her ladyship; and after
+supper a good many of those who pretended to have come to see the ghost,
+wandered off in couples to saunter along the willow-shaded bank, while only
+the more earnest spirits were content to wait and watch and listen in the
+great vaulted hall, with no light but the moon which sent a flood of silver
+through the high Gothic window, from which every vestige of glass had long
+vanished.
+
+There were stone benches along the two side walls, and Lady Sarah's
+_prévoyance_ had secured cushions or carpets for her guests to sit upon;
+and here the superstitious sat in patient weariness, Angela among them,
+with Denzil still at her side, scornful of credulous folly, but loving to
+be with her he adored. Lady Fareham had been tempted out-of-doors by De
+Malfort to look at the moonlight on the river, and had not returned.
+Rochester and his crew had also vanished directly after supper; and for
+company Angela had on her left hand Mr. Dubbin, far advanced in liquor, and
+trembling at every breath of summer wind that fluttered the ivy round the
+ruined window, and at every shadow that moved upon the moonlit wall. His
+wife was on the other side of the hall, whispering with Lady Sarah, and
+both so deep in a court scandal--in which the "K" and the "D" recurred
+very often--that they had almost forgotten the purpose of that moonlight
+sitting.
+
+Suddenly in the distance there sounded a long shrill wailing, as of a soul
+in agony, whereupon Mr. Dubbin, after clinging wildly to Angela, and being
+somewhat roughly flung aside by Denzil, collapsed altogether, and rolled
+upon the ground.
+
+"Lady Euphemia," cried Mrs. Townshend, a young lady who had been sitting
+next the obnoxious citizen, "be pleased to look after your drunken husband.
+If you take the low-bred sot into company, you should at least charge
+yourself with the care of his manners."
+
+The damsel had started to her feet, and indignantly snatched her satin
+petticoat from contact with the citizen's porpoise figure.
+
+"I hate mixed company," she told Angela, "and old maids who marry
+tallow-chandlers. If a woman of rank marries a shopkeeper she ought never
+to be allowed west of Temple Bar."
+
+This young lady was no believer in ghosts; but others of the company were
+too scared for speech. All had risen, and were staring in the direction
+whence that dismal shriek had come. A trick, perhaps, since anybody with
+strong lungs--dairymaid or cowboy--could shriek. They all wanted to _see_
+something, a real manifestation of the supernatural.
+
+The unearthly sound was repeated, and the next moment a spectral shape, in
+flowing white garments, rushed through the great window, and crossed the
+hall, followed by three other shapes in dark loose robes, with hooded
+heads. One carried a rope, another a pickaxe, the third a trowel and hod of
+mortar. They crossed the hall with flying footsteps--shadowlike--the pale
+shape in distracted flight, the dark shapes pursuing, and came to a stop
+close against the wall, which had been vacated by the scared assembly,
+scattering as if the king of terrors had appeared among them--yet with
+fascinated eyes fixed on those fearsome figures.
+
+"It is the nun herself!" cried Lady Sarah, apprehension and triumph
+contending in her agitated spirits; for it was surely a feather in her
+ladyship's cap to have produced such a phantasmal train at her party. "The
+nun and her executioners!"
+
+The company fell back from the ghostly troop, recoiling till they were all
+clustered against the opposite wall, leaving a clear space in front of the
+spectres, whence they looked on, shuddering, at the tragedy of the erring
+Sister's fate, repeated in dumb show. The white-robed figure knelt and
+grovelled at the feet of those hooded executioners. One seized and bound
+her, with strange automatic action, unlike the movements of living
+creatures, and another smote the wall with a pickaxe that made no sound,
+while the third waited with his trowel and mortar. It was a gruesome sight
+to those who knew the story--a gruesome, yet an enjoyable spectacle; since,
+as Lady Sarah's friends had not had the pleasure of knowing the sinning
+Sister in the flesh, they watched this ghostly representation of her
+suffering with as keen an interest as they would have felt had they been
+privileged to see Claud Duval swing at Tyburn.
+
+The person most terrified by this ghostly show was the only one who had the
+hardihood to tackle the performers. This was Mr. Dubbin, who sat on the
+ground watching the shadowy figures, sobered by fear, and his shrewd city
+senses gradually returning to a brain bemused by Burgundy.
+
+"Look at her boots!" he cried suddenly, scrambling to his feet, and
+pointing to the nun, who, in sprawling and writhing at the feet of her
+executioner, had revealed more leg and foot than were consistent with her
+spectral whiteness. "She wears yaller boots, as substantial as any shoe
+leather among the company. I'll swear to them yaller boots."
+
+A chorus of laughter followed this attack--laughter which found a smothered
+echo among the ghosts. The spell was broken; disillusion followed the
+exquisite thrill of fear; and all Lady Sarah's male visitors made a rush
+upon the guilty nun. The loose white robe was stripped off, and little
+Jerry Spavinger, gentleman jock, famous on the Heath, and at Doncaster,
+stood revealed, in his shirt and breeches, and those light riding-boots
+which he rarely exchanged for a more courtly chaussure.
+
+The monks, hustled out of their disguise, were Rochester, Masaroon, and
+Lady Sarah's young brother, George Saddington.
+
+"From my Lord Rochester I expect nothing but pot-house buffoonery; but
+I take it vastly ill on your part, George, to join in making me a
+laughing-stock," remonstrated Lady Sarah.
+
+"Indeed, sister, you have to thank his light-headed lordship for giving a
+spirited end to your assembly. Could you conceive how preposterous you
+and your friends looked sitting against the walls, mute as stockfish, and
+suggesting nothing but a Quaker's meeting, you would make us your lowest
+curtsy, and thank us kindly for having helped you out of a dilemma."
+
+Lady Sarah, who was too much of a woman of the world to quarrel seriously
+with a Court favourite, furled the fan with which she had been cooling her
+indignation, and tapped young Wilmot playfully on that oval cheek where the
+beard had scarce begun to grow.
+
+"Thou art the most incorrigible wretch of thy years in London," she said,
+"and it is impossible to help being angry with thee or to help forgiving
+thee."
+
+The saunterers on the willow-shadowed banks came strolling in. Lady
+Fareham's cornets and fiddles sounded a March in Alceste; and the party
+broke up in laughter and good temper, Mr. Dubbin being much complimented
+upon his having detected Spavinger's boots.
+
+"I ought to know 'em," he answered ruefully. "I lost a hundred meggs on him
+Toosday se'nnight, at Windsor races; and I had time to take the pattern of
+them boots while he was crawling in, a bad third."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+FALCON AND DOVE.
+
+
+"Has your ladyship any commands for Paris?" Lord Fareham asked, one August
+afternoon, when the ghost party at Millbank was almost forgotten amid a
+succession of entertainments on land and river; a fortnight at Epsom to
+drink the waters; and a fortnight at Tunbridge--where the Queen and Court
+were spending the close of summer--to neutralise the bad effects of Epsom
+chalybeates with a regimen of Kentish sulphur. If nobody at either resort
+drank deeper of the medicinal springs than Hyacinth--who had ordered her
+physician to order her that treatment--the risk of harm or the possibility
+of benefit was of the smallest. But at Epsom there had been a good deal of
+gay company, and a greater liberty of manners than in London; for, indeed,
+as Rochester assured Lady Fareham, "the freedom of Epsom allowed almost
+nothing to be scandalous." And at Tunbridge there were dances by torchlight
+on the common. "And at the worst," Lady Fareham told her friends, "a
+fortnight or so at the Wells helps to shorten the summer."
+
+It was the middle of August when they went back to Fareham House, hot, dry
+weather, and London seemed to be living on the Thames, so thick was the
+throng of boats going up and down the river, so that with an afternoon tide
+running up it seemed as if barges, luggers, and wherries were moving in one
+solid block into the sunset sky.
+
+De Malfort had been attached to her ladyship's party at Epsom, and at
+Tunbridge Wells. He had his own lodgings, but seldom occupied them,
+except in that period between four or five in the morning and two in the
+afternoon, which Rochester and he called night. His days were passed
+chiefly in attendance upon Lady Fareham--singing and playing, fetching and
+carrying combing her favourite spaniel with the same ivory pocket-comb that
+arranged his own waterfall curls; or reading a French romance to her, or
+teaching her the newest game of cards, or the last dancing-step imported
+from Fontainebleau or St. Cloud, or some new grace or fashion in dancing,
+the holding of the hand lower or higher; the latest manner of passaging
+in a bransle or a coranto, as performed by the French King and Madame
+Henriette, the two finest dancers in France; Condé, once so famous for his
+dancing, now appearing in those gay scenes but seldom.
+
+"Have you any commands for Paris, Hyacinth?" repeated Lord Fareham, his
+wife being for the moment too surprised to answer him. "Or have you,
+sister? I am starting for France to-morrow. I shall ride to Dover--lying a
+night at Sittingbourne, perhaps--and cross by the Packet that goes twice a
+week to Calais."
+
+"Paris! And pray, my lord, what business takes you to Paris?"
+
+"There is a great collection of books to be sold there next week. The
+library of your old admirer, Nicolas Fouquet, whom you knew in his
+splendour, but who has been a prisoner at Pignerol for a year and a half."
+
+"Poor wretch!" cried De Malfort, "I was at the Chamber with Madame de
+Sévigné very often during his long tedious trial. Mon dieu! what courage,
+what talent he showed in defending himself! Every safeguard of the law was
+violated in order to silence him and prove him guilty; his papers seized
+in his absence, no friend or servant allowed to protect his interest,
+no inventory taken--documents suppressed that might have served for his
+defence, forgeries inserted by his foes. He had an implacable enemy, and
+he the highest in the land. He was the scapegoat of the past, and had
+to answer for a system of plunder that made Mazarin the richest man in
+France."
+
+"I don't wonder that Louis was angry with a servant who had the insolence
+to entertain his Majesty with a splendour that surpassed his own," said
+Lady Fareham. "I should like to have been at those fêtes at Vaux. But
+although Fareham talks so lightly of travelling to Paris to choose a few
+dusty books, he has always discouraged me from going there to see old
+friends, and my own house--which I grieve to think of--abandoned to the
+carelessness of servants."
+
+"Dearest, the cleverest woman in the world cannot be in two places at once;
+and it seems to me you have ever had your days here so full of agreeable
+engagements that you can have scarcely desired to leave London," answered
+Fareham, with his grave smile.
+
+"To leave London--no! But there have been long moping months in Oxfordshire
+when it would have been a relief to change the scene."
+
+"Then, indeed, had you been very earnest in wanting such a change, I am
+sure you would have taken it. I have never forbidden your going to Paris,
+nor refused to accompany you there. You may go with me to-morrow, if you
+can be ready."
+
+"Which you know I cannot, or you would scarce make so liberal an offer."
+
+"Très chère, you are pleased to be petulant. But I repeat my question. Is
+there anything you want at Paris?"
+
+"Anything? A million things! Everything! But they are things which you
+would not be able to choose--except, perhaps, some of the new lace. I
+might trust you to buy that, though I'll wager you will bring me a hideous
+pattern--and some white Cypress powder--and a piece of the ash-coloured
+velvet Madame wore last winter. I have friends who can choose for you, if
+I write to them; and you will have but to bring the goods, and see they
+suffer no harm on the voyage. And you can go to the Rue de Tourain and see
+whether my servants are keeping the house in tolerable order."
+
+"With your ladyship's permission I will lodge there while I am in Paris,
+which will be but long enough to attend the sale of books, and see some old
+friends. If I am detained it will be by finding my friends out of town, and
+having to make a journey to see them. I shall not go beyond Fontainebleau
+at furthest."
+
+"Dear Fontainebleau! It is of all French palaces my favourite. I always
+envy Diana of Poitiers for having her cypher emblazoned all over that
+lovely gallery--Henri and Diane! Diane and Henri! Ah, me!"
+
+"You envy her a kind of notoriety which I do not covet for my wife!"
+
+"You always take one au pied de la lettre; but seriously, Madame de Brézé
+was an honest woman compared with the lady who lodges by the Holbein Gate."
+
+"I admit that sin wears a bolder front than it did in the last century.
+Angela, can I find nothing for you in Paris?"
+
+"No; I thank your lordship. You and sister are both so generous to me that
+I have lost the capacity to wish for anything."
+
+"And as Lewin crosses the Channel three or four times a year, I doubt we
+positively have the Paris fashions as soon as the Parisians themselves,"
+added Hyacinth.
+
+"That is an agreeable hallucination with which Englishwomen have ever
+consoled themselves for not being French," said De Malfort, who sat lolling
+against the marble balustrade, nursing the guitar on which he had been
+playing when Fareham interrupted their noontide idleness; "but your
+ladyship may be sure that London milliners are ever a twelvemonth in the
+rear of Paris fashions. It is not that they do not see the new mode. They
+see it, and think it hideous; and it takes a year to teach them that it is
+the one perfect style possible."
+
+"I was not thinking of kerchiefs or petticoats," said Fareham. "You are a
+book-lover, sister, like myself. Can I bring you no books you wish for?"
+
+"If there were a new comedy by Molière; but I fear it is wrong to read him,
+since in his late play, performed before the King at Versailles, he is so
+cruel an enemy to our Church."
+
+"A foe only to hypocrites and pretenders, Angela. I will bring you his
+_Tartuffe_, if it is printed; or still better, _Le Misanthrope_, which I am
+told is the finest comedy that was ever written; and the latest romance, in
+twenty volumes or so, by one of those lady authors Hyacinth so admires, but
+which I own to finding as tedious as the divine Orinda's verses."
+
+"You can jeer at that poor lady's poetry, yet take pleasure in such
+balderdash as Hudibras!"
+
+"I love wit, dearest; though I am not witty. But as for your Princesse de
+Cleves, I find her ineffably dull."
+
+"That is because you do not take the trouble to discover for whom the
+characters are meant. You lack the key to the imbroglio," said his wife,
+with a superior air.
+
+"I do not care for a book that is a series of enigmas. Don Quixote needs no
+such guess-work. Shakespeare's characters are painted not from the petty
+models of yesterday and to-day, but from mankind in every age and every
+climate. Molière's and Calderon's personages stand on as solid a basis. In
+less than half a century your 'Grand Cyrus' will be insufferable jargon."
+
+"Not more so than your _Hamlet_ or _Othello_. Shakespeare was but kept in
+fashion during the late King's reign because his Majesty loved him--and
+will soon be forgotten, now that we have so many gayer and brisker
+dramatists."
+
+"Whoever quotes Shakespeare, nowadays?" asked Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, who
+had been showing a rustic niece the beauties of the river, as seen from
+Fareham House. "Even Mr. Taylor, whose sermons bristle with elegant
+allusions, never points one of his passionate climaxes with a Shakespearian
+line. And yet there are some very fine lines in _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_,
+which would scarce sound amiss from the pulpit," added her ladyship,
+condescendingly. "I have read all the plays, some of them twice over. And I
+doubt that though Shakespeare cannot hold the stage in our more enlightened
+age, and will be less and less acted as the town grows more refined, his
+works will always be tasted by scholars; among whom, in my modest way, I
+dare reckon myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lord Fareham left London on horseback, with but one servant, in the early
+August dawn, before the rest of the household were stirring. Hyacinth lay
+nearly as late of a morning as Henrietta Maria, whom Charles used sometimes
+to reproach for not being up in time for the noonday office at her own
+chapel. Lady Fareham had not Portuguese Catherine's fervour, who was often
+at Mass at seven o'clock; but she did usually contrive to be present at
+High Mass at the Queen's chapel; and this was the beginning of her day. By
+that time Angela and her niece and nephew had spent hours on the river, or
+in the meadows at Chiswick, or on Putney Heath, ever glad to escape from
+the great overgrown city, which was now licking up every stretch of green
+sward, and every flowery hedgerow west of St. James's Street. Soon there
+would be no country between the Haymarket and "The Pillars of Hercules."
+
+Denzil sometimes enjoyed the privilege of accompanying Angela, children,
+and _gouvernante_, on these rural expeditions by the great waterway; and on
+such occasions he and Angela would each take an oar and row the boat for
+some part of the voyage, while the watermen rested, and in this manner
+Angela, instructed by Sir Denzil, considerably advanced her power as
+an oarswoman. It was an exercise she loved, as indeed she loved all
+out-of-door exercises, from riding with hawks and hounds to battledore
+and shuttlecock. But most of all, perhaps, she loved the river, and the
+rhythmical dip of oars in the fresh morning air, when every curve of the
+fertile shores seemed to reveal new beauty.
+
+It had been a hot, dry summer, and the grass in the parks was burnt to a
+dull brown--had, indeed, almost ceased to be grass--while the atmosphere in
+town had a fiery taste, and was heavy with the dust which whitened all the
+roadways, and which the faintest breath of wind dispersed. Here on the
+flowing tide there was coolness, and the long rank grass upon those low
+sedgy shores was still green.
+
+Lady Fareham supported the August heats sitting on her terrace, with a
+cluster of friends about her, and her musicians and singing-boys grouped
+in the distance, ready to perform at her bidding; but Henriette and her
+brother soon tired of that luxurious repose, and would urge their aunt
+to assist in a river expedition. The _gouvernante_ was fat and lazy and
+good-tempered, had attended upon Henriette from babyhood, and always did as
+she was told.
+
+"Her ladyship says I must have some clever person instead of Priscilla
+before I am a year older," Henriette told her aunt; "but I have promised
+poor old Prissy to hate the new person consumedly."
+
+Angela and Denzil laughed as they rowed past the ruined abbey, seen dimly
+across the low water-meadow, where cows of the same colour were all lying
+in the same attitude, chewing the cud.
+
+"I think Mr. Spavinger's trick must have cured your sister's fine friends
+of all belief in ghosts," he said.
+
+"I doubt they would be as ready to believe--or to pretend to
+believe--to-morrow," answered Angela. "They think of nothing from morning
+till night but how to amuse themselves; and when every pleasure has been
+exhausted, I suppose fear comes in as a form of entertainment, and they
+want the shock of seeing a ghost."
+
+"There have been no more midnight parties since Lady Sarah's assembly, I
+think?"
+
+"Not among people of quality, perhaps; but there have been citizens'
+parties. I heard Monsieur de Malfort telling my sister about a supper given
+by a wealthy wine-cooper's lady from Aldersgate. The city people copy
+everything that their superiors wear or do."
+
+"Even to their morals," said Denzil. "'Twere happy if the so-called
+superiors would remember that, and upon what a fertile ground they sow
+the seed of new vices. It is like the importation of a new weed or a new
+insect, which, beginning with an accident, may end in ruined crops and a
+country's famine."
+
+Without deliberate disobedience to her husband, Lady Fareham made the best
+use of her time during his absence in Paris. The public theatres had not
+yet re-opened after the horror of the plague. Whitehall was a desert, the
+King and his chief following being at Tunbridge. It was the dullest season
+of the year, and the recrudescence of the contagion in the low-lying towns
+along the Thames--Deptford, Greenwich, and the neighbourhood--together with
+some isolated cases in London, made people more serious than usual, despite
+of the so-called victory over the Dutch, which, although a mixed benefit,
+was celebrated piously by a day of General Thanksgiving.
+
+Hyacinth, disgusted at the dulness of the town, was for ordering her
+coaches and retiring to Chilton.
+
+"It is mortal dull at the Abbey," she said, "but at least we have the
+hawks, and breezy hills to ride over, instead of this sickly city
+atmosphere, which to my nostrils smells of the pestilence."
+
+Henri de Malfort argued against such a retreat.
+
+"It were a deliberate suicide," he said. "London, when everybody has
+left--all the bodies we count worthy to live, _par exemple_--is a more
+delightful place than you can imagine. There are a host of vulgar
+amusements which you would not dare to visit when your friends are in town;
+and which are ten times as amusing as the pleasures you know by heart. Have
+you ever been to the Bear Garden? I'll warrant you no, though 'tis but
+across the river at Bankside. We'll go there this afternoon, if you like,
+and see how the common people taste life. Then there are the gardens at
+Islington. There are mountebanks, and palmists, and fortune-tellers,
+who will frighten you out of your wits for a shilling. There's a man at
+Clerkenwell, a jeweller's journeyman from Venice, who pretends to practise
+the transmutation of metals, and to make gold. He squeezed hundreds out of
+that old miser Denham, who was afraid to have the law of him for imposture,
+lest all London should laugh at his own credulity and applaud the
+cheat. And you have not seen the Italian puppet-play, which is vastly
+entertaining. I could find you novelty and amusement for a month."
+
+"Find anything new, even if it fail to amuse me. I am sick of everything I
+know."
+
+"And then there is our midnight party at Millbank, the ghost-party, at
+which you are to frighten your dearest friends out of their poor little
+wits."
+
+"Most of my dearest friends are in the country."
+
+"Nay, there is Lady Lucretia Topham, whom I know you hate; and Lady Sarah
+and the Dubbins are still in Covent Garden."
+
+"I will have no Dubbin--a toping wretch--and she is a too incongruous
+mixture, with her Edinburgh lingo and her Whitehall arrogance. Besides, the
+whole notion of a mock ghost was vulgarised by Wilmot's foolery, who ought
+to have been born a saltimbanque, and spent his life in a fair. No, I have
+abandoned the scheme."
+
+"What! after I have been taxing my invention to produce the most terrible
+illusion that was ever witnessed? Will you let a clown like Spavinger--a
+well-born stable-boy--baulk us of our triumph? I am sending to Paris for
+a powder to burn in a corner of the room, which will throw the ghastliest
+pallor upon your countenance. When I devise a ghost, it shall be no
+impromptu spectre in yellow riding-boots, but a vision so awful, so true
+an image of a being returned from the dead, that the stoutest nerves will
+thrill and tremble at the apparition. The nun's habit is coming from Paris.
+I have asked my cousin, Madame de Fiesque, to obtain it for me at the
+Carmelites."
+
+"You are taking a vast deal of trouble. But what kind of assembly can we
+muster at this dead season?" "Leave all in my hands. I will find you some
+of the choicest spirits. It is to be _my_ party. I will not even tell you
+what night I fix upon, till all is ready. So make no engagements for your
+evenings, and tell nobody anything."
+
+"Who invented that powder?"
+
+"A French chemist. He has it of all colours, and can flood a scene in
+golden light, or the rose of dawn, or the crimson of sunset, or a pale
+silvery blueness that you would swear was moonshine. It has been used in
+all the Court ballets. I saw Madame once look as ghastly as death itself,
+and all the Court was seized with terror. Some blundering fool had
+burnt the wrong powder, which cast a greenish tint over the faces, and
+Henriette's long thin features had a look of death. It seemed the forecast
+of an early grave; and some of us shuddered, as at a prophecy of evil."
+
+"You might expect the worst in her case, knowing the wretched life she
+leads with Monsieur."
+
+"Yes, when she is with him; but that is not always. There are
+compensations."
+
+"If you mean scandal, I will not hear a word. She is adorable. The most
+sympathetic person I know--good even to her enemies--who are legion."
+
+"You had better not say that, for I doubt she has only one kind of enemy."
+
+"As how?"
+
+"The admirers she has encouraged and disappointed. Yes, she is adorable,
+wofully thin, and, I fear, consumptive, but royal: and adorable, 'douceur
+et lumière,' as Bossuet calls her. But to return to my ghost-party."
+
+"If you were wise, you would abandon the notion. I doubt that in spite of
+your powders your friends will never believe in a ghost."
+
+"Oh yes, they will. It shall be my business to get them in the proper
+temper."
+
+That idea of figuring in a picturesque habit, and in a halo of churchyard
+light, was irresistible. Hyacinth promised to conform to Malfort's plans,
+and to be ready to assume her phantom _rôle_ whenever she was called upon.
+
+Angela knew something of the scheme, and that there was to be another
+assembly at Millbank; but her sister had seemed disinclined to talk of
+the plan in her presence--a curious reticence in one whose sentiments and
+caprices were usually given to the world at large with perfect freedom. For
+once in her life Hyacinth had a secret air, and checked herself suddenly in
+the midst of her light babble at a look from De Malfort, who had urged her
+to keep her sister out of their midnight party.
+
+"I pledge my honour that there shall be nothing to offend," he told her,
+"but I hope to have the wittiest coxcombs in London, and we want no prudes
+to strangle every jest with a long-drawn lip and an alarmed eye. Your
+sister has a pale, fragile prettiness which pleases an eye satiated with
+the exuberant charms of your Rubens and Titian women; but she is not
+handsome enough to give herself airs; and she is a little inclined that
+way. By the faith of a gentleman, I have suffered scowls from her that I
+would scarce have endured from Barbara!"
+
+"Barbara! You are vastly free with her ladyship's name."
+
+"Not freer than she has ever been with her friendship."
+
+"Henri, if I thought----"
+
+"What, dearest?"
+
+"That you had ever cared for that--wanton----"
+
+"Could you think it, when you know my life in England has been one long
+tragedy of loving in vain--of sighing only to be denied--of secret
+tears--and public submission."
+
+"Do not talk so," she exclaimed, starting up from her low tabouret, and
+moving hastily to the open window, to fresh air and sunshine, rippling
+river and blue sky, escaping from an atmosphere that had become feverish.
+
+"De Malfort, you know I must not listen to foolish raptures."
+
+"I know you have been refusing to hear for the last two years."
+
+They were on the terrace now, she leaning on the broad marble balustrade,
+he standing beside her, and all the traffic of London moving with the tide
+below them.
+
+"To return to our party," she said, in a lighter tone, for that spurt of
+jealousy had betrayed her into seriousness. "It will be very awkward not to
+invite my sister to go with me."
+
+"If you did she would refuse, belike, for she is under Fareham's thumb; and
+he disapproves of everything human."
+
+"Under Fareham's thumb! What nonsense! Indeed I must invite her. She would
+think it so strange to be omitted."
+
+"Not if you manage things cleverly. The party is to be a surprise. You can
+tell her next morning you knew nothing about it beforehand."
+
+"But she will hear me order the barge--or will see me start."
+
+"There will be no barge. I shall carry you to Millbank in my coach, after
+your evening's entertainment, wherever that may be."
+
+"I had better take my own carriage at least, or my chair."
+
+"You can have a chair, if you are too prudish to use my coach, but it shall
+be got for you at the moment. We won't have your own chairman and links to
+chatter and betray you before you have played the ghost. Remember you
+come to my party not as a guest, but as a performer. If they ask why Lady
+Fareham is absent I shall say you refused to take part in our foolery."
+
+"Oh, you must invent some better excuse. They will never believe anything
+rational of me. Say I was disappointed of a hat or a mantua. Well, it
+shall be as you wish. Angela is apt to be tiresome. I hate a disapproving
+carriage, especially in a younger sister."
+
+Angela was puzzled by Hyacinth's demeanour. A want of frankness in one so
+frank by nature aroused her fears. She was puzzled and anxious, and longed
+for Fareham's return, lest his giddy-pated wife should be guilty of some
+innocent indiscretion that might vex him.
+
+"Oh! if she but valued him at his just worth she would value his opinion
+second only to the approval of conscience," she thought, sadly, ever
+regretful of her sister's too obvious indifference towards so kind a
+husband.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+WHICH WAS THE FIERCER FIRE?
+
+
+It was Saturday, the first of September, and the hot dry weather having
+continued with but trifling changes throughout the month, the atmosphere
+was at its sultriest, and the burnt grass in the parks looked as if even
+the dews of morning and evening had ceased to moisten it, while the arid
+and dusty foliage gave no feeling of coolness, and the very shadows cast
+upon that parched ground seemed hot. Morning was sultry as noon; evening
+brought but little refreshment; while the night was hotter than the day.
+People complained that the season was even more sickly than in the plague
+year, and prophesied a new and worse outbreak of the pestilence. Was not
+this the fatal year about which there had been darkest prophecies? 1666!
+Something awful, something tragical was to make this triplicate of sixes
+for ever memorable. Sixty-five had been terrible, sixty-six was to bring
+a greater horror; doubtless a recrudescence of that dire malady which had
+desolated London.
+
+"And this time," says one modish raven, "'twill be the quality that will
+suffer. The lower 'classis' has paid its penalty, and only the strong and
+hardy are left. We. have plenty of weaklings and corrupt constitutions that
+will take fire at a spark. I should not wonder were the contagion to rage
+worst at Whitehall. The buildings lie low, and there is ever a nucleus
+of fever somewhere in that conglomeration of slaughter-houses, bakeries,
+kitchens, stables, cider-houses, coal-yards, and over-crowded servants'
+lodgings."
+
+"One gets but casual whiffs from their private butcheries and bakeries,"
+says another. "What I complain of is the atmosphere of his Majesty's
+apartments, where one can scarce breathe for the stench of those cursed
+spaniels he so delights in."
+
+Every one agreed that the long dry summer menaced some catastrophic change
+which should surprise this easy-going age as the plague had done last year.
+But oh, how lightly that widespread calamity had touched those light minds!
+and, if Providence had designed to warn or to punish, how vain had been
+the warning, and how soon forgotten the penalty that had left the worst
+offenders unstricken!
+
+There was to be a play at Whitehall that evening, his Majesty and the Court
+having returned from Tunbridge Wells, the business of the navy calling
+Charles to council with his faithful General--_the_ General _par
+excellence_, George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, and his Lord High Admiral and
+brother--_par excellence_ the Duke. Even in briefest residence, and on
+sternest business intent, with the welfare and honour of the nation
+contingent on their consultations, to build or not to build warships of the
+first magnitude, the ball of pleasure must be kept rolling. So Killigrew
+was to produce a new version of an old comedy, written in the forties,
+but now polished up to the modern style of wit. This new-old play, _The
+Parson's Widow_, was said to be all froth and sparkle and current interest,
+fresh as the last _London Gazette_, and spiced with allusions to the
+late sickness, an admirable subject, and allowing a wide field for the
+ridiculous.
+
+Hyacinth was to be present at this Court function; but not a word was to be
+said to Angela about the entertainment.
+
+"She would only preach me a sermon upon Fareham's tastes and wishes, and
+urge me to stay away because he abhors a fashionable comedy," she told De
+Malfort, "I shall say I am going to Lady Sarah's to play basset. Ange hates
+cards, and will not desire to go with me. She is always happy with the
+children, who adore her."
+
+"Faute de mieux."
+
+"You are so ready to jeer! Yes, I know I am a neglectful mother. But what
+would you have?"
+
+"I would have you as you are," he answered, "and only as you are; or for
+choice a trifle worse than you are; and so much nearer my own level."
+
+"Oh, I know you! It is the wicked women you admire--like Madame Palmer."
+
+"Always harping upon Barbara. 'My mother had a maid called Barbara.' His
+Majesty has--a lady of the same melodious name. Well, I have a world of
+engagements between now and nine o'clock, when the play begins. I shall be
+at the door to lift you out of your chair. Cover yourself with your richest
+jewels--or at least those you love best--so that you may blaze like the sun
+when you cast off the nun's habit. All the town will be there to admire
+you."
+
+"All the town! Why, there is no one in London!"
+
+"Indeed, you mistake. Travelling is so easy nowadays. People tear to and
+fro between Tunbridge and St James's as often as they once circulated
+betwixt London and Chelsea. Were it not for the highwaymen we should be
+always on the road."
+
+Angela and her niece were on the terrace in the evening coolness. The
+atmosphere was less oppressive here by the flowing tide than anywhere
+else in London; but even here there was a heaviness in the night air, and
+Henriette sprawled her long thin legs wearily on the cushioned bench where
+she lay, and vowed that it would be sheer folly for Priscilla to insist
+upon her going to bed at her usual hour of nine, when everybody knew she
+could not sleep.
+
+"I scarce closed my eyes last night," she protested, "and I had half a
+mind to put on a petticoat and come down to the terrace. I could have come
+through the yellow drawing-room, where the men usually forget to close the
+shutters. And I should have brought my theorbo and serenaded you. Should
+you have taken me for a fairy, chère, if you had heard me singing?"
+
+"I should have taken you for a very silly little person who wanted to
+frighten her friends by catching an inflammation of the lungs."
+
+"Well, you see, I thought better of it, though it would have been
+impossible to catch cold on such a stifling night I heard every clock
+strike in Westminster and London. It was light at five, yet the night
+seemed endless. I would have welcomed even a mouse behind the wainscot.
+Priscilla is an odious tyrant," making a face at the easy-tempered
+gouvernante sitting by; "she won't let me have my dogs in my room at
+night."
+
+"Your ladyship knows that dogs in a bed-chamber are unwholesome," said
+Priscilla.
+
+"No, you foolish old thing; my ladyship knows the contrary; for his
+Majesty's bed-chamber swarms with them, and he has them on his bed
+even--whole families--mothers and their puppies. Why can't I have a few
+dear little mischievous innocents to amuse me in the long dreary nights?"
+
+By dint of clamour and expostulation the honourable Henriette contrived
+to stay up till ten o'clock was belled with solemn tone from St. Paul's
+Cathedral, which magnificent church was speedily to be put in hand for
+restoration, at a great expenditure. The wooden scaffolding which had been
+necessary for a careful examination of the building was still up. Until
+the striking of the great city clock, Papillon had resolutely disputed the
+lateness of the hour, putting forward her own timekeeper as infallible--a
+little fat round purple enamel watch with diamond figures, and gold hands
+much bent from being pushed backwards and forwards, to bring recorded time
+into unison with the young lady's desires--a watch to which no sensible
+person could give the slightest credit. The clocks of London having
+demonstrated the futility of any reference to that ill-used Geneva toy, she
+consented to retire, but was reluctant to the last.
+
+"I am going to bed," she told her aunt, "because this absurd old Prissy
+insists upon it, but I don't expect a quarter of an hour's sleep between
+now and morning; and most of the time I shall be looking out of the window,
+watching for the turn of the tide, to see the barges and boats swinging
+round."
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind, Mrs. Henriette; for I shall sit in your
+room till you are sound asleep," said Priscilla.
+
+"Then you will have to sit there all night; and I shall have somebody to
+talk to."
+
+"I shall not allow you to talk."
+
+"Will you gag me, or put a pillow over my face, like the Blackamoor in the
+play?"
+
+The minx and her governess retired, still disputing, after Angela had been
+desperately hugged by Henriette, who brimmed over with warmest affection in
+the midst of her insolence. They were gone, their voices sounding in the
+stillness on the terrace, and then on the staircase, and through the great
+empty rooms, where the windows were open to the sultry night, while the
+host of idle servants caroused in the basement, in a spacious room with a
+vaulted roof, like a college hall, where they were free to be as noisy or
+as drunken as they pleased. My lady was out, had taken only her chair, and
+running footmen, and had sent chairmen and footmen back from Whitehall,
+with an intimation that they would be wanted no more that night.
+
+Angela lingered on the terrace in the sultry summer gloom, watching
+solitary boats moving to and fro, shadowy as Charon's. She dreaded the
+stillness of silent rooms, and to be alone with her own thoughts, which
+were not of the happiest. Her sister's relations with De Malfort troubled
+her, innocent as they doubtless were: innocent as that close friendship of
+Henrietta of England with her cousin of France, when they two spent the
+fair midsummer nights roaming in palace gardens, close as lovers, but
+only fast friends. Malicious tongues had babbled even of that innocent
+friendship; and there were those who said that if Monsieur behaved liked
+a brute to his lovely young wife, it was because he had good reason for
+jealousy of Louis in the past, as well as of De Guiche in the present.
+These innocent friendships are ever the cause of uneasiness to the
+lookers-on. It is like seeing children at play on the edge of a cliff. They
+are too near danger and destruction.
+
+Hyacinth, being about as able to carry a secret as to carry an elephant,
+had betrayed by a hundred indications that a plot of some kind was being
+hatched between her and De Malfort. And to-night, before going out, she
+had made too much fuss about so simple a matter as a basset-party at Lady
+Sarah's, who had her basset-table every night, and was popularly supposed
+to keep house upon her winnings, and to have no higher code of honour than
+De Gramont had when he invited a brother officer to supper on purpose to
+rook him.
+
+Mr. Killigrew's comedy had been discussed in Angela's hearing. People who
+had been deprived of the theatre for over a year were greedy and eager
+spectators of all the plays produced at Court; but this production was an
+exceptional event. Killigrew's wit and impudence and impecuniosity were the
+talk of the town, and anything written by that audacious jester was sure to
+be worth hearing.
+
+Had her sister gone to Whitehall to see the new comedy, in direct
+disobedience to her husband, instead of to so accustomed an entertainment
+as Lady Sarah's basset-table? And was that the only mystery between
+Hyacinth and De Malfort? Or was there something else--some ghost-party,
+such as they had planned and talked about openly till a fortnight ago,
+and had suddenly dropped altogether, as if the notion were abandoned and
+forgotten? It was so unlike Hyacinth to be secret about anything; and
+her sister feared, therefore, that there was some plot of De Malfort's
+contriving--De Malfort, whom she regarded with distrust and even
+repugnance; for she could recall no sentiment of his that did not make
+for evil. Beneath that gossamer veil of airy language which he flung over
+vicious theories, the conscienceless, unrelenting character of the man had
+been discovered by those clear eyes of the meditative onlooker. Alas!
+what a man to be her sister's closest friend, claiming privileges by long
+association, which Hyacinth would have been the last to grant her dissolute
+admirers of yesterday, but which were only the more perilous for those
+memories of childhood that justified a so dangerous friendship.
+
+She was startled from these painful reflections by the clatter of horses'
+hoofs on the paved courtyard east of the house, and the jingle of
+sword-belt and bit, sounds instantly followed by the ringing of the bell at
+the principal door.
+
+Was it her sister coming home so early? No, Lady Fareham had gone out in
+her chair. Was it his lordship returning unannounced? He had stated no time
+for his return, telling his wife only that, on his business in Paris being
+finished, he would come back without delay. Indeed, Hyacinth had debated
+the chances of his arrival this very evening with half a dozen of her
+particular friends, who knew that she was going to see Mr. Killigrew's
+play.
+
+"Fate cannot be so perverse as to bring him back on the only night when his
+return would be troublesome," she said.
+
+"Fate is always perverse, and a husband is very lucky if there is but one
+day out of seven on which his return would be troublesome," answered one of
+her gossips.
+
+Fate had been perverse, for Angela heard her brother-in-law's deep strong
+voice talking in the hall, and presently he came down the marble steps to
+the terrace, and came towards her, white with Kentish dust, and carrying an
+open letter in his hand. She had risen at the sound of the bell, and was
+hurrying to the house as he met her. He came close up to her, scarcely
+according her the civility of greeting. Never had she seen his countenance
+more gloomy.
+
+"You can tell me truer than those drunken devils below stairs," he said.
+"Where is your sister?"
+
+"At Lady Sarah Tewkesbury's."
+
+"So her major-domo swears; but her chairmen, whom I found asleep in the
+hall, say they set her down at the palace."
+
+"At Whitehall?"
+
+"Yes, at Whitehall. There is a modish performance there to-night, I hear;
+but I doubt it is over, for the Strand was crowded with hackney coaches
+moving eastward. I passed a pair of handsome eyes in a gilded chair, that
+flashed fury at me as I rode by, which I'll swear were Mrs. Palmer's; and,
+waiting for me in the hall, I found this letter, that had just been handed
+in by a link, who doubtless belonged to the same lady. Read, Angela; the
+contents are scarce long enough to weary you." She took the letter from him
+with a hand that trembled so that she could hardly hold the sheet of paper.
+
+"Watch! There is an intrigue afoot this night; and you must be a greater
+dullard than I think you if you cannot unmask a deceitful----"
+
+The final word was one which modern manners forbid in speech or printed
+page. Angela's pallid cheek flushed crimson at the sight of the vile
+epithet. Oh, insane lightness of conduct which made such an insult
+possible! Standing there, confronting the angry husband, with that
+detestable paper in her hand, she felt a pang of compunction at the thought
+that she might have been more strenuous in her arguments with her sister,
+more earnest and constant in reproof. When the peace and good repute of two
+lives were at stake, was it for her to consider any question of older or
+younger, or to be restrained by the fear of offending a sister who had been
+so generous and indulgent to her?
+
+Fareham saw her distress, and looked at her with angry suspicion.
+
+"Come," he said, "I scarce expected a lying answer from you; and yet you
+join with servants to deceive me. You know your sister is not at Lady
+Sarah's."
+
+"I know nothing, except that, wherever she is, I will vouch that she
+is innocently employed, and has done nothing to deserve that infamous
+aspersion," giving him back the letter.
+
+"Innocently employed! You carry matters with a high hand. Innocently
+employed, in a company of she-profligates, listening to Killigrew's ribald
+jokes--Killigrew, the profanest of them all, who can turn the greatest
+calamity this city ever suffered to horseplay and jeering. Innocently
+employed, in direct disobedience to her husband! So innocently employed
+that she makes her servants--and her sister--tell lies to cover her
+innocence!"
+
+"Hector as much as you please, I have told your lordship no lies; and, with
+your permission, I will leave you to recover your temper before my sister's
+return, which I doubt will happen within the next hour."
+
+She moved quickly past him towards the house.
+
+"Angela, forgive me----" he began, trying to detain her; but she hurried
+on through the open French window, and ran upstairs to her room, where she
+locked herself in.
+
+For some minutes she walked up and down, profoundly agitated, thinking out
+the position of affairs. To Fareham she had carried matters with a high
+hand, but she was full of fear. The play was over, and her sister, who
+doubtless had been among the audience, had not come home. Was she staying
+at the palace, gossiping with the maids-of-honour, shining among that
+brilliant, unscrupulous crowd, where intrigue was in the very air, where no
+woman was credited with virtue, and every man was remorseless?
+
+The anonymous letter scarcely influenced Angela's thoughts in these
+agitated moments--that was but a foul assault on character by a foul-minded
+woman. But the furtive confabulations of the past week must have had some
+motive; and her sister's fluttered manner before leaving the house had
+marked this night as the crisis of the plot.
