book I

could get no one to accept,--I tell you, I will make it the talk of London!"

"Possibly you will"--he said, looking at me through half-closed eyes and a cloud of smoke,--"London easily talks. Particularly on unsavoury and questionable subjects. Therefore,--as I have already hinted,--if your book were a judicious mixture of Zola, Huysmans and Baudelaire, or had for its heroine a 'modest' maid who considered honourable marriage a 'degradation,' it would be quite sure of success in these days of new Sodom and Gomorrah." Here he suddenly sprang up, and flinging away his cigar, confronted me. "Why do not the heavens rain fire on this accursed city! It is ripe for punishment,--full of abhorrent creatures not worth the torturing in hell to which it is said liars and hypocrites are condemned! Tempest, if there is one human being more than another that I utterly abhor, it is the type of man so common to the present time, the man who huddles his own loathly vices under a cloak of assumed broad-mindedness and virtue. Such an one will even deify the loss of chastity in woman by the name of 'purity,'--because he knows that it is by her moral and physical ruin alone that he can gratify his brutal lusts. Rather than be such a sanctimonious coward I would openly proclaim myself vile!"

"That is because yours is a noble nature"--I said--"You are an exception to the rule."

"An exception? I?"--and he laughed bitterly--"Yes, you are right; I am an exception among men perhaps,--but I am one with the beasts in honesty! The lion does not assume the manners of the dove,--he loudly announces his own ferocity. The very cobra, stealthy though its movements be, evinces its meaning by a warning hiss or rattle. The hungry wolf's bay is heard far down the wind, intimidating the hurrying traveller among the wastes of snow. But man gives no clue to his intent--more malignant than the lion, more treacherous than the snake, more greedy than the wolf, he takes his fellow-man's hand in pretended friendship, and an hour later defames his character behind his back,--with a smiling face he hides a false and selfish heart,--flinging his pigmy mockery at the riddle of the Universe, he stands gibing at God, feebly a-straddle on his own earth-grave--Heavens!"--here he stopped short with a passionate gesture--"What should the Eternities do with such a thankless, blind worm as he!"

His voice rang out with singular emphasis,--his eyes glowed with a fiery ardour; startled by his impressive manner I let my cigar die out and stared at him in mute amazement. What an inspired countenance!--what an imposing figure!--how sovereignly supreme and almost god-like in his looks he seemed at the moment;--and yet there was something terrifying in his attitude of protest and defiance. He caught my wondering glance,--the glow of passion faded from his face,--he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"I think I was born to be an actor"--he said carelessly--"Now and then the love of declamation masters me. Then I speak--as Prime Ministers and men in Parliament speak--to suit the humour of the hour, and without meaning a single word I say!"

"I cannot accept that statement"--I answered him, smiling a little--"You do mean what you say,--though I fancy you are rather a creature of impulse."

"Do you really!" he exclaimed--"How wise of you!--good Geoffrey Tempest, how very wise of you! But you are wrong. There never was a being created who was less impulsive, or more charged with set purpose than I. Believe me or not as you like,--belief is a sentiment that cannot be forced. If I told you that I am a dangerous companion,--that I like evil things better than good,--that I am not a safe guide for any man, what would you think?"

"I should think you were whimsically fond of under-estimating your own qualities"--I said, re-lighting my cigar, and feeling somewhat amused by his earnestness--"And I should like you just as well as I do now,--perhaps better,--though that would be difficult."

At these words, he seated himself, bending his steadfast dark eyes full upon me.

"Tempest, you follow the fashion of the prettiest women about town,--they always like the greatest scoundrels!"

"But you are not a scoundrel;"--I rejoined, smoking peacefully.

"No,--I'm not a scoundrel, but there's a good deal of the devil in me."

"All the better!" I said, stretching myself out in my chair with lazy comfort--"I hope there's something of him in me too."

"Do you believe in him?" asked Rimânez smiling.

"The devil? of course not!"

"He is a very fascinating legendary personage;"--continued the prince, lighting another cigar and beginning to puff at it slowly--"And he is the subject of many a fine story. Picture his fall from heaven!--'Lucifer Son of the Morning'--what a title, and what a birthright! To be born of the morning implies to be a creature formed of translucent light undefiled, with all the warm rose of a million orbs of day colouring his bright essence, and all the lustre of fiery planets flaming in his eyes. Splendid and supreme, at the right hand of Deity itself he stood, this majestic Arch-angel, and before his unwearied vision rolled the grandest creative splendours of God's thoughts and dreams. All at once he perceived in the vista of embryonic things a new small world, and on it a being forming itself slowly as it were into the Angelic likeness,--a being weak yet strong, sublime yet foolish,--a strange paradox, destined to work its way through all the phases of life, till imbibing the very breath and soul of the Creator it should touch Conscious Immortality,--Eternal Joy. Then Lucifer, full of wrath, turned on the Master of the Spheres, and flung forth his reckless defiance, crying aloud--'Wilt thou make of this slight poor creature an Angel even as I? I do protest against thee and condemn! Lo, if thou makest Man in Our image I will destroy him utterly, as unfit to share with me the splendours of Thy Wisdom,--the glory of Thy love!' And the Voice Supreme in accents terrible and beautiful replied; 'Lucifer, Son of the Morning, full well dost thou know that never can an idle or wasted word be spoken before Me. For Free-will is the gift of the Immortals; therefore what thou sayest, thou must needs do! Fall, proud Spirit from thy high estate!--thou and thy companions with thee!--and return no more till Man himself redeem thee! Each human soul that yields unto thy tempting shall be a new barrier set between thee and heaven; each one that of its own choice doth repel and overcome thee, shall lift thee nearer thy lost home! When the world rejects thee, I will pardon and again receive thee,--but _not till then_.'"

"I never heard exactly that version of the legend before,"--I said,--"The idea that Man should redeem the devil is quite new to me."

"Is it?" and he looked at me fixedly--"Well--it is one form of the story, and by no means the most unpoetical. Poor Lucifer! His punishment is of course eternal, and the distance between himself and Heaven must be rapidly increasing every day,--for Man will never assist him to retrieve his error. Man will reject God fast enough and gladly enough--but never the devil. Judge then, how, under the peculiar circumstances of his doom, this 'Lucifer, Son of the Morning,' Satan, or whatever else he is called, must hate Humanity!"

I smiled. "Well he has one remedy left to him"--I observed--"He need not tempt anybody."

"You forget!--he is bound to keep his word, according to the legend"--said Rimânez--"He swore before God that he would destroy Man utterly,--he must therefore fulfil that oath, if he can. Angels, it would seem, may not swear before the Eternal without endeavouring at least to fulfil their vows,--men swear in the name of God every day without the slightest intention of carrying out their promises."

"But it's all the veriest nonsense,"--I said somewhat impatiently--"All these old legends are rubbish. You tell the story well, and almost as if you believed in it,--that is because you have the gift of speaking with eloquence. Nowadays no one believes in either devils or angels;--I, for example, do not even believe in the soul."

"I know you do not"--he answered suavely--"And your scepticism is very comfortable because it relieves you of all personal responsibility. I envy you! For--I regret to say, I am compelled to believe in the soul."

"Compelled!" I echoed--"That is absurd--no one can compel you to accept a mere theory."

He looked at me with a flitting smile that darkened rather than lightened his face.

"True! very true! There is no compelling force in the whole Universe,--Man is the supreme and independent creature,--master of all he surveys and owning no other dominion save his personal desire. True--I forgot! Let us avoid theology, please, and psychology also,--let us talk about the only subject that has any sense or interest in it--namely, Money. I perceive your present plans are definite,--you wish to publish a book that shall create a stir and make you famous. It seems a modest enough campaign! Have you no wider ambitions? There are several ways, you know, of getting talked about. Shall I enumerate them for your consideration?"

I laughed. "If you like!"

"Well, in the first place I should suggest your getting yourself properly paragraphed. It must be known to the press that you are an exceedingly rich man. There is an Agency for the circulation of paragraphs,--I daresay they'll do it sufficiently well for about ten or twenty guineas."

I opened my eyes a little at this.

"Oh, is that the way these things are done?"

"My dear fellow, how else should they be done?" he demanded somewhat impatiently--"Do you think _anything_ in the world is done without money? Are the poor, hard-working journalists your brothers or your bosom friends that they should lift you into public notice without getting something for their trouble? If you do not manage them properly in this way, they'll abuse you quite heartily and free of cost,--that I can promise you! I know a 'literary agent,' a very worthy man too, who for a hundred guineas down, will so ply the paragraph wheel that in a few weeks it shall seem to the outside public that Geoffrey Tempest, the millionaire, is the only person worth talking about, and the one desirable creature whom to shake hands with is next in honour to meeting Royalty itself."

"Secure him!" I said indolently--"And pay him _two_ hundred guineas! So shall all the world hear of me!"

"When you have been paragraphed thoroughly," went on Rimânez--"the next move will be a dash into what is called 'swagger' society. This must be done cautiously and by degrees. You must be presented at the first Levée of the season, and later on, I will get you an invitation to some great lady's house, where you will meet the Prince of Wales privately at dinner. If you can oblige or please His Royal Highness in any way so much the better for you,--he is at least the most popular royalty in Europe, so it should not be difficult to you to make yourself agreeable. Following upon this event, you must purchase a fine country seat, and have _that_ fact 'paragraphed'--then you can rest and look round,--Society will have taken you up, and you will find yourself in the swim!"

I laughed heartily,--well entertained by his fluent discourse.

"I should not," he resumed--"propose your putting yourself to the trouble of getting into Parliament. That is no longer necessary to the career of a gentleman. But I should strongly recommend your winning the Derby."

"I daresay you would!" I answered mirthfully--"It's an admirable suggestion,--but not very easy to follow!"

"If you wish to win the Derby," he rejoined quietly--"you _shall_ win it. I'll guarantee both horse and jockey!"

Something in his decisive tone impressed me, and I leaned forward to study his features more closely.

"Are you a worker of miracles?" I asked him jestingly--"Do you mean it?"

"Try me!" he responded--"Shall I enter a horse for you?"

"You can't; it's too late," I said. "You would need to be the devil himself to do it. Besides I don't care about racing."

"You will have to amend your taste then,"--he replied--"That is, if you want to make yourself agreeable to the English aristocracy, for they are interested in little else. No really great lady is without her betting book, though she may be deficient in her knowledge of spelling. You may make the biggest literary _furore_ of the season, and that will count as nothing among 'swagger' people, but if you win the Derby you will be a really famous man. Personally speaking I have a great deal to do with racing,--in fact I am devoted to it. I am always present at every great race,--I never miss one; I always bet, and I never lose! And now let me proceed with your social plan of action. After winning the Derby you will enter for a yacht race at Cowes, and allow the Prince of Wales to beat you just narrowly. Then you will give a grand dinner, arranged by a perfect _chef_,--and you will entertain His Royal Highness to the strains of 'Britannia rules the waves,' which will serve as a pretty compliment. You will allude to the same well-worn song in a graceful speech,--and the probable result of all this will be one, or perhaps two Royal invitations. So far, so good. With the heats of summer you will go to Homburg to drink the waters there whether you require them or not,--and in the autumn you will assemble a shooting-party at the country seat before-mentioned which you will have purchased, and invite Royalty to join you in killing the poor little partridges. Then your name in society may be considered as made, and you can marry whatever fair lady happens to be in the market!"

"Thanks!--much obliged!" and I gave way to hearty laughter--"Upon my word Lucio, your programme is perfect! It lacks nothing!"

"It is the orthodox round of social success," said Lucio with admirable gravity--"Intellect and originality have nothing whatever to do with it,--only money is needed to perform it all."

"You forget my book"--I interposed--"I know there is some intellect in that, and some originality too. Surely that will give me an extra lift up the heights of fashionable light and leading."

"I doubt it!" he answered--"I very much doubt it. It will be received with a certain amount of favour of course, as a production of a rich man amusing himself with literature as a sort of whim. But, as I told you before, genius seldom develops itself under the influence of wealth. Then again 'swagger' folks can never get it out of their fuddled heads that Literature belongs to Grub Street. Great poets, great philosophers, great romancists are always vaguely alluded to by 'swagger' society as 'those sort of people.' Those sort of people are so 'interesting' say the blue-blooded noodles deprecatingly, excusing themselves as it were for knowing any members of the class literary. You can fancy a 'swagger' lady of Elizabeth's time asking a friend--'O do you mind, my dear, if I bring one Master William Shakespeare to see you? He writes plays, and does something or other at the _Globe_ theatre,--in fact I'm afraid he acts a little--he's not very well off poor man,--but _these sort of people_ are always so amusing!' Now you, my dear Tempest, are not a Shakespeare, but your millions will give you a better chance than he ever had in his life-time, as you will not have to sue for patronage, or practise a reverence for 'my lord' or 'my lady,'--these exalted personages will be only too delighted to borrow money of you if you will lend it."

"I shall not lend,"--I said.

"Nor give?"

"Nor give."

His keen eyes flashed approval.

"I am very glad," he observed, "that you are determined not to 'go about doing good' as the canting humbugs say, with your money. You are wise. Spend on yourself,--because your very act of spending cannot but benefit others through various channels. Now I pursue a different course. I always help charities, and put my name on subscription-lists,--and I never fail to assist a certain portion of clergy."

"I rather wonder at that--" I remarked--"Especially as you tell me you are not a Christian."

"Yes,--it does seem strange,--doesn't it?"--he said with an extraordinary accent of what might be termed apologetic derision--"But perhaps you don't look at it in the proper light. Many of the clergy are doing their utmost best to _destroy_ religion,--by cant, by hypocrisy, by sensuality, by shams of every description,--and when they seek my help in this noble work, I give it,--freely!"

I laughed "You must have your joke evidently"--I said, throwing the end of my finished cigar into the fire--"And I see you are fond of satirizing your own good actions. Hullo, what's this?"

For at that moment Amiel entered, bearing a telegram for me on a silver salver. I opened it,--it was from my friend the publisher, and ran as follows--

"Accept book with pleasure. Send manuscript immediately."

I showed this to Rimânez with a kind of triumph. He smiled.

"Of course! what else did you expect? Only the man should have worded his telegram differently, for I do not suppose he would accept the book with pleasure if he had to lay out his own cash upon it. 'Accept money for publishing book with pleasure' should have been the true message of the wire. Well, what are you going to do?"

"I shall see about this at once"--I answered, feeling a thrill of satisfaction that at last the time of vengeance on certain of my enemies was approaching--"The book must be hurried through the press as quickly as possible,--and I shall take a particular pleasure in personally attending to all the details concerning it. For the rest of my plans,--"

"Leave them to me!" said Rimânez laying his finely shaped white hand with a masterful pressure on my shoulder; "Leave them to me!--and be sure that before very long I shall have set you aloft like the bear who has successfully reached the bun on the top of a greased pole,--a spectacle for the envy of men, and the wonder of angels!"

VII

The next three or four weeks flew by in a whirl of excitement, and by the time they were ended I found it hard to recognize myself in the indolent, listless, extravagant man of fashion I had so suddenly become. Sometimes at stray and solitary moments the past turned back upon me like a revolving picture in a glass with a flash of unwelcome recollection, and I saw myself worn and hungry, and shabbily clothed, bending over my writing in my dreary lodging, wretched, yet amid all my wretchedness receiving curious comfort from my own thoughts which created beauty out of penury, and love out of loneliness. This creative faculty was now dormant in me,--I did very little, and thought less. But I felt certain that this intellectual apathy was but a passing phase,--a mental holiday and desirable cessation from brain-work to which I was deservedly entitled after all my sufferings at the hands of poverty and disappointment. My book was nearly through the press,--and perhaps the chiefest pleasure of any I now enjoyed was the correction of the proofs as they passed under my supervision. Yet even this, the satisfaction of authorship, had its drawback,--and my particular grievance was somewhat singular. I read my own work with gratification of course, for I was not behind my contemporaries in thinking well of myself in all I did,--but my complacent literary egoism was mixed with a good deal of disagreeable astonishment and incredulity, because my work, written with enthusiasm and feeling, propounded sentiments and inculcated theories which I personally did not believe in. Now, how had this happened, I asked myself? Why had I thus invited the public to accept me at a false valuation? I paused to consider,--and I found the suggestion puzzling. How came I to write the book at all, seeing that it was utterly unlike me as I now knew myself? My pen, consciously or unconsciously, had written down things which my reasoning faculties entirely repudiated,--such as belief in a God,--trust in the eternal possibilities of man's diviner progress,--I credited neither of these doctrines. When I imagined such transcendental and foolish dreams I was poor,--starving,--and without a friend in the world;--remembering all this, I promptly set down my so-called 'inspiration' to the action of an ill-nourished brain. Yet there was something subtle in the teaching of the story, and one afternoon when I was revising some of the last proof sheets I caught myself thinking that the book was nobler than its writer. This idea smote me with a sudden pang,--I pushed my papers aside, and walking to the window, looked out. It was raining hard, and the streets were black with mud and slush,--the foot-passengers were drenched and miserable,--the whole prospect was dreary, and the fact that I was a rich man did not in the least lift from my mind the depression that had stolen on me unawares. I was quite alone, for I had my own suite of rooms now in the hotel, not far from those occupied by Prince Rimânez; I also had my own servant, a respectable, good sort of fellow whom I rather liked because he shared to the full the instinctive aversion I felt for the prince's man, Amiel. Then I had my own carriage and horses with attendant coachman and groom,--so that the prince and I, though the most intimate friends in the world, were able to avoid that 'familiarity which breeds contempt' by keeping up our own separate establishments. On this particular afternoon I was in a more miserable humour than ever my poverty had brought upon me, yet from a strictly reasonable point of view I had nothing to be miserable about. I was in full possession of my fortune,--I enjoyed excellent health, and I had everything I wanted, with the added consciousness that if my wants increased I could gratify them easily. The 'paragraph wheel' under Lucio's management had been worked with such good effect that I had seen myself mentioned in almost every paper in London and the provinces as the 'famous millionaire,'--and for the benefit of the public, who are sadly uninstructed on these matters, I may here state as a very plain unvarnished truth, that for forty pounds,[1] a well-known 'agency' will guarantee the insertion of _any_ paragraph, provided it is not libellous, in no less than four hundred newspapers. The art of 'booming' is thus easily explained, and level-headed people will be able to comprehend why it is that a few names of authors are constantly mentioned in the press, while others, perhaps more deserving, remain ignored. Merit counts as nothing in such circumstances,--money wins the day. And the persistent paragraphing of my name, together with a description of my personal appearance and my 'marvellous literary gifts,' combined with a deferential and almost awe-struck allusion to the 'millions' which made me so interesting--(the paragraph was written out by Lucio and handed for circulation to the 'agency' aforesaid with 'money down')--all this I say brought upon me two inflictions,--first, any amount of invitations to social and artistic functions,--and secondly, a continuous stream of begging-letters. I was compelled to employ a secretary, who occupied a room near my suite, and who was kept hard at work all day. Needless to say I refused all appeals for money;--no one had helped _me_ in my distress, with the exception of my old chum 'Boffles,'--no one save he had given me even so much as a word of sympathy,--I was resolved now to be as hard and as merciless as I had found my contemporaries. I had a certain grim pleasure in reading letters from two or three literary men, asking for work 'as secretary or companion,' or failing that, for the loan of a little cash to 'tide over present difficulties.' One of these applicants was a journalist on the staff of a well-known paper who had promised to find _me_ work, and who instead of doing so, had, as I afterwards learned, strongly dissuaded his editor from giving me any employment. He never imagined that Tempest the millionaire, and Tempest the literary hack, were one and the same person,--so little do the majority think that wealth can ever fall to the lot of authors! I wrote to him myself however and told him what I deemed it well he should know, adding my sarcastic thanks for his friendly assistance to me in time of need,--and herein I tasted something of the sharp delight of vengeance. I never heard from him again, and I am pretty sure my letter gave him material not only for astonishment but meditation.

Yet with all the advantages over both friends and enemies which I now possessed I could not honestly say I was happy. I knew I could have every possible enjoyment and amusement the world had to offer,--I knew I was one of the most envied among men, and yet,--as I stood looking out of the window at the persistently falling rain, I was conscious of a bitterness rather than a sweetness in the full cup of fortune. Many things that I had imagined would give me intense satisfaction had fallen curiously flat. For example, I had flooded the press with the most carefully worded and prominent advertisements of my forthcoming book, and when I was poor I had pictured to myself how I should revel in doing this,--now that it was done I cared nothing at all about it. I was simply weary of the sight of my own advertised name. I certainly did look forward with very genuine feeling and expectation to the publication of my work when that should be an accomplished fact,--but to-day even that idea had lost some of its attractiveness owing to this new and unpleasant impression on my mind that the contents of that book were as utterly the reverse of my own true thoughts as they could well be. A fog began to darken down over the streets in company with the rain,--and disgusted with the weather and with myself, I turned away from the window and settled into an arm-chair by the fire, poking the coal till it blazed, and wondering what I should do to rid my mind of the gloom that threatened to envelop it in as thick a canopy as that of the London fog. A tap came at the door, and in answer to my somewhat irritable "Come in!" Rimânez entered.

"What, all in the dark Tempest!" he exclaimed cheerfully--"Why don't you light up?"

"The fire's enough,"--I answered crossly--"Enough at any rate to think by."

"And have you been thinking?" he inquired laughing--"Don't do it. It's a bad habit. No one thinks now-a-days,--people can't stand it--their heads are too frail. Once begin to think and down go the foundations of society,--besides thinking is always dull work."

"I have found it so," I said gloomily--"Lucio, there is something wrong about me somewhere."

His eyes flashed keen, half-amused inquiry into mine.

"Wrong? Oh no, surely not! What _can_ there be wrong about you, Tempest? Are you not one of the richest men living?"

I let the satire pass.

"Listen, my friend," I said earnestly--"You know I have been busy for the last fortnight correcting the proofs of my book for the press,--do you not?"

He nodded with a smiling air.

"Well I have arrived almost at the end of my work and I have come to the conclusion that the book is not Me,--it is not a reflex of my feelings at all,--and I cannot understand how I came to write it."

"You find it stupid perhaps?" said Lucio sympathetically.

"No," I answered with a touch of indignation--"I do not find it stupid."

"Dull then?"

"No,--it is not dull."

"Melodramatic?"

"No,--not melodramatic."

"Well, my good fellow, if it is not dull or stupid or melodramatic, what is it!" he exclaimed merrily--"It must be something!"

"Yes,--it is this,--it is beyond me altogether." And I spoke with some bitterness. "Quite beyond me. I could not write it now,--I wonder I could write it then. Lucio, I daresay I am talking foolishly,--but it seems to me I must have been on some higher altitude of thought when I wrote the book,--a height from which I have since fallen."

