I

The last scene in my last book¹ concluded within the walls of Alnwick House, and the first scene in my present volume opens in the same place. I have a great partiality for morning pictures. There is such a freshness about everybody and everything before the toil of the day has worn them. When you descend from your bedroom, the parlour looks so clean, the fire so bright, the hearth so polished, the furnished breakfast table so tempting. All these attractions are diffused over the oak-panelled room with the glass door to which my readers have before had frequent admission. The cheerfulness within is enhanced by the dreary, wildered look of all without.² The air is dimmed, with snow careering through it in wild whirls, the sky is one mass of congealed tempest, heavy, wan and icy; the trees rustle their frozen branches against each other in a blast bitter enough to flay alive the flesh that should be exposed to its sweep. But hush! the people of the house are up. I hear a step on the stairs. Let us watch the order in which they will collect in the breakfast room.

First, by himself, comes an individual in a furred morning-gown of crimson damask, with his shirt-collar open and neckcloth thrown by; his face fresh and rather rosy than otherwise, partly perhaps with health but chiefly with the cold water in which he has been performing his morning’s ablutions, his hair fresh from the toilette, plenty of it, and carefully brushed and curled, his hands clean and white and visibly as cold as icicles. He walks to the fire, rubbing them. He glances towards the window meantime, and whistles as much as to say, ‘It’s a rum morning.’ He then steps to a side-table, takes up a newspaper,³ of which there are dozens lying folded and fresh from the postman’s bag, he throws himself into an arm-chair and begins to read. Meantime, another step and a rustle of silks. In comes the Countess Zenobia with a white gauze turban over her raven curls and a dress of grey. ‘Good morning, Arthur,’ she says in her cheerful tone, such as she uses when all’s right with her.⁴ ‘Good morning, Zenobia,’ answers the Duke, getting up, and they shake hands and stand together on the rug.

‘What a morning it is!’ he continues. ‘How the snow drifts! If it were a little less boisterous I would make you come out and have a snow-balling match with me, just to whet your appetite for breakfast.’

‘Aye,’ said the Countess. ‘We look like two people adapted for such child’s-play, don’t we?’ and she glanced with a smile first at the ‘great blethering King of Angria’ (see Harlaw) and then at her own comely and portly figure.⁵

‘You don’t mean to insinuate that we are too stout for such exercise?’ said His Majesty.

Zenobia laughed. ‘I am, at any rate,’ said she, and, ‘Your Grace is in most superb condition – what a chest!’

‘This will never do,’ returned the Duke, shaking his head. ‘Wherever I go they compliment me on my enlarged dimensions. I must take some measures for reducing them within reasonable bounds. Exercise and Abstinence, that is my motto.’

‘No, Adrian – let it be “Ease and Plenty”,’ said a much softer voice, replying to his Grace. A third person had joined the pair and was standing a little behind, for she could not get her share of the fire, being completely shut out by the Countess with her robes and the Duke with his morning-gown. This person seemed but a little and slight figure when compared with these two august individuals, and as the Duke drew her in between them, that she might at least have a sight of the glowing hearth, she was almost lost in the contrast.

‘Ease and Plenty!’ exclaimed his Grace. ‘So you would have a man mountain⁶ for your husband at once!’

‘Yes, I should like to see you really very stout. I call you nothing now – quite slim, scarcely filled up.’

‘That’s right!’ said Zamorna. ‘Mary always takes my side.’

Lady Helen Percy⁷ now entered; and shortly after, the Earl, with slow step and in silence, took his place at the breakfast-table. The meal proceeded in silence. Zamorna was reading. Newspaper after newspaper he opened, glanced over and threw on the floor. One of them happened to fall over Lord Northangerland’s foot. It was very gently removed as if there was contamination in the contact.

‘An Angrian print, I believe,’ murmured the Earl. ‘Why do they bring such things to the house?’

‘They are my papers,’ answered his son-in-law, swallowing, at the same moment, more at one mouthful than would have sufficed his father for the whole repast.

‘Yours! What do you read them for? To give you an appetite? If so, they seem to have answered their end. Arthur, I wish you would masticate your food better –’

‘I have not time. I’m very hungry. I eat but one meal all yesterday.’

‘Humph! and now you’re making up for it, I suppose. But pray put that newspaper away.’

‘No. I wish to learn what my loving subjects are saying about me.’

‘And what are they saying, pray?’

‘Why, here is a respectable gentleman who announces that he fears his beloved monarch is again under the influence of that baleful star whose ascendancy has already produced such fatal results to Angria – wishing to be witty he calls it the North Star. Another insinuates that their gallant sovereign, though a Hector in war, is but a Paris in peace. He talks something about Sampson and Delilah, Hercules⁸ and the distaff, and hints darkly at the evils of petticoat government – a hit at you, Mary. A third mutters threateningly of hoary old ruffians who, worn with age and excess, sit like Bunyan’s Giant Pope⁹ at the entrances of their dens, and strive by menace or promise to allure passengers within the reach of their bloody talons.’

‘Is that me?’ asked the Earl quietly.

‘I’ve very little doubt of it,’ was the reply. ‘And there is a fourth print, the War Despatch, noted for the ardour of its sentiments, which growls a threat concerning the power of Angria to elect a new sovereign whenever she is offended with her old one. Zenobia, another cup of coffee, if you please.’

‘I suppose you’re frightened,’ said the Earl.

‘I shake in my shoes,’ replied the Duke. ‘However, there are two old sayings that somewhat cheer me – “More noise than work”, “Much cry and little wool”.¹⁰ Very applicable when properly considered, for I always called the Angrians hogs, and who am I except the Devil that shears them?’

Breakfast had been over for about a quarter of an hour. The room was perfectly still. The Countess and Duchess were reading those papers Zamorna had dropped, Lady Helen was writing to her son’s agent, the Earl was pacing the room in a despondent mood; as for the Duke, no one well knew where he was, or what he was doing. He had taken himself off, however. Ere long, his step was heard descending the staircase, then his voice in the hall giving orders, and then he re-entered the breakfast-room, but no longer in morning costume. He had exchanged his crimson damask robe for a black coat and checked pantaloons; he was wrapped up in a huge blue cloak with a furred collar; a light fur cap rested on his brow; his gloves were held in his hands. In short, he was in full travelling costume.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the Earl, pausing in his walk.

‘To Verdopolis, and from thence to Angria,’ was the reply.

‘To Verdopolis, and in such weather!’ exclaimed the Countess, glancing towards the wild whitened tempest that whirled without. Lady Helen looked up from her writing.

‘Absurd, my Lord Duke! You do not mean what you say.’

‘I do. I must go; the carriage will be at the door directly. I’m come to bid you all good-bye.’

‘And what is all this haste about?’ returned Lady Helen, rising.

‘There is no haste in the business, madam. I’ve been here a week. I intended to go today.’

‘You never said anything about your intention.’

‘No, I did not think of mentioning it. But they are bringing the carriage round. Good morning, madam.’

He took Lady Helen’s hand, and saluted her as he always does at meeting and parting. Then he passed to the Countess.

‘Good-bye, Zenobia. Come to Ellrington House as soon as you can persuade our friend to accompany you.’

He kissed her, too. The next in succession was the Earl.

‘Farewell, sir, and be d—d to you. Will you shake hands?’

‘No. You always hurt me so. Good morning. I hope you won’t find your masters quite so angry as you expect them to be. But you do right not to delay attending to their mandates. I’m sorry I have been the occasion of your offending them.’

‘Are we to part in this way?’ asked the Duke. ‘And won’t you shake hands?’

‘No!’

Zamorna coloured highly, but turned away and put on his gloves. The barouche stood at the door. The groom and the valet were waiting, and the Duke, still with a clouded countenance, was proceeding to join them, when his wife came forwards.

‘You have forgotten me, Adrian,’ she said in a very quiet tone, but her eye meantime flashing expressively. He started, for in truth he had forgotten her. He was thinking about her father.

‘Good-bye then, Mary,’ he said, giving her a hurried kiss and embrace. She detained his hand.

‘Pray how long am I to stay here?’ she asked. ‘Why do you leave me at all? Why am I not to go with you?’

‘It is such weather!’ he answered. ‘When this storm passes over I will send for you.’

‘When will that be?’ pursued the Duchess, following his steps as he strode into the hall.

‘Soon, soon, my love, perhaps in a day or two. There now, don’t be unreasonable. Of course you cannot go to-day.’

‘I can and I will,’ answered the Duchess quickly. ‘I have had enough of Alnwick. You shall not leave me behind you.’

‘Go into the room, Mary. The door is open and the wind blows on you far too keenly. Don’t you see how it drifts the snow in?’