+
+Angela could imagine nothing but that ghostly masquerading which had, in
+the first place, been discussed freely in her presence; and she could but
+wonder that De Malfort and her sister should have made a mystery about a
+plan which she had known in its inception. The more deeply she considered
+all the circumstances, the more she inclined to suspect some evil intention
+on De Malfort's part, of which Hyacinth, so frank, so shallow, might be too
+easy a dupe.
+
+"I do little good doubting and suspecting and wondering here," she said to
+herself; and after hastily lighting the candles on her toilet-table, she
+began to unlace the bodice of her light-coloured silk mantua, and in a few
+minutes had changed her elegant evening attire for a dark cloth gown, short
+in the skirt, and loose in the sleeves, which had been made for her to wear
+upon the river. In this costume she could handle a pair of sculls as freely
+as a waterman.
+
+When she had put on a little black silk hood, she extinguished her candles,
+pulled aside the curtain which obscured the open window, and looked out on
+the terrace. There was just light enough to show her that the coast was
+clear. The iron gate at the top of the water-stairs was seldom locked, nor
+were the boat-houses often shut, as boats were being taken in and out at
+all hours, and, for the rest, neglect and carelessness might always be
+reckoned upon in the Fareham household.
+
+She ran lightly down a side staircase, and so by an obscure door to the
+river-front. No, the gate was not locked, and there was not a creature
+within sight to observe or impede her movements. She went down the steps to
+the paved quay below the garden terrace. The house where the wherries were
+kept was wide open, and, better still, there was a skiff moored by the side
+of the steps, as if waiting for her; and she had but to take a pair of
+sculls from the rack and step into the boat, unmoor and away westward, with
+swiftly dipping oars, in the soft summer silence, broken now and then by
+sounds of singing--a tipsy, unmelodious strain, perhaps, were it heard too
+near, but musical in the distance--as the rise and fall of voices crept
+along a reach of running water.
+
+The night was hot and oppressive, even on the river. But it was better here
+than anywhere else; and Angela breathed more freely as she bent over her
+sculls, rowing with all her might, intent upon reaching that landing-stage
+she knew of in the very shortest possible time. The boat was heavy, but she
+had the incoming tide to help her.
+
+Was Fareham hunting for his wife, she wondered? Would he go to Lady
+Sarah's lodgings, in the first place; and, not finding Hyacinth there, to
+Whitehall? And then, would he remember the assembly at Millbank, in which
+he had taken no part, and apparently no interest? And would he extend his
+search to the ruined abbey? At the worst, Angela would be there before him,
+to prepare her sister for the angry suspicions which she would have to
+meet. He was not likely to think of that place till he had exhausted all
+other chances.
+
+It was not much more than a mile from Fareham House to that desolate bit
+of country betwixt Westminster and Chelsea, where the modern dairy-farm
+occupied the old monkish pastures. As Angela ran her boat inshore, she
+expected to see Venetian lanterns, and to hear music and voices, and
+all the indications of a gay assembly; but there were only silence and
+darkness, save for one lighted window in the dairyman's dwelling-house, and
+she thought that she had come upon a futile errand, and had been mistaken
+in her conjectures.
+
+She moored her boat to the wooden landing-stage, and went on shore to
+examine the premises. The revelry might be designed for a later hour,
+though it was now near midnight, and Lady Sarah's party had assembled at
+eleven. She walked across a meadow, where the dewy grass was cool under her
+feet, and so to the open space in front of the dairyman's house--a shabby
+building attached like a wen to the ruined refectory.
+
+She started at hearing the snort of a horse, and the jingling of bit and
+curb-chain, and came suddenly upon a coach-and-four, with a couple of
+post-boys standing beside their team.
+
+"Whose coach is this?" she asked.
+
+"Mr. Malfy's, your ladyship."
+
+"The French gentleman from St. James's Street, my lady," explained the
+other man.
+
+"Did you bring Monsieur de Malfort here?"
+
+"No, madam. We was told to be here at eleven, with horses as fresh as fire;
+and the poor tits be mighty impatient to be moving. Steady, Champion!
+You'll have work enough this side Dartford,"--to the near leader, who was
+shaking his head vehemently, and pawing the gravel.
+
+Angela waited to ask no further questions, but made straight for the
+unglazed window, through which Mr. Spavinger and his companions had
+entered.
+
+There was no light in the great vaulted room, save the faint light of
+summer stars, and two figures were there in the dimness--a woman standing
+straight and tall in a satin gown, whose pale sheen reflected the
+starlight; a woman whose right arm was flung above her head, bare and
+white, her hand clasping her brow distractedly; and a man, who knelt at
+her feet, grasping the hand that hung at her side, looking up at her, and
+talking eagerly, with passionate gestures.
+
+Her voice was clearer than his; and Angela heard her repeating with a
+piteous shrillness, "No, no, no! No, Henri, no!"
+
+She stayed to hear no more, but sprang through the opening between the
+broken mullions, and rushed to her sister's side; and as De Malfort started
+to his feet, she thrust him vehemently aside, and clasped Hyacinth in her
+arms.
+
+"You here, Mistress Kill-joy?" he muttered, in a surly tone. "May I ask
+what business brought you? For I'll swear you wasn't invited."
+
+"I have come to save my sister from a villain, sir. But oh, my sweet, I
+little dreamt thou hadst such need of me!"
+
+"Nay, love, thou didst ever make tragedies out of nothing," said Hyacinth,
+struggling to disguise hysterical tears with airy laughter. "But I am right
+glad all the same that you are come; for this gentleman has put a scurvy
+trick upon me, and brought me here on pretence of a gay assembly that has
+no existence."
+
+"He is a villain and a traitor," said Angela, in deep, indignant tones.
+"Dear love, thou hast been in danger I dare scarce think of. Fareham is
+searching for you."
+
+"Fareham! In London?"
+
+"Returned an hour ago. Hark!"
+
+She lifted her finger warningly as a bell rang, and the well-known voice
+sounded outside the house, calling to some one to open the door.
+
+"He is here!" cried Hyacinth, distractedly. "For God's sake, hide me from
+him! Not for worlds--not for worlds would I meet him!"
+
+"Nay, you have nothing to fear. It is Monsieur de Malfort who has to answer
+for what he has done."
+
+"Henri, he will kill you! Alas, you know not what he is in anger! I have
+seen him, once in Paris, when he thought a man was insolent to me. God! The
+thunder of his voice, the blackness of his brow! He will kill you! Oh, if
+you love me--if you ever loved me--come out of his way! He is fatal with
+his sword!"
+
+"And am I such a tyro at fence, or such a poltroon as to be afraid to meet
+him? No, Hyacinth, I go with you to Dover, or I stand my ground and face
+him."
+
+"You shall not!" sobbed Hyacinth. "I will not have your blood on my head!
+Come, come--by the garden--by the river!"
+
+She dragged him towards the window; he pretending to resist, as Angela
+thought, yet letting himself be led as she pleased to lead him. They had
+but just crossed the yawning gap between the mullions and vanished into
+the night, when Fareham burst into the room with his sword drawn, and
+came towards Angela, who stood in shadow, her face half hidden in her
+close-fitting hood.
+
+"So, madam, I have found you at last," he said; "and in time to stop your
+journey, though not to save myself the dishonour of a wanton wife! But it
+is your paramour I am looking for, not you. Where is that craven hiding?"
+
+He went back to the inhabited part of the house, and returned after a
+hasty examination of the premises, carrying the lamp which had lighted his
+search, only to find the same solitary figure in the vast bare room. Angela
+had moved nearer the window, and had sunk exhausted upon a large carved oak
+chair, which might be a relic of the monkish occupation. Fareham came to
+her with the lamp in his hand.
+
+"He has given me a clean pair of heels," he said; "but I know where to find
+him. It is but a pleasure postponed. And now, woman, you had best return to
+the house your folly, or your sin, has disgraced. For to-night, at least,
+it must needs shelter you. Come!"
+
+The hooded figure rose at his bidding, and he saw the face in the
+lamplight.
+
+"You!" he gasped. "You!"
+
+"Yes, Fareham, it is I. Cannot you take a kind view of a foolish business,
+and believe there has been only folly and no dishonour in the purpose that
+brought me here?"
+
+"You!" he repeated. "You!"
+
+His bearing was that of a man who staggers under a crushing blow, a stroke
+so unexpected that he can but wonder and suffer. He set down the lamp with
+a shaking hand, then took two or three hurried turns up and down the room;
+then stopped abruptly by the lamp, snatched the anonymous letter from his
+breast, and read the lines over again.
+
+"'An intrigue on foot----' No name. And I took it for granted my wife was
+meant. I looked for folly from her; but wisdom, honour, purity, all the
+virtues from you. Oh, what was the use of my fortitude, what the motive
+of self-conquest here," striking himself upon the breast, "if you were
+unchaste? Angela, you have broken my heart."
+
+There was a long pause before she answered, and her face was turned from
+him to hide her streaming tears. At last she was able to reply calmly--
+
+"Indeed, Fareham, you do wrong to take this matter so passionately. You may
+trust my sister and me. On my honour, you have no cause to be angry with
+either of us."
+
+"And when I gave you this letter to read," he went on, disregarding her
+protestations, "you knew that you were coming here to meet a lover. You
+hurried away from me, dissembler as you were, to steal to this lonely place
+at midnight, to fling yourself into his arms. Tell me where he is hiding,
+that I may kill him; now, while I pant for vengeance. Such rage as mine
+cannot wait for idle forms. Now, now, now, is the time to reckon with your
+seducer!"
+
+"Fareham, you cover me with insults!"
+
+He had rushed to the door, still carrying his naked sword; but he turned
+back as she spoke, and stood looking at her from head to foot with a savage
+scornfulness.
+
+"Insult!" he cried. "You have sunk too low for insult. There are no words
+that I know vile enough to stigmatise such disgrace as yours! Do you
+know what you have been to me, Angela? A saint--a star; ineffably pure,
+ineffably remote; a creature to worship at a distance; for whose sake it
+was scarce a sacrifice to repress all that is common to the base heart of
+man; from whom a kind word was enough for happiness--so pure, so far away,
+so detached from this vile age we live in. God, how that saintly face has
+cheated me! Mock saint, mock nun; a creature of passions like my own but
+more stealthy; from top to toe an incarnate lie!"
+
+He flung out of the room, and she heard his footsteps about the house, and
+heard doors opened and shut. She waited for no more; but, being sure by
+this time that her sister had left the premises, her own desire was to
+return to Farebam House as soon as possible, counting upon finding Hyacinth
+there; yet with a sick fear that the seducer might take base advantage of
+her sister's terror and confused spirits, and hustle her off upon the fatal
+journey he had planned.
+
+The boat lay where she had moored it, at the foot of the wooden stair, and
+she was stepping into it when Fareham ran hastily to the bank.
+
+"Your paramour has got clear off," he said; and then asked curtly, "How
+came you by that boat?"
+
+"I brought it from Fareham House."
+
+"What! you came here alone by water at so late an hour! You heaven-born
+adventuress! Other women need education in vice; but to you it comes by
+nature."
+
+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 délicats 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 Béarnais, 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
+Condé'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 _tête-à-tête_. 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 _à
+la Française_."
+
+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 Scudéry
+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
+Hôtel 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
+Lucrèce; 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 Molière'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, Lucrèce, 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 Scudéry, and full of high-flown ideas expressed in high-flown
+language. All Paris had laughed at Molière's _Precieuses Ridicules_; but
+the Précieuses 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 Scudéry,
+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-rimés, 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, chère 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.
+
+"Chérie, 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 Scudéry, 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.
+
+"Louise de Bourbon, a woman who can head a revolt and fire a cannon, would
+think no sacrifice too great for a cold-hearted schemer like Lauzun--yet
+you who swore you loved me, when the coach was waiting that would have
+carried me to paradise, and made us one for all this life, could suffer a
+foolish girl to separate us in the very moment of triumphant union. You
+were mine, Hyacinth; heart and mind were consenting, when your convent-bred
+sister surprised us, and all my hopes of bliss expired in a sermon. And now
+I can but say, with that witty rhymester, whom everybody in London quotes--
+
+    'Love in your heart as idly burns,
+    As fire in antique Roman urns.'
+
+"Good-bye, which means 'God be with you.' I know not if the fear of Him was
+in your mind when you sacrificed your lover to that icy abstraction women
+call virtue. The Romans had but one virtue, which meant the courage that
+dares; and to me the highest type of woman would be one whose bold spirit
+dared and defied the world for love's sake. These are the women history
+remembers, and whom the men who live after them worship. Cleopatra,
+Mary Stuart, Diana of Poictiers, Marguerite de Valois, la Chevreuse, la
+Montbazon! Think you that these became famous by keeping their lovers at a
+distance?
+
+"'Go, lovely rose!'
+
+"How often I have sung those lines, and you have listened, and nothing
+has come of it; except time wasted, smiles, sighs, and tears, that ever
+promised, and ever denied. Beauty, too choice to be kind, adieu!
+
+"DE MALFORT."
+
+When she had read these last words, she crushed the letter in her palm,
+clenching her fingers over it till the nails wounded the delicate flesh;
+and then she opened her hand, and employed herself in smoothing out the
+crumpled paper, as if her life depended on making the letter readable
+again. But her pains could not undo what her passion had done; and finding
+this, she tossed the ragged paper into the flames, and began to walk about
+the room in a distracted fashion, giving a little hysterical cry every now
+and then, and clasping her hands upon her forehead.
+
+Anger, humiliation, wounded love, wounded vanity, disappointment,
+disillusion, were all in that cry, and in the passionate beating of her
+heart, her stifled breath, her clenched hands.
+
+"He was laughing when he wrote that letter--I am sure he was laughing.
+There was not one serious moment, not one pang at leaving me! He has been
+laughing at me ever since he came to London. I have been his fool, his
+amusement. Other women have had his love, the guilty love that he praises!
+He has come to me straight from their wicked houses, their feasting, and
+riot, and drunkenness--has come and pretended to love poetry, and Scudéry's
+romances, and music, and innocent conversation--come to rest himself after
+dissolute pleasures, bringing me the leavings of that hellish company! And
+I have reviled such women, and he has pretended an equal horror of them;
+and he was their slave all the time, and went from me to them, and made a
+jest of me for their amusement I know his biting raillery. And he was at
+the play-house day after day, where I could not go, sitting side by
+side with his Jezebels, laughing at filthy comedies, and at me that was
+forbidden to appear there. He had pleasures of which I knew nothing; and
+when I fancied our inmost souls moved in harmony, his thoughts were full of
+wanton women and their wanton jests, and he smiled at my childishness, and
+fooled me as children are fooled."
+
+The thought was distraction. She plucked out handfuls of her pale gold
+hair, the pretty blonde hair which had been almost as famous in Paris as
+Beaufort's or Madame de Longueville's yellow locks. The thought of De
+Malfort's ridicule cut her like a whalebone whip. She had fancied herself
+his Beatrice, his Laura, his Stella--a being to be worshipped as reverently
+as the stars, to make her lover happy with smiles and kindly words, to
+stand for ever a little way off, like a goddess in her temple, yet near
+enough to be adored.
+
+And fondly believing this to be her mission, having posed for the
+character, and filled it to her own fancy, she found that she had only
+been a dissolute man's dupe all the time; and no doubt had been the
+laughing-stock of her acquaintance, who looked at the game.
+
+"And I was so proud of his devotion--I carried my slave everywhere with me.
+Oh, fool, fool, fool!"
+
+And then--the poor little brains being disordered by passionate
+regrets--wickedest ideas ran riot in the confusion of a mind not wide
+enough to hold life's large passions. She began to be sorry that she was
+not like those other women--to hate the modesty that had lost her a lover.
+
+To be like Barbara Castlemaine! That was woman's only royalty. To rule with
+sovereign power over the hearts and senses of men. A King for her lover,
+constant in inconstancy, always going back to her from every transient
+fancy--her property, her chattel; and the foremost wits and dandies of the
+age for her servants, her Court of adorers, whom she ruled with frowns
+or smiles, as her humour prompted. To be daring, profuse, reckless,
+tyrannical; to suffer no control of heaven or men--yes, that was, indeed,
+to be a Queen! And compared with such empire, the poor authority of the
+Précieuse, dictating the choice of adjectives, condemning pronouns,
+theorising upon feelings and passions of which in practice she knows
+nothing, was a thing for scornfullest laughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+PHILASTER.
+
+
+January was nearly over, the memorial service for the martyred King was
+drawing near, and royalty and fashion had deserted Whitehall for Hampton
+Court; yet the Farehams lingered at their riverside mansion. His lordship
+had business in London, while Sir Denzil Warner, who came to Fareham House
+daily, was also detained in the city by some special attraction, which made
+hawk and hound, and even his worthy mother's company, indifferent to him.
+
+Lady Fareham had an air of caring for neither town nor country, but on the
+whole preferred town.
+
+"London has become a positive desert--and the smoke from the smouldering
+ruins poisons the garden and terrace whenever there is an east wind," she
+complained. "But Oxfordshire would be a worse desert--and I believe I
+should die of the spleen in a week, if I trusted myself in that great
+rambling Abbey. I can just suffer life in London; so I suppose I had best
+stay till his lordship has finished his business, about which he is so
+secret and mysterious."
+
+Denzil was more devoted, more solicitous to please than ever; and had a
+better chance of pleasing now that most of her ladyship's fine visitors
+had left town. He read aloud to Hyacinth and her sister as they worked--or
+pretended to work--at their embroidery frames. He played the organ, and
+sang duets with Angela. He walked with her on the terrace, in the cold,
+bleak afternoon, and told her the news of the town--not the scandals and
+trivialities which alone interested Lady Fareham, but the graver facts
+connected with the state and the public welfare--the prospects of war or
+peace, the outlook towards France and Spain, Holland and Sweden, Andrew
+Marvel's last speech, or the last grant to the King, who might be relied
+on to oppose no popular measure when his lieges were about to provide a
+handsome subsidy or an increase of his revenue.
+
+"We are winning our liberties from him," Denzil said.
+
+"For the mess of pottage we give, the money he squanders on libertine
+pleasures, England is buying freedom. Yet why, in the name of common sense,
+maintain this phantom King, this Court which shocks and outrages every
+decent Englishman's sense of right, and maintains an ever-widening hotbed
+of corruption, so that habits and extravagances once unknown beyond that
+focus of all vice, are now spreading as fast as London; and wherever there
+are bricks and mortar there are profligacy and irreligion? Can you wonder
+that all the best and wisest in this city regret Cromwell's iron rule, the
+rule of the strongest, and deplore that so bold a stroke for liberty should
+have ended in such foolish subservience to a King of whom we knew nothing
+when we begged him to come and reign over us?"
+
+"But if you win liberty while he is King, if wise laws are established--"
+
+"Yes; but we might have been noble as well as free. There is something so
+petty in our resumed bondage. Figure to yourself a thoroughbred horse that
+had kicked off the traces, and stood free upon the open plain with arched
+neck and lifted nostrils, sniffing the morning air! and behold he creeps
+back to his harness, and makes himself again a slave! We had done with
+the Stuarts, at the cost of a tragedy, and in ten years we call them back
+again, and put on the old shackles; and for common sense, religion, and
+freedom, we have the orgies of Whitehall, and the extravagance of Lady
+Castlemaine. It will not last, Angela; it cannot last. I was with his
+lordship in Artillery Row last night, and we talked with the blind sage who
+would sacrifice the remnant of his darkened days in the cause of liberty."
+
+"Sir Denzil, I hope you are not plotting mischief--you and my brother,"
+Angela said anxiously. "You are so often together; and his lordship has
+such a preoccupied air."
+
+"No, no, there is no conspiring; but there is plenty of discontent. It
+would need but little to fire the train. Can any man in his senses be happy
+when he sees his country, which ten years ago was at the pinnacle of
+power and renown, sinking to the appanage of a foreign sovereign; England
+threatened with a return to Rome; honest men forbidden to preach the
+gospel; and innocent seekers after truth hounded off to gaol, to rot
+among malefactors, because they have dared to worship God after their own
+fashion?"
+
+"Where was your liberty of conscience under the Protectorate, when the
+Liturgy was forbidden as if it were an unholy thing, when the Anglican
+priests were turned out of their pulpits, and the Anglican service
+tolerated in only one church in all this vast London?" Angela asked
+indignantly.
+
+"That was a revolt of deep thinkers against a service which has all the
+mechanical artifice of Romanism without its strong appeal to the heart and
+the senses--dry, empty, rigid--a repetition of vain phrases. If I am ever
+to bow my neck beneath the Church's yoke, let me swallow the warm-blooded
+errors of Papacy rather than the heartless formalism of English
+Episcopacy."
+
+"But what can you or Fareham--or a few good men like you--do to change
+established things? Remember Venner's plot, and how many lives were wasted
+on that foolish, futile attempt. You can only hazard your lives, die on the
+scaffold. Or would you like to see civil war again; the nation divided into
+opposite camps; Englishmen fighting with Englishmen? Can you forget that
+dreadful last year of the Rebellion? I was only a little child; but it is
+branded deep on my memory. Can you forget the murder of the King? He was
+murdered; let Mr. Milton defend the deed as he can with his riches of big
+words. I have wept over the royal martyr's own account of his sufferings."
+
+"Over Dr. Gauden's account, that is to say. 'Eikon Basilike' was no more
+written by Charles than by Cromwell. It was a doctored composition--a
+churchman's spurious history, trumped up by Charles's friends and
+partisans, possibly with the approval of the King himself. It is a fine
+piece of special pleading in a bad cause."
+
+"You make me hate you when you talk so slightingly of that so ill-used
+King. You will make me hate you more if you lead Fareham into danger by
+underhand work against the present King."
+
+"Lies Fareham's safety so very near your heart?"
+
+"It lies in my heart," she answered, looking at him, and defying him with
+straight, clear gaze. "Is he not my sister's husband, and to me as a
+brother? Do you expect me to be careless about his fate? I know you are
+leading him into danger. Some mischief must come of these visits to Mr.
+Milton, a Republican outlaw, who has escaped the penalty of his treasonous
+pamphlets only because he is blind and old and poor. I doubt there is
+danger in all such conferences. Fareham is at heart a Republican. It would
+need little persuasion to make him a traitor to the King."
+
+"You have it in your power to make me so much your slave, that I would
+sacrifice every patriotic aspiration at your bidding, Angela," Denzil
+answered gravely.
+
+"I know not if this be the time to speak, or if, after waiting more than a
+year, I may not even now be premature. Dearest girl, you know that I love
+you--that I haunt this house only because you live here; that I am in
+London only because my star shines there; that above all public interests
+you rule my life. I have exercised a prodigious patience, only because I
+have a prodigious resolution. Is it not time for me to reap my reward?"
+
+"Oh, Denzil, you fill me with sorrow! Have I not said everything to
+discourage you?"
+
+"And have I not refused to be discouraged? Angela, I am resolved to
+discover the reason of your coldness. Was there ever a young and lovely
+woman who shut love out of her heart? History has no record of such an
+one. I am of an appropriate age, of good birth and good means, not
+under-educated, not brutish, or of repulsive face and figure. If your heart
+is free I ought to be able to win it. If you will not favour my suit, it
+must be because there is some one else, some one who came before me, or who
+has crossed my path, and to whom your heart has been secretly given."
+
+She had turned from red to pale as he spoke. She stood before him in the
+winter light, with her colour changing, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes
+cast down, and tears trembling on the long dark lashes.
+
+"You have no right to question me. It is enough for you to have my honest
+answer. I esteem you, but I do not love you; and it distresses me when you
+talk of love."
+
+"There is some one else, then! I knew it. There is some one else. For me
+you are marble. You are fire for him. He is in your heart. You have said
+it"
+
+"How dare you----" she began.
+
+"Why should I shrink from warning you of your danger? It is Fareham you
+love. I have seen you tremble at his touch--start at the sound of his
+footstep--that step you know so well. His footstep? Why, the very air he
+breathes carries to you the consciousness of his approach. Oh, I have
+watched you both, Angela; and I know, I know. Jealous pangs have racked me,
+day after day; yet I have hung on. I have been very patient. 'She knows not
+the sinful impulses of her own heart,' I said, 'knows not in her purity how
+near she goes to a fall. Here, in her sister's house, passionately loved by
+her sister's husband! She calls him 'brother,' whose eyes cannot look at
+her without telling their story of wicked love. She walks on the edge of
+a precipice--self-deceived. Were I to abandon her she might fall. My
+affection is her only safeguard; and by winning her to myself I shall
+snatch her from the pit of hell.'"
+
+It was the truth he was telling her. Yes; even when Fareham was harshest,
+she had been dimly conscious that love was at the root of his unkindness.
+The coldness that had held them apart since that midnight meeting had been
+ice over fire. It was jealousy that had made him so angry. No word of love,
+directly spoken, had ever offended her ear; but there had been many a
+speech of double meaning that had set her wondering and thinking.
+
+And, oh! the guilt of it, when an honourable man like Denzil set her sin
+before her, in plain language. She stood aghast at her own wickedness. That
+which had been a sin of thought only, a secret sorrow, wrestled with in
+many an hour of heartfelt prayer, with all the labour of a soul that sought
+heavenly aid against earthly temptation, was conjured into hideous reality
+by Denzil's plain speech. To love her sister's husband, to suffer his
+guilty love, to know gladness only in his company, to be exquisitely happy
+were he but in the same room with her--to sink to profoundest melancholy
+when he was absent. Oh, the sin of it! In what degree did her guilt differ
+from that of the women of the Court, who had each her open secret in some
+base intrigue that all the world knew and laughed at? She had been kept
+aloof from that libertine crew; but was she any better than they? Was
+Fareham, who openly scorned the royal debauchee, was he any better than the
+King?
+
+She remembered how he had talked of Lord Sandwich, making excuses for a
+perverted love. She had heard him speak of other offenders in the same
+strain. He had been ever ready to recognise fatality where a good Catholic
+would have perceived only sin.
+
+"Angela, believe me, you are drifting helmless in perilous waters," Denzil
+urged, while she stood beside him in mute distress. "Let me be your strong
+rock. Only give me the promise of your hand. I can be patient still. I will
+give time for love to grow. Grant me but the right to guard you from the
+danger of an unholy passion that is always near you in this house."
+
+"You pretend to be his lordship's friend, and you speak slander of him."
+
+"I am his friend. I could find it in my heart to pity him for loving you.
+Indeed, it has been in friendship that I have tried to interest him in a
+great national question--to wean him from his darling sin. But were you my
+wife he should never cross our threshold. The day that made us one should
+make you and Fareham strangers. It is for you to choose, Angela, between
+two men who love you--one near your own age, free, God-fearing; the other
+nearly old enough to be your father, bound by the tie which your Church
+deems indissoluble, whose love is insult and pollution, and can but end in
+shame and despair. It is for you to choose between honest and dishonest
+love."
+
+"There is a nobler choice open to me," she said, more calmly than she had
+yet spoken, and with a pale dignity in her countenance that awed him. A
+thrill of admiration and fear ran along his nerves as he looked at her. She
+seemed transfigured. "There is a higher and better love," she said. "This
+is not the first time that I have considered a sure way out of all
+my difficulties. I can go back to the convent where, in my dear Aunt
+Anastasia, I saw so splendid an example of a holy life hidden from the
+world."
+
+"Life buried in a living grave!" cried Denzil, horror-stricken at the idea
+of such a sacrifice. "Free-will and reason obscured in a cloud of incense!
+All the great uses of a noble life brought down to petty observances and
+childish mummeries, prayers and genuflections before waxen relics and
+dressed-up madonnas. Oh, my dearest girl, next worst only to the dominion
+of sin is the slavery of a false religion. I would have thee free as
+air--free and enlightened--released from the trammels of Rome, happy in
+thyself and useful to thy fellow-creatures."
+
+"You see, Sir Denzil, even if we loved each other, we could never think
+alike," Angela said, with a gentle sadness. "Our minds would always dwell
+far apart. Things that are dear and sacred to me are hateful to you."
+
+"If you love me I could win you to my way of thinking," he said.
+
+"You mean that if I loved you I should love you better than I love God?"
+
+"Not so, dear. But you would open your mind to the truth. St. Paul
+sanctified union between Christian and pagan, and deemed the unbelieving
+wife sanctified by the believing husband. There can be no sin, therefore,
+despite my poor mother's violent opinions, in the union of those who
+worship the same God, and whose creed differs only in particulars. 'How
+knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?' Indeed, love, I
+doubt not my power to wean you from the errors of your early education."
+
+"Cannot you see how wide apart we are? Every word you say widens the gulf
+betwixt us. Indeed, Sir Denzil, you had best remain my friend. You can be
+nothing else."
+
+She turned from him almost impatiently. Young, handsome, of a frank and
+generous nature, he yet lacked the gifts that charm women; or at least this
+one woman was cold to him. It might be that in his own nature there was a
+coldness, a something wanting, the fire we miss in that great poet of the
+age, whose verse could rise to themes transcendent, but never burnt with
+the white heat of human passion.
+
+Papillon came flying along the terrace, her skirts and waving tresses
+spread wide in the wind, a welcome intruder.
+
+"What are you and Sir Denzil doing in the cold? I have news for my dear,
+dearest auntie. My lord is in a good humour, and _Philaster_ is to be acted
+by the Duke's servants, and her ladyship's footmen are keeping places for
+us in the boxes. I have only seen three plays in my life, and they were all
+sad ones. I wish _Philaster_ was a comedy. I should like to see _Love in a
+Tub_. That must be full of drollery. But his honour likes only grave plays.
+Be brisk, auntie! The coach will be at the door directly. Come and put on
+your hood. His lordship says we need no masks. I should have loved to wear
+a mask. Are you coming to the play, Sir Denzil?"
+
+"I know not if I am bidden, or if there be a place for me."
+
+"Why, you can stand with the fops in the pit, and you can buy us some China
+oranges. I heard Lady Sarah tell my mother that the new little actress with
+the pretty feet was once an orange-girl, who lived with Lord Buckhurst.
+Why did he have an orange-girl to live with him? He must be vastly fond of
+oranges. I should love to sell oranges in the pit, if I could be an actress
+afterwards. I would rather be an actress than a duchess. Mademoiselle
+taught me Chiméne's tirades in Corneille's _Cid_. I learn quicker than any
+pupil she ever had. Monsieur de Malfort once said I was a born actress,"
+pursued Papillon, as they walked to the house.
+
+_Philaster!_ That story of unhappy love--so pure, patient, melancholy,
+disinterested. How often Angela had hung over the page, in the solitude of
+her own chamber! And to hear the lines spoken to-day, when a tempest of
+emotion had been raised in her breast, with Fareham by her side; to meet
+his glances at this or that moment of the play, when the devoted girl was
+revealing the secret of her passionate heart. Yet never was love freer from
+taint of sin, and the end of the play was in no wise tragic. That pure
+affection was encouraged and sanctified by the happy bride. Bellario was
+not to be banished, but sheltered.
+
+Alas! yes; but this was love unreturned. There was no answering warmth on
+Philaster's part, no fire of passion to scathe and destroy; only a gentle
+gratitude for the girl's devotion--a brother's, not a lover's regard.
+
+She found Fareham and her sister in the hall, ready to step into the coach.
+
+"I saw the name of your favourite play on the posts as I walked home," he
+said; "and as Hyacinth is always teasing me for denying her the play-house,
+I thought this was a good opportunity for pleasing you both."
+
+"You would have pleased me more if you had offered me the chance of seeing
+a new comedy," his wife retorted, pettishly.
+
+"Ah, dearest, let us not resume an old quarrel. The play-wrights of
+Elizabeth's age were poets and gentlemen. The men who write for us are
+blackguards and empty-headed fops. We have novelty, which is all most of us
+want, a hundred new plays in a year, of which scarce one will be remembered
+after the year is out."
+
+"Who wants to remember? The highest merit in a play is that it should be a
+reflection of to-day; and who minds if it be stale to-morrow? To hold the
+mirror up to nature, doesn't your Shakespeare say? And what more transient
+than the image in a glass? A comedy should be like one's hat or one's gown,
+the top of the mode to-day, and cast off and forgotten, in a week."
+
+"That is what our fine gentlemen think; who are satisfied if their wit gets
+three days' acceptance, and some substantial compliment from the patron to
+whom they dedicate their trash."
+
+His lordship's liveries and four grey horses made a stir in Lincoln's Inn
+Fields, and startled the crowd at the doors of the New Theatre; and within
+the house Lady Fareham and her sister divided the attention of the pit
+with their royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess, who no longer amused
+or scandalised the audience by those honeymoon coquetries which had
+distinguished their earlier appearances in public. Duchess Anne was growing
+stout, and fast losing her beauty, and Duke James was imitating his
+brother's infidelities, after his own stealthy fashion; so it may be that
+Clarendon's daughter was no more happy than her sister-in-law the Queen,
+nor than her father the Chancellor, over whom the shadows of royal
+disfavour were darkening.
+
+Lady Fareham lolled languidly back in her box, and let all the audience see
+her indifference to Fletcher's poetic dialogue. Angela sat motionless, her
+hands clasped in her lap, entranced by that romantic story, and the acting
+which gave life and reality to that poetic fable, as well it might when the
+incomparable Betterton played Philaster. Fareham stood beside his wife,
+looking down at the stage, and sometimes, as Angela looked up, their eyes
+met in one swift flash of responsive thought; met and glanced away, as if
+each knew the peril of such meetings--
+
+    "If it be love
+    To forget all respect of his own friends
+    In thinking on your face."
+
+Was it by chance that Fareham sighed as those lines were spoken? And
+again--
+
+    "If, when he goes to rest (which will not be),
+    'Twixt every prayer he says he names you once."
+
+And again, was it chance that brought that swift, half-angry, questioning
+look upon her from those severe eyes in the midst of Philaster's tirade?--
+
+    "How heaven is in your eyes, but in your hearts
+    More hell than hell has; how your tongues, like scorpions,
+    Both heal and poison; how your thoughts are woven
+    With thousand changes in one subtle web,
+    And worn so by you. How that foolish man
+    That reads the story of a woman's face,
+    And dies believing it is lost for ever."
+
+It was Angela whose eyes unconsciously sought his when that passage
+occurred which had written itself upon her heart long ago at Chilton when
+she first read the play--
+
+    "Alas, my lord, my life is not a thing
+    Worthy your noble thoughts; 'tis not a life,
+    'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."
+
+What was her poor life worth--so lonely even in her sister's house--so
+desolate when his eyes looked not upon her in kindness? After having lived
+for two brief summers and winters in his cherished company, having learnt
+to know what a proud, honourable man was like, his disdain of vice, his
+indifference to Court favour, his aspirations for liberty; after having
+known him, and loved him with silent and secret love, what better could she
+do than bury herself within convent walls, and spend the rest of her days
+in praying for those she loved? Alas, he had such need that some faithful
+soul should soar heavenward in supplication for him who had himself so weak
+a hold upon the skies! Alas, to think of him as unbelieving, putting his
+trust in the opinions of infidels like Hobbes and Spinoza, rather than
+leaning on that Rock of Ages the Church of St. Peter.
+
+If she could not live for him--if it were a sin even to dwell under the
+same roof with him--she could at least die for him--die to the world of
+pleasure and folly, of beauty and splendour, die to friendship and love;
+sink all individuality under the monastic rule; cease to be, except as
+a part in a great organisation, an atom acting and acted upon by higher
+powers; surrendering every desire and every hope that distinguished her
+from the multitude of women vowed to a holy life.
+
+    "Never, sir, will I
+    Marry; it is a thing within my vow."
+
+The voice of the actress sounded silver-clear as Bellario spoke her last
+speech, finishing her story of a love which can submit to take the lower
+place, and asks but little of fate.
+
+    "It is a thing within my vow."
+
+The line repeated itself in Angela's mind as Denzil met them at the door,
+and handed her into the coach.
+
+Should she prove of weaker stuff than the sad Eufrasia, and accept a
+husband she did not love? This humdrum modern age allowed of no romance.
+She could not stain her face with walnut juice, and disguise herself as
+a footboy, and live unknown in his service, to wait upon him when he was
+weary, to nurse him when he was sick. Such a life she would have deemed
+exquisitely happy; but the hard everyday world had no room for such
+dreams. In this unromantic age Dion's daughter would be recognised within
+twenty-four hours of her putting on male attire. The golden days of poetry
+were dead. Una would find no lion to fawn at her feet. She would be mobbed
+in the Strand.
+
+"Oh, that it could have been!" thought Angela, as the coach jolted and
+rumbled through the narrow ways, and shaved awkward corners with its
+ponderous wheels, and got its horses entangled with other noble teams, to
+the provocation of much ill-language from postillions, and flunkeys, and
+linkmen, for it was dark when they came out of the theatre, and a thick
+mist was rising from the river, and flambeaux were flaring up and down the
+dim narrow thoroughfares.
+
+"They light the streets better in Paris," complained Hyacinth. "In the Rue
+de Touraine we had a lamp to every house."
+
+"I like to see the links moving up and down," said Papillon; "'tis ever so
+much prettier than lanterns that stand still--like that one at the corner."
+
+She pointed to a small round lamp that made a bubble of light in an abyss
+of gloom.
+
+"Here the lamps stink more than they light," said Hyacinth. "How the coach
+rocks--those blockheads will end by upsetting it. I should have been twice
+as well in my chair."
+
+Angela sat in her place, lost in thought, and hardly conscious of the
+jolting coach, or of Papillon's prattle, who would not be satisfied till
+she had dragged her aunt into the conversation.
+
+"Did you not love the play, and would you not love to be a princess like
+Arethusa, and to wear such a necklace? Mother's diamonds are not half as
+big."
+
+"Pshaw, child, 'twas absolute glass--arrant trumpery."
+
+"But her gown was not trumpery. It was Lady Castlemaine's last birthday
+gown. I heard a lady telling her friend about it in the seat next mine.
+Lady Castlemaine gave it to the actress; and it cost three hundred
+pounds--and Lady Castlemaine is all that there is of the most extravagant,
+the lady said, and old Rowley has to pay her debts--(who is old Rowley, and
+why does he pay people's debts?)--though she is the most unscrupulous--I
+forget the word--in London."
+
+"You see, madam, what a good school the play-house is for your child," said
+Fareham grimly.
+
+"I never asked you to take our child there."
+
+"Nay, Hyacinth; but a mother should enter no scene unfit for her daughter's
+innocence."
+
+"Oh, my lord, your opinions are of the Protectorate. You would be better in
+New England--tilling your fields reclaimed from the waste."
+
+"Yes, I might be better there, reclaimed from the waste--of London life.
+Strange that your talk should hit upon New England. I was thinking of that
+New World not an hour ago at the play--thinking what a happy innocent life
+a man might lead there, were he but young and free, with one he loved."
+
+"Innocent, yes; happy, no; unless he were a savage or a peasant," Hyacinth
+exclaimed disdainfully. "We that have known the grace and beauty of life
+cannot go back to the habits of our ancestors, to eat without forks, and
+cover our floors with rushes instead of Persian carpets."
+
+"The beauty and grace of life--houses that are whited sepulchres, banquets
+where there is no love."
+
+The coach stopped before the tall Italian doorway, and Fareham handed out
+his wife and sister in silence; but there was one of the party to whom it
+was unnatural to be mute.
+
+Papillon sprang off the coach step into her father's arms.
+
+"Sweetheart, why are you so sad?" she asked. "You look more unhappy than
+Philaster when he thought his lady loved him not."
+
+She would not be put off, but hung about him all the length of the
+corridor, to the door of his room, where he parted from her with a kiss on
+her forehead.
+
+"How your lips burn!" she cried. "I hope you are not sickening for the
+plague. I dreamt last night that the contagion had come back; and that our
+new glass coach was going about with a bell collecting the dead."
+
+"Thou hadst eaten too much supper, sweet. Such dreams are warnings against
+excess of pies and jellies. Go, love; I have business."
+
+"You have always business now. You used to let me stay with you--even when
+you was busy," Henriette remonstrated, dejectedly, as the sonorous oak door
+closed against her.
+
+Fareham flung himself into his chair in front of the large table, with
+its heaped-up books and litter of papers. Straight before him there lay
+Milton's pamphlet--a publication of ten years ago; but he had been reading
+it only that morning--"The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce."
+
+There were sentences which seemed to him to stand out upon the page, almost
+as if written in fire; and to these he recurred again and again, brooding
+over and weighing every word. "....Neither can this law be of force to
+engage a blameless creature to his own perpetual sorrow, mistaken for his
+expected solace, without suffering charity to step in and do a confessed
+good work of parting those whom nothing holds together but this of God's
+joining, falsely supposed against the express end of his own ordinance....
+'It is not good,' said He, 'that man should be alone; I will make him a
+helpmeet for him.' From which words, so plain, less cannot be concluded,
+nor is by any learned interpreter, than that in God's intention a meet and
+happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage.... Again,
+where the mind is unsatisfied, the solitariness of man, which God had
+namely and principally ordered to prevent by marriage, hath no remedy, but
+lies in a worse condition than the loneliest single life; for in single
+life the absence and remoteness of a helper might inure him to expect his
+own comforts out of himself, or to seek with hope; but here the continual
+sight of his deluded thoughts, without cure, must needs be to him, if
+especially his complexion incline him to melancholy, a daily trouble and
+pain of loss, in some degree like that which reprobates feel."
+
+He closed the book, and started up to pace the long, lofty room, full of
+shadow, betwixt the light of the fire and that one pair of candles on his
+reading desk.
