University of Virginia Library

Lady Ravelgold.

ROMANCE OF TRAVEL.

LADY RAVELGOLD.

1. CHAP. I.

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 clamour
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 gambage 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 mistresses
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 if the nearest clerk of the junior
partner were in, was showed 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, high-born, 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 honour 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 illdissembled
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 cannot 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 champêtre 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 honour 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 staid, 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 horrour with which the thought
was met in the mind of Lady 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
for half a moment from the subject of those busy
dreams.

2. CHAP. 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 fullthroated
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 fête, 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 gentleman 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 coach-makers, 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 that 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 arbour 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 super-annuated
dependants of Lord Roseberry, whose only
duties were to look like patriarchs, and give tea and
new cream-cheese to visiters on fête-days. 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
“Marmalct 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 green-houses,
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 shapely
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 colour, 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 musick, “They who soar highest strike surest;
the dove lies in the falcon's bosom.”

3. CHAP. 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 obeyed 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, curtsying,
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

honour, 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 pretter
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 classick 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 honour
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, favourable 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 entrusted. 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 endeavoured to interest her mother
in conversation on the subject, with the intention of
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 earnestness of her mother's manner,
and a certain case 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 irrisistible when
she chose to please, that she supposed it of course;
and very soon the heightened colour 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
favour 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 artizans were busy below the lawn, erecting
the machinery for the fire-works. Meantime every

alley and avenue, grot and labyrinth, had been dimly
illuminated with coloured lamps, showing like varicoloured
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-coloured 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 fire-works, 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'évanóuit. 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 lilachs, 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. CHAP. 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 over-dressed daughters. Watching
them, to see the effect of their application, stood
upon the sidewalk three or four young men from the
neighbouring club-house, and at the moment Tremlet
was observing these circumstances, a foreign
britsçka, containing a beautiful woman of a reputation
better understood than expressed in the conclave
above stairs, flew round the corner of St. James'-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 daughter's 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
britsçka.

“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 coloured
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 tearoom.
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 tonight
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, colour, 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 exist 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 dishonourable
suit. The scene disclosed by the sudden blaze of
the fire-works 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 favoured 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 favour, 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 favour, 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 speech less 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 emperour, 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 gasped 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. CHAP. 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 toilette, 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 odours 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 Agläe, 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 favourites 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 looking at the servant, who
immediately left the room. “Let us understand
each other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us tonight?”

“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 colour 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 Ravel-gold's
increasing obligations and embarrassments
and his own wealth might weigh against his disadvantages,
and now, his honourable 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
awhile 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. CHAP. 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 roselamp
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
assured 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 cannot 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
staunch 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, sometimes 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 labourers 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 side-walk,
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 all on
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 honour!

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

“Baron

—Before taking the usual notice of the occurrence
of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two points in
which our position is false. I find myself, since last night,
the accepted lover of Lady Imogen Ravelgold, and the master
of estates and title as a count of the Russian empire.
Under the etourdissement of such sudden changes in feelings
and fortune, perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady in whose
cause you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any
rate, I am so newly in love with life that I am willing to
suppose for an hour that had you known these circumstances
you would have taken a different view of the offence in
question. I shall remain at home till two, and it is in your
power till then to make me the reparation necessary to my
honour.

Yours, etc.
TREMLET.”

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 favours turned into Bond-street, on their
way back to Belgrave-square the cortége 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.