‘I will not go into the room. I’ll step into the carriage as I am if you refuse to wait till I can prepare. Perhaps you will be humane enough to let me have a share of your cloak.’

She shivered as she spoke. Her hair and her dress floated in the cold blast that blew in through the open entrance, strewing the hall with snow and dead leaves. His Grace, though he was rather stern, was not quite negligent of her, for he stood so as to screen her in some measure from the draught.

‘I shall not let you go, Mary,’ he said. ‘So there is no use in being perverse.’

The Duchess regarded him with that troubled, anxious glance peculiar to herself.

‘I wonder why you wish to leave me behind you,’ she said.

‘Who told you I wished to do so?’ was his answer. ‘Look at the weather, and tell me if it is fit for a delicate little woman like you to be exposed to?’

‘Then,’ murmured the Duchess wistfully, glancing at the January storm, ‘you might wait till it is milder. I don’t think it will do your Grace any good to be out to-day.’

‘But I must go, Mary. The Christmas recess is over, and business presses.’

‘Then do take me. I am sure I can bear it.’

‘Out of the question. You may well clasp those small, silly hands, so thin I can almost see through them, and you may well shake your curls over your face, to hide its paleness from me, I suppose. What is the matter, crying? Good! what the d—l am I to do with her? Go to your father, Mary. He has spoilt you.’

‘Adrian, I cannot live at Alnwick without you,’ said the Duchess earnestly. ‘It recalls too forcibly the very bitterest days of my life.¹¹ I’ll not be separated from you again except by violence.’ She took hold of his arm with one hand, while with the other she was hastily wiping away the tears from her eyes.

‘Well, it will not do to keep her any longer in this hall,’ said the Duke. He pushed open a side-door which led into a room that during his stay he had appropriated for his study. There was a fire in it, and a sofa drawn to the hearth. There he took the Duchess, and, having shut the door, recommenced the task of persuasion, which was no very easy one, for his own false play, his alienations and his unnumbered treacheries had filled her mind with hideous phantasms of jealousy, had weakened her nerves and made them a prey to a hundred vague apprehensions – fears that never wholly left her, except when she was actually in his arms or at least in his immediate presence.

‘I tell you, Mary,’ he said, regarding her with a smile half-expressive of fondness, half of vexation, ‘I tell you I will send for you in two or three days.’

‘And will you be at Wellesley House when I get there? You said you were going from Verdopolis to Angria.’

‘I am, and probably I shall be a week in Angria, not more.’

‘A week! and your Grace considers that but a short time? To me it will be most wearisome. However, I must submit; I know it is useless to oppose your Grace. But I could go with you, and you should never find me in the way. I am not often intrusive on your Grace.’

‘The horses will be frozen if they stand much longer,’ returned the Duke, not heeding her last remark. ‘Come, wipe your eyes, and be a little philosopher for once. There, let me have one smile before I go. A week will be over directly. This is not like setting out for a campaign.’

‘Don’t forget to send for me in two days,’ pleaded the Duchess, as Zamorna released her from his arms.

‘No, no. I’ll send for you to-morrow if the weather is settled enough, and,’ half mimicking her voice, ‘don’t be jealous of me, Mary – unless you’re afraid that the superior charms of Enara and Warner and Kirkwall and Richton and Thornton¹² will seduce me from my allegiance to a certain fair-complexioned brown-eyed young woman in whom you are considerably interested. Good-bye.’

He was gone. She hurried to the window; he passed it. In three minutes the barouche swept with muffled sound round the lawn, shot down the carriage road and was quickly lost in the thickening whirl of the snow-storm.

Late at night, the Duke of Zamorna reached Wellesley House. His journey had been much delayed by the repeated change of horses which the state of the roads rendered necessary. So heavy and constant had been the falls of snow all day that in many places they were almost blocked up, and he and his valet had more than once been obliged to alight from the carriage and wade through the deep drifts, far above the knee. Under such circumstances any other person would have stopped for the night at some of the numerous excellent hotels which skirt the way, but his Grace is well known to be excessively pig-headed, and the more obstacles are thrown in the way of any scheme he wishes to execute, the more resolute he is in pushing on to the attainment of his end. In the prosecution of this journey he had displayed a particular wilfulness. In vain, when he had alighted at some inn to allow time for a change of horses, Rosier had hinted the propriety of a longer stay, in vain he had recommended some more substantial refreshment than the single glass of Madeira and the half-biscuit wherewith his noble master tantalized rather than satisfied the cravings of a rebellious appetite. At last, leaving him to the enjoyment of obstinacy and starvation in a large saloon of the inn, which his Grace was traversing with strides that derived their alacrity partly from nipping cold and partly from impatience, Eugene himself had sought the traveller’s room, and while he devoured a chicken with champagne he had solaced himself with the muttered objurgation, ‘Let him starve and be d—d!’

Flinging himself from the barouche, the Duke, in no mild mood, passed through his lighted halls, whose echoes were still prolonging the last stroke of midnight, pealed from the house-bell just as the carriage drew up under the portico. Zamorna seemed not to heed the call to immediate repose which that sound conveyed, for turning as he stood on the first landing-place of the wide white marble stairs, with a bronze lamp pendant above him and a statue standing in calm contrast to his own figure, he called out, ‘Rosier, I wish Mr Warner¹³ to attend me instantly. See that a messenger is despatched to Warner Hotel.’

‘Tonight, does your Grace mean?’ said the valet.

‘Yes, sir.’

Monsieur Rosier reposed his tongue in his cheek but hastened to obey.

‘Hutchinson, send your deputy directly – you heard his Grace’s orders – and, Hutchinson, tell the cook to send a tumbler of hot negus into my room. I want something to thaw me. And tell her to toss me up a nice hot petit souper – a fricandeau de veau or an omelette. And carry my compliments to Mr Greenwood and say I shall be happy to have the honour of his company in my salon half an hour hence. And, above all things, Hutchinson’ – here the young gentleman lowered his tone to a more confidential key – ‘give Mademoiselle Harriette a hint that I am returned – very ill, you may say, for I’ve got a cursed sore throat with being exposed to this night air. Ah! there she is! I’ll tell her myself.’

As the omnipotent Eugene spoke, a young lady carrying a china ewer appeared, crossing the gallery which ran round this inner hall. The French garçon skipped up the stairs like a flea.

‘Ma belle!’ he exclaimed, ‘permettez moi porte cette cruse-là!’¹⁴

‘No, monsieur, no,’ replied the young lady, laughing and throwing back her head which was covered with very handsome dark hair finely curled. ‘I will carry it; it is for the Duke.’

‘I must assist you,’ returned the gallant Rosier, ‘and then I shall earn a kiss for my services.’

But the damsel resisted him and, stepping back, shewed to better advantage a pretty foot and ancle, well displayed by a short, full petticoat of pink muslin and a still shorter apron of black silk. She had also a modest handkerchief of thin lace on her neck. She wore no cap, had good eyes, comely features and a plump round figure. A very interesting love scene was commencing in the seclusion of the gallery, when a bell rang very loudly.

‘God! it’s the Duke!’ exclaimed Rosier. He instantly released his mistress, and she shot away like an arrow towards the inner chambers. Eugene followed her very cautiously – somewhat jealously, perhaps. Threading her path through a labyrinth of intermediate rooms, she came at last to the royal chamber and thence a door opened direct to the royal dressing-room. His Grace was seated in an arm-chair by his mirror – an enormous one taking him in from head to foot. He looked cursedly tired and somewhat wan, but the lights and shadows of the fire were playing about him with an animating effect.

‘Well, Harriet,’ he said, as the housemaid entered his presence. ‘I wanted that water before. Put it down and pour me out a glass. What made you so long in bringing it?’

Harriet blushed as she held the refreshing draught to her royal master’s parched lips. (He was too lazy to take it himself.) She was going to stammer out some excuse, but meantime the Duke’s eye had reverted to the door and caught the dark vivacious aspect of Rosier.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I see how it is! Well, Harriet, mind what you’re about. No giddiness! You may go now, and tell your swain to come forwards, on pain of having his brains converted into paste.’

Eugene strutted in, humming aloud, in no sort abashed or put to the blush. When Harriet was gone, the Duke proceeded to lecture him, the valet meantime coolly aiding him in the change of his travelling-dress, arrangement of his hair, etc.

‘Dog,’ began the saintly master, ‘take care how you conduct yourself towards that girl; I’ll have no improprieties in my house, none.’

‘If I do but follow your Grace’s example, I cannot be guilty of improprieties,’ snivelled the valet, who, being but too well acquainted with many of his master’s weaknesses, is sometimes permitted a freedom of speech few others would attempt.

‘I’ll make you marry her at all risks if you once engage her affections,’ pursued Zamorna.