"I'm sorry to hear this," he answered, with twinkling eyes--"From what you say it appears to me you have been guilty of literary sublimity. Oh bad, very bad! Nothing can be worse. To write sublimely is a grievous sin, and one which critics never forgive. I'm really grieved for you, my friend--I never thought your case was quite so desperate."

I laughed in spite of my depression.

"You are incorrigible, Lucio!" I said--"But your cheerfulness is very inspiriting. All I wanted to explain to you is this,--that my book expresses a certain tone of thought which purporting to be _mine_, is not _me_,--in short, I, in my present self have no sympathy with it. I must have changed very much since I wrote it."

"Changed? Why yes, I should think so!" and Lucio laughed heartily--"The possession of five millions is bound to change a man considerably for the better--or worse! But you seem to be worrying yourself most absurdly about nothing. Not one author in many centuries writes from his own heart or as he truly feels--when he does, he becomes well-nigh immortal. This planet is too limited to hold more than one Homer, one Plato, one Shakespeare. Don't distress yourself--you are neither of these three! You belong to the age, Tempest,--it is a decadent ephemeral age, and most things connected with it are decadent and ephemeral. Any era that is dominated by the love of money only, has a rotten core within it and must perish. All history tells us so, but no one accepts the lesson of history. Observe the signs of the time,--Art is made subservient to the love of money--literature, politics and religion the same,--_you_ cannot escape from the general disease. The only thing to do is to make the best of it,--no one can reform it--least of all you, who have so much of the lucre given to your share."

He paused,--I was silent, watching the bright fire-glow and the dropping red cinders.

"What I am going to say now," he proceeded in soft, almost melancholy accents--"will sound ridiculously trite,--still it has the perverse prosiness of truth about it. It is this--in order to write with intense feeling, you must first _feel_. Very likely when you wrote this book of yours, you were almost a human hedge-hog in the way of feeling. Every prickly point of you was erect and responsive to the touch of all influences, pleasant or the reverse, imaginative or realistic. This is a condition which some people envy and others would rather dispense with. Now that you, as a hedge-hog, have no further need for either alarm, indignation or self-defence, your prickles are soothed into an agreeable passiveness, and you partially cease to feel. That is all. The 'change' you complain of is thus accounted for;--you have nothing to feel about,--hence you cannot comprehend how it was that you ever felt."

I was conscious of irritation at the calm conviction of his tone.

"Do you take me for such a callous creature as all that?" I exclaimed--"You are mistaken in me, Lucio. I feel most keenly----"

"What do you feel?" he inquired, fixing his eyes steadily upon me--"There are hundreds of starving wretches in this metropolis,--men and women on the brink of suicide because they have no hope of anything in this world or the next, and no sympathy from their kind--do you feel for them? Do _their_ griefs affect _you_? You know they do not,--you know you never think of them,--why should you? One of the chief advantages of wealth is the ability it gives us to shut out other people's miseries from our personal consideration."

I said nothing,--for the first time my spirit chafed at the truth of his words, principally because they _were_ true. Alas, Lucio!--if I had only known then what I know now!

"Yesterday," he went on in the same quiet voice--"a child was run over here, just opposite this hotel. It was _only_ a poor child,--mark that 'only.' Its mother ran shrieking out of some back-street hard by, in time to see the little bleeding body carted up in a mangled heap. She struck wildly with both hands at the men who were trying to lead her away, and with a cry like that of some hurt savage animal fell face forward in the mud--dead. She was only a poor woman,--another 'only.' There were three lines in the paper about it headed 'Sad Incident.' The hotel-porter here witnessed the scene from the door with as composed a demeanor as that of a fop at the play, never relaxing the serene majesty of his attitude,--but about ten minutes after the dead body of the woman had been carried out of sight, he, the imperial, gold-buttoned being, became almost crook-backed in his servile haste to run and open the door of your brougham, my dear Geoffrey, as you drove up to the entrance. This is a little epitome of life as it is lived now-a-days,--and yet the canting clerics swear we are all equal in the sight of heaven! We may be, though it does not look much like it,--and if we are, it does not matter, as we have ceased to care how heaven regards us. I don't want to point a moral,--I simply tell you the 'sad incident' as it occurred,--and I am sure you are not the least sorry for the fate of either the child who was run over, or its mother who died in the sharp agony of a suddenly broken heart. Now don't say you are, because I know you're not!"

"How can one feel sorry for people one does not know or has never seen,--" I began.

"Exactly!--How is it possible? And there we have it--how can one feel, when one's self is so thoroughly comfortable as to be without any other feeling save that of material ease? Thus, my dear Geoffrey, you must be content to let your book appear as the reflex and record of your past when you were in the prickly or sensitive stage,--now you are encased in a pachydermatous covering of gold, which adequately protects you from such influences as might have made you start and writhe, perhaps even roar with indignation, and in the access of fierce torture, stretch out your hands and grasp--quite unconsciously--the winged thing called Fame!"

"You should have been an orator,"--I said, rising and pacing the room to and fro in vexation,--"But to me your words are not consoling, and I do not think they are true. Fame is easily enough secured."

"Pardon me if I am obstinate;"--said Lucio with a deprecatory gesture--"Notoriety is easily secured--very easily. A few critics who have dined with you and had their fill of wine, will give you notoriety. But fame is the voice of the whole civilized public of the world."

"The public!" I echoed contemptuously--"The public only care for trash."

"It is a pity you should appeal to it then;"--he responded with a smile--"If you think so little of the public why give it anything of your brain? It is not worthy of so rare a boon! Come, come Tempest,--do not join in the snarl of unsuccessful authors who take refuge, when marked unsaleable, in pouring out abuse on the public. The public is the author's best friend and truest critic. But if you prefer to despise it, in company with all the very little literature-mongers who form a mutual admiration society, I tell you what to do,--print just twenty copies of your book and present these to the leading reviewers, and when they have written you up (as they will do--I'll take care of that) let your publisher advertise to the effect that the 'First and Second Large Editions' of the new novel by Geoffrey Tempest, are exhausted, one hundred thousand copies having been sold in a week! If that does not waken up the world in general, I shall be much surprised!"

I laughed,--I was gradually getting into a better humour.

"It would be quite as fair a plan of action as is adopted by many modern publishers," I said--"The loud hawking of literary wares now-a-days reminds me of the rival shouting of costermongers in a low neighbourhood. But I will not go quite so far,--I'll win my fame legitimately if I can."

"You can't!" declared Lucio with a serene smile--"It's impossible. You are too rich. That of itself is not legitimate in Literature, which great art generally elects to wear poverty in its button-hole as a flower of grace. The fight cannot be equal in such circumstances. The fact that you are a millionaire must weigh the balance apparently in your favour for a time. The world cannot resist money. If I, for example, became an author, I should probably with my wealth and influence, burn up every one else's laurels. Suppose that a desperately poor man comes out with a book at the same time as you do, he will have scarcely the ghost of a chance against you. He will not be able to advertise in your lavish style,--nor will he see his way to dine the critics as you can. And if he should happen to have more genius than you, and you succeed, your success will _not_ be legitimate. But after all, that does not matter much--in Art, if in nothing else, things always right themselves."

I made no immediate reply, but went over to my table, rolled up my corrected proofs and directed them to the printers,--then ringing the bell I gave the packet to my man, Morris, bidding him post it at once. This done, I turned again towards Lucio and saw that he still sat by the fire, but that his attitude was now one of brooding melancholy, and that he had covered his eyes with one hand on which the glow from the flames shone red. I regretted the momentary irritation I had felt against him for telling me unwelcome truths,--and I touched him lightly on the shoulder.

"Are _you_ in the dumps now Lucio?" I said--"I'm afraid my depression has proved infectious."

He moved his hand and looked up,--his eyes were large and lustrous as the eyes of a beautiful woman.

"I was thinking," he said, with a slight sigh--"of the last words I uttered just now,--_things always right themselves_. Curiously enough in art they always do,--no charlatanism or sham lasts with the gods of Parnassus. But in other matters it is different. For instance _I_ shall never right myself! Life is hateful to me at times, as it is to everybody."

"Perhaps you are in love?" I said with a smile.

He started up.

"In love! By all the heavens and all the earths too, that suggestion wakes me with a vengeance! In love! What woman alive do you think could impress _me_ with the notion that she was anything more than a frivolous doll of pink and white, with long hair frequently not her own? And as for the tom-boy tennis-players and giantesses of the era, I do not consider them women at all,--they are merely the unnatural and strutting embryos of a new sex which will be neither male nor female. My dear Tempest, I hate women. So would you if you knew as much about them as I do. They have made me what I am, and they keep me so."

"They are to be much complimented then,"--I observed--"You do them credit!"

"I do!" he answered slowly--"In more ways than one!" A faint smile was on his face, and his eyes brightened with that curious jewel-like gleam I had noticed several times before. "Believe me, I shall never contest with you such a slight gift as woman's love, Geoffrey. It is not worth fighting for. And _apropos_ of women, that reminds me,--I have promised to take you to the Earl of Elton's box at the Haymarket to-night,--he is a poor peer, very gouty and somewhat heavily flavoured with port-wine, but his daughter, Lady Sibyl, is one of the belles of England. She was presented last season and created quite a _furore_. Will you come?"

"I am quite at your disposition"--I said, glad of any excuse to escape the dullness of my own company and to be in that of Lucio, whose talk, even if its satire galled me occasionally, always fascinated my mind and remained in my memory--"What time shall we meet?"

"Go and dress now, and join me at dinner,"--he answered; "And we'll drive together to the theatre afterwards. The play is on the usual theme which has lately become popular with stage-managers,--the glorification of a 'fallen' lady, and the exhibition of her as an example of something superlatively pure and good, to the astonished eyes of the innocent. As a play it is not worth seeing,--but perhaps Lady Sibyl is."

He smiled again as he stood facing me,--the light flames of the fire had died down to a dull uniform coppery red,--we were almost in darkness, and I pressed the small button near the mantelpiece that flooded the room with electric light. His extraordinary beauty then struck me afresh as something altogether singular and half unearthly.

"Don't you find that people look at you very often as you pass, Lucio?" I asked him suddenly and impulsively.

He laughed. "Not at all. Why should they? Every man is so intent on his own aims, and thinks so much of his own personality that he would scarcely forget his _ego_ if the very devil himself were behind him. Women look at me sometimes, with the affected coy and kitten-like interest usually exhibited by the frail sex for a personable man."

"I cannot blame them!" I answered, my gaze still resting on his stately figure and fine head with as much admiration as I might have felt for a noble picture or statue--"What of this Lady Sibyl we are to meet to-night,--how does she regard you?"

"Lady Sibyl has never seen me,"--he replied--"And I have only seen her at a distance. It is chiefly for the purpose of an introduction to her that the Earl has asked us to his box this evening."

"Ha ha! Matrimony in view!" I exclaimed jestingly.

"Yes--I believe Lady Sibyl is for sale,"--he answered with the callous coldness that occasionally distinguished him and made his handsome features look like an impenetrable mask of scorn--"But up to the present the bids have not been sufficiently high. And I shall not purchase. I have told you already, Tempest, I hate women."

"Seriously?"

"Most seriously. Women have always done me harm,--they have wantonly hindered me in my progress. And why I specially abominate them is, that they have been gifted with an enormous power for doing good, and that they let this power run to waste and will not use it. Their deliberate enjoyment and choice of the repulsive, vulgar and common-place side of life disgusts me. They are much less sensitive than men, and infinitely more heartless. They are the mothers of the human race, and the faults of the race are chiefly due to them. That is another reason for my hatred."

"Do you want the human race to be perfect?" I asked astonished--"Because, if you do, you will find that impossible."

He stood for a moment apparently lost in thought.

"Everything in the Universe is perfect,"--he said, "except that curious piece of work--Man. Have you never thought out any reason why he should be the one flaw,--the one incomplete creature in a matchless Creation?"

"No, I have not,"--I replied--"I take things as I find them."

"So do I,"--and he turned away, "And as I find _them_, so they find _me_! Au revoir! Dinner in an hour's time remember!"

The door opened and closed--he was gone. I remained alone for a little, thinking what a strange disposition was his,--what a curious mixture of philosophy, worldliness, sentiment and satire seemed to run like the veins of a leaf through the variable temperament of this brilliant, semi-mysterious personage who had by mere chance become my greatest friend. We had now been more or less together for nearly a month, and I was no closer to the secret of his actual nature than I had been at first. Yet I admired him more than ever,--without his society I felt life would be deprived of half its charm. For though, attracted as human moths will be by the glare of my glittering millions, numbers of so-called 'friends' now surrounded me, there was not one among them who so dominated my every mood and with whom I had so much close sympathy as this man,--this masterful, half cruel, half kind companion of my days, who at times seemed to accept all life as the veriest bagatelle, and myself as a part of the trivial game.

[1] A fact.

VIII

No man, I think, ever forgets the first time he is brought face to face with perfect beauty in woman. He may have caught fleeting glimpses of loveliness on many fair faces often,--bright eyes may have flashed on him like star-beams,--the hues of a dazzling complexion may now and then have charmed him, or the seductive outlines of a graceful figure;--all these are as mere peeps into the infinite. But when such vague and passing impressions are suddenly drawn together in one focus,--when all his dreamy fancies of form and colour take visible and complete manifestation in one living creature who looks down upon him as it were from an empyrean of untouched maiden pride and purity, it is more to his honour than his shame, if his senses swoon at the ravishing vision, and he, despite his rough masculinity and brute strength, becomes nothing but the merest slave to passion. In this way was I overwhelmed and conquered without any chance of deliverance when Sibyl Elton's violet eyes, lifted slowly from the shadow of their dark lashes, rested upon me with that indefinable expression of mingled interest and indifference which is supposed to indicate high breeding, but which more frequently intimidates and repulses the frank and sensitive soul. The Lady Sibyl's glance repelled, but I was none the less attracted. Rimânez and I had entered the Earl of Elton's box at the Haymarket between the first and second acts of the play, and the Earl himself, an unimpressive, bald-headed, red-faced old gentleman, with fuzzy white whiskers, had risen to welcome us, seizing the prince's hand and shaking it with

## particular effusiveness. (I learned afterwards that Lucio had lent him a

thousand pounds on easy terms, a fact which partly accounted for the friendly fervour of his greeting.) His daughter had not moved; but a minute or two later when he addressed her somewhat sharply, saying "Sibyl! Prince Rimânez and his friend, Mr Geoffrey Tempest," she turned her head and honoured us both with the chill glance I have endeavoured to describe, and the very faintest possible bow as an acknowledgment of our presence. Her exquisite beauty smote me dumb and foolish,--I could find nothing to say, and stood silent and confused, with a strange sensation of bewilderment upon me. The old Earl made some remark about the play, which I scarcely heard though I answered vaguely and at hap-hazard,--the orchestra was playing abominably as is usual in theatres, and its brazen din sounded like the noise of the sea in my ears,--I had not much real consciousness of anything save the wondrous loveliness of the girl who faced me, clad in pure white, with a few diamonds shining about her like stray dewdrops on a rose. Lucio spoke to her, and I listened.

"At last, Lady Sibyl," he said, bending towards her deferentially. "At last I have the honour of meeting you. I have seen you often, as one sees a star,--at a distance."

She smiled,--a smile so slight and cold that it scarcely lifted the corners of her lovely lips.

"I do not think I have ever seen _you_," she replied. "And yet there is something oddly familiar in your face. I have heard my father speak of you constantly,--I need scarcely say his friends are always mine."

He bowed.

"To merely speak to Lady Sibyl Elton is counted sufficient to make the man so privileged happy," he said. "To be her friend is to discover the lost paradise."

She flushed,--then grew suddenly very pale, and shivering, she drew her cloak towards her. Rimânez wrapped its perfumed silken folds carefully round her beautiful shoulders,--how I grudged him the dainty task! He then turned to me, and placed a chair just behind hers.

"Will you sit here Geoffrey?" he suggested--"I want to have a moment's business chat with Lord Elton."

Recovering my self-possession a little, I hastened to take the chance he thus generously gave me to ingratiate myself in the young lady's favour, and my heart gave a foolish bound of joy because she smiled encouragingly as I approached her.

"You are a great friend of Prince Rimânez?" she asked softly, as I sat down.

"Yes, we are very intimate," I replied--"He is a delightful companion."

"So I should imagine!" and she looked over at him where he sat next to her father talking earnestly in low tones--"He is singularly handsome."

I made no reply. Of course Lucio's extraordinary personal attractiveness was undeniable,--but I rather grudged her praise bestowed on him just then. Her remarks seemed to me as tactless as when a man with one pretty woman beside him loudly admires another in her hearing. I did not myself assume to be actually handsome, but I knew I was better looking than the ordinary run of men. So out of sudden pique I remained silent, and presently the curtain rose and the play was resumed. A very questionable scene was enacted, the 'woman with the past' being well to the front of it. I felt disgusted at the performance and looked at my companions to see if they too were similarly moved. There was no sign of disapproval on Lady Sibyl's fair countenance,--her father was bending forward eagerly, apparently gloating over every detail,--Rimânez wore that inscrutable expression of his in which no feeling whatever could be discerned. The 'woman with the past' went on with her hysterical sham-heroics, and the mealy-mouthed fool of a hero declared her to be a 'pure angel wronged,' and the curtain fell amid loud applause. One energetic hiss came from the gallery, affecting the occupants of the stalls to scandalized amazement.

"England has progressed!" said Rimânez in soft half-bantering tones--"Once upon a time this play would have been hooted off the stage as likely to corrupt the social community. But now the only voice of protest comes from the 'lower' classes."

"Are you a democrat, prince?" inquired Lady Sibyl, waving her fan indolently to and fro.

"Not I! I always insist on the pride and supremacy of worth,--I do not mean money value, but intellect. And in this way I foresee a new aristocracy. When the High grows corrupt, it falls and becomes the Low;--when the Low educates itself and aspires, it becomes the High. This is simply the course of nature."

"But, God bless my soul!" exclaimed Lord Elton--"you don't call this play low or immoral do you? It's a realistic study of modern social life--that's what it is. These women you know,--these poor souls with a past--are very interesting!"

"Very!" murmured his daughter.--"In fact it would seem that for women with no such 'past' there can be no future! Virtue and modesty are quite out of date, and have no chance whatever."

I leaned towards her, half whispering,

"Lady Sibyl, I am glad to see this wretched play offends you."

She turned her deep eyes on me in mingled surprise and amusement.

"Oh no, it doesn't," she declared--"I have seen so many like it. And I have read so many novels on just the same theme! I assure you, I am quite convinced that the so-called 'bad' woman is the only popular type of our sex with men,--she gets all the enjoyment possible out of life,--she frequently makes an excellent marriage, and has, as the Americans say 'a good time all round.' It's the same thing with our convicted criminals,--in prison they are much better fed than the honest working-man. I believe it is quite a mistake for women to be respectable,--they are only considered dull."

"Ah, now you are only joking!" I said with an indulgent smile. "You know that in your heart you think very differently!"

She made no answer, as just then the curtain went up again, disclosing the unclean 'lady' of the piece, "having a good time all round" on board a luxurious yacht. During the unnatural and stilted dialogue which followed, I withdrew a little back into the shadow of the box, and all that self-esteem and assurance of which I had been suddenly deprived by a glance at Lady Sibyl's beauty, came back to me, and a perfectly stolid coolness and composure succeeded to the first feverish excitement of my mind. I recalled Lucio's words--"_I believe Lady Sibyl is for sale_"--and I thought triumphantly of my millions. I glanced at the old earl, abjectly pulling at his white whiskers while he listened anxiously to what were evidently money schemes propounded by Lucio. Then my gaze came back appraisingly to the lovely curves of Lady Sibyl's milk-white throat, her beautiful arms and bosom, her rich brown hair of the shade of a ripe chestnut, her delicate haughty face, languid eyes and brilliant complexion,--and I murmured inwardly--"All this loveliness is purchaseable, and I will purchase it!" At that very instant she turned to me and said--

"You are the famous Mr Tempest, are you not?"

"Famous?" I echoed with a deep sense of gratification--"Well,--I am scarcely that,--yet! My book is not published ..."

Her eyebrows arched themselves surprisedly.

"Your book? I did not know you had written one?"

My flattered vanity sank to zero.

"It has been extensively advertised," I began impressively,--but she interrupted me with a laugh.

"Oh I never read advertisements,--it's too much trouble. When I asked if you were the famous Mr Tempest, I meant to say were you the great millionaire who has been so much talked of lately?"

I bowed a somewhat chill assent. She looked at me inquisitively over the lace edge of her fan.

"How delightful it must be for you to have so much money!" she said--"And you are young too, and good-looking."

Pleasure took the place of vexed _amour-propre_ and I smiled.

"You are very kind, Lady Sibyl!"

"Why?" she asked laughing,--such a delicious little low laugh--"Because I tell you the truth? You _are_ young and you _are_ good-looking! Millionaires are generally such appalling creatures. Fortune, while giving them money, frequently deprives them of both brains and personal attractiveness. And now do tell me about your book!"

She seemed to have suddenly dispensed with her former reserve, and during the last act of the play, we conversed freely, in whispers which assisted us to become almost confidential. Her manner to me now was full of grace and charm, and the fascination she exerted over my senses became complete. The performance over, we all left the box together, and as Lucio was still apparently engrossed with Lord Elton I had the satisfaction of escorting Lady Sibyl to her carriage. When her father joined her, Lucio and I both stood together looking in at the window of the brougham, and the Earl, getting hold of my hand shook it up and down with boisterous friendliness.

"Come and dine,--come and dine!" he spluttered excitedly; "Come--let me see,--this is Tuesday--come on Thursday. Short notice and no ceremony! My wife is paralysed I'm sorry to say,--she can't receive,--she can only see a few people now and then when she is in the humour,--her sister keeps house and does the honours,--Aunt Charlotte, eh Sibyl?--ha-ha-ha! The Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill would never be any use to me, for if my wife were to die I shouldn't be anxious to marry Miss Charlotte Fitzroy! Ha ha ha! A perfectly unapproachable woman sir!--a model,--ha ha! Come and dine with us, Mr Tempest,--Lucio, you bring him along with you, eh? We've got a young lady staying with us,--an American, dollars, accent and all,--and by Jove I believe she wants to marry me ha ha ha! and is waiting for Lady Elton to go to a better world first, ha ha! Come along--come and see the little American, eh? Thursday shall it be?"

