University of Virginia Library

LADY RAVELGOLD.

1. CHAPTER I.

Rule a Wife.

It was what is called by people on the continent a
“London day.” A thin, gray mist drizzled down
through the smoke which darkened the long cavern
of Fleet street; the sidewalks were slippery and clammy;
the drays slid from side to side on the greasy
pavement, creating a perpetual clamor among the
lighter carriages with which they came in contact;
the porters wondered that “gemmen” would carry
their umbrellas up when there was no rain, and the
gentlemen wondered that porters should be permitted
on the sidewalks; there were passengers in box-coats,
though it was the first of May, and beggars with bare
breasts, though it was chilly as November; the boys
were looking wistfully into the hosier's windows who
were generally at the pastry-cook's; and there were
persons who wished to know the time, trying in vain
to see the dial of St. Paul's through the gamboge atmosphere.

It was twelve o'clock, and a plain chariot with a
simple crest on the panels, slowly picked its way
through the choked and disputed thoroughfare east
of Temple Bar. The smart glazed hat of the coachman,
the well-fitted drab greatcoat and gaiters of the
footman, and the sort of half-submissive, half-contemptuous
look on both their faces (implying that they
were bound to drive to the devil if it were miladi's orders,
but that the rabble of Fleet street was a leetle too
vulgar for their contact), expressed very plainly that
the lady within was a denizen of a more privileged
quarter, but had chosen a rainy day for some compulsory
visit to “the city.”

At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well-groomed
night-horses (a pair of smart, hardy, twelve-mile
cabs, all bottom, but little style, kept for night-work
and forced journeys) had threaded the tortuous
entrails of London, and had arrived at the arch of a
dark court in Throgmorton street. The coachman
put his wheels snug against the edge of the sidewalk,
to avoid being crushed by the passing drays, and settled
his many-caped benjamin about him; while the
footman spread his umbrella, and making a balustrade
of his arm for his mistress's assistance, a closely-veiled
lady descended and disappeared up the wet and ill-paved
avenue.

The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. opened on
its silent hinges and admitted the mysterious visiter,
who, inquiring of the nearest clerk if the junior partner
were in, was shown to a small inner room containing
a desk, two chairs, a coal fire, and a young gentleman.
The last article of furniture rose on the lady's
entrance, and as she threw off her veil he made a low
bow, with the air of a gentleman, who is neither surprised
nor embarrassed, and pushing aside the door-check,
they were left alone.

There was that forced complaisance in the lady's
manner on her first entrance, which produced the
slightest possible elevation in a very scornful lip owned
by the junior partner, but the lady was only forty-five,
highborn, and very handsome, and as she looked at
the fine specimen of nature's nobility, who met her
with a look as proud and yet as gentle as her own, the
smoke of Fleet street passed away from her memory,
and she became natural and even gracious. The
effect upon the junior partner was simply that of removing
from his breast the shade of her first impression.

“I have brought you,” said his visiter, drawing a
card from her reticule, “an invitation to the dutchess
of Hautaigle's ball. She sent me half a dozen to fill
up for what she calls `ornamentals' — and I am sure I
shall scarce find another who comes so decidedly under
her grace's category.”

The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech
in the sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James's,
looking the while at the toe of the small brodequin
which she held up to the fire — perhaps thinking only
of drying it. As she concluded her sentence, she
turned to her companion for an answer, and was surprised
at the impassive politeness of his bow of acknowledgment.

“I regret that I shall not be able to avail myself of
your ladyship's kindness,” said the junior partner, in
the same well-enunciated tone of courtesy.

“Then,” replied the lady with a smile, “Lord Augustus
Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time
in a spoon, will be the Apollo of the hour. What a
pity such a handsome creature should be so vain! —
By-the-way, Mr. Firkins, you live without a looking-glass,
I see.”

“Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a
place of business. May I ask at once what errand
has procured me the honor of a visit on so unpleasant
a day?”

A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead
of the beautiful woman, as she compressed her lips,
and forced herself to say with affected ease, “The
want of five hundred pounds.”

The junior partner paused an instant, while the lady
tapped with her boot upon the fender in ill-dissembled
anxiety, and then, turning to his desk, he filled up the

check without remark, presented it, and took his hat
to wait on her to her carriage. A gleam of relief and
pleasure shot over her countenance as she closed her
small jewelled hand over it, followed immediately by a
look of embarrassed inquiry into the face of the unquestioning
banker.

“I am in your debt already.”

“Thirty thousand pounds, madam!”

“And for this you think the securities on the estate
of Rockland — ”

“Are worth nothing, madam! But it rains. I regret
that your ladyship's carriage can not come to the
door. In the old-fashioned days of sedan-chairs, now,
the dark courts of Lothbury must have been more attractive.
By-the-way, talking of Lothbury, there is
Lady Roseberry's fête champétre next week. If you
should chance to have a spare card — ”

“Twenty, if you like — I am too happy — really, Mr.
Firkins — ”

“It's on the fifteenth; I shall have the honor of
seeing your ladyship there! Good-morning! Home,
coachman!”

“Does this man love me?” was Lady Ravelgold's
first thought, as she sank back in her returning chariot.
“Yet no! he was even rude in his haste to be
rid of me. And I would willingly have stayed too, for
there is something about him of a mark that I like.
Ay, and he must have seen it — a lighter encouragement
has been interpreted more readily. Five hundred
pounds! — really five hundred pounds! And thirty
thousand at the back of it! What does he mean?
Heavens! if he should be deeper than I thought! If
he should wish to involve me first!”

And spite of the horror with which the thought was
met in the mind of Lavy Ravelgold, the blush over
her forehead died away into a half smile and a brighter
tint in her lips; and as the carriage wound slowly
on through the confused press of Fleet street and the
Strand, the image of the handsome and haughty young
banker shut her eyes from all sounds without, and she
was at her own door in Grosvenor square before she
had changed position or wandered half a moment from
the subject of those busy dreams.

2. CHAPTER II.

The morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to
have been appointed by all the flowers as a jubilee of
perfume and bloom. The birds had been invited, and
sang in the summer with a welcome as full-throated
as a prima donna singing down the tenor in a duet;
the most laggard buds turned out their hearts to the
sunshine, and promised leaves on the morrow; and
that portion of London that had been invited to Lady
Roseberry's fète, thought it a very fine day! That
portion which was not, wondered how people would
go sweltering about in such a glare for a cold dinner!