‘Well,’ replied Rosier, ‘if I do marry her and if I don’t like her, I can recompense myself for the sacrifice.’

‘Keep within your allotted limits, my lad,’ remarked the Duke quietly.

‘What does your Grace mean? Matrimonial limits or limits of the tongue?’

‘Learn to discern for yourself!’ returned his master, enforcing the reply by manual application that sent Monsieur to the other side of the room. He speedily gathered himself up and returned to his employment of combing out the Duke’s long and soft curls of dark brown hair.

‘I have a particular interest in your Harriet,’ remarked Zamorna benevolently. ‘I can’t say that the other handmaids of the house often cross my sight, but now and then I meet that nymph in a gallery or a passage, and she always strikes me as being very modest and correct in her conduct.’

‘She was first bar-maid at Stancliffe’s Hotel in Zamorna not long since,’ insinuated Rosier.

‘I know she was, sir. I have reason to remember her in that station. She once gave me a draught of cold water, when there was not another human being in the world who would have lifted a finger to do me even that kindness.’

‘I’ve heard Mademoiselle tell that story,’ replied Eugene. ‘It was when your Grace was taken prisoner of war before MacTerroglen, and she told how your Grace rewarded her afterwards when you stopped six months ago at Stancliffe’s and gave her a certificate of admission to the royal household – and into the bargain, if Mademoiselle speaks truth, your Grace gave her a kiss from your own royal lips.’

‘I did and be d—d to you, sir. The draught of water she once gave me and the gush of kind-hearted tears that followed it were cheaply rewarded by a kiss.’

‘I should have thought so,’ replied Rosier, ‘but perhaps she did not. Ladies of title sometimes pull each others’ ears for your Grace’s kisses, so I don’t know how a simple bar-maid would receive them.’

‘Eugene, your nation have a penchant for suicide.¹⁵ Go and be heroic,’ returned Zamorna.

‘If your Grace has done with me, I will obey your wishes and immediately seek my quietus in a plate of ragout of paradise and such delicate claret as the vintages of la belle France yield when they are in a good humour.’

As the illustrious valet withdrew from the presence of his still more illustrious master, a different kind of personage entered by another door – a little man enveloped in a fur cloak. He put it off and, glancing round the room, his eye settled upon Zamorna. Released from the cumbrous costume of his journey, Zamorna was again enveloped in his crimson damask robe, half reclined on the mattress of a low and hard couch, his head of curls preparing to drop on to the pillow and one hand just drawing up the coverlet of furs and velvet. Warner beheld him in the act of seeking his night’s repose.

‘I thought your Grace wanted me on business!’ exclaimed the minister. ‘And I find you in bed!’

Zamorna stretched his limbs, folded his arms across his chest, buried his brow, cheek and dark locks in the pillow, and in a faint voice requested Warner to ‘arrange that coverlet for he was too tired to do it’. The Premier’s lip struggled to repress a smile. This was easily done, for the said lip was unaccustomed to that relaxation.

‘Has your Majesty dismissed Monsieur Rosier, and have you sent for me to fulfil the duties of that office he held about your Majesty’s person?’

‘There, I’m comfortable,’ said the Duke, as the drapery fell over him arranged to his satisfaction. ‘Pray, Warner, be seated.’

Warner drew close to his Grace’s bedside an arm-chair and threw himself into it. ‘What’, said he, ‘have you been doing? You look extremely pale – have you been raking?’¹⁶

‘God forgive you for the supposition! No, I have been fagging myself to death for the good of Angria.’

‘For the good of Angria, my lord! Aye, truly, there you come to the point! And it is I suppose for the good of Angria that you go to Alnwick and spend a week in the sick room of Lord Northangerland?’

‘How dutiful of me, Howard! I hope my subjects admire me for it.’

‘My lord Duke, do not jest. The feeling which has been raised by that ill-advised step is no fit subject for levity. What a strange mind is yours, which teaches you to rush headlong into those very errors which your enemies are always attributing to you! It is in vain that you now and then display a splendid flash of talent, when the interstices, as it were, of your political life are filled up with such horrid bungling as this.’

‘Be easy, Howard. What harm have I done?’

‘My lord, I will tell you. Has it not ever been the bitterest reproach in the mouth of your foes that you are a weak man, liable to be influenced and controlled. Have not Ardrah and Montmorency a thousand times affirmed that Northangerland guided, ruled, infatuated you? They have tried to bring that charge home to you – to prove it – but they could not, and you, with all Christian charity, have taken the trouble off their hands. You have proved it beyond dispute or contradiction.’

‘As how, my dear Howard?’

‘My lord, you see it, you feel it yourself. In what state was Angria last year at this time? You remember it laid in ashes – plague and famine and slaughter, struggling with each other which should sway the sceptre that disastrous war had wrested from your own hand. And I ask, my lord, who had brought Angria to this state?’

‘Northangerland!’ replied Zamorna promptly.

‘Your Grace [h]as spoken truly. And knowing this, was it weakness or was it wickedness which led you to the debauched traitor’s couch and taught you to bend over him with the tenderness of a son to a kind father?’ Warner paused for an answer but none came. He continued, ‘That the man is dying I have very little doubt – dying in that premature decay brought on by excesses such as would have disgraced any nature, aye, even that of an unreasoning beast. But ought you not to have let him meet death alone, in that passion of anguish and desolation which is the just meed for crime, for depravity like his? What call was there for you to go and count his pulses? Can you prolong their beat? Why should you mingle your still pure breath with his last contaminated gasps? Can you purify that breath which debauchery has so sullied? Why should you commit your young hand to the touch of his clammy nerveless fingers? Can the contact infuse vitality into his veins or vigour into his sinews? Had you not the strength of mind to stand aloof and let him who has lived the slave of vice die the victim of disease?’

The Duke of Zamorna raised himself on his elbow.

‘Very bad language, this, Howard,’ said he. ‘And it won’t do. I know very well what the reformers and the constitutionalists and my own opinionated and self-complacent Angrians have been saying because I chose to spend my Christmas recess at Alnwick. I knew beforehand what they would say – and above all I knew in particular what you would say. Now, it was not in defiance of either public or private opinion that I went. Neither was it from the working of any uncontrollable impulse. No, the whole matter was the result of mature reflection. My Angrians have certain rights over me. So have my ministers. I also have certain rights independent of them, independent of any living thing under the firmament of heaven. I claim the possession of my reason. I am neither insane nor idiotic, whatever the all-accomplished Harlaw may say to the contrary, and in two or three things I will, whilst I retain that valuable possession, judge for myself.

‘One of these is the degree of intimacy which I choose to maintain with Lord Northangerland. In a public sense, I have long done with him. The alienation cost me much, for in two or three particular points his views and mine harmonized, and neither could hope to find a substitute for the other in the whole earth beside. However, though it was like tearing up something whose roots had taken deep hold in my very heart of hearts, the separation was made – and since it was finally completed, by what glance or look or word have I sighed for a reunion? I have not done so and I cannot do so. My path I have struck out, and it sweeps far away out of sight of his. The rivers of blood Angria shed last year, and the hills of cold carnage which she piled up before the shrine of Freedom, effectually, eternally divide Northangerland’s spirit from mine. But in the body we may meet – we shall meet – till death interposes. I say, Warner, no sneers of my foes nor threats from my friends, no murmurs from my subjects, shall over-rule me in this matter.

‘Howard, you are a different man from Northangerland, but let me whisper to you this secret. You also love to control, and if you could you would extend the energies of that keen haughty mind, till they surrounded me and spell-bound my will and actions within a magic circle of your own creating. It will not do, it will not do. Hate Northangerland if you please – abhor him, loathe him. You have a right to do so. He has more than once treated you brutally, spoken of you grossly. If you feel so inclined, and if an opportunity should offer, you have a right to pistol him. But, sir, do not dare to impose your private feelings on me, to call upon me to avenge them. Do it yourself! In you the action would be justifiable, in me dastardly. Neither will I bend to Ardrah, or to the defiled cuckold Montmorency. I will not at their bidding give up the best feelings of a very bad nature – I will not crush the only impulses that enable me to be endured by my fellow-men – I will not leave the man who was once my comrade, my friend, to die in unrelieved agony, because Angria mutinies and Verdopolis sneers. My heart, my hand, my energies belong to the public – my feelings are my own. Talk no more on the subject.’

Warner did not. He sat and gazed in silence on his master, who with closed eyes and averted head seemed composing himself to slumber. At last he said aloud: ‘A false step, a false step! I would die on the word!’

Zamorna woke from his momentary doze.

‘You have papers for me to sign and look over, I daresay, Howard. Give me them. I wish to despatch arrears to-night, as it is my intention to set off for Angria. I wish to ascertain in person the state of feeling there and to turn it into its legitimate channel.’