Over the fair features of Lady Sibyl there passed a faint shadow of annoyance at her father's allusion to the "little American," but she said nothing. Only her looks appeared to question our intentions as well as to persuade our wills, and she seemed satisfied when we both accepted the invitation given. Another apoplectic chuckle from the Earl and a couple of handshakes,--a slight graceful bow from her lovely ladyship, as we raised our hats in farewell, and the Elton equipage rolled away, leaving us to enter our own vehicle, which amid the officious roarings of street-boys and policemen had just managed to draw up in front of the theatre. As we drove off, Lucio peered inquisitively at me--I could see the steely glitter of his fine eyes in the semi-darkness of the brougham,--and said--

"Well?"

I was silent.

"Don't you admire her?" he went on--"I must confess she is cold,--a very chilly vestal indeed,--but snow often covers volcanoes! She has good features, and a naturally clear complexion."

Despite my intention to be reticent, I could not endure this tame description.

"She is perfectly beautiful,"--I said emphatically. "The dullest eyes must see that. There is not a fault to be found with her. And she is wise to be reserved and cold--were she too lavish of her smiles and too seductive in manner, she might drive many men not only into folly, but madness."

I felt rather than saw the cat-like glance he flashed upon me.

"Positively, Geoffrey, I believe that notwithstanding the fact that we are only in February, the wind blows upon you due south, bringing with it odours of rose and orange-blossom! I fancy Lady Sibyl has powerfully impressed you?"

"Did you wish me to be impressed?" I asked.

"I? My dear fellow, I wish nothing that you yourself do not wish. I accommodate my ways to my friends' humours. If asked for my opinion I should say it is rather a pity if you are really smitten with the young lady, as there are no obstacles to be encountered. A love-affair, to be conducted with spirit and enterprise should always bristle with opposition and difficulty, real or invented. A little secrecy and a good deal of wrong-doing, such as sly assignations and the telling of any amount of lies--such things add to the agreeableness of love-making on this planet--"

I interrupted him.

"See here, Lucio, you are very fond of alluding to 'this' planet as if you knew anything about other planets"--I said impatiently. "_This_ planet, as you somewhat contemptuously call it, is the only one _we_ have any business with."

He bent his piercing looks so ardently upon me that for the moment I was startled.

"If that is so," he answered, "why in Heaven's name do you not let the other planets alone? Why do you strive to fathom their mysteries and movements? If men, as you say, have no business with any planet save this one why are they ever on the alert to discover the secret of mightier worlds,--a secret which haply it may some day terrify them to know!"

The solemnity of his voice and the inspired expression of his face awed me. I had no reply ready, and he went on--

"Do not let us talk, my friend, of planets, not even of this particular pin's point among them known as Earth. Let us return to a better subject--the Lady Sibyl. As I have already said, there are no obstacles in the way of your wooing and winning her, if such is your desire. Geoffrey Tempest, as mere author of books would indeed be insolent to aspire to the hand of an earl's daughter, but Geoffrey Tempest, millionaire, will be a welcome suitor. Poor Lord Elton's affairs are in a bad way--he is almost out-at-elbows;--the American woman who is boarding with him----"

"Boarding with him!" I exclaimed--"Surely he does not keep a boarding-house?"

Lucio laughed heartily.

"No, no!--you must not put it so coarsely, Geoffrey. It is simply this, that the Earl and Countess of Elton give the prestige of their home and protection to Miss Diana Chesney (the American aforesaid) for the trifling sum of two thousand guineas per annum. The Countess being paralyzed, is obliged to hand over her duties of chaperonage to her sister Miss Charlotte Fitzroy,--but the halo of the coronet still hovers over Miss Chesney's brow. She has her own suite of rooms in the house, and goes wherever it is proper for her to go, under Miss Fitzroy's care. Lady Sibyl does not like the arrangement, and is therefore never seen anywhere except with her father. She will not join in companionship with Miss Chesney, and has said so pretty plainly."

"I admire her for it!" I said warmly--"I really am surprised that Lord Elton should condescend----"

"Condescend to what?" inquired Lucio--"Condescend to take two thousand guineas a year? Good heavens man, there are no end of lords and ladies who will readily agree to perform such an act of condescension. 'Blue' blood is getting thin and poor, and only money can thicken it. Diana Chesney is worth over a million dollars and if Lady Elton were to die conveniently soon, I should not be surprised to see that 'little American' step triumphantly into her vacant place."

"What a state of topsy-turveydom!" I said, half angrily.

"Geoffrey, my friend, you are really amazingly inconsistent! Is there a more flagrant example of topsy-turveydom than yourself for instance? Six weeks ago, what were you? A mere scribbler, with flutterings of the wings of genius in your soul, but many uncertainties as to whether those wings would ever be strong enough to lift you out of the rut of obscurity in which you floundered, struggling and grumbling at adverse fate. Now, as millionaire, you think contemptuously of an Earl, because he ventures quite legitimately to add a little to his income by boarding an American heiress and launching her into society where she would never get without him. And you aspire, or probably mean to aspire to the hand of the Earl's daughter, as if you yourself were a descendant of kings. Nothing can be more topsy-turvey than _your_ condition!"

"My father was a gentleman," I said, with a touch of hauteur, "and a descendant of gentlemen. We were never common folk,--our family was one of the most highly esteemed in the counties."

Lucio smiled.

"I do not doubt it, my dear fellow,--I do not in the least doubt it. But a simple 'gentleman' is a long way below--or above--an Earl. Have it which side you choose!--because it really doesn't matter nowadays. We have come to a period of history when rank and lineage count as nothing at all, owing to the profoundly obtuse stupidity of those who happen to possess it. So it chances, that as no resistance is made, brewers are created peers of the realm, and ordinary tradesmen are knighted, and the very old families are so poor that they have to sell their estates and jewels to the highest bidder, who is frequently a vulgar 'railway-king' or the introducer of some new manure. You occupy a better position than such, since you inherit your money with the farther satisfaction that you do not know how it was made."

"True!" I answered meditatively,--then, with a sudden flash of recollection I added--"By the way I never told you that my deceased relative imagined that he had sold his soul to the devil, and that this vast fortune of his was the material result!"

Lucio burst into a violent fit of laughter.

"No! Not possible!" he exclaimed derisively--"What an idea! I suppose he had a screw loose somewhere! Imagine any sane man believing in a devil! Ha, ha, ha! And in these advanced days too! Well, well! The folly of human imaginations will never end! Here we are!"--and he sprang lightly out as the brougham stopped at the Grand Hotel--"I will say good-night to you, Tempest. I've promised to go and have a gamble."

"A gamble? Where?"

"At one of the select private clubs. There are any amount of them in this eminently moral metropolis--no occasion to go to Monte Carlo! Will you come?"

I hesitated. The fair face of Lady Sibyl haunted my mind,--and I felt, with a no doubt foolish sentimentality, that I would rather keep my thoughts of her sacred, and unpolluted by contact with things of lower tone.

"Not to-night;"--I said,--then half smiling, I added--"It must be rather a one-sided affair for other men to gamble with you, Lucio! You can afford to lose,--and perhaps they can't."

"If they can't, they shouldn't play,"--he answered--"A man should at least know his own mind and his own capacity; if he doesn't, he is no man at all. As far as I have learned by long experience, those who gamble like it, and when _they_ like it, _I_ like it. I'll take you with me to-morrow if you care to see the fun,--one or two very eminent men are members of the club, though of course they wouldn't have it known for worlds. You shan't lose much--I'll see to that."

"All right,--to-morrow it shall be!"--I responded, for I did not wish to appear as though I grudged losing a few pounds at play--"But to-night I think I'll write some letters before going to bed."

"Yes--and dream of Lady Sibyl!" said Lucio laughing--"If she fascinates you as much when you see her again on Thursday you had better begin the siege!"

He waved his hand gaily, and re-entering his carriage, was driven off at a furious pace through the drifting fog and rain.

IX

My publisher, John Morgeson,--the estimable individual who had first refused my book, and who now, moved by self-interest, was devoting his energies assiduously to the business of launching it in the most modern and approved style, was not like Shakespeare's _Cassio_, strictly 'an honourable man.' Neither was he the respectable chief of a long-established firm whose system of the cheating of authors, mellowed by time, had become almost sacred;--he was a 'new' man, with new ways, and a good stock of new push and impudence. All the same, he was clever, shrewd and diplomatic, and for some reason or other, had secured the favour of a certain portion of the press, many of the dailies and weeklies always giving special prominence to his publications over the heads of other far more legitimately dealing firms. He entered into a

## partial explanation of his methods, when, on the morning after my first

meeting with the Earl of Elton and his daughter, I called upon him to inquire how things were going with regard to my book.

"We shall publish next week,"--he said, rubbing his hands complacently, and addressing me with all the deference due to my banking account--"And as you don't mind what you spend, I'll tell you just what I propose to do. I intend to write out a mystifying paragraph of about some seventy lines or so, describing the book in a vague sort of way as '_likely to create a new era of thought_'--or, '_ere long everybody who is anybody will be compelled to read this remarkable work_,'--or '_as something that must be welcome to all who would understand the drift of one of the most delicate and burning questions of the time_.' These are all stock phrases, used over and over again by the reviewers,--there's no copyright in them. And the last one always 'tells' wonderfully, considering how old it is, and how often it has been made to do duty, because any allusion to a '_delicate and burning question_' makes a number of people think the novel must be improper, and they send for it at once!"

He chuckled at his own perspicuity, and I sat silent, studying him with much inward amusement. This man on whose decision I had humbly and anxiously waited not so many weeks ago was now my paid tool,--ready to obey me to any possible extent for so much cash,--and I listened to him indulgently while he went on unravelling his schemes for the gratification of _my_ vanity, and the pocketing of _his_ extras.

"The book has been splendidly advertised"--he went on; "It could not have been more lavishly done. Orders do not come in very fast yet--but they will,--they will. This paragraph of mine, which will take the shape of a 'leaderette,' I can get inserted in about eight hundred to a thousand newspapers here and in America. It will cost you,--say a hundred guineas--perhaps a trifle more. Do you mind that?"

"Not in the least!" I replied, still vastly amused.

He meditated a moment,--then drew his chair closer to mine and lowered his voice a little.

"You understand I suppose, that I shall only issue two hundred and fifty copies at first?"

This limited number seemed to me absurd, and I protested vehemently.

"Such an idea is ridiculous!" I said--"you cannot supply the trade with such a scanty edition."

"Wait, my dear sir, wait,--you are too impatient. You do not give me time to explain. All these two hundred and fifty will be _given away_ by me in the proper quarters on the day of publication,--never mind how,--they _must_ be given away--"

"Why?"

"Why?" and the worthy Morgeson laughed sweetly--"I see, my dear Mr Tempest, you are like most men of genius--you do not understand business. The reason why we give the first two hundred and fifty copies away is in order to be able to announce at once in all the papers that '_The First Large Edition of the New Novel by Geoffrey Tempest being exhausted on the day of publication, a Second is in Rapid Preparation_.' You see we thus hoodwink the public, who of course are not in our secrets, and are not to know whether an edition is two hundred or two thousand. The Second Edition will of course be ready behind the scenes, and will consist of another two hundred and fifty."

"Do you call that course of procedure honest?" I asked quietly.

"Honest? My dear sir! Honest?" And his countenance wore a virtuously injured expression--"Of course it is honest! Look at the daily papers! Such announcements appear every day--in fact they are getting rather too common. I freely admit that there are a few publishers here and there who stick up for exactitude and go to the trouble of not only giving the number of copies in an Edition, but also publishing the date of each one as it was issued,--this may be principle if they like to call it so, but it involves a great deal of precise calculation and worry! If the public like to be deceived, what is the use of being exact! Now, to resume,--your second edition will be sent off 'on sale or return' to provincial booksellers, and then we shall announce--"In consequence of the Enormous Demand for the new novel by Geoffrey Tempest, the Large Second Edition is out of print. A Third will be issued in the course of next week." And so on, and so on, till we get to the sixth or seventh edition (always numbering two hundred and fifty each) in three volumes; perhaps we can by skilful management work it to a tenth. It is only a question of diplomacy and a little dexterous humbugging of the trade. Then we shall arrive at the one-volume issue, which will require different handling. But there's time enough for that. The frequent advertisements will add to the expense a bit, but if you don't mind--"

"I don't mind anything," I said--"so long as I have my fun."

"Your fun?" he queried surprisedly--"I thought it was fame you wanted, more than fun!"

I laughed aloud.

"I'm not such a fool as to suppose that fame is secured by advertisement," I said--"For instance I am one of those who think the fame of Millais as an artist was marred when he degraded himself to the level of painting the little green boy blowing bubbles of Pears's Soap. That was an advertisement. And that very incident in his career, trifling though it seems, will prevent his ever standing on the same dignified height of distinction with such masters in art as Romney, Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough or Reynolds."

"I believe there is a great deal of justice in what you say;" and Morgeson shook his head wisely--"Viewed from a purely artistic and sentimental standpoint you are right." And he became suddenly downcast and dubious. "Yes,--it is a most extraordinary thing how fame does escape people sometimes just when they seem on the point of grasping it. They are 'boomed' in every imaginable way, and yet after a time nothing will keep them up. And there are others again who get kicked and buffeted and mocked and derided----"

"Like Christ?" I interposed with a half smile. He looked shocked,--he was a Non-conformist,--but remembering in time how rich I was, he bowed with a meek patience.

"Yes"--and he sighed--"as you suggest, Mr Tempest, like Christ. Mocked and derided and opposed at every turn,--and yet by the queerest caprice of destiny, they succeed in winning a world-wide fame and power----"

"Like Christ again!" I said mischievously, for I loved to jar his non-conformist conscience.

"Exactly!" He paused, looking piously down. Then with a return of secular animation he added--"But I was not thinking of the Great Example just then, Mr Tempest--I was thinking of a woman."

"Indeed!" I said indifferently.

"Yes--a woman, who despite continued abuse and opposition is rapidly becoming celebrated. You are sure to hear of her in literary and social circles"--and he gave me a furtive glance of doubtful inquiry--"but she is not rich, you know,--only famous. However,--we have nothing to do with her just now--so let us return to business. The one uncertain point in the matter of your book's success is the attitude of the critics. There are only six leading men who do the reviews, and between them they cover all the English magazines and some of the American too, as well as the London papers. Here are their names"--and he handed me a pencilled memorandum,--"and their addresses, as far as I can ascertain them, or the addresses of the papers for which they most frequently write. The man at the head of the list, David McWhing, is the most formidable of the lot. He writes everywhere about everything,--being a Scotchman he's bound to have his finger in every pie. If you can secure McWhing, you need not trouble so much about the others, as he generally gives the 'lead,' and has his own way with the editors. He is one of the 'personal friends' of the editor of the _Nineteenth Century_ for example, and you would be sure to get a notice there, which would otherwise be impossible. No reviewer _can_ review anything for that magazine unless he _is_ one of the editor's friends.[2] You must manage McWhing, or he might, just for the sake of 'showing off,' cut you up rather roughly."

"That would not matter," I said, diverted at the idea of 'managing McWhing,'--"A little slating always helps a book to sell."

"In some cases it does,"--and Morgeson stroked his thin beard perplexedly--"But in others it most emphatically does _not_. Where there is any very decided or daring originality, adverse criticism is always the most effective. But a work like yours requires fostering with favour,--wants 'booming' in short----"

"I see!" and I felt distinctly annoyed--"You don't think my book original enough to stand alone?"

"My dear sir!--you are really--really--! what shall I say?" and he smiled apologetically--"a little brusque? I think your book shows admirable scholarship and delicacy of thought,--if I find fault with it at all, it is perhaps because I am dense. The only thing it lacks in my opinion is what I should call _tenaciousness_, for want of a better expression,--the quality of holding the reader's fancy fixed like a nail. But after all this is a common failing of modern literature; few authors feel sufficiently themselves to make others feel."

I made no reply for a moment. I was thinking of Lucio's remarks on this very same subject.

"Well!" I said at last--"If I had no feeling when I wrote the book, I certainly have none now. Why man, I felt every line of it!--painfully and intensely!"

"Ay, ay indeed!" said Morgeson soothingly--"Or perhaps you _thought_ you felt, which is another very curious phase of the literary temperament. You see, to convince people at all, you must first yourself be convinced. The result of this is generally a singular magnetic attraction between author and public. However I am a bad hand at argument,--and it is possible that in hasty reading I may have gathered a wrong impression of your intentions. Anyhow the book shall be a success if we can make it so. All I venture to ask of you is that you should personally endeavour to manage McWhing!"

I promised to do my best, and on this understanding we parted. I realised that Morgeson was capable of greater discernment than I had imagined, and his observations had given me material for thought which was not altogether agreeable. For if my book, as he said, lacked tenacity, why then it would not take root in the public mind,--it would be merely the ephemeral success of a season,--one of those brief 'booms' in literary wares for which I had such unmitigated contempt,--and Fame would be as far off as ever, except that spurious imitation of it which the fact of my millions had secured. I was in no good humour that afternoon, and Lucio saw it. He soon elicited the sum and substance of my interview with Morgeson, and laughed long and somewhat uproariously over the proposed 'managing' of the redoubtable McWhing. He glanced at the five names of the other leading critics and shrugged his shoulders.

"Morgeson is quite right,"--he said--"McWhing is intimate with the rest of these fellows--they meet at the same clubs, dine at the same cheap restaurants and make love to the same painted ballet-girls. All in a comfortable little fraternal union together, and one obliges the other on their several journals when occasion offers. Oh yes! I should make up to McWhing if I were you."

"But how?" I demanded, for though I knew McWhing's name well enough having seen it signed _ad nauseam_ to literary articles in almost every paper extant, I had never met the man; "I cannot ask any favour of a press critic."

"Of course not!" and Lucio laughed heartily again--"If you were to do such an idiotic thing what a slating you'd get for your pains! There's no sport a critic loves so much as the flaying of an author who has made the mistake of lowering himself to the level of asking favours of his intellectual inferiors! No, no, my dear fellow!--we shall manage McWhing quite differently,--_I_ know him, though you do not."

"Come, that's good news!" I exclaimed--"Upon my word Lucio, you seem to know everybody."

"I think I know most people worth knowing--" responded Lucio quietly--"Though I by no means include Mr McWhing in the category of worthiness. I happened to make his personal acquaintance in a somewhat singular and exciting manner. It was in Switzerland, on that awkward ledge of rock known as the Mauvais Pas. I had been some weeks in the neighbourhood on business of my own, and being surefooted and fearless, was frequently allowed by the guides to volunteer my services with theirs. In this capacity of amateur guide, capricious destiny gave me the pleasure of escorting the timid and bilious McWhing across the chasms of the Mer de Glace, and I conversed with him in the choicest French all the while, a language of which, despite his boasted erudition, he was deplorably ignorant. I knew who he was I must tell you, as I know most of his craft, and had long been aware of him as one of the authorised murderers of aspiring genius. When I got him on the Mauvais Pas, I saw that he was seized with vertigo; I held him firmly by the arm and addressed him in sound strong English thus--'Mr McWhing, you wrote a damnable and scurrilous article against the work of a certain poet' and I named the man--'an article that was a tissue of lies from beginning to end, and which by its cruelty and venom embittered a life of brilliant promise, and crushed a noble spirit. Now, unless you promise to write and publish in a leading magazine a total recantation of this your crime when you get back to England,--_if_ you get back!--giving that wronged man the 'honourable mention' he rightly deserves,--down you go! I have but to loosen my hold!' Geoffrey, you should have seen McWhing then! He whined, he wriggled, he clung! Never was an oracle of the press in such an unoracular condition. 'Murder!--murder!' he gasped, but his voice failed him. Above him towered the snow peaks like the summits of that Fame he could not reach and therefore grudged to others,--below him the glittering ice-waves yawned in deep transparent hollows of opaline blue and green,--and afar off the tinkling cowbells echoed through the still air, suggestive of safe green pastures and happy homes. 'Murder!' he whispered gurglingly. 'Nay!' said I, ''tis I should cry Murder!--for if ever an arresting hand held a murderer, mine holds one now! Your system of slaying is worse than that of the midnight assassin, for the assassin can but kill the body,--_you_ strive to kill the soul. You cannot succeed, 'tis true, but the mere attempt is devilish. No shouts, no struggles will serve you here,--we are alone with Eternal Nature,--give the man you have slandered his tardy recognition, or else, as I said before--down you go!' Well, to make my story short, he yielded, and swore to do as I bade him,--whereupon placing my arm round him as though he were my tender twin-brother, I led him safely off the Mauvais Pas and down the kindlier hill, where, what with the fright and the remains of vertigo, he fell a'weeping grievously. Would you believe it, that before we reached Chamounix we had become the best friends in the world? He explained himself and his rascally modes of action, and I nobly exonerated him,--we exchanged cards,--and when we parted, this same author's bug-bear McWhing, overcome with sentiment and whisky toddy (he is a Scotchman you know) swore that I was the grandest fellow in the world, and that if ever he could serve me he would. He knew my princely title by this time, but he would have given me a still higher name. 'You are not--_hic_--a poet yourself?' he murmured, leaning on me fondly as he rolled to bed. I told him no. 'I am sorry--very!' he declared, the tears of whisky rising to his eyes, 'If you had been I would have done a great thing for you,--I would have boomed you,--_for nothing_!' I left him snoring nobly, and saw him no more. But I think he'll recognize me, Geoffrey;--I'll go and look him up personally. By all the gods!--if he had only known Who held him between life and death upon the Mauvais Pas!"

I stared, puzzled.

"But he did know"--I said--"Did you not say you exchanged cards?"

"True, but that was afterwards!" and Lucio laughed; "I assure you, my dear fellow, we can 'manage' McWhing!"

I was intensely interested in the story as he told it,--he had such a dramatic way of speaking and looking, while his very gestures brought the whole scene vividly before me like a picture. I spoke out my thought impulsively.

"You would certainly have made a superb actor, Lucio!"

"How do you know I am not one?" he asked with a flashing glance, then he added quickly--"No,--there is no occasion to paint the face and prance over the boards before a row of tawdry footlights like the paid mimes, in order to be histrionically great. The finest actor is he who can play the comedy of life perfectly, as I aspire to do. To walk well, talk well, smile well, weep well, groan well, laugh well--and die well!--it is all pure acting,--because in every man there is the dumb dreadful immortal Spirit who is real,--who cannot act,--who Is,--and who steadily maintains an infinite though speechless protest against the body's Lie!"