+
+"Reprobate! Yes. Am not I a reprobate, and the worst, plotting against
+innocence? New England," he repeated to himself. "How much the name
+promises. A new world, a new life, and old fetters struck off. God, if it
+could be done! It would hurt no one--no one--except perhaps those children,
+who might suffer a brief sorrow--and it would make two lives happy that
+must be blighted else. Two lives! Am I so sure of her? Yes, if eyes speak
+true. Sure as of my own fond passion. The contagion, quotha! I have
+suffered that, sweet, and know its icy sweats and parching heats; but
+'tis not so fierce a fever as that devilish disease, the longing for your
+company."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+GOOD-BYE, LONDON.
+
+
+Sitting in her own room before supper, a letter was brought to Angela--a
+long letter, closely written, in a neat, firm hand she knew very well.
+
+It was from Denzil Warner; a letter full of earnest thought and warm
+feeling, in which he pursued the subject of their morning's discourse.
+
+"We were interrupted before I had time to open my heart to you, dearest,"
+he wrote; "and at a moment when we had touched on the most delicate
+point in our friendship--the difference in our religious education and
+observance. Oh, my beloved, let not difference in particulars divide two
+hearts that worship the same God, or make a barrier between two minds that
+think alike upon essentials. The Christ who died for you is not less my
+Saviour because I love not to obtrude the dressed-up image of His earthly
+mother between His Godhead and my prayers. In the regeneration of baptism,
+in the sanctity of marriage, in the resurrection of the body, and the
+life of the world to come, in the reality of sin and the necessity for
+repentance, I believe as truly as any Papist living. Let our lives be but
+once united, who knows how the future may shape and modify our minds and
+our faith? I may be brought to your way of thinking, or you to mine. I will
+pledge myself never to be guilty of disrespect to your religion, or to
+unkindly urge you to any change in your observances. I am not one of those
+who have exchanged one tyranny for another, and who, released from the
+dominion of Rome, have become the slave of the Covenant. I have been taught
+by one who, himself deeply religious, would have all men free to worship
+God by the light of their own conscience; and to my wife, that dearer half
+of my soul, I would allow perfect freedom. I suffer from the lack of poetic
+phrases with which to embellish the plain reality of my love; but be sure,
+Angela, that you may travel far through the world, and receive many a
+flowery compliment to your beauty, yet meet none who will love you as
+faithfully as I have loved you for this year last past, and as I doubt I
+shall love you--happy or unfortunate in my wooing--for all the rest of my
+life. Think, dearest, whether it were not wise on your part to accept the
+chaste and respectful homage of a suitor who is free to love and cherish
+you, and thus to shield yourself from the sinful pursuit of one who offends
+Heaven and dishonours you whenever he looks at you with the eyes of a
+lover. I would not write harshly of a man whose very sin I pity, and whom
+I believe not wholly vile; but for him, as for me, that were a happy day
+which should make you my wife, and thus end the madness of unholy hopes. I
+would again urge that Lady Fareham desires our union with all a sister's
+concern for you, and more than a friend's tenderness to me.
+
+"I beseech your pardon and indulgence for my rough words of this morning.
+God forbid that I should impute one unworthy thought to her whose virtues I
+honour above all earthly merit. If your heart inclines towards one whom it
+were misery for you to love, I know that it must be with an affection pure
+and ethereal as the love of the disguised girl in Fletcher's play. But, ah,
+dearest angel, you know not the peril in which you walk. Your innocent mind
+cannot conceive the audacious height to which unholy love may climb in a
+man's fiery nature. You cannot fathom the black depths of such a character
+as Fareham--a man as capable of greatness in evil as of distinction in
+good. Forget not whose fierce blood runs in those veins. Can you doubt his
+audacity in wrong-doing, when you remember that he comes of the same stock
+which produced that renegade and tyrant, Thomas Wentworth--a man who would
+have waded deep in the blood of a nation to reach his desired goal, all the
+history of whose life was expressed by him in one word--'thorough'?
+
+"Do you consider what that word means to a man over whose heart sin has
+taken the upper hand? Thorough! How resolute in evil, how undaunted and
+without limit in baseness, is he who takes that word for his motto! Oh, my
+love, there are dragons and lions about thy innocent footsteps--the dragons
+of lust, the lions of presumptuous love. Flee from thy worst enemy,
+dearest, to the shelter of a heart which adores thee; lean upon a breast
+whose pulses beat for thee with a truth that time cannot change.
+
+"Thine till death,
+
+"WARNER."
+
+Angela tore up the letter in anger. How dared he write thus of Lord
+Fareham? To impute sinful passions, guilty desires--to enter into another
+man's mind, and read the secret cipher of his thoughts and wishes with
+an assumed key, which might be false? His letter was a bundle of false
+assumptions. What right had he to insist that her brother-in-law cared for
+her with more than the affection authorised by affinity? He had no right.
+She hated him for his insolent letter. She scorned the protection of his
+love. She had her refuge and her shelter in a holier love than his. The
+doors of the old home would open to her at a word.
+
+She sat on a low stool in front of the hearth, while the pile of ship
+timber on the andirons burnt itself out and turned from red to grey. She
+sat looking into the dying fire and recalling the pictures of the past;
+the dull grey convent rooms and formal convent garden; the petty rules and
+restrictions; the so-frequent functions--low mass and high, benedictions,
+vespers--the recurrent sound of the chapel bell. The few dull books,
+permitted in the hour of so-called recreation; the sombre grey gown,
+which was the only relief from perpetual black; the limitations of
+that colourless life. She had been happy with the Ursulines under her
+kinswoman's gentle sway. But could she be happy with the present Superior,
+whose domineering temper she knew? She had been happy in her ignorance of
+the outer world; but could she be happy again in that grey seclusion--she
+who had sat at the banquet of life, who had seen the beauty and the variety
+of her native land? To be an exile for the rest of her days, in the
+hopeless gloom of a Flemish convent, among the heavy faces of Flemish nuns!
+
+In the intensity of introspective thought she had forgotten one who had
+forbidden that gloomy seclusion, and to whom it would be as natural for
+her to look for protection and refuge as to convent or husband. From her
+thoughts to-night the image of her wandering father had been absent. His
+appearances in her life had been so rare and so brief, his influence on her
+destiny so slight, that she was forgetful of him now in this crisis of her
+fate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was within a week of that evening that the sisters were startled by the
+arrival of their father, unannounced, in the dusk of the winter afternoon.
+He had come by slow stages from Spain, riding the greater part of the
+journey--like Howell, fifty years earlier--attended only by one faithful
+soldier-servant, and enduring no small suffering, and running no slight
+risk, upon the road.
+
+"The wolves had our provender on more than one occasion," he told them.
+"The wonder is they never had us or our hackneys. I left Madrid in July,
+not long after the death of my poor friend Fanshawe. Indeed, it was his
+friendship and his good lady's unvarying courtesy that took me to the
+capital. We had last met at Hampton Court, with the King, shortly before
+his Majesty's so ill-advised flight; and we were bosom-friends then. And
+so, he being dead of a fever early in the summer, I had no more to do but
+to travel slowly homeward, to end my days in my own chimney-corner, and to
+claim thy promise, Angela, that thou wouldst keep my house, and comfort my
+declining years."
+
+"Dear father!" Angela murmured, hanging over him as he sat in the
+high-backed velvet chair by the fire, while her ladyship's footmen set
+a table near him, with wine and provisions for an impromptu meal, Lady
+Fareham directing them, and coming between-whiles to embrace her father in
+a flutter of spirits, the firelight shining on her flame-coloured velvet
+gown and primrose taffety petticoat, her pretty golden curls and sparkling
+Sévigné, her ruby necklace and earrings, and her bright restless eyes.
+
+While the elder sister was all movement and agitation, the younger stood
+calm and still beside her father's chair, her hands clasped in his, her
+thoughtful eyes looking down at him as he talked, stopping now and then in
+his story of adventures to eat and drink.
+
+He looked much older than when he surprised her in the Convent garden. His
+hair and beard, then iron grey, were now silver white. He wore his own
+hair, which was abundant, and a beard cut after the fashion she knew in the
+portraits of Henri Quatre. His clothes also were of that style, which lived
+now only in the paintings of Vandyke and his school.
+
+"How the girl looks at me!" Sir John said, surprising his daughter's
+earnest gaze. "Does she take me for a ghost?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, she may well fancy you have come back from the other world
+while you wear that antique suit," said Hyacinth. "I hope your first
+business to-morrow will be to replenish your wardrobe by the assistance
+of Lord Rochester's tailor. He is a German, and has the best cut for a
+justau-corps in all the West End. Fareham is shabby enough to make a wife
+ashamed of him; but his clothes are only too plain for his condition. Your
+Spanish cloak and steeple hat are fitter for a travelling quack doctor than
+for a gentleman of quality, and your doublet and vest might have come out
+of the ark."
+
+"If I change them, it will be but to humour your vanity, sweetheart,"
+answered her father. "I bought the suit in Paris three years ago, and
+I swore I would cast them back upon the snip's hands if he gave me any
+new-fangled finery. But a riding-suit that has crossed the Pyrenees and
+stood a winter's wear at Montpelier--where I have been living since
+October--can scarce do credit to a fine lady's saloon; and thou art finest,
+I'll wager, Hyacinth, where all are fine."
+
+"You would not say that if you had seen Lady Castlemaine's rooms. I would
+wager that her gold and silver tapestry cost more than the contents of my
+house."
+
+"Thou shouldst not envy sin in high places, Hyacinth."
+
+"Envy! I envy a----"
+
+"Nay, love, no bad names! 'Tis a sorry pass England has come to when the
+most conspicuous personage at her Court is the King's mistress. I was with
+Queen Henrietta at Paris, who received me mighty kindly, and bewailed with
+me over the contrast betwixt her never-to-be-forgotten husband and his
+sons. They have nothing of their father, she told me, neither in person nor
+in mind. 'I know not whence their folly comes to them!' she cried. It would
+have been uncivil to remind her that her own father, hero as he was, had
+set no saintly example to royal husbands; and that it is possible our
+princes take more of their character from their grandfather Henry than from
+the martyr Charles. Poor lady, I am told she left London deep in debt,
+after squandering her noble income of these latter years, and that she has
+sunk in the esteem of the French court by her alliance with Jermyn."
+
+"I can but wonder that she, above all women, should ever cease to be a
+widow."
+
+"She comes of a light-minded race and nation, Angela; and it is easy to her
+to forget; or she would not easily forget that so-adoring husband whose
+fortunes she ruined. His most fatal errors came from his subservience to
+her. When I saw her in her new splendour at Somerset House, all smiles and
+gaiety, with youth and beauty revived in the sunshine of restored fortune,
+I could but remember all he was, in dignity and manly affection, proud and
+pure as King Arthur in the old romance, and all she cost him by womanish
+tyrannies and prejudices, and difficult commands laid upon him at a
+juncture of so exceeding difficulty."
+
+The sisters listened in respectful silence. The old cavalier cut a fresh
+slice of chine, sighed, and continued his sermon.
+
+"I doubt that while we, the lookers on, remember, they, the actors, forget;
+for could the son of such a noble victim wallow in a profligate court,
+surrender himself to the devilish necromancies of vicious women and viler
+men, if he remembered his father's character, and his father's death? No;
+memory must be a blank, and we, who suffered with our royal master, are
+fools to prate of ingratitude or neglect, since the son who can forget such
+a father may well forget his father's servants and friends. But we will not
+talk of public matters in the first hour of our greeting. Nor need I prate
+of the King, since I have not come back to England to clap a periwig over
+my grey hairs, and play waiter upon Court favour, and wear out the back
+of my coat against the tapestry at Whitehall, standing in the rear of the
+crowd, to have my toes trampled upon by the sharp heels of Court ladies,
+and an elbow in my stomach more often than not. I am come, like Wolsey,
+girls, to lay my old bones among you. Art thou ready, Angela? Hast thou
+had enough of London, and play-houses, and parks; and wilt thou share thy
+father's solitude in Buckinghamshire?"
+
+"With all my heart, sir."
+
+"What! never a sigh for London pleasures? Thou hast the great lady's air
+and carriage in that brave blue taffety. The nun I knew three years ago has
+vanished. Can you so lightly renounce the splendour of this house, and your
+sister's company, to make a prosing old father happy?"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I am ready to go with you."
+
+"How she says that--with what a countenance of woeful resignation! But I
+will not make the Manor Moat too severe a prison, dearest. You shall visit
+London, and your sister, when you will. There shall be a coach and a team
+of stout roadsters to pull it when they are not wanted for the plough. And
+the Vale of Aylesbury is but a long day's journey from London, while 'tis
+no more than a morning's ride to Chilton."
+
+"I could not bear for her to be long away from me," said Hyacinth. "She is
+the only companion I have in the world."
+
+"Except your husband."
+
+"Husbands such as mine are poor company. Fareham has a moody brow, and a
+mind stuffed with public matters. He dines with Clarendon one day, and with
+Albemarle another; or he goes to Deptford to grumble with Mr. Evelyn; or he
+creeps away to some obscure quarter of the town to hob-nob with Milton,
+and with Marvel, the member for Hull. I doubt they are all of one mind in
+abusing his Majesty, and conspiring against him. If I lose my sister I
+shall have no one."
+
+"What, no one; when you have Henriette, who even three years ago had
+shrewdness enough to keep an old grandfather amused with her impertinent
+prattle?"
+
+"Grandfathers are easily amused by children they see as seldom as you have
+seen Papillon. To have her about you all day, with her everlasting chatter,
+and questions, and remarks, and opinions (a brat of twelve with opinions),
+would soon give you the vapours."
+
+"I am not so subject to vapours as you, child. Let me look at you, now the
+candles are lighted."
+
+The footmen had lighted clusters of wax candles on either side the tall
+chimney-piece.
+
+Sir John drew his elder daughter to the light, and scrutinised her face
+with a father's privilege of uncompromising survey.
+
+"You paint thick enough, i' conscience' name, though not quite so thick as
+the Spanish señoras. They are browner than you, and need a heavier hand
+with white and red. But you are haggard under all your red. You are not the
+woman I left in '65."
+
+"I am near two years older than the woman you left; and as for paint, there
+is not a woman over twenty in London who uses as little red and white as I
+do."
+
+"What has become of Fareham to-night?" Sir John asked presently, when
+Hyacinth had picked up her favourite spaniel to nurse and fondle, while
+Angela had resumed her occupation at an embroidery frame, and a reposeful
+air as of a long-established domesticity had fallen upon the scene.
+
+"He is at Chilton. When he is not plotting he rushes off to Oxfordshire
+for the hunting and shooting. He loves buglehorns and yelping curs,
+and huntsmen's cracked voices, far before the company of ladies or the
+conversation of wits."
+
+"A man was never meant to sit in a velvet chair and talk fine. It is all
+one for a French Abbé and a few old women in men's clothing to sit round
+the room and chop logic with a learned spinster like Mademoiselle Scudéry;
+but men must live _sub Jove_, unless they are statesmen or clerks. They
+must have horses and hounds, gun and spaniel, hawk or rod. I am glad
+Fareham loves sport. And as for that talk of conspiring, let me not hear it
+from thee, Hyacinth. 'Tis a perilous discourse to but hint at treason;
+and your husband is a loyal gentleman who loves, and"--with a wry
+face--"reveres--his King."
+
+"Oh, I was only jesting. But, indeed, a man who so disparages the things
+other people love must needs be a rebel at heart. Did you hear of Monsieur
+de Malfort while you were at Paris?"
+
+The inquiry was made with that over-acted carelessness which betrays hidden
+pain; but the soldier's senses had been blunted by the rough-and-tumble of
+an adventurer's life, and he was not on the alert for shades of feeling.
+
+Angela accepted her father's return, with the new duties it imposed upon
+her, as if it had been a decree of Heaven. She put aside all consideration
+of that refuge which would have meant so complete a renunciation and
+farewell. On her knees that night, in the midst of fervent prayers, her
+tears streamed fast at the thought that, secure in the shelter of her
+father's love, in the peaceful solitude of her native valley, she could
+look to a far-off future when she and Fareham might meet with out fear of
+sin, when no cloud of passion should darken his brotherly affection for
+her; when his heart, now estranged from holy things, would have returned to
+the faith of his ancestors, reconciled to God and the Church. She could but
+think of him now as a fallen angel--a wanderer who had strayed far from the
+only light and guide of human life, and was thus a mark for the tempter.
+What lesser power than Satan's could have so turned good to evil; the
+friendship of a brother to the base passion which had made so wide a gulf
+between them; and which must keep them strangers till he was cured of his
+sin? Only to diabolical possession could she ascribe the change that had
+come over him since those happy days when she had watched the slow dawn
+of health upon his sunken cheeks, when he and she had travelled together
+through the rich autumn woods, along the pleasant English roads, and when,
+in the leisure of the slow journey, he had poured out his thoughts to her,
+the story of his life, his opinions, expatiating in fraternal confidence
+upon the things he loved and the things he hated. And at Chilton, she
+looked back and remembered his goodness to her, the pains he had taken in
+choosing horses for her to ride, their long mornings on the river with
+Henriette, their hawking parties, and in all his tender brotherly care of
+her. The change in him had come about by almost imperceptible degrees:
+but it had been chiefly marked by a fitful temper that had cut her to the
+quick; now kind; now barely civil; courting her company to-day; to-morrow
+avoiding her, as if there were contagion in her presence. Then, after
+the meeting at Millbank, there had come a coldness so icy, a sarcasm so
+cutting, that for a long time she had thought he hated as much as he
+despised her. She had withered in his contempt. His unkindness had
+overshadowed every hour of her life, and the longing to cry out to him
+"Indeed, sir, your thoughts wrong me. I am not the wretch you think,"
+had been almost too much for her fortitude. She had felt that she must
+exculpate herself, even though in so doing she should betray her sister.
+But honour, and affection for Hyacinth, had prevailed; and she had bent her
+shoulders to the burden of undeserved shame. She had sat silent and abashed
+in his presence, like a guilty creature.
+
+Sir John Kirkland spent a week at Fareham House, employed in choosing a
+team of horses, suitable alike for the road and the plough, looking
+out, among the coachmakers, for a second-hand travelling carriage, and
+eventually buying a coach of Lady Fanshawe's, which had been brought from
+Madrid with the rest of her very extensive goods and chattels.
+
+One need scarce remark that it was not one of the late Ambassador's state
+carriages, his ruby velvet coach, with fringes that cost three hundred
+pounds, or his brocade carriage, but a coach that had been built for the
+everyday use of his suite.
+
+Sir John also bought a little plain silver, in place of that fine
+collection of silver and parcel-gilt which had been so willingly sacrificed
+to royal necessities; and though he breathed no sigh over past losses, some
+bitter thoughts may have come across his cheerfulness as he heard of the
+splendour and superabundance of Lady Castlemaine's plate and jewels, or of
+the ring worth six hundred pounds lately presented to a pretty actress.
+
+In a week he was ready for Buckinghamshire; and Angela had her trunks
+packed, and had bid good-bye to her London friends, amidst the chatter of
+Lady Fareham's visiting-day, and the clear, bell-like clash of delicate
+china tea-cups--miniature bowls of egg-shell porcelain, without handles,
+and to be held daintily between the tips of high-bred fingers.
+
+There was a chorus of courteous bewailing at the notion of Mrs. Kirkland's
+departure.
+
+Sir Ralph Masaroon pretended to be in despair.
+
+"Is it not bad enough to have had the coldest winter my youth can remember?
+But you must needs take the sun from our spring. Why, the maids of honour
+will count for handsome when you are gone. What's that Butler says?--
+
+    'The twinkling stars begin to muster,
+    And glitter with their borrowed lustre.'
+
+But what's to become of me without the sun? I shall have no one to
+side-glass in the Ring."
+
+"Indeed, Sir Ralph, I did not know that you ever side-glassed me!"
+
+"What, you have suffered my devotion to pass unperceived? When I have
+broken half a dozen coach windows in your service, rattling a glass down
+with a vehemence which would have startled a Venus in marble to turn and
+recognise an adorer! Round and round the Ring I have driven for hours, on
+the chance of a look. Nay, marble is not so coy as froward beauty! And at
+the Queen's chapel have I not knelt at the Mass morning after morning, at
+the risk of being thought a Papist, for the sake of seeing you at prayers;
+and have envied the Romish dog who handed you the aspersoir as you went
+out? And you to be unconscious all the time!"
+
+"Nay, 'tis so much happier for me, Sir Ralph, since you have given me a
+reserve of gratified vanity that will last me a year in the country, where
+I shall see nothing but ploughmen and bird-boys."
+
+"Look out for the scarecrows in Sir John's fields, for the odds are you
+will see me some day disguised as one."
+
+"Why disguised?" asked his friend Mr. Penington, who had lately produced a
+comedy that had been acted three afternoons at the Duke's Theatre, and one
+evening at Court, which may be taken as a prosperous run for a new play.
+
+Lady Sarah Tewkesbury held forth on the pleasures of a country life, and
+lamented that family connections and the necessity of standing well with
+the Court constrained her to spend the greater part of her existence in
+town.
+
+"I am like Milton," she said. "I adore a rural life. To hear the cock--
+
+    'From his watchtower in the skies,
+    When the horse and hound do rise.'
+
+Oh, I love buttercups and daisies above all the Paris finery in the
+Exchange; and to steep one's complexion in May-dew, and to sup on a
+syllabub or a dish of frumenty--so cheap, too, while it costs a fortune but
+to scrape along in London."
+
+"The country is well enough for a month at hay-making, to romp with a bevy
+of London beauties in the meadows near Tunbridge Wells, or to dance to
+a couple of fiddles on the Common by moonlight," said Mr. Penington;
+whereupon all agreed that Tunbridge Wells, Epsom, Doncaster, and Newmarket
+were the only country possible to people of intellect.
+
+"I would never go further than Epsom, if I had my will," said Sir Ralph;
+"for I see no pleasure in Newmarket for a man who keeps no running-horses,
+and has no more interest in the upshot of a race than he might have in
+a maggot match on his own dining-table, did he stake high enough on the
+result."
+
+"But my sister is not to be buried in Buckinghamshire all the year round,"
+explained Hyacinth. "I shall fetch her here half a dozen times in a season;
+and her shortest visits must be long enough to take the country freshness
+out of her complexion, and save her from becoming a milkmaid."
+
+"Gud, to see her freckled!" cried Penington. "I could as soon imagine
+Helen with a hump. That London pallor is the choicest charm in a girl
+of quality--a refined sickliness that appeals to the heart of a man of
+feeling, an 'if-you-don't-lend-me-your-arm-I-shall-swoon' sort of air. Your
+country hoyden, with her roses-and-cream complexion, and open-air manners,
+is more shocking than Medusa to a man of taste."
+
+The talk drifted to other topics at the mention of Buckingham, who had but
+lately been let out of the Tower, where he and Lord Dorchester had been
+committed for scuffling and quarrelling at the Canary Conference.
+
+"Has your ladyship seen the Duke and Lord Dorchester since they came out of
+the house of bondage?" asked Lady Sarah. "I think Buckingham was never so
+gay and handsome, and takes his imprisonment as the best joke that ever
+was, and is as great at Court as ever."
+
+"His Majesty is but too indulgent," said Masaroon, "and encourages the Duke
+to be insolent and careless of ceremony. He had the impertinence to show
+himself at chapel before he had waited on his Majesty."
+
+"Who was very angry and forbade him the Court," said Penington. "But
+Buckingham sent the King one of his foolish, jesting letters, capped with
+a rhyme or two; and if you can make Charles Stuart laugh you may pick his
+pocket----"
+
+"Or seduce his mistress----"
+
+"Oh, he will forgive much to wit and gaiety. He learnt the knack of taking
+life easily, while he led that queer, shifting life in exile. He was a
+cosmopolitan and a soldier of fortune before he was a King _de facto;_ and
+still wears the loose garments of those easy, beggarly days, when he had
+neither money nor care. Be sure he regrets that roving life--Madrid, Paris,
+the Hague--and will never love a son as well as little Monmouth, the child
+of his youth."
+
+"What would he not give to make that base-born brat Prince of Wales?
+Strange that while Lord Ross is trying to make his offspring illegitimate
+by Act of Parliament, his master's anxieties should all tend the other
+way."
+
+"Don't talk to me of Parliament!" cried Lady Sarah; "the tyranny of the
+Rump was nothing to them. Look at the tax upon French wines, which will
+make it almost impossible for a lady of small means to entertain her
+friends. And an Act for burying us all in woollen, for the benefit of the
+English trade in wool."
+
+"But, indeed, Lady Sarah, it is we of the old faith who have most need to
+complain," said Lady Fareham, "since these wretches make us pay a double
+poll-tax; and all our foreign friends are being driven away for the same
+reason--just because the foolish and the ignorant must needs put down the
+fire to the Catholics."
+
+"Indeed, your ladyship, the Papists have had an unlucky knack at lighting
+fires, as Smithfield and Oxford can testify," said Penington; "and perhaps,
+having no more opportunity of roasting martyrs, it may please some of
+your creed to burn Protestant houses, with the chance of cooking a few
+Protestants inside 'em."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Angela had drawn away from the little knot of fine ladies and finer
+gentlemen, and was sitting in the bay window of an ante-room, with
+Henriette and the boy, who were sorely dejected at the prospect of losing
+her. The best consolation she could offer was to promise that they should
+be invited to the Manor Moat as soon as she and her father had settled
+themselves comfortably there--if their mother could spare them.
+
+Henriette laughed outright at this final clause.
+
+"Spare us!" she cried. "Does she ever want us? I don't think she knows when
+we are in the room, unless we tread upon her gown, when she screams out
+'Little viper!' and hits us with her fan."
+
+"The lightest touch, Papillon; not so hard as you strike your favourite
+baby."
+
+"Oh, she doesn't hurt me; but the disrespect of it! Her only daughter, and
+nearly as high as she is!"
+
+"You are an ungrateful puss to complain, when her ladyship is so kind as to
+let you be here to see all her fine company."
+
+"I am sick of her company, almost always the same, and always talking about
+the same things. The King, and the Duke, and the General, and the navy;
+or Lady Castlemaine's jewels, or the last new head from Paris, or her
+ladyship's Flanders lace. It is all as dull as ditch-water now Monsieur de
+Malfort is gone. He was always pleasant, and he let me play on his guitar,
+though he swore it excruciated him. And he taught me the new Versailles
+coranto. There's no pleasure for any one since he fell ill and left
+England."
+
+"You shall come to the Manor. It will be a change, even though you hate the
+country and love London."
+
+"I have left off loving London. I have had too much of it. If his lordship
+let us go to the play-house often it would be different. Oh, how I
+loved Philaster--and that exquisite page! Do you think I could act that
+character, auntie, if his lordship's tailor made me such a dress?"
+
+"I think thou hast impudence for anything, dearest."
+
+"I would rather act that page than Pauline in _Polyeucte_, though
+Mademoiselle swears I speak her tirades nearly as well as an actress she
+once saw at the Marais, who was too old and fat for the character. How I
+should love to be an actress, and to play tragedy and comedy, and
+make people cry and laugh! Indeed, I would rather be anything than a
+lady--unless I could be exactly like Lady Castlemaine."
+
+"Ah, Heaven forbid!"
+
+"But why not? I heard Sir Ralph tell mother that, let her behave as badly
+as she may, she will always be atop of the tree, and that the young sparks
+at the Chapel Royal hardly look at their prayer-books for gazing at her,
+and that the King----"
+
+"Ah, sweetheart, I want to hear no more of her!"
+
+"Why, don't you like her? I thought you did not know her. She never comes
+here."
+
+"Are there any staghounds in the Vale of Aylesbury?" asked the boy, who had
+been looking out of the window, watching the boats go by, unheeding his
+sister's babble.
+
+"I know not, love; but there shall be dogs enough for you to play with,
+I'll warrant, and a pony for you to ride. Grandfather shall get them for
+his dearest."
+
+Sir John was fond of Henriette, whom he looked upon as a marvel of
+precocious brightness; but the boy was his favourite, whom he loved with an
+old man's half-melancholy affection for the creature which is to live and
+act a part in the world when he, the greybeard, shall be dust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+AT THE MANOR MOAT.
+
+
+Solid, grave, and sober, grey with a quarter of a century's neglect, the
+Manor House, in the valley below Brill, differed in every detail from the
+historical Chilton Abbey. It was a moated manor house, the typical house of
+the typical English squire; an E-shaped house, with a capacious roof that
+lodged all the household servants, and clustered chimney-stacks that
+accommodated a great company of swallows. It had been built in the reign
+of Henry the Seventh, and was coeval with its distinguished neighbour, the
+house of the Verneys, at Middle Claydon, and it had never served any other
+purpose than to shelter Englishmen of good repute in the land. Souvenirs
+of Bosworth field--a pair of huge jack-boots, a two-handed sword, and a
+battered helmet--hung over the chimney-piece in the low-ceiled hall; but
+the end of the civil war was but a memory when the Manor House was built.
+After Bosworth a slumberous peace had fallen on the land, and in the
+stillness of this secluded valley, sheltered from every bleak wind by
+surrounding hills and woods, the gardens of the Manor Moat had grown into
+a settled beauty that made the chief attraction of a country seat which
+boasted so little of architectural dignity, or of expensive fantasy in
+moulded brick and carved stone. Plain, sombre, with brick walls and heavy
+stone mullions to low-browed windows, the Manor House stood in the midst
+of gardens such as the modern millionaire may long for, but which only the
+grey old gardener Time can create.
+
+There was more than a mile of yew hedge, eight feet high, and three
+feet broad, walling in flower garden and physic garden, the latter the
+particular care of the house-mothers of previous generations, the former a
+paradise of those old flowers which bloom and breathe sweet odours in the
+pages of Shakespeare, and jewel the verse of Milton. The fritillary here
+opened its dusky spotted petals to drink the dews of May; and here, against
+a wall of darkest green, daffodils bloomed unruffled by March winds.
+
+Verily a garden of gardens; but when Angela came there in the chill
+February there were no flowers to welcome her, only the long, straight
+walks beside those walls of yew, and the dark shining waters of the moat
+and the fish-pond, reflecting the winter sun; and over all the scene a
+quiet as of the grave.
+
+A little colony of old servants had been left in the house, which had
+escaped confiscation, albeit the property of a notorious Malignant, perhaps
+chiefly on account of its insignificance, the bulk of the estate having
+been sold by Sir John in '44, when the king's condition was waxing
+desperate, and money was worth twice its value to those who clung to hope,
+and were ready to sacrifice their last jacobus in the royal cause. The poor
+little property--shrunk to a home-farm of ninety acres, a humble homestead,
+and the Manor House--may have been thought hardly worth selling; or Sir
+John's rights may have been respected out of regard for his son-in-law,
+who, on the maternal side, had kindred in high places under the
+Commonwealth, a fact of which Hyacinth occasionally reminded her husband,
+telling him that he was by hereditary instinct a rebel and a king-slayer.
+
+The farm had been taken to by Sir John's steward, a man who in politics was
+of the same easy temper as the Vicar of Bray in religion, and was a staunch
+Cromwellian so long as Oliver or Richard sat at Whitehall, or would have
+tossed up his cap and cheered for Monk, as Captain-General of Great
+Britain, had he been called upon to till his fields and rear his stock
+under a military despotism. It mattered little to any man living at ease in
+a fat Buckinghamshire valley what King or Commonwealth ruled in London, so
+long as there was a ready market at Aylesbury or Thame for all the farm
+could produce, and civil war planted neither drake nor culverin on Brill
+Hill.
+
+The old servants had vegetated as best they might in the old house, their
+wages of the scantiest; but to live and die within familiar walls was
+better than to fare through a world which had no need of them. The younger
+members of the household had scattered, and found new homes; but the
+grey-haired cook was still in her kitchen; the old butler still wept over
+his pantry, where a dozen or so of spoons, and one battered tankard of
+Heriot's make, were all that remained of that store of gold and silver
+which had been his pride forty years ago, when Charles was bringing home
+his fair French bride, and old Thames at London was alight with fire-works
+and torches, and alive with music and singing, as the city welcomed its
+young Queen, and when Reuben Holden was a lad in the pantry, learning to
+polish a salver or a goblet, and sorely hectored by his uncle the butler.
+
+Reuben, and Marjory, the old cook, famous in her day as any _cordon-bleu_,
+were the sole representatives of the once respectable household; but a
+couple of stout wenches had been hired from the cluster of labourers'
+hovels that called itself a village; and these had been made to drudge as
+they had never drudged before in the few days of warning which prepared
+Reuben for his master's return.
+
+Fires had been lighted in rooms where mould and mildew had long prevailed;
+wainscots had been scrubbed and polished till the whole house reeked
+of bees-wax and turpentine, to a degree that almost overpowered those
+pervading odours of damp and dry rot, which can curiously exist together.
+The old furniture had been made as bright as faded fabrics and worm-eaten
+wood could be made by labour; and the leaping light of blazing logs,
+reflected on the black oak panelling, gave a transient air of cheerfulness
+to the spacious dining-parlour where Sir John and his daughter took their
+first meal in the old home. And if to Angela's eye, accustomed to the
+Italian loftiness of the noble mansions on the Thames, the broad oak
+crossbeams seemed coming down upon her head, there was at least an air of
+homely snugness in the low darkly coloured room.
+
+On that first evening there had been much to interest and engage her. She
+had the old house to explore, and dim childish memories to recall. Here was
+the room where her mother died, the room in which she herself had first
+seen the light--perhaps not until a month or so after her birth, since
+the seventeenth-century baby was not flung open-eyed into her birthday
+sunshine, but was swaddled and muffled in a dismal apprenticeship to life.
+The chamber had been hung with "blacks" for a twelvemonth, Reuben told her,
+as he escorted her over the house, and unlocked the doors of disused rooms.
+
+The tall bedstead with its red and yellow stamped velvet curtains and
+carved ebony posts looked like an Indian temple. One might expect to
+see Buddha squatting on the embroidered counterpane--the work of half a
+lifetime. When the curtains were drawn back, a huge moth flew out of the
+darkness, and spun and wheeled round the room with an awful humming noise,
+and to the superstitious mind might have suggested a human soul embodied in
+this phantasmal greyness, with power of sound in such excess of its bulk.
+
+"Sir John never used the room after her ladyship's death," Reuben
+explained, "though 'tis the best bed-chamber. He has always slept in the
+blue room, which is at the furthest end of the gallery from the room that
+has been prepared for madam. We call that the garden room, and it is mighty
+pretty in summer."
+
+In summer! How far it seemed to summer-time in Angela's thoughts! What a
+long gulf of nothingness to be bridged over, what a dull level plain to
+cross, before June and the roses could come round again, bringing with them
+the memory of last summer; and the days she had lived under the same roof
+with Fareham, and the evenings when they had sat in the same room, or
+loitered on the terrace, pausing now and then beside an Italian vase of
+gaudy flowers to look at this or that, or to watch the mob on the river;
+and those rare golden days, like that at Sayes Court, which she had spent
+in some excursion with Fareham and Henriette.
+
+"I hope madam likes the chamber we have prepared for her?" the old man
+said, as she stood dreaming.
+
+"Yes, my good friend, it is very comfortable. My woman complained of the
+smoky chimney in her chamber; but no doubt we shall mend that by-and-by."
+
+"It would be strange if a gentlewoman's servant found not something to
+grumble about," said Reuben; "they have ever less work to do than any one
+else in the house, and ever make more trouble than their mistresses. I'll
+settle the hussy, with madam's leave."
+
+"Nay, pray, Mr. Reuben, no harshness. She is a willing, kind-hearted girl,
+and we shall find plenty of work for her in this big house where there are
+so few servants."
+
+"Oh, there's work enough for sure, if she'll do it, and is no fine city
+madam that will scream at sight of a mouse, belike."
+
+"She is a girl I had out of Oxfordshire."
+
+"Oh, if she comes out of Oxfordshire, from his lordship's estate, I dare
+swear she is a good girl. I hate your London trash; and I think the great
+fire would have been a blessing in disguise if it had swept away most of
+such trumpery."
+
+"Oh, sir, if a Romanist were to say as much as that!" said Angela,
+laughing.
+
+"Oh, madam, I am not one of they fools that say because half London was
+burnt the Papishes must have set it on fire. What good would the burning of
+it do 'em, poor souls? And now they are to pay double taxes, as if it was
+a sure thing their faggots kindled the blaze. I know how kind and sweet a
+soul a Papish may be, though she do worship idols; for I had the honour to
+serve your ladyship's mother from the hour she first entered this house
+till the day I smuggled the French priest by the back stairs to carry her
+the holy oils. Ah! she was a noble and lovely lady. Madam's eyes are of her
+colour; and, indeed, madam favours her mother more than my Lady Fareham
+does."
+
+"Have you seen Lady Fareham of late years?"
+
+"Ay, madam, she came here in her coach-and-six the summer before the
+pestilence, with her two beautiful children, and a party of ladies and
+gentlemen. They rode here from his Grace of Buckingham's new mansion by
+the Thames--Clefden, I think they call it; and they do say his Grace do so
+lavish and squander money in the building of it, that belike he will be
+ruined and dead before his palace be finished. There were three coaches
+full, with servants and what not. And they brought wine, and capons ready
+dressed, and confectionery, and I helped to serve a collation for them in
+the garden. And after they had feasted merrily, with a vast quantity of
+sparkling French wine, they all rushed through the house like madcaps,
+laughing and chattering, regular French magpies, for there was more of 'em
+French than English, her ladyship leading them, till she comes to the door
+of this room, and finds it locked, and she begins to thump upon the panels
+like a spoilt child, and calls, 'Reuben, Reuben, what is your mystery? Sure
+this must be the ghost-chamber! Open, open, instantly.' And I answered her
+quietly, ''Tis the chamber where that sweet angel, your ladyship's mother,
+lay in state, and it has never been opened to strangers since she died.'
+And all in the midst of her mirth, the dear young lady burst out weeping,
+and cried, 'My sweet, sweet mother! I remember the last smile she gave me
+as if it was yesterday.' And then she dropped on her knees and crossed
+herself, and whispered a prayer, with her face close against the door;
+and I knew that she was praying for her lady-mother, as the way of your
+religion is, madam, to pray for the dead; and sure, though it is a simple
+thing, it can do no harm; and to my thinking, when all the foolishness is
+taken out of religion the warmth and the comfort seem to go too; for I know
+I never used to feel a bit more comfortable after a two hours' sermon, when
+I was an Anabaptist."
+
+"Are you not an Anabaptist now, Reuben?"
+
+"Lord forbid, madam! I have been a member of the Church of England ever
+since his Majesty's restoration brought the Vicar to his own again, and
+gave us back Christmas Day, and the organ, and the singing-boys."
+
+Angela's life at the Manor was so colourless that the first blossoming of a
+familiar flower was an event to note and to remember. Life within convent
+walls would have been scarcely more tranquil or more monotonous. Sir John
+rode with his hounds three or four times a week, or was about the fields
+superintending the farming operations, walking beside the ploughman as he
+drove his furrow, or watching the scattering of the seed. Or he was in
+the narrow woodlands which still belonged to him, and Angela, taking her
+solitary walk at the close of day, heard his axe ringing through the wintry
+air.
+
+It was a peaceful, and should have been a pleasant, life, for father and
+for daughter. Angela told herself that God had been very good to her in
+providing this safe haven from tempestuous seas, this quiet little world,
+where the pulses of passion beat not; where existence was like a sleep, a
+gradual drifting away of days and weeks, marked only by the changing note
+of birds, the deepening umber on the birch, the purpling of beech buds, and
+the starry celandine shining out of grassy banks that had so lately been
+obliterated under the drifted snow.
+
+"I ought to be happy," she said to herself of a morning, when she rose from
+her knees, and stood looking across the garden to the grassy hills beyond,
+while the beads of her rosary slipped through her languid fingers--"I ought
+to be happy."
+
+And then she turned from the sunny window with a sigh, and went down the
+dark, echoing staircase to the breakfast parlour, where her own little
+silver chocolate-pot looked ridiculously small beside Sir John's quart
+tankard, and where the crisp, golden rolls, baked in the French fashion
+by the maid from Chilton, who had been taught by Lord Fareham's _chef_,
+contrasted with the chine of beef and huge farmhouse loaf that accompanied
+the knight's old October.
+
+After all his Continental wanderings Sir John had come back to substantial
+English fare with an unabated relish; and Angela had to sit down, day after
+day, to a huge joint and an overloaded dish of poultry, and to reassure her
+father when he expressed uneasiness because she ate so little.
+
+"Women do not want much food, sir. Martha's rolls, and our honey, and the
+conserves old Marjory makes so well, are better for me than the meat which
+suits your heartier appetite."
+
+"Faith, child, if I played no stouter a part at table than you do, I should
+soon be fit to play living skeleton at Aylesbury Fair. And I dubitate as to
+your diet-loaves and confectionery suiting you better than a slice of chine
+or sirloin, for you have a pale cheek and a pensive eye that smite me to
+the heart. Indeed, I begin to question if I was kind to take you from all
+the pleasures of the town to be mewed up here with a rusty old soldier."
+
+"Indeed, sir, I could be happier nowhere than here. I have had enough of
+London pleasures; and I was meditating upon returning to the convent, when
+you came to put an end to all my perplexities; and, sir, I think God sent
+you to me when I most needed a father's love."
+
+She went to him and knelt by his chair, hiding her tearful eyes against the
+cushioned arm. But, though he could not see her face, he heard the break in
+her voice, and he bent down and lifted her drooping head on his breast, and
+kissed the soft brown hair, and embraced her very tenderly.
+
+"Sweetheart, thou hast all a father's love, and it is happiness to me to
+have thee here; but old as I am, and with so little cunning to read a
+maiden's heart, I can read clear enough to know thou art not happy.
+Whisper, dearest. Is it a sweetheart who sighs for thy favours far off, and
+will not beard this old lion in his den? My gentle Angela would make no ill
+choice. Fear not to trust me, my heart. I will love whom you love, favour
+whom you favour. I am no tyrant, that my sweet daughter should grow pale
+with keeping secrets from me."