Warner produced a green bag well filled. The Duke raised himself on his couch and, collecting his wearied faculties, proceeded to the task. A silence of nearly an hour ensued, broken only by occasional monosyllables from the King and minister as papers were presented and returned. At length Warner locked the padlock with which the bag was secured, and saying, ‘I recommend your Majesty to sleep,’ rose to reassume his cloak.

‘Warner,’ said the Duke, with an appearance of nonchalance, ‘where is Lord Hartford? I have seen nothing of him for some time.’

‘Lord Hartford, my lord! Lord Hartford is a fool and affects delicacy of the lungs. His health, forsooth, is in too precarious a state to allow of any attention to public affairs and he has withdrawn to Hartford Hall there to nurse his maudlin folly in retirement.’

‘What, the maudlin folly of being ill? You are very unsparing, Howard.’

‘Ill, sir! The man is as strong and sound as you are. All trash! It is the effects of his ruling passion, sir, which will pursue him to hoar age, I suppose. Lord Hartford is love-sick, my lord Duke – the superannuated profligate!’

‘Did he tell you so?’

‘No, indeed, he dared not – but Lord Richton insinuated as much in his gossipy way. I will cut Lord Hartford, sir. I despise him! He ought to be sent to Coventry.’¹⁷

‘How very bitter you are, Warner! Be more moderate. Meantime, good-night.’

‘I wish your Grace a very good night. Take care that you sleep soundly and derive refreshment from your slumbers.’

‘I will do my best,’ replied the Duke, laughing. Warner, having clasped on his cloak, withdrew. Could he have watched unseen by the couch of his master for two hours longer, he would have repined at the hidden feeling that prevented the lids from closing over those dark and restless eyes. Long Zamorna lay awake. Neither youth nor health nor weariness could woo sleep to his pillow. He saw his lamp expire. He saw the brilliant flame of the hearth settle into ruddy embers, then fade, decay, and at last perish. He felt silence and total darkness close around him. But still the unslumbering eye wandered over images which the fiery imagination pourtrayed upon vacancy. Thought yielded at last, and sleep triumphed. Zamorna lay in dead repose amidst the hollow darkness of his chamber.

Lord Hartford sat by himself after his solitary dinner with a decanter of champagne and a half-filled glass before him. There was also a newspaper spread out on which his elbow leant and his eye rested. The noble lord sat in a large dining-room, the windows of which looked upon a secluded part of his own grounds, a part pleasant enough in summer leafiness and verdure, but dreary now in the cold white clothing of winter. Many a time had this dining-room rung with the merriment of select dinner-parties, chosen by the noble bachelor from his particular friends, and often had the rum physiognomies of Richton, Arundel, Castlereagh and Thornton been reflected in the mirror-like surface of that long dark polished mahogany table, at whose head Edward Hartford now sat alone. Gallant and gay, and bearing on his broad forehead the very brightest and greenest laurels Angria had gathered on the banks of the Cirhala,¹⁸ he had retired with all his blushing honours thick upon him from the council, the court, the salon. He had left Verdopolis in the height of the most dazzling season it had ever known and gone to haunt like a ghost his lonely halls in Angria. Most people thought the noble General’s brains had suffered some slight injury amid the hardships of the late campaign. Richton was among the number who found it impossible to account for his friend’s conduct upon any other supposition.

As the dusk closed and the room grew more dismal, Hartford threw the newspaper from him, poured out a bumper of amber-coloured wine and quaffed it off to the memory of the vintage that produced it. According to books, men in general soliloquize when they are by themselves, and so did Hartford.

‘What the d—l,’ he began, ‘has brought our lord the King down to Angria? That drunken editor of the War Despatch gives a pretty account of his progress – hissed, it seems, in the streets of Zamorna, and then, like himself, instead of getting through the town as quietly as he could, bidding the postillions halt before Stancliffe’s and treating them to one of his fire and gunpowder explosions! What a speech, beginning, “My lads what a d—d set you are! Unstable as water! you shall never excel!” It’s odd, but that western dandy knows the genius of our land. “Take the bull by the horns”:¹⁹ that’s his motto. Hitherto his tactics have succeeded, but I think it says somewhere, either in Revelation or the Apocrypha, the end is not yet.²⁰ I wish he’d keep out of Angria.’

Here a pause ensued, and Hartford filled it up with another goblet of the golden wine.

‘Now,’ he proceeded. ‘I know I ought not drink this Guanache. It is a kindling sort of draught and I were better take to toast and water.²¹ But Lord bless me! I’ve got a feeling about my heart I can neither stifle nor tear away, and I would fain drown it. They talk of optical delusions – I wonder what twisting of the nerves it is that fixes before my eyes that image which neither darkness can hide nor light dissipate? Some demon is certainly making a bonfire of my inwards. The burning thrill struck through all my veins to my heart with that last touch of the little warm soft hand – by heaven, nearly a year ago – and it has never left me since. It wastes me. I’m not half the man I was. But I’m handsome still!’

He looked up at a lofty mirror between the two opposite windows. It reflected his dark, commanding face with the prominent profile, the hard forehead, the deep expressive eye, the mass of raven hair and whisker and mustache, the stately aspect and figure, the breadth of chest and length of limb. In short, it gave back to his sight as fine a realization of soldier and patrician majesty as Angria ever produced from her ardent soil. Hartford sprang up.

‘What should I give up hope for?’ he said, rapidly pacing the room. ‘By G—d, I think I could make her love me! I never yet have told her how I adore her. I’ve never offered her my title and hand and my half-phrenzied heart. But I will do it. Who says it is impossible she should prefer being my wife to being his mistress? The world will laugh at me – I don’t care for the world – it’s inconsistent with the honour of my house. I’ve burnt the honour of my house, and drank its ashes in Guanache. It’s dastardly to meddle with another man’s matters – another man who has been my friend, with whom I have fought and feasted, suffered and enjoyed. By G—d it is, I know it is, and if any man but myself had dared to entertain the same thought I’d have called him out. But Zamorna leaves her and cares no more about her – except when she can be of use to him – than I do for that silly Christmas rose on the lawn shrivelled up by the frost. Besides, every man for himself. I’ll try, and if I do not succeed, I’ll try again and again. She’s worth a struggle. Perhaps, meantime, Warner or Enara will send me an invitation to dine on bullets for two, or perhaps I may forget the rules of the drill, and present and fire not from but at myself. In either case I get comfortably provided for and that torment will be over which now frightens away my sleep by night and my sense by day.’

This was rather wild talk, but his lordship’s peculiar glance told that wine had not been without its effect. We will leave him striding about the room and maddening under the influence of his fiery passions. A sweet specimen of an aristocrat!

Late one fine, still evening in January the moon arose over a blue summit of the Sydenham Hills and looked down on a quiet road winding from the hamlet of Rivaulx.²² The earth was bound in frost, hard, mute and glittering. The forest of Hawkscliffe was as still as a tomb, and its black leafless wilds stretched away in the distance and cut off with a hard serrated line the sky from the country. That sky was all silver blue, pierced here and there with a star like a diamond. Only the moon softened it, large, full, golden. The by-road I have spoken of received her ascending beam on a path of perfect solitude. Spectral pines and vast old beech trees guarded the way like sentinels from Hawkscliffe. Farther on the rude track wound deep into the shades of the forest, but here it was open, and the worn causeway bleached with frost ran under an old wall grown over with moss and wild ivy. Over this scene the sun of winter had gone down in cloudless calm, red as fire and kindling with its last beams the windows of a mansion on the verge of Hawkscliffe. To that mansion the road in question was the shortest cut from Rivaulx. And here a moment let us wait, wrapped, it is to be hoped, in furs, for a keener frost never congealed the Olympian.

Almost before you are aware, a figure strays up the causeway at a leisurely pace, musing amid the tranquillity of evening. Doubtless that figure must be an inmate of the before-mentioned mansion, for it is an elegant and pleasing object. Approaching gradually nearer, you can observe more accurately. You see now a lady of distinguished carriage, straight and slender, something inceding and princess-like in her walk, but unconsciously so. Her ancles are so perfect and her feet – if she tried she could scarce tread otherwise than she does, lightly, firmly, erectly. The ermine muff, the silk pelisse, the graceful and ample hat of dark beaver, suit and set off her slight, youthful form. She is deeply veiled; you must guess at her features. But she passes on, and a turn of the road conceals her.

Breaking up the silence, dashing in on the solitude comes a horseman. Fire flashes from under his steed’s hoofs out of the flinty road. He rides desperately. Now and then he rises in his stirrups and eagerly looks along the track as if to catch sight of some object that has eluded him. He sees it, and the spurs are struck mercilessly into his horse’s flanks. Horse and rider vanish in a whirlwind.