At about half past two, a very elegant dark-green
cab without a crest, and with a servant in whose slight
figure and plain blue livery there was not a fault,
whirled out at the gate of the Regent's Park, and took
its way up the well-watered road leading to Hampstead.
The gentlemen whom it passed or met turned
to admire the performance of the dark-gray horse, and
the ladies looked after the cab as if they could see the
handsome occupant once more through its leather
back. Whether by conspiracy among the coachmakers,
or by an aristocracy of taste, the degree of
elegance in a turn-out attained by the cab just described,
is usually confined to the acquaintances of
Lady — ; that list being understood to enumerate
all “the nice young men” of the West End, beside
the guardsmen. (The ton of the latter, in all matters
hat affect the style of the regiment, is looked after by
the club and the colonel.) The junior Firkins seemed
an exception to this exclusive rule. No “nice man”
could come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady
— ; but his horse was faultless, and when he turned
into the gate of Rose-Eden, the policeman at the
porter's lodge, though he did not know him, thought
it unnecessary to ask for his name. Away he spattered
up the hilly avenue, and giving the reins to his
groom at the end of a green arbor leading to the reception-lawn,
he walked in and made his bow to Lady
Roseberry, who remarked, “How very handsome!
Who can he be?” — and the junior partner walked on
and disappeared down an avenue of laburnums.

Ah! but Rose-Eden looked a paradise that day!
Hundreds had passed across the close-shaven lawn,
with a bow to the lady-mistress of this fair abode. Yet
the grounds were still private enough for Milton's pair,
so lost were they in the green labyrinths of hill and
dale. Some had descended through heavily-shaded
paths to a fancy dairy, built over a fountain in the bottom
of a cool dell; and here, amid her milk-pans of
old and costly china, the prettiest maid in the country
round pattered about upon a floor of Dutch tiles, and
served her visiters with creams and ices — already, as it
were, adapted to fashionable comprehension. Some
had strayed to the ornamental cottages in the skirts
of the flower-garden — poetical abodes, built from a
picturesque drawing, with imitation roughness; thatch,
lattice-window, and low paling, all complete; and inhabited
by superannuated dependants of Lord Roseberry,
whose only duties were to look like patriarchs,
and give tea and new cream-cheese to visiters on fêtedays.
Some had gone to see the silver and gold pheasants
in their wire-houses, stately aristocrats of the game
tribe, who carry their finely-pencilled feathers like
“Marmalet Madarus,” strutting in hoop and farthingale.
Some had gone to the kennels, to see setters
and pointers, hounds and terriers, lodged like gentlemen,
each breed in its own apartment — the puppies, as
elsewhere, treated with most attention. Some were
in the flower-garden, some in the greenhouses, some
in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes; and at the side
of a bright sparkling fountain, in the recesses of a fir-grove,
with her foot upon its marble lip, and one hand
on the shoulder of a small Cupid who archly made a
drinking-cup of his wing, and caught the bright water
as it fell, stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the loveliest
girl of nineteen that prayed night and morning within
the parish of May Fair, listening to very passionate
language from the young banker of Lothbury.

A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every
alley, and by every path, poured in the gay multitude,
and the smooth sward looked like a plateau of animated
flowers, waked by magic from a broidery on
green velvet. Ah! the beautiful demi-toilettes! — so
difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the dress most
modest, most captivating, most worthy the divine grace
of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering from the sun,
yet not enviously concealing a feature or a ringlet that
a painter would draw for his exhibition-picture!
Those summery and shapeless robes, covering the
person more to show its outline better, and provoke
more the worship, which, like all worship, is made
more adoring by mystery! Those complexions which
but betray their transparency in the sun; lips in which
the blood is translucent when between you and the
light; cheeks finer-grained than alabaster, yet as cool
in their virgin purity as a tint in the dark corner of a
Ruysdael: the human race was at less perfection in
Athens in the days of Lais — in Egypt in the days of
Cleopatra — than that day on the lawn of Rose-Eden.

Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay color, had been
laced through the trees in all directions; and amid
every variety of foliage, and every shade of green, the
tulip-tints shone vivid and brilliant, like an American
forest after the first frost. From the left edge of the

lawn, the ground suddenly sunk into a dell, shaped
like an amphitheatre, with a level platform at its bottom,
and all around, above and below, thickened a
shady wood. The music of a delicious band stole up
from the recesses of a grove, draped as an orchestra
and green-room on the lower side, and while the
audience disposed themselves in the shade of the upper
grove, a company of players and dancing-girls
commenced their theatricals. — Imogen Ravelgold,
who was separated, by a pine tree only, from the junior
partner, could scarce tell you, when it was finished,
what was the plot of the play.

The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band
wound away from the lawn, playing a gay march.
Followed Lady Roseberry and her suite of gentlemen,
followed dames and their daughters, followed all who
wished to see the flight of my lord's falcons. By a
narrow path and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided
train stole out upon an open hill-side, looking down
on a verdant and spreading meadow. The band played
at a short distance behind the gay groups of spectators,
and it was a pretty picture to look down upon
the splendidly-dressed falconer and his men, holding
their fierce birds upon their wrists, in their hoods and
jesses, a foreground of old chivalry and romance;
while far beyond extended, like a sea over the horizon,
the smoke-clad pinnacles of busy and every-day London.
There are such contrasts of the eyes of the
rich!

The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest
falcon, and a dove, confined, at first, with a string,
was thrown up, and brought back, to excite his attention.
As he fixed his eye upon him, the frightened
victim was let loose, and the falcon flung off; away
skimmed the dove in a low flight over the meadow,
and up to the very zenith, in circles of amazing swiftness
and power, sped the exulting falcon, apparently
forgetful of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun
with his strong wings and his liberty. The falconer's
whistle and cry were heard; the dove circled round
the edge of the meadow in his wavy flight; and down,
with the speed of lightning, shot the falcon, striking
his prey dead to the earth before the eye could settle
on his form. As the proud bird stood upon his
victim, looking around with a lifted crest and fierce eye,
Lady Imogen Ravengold heard, in a voice of which
her heart knew the music, “They who soar highest
strike surest; the dove lies in the falcon's bosom.”