I said nothing in answer to this outburst,--I was beginning to be used to his shifting humours and strange utterances,--they increased the mysterious attraction I had for him, and made his character a perpetual riddle to me which was not without its subtle charm. Every now and then I realized, with a faintly startled sense of self-abasement, that I was completely under his dominance,--that my life was being entirely guided by his control and suggestion,--but I argued with myself that surely it was well it should be so, seeing he had so much more experience and influence than I. We dined together that night as we often did, and our conversation was entirely taken up with monetary and business concerns. Under Lucio's advice I was making several important investments, and these matters gave us ample subject for discussion. At about eleven o'clock, it being a fine frosty evening and fit for brisk walking, we went out, our destination being the private gambling club to which my companion had volunteered to introduce me as a guest. It was situated at the end of a mysterious little back street, not far from the respectable precincts of Pall-Mall, and was an unpretentious looking house enough outside, but within, it was sumptuously though tastelessly furnished. Apparently, the premises were presided over by a woman,--a woman with painted eyes and dyed hair who received us first of all within the lamp-lighted splendours of an Anglo-Japanese drawing-room. Her looks and manner undisguisedly proclaimed her as a _demi-mondaine_ of the most pronounced type,--one of those 'pure' ladies with a 'past' who are represented as such martyrs to the vices of men. Lucio said something to her apart,--whereupon she glanced at me deferentially and smiled,--then rang the bell. A discreet looking man-servant in sober black made his appearance, and at a slight sign from his mistress who bowed to me as I passed her, proceeded to show us upstairs. We trod on a carpet of the softest felt,--in fact I noticed that everything was rendered as noiseless as possible in this establishment, the very doors being covered with thick baize and swinging on silent hinges. On the upper landing, the servant knocked very cautiously at a side-door,--a key turned in the lock, and we were admitted into a long double room, very brilliantly lit with electric lamps, which at a first glance seemed crowded with men playing at _rouge et noir_ and _baccarat_. Some looked up as Lucio entered and nodded smilingly,--others glanced inquisitively at me, but our entrance was otherwise scarcely noticed. Lucio drawing me along by the arm, sat down to watch the play,--I followed his example and presently found myself infected by the intense excitement which permeated the room like the silent tension of the air before a thunderstorm. I recognised the faces of many well known public men,--men eminent in politics and society whom one would never have imagined capable of supporting a gambling club by their presence and authority. But I took care to betray no sign of surprise, and quietly observed the games and the gamesters with almost as impassive a demeanour as that of my companion. I was prepared to play and to lose,--I was not prepared however for the strange scene which was soon to occur and in which I, by force of circumstances was compelled to take a leading part.

[2] The author has Mr Knowles's own written authority for this fact.

X

As soon as the immediate game we were watching was finished, the players rose, and greeted Lucio with a good deal of eagerness and effusion. I instinctively guessed from their manner that they looked upon him as an influential member of the club, a person likely to lend them money to gamble with, and otherwise to oblige them in various ways, financially speaking. He introduced me to them all, and I was not slow to perceive the effect my name had upon most of them. I was asked if I would join in a game of baccarat, and I readily consented. The stakes were ruinously high, but I had no need to falter for that. One of the players near me was a fair-haired young man, handsome in face and of aristocratic bearing,--he had been introduced to me as Viscount Lynton. I noticed him

## particularly on account of the reckless way he had of doubling his

stakes suddenly and apparently out of mere bravado, and when he lost, as he mostly did, he laughed uproariously as though he were drunk or delirious. On first beginning to play I was entirely indifferent as to the results of the game, caring nothing at all as to whether I had losses or gains. Lucio did not join us, but sat apart, quietly observant, and watching me, so I fancied, more than anyone. And as chance would have it, all the luck came my way, and I won steadily. The more I won the more excited I became, till presently my humour changed and I was seized by a whimsical desire to lose. I suppose it was the touch of some better impulse in my nature that made me wish this for young Lynton's sake. For he seemed literally maddened by my constant winnings, and continued his foolhardy and desperate play,--his young face grew drawn and sharply thin, and his eyes glittered with a hungry feverishness. The other gamesters, though sharing in his run of ill-luck, seemed better able to stand it, or perhaps they concealed their feelings more cleverly,--anyhow I know I caught myself very earnestly wishing that this devil's luck of mine would desert me and set in the young Viscount's direction. But my wishes were no use,--again and again I gathered up the stakes, till at last the players rose, Viscount Lynton among them.

"Well, I'm cleaned out!" he said, with a loud forced laugh. "You must give me my chance of a _revanche_ to-morrow, Mr Tempest!"

I bowed.

"With pleasure!"

He called a waiter at the end of the room to bring him a brandy and soda, and meanwhile I was surrounded by the rest of the men, all of them repeating the Viscount's suggestion of a 'revanche,' and strenuously urging upon me the necessity of returning to the club the next night in order to give them an opportunity of winning back what they had lost. I readily agreed, and while we were in the midst of talk, Lucio suddenly addressed young Lynton.

"Will you make up another game with me?" he inquired. "I'll start the bank with this,"--and he placed two crisp notes of five hundred pounds each on the table.

There was a moment's silence. The Viscount was thirstily drinking his brandy-and-soda, and glanced over the rim of his tall tumbler at the notes with covetous bloodshot eyes,--then he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "I can't stake anything," he said; "I've already told you I'm cleaned out,--'stony-broke,' as the slang goes. It's no use my joining."

"Sit down, sit down, Lynton!" urged one man near him. "I'll lend you enough to go on with."

"Thanks, I'd rather not!" he returned, flushing a little. "I'm too much in your debt already. Awfully good of you all the same. You go on, you fellows, and I'll watch the play."

"Let me persuade you Viscount Lynton," said Lucio, looking at him with his dazzling inscrutable smile--"just for the fun of the thing! If you do not feel justified in staking money, stake something trifling and merely nominal, for the sake of seeing whether the luck will turn"--and here he took up a counter--"This frequently represents fifty pounds,--let it represent for once something that is not valuable like money,--your soul, for example!" A burst of laughter broke from all the men. Lucio laughed softly with them.

"We all have, I hope, enough instruction in modern science to be aware that there is no such thing as a soul in existence"--he continued. "Therefore, in proposing it as a stake for this game at baccarat, I really propose less than one hair of your head, because the hair is a something, and the soul is a nothing! Come! Will you risk that non-existent quantity for the chance of winning a thousand pounds?"

The Viscount drained off the last drop of brandy, and turned upon us, his eyes flushing mingled derision and defiance.

"Done!" he exclaimed; whereupon the party sat down.

The game was brief,--and in its rapid excitement, almost breathless. Six or seven minutes sufficed, and Lucio rose, the winner. He smiled as he pointed to the counter which had represented Viscount Lynton's last stake.

"I have won!" he said quietly. "But you owe me nothing, my dear Viscount, inasmuch as you risked--Nothing! We played this game simply for fun. If souls had any existence of course I should claim yours;--I wonder what I should do with it by the way!" He laughed good-humouredly. "What nonsense, isn't it!--and how thankful we ought to be that we live in advanced days like the present, when such silly superstitions are being swept aside by the march of progress and pure Reason! Good-night! Tempest and I will give you, your full revenge to-morrow,--the luck is sure to change by then, and you will probably have the victory. Again--good-night!"

He held out his hand,--there was a peculiar melting tenderness in his brilliant dark eyes,--an impressive kindness in his manner. Something--I could not tell what--held us all for the moment spellbound as if by enchantment, and several of the players at other tables, hearing of the eccentric stake that had been wagered and lost, looked over at us curiously from a distance. Viscount Lynton, however, professed himself immensely diverted, and shook Lucio's proffered hand heartily.

"You are an awfully good fellow!" he said, speaking a little thickly and hurriedly--"And I assure you seriously if I had a soul I should be very glad to part with it for a thousand pounds at the present moment. The soul wouldn't be an atom of use to me and the thousand pounds would. But I feel convinced I shall win to-morrow!"

"I am equally sure you will!" returned Lucio affably, "In the meantime, you will not find my friend here, Geoffrey Tempest, a hard creditor,--he can afford to wait. But in the case of the lost soul,"--here he paused, looking straight into the young man's eyes,--"of course _I_ cannot afford to wait!"

The Viscount smiled vaguely at this pleasantry, and almost immediately afterwards left the club. As soon as the door had closed behind him, several of the gamesters exchanged sententious nods and glances.

"Ruined!" said one of them in a _sotto-voce_.

"His gambling debts are more than he can ever pay"--added another--"And I hear he has lost a clear fifty thousand on the turf."

These remarks were made indifferently, as though one should talk of the weather,--no sympathy was expressed,--no pity wasted. Every gambler there was selfish to the core, and as I studied their hardened faces, a thrill of honest indignation moved me,--indignation mingled with shame. I was not yet altogether callous or cruel-hearted, though as I look back upon those days which now resemble a wild vision rather than a reality, I know that I was becoming more and more of a brutal egoist with every hour I lived. Still I was so far then from being utterly vile, that I inwardly resolved to write to Viscount Lynton that very evening, and tell him to consider his debt to me cancelled, as I should refuse to claim it. While this thought was passing through my mind, I met Lucio's gaze fixed steadily upon me. He smiled,--and presently signed to me to accompany him. In a few minutes we had left the club, and were out in the cold night air under a heaven of frostily sparkling stars. Standing still for a moment, my companion laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Tempest, if you are going to be kind-hearted or sympathetic to undeserving rascals, I shall have to part company with you!" he said, with a curious mixture of satire and seriousness in his voice--"I see by the expression of your face that you are meditating some silly disinterested action of pure generosity. Now you might just as well flop down on these paving stones and begin saying prayers in public. You want to let Lynton off his debt,--you are a fool for your pains. He is a born scoundrel,--and has never seen his way to being anything else,--why should you compassionate him? From the time he first went to college till now, he has been doing nothing but live a life of degraded sensuality,--he is a worthless rake, less to be respected than an honest dog!"

"Yet some one loves him I daresay!" I said.

"Some one loves him!" echoed Lucio with inimitable disdain--"Bah! Three ballet girls live on him if that is what you mean. His mother loved him,--but she is dead,--he broke her heart. He is no good I tell you,--let him pay his debt in full, even to the soul he staked so lightly. If I were the devil now, and had just won the strange game we played to-night, I suppose according to priestly tradition, I should be piling up the fire for Lynton in high glee,--but being what I am, I say let the man alone to make his own destiny,--let things take their course,--and as he chose to risk everything, so let him pay everything."

We were by this time walking slowly into Pall Mall,--I was on the point of making some reply, when catching sight of a man's figure on the opposite side of the way, not far from the Marlborough Club, I uttered an involuntary exclamation.

"Why there he is!" I said--"there is Viscount Lynton!"

Lucio's hand closed tightly on my arm.

"You don't want to speak to him now, surely!"

"No. But I wonder where he's going? He walks rather unsteadily."

"Drunk, most probably!"

And Lucio's face presented the same relentless expression of scorn I had so often seen and marvelled at.

We paused a moment, watching the Viscount strolling aimlessly up and down in front of the clubs,--till all at once he seemed to come to a sudden resolution, and stopping short, he shouted,

"Hansom!"

A silent-wheeled smart vehicle came bowling up immediately. Giving some order to the driver, he jumped in. The cab approached swiftly in our direction,--just as it passed us the loud report of a pistol crashed on the silence.

"Good God!" I cried reeling back a step or two--"He has shot himself!"

The hansom stopped,--the driver sprang down,--club-porters, waiters, policemen and no end of people starting up from Heaven knows where, were on the scene on an instant,--I rushed forward to join the rapidly gathering throng, but before I could do so, Lucio's strong arm was thrown round me, and he dragged me by main force away.

"Keep cool, Geoffrey!" he said--"Do you want to be called up to identify? And betray the club and all its members? Not while I am here to prevent you! Check your mad impulses, my good fellow,--they will lead you into no end of difficulties. If the man's dead he's dead, and there's an end of it."

"Lucio! You have no heart!" I exclaimed, struggling violently to escape from his hold--"How can you stop to reason in such a case! Think of it! _I_ am the cause of all the mischief!--it is my cursed luck at baccarat this evening that has been the final blow to the wretched young fellow's fortunes,--I am convinced of it!--I shall never forgive myself--"

"Upon my word, Geoffrey, your conscience is very tender!" he answered, holding my arm still more closely and hurrying me away despite myself--"You must try and toughen it a little if you want to be successful in life. Your 'cursed luck' you think, has caused Lynton's death? Surely it is a contradiction in terms to call luck 'cursed,'--and as for the Viscount, he did not need that last game at baccarat to emphasise his ruin. You are not to blame. And for the sake of the club, if for nothing else, I do not intend either you or myself to be mixed up in a case of suicide. The coroner's verdict always disposes of these incidents comfortably in two words--'Temporary insanity.'"

I shuddered. My soul sickened as I thought that within a few yards of us was the bleeding corpse of the man I had so lately seen alive and spoken with,--and notwithstanding Lucio's words I felt as if I had murdered him.

"'Temporary insanity'"--repeated Lucio again, as if speaking to himself--"all remorse, despair, outraged honour, wasted love, together with the scientific modern theory of Reasonable Nothingness--Life a Nothing, God a Nothing,--when these drive the distracted human unit to make of himself also a nothing, 'temporary insanity' covers up his plunge into the infinite with an untruthful pleasantness. However, after all, it is as Shakespeare says, a mad world!"

I made no answer. I was too overcome by my own miserable sensations. I walked along almost unconscious of movement, and as I stared bewilderedly up at the stars they danced before my sight like fireflies whirling in a mist of miasma. Presently a faint hope occurred to me.

"Perhaps," I said, "he has not really killed himself? It may be only an attempt?"

"He was a capital shot"--returned Lucio composedly,--"That was his one quality. He has no principles,--but he was a good marksman. I cannot imagine his missing aim."

"It is horrible! An hour ago alive, ... and now ... I tell you, Lucio, it is horrible!"

"What is? Death? It is not half so horrible as Life lived wrongly,"--he responded, with a gravity that impressed me in spite of my emotion and excitement--"Believe me, the mental sickness and confusion of a wilfully degraded existence are worse tortures than are contained in the priestly notions of Hell. Come come, Geoffrey, you take this matter too much to heart,--you are not to blame. If Lynton has given himself the 'happy dispatch' it is really the best thing he could do,--he was of no use to anybody, and he is well out of it. It is positively weak of you to attach importance to such a trifle. You are only at the beginning of your career----"

"Well, I hope that career will not lead me into any more such tragedies as the one enacted to-night,"--I said passionately--"If it does, it will be entirely against my will!"

Lucio looked at me curiously.

"Nothing can happen to you against your will"--he replied; "I suppose you wish to imply that I am to blame for introducing you to the club? My good fellow, you need not have gone there unless you had chosen to do so! I did not bind and drag you there! You are upset and unnerved,--come into my room and take a glass of wine,--you will feel more of a man afterwards."

We had by this time reached the hotel, and I went with him passively. With equal passiveness I drank what he gave me, and stood, glass in hand, watching him with a kind of morbid fascination as he threw off his fur-lined overcoat and confronted me, his pale handsome face strangely set and stern, and his dark eyes glittering like cold steel.

"That last stake of Lynton's, ... to you--" I said falteringly--"His soul----"

"Which _he_ did not believe in, and which _you_ do not believe in!" returned Lucio, regarding me fixedly. "Why do you now seem to tremble at a mere sentimental idea? If fantastic notions such as God, the Soul, and the Devil were real facts, there would perhaps be cause for trembling, but being only the brainsick imaginations of superstitious mankind, there is nothing in them to awaken the slightest anxiety or fear."

"But you"--I began--"you say you believe in the soul?"

"I? I am brainsick!" and he laughed bitterly--"Have you not found that out yet? Much learning hath driven me mad, my friend! Science has led me into such deep wells of dark discovery, that it is no wonder if my senses sometimes reel,--and I believe--at such insane moments--in the Soul!"

I sighed heavily.

"I think I will go to bed," I answered. "I am tired out,--and absolutely miserable!"

"Alas, poor millionaire!" said Lucio gently,--"I am sorry, I assure you, that the evening has ended so disastrously."

"So am I!" I returned despondently.

"Imagine it!" he went on, dreamily regarding me--"If my beliefs,--my crack-brained theories,--were worth anything,--which they are not--I could claim the only positive existing part of our late acquaintance Viscount Lynton! But,--where and how to send in my account with him? If I were Satan now...."

I forced a faint smile.

"You would have cause to rejoice!" I said.

He moved two paces towards me, and laid his hands gently on my shoulders.

"No, Geoffrey"--and his rich voice had a strange soft music in it--"No, my friend! If I were Satan I should probably lament!--for every lost soul would of necessity remind me of my own fall, my own despair,--and set another bar between myself and heaven! Remember,--the very Devil was an Angel once!"

His eyes smiled, and yet I could have sworn there were tears in them. I wrung his hand hard,--I felt that notwithstanding his assumed coldness and cynicism, the fate of young Lynton had affected him profoundly. My liking for him gained new fervour from this impression, and I went to bed more at ease with myself and things in general. During the few minutes I spent in undressing I became even able to contemplate the tragedy of the evening with less regret and greater calmness,--for it was certainly no use worrying over the irrevocable,--and, after all, what interest had the Viscount's life for me? None. I began to ridicule myself for my own weakness and disinterested emotion,--and presently, being thoroughly fatigued, fell sound asleep. Towards morning however, perhaps about four or five o'clock, I woke suddenly as though touched by an invisible hand. I was shivering violently, and my body was bathed in a cold perspiration. In the otherwise dark room there was something strangely luminous, like a cloud of white smoke or fire. I started up, rubbing my eyes,--and stared before me for a moment, doubting the evidence of my own senses. For, plainly visible and substantially distinct, at a distance of perhaps five paces from my bed, stood three Figures, muffled in dark garments and closely hooded. So solemnly inert they were,--so heavily did their sable draperies fall about them that it was impossible to tell whether they were men or women,--but what paralysed me with amazement and terror was the strange light that played around and above them,--the spectral, wandering, chill radiance that illumined them like the rays of a faint wintry moon. I strove to cry out,--but my tongue refused to obey me--and my voice was strangled in my throat. The Three remained absolutely motionless,--and again I rubbed my eyes, wondering if this were a dream or some hideous optical delusion. Trembling in every limb, I stretched my hand towards the bell intending to ring violently for assistance,--when--a Voice, low and thrilling with intense anguish, caused me to shrink back appalled, and my arm fell nerveless at my side. "_Misery!_"

The word struck the air with a harsh reproachful clang, and I nearly swooned with the horror of it. For now one of the Figures moved, and a face gleamed out from beneath its hooded wrappings--a face white as whitest marble and fixed into such an expression of dreadful despair as froze my blood. Then came a deep sigh that was more like a death-groan, and again the word, "_Misery!_" shuddered upon the silence.

Mad with fear, and scarcely knowing what I did, I sprang from the bed, and began desperately to advance upon these fantastic masqueraders, determined to seize them and demand the meaning of this practical and untimely jest,--when suddenly all Three lifted their heads and turned their faces on me,--such faces!--indescribably awful in their pallid agony,--and a whisper more ghastly than a shriek, penetrated the very fibres of my consciousness--"_Misery!_"

With a furious bound I flung myself upon them,--my hands struck _empty space_. Yet there--distinct as ever--they stood, glowering down upon me, while my clenched fists beat impotently _through_ and _beyond_ their seemingly corporeal shapes! And then--all at once--I became aware of their eyes,--eyes that watched me pitilessly, stedfastly, and disdainfully,--eyes that like witch-fires, seemed to slowly burn terrific meanings into my very flesh and spirit. Convulsed and almost frantic with the strain on my nerves, I abandoned myself to despair,--this awful sight meant death I thought,--my last hour had surely come! Then--I saw the lips of one of those dreadful faces move ... some superhuman instinct in me leaped to life, ... in some strange way I thought I knew, or guessed the horror of what that next utterance would be, ... and with all my remaining force I cried out--

"No! No! Not that eternal Doom! ... Not yet!"

Fighting the vacant air, I strove to beat back those intangible weird Shapes that loomed above me, withering up my soul with the fixed stare of their angry eyes, and with a choking call for help, I fell, as it were, into a pit of darkness, where I lay mercifully unconscious.

XI

How the ensuing hours between this horrible episode and full morning elapsed I do not know. I was dead to all impressions. I woke at last, or rather recovered my senses to see the sunlight pouring pleasantly through the half-drawn curtains at my window, and to find myself in bed in as restful a position as though I had never left it. Was it then merely a vision I had seen?--a ghastly sort of nightmare? If so, it was surely the most abhorrent illusion ever evolved from dreamland! It could not be a question of health, for I had never felt better in my life. I lay for some time quiescent, thinking over the matter, with my eyes fixed on that part of the room where those Three Shapes had seemingly stood; but I had lately got into such a habit of cool self-analysis, that by the time my valet brought my early cup of coffee, I had decided that the whole thing was a dreadful fantasy, born of my own imagination, which had no doubt been unduly excited by the affair of Viscount Lynton's suicide. I soon learned that there was no room left for doubt as to that unhappy young nobleman's actual death. A brief account of it was in the morning papers, though as the tragedy had occurred so late at night there were no details. A vague hint of 'money difficulties' was thrown out in one journal,--but beyond that, and the statement that the body had been conveyed to the mortuary there to await an inquest, there was nothing said, either personal or particular. I found Lucio in the smoking-room, and it was he who first silently pointed out to me the short paragraph headed 'Suicide of a Viscount.'

"I told you he was a good shot!" he commented.

I nodded. Somehow I had ceased to feel much interest in the subject. My emotion of the previous evening had apparently exhausted all my stock of sympathy and left me coldly indifferent. Absorbed in myself and my own concerns, I sat down to talk and was not long before I had given a full and circumstantial account of the spectral illusion which had so unpleasantly troubled me during the night. Lucio listened, smiling oddly.

"That old Tokay was evidently too strong for you!" he said, when I had concluded my story.

"Did you give me old Tokay?" I responded laughing--"Then the mystery is explained! I was already overwrought, and needed no stimulant. But what tricks the imagination plays us to be sure! You have no idea of the distinct manner in which those three phantoms asserted themselves! The impression was extraordinarily vivid."

"No doubt!" And his dark eyes studied me curiously. "Impressions often _are_ very vivid. See what a marvellously real impression this world makes upon us, for example!"

"Ah! But then the world _is_ real!" I answered.

"Is it? You accept it as such, I daresay, and things are as they appear to each separate individual. No two human beings think alike; hence there may be conflicting opinions as to the reality or non-reality of this present world. But we will not take unnecessary plunges into the infinite question of what _is_, as contrasted with what appears to be. I have some letters here for your consideration. You have lately spoken of buying a country estate--what say you to Willowsmere Court in Warwickshire? I have had my eye on that place for you,--it seems to me just the very thing. It is a magnificent old pile; part of it dates from Elizabeth's time. It is in excellent repair; the grounds are most picturesque, the classic river Avon winds with rather a broad sweep through the park,--and the whole thing, with a great part of the furniture included, is to be sold for a mere song;--fifty thousand pounds cash. I think you had better go in for it; it would just suit your literary and poetic tastes."