+
+"Dear father, you are all goodness. No, there is no one--no one! I am happy
+with you. I have no one in the world but you, and, in a so much lesser
+degree of love, my sister and her children--"
+
+"And Fareham. He should be to you as a brother. He is of a black
+melancholic humour, and not a man whom women love; but he has a heart of
+gold, and must regard you with grateful affection for your goodness to him
+when he was sick. Hyacinth is never weary of expatiating upon your devotion
+in that perilous time."
+
+"She is foolish to talk of services I would have given as willingly to a
+sick beggar," Angela answered, impatiently.
+
+Her face was still hidden against her father's breast; but she lifted her
+head presently, and the pale calmness of her countenance reassured him.
+
+"Well, it is uncommon strange," he said, "if one so fair has no sweetheart
+among all the sparks of Whitehall."
+
+"Lord Fareham hates Whitehall. We have only attended there at great
+festivals, when my sister's absence would have been a slight upon her
+Majesty and the Duchess."
+
+"But my star, though seldom shining there, should have drawn some
+satellites to her orbit. You see, dearest, I can catch the note of Court
+flattery. Nay, I will press no questions. My girl shall choose her own
+partner; provided the man is honest and a loyal servant of the King. Her
+old father shall set no stumbling-block in the high-road to her happiness.
+What right has one who is almost a pauper to stipulate for a wealthy
+son-in-law?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+PATIENT, NOT PASSIONATE.
+
+
+The quiet days went on, and the old Cavalier settled down into a tranquil
+happiness, which comforted his daughter with the feeling of duty
+prosperously fulfilled. To make this dear old man happy, to be his
+companion and friend, to share in his rides and rambles, and of an evening
+to play the games he loved on the old shovel-board in the hall, or an
+old-fashioned game at cards, or backgammon beside the fire in the panelled
+parlour, reconciled her to the melancholy of an existence from which hope
+had vanished like a light extinguished. It seemed to her as if she had
+dropped back into the old life with her great-aunt. The Manor House was
+just a little gayer than the Flemish Convent--for the voices and footsteps
+of the few inhabitants had a freer sound, which made the few seem more
+populous than the many. And then there were the dogs. What a powerful
+factor in home life those four-footed friends were! Out-of-doors a stone
+barn had been turned into a kennel for five couple of foxhounds; indoors a
+couple of setters, sent by a friend over sea from Waterford, had insinuated
+themselves into the parlour, where they established themselves as household
+favourites, to the damage of those higher hereditary qualities which fitted
+them for distinction with the guns. Indeed, the old Knight was too fond of
+his fireside companions to care very much if he missed a bird now and then
+because Cataline was over-fed or Caesar disobedient. They stood sentinel on
+each side of his chair at dinner, like supporters to a coat-of-arms. Angela
+had her own particular favourite in a King Charles's spaniel. It was the
+very dog which had first greeted her in the silence of the plague-stricken
+house. She had chosen this one from the canine troop when her sister
+offered her the gift of a dog at parting, though Hyacinth had urged her to
+take something younger than this, which was over five years old.
+
+"He will die just when you love him best," she said.
+
+"Nay; but such partings must come. I love this one because he was with me
+in fear and sadness. He used to cling to me, and look up and lick my face,
+as if he were telling me to hope, when my brother seemed marked for death."
+
+"Poor Fareham! Did you desire every dog in the house--and my spaniels are
+of the same breed as the King's, and worth fifty pound apiece--you have
+a right to take them. But, indeed, I would rather you chose a younger
+dog--and with a shorter nose; but, of course, if you like this one
+best----"
+
+Angela held by her first choice, and Ganymede was the companion of all her
+hours, walked and lived with her, and slept on a satin cushion at the foot
+of her spacious four-post bed, and fretted and whined if she left him shut
+in an empty room for half an hour; yet with all his refinements, and his
+air of being as dainty a gentleman as any spark of quality, he had a gross
+passion for the kitchen, and after nibbling sweet cakes delicately out
+of his mistress's taper fingers, he would waddle through a labyrinth of
+passages, and find his way to the hog-tub, there to wallow in slush and
+broken victuals, till he all but drowned himself in a flood of pot-liquor.
+It was hard to reconcile so much beauty and grace, such eloquent eyes and
+satin coat, with tastes and desires so vulgar; and Angela sighed over him
+when a scullion brought him to her, greasy and penitent, to crouch at her
+feet, and deprecate her disgust with an abject tail.
+
+Oh, tranquil, duteous life, how fair it might have seemed, as spring
+advanced, and the garden smiled with the promise of summer, were it not for
+that aching sense of loss, the some one missing, whose absence made all
+things grey and cold!
+
+Yes, she knew now, fully realising as she had never done before, how long
+and how utterly her life had been influenced by an affection which even to
+contemplate was mortal sin. Yet to extinguish memory was not within her
+power. She looked back and remembered how Fareham's protecting love had
+enfolded her with its gentle warmth, in those happy days at Chilton; how
+all she knew of poetry and the drama, of ethics and philosophy, had been
+learnt from him. She recalled his evident delight in opening the rich
+treasures of a mind which he had never ceased to cultivate, even amidst the
+vicissitudes of a soldier's life, in making her familiar with the writers
+he loved, and teaching her to estimate, and to discuss them. And in
+all their talk together he had been for the most part careful to avoid
+disparagement of the religion in which she believed--so that it was only
+some chance revelation of the infidel's narrow outlook that reminded her of
+his unbelief.
+
+Yes, his love had been round her like an atmosphere; and she had been
+exquisitely happy while that unquestioning affection was hers. On her part
+there had been neither doubt nor fear. It seemed the most natural thing in
+the world that he should be fond of her and she of him. Affinity had made
+them brother and sister; and then they had been together in sickness and in
+peril of death. It might be true, as he himself had affirmed, that her
+so happy arrival had saved his life; since just those hours between the
+departure of his attendants and the physician's evening visit may have been
+the crisis of his disease.
+
+Well, it was past--the exquisite bliss, the unconscious sin, the
+confidence, the danger. All had vanished into the grave of irrecoverable
+days.
+
+She had heard nothing from Denzil since she left London, nor had she
+acknowledged his letter. Her silence had doubtless angered him, and all
+was at an end between them, and this was what she wished. Hyacinth and her
+children were at Chilton, whence came letters of complaining against the
+dulness of the country, where his lordship hunted four times a week, and
+spent all the rest of his time in his library, appearing only "at our
+stupid heavy meals; and that not always, since on his hunting days he is
+far afield when I have to sit down to the intolerable two-o'clock dinner,
+and make a pretence of eating--as if anybody with more intellectuals than
+a sheep could dine; or as if appetite came by staring at green fields! You
+remember how in London supper was the only meal I ever cared for. There
+is some grace in a repast that comes after conversation and music, or the
+theatre, or a round of visits--a table dazzling with lights, and men and
+women ready to amuse, and be amused. But to sit down in broad daylight,
+when one has scarce swallowed one's morning chocolate, and face a
+sweltering sirloin, or open a smoking veal pie! Indeed, dearest, our whole
+method of feeding smacks of a vulgar brutishness, more appropriate to a
+company of Topinambous than to persons of quality. Why, oh, why must these
+reeking hecatombs load our tables, when they might as easily be kept out of
+sight upon a buffet? The spectacle of huge mountains of meat, the steam and
+odour of rank boiled and roast under one's very nostrils, change appetite
+to nausea, and would induce a delicate person to rise in disgust and fly
+from the dining-room. Mais, je ne fais que divaguer; and almost forget what
+it was I was so earnest to tell thee when I began my letter.
+
+"Sir Denzil Warner has been over here, his ostensible motive a civil
+inquiry after my health; but I could see that his actual purpose was to
+hear of you. I told him how happily your simple soul has accommodated
+itself to an almost conventual seclusion, and a very inferior style of
+living--whereupon he smiled his rapture, and praised you to the skies.
+'Would that she could accommodate herself to my house as easily,' he said;
+'she should have every indulgence that an adoring husband could yield her.'
+And then he said much more, but as lovers always sing the same repetitive
+song, and have no more strings to their lyre than the ancients had before
+Mercury expanded it, I confess to not listening over carefully, and will
+leave you to imagine the eloquence of a manly and honourable love. Ah,
+sweetheart! you do wrong to reject him. Thou hast a quiet soothing
+prettiness of thine own, but art no blazing star of beauty, like the
+Stewart, to bring a King to thy feet--he would have married her if poor
+Catherine had not disappointed him by her recovery--and to take a Duke as
+_pis aller_. Believe me, love, it were wise of you to become Lady Warner,
+with an unmortgaged estate, and a husband who, in these Republican times,
+may rise to distinction. He is your only earnest admirer; and a love so
+steadfast, backed by a fortune so respectable, should not be discarded
+lightly."
+
+Over all these latter passages in her sister's letter Angela's eye ran
+with a scornful carelessness. Her womanly pride revolted at such petty
+schooling--that she should be bidden to accept this young man gratefully,
+because he was her only suitor. No one else had ever cared for her pale
+insignificance. She looked at her clouded image in the oblong glass that
+hung on the panel above her secrétaire, and whose reflection made any
+idea of her own looks rather speculative than precise. It showed her a
+thoughtful face, too pale for beauty; yet she could but note the harmony of
+lines which recalled that Venetian type familiar to her eye in the Titians
+and Tintorets at Fareham House.
+
+"I doubt I am good-looking enough for any one to be satisfied with the
+outward semblance who valued the soul within," she thought, as she turned
+from the glass with a mournful sigh.
+
+It was not of Denzil she was thinking, but of that other who in slow
+contemplative days in the library where he had taught her what books
+she ought to love, and where she might never more enter, must naturally
+sometimes remember her, and cast some backward thoughts to the hours they
+had spent together.
+
+Hyacinth's letter of matronly counsel was but a week old when Sir
+John surprised his daughter one morning, as they sat at table, by the
+announcement of a visitor to stay in the house.
+
+"You will order the west room to be got ready, Angela, and bid Marjory Cook
+serve us some of her savourest dishes while Sir Denzil stays here."
+
+"Sir Denzil!"
+
+"Yes, ma mie, Sir Denzil! Ventregris, the girl stares as if I had said Sir
+Bevis of Southampton, or Sir Guy of Warwick! I knew this young gentleman's
+father before the troubles--an honest man, though he took the wrong side He
+paid for his perversity with his life; so we'll say requiescat. The young
+man is a fine young man, whom I would fain have something nearer to me than
+he is. So at a hint from your sister I have asked him to bring his fishing
+tackle and whip our streams for a May trout or two. He may catch a finer
+fish than trout, perhaps, while he is a-fishing; if you will be his guide
+through the meadows."
+
+"Father, how could you----"
+
+"Ah! thou art a sly one, fair mistress. Who was it told me there was no
+one? 'No one, dear father, and indeed, sir, I was thinking of the convent
+when you came to London,' while here was as handsome a spark as one would
+meet in a day's march, sighing and dying for you."
+
+"Father, I do protest to you----" she began, with a pale distressed look
+that vouched for her earnestness; but the Knight had his face in the
+tankard, and set it down only to pursue his own train of thought.
+
+"If it had not have been for that little bird at Chilton you might have
+hoodwinked me as blind as ever gerfalcon was hooded. Well, the young man
+will be here before evening. I would not force your inclinations, but it is
+the dearest desire of my heart to see you happily married before I blow out
+the candle, and bid my last good night. And a man of honour, handsome and
+of handsomest fortune, is not to be slighted."
+
+Angela's spirit rose against this recurrence of her sister's sermon.
+
+"If Sir Denzil is coming to this house as my suitor, I will go to Louvain
+without an hour's delay that I can help," she said resolutely.
+
+"Why, what a vixen! Nay, dearest, there is no need for that angry flush.
+The young man is too courteous to plague you with unwelcome civilities.
+I saw him in London at the tennis court, and was friendly to him for his
+father's memory, knowing nothing of his desire to be my son-in-law. He is a
+fine player at that royal game, and a fine man. He comes here this evening
+as my friend; and if you please to treat him disdainfully, I cannot help
+it. But, indeed, I wonder as much as your sister why you should not
+reciprocate this gentleman's love."
+
+"When you were young, father, did you love the first comer; only because
+she was handsome and civil?"
+
+"No, child; I had seen many handsome women before I met your mother. She
+came over in '35 with the Marquise, who had been lady of honour to Queen
+Marie before the Princess Henriette married our King, and Queen Henriette
+was fond of her, and invited her to come to London, and she divided her
+life between the two countries till the troubles, when she was one of the
+first to scamper off, as you know. My wife was little more than a child
+when I saw her at Court, hiding behind her mother's large sleeves. I had
+seen handsomer women; but she was the first whose face went straight to
+my heart. And it has dwelt there ever since," he concluded, with a sudden
+break in his voice.
+
+"Then you can comprehend, dear sir, that a man may be honourable, and
+courteous, and handsome, and yet not win a woman's love."
+
+"Ah, it is not the man; it is love that should win, sweetheart. Love is
+worthy of love. When that is the true coin it should buy its reward. Indeed
+I have rarely seen it otherwise. Love begets love. Louise de la Vallière is
+not the handsomest woman at the French Court. Her complexion has suffered
+from small-pox, and she has a defective gait; but the King discovered a so
+fond and romantic attachment to his person, a love ashamed of loving, the
+very poetry of affection; and that discovery made him her slave. The Court
+beauties--sultanas splendid as Vashti--look on in angry wonder. Louise is
+adored because she began by adoring. Mind, I do not praise or excuse her,
+for 'tis a mortal sin to love a married man, and steal him from his wife.
+Foolish child, how your cheek crimsons! I do wrong to shock your innocence
+with my babble of a King's mistress."
+
+Denzil arrived at sunset, on horseback, with a mounted servant in
+attendance, carrying his saddle-bags and fishing tackle. It was but a short
+day's ride from Oxford. Fareham's rides with the hounds must have brought
+him sometimes within a few miles of the Manor Moat Hyacinth and her
+children might have ridden over in their coach; and indeed she had promised
+her sister a visit in more than one of her letters. But there had been
+always something to postpone the expedition--company at home, or bad
+weather, or a fit of the vapours--so that the sisters had been as much
+asunder as if the elder had been in Yorkshire or Northumberland.
+
+Denzil brought news of the household at Chilton. Lady Fareham was as
+charming as ever, and though she had complained very often of bad health,
+she had been so lively and active whenever the whim took her, riding with
+hawk and hound, visiting about the neighbourhood, driving into Oxford, that
+Denzil was of opinion her ailments were of the spirits only, a kind of
+rustic malady to which most fine ladies were subject, the nostalgia of
+paving-stones and oil lamps. Henriette--she now insisted upon discarding
+her nick-name--was less volatile than in London, and missed her aunt
+sorely, and quarrelled with mademoiselle, who was painfully strict upon all
+points of speech and manners. George's days of unalloyed idleness were also
+ended, for the Roman Catholic priest was now a resident in the house as
+the little boy's tutor, besides teaching 'Henriette the rudiments, and
+instructing her in her mother's religion.
+
+Denzil told them even of the guests he had met at the Abbey; but of the
+master of the house his lips spoke not, till Sir John questioned him.
+
+"And Fareham? Has he that same air of not belonging to the family which I
+remarked of him in London?"
+
+"His lordship has ever an air of being aloof from everybody," Denzil
+answered gravely. "He is solitary even in his sports, and his indoor life
+is mostly buried in a book."
+
+"Ah, those books, they will be the ruin of nations! As books multiply,
+great actions will grow less. Life's golden hours will be wasted in
+dreaming over the fancies of dead men; and the world will be over-full of
+brooding philosophers like Descartes, or pamphleteers like your friend Mr.
+Milton."
+
+"Nay, sir, the world is richer for such a man as John Milton, who has
+composed the grandest poem in our language--an epic on a scale and subject
+as sublime as the Divine Comedy of Dante."
+
+"I never saw Mr. Dante's comedy acted, and confess myself ignorant of its
+merits."
+
+"Comedy, sir, with Dante, is but a name. The Italian poem is an epic, and
+not a play. Mr. Milton's poem will be given to the world shortly, though,
+alas! he will reap little substantial reward for the intellectual labour
+of years. Poetry is not a marketable commodity in England, save when it
+flatters a royal patron, or takes the vulgarer form of a stage-play. But
+this poem of Mr. Milton's has been the solace of his darkened life. You
+have heard, perhaps, of his blindness?"
+
+"Yes, he had to forego his office as Latin Secretary to that villain. To my
+mind the decay of sight was a judgment upon him for having written against
+his murdered King, even to the denial of his Majesty's own account of his
+sufferings. But I confess that even if the man had been a loyal subject,
+I have little admiration for that class; scribblers and pamphleteers,
+brooders over books, crouchers in the chimney-corner, who have never
+trailed a pike or slept under the open sky. And seeing this vast increase
+of book-learning, and the arising of such men as Hobbes, to question our
+religion--and Milton to assail monarchy--I can but believe those who
+say that this old England has taken the downward bent; that, as we are
+dwindling in stature, so we are decaying in courage and capacity for
+action."
+
+Denzil listened respectfully to the old man's disquisitions over his
+morning drink; while Reuben stood at the sideboard carving a ham or a
+round of powdered beef; and while Angela sipped her chocolate out of the
+porcelain cup which Hyacinth had bought for her at the Middle Exchange,
+where curiosities from China and the last inventions from Paris were always
+to be had before they were seen anywhere else. Nothing could be more
+reverential than the young man's bearing to his host, while his quiet
+friendliness set Angela at her ease, and made her think that he had
+abandoned his suit, and henceforward aspired only to such a tranquil
+friendship as they had enjoyed at Chilton before any word of love had been
+spoken.
+
+Apart from the question of love and marriage, his presence was in no manner
+displeasing to her; indeed, the long days in that sequestered valley lost
+something of their grey monotony now that she had a companion in all her
+intellectual occupations. Fondly as she loved her father, she had not been
+able to hide from herself the narrowness of his education and the blind
+prejudice which governed his ideas upon almost every subject, from politics
+to natural history. Of the books which make the greater part of a solitary
+life she could never talk to him; and it was here that she had so sorely
+missed the counsellor and friend, who had taught her to love and to
+comprehend the great poets of the past--Homer and Virgil, Dante and
+Tasso, and the deep melancholy humour of Cervantes, and, most of all, the
+inexhaustible riches of the Elizabethans.
+
+Denzil was of a temper as thoughtful, but his studies had taken a different
+direction. He was not even by taste or apprehension a poet. Had he been
+called upon to criticise his tutor's compositions, he might, like Johnson,
+have objected to the metaphoric turns of Lycidas, and have missed the
+melody of lines as musical as the nightingale. In that great poem of which
+he had been privileged to transcribe many of the finest passages from the
+lips of the poet, he admired rather the heroic patience of the blind
+author than the splendour of the verse. He was more impressed by the
+schoolmaster's learning than by that God-given genius which lifted that one
+Englishman above every other of his age and country. No, he was eminently
+prosaic, had sucked prose and plain-thinking from his mother's breast; but
+he was not the less an agreeable companion for a girl upon whose youth an
+unnatural solitude had begun to weigh heavily.
+
+All that one mind can impart to another of a widely different fibre, Denzil
+had learnt from Milton in that most impressionable period of boyhood which
+he had spent in the small house in Holborn, whose back rooms looked out
+over the verdant spaces of Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Lord Newcastle's
+palace had not yet begun to rise from its foundations, and where the
+singing birds had not been scared away by the growth of the town. A theatre
+now stood where the boy and a fellow-scholar had played trap and ball,
+and the stately houses of Queen Street hard by were alive with rank and
+fashion.
+
+In addition to the classical curriculum which Milton had taught with the
+solemn earnestness of one in whom learning is a religion, Denzil had
+acquired a store of miscellaneous knowledge from the great Republican;
+and most interesting among these casual instructions had been the close
+acquaintance with nature gained in the course of many a rustic ramble in
+the country lanes beyond Gray's Inn, or sauntering eastward along the banks
+of the limpid Lee, or in the undulating meadows beside Sir Hugh Middleton's
+river. Mixed with plain facts about plant or flower, animal or insect,
+Milton's memory was stored with the quaint absurdities of the Hermetic
+philosophy, that curious mixture of deep-reaching theories and old women's
+superstitions, the experience of the peasant transmuted by the imagination
+of the adept. Sound and practical as the poet had ever shown himself--save
+where passion got the upper hand of common sense, as in his advocacy
+of divorce--he was yet not entirely free from a leaning to Baconian
+superstitions, and may, with Gesner, have believed that the pickerel weed
+could engender pike, and that frogs could turn to slime in winter, and
+become frogs again in spring. Whatever rags of old-world fatuity may have
+lingered in that strong brain, he had been not the less a delightful
+teacher, and had imparted an ardent love of nature to his little family of
+pupils in that peripatetic school between hawthorn hedges or in the open
+fields by the Lee.
+
+And now, in quiet rambles with Angela, in the midst of a landscape
+transfigured by that vernal beauty which begins with the waning of April,
+and is past and vanished before the end of May, Denzil loved to expound the
+wonders of the infinitesimal; the insect life that sparkled and hummed in
+the balmy air, or flashed like living light among the dewy grasses; the
+life of plant and flower, which seemed almost as personal and conscious a
+form of existence; since it was difficult to believe there was no sense of
+struggle or of joy in those rapid growths which shot out from a tangle of
+dark undergrowth upward to the sunlight, no fondness in the wild vines that
+clung so close to some patriarchal trunk, covering decay with the
+beautiful exuberance of youth. Denzil taught her to realise the wonders of
+creation--most wonderful when most minute--for beyond the picturesque
+and lovely in nature, he showed her those marvels of order, and law, and
+adaptation, which speak to the naturalist with a stronger language than
+beauty.
+
+There was a tranquil pleasure in these rustic walks, which beguiled her
+into forgetfulness that this man had ever sought to be more to her than he
+was now--a respectful, unobtrusive friend. Of London, and the tumultuous
+life going on there, he had scarcely spoken, save to tell her that he meant
+to stand for Henley at the next Parliament; nor had he alluded to the past
+at Chilton; nor ever of his own accord had he spoken Lord Fareham's name;
+indeed, that name was studiously avoided by them both; and if Denzil had
+never before suspected Angela of an unhappy preference for one whom she
+could not love without sin, he might have had some cause for such suspicion
+in the eagerness with which she changed the drift of the conversation
+whenever it approached that forbidden subject.
+
+From his Puritanical bringing up, the theory of self-surrender and
+deprivation ever kept before him, Denzil had assuredly learnt to possess
+his soul in patience; and throughout all that smiling month of May, while
+he whipped the capricious streams that wound about the valley, with Angela
+for the willing companion of his saunterings from pool to pool, he never
+once alarmed her by any hint of a warmer feeling than friendship; indeed,
+he thought of himself sometimes as one who lived in an enchanted world,
+where to utter a certain fatal word would be to break the spell; and
+whatever momentary impulse or passionate longing, engendered by a look, a
+smile, the light touch of a hand, the mere sense of proximity, might move
+him to speak of his love, he had sufficient self-command to keep the fatal
+words unspoken. He meant to wait till the last hour of his visit. Only when
+separation was imminent would he plead his cause again. Thus at the worst
+he would have lost no happy hours of her company. And, in the mean time,
+since she was always kind, and seemed to grow daily more familiar and at
+ease in his society, he dared hope that affection for him and forgetfulness
+of that other were growing side by side in her mind.
+
+In this companionship Angela learnt many of the secrets and subtleties of
+the angler's craft, as acquired by her teacher's personal experience, or
+expounded in that delightful book, then less than twenty years old, which
+has ever been the angler's gospel. Often after following the meandering
+water till a gentle weariness invited them to rest, Angela and Denzil
+seated themselves on a sheltered bank and read their Izaak Walton together,
+both out of the same volume, he pleased to point out his favourite passages
+and to watch her smile as she read.
+
+Before May was ended, she knew old Izaak almost as well as Denzil, and had
+learnt to throw a fly, and to choose the likeliest spot and the happiest
+hour of the day for a good trout; had learnt to watch the clouds and
+cloud-shadows with an angler's keen interest; and had amused herself with
+the manufacture of an artificial minnow, upon Walton's recipe, devoting
+careful labour and all the resources of her embroidery basket--silks and
+silver thread--to perfecting the delicate model, which, when completed, she
+presented smilingly to Denzil, who was strangely moved by so childish a
+toy, and had some difficulty in suppressing his emotion as he held the
+glistening silken fish in his hands, and thought how her tapering fingers
+had caressed it, and how much of her very self seemed, as he watched her,
+to have been enwrought with the fabric. So poor, so trivial a thing; but
+her first gift! If she had tossed him a flower, plucked that moment, he
+would have treasured it all his life; but this, which had cost her so
+much careful work, was far more than any casual blossom. Something of the
+magnetism of her mind had passed into the silver thread drawn so daintily
+through her rosy fingers--something of the soft light in her eyes had mixed
+with the blended colours of the silk. Foolish fancies these, but in the
+gravest man's love there is a vein of folly.
+
+Sometimes they rode with Sir John, and in this way explored the
+neighbourhood, which was rich in historical associations--some of the
+remote past, as when King John kept Christmas at Brill; but chiefly of
+those troubled times through which Sir John Kirkland had lived, an active
+participator in that deadly drama. He showed them the site of the garrison
+at Brill, and trod every foot of the earthworks to demonstrate how the hill
+had been fortified. He had commanded in the defence against Hampden and
+his greencoats--that regiment of foot raised in his pastoral shire, whose
+standard bore on one side the watchword of the Parliament, "God with us,"
+and on the other Hampden's own device, "_Vestigia nulla retrorsum_."
+
+"'Twas a legend to frighten some of us, who had no Latin," said Sir John;
+"but we put his bumpkin greencoats to the rout, and trampled that insolent
+flag in the mire."
+
+All was peaceful now in the hamlet on the hill. Women and children were
+sitting upon sunny doorsteps, with their pillows on their knees and their
+bobbins moving quickly in dexterous fingers, busy at the lace-making which
+had been established in Buckinghamshire more than a century before by
+Catherine of Aragon, whose dowry was derived from the revenues of Steeple
+Claydon. The Curate had returned to the grey old church, and rural life
+pursued its slumbrous course, scarce ruffled by rumours of maritime war,
+or plague, or fire. They rode to Thame--a stage on the journey to Oxford,
+Angela thought, as she noted the figures on a milestone, and at a flash her
+memory recalled that scene in the gardens by the river, when Fareham had
+spoken for the first time of his inner life, and she had seen the man
+behind the mask. She thought of her sister, so fair, so sweet, charming in
+her capriciousness even, yet not the woman to fill that unquiet heart,
+or satisfy that sombre and earnest nature. It was not by many words that
+Fareham had revealed himself. Her knowledge of his character and feelings
+went deeper than the knowledge that words can impart. It came from that
+constant unconscious study which a romantic girl devotes to the character
+of the man who first awakens her interest.
+
+Angela was grave and silent throughout the drive to Thame and the return
+home, riding for the most part in the rear of the two men, leaving Denzil
+to devote all his attention to Sir John, who was somewhat loquacious that
+afternoon, stimulated by the many memories of the troubled time which the
+road awakened. Denzil listened respectfully, and went never astray in his
+answers, but he looked back very often to the solitary rider who kept at
+some distance to avoid the dust.
+
+Sometimes in the early morning they all went with the otter hounds, the
+Knight on horseback, Denzil and Angela on foot, and spent two or three
+very active hours before breakfast in rousing the otter from his holt, and
+following every flash of his head upon the stream, with that briskness and
+active enjoyment which seem a part of the clear morning atmosphere, the
+inspiring breath of dewy fields and flowers unfaded by the sun. All that
+there was of girlishness in Angela's spirits was awakened by those merry
+morning scampers by the margin of the stream, which had often to be forded
+by the runners, with but' little heed of wet feet or splashed petticoat.
+The Parson and his daughters from the village of St Nicholas joined in the
+sport, and were invited to the morning drink and substantial breakfast
+afterwards, where the young ladies were lost in admiration of Angela's
+silver chocolate-pot and porcelain cups, while their clerical father owned
+to a distaste for all morning drinks except such as owed their flavour and
+strength to malt and hops.
+
+"If you had lived among green fields and damp marshes as long as I have,
+miss, you would know what poor stuff your chocolate is to fortify a man's
+bones against ague and rheumatism. I am told the Spaniards brought it from
+Mexico, where the natives eat nothing else, from which comes the copper
+colour of their skins."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Denzi's visit lasted over a month, during which time he rode into
+Oxfordshire twice, to see Lady Warner, stopping a night each time, lest
+that worthy person should fancy herself neglected.
+
+Sir John derived the utmost pleasure from the young man's company, who bore
+himself towards his host with a respectful courtesy that had gone out of
+fashion after the murder of the King, and was rarely met with in an age
+when elderly men were generally spoken of as "old puts," and considered
+proper subjects for "bubbling."
+
+To Denzil the old campaigner opened his heart more freely than he had ever
+done to any one except a brother in arms; and although he was resolute in
+upholding the cause of Monarchy against Republicanism, he owned to the
+natural disappointment which he had felt at the King's neglect of old
+friends, and reluctantly admitted that Charles, sauntering along Pall Mall
+with ruin at his heels, and the wickedest men and women in England for his
+chosen companions, was not a monarch to maintain and strengthen the public
+idea of the divinity that doth hedge a King.
+
+"Of all the lessons danger and adversity can teach he has learnt but
+one," said Sir John, with a regretful sigh. "He has learnt the Horatian
+philosophy--to snatch the pleasures of the day, and care nothing what may
+happen on the morrow. I do not wonder that predictions of a sudden end to
+this globe of ours should have been bruited about of late; for if lust
+and profaneness could draw down fire from heaven, London would be in as
+perilous a case as Gomorrah. But I doubt such particular judgments belonged
+but to the infancy of this world, when men believed in a Personal God,
+interested in all their concerns, watchful to bless or to punish. We have
+now but the God of Spinoza--a God who is in all things and everywhere about
+us, of whom this Creation in which we move is but the garment--a Universal
+Essence which should govern and inform all we are and all we do; but not
+the Judge and Father of His people, to be reached by prayer and touched by
+pity."
+
+"Ah, sir, our life here and hereafter is encompassed with mystery. To think
+is to be lost on the trackless ocean of doubt. The Papists have the easiest
+creed, for they believe that which they are taught, and take the mysteries
+of the unseen world at second hand from their Priests. A year ago, had I
+been happy enough to win your daughter, I should have tried my hardest to
+wean her from Rome; but I have lived and thought since then, and I have
+come to see that Calvinism is a religion of despair, and that the doctrine
+of Predestination involves contradictions as difficult to swallow as any
+fable of the Roman Church."
+
+"It is well that you should be prepared to let her keep her religion; for
+I doubt she has a stubborn affection for the creed she learnt in her
+childhood. Indeed, it was but the other day she talked of the cloister; and
+I fear she has all the disposition to that religious prison in which her
+great aunt lived contentedly for the space of a long lifetime. But it is
+for you, Denzil, to cure her of that fancy, and to spare me the pain of
+seeing my best-beloved child under the black veil."
+
+"Indeed, sir, if a love as earnest as man ever experienced--"
+
+"Yes, Denzil, I know you love her; and I love you almost as if you were my
+very son. In the years that went by after Hyacinth was born, before the
+beginning of trouble, I used to long for a son, and I am afraid I did
+sometimes distress my dear wife by dwelling too persistently upon
+disappointed hopes. And then came chaos--England in arms, a rebellious
+people, a King put upon his defence--and I had leisure to think of none but
+my royal master. And in the thick of the strife my poor lamb was born to
+me--the bringer of my life's great sorrow--and there was no more thought of
+sons. So, you see, friend, the place in my heart and home has waited empty
+for you. Win but yonder shy dove to consent, and we shall be of one family
+and of one mind, and I as happy as any broken-down campaigner in England
+can be--content to creep to the grave in obscurity, forgotten by the Prince
+whose father it is my dear memory to have served."
+
+"You loved your King, sir, I take it, with a personal affection."
+
+"Ah, Denzil, we all loved him. Even the common people--led as they were
+by hectoring preachers of sedition, of no more truth or honesty than the
+mountebanks that ply their knavish trade round Henry's statue on the Pont
+Neuf--even they, the very rabble, had their hours of loyalty. I rode with
+his Majesty from Royston to Hatfield, in '47, when the people filled the
+midsummer air with his name, from hearts melting with love and pity. They
+strewed the ways with boughs, and strewed the boughs with roses. So great
+honour has been seldom shown to a royal captive."
+
+"I take it that the lower class are no politicians, and loved their King
+for his private virtues."
+
+"Never was monarch worthier to be so esteemed. He was a man of deep
+affections, and it was perhaps his most fatal quality where he loved
+to love too much. I have no grudge against that beautiful and most
+accomplished woman he so worshipped, and who was ever gracious to me; but I
+cannot doubt that Henrietta Maria was his evil star. She had the fire and
+daring of her father, but none of his care and affection for the people.
+The daughter of the most beloved of kings had the instincts of a tyrant,
+and was ever urging her too pliant husband to unpopular measures. She
+wanted to set that little jewelled shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion,
+when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her
+foes. Her beauty and her grace might have done much, had she inherited with
+the pride of the Medici something of their finesse and suavity. But he
+loved her, Denzil, forgave all her follies, her lavish spending and
+wasteful splendour. 'My wife is a bad housekeeper,' I heard him say once,
+when she was hanging upon his chair as he sat at the end of the Council
+table. The palace accounts were on the table--three thousand pounds for
+a masque--extravagance only surpassed by Nicholas Fouquet twenty years
+afterwards, when he was squandering the public money. 'My wife is a bad
+housekeeper,' his Majesty said gently, and then he drew down the little
+French museau with a caressing hand, and kissed her in the presence of
+those greybeards."
+
+"His son is strangely unlike him in domestic matters."
+
+"His son has the manners of a Frenchman and the morals of a Turk. He is a
+despot to his wife and a slave to his mistress. There never was greater
+cruelty to a woman than his Majesty's treatment of Catherine while she was
+still but a stranger in the land, and when he forced his notorious paramour
+upon her as her lady of honour. Of honour, quotha! There was sorry store of
+honour in his conduct. He had need feel the sting of remorse t'other day
+when the poor lady was thought to be on her death-bed--so gentle,
+so affectionate, so broken to the long-suffering of consort-queens,
+apologising for having lived to trouble him. Ned Hyde has given me the
+whole story of that poor lady's subjugation, for he was behind the scenes,
+and in their secrets. Poor soul! Blood rushed from her ears and nostrils
+when that shameless woman was brought to her, and she was carried swooning
+to her chamber. And then she was sullen, and the King threatened her, and
+sent away all her Portuguese, save one ancient waiting woman. I grant
+you they were ugly devils, fit to set in a field to frighten crows;
+but Catherine loved them. Royal treatment for a Christian Queen from a
+Christian King! Could the Sophy do worse? And presently the poor lady
+yielded (as most women will, for at heart they are slavish and love to be
+beaten), and after holding herself aloof for a long time--a sad, silent,
+neglected figure where all the rest were loud and merry--she made friends
+with the lady, and even seemed to fawn upon her."
+
+"And now I dare swear the two women mingle their tears when Charles is
+unfaithful to both; or Catherine weeps while Barbara curses. That would be
+more in character. Fire and not water is her ladyship's element."
+
+"Ah, Denzil, 'tis a curious change; and to have lived to see Buckingham
+murdered, and Stafford sacrificed, and the Rebellion, and the Commonwealth,
+and the Restoration, and the Plague, and the Fire, and to have skirmished
+in the battles of Parliaments and Princes, t'other side the Channel, and
+seen the tail of the Thirty Years' War, towns ruined, villages laid waste,
+where Tilly passed in blood and fire, is to have lived through as wild a
+variety of fortunes as ever madman invented in a dream."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Denzil lingered at the Manor, urged again and again by his host to stay
+over the day fixed for departure, and so lengthening his visit with a most
+willing submission till late in June, when the silence of the nightingales
+made sleep more possible, and the sunset was so late and the sunrise so
+early that there seemed to be no such thing as night. He had made up his
+mind to plead for a hearing in the hour of farewell; and it may have been
+as much from apprehension of that fateful hour as even from the delight of
+being in his mistress's company that he acceded with alacrity when Sir John
+desired him to stay. But an end must come at last to all hesitations, and a
+familiar verse repeated itself in his brain with the persistent iteration
+of cathedral chimes--
+
+    "He either fears his fate too much,
+    Or his desert is small,
+    Who fears to put it to the touch,
+    And win or lose it all."
+
+Sir John pushed him towards his fate with affectionate urgency.
+
+"Never be dastardised by a girl's refusal, man," said the Knight, warm with
+his morning draught, on that last day, when the guest's horses had been
+fed for a journey, and the saddle-bags packed. "Don't let a simpleton's
+coldness cow your spirits. The wench likes you; else she would scarce have
+endured your long sermons upon weeds and insects, or been smiling and
+contented in your company all these weeks. Take heart of grace, man; and
+remember that though I am no tyrannical father to drag an unwilling bride
+to the altar, I have all a father's authority, and will not have my dearest
+wishes baulked by the capricious humours of a coquette."
+
+"Not for worlds, sir, would I owe to authority what love cannot freely
+grant--"
+
+"Don't chop logic, Denzil. You want my daughter; and by God you shall have
+her! Win her with pretty speeches if you can. If she turn stubborn she
+shall have plain English from me. I have promised not to force her
+inclination; but if I am driven to harsh measures 'twill be for her own
+good I am severe. Ventregris! What can fortune give her better than a
+handsome and virtuous husband?"
+
+Angela was in the garden when Denzil went to take leave of her. She was
+walking up and down beside a long border of June flowers, screened from
+rough winds by those thick walls of yew which gave such a comfortable
+sheltered feeling to the Manor gardens, while in front of flowers and turf
+there sparkled the waters of a long pond or stew, stocked with tench and
+carp, some among them as ancient and as greedy as the scaly monsters of
+Fontainebleau.
+
+The sun was shining on the dark green water and the gaudy flower-bed,
+and Angela's favourite spaniel was running about the grass, barking his
+loudest, chasing bird or butterfly with impotent fury, since he never
+caught anything. At sight of Denzil he tore across the greensward, his
+silky ears flying, and barked at him as if the young man's appearance in
+that garden were an insufferable impertinence; but, on being taken up in
+one strong hand, changed his opinion, and slobbered the face of the foe in
+an ecstasy of affection.
+
+"Soho, Ganymede, thou knowest I bear thee a good heart, plaything and mere
+pretence of a dog as thou art," said Denzil, depositing their little bundle
+of black-and-tan flossiness at Angela's feet.
+
+He might have carried and nursed his mistress's favourite with pleasure
+during any casual sauntering and random talk; but a man could hardly ask to
+have his fate decided for good or ill with a toy spaniel in his arms.
+
+"My horse is at the door, Angela, and I am come to bid you good-bye," he
+said in a grave voice.
+
+The words were of the simplest; but there was something in his tone that
+told her all was not said. She paled at the thought of an approaching
+conflict; for she knew her father was against her, and that there must be
+hard fighting.
+
+They walked the length of flower border and lawn in silence; and then, when
+they were furthest from the house, and from the hazard of eyes looking out
+of windows, he stopped suddenly, and took her unresisting hand, which lay
+cold in his.
+
+"Dearest, I have kept silence through all those blessed days in which you
+and I have been together; but I have not left off loving you or hoping for
+you. Things have changed since I spoke to you in London last winter. I have
+a powerful advocate now whose pleading ought to prevail with you--a father
+whose anxious affection urges what my passionate love so ardently desires.
+Indeed, dear heart, if you will be kind, you can make a father and lover
+happy with one breath. You have but to say 'Yes' to the prayer you know
+of----"
+
+"Alas! Denzil, I cannot. I am your true and faithful friend. If you were
+sick and alone--as his lordship was--I would go to you and nurse you, as
+your friend and sister. If you were poor and I were rich, I would divide my
+fortune with you. I shall always think of you with affection--always take
+pleasure in your society, if you will let me; but it must be as your
+sister. You have no sister, Denzil--I no brother. Why cannot we be to each
+other as brother and sister?"
+
+"Only because from the hour when your beauty and sweetness began to grow
+into my mind I have been your lover, and nothing else--your adoring lover.
+I cannot change my fervent hope for the poor name of friend. I can never
+again dare be to you what I have been in this happy season last past,
+unless you will let me be more than I have been."
+
+"Alas!"
+
+Only that one word, with a sorrowful shake of the graceful head, covered
+with feathery ringlets in the dainty fashion of that day, so becoming in
+youth, so inappropriate to advancing years, when the rich profusion of
+curls came straight from Chedreux, or some of his imitators, and baldness
+was hidden by the spoils of the dead.
+
+"Alas!"
+
+No need for more than that sad dissyllable.
+
+"Then I am no nearer winning this dear hand than I was at Fareham House?"
+he said heartbrokenly, for he had built high hopes upon her kindness and
+willing companionship in that Arcadian valley.
+
+"I told you then that I should never marry. I have not changed my mind. I
+never can change. I am to be Henriette's spinster aunt."
+
+"And Fareham's spinster sister?" said Denzil. "I understand. We are neither
+of us cured of our malady. It is my disease to love you in spite of your
+disdain. It is your disease to love where you should not. Farewell!"
+
+He was gone before she could reply. The livid anger of his face, the
+deep resentment in his voice, haunted her memory, and made life almost
+intolerable.