3. CHAPTER III.

The afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on,
and at six the “breakfast” was announced. The
tents beneath which the tables were spread were in
different parts of the grounds, and the guests had
made up their own parties. Each sped to his rendezvous,
and as the last loiterers disappeared from
the lawn, a gentleman in a claret coat and a brown
study, found himself stopping to let a lady pass who
had obeying the summons as tardily as himself. In
a white chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the
valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a simple
white robe, the chef-d'œuvre of Victotine in style and
tournure, Lady Ravelgold would have been the belle
of the fête, but for her daughter.

“Well emerged from Lothbury!” she said, courtesying,
with a slight flush over her features, but immediately
taking his arm; “I have lost my party, and
meeting you is opportune. Where shall we breakfast?”

There was a small tent standing invitingly open on
the opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter rattle
of soup-spoons from that quarter, it promised to be
less crowded than the others. The junior partner
would willingly have declined the proffered honor, but
he saw at a glance that there was no escape, and submitted
with a grace.

“You know very few people here,” said his fair
creditor, taking the bread from her napkin.

“Your ladyship and one other.”

“Ah, we shall have dancing by-and-by, and I must
introduce you to my daughter. By the way, have
you no name from your mother's side? `Firkins'
sounds so very odd. Give me some prettier word to
drink in this champagne.”

“What do you think of Tremlet?”

“Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty —
but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health! Will you
give me a little of the paté before you? Pray, if it
is not indiscreet, how comes that classic profile, and
more surprising still, that distinguished look of yours,
to have found no gayer destiny than the signing of
`Firkins and Co.' to notes of hand? Though I thought
you became your den in Lothbury, upon my honor you
look more at home here.”

And Lady Ravengold fixed her superb eyes upon
the beautiful features of her companion, wondering
partly why he did not speak, and partly why she had
not observed before that he was incomparably the
handsomest creature she had ever seen.

“I can regret no vocation,” he answered after a
moment, “which procures me an acquaintance with
your ladyship's family.”

“There is an arriére pensée in that formal speech,
Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only
one in my family whom you know, and what pleasure
have you taken in my acquaintance? And, now
I think of it, there is a mystery about you, which, but
for the noble truth written so legibly on your features.
I should be afraid to fathom. Why have you suffered
me to over-draw my credit so enormously, and without
a shadow of a protest?”

When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart
of this direct question, she turned half round and
looked her companion in the face with an intense
interest, which produced upon her own features an
expression of earnestness very uncommon upon their
pale and impassive lines. She was one of those persons
of little thought, who care nothing for causes or
consequences, so that the present difficulty is removed,
or the present hour provided with its wings; but the
repeated relief she had received from the young banker,
when total ruin would have been the consequence of
his refusal, and his marked coldness in his manner to
her, had stimulated the utmost curiosity of which she
was capable. Her vanity, founded upon her high rank
and great renown as a beauty, would have agreed that
he might be willing to get her into his power at that
price, had he been less agreeable in his own person,
or more eager in his manner. But she had wanted
money sufficiently to know, that thirty thousand pounds
are not a bagatelle, and her brain was busy till she discovered
the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime
her fear that he would turn out to be a lover, grew
rapidly into a fear that he would not.

Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute
earl, who had died, leaving his estate inextricably involved.
With no male heir to the title or property,
and no very near relation, the beautiful widow shut
her eyes to the difficulties by which she was surrounded,
and at the first decent moment after the
death of her lord, she had re-entered the gay society
of which she had been the bright and particular star,
and never dreamed either of diminishing her establishment,
or of calculating her possible income. The
first heavy draft she had made upon the house of
Firkins and Co., her husband's bankers, had been returned
with a statement of the Ravelgold debt and
credit on their books, by which it appeared that Lord
Ravelgold had overdrawn four or five thousand pounds
before his death, and that from some legal difficulties,

nothing could be realized from the securities given
on his estates. This bad news arrived on the morning
of a fête to be given by the Russian ambassador, at
which her only child. Lady Imogen, was to make her
début in society. With the facility of disposition
which was peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the
papers into her drawer, and determining to visit her
banker on the following morning, threw the matter
entirely from her mind and made preparations for the
ball. With the Russian government the house of
Firkins and Co. had long carried on very extensive
fiscal transactions, and in obedience to instructions
from the emperor, regular invitations for the embassy
fêtes were sent to the bankers, accepted occasionally
by the junior partner only, who was generally supposed
to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out of the
banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet, and it
was by this name, which was presumed to be his
mother's, that he was casually introduced to Lady
Imogen on the night of the fête, while she was separated
from her mother in the dancing-room. The consequence
was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable passion in
the bosom of the young banker, checked and silenced,
but never lessened or chilled by the recollection of
the obstacle of his birth. The impression of his subdued
manner, his worshipping, yet most respectful
tones, and the bright soul that breathed through his
handsome features with his unusual excitement, was,
to say the least, favorable upon Lady Imogen, and they
parted on the night of the fête, mutually aware of each
other's preference.

On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made
her proposed visit to the city; and inquiring for Mr.
Firkins, was shown in as usual to the junior partner,
to whom the colloquial business of the concern had
long been intrusted. To her surprise she found no
difficulty in obtaining the sum of money which had
been refused her on the preceding day — a result which
she attributed to her powers of persuasion, or to some
new turn in the affairs of the estate; and for two years
these visits had been repeated at intervals of three or
four months, with the same success, though not with
the same delusion as to the cause. She had discovered
that the estate was worse than nothing, and the
junior partner cared little to prolong his têtes-à-têtes
with her, and, up to the visit with which this tale
opened, she had looked to every succeeding one with
increased fear and doubt.

During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady
Imogen occasionally at balls and public places, and
every look they exchanged wove more strongly between
them the subtle threads of love. Once or twice
she had endeavored to interest her mother in conversation
on the subject, with the intention of making
a confidence of her feelings; but Lady Ravengold,
when not anxious, was giddy with her own success,
and the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on her
ear. With this explanation to render the tale intelligible,
“let us,” as the French say, “return to our
muttons.”