Was it my fancy, or had his musical voice the faintest touch of a sneer as he uttered the last words? I would not allow myself to think this possible, and answered quickly,--

"Anything _you_ recommend must be worth looking at, and I'll certainly go and see it. The description sounds well, and Shakespeare's country always appeals to me. But wouldn't you like to secure it for yourself?"

He laughed.

"Not I! I live nowhere for long. I am of a roving disposition, and am never happy tied down to one corner of the earth. But I suggest Willowsmere to you for two reasons,--first that it is charming and perfectly appointed; secondly, that it will impress Lord Elton considerably if he knows you are going to buy it."

"How so?"

"Why, because it used to be his property"--returned Lucio quietly--"till he got into the hands of the Jews. He gave them Willowsmere as security for loans, and latterly they have stepped in as owners. They've sold most of the pictures, china, bric-a-brac and other valuables. By the way, have you noticed how the legended God still appears to protect the house of Israel? Particularly the 'base usurer' who is allowed to get the unhappy Christian into his clutches nine times out of ten? And no remedy drops from heaven! The Jew always triumphs. Rather inconsistent isn't it, on the part of an equitable Deity!" His eyes flashed strange scorn. Anon he resumed--"As a result of Lord Elton's unfortunate speculations, and the Jews' admirable shrewdness, Willowsmere, as I tell you is in the market, and fifty thousand pounds will make you the envied owner of a place worth a hundred thousand."

"We dine at the Eltons' to-night, do we not?" I asked musingly.

"We do. You cannot have forgotten that engagement and Lady Sibyl so soon surely!" he answered laughing.

"No, I have not forgotten"--I said at last, after a little silence. "And I will buy this Willowsmere. I will telegraph instructions to my lawyers at once. Will you give me the name and address of the agents?"

"With pleasure, my dear boy!" And Lucio handed me a letter containing the particulars concerning the sale of the estate and other items. "But are you not making up your mind rather suddenly? Hadn't you better inspect the property first? There may be things you object to----"

"If it were a rat-infested barrack," I said resolutely--"I would still buy it! I shall settle the matter at once. I wish to let Lord Elton know this very night that I am the future owner of Willowsmere!"

"Good!"--and my companion thrust his arm through mine as we left the smoking-room together--"I like your swiftness of action Geoffrey. It is admirable! I always respect determination. Even if a man makes up his mind to go to hell, I honour him for keeping to his word, and going there straight as a die!"

I laughed, and we parted in high good-humour,--he to fulfil a club engagement, I to telegraph precise instructions to my legal friends Messrs Bentham and Ellis, for the immediate purchase in my name at all costs, risks or inconveniences, of the estate known as Willowsmere Court in the county of Warwick.

That evening I dressed with more than common care, giving my man Morris almost as much trouble as if I had been a fidgetty woman. He waited upon me however with exemplary patience, and only when I was quite ready did he venture to utter what had evidently been on his mind for some time.

"Excuse me sir,"--he then observed--"but I daresay you've noticed that there's something unpleasant-like about the prince's valet, Amiel?"

"Well, he's rather a down-looking fellow if that's what you mean,"--I replied--"But I suppose there's no harm in him."

"I don't know about that sir,"--answered Morris severely; "He does a great many strange things I do assure you. Downstairs with the servants he goes on something surprising. Sings and acts and dances too, as if he were a whole music-hall."

"Really!" I exclaimed in surprise--"I should never have thought it."

"Nor should I sir, but it's a fact."

"He must be rather an amusing fellow then,"--I continued, wondering that my man should take the accomplishments of Amiel in such an injured manner.

"Oh, I don't say anything against his amusingness,"--and Morris rubbed his nose with a doubtful air--"It's all very well for him to cut capers and make himself agreeable if he likes,--but it's the deceit of him that surprises me sir. You'd think to look at him that he was a decent sort of dull chap with no ideas beyond his duty, but really sir, it's quite the contrary, if you'll believe me. The language he uses when he's up to his games downstairs is something frightful! And he actually swears he learnt it from the gentlemen of the turf, sir! Last night he was play

## acting, and taking off all the fashionable folks,--then he took to

hypnotising--and upon my word it made my blood run cold."

"Why, what did he do?" I asked with some curiosity.

"Well, sir, he took one of the scullery-maids and sat her in a chair and just pointed at her. Pointed at her and grinned, for all the world like a devil out of a pantomime. And though she is generally a respectable sober young woman, if she didn't get up with a screech and commence dancing round and round like a lunatic, while he kept on pointing. And presently she got to jumping and lifting her skirts that high that it was positively scandalous! Some of us tried to stop her and couldn't; she was like mad, till all at once number twenty-two bell rang--that's the prince's room,--and he just caught hold of her, set her down in her chair again and clapped his hands. She came to directly, and didn't know a bit what she'd been doing. Then twenty-two bell rang again, and the fellow rolled up his eyes like a clergyman and said, 'Let us pray!' and off he went."

I laughed.

"He seems to have a share of humour at anyrate,"--I said; "I should not have thought it of him. But do you think these antics of his are mischievous?"

"Well that scullery girl is very ill to-day,"--replied Morris; "I expect she'll have to leave. She has what she calls the 'jumps' and none of us dare tell her how she got them. No sir, believe me or not as you like, there's something very queer about that Amiel. And another thing I want to know is this--what does he do with the other servants?"

"What does he do with the other servants?" I repeated bewilderedly--"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well sir, the prince has a _chef_ of his own hasn't he?" said Morris enumerating on his fingers--"And two personal attendants besides Amiel,--quiet fellows enough who help in the waiting. Then he has a coachman and groom. That makes six servants altogether. Now none of these except Amiel are ever seen in the hotel kitchens. The _chef_ sends all the meals in from somewhere, in a heated receptacle--and the two other fellows are never seen except when waiting at table, and they don't live in their own rooms all day, though they _may_ sleep there,--and nobody knows where the carriage and horses are put up, or where the coachman and groom lodge. Certain it is that both they and the _chef_ board out. It seems to me very mysterious."

I began to feel quite unreasonably irritated.

"Look here, Morris," I said--"There's nothing more useless or more harmful than the habit of inquiring into other people's affairs. The prince has a right to live as he likes, and do as he pleases with his servants--I am sure he pays royally for his privileges. And whether his cook lives in or out, up in the skies or down in a cellar is no matter of mine. He has been a great traveller and no doubt has his peculiarities; and probably his notions concerning food are very

## particular and fastidious. But I don't want to know anything about his

ménage. If you dislike Amiel, it's easy to avoid him, but for goodness sake don't go making mysteries where none exist."

Morris looked up, then down, and folded one of my coats with special care. I saw I had effectually checked his flow of confidence.

"Very well, sir,"--he observed, and said no more.

I was rather diverted than otherwise at my servant's solemn account of Amiel's peculiarities as exhibited among his own class,--and when we were driving to Lord Elton's that evening I told something of the story to Lucio. He laughed.

"Amiel's spirits are often too much for him,"--he said--"He is a perfect imp of mischief and cannot always control himself."

"Why, what a wrong estimate I have formed of him!" I said--"I thought he had a peculiarly grave and somewhat sullen disposition."

"You know the trite saying--appearances are deceptive?" went on my companion lightly--"It's extremely true. The professed humourist is nearly always a disagreeable and heavy man personally. As for Amiel, he is like me in the respect of not being at all what he seems. His only fault is a tendency to break the bounds of discipline, but otherwise he serves me well, and I do not inquire further. Is Morris disgusted or alarmed?"

"Neither I think," I responded laughing--"He merely presents himself to me as an example of outraged respectability."

"Ah then, you may be sure that when the scullery-maid was dancing, he observed her steps with the closest nicety;" said Lucio--"Very respectable men are always particular of inspection into these matters! Soothe his ruffled feelings, my dear Geoffrey, and tell him that Amiel is the very soul of virtue! I have had him in my service for a long time, and can urge nothing against his character as a man. He does not pretend to be an angel. His tricks of speech and behaviour are the result of a too constant repression of his natural hilarity, but he is really an excellent fellow. He dabbled in hypnotic science when he was with me in India; I have often warned him of the danger there is in practising this force on the uninitiated. But--a scullery-maid!--heavens!--there are so many scullery-maids! One more or less with the 'jumps' will not matter. This is Lord Elton's."

The carriage stopped before a handsome house situated a little back from Park Lane. We were admitted by a man-servant gorgeous in red plush, white silk hose and powdered wig, who passed us on majestically to his twin-brother in height and appearance, though perhaps a trifle more disdainful in bearing, and he in his turn ushered us upstairs with the air of one who should say "See to what ignominious degradation a cruel fate reduces so great a man!" In the drawing-room we found Lord Elton, standing on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and directly opposite him in a low arm chair, reclined an elegantly attired young lady with very small feet. I mention the feet, because as I entered they were the most prominent part of her person, being well stretched out from beneath the would-be concealment of sundry flounced petticoats towards the warmth of the fire which the Earl rather inconsiderately screened from view. There was another lady in the room sitting bolt upright with hands neatly folded on her lap, and to her we were first of all introduced when Lord Elton's own effusive greetings were over.

"Charlotte, allow me,--my friends, Prince Lucio Rimânez--Mr Geoffrey Tempest; gentlemen, my sister-in-law, Miss Charlotte Fitzroy."

We bowed; the lady gave us a dignified bend of the head. She was an imposing looking spinster, with a curious expression on her features which was difficult to construe. It was pious and prim, but it also suggested the idea that she must have seen something excessively improper once in her life and had never been able to forget it. The pursed-up mouth, the round pale-coloured eyes and the chronic air of insulted virtue which seemed to pervade her from head to foot all helped to deepen this impression. One could not look at Miss Charlotte long without beginning to wonder irreverently what it was that had in her long past youth so outraged the cleanly proprieties of her nature as to leave such indelible traces on her countenance. But I have since seen many English women look so, especially among the particularly 'high bred,' old and plain-featured of the "upper ten." Very different was the saucy and bright physiognomy of the younger lady to whom we were next presented, and who, raising herself languidly from her reclining position, smiled at us with encouraging familiarity as we made our salutations.

"Miss Diana Chesney,"--said the Earl glibly--"You perhaps know her father, prince,--you must have heard of him at any rate--the famous Nicodemus Chesney, one of the great railway-kings."

"Of course I know him"--responded Lucio warmly--"Who does not! I have met him often. A charming man, gifted with most remarkable humour and vitality--I remember him perfectly. We saw a good deal of each other in Washington."

"Did you though?" said Miss Chesney with a somewhat indifferent interest,--"He's a queer sort of man to my thinking; rather a cross between the ticket-collector and custom-house officer combined, you know! I never see him but what I feel I must start on a journey directly--railways seem to be written all over him. I tell him so. I say 'Pa, if you didn't carry railway-tracks in your face you'd be better looking.' And you found him humorous, did you?"

Laughing at the novel and free way in which this young person criticised her parent, Lucio protested that he did.

"Well I don't,"--confessed Miss Chesney--"But that may be because I've heard all his stories over and over again, and I've read most of them in books besides,--so they're not much account to me. He tells some of them to the Prince of Wales whenever he can get a chance,--but he don't try them off on me any more. He's a real clever man too; he's made his pile quicker than most. And you're quite right about his vitality,--my!--his laugh takes you into the middle of next week!"

Her bright eyes flashed merrily as she took a comprehensive survey of our amused faces.

"Think I'm irreverent, don't you?" she went on--"But you know Pa's not a 'stage parent' all dressed out in lovely white hair and benedictions,--he's just an accommodating railway-track, and he wouldn't like to be reverenced. Do sit down, won't you?"--then turning her pretty head coquettishly towards her host--"Make them sit down, Lord Elton,--I hate to see men standing. The superior sex, you know! Besides you're so tall," she added, glancing with unconcealed admiration at Lucio's handsome face and figure, "that it's like peering up an apple-tree at the moon to look at you!"

Lucio laughed heartily, and seated himself near her--I followed his example; the old Earl still kept his position, legs a-straddle, on the hearth-rug, and beamed benevolence upon us all. Certainly Diana Chesney was a captivating creature; one of those surface-clever American women who distinctly divert men's minds without in the least rousing their passions.

"So you're the famous Mr Tempest?" she said, surveying me critically--"Why, it's simply splendid for you isn't it? I always say it's no use having a heap of money unless you're young,--if you're old, you only want it to fill your doctor's pockets while he tries to mend your poor tuckered-out constitution. I once knew an old lady who was left a legacy of a hundred thousand pounds when she was ninety-five. Poor old dear, she cried over it. She just had sense enough to understand what a good time she couldn't have. She lived in bed, and her only luxury was a halfpenny bun dipped in milk for her tea. It was all she cared for."

"A hundred thousand pounds would go a long way in buns!" I said smiling.

"Wouldn't it just!" and the fair Diana laughed--"But I guess _you'll_ want something a little more substantial for your cash Mr Tempest! A fortune in the prime of life is worth having. I suppose you're one of the richest men about just now, aren't you?"

She put the question in a perfectly naïve frank manner and seemed to be unconscious of any undue inquisitiveness in it.

"I may be one of the richest,"--I replied, and as I spoke the thought flashed suddenly across me how recently I had been one of the poorest!--"But my friend here, the prince, is far richer than I."

"Is that so!" and she stared straight at Lucio, who met her gaze with an indulgent, half satirical smile--"Well now! I guess Pa's no better than a sort of pauper after all! Why, you must have the world at your feet!"

"Pretty much so,"--replied Lucio composedly--"But then, my dear Miss Chesney, the world is so very easily brought to one's feet. Surely _you_ know that?"

And he emphasized the words by an expressive look of his fine eyes.

"I guess you mean compliments,"--she replied unconcernedly--"I don't like them as a rule, but I'll forgive you this once!"

"Do!" said Lucio, with one of his dazzling smiles that caused her to stop for a moment in her voluble chatter and observe him with mingled fascination and wonderment.

"And you too are young, like Mr Tempest,"--she resumed presently.

"Pardon me!" interrupted Lucio--"I am many years older."

"Really!" exclaimed Lord Elton at this juncture--"You don't look it, does he Charlotte?"

Miss Fitzroy thus appealed to, raised her elegant tortoise-shell-framed glasses to her eyes and peered critically at us both.

"I should imagine the prince to be slightly the senior of Mr Tempest"--she remarked in precise high-bred accents--"But only very slightly."

"Anyhow," resumed Miss Chesney "you're young enough, to enjoy your wealth aren't you?"

"Young enough, or old enough;--just as you please;"--said Lucio with a careless shrug--"But as it happens--I do _not_ enjoy it!"

Miss Chesney's whole aspect now expressed the most lively astonishment.

"What does money do for you?" went on Lucio, his eyes dilating with that strange and wistful expression which had often excited my curiosity--"The world is at your feet, perhaps; yes--but _what_ a world! What a trumpery clod of kickable matter! Wealth acts merely as a kind of mirror to show you human nature at its worst. Men skulk and fawn about you, and lie twenty times in as many hours in the hope to propitiate you and serve their own interests; princes of the blood willingly degrade themselves and their position to borrow cash of you,--your intrinsic merit (if you have any) is thought nothing of,--your full pockets are your credentials with kings, prime ministers and councillors! You may talk like a fool, laugh like a hyena and look like a baboon, but if the chink-chink of your gold be only sufficiently loud, you may soon find yourself dining with the Queen if such be your ambition. If, on the contrary you happen to be truly great, brave, patient, and enduring, with a spark in you of that genius which strengthens life and makes it better worth living,--if you have thoughts which take shape in work that shall endure when kingdoms are swept away like dust before the wind, and if, with all this you are yet poor in current coin, why then,--you shall be spurned by all the crowned dummies of the world,--you shall be snubbed by the affluent starch-maker and the Croesus who lives on a patent pill,--the tradesman from whom you buy bedsteads and kitchen ware, can look down upon you with lordly scorn, for does he not by virtue of his wealth alone, drive a four-in-hand, and chat on easy and almost patronizing terms with the Prince of Wales? The wealthy denizens of Snob-land delight in ignoring Nature's elected noblemen."

"But supposing" said Miss Chesney quickly, "you happen to be a Nature's nobleman yourself, and have the advantage of wealth besides, surely you must fairly allow that to be rather a good thing, mustn't you?"

Lucio laughed a little--

"I will retort upon you in your own words fair lady, and say 'I guess you mean compliments.' What I venture to imply however, is that even when wealth does fall to the lot of one of these 'Nature's noblemen,' it is not _because_ of his innate nobility that he wins social distinction. It is simply because he is rich. That is what vexes me. I for example, have endless friends who are not my friends so much as the friends of my income. They do not trouble to inquire as to my antecedents,--what I am or where I came from is of no importance. Neither are they concerned in how I live or what I do; whether I am sick or well, happy or unhappy, is equally with them a matter of indifference. If they knew more about me, it would perhaps be better in the long run. But they do not want to know,--their aims are simple and unconcealed,--they wish to make as much out of me, and secure as much advantage to themselves by their acquaintance with me as possible. And I give them their full way,--they get all they want,--and more!"

His musical voice lingered with a curiously melancholy impressiveness on the last word,--and this time, not only Miss Chesney, but we all, looked at him as though drawn by some irresistible magnetic spell, and for a moment there was silence.

"Very few people have any real friends,"--said Lord Elton presently. "And in that respect I suppose we're none of us worse off than Socrates, who used to keep two chairs only in his house 'one for myself, and another for a friend--when I find him!' But you are a universal favourite Lucio,--a most popular fellow--and I think you're rather hard on your set. People must look after themselves you know--eh?"

Lucio bowed his head gravely.

"They must indeed," he replied--"Especially as the latest news of science is that God has given up the business."

Miss Fitzroy looked displeased,--but the Earl laughed uproariously. At that moment a step was heard outside, approaching the open doorway of the drawing-room, and Miss Chesney's quick ears caught the sound. She shook herself out of her reclining attitude instantly and sat erect.

"It's Sibyl!" she said with a half-laughing half-apologetic flash of her brown eyes at us all--"I never can loll before Sibyl!"

My heart beat fast as the woman whom poets might have called the goddess of their dreams, but whom I was now disposed to consider as an object of beauty lawfully open to my purchase, entered, clad in simple white, unrelieved by any ornaments save a golden waistbelt of antique workmanship, and a knot of violets nestled among the lace at her bosom. She looked far lovelier than when I had first seen her at the theatre; there was a deeper light in her eyes and a more roseate flush on her cheeks, while her smile as she greeted us was positively dazzling. Something in her presence, her movements, her manner, sent such a tide of passion through me that for a moment my brain whirled in a dizzy maze, and despite the cold calculations I had made in my own mind as to the certainty I had of winning her for my wife, there was a wondrous charm of delicate dignity and unapproachableness about her that caused me for the moment to feel ashamed, and inclined to doubt even the power of wealth to move this exquisite lily of maidenhood from her sequestered peace. Ah, what fools men are! How little do we dream of the canker at the hearts of these women 'lilies' that look so pure and full of grace!

"You are late, Sibyl," said her aunt severely.

"Am I?" she responded with languid indifference--"So sorry! Papa, are you an extemporized fire-screen?"

Lord Elton hastily moved to one side, rendered suddenly conscious of his selfish monopoly of the blaze.

"Are you not cold, Miss Chesney?" continued Lady Sibyl, in accents of studied courtesy--"Would you not like to come nearer the fire?"

Diana Chesney had become quite subdued, almost timid in fact.

"Thank-you!"--she murmured, and her eyes drooped with what might have been called retiring maiden modesty, had not Miss Chesney's qualities soared far beyond that trite description.

"We heard some shocking news this morning, Mr Tempest," said Lady Sibyl, looking at Lucio rather than at me--"No doubt you read it in the papers,--an acquaintance of ours, Viscount Lynton, shot himself last night."

I could not repress a slight start. Lucio gave me a warning glance, and took it upon himself to reply.

"Yes, I read a brief account of the affair--terrible indeed! I also knew him slightly."

"Did you? Well, he was engaged to a friend of mine," went on Lady Sibyl--"I myself think she has had a lucky escape, because though he was an agreeable man enough in society, he was a great gambler, and very extravagant, and he would have run through her fortune very quickly. But she cannot be brought to see it in that light,--she is dreadfully upset. She had set her heart on being a Viscountess."

"I guess," said Miss Chesney demurely, with a sly sparkle of her eyes--"it's not only Americans who run after titles. Since I've been over here I've known several real nice girls marry downright mean dough-heads just for the sake of being called 'my lady' or 'your grace.' I like a title very well myself--but I also like a man attached to it."

The Earl smothered a chuckling laugh,--Lady Sibyl gazed meditatively into the fire and went on as though she had not heard.

"Of course my friend will have other chances,--she is young and handsome--but I really think, apart from the social point of view, that she was a little in love with the Viscount----"

"Nonsense! nonsense!" said her father somewhat testily. "You always have some romantic notion or other in your head Sibyl,--one 'season' ought to have cured you of sentiment--ha-ha-ha! She always knew he was a dissolute rascal, and she was going to marry him with her eyes wide open to the fact. When I read in the papers that he had blown his brains out in a hansom, I said 'Bad taste--bad taste! spoiling a poor cabby's stock-in-trade to satisfy a selfish whim!' ha-ha!--but I thought it was a good riddance of bad rubbish. He would have made any woman's life utterly miserable."

"No doubt he would!" responded Lady Sibyl, listlessly; "But, all the same, there is such a thing as love sometimes."

She raised her beautiful liquid eyes to Lucio's face, but he was not looking her way, and her steadfast gaze met mine instead. What my looks expressed I know not; but I saw the rich blood mantle warmly in her cheeks, and a tremor seemed to pass through her frame,--then she grew very pale. At that moment one of the gorgeous footmen appeared at the doorway.

"Dinner is served, my lud."

"Good!" and the Earl proceeded to 'pair' us all. "Prince, will you take Miss Fitzroy,--Mr Tempest, my daughter falls to your escort,--I will follow with Miss Chesney."

We set off in this order down the stairs, and as I walked behind Lucio with Lady Sibyl on my arm, I could not help smiling at the extreme gravity and earnestness with which he was discussing church matters with Miss Charlotte, and the sudden enthusiasm that apparently seized that dignified spinster at some of his remarks on the clergy, which took the form of the most affectionate and respectful eulogies, and were totally the reverse of the ideas he had exchanged with me on the same subject. Some spirit of mischief was evidently moving him to have a solemn joke with the high-bred lady he escorted, and I noted his behaviour with a good deal of inward amusement.

"Then you know the dear Canon?" I heard Miss Charlotte say.

"Most intimately!" replied Lucio with fervour--"and I assure you I am thankful to have the privilege of knowing him. A truly perfect man!--almost a saint--if not quite!"

"So pure-minded!" sighed the spinster.