+
+"My sin has found me out!" she said to herself, as she paced the garden
+with the rapid steps that indicate a distempered spirit. "What right has he
+to pry into the depths of my mind, and ferret out all that there is of evil
+in my nature? Well, he goes the surest way to make me hate him. If ever he
+comes here again, I will run away and hide from all who know me. I would
+rather be a farm-servant, and rise at daybreak to work in the fields, than
+endure his insolence."
+
+She had to bear worse pain before Denzil had ridden far upon his journey;
+for her father came to the garden to seek her, eager to know the result of
+his _protégé's_ wooing.
+
+"Well, sweetheart," he began, taking her to his bosom and kissing her. "Do
+I salute the future Lady Warner?"
+
+"No, sir; I am too well content with the name I inherit to desire any
+other."
+
+"That is gracefully said, chérie; but I want to see my ewe lamb happily
+wedded. Has thy sweetheart stolen away without finding courage to ask the
+question that has been on the tip of his tongue for the last six weeks?"
+
+"He has been both importunate and impertinent, sir, and he has had his
+answer. I hope I may never see him again."
+
+"What! you have refused him? You must be mad!"
+
+"No, sir; sober and sane enough to know when I am happy. I told you before
+this gentleman came here that I did not mean to marry. Surely I am not so
+unloving a daughter that I must be driven to take a husband, because my
+father will not have me."
+
+"Angela, it is for your own safety and welfare I would see you married.
+What have you to succeed to when I am gone? An impoverished estate, in a
+country that has seen such rough changes within a score of years that one
+dare scarcely calculate upon a prolonged time of safety, even in this
+sequestered valley. God only knows when cannon-balls may tear up our
+fields, and bullets whistle through the copses. This Monarchy, restored
+with such a clamorous approval, may endure no longer than the Commonwealth,
+which was thought to be lasting. His Majesty's trivial life and gross
+extravagance have disgusted and alarmed some who loved him dearly, and have
+set the common people questioning whether the rough rule of the Protector
+were not better than the ascendency of shameless women and dissolute men.
+The pageantry of Whitehall may vanish like a parchment scroll in a furnace,
+and Charles, who has tasted the sours of exile, may be again a wanderer,
+dependent on the casual munificence of foreign states; and in such an evil
+hour," continued the Knight, his mind straying from the contemplation of
+his daughter's future to the memory of his own wrongs, "Charles Stuart
+may remember the old puts who fought and suffered for his father, and how
+scurvy a recompense they had for their services."
+
+He reverted to Denzil's offer after a brief silence, Angela walking
+dutifully by his side, prepared to suffer any harshness upon his part
+without complaining.
+
+"I love the young man, and he would be to me as a son," he said; "the
+comrade and support of my old age. I am poor, as the world goes now; have
+but just enough to live modestly in this retreat, where life costs but
+little. He is rich, and can give you a handsome seat near your sister's
+mansion; and a house in London if you desire one; less splendid, doubtless,
+than Fareham's palace on the Thames, but more befitting the habits and
+manners of an English gentleman's wife. He can give you hounds and hawks,
+your riding-horses, and your coach-and-six. What more, in God's name, can
+any reasonable woman desire?"
+
+"Only one thing, sir. To live my own life in peace, as my conscience and my
+reason bid me. I cannot love Denzil Warner, though of late I have grown
+to like and respect him as a friend and most intelligent companion. Your
+persistence is fast changing friendship into dislike; and the very name of
+the man would speedily become hateful to me."
+
+"Oh, I have done!" retorted Sir John. "I am no tyrant. You must take your
+own way, mistress. I can but lament that Providence gave me only two
+daughters, and one of them an arrant fool."
+
+He left her in a huff, and had it not been for an astonishing event, which
+convulsed town and country, and suspended private interests and private
+quarrels in the excitement of public affairs, she would have heard much
+more of his discontent.
+
+The Dutch ships were at Chatham. English men-of-war were blazing at the
+very mouth of the Thames, and there was panic lest the triumphant foe
+should sail their fire-ships up the river to London, besiege the Tower,
+relight the fire whose ashes were scarce grown cold, pillage, slaughter,
+destroy--as Tilly had destroyed the wretched Provinces in the religious
+war.
+
+Here, in this sheltered haven, amidst green fields, under the lee of the
+Brill, the panic and consternation were as intense as if the village of St.
+Nicholas were the one spot the Dutch would make for after landing; and,
+indeed, there were rustics who went to the placid scene where the infant
+Thame rises in its cradle of reed and lily, half expectant of seeing
+Netherlandish vessels stranded among the rushes.
+
+The Dutch fleet was at Chatham. Ships were being sunk across the Medway, to
+stop the invader.
+
+Sheerness was to be fortified. London was in arms; and Brill remembered
+its repulse of Hampden's regiment with a proud consciousness of being
+invincible.
+
+The Dutch fleet saved Angela many a paternal lecture; for Sir John rode
+post-haste towards London, and did not return until the end of the month.
+
+In London he found Hyacinth, much disturbed about her husband, who had
+gone as volunteer with General Middleton, and was in command of a cavalry
+regiment at Chatham.
+
+"I never saw him in such spirits as when he left me," Lady Fareham told her
+father. "I believe he is ever happiest when he breathes gunpowder."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir John's leave-taking had been curt and moody, for Angela's offence
+rankled deep in his mind; and it was as much as he could do to command his
+anger, even in bidding her good-bye.
+
+"Did I not tell you that we live in troubled times, and that no man can
+foresee the coming evil, or how great our woes and distractions may be?" he
+asked, with a gloomy triumph. "Whoever thought to hear De Ruyter's guns at
+Sheerness, or to see the Royal Charles led captive? Absit omen! Who knows
+what destruction may come upon that other Royal Charles, for whose safety
+we pray morning and night, and who lolls across a basset-table, perhaps,
+with his wantons around him, while we are on our knees supplicating the
+Creator for him? Who knows? We may have London in flames again, and a
+conflagration more fatal than the last, thou obstinate wench, before thou
+art a week older, and every able-bodied man called away from plough and
+pasture to serve the King, and desolation and famine where plenty now
+smiles at us. And is this a time in which to refuse a valiant and wealthy
+protector, a lover as honest as ever God made; a pious, conforming
+Christian, of unsullied name; a young man after my own pattern; a fine
+horseman and a good farmer; one who loves a pack of hounds and a well-bred
+horse, a flight of hawks and a match at bowls, better than to give chase to
+a she-rake in the Mall, or to drink himself stark mad at a tavern in Covent
+Garden with debauchees from Whitehall?"
+
+Sir John prosed and grumbled to the last moment, but could not refuse to
+bend down from his saddle and kiss the fair, pale face that looked at him
+in piteous deprecation at the moment of parting.
+
+"Well, keep a brave heart, Mistress Wilful. Thou art safe here yet awhile
+from Dutch marauders. I go but to find out how much truth there is in these
+panic rumours."
+
+She begged him not to fatigue himself with too long stages, and went back
+to the silent house, thankful to be alone in her despondency. She felt as
+if the last page in her worldly life had been written. She had to turn
+her thoughts backward to that quiet retreat where there would at least be
+peace. She had promised her father that she would not return to the Convent
+while he wanted her at home. But was that promise to hold good if he were
+to embitter her life by urging her to a marriage that would only bring her
+unhappiness?
+
+She had ample leisure for thought in one summer day of a solitude so
+absolute that she began to shiver in the sultry stillness of afternoon,
+and scarce ventured to raise her eyes from her embroidery frame, lest some
+shadowy presence, some ghost out of the dead past, should hover near,
+watching her as she sat alone in scenes where that pale spirit had been
+living flesh. The thought of all who had lived and died in that house--men
+and women of her own race, whose qualities of mind and person she had
+inherited--oppressed her in the long hours of silent reverie. Before
+her first day of loneliness had ended, her spirits had sunk to deepest
+melancholy; and in that weaker condition of mind she had begun to ask
+herself whether she had any right to oppose her father's wishes by denying
+herself to a suitor whom she esteemed and respected, and whose filial
+affection would bring new sunshine into that dear father's declining years.
+She had noted their manner to each other during Denzil's protracted visit,
+and had seen all the evidences of a warm regard on both sides. She had too
+complete a faith in Denzil's sterling worth to question the reality of any
+feeling which his words and manner indicated. He was above all things a
+man of truth and honesty. She was roaming about the gardens with her dog
+towards noon in the second day of her solitude, when across the yew hedges
+she saw white clouds of dust rising from the high-road, and heard
+the clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels--a noise as of a troop of
+cavalry--whereat Ganymede barked himself almost into an apoplexy, and
+rushed across the grass like a mad thing.
+
+A great cracking of whips and sound of voices, horses galloping, horses
+trotting, dust enough to whiten all the hedges and greensward! Angela stood
+at gaze, wondering if the Dutch were coming to storm the old house, or the
+county militia coming to garrison it.
+
+The Manor Moat was the destination of that clamorous troop, whoever they
+were. Wheels and horses stopped sharply at the great iron gate in front of
+the house, and the bell began to ring furiously, while other dogs, with
+voices that resembled Ganymede's, answered his shrill bark with even
+shriller yelpings.
+
+Angela ran towards the gate, and was near enough to see it opened to
+admit three black-and-tan spaniels, and one slim personage in a long
+flame-coloured brocatelle gown and a large beaver hat, who approached with
+stately movements, a small, pert nose held high, and rosy upper lip curled
+in patrician disdain of common things, while a fan of peacock's plumage,
+that flashed sapphire and emerald in the fierce noonday sun, was waved
+slowly before the dainty face, scattering the tremulous life of summer that
+buzzed and fluttered in the sultry air.
+
+In the rear of this brilliant figure appeared a middle-aged person in
+a grey silk gown and hood, and a negro page in the Fareham livery, a
+waiting-woman, and a tall lackey, so many being the necessary adjuncts to
+the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel's state when she went abroad.
+
+Angela ran to receive her niece with a cry of rapture, and the tall slip of
+a girl in the flame-coloured frock was clasped to her aunt's heart with a
+ruthless disregard of the beaver hat and cataract of ostrich plumage.
+
+"Prends garde d'abimer mon chapeau, p'tite tante," cried Henriette, "'tis
+one of Lewin's Nell Gwyn hats, and cost twenty guineas, without the buckle,
+which I stole out of father's shoe t'other day. His lordship is so careless
+about his clothes that he wore the shoes two days and never knew there was
+a buckle missing, and those lazy devils his servants never told him. I
+believe they meant to rook him of t'other buckle."
+
+"Chatterer, chatterer, how happy I am to see thee! But is not your mother
+with you?"
+
+"Her ladyship is in London. Everybody of importance is scampering off to
+London; and no doubt will be rushing back to the country again if the Dutch
+take the Tower; but I don't think they will while my father is able to
+raise a regiment."
+
+"And mademoiselle"--with a curtsy to the lady in grey--"has brought you all
+this long way through the heat to see me?"
+
+"I have brought mademoiselle," Henrietta answered contemptuously, before
+the Frenchwoman had finished the moue and the shrug which with her always
+preceded speech; "and a fine plague I had to make her come."
+
+"Madame will conceive that, in miladi's absence, it was a prodigious
+inconvenience to order two coaches, and travel so far. His lordship's groom
+of the chambers is my witness that I protested against such an outrageous
+proceeding."
+
+"Two coaches!" exclaimed Angela.
+
+"A coach-and-six for me and my dogs and my gouvernante, and a
+coach-and-four for my people," explained Henriette, who had modelled her
+equipage and suite upon a reminiscence of the train which attended Lady
+Castlemaine's visit to Chilton, as beheld from a nursery window.
+
+"Come, child, and rest, out of the sun; and you, mademoiselle, must need
+refreshment after so long a drive."
+
+"Our progress through a perpetual cloud of dust and a succession of narrow
+lanes did indeed suggest the torments of purgatory; but the happiness
+of madame's gracious welcome is an all-sufficient compensation for our
+fatigue," mademoiselle replied, with a deep curtsey.
+
+"I was not tired in the least," asserted Henriette. "We stopped at the
+Crown at Thame and had strawberries and milk."
+
+"_You_ had strawberries and milk, mon enfant. I have a digestion which will
+not allow such liberties."
+
+"And our horses were baited, and our people had their morning drink," said
+Henriette, with her grown-up air. "One ought always to remember cattle and
+servants. May we put up our horses with you, auntie? We must leave you soon
+after dinner, so as to be at Chilton by sunset, or mademoiselle will
+be afraid of highwaymen, though I told Samuel and Peter to bring their
+blunderbusses in case of an attack. Ma'amselle has no valuables, and at the
+worst I should but have to give them my diamond buckle, and my locket with
+his lordship's portrait."
+
+Angela's cheeks flushed at that chance allusion to Fareham's picture. It
+brought back a vision of the Convent parlour, and she standing there with
+Fareham's miniature in her hand, wonderingly contemplative of the dark,
+strong face. At that stage of her life she had seen so few men's faces;
+and this one had a power in it that startled her. Did she divine, by some
+supernatural foreknowledge, that this face held the secret of her destiny?
+
+She went to the house, with Henriette's lissom form hanging upon her, and
+the grey governess tripping mincingly beside them, tottering a little upon
+her high heels.
+
+Old Reuben had crept out into the sunshine, with a rustic footman following
+him, and the cook was looking out at a window in the wing where kitchen and
+servants' hall occupied as important a position as the dining-parlour and
+saloon on the opposite side. A hall with open roof, wide double staircase,
+and music gallery, filled the central space between the two projecting
+wings, and at the back there was a banqueting-chamber or ball-room, where
+in more prosperous days, the family had been accustomed to dine on all
+stately occasions--a room now shabby and grey with disuse.
+
+While the footman showed the way to the stables, Angela drew Reuben aside
+for a brief consultation as to ways and means for a dinner that must be the
+best the house could provide, and which might be served at two o'clock, the
+later hour giving time for extra preparation. A capon, larded after the
+French fashion, a pair of trouts, the finest the stream could furnish, or a
+carp stewed in clary wine, and as many sweet kickshaws as cook's ingenuity
+could furnish at so brief a notice. Nor were waiting-woman, lackey, and
+postillions to be neglected. Chine and sirloin, pudding and beer must be
+provided for all.
+
+"There are six men besides the black boy," sighed Reuben; they will devour
+us a week's provision of butcher's meat."
+
+"If you have done your housekeeping, tante, let me go to your favourite
+summer-house with you, and tell you my secrets. I am perishing for a
+_tête-à-tête!_ Ma'amselle"--with a wave of the peacock fan--"can take a
+siesta, and forget the dust of the road, while we converse."
+
+Angela ushered mademoiselle to the pretty summer-parlour, looking out upon
+a geometrical arrangement of flower-beds in the Dutch manner. Chocolate
+and other light refreshments were being prepared for the travellers; but
+Henrietta's impatience would wait for nothing.
+
+"I have not driven along these detestable roads to taste your chocolate,"
+she protested. "I have a world to say to you: en attendant, mademoiselle,
+you will consider everything at your disposal in the house of my
+grandfather, jusqu'à deux heures."
+
+She sank almost to the ground in a Whitehall curtsy, rose swift as an
+arrow, tucked her arm through Angela's, and pulled her out of the room,
+paying no attention to the governess's voluble injunctions not to expose
+her complexion to the sun, or to sit in a cold wind, or to spoil her gown.
+
+"What a shabby old place it is!" she said, looking critically round her as
+they went through the gardens. "I'm afraid you must perish with _ennui_
+here, with so few servants and no company to speak of. Yes"--contemplating
+her shrewdly, as they seated themselves in a stone temple at the end of the
+bowling-green--"you are looking moped and ill. This valley air does not
+agree with you. Well, you can have a much finer place whenever you choose.
+A better house and garden, ever so much nearer Chilton. And you will
+choose, won't you, dearest?" nestling close to her, after throwing off the
+big hat which made such loving contact impossible.
+
+"I don't understand you, Henriette."
+
+"If you call me Henriette I shall be sure you are angry with me."
+
+"No, love, not angry, but surprised."
+
+"You think I have no right to talk of your sweetheart, because I am only
+thirteen--and have scarce left off playing with babies--I have hated them
+for ages, only people persist in giving me the foolish puppets. I know more
+of the world than you do, auntie, after being shut in a Convent the best
+part of your life. Why are you so obstinate, ma chérie, in refusing a
+gentleman we all like?"
+
+"Do you mean Sir Denzil?"
+
+"Sans doute. Have you a crowd of servants?"
+
+"No, child, only this one. But don't you see that other people's liking
+has less to do with the question than mine? And if I do not like him well
+enough to be his wife----"
+
+"But you ought to like him. You know how long her ladyship's heart has been
+set on the match; you must have seen what pains she took in London to have
+Sir Denzil always about you. And now, after a most exemplary patience,
+after being your faithful servant for over a year, he asks you to be his
+wife, and you refuse, obstinately refuse. And you would rather mope here
+with my poor old grandfather--in abject poverty--mother says 'abject
+poverty'--than be the honoured mistress of one of the finest seats in
+Oxfordshire."
+
+"I would rather do what is right and honest, my dearest It is dishonest to
+marry without love."
+
+"Then half mother's fine friends must be dishonest, for I dare swear that
+very few of them love their husbands."
+
+"Henriette, you talk of things you don't know."
+
+"Don't know! Why, there is no one in London knows more. I am always
+listening, and I always remember. De Malfort used to say I had a plaguey
+long memory, when I told him of things he had said a year ago."
+
+"My dear, I love you fondly, but I cannot have you talk to me of what you
+don't understand; and I am sorry Sir Denzil Warner had no more courtesy
+than to go and complain of me to my sister."
+
+"He did not come to Chilton to complain. Her ladyship met him on the way
+from Oxford in her coach. He was riding, and she called to him to come
+to the coach door. It was the day after he left you, and he was looking
+miserable; and she questioned him, and he owned that his suit had been
+rejected, and he had no further hope. My mother came home in a rage. But
+why was she angry with his lordship? Indeed, she rated him as if it were
+his fault you refused Sir Denzil."
+
+Angela sat silent, and the hand Henriette was clasping grew cold as ice.
+
+"Did my father bid you refuse him, aunt?" asked the girl, scrutinising her
+aunt's countenance, with those dark grey eyes, so like Fareham's in their
+falcon brightness.
+
+"No, child. Why should he interfere? It is no business of his."
+
+"Then why was mother so angry? She walked up and down the room in a
+towering passion. 'This is your doing,' she cried. 'If she were not your
+adoring slave, she would have jumped at so handsome a sweetheart. This is
+your witchcraft. It is you she loves--you--you--you!' His lordship stood
+dumb, and pointed to me. 'Do you forget your child is present?' he said. 'I
+forget everything except that everybody uses me shamefully,' she cried.
+'I was only made to be slighted and trampled upon.' His lordship made
+no answer, but walked to the door in that way he ever has when he is
+angered--pale, frowning, silent. I was standing in his way, and he gripped
+me by the arm, and dragged me out of the room. I dare venture there is a
+bruise on my arm where he held me. I know his fingers hurt me with their
+grip; and I could hear my lady screaming and sobbing as he took me away.
+But he would not let me go back to her. He would only send her women. 'Your
+mother has an interval of madness,' he said; 'you are best out of her
+presence.' The news of the Dutch ships came the same evening, and my father
+rode off towards London, and my mother ordered her coach, and followed an
+hour after. They seemed both distracted; and only because you refused Sir
+Denzil."
+
+"I cannot help her ladyship's foolishness, Papillon. She has no occasion
+for any of this trouble. I am her dutiful, affectionate sister; but my
+heart is not hers to give or to refuse."
+
+"But was it indeed my father's fault? Is it because you adore him that you
+refused Sir Denzil?"
+
+"No--no--no. My affection for my brother--he has been to me as a
+brother--can make no difference in my regard for any one else. One cannot
+fall in love at another's ordering, or be happy with a husband of another's
+choice. You will discover that for yourself, Papillon, perhaps, when you
+are a woman."
+
+"Oh, I mean to marry for wealth and station, as all the clever women do,"
+said Papillon, with an upward jerk of her delicate chin. "Mrs. Lewin always
+says I ought to be a duchess. I should like to have married the Duke of
+Monmouth, and then, who knows, I might have been a Queen. The King's other
+sons are too young for me, and they will never have Monmouth's chance. But,
+indeed, sweetheart, you ought to marry Sir Denzil, and come and live near
+us at Chilton. You would make us all happy."
+
+"Ma tres chère, it is so easy to talk--but when thou thyself art a
+woman----"
+
+"I shall never care for such trumpery as love. I mean to have a grand
+house--ever so much grander than Fareham House. Perhaps I may marry a
+Frenchman, and have a salon, and all the wits about me on my day. I would
+make it gayer than Mademoiselle de Scudery's Saturdays, which my governess
+so loves to talk of. There should be less talk and more dancing. But
+listen, p'tite tante," clasping her arms suddenly round Angela's neck, "I
+won't leave this spot till you have promised to change your mind about
+Denzil. I like him vastly; and I'm sure there's no reason why you should
+not love him--unless you really are his lordship's adoring slave,"
+emphasising those last words, "and he has forbidden you."
+
+Angela sat dumb, her eyes fixed on vacancy.
+
+"Why, you are like the lady in those lines you made me learn, who 'sat like
+patience on a monument, smiling at grief.' Dearest, why so sad? Remember
+that fine house--and the dairy that was once a chapel. You could turn it
+into a chapel again if you liked, and have your own chaplain. His Majesty
+takes no heed of what we Papists do--being a Papist himself at heart, they
+say--though poor wretches are dragged off to gaol for worshipping in a
+conventicle. What is a conventicle? Will you not change your mind, dearest?
+Answer, answer, answer!"
+
+The slender arms tightened their caress, the pretty little brown face
+pressed itself against Angela's pale, cold cheek.
+
+"For my sake, sweetheart, say thou wilt have him. I will go to see thee
+every day."
+
+"I have been here for months and you have not come, though I begged you in
+a dozen letters."
+
+"I have been kept at my book and my dancing lessons. Mademoiselle told her
+ladyship that I was a monster of ignorance. I have been treated shamefully.
+I could not have come to-day had my lady been at home; but I would not
+brook a hireling's dictation. Voyons, p'tite tante, tu seras miladi Warner.
+Dis, dis, que je te fasse mourir de baisers."
+
+She was almost stifling her aunt with kisses in the intervals of her eager
+speech.
+
+"The last word has been spoken, Papillon. I have sent him away--and it was
+not the first time. I had refused him before. I cannot call him back."
+
+"But he shall come without calling. He is your adoring slave," cried
+Henriette, leaping up from the stone bench, and clapping her hands in
+an ecstasy. "He will need no calling. Dearest, dearest, most exquisite,
+delectable auntie! I am so happy! And my mother will be content. And no one
+shall ever say you are my father's slave."
+
+"Henriette, if you repeat that odious phrase I shall hate you!"
+
+"Now you are angry. God, what a frown! I will repeat no word that angers
+you. My Lady Warner--sweet Lady Warner. I vow 'tis a prettier name than
+Revel or Fareham."
+
+"You are mad, Henriette! I have promised nothing."
+
+"Yes, you have, little aunt. You have promised to drop a curtsy, and say
+'Yes' when Sir Denzil rides this way. You sent him away in a huff. He will
+come back smiling like yonder sunshine on the water. Oh, I am so happy! My
+doing, all my doing!"
+
+"It is useless to argue with you."
+
+"Quite useless. Il n'y a pas de quoi. Nous sommes d'accord. I shall be
+your chief bridesmaid. You must be married in her Majesty's chapel at St.
+James's. The Pope will give his dispensation--if you cannot persuade Denzil
+to change his religion. Were he my suitor I would twist him round my
+fingers," with an airy gesture of the small brown hand.
+
+There is nothing more difficult than to convince a child that she pleads in
+vain for any ardently desired object. Nothing that Angela could say would
+reconcile her niece to the idea of failure; so there was no help but to let
+her fancy her arguments conclusive, and to change the bent of her thoughts
+if possible.
+
+It wanted nearly an hour of dinner-time, so Angela suggested an inspection
+of the home farm, which was close by, trusting that Henriette's love of
+animals would afford an all-sufficient diversion; nor was she disappointed,
+for the little fine lady was quite as much at home in stable and cowshed as
+in a London drawing-room, and spent a happy hour in making friends with
+the live stock, from the favourite Hereford cow, queen of the herd, to the
+smallest bantam in the poultry-yard.
+
+To this rustic entertainment followed dinner, in the preparation of which
+banquet Marjory Cook had surpassed herself; and Papillon, being by this
+time seriously hungry, sat and feasted to her heart's content, discussing
+the marrow pudding and the stewed carp with the acumen and authority of a
+professed gourmet.
+
+"I like this old-fashioned rustic diet," she said condescendingly.
+
+She reproached her governess with not doing justice to a syllabub; but
+showed herself a fine lady by her complaint at the lack of ice for her
+wine.
+
+"My grandfather should make haste and build an icehouse before next
+winter," she drawled. "One can scarce live through this weather without
+ice," fanning herself, with excessive languor.
+
+"I hope, dear, thou wilt not expire on the journey home."
+
+The coaches were at the gate before Papillon had finished dinner, and
+Mademoiselle was in great haste to be gone, reminding her pupil that she
+had travelled so far against her will and at the hazard of angering Madame
+la Baronne.
+
+"Madame la Baronne will be enraptured when she knows what I have done to
+please her," answered Papillon, and then, with a last parting embrace,
+hugging her aunt's fair neck more energetically than ever, she whispered,
+"I shall tell Denzil. You will make us all happy."
+
+A cloud of dust, a clatter of hoofs, Ma'amselle's screams as the carriage
+rocked while she was mounting the steps, and with much cracking of whips
+and swearing at horses from the postillions who had taken their fill of
+home-brewed ale, hog's harslet, and cold chine, and, lo, the brilliant
+vision of the Honourable Henrietta Maria and her train vanished in the dust
+of the summer highway, and Angela went slowly back to the long green walk
+beside the fish-pond, where she was in as silent a solitude, but for a
+lingering nightingale or two, as if she had been in the palace of the
+sleeping beauty. If all things slumbered not, there was at least as marked
+a pause in life. The Dutch might be burning more ships, and the noise of
+war might be coming nearer London with every hour of the summer day. Here
+there was a repose as of the after-life, when all hopes and dreams and
+loves and hates are done and ended, and the soul waits in darkness and
+silence for the next unfolding of its wings.
+
+Those hateful words, "your adoring slave," and all that speech of
+Hyacinth's which the child had repeated, haunted Angela with an agonising
+iteration. She had not an instant's doubt as to the scene being faithfully
+reported. She knew how preternaturally acute Henriette's intellect had
+become in the rarified atmosphere of her mother's drawing-room, how
+accurate her memory, how sharp her ears, and how observant her eyes.
+Whatever Henriette reported was likely to be to the very letter and spirit
+of the scene she had witnessed. And Hyacinth, her sister, had put this
+shame upon her, had spoken of her in the cruelest phrase as loving one whom
+it was mortal sin to love. Hyacinth, so light, so airy a creature, whom her
+younger sister had ever considered as a grown-up child, had yet been shrewd
+enough to fathom her mystery, and to discover that secret attachment which
+had made Denzil's suit hateful to her. "And if I do not consent to marry
+him she will always think ill of me. She will think of me as a wretch who
+tried to steal her husband's love--a worse woman than Lady Castlemaine--for
+she had the King's affection before he ever saw the Queen's poor plain
+face. His adoring slave!"
+
+Evening shadows were around her. She had wandered into the woods, was
+slowly threading the slender cattle tracks in the cool darkness; while that
+passionate song of the nightingales rose in a louder ecstasy as the quiet
+of the night deepened, and the young moon hung high above the edge of a
+wooded hill.
+
+"His adoring slave," she repeated, with her hands clasped above her
+uncovered head.
+
+Hateful, humiliating words! Yet there was a keen rapture in repeating them.
+They were true words. His slave--his slave to wait upon him in sickness and
+pain; to lie and watch at his door like a faithful dog; to follow him to
+the wars, and clean his armour, and hold his horse, and wait in his tent
+to receive him wounded, and heal his wounds where surgeons failed to cure,
+wanting that intensity of attention and understanding which love alone can
+give; to be his Bellario, asking nothing of him, hoping for nothing, hardly
+for kind words or common courtesy, foregoing woman's claim upon man's
+chivalry, content to be nothing--only to be near him.
+
+If such a life could have been--the life that poets have imagined for
+despairing love! It was less than a hundred years since handsome Mrs.
+Southwell followed Sir Robert Dudley to Italy, disguised as a page. But
+the age of romance was past. The modern world had only laughter for such
+dreams.
+
+That revelation of Hyacinth's jealousy had brought matters to a crisis.
+Something must be done, Angela told herself, and quickly, to set her
+right with her sister, and in her own esteem. She had to choose between a
+loveless marriage and the Convent. By accepting one or the other she must
+prove that she was not the slave of a dishonourable love.
+
+Marriage or the Convent? It had been easy, contemplating the step from a
+distance, to choose the Convent. But when she thought of it, to-night, amid
+the exquisite beauty of these woods, with the moonlit valley lying at her
+feet, the winding streams reflecting that silvery light, or veiled in a
+pale haze--to-night, in the liberty and loveliness of the earth, the vision
+of Convent walls filled her with a shuddering horror. To be shut in that
+Flemish garden for ever; her life enclosed within the straight lines of
+that long green alley leading to a dead wall, darkened over by flowerless
+ivy. How witheringly dull the old life showed, looking back at it after
+years of freedom and enjoyment, action and variety. No, no, no! She could
+not bury herself alive, could not forego the liberty to wander in a wood
+like this, to gaze upon scenes as beautiful as yonder valley, to read the
+poets she loved, to see, perhaps, some day those romantic scenes which
+she knew but as dreams--Florence, Vallombrosa--to follow the footsteps of
+Milton, to see the Venice she had read of in Howell's Letters, to kneel at
+the feet of the Holy Father, in the City of Cities. All these things would
+be for ever forbidden to her if she chose the common escape from earthly
+sorrow.
+
+She thought of her whose example had furnished the theme of many a
+discourse at the Convent, Mazarin's lovely niece, the Princess de Conti,
+who, in the bloom of early womanhood, was awakened from the dream of this
+life to the reality of Heaven, and had renounced the pleasures of the most
+brilliant Court in the world for the severities of Port Royal. She thought
+of that sublime heretic Ferrar, whose later existence was one long prayer.
+Of how much baser a clay must she be fashioned when her too earthly heart
+clung so fondly to the loveliness of earth, and shrank with aversion from
+the prospect of a long life within those walls where her childhood had been
+so peaceful and happy.
+
+"How changed, how changed and corrupted this heart has become!" she
+murmured, in her dejection, "when that life which was once my most ardent
+desire now seems to me worse than the grave. Anything--any life of duty in
+the world, rather than that living death."
+
+She was in the garden next morning at six, after a sleepless night, and
+she occupied herself till noon in going about among the cottagers carrying
+those small comforts which she had been in the habit of taking them, and
+listening patiently to those various distresses which they were very glad
+to relate to her. She taught the children, and read to the sick, and
+was able in this round of duties to keep her thoughts from dwelling too
+persistently upon her own trouble. After the one o'clock dinner, at which
+she offended old Reuben by eating hardly anything, she went for a woodland
+ramble with her dogs, and it was near sunset when she returned to the
+house, just in time to see two road-stained horses being led away from the
+hall door.
+
+Sir John had come home. She found him in the dining parlour, sitting gloomy
+and weary looking before the table where Reuben was arranging a hasty meal.
+
+"I have eaten nothing upon the road, yet I have but a poor stomach for
+your bacon-ham," he said, and then looked up at his daughter with a moody
+glance, as she went towards him.
+
+"Dear sir, we must try to coax your appetite when you have rested a little.
+Let me unbuckle your spurs and pull off your boots, while Reuben fetches
+your easiest shoes."
+
+"Nay, child, that is man's work, not for such fingers as yours. The boots
+are nowise irksome--'tis another kind of shoe that pinches, Angela."
+
+She knelt down to unbuckle the spur-straps, and while on her knees she
+said--
+
+"You look sad, sir. I fear you found ill news at London."
+
+"I found such shame as never came before upon England, such confusion as
+only traitors and profligates can know; men who have cheated and lied and
+wasted the public money, left our fortresses undefended, our ships unarmed,
+our sailors unpaid, half-fed, and mutinous; clamorous wives crying aloud in
+the streets that their husbands should not fight and bleed for a King who
+starved them. They have clapped the scoundrel who had charge of the Yard at
+Chatham in the Tower--but will that mend matters? A scapegoat, belike, to
+suffer for higher scoundrels. The mob is loudest against the Chancellor,
+who I doubt is not to blame for our unreadiness, having little power of
+late over the King. Oh, there has been iniquity upon iniquity, and men know
+not whom most to blame--the venal idle servants, or the master of all."
+
+"You mean that men blame his Majesty?"
+
+"No, Angela. But when our ships were blazing at Chatham, and the Dutch
+triumphing, the cry was 'Oh, for an hour of old Noll!' Charles has played
+his cards so that he has made the loyalest hearts in England wish the
+Brewer back again. They called him the Tiger of the Seas. We have no tigers
+now, only asses and monkeys. Why, there was scarce a grain of sense left in
+London. The beat of the drums calling out the train-bands seemed to have
+stupefied the people. Everywhere madness and confusion. They have sunk
+their richest argosies at Barking Creek to block the river; but the Dutch
+break chains, ride over sunken ships, laugh our petty defences to scorn."
+
+"Dear sir, this confusion cannot last."
+
+"It will last as long as the world's history lasts. Our humiliation will
+never be forgotten."
+
+"But Englishmen will not look on idle. There must be brave men up in arms."
+
+"Oh, there are brave men enough--Fairfax, Ingoldsby, Bethell, Norton. The
+Presbyterians come to the front in our troubles. Your brother-in-law is
+with Lord Middleton. There is no lack of officers; and regiments are being
+raised. But our merchant-ships, which should be quick to help us, hang
+back. Our Treasury is empty, and half the goldsmiths in London are
+bankrupt. And our ships that are burnt, and our ships that are taken, will
+not be conjured back again. The _Royal Charles_ carried off with insulting
+triumph! Oh, child, it is not the loss that galls; it is the dishonour!"
+
+He took a draught of claret out of the tankard which Angela placed at his
+elbow, and she carved the ham for him, and persuaded him to eat.
+
+"Is it the public misfortune that troubles you so sadly, sir?" she asked,
+presently, when her father flung himself back in his chair with a heavy
+sigh.
+
+"Nay, Angela, I have my peck of trouble without reckoning the ruin of my
+country. But my back is broad. It can bear a burden as well as any."
+
+"Do you count a disobedient daughter among your cares, sir?"
+
+"Disobedient is too harsh a word. I told you I would never force your
+inclinations. But I have an obstinate daughter, who has disappointed me,
+and well-nigh broken my spirit."
+
+"Your spirit shall not rest broken if my obedience can mend it, sir," she
+said gently, dropping on her knees beside his chair.
+
+"What! has that stony heart relented! Wilt thou marry him, sweetheart? Wilt
+give me a son as well as a daughter, and the security that thou wilt be
+safe and happy when I'm gone?"
+
+"No one can be sure of happiness, father; it comes strangely, and goes we
+know not why. But if it will make your heart easier, sir, and Denzil be
+still of the same mind----"
+
+"His mind his rock, dearest. He swore to me that he could never change. Ah,
+love, you have made me happy! Let the fleet burn, the _Royal Charles_
+fly Dutch colours. Here, in this quiet valley, there shall be a peaceful
+household and united hearts. Angela, I love that youth! Fareham, with all
+his rank and wealth, has never been so dear to me. That black visage
+repels love. But Denzil's countenance is open as the day. I can say 'Nunc
+Dimittis' with a light heart. I can trust Denzil Warner with my daughter's
+happiness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+"QUITE OUT OF FASHION."
+
+
+Denzil received the good news by the hands of a mounted messenger in the
+following forenoon.
+
+The Knight had written, "Ride--ride--ride!" in the Elizabethan style, on
+the cover of his letter, which contained but two brief sentences--
+
+"Womanlike, she has changed her mind. Come when thou wilt, dear son."
+
+And the son-in-law-to-be lost not an hour. He was at the Manor before
+night-fall. He was a member of the quiet household again, subservient to
+his mistress in everything.
+
+"There are some words that must needs be spoken before we are agreed,"
+Angela said, when they found themselves alone for the first time, in the
+garden, on the morning after his return, and when Denzil would fain have
+taken her to his breast and ratified their betrothal with a kiss. "I think
+you know as well as I do that it is my father's wish that has made me
+change."
+
+"So long as you change not again, dear, I am of all men the happiest. Yes,
+I know 'tis Sir John's wooing that won you, not mine. And that I have
+still to conquer your heart, though your hand is promised me. Yet I do not
+despair of being loved in as full measure as I love. My faith is strong in
+the power of an honest affection."
+
+"You may at least be sure of my honesty. I profess nothing but the desire
+to be your true and obedient wife----"
+
+"Obedient! You shall be my empress."
+
+"No, no. I have no wish to rule. I desire only to make my father happy, and
+you too, sir, if I can."
+
+"Ah, my soul, that is so easy for you. You have but to let me live in your
+dear company. I doubt I would rather be miserable with you than happy with
+any other woman. Ill-use me if you will; play Zantippe, and I will be more
+submissive than Socrates. But you are all mildness--perfect Christian,
+perfect woman. You cannot miss being perfect as wife--and----"
+
+Another word trembled on his lips; but he checked himself lest he should
+offend, and the speech ended in a sob.
+
+"My Angela, my angel!"
+
+He took her to his heart, and kissed the fair brow, cold under his
+passionate kisses. That word "angel" turned her to ice. It conjured back
+the sound of a voice that it was sin to remember. Fareham had called her
+so; not once, but many times, in their placid days of friendship, before
+the fiery breath of passion had withered all the flowers in her earthly
+paradise--before the knowledge of evil had clouded the brightness of the
+world.
+
+A gentle peace reigned at the Manor after Angela's betrothal. Sir John was
+happier than he had been since the days of his youth, before the coming
+of that cloud no bigger than a man's hand, when John Hampden's stubborn
+resistance of a thirty-shilling rate had brought Crown and People face to
+face upon the burning question of Ship-money, and kindled the fire that was
+to devour England. From the hour he left his young wife to follow the King
+to Yorkshire Sir John's existence had known little of rest or of comfort,
+or even of glory. He had fought on the losing side, and had missed the
+fame of those who fell and took the rank of heroes by an untimely death.
+Hardship and danger, wounds and sickness, straitened means and scanty fare,
+had been his portion for three bitter years; and then had come a period of
+patient service, of schemes and intrigues foredoomed to failure; of going
+to and fro, from Jersey to Paris, from Paris to Ireland, from Ireland
+to Cornwall, journeying hither and thither at the behest of a shifty,
+irresolute man, or a passionate, imprudent woman, as the case might be; now
+from the King to the Queen, now from the Queen to this or that ally; futile
+errands, unskilful combinations, failure on every hand, till the last fatal
+journey, on which he was an unwilling attendant, the flight from Hampton
+Court to Titchfield, when the fated King broke faith with his enemies in an
+unfinished negotiation.
+
+Foreign adventure had followed English hardships, and the soldier had
+been tossed on the stormy sea of European warfare. He had been graciously
+received at the French Court, but only to feel himself a stranger there,
+and to have his English clothes and English accent laughed at by Gramont
+and Bussy, and the accomplished St. Évremond, and the frivolous herd of
+their imitators; to see even the Queen, for whom he had spent his
+last jacobus, smile behind her fan at his bévues, and whisper to her
+sister-in-law while he knelt to kiss the little white hand that had led a
+King to ruin. Everywhere the stern Malignant had found himself outside the
+circle of the elect. At the Hôtel de Rambouillet, in the splendid houses of
+the newly built Place Royale, in the salons of Duchesses, and the taverns
+of courtly roysterers and drunken poets, at Cormier's, or at the Pine
+Apple, in the Rue de la Juiverie, where it was all the better for a
+Christian gentleman not to understand the talk of the wits that flashed and
+drank there. Everywhere he had been a stranger and aloof. It was only under
+canvas, in danger and privation, that he lost the sense of being one
+too many in the world. There John Kirkland found his level, shoulder to
+shoulder with Condé and Turenne. The stout Cavalier was second to no
+soldier in Louis' splendid army; was of the stamp of an earlier race even,
+better inured to hardship than any save that heroic Prince, the Achilles
+of his day, who to the graces of a modern courtier joined the temper of an
+ancient Greek.
+
+His daughter Hyacinth had given him the utmost affection which such a
+nature could give; but it was the affection of a trained singing-bird, or
+a pug-nosed spaniel; and the father, though he admired her beauty, and was
+pleased with her caresses, was shrewd enough to perceive the lightness
+of her disposition and the shallowness of her mind. He rejoiced in her
+marriage with a man of Fareham's strong character.
+
+"I have married thee to a husband who will know how to rule a wife," he
+told her on the night of her wedding. "You have but to obey and to be
+happy; for he is rich enough to indulge all your fancies, and will not
+complain if you waste the gold that would pay a company of foot on the
+decoration of your poor little person."
+
+"The tone in which you speak of my poor little person, sir, can but remind
+me how much I need the tailor and the milliner," answered Hyacinth,
+dropping her favourite curtsy, which she was ever ready to practise at the
+slightest provocation.
+
+"Nay, petite chatte, you know I think you the loveliest creature at Saint
+Germain or the Louvre, far surpassing in beauty the Cardinal's niece, who
+has managed to set young Louis' heart throbbing with a boyish passion. But
+I doubt you bestow too much care on the cherishing of a gift so fleeting."
+
+"You have said the word, sir. 'Tis because it is so fleeting I must needs
+take care of my beauty. We poor women are like the butterflies and the
+roses. We have as brief a summer. You men, who value us only for our
+outward show, should pardon some vanity in creatures so ephemeral."