Of the conversation between Tremlet and her mother,
Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished
witness. The tent which they had entered was large,
with a buffet in the centre, and a circular table waited
on by servants within the ring; and, just concealed
by the drapery around the pole, sat Lady Imogen
with a party of her friends, discussing very seriously
the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. She had half
risen, when her mother entered, to offer her a seat by
her side, but the sight of Tremlet, who immediately
followed, had checked the words upon her lip, and to
her surprise they seated themselves on the side that
was wholly unoccupied, and conversed in a tone inaudible
to all but themselves. Not aware that her
lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she supposed that they
might have been casually introduced, till the earnest
ness of her mother's manner, and a certain ease between
them in the little courtesies of the table, assured
her that this could not be their first interview. Tremlet's
face was turned from her, and she could not
judge whether he was equally interested; but she
had been so accustomed to consider her mother as
irresistible when she chose to please, that she supposed
if of course; and very soon the heightened color of
Lady Ravelgold, and the unwavering look of mingled
admiration and curiosity which she bent upon the
handsome face of her companion, left no doubt in her
mind that her reserved and exclusive lover was in the
dangerous toils of a rival whose power she knew.
From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send
thee deliverance, fair Lady Imogen!

“We shall find our account in the advances on
your ladyship's credit;” said Tremlet, in reply to the
direct question that was put to him. “Meantime
permit me to admire the courage with which you look
so disagreeable a subject in the face.”

“For `disagreeable subject,' read `Mr. Tremlet.'
I show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces,
yours would become the new fashion of cravat. The
men at Crockford's slip the ends through a ring of
their lady-love's, if they chance to have one — thus!”
and untying the loose knot of his black satin cravat,
Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends a diamond of
small value, conspicuously set in pearls.

“The men at Crockford's,” said Tremlet, hesitating
to commit the rudeness of removing the ring,
“are not of my school of manners. If I had been so
fortunate as to inspire a lady with a preference for me,
I should not advertise it on my cravat.”

“But suppose the lady were proud of her preference
as dames were of the devotion of their knights in the
days of chivalry — would you not wear her favor as
conspicuously as they?”

A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise
shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and he was turning
the ring with his fingers, when Lady Imogen, attempting
to pass out of the tent, was stopped by her
mother.

“Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet. Lady
Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet!”

The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the
wounded girl gave to her lover, betrayed no previous
acquaintance to the careless Lady Ravelgold. Without
giving a second thought to her daughter, she held
her glass for some champagne to a passing servant,
and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed the lawn
to the dancing-tent, she resumed the conversation
which they had interrupted; while Tremlet, with his
heart brooding on the altered look he had received,
listened and replied almost unconsciously; yet from
this very circumstance, in a manner which was interpreted
by his companion as the embarrassment of a
timid and long-repressed passion for herself.

While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner were
thus playing at cross purposes over their champagne
and bons-bons, Grisi and Lablanche were singing a
duet from I Puritani, to a full audience in the saloon;
the drinking young men sat over their wine at the
nearly-deserted tables; Lady Imogen and her friends
waltzed to Collinet's band, and the artisans were busy
below the lawn, erecting the machinery for the fireworks.
Meantime every alley and avenue, grot and
labyrinth, had been dimly illuminated with colored
lamps, showing like vari-colored glow-worms amid
the foliage and shells; and if the bright scenery of
Rose-Eden had been lovely by day, it was fay-land
and witchery by night. Fatal impulse of our nature,
that these approaches to paradise in the “delight of
the eye,” stir only in our bosoms the passions upon
which law and holy writ have put ban and bridle!

“Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson lamps?”
said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn from the tent

where their coffee had been brought to them, and putting
her slender arm far into that of her now pale and
silent companion.

A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of that
crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate admirer
disappeared beneath the closing lines of the
long perspective, and, remaining a moment gazing
through the unbroken twinkle of the confusing lamps,
she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, drew
up her form as if struggling with some irrepressible
feeling, and in another moment was whirling in the
waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope, whose mother
wrote a complimentary paragraph about their performance
for the next Saturday's Court Journal.

The bugle sounded, and the band played a march
upon the lawn. From the breakfast tents, from the
coffee-rooms, from the dance, from the card-tables,
poured all who wished to witness the marvels that lie
in saltpetre. Gentlemen who stood in a tender attitude
in the darkness, held themselves ready to lean the
other way when the rockets blazed up, and mammas
who were encouraging flirtations with eligibles, whispered
a caution on the same subject to their less experienced
daughters.

Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair
burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and
back again on their wires, and softly floated down
through the dewy atmosphere of that May night the
lambent and many-colored stars, flung burning from
the exploded rockets. Device followed device, and
Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child's delight at
the spectacle, that she had taken into her bosom a
green serpent, whose folds were closing like suffocation
about her heart.

The finalè was to consist of a new light, invented
by the pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry to
be several degrees brighter than the sun — comparatively
with the quantity of matter. Before this last
flourish came a pause; and while all the world were
murmuring love and applause around her, Lady
Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite point in
the darkness, took advantage of the cessation of light
to feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate and
uncontrollable pain. A French attaché, Phillipiste to
the very tips of his mustache, addressed to her ear,
meantime, the compliments he had found most effective
in the Chaussée d'Antin.

The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing
points, clear, dazzling, intense — illuminating, as by
the instantaneous burst of day, the farthest corner of
Rose-Eden. And Monsieur Mangepoire, with a
French contempt for English fireworks, took advantage
of the first ray to look into Lady Imogen's eyes.

“Mais, Miladi!” was his immediate exclamation,
after following their direction with a glance, “ce n'est
qu'un tableau vivant, cela! Help, gentlemen! Elle
s'évanôuit. Some salts! Misericorde! Mon Dieu!
Mon Dieu!” And Lady Imogen Ravelgold was carried
fainting to Lady Roseberry's chamber.

In a small opening at the end of a long avenue of
lilacs, extended from the lawn in the direction of
Lady Imogen's fixed and unconscious gaze, was presented,
by the unexpected illumination, the tableau
vivant, seen by her ladyship and Monsieur Mangepoire
at the same instant — a gentleman drawn up to
his fullest height, with his arms folded, and a lady
kneeling on the ground at his feet with her arms
stretched up to his bosom.