The lady passing through the iron gates had just entered upon the demesne of Hawkscliffe. She paused to gaze at the moon, which now fully risen looked upon her through the boughs of a superb elm. A green lawn lay between her and the house and there its light slumbered in gold. Thundering behind her came the sound of hoofs and, bending low to his saddle to avoid the contact of oversweeping branches, that wild horseman we saw five minutes since rushed upon the scene. Harshly curbing the charger, he brought it almost upon its haunches close to the spot where she stood.

‘Miss Laury! Good evening!’ he said.

The lady threw back her veil, surveyed him with one glance, and replied, ‘Lord Hartford! I am glad to see you, my lord. You have ridden fast; your horse foams. Any bad news?’

‘No!’

‘Then you are on your way to Adrianopolis, I suppose. You will pass the night here?’

‘If you ask me, I will.’

‘If I ask you! Yes, this is the proper half-way house between the capitals. The night is cold, let us go in.’

They were now at the door. Hartford flung himself from his saddle. A servant came to lead the over-ridden steed to the stables, and he followed Miss Laury in.

It was her own drawing-room to which she led him, just such a scene as is most welcome after the contrast of a winter’s evening’s chill: not a large room, simply furnished, with curtains and couches of green silk, a single large mirror, a Grecian lamp dependent from the centre, softly burning now and mingling with the warmer illumination of the fire, whose brilliant glow bore testimony to the keenness of the frost.

Hartford glanced round him. He had been in Miss Laury’s drawing-room before, but never as her sole guest. He had, before the troubles broke out, more than once formed one of a high and important trio, whose custom it was to make the lodge of Rivaulx their occasional rendezvous. Warner, Enara and himself had often stood on that hearth in a ring round Miss Laury’s sofa, and he recalled, now, her face looking up to them, with its serious, soft intelligence that blent no woman’s frivolity with the heartfelt interest of those subjects on which they conversed. He remembered those first kindlings of the flame that now devoured his life, as he watched her beauty and saw the earnest enthusiasm with which she threw her soul into topics of the highest import. She had often done for these great men what they could get no man to do for them. She had kept their secrets and executed their wishes as far as in her lay, for it had never been her part to counsel. With humble feminine devotedness, she always looked up for her task to be set, and then not Warner himself could have bent his energies more resolutely to the fulfilment of that task than did Miss Laury.

Had Mina’s lot in life been different, she never would have interfered in such matters. She did not interfere now; she only served. Nothing like intrigue had ever stained her course in politics. She told her directors what she had done, and she asked for more to do, grateful always that they would trust her so far as to employ her, grateful too for the enthusiasm of their loyalty; in short, devoted to them heart and mind, because she believed them to be devoted as unreservedly to the common master of all. The consequences of this species of deeply confidential intercourse between the statesmen and their beautiful lieutenant had been intense and chivalric admiration on the part of Mr Warner, strong fond attachment on that of General Enara, and on Lord Hartford’s the burning brand of passion. His Lordship had always been a man of strong and ill-regulated feelings and, in his youth (if report may be credited), of somewhat dissolute habits, but he had his own ideas of honour strongly implanted in his breast, and though he would not have scrupled if the wife of one of his equals or the daughter of one of his tenants had been in the question, yet as it was he stood beset and nonplussed.

Miss Laury belonged to the Duke of Zamorna. She was indisputably his property, as much as the lodge of Rivaulx or the stately woods of Hawkscliffe, and in that light she considered herself. All his dealings with her had been on matters connected with the Duke, and she had ever shown an habitual, rooted, solemn devotedness to his interest, which seemed to leave her hardly a thought for anything else in the world beside. She had but one idea – Zamorna, Zamorna! It had grown up with her, become a part of her nature. Absence, coldness, total neglect for long periods together went for nothing. She could no more feel alienation from him than she could from herself. She did not even repine when he forgot her, any more than the religious devotee does when his deity seems to turn away his face for a time and leave him to the ordeal of temporal afflictions. It seemed as if she could have lived on the remembrance of what he had once been to her without asking for anything more.

All this Hartford knew, and he knew, too, that she valued himself in proportion as she believed him to be loyal to his sovereign. Her friendship for him turned on this hinge: ‘We have been fellow-labourers and fellow-sufferers together in the same good cause.’ These were her own words, which she had uttered one night as she took leave of her three noble colleagues just before the storm burst over Angria. Hartford had noted the expression of her countenance as she spoke, and thought what a young and beautiful being thus appealed for sympathy with minds scarcely like her own in mould.

However, let us dwell no longer on these topics. Suffice it to say that Lord Hartford, against reason and without hope, had finally delivered himself wholly up to the guidance of his vehement passions, and it was with the resolution to make one desperate effort in the attainment of their end that he now stood before the lady of Rivaulx.

Above two hours had elapsed since Lord Hartford had entered the house. Tea was over, and in the perfect quiet of evening he and Miss Laury were left together. He sat on one side of the hearth, she on the other, her work-table only between them, and on that her little hand rested within his reach. It was embedded on a veil of lace, the embroidering of which she had just relinquished for a moment’s thought. Lord Hartford’s eye was fascinated by the white soft fingers. His whole heart at the moment was in a tumult of bliss. To be so near! To be received so benignly, so kindly! He forgot himself. His own hand closed half involuntarily upon hers.

Miss Laury looked at him. If the action had left any room for doubt of its significance, the glance which met hers filled up all deficiencies – a wild fiery glance as if his feelings were wrought up almost to delirium. Shocked for a moment, almost overwhelmed, she yet speedily mastered her emotions, took her hand away, resumed her work, and with head bent down seemed endeavouring to conceal embarrassment under the appearance of occupation. The dead silence that followed would not do, so she broke it, in a very calm, self-possessed tone.

‘That ring, Lord Hartford, which you were admiring just now, belonged once to the Duchess of Wellington.’

‘And was it given you by her son?’ asked the General bitterly.

‘No, my lord. The Duchess herself gave it me²³ a few days before she died. It has her maiden-name, Catherine Pakenham, engraved within the stone.’

‘But,’ pursued Hartford, ‘I was not admiring the ring when I touched your hand. No, the thought struck me, if ever I marry I should like my wife’s hand to be just as white and snowy and taper as that.’

‘I am the daughter of a common soldier,²⁴ my lord, and it is said that ladies of high descent have fairer hands than peasant women.’

Hartford made no reply. He rose restlessly from his seat and stood leaning against the mantle-piece.

‘Miss Laury, shall I tell you what was the happiest hour of my life?’

‘I will guess, my lord. Perhaps when the bill passed which made Angria an independent kingdom.’²⁵

‘No,’ replied Hartford with an expressive smile.

‘Perhaps, then, when Lord Northangerland resigned the seals²⁶ – for I know you and the Earl were never on good terms.’

‘No. I hated his lordship, but there are moments of deeper felicity even than those which see the triumph of a fallen enemy.’

‘I will hope then it was at the Restoration.’²⁷

‘Wrong again. Why, madam, young as you are, your mind is so used to the harness of politics that you can imagine no happiness or misery unconnected with them. You remind me of Warner.’

‘I believe I am like him,’ returned Miss Laury. ‘He often tells me so himself. But I live so with men and statesmen, I almost lose the ideas of a woman.’

‘Do you?’ muttered Hartford, with the dark, sinister smile peculiar to him. ‘I wish you would tell the Duke so next time you see him.’

Miss Laury passed over this equivocal remark and proceeded with the conversation.

‘I cannot guess your riddle, my lord, so I think you must explain it.’

‘Then, Miss Laury, prepare to be astonished. You are so patriotic, so loyal, that you will scarcely credit me when I say that the happiest hour I have ever known fell on the darkest day in the deadliest crisis of Angria’s calamities.’

‘How, Lord Hartford?’

‘Moreover, Miss Laury, it was at no bright period of your own life. It was to you an hour of the most acute agony, to me one of ecstasy.’

Miss Laury turned aside her head with a disturbed air and trembled. She seemed to know to what he alluded.

‘You remember the first of July, —36?’ continued Hartford.

She bowed.

‘You remember that the evening of that day closed in a tremendous storm?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘You recollect how you sat in this very room by this fireside, fearful of retiring for the night lest you should awake in another world in the morning? The country was not then as quiet as it is now. You have not forgotten the deep explosion which roared up at midnight, and told you that your life and liberty hung on a thread, that the enemy had come suddenly upon Rivaulx and that we who lay there to defend the forlorn hope were surprised and routed by a night attack? Then, madam, perhaps you recollect the warning which I brought you at one o’clock in the morning, to fly instantly, unless you chose the alternative of infamous captivity in the hands of Jordan. I found you here, sitting by a black hearth without fire, and Ernest Fitz-Arthur²⁸ lay on your knee asleep. You told me you had heard the firing, and that you were waiting for some communication from me, determined not to stir without orders lest a precipitate step on your part should embarrass me. I had a carriage already in waiting for you. I put you in and, with the remains of my defeated followers, escorted you as far as Zamorna. What followed after this, Miss Laury?’