+
+"Ephemeral scarce applies to a sex which owns such an example as your
+grandmother, who has lived to reckon her servants among the grandsons of
+her earliest lovers."
+
+"Not lived, sir! No woman lives after thirty. She can but exist, and dream
+that she is still admired. La Marquise has been dead for the last twenty
+years, but she won't own it. Ah, sir, c'est un triste supplice to _have
+been_! I wonder how those poor ghosts can bear that earthly purgatory which
+they call old age? Look at Madame de Sablé, par exemple, once a beauty, now
+only a tradition. And Queen Anne! Old people say she was beautiful, and
+that Buckingham risked being torn by wild horses--like Ravaillac--only
+to kiss her hand by stealth in a moonlit garden; and would have plunged
+England in war but for an excuse to come back to Paris. Who would go to war
+for Anne's haggard countenance nowadays?"
+
+Even in Lady Fareham's household the Cavalier soon began to fancy himself
+an inhabitant too much; a dull, grey ghost from a tragical past. He could
+not keep himself from talking of the martyred King, and those bitter years
+through which he had followed his master's sinking fortunes. He told
+stories of York and of Beverley; of the scarcity of cash which reduced his
+Majesty's Court to but one table; of that bitter affront at Coventry; of
+the evil omens that had marked the raising of the Standard on the hill at
+Nottingham, and filled superstitious minds with dark forebodings, reminding
+old men of that sad shower of rain that fell when Charles was proclaimed at
+Whitehall, on the day of his accession, and of the shock of earthquake on
+his coronation day; of Edgehill and Lindsey's death; of the profligate
+conduct of the Cavalier regiments, and the steady, dogged force of their
+psalm-singing adversaries; of Queen Henrietta's courage, and beauty, and
+wilfulness, and her fatal influence upon an adoring husband.
+
+"She wanted to be all that Buckingham had been," said Sir John, "forgetting
+that Buckingham was the King's evil genius."
+
+That lively and eminently artificial society of the Rue de Touraine soon
+wearied of Sir John's reminiscences. King Charles's execution had receded
+into the dim grey of history. He might as well have told them anecdotes
+of Cinq Mars, or of the great Henri, or of Moses or Abraham. Life went
+on rapid wheels in patrician Paris. They had Condé to talk about, and
+Mazarin's numerous nieces, and the opera, that new importation from Italy,
+which the Cardinal was bringing into fashion; while in the remote past of
+half a dozen years back the Fronde was the only interesting subject, and
+even that was worn threadbare; the adventures of the Duchess, the conduct
+of the Prince in prison, the intrigues of Cardinal and Queen, Mademoiselle,
+yellow-haired Beaufort, duels of five against five--all--all these were
+ancient history as compared with young Louis and his passion for Marie de
+Mancini, and the scheming of her wily uncle to marry all his nieces to
+reigning princes or embryo kings.
+
+And then the affectations and conceits of that elegant circle, the sonnets
+and madrigals, the "bouts-rimés," the practical jokes, the logic-chopping
+and straw-splitting of those ultra-fine intellects, the romances where the
+personages of the day masqueraded under Greek or Roman or Oriental aliases,
+books written in a flowery language which the Cavalier did not understand,
+and full of allusions that were dark to him; while not to know and
+appreciate those master-works placed him outside the pale.
+
+He rejoiced in escaping from that overcharged atmosphere to the tavern, to
+the camp, anywhere. He followed the exiled Stuarts in their wanderings,
+paid his homage to the Princess of Orange, roamed from scene to scene, a
+stranger and one too many wherever he went.
+
+Then came the hardest blow of all--the chilling disillusion that awaited
+many of Charles's faithful friends, who were not of such political
+importance as to command their recompense. Neglect and forgetfulness were
+Sir John Kirkland's portion; and for him and for such as he that caustic
+definition of the Act of Indemnity was a hard and cruel truth. It was an
+Act of Indemnity for the King's enemies and of oblivion for his friends.
+Sir John's spirits had hardly recovered from the bitterness of disappointed
+affection when he came back to the old home, though his chagrin was seven
+years old. But now, in his delight at the alliance with Denzil Warner, he
+seemed to have renewed his lease of cheerfulness and bodily vigour. He rode
+and walked about the lanes and woods with erect head and elastic limbs. He
+played bowls with Denzil in the summer evenings. He went fishing with his
+daughter and her sweetheart. He revelled in the simple rustic life, and
+told them stories of his boyhood, when James was King, and many a queer
+story of that eccentric monarch and of the rising star, George Villiers.
+
+"Ah, what a history that was!" he exclaimed. "His mother trained him as if
+with a foreknowledge of that star-like ascendency. He was schooled to shine
+and dazzle, to excel all compeers in the graces men and women admire. I
+doubt she never thought of the mind inside him, or cared whether he had a
+heart or a lump of marble behind his waist-band. He was taught neither to
+think nor to pity--only to shine; to be quick with his tongue in half a
+dozen languages, with his sword after half a dozen modes of fence. He could
+kill his man in the French, or the Italian, or the Spanish manner. He was
+cosmopolitan in the knowledge of evil. He had every device that can make a
+man brilliant and dangerous. He mounted every rung of the ladder, leaping
+from step to step. He ascended, swift as a shooting star, from plain
+country gentleman to the level of princes. And he expired with an
+ejaculation, astonished to find himself mortal, slain in a moment by the
+thrust of a ten-penny knife. I remember as if it were yesterday how men
+looked and spoke when the news came to London, and how some said this
+murder would be the saving of King Charles. I know of one man at least who
+was glad."
+
+"Who was he, sir?" asked Denzil.
+
+"He who had the greatest mind among Englishmen--Thomas Wentworth.
+Buckingham had held him at a distance from the King, and his strong
+passionate temper was seething with indignation at being kept aloof by
+that silken sybarite--an impotent General, a fatal counsellor. After the
+Favourite's death there came a time of peace and plenty. The pestilence had
+passed, the war was over. Charles was happy with his Henriette and their
+lovely children. Wentworth was in Ireland. The Parliament House stood still
+and empty, doors shut, swallows building under the eaves. I look back, and
+those placid years melt into each other like one long summer. And then,
+again, as 'twere yesterday, I hear Hampden's drums and fifes in the
+lanes, and see the rebels' flag with that hateful legend, 'Vestigia nulla
+retrorsum,' and Buckinghamshire peasants are under arms, and the King and
+his people have begun to hate and fear each other."
+
+"None foresaw that the war would last so long or end in murder, I doubt,
+sir," said Angela.
+
+"Nay, child; we who were loyal thought to see that rabble withered by the
+breath of kingly nostrils. A word should have brought them to the dust."
+
+"There might be so easy a victory, perhaps, sir, from a King who knew how
+to speak the right word at the right moment, how to comply graciously with
+a just demand, and how to be firm in a righteous denial," replied Denzil;
+"but with Charles a stammering speech was but the outward expression of a
+wavering mind. He was a man who never listened to an appeal, but always
+yielded to a threat, were it only loud enough."
+
+The wedding was to be soon. Marriages were patched up quickly in the
+light-hearted sixties. And here there was nothing to wait for. Sir John had
+found Denzil compliant on every minor question, and willing to make his
+home at the Manor during his mother's lifetime.
+
+"The old lady would never stomach a Papist daughter-in-law," said Sir John;
+and Denzil was fain to confess that Lady Warner would not easily reconcile
+herself with Angela's creed, though she could not fail of loving Angela
+herself.
+
+"My daughter would have neither peace nor liberty under a Puritan's roof,"
+Sir John said; "and I should have neither son nor daughter, and should be a
+loser by my girl's marriage. You shall be as much master here, Denzil, as
+if this were your own house--which it will be when I have moved to my last
+billet. Give me a couple of stalls for my roadsters, and kennel room for my
+dogs, and I want no more. You and Angela may introduce as many new fashions
+as you like; dine at two o'clock, and sip your unwholesome Indian drink of
+an evening. The fine ladies in Paris were beginning to take tea when I was
+last there, though by the faces they made over the stuff it might have been
+poison. I can smoke my pipe in the chimney-corner, and look on and admire
+at the new generation. I shall not feel myself one too many at your
+fireside, as I used sometimes in the Rue de Touraine, when those strutting
+Gallic cocks were quizzing me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were clouds of dust and a clatter of hoofs again in front of the
+floriated iron gate; but this time it was not the Honourable Henriette who
+came tripping along the gravel path on two-inch heels, but my Lady Fareham,
+who walked languidly, with the assistance of a gold-headed cane, and who
+looked pale and thin in her apple-green satin gown and silver-braided
+petticoat.
+
+She, too, came attended by a second coach, which was filled by her
+ladyship's French waiting-woman, Mrs. Lewin, and a pile of boxes and
+parcels.
+
+"I'll wager that in the rapture and romance of your sweethearting you have
+not given a thought to petticoats and mantuas," she said, after she had
+embraced her sister, who was horrified at the sight of that painted
+harridan from London.
+
+Angela blushed at those words, "rapture and romance," knowing how little
+there had been of either in her thoughts, or in Denzil's sober courtship.
+Romance! Alas! there had been but one romance in her life, and that a
+guilty one, which she must ever remember with remorse.
+
+"Come now, confess you have not a gown ordered."
+
+"I have gowns enough and to spare. Oh, sister! have you come so far to talk
+of gowns? And that odious woman too! What brought her here?" Angela asked,
+with more temper than she was wont to show.
+
+"My sisterly kindness brought her. You are an ungrateful hussy for looking
+vexed when I have come a score of miles through the dust to do you a
+service."
+
+"Ah, dearest, I am grateful to you for coming. But, alas! you are looking
+pale and thin. Heaven forbid that you have been indisposed, and we in
+ignorance of your suffering."
+
+"No, I am well enough, though every one assures me I look ill; which is but
+a civil mode of telling me I am growing old and ugly."
+
+"Nay, Hyacinth, the former we must all become, with time; the latter you
+will never be."
+
+"Your servant, Sir Denzil, has taught you to pay antique compliments. Well,
+now we will talk business. I had occasion to send for Lewin--my toilet was
+in a horrid state of decay; and then it seemed to me, knowing your foolish
+indifference, that even your wedding gown would not be chosen unless I
+saw to it. So here is Lewin with Lyons and Genoa silks of the very latest
+patterns. She has but just come from Paris, and is full of Parisian modes
+and Court scandals. The King posted off to Versailles directly after his
+mother's death, and has not returned to the Louvre since. He amuses
+himself by spending millions on building, and making passionate love to
+Mademoiselle la Vallière, who encourages him by pretending an excessive
+modesty, and exaggerates every favour by penitential tears. I doubt his
+attachment to so melancholy a mistress will hardly last a lifetime. She is
+not beautiful; she has a halting gait; and she is no more virtuous than any
+other young woman who makes a show of resistance to enhance the merit of
+her surrender."
+
+Hyacinth prattled all the way to the parlour, Mrs. Lewin and the
+waiting-woman following, laden with parcels.
+
+"Queer, dear old hovel!" she exclaimed, sinking languidly upon a tabouret,
+and fanning herself exhaustedly, while the mantua-maker opened her boxes,
+and laid out her sample breadths of richly decorated brocade, or silver and
+gold enwrought satin. "How well I remember being whipped over my horn-book
+in this very room! And there is the bowling green where I used to race with
+the Italian greyhound my grandmother brought me from Paris. I look back,
+and it seems a dream of some other child running about in the sunshine. It
+is so hard to believe that joyous little being--who knew not the meaning of
+heart-ache--was I."
+
+"Why that sigh, sister? Surely none ever had less cause for heart-ache than
+you?"
+
+"Have I not cause? Not when my glass tells me youth is gone, and beauty
+is waning? Not when there is no one in this wide world who cares a straw
+whether I am handsome or hideous? I would as lief be dead as despised and
+neglected."
+
+"Sorella mia, questa donna ti ascolta," murmured Angela; "come and look at
+the old gardens, sister, while Mrs. Lewin spreads out her wares. And pray
+consider, madam," turning to the mantua-maker, "that those peacock purples
+and gold embroideries have no temptations for me. I am marrying a country
+gentleman, and am to lead a country life. My gowns must be such as will
+not be spoilt by a walk in dusty lanes, or a visit to a farm-labourer's
+cottage."
+
+"Eh, gud, your ladyship, do not tell me that you would bury so much beauty
+among sheep and cows, and odious ploughmen's wives and dairy-women. A month
+or so of rustic life in summer between Epsom and Tunbridge Wells may be
+well enough, to rest your beauty--without patches or a French head--out of
+sight of your admirers. But to live in the country! Only a jealous husband
+could ever propose more than an annual six weeks of rustic seclusion to a
+wife under sixty. Lord Chesterfield was considered as cruel for taking his
+Countess to the rocks and ravines of Derbyshire as Sir John Denham for
+poisoning his poor lady."
+
+"Chut! tu vas un peu trop loin, Lewin!" remonstrated Lady Fareham.
+
+"But, in truly, your ladyship, when I hear Mrs. Kirkland talk of a husband
+who would have her waste her beauty upon clod-polls and dairy-maids, and
+never wear a mantua worth looking at----"
+
+"I doubt my husband will be guided by his own likings rather than by Mrs.
+Lewin's tastes and opinions," said Angela, with a stately curtsy, which was
+designed to put the forward tradeswoman in her place, and which took that
+personage's breath away.
+
+"There never was anything like the insolence of a handsome young woman
+before she has been educated by a lover," she said to her ladyship's
+Frenchwoman, with a vindictive smile and scornful shrug of bloated
+shoulders, when the sisters had left the parlour. "But wait till her first
+intrigue, and then it is 'My dearest Lewin, wilt thou make me everlastingly
+beholden to thee by taking this letter--thou knowest to whom?' Or, in a
+flood of tears, 'Lewin, you are my only friend--and if you cannot find me
+some good and serviceable woman who would give me a home where I can hide
+from the cruel eye of the world, I must take poison.' No insolence then,
+mark you, Madame Hortense!"
+
+"This demoiselle is none of your sort," Hortense said. "You must not judge
+English ladies by your maids of honour. Celles là sont des drôlesses, sans
+foi ni loi."
+
+"Well, if she thinks I am going to make up linsey woolsey, or Norwich
+drugget, she will find her mistake. I never courted the custom of little
+gentlemen's wives, with a hundred a year for pin-money. If I am to do
+anything for this stuck-up peacock, Lady Fareham must give me the order. I
+am no servant of Madame Kirkland."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alone in the garden, the sisters embraced again, Lady Fareham with a
+fretful tearfulness, as of one whose over strung nerves were on the verge
+of hysteria.
+
+"There is something that preys upon your spirits, dearest," Angela said
+interrogatively.
+
+"Something! A hundred things. I am at cross purposes with life. But I
+should have been worse had you been obstinate and still refused this
+gentleman."
+
+"Why should that affect you, Hyacinth?" asked her sister, with a sudden
+coldness.
+
+"Chi lo sa? One has fancies! But my dearest sister has been wise in good
+time, and you will be the happiest wife in England; for I believe your
+Puritan is a saintly person, the very opposite of our Court sparks, who are
+the most incorrigible villains. Ah, sweet, if you heard the stories Lewin
+tells me--even of that young Rochester--scarce out of his teens. And the
+Duke--not a jot better than the King--and with so much less grace in his
+iniquity. Well, you will be married at the Chapel Royal, and spend your
+wedding night at Fareham House. We will have a great supper. His Majesty
+will come, of course. He owes us that much civility."
+
+"Hyacinth, if you would make me happy, let me be married in our dear
+mother's oratory, by your chaplain. Sure, dearest, you know I have never
+taken kindly to Court splendours."
+
+"Have you not? Why, you shone and sparkled like a star, that last night you
+were ever at Whitehall, Henri sitting close beside you. 'Twas the night
+he took ill of a fever. Was it a fever? I have wondered sometimes whether
+there was not a mystery of attempted murder behind that long sickness."
+
+"Murder!"
+
+"A deadly duel with a man who hated him. Is not that an attempt at murder
+on the part of him who deliberately provokes the quarrel? Well, it is past,
+and he is gone. For all the colour of the world I live in, there might
+never have been any such person as Henri de Malfort."
+
+Her airy laugh ended in a sob, which she tried to stifle, but could not.
+
+"Hyacinth, Hyacinth, why will you persist in being miserable when you have
+so little cause for sadness?"
+
+"Have I not cause? Am I not growing old, and robbed of the only friend who
+brought gaiety into my life; who understood my thoughts and valued me? A
+traitor, I know--like the rest of them. They are all traitors. But he would
+have been true had I been kinder, and trusted him."
+
+"Hyacinth, you are mad! Would you have had him more your friend? He was
+too near as it was. Every thought you gave him was an offence against your
+husband. Would you have sunk as low as those shameless women the King
+admires?"
+
+"Sunk--low? Why, those women are on a pinnacle of
+fame--courted--flattered--poetised--painted. They will be famous for
+centuries after you and I are forgotten. There is no such thing as shame
+nowadays, except that it is shameful to have done nothing to be ashamed of.
+I have wasted my life, Angela. There was not a woman at the Louvre who had
+my complexion, nor one who could walk a coranto with more grace. Yet I have
+consented to be a nobody at two Courts. And now I am growing old, and my
+poor painted face shocks me when I chance on my reflection by daylight; and
+there is nothing left for me--nothing."
+
+"Your husband, sister!"
+
+"Sister, do not mock me! You know how much Fareham is to me. We were chosen
+for each other, and fancied we were in love for the first few years, while
+he was so often called away from me, that his coming back made a festival,
+and renewed affection. He came crimson from battles and sieges; and I was
+proud of him, and called him my hero. But after the treaty of the Pyrenees
+our passion cooled, and he grew too much the school-master. And when he
+recovered of the contagion, he had recovered of any love-sickness he ever
+had for me!"
+
+"Ah, sister, you say these things without thinking them. His lordship needs
+but some sign of affection on your part to be as fond a husband as ever he
+was."
+
+"You can answer for him, I'll warrant"
+
+"And there are other claims upon your love--your children."
+
+"Henriette, who is nearly as tall as I am, and thinks herself handsomer and
+cleverer than ever I was. George, who is a lump of selfishness, and cares
+more for his ponies and peregrines than for father and mother. I tell you
+there is nothing left for me, except fine houses and carriages; and to show
+my fading beauty dressed in the latest mode at twilight in the Ring, and to
+startle people from the observation of my wrinkles by the boldness of my
+patches. I was the first to wear a coach and horses across my forehead--in
+London, at least. They had these follies in Paris three years ago."
+
+"Indeed, dearest?"
+
+"And thou wilt let me arrange thy wedding after my own fancy, wilt thou
+not, ma très chère?"
+
+"You forget Denzil's hatred of finery."
+
+"But the wedding is the bride's festival. The bridegroom hardly counts.
+Nay, love, you need fear no immodest fooling when you bid good night to the
+company; nor shall there be any scuffling for garters at the door of your
+chamber. There was none of that antique nonsense when Lady Sandwich married
+her daughter. All vulgar fashions of coarse old Oliver's day have gone to
+the ragbag of worn-out English customs. We were so coarse a nation, till we
+learnt manners in exile. Let me have my own way, dearest. It will amuse me,
+and wean me from melancholic fancies."
+
+"Then, indeed, love, thou shalt have thy way in all particulars."
+
+After this Lady Fareham was in haste to return to the house in order to
+choose the wedding gown; and here in the panelled parlour they found the
+two gentlemen, with the dust of the road and the warmth of the noonday sun
+upon them, newly returned from Aylesbury, where they had ridden in the
+freshness of the early morning to choose a team of plough-horses at
+the fair; and who were more disconcerted than gratified at finding the
+dinner-parlour usurped by Mrs. Lewin, Madame Hortense, and an array of
+finery that made the room look like a stall in the Exchange.
+
+It was on the stroke of one, yet there were no signs of dinner. Sir John
+and Sir Denzil were both sharp set after their ride, and were looking by no
+means kindly on Mrs. Lewin and her wares when Hyacinth and Angela appeared
+upon the scene.
+
+"Nothing could happen luckier," said Lady Fareham, when she had saluted
+Denzil, and embraced her father with "Pish, sir! how you smell of clover
+and new-mown grass! I vow you have smothered my mantua with dust."
+
+Father and sweetheart were called upon to assist in choosing the wedding
+gown--a somewhat empty compliment on the part of Lady Fareham, since she
+would not hear of the simple canary brocade which Denzil selected, and
+which Mrs. Lewin protested was only good enough to make his lady
+a bed-gown; or of the pale grey atlas which her father considered
+suitable--since, indeed, she would have nothing but a white satin, powdered
+with silver fleurs de luces, which she remarked, _en passant_, would
+have become the Grande Mademoiselle, had she but obtained her cousin's
+permission to cast herself away on Lauzun.
+
+"Dear sister, can you consider a fabric fit for a Bourbon Princess a
+becoming gown for me?" remonstrated Angela.
+
+"Yes, child; white and silver will better become thee than poor Louise, who
+has no more complexion left than I have. She was in her heyday when she
+held the Bastille, and when she and Beaufort were two of the most popular
+people in Paris. She has made herself a laughing-stock since then. That is
+settled, Lewin"--with a nod to the milliner--"the silver fleurs de luces
+for the wedding mantua. And now be quick with your samples."
+
+All Angela's remonstrances were as vain to-day as they had been on the
+occasion of her first acquaintance with Mrs. Lewin. The excitement of
+discussing and selecting the finery she loved affected Lady Fareham's
+spirits like a draught of saumur. She was generous by nature, extravagant
+by long habit.
+
+"Sure it would be a hard thing if I could not give you your wedding
+clothes, when you are marrying the man I chose for you," she protested.
+"The cherry-coloured farradine, by all means, Lewin; 'tis the very shade
+for my sister's fair skin. Indeed, Denzil"--nodding at him, as he stood
+watching them, with that hopelessly bewildered air of a man in a milliner's
+shop--"I have been your best friend from the beginning, and, but for me,
+you might never have won your sweetheart to listen to you. Mazarine hoods
+are as ancient as the pyramids, Lewin. Pr'ythee show us something newer."
+
+It was late in the evening when the two coaches left the Manor gate.
+Hyacinth had been in no haste to return to the Abbey. There was nobody
+there who wanted her, she protested, and there would be a moon after nine
+o'clock, and she had servants enough to take care of her on the road; so
+Mrs. Lewin and her ladyship's woman were entertained in the steward's
+room, where Reuben held forth upon the splendour that had prevailed in his
+master's house before the troubles--and where the mantua-maker ate and
+drank all she could get, and dozed and yawned through the old man's
+reminiscences.
+
+The afternoon was spent more pleasantly by the quality, who sat about in
+the sunny garden, or sauntered by the fish pond and fed the carp--and took
+a dish of the Indian drink which the sisters loved, in the pergola at the
+end of the grass walk.
+
+Hyacinth now affected a passion for the country, and quoted the late Mr.
+Cowley in praise of rusticity.
+
+"Oh, how delicious is this woodland valley," she cried.
+
+    "'Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying,
+    Hear the soft winds, above me plying,
+    With all their wanton boughs dispute.'
+
+Poor Cowley, he might well love the country, for he was shamefully treated
+in town--a devoted servant to bankrupt royalty for all the best years of
+his life, and fobbed off with a compliment when the King came into power.
+Ah me, 'tis an ill world we live in, and London is the most hateful spot in
+it," she concluded, with a sigh.
+
+"And yet you will have me married nowhere else, sister?"
+
+"Oh, for a wedding or a christening one must have a crowd of fine people.
+It would go about that Lady Fareham was quite out of fashion if I were
+content to see only ploughmen and dairy-maids, and a petty gentleman or two
+with their ill-dressed wives, at my sister's marriage. London is the only
+decent place--after Paris--to live in; but the country is a peacefuller
+place in which to die."
+
+A heart-breaking sigh emphasised the sentence, and Angela scrutinised her
+sister's face with increased concern.
+
+"Dear love, I fear you are hiding something from me; and that you are
+seriously indisposed," she said earnestly.
+
+"If I am I do not know it. But when one is weary of living there is only
+one sensible thing left to do--if Providence will but be kind and help one
+to do it. I am not for dagger or poison, or for a plunge in deep water. But
+to fade away in a gentle disease--a quiet ebbing of the vital stream--is
+the luckiest thing that can befall one who is tired of life."
+
+Alarmed at hearing her sister talk in this melancholy strain, and still
+more alarmed by the change in her looks, sunken cheeks, hectic flush,
+fever-bright eyes, Angela entreated Lady Fareham to stay at the Manor, and
+be nursed and cared for.
+
+"Oh, I know your skill in nursing, and your power over a sick person,"
+Hyacinth interjected scornfully, and then in the next moment apologised for
+the little spurt of retrospective jealousy.
+
+"Stay with us, love, and let us make you happier than you are at Chilton,"
+pleaded Angela; but Hyacinth, who had been protesting that nobody wanted
+her, now declared that she could not leave home, and recited a list of
+duties, social and domestic.
+
+"I shall not have half an hour to spare until I go to London next week to
+prepare for the wedding," she said. The date had been fixed while they sat
+at dinner; Sir John and his elder daughter settling the day, while Denzil
+assented with radiant smiles, and Angela sat by in pale silence, submissive
+to the will of others. They were to be married on a Thursday, July 19, and
+it was now the end of June--little more than a fortnight's interval in
+which to meditate upon the beginning of a new life.
+
+Mrs. Lewin promised the white and silver mantua, and as many of the new
+clothes as a supernatural address, industry, and obligingness, could
+produce within the time. Hyacinth grew more lively after supper, and parted
+from her father and sister in excellent spirits; but her haggard face
+haunted Angela in troubled dreams all that night, and she thought of her
+with anxiety during the next few days, and most of all upon one long sultry
+day, the 4th of July, which was the third day she had spent in unbroken
+solitude since her father and Denzil had ridden away in the dim early
+morning, while the pastures were veiled in summer haze, on the first stage
+of a journey to London, hoping, with a long rest between noon and evening,
+to ride thirty-seven miles before night.
+
+They were to consult with a learned London lawyer, and to execute the
+marriage settlement, Sir John vastly anxious about this business, in his
+ignorance of law and distrust of lawyers. They were to stay in London only
+long enough to transact their business, and would then return post-haste to
+the Manor; but as they were to ride their own horses all the way, and as
+lawyers are notoriously slow, Angela had been told not to expect them till
+the fourth evening after their departure. In her lonely rambles that long
+summer day, with her spaniel Ganymede, and her father's favourite pointer,
+for her only companions, Angela's thoughts dwelt ever on the past. Of the
+future--even that so near future of her marriage--she thought hardly at
+all. That future had been disposed of by others. Her fate had been settled
+for her; and she was told that by her submission she would make those she
+loved happy. Her father would have the son he longed for, and would be
+sure of her faithful devotion till the end of his days--or of hers, should
+untimely death intervene. Hyacinth's foolish jealousy would be dispelled by
+the act which gave her sister's honour into a husband's custody. And for
+him, that presumptuous lover who had taken so little pains to hide his
+wicked passion, if in any audacious hour he had dared to believe her guilty
+of reciprocating his love, that insolent suspicion would be answered at
+once and for ever by her marriage with Denzil--Denzil who was Fareham's
+junior by fifteen years, his superior in every advantage of person, as
+she told herself with a bitter smile; for even while she thought of that
+superiority--the statuesque regularity of feature, the clear colouring of
+a complexion warmed with the glow of health, the deep blue of large
+well-opened eyes, the light free carriage of one who had led an active
+country life--even while she thought of Denzil, another face and figure
+flashed upon her memory--rugged and dark, the forehead deeper lined than
+years justified, the proud eye made sombre by the shadow of the projecting
+brow, the cheek sunken, the shoulders bent as if under the burden of
+melancholy thoughts.
+
+O God! this was the face she loved. The only face that had ever touched the
+springs of joy and pain. It was nearly half a year since she had seen him.
+Their meetings in the future need be of the rarest. She knew that Denzil
+regarded him with a distrust which made friendship out of the question; and
+it would be her duty to keep as far aloof from that old time as possible.
+Family meetings there must be, considering the short distance between
+Chilton and the Manor, feastings and junketings in company once or twice in
+the summer, lest it should be thought Sir John and his lordship were ill
+friends. But Angela knew that in any such social gathering, sitting at the
+overloaded board, amid the steam of rich viands, and the noise of many
+voices, she and Fareham would be as far apart as if the Indian Ocean rolled
+between them.
+
+Once, and very soon, they must meet face to face; and he would take her
+hand in greeting, and would kiss her on the lips as she stood before him in
+her wedding finery, that splendour of white and silver which would provoke
+him to scornful wonder at her trivial pleasure in sumptuous clothes. Thus
+once they must meet. Her heart thrilled at the thought. He had so often
+shunned her, taking such obvious trouble to keep his distance; but he could
+hardly absent himself from her wedding. The scandal would be too great.
+
+Well, she had accepted her fate, and this dull aching misery must be lived
+through somehow; and neither her father nor Denzil must ever have occasion
+to suspect her unhappiness.
+
+"Oh, gracious Mary, Mother of God, help and sustain me in my sorrow! Guard
+and deliver me from sinful thoughts. What are my fanciful griefs to thy
+great sorrows, which thou didst endure with holy patience? Subdue and bend
+me to obedience and humility. Let me be an affectionate daughter, a dutiful
+wife, a friend and comforter to my poor neighbours."
+
+So, and with many such prayers she struggled against the dominion of evil,
+kneeling meekly in the leafy stillness of that deep beechwood, where no
+human eye beheld her devotions. So in the long solitude of the summer day
+she held commune with heaven, and fought against that ever-recurring memory
+of past happiness, that looking back to the joys and emotions of those
+placid hours at Chilton Abbey, before the faintest apprehension of evil had
+shadowed her friendship with Fareham. Not to look back; not to remember
+and regret. That was the struggle in which the intense abstraction of
+the believer, lifting the mind to heaven, alone could help her. Long and
+fervent were her prayers in that woodland sanctuary where she made her
+pious retreat; nor was her sister forgotten in those prayers, which
+included much earnest supplication for the welfare here and hereafter
+of that lighter soul for whom she had ever felt a protecting and almost
+maternal love. Years counted for very little in the relations between these
+sisters.
+
+The day wore to its close--the most solemn day in Angela's life since that
+which she had spent in the Reverend Mother's death-chamber, kneeling in the
+faint yellow glow of the tall wax-candles, in a room from which daylight
+was excluded. She remembered the detachment of her mind from all earthly
+interests as she knelt beside that death-bed, and how easily her thoughts
+had mounted heavenward; while now her love clung to this sinful earth. How
+had she changed for the worse, how was she sunk from the holy aspirations
+of that time!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+HIGH STAKES.
+
+
+Angela had eaten her lonely supper, and was sitting at her embroidery frame
+between nine and ten, while the sounds of bolts and bars in the hall and
+corridors, and old Reuben's voice hectoring the maids, told her that the
+servants were closing the house before going to bed. Reuben would be coming
+to her presently, no doubt, to remind her of the lateness of the hour,
+wanting to carry her candle to her chamber, and as it were to see her
+safely disposed of before he went to his garret. She meant, on this
+occasion, to resist his friendly tyranny, having so little inclination for
+sleep, and hoping to find peace of mind and distraction in this elaborate
+embroidery of gold thread and many-coloured silks, which was destined to
+adorn her father's person, on the facings of a new-fashioned doublet.
+
+Suddenly, as she bent over the candle to scrutinize the shading of her
+silks, the hollow sound of hoofs broke upon the silence, and in a minute
+afterwards a bell rang loudly.
+
+Who could it be at such an hour? Her father, no doubt; no one else. He had
+hurried his business through, and returned a day earlier than he had hoped.
+Or could it be that he had fallen sick in London, and Denzil had come to
+tell her ill news? Or was it a messenger from her sister? She had time to
+contemplate several evil contingencies while she stood in the hall watching
+Reuben withdraw various bolts and bars.
+
+The door swung back at last, and she saw a man in high-riding boots and
+slouched hat standing on the threshold, while in the moonlight behind him
+she could distinguish a mounted groom holding the bridle of a led horse, as
+well as the horse from which the visitor had just dismounted.
+
+The face that looked at her from the doorway was the face which had haunted
+her with cruel persistency through that long day, chaining her thoughts to
+earth.
+
+Fareham stood looking at her for a few moments, deadly pale, while she
+was collecting her senses, trying to understand this most unlooked-for
+presence. Why was he here? Ah, no doubt, a messenger of evil.
+
+"Oh, sir, my sister is ill!" she cried; "I read sorrow in your
+face--seriously ill--dangerously? Speak, my lord, for pity's sake!"
+
+"Yes, she is ill."
+
+"Not dead?"
+
+"No, no."
+
+"But very ill? Oh, I feared, I feared when I saw her that there was
+something amiss. Has she sent you to fetch me?"
+
+"Yes; you are wanted."
+
+"Reuben, I must set out this instant. Order the coach to be got ready. And
+Betty must go with me."
+
+"You will need no coach, Angela. Nor is there time to spare for any such
+creeping conveyance. I have brought Zephyr. You remember how you loved him.
+He is swift, and gentle as the wind after which we named him; sure of foot,
+easy to ride. The roads are good after yesterday's rain, and the moon will
+last us most of our way. We shall be at Chilton in two hours. Put on your
+coat and hat. Indeed, there is no time to be lost."
+
+"Do you mean that she may die before I can reach her?"
+
+"I know not," stamping his foot impatiently. "Fate holds the keys. But you
+had best waste no time on questions."
+
+His manner was one of command, and he seemed to apprehend no possibility
+of hesitation on her part. Reuben ran to his pantry, and came back with a
+tankard of wine, which he offered to the visitor with tremulous respect,
+almost ready to kneel.
+
+"Our best Burgundy, my lord. Your lordship must be dry after your long
+ride; and if your lordship would care to sup, there is good picking on last
+Monday's chine, and a capon from madam's supper scarce touched with the
+carving-knife."
+
+"Nothing, I thank you, friend. There is no time for gluttony."
+
+Reuben, pressing the tankard upon him, he drank some wine with an automatic
+air, and still stood with his eyes fixed on Angela's pallid countenance,
+waiting her decision.
+
+"Are you coming?" he asked.
+
+"Does she want me? Has she asked for me? Oh, for God's sake, my lord, tell
+me more! Is she dangerously ill? Have the doctors given her over?"
+
+"No. But she is in a bad way. And you--you--you--are wanted. Will you come?
+Ay or no?"
+
+"Yes. It is my duty to go to her. But when my father and Denzil come back
+to-morrow, Reuben must be able to tell them why I went; and the nature
+of my sister's illness. Were it not so serious that there is no time for
+hesitation, it would ill become me to leave this house in my father's
+absence."
+
+He gave his head a curious jerk at Denzil's name, as if he had been stung.
+
+"Yes, I will explain; I can make all clear to this gentleman here while you
+put on your cloak. Bring the black to the door," he called to his man.
+
+"Will not your lordship bait your horses before you start?" Reuben asked
+deferentially.
+
+"No time, fellow. There is no time. How often must I tell you so?" retorted
+Fareham.
+
+Reuben's village breeding had given him an exaggerated respect for
+aristocracy. He had grown up in the midst of small country gentlemen,
+rural squires, among whom the man with three thousand a year in land was a
+magnate, and there had never been more than one nobleman resident within a
+day's ride of the Manor Moat. To Reuben, therefore, a peer was like a god;
+and he would have no more questioned Lord Fareham's will than a disciple of
+Hobbes would have imputed injustice to Kings.
+
+Angela returned in a few minutes, having changed her silken gown for a neat
+cloth riding-skirt and close-fitting hood. She carried nothing with her,
+being assured that her sister's wardrobe would be at her disposal, and
+having no mind to spend a minute more in preparation than was absolutely
+necessary. Brief as her toilet was, she had time to consider Lord Fareham's
+countenance and manner, the cold distance of his address, and to scorn
+herself for having thought of him in her reveries that day as loving her
+always and till death. It was far better so. The abyss that parted them
+could not yawn too wide. She put a stern restraint upon herself, so that
+there should be nothing hysterical in her manner, lest her fears about her
+sister's health should be mistaken for agitation at his presence. She stood
+beside the horse, straight and firm, with her hand on the pommel, and
+sprang lightly into the saddle as Fareham's strong arm lifted her. Yet
+she could but notice that his hand shook as he gave her the bridle, and
+arranged the cloth petticoat over her foot.
+
+Not a word was spoken on either side as they rode out at the gate and
+through the village of St. Nicholas, beautiful in the moonlight. Such low
+crumbling walls and deeply sloping roofs of cottages squatting in a tangle
+of garden and orchard; such curious outlines of old brick gables in the
+better class houses of miller, butcher, and general dealer; orchards and
+gardens and farm buildings, with every variety of thatch and eaves, huddled
+together in picturesque confusion; large spaces everywhere--pond, and
+village green, and common, and copse beyond; a peaceful, prosperous
+settlement, which had passed unharmed through the ordeal of the civil war,
+safe in its rural seclusion. Not a word was spoken even when the village
+was left behind, and they were riding on a lonely road, in so brilliant
+a moonlight that Angela could see every line in her companion's brooding
+face.
+
+Why was he so gloomy and so unkind, in an hour when his sympathy should
+naturally have been given to her? Was he consumed with sorrow for his
+wife's indisposition, and did anxiety make him silent; or was he angry with
+himself for not being as deeply distressed as a husband ought to be at
+a wife's peril? She knew too well how he and Hyacinth had been growing
+further apart day by day, till the only link between husband and wife
+seemed to be a decent courtesy and subservience to the world's opinion.
+
+She recalled that other occasion when they two had made a solitary journey
+together, and in as gloomy a silence--that night of the great fire, when he
+had flung off his doublet and taken the sculls out of her hands, and rowed
+steadily and fast, with his eyes downcast, leaving her to steer the boat as
+she would, or trusting to the lateness of the hour for a clear course. He
+had seemed to hate her that night just as he seemed to hate her now, as
+they rode mile after mile side by side, the groom following near, now at a
+fast trot, now galloping along a stretch of waste grass that bordered the
+highway, now breathing their horses in a walk.
+
+
+In one of those intervals he asked her if she were tired.
+
+"No, no. I have no power to feel anything but anxiety. If you would only
+be kinder and tell me more about my sister! I fear you consider her in
+danger."
+
+"Yes, she is in danger. There is no doubt of that."
+
+"O God! she looked so ill when I saw her last, and she talked so wildly. I
+feared she was in a bad way. How soon shall we be at Chilton, my lord?"
+
+"My lord! Why do you 'my lord' me?"
+
+"I can find no other name. We seem to be strangers to-night; but, indeed,
+names and ceremonies matter nothing when the mind is in trouble. How soon
+shall we reach the Abbey, Fareham?"
+
+"In an hour, at latest, Angela."
+
+His voice trembled as he spoke her name, and all of force and passion that
+could be breathed into a single word was in his utterance. She flushed at
+the sound, and looked at him with a sudden fear; but his countenance might
+have been wrought-iron, so cold and passionless and cruelly resolute looked
+that rough-hewn face in the moonlight.
+
+"I have a fresh horse waiting for you at Thame," he said. "I will not have
+you wearied by riding a tired horse. We are within five minutes of the inn.
+Will you rest there for half an hour, and take some refreshment?"
+
+"Rest, when my sister may be dying! Not a moment more than is needed to
+change horses."
+
+"I have brought Queen Bess, another of your favourites. 'Twas she who
+taught you to ride. She will know your voice, and your light hand upon her
+bridle."
+
+They found the Inn wrapped in slumber, like every house or cottage they had
+passed; but a lantern shone within an open door in the quadrangle round
+which house and stables were built. One of the Fareham grooms was there,
+with an ostler to wait upon him, and three horses were brought out of their
+stable, ready saddled, as the travellers rode under the archway into the
+yard.
+
+The mare was excited at finding herself on the road in the clear cool
+night, with the moonlight in her eyes, and was gayer than Fareham liked to
+see her under so precious a load; but Angela was no longer the novice by
+whose side he had ridden nearly two years before. She handled Queen Bess
+firmly, and soon settled her into a sharp trot, and kept her at it for
+nearly three miles. The hour Fareham had spoken of was not exceeded by many
+minutes when Chilton Abbey came in sight, the grey stone walls pale in the
+moonlight. All things--the long park wall, the pillared gates, the open
+spaces of the park, the depth of shadow where the old oaks and beeches
+spread wide and dark, had a look of unreality which contrasted curiously
+with the scene as she had last beheld it in all its daylight verdure and
+homeliness.
+
+She dropped lightly from her horse, so soon as they drew rein at an angle
+of the long irregular house, where there was a door, half hidden under ivy,
+by which Lord Fareham went in and out much oftener than by the principal
+entrance. It opened into a passage that led straight to the library, where
+there was a lamp burning to-night. Angela saw the light in the window as
+they rode past.
+
+He opened the door, which had been left on the latch, and nodded a
+dismissal to the groom, who went off to the stables, leading their horses.
+All was dark in the passage--dark and strangely silent; but this wing was
+remote from the chief apartments and from the servants' offices.
+
+"Will you take me to my sister at once?" Angela asked, stopping on the
+threshold of the library, when Fareham had opened the door.
+
+A lamp upon the tall mantelpiece feebly lighted the long low room, gloomy
+with the darkness of old oak wainscot and a heavily timbered ceiling. There
+were two flasks of wine upon a silver salver, and provisions for a supper,
+and a fire was burning on the hearth.
+
+"You had better warm yourself after your night ride, and eat and drink
+something before you see her."