4. CHAPTER IV.

A little after two o'clock on the following
Wednesday, Tremlet's cabriolet stopped near the
perron of Willis's rooms in King street, and while he
sent up his card to the lady patronesses for his ticket
to that night's Almack's, he busied himself in looking
into the crowd of carriages about him, and reading on
the faces of their fair occupants the hope and anxiety
to which they were a prey till John the footman
brought them tickets or despair. Drawn up on the
opposite side of the street, stood a family-carriage of
the old style, covered with half the arms of the herald's
office, and containing a fat dowager and three very overdressed
daughters. Watching them, to see the effect
of their application, stood upon the sidewalk three or
four young men from the neighboring club-house, and
at the moment Tremlet was observing these circumstances,
a foreign britscka, containing a beautiful woman
of a reputation better understood than expressed
in the conclave above stairs, flew round the corner of
St. James's street, and very nearly drove into the open
mouth of the junior partner's cabriolet.

“I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay
of yours,” said the Russian secretary of legation, advancing
from the group of dandies to Tremlet, “that
miladi, yonder, with all the best blood of England in
her own and her daughters' red faces, gets no tickets
this morning.”

“I'll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly
extinguished me, if you like,” answered Tremlet,
gazing with admiration at the calm, delicate, childlike
looking creature, who sat before him in the
britscka.

“No!” said the secretary, “for Almack's is a republic
of beauty, and she'll be voted in without either
blood or virtue. Par exémple, Lady Ravelgold's
voucher is good here, though she does study tableaux
in Lothbury — eh, Tremlet?”

Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the
fireworks at Lady Roseberry's fête, Tremlet colored
and was inclined to take the insinuation as an affront;
but a laugh from the dandies drew off his companion's
attention, and he observed the dowager's footman
standing at her coach window with his empty hands
held up in most expressive negation, while the three
young ladies within sat aghast, in all the agonies of
disappointed hopes. The lumbering carriage got into
motion — its ineffective blazonry paled by the mortified
blush of its occupants — and, as the junior partner
drove away, philosophizing on the arbitrary opinions
and unprovoked insults of polite society, the britsçka
shot by, showing him, as he leaned forward, a lovely
woman who bent on him the most dangerous eyes in
London, and an Almack's ticket lying on the unoccupied
cushion beside her.

The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of Almack's
showed every crack in its stucco flowers, and
the faded chaperons who had defects of a similar description
to conceal, took warning of the walls, and
retreated to the friendlier dimness of the tea-room.
Collinet was beginning the second set of quadrilles,
and among the fairest of the surpassingly beautiful
women who were moving to his heavenly music, was
Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier to-night for the
first heavy sadness that had ever dimmed the roses
in her cheek. Her lady-mother divided her thoughts
between what this could mean, and whether Mr.
Tremlet would come to the ball; and when, presently
after, in the dos-a-dos, she forgot to look at her daughter,
on seeing that gentleman enter, she lost a very
good opportunity for a guess at the cause of Lady
Imogen's paleness.

To the pure and true eye that appreciates the
divinity of the form after which woman is made, it
would have been a glorious feast to have seen the perfection
of shape, color, motion, and countenance, shown
that night on the bright floor of Almack's. For the
young and beautiful girls whose envied destiny is to
commence their woman's history in this exclusive

hall, there exists aids to beauty known to no other
class or nation. Perpetual vigilance over every limb
from the cradle up; physical education of a perfection,
discipline, and judgment, pursued only at great
expense and under great responsibility; moral education
of the highest kind, habitual consciousness of
rank, exclusive contact with elegance and luxury, and
a freedom of intellectual culture which breathes a soul
through the face before passion has touched it with a
line or a shade — these are some of the circumstances
which make Almack's the cynosure of the world for
adorable and radiant beauty.

There were three ladies who had come to Almack's
with a definite object that night, each of whom was
destined to be surprised and foiled: Lady Ravelgold,
who feared she had been abrupt with the inexperienced
banker, but trusted to find him softened by a day or
two's reflection; Mrs. St. Leger, the lady of the
britsçka, who had ordered supper for two on her arrival
at home from her morning's drive, and intended
to have the company of the handsome creature she
had nearly run over in King street; and Lady Imogen
Ravelgold as will appear in the sequel.

Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room a
moment, gathering courage to walk alone into such a
dazzling scene, and then, having caught a glimpse of
the glossy lines of Lady Imogen's head at the farthest
end of the room, he was advancing toward her, when he
was addressed by a lady who leaned against one of the
slender columns of the orchestra. After a sweetly-phrased
apology for having nearly knocked out his
brains that morning with her horses' fore feet, Mrs. St.
Leger took his arm, and walking deliberately two or
three times up and down the room, took possession, at
last, of a banquette on the highest range, so far from any
other person, that it would have been a marked rudeness
to have left her alone. Tremlet took his seat by
her with this instinctive feeling, trusting that some of
her acquaintances would soon approach, and give him
a fair excuse to leave her; but he soon became
amused with her piquant style of conversation, and,
not aware of being observed, fell into the attitude of a
pleased and earnest listener.

Lady Ravelgold's feelings during this petit entretien,
were of a very positive description. She had
an instinctive knowledge, and consequently a jealous
dislike of Mrs. St. Leger's character; and, still under
the delusion that the young banker's liberality was
prompted by a secret passion for herself, she saw her
credit in the city and her hold upon the affections of
Tremlet (for whom she had really conceived a violent
affection), melting away in every smile of the dangerous
woman who engrossed him. As she looked around
for a friend, to whose ear she might communicate
some of the suffocating poison in her own heart, Lady
Imogen returned to her from a galopade; and, like a
second dagger into the heart of the pure-minded girl,
went this second proof of her lover's corrupt principle
and conduct. Unwilling to believe even her own eyes
on the night of Lady Roseberry's fête, she had summoned
resolution on the road home to ask an explanation
of her mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt question,
Lady Ravelgold felt obliged to make a partial
confidence of the state of her pecuniary affairs; and
to clear herself, she represented Tremlet as having
taken advantage of her obligations to him, to push a
dishonorable suit. The scene disclosed by the sudden
blaze of the fireworks being thus simply explained,
Lady Imogen determined at once to give up
Tremlet's acquaintance altogether; a resolution which
his open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger's
character served to confirm. She had, however, one
errand with him, prompted by her filial feelings and
favored by an accidental circumstance which will appear.

“Do you believe in animal magnetism?” asked
Mrs. St. Leger, “for by the fixedness of Lady Ravelgold's
eyes in this quarter, something is going to happen
to one of us.”