"So free from every taint of hypocrisy!" murmured Lucio with intense gravity.

"Ah yes! Yes indeed! And so----"

Here they passed into the dining-room and I could hear no more. I followed with my beautiful partner, and in another minute we were all seated at table.

XII

The dinner went on in the fashion of most dinners at great houses,--commencing with arctic stiffness and formality, thawing slightly towards the middle course, and attaining to just a pleasant warmth of mutual understanding when ices and dessert gave warning of its approaching close. Conversation at first flagged unaccountably, but afterwards brightened under Lucio's influence to a certain gaiety. I did my best to entertain Lady Sibyl, but found her like most 'society' beauties, somewhat of a vague listener. She was certainly cold, and in a manner irresponsive,--moreover I soon decided that she was not

## particularly clever. She had not the art of sustaining or appearing to

sustain interest in any one subject; on the contrary, she had, like many of her class, an irritating habit of mentally drifting away from you into an absorbed reverie of her own in which you had no part, and which plainly showed you how little she cared for anything you or anyone else happened to be saying. Many little random remarks of hers however implied that in her apparently sweet nature there lurked a vein of cynicism and a certain contempt for men, and more than once her light words stung my sense of self-love almost to resentment, while they strengthened the force of my resolve to win her and bend that proud spirit of hers to the meekness befitting the wife of a millionaire and--a genius. A genius? Yes,--God help me!--that is what I judged myself to be. My arrogance was two-fold,--it arose not only from what I imagined to be my quality of brain, but also from the knowledge of what my wealth could do. I was perfectly positive that I could buy Fame,--buy it as easily as one buys a flower in the market,--and I was more than positive that I could buy love. In order to commence proving the truth of this, I threw out a 'feeler' towards my object.

"I believe," I said suddenly, addressing the Earl--"you used to live in Warwickshire at Willowsmere Court did you not?"

Lord Elton flushed an apoplectic red, and swallowed a gulp of champagne hastily.

"Yes-er-yes. I--er had the place for some time,--rather a bore to keep up,--wants quite an army of servants."

"Just so;" I replied with a nod of appreciative comprehension--"I presume it will require a considerable domestic retinue. I have arranged to purchase it."

Lady Sibyl's frigid composure was at last disturbed--she looked strangely agitated,--and the Earl stared till his eyes seemed likely to fall out of his head.

"You? _You_ are going to buy Willowsmere?" he ejaculated.

"Yes. I have wired to my lawyers to settle the matter as quickly as possible"--and I glanced at Lucio whose steel-bright eyes were fixed on the Earl with curious intentness,--"I like Warwickshire,--and as I shall entertain a great deal I think the place will suit me perfectly."

There was a moment's silence. Miss Charlotte Fitzroy sighed deeply, and the lace bow on her severely parted hair trembled visibly. Diana Chesney looked up with inquisitive eyes and a little wondering smile.

"Sibyl was born at Willowsmere,"--said the Earl presently in rather a husky voice.

"A new charm is added to its possession by that knowledge,"--I said gently, bowing to Lady Sibyl as I spoke--"Have you many recollections of the place?"

"Indeed, indeed I have!" she answered with a touch of something like passion vibrating in her accents--"There is no corner of the world I love so well! I used to play on the lawns under the old oak-trees, and I always gathered the first violets and primroses that came out on the banks of the Avon. And when the hawthorn was in full flower I used to make believe that the park was fairyland and I the fairy queen----"

"As you were and are!" interposed Lucio suddenly.

She smiled and her eyes flashed,--then she went on more quietly--

"It was all very foolish, but I loved Willowsmere, and love it still. And I often saw in the fields on the other side of the river which did not belong to the estate, a little girl about my own age, playing all by herself and making long daisy-chains and buttercup balls,--a little girl with long fair curls and a sweet baby face. I wanted to know her and speak to her, but my nurse would never let me because she was supposed to be 'beneath' me." Lady Sibyl's lip curled scornfully at this recollection. "Yet she was well-born; she was the orphan child of a very distinguished scholar and gentleman, and had been adopted by the physician who attended her mother's deathbed, she having no living relatives left to take care of her. And she--that little fair-haired girl,--was Mavis Clare."

As this name was uttered, a sort of hush fell on our party as though an 'Angelus' had rung; and Lucio looking across at me with peculiar intentness asked,

"Have you never heard of Mavis Clare, Tempest?"

I thought a moment before replying. Yes,--I had heard the name,--connected with literature in some dim and distant way, but I could not remember when or how. For I never paid any attention to the names of women who chose to associate themselves with the Arts, as I had the usual masculine notion that all they did, whether in painting, music or writing, must of necessity be trash and unworthy of comment. Women, I loftily considered, were created to amuse men,--not to instruct them.

"Mavis Clare is a genius,"--Lady Sibyl said presently--"If Mr Tempest has not heard of her, there is no doubt he _will_ hear. I often regret that I never made her acquaintance in those old days at Willowsmere,--the stupidity of my nurse often rankles in my mind. 'Beneath me'--indeed!--and how very much she is above me now! She still lives down there,--her adopted parents are dead and she rents the lovely little house they inhabited. She has bought some extra land about it and improved the place wonderfully. Indeed I have never seen a more ideal poet's corner than Lily Cottage."

I was silent, feeling somewhat in the background on account of my ignorance as to the gifts and the position of the individual they all seemed to recognize as a celebrity of importance.

"Rather an odd name, Mavis, isn't it?"--I at last ventured to observe.

"Yes,--but it suits her wonderfully. She sings quite as sweetly as any thrush, so she merits her designation."

"What has she done in literature?" I continued.

"Oh,--only a novel!" replied Lucio with a smile--"But it has a quality unusual to novels; it lives! I hope, Tempest, that your forthcoming work will enjoy the same vitality."

Here Lord Elton who had been more or less brooding darkly over his glass of wine ever since I had mentioned my purchase of Willowsmere, roused himself from his reverie.

"Why, God bless my soul!" he exclaimed--"You don't mean to tell me you have written a novel Mr Tempest?" (Was it possible he had never noticed all the prominent advertisements of my book in every paper, I thought indignantly!) "What do you want to do that for, with your immense position?"

"He hankers after fame!" said Lucio half kindly, half satirically.

"But you've got fame!" declared the Earl emphatically--"Everybody knows who you are by this time."

"Ah, my dear lord, that is not enough for the aspirations of my gifted friend"--responded Lucio, speaking for me, his eyes darkening with that mystic shadow of mingled sorrow and scorn which so frequently clouded their lustrous brilliancy; "He does not particularly care for the 'immense position' that is due to wealth alone, because that does not lift him a jot higher than Maple of Tottenham Court Road. He seeks to soar beyond the furniture man,--and who shall blame him? He would be known for that indescribable quality called Genius,--for high thoughts, poetry, divine instincts, and prophetic probings into the heart of humanity,--in short, for the power of the Pen, which topples down great kingdoms like card-houses and sticks foolscaps on the heads of kings. Generally it is the moneyless man or woman who is endowed with this unpurchaseable power,--this independence of action and indifference to opinion,--the wealthy seldom do anything but spend or hoard. But Tempest means to unite for once in his own person the two most strenuously opposed forces in nature,--genius and cash,--or in other words, God and Mammon."

Lady Sibyl turned her head towards me;--there was a look of doubt and wonder on her beautiful face.

"I am afraid,"--she said half smiling, "that the claims of society will take up too much of your time, Mr Tempest, to allow you to continue the writing of books. I remember you told me the other evening that you were about to publish a novel. I suppose you were--originally I mean--an author by profession?"

A curious sense of anger burned dully within me. 'Originally' an author? Was I not one still? Was I to be given credit for nothing but my banking-book? 'Originally'? Why, I had never been an actual 'author' till now,--I had simply been a wandering literary hack,--a stray 'super' of Grub Street, occasionally engaged to write articles 'to order' on any subject that came uppermost, at a starvation rate of pay, without any visible prospect of rising from that lowest and dirtiest rung of the literary ladder. I felt myself growing red, then pale,--and I saw that Lucio was looking at me fixedly.

"I _am_ an author, Lady Sibyl"--I said at last--"and I hope I may soon prove my right to be acknowledged as one. 'Author' is in my opinion, a prouder title than king, and I do not think any social claims will deter me from following the profession of literature, which I look upon as the highest in the world."

Lord Elton fidgetted uneasily in his chair.

"But your people"--he said--"Your family--are they literary?"

"No members of my family are now living,"--I answered somewhat stiffly--"My father was John Tempest of Rexmoor."

"Indeed!" and the Earl's face brightened considerably--"Dear me, dear me! I used to meet him often in the hunting field years ago. You come of a fine old stock, sir!--the Tempests of Rexmoor are well and honourably known in county chronicles."

I said nothing, feeling a trifle heated in temper, though I could not have quite explained why.

"One begins to wonder,"--said Lucio then in his soft smooth accents--"when one is the descendant of a good English county family,--a distinct cause for pride!--and moreover has the still more substantial fact of a large fortune to support that high lineage, why one should trouble to fight for merely literary honours! You are far too modest in your ambitions, Tempest!--high-seated as you are upon bank-notes and bullion, with all the glory of effulgent county chronicles behind you, you still stoop to clutch the laurel! Fie, my dear fellow! You degrade yourself by this desire to join the company of the immortals!"

His satirical tone was not lost upon the company; and I, who saw that in his own special way he was defending the claims of literature against those of mere place and money, felt soothed and grateful. The Earl looked a trifle annoyed.

"That's all very fine," he said--"But you see it isn't as if Mr Tempest were driven by necessity to write for his living"--

"One may love work for the work's sake without any actual necessity for doing it,"--I interposed--"For example,--this Mavis Clare you speak of,--is she,--a woman,--driven by necessity?"

"Mavis Clare hasn't a penny in the world that she does not earn,"--said Lord Elton gruffly--"I suppose that if she did not write she would starve."

Diana Chesney laughed.

"I guess she's a long way off starvation just now,"--she remarked, her brown eyes twinkling--"Why, she's as proud as the proudest,--drives in the Park in her victoria and pair with the best in the land, and knows all the 'swagger' people. She's nowhere near Grub Street _I_ should say. I hear she's a splendid business woman, and more than a match for the publishers all round."

"Well I should rather doubt that,"--said the Earl with a chuckle. "It needs the devil himself to match the publishers."

"You are right!"--said Lucio--"In fact I daresay that in the various 'phases' or transmigrations of the spirit into differing forms of earthy matter, the devil (should he exist at all) has frequently become a publisher,--and a particularly benevolent publisher too!--by way of diversion."

We all smiled.

"Well, I should imagine Mavis Clare to be a match for anybody or anything,"--said Lady Sibyl--"Of course she is not rich,--but she spends her money wisely and to effective advantage. I do not know her personally,--I wish I did; but I have read her books, which are quite out of the common. She is a most independent creature too; quite indifferent to opinions"--

"I suppose she must be extremely plain then"--I observed; "Plain women always try to do something more or less startling in order to attract the attention denied to their personality."

"True,--but that would not apply to Miss Clare. She is pretty, and knows how to dress besides."

"_Such_ a virtue in literary women!" exclaimed Diana Chesney--"Some of them _are_ such dowdies!"

"Most people of culture," went on Lady Sibyl--"in our set at any rate, are accustomed to look upon Miss Clare as quite an exception to the usual run of authors. She is charming in herself as well as in her books, and she goes everywhere. She writes with inspiration,--and always has something so new to say--"

"That of course all the critics are down upon her?" queried Lucio.

"Oh, naturally! But _we_ never read reviews."

"Nor anyone else I should hope,"--said Lord Elton with a laugh--"except the fellows who write them, ha--ha--ha! I call it damned impertinence--excuse the word--on the part of a newspaper hack to presume to teach _me_ what I ought to read, or what I ought to appreciate. I'm quite capable of forming my own judgment on any book that ever was written. But I avoid all the confounded 'new' poets,--avoid 'em like poison, sir--ha--ha! Anything but a 'new' poet; the old ones are good enough for me! Why sir, these reviewers who give themselves such airs with a pennorth of ink and a pen, are mostly half-grown half-educated boys who for a couple of guineas a week undertake to tell the public what _they_ think of such and such a book, as if anyone cared a jot about their green opinions! Ridiculous--quite ridiculous!--what do they take the public for I wonder! Editors of responsible journals ought to know better than to employ such young coxcombs just because they can get them cheap----"

At this juncture the butler came up behind his master's chair and whispered a few words. The Earl's brow clouded,--then he addressed his sister-in-law,--

"Charlotte, Lady Elton sends word that she will come into the drawing-room to-night. Perhaps you had better go and see that she is made comfortable." And, as Miss Charlotte rose, he turned to us saying--"My wife is seldom well enough to see visitors, but this evening she feels inclined for a little change and distraction from the monotony of her sick-room. It will be very kind of you two gentlemen to entertain her,--she cannot speak much, but her hearing and sight are excellent, and she takes great interest in all that is going on. Dear dear me!" and he heaved a short troubled sigh--"She used to be one of the brightest of women!"

"The sweet Countess!" murmured Miss Chesney with patronizing tenderness--"She is quite lovely still!"

Lady Sibyl glanced at her with a sudden haughty frown which showed me plainly what a rebellious temper the young beauty held in control; and I fell straightway more in love,--according to _my_ idea of love,--than ever. I confess I like a woman to have a certain amount of temper. I cannot endure your preternaturally amiable female who can find nothing in all the length or breadth of the globe to move her to any other expression than a fatuous smile. I love to see the danger-flash in bright eyes,--the delicate quiver of pride in the lines of a lovely mouth, and the warm flush of indignation on fair cheeks. It all suggests spirit, and untamed will; and rouses in a man the love of mastery that is born in his nature, urging him to conquer and subdue that which seems unconquerable. And all the desire of such conquest was strong within me, when at the close of dinner I rose and held the door open for the ladies to pass out of the room. As the fair Sibyl went, the violets she wore at her bosom dropped. I picked them up and made my first move.

"May I keep these?" I said in a low tone.

Her breath came and went quickly,--but she looked straight in my eyes with a smile that perfectly comprehended my hidden meaning.

"You may!" she answered.

I bowed,--closed the door behind her, and secreting the flowers, returned, well-satisfied, to my place at table.

XIII

Left with myself and Lucio, Lord Elton threw off all reserve, and became not only familiar, but fawning in his adulation of us both. An abject and pitiable desire to please and propitiate us expressed itself in his every look and word; and I firmly believe that if I had coolly and brutally offered to buy his fair daughter by private treaty for a hundred thousand pounds, that sum to be paid down to him on the day of marriage, he would have gladly agreed to sell. Apart however from his personal covetousness, I felt and knew that my projected courtship of Lady Sibyl would of necessity resolve itself into something more or less of a market bargain, unless indeed I could win the girl's love. I meant to try and do this, but I fully realized how difficult, nay, almost impossible it would be for her to forget the fact of my unhampered and vast fortune, and consider me for myself alone. Herein is one of the blessings of poverty which the poor are frequently too apt to forget. A moneyless man if he wins a woman's love knows that such love is genuine and untainted by self-interest; but a rich man can never be truly certain of love at all. The advantages of a wealthy match are constantly urged upon all marriageable girls by both their parents and friends,--and it would have to be a very unsophisticated feminine nature indeed that could contemplate a husband possessing five millions of money, without a touch of purely interested satisfaction. A very wealthy man can never be sure even of friendship,--while the highest, strongest and noblest kind of love is nearly always denied to him, in this way carrying out the fulfilment of those strange but true words--"How hardly shall he that is a rich man, enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" The heaven of a woman's love, tried and proved true through disaster and difficulty,--of her unflinching faithfulness and devotion in days of toil and bitter anguish,--of her heroic self-abnegation, sweetness and courage through the darkest hours of doubt and disappointment;--this bright and splendid side of woman's character is reserved by Divine ordinance for the poor man. The millionaire can indeed wed whomsoever he pleases among all the beauties of the world,--he can deck his wife in gorgeous apparel, load her with jewels and look upon her in all the radiance of her richly adorned loveliness as one may look upon a perfect statue or matchless picture,--but he can never reach the deeper secrets of her soul or probe the well-springs of her finer nature. I thought this even thus early in the beginning of my admiration for Lady Sibyl Elton, though I did not then dwell upon it as I have often done since. I was too elated with the pride of wealth to count the possibilities of subtle losses amid so many solid gains; and I enjoyed to the full and with a somewhat contemptuous malice the humble prostration of a 'belted Earl' before the dazzling mine of practically unlimited cash as represented to him in the persons of my brilliant comrade and myself. I took a curious sort of pleasure in patronizing him, and addressed him with a protecting air of indulgent kindness whereat he seemed gratified. Inwardly I laughed as I thought how differently matters would have stood, supposing I had been indeed no more than 'author'! I might have proved to be one of the greatest writers of the age, but if, with that, I had been poor or only moderately well off, this same half bankrupt Earl who privately boarded an American heiress for two thousand guineas a year, would have deemed it a 'condescension' to so much as invite me to his house,--would have looked down upon me from his titled nothingness and perhaps carelessly alluded to me as 'a man who writes--er--yes--er--rather clever I believe!' and then would have thought no more about me. For this very cause as 'author' still, though millionaire, I took a fantastic pleasure in humiliating his lordship as much as possible, and I found the best way to do this was to talk about Willowsmere. I saw that he winced at the very name of his lost estate, and that notwithstanding this, he could not avoid showing his anxiety as to my intentions with regard to its occupation. Lucio, whose wisdom and foresight had suggested my becoming the purchaser of the place, assisted me in the most adroit fashion to draw him out and to make his character manifest, and by the time we had finished our cigars and coffee I knew that the 'proud' Earl of Elton, who could trace his lineage to the earliest days of the Crusaders, was as ready to bend his back and crawl in the dust for money as the veriest hotel-porter expectant of a sovereign 'tip.' I had never entertained a high opinion of the aristocracy, and on this occasion it was certainly not improved, but remembering that the spendthrift nobleman beside me was the father of Lady Sibyl, I treated him on the whole with more respect than his mean and grasping nature deserved.

On returning to the drawing-room after dinner I was struck by the chill weirdness that seemed to be imparted to it by the addition of Lady Elton's couch, which, placed near the fire, suggested a black sarcophagus in bulk and outline. It was practically a narrow bed on wheels, though partially disguised by a silk coverlet draped skilfully so as to somewhat hide its coffin-like shape. The extended figure of the paralysed Countess herself presented a death-like rigidity; but her face as she turned it towards us on our entrance, was undisfigured as yet and distinctly handsome, her eyes especially being large, clear, and almost brilliant. Her daughter introduced us both in a low tone, and she moved her head slightly by way of acknowledgment, studying us curiously the while.

"Well, my dear"--said Lord Elton briskly, "This is an unexpected pleasure! It is nearly three months since you honoured us with your company. How do you feel?"

"Better," she replied slowly, yet distinctly, her gaze now fixed with wondering intentness on Prince Rimânez.

"Mother found the room rather cold"--explained Lady Sibyl--"So we brought her as near to the fire as possible. It _is_ cold"--and she shivered--"I fancy it must be freezing hard."

"Where is Diana?" asked the Earl, looking about in search of that lively young lady.

"Miss Chesney has gone to her own room to write a letter;" replied his daughter somewhat frigidly--"She will be back directly."

At this moment Lady Elton feebly raised her hand and pointed to Lucio, who had moved aside to answer some question asked of him by Miss Charlotte.

"Who is that?" she murmured.

"Why, mother dear, I told you"--said Lady Sibyl gently--"That is Prince Lucio Rimânez, Papa's great friend."

The Countess's pallid hand still remained lifted, as though it were frozen in air.

"_What_ is he?" the slow voice again inquired,--and then the hand dropped suddenly like a dead thing.

"Now Helena, you must not excite yourself"--said her husband, bending over her couch with real or assumed anxiety; "Surely you remember all I have told you about the prince? And also about this gentleman, Mr Geoffrey Tempest?"

She nodded, and her eyes, turning reluctantly away from Rimânez, regarded me fixedly.

"You are a very young man to be a millionaire,"--were her next words, uttered with evident difficulty--"Are you married?"

I smiled, and answered in the negative. Her looks wandered from me to her daughter's face,--then back to me again with a singularly intent expression. Finally, the potent magnetism of Lucio's presence again attracted her, and she indicated him by a gesture.

"Ask your friend ... to come here ... and speak to me."

Rimânez turned instinctively at her request, and with his own peculiar charm and gallant grace of bearing, came to the side of the paralysed lady, and taking her hand, kissed it.

"Your face seems familiar to me,"--she said, speaking now, as it seemed, with greater ease--"Have I ever met you before?"

"Dear lady, you may have done so"--he replied in dulcet tones and with a most captivating gentleness of manner--"It occurs to me, now I think of it, that years ago, I saw once, as a passing vision of loveliness, in the hey-day of youth and happiness, Helena Fitzroy, before she was Countess of Elton."

"You must have been a mere boy--a child,--at that time!" she murmured faintly smiling.

"Not so!--for you are still young, Madame, and I am old. You look incredulous? Alas, why is it I wonder, I may not look the age I am! Most of my acquaintances spend a great part of their lives in trying to look the age they are not; and I never came across a man of fifty who was not proud to be considered thirty-nine. My desires are more laudable,--yet honourable eld refuses to impress itself upon my features. It is quite a sore point with me I assure you."

"Well, how old are you really?" asked Lady Sibyl smiling at him.

"Ah, I dare not tell you!" he answered, returning the smile; "But I ought to explain that in my countings I judge age by the workings of thought and feeling, more than by the passing of years. Thus it should not surprise you to hear that I feel myself old,--old as the world!"

"But there are scientists who say that the world is young;" I observed, "And that it is only now beginning to feel its forces and put forth its vigour."

"Such optimistic wise-acres are wrong," he answered,--"The world is a veritable husk of a planet; humanity has nearly completed all its allotted phases, and the end is near."

"The end?" echoed Lady Sibyl,--"Do you believe the world will ever come to an end?"

"I do, most certainly. Or, to be more correct, it will not actually perish, but will simply change. And the change will not agree with the constitution of its present inhabitants. They will call the transformation the Day of Judgment. I should imagine it would be a fine sight."

The Countess gazed at him wonderingly,--Lady Sibyl seemed amused.

"I would rather not witness it,"--said Lord Elton gruffly.

"Oh, why?" and Rimânez looked about with quite a cheerful air--"A final glimpse of the planet ere we _a_scend or _de_scend to our future homes elsewhere, would be something to remember! Madame"--here he addressed Lady Elton; "are you fond of music?"

The invalid smiled gratefully, and bent her head in acquiescence. Miss Chesney had just entered the room and heard the question.

"Do you play?" she exclaimed vivaciously, touching him on the arm with her fan.