Miss Laury covered her eyes with her hand. She seemed as if she could not answer.

‘Well,’ continued Hartford. ‘In the midst of darkness and tempest, and while the whole city of Zamorna seemed changed into a hell peopled with fiends and inspired with madness, my lads were hewed down about you and your carriage was stopped. I very well remember what you did – how frantically you struggled to save Fitz-Arthur, and how you looked at me when he was snatched from you. As to your own preservation – that, I need not repeat – only my arm did it. You acknowledge that, Miss Laury?’

‘Hartford, I do. But why do you dwell on that horrible scene?’

‘Because I am now approaching the happiest hour of my life. I took you to the house of one of my tenants whom I could depend upon, and just as morning dawned you and I sat together and alone in the little chamber of a farmhouse, and you were in my arms, your head upon my shoulder, and weeping out all your anguish on a breast that longed to bleed for you.’

Miss Laury agitatedly rose. She approached Hartford.

‘My lord, you have been very kind to me, and I feel very grateful for that kindness. Perhaps sometime I may be able to repay it. We know not how the chances of fortune may turn. The weak have aided the strong, and I will watch vigilantly for the slightest opportunity to serve you. But do not talk in this way. I scarcely know whither your words tend.’

Lord Hartford paused a moment before he replied. Gazing at her with bended brows and folded arms, he said:

‘Miss Laury, what do you think of me?’

‘That you are one of the noblest hearts in the world,’ she replied unhesitatingly.

She was standing just before Hartford, looking up at him, her hair in the attitude falling back from her brow, shading with exquisite curls her temples and her slender neck, her small sweet features, with that high seriousness deepening their beauty, lit up by eyes so large, so dark, so swimming, so full of pleading benignity, of an expression of alarmed regard, as if she at once feared for and pitied the sinful abstraction of a great mind. Hartford could not stand it. He could have borne female anger or terror, but the look of enthusiastic gratitude softened by compassion nearly unmanned him. He turned his head for a moment aside, but then passion prevailed. Her beauty, when he looked again, struck through him, maddening sensation whetted to acuter power by a feeling like despair.

‘You shall love me!’ he exclaimed desperately. ‘Do I not adore you? Would I not die for you? And must I in return receive only the cold regard of friendship? I am no Platonist,²⁹ Miss Laury. I am not your friend. I am – hear me, madam – your declared lover! Nay, you shall not leave me, by heaven! I am stronger than you are!’

She had stepped a pace or two back, appalled by his vehemence. He thought she meant to withdraw, and determined not to be so balked. He clasped her at once in both his arms, and kissed her furiously rather than fondly. Miss Laury did not struggle.

‘Hartford,’ said she, steadying her voice, though it faltered in spite of her effort. ‘This must be our parting scene. I will never see you again if you do not restrain yourself.’

Hartford saw that she turned pale, and he felt her tremble violently. His arms relaxed their hold; he allowed her to leave him. She sat down on a chair opposite, and hurriedly wiped her brow, which was damp and marble pale.

‘Now, Miss Laury,’ said his Lordship. ‘No man in the world loves you as I do. Will you accept my title and my coronet? I fling them at your feet.’

‘My lord, do you know whose I am?’ she replied in a hollow, very suppressed tone. ‘Do you know with what a sound those proposals fall on my ear, how impious and blasphemous they seem to be? Do you at all conceive how utterly impossible it is that I should ever love you? The scene I have just witnessed has given a strange wrench to all my accustomed habits of thought. I thought you a true-hearted, faithful man; I find that you are a traitor.’

‘And do you despise me?’ asked Hartford.

‘No, my lord, I do not.’

She paused, and looked down. The colour rose rapidly into her pale face; she sobbed, not in tears, but in the overmastering approach of an impulse born of a warm and western heart.³⁰ Again she looked up. Her eyes had changed their aspect, burning with a wild bright inspiration truly, divinely Irish.

‘Hartford!’ she said. ‘Had I met you long since, before I left Ellibank and forgot the St Cyprian³¹ and dishonoured my father, I would have loved you. Oh, my lord, you know not how truly! I would have married you, and made it the glory of my life to cheer and brighten your hearth. But I cannot do so now, never. I saw my present master when he had scarcely attained manhood. Do you think, Hartford, I will tell you what feelings I had for him? No tongue could express them; they were so fervid, so glowing in their colour that they effaced every thing else. I lost the power of properly appreciating the value of the world’s opinion, of discerning the difference between right and wrong. I have never in my life contradicted Zamorna, never delayed obedience to his commands. I could not. He was something more to me than a human being. He superseded all things – all affections, all interests, all fears, or hopes, or principles. Unconnected with him my mind would be a blank – cold, dead, susceptible only of a sense of despair. How I should sicken if I were torn from him and thrown to you! Do not ask it; I would die first. No woman that ever loved my master could consent to leave him. There is nothing like him elsewhere. Hartford, if I were to be your wife, if Zamorna only looked at me, I should creep back like a slave to my former service. I should disgrace you as I have long since disgraced all my kindred. Think of that, my lord, and never say you love me again.’

‘You do not frighten me,’ replied Lord Hartford hardily. ‘I would stand that chance, aye, and every other, if I only might see, at the head of my table in that old dining-room at Hartford Hall, yourself as my wife and lady. I am called proud as it is, but then I would shew Angria to what pitch of pride a man might attain, if I could, coming home at night, find Mina Laury waiting to receive me, if I could sit down and look at you with the consciousness that your exquisite beauty was all my own, that that cheek, those lips, that lovely hand might be claimed arbitrarily and you dare not refuse me. I should then feel happy.’

‘Hartford, you would be more likely, when you came home, to find your house vacant and your hearth deserted. I know the extent of my own infatuation. I should go back to Zamorna and entreat him on my knees to let me be his slave again.’

‘Madam,’ said Hartford, frowning, ‘you dared not if you were my wife. I would guard you.’

‘Then I should die under your guardianship. But the experiment will never be tried.’

Hartford came near, sat down by her side and leant over her. She did not shrink away.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘I am happy. There was a time when I dared not have come so near you. One summer evening, two years ago, I was walking in the twilight amongst those trees on the lawn, and at a turn I saw you, sitting at the root of one of them by yourself. You were looking up at a star which was twinkling above the Sydenhams. You were in white. Your hands were folded on your knee, and your hair was resting in still, shining curls on your neck. I stood and watched. The thought struck me – if that image sat now in my own woods, if she were something in which I had an interest, if I could go and press my lips to her brow and expect a smile in answer to the caress, if I could take her in my arms and turn her thoughts from that sky with its single star and from the distant country to which it points (for it hung in the west, and I knew you were thinking about Senegambia), if I could attract those thoughts and centre them all in myself, how like heaven would the world become to me. I heard a window open, and Zamorna’s voice called through the silence “Mina!” The next moment I had the pleasure of seeing you standing on the lawn, close under this very casement, where the Duke sat leaning out, and you were allowing his hand to stray through your hair, and his lips –’

‘Lord Hartford!’ exclaimed Miss Laury, colouring to the eyes. ‘This is more than I can bear. I have not been angry yet. I thought it folly to rage at you because you said you loved me, but what you have just said is like touching a nerve; it overpowers all reason. It is like a stinging taunt which I am under no obligation to endure from you. Every one knows what I am. But where is the woman in Africa who would have acted more wisely than I did if under the same circumstances she had been subject to the same temptations?’

‘That is,’ returned Hartford, whose eye was now glittering with a desperate, reckless expression, ‘where is the woman in Africa who would have said no to young Douro, when amongst the romantic hills of Ellibank, he has pressed his suit on some fine moonlight summer night, and the girl and boy have found themselves alone in a green dell, here and there a tree to be their shade, far above, the stars for their sentinels, and around, the night for their wide curtain.’

The wild bounding throb of Miss Laury’s heart was visible through her satin bodice. It was even audible, as for a moment Hartford ceased his scoffing to note its effect. He was still close by her, and she did not move from him. She did not speak. The pallid lamplight shewed her lips white, her cheek bloodless.

He continued unrelentingly and bitterly: ‘In after times, doubtless, the woods of Hawkscliffe have witnessed many a tender scene, when the King of Angria has retired from the turmoil of business and the teazing of matrimony to love and leisure with his gentle mistress.’

‘Now, Hartford, we must part,’ interrupted Miss Laury. ‘I see what your opinion of me is, and it is very just, but not one which I willingly hear expressed. You have cut me to the heart. Good-bye. I shall try to avoid seeing you for the future.’