The next moment the Russian secretary approached
and took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with
diplomatic address contrived to convey to Tremlet's
ear that Lady Ravelgold wished to speak with him.
The banker rose, but the quick wit of his companion
comprehended the manœuvre.

“Ah! I see how it is,” she said, “but stay — you'll
sup with me to-night? Promise me — parole d'honneur!”

“Parole!” answered Tremlet, making his way
out between the seats, half pleased and half embarrassed.

“As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire,” said Mrs.
St. Leger, “you have forfeited my favor, and may
sup elsewhere. How dare you conspire against me?”

While the Russian was making his peace, Tremlet
crossed over to Lady Ravelgold; but, astonished
at the change in Lady Imogen, he soon broke in
abruptly upon her mother's conversation, to ask her
to dance. She accepted his hand for a quadrille;
but as they walked down the room in search of a vis
à-vis, she complained of heat, and asked timidly if he
would take her to the tea-room.

“Mr. Tremlet,” she said, fixing her eyes upon the
cup of tea which he had given her, and which she
found some difficulty in holding, “I have come here
to-night to communicate to you some important information,
to ask a favor, and to break off an acquaintance
which has lasted too long.”

Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled from
her lips, and she was compelled to ask his arm for a
support. She drew herself up to her fullest height
the next moment, looked at Tremlet, who stood in
speechless astonishment, and with a strong effort, commenced
again in a low, firm tone —

“I have been acquainted with you some time, sir,
and have never inquired, nor knew more than your
name, up to this day. I suffered myself to be pleased
too blindly — ”

“Dear Lady Imogen!”

“Stay a moment, sir! I will proceed directly to
my business. I received this morning a letter from
the senior partner of a mercantile house in the city,
with which you are connected. It is written on the
supposition that I have some interest in you, and informs
me that you are not, as you yourself suppose,
the son of the gentleman who writes the letter.”

“Madam!”

“That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was
married. He informs me that in the course of many
financial visits to St. Petersburgh, he formed a friendship
with Count Manteuffel, then minister of finance
to the emperor, whose tragical end, in consequence
of his extensive defalcations, is well known. In
brief, sir, you were his child, and were taken by this
English banker, and carefully educated as his own, in
happy ignorance, as he imagined, of your father's misfortunes
and mournful death.”

Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply
to this astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen
went on.

“Your title and estates have been restored to you
at the request of your kind benefactor, and you are
now the heir to a princely fortune, and a count of
the Russian empire. Here is the letter, sir, which
is of no value to me now. Mr. Tremlet! one word
more, sir.”

Lady Imogen grasped for breath.

“In return, sir, for much interest given you heretofore
— in return, sir, for this information — ”

“Speak, dear Lady Imogen!”

“Spare my mother!”

“Mrs. St. Leger's carriage stops the way!” shouted

a servant at that moment, at the top of the stairs;
and as if there were a spell in the sound to nerve her
resolution anew, Lady Imogen Ravelgold shook the
tears from her eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet, and
passed out into the dressing-room.

“If you please, sir,” said a servant, approaching the
amazed banker, “Mrs. St. Leger waits for you in her
carriage.”

“Will you come home and sup with us?” said
Lady Ravelgold at the same instant, joining him in
the tea-room.

“I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold.”

The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued
to “stop the way,” spite of policemen and infuriated
footmen, for some fifteen minutes. At the end of
that time Mr. Tremlet appeared, handing down
Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who walked to
their chariot, which was a few steps behind; and
very much to Mrs. St. Leger's astonishment, the
handsome banker sprang past her horses' heads a
minute after, jumped into his cabriolet, which stood
on the opposite side of the street, and drove after
the vanishing chariot as if his life depended on overtaking
it. Still Mrs. St. Leger's carriage “stopped
the way.” But, in a few minutes after, the same
footman who had summoned Tremlet in vain, returned
with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed
unconsciousness to play the pis aller at her tête-à-tête
supper in Spring Gardens.

5. CHAPTER V.

If Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the uncompromising
light and in the ornamented hall of
Almack's, she was radiant as she came through the
mirror door of her own loved-contrived and beauty-breathing
boudoir. Tremlet had been showed into
this recess of luxury and elegance on his arrival, and
Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who preceded her
by a minute or two, had gone to their chambers, the
first to make some slight changes in her toilet, and
the latter (entirely ignorant of her lover's presence in
the house), to be alone with a heart never before in
such painful need of self-abandonment and solitude.

Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room
in which he found himself alone, and spite of the
prepossessed agitation of his feelings, the voluptuous
beauty of every object had the effect to divert and
tranquillize him. The light was profuse, but it came
softened through the thinnest alabaster; and while
every object in the room was distinctly and minutely
visible, the effect of moonlight was not more soft and
dreamy. The general form of the boudoir was an
oval, but within the pilasters of folded silk with their
cornices of gold, lay crypts containing copies exquisitely
done in marble of the most graceful statues of antiquity,
one of which seemed, by the curtain drawn
quite aside and a small antique lamp burning near it,
to be the divinity of the place — the Greek Antinous,
with his drooped head and full, smooth limbs, the
most passionate and life-like representation of voluptuous
beauty that intoxicates the slumberous air of
Italy. Opposite this, another niche contained a few
books, whose retreating shelves swung on a secret
door, and as it stood half open, the nodding head of a
snowy magnolia leaned through, as if pouring from
the lips of its broad chalice the mingled odors of the
unseen conservatory it betrayed. The first sketch in
crayons of a portrait of Lady Ravelgold by young
Lawrence, stood against the wall, with the frame half
buried in a satin ottoman; and, as Tremlet stood before
it, admiring the clear, classic outline of the head
and bust, and wondering in what chamber of his brain
the gifted artist had found the beautiful drapery in
which he had drawn her, the dim light glanced faintly
on the left, and the broad mirror by which he had
entered swung again on its silver hinges, and admitted
the very presentment of what he gazed on. Lady
Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her hair, and
the robe of wrought lace, which she had worn that
night over a boddice of white satin laced loosely below
the bosom. In the place of this she had thrown upon
her shoulders a flowing wrapper of purple velvet,
made open after the Persian fashion, with a short and
large sleeve, and embroidered richly with gold upon
the skirts. Her admirable figure, gracefully defined
by the satin petticoat and boddice, showed against the
gorgeous purple as it flowed back in her advancing
motion, with a relief which would have waked the very
soul of Titian; her complexion was dazzling and
faultless in the flattering light of her own rooms; and
there are those who will read this who know how the
circumstances which surround a woman — luxury,
elegance, taste, or the opposite of these — enhance or
dim, beyond help or calculation, even the highest order
of woman's beauty.

Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as she
came in.

“In my own house,” she said, holding the glittering
jewel to Tremlet, “I have a fancy for the style
antique. Tasseline, my maid, has gone to bed, and
you must do the devoir of a knight, or an abigail, and
loop up this Tyrian sleeve. Stay — look first at the
model — that small statue of Cytheris, yonder! Not
the shoulder — for you are to swear mine is prettier —
but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So! Now take
me for a Grecian nymph the rest of the evening.”

“Lady Ravelgold!”

“Hermione or Aglae, if you please! But let us
ring for supper!”

As the bell sounded, a superb South American
trulian darted in from the conservatory, and, spreading
his gorgeous black and gold wings a moment
over the alabaster shoulder of Lady Ravelgold, as if
he took a pleasure in prolonging the first touch as
he alighted, turned his large liquid eye fiercely on
Tremlet.

“Thus it is,” said Lady Ravelgold, “we forget our
old favorites in our new. See how jealous he is!”

“Supper is served, miladi!” said a servant entering.

“A hand to each, then, for the present,” she said,
putting one into Tremlet's, and holding up the trulian
with the other. “He who behaves best shall drink
first with me.”

“I beg your ladyship's pardon,” said Tremlet,
drawing back, and looked at the servant, who immediately
left the room. “Let us understand each
other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us to-night?”

“Lady Imogen has retired,” said her mother, in
some surprise.

“Then, madam, will you be seated one moment and
listen to me?”

Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman,
with the air of a person too high bred to be taken by
surprise, but the color deepened to crimson in the
centre of her cheek, and the bird on her hand betrayed
by one of his gurgling notes that he was held
more tightly than pleased him. With a calm and decisive
tone. Tremlet went through the explanation
given in the previous parts of this narration. He declared
his love for Lady Imogen, his hopes (while he
had doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravelgold's increasing
obligations and embarrassments and his own wealth
might weigh against his disadvantages; and now, his
honorable descent being established, and his rank entitling
him to propose for her hand, he called upon
Lady Ravelgold to redeem her obligations to him by
an immediate explanation to her daughter of his conduct
toward herself, and by lending her whole influence
to the success of his suit.

Five minutes are brief time to change a lover into a
son-in-law; and Lady Ravelgold, as we have seen in
the course of this story, was no philosopher. She
buried her face in her hands, and sat silent for a while
after Tremlet had concluded: but the case was a very
clear one. Ruin and mortification were in one scale,
mortification and prosperity in the other. She rose,
pale but decided, and requesting Monsieur le conte
Manteuffel to await her a few minutes, ascended to
her daughter's chamber.

“If you please, sir,” said a servant, entering in about
half an hour, “miladi and Lady Imogen beg that you
will join them in the supper-room.”

6. CHAPTER VI.

The spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial atmospheres
as Belgrave square, might have been pleased
to sit invisibly on the vacant side of Lady Ravelgold's
table. Tremlet had been shown in by the servant to a
small apartment, built like a belvidere over the garden,
half boudoir in its character, yet intended as a supper-room,
and at the long window (opening forth upon
descending terraces laden with flowers, and just now
flooded with the light of a glorious moon) stood Lady
Imogen, with her glossy head laid against the casement,
and the palm of her left hand pressed close upon
her heart. If those two lights — the moon faintly shed
off from the divine curve of her temple, and the stained
rose-lamp pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly
shape and whiteness of her shoulder and neck — if those
two lights, I say, could have been skilfully managed,
Mr. Lawrence! what a picture you might have made
of Lady Imogen Ravelgold!

“Imogen, my daughter! Mr. Tremlet!” said her
mother as he entered.

Without changing her position, she gave him the
hand she had been pressing on her heart.

“Mr. Tremlet!” said Lady Ravelgold, evidently
entering into her daughter's embarrassment, “trouble
yourself to come to the table and give me a bit of this
pheasant. Imogen, George waits to give you some
champagne.”

“Can you forgive me?” said the beautiful girl, before
turning to betray her blushing cheek and suffused
eyes to her mother.

Tremlet stopped as if to pluck a leaf from the verbena
at her feet, and passed his lips over the slight fingers
he held.

“Pretty trulian!” murmured Lady Ravelgold to her
bird, as he stood on the edge of her champagne-glass,
and curving his superb neck nearly double, contrived
to drink from the sparkling brim — “pretty trulian!
you will be merry after this! What ancient Sybarite,
think you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the body of this
bright bird? Look up, mignon, and tell us if you were
Hylas or Alcibiades! Is the pheasant good, Mr. Tremlet?”

“Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true
that you have your table supplied from Crockford's?”

“Tout bonnement! I make it a principle to avoid all
great anxieties, and I can trust nobody but Ude. He
sends my dinners quite hot, and if there is a particular
dish of game, he drives round at the hour and gives it
the last turn in my own kitchen. I should die, to be
responsible for my dinners. I don't know how people
get on that have no grand artiste. Pray, Mr. Tremlet
(I beg pardon — Monsieur le conte, perhaps I should
say?”)

“No, no, I implore you! `Tremlet' has been spoken
too musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet or
Charles, which you will!”

Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked
from his face to her daughter's with a smile, which as
sured him that she had obtained a victory over herself.
Shrinking immediately, however, from anything like
sentiment (with the nervous dread of pathos so peculiar
to the English), she threw off her trulian, that
made a circle and alighted on the emerald bracelet of
Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for coffee.

“I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet,” she said, “that I
have made a new application of the homœopathic philosophy.
Hahnemann, they say, cures fevers by aggravating
the disease; and when I can not sleep, I
drink coffee. J'en suis passablement fiére! You did
not know I was a philosopher?”

“No, indeed!”

“Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I got it of
the Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux yeux
on purpose. Stop! you shall have it in the little tinsel
cups he sent me. George, bring those filagree
things! Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine yourself in the
serail du Bosphore — Imogen and I two lovely Circassians,
par exemple! Is it not delicious? Talking of
the Bosphorus, nobody was classical enough to understand
the device in my coiffure to-night.”