He bowed. "I do. In an erratic sort of fashion. I also sing. Music has always been one of my passions. When I was very young,--ages ago,--I used to imagine I could hear the angel Israfel chanting his strophes amid the golden glow of heavenly glory,--himself white-winged and wonderful, with a voice out-ringing beyond the verge of paradise!"

As he spoke, a sudden silence fell upon us all. Something in his accent touched my heart to a strange sense of sorrow and yearning, and the Countess of Elton's dark eyes, languid with long suffering, grew soft as though with repressed tears.

"Sometimes," he continued more lightly--"just at odd moments--I like to believe in Paradise. It is a relief, even to a hardened sinner like myself, to fancy that there _may_ exist something in the way of a world better than this one."

"Surely sir," said Miss Charlotte Fitzroy severely--"you believe in Heaven?"

He looked at her and smiled slightly.

"Madame, forgive me! I do not believe in the clerical heaven. I know you will be angry with me for this frank confession! But I cannot picture the angels in white smocks with goose wings, or the Deity as a somewhat excitable personage with a beard. Personally I should decline to go to any heaven which was only a city with golden streets; and I should object to a sea of glass, resenting it as a want of invention on the part of the creative Intelligence. But----do not frown, dear Miss Fitzroy!--I do believe in Heaven all the same,--a different kind of heaven,--I often see it in my dreams!"

He paused, and again we were all silent, gazing at him. Lady Sibyl's eyes indeed, rested upon him with such absorbed interest, that I became somewhat irritated, and was glad, when turning towards the Countess once more, he said quietly.

"Shall I give you some music now, Madame?"

She murmured assent, and followed him with a vaguely uneasy glance as he crossed over to the grand piano and sat down. I had never heard him either play or sing; in fact so far as his accomplishments went, I knew nothing of him as yet except that he was a perfect master of the art of horsemanship. With the first few bars he struck I half started from my chair in amazement;--could a mere pianoforte produce such sounds?--or was there some witchery hidden in the commonplace instrument, unguessed by any other performer? I stared around me, bewildered,--I saw Miss Charlotte drop her knitting abstractedly,--Diana Chesney, lying lazily back in one corner of the sofa, half closed her eyelids in dreamy ecstasy,--Lord Elton stood near the fire resting one arm on the mantelpiece and shading his fuzzy brows with his hand,--and Lady Sibyl sat beside her mother, her lovely face pale with emotion, while on the worn features of the invalided lady there was an expression of mingled pain and pleasure difficult to describe. The music swelled into passionate cadence,--melodies crossed and re-crossed each other like rays of light glittering among green leaves,--voices of birds and streams and tossing waterfalls chimed in with songs of love and playful merriment;--anon came wilder strains of grief and angry clamour; cries of despair were heard echoing through the thunderous noise of some relentless storm,--farewells everlastingly shrieked amid sobs of reluctant shuddering agony;--and then, as I listened, before my eyes a black mist gathered slowly, and I thought I saw great rocks bursting asunder into flame, and drifting islands in a sea of fire,--faces, wonderful, hideous, beautiful, peered at me out of a darkness denser than night, and in the midst of this there came a tune, complete in sweetness and suggestion,--a piercing sword-like tune that plunged into my very heart and rankled there,----my breath failed me,--my senses swam,--I felt that I must move, speak, cry out, and implore that this music, this horribly insidious music should cease ere I swooned with the voluptuous poison of it,--when, with a full chord of splendid harmony that rolled out upon the air like a breaking wave, the intoxicating sounds ebbed away into silence. No one spoke,--our hearts were yet beating too wildly with the pulsations roused by that wondrous lyric storm. Diana Chesney was the first to break the spell.

"Well, that beats everything I've ever heard!" she murmured tremulously.

I could say nothing,--I was too occupied with my own thoughts. Something in the music had instilled itself into my blood, or so I fancied, and the clinging subtle sweetness of it, moved me to strange emotions that were neither wise, nor worthy of a man. I looked at Lady Sibyl; she was very pale,--her eyes were cast down and her hands were trembling. On a sudden impulse I rose and went to Rimânez where he still sat at the piano, his hands dumbly wandering over the keys.

"You are a great master"--I said--"A wonderful performer! But do you know what your music suggests?"

He met my fixed gaze, shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head.

"Crime!" I whispered--"You have roused in me evil thoughts of which I am ashamed. I did not think that was possible to so divine an Art."

He smiled, and his eyes glittered with the steely brightness of stars on a wintry night.

"Art takes its colours from the mind, my dear friend;"--he said--"If you discover evil suggestions in my music, the evil, I fear, must be in your own nature."

"Or in yours!" I said quickly.

"Or in mine;"--he agreed coldly--"I have often told you I am no saint."

I stood hesitatingly, looking at him. For one moment his great personal beauty appeared hateful to me, though I knew not why. Then the feeling of distrust and repulsion slowly passed, leaving me humiliated and abashed.

"Pardon me, Lucio!" I murmured regretfully--"I spoke in haste; but truly your music almost put me in a state of frenzy,--I never heard anything in the least like it----"

"Nor I,"--said Lady Sibyl, who just then moved towards the piano--"It was marvellous! Do you know, it quite frightened me?"

"I am sorry!" he answered with a penitent air--"I know I am quite a failure as a pianist--I am not sufficiently 'restrained,' as the press men would say."

"A failure? Good God!" exclaimed Lord Elton at this juncture--"Why, if you played like that in public, you'd drive everyone frantic!"

"With alarm?" queried Lucio, laughing--"Or with disgust?"

"Nonsense! you know what I mean very well. I have always had a contempt for the piano as an instrument, but by Jove! I never heard such music as yours even in a full orchestra. It is extraordinary!--it is positively magnificent! Where in the world did you study?"

"In Nature's conservatoire;"--replied Rimânez lazily. "My first 'maestro' was an amiable nightingale. He, singing on a branch of fir when the moon was full, explained with liquid-noted patience, how to construct and produce a pure roulade, cadenza and trill,--and when I had learned thus far, he showed me all the most elaborate methods of applying rhythmic tune to the upward and downward rush of the wind, thus supplying me with perfect counterpoint. Chords I learned from old Neptune, who was good enough to toss a few of his largest billows to the shore for my special benefit. He nearly deafened me with his instructions, being somewhat excitable and loud-voiced,--but on finding me an apt pupil, he drew back his waves to himself with so much delicacy among the pebbles and sand, that at once I mastered the secret of playing _arpeggi_. Once too I had a finishing lesson from a Dream,--a mystic thing with wild hair and wings--it sang one word in my ears, and the word was unpronounceable in mortal speech,--but after many efforts I discovered it lurking in the scale of sound. The best part of it all was, that my instructors asked no fees!"

"I think you are a poet as well as a musician,"--said Lady Sibyl.

"A poet! Spare me!--my dear young lady, why are you so cruel as to load me with so vile an imputation! Better be a murderer than a poet,--one is treated with much more respect and courteous consideration,--by the press at anyrate. The murderer's breakfast-menu will be given due place in many of the most estimable journals,--but the poet's lack of both breakfast and dinner will be deemed his fitting reward. Call me a live-stock producer, a horse-breeder, a timber-merchant,--anything but a poet! Why even Tennyson became an amateur milkman to somewhat conceal and excuse the shame and degradation of writing verse!"

We all laughed.

"Well, you must admit," said Lord Elton, "that we've had rather too much of poets lately. It's no wonder we're sick of them, and that poetry has fallen into disrepute. Poets are such a quarrelsome lot too--effeminate, puling, unmanly humbugs!"

"You are speaking of the newly 'discovered' ones of course," said Lucio--"Yes, they are a weedy collection. I have sometimes thought that out of pure philanthropy I would start a bon-bon manufactory, and employ them to write mottoes for the crackers. It would keep them out of mischief and provide them with a little pocket-money, for as matters stand they do not make a farthing by their books. But I do not call them 'poets' at all,--they are mere rhymers. One or two real poets do exist, but, like the prophets of Scripture, they are not 'in society,' nor can they get their logs rolled by any of their contemporaries. They are not favourites with any 'set'; that is why I am afraid my dear friend Tempest will never be accepted as the genius he is; society will be too fond of him to let him go down into dust and ashes to gather the laurel."

"It is not necessary to go down into dust and ashes for that," I said.

"I assure you it is!--" he answered gaily--"Positively imperative. The laurel flourishes best so,--it will not grow in a hot-house."

At that moment Diana Chesney approached.

"Lady Elton would like to hear you sing, prince--" she said--"Will you give us that pleasure? Do! Something quite simple, you know,--it will set our nerves straight after your terribly beautiful music! You'd hardly believe it perhaps,--but I really feel quite unstrung!"

He folded his hands with a droll air of penitence.

"Forgive me!" he said, "I'm always, as the church service says, doing those things I ought not to do."

Miss Chesney laughed, a trifle nervously.

"Oh, I forgive you!" she replied--"On condition that you sing."

"I obey!" and with that he turned again to the piano, and playing a strange wild minor accompaniment sang the following stanzas:

Sleep, my Belovëd, sleep! Be patient!--we shall keep Our secret closely hid Beneath the coffin-lid,-- There is no other place in earth or air For such a love as ours, or such despair! And neither hell nor heaven shall care to win Our loathëd souls, rejoicing in their sin!

Sleep!--for my hand is sure,-- The cold steel bright and pure Strikes through thy heart and mine Shedding our blood like wine;-- Sin's sweetness is too sweet, and if the shame Of love must be our curse, we hurl the blame Back on the gods who gave us love with breath And tortured us from passion into death!

This strange song, sung in the most glorious of baritones, full and rich, and vibrating with power and sweetness, had a visibly thrilling effect upon us all. Again we were struck dumb with surprise and something like fear,--and again Diana Chesney broke the silence.

"You call that simple!" she said, half petulantly.

"Quite so. Love and Death are the simplest things in the world"--replied Lucio.--"The ballad is a mere trifle,--it is entitled 'The Last Love-Song' and is supposed to be the utterance of a lover about to kill his mistress and himself. Such events happen every day,--you know that by the newspapers,--they are perfectly common-place----"

He was interrupted by a sharp clear voice ringing imperatively across the room--

"Where did you learn that song?"

XIV

It was the paralysed Countess who spoke. She had managed to partly raise herself on her couch, and her face expressed positive terror. Her husband hurried to her side,--and, with a curiously cynical smile on his lips, Rimânez rose from the piano. Miss Charlotte, who had sat rigidly upright and silent for some time, hastened to attend upon her sister, but Lady Elton was singularly excited, and appeared to have gained a sudden access of unnatural vigour.

"Go away,--I'm not ill,"--she said impatiently--"I feel better,--much better than I have done for months. The music does me good." And addressing her husband, she added--"Ask your friend to come and sit here by me,--I want to talk to him. He has a magnificent voice,--and--I know that song he sang,--I remember reading it--in a manuscript album--long ago. I want to know where he found it--"

Rimânez here advanced with his gentle tread and courteous bearing, and Lord Elton gave him a chair beside the invalid.

"You are working miracles on my wife,"--he said--"I have not seen her so animated for years."

And leaving the two to talk, he crossed over to where Lady Sibyl, myself and Miss Chesney were all seated in a group, chatting more or less unrestrainedly.

"I have just been expressing the hope that you and your daughter will pay me a visit at Willowsmere, Lord Elton," I said.

His brows contracted a little, but he forced a smile. "We shall be delighted,"--he mumbled--"when do you take possession?"

"As soon as it is at all feasible"--I replied--"I shall wait in town till the next Levée is over, as both my friend and myself have arranged to be presented."

"Oh--ah--yes!--er--yes! That is always advisable. And it's not half such a troublesome business as a Drawing-room is for the ladies. It's soon over,--and low bodices are not _de rigeur_--ha--ha--ha! Who is your presenter?"

I named a distinguished personage, closely connected with the Court, and the Earl nodded.

"A very good man,--you could not have a better"--he said complacently--"And this book of yours,--when does it come out?"

"Next week."

"We must get it,--we must certainly get it,"--said Lord Elton, assuming interest,--"Sybil, you must put it down on your library list."

She assented, though, as I thought a trifle indifferently.

"On the contrary you must allow me to present it to you;" I said--"It will be a pleasure to me which I hope you will not deny."

"You are very kind,"--she answered, lifting her beautiful eyes to mine as she spoke--"But the librarian at Mudie's is sure to send it--he knows I read everything. Though I confess I never buy any books except those by Mavis Clare."

Again that woman's name! I felt annoyed, but took care not to show my annoyance.

"I shall be jealous of Mavis Clare," I said playfully.

"Most men are!" she replied quietly.

"You are indeed an enthusiastic partisan of hers!" I exclaimed, somewhat surprised.

"Yes, I suppose I am. I like to see any member of my sex distinguish herself as nobly as she does. I have no genius of my own, and that is one of the reasons why I honour it so much in other women."

I was about to make some suitable compliment by way of response to this remark, when we were all violently startled from our seats by a most horrible cry,--a gasping scream such as might be wrung from some tortured animal. Aghast at the sound we stood for a moment inert, staring at Rimânez, who came quickly towards us with an air of grave concern.

"I am afraid," he said softly--"that the Countess is not so well,--perhaps you had better go to her--"

Another shriek interrupted his words, and transfixed with horror we saw Lady Elton struggling in the throes of some sudden and terrific convulsion, her hands beating the air as if she were fighting with an unseen enemy. In one second her face underwent such hideous contortions as robbed it of all human semblance, and between the agonized pantings of her difficult breath, her half-choked voice could be heard uttering wild cries--

"Mercy!--mercy!--oh God--God! Tell Sibyl!--pray--pray to God,--pray--"

And with that she fell heavily back, speechless and unconscious.

All was instant confusion. Lady Sibyl rushed to her mother's side, with Miss Charlotte,--Diana Chesney hung back trembling and afraid,--Lord Elton sprang to the bell and rang it furiously.

"Fetch the doctor!" he cried to the startled servant--"Lady Elton has had another shock! She must be taken to her room at once!"

"Can I be of any service?" I inquired, with a side-glance at Rimânez, who stood gravely apart, a statuesquely composed figure of silence.

"No no,--thanks all the same!" and the Earl pressed my hand gratefully--"She should not have come downstairs,--it has been too exciting for her. Sybil, don't look at her, my dear--it will only unnerve you,--Miss Chesney, pray go to your room,--Charlotte can do all that is possible----"

As he spoke two of the men-servants came in to carry the insensible Countess upstairs,--and as they slowly bore her on her coffin-like couch past me, one of them drew the coverlet across her face to conceal it. But not so quickly that I could not see the awful change impressed upon it,--the indelible horror that was stamped on the drawn features,--horror such as surely never was seen except in a painter's idea of some lost soul in torment. The eyes were rolled up and fixed in their sockets like balls of glass, and in them also was frozen the same frenzied desperate look of fear. It was a dreadful face!--so dreadful in its ghastly immovableness that I was all at once reminded of my hideous vision of the previous night, and the pallid countenances of the three phantoms that had scared me in my sleep. Lady Elton's looks now resembled theirs! Sickened and appalled I averted my eyes, and was glad to see Rimânez taking farewell of his host, the while he expressed his regret and sympathy with him in his domestic affliction. I myself, approaching Lady Sibyl, pressed her cold and trembling hand in mine, and respectfully kissed it.

"I am deeply sorry!" I murmured--"I wish I could do anything to console you!"

She looked at me with dry calm eyes.

"Thank-you. But the doctors have always said that my mother would have another shock depriving her of speech. It is very sad; she will probably live for some years like that."

I again expressed my sympathy.

"May I come and inquire about you all to-morrow?" I asked.

"It will be very kind of you,"--she answered quietly.

"Shall I see you if I come?" I said in a lower tone.

"If you wish it,--certainly!"

Our eyes met; and I knew by instinct that she read my thoughts. I pressed her hand again and was not repulsed,--then bowing profoundly, I left her to make my adieux to Lord Elton and Miss Chesney, who seemed terribly upset and frightened. Miss Charlotte Fitzroy had left the room in attendance on her sister, and she did not return to bid us good-night. Rimânez lingered a moment behind me to say another word or two to the Earl, and when he joined me in the hall and threw on his opera-coat, he was smiling to himself somewhat singularly.

"An unpleasant end for Helena, Countess of Elton"--he said, when we were in our brougham, driving away--"Paralysis is perhaps the worst of all the physical punishments that can befall a 'rapid' lady."

"Was she 'rapid'?"

"Well,--perhaps 'rapid' is too mild a term, but I can find no other;"--he answered--"When she was young,--she is barely fifty now,--she did everything that could be done by woman at her worst and wildest. She had scores of lovers,--and I believe one of them cleared off her husband's turf-debts,--the Earl consenting gladly,--on a rather pressing occasion."

"What disgraceful conduct!" I exclaimed.

He looked at me with an expression of cynical amusement.

"Think so? The 'upper ten' quite condone that sort of thing in their own set now-a-days. It is all right. If a lady has lovers, and her husband beams benevolence on the situation what can be said? Nothing. How very tender your conscience is, Geoffrey!"

I sat silent, thinking. My companion lit a cigarette and offered me one. I took it mechanically without lighting it.

"I made a mistake this evening,"--he went on--"I should not have sung that 'Last Love-song.' The fact is, the words were written by one of her ladyship's former admirers, a man who was something of a poet in his way,--and she had an idea that she was the only person living who had ever seen the lines. She wanted to know if I knew the man who composed them, and I was able to say that I did--very intimately. I was just explaining how it was, and why I knew him so well, when the distressing attack of convulsions came on, and finished our conversation."

"She looked horrible!" I said.

"The paralysed Helen of a modern Troy? Yes,--her countenance at the last was certainly not attractive. Beauty combined with wantonness frequently ends in the drawn twitch, fixed eye and helpless limbs of life-in-death. It is Nature's revenge on the outraged body,--and do you know, Eternity's revenge on the impure Soul is extremely similar?"

"What do you know about it?" I said, smiling in spite of myself as I looked at his fine face, expressive of perfect health and splendid intellectuality--"Your absurd fancies about the soul are the only traces of folly I discover in you."

"Really? Well I am glad I have something of the fool in my disposition,--foolishness being the only quality that makes wisdom possible. I confess I have odd, very odd notions about the soul."

"I will excuse them--" I said, laughing--God forgive me, in my own insensate blind conceit,--the while he regarded me fixedly--"In fact I will excuse anything for the sake of your voice. I do not flatter you, Lucio,--you sing like an angel."

"Don't use impossible comparisons;"--he replied--"Have you ever heard an angel sing?"

"Yes!" I answered smiling--"I have,--this very night!"

He turned deadly pale.

"A very open compliment!" he said, forcing a laugh,--and with almost rough haste, he suddenly let down the window of the carriage though the night was bitter cold--"This vehicle is suffocating me,--let us have some air. See how the stars are shining!--like great crown jewels--Deity's regalia! Hard frost, like hard times, brings noble works into prominence. Yonder, far off, is a star you can hardly perceive; red as a cinder at times and again blue as the lightning,--I can always discover it, though many cannot. It is Algol,--judged by superstitious folk to be an evil star. I love it chiefly on account of its bad reputation,--it is no doubt much maligned. It may be a cold quarter of hell where weeping spirits sit frozen in ice made of their own congealed tears,--or it may be a preparatory school for Heaven--who knows! Yonder too, shines Venus,--your star Geoffrey!--for you are in love my friend!--come confess it! are you not?"

"I am not sure;"--I answered slowly--"The phrase 'in love' scarcely describes my present feeling...."

"You have dropped these,"--he said suddenly, picking up a fast fading knot of violets from the floor of the brougham and holding them towards me. He smiled, as I uttered an exclamation of annoyance. They were Lady Sibyl's flowers which I had inadvertently let fall, and I saw he knew it. I took them from his hand in silence.

"My dear fellow, do not try to hide your intentions from your best friend,"--he said seriously and kindly--"You wish to marry the Earl of Elton's beautiful daughter, and you shall. Trust me!--I will do everything I can to promote your desire."

"You will?" I exclaimed with unconcealed delight, for I fully recognised the influence he had over Sibyl's father.

"I will, I promise--" he answered gravely--"I assure you that such a marriage would be one after my own heart. I'll do all I can for you,--and I have made many matches in my time!"

My heart beat high with triumph,--and when we parted that night I wrung his hand fervently and told him I was devoutly grateful to the fates for sending me such a good friend as he was.

"Grateful to--whom did you say?" he asked with a whimsical look.

"To the Fates!"

"Are you really? They are very ugly sisters I believe. Perhaps they were your ghostly visitors of last night!"

"God forbid!" I ejaculated.

"Ah! God never forbids the fulfilment of His own laws!" he answered--"To do so He would have to destroy Himself."

"If He exists at all!" I said carelessly.

"True! If--!"

And with this, we separated to our different quarters in the 'Grand.'

XV

After that evening I became a regular and welcome visitor at Lord Elton's house, and was soon on terms of the most friendly intimacy with all the members of his family, including even the severely pious Miss Charlotte Fitzroy. It was not difficult for me to see that my matrimonial aspirations were suspected,--and though the encouragement I received from Lady Sibyl herself was so slight as to make me doubtful whether after all my hopes of winning her would ever be realized, the Earl made no secret of his delight at the idea of securing me as a son-in-law. Such wealth as mine was not to be met with every day,--and even had I been a blackleg of the turf or a retired jockey, instead of an 'author,' I should, with five millions at my back, have been considered quite as desirable a suitor for the Lady Sibyl's hand. Rimânez scarcely ever went with me to the Eltons' now, pleading as excuse much pressing business and many social engagements. I was not altogether sorry for this. Greatly as I admired and honoured him, his extraordinary physical beauty and fascination of manner were in dangerous contrast to my merely 'ordinary good-looking' personality, and it seemed to me impossible that any woman, seeing much of him, could be expected to give me the preference. All the same I had no fear that he would ever voluntarily become my rival,--his antipathy to women was too deep-rooted and sincere for that. On this point indeed his feelings were so strong and passionate that I often wondered why the society sirens who eagerly courted his attention remained so blind and unconscious to the chill cynicism that lurked beneath his seeming courtesy,--the cutting satire that was coupled with apparent compliment, and the intensity of hatred that flamed under the assumed expression of admiring homage in his flashing eyes. However it was not my business to point out to those who could not, or would not, see the endless peculiarities of my friend's variable disposition. I did not pay much heed to them even so far as I myself was concerned, for I had grown accustomed to the quick changes he was wont to ring on all the gamut of human feeling, and absorbed in my own life-schemes I did not trouble myself to intimately study the man who had in a couple of months become my _fidus Achates_. I was engrossed at the moment in doing all I could to increase the Earl of Elton's appreciative sense of my value as a man and a millionaire, and to this end I paid some of his pressing debts, lent him a large sum of money without demanding interest or promise of repayment, and stocked his cellar with presents of such rare old wines as he had not been able to afford to purchase for himself for many years. Thus was confidence easily engendered between us, even to that point of affection which displayed itself in his lordship's readiness to thrust his arm through mine when we sauntered together down Piccadilly, and his calling me 'my dear boy' in public. Never shall I forget the bewildered amazement of the scrubby little editor of a sixpenny magazine who met me face to face thus accompanied in the Park one morning! That he knew the Earl of Elton by sight was evident, and that he also knew me his apoplectic stare confessed. He had pompously refused to even read any of my offered contributions on the ground that I had 'no name,'--and now--! he would have given a month's salary if I had but condescended to recognize him! I did not so condescend,--but passed him by, listening to, and laughing with my intended future father-in-law, who was retailing an extremely ancient joke for my benefit. The incident was slight, even trumpery,--yet it put me in a good humour, for one of the chiefest pleasures I had out of my wealth was the ability to repay with vengeful interest all the contempt and insult that had beaten me back from every chance of earning a livelihood while I was poor.