She rose. Hartford did not attempt to detain her. She went out. As she closed the door, he heard the bursting, convulsive gush of feelings which his taunts had wrought up to agony.

Her absence left a blank. Suddenly the wish to recall, to soothe, to propitiate her, rose in his mind. He strode to the door and opened it. There was a little hall, or rather, a wide passage without, in which one large lamp was quietly burning. Nothing appeared there, nor on the staircase of low broad steps in which it terminated. She seemed to have vanished.

Lord Hartford’s hat and horseman’s cloak lay on the side slab. There remained no further attraction for him at the lodge of Rivaulx. The delirious dream of rapture which had intoxicated his sense broke up and disappeared; his passionate stern nature maddened under disappointment. He strode out into the black and frozen night, burning in flames no ice could quench. He ordered and mounted his steed, and, dashing his spurs with harsh cruelty up to the rowels³² into the flanks of the noble war-horse which had borne him victoriously through the carnage of Westwood and Leyden, he dashed in furious gallop down the road to Rivaulx.

The frost continued unbroken, and the snow lay cold and cheerless all over Angria. It was a dreary morning. Large flakes were fluttering slowly down from the sky, thickening every moment. The trees around a stately hall, lying up among its grounds at some distance from the road-side, shuddered in the cutting wind that at intervals howled through them. We are now on a broad and public road. A great town lies on our left hand, with a deep river sweeping under the arches of a bridge. This is Zamorna, and that house is Hartford Hall.

The wind increased, the sky darkened, and the bleached whirl of a snow-storm began to fill the air. Dashing at a rapid rate through the tempest, an open travelling carriage swept up the road. Four splendid greys and two mounted postillions gave the equipage an air of aristocratic style. It contained two gentlemen, one a man of between thirty or [?and] forty, having about him a good deal of the air of a nobleman, shawled to the eyes, and buttoned up in at least three surtouts, with a waterproof white beaver hat, an immense mackintosh cape,³³ and beaver gloves. His countenance bore a half-rueful, half-jesting expression. He seemed endeavouring to bear all things as smoothly as he could, but still the cold east wind and driving snow evidently put his philosophy very much to the test. The other traveller was a young high-featured gentleman with a pale face and accurately arched dark eyebrows. His person was carefully done up in a vast roquelaire of furs. A fur travelling cap decorated his head, which, however, nature had much more effectively protected by a profusion of dark chestnut ringlets, now streaming long and thick in the wind. He presented to the said wind a case³⁴ of bared teeth firmly set together and exposed in a desperate grin. They seemed daring the snow-flakes to a comparison of whiteness.

‘Oh,’ groaned the elder traveller, ‘I wish your Grace would be ruled by reason. What could possess you to insist on prosecuting the journey in such weather as this?’

‘Stuff, Richton, an old campaigner like you ought to make objections to no weather. It’s d—d cold, though. I think all Greenland’s coming down upon us. But you’re not going to faint, are you, Richton? What are you staring at so? Do you see the d—l?’

‘I think I do,’ replied Lord Richton. ‘And really, if your Grace will look two yards before you, you will be of the same opinion.’

The carriage was now turning that angle of the park wall where a lodge on each side, overhung by some magnificent trees, formed the supporters to the stately iron gates opening upon the broad carriage-road which wound up through the park. The gates were open, and just outside, on the causeway of the high road, stood a tall, well-dressed man in a blue coat with military pantaloons of grey having a broad stripe of scarlet down the sides. His distinguished air, his handsome dark face, and his composed attitude – for he stood perfectly still with one hand on his side – gave singular effect to the circumstance of his being without hat. Had it been a summer day one would not so much have wondered at it, though even in the warmest weather it is not usual to see gentlemen parading the public roads uncovered. Now, as the keen wind rushed down upon him through the boughs of the lofty trees arching the park portal, and as the snow-flakes settled thick upon the short raven curls of his hair, he looked strange indeed.

Abruptly stepping forward, he seized the first leader of the chariot by the head and backed it fiercely. The postillions were about to whip on, consigning the hatless and energetic gentleman to that fate which is sought by the worshippers of Juggernaut,³⁵ when Lord Richton called out to them, ‘For God’s sake to stop the horses!’

‘I think they are stopped with a vengeance,’ said his young companion. Then, leaning forward with a most verjuice expression on his pale face, he said,

‘Give that gentleman half a minute to get out of the way and then drive on forward like d—ls.’

‘My lord Duke,’ interposed Richton, ‘do you see who it is? Permit me to solicit a few minutes’ forbearance. Lord Hartford must be ill. I will alight and speak to him.’

Before Richton could fulfil his purpose, the individual had let go his hold and stood by the side of the chariot. Stretching out his clenched hand with a menacing gesture, he addressed Zamorna thus:

‘I’ve no hat to take off in your Majesty’s presence, so you must excuse my rustic breeding. I saw the royal carriage at a distance, and so I came out to meet it something in a hurry. I’m just in time, God be thanked! Will your Grace get out and speak to me? By the Lord, I’ll not leave this spot alive without an audience.’

‘Your Lordship is cursedly drunk,’ replied the Duke, keeping his teeth as close shut as a vice. ‘Ask for an audience when you’re sober. Drive on, postillions!’

‘At the peril of your lives!’ cried Hartford, and he drew out a brace of pistols, cocked them, and presented one at each postillion.

‘Rosier! my pistols!’ shouted Zamorna to his valet, who sat behind, and he threw himself at once from the chariot and stood facing Lord Hartford on the high road.

‘It is your Grace that is intoxicated,’ retorted the nobleman. ‘And I’ll tell you with what – with wine of Cyprus or Cythera.³⁶ Your Majesty is far too amorous; you had better keep a harem!’

‘Come, sir,’ said Zamorna in lofty scorn, ‘this won’t do. I see you are mad. Postillions, seize him, and you, Rosier, go up to the Hall and fetch five or six of his own domestics. Tell them to bring a strait waistcoat if they have such a thing.’

‘Your Grace would like to throw me into a dungeon,’ said Hartford, ‘but this is a free country, and we will have no western despotism. Be so good as to hear me, my lord Duke, or I will shoot myself.’

‘Small loss,’ said Zamorna, lifting his lip with a sour sneer.

‘Do not aggravate his insanity,’ whispered Richton. ‘Allow me to manage him, my lord Duke. You had better return to the carriage, and I will accompany Hartford home.’ Then, turning to Hartford: ‘Take my arm, Edward, and let us return to the house together. You do not seem well this morning.’

‘None of your snivel,’ replied the gallant nobleman. ‘I’ll have satisfaction, I’m resolved on it. His Grace has injured me deeply.’

‘A good move,’ replied Zamorna. ‘Then take your pistols, sir, and come along. Rosier, take the carriage back to the town. Call at Dr Cooper’s, and ask him to ride over to Hartford Hall. D—n you, sir, what are you staring at? Do as I bid you.’

‘He is staring at the propriety of the monarch of a kingdom fighting a duel with a madman,’ replied Richton. ‘If your Grace will allow me to go, I will return with a detachment of police and put both the sovereign and the subject under safe ward.’

‘Have done with that trash!’ said Zamorna angrily. ‘Come on, you will be wanted for a second.’

‘Well,’ said Richton, ‘I don’t wish to disoblige either your Grace or my friend Hartford, but it’s an absurd and frantic piece of business. I beseech you to consider a moment. Hartford, reflect; what are you about to do?’

‘To get vengeance for a thousand wrongs and sufferings,’ was the reply. ‘His Grace has dashed my happiness for life.’

Richton shook his head. ‘I must stop this work,’ he muttered to himself. ‘What demon is influencing Edward Hartford? And Zamorna too, for I never saw such a fiendish glitter as that in his eyes just now – strange madness!’

The noble Earl buttoned his surtout still closer and then followed the two other gentlemen, who were already on their way to the house. The carriage, meantime, drove off according to orders in the direction of Zamorna.

Lord Hartford was not mad, though his conduct might seem to betoken such a state of mind. He was only desperate. The disappointment of the previous night had wrought him up to a pitch of rage and recklessness whose results, as we have just seen them, were of such a nature as to convince Lord Richton that the doubts he had long harboured of his friend’s sanity were correct. So long as his passion for Miss Laury remained unavowed and consequently unrejected, he had cherished a dreamy kind of hope that there existed some chance of success. When wandering through his woods alone, he had fed on reveries of some future day when she might fill his halls with the bliss of her presence and the light of her beauty. All day her image haunted him. It seemed to speak to and look upon him with that mild friendly aspect he had ever seen her wear, and then, as imagination prevailed, it brought vividly back that hour when, in a moment almost of despair, her feminine weakness had thrown itself utterly on him for support, and he had been permitted to hold her in his arms and take her to his heart. He remembered how she looked when, torn from danger and tumult, rescued from hideous captivity, he carried her up the humble staircase of a farmhouse, all pale and shuddering, with her long black curls spread dishevelled on his shoulder and her soft cheek resting there as confidingly as if he had indeed been her husband. From her trusting gentleness in those moments he drew blissful omens, now, alas! utterly belied. No web of self-delusion could now be woven. The truth was too stern. And besides, he had taunted her, hurt her feelings, and alienated for ever her grateful friendship.