+
+"No, no. What, after riding as fast as our horses could carry us! I must go
+to her this moment. Can you find me a candle?"--looking about her hurriedly
+as she spoke. "But, indeed, it is no matter; I know my way to her room in
+the dark, and there will be light enough from the great window."
+
+"Stop!" he cried, seizing her arm as she was leaving the room; "stop!"
+dragging her back and shutting the door violently. "Your sister is not
+there."
+
+"Great God! what do you mean? You told me your wife was here--ill--dying
+perhaps."
+
+"I told you a lie, sweetheart; but desperate men will do desperate things."
+
+"Where is my sister? Is she dead?"
+
+"Not unless the Nemesis that waits on woman's folly has been swifter of
+foot than common. I have no wife, Angela; and you have no sister that you
+will ever care to own. My Lady Fareham has crossed the narrow sea with her
+lover, Henri de Malfort--her paramour always--though I once thought him
+yours, and tried to kill him for your sake."
+
+"A runaway wife! Hyacinth! Great God!" She clasped her hands before her
+face in an agony of shame and despair, falling upon her knees in sudden
+self-abasement, her head drooping until her brow almost touched the ground.
+And then, after but a few minutes of this deep humiliation, she started to
+her feet with a cry of anger. "Liar! villain! despicable, devilish villain!
+This is a lie, like the other--a wicked lie! Your wife--your wife a wanton?
+My sister? My life upon it, she is in London--in your house, busy preparing
+for my marriage. Unlock that door, my lord; let me go this instant--back to
+my father. Oh, that I could be so mad as to leave his protection at your
+bidding! Open the door, sir, I command you!"
+
+She seemed to gain in height, and to be taller than he had thought her--he
+who had so watched her, and whose memory held every line of that slender,
+graceful figure. She stood straight as an arrow, looking at him with
+set lips and flaming eyes, too angry to be afraid, trembling, but with
+indignation, not fear of him.
+
+"Nay, child," he said gravely, "I have got you, and I mean to keep you. But
+you have trusted yourself to my hospitality, and you are safe in my house
+as in a sanctuary. I may be a villain, but I am not a ruffian. If I have
+brought you here by a trick, you are as much mistress of your life and fate
+under this roof as you ever were in your father's house."
+
+"I have but one thing to say, sir. Let me out of this hateful house."
+
+"What then? Would you walk back to the Manor Moat, through the
+night--alone?"
+
+"I would crawl there on my hands and knees if I could not walk; anything to
+get away from you. Oh, the baseness of it! To vilify my sister--for your
+own base purposes. Intolerable villain!"
+
+"Mistress, we will soon put an end to that charge. Lies there have been,
+but that is none. 'Tis you are the slanderer there."
+
+He took a letter from the pocket of his doublet, and handed it to her. Then
+he took the lamp from the mantelshelf and held it while she read.
+
+Alas, it was her sister's hand. She knew those hurried characters too well.
+The letter was blotted with ink and smeared as with tears. Angela's tears
+began to rain upon the page as she read:--
+
+"I have tried to be a good woman and a true wife to you, tried hard for
+these many years, knowing all the time that you had left off loving me,
+and but for the shame of it would have cared little, though I had as many
+lovers as a maid of honour. You made life harder for me in this year last
+past by your passion for my sister, which mystery of yours, silent and
+secret as you were, these eyes must have been blind not to discover.
+
+"And while you were cold in manner and cruel of speech--slighting me
+ever--there was one who loved and praised me, one whose value I knew not
+till he left this country, and I found myself desolate without him.
+
+"He has come back. He, too, has found that I was the other half of his
+mind; and that he could taste no pleasure in life unshared by me. He has
+come to claim one who ever loved him, and denied him only for virtue's
+sake. Virtue! Poor fool that I was to count that a woman's noblest quality!
+Why, of all attributes, it is that the world least values. Virtue! when the
+starched Due de Montausier fawns upon Louise de la Vallière, when Barbara
+Palmer is de facto Queen of England. Virtue!
+
+"Farewell! Forget me, Fareham, as I shall try to forget you. I shall be
+in Paris perhaps before you receive this letter. My house in the Rue de
+Touraine is ready for me. I shall dishonour you by no open scandal. The man
+I love will but rank as the friend I most value, and my other friends will
+ask no questions so long as you are silent, and do not seek to disgrace me.
+Indeed, it were an ill thing to pursue me with your anger; the more so as I
+am weak and ailing, and may not live long to enjoy my happiness. You have
+given me so little that you should in common justice spare me your hate.
+
+"I leave you your children, whom you have affected to love better than I;
+and who have shown so little consideration for me that I shall not miss
+them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What think you of that, Angela, for the letter of a she-cynic?"
+
+"It is blotted with her tears. She wrote in sorrow, despairing of your
+love."
+
+"She managed to exist for a round dozen years without my love--or doubting
+it--so long as she had her _cavalière servante_. It was only when he
+deserted her that she found life a burden. And now she has crossed the
+Rubicon. She belongs to her age--the age of Kings' mistresses and light
+women. And she will be happy, I dare swear, as they are. It is not an age
+of tears. And when the fair Louise ran away to her Convent the other day,
+in a passion of penitence, be sure she only went on purpose to be brought
+back again. But now, sweet, say have I lied to you about the lady who was
+once my wife?" he asked, pointing to the letter in her hand.
+
+"And who is my sister to the end of time; my sister in Eternity: in
+Purgatory or in Paradise. I cannot cast her off, though you may. I will set
+out for Paris to-morrow, and bring her home, if I can, to the Manor. She
+need trouble you no more. My husband and I can shelter and pity her."
+
+"Your husband!"
+
+"He will be my husband a fortnight hence."
+
+"Never! Never, while I live to fling my body between you at the altar.
+His blood or mine should choke your marriage vows. Angela, Angela, be
+reasonable. I have brought you out of that trap. I have cut the net in
+which they had caught you. My love, you are free, and I am free, and you
+belong to me. You never loved Denzil Warner, never would love him, were
+you to live with him a quarter of a century. He is ice, and you are fire.
+Dearest, you belong to me. He who made us both created us to be happy
+together. There are strings in our hearts that harmonize as concords in
+music do. We are miserable apart, both of us. We waste, and fade, and
+torture ourselves in absence; but only to breathe the same air, to sit,
+silent, in the same room, is to be happy."
+
+"Let me go!" she cried, looking at him with wild eyes, leaning against the
+locked door, her hands clutching at the latch, seeming neither to hear nor
+heed his impassioned address, though every word had sunk deep enough to
+remain in her memory for ever. "Let me go! You are a dishonourable villain!
+I came to London alone to your deserted house. I was not afraid of death or
+the plague then. I am not afraid of you now. Open this door, and let me go,
+never to see your wicked face again!"
+
+"Angela, canst thou so play fast and loose with happiness? Look at me,"
+kneeling at her feet, trying to take her hands from their hold on the
+latch. "Our fate is in our power to-night. The day is near dawning, and
+at the stroke of five my coach will be at the door to take us to Bristol,
+where the ship lies that shall carry us to New England--to a new world, and
+liberty; and to the sweet simple life that will please my dear love better
+than all the garish pleasures of a licentious court. Ah, dearest, I know
+thy mind and heart as well as I know my own. I know I can make thee happy
+in that fair new world, where we shall begin life again, free from all old
+burdens; and where, if thou wilt, my motherless children can join us, and
+make one loving household. My Henriette adores you; and it were Christian
+charity to rescue her and her brother from Charles Stuart's England, and to
+bring them up to an honest life in a country where men are free to worship
+God as He moves them. Love, you cannot deny me. So sweet a life waits for
+us; and you have but to lay that dear hand in mine and give consent."
+
+
+"Oh, God!" she murmured. "I thought this man held me in honour and esteem."
+
+"Do I not honour you? Ah, love, what can a man do more than offer his life
+to her he loves----"
+
+"And if he is another woman's husband?"
+
+"That tie is broken."
+
+"I deny it. But if it were, you have been my sister's husband, and you
+could be nothing to me but my brother. You have made sisterly affection
+impossible, and so, my lord, we must be strangers; and, as you are a
+gentleman, I bid you open this door, and let me make my way to some more
+peaceful shelter than your house."
+
+"Angela!"
+
+He tried to draw her to his breast; but she held him off with outstretched
+arm, and even in the tumult of his passion the knowledge of her
+helplessness and his natural shame at his own treachery kept him in check.
+
+"Angela, call me villain if you will, but give me a fair hearing. Dearest,
+the joy or sorrow of two lives lies in your choice to-night. If you will
+trust me, and go with me, I swear I will make you happy. If you are
+stubborn to refuse--well, sweetheart, you will but send a man to the devil
+who is not wholly bad, and who, with you for his guardian angel, might find
+the way to heaven."
+
+"And begin the journey by a sin these lips dare not name. Oh, Fareham," she
+said, growing suddenly calm and grave, and with something of that tender
+maternal manner with which she had soothed and controlled him while he had
+but half his wits, and when she feared he might be lying on his death-bed,
+"I would rather believe you a madman than a villain; and, indeed, all that
+you have done to-night is the work of a madman, who follows his own wild
+fancy without power to reason on what he does. Surely, sir, you know me too
+well to believe that I would let love--were it the blindest, most absorbing
+passion woman ever felt--lead me into sin so base as that you would urge.
+The vilest wanton at Whitehall would shrink from stealing a sister's
+husband."
+
+"There would be no theft. Your sister flings me to you as a dog drops the
+bone he has picked dry. She had me when I was young, and a soldier--with
+some reflected glory about me from the hero I followed--and rich and happy.
+She leaves me old and haggard, without aim or hope, save to win her I
+worship. Shall I tell you when I began to love you, my angel?"
+
+"No, no; I will listen to no more raving. Thank God, there is the
+daylight!" as the cold wan dawn flickered across the room. "Will you let me
+beat my hands against this door till they bleed?"
+
+"Thou shalt not harm the loveliest hands on earth," seizing them both in
+his own. "Ah, sweet, I began to love thee before ever I rose from that bed
+of horror where I had been left to perish. I loved thee in my unreason, and
+my love strengthened with each hour of returning sense. Our journey, I so
+weak, and sick, and helpless--was a ride through Paradise. I would have had
+it last a year; would have suffered sickness and pain, aching limbs and
+parched lips, only to feel the light touch of this dear hand upon my brow
+'twixt sleep and waking; only to look up as I awoke, and see those sweet
+eyes looking down at me. Ah, dearest, my heart arose from among the dead,
+and came out of the tomb of all human affections to greet thee. Till I knew
+you I knew not the meaning of love. And if you are stubborn, and will not
+come with me to that new world, where we may be so happy, why, then I must
+go down to my grave a despairing wretch that never knew a woman's love."
+
+"My sister--your wife?"
+
+"Never loved me. Her heart--that which she calls heart--was ever Malfort's
+and not mine. She gave me to know as much by a hundred signs and tokens
+which read plain enough now, looking back, but which I scarce heeded at the
+time. I believed her chaste, and she was civil, and I was satisfied. I tell
+you, Angela, this heart never beat for woman till I knew you. Ah, love, be
+not stone! Make not our affinity an obstacle. The Roman Church will ever
+grant dispensation for a union of affinities where there is cause for
+indulgence. The Church would have had Philip married to his wife's sister
+Elizabeth."
+
+"The Church holds the bond of marriage indissoluble," Angela answered. "You
+are married to my sister; and while she lives you can have no other wife."
+
+Her brow was stern, her courage unfaltering; but physical force was failing
+her. She leant against the door for support, and she no longer struggled
+to withdraw her hands from that strong grasp which held them. She fought
+against the faintness that was stealing over her senses; but her heavy
+eyelids were beginning to droop, and there was a sound like rushing water
+in her ears.
+
+"Angela--Angela," pleaded the tender voice, "do you forget that afternoon
+at the play, and how you wept over Bellario's fidelity--the fond girl-page
+who followed him she loved; risked name and virtue; counted not the
+cost, in that large simplicity of love which gives all it has to give,
+unquestioning? Remember Bellario."
+
+"Bellario had no thought that was not virtue's," she answered faintly; and
+he took that fainter tone for a yielding will.
+
+"She would not have left Philaster if he had been alone in the wilderness,
+miserable for want of her love."
+
+Her white lips moved dumbly, her eyelids sank, and her head fell back
+upon his shoulder, as he started up from his knees to support her sinking
+figure. She was in his arms, unconscious--the image of death.
+
+He kissed her on the brow.
+
+"My soul, I will owe nothing to thy helplessness," he whispered. "Thy free
+will shall decide whether I live or die."
+
+Another sound had mingled with the rushing waters as her senses left
+her--the sound of knocking at a distant door. It grew louder and louder
+momently, indicating a passionate impatience in those who knocked. The
+sound came from the principal door, and there was a long corridor between
+that door and Fareham's room.
+
+He stood listening, undecided; and then he laid the unconscious form gently
+on the thick Persian carpet--knowing that for recovery the fainting girl
+could not lie too low. He cast one agitated glance at the white face
+looking up at the ceiling, and then went quickly to the hall.
+
+As he came near, the knocking began again, with greater vehemence, and a
+voice, which he knew for Sir John's, called--
+
+"Open the door, in the King's name, or we will break it open!"
+
+There was a pause; those without evidently waiting for the result of that
+last and loudest summons.
+
+Fareham heard the hoofs of restless horses trampling the gravel drive, the
+jingle of bit and chain, and the click of steel scabbards.
+
+Sir John had not come alone.
+
+"So soon; so devilish soon!" muttered Fareham. And then, as the knocking
+was renewed, he turned and left the hall without a word of answer to those
+outside, and hastened back to the room where he had left Angela. His brow
+was fixed in a resolute frown, every nerve was braced. He had made up his
+mind what to do. He had the house to himself, and was thus master of the
+situation, so long as he could keep his pursuers on the outside. The upper
+servants--half a dozen coach-loads--had been packed off to London, under
+convoy of Manningtree and Mrs. Hubbock. The under servants--rank and
+file--from housemaids to turnspits, slept in a huge barrack adjoining the
+stables, built in Elizabeth's reign to accommodate the lower grade of a
+nobleman's household. These would not come into the house to light fires
+and sweep rooms till six o'clock at the earliest; and it was not yet four.
+Lord Fareham, therefore, had to fear no interruption from his own people.
+
+There was broad daylight in the house now; yet he looked about for a
+candle; found one on a side-table, in a tall silver candlestick, and
+stopped to light it, before he raised the lifeless figure from the floor
+and lifted it into the easiest position for carrying, the head lying on his
+shoulder. Then, holding the slender waist firmly, circled by his left arm,
+he took the candlestick in his right hand, and went out of the room with
+his burden, along a passage leading to a seldom-used staircase, which he
+ascended, carrying that tall, slim form as if it had been a feather-weight,
+up flight after flight, to the muniment room in the roof. From that point
+his journey, and the management of that unconscious form, and to dispose
+safely of the lighted candle, became more difficult, and occupied a
+considerable time; during which interval the impatience of an enraged
+father and a betrothed husband, outside the hall door, increased with every
+minute of delay, and one of their mounted followers, of whom they had
+several, was despatched to ride at a hand-gallop to the village of
+Chilton, and rouse the Constable, while another was sent to Oxford for a
+Magistrate's warrant to arrest Lord Fareham on the charge of abduction. And
+meanwhile the battering upon thick oaken panels with stout riding-whips,
+and heavy sword-hilts, and the calling upon those within, were repeated
+with unabated vehemence, while a couple of horsemen rode round the house to
+examine other inlets, and do picket duty.
+
+The Constable and his underling were on the ground before that stubborn
+citadel answered the reiterated summons; but at last there came the sound
+of bolts withdrawn. An iron bar dropped from its socket with a clang that
+echoed long and loud in the empty hall, the door opened, and Fareham
+appeared on the threshold, corpse-like in the cold raw daylight, facing his
+besiegers with a determined insolence.
+
+"Thou most infernal villain!" cried Sir John, rushing into the hall,
+followed closely by Denzil and one of the men, "what have you done with my
+daughter?"
+
+"Which daughter does your honour seek? If it be she whom you gave me for a
+wife, she has broken the bond, and is across the sea with her paramour?"
+
+"You lie--reprobate! Your wife had doubtless business relating to her
+French estate, which called her to Paris. My daughters are honest women,
+unless by your villainy, one, who should have been sacred, as your sister
+by affinity, should bear a blighted name. Give me back my daughter,
+villain--the girl you lured from her home by the foulest deceit!"
+
+"You cannot see the lady to-day, gentlemen; even though you threaten me
+with your weapons," pointing with a sardonic smile to their drawn swords,
+"and out-number me with your followers. The lady is gone. I am alone in the
+house to submit to any affront your superior force may put upon me."
+
+"Our superiority can at least search your house," said Denzil. "Sir John,
+you had best take one way and I another. I doubt I know every room and
+passage in the Abbey."
+
+"And your yeoman's manners offer a handsome return for the hospitality
+which made you acquainted with my house," said Fareham, with a contemptuous
+laugh.
+
+He followed Denzil, leaving Sir John to grope alone. The house had been
+deserted but for a few days, yet the corridors and rooms had the heavy
+atmosphere of places long shut from sunshine and summer breezes; while
+the chilling hour, the grey ghostly light, added something phantasmal and
+unnatural to the scene.
+
+Denzil entered room after room--below stairs and above--explored the
+picture-gallery, the bed-chambers, the long low ball-room in the roof,
+built in Elizabeth's reign, when a wing had been added to the Abbey, and of
+late used only for lumber. Fareham followed him close, stalking behind him
+in sullen silence, with an unalterable gloom upon his face which betrayed
+no sudden apprehensions, no triumph or defeat. He followed like doom, stood
+quietly on one side as Denzil opened a door; waited on the threshold
+while the searcher made his inspection, always with the same iron visage,
+offering no opposition to the entrance of this or that chamber; only
+following and watching, silent, intent, sphinx-like; till at last, fairly
+worn out by blank disappointment, Denzil turned upon him in a sudden fury.
+
+"What have you done with her?" he cried, desperately. "I will stake my life
+she has not left this house, and by Him who made us you shall not leave it
+living unless I find her."
+
+He glanced downward at the naked sword he had carried throughout his
+search. Fareham's was in the scabbard, and he answered that glance with an
+insulting smile.
+
+"You think I have murdered her, perhaps," he said. "Well, I would rather
+see her dead than yours. So far I am in capacity a murderer."
+
+They met Sir John in Lady Fareham's drawing-room, when Denzil had gone over
+the whole house, trusting nothing to the father's scrutiny.
+
+"He has stabbed her and dropped her murdered body down a well," cried the
+Knight, half distraught. "He cannot have spirited her away otherwise. Look
+at him, Denzil; look at that haggard wretch I have called my son. He has
+the assassin's aspect."
+
+
+Something--it might be the room in which they were standing--brought back
+to Angela's betrothed the memory of that Christmas night when aunt and
+niece had been missing, and when he, Denzil, had burst into this room,
+where Fareham was seated at chess; who, at the first mention of Angela's
+name, started up, white with horror, to join in the search. It was he who
+found her then; it was he who had hidden her now; and in the same remote
+and secret spot.
+
+"Fool that I was not to remember sooner!" cried Denzil. "I know where to
+find her. Follow me, Sir John. Andrew"--calling to the servant who waited
+in the hall--"follow us close."
+
+He rushed along a passage, ran upstairs faster than old age, were it ever
+so eager, could follow. But Fareham was nearly as fast--nearly, but not
+quite, able to overtake him; for he was older, heavier, and more broken by
+the fever of that night's work than his colder-tempered rival.
+
+Denzil was some paces in advance when he reached the muniment room. He
+found the opening in the wainscot, and the steep stair built into the
+chimney. Half way to the bottom there was a gap--an integral part of the
+plan--and a drop of six feet; so that a stranger in hurried pursuit would
+be likely to come to grief at this point, and make time for his quarry to
+escape by the door that opened on the garden. Memory, or wits sharpened by
+anxiety, enabled Denzil to avoid this trap; and he was at the door of the
+Priest's Hole before Fareham began the descent.
+
+Yes, she was there, kneeling in a corner, a candle burning dimly on a stone
+shelf above her head. She was in the attitude of prayer, her head bent, her
+face hidden, when the door opened, and she looked up and saw her betrothed
+husband.
+
+"Denzil! How did you find me here?"
+
+"I should be a poor slave if I had not found you, remembering the past.
+Great God, how pale you are! Come, love, you are safe. Your father is here.
+Angela, thou that art so soon to be my wife--face to face--here--before we
+leave this accursed pit--tell me that you did not go with that villain,
+except for the sake of your sick sister--that you were the victim of a
+heartless lie--not a party to a trick invented to blind your father and
+me!"
+
+"I doubt I have not all my senses yet," she said, putting her hand to her
+head. "I was told my sister wanted me, and I came. Where is Lord Fareham?"
+
+The terror in her countenance as she asked that question froze Denzil.
+Ah, he had known it all along! That was the man she loved. Was she his
+victim--and a willing victim? He felt as if a great gulf had opened between
+him and his betrothed, and that all his hopes had withered.
+
+Fareham was at his elbow in the next moment. "Well, you have found her,"
+he said; "but you shall not have her, save by force of arms. She is in my
+custody, and I will keep her; or die for her if I am outnumbered!"
+
+"Execrable wretch! would you attempt to detain her by violence? Come,
+madam," said Denzil, turning coldly to Angela, "there is a door on those
+stairs which will let you out into the air.
+
+"The door will not open at your bidding!" Fareham said fiercely.
+
+He snatched Angela up in his arms before the other could prevent him, and
+carried her triumphantly to the first landing-place, which was considerably
+below that treacherous gap between stair and stair. He had the key of the
+garden door in his pocket, unlocked it, and was in the open air with his
+burden before Denzil could overtake him.
+
+He found himself caught in a trap. He had his coach-and-six and armed
+postillions waiting close by, and thought he had but to leap into it with
+his prey and spirit her off towards Bristol; but between the coach and the
+door one of Sir John's pickets was standing, who the moment the door opened
+whistled his loudest, and brought Constable and man and another armed
+servant running helter-skelter round an angle of the house, and so crossing
+the very path to the coach.
+
+"Fire upon him if he tries to pass you!" cried Denzil.
+
+"What! And shoot the lady you have professed to love!" exclaimed Fareham,
+drawing himself up, and standing firm as a rock, with Angela motionless in
+his arms.
+
+He dropped her to her feet, but held her against his left shoulder with an
+iron hold, while he drew his sword and made a rush for the coach. Denzil
+sprang into his path, sword in hand, and their blades crossed with a shrill
+clash and rattle of steel. They fought like demons, Fareham holding Angela
+behind him, sheltering her with his body, and swaying from side to side in
+his sword-play with a demoniac swiftness and suppleness, his thick dark
+brows knitted over eyes that flamed with a fiercer fire than flashed from
+steel meeting steel. A shriek of horror from Angela marked the climax, as
+Denzil fell with Fareham's sword between his ribs. There had been little of
+dilettante science, or graceful play of wrist in this encounter. The men
+had rushed at each other savagely, like beasts in a circus, and whatever
+of science had guided Fareham's more practised hand had been employed
+automatically. The spirit of the combatants was wild and fierce as the rage
+that moves rival stags fighting for a mate, with bent heads and tramping
+hoofs, and clash of locked antlers reverberating through the forest
+stillness.
+
+Fareham had no time to exult over his prostrate foe; Sir John and his
+servants, Constable and underlings, surrounded him, and he was handcuffed
+and hauled off to the coach that was to have carried him to a sinner's
+paradise, before any one had looked to Denzil's wound, or discovered
+whether that violent thrust below the right lung had been fatal. Angela
+sank swooning in her father's arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH.
+
+
+The summer and autumn had gone by--an eventful season, for with it had
+vanished from the stage of politics one who had played so dignified and
+serious a part there. Southampton was dead, Clarendon disgraced and in
+exile. The Nestor and the Ulysses of the Stuart epic had melted from the
+scene. Down those stairs by which he had descended on his way to so many a
+splendid festival, himself a statelier figure than Kings or Princes, the
+Chancellor had gone to banishment and oblivion. "The lady" had looked for
+the last time, a laughing Jezebel, from a palace window, exultant at her
+enemy's fall; and along the river that had carried such tragic destinies
+eastward to be sealed in blood, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, had drifted
+quietly out of the history he had helped to make. The ballast of that grave
+intellect was flung overboard so that the ship of fools might drift the
+faster.
+
+But in Westminster Hall, upon this windy November morning, nobody thought
+of Clarendon. The business of the day was interesting enough to obliterate
+all considerations of yesterday. The young barristers, who were learning
+their trade by listening to their betters, had been shivering on their
+benches in the Common Pleas since nine o'clock, in that chilly corner
+where every blast from the north or north-east swept over the low wooden
+partition that enclosed the court, or cut through the chinks in the
+panelling. The students and juniors were in their usual places, sitting at
+the feet of their favourite Common-law Judge; but the idlers who came for
+amusement, to saunter about the hall, haggle for books with the second-hand
+dealers along the south wall, or flirt with the milliners who kept stalls
+for bands and other legal finery on the opposite side, or to listen on
+tiptoe, with an ear above the panelled enclosure, to the quips and cranks
+or fierce rhetoric of a famous advocate--these to-day gravitated with one
+accord towards the south-west corner of the Hall, where, in the Court of
+King's Bench, Richard Revel, Baron Fareham, of Fareham, Hants, was to be
+tried by a Buckinghamshire jury for abduction, with fraud, malice, and
+violence, and for assault, with intent to murder.
+
+The rank of the offender being high, and the indictment known to involve
+tragic details of family history, there had been much talk of the cause
+which was on the paper for to-day; and, as a natural consequence, besides
+the habitual loungers and saunterers, gossips, and book-buyers, there was
+a considerable sprinkling of persons of quality, who perfumed the not too
+agreeable atmosphere with pulvilio and Florentine iris powder, and the
+rustle of whose silks and brocades was audible all over the Hall. Not
+often did such gowns sweep the dust brought in by plebeian feet, nor such
+Venetian point collars rub shoulders with the frowsy Norwich drugget worn
+by hireling perjurers or starveling clerks. The modish world had come down
+upon the great Norman Hall like a flock of pigeons, sleek, iridescent,
+all fuss and flutter; and among these unaccustomed visitors there was
+prodigious impatience for the trial to begin, and a struggle for good
+places that brought into full play the primitive brutality which underlies
+the politeness of the civillest people.
+
+Lady Sarah Tewkesbury had risen betimes, and, in her anxiety to secure a
+good place, had come out in her last night's "head," which somewhat damaged
+edifice of ginger-coloured ringlets and Roman pearls was now visible above
+the wooden partition of the King's Bench to the eyes of the commonalty
+in the hall below, her ladyship being accommodated with a seat among the
+lawyers.
+
+One of these was a young man in a shabby gown and rumpled wig, but with
+a fair complexion and tolerable features--a stranger to that court, and
+better known at Hicks's Hall, and among city litigators, with whom he had
+already a certain repute for keen wits and a plausible tongue--about the
+youngest advocate at the English Bar, and by some people said to be no
+barrister at all, but to have put on wig and gown two years ago at Kingston
+Assizes and called himself to the Bar, and stayed there by sheer audacity.
+This young gentleman, Jeffreys by name, having deserted the city and
+possible briefs in order to hear the Fareham trial, was inclined to resent
+being ousted by an obsequious official to make room for Lady Sarah.
+
+"Faith, one would suppose I was her ladyship's footman and had been keeping
+her seat for her," he grumbled, as he reluctantly rose at the Usher's
+whispered request, and edged himself sulkily off to a corner where he found
+just standing-room.
+
+It was a very hard seat which Mr. Jeffreys had vacated, and her ladyship,
+after sitting there over two hours, nodding asleep a good part of the time,
+began to feel internal sinkings and flutterings which presaged what she
+called a "swound," and necessitated recourse to a crystal flask of strong
+waters which she had prudently brought in her muff. Other of Lady Fareham's
+particular friends were expected--Sir Ralph Masaroon, Lady Lucretia Topham,
+and more of the same kidney; and even the volatile Rochester had deigned to
+express an interest in the case.
+
+"The man was mistaken in his métier," he had told Lady Sarah, when the
+scandal was discussed in her drawing-room. "The _rôle_ of seducer was
+not within his means. Any one could see he was in love with the pale
+sister-in-law by the manner in which he scowled at her; but it is not every
+woman who can be subjugated by gloom and sullenness, though some of 'em
+like us tragical. My method has been to laugh away resistance, as my wife
+will acknowledge, who was the cruellest she I ever tackled, and had baffled
+all her other servants. Indeed she must have been in Butler's eye when he
+wrote--
+
+    'That old Pyg--what d'ye call him--malion
+    That cut his mistress out of stone,
+    Had not so hard a hearted one.'
+
+Even Lady Rochester will admit I conquered without heroics," upon which her
+ladyship, late mistress Mallett, a beauty and a fortune, smiled assent with
+all the complacency of a six-months' bride. "To see a man tried for an
+attempted abduction is a sight worth a year's income," pursued Rochester.
+"I would travel a hundred miles to behold that rare monster who has failed
+in his pursuit of one of your obliging sex!"
+
+"Do you think us all so easily won?" asked Lady Sarah, piqued.
+
+"Dear lady, I can but judge by experience. If obdurate to others you have
+still been kind to me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lady Sarah had nearly emptied her flask of Muscadine before Masaroon
+elbowed his way to a seat beside her, from which he audaciously dislodged
+a coffee-house acquaintance, an elderly lawyer upon whom fortune had not
+smiled, with a condescending civility that was more uncivil than absolute
+rudeness.
+
+"We'll share a bottle in Hell after the trial, mon ami," he said; and on
+seeing Lady Sarah's look of horror, he hastened to explain that Heaven,
+Hell, and Purgatory, were the cant names of three taverns which drove a
+roaring trade in strong drinks under the very roof of the Hall.
+
+"The King's Attorney-general is prosecuting," answered Sir Ralph, replying
+to a question from Lady Sarah, whose inquiries betrayed that dense
+ignorance of legal technicalities common even to accomplished women. "It
+is thought the lady's father would have been glad for the matter to be
+quashed, his fugitive daughter being restored to his custody--albeit with a
+damaged character--and her elder sister having run away from her husband."
+
+"I will not hear you slander my dearest friend," protested Lady Sarah.
+"Lady Fareham left her husband, and with good cause, as his after-conduct
+showed. She did not run away from him."
+
+"Nay, she had doubtless the assistance of a carriage-and-six. She would
+scarce foot it from London to Dover. And now she is leading grand train in
+Paris, and has taken almost as commanding a place as her friend Madame de
+Longueville, penitent and retired from service."
+
+"Hyacinth, under all her appearance of silliness, is a remarkably clever
+woman," said Lady Sarah, sententiously; "but, pray, Sir Ralph, if Mistress
+Angela's father has good reason for not prosecuting his daughter's
+lover--indeed I ever thought her an underhand hussy--why does not Sir
+Denzil Warner--who I hear has been at death's door--pursue him for assault
+and battery?"
+
+"Nay, is so still, madam. I question if he be yet out of danger. The
+gentleman is a kind of puritanical Quixote, and has persistently refused to
+swear an information against Fareham, whereby I doubt the case will fall
+through, or his lordship get off with a fine of a thousand or two. We have
+no longer the blessing of a Star Chamber, to supply state needs out of
+sinners' pockets, and mitigate general taxation; but his Majesty's Judges
+have a capacious stomach for fines, and his Majesty has no objection to see
+his subjects' misdemeanours transmuted into coin."
+
+And now the business of the day began, the panelled enclosure being by
+this time crowded almost to suffocation; and Lord Fareham was brought into
+court.
+
+He was plainly dressed in a dark grey suit, and looked ten years older
+than when Lady Sarah had last seen him on his wife's visiting day, an
+uninterested member of that modish assembly. His eyes were deeper sunken
+under the strongly marked brows. The threads of iron-grey in his thick
+black hair were more conspicuous. He carried his head higher than he had
+been accustomed to carry it, and the broad shoulders were no longer bent in
+the Stafford stoop. The spectators could see that he had braced himself for
+the ordeal, and would go through the day's work like a man of iron.
+
+Proclamation was made for silence, and for information, if any person could
+give any, concerning the misdemeanour and offence whereof the defendant
+stood impeached; and the defendant was bid to look to his challenges, and
+the Jury, being gentlemen of the county of Bucks, were called, challenged,
+and sworn.
+
+The demand for silence was so far obeyed that there followed a hush within
+the enclosure of the court; but there was no cessation of the buzz of
+voices and the tramp of footsteps in the hall, which mingled sounds seemed
+like the rise and fall of a human ocean, as heard within that panelled
+sanctuary.
+
+The lawyers took snuff, shuffled on their seats, nudged each other and
+whispered now and then, during the reading of the indictment; but among
+Lady Fareham's friends, and the quality in general, there was a breathless
+silence and expectancy; and Lady Sarah would gladly have run her hat-pin
+into a snuffy old Serjeant close beside her, who must needs talk behind his
+hand to his pert junior.
+
+To her ladyship's unaccustomed ears that indictment, translated literally
+from the Latin original, sounded terrible as an impeachment in the
+subterranean halls of the Vehm Gericht, or in the most select and secret
+council in the Venetian Doge's Palace.
+
+The indictment set forth "that the defendant, Richard Revel, Baron Fareham,
+on the 4th day of July, in the 18th year of our sovereign lord the King
+that now is, at the parish of St. Nicholas in the Vale, in the county of
+Bucks, falsely, unlawfully, unjustly, and wickedly, by unlawful and impure
+ways and means, contriving, practising, and intending the final ruin and
+destruction of Mrs. Angela Kirkland, unmarried, and one of the daughters
+of Sir John Kirkland, Knight--the said lady then and there being under
+the custody, government, and education of the said Sir John Kirkland, her
+father--he, the said Richard Revel, Baron Fareham, then and there falsely,
+unlawfully, devilishly, to fulfil, perfect, and bring to effect, his most
+wicked, impious, and devilish intentions aforesaid--the said Richard Revel,
+Lord Fareham (then and long before, and yet, being the husband of Mrs.
+Hyacinth, another daughter of the said Sir John Kirkland, Knight, and
+sister of the said Mrs. Angela), against all laws as well divine as human,
+impiously, wickedly, impurely, and scandalously, did tempt, invite, and
+solicit, and by false and lying pretences, oaths, and affirmations,
+unlawfully, unjustly, and without the leave, and against the will of the
+aforesaid Sir John Kirkland, Knight, in prosecution of his most wicked
+intent aforesaid, did carry off the aforesaid Mrs. Angela, she consenting
+in ignorance of his real purpose, about the hour of twelve in the
+night-time of the said 4th day of July, in the year aforesaid, and at the
+aforesaid, parish of St. Nicholas in the Vale, in the county of Bucks
+aforesaid, out of the dwelling-house of the said Sir John Kirkland, Knight,
+did take and convey to his own house in the county of Oxford, and did then
+and there detain her by fraud, and did there keep her hidden in a secret
+chamber known as the Priest's Hole in his own house aforesaid, at the
+hazard of her life, and did oppose her rescue by force of arms, and with
+his sword, unlawfully, murderously, and devilishly, and in the prosecution
+of his wicked purpose did stab and wound Sir Denzil Warner, Baronet, the
+lady's betrothed husband, from which murderous assault the said Sir Denzil
+Warner, Baronet, still lies in great sickness and danger of death, to the
+great displeasure of Almighty God, to the ruin and destruction of the said
+Mrs. Angela Kirkland, to the grief and sorrow of all her friends, and
+to the evil and most pernicious example of all others in the like case
+offending; and against the peace of our said sovereign lord the King, his
+crown and dignity."
+
+The defendant having pleaded "Not guilty," the Jury were charged in the
+usual manner and with all solemnity.
+
+"If you find him 'guilty' you are to say so; if you find him 'not guilty'
+you are to say so, and no more, and hear your evidence."
+
+The Attorney-General confined himself to a brief out-line of the tragic
+story, leaving all details to be developed by the witnesses, who were
+allowed to give their evidence with colloquial freedom and expansiveness.
+
+The first witness was old Reuben, the steward from the Manor Moat, who had
+not yet emerged from that mental maze in which he had found himself upon
+beholding the change that had come to pass in the great city, since the
+well-remembered winter of the King's execution, and the long frost, when
+he, Reuben, was last in London. His evidence was confused and confusing;
+and he drew upon himself much good-natured ridicule from the junior who
+opened the case. Out of various muddle-headed answers and contradictory
+statements the facts of Lord Fareham's unexpected appearance at the Manor
+Moat, his account of his lady's illness, and his hurried departure,
+carrying the young madam with him on horseback, were elicited, and the
+story of the ruse by which Mrs. Angela Kirkland had been beguiled from her
+home was made clear to the comprehension of a superior but rustic jury,
+more skilled in discriminating the points of a horse, the qualities of an
+ox, or the capacity of a hound, than in differentiating truth and falsehood
+in a story of wrong-doing.
+
+Sir John Kirkland was the next witness, and the aspect of the man, the
+noble grey head, fine features, and soldierly carriage, the old-fashioned
+habit, the fashion of an age not long past, but almost forgotten, enlisted
+the regard and compassion of Jury and audience.
+
+"Let me perish if it is not a ghost from the civil wars!" whispered Sir
+Ralph to Lady Sarah. "Mrs. Angela might well be romanesque and unlike the
+rest of us, with such a father."
+
+A spasm of pain convulsed Fareham's face for a moment, as the old Cavalier
+stood up in the witness-box, towering above the Court in that elevated
+position, and, after being sworn, took one swift survey of the Bench and
+Jury, and then fixed his angry gaze upon the defendant, and scarcely
+shifted it in the whole course of his examination.
+
+"Now, Gentlemen of the Jury," said the Attorney-General, "we shall tell you
+what happened at Chilton Abbey, to which place the defendant, under such
+fraudulent and lying pretences as you have heard of from the last witness,
+conveyed the young lady. Sir John, I will ask you to acquaint the Jury
+as fully and straightforwardly as you can with the circumstances of your
+pursuit, and the defendant's reception of you and your intended son-in-law,
+Sir Denzil Warner, whose deposition we have failed to obtain, but who could
+relate no facts which are not equally within your own knowledge."
+
+"My words shall be straight and plain, sir, to denounce that unchristian
+wretch whom, until this miserable business, I trusted as if he had been my
+son. I came to my house, accompanied by my daughter's plighted husband,
+within an hour after that villain conveyed her away; and on hearing my old
+servant's story was quick to suspect treachery. Nor was Sir Denzil backward
+in his fears, which were more instantaneous than mine; and we waited only
+for the saddling of fresh horses, and rousing a couple of grooms from
+their beds, fellows that I could trust for prudence and courage, before we
+mounted again, following in that wretch's track. We heard of him and his
+victim at the Inn where they changed horses, she going consentingly,
+believing she was being taken in this haste to attend a dying sister."
+
+"And on arriving at the defendant's house what was your reception?"
+
+"He opposed our entrance, until he saw that we should batter down his door
+if he shut us out longer. We were not admitted until after I had sent one
+of my servants for the nearest Constable; and before we had gained an
+entrance into his house he had contrived to put away my daughter in a
+wretched hiding-place, planned for the concealment of Romish Priests or
+other recusants and malefactors, and would have kept her there, I believe,
+till she had perished in that foul cavern, rather than restore her to her
+father and natural guardian."
+
+"That is false, and you know it!" cried Fareham. "My life is of less
+account to me than a hair of her head. I hid her from you, to save her from
+your tyranny, and the hateful marriage to which you would have compelled
+her."
+
+"Liar! Impudent, barbarous liar!" roared the old Knight, with his right arm
+raised, and his body half out of the box, as if he would have assaulted
+the defendant. "Sir John," said the Judge, "I would be very loath to deal
+otherwise than becomes me with a person of your quality; but, indeed, this
+is not so handsome, and we must desire you to be calm."
+
+"When I remember his infamy, and that vile assumption of my daughter's
+passion for him, which he showed in every word and act of that miserable
+scene."
+
+He went on to relate the searching of the house, and Warner's happy
+inspiration, by which Angela's hiding-place was discovered, and she rescued
+in a fainting condition. He described the defendant's audacious attempt
+to convey her to the coach which stood ready for her abduction, and his
+violence in opposing her rescue, and the fight which had well-nigh resulted
+in Warner's death.
+
+When Sir John's story was finished the defendant's advocate, who had
+declined to question the old butler, rose to cross-examine this more
+important witness.
+
+"In your tracing of the defendant's journey between your house and Chilton
+you heard of no outcries of resistance upon your daughter's side?"
+
+"No, sir. She went willingly, under a delusion."
+
+"And do you think now, sir, as a man of the world, and with some knowledge
+of women, that your daughter was so easily hoodwinked; she having seen her
+sister, Lady Fareham, so shortly before, in good health and spirits?"
+
+"Lady Fareham did not appear in good health when she was last at the Manor,
+and her sister was already uneasy about her."
+
+"But not so uneasy as to believe her dying, and that it was needful to ride
+to her helter-skelter in the night-time. Do you not think, sir, that the
+young lady, who was so quick to comply with his lordship's summons, and
+bustled up and was in the saddle ten minutes after he entered the house,
+and was willing to got without her own woman, or any preparation for
+travel, had a strong inclination for the journey, and a great kindness for
+the gentleman who solicited her company?"
+
+"Has that barbarous wretch set you on to slander the lady whose ruin he
+sought, sir?" asked the Knight, pallid with the white heat of indignation.
+
+"Nay, Sir John, I am no slanderer; but I want the Jury to understand the
+sentiments and passions which are the springs of action here, and to bear
+in mind that the case they are hearing is a love story, and they can only
+come at the truth by remembering their own experience as lovers--"
+
+The deep and angry tones of his client interrupted the silvery-tongued
+Counsellor.