In all my visits to the Eltons, I never saw the paralysed Countess again. Since the last terrible visitation of her dread disease, she had not moved. She merely lived and breathed--no more. Lord Elton told me that the worst part of her illness at present, so far as it affected those who had to attend upon her, was the particularly hideous alteration of her face.

"The fact is," he said, not without a shudder--"she's dreadful to look at,--positively dreadful!--no longer human, you know. She used to be a lovely woman,--now she is literally frightful. Her eyes especially;--they are as scared and wild as if she had seen the devil. Quite an awful expression I assure you!--and it never alters. The doctors can do nothing--and of course it's very trying for Sibyl, and everybody."

I assented sympathetically; and realising that a house holding such a figure of living death within it must of necessity be more or less gloomy and depressing to a young and vigorous nature, I lost no opportunity of giving Lady Sibyl whatever slight pleasures were in my power to procure, for her distraction and entertainment. Costly flowers, boxes for the opera and 'first nights' at the play,--every sort of attention that a man can pay to a woman without being considered officious or intrusive I offered, and was not repulsed. Everything progressed well and favourably towards the easy attainment of my wishes,--I had no difficulties, no troubles of any kind,--and I voluntarily led a life of selfishly absorbed personal gratification, being commended and encouraged therein by a whole host of flatterers and interested acquaintances. Willowsmere Court was mine, and every newspaper in the kingdom had commented on the purchase, in either servile or spiteful paragraphs. My lawyers had warmly congratulated me on the possession of so admirable a property which they, in strict accordance with what they conceived to be their duty, had personally inspected and approved. The place was now in the hands of a firm of decorators and furnishers, recommended by Rimânez, and it was expected to be in perfect order for my habitation in early summer, at which time I purposed entertaining a large house-party of more or less distinguished people.

Meantime, what I had once considered would be the great event of my life, took place,--namely the publication of my book. Trumpeted forth by the most heraldic advertisements, it was at last launched on the uncertain and fluctuating tide of public favour, and special 'advance' copies were sent to the office of every magazine and journal in London. The day after this was done, Lucio, as I now familiarly called him, came in to my room with a mysterious and mischievous air.

"Geoffrey," he said--"I'm going to lend you five hundred pounds!"

I looked up with a smile.

"What for?"

He held out a cheque towards me. Glancing at it I saw that the sum he mentioned was filled in and endorsed with his signature, but that the name of the person to whom the money was to be made payable, had not yet been written.

"Well? What does it mean?"

"It means"--replied he--"that I am going to see Mr McWhing this morning. I have an appointment with him at twelve. You, as Geoffrey Tempest, the author of the book Mr McWhing is going to criticise and make a 'boom' of, could not possibly put your name to such a cheque. It would not be 'good form'--it might crop up afterwards and so betray 'the secrets of the prison-house.' But for me it is another affair. I am going to 'pose' as your businessman--your 'literary agent' who pockets ten per cent. of the profits and wants to make a 'big thing' out of you, and I'm going to talk the matter over with the perfectly practical McWhing who has, like every true Scot, a keen eye for the main chance. Of course it will be in confidence,--strict confidence!" and he laughed--"It's all a question of business you know,--in these commercial days, literature has become a trade like everything else, and even critics only work for what pays them. As indeed why should they not?"

"Do you mean to tell me McWhing will take that five hundred?" I asked dubiously.

"I mean to tell you nothing of the kind. I would not put the matter so coarsely for the world! This money is not for McWhing,--it is for a literary charity."

"Indeed! I thought you had an idea perhaps of offering a bribe...."

"Bribe! Good Heavens! Bribe a critic! Impossible, my good Geoffrey!--such a thing was never heard of--never, never, never!" and he shook his head and rolled up his eyes with infinite solemnity--"No no! Press people never take money for anything--not even for 'booming' a new gold-mining company,--not even for putting a notice of a fashionable concert into the Morning Post. Everything in the English press is the just expression of pure and lofty sentiment, believe me! This little cheque is for a charity of which Mr McWhing is chief patron,--you see the Civil List pensions all go by favour to the wrong persons nowadays; to the keeping of lunatic versifiers and retired actresses who never could act--the actual bona-fide 'genius' never gets anything out of Government, and moreover would scorn to take a farthing from that penurious body, which grudges him anything higher than a money-recognition. It is as great an insult to offer a beggarly pension of fifty or a hundred pounds a year to a really great writer as to give him a knighthood,--and we cannot fall much lower than to be a knight, as knights go. The present five hundred pounds will help to relieve certain 'poor and proud' but pressing literary cases known to McWhing alone!" His expression at this moment was so extraordinary, that I entirely failed to fathom it. "I have no doubt I shall be able to represent the benevolent and respectable literary agent to perfection--of course I shall insist on my ten per cent.!"--and he began laughing again. "But I can't stop to discuss the matter now with you--I'm off. I promised McWhing to be with him at twelve o'clock precisely, and it's now half-past-eleven. I shall probably lunch with him, so don't wait for me. And concerning the five hundred, you needn't be in my debt an hour longer than you like--I'll take a cheque for the money back from you this evening."

"All right"--I said--"But perhaps the great oracle of the cliques will reject your proposals with scorn."

"If he does, then is Utopia realized!"--replied Lucio, carefully drawing on his gloves as he spoke--"Where's a copy of your book? Ah--here's one--smelling newly of the press," and he slipped the volume into his overcoat pocket; "Allow me, before departure, to express the opinion that you are a singularly ungrateful fellow, Geoffrey! Here am I, perfectly devoted to your interests,--and despite my princedom actually prepared to 'pose' to McWhing as your 'acting manager' _pro tem_, and you haven't so much as a thank-you to throw at me!"

He stood before me smiling, the personification of kindness and good humour. I laughed a little.

"McWhing will never take _you_ for an acting manager or literary agent,"--I said--"You don't look it. If I seem churlish I'm sorry--but the fact is I am disgusted ..."

"At what?" he inquired, still smiling.

"Oh, at the humbug of everything,"--I answered impatiently; "The stupid farce of it all. Why shouldn't a book get noticed on its own merits without any appeal to cliquism and influential wire-pulling on the press?"

"Exactly!" and he delicately flicked a grain of dust off his coat while speaking--"And why shouldn't a man get received in society on his own merits, without any money to recommend him or any influential friend to back him up?"

I was silent.

"The world is as it is made,"--he went on, regarding me fixedly--"It is moved by the lowest and pettiest motives,--it works for the most trivial, ridiculous and perishable aims. It is not a paradise. It is not a happy family of united and affectionate brethren. It is an over-populated colony of jabbering and quarrelsome monkeys, who fancy they are men. Philosophers in old days tried to teach it that the monkey-type should be exterminated for the growth and encouragement of a nobler race,--but they preached in vain--there never were enough real men alive to overcome the swarming majority of the beasts. God Himself, they say, came down from Heaven to try and set wrong things right, and to restore if possible His own defaced image to the general aspect of humanity,--and even He failed."

"There is very little of God in this world"--I said bitterly; "There is much more Devil!"

He smiled,--a musing, dreamy smile that transfigured his countenance and made him look like a fine Apollo absorbed in the thought of some new and glorious song.

"No doubt!" he said, after a little pause--"Mankind certainly prefer the devil to any other deity,--therefore if they elect him as their representative, it is scarcely to be wondered at that he governs where he is asked to govern. And yet--do you know Geoffrey--this devil,--if there is one,--can hardly, I think, be quite so bad as his detractors say. I myself don't believe he is a whit worse than a nineteenth-century financier!"

I laughed aloud at the comparison.

"After that," I said--"you had better go to McWhing. I hope you will tell him that I am the triple essence of all the newest 'discoveries' rolled into one!"

"Never fear!" returned Lucio,--"I've learned all my stock-phrases by heart--a 'star of the first magnitude' etc.,--I've read the _Athenæum_ till I've got the lingo of the literary auctioneer well-nigh perfect, and I believe I shall acquit myself admirably. Au revoir!"

He was gone; and I, after a little desultory looking over my papers, went out to lunch at Arthur's, of which club I was now a member. On my way I stopped to look in at a bookseller's window to see if my 'immortal' production was yet on show. It was not,--and the volume put most conspicuously to the front among all the 'newest books' was one entitled 'Differences. By Mavis Clare.' Acting on a sudden impulse I went in to purchase it.

"Has this a good sale?" I asked, as the volume was handed to me.

The clerk at the counter opened his eyes wide.

"Sale?" he echoed--"Well, I should think so--rather! Why everybody's reading it!"

"Indeed!" and I turned over the uncut pages carelessly--"I see no allusion whatever to it in the papers."

The clerk smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"No--and you're not likely to, sir"--he said--"Miss Clare is too popular to need reviews. Besides, a large number of the critics,--the 'log-rollers' especially, are mad against her for her success, and the public know it. Only the other day a man came in here from one of the big newspaper offices and told me he was taking a few notes on the books which had the largest sales,--would I tell him which author's works were most in demand? I said Miss Clare took the lead,--as she does,--and he got into a regular rage. Said he--'That's the answer I've had all along the line, and however true it is, it's no use to me because I dare not mention it. My editor would instantly scratch it out--he hates Miss Clare.' 'A precious editor you've got!' I said, and he looked rather queer. There's nothing like journalism, sir, for the suppression of truth!"

I smiled, and went away with my purchase, convinced that I had wasted a few shillings on a mere piece of woman's trash. If this Mavis Clare was indeed so 'popular,' then her work must naturally be of the 'penny dreadful' order, for I, like many another literary man, laboured under the ludicrous inconsistency of considering the public an 'ass' while I myself desired nothing so much as the said 'ass's' applause and approval!--and therefore I could not imagine it capable of voluntarily selecting for itself any good work of literature without guidance from the critics. Of course I was wrong; the great masses of the public in all nations are always led by some instinctive sense of right, that moves them to reject the false and unworthy, and select the true. Completely prepared, like most men of my type to sneer and cavil at the book, chiefly because it was written by a feminine hand, I sat down in a retired corner of the club reading-room, and began to cut and skim the pages. I had not read many sentences before my heart sank with a heavy sense of fear and,--jealousy!--the slow fire of an insidious envy began to smoulder in my mind. What power had so gifted this author--this mere _woman_,--that she should dare to write better than I! And that she should force me, by the magic of her pen to mentally acknowledge, albeit with wrath and shame, my own inferiority! Clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction, all these were hers, united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skill,--and all at once, in the very midst of reading, such a violent impulse of insensate rage possessed me that I flung the book down, dreading to go on with it. The potent, resistless, unpurchaseable quality of Genius!--ah, I was not yet so blinded by my own conceit as to be unable to recognize that divine fire when I saw it flashing up from every page as I saw it now; but, to be compelled to give that recognition to a woman's work, galled and irritated me almost beyond endurance. Women, I considered, should be kept in their places as men's drudges or toys--as wives, mothers, nurses, cooks, menders of socks and shirts, and housekeepers generally,--what right had they to intrude into the realms of art and snatch the laurels from their masters' brows! If I could but get the chance of reviewing this book, I thought to myself savagely!--I would misquote, misrepresent, and cut it to shreds with a joy too great for words! This Mavis Clare, 'unsexed,' as I at once called her in my own mind simply because she had the power I lacked,--wrote what she had to say with a gracious charm, freedom, and innate consciousness of strength,--a strength which forced me back upon myself and filled me with the bitterest humiliation. Without knowing her I hated her,--this woman who could win fame without the aid of money, and who was crowned so brightly and visibly to the world that she was beyond criticism. I took up her book again and tried to cavil at it,--over one or two dainty bits of poetic simile and sentiment I laughed,--enviously. When I left the club later in the day, I took the book with me, divided between a curious desire to read it honestly through with justice to it and its author, and an impulse to tear it asunder and fling it into the road to be crushed in the mud under rolling cab and cart wheels. In this strange humour Rimânez found me, when at about four o'clock he returned from his mission to David McWhing, smiling and--triumphant.

"Congratulate me Geoffrey!" he exclaimed as he entered my room--"Congratulate me, and yourself! I am _minus_ the five hundred pound cheque I showed you this morning!"

"McWhing has pocketed it then,"--I said sullenly--"All right! Much good may it do him, and his 'charity'!"

Rimânez gave me a quick observant glance.

"Why, what has happened to you since we parted?" he inquired, throwing off his overcoat and sitting down opposite to me--"You seem out of temper! Yet you ought to be a perfectly happy man--for your highest ambition is about to be gratified. You said you wished to make your book and yourself 'the talk of London,'--well, within the next two or three weeks you will see yourself praised in a very large number of influential newspapers as the newest discovered 'genius' of the day, only a little way removed from Shakespeare himself (three of the big leading magazines are guaranteed to say that) and all this through the affability of Mr McWhing, and the trifling sum of five hundred pounds! And are you not satisfied? Really, my friend, you are becoming difficult!--I warned you that too much good fortune spoils a man."

With a sudden movement I flung down Mavis Clare's book before him.

"Look at this"--I said--"Does _she_ pay five hundred pounds to David McWhing's charity?"

He took up the volume and glanced at it.

"Certainly not. But then,--she gets slandered--not criticized!"

"What does that matter!" I retorted--"The man from whom I bought this book says that everybody is reading it."

"Exactly!" and Rimânez surveyed me with a curious expression, half of pity, half of amusement--"But you know the old axiom, my dear Geoffrey?--'you may lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink.' Which statement, interpreted for the present occasion, means that though certain log-rollers, headed by our estimable friend McWhing, may drag the horse--i.e. the public, up to their own particularly prepared literary trough, they cannot force it to swallow the mixture. The horse frequently turns tail and runs away in search of its own provender,--it has done so in the case of Miss Clare. When the public choose an author for themselves, it is a dreadful thing of course for other authors,--but it really can't be helped!"

"Why should they choose Mavis Clare?" I demanded gloomily.

"Ah, why indeed!" he echoed smiling--"McWhing would tell you they do it out of sheer idiotcy;--the public would answer that they choose her because she has genius."

"Genius!" I repeated scornfully--"The public are perfectly incapable of recognizing such a quality!"

"You think so?" he said still smiling--"you really think so? In that case it's very odd isn't it, how everything that is truly great in art and literature becomes so widely known and honoured, not only in this country but in every civilized land where people think or study? You must remember that all the very famous men and women have been steadily 'written down' in their day, even to the late English Laureate, Tennyson, who was 'criticized' for the most part in the purest Billingsgate,--it is only the mediocrities who are ever 'written up.' It seems as if the stupid public really had a hand in selecting these 'great,' for the reviewers would never stand them at any price, till driven to acknowledge them by the popular _force majeure_. But considering the barbarous want of culture and utter foolishness of the public, Geoffrey, what _I_ wonder at, is that you should care to appeal to it at all!"

I sat silent,--inwardly chafing under his remarks.

"I am afraid--" he resumed, rising and taking a white flower from one of the vases on the table to pin in his button-hole--"that Miss Clare is going to be a thorn in your side, my friend! A man rival in literature is bad enough,--but a woman rival is too much to endure with any amount of patience! However you may console yourself with the certainty that _she_ will never get 'boomed,'--while you--thanks to my tender fostering of the sensitive and high-principled McWhing, will be the one delightful and unique 'discovery' of the press for at least one month, perhaps two, which is about as long as any 'new star of the first magnitude' lasts in the latter-day literary skies. Shooting-stars all of them!--such as poor old forgotten Béranger sang of--

"les etoiles qui filent, 'Qui filent,--qui filent--et disparaissent!'"

"Except--Mavis Clare!" I said.

"True! Except Mavis Clare!" and he laughed aloud,--a laugh that jarred upon me because there was a note of mockery in it--"She is a small fixture in the vast heavens,--or so it seems--revolving very contentedly and smoothly in her own appointed orbit,--but she is not and never will be attended by the brilliant meteor-flames that will burst round _you_, my excellent fellow, at the signal of McWhing! Fie Geoffrey!--get over your sulks! Jealous of a woman! Be ashamed,--is not woman the inferior creature?, and shall the mere spectre of a feminine fame cause a five-fold millionaire to abase his lofty spirit in the dust? Conquer your strange fit of the spleen, Geoffrey, and join me at dinner!"

He laughed again as he left the room,--and again his laughter irritated me. When he had gone, I gave way to the base and unworthy impulse that had for some minutes been rankling within me, and sitting down at my writing table, penned a hasty note to the editor of a rather powerful magazine, a man whom I had formerly known and worked for. He was aware of my altered fortunes and the influential position I now occupied, and I felt confident he would be glad to oblige me in any matter if he could. My letter, marked '_private and confidential_' contained the request that I might be permitted to write for his next number, an anonymous 'slashing' review of the new novel entitled 'Differences' by Mavis Clare.

XVI

It is almost impossible for me to describe the feverish, irritated and contradictory state of mind in which I now began to pass my days. With the absolute fixity of my fortunes, my humours became more changeful than the wind, and I was never absolutely contented for two hours together. I joined in every sort of dissipation common to men of the day, who with the usual inanity of noodles, plunged into the filth of life merely because to be morally dirty was also at the moment fashionable and much applauded by society. I gambled recklessly, solely for the reason that gambling was considered by many leaders of the 'upper ten' as indicative of 'manliness' and 'showing _grit_.'

"I hate a fellow who grudges losing a few pounds at play,"--said one of these 'distinguished' titled asses to me once--"It shows such a cowardly and currish disposition."

Guided by this 'new' morality, and wishing to avoid the possibility of being called "cowardly and currish," I indulged in baccarat and other ruinous games almost every night, willingly losing the 'few pounds' which in my case meant a few hundreds, for the sake of my occasional winnings, which placed a number of 'noble' rakes and blue-blooded blacklegs in my power for 'debts of honour,' which are supposed to be more strictly attended to and more punctually paid than any debts in the world, but which, as far as I am concerned, are still owing. I also betted heavily, on everything that could be made the subject of a bet,--and not to be behind my peers in 'style' and 'knowledge of the world' I frequented low houses and allowed a few half-nude brandy-soaked dancers and vulgar music-hall 'artistes' to get a couple of thousand pounds worth of jewels out of me, because this sort of thing was called 'seeing life' and was deemed part of a 'gentleman's' diversion. Heavens!--what beasts we all were, I and my aristocratic boon companions!--what utterly worthless, useless, callous scoundrels!--and yet,--we associated with the best and the highest in the land;--the fairest and noblest ladies in London received us in their houses with smiles and softly-worded flatteries--we--whose presence reeked with vice; we, 'young men of fashion' whom, if he had known our lives as they were, an honest cobbler working patiently for daily bread, might have spat upon, in contempt and indignation that such low rascals should be permitted to burden the earth! Sometimes, but very seldom, Rimânez joined our gambling and music-hall parties, and on such occasions I noticed that he, as it were, 'let himself go' and became the wildest of us all. But though wild he was never coarse,--as _we_ were; his deep and mellow laughter had a sonorous richness in it that was totally unlike the donkey's 'hee-haw' of our 'cultured' mirth,--his manners were never vulgar; and his fluent discourse on men and things, now witty and satirical, now serious almost to pathos, strangely affected many of those who heard him talk, myself most of all. Once, I remember, when we were returning late from some foolish carouse,--I with three young sons of English peers, and Rimânez walking beside us,--we came upon a poorly clad girl sobbing and clinging to the iron railing outside a closed church door.

"Oh God!" she wailed--"Oh dear God! Do help me!"

One of my companions seized her by the arm with a lewd jest, when all at once Rimânez stepped between.

"Leave her alone!" he said sternly--"Let her find God if she can!"

The girl looked up at him terrified, her eyes streaming with tears, and he dropped two or three gold pieces into her hand. She broke out crying afresh.

"Oh God bless you!" she cried wildly--"God bless you!"

He raised his hat and stood uncovered in the moonlight, his dark beauty softened by a strangely wistful expression.

"I thank you!" he said simply--"You make me your debtor."

And he passed on; we followed, somewhat subdued and silenced, though one of my lordling friends sniggered idiotically.

"You paid dearly for that blessing, Rimânez!" he said--"You gave her three sovereigns;--by Jove! I'd have had something more than a blessing if I had been you."

"No doubt!" returned Rimânez--"You deserve more,--much more! I hope you will get it! A blessing would be of no advantage whatever to _you_;--it is, to _me_."

How often I have thought of this incident since! I was too dense to attach either meaning or importance to it then,--self-absorbed as I was, I paid no attention to circumstances which seemed to have no connection with my own life and affairs. And in all my dissipations and so-called amusements, a perpetual restlessness consumed me,--I obtained no real satisfaction out of anything except my slow and somewhat tantalizing courtship of Lady Sibyl. She was a strange girl; she knew my intentions towards her well enough; yet she affected not to know. Each time I ventured to treat her with more than the usual deference, and to infuse something of the ardour of a lover into my looks or manner, she feigned surprise. I wonder why it is that some women are so fond of playing the hypocrite in love? Their own instinct teaches them when men are amorous; but unless they can run the fox to earth, or in other words, reduce their suitors to the lowest pitch of grovelling appeal, and force them to such abasement that the poor passion-driven fools are ready to fling away life, and even honour, dearer than life, for their sakes, their vanity is not sufficiently gratified. But who, or what am I that I should judge of vanity,--I whose egregious and flagrant self-approbation was of such a character that it blinded me to the perception and comprehension of everything in which my own Ego was not represented! And yet,--with all the morbid interest I took in myself, my surroundings, my comfort, my social advancement, there was one thing which soon became a torture to me,--a veritable despair and loathing,--and this, strange to say, was the very triumph I had most looked forward to as the crown and summit of all my ambitious dreams. My book,--the