“What was it?” asked Tremlet, absently, gazing
while he spoke, with eyes of envy at the trulian, who
was whetting his bill backward and forward on the
clear bright lips of Lady Imogen.

“Do you think my profile Grecian?” asked Lady
Ravelgold.

“Perfectly!”

“And my hair is coiffed à la Grec?”

“Most becomingly.”

“But still you won't see my golden grasshopper!
Do you happen to know, sir, that to wear the golden
grasshopper was the birthright of an Athenian? I saw
it in a book. Well! I had to explain it to everybody.
By-the-way, what did that gambler, George Heriot,
mean, by telling me that its legs should be black? —
`All Greeks have black legs,' said he, yawning in his
stupid way. What did he mean, Mr. Tremlet?”

“`Greeks' and blacklegs are convertible terms. He
thought you were more au fait of the slang dictionary.
Will you permit me to coax my beautiful rival from
your hand, Lady Imogen?”

She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a bend
of its slender and alabaster lines which would have
drawn a sigh from Praxiteles. The trulian glanced
his fiery eyes from his mistress's face to Tremlet's,
and as the strange hand was put out to take him from
his emerald perch, he flew with the quickness of lightning
into the face of her lover, and buried the sharp
beak in his lip. The blood followed copiously, and
Lady Imogen, startled from her timidity, sprang from
her chair and pressed her hands one after the other
upon the wound, in passionate and girlish abandonment.
Lady Ravelgold hurried to her dressing-room
for something to stanch the wound, and, left alone
with the divine creature who hung over him, Tremlet
drew her to his bosom and pressed his cheek long and
closely to hers, while to his lips, as if to keep in life,
clung her own crimsoned and trembling fingers.

“Imogen!” said Lady Ravelgold, entering, “take
him to the fountain in the garden and wash the wound;
then put on this bit of gold-beater's skin. I will come
to you when I have locked up the trulian. Is it painful,
Mr. Tremlet?”

Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, but
with his arm still around Lady Imogen, he descended
by the terrace of flowers to the fountain.

They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and
the moonlight striking through the jet of the fountain,
descended upon them like a rain of silver. Lady Imogen
had recovered from her fright, and buried her face
in her hands, remembering into what her feelings had
betrayed her; and Tremlet, sometimes listening to the
clear bell-like music of the descending water, some
times uttering the broken sentences which are most

eloquent in love, sat out the hours till the stars began
to pale, undisturbed by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the
upper stair of the terrace, read by a small lamp, which,
in the calm of that heavenly summer night, burned
unflickeringly in the open air.

It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, sauntered
slowly past Hyde Park corner on his way to the
Albany. The lamps were still struggling with the
brightening approach to sunrise, the cabmen and their
horses slept on the stand by the Green Park, and with
cheerful faces the laborers went to their work, and with
haggard faces the night-birds of dissipation crept wearily
home. The well-ground dust lay in confused heel-marks
on the sidewalk, a little dampened by the night-dew;
the atmosphere in the street was clear, as it never
is after the stir of day commences; a dandy, stealing
out from Crockford's, crossed Piccadilly, lifting up his
head to draw in long breaths of the cool air, after the
closeness of over-lighted rooms and excitement; and
Tremlet, marking none of these things, was making
his way through a line of carriages slowly drawing up
to take off their wearied masters from a prolonged fête
at Devonshire house, when a rude hand clapped him
on the shoulder.

“Monsieur Tremlet!”

“Ah, Baron! bien bon jour!”

“Bien rencontrè, Monsieur! You have insulted a
lady to-night, who has confided her cause to my hands.
Madam St. Leger, sir, is without a natural protector,
and you have taken advantage of her position to insult
her — grossly, Mr. Tremlet, grossly!”

Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraordinary
address, and saw that he was evidently highly
excited with wine. He drew him aside into Berkeley
street, and in the calmest manner attempted to explain
what was not very clear to himself. He had totally
forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomate, though
quite beyond himself with his excitement, had sufficient
perception left to see the weak point of his statement;
and infuriated with the placid manner in which
he attempted to excuse himself, suddenly struck his
glove into his face, and turned upon his heel. They
had been observed by a policeman, and at the moment
that Tremlet, recovering from his astonishment, sprang
forward to resent the blow, the gray-coated guardian
of the place laid his hand upon his collar and detained
him till the baron had disappeared.

More than once on his way to the Albany, Tremlet
surprised himself forgetting both the baron and the insult,
and feeding his heart in delicious abandonment
with the dreams of his new happiness. He reached
his rooms and threw himself on the bed, forcing from
his mind, with a strong effort, the presence of Lady
Imogen, and trying to look calmly on the unpleasant
circumstance before him. A quarrel which, the day
before, he would have looked upon merely as an inconvenience,
or which, under the insult of a blow, he
would have eagerly sought, became now an almost insupportable
evil. When he reflected on the subject
of the dispute — a contention about a woman of doubtful
reputation taking place in the same hour with a
first avowal from the delicate and pure Lady Imogen —
when he remembered the change in his fortunes,
which he had as yet scarcely found time to realize —
on the consequences to her who was so newly dear to
him, and on all he might lose, now that life had become
invaluable — his thoughts were almost too painful
to bear. How seldom do men play with an equal stake
in the game of taking life, and how strange it is that
equality of weapons is the only comparison made necessary
by the laws of honor!

Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. He
rose, after an hour's reflection, and wrote as follows:
—

There was a bridal on the following Monday at St.
George's church, and the Russian secretary stood behind
the bridegroom. Lady Ravelgold had never been
seen so pale, but her face was clear of all painful feeling;
and it was observed by one who knew her well,
that her beauty had acquired, during the brief engagement
of her daughter, a singular and undefinable elevation.
As the carriages with their white favors turned
into Bond street, on their way back to Belgrave square,
the cortege was checked by the press of vehicles, and
the Russian, who accompanied Lady Ravelgold in her
chariot, found himself opposite the open britsçka of a
lady who fixed her glass full upon him without recognising
a feature of his face.

“I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger,
baron!” said Lady Ravelgold.

“Or I should not have been here!” said the Russian;
and as they drove up Piccadilly, he had just time
between Bond street and Milton Crescent to tell her
ladyship the foregone chapter of this story.

The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake,
and the wound on Mr. Tremlet's lip was not cured by
letting alone.