+
+"If you think to help me, sir, by traducing the lady, I repudiate your
+advocacy."
+
+"My lord, you are not allowed to give evidence or to interrupt the Court.
+You have pleaded not guilty, and it is my duty to demonstrate your
+innocence. Come, Sir John, do you not know that his lordship's unhappy
+passion for his sister-in-law was shared by the subject of it; and that she
+for a long time opposed all your efforts to bring about a proper alliance
+for her, solely guided and influenced by this secret passion?"
+
+"I know no such thing."
+
+"Do I understand, then, that from the time of your first proposals she was
+willing to marry Sir Denzil Warner?"
+
+"She was not willing."
+
+"I would have wagered as much. Did you fathom her reason for declining so
+proper an alliance?"
+
+"I did not trouble myself about her reasons. I knew that time would wear
+them away."
+
+"And I doubt you trusted to a father's authority?"
+
+"No, sir. I promised my daughter that I would not force her inclinations."
+
+"But you used all methods of persuasion. How long was it before July the
+4th that Mrs. Angela consented to marry Sir Denzil?"
+
+"I cannot be over precise upon that point. I have no record of the date."
+
+"But you have the faculty of memory, sir; and this is a point which a
+father would not easily forget."
+
+"It may have been a fortnight before."
+
+"And until that time the lady was unwilling?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She refused positively to accept the match you urged upon her?"
+
+"She refused."
+
+"And finally consented, I will wager, with marked reluctance?"
+
+"No, sir, there was no reluctance. She came to me of her own accord, and
+surprised me by her submission."
+
+"That will do, Sir John. You can stand down. I shall now proceed to call a
+witness who will convince the Jury of my client's innocence upon the first
+and chief count in the indictment, abduction with fraud and violence. I
+shall tell you by the lips of my witness, that if he took the lady away
+from her home, she being of full age, she went freely consenting, and with
+knowledge of his purpose."
+
+"Lies--foul lies!" cried the old Cavalier, almost strangled with passion.
+
+He plucked at the knot of his cravat, trying to loosen it, feeling himself
+threatened with apoplexy.
+
+"Call Mistress Angela Kirkland," said the Serjeant, in strong steady tones
+that contrasted with the indignant father's hoarse and gasping utterance.
+
+"S'life! the business becomes every moment more interesting," whispered
+Lady Sarah. "Will he make that sly slut own her misconduct in open court?"
+
+"If she blush at her slip from virtue, it will be a new sensation in a
+London law-court to see the colour of shame," replied Sir Ralph, behind his
+perfumed glove; "but I warrant she'll carry matters with a high hand, and
+feel herself every inch a heroine."
+
+Angela came into the court attended by her waiting-woman, who remained near
+the entrance, amid the close-packed crowd of lawyers and onlookers, while
+her mistress quietly followed the official who conducted her to the
+witness-box.
+
+She was dressed in black, and her countenance under her neat black hood
+looked scarcely less white than her lawn neckerchief; but she stood erect
+and unfaltering in that conspicuous station, and met the eyes of her
+interrogator with an untroubled gaze. When her lips had touched the dirty
+little book, greasy with the kisses of innumerable perjurers, the Serjeant
+began to question her in a tone of odious familiarity.
+
+"Now, my dear young lady, here is a gentleman's liberty, and perhaps his
+life, hanging on the breath of those pretty lips; so I want you to answer
+a few plain questions with as plain speech as you can command, remembering
+that you are to tell us the truth, and the whole truth, and nothing but the
+truth. Come, now, dear miss, when you left your father's house on the night
+of July 4, in this present year, in Lord Fareham's company, did you go with
+him of your own free will, and with a knowledge of his purpose?"
+
+"I knew that he loved me."
+
+A heart-breaking groan from Sir John Kirkland was hushed down by an usher
+of the court.
+
+"You knew that he loved you, and that he designed to carry you beyond
+seas?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you were willing to leave your father's custody and go with the
+defendant as his paramour?"
+
+There was a pause, and the white cheek crimsoned, and the heavy eyelids
+fell over agonised eyes.
+
+"I went willingly--because I loved him;" and then with a sudden burst of
+passion, "I would have died for him, or lived for him. It mattered not
+which."
+
+"And she has lied for him--has sworn to a lie--and that to her own
+dishonour!" cried Sir John, beside himself; whereupon he was sternly bidden
+to keep silence.
+
+There was no intention that this little Buckinghamshire gentleman should
+be indulged, to the injury of a person of Lord Fareham's wealth and
+consequence. The favour of the Bench obviously leant towards the defendant.
+
+Fareham's deep tones startled the audience.
+
+"In truth, your Honour, the young lady has belied herself in order to help
+me," he said. "I cannot accept acquittal at the cost of her good name."
+
+"Your lordship has pleaded not guilty."
+
+"And his lordship's chivalry would revoke that plea," cried the Counsel;
+"this is most irregular. I must beg that the Bench do order the defendant
+to keep silence. The witness can stand down."
+
+Angela descended from the witness-box falteringly, and would perhaps have
+fallen but for her father's strong grasp, which clutched her arm as she
+reached the last step.
+
+He dragged her out of the close-packed court, and into the open Hall.
+
+"Wanton!" he hissed in her ear, "shameless wanton!"
+
+She answered nothing; but stood where he held her, with wild eyes looking
+out of a white, rigid countenance. She had done what she had come there
+to do. Persuaded by Fareham's attorney, who had waited upon her at her
+lodgings when Sir John was out of the way, she had made her ill-considered
+attempt to save the man she loved, ignorant of the extent of his danger,
+exaggerating the potential severity of his punishment, in the illimitable
+fear of a woman for the safety of the being she loves. And now she cared
+nothing what became of her, cared little even for her father's anger or
+distress. There was always the Convent, last refuge of sin or sorrow, which
+meant the annihilation of the individual, and where the world's praise or
+blame had no influence.
+
+Her woman fussed about her with a bottle of strong essence, and Sir John
+dragged rather than led her along the Hall, to the great door where the
+coach that had carried her from his London lodgings was in waiting. He saw
+her seated, with her woman beside her, supporting her, gave the coachman
+his orders, and then went hastily back to the Court of King's Bench.
+
+The Court was rising; the Jury, without leaving their seats, had pronounced
+the defendant guilty of a misdemeanour, not in conveying Sir John
+Kirkland's daughter away from her home, to which act she had avowed herself
+a consenting party; but in detaining her in his house with violence, and
+in opposition to her father and proper guardian. The Lord Chief Justice
+expressed his satisfaction at this verdict, and after expatiating with
+pious horror upon the evil consequences of an ungovernable passion, a
+guilty, soul-destroying love, a direct inspiration of Satan, sentenced the
+defendant to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, upon the payment of which
+sum he would be set at liberty.
+
+The old Cavalier heard the brief sermon and the sentence, which seemed to
+him of all punishments the most futile. He had hoped to see his son-in-law
+sent to the Plantations for life; had been angry at the thought that he
+would escape the gallows; and for sole penalty the seducer was sentenced to
+forfeit less than a year's income. How corrupt and venal was a bench
+that made the law of the land a nullity when a great personage was the
+law-breaker!
+
+He flung himself in the defendant's way as he left the court, and struck
+him across the breast with the flat of his sword.
+
+"An unarmed man, Sir John! Is that your old-world chivalry?" Fareham asked,
+quietly.
+
+A crowd was round them and swords were drawn before the officer could
+interfere. There were friends of Fareham's in the court, and two of his
+gentlemen; and Sir John, who was alone, might have been seriously hurt
+before the authorities could put down the tumult, had not his son-in-law
+protected him.
+
+"Sheath your swords, if you love me!" he exclaimed, flinging himself in
+front of Sir John. "I would not have the slightest violence offered to this
+gentleman."
+
+"And I would kill you if I had the chance!" cried Sir John; "that is the
+difference between us. I keep no measures with the man who ruined my
+daughter."
+
+"Your daughter is as spotless a saint as the day she left her Convent, and
+you are a blatant old fool to traduce her," said Fareham, exasperated, as
+the Usher led him away.
+
+His detention was no more than a formality; and as he had been previously
+allowed his liberty upon bail, he was now permitted to return to his
+own house, where by an order upon his banker he paid the fine, and was
+henceforward a free man.
+
+The first use he made of his freedom was to rush to Sir John's lodgings,
+only to hear that the Cavalier, with his daughter and two servants, had
+left half an hour earlier in a coach-and-four for Buckinghamshire. The
+people at the lodgings did not know which road they had taken, or at what
+Inn they were to lie on the way.
+
+"Well, there will be a better chance of seeing her at the Manor than in
+London," Fareham thought; "he cannot keep so close a watch upon her there
+as in the narrow space of town lodgings."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BRINGERS OF SUNSHINE.
+
+
+It was December, and the fields and pastures were white in the tardy dawn
+with the frosty mists of early winter, and Sir John Kirkland was busy
+making his preparations for leaving Buckinghamshire and England with his
+daughter. He had come from Spain at the beginning of the year, hoping to
+spend the remnant of his days in the home of his forefathers, and to lay
+his old bones in the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for
+evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held
+in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout
+in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only
+waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the
+high-road to recovery, before he crossed the Channel.
+
+"There is no occasion you should leave Buckinghamshire, sir," Angela
+argued. "It is the dearest wish of my heart to return to the Convent at
+Louvain, and finish my life there, sheltered from the world's contempt."
+
+"What, having failed to get your fancy, you would dedicate yourself to
+God?" he cried. "No, madam. I am still your father, though you have
+disgraced me; and I require a daughter's duty from you. Oh, child, I so
+loved you, was so proud of you! It is a bitter physic you have given me to
+drink."
+
+She knelt at his feet, and kissed his sunburnt hands shrunken with age.
+
+"I will do whatever you desire, sir. I wish no higher privilege than to
+wait upon you; but when you weary of me there is ever the Convent."
+
+"Leave that for your libertine sister. Be sure she will finish a loose life
+by a conspicuous piety. She will turn saint like Madame de Longueville.
+Sinners are the stuff of which modern saints are made. And women love
+extremes--to pass from silk and luxury to four-o'clock matins, and the
+Carmelite's woollen habit. No, Angela, there must be no Convent for you,
+while I live. Your penance must be to suffer the company of a petulant,
+disappointed old man."
+
+"No penance, sir, but peace and contentment; so I am but forgiven."
+
+"Oh, you are forgiven. There is that about you with which one cannot long
+be angry--a creature so gentle and submissive, a reed that bends under a
+blow. Let us not think of the past. You were a fool--but not a wanton. No,
+I will never believe that! A generous, headstrong fool, ready with thine
+own perjured lips to blacken thy character in order to save the villain who
+did his best to ruin thee. But thou art pure," looking down at her with a
+severe scrutiny. "There is no memory of guilt in those eyes. We will go
+away together, and live peacefully together, and you shall still be the
+staff of my failing steps, the light of my fading eyes, the comfort of
+my ebbing life. Were I but easy in my mind about those poor forsaken
+grandchildren, I could leave England cheerfully enough; but to know them
+motherless--with such a father!"
+
+"Indeed, sir, I believe, however greatly Lord Fareham may have erred, he
+will not prove a neglectful father," Angela said, her voice growing low and
+tremulous as she pronounced that fatal name.
+
+
+"You will vouch for him, no doubt. A licentious villain, but an admirable
+father! No, child, Nature does not deal in such anomalies. The children are
+alone at Chilton with their English gouvernante, and the prim Frenchwoman,
+who takes infinite pains to perfect Henriette's unlikeness to a human
+child. They are alone, and their father is hanging about the Court."
+
+"At Court! Lord Fareham! Indeed, sir, I think you must be mistaken."
+
+"Indeed, madam, I have the fact on good authority."
+
+"Oh, sir, if you have reason to think those dear children neglected, is it
+not your duty to protect and care for them? Their poor, mistaken mother has
+abandoned them."
+
+"Yes, to play the great lady in Paris, where, when I went in quest of
+her last July--while thou wert lying sick here--hoping to bring back a
+penitent, I was received with a triumphant insolence, finding her the
+centre of a circle of flatterers, a Princess in little, with all the airs
+and graces and ceremonies and hauteur of the French Blood-royal. When I
+charged her with being Malfort's mistress, and bade her pack her traps and
+come home with me, she deafened me with her angry volubility. I to slander
+her--I, her father, when there was no one in Paris, from the Place Royale
+to the Louvre, more looked up to! But when I questioned my old friends they
+answered with enigmatical smiles, and assured me that they knew nothing
+against my daughter's character worse than all the world was saying about
+some of the highest ladies in France--Madame, to wit; and with this cold
+comfort I must needs be content, and leave her in her splendid infamy."
+
+"Father, be sure she will come back to us. She has been led into
+wrong-doing by the artfullest of villains. She will discover the emptiness
+of her life, and come back to seek the solace of her children's love. Let
+us care for them meanwhile. They have no other kindred. Think of our sweet
+Henriette--so rich, so beautiful, so over-intelligent--growing from child
+to woman in the care of servants, who may spoil and pervert her even by
+their very fondness."
+
+"It is a bad case, I grant; but I can stir no finger where that man is
+concerned. I can hold no communication with that scoundrel."
+
+"But your lawyer could claim custody of the children for you, perhaps."
+
+"I think not, Angela, unless there was a criminal neglect of their bodies.
+The law takes no account of souls."
+
+Angela's greatest anxiety--now that Denzil's recovery was assured--was for
+the welfare of these children whom she fondly loved, and for whom she would
+have gladly played a mother's part. She wrote in secret to her sister,
+entreating her to return to England for her children's sake, and to devote
+herself to them in retirement at Chilton, leaving the scandal of her
+elopement to be forgotten in the course of blameless years; so that by the
+time Henriette was old enough to enter the world her mother would have
+recovered the esteem of worthy people, as well as the respect of the mob.
+
+Lady Fareham's tardy answer was not encouraging. She had no design of
+returning to a house in which she had never been properly valued, and
+she admired that her sister should talk of scandal, considering that the
+scandal of her own intrigue with her brother-in-law had set all England
+talking, and had been openly mentioned in the London and Oxford Gazettes.
+Silence about other people's affairs would best become a young miss who had
+made herself so notorious.
+
+As for the children, Lady Fareham had no doubt that their father, who had
+ever lavished more affection upon them than he bestowed upon his wife,
+might be trusted with the care of them, however abominable his conduct
+might be in other matters. But in any case her ladyship would not exchange
+Paris for London, where she had been slighted and neglected at Court as
+well as at home.
+
+The letter was a tissue of injustice and egotism; and Angela gave up all
+hope of influencing her sister for good; but not the hope of being useful
+to her sister's children.
+
+Now, as the short winter days went by, and the preparations for departure
+were making, she grew more and more urgent with her father to obtain the
+custody of his grandchildren, and carry them to France with him, where they
+might be reared and educated under his own eye. Montpelier was the place of
+exile he had chosen, a place renowned alike for its admirable climate and
+educational establishments; and where Sir John had spent the previous
+winter, and had made friends.
+
+It was to Montpelier the great Chancellor had retired from the splendours
+of a princely mansion but just completed--far exceeding his own original
+intentions in splendour, as the palaces of new-made men are apt to do--and
+from a power and authority second only to that of kings. There the
+grandfather of future queens was now residing in modest state, devoting the
+evening of his life to the composition of an authentic record of the late
+rebellion, and of those few years during which he had been at the head of
+affairs in England. Sir John Kirkland, who had never forgotten his own
+disappointments in the beginning of his master's restored fortunes, had a
+fellow-feeling for "Ned Hyde" in his fall.
+
+"As a statesman he was next in capacity to Wentworth," said Sir John, "and
+yet a painted favourite and a rabble of shallow wits were strong enough to
+undermine him."
+
+The old Knight confessed that he had ridden out of his way on several
+occasions when he was visiting Warner's sick-bed, in the hope of meeting
+Henrietta and George on their ponies, and had more than once been so lucky
+as to see them.
+
+"The girl grows handsomer, and is as insolent as ever; but she has a
+sorrowful look which assures me she misses her mother; though it was indeed
+of that wretch, her father, she talked most. She said he had told her he
+was likely to go on a foreign embassy. If it is to France he goes, there is
+an end of Montpelier. The same country shall not hold him and my daughter
+while I live to protect you."
+
+Angela began to understand that it was his fear, or his hatred of Fareham,
+which was taking him out of his native country. No word had been said of
+her betrothal since that fatal night. It seemed tacitly understood that all
+was at an end between her and Denzil Warner. She herself had been prostrate
+with a low, nervous fever during a considerable part of that long period of
+apprehension and distress in which Denzil lay almost at the point of death,
+nursed by his grief-stricken mother, to whom the very name of his so lately
+betrothed wife was hateful. Verily the papistical bride had brought a
+greater trouble to that house than even Lady Warner's prejudiced mind had
+anticipated. Kneeling by her son's bed, exhausted with the passion of long
+prayers for his recovery, the mother's thoughts went back to the day when
+Angela crossed the threshold of that house for the first time, so fair, so
+modest, with a countenance so innocent in its pensive beauty.
+
+"And yet she was guilty at heart even then," Lady Warner told herself, in
+the long night-watches, after the trial at Westminster Hall, when Angela's
+public confession of an unlawful love had been reported to her by her
+favourite Nonconformist Divine, who had been in court throughout the trial,
+with Lady Warner's lawyer, watching the proceedings in the interest of Sit
+Denzil. Lady Warner received the news of the verdict and sentence with
+unspeakable indignation.
+
+"And my murdered son!" she gasped, "for I know not yet that God will
+hear my prayers and raise him up to me again. Is his blood to count for
+nothing--or his sufferings--his patient sufferings on that bed? A fine--a
+paltry fine--a trifle for a rich man. I would pay thrice as much, though
+it beggared me, to see him sent to the Plantations. O Judge and Avenger of
+Israel! Thou hast scourged us with pestilence, and punished us with fire;
+but Thou hast not convinced us of sin. The world is so sunk in wickedness
+that murder scarce counts for crime."
+
+The day of terror was past. Denzil's convalescence was proceeding slowly,
+but without retrograde stages. His youth and temperate habits had helped
+his recovery from a wound which in the earlier stages looked fatal. He was
+now able to sit up in an armchair, and talk to his visitor, when Sir John
+rode twenty miles to see him; but only once did his lips shape the name
+that had been so dear, and that occasion was at the end of a visit which
+Sir John announced as the last.
+
+"Our goods are packed and ready for shipping," he said. "My daughter and I
+will begin our journey to Montpelier early next week."
+
+It was the first time Sir John had spoken of his daughter in that
+sick-room.
+
+"If she should ever talk of me, in the time to come," Denzil said--speaking
+very slowly, in a low voice, as if the effort, mental and physical, were
+almost beyond his strength, and holding the hand which Sir John had given
+him in saying good-bye--"tell her that I shall ever remember her with
+a compassionate affection--ever hold her the dearest and loveliest of
+women--yes, even if I should marry, and see the children of some fair and
+chaste wife growing up around me. She will ever be the first. And tell
+her that I know she forswore herself in the court; and that she was the
+innocent dupe of that villain--never his consenting companion. And tell her
+that I pity her even for that so misplaced affection which tempted her to
+swear to a lie. I knew, sir, always, that she loved him and not me. Yes,
+from the first. Indeed, sir, it was but too easy to read that unconscious
+beginning of unholy love, which grew and strengthened like some fatal
+disease. I knew, but nursed the fond hope that I could win her heart--in
+spite of him. I fancied that right must prevail over wrong; but it does
+not, you see, sir, not always--not----" A faintness came over him;
+whereupon his mother, re-entering the room at this moment, ran to him and
+restored him with the strong essence that stood handy among the medicine
+bottles on the table by his chair.
+
+"You have suffered him to talk too much," she said, glancing angrily at Sir
+John. "And I'll warrant he has been talking of your daughter--whose name
+must be poison to him. God knows 'tis worse than poison to me!"
+
+"Madam, I did not come to this house to hear my daughter abused----"
+
+"It would have better become you, Sir John Kirkland, to keep away from this
+house."
+
+"Mother, silence! You distress me worse than my illness----"
+
+"This, madam, is my farewell visit. You will not be plagued any more with
+me," said Sir John, lifting his hat, and bowing low to Lady Warner.
+
+He was gone before she could reply.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The baggage was ready--clothes, books, guns, plate, and linen--all
+necessaries for an exile that might last for years, had been packed for the
+sea voyage; but the trunks and bales had not yet been placed in the waggon
+that was to convey them to the Tower Wharf, where they were to be shipped
+in one of the orange-boats that came at this season from Valencia, laden
+with that choice and costly fruit, and returned with a heterogeneous cargo.
+At Valencia the goods would be put on board a Mediterranean coasting
+vessel, and landed at Cette.
+
+Sir John began to waver about his destination after having heard from
+Henriette of her father's possible embassy. Certainly if Fareham were to be
+employed in foreign diplomacy, Paris seemed a likely post for a man who was
+so well known there, and had spent so much of his life in France. And if
+Fareham were to be at Paris, Sir John considered Montpelier, remote as it
+was from the capital, too near his enemy.
+
+"He has proved himself an indomitable villain," thought the Knight. "And I
+could not always keep as close a watch upon my daughter as I have done
+in the last six weeks. No. If Fareham be for France, I am for some other
+country. I might take her to Florence, and put the Apennines between her
+and that daring wretch."
+
+It may be, too, that Sir John had another reason for lingering, after all
+was ready for the journey. He may have been much influenced by Angela's
+concern about his grandchildren, and may have hesitated at leaving them
+alone in England with only salaried guardians.
+
+"Their father concerns himself very little about them, you see," he told
+Angela, "since he can entertain the project of a foreign embassy, while
+those little wretches are pining in a lonely barrack in Oxfordshire."
+
+"Indeed, sir, he is a fond father. I would wager my life that he is deeply
+concerned about them."
+
+"Oh, he is an angel, on your showing! You would blacken your sister's
+character to make him a saint."
+
+The next day was fine and sunny, a temperature as of April, after the
+morning frost had melted. There was a late rose or two still lingering in
+the sheltered Buckinghamshire valley, though it wanted but a fortnight of
+Christmas. Angela and her father were sitting in a parlour that faced the
+iron gates. Since their return from London Sir John had seemed uneasy when
+his daughter was out of his sight; and she, perceiving his watchfulness and
+trouble, had been content to abandon her favourite walks in the lanes and
+woods and to the "fair hill of Brill," whence the view was so lovely and
+so vast, on one side reaching to the Welsh mountains, and on another
+commanding the nearer prospect of "the great fat common of Ottmoor," as
+Aubrey calls it, "which in some winters is like a sea of waters." For her
+father's comfort, noting the sad wistful eyes that watched her coming in
+and going out, she had resigned herself to spend long melancholy
+hours within doors, reading aloud till Sir John fell asleep, playing
+backgammon--a game she detested worse even than shove-halfpenny, which
+latter primitive game they played sometimes on the shovel-board in the
+hall. Life could scarcely be sadder than Angela's life in those grey winter
+days; and had it not been for an occasional ride across country with her
+father, health and spirits must alike have succumbed to this monotony of
+sadness.
+
+This morning, as on many mornings of late, the subject of the boy and girl
+at Chilton had been discussed with the Knight's tankard of home-brewed and
+his daughter's chocolate.
+
+"Indeed, sir, it would be a cruel thing for us to abandon them. At
+Montpelier we shall be a fortnight's journey from England; and if either
+of those dear creatures should fall ill, dangerously ill, perhaps, their
+father beyond the seas, and we, too, absent--oh, sir, figure to yourself
+Henriette or George dying among strangers! A cold or a fever might carry
+them off in a few days; and we should know nothing till all was over."
+
+Sir John groaned and paced the room, agitated by the funereal image.
+
+"Why, what a raven thou art, ever to croak dismal prophecies. The children
+are strong and well, and have careful custodians. I can have no dealings
+with their father. Must I tell you that a hundred times, Angela? He is a
+consummate villain: and were it not that I fear to make a bigger scandal,
+he or I should not have survived many hours after that iniquitous
+sentence."
+
+A happy solution of this difficulty, which distressed the Knight much more
+than his stubbornness allowed him to admit, was close at hand that morning,
+while Angela bent over her embroidery frame, and her father spelt through
+the last _London Gazette_ that the post had brought him.
+
+The clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels announced a visit; and while they
+were looking at the gate, full of wonder, since their visitors were of so
+small a number, a footman in the Fareham livery pulled the iron ring that
+hung by a chain from the stone pillar, and the bell rang loud and long in
+the frosty air. The Fareham livery! Twice before the Fareham coaches and
+liveries had taken that quiet household by surprise; but to-day terror
+rather than surprise was in Angela's mind as she stood in front of the
+window looking at the gate.
+
+Could Fareham be so rash as to face her father, so daring as to seek a
+farewell interview on the eve of departure? No, she told herself; such
+folly was impossible. The visitor could be but one person--Henriette. Even
+assured of this in her own mind, she did not rush to welcome her niece, but
+stood as if turned to stone, waiting for the opening of the gate.
+
+Old Reuben, having seen the footman, went himself to admit the visitors,
+with his grandson and slave in attendance.
+
+"It must be her little ladyship," he said, taking his young mistress's view
+of the case. "Lord Fareham would never dare to show his deceiving face
+here."
+
+A shrill voice greeted him from the coach window before he reached the
+gate.
+
+"You are the slowest old wretch I ever saw!" cried the voice. "Don't you
+know that when visitors of importance come to a house they expect to be let
+in? I vow a convent gate would be opened quicker."
+
+"Indeed, your ladyship, when your legs are as old as mine----"
+
+"Which I hope they never will be," muttered Henriette, as she descended
+with a languid slowness from the coach, assisted on either side by a
+footman; while George, who could not wait for her airs and graces, let
+himself out at the door on the off side just as Reuben succeeded in turning
+the key.
+
+"So you are old Reuben!" he said, patting the butler on the shoulder with
+the gold hilt of his riding-whip. "And you were here, like a vegetable, all
+through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth?"
+
+"Yes, your lordship, from the raising of Hampden's regiment."
+
+"Ah, you shall tell me all about it over a pipe and a bottle. You must be
+vastly good company. I am come to live here."
+
+"To live here, your honour?"
+
+"Yes; sister and I are to live here while my father represents his Majesty
+beyond seas. I hope you have good stabling and plenty of room. My ponies
+and Mistress Henriette's Arab horse will be here to-morrow. I doubt I shall
+have to build a place for my hawks; but I suppose Sir John will find me a
+cottage for my Dutch falconer."
+
+"Lord, how the young master do talk!" exclaimed Reuben, with an admiring
+grin.
+
+The boy was so rapid in his speech, had such vivacity and courage in his
+face, such a spring in every movement, as if he had quicksilver in his
+veins, Reuben thought; but it was only the quicksilver of youth, that
+Divine ichor which lasts for so brief a season.
+
+"It made me feel twenty years younger only to hear him prattle," Reuben
+said afterwards.
+
+Sir John and his daughter had come to meet the children by this time,
+and there were fond embracings, in the midst of which Henriette withdrew
+herself from her grandfather's arms, and retired a couple of paces, in
+order to drop him the Jennings curtsy, sinking almost to the ground, and
+then rising from billows of silk, like Venus from the sea, and handing
+him a letter, with a circular sweep of her arm, learnt in London from her
+Parisian dancing mistress, an apprentice of St. André's, not from the
+shabby little French cut-caper from Oxford.
+
+"My father sends you this letter, sir."
+
+"Is your father at Chilton?"
+
+"No, sir. He was with us the day before yesterday, to bid us good-bye
+before he started upon his foreign embassy," replied Henriette, struggling
+with her tears, lest she should seem a child, and not the woman of fashion
+she aspired to be. "He left us early in the afternoon to ride back to
+London, and he takes barge this afternoon to Gravesend, to embark for
+Archangel, on his way to Moscow. I doubt you know he is to be his Majesty's
+Ambassador at Muscovy?"
+
+"I know nothing but what you told me t'other day, Henriette," the Knight
+answered, as they went to the house, where George began to run about on an
+exploration of corridors, and then escaped to the stables, while Henriette
+stood in front of the great wood fire, and warmed her hands in a stately
+manner.
+
+Angela had found no words of welcome for her niece yet. She only hugged
+and kissed her, and now occupied herself unfastening the child's hood and
+cloak. "How your hands shake, auntie. You must be colder than I am; though
+that leathern coach lets in the wind like a sieve. I suppose my people will
+know where to dispose themselves?" she added, resuming her grand air.
+
+"Reuben will take care of them, dearest."
+
+"Why, your voice shakes like your hands; and oh, how white you are. But you
+are glad to see us, I hope?"
+
+"Gladder than I can say, Henriette."
+
+"I am glad you don't call me Papillon. I have left off that ridiculous
+name, which I ought never to have permitted."
+
+"I doubt, mistress, you who know so much know what is in this letter," said
+Sir John, staring at Fareham's superscription as if he had come suddenly
+upon an adder.
+
+"Nay, sir, I only know that my father was shut in his library for a long
+time writing, and was as white as my aunt is now when he brought it to me.
+'You and George, and your gouvernante and servants, are to go to the Manor
+Moat the day after to-morrow,' he said, 'and you are to give this letter
+into your grandfather's hand.' I have done my duty, and await your Honour's
+pleasure. Our gouvernante is not the Frenchwoman. Father dismissed her for
+neglecting my education, and walking out after dark with Daniel Lettsome.
+'Tis only Priscilla, who is something between a servant and a friend, and
+who does everything I tell her."
+
+"A pretty gouvernante!"
+
+"Nay, sir, she is as plain as a pikestaff; that is one of her merits.
+Mademoiselle thought herself pretty, and angled for a rich husband. Please
+be so good as to read your letter, grandfather, for I believe it is about
+us."
+
+Sir John broke the seal, and began to read the letter with a frowning brow,
+which lightened as he read. Angela stood with her niece clasped in her
+arms, and watched her father's countenance across the silky brown head that
+nestled against her bosom.
+
+"SIR,--Were it not in the interests of others, who must needs hold a place
+in your affection second only to that they have in my heart, I should
+scarce presume to address you; but it is to the grandfather of my children
+I write, rather than to the gentleman whom I have so deeply offended. I
+look back, sir, and repent the violence of that unhappy night; but know no
+change in the melancholy passion that impelled me to crime. It would have
+been better for me had I been the worst rake-hell at Whitehall, than to
+have held myself aloof from the modish vices of my day, only to concentrate
+all my desires and affections there, where it was most sinful to place
+them.
+
+"Enough, sir. Did I stand alone I should have found an easy solution of all
+difficulties, and you, and the lady my madness has so insulted, would have
+been rid for ever of the despicable wretch who now addresses you.
+
+"I had to remember the dear innocents who bring you this letter, and it was
+of them I thought when I humbled myself to turn courtier in order to obtain
+the post of Ambassador to Muscovy--in which savage place I shall be so
+remote from all who ever knew me in this country, that I shall be as good
+as dead; and you would have as much compunction in withholding your love
+and protection from my boy and girl as if they were de facto orphans. I
+send them to you, sir, unheralded. I fling them into the bosom of your
+love. They are rich, and the allowance that will be paid you for them will
+cover, I apprehend, all outlays on their behalf, or can be increased at
+your pleasure. My lawyers, whom you know, will be at your service for all
+communications; and they will spare you the pain of correspondence with me.
+
+"I leave the nurture, education, and happiness of these, my only son and
+daughter, solely in your care and authority. They have been reared in
+over-much luxury, and have been spoiled by injudicious indulgence. But
+their faults are trivial faults, and are all on the surface. They are
+truthful, and have warm and generous hearts. I shall deem it a further
+favour if you will allow their nurse, or nurse-gouvernante, Mrs. Priscilla
+Baker, to remain with them, as your servant, and subject to your authority.
+Their horses, ponies, hawks, and hounds, carriages, etc., must be
+accommodated, or not, at your pleasure. My girl is greatly taken up with
+the Arab horse I gave her on her last birthday, and I should be glad if
+your stable could shelter him. I subscribe myself, perhaps for the last
+time, sir,
+
+"Your obedient servant, and a penitent sinner,
+
+"FAREHAM."
+
+
+When he had come to the end of the letter, reading slowly and thoughtfully,
+Sir John handed it to his daughter, in a dead silence.
+
+She tried to read; but at sight of the beloved writing a rush of tears
+blinded her, and she gave the letter back to her father.
+
+"I cannot read it, sir," she sobbed; "tell me only, are we to keep the
+children?"
+
+"Yes. Henceforward they are our children; and it will be the business of
+our lives to make them happy."
+
+"If you cry, tante, I shall think you are vexed that we have come to plague
+you," said Henriette, with a pretty, womanly air. "I am very sorry for
+his poor lordship, for he also cried when he kissed us; but he will have
+skating and sledging in Muscovy, and he will shoot bears; so he will be
+very happy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+IN A DEAD CALM.
+
+
+The great bales and chests, and leather trunks, on the filling whereof
+Sir John's household had bestowed a week's labour, were all unpacked and
+cleared out of the hall, to make room for a waggon load of packages from
+Chilton Abbey, which preliminary waggon was followed day after day by other
+conveyances laden with other possessions of the Honourable Henriette,
+or the Honourable George. The young lady's virginals, her guitar, her
+embroidery frames, her books, her "babies," which the maids had packed,
+although it was long since she had played with them; the young gentleman's
+guns and whips, tennis rackets, bows and arrows, and a mass of
+heterogeneous goods; there seemed no end to the two children's personal
+property, and it was well that the old house was sufficiently spacious to
+afford a wing for their occupation. They brought their gouvernante, and a
+valet and maid, the falconer, and three grooms, for whom lodgings had to
+be found out-of-doors. The valet and waiting-woman spent some days in
+distributing and arranging all that mass of belongings; but at the end of
+their labour the children's rooms looked more cheerful than their luxurious
+quarters at Chilton, and the children themselves were delighted with their
+new home.
+
+"We are lodged ever so much better here than at the Abbey," George told
+his grandfather. "We were ever so far away from father and mother, and
+the house was under a curse, being stolen from the Church in King Henry's
+reign. Once, when I had a fever, an old grey monk came and sat at the
+foot of the bed, between the curtains, and wouldn't go away. He sat there
+always, till I began to get well again. Father said there was nothing
+there, and it was only the fever made me see him; but I know it was the
+ghost of one of the monks who were flung out to starve when the Abbey was
+seized by Cromwell's men. Not Oliver Cromwell, grandfather; but another bad
+man of the name, who had his head cut off afterwards; though I doubt he
+deserved the axe less than the Brewer did."
+
+There was no more talk of Montpelier or exile. A new life began in the old
+house in the valley, with new pleasures, new motives, new duties--a life in
+which the children were paramount. These two eager young minds ruled at the
+Manor Moat. For them the fish-pond teemed with carp and tench, for them
+hawks flew, and hounds ran, and horses and ponies were moving from morning
+till twilight; for them Sir John grew young again, and hunted fox and hare,
+and rode with the hawks with all the pertinacity of youth, for whom there
+is no such word as enough. For them the happy grandfather lived in his
+boots from October to March, and the adoring aunt spent industrious hours
+in the fabrication of flies for trout, after the recipes in Mr. Walton's
+agreeable book. The whole establishment was ordered for their comfort and
+pleasure; but their education and improvement were also considered in
+everything. A Roman Catholic gentleman, from St. Omer, was engaged as
+George's tutor, and to teach Angela and Henriette Latin and Italian,
+studies in which the niece was stimulated to industry by her desire to
+surpass her aunt, an ambition which her volatile spirits never allowed her
+to realise. For all other learning and accomplishments Angela was her only
+teacher, and as the girl grew to womanhood aunt and niece read and studied
+together, like sisters, rather than like pupil and mistress; and Angela
+taught Henriette to love those books which Fareham had given her, and so in
+a manner the intellect of the banished father influenced the growing mind
+of the child. Together, and of one opinion in all things, aunt and niece
+visited and ministered to the neighbouring poor, or entertained their
+genteel neighbours in a style at once friendly and elegant. No existence
+could have been calmer or happier, to one who was content to renounce all
+passionate hopes and desires, all the romantic aspirations of youth; and
+Angela had resigned herself to such renunciation when she rose from her
+sick-bed, after the tragedy at Chilton. Here was the calm of the Convent
+without its restrictions and limitations, the peace which is not of this
+world, and yet liberty to enjoy all that is fairest and noblest in this
+world; for had not Sir John pledged himself to take his daughter and niece
+and nephew for the grand tour through France and Italy, soon after George's
+seventeenth birthday? Father Andrea, who was of Florentine birth, would go
+with them; and with such a cicisbeo, they would see and understand all the
+treasures of the past and the present, antique and modern art.
+
+Lord Fareham was still in the north of Europe; but, after three years in
+Russia, had been transferred from Moscow to Copenhagen, where he was in
+high favour with the King of Denmark.
+
+Denzil Warner had lately married a young lady of fortune, the only child
+and heiress of a Wiltshire gentleman, who had made a considerable figure in
+Parliament under the Protector, but was now retired from public affairs.
+
+And all that remained to Angela of her story of impassioned love, sole
+evidence of the homage that had been offered to her beauty or her youth,
+was a letter, now long grown dim with tears, which Henriette had given to
+her on the first night the children spent under their grandfather's roof.
+
+"I was to hand you this when no one was by," the girl said simply, and left
+her aunt standing mute and pale with a sealed letter in her hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How shall I thank or praise you for the sacrifice your love made for one
+so unworthy--a sacrifice that cut me to the heart? Alas, my beloved, it
+would have been better for both of us hadst thou given me thyself rather
+than so empty a gift as thy good name. I hoped to tell you, lip to lip, in
+one last meeting, all my gratitude and all my hopeless love; but though I
+have watched and hung about your gardens and meadows day after day, you
+have been too jealously guarded, or have kept too close, and only with my
+pen can I bid you an eternal farewell.
+
+"I go out of your life for ever, since I am leaving for a distant country
+with the fixed intention never to return to England. I bequeath you my
+children, as if I left you a rag of my own lacerated heart.
+
+"If you ever think of me, I pray you to consider the story of my life
+as that of an invincible passion, wicked and desperate if you will, but
+constant as life and death. You were, and are, and will be to my latest
+breath, my only love.
+
+"Perhaps you will think sometimes, as I shall think always, that we might
+have lived innocently and happily in New England, forgetting and forgotten
+by the rabble we left behind us, having shaken off the slough of an unhappy
+life, beginning the world again, under new names, in a new climate and
+country. It was a guilty dream to entertain, perhaps; but I shall dream
+it often enough in a strange land, among strange faces and strange
+manners--shall dream of you on my death-bed, and open dying eyes to see you
+standing by my bedside, looking down at me with that sweetly sorrowful
+look I remember best of all the varying expressions in the face I
+worship.--Farewell for ever.
+
+"F."
+
+While her son and daughter were growing up at the Manor Moat, Lady Fareham
+sparkled at the French Court, one of the most brilliant figures in that
+brilliant world, a frequent guest at the Louvre and Palais Royal, and the
+brand-new palace of Versailles, where the largest Court that had ever
+collected round a throne was accommodated in a building of Palladian
+richness in ornament and detail, a Palace whose offices were spacious
+enough for two thousand servants. No foreigner at the great King's court
+was more admired than the lovely Lady Fareham, whose separation from her
+black-browed husband occasioned no scandal in a society where the husbands
+of beautiful women were for the most part gentlemen who pursued their own
+vulgar amours abroad, and allowed a wide liberty to the Venus at home; nor
+was Henri de Malfort's constant attendance upon her ladyship a cause of
+evil-speaking, since there was scarce a woman of consequence who had not
+her _cavalière servante_.
+
+Madame de Sévigné, in one of those budgets of Parisian scandal with which
+she cheered a kinsman's banishment, assured Bussy de Rabutin that Lady
+Fareham had paid her friend's debts more than once since her return to
+France; but constancy such as De Malfort's could hardly be expected
+were not the golden fetters of love riveted by the harder metal of
+self-interest. Their alliance was looked on with favour by all that
+brilliant world, and even tolerated by that severe moralist, the Due
+du Montausier, who had been lately rewarded for his wife's civility to
+Mademoiselle de la Vallière, now Duchess and reigning favourite, by being
+made guardian of the infant Dauphin.
+
+Every one approved, every one admired; and Hyacinth's life in the land
+she loved was like a long summer day. But darkness came upon that day as
+suddenly as the night of the tropics. She rose one morning, light-hearted
+and happy, to pursue the careless round of pleasure. She lay down in a
+darkened chamber, never again to mix in that splendid crowd.
+
+Betwixt noon and twilight Henri de Malfort had fallen in a combat of eight,
+a combat so savage as to recall that fatal fight of five against five
+during the Fronde, in which Nemours had fallen, shot through the heart by
+Beaufort.
+
+The light words of a fool in a tavern, backed by three other fools, had led
+to this encounter, in which De Malfort had been the challenger. He and
+one of his friends died on the ground, while three on the other side
+were mortally wounded. It would henceforth be fully understood that Lady
+Fareham's name was not for ribald jesters; but the man Lady Fareham loved
+was dead, and her life of pleasure had ended with a pistol-ball from an
+unerring hand. To her it seemed the hand of Fate. She scarcely thought of
+the man who had killed him.
+
+As her life had been brilliant and conspicuous, so her retirement from the
+world was not without _éclat_. Royalty witnessed the solemn office of the
+Church which transformed Hyacinth, Lady Fareham, into Mère Agnes, of the
+Seven Wounds; while, seated in the royal tribune, a King's mistress,
+beautiful and adored, thought of a day when she, too, might bring to yonder
+altar the sacrifice of a broken spirit and a life that had outlived earthly
+happiness.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of London Pride, by M. E. Braddon
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