Having thus entered more particularly into the state of his feelings, let me proceed with my narrative.

The apartment into which Lord Hartford shewed his illustrious guest was that very dining-room where I first represented him sitting alone and maddening under the double influence of passion and wine. His manner now was more composed, and he demeaned himself even with lofty courtesy towards his sovereign. There was a particular chair in that room which Zamorna had always been accustomed to occupy when in happier days he had not unfrequently formed one of the splendid dinner-parties given at Hartford Hall. The General asked him to assume that seat now, but he declined, acknowledging the courtesy only by a slight inclination of the head, and planted himself just before the hearth, his elbow leaning on the mantle-piece and his eyes looking down. In that position the eye-lids and the long fringes partly concealed the sweet expression of vindictiveness lurking beneath. But still, aided by the sour curl and pout of the lip, the passionate dishevelment of the hair and flushing of the brow, there was enough seen to stamp his countenance with a character of unpleasantness more easily conceived than described.

Lord Hartford, influenced by his usual habits, would not sit whilst his monarch stood, so he retired with Richton to the deeply embayed recess of a window. That worthy and prudent personage, bent upon settling this matter without coming to the absurd extreme now contemplated,³⁷ began to reason with his friend on the subject.

‘Hartford,’ he said, speaking soft and low so that Zamorna could not overhear him, ‘let me entreat you to consider well what you are about to do. I know that the scene which we have just witnessed is not the primary cause of the dispute between you and his Grace there, which is now about to terminate so fatally. I know that circumstances previously existed which gave birth to bitter feelings on both sides. I wish, Hartford, you would reconsider the steps you have taken. All is in vain: the lady in question can never be yours.’

‘I know that, sir, and that is what makes me frantic. I have no motive left for living, and if Zamorna wants my blood, let him have it.’

‘You may kill him,’ suggested Richton, ‘and what will be the consequences then?’

‘Trust me,’ returned Hartford. ‘I’ll not hurt him much, though he deserves it – the double-dyed infernal western profligate! But the fact is he hates me far more than I hate him. Look at his face now reflected in that mirror. God! he longs to see the last drop of blood I have in my heart.’

‘Hush! he will hear you,’ said Richton. ‘He certainly does not look very amiable, but recollect, you are the offender.’

‘I know that,’ replied Hartford gloomily. ‘But it is not out of spite to him that I wish to get his mistress. And how often in the half-year does he see her or think about her? Grasping dog! Another king when he was tired of his mistress would give her up, but he – ! I think I’ll shoot him straight through the head; I would, if his death would only win me Miss Laury.’

That name, though spoken very low, caught Zamorna’s ear, and he at once comprehended the nature of the conversation. It is not often that he had occasion to be jealous, and as it is a rare so also it is a remarkably curious and pretty sight to see him under the influence of that passion. It worked in every fibre of his frame and boiled in every vein. Blush after blush deepened the hue of his cheek; as one ended another of darker crimson followed. (This variation of colour resulting from strong emotion has been his wonted peculiarity from childhood.) His whiskers twined and writhed, and even the very curls seemed to stir on his brow.

Turning to Hartford, he spoke:

‘What drivelling folly have you let into your head, sir, to dare to look at anything which belonged to me? Frantic idiot! To dream that I should allow a coarse Angrian squire to possess anything that had ever been mine! As if I knew how to relinquish! G—d d—n your grossness! Richton, you have my pistols? Bring them here directly. I will neither wait for doctors³⁸ nor anybody else to settle this business.’

‘My lord Duke!’ began Richton.

‘No interference, sir!’ exclaimed his Grace. ‘Bring the pistols!’

The Earl was not going to stand this arbitrary work.

‘I wash my hands of this bloody affair,’ he said sternly, placing the pistols on the table, and in silence he left the room.

The demon of Zamorna’s nature was now completely roused. Growling out his words in a deep and hoarse tone, almost like the smothered roar of a lion, he savagely told Hartford to measure out his ground in this room, for he would not delay the business a moment.³⁹ Hartford did so, without remonstrance or reply.

‘Take your station!’ thundered the barbarian.

‘I have done so,’ replied his Lordship, ‘and my pistol is ready.’

‘Then fire!’

The deadly explosion succeeded, the flash and the cloud of smoke.

While the room still shook to the sound, almost before the flash had expired and the smoke burst after it, the door slowly opened and Lord Richton reappeared, wearing upon his face a far more fixed and stern solemnity than I ever saw there before.

‘Who is hurt?’ he asked.

There was but one erect figure visible through the vapour, and the thought thrilled through him, ‘The other may be a corpse.’

Lord Hartford lay across the doorway, still and pale.

‘My poor friend!’ said Lord Richton and, kneeling on one knee, he propped against the other the wounded nobleman, from whose lips a moan of agony escaped as the Earl moved him.

‘Thank God he is not quite dead!’ was Richton’s involuntary exclamation, for though a man accustomed to scenes of carnage on gory battle-plains, and though of enduring nerves and cool resolution, he felt a pang at this spectacle of fierce manslaughter amid scenes of domestic peace. The renowned and gallant soldier, who had escaped hostile weapons and returned unharmed from fields of terrific strife, lay, as it seemed, dying, under his own roof. Blood began to drop on to Richton’s hand, and a large crimson stain appeared on the ruffles of his shirt. The same ominous dye darkened Lord Hartford’s lips and oozed through them when he made vain efforts to speak. He had been wounded in the region of the lungs.

A thundering knock and a loud ring at the door-bell now broke up the appalling silence which had fallen. It was Dr Cooper.⁴⁰ He speedily entered, followed by a surgeon with instruments etc. Richton silently resigned his friend to their hands, and turned for the first time to the other actor in this horrid scene.

The Duke of Zamorna was standing by a window, coolly buttoning his surtout over the pistols which he had replaced in his breast.

‘Is your Majesty hurt?’ asked Richton.

‘No, sir. May I trouble you to hand me my gloves?’

They lay on a side-board near the Earl. He politely complied with the request, handing over at the same time a large shawl or scarf of crimson silk which the Duke had taken from his neck. In this he proceeded to envelop his throat and a considerable portion of his face, leaving little more visible than the forehead, eyes and high Roman nose. Then, drawing on his gloves, he turned to Dr Cooper.

‘Of what nature is the wound, sir? Is there any likelihood of Lord Hartford’s recovery?’

‘A possibility exists that he may recover, my Lord Duke, but the wound is a severe one. The lungs have only just escaped.’

The Duke drew near the couch on which his general had been raised, looked at the wound then under the operation of the surgeon’s probing knife, and transferred his glance from the bloody breast to the pallid face of the sufferer. Hartford, who had borne the extraction of the bullet without a groan, and whose clenched teeth and rigid brow seemed defying pain to do its worst, smiled faintly when he saw his monarch’s eye bent near him with searching keenness. In spite of the surgeon’s prohibition, he attempted to speak.

‘Zamorna,’ he said, ‘I have got your hate, but you shall not blight me with your contempt. This is but a little matter. Why did you not inflict more upon me, that I might bear it without flinching? You called me a coarse Angrian squire ten minutes since. Angrians are men as well as westerns.’

‘Brutes, rather,’ replied Zamorna. ‘Faithful, gallant, noble brutes.’

He left the room, for his carriage had now returned and waited at the door. Before Lord Richton followed him, he stopped a moment to take leave of his friend.

‘Well,’ murmured Hartford, as he feebly returned the pressure of the Earl’s hand, ‘Zamorna has finished me. But I bear him no ill-will. My love for his mistress was involuntary. I am not sorry for it now. I adore her to the last. Flower,⁴¹ if I die give Miss Laury this token of my truth.’ He drew the gold ring from his little finger and gave it into Richton’s hand. ‘Good G—d!’ he muttered, turning away. ‘I would have endured hell’s torments to win her love. My feelings are not changed; they are just the same – passion for her, bitter self-reproach for my treachery to her master. But he has paid himself in blood, the purest coin to a western. Farewell, Richton.’

They parted without another word on either side.⁴² Richton joined the Duke, sprung to his place in the carriage, and off it swept like the wind.