University of Virginia Library

THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE.

1. CHAPTER I.
SHOWING THE HUMILIATIONS OF THE BARRIERS OF
HIGH-LIFE.

There is no aristocracy in the time o' night. It
was punctually ten o'clock, in Berkeley square. It
rained on the nobleman's roof. It rained on the beggar's
head. The lamps, for all that was visible except
themselves, might as well have been half way to the
moon, but even that was not particular to Berkeley
square.

A hack cabriolet groped in from Bruton street.

“Shall I ring any bell for you, sir?” said the cabman,
pulling aside the wet leather curtain.

“No! I'll get out anywhere! Pull up to the sidewalk!”

But the passenger's mind changed while paying his
shilling.

“On second thoughts, my good fellow, you may
knock at the large door on the right.”

The driver scrambled up the high steps and gave a
single knock—such a knock as the drivers of only the
poor and unfashionable are expected to give, in well-regulated
England.

The door was opened only to a crack, and a glittering
livery peered through. But the passenger was
close behind, and setting his foot against the door, he
drove back the suspicious menial and walked in.
Three men, powdered and emblazoned in blue and
gold, started to their feet, and came toward the apparent
intruder. He took the wet cap from his head,
deliberately flung his well-worn cloak into the arms
of the nearest man, and beckoning to another, pointed
to his overshoes. With a suppressed titter, two of
the footmen disappeared through a side-door, and the
third, mumbling something about sending up one of
the stable-boys, turned to follow them.

The new-comer's hand passed suddenly into the
footman's white cravat, and, by a powerful and sudden
throw, the man was brought to his knee.

“Oblige me by unbuckling that shoe!” said the
stranger in a tone of imperturbable coolness, setting
his foot upon the upright knee of the astonished menial.

The shoe was taken off, and the other set in its
place upon the plush-covered leg, and unbuckled, as
obediently.

“Keep them until I call you to put them on again!”
said the wearer, taking his gloves from his pockets, as
the man arose, and slowly walking up and down the
hall while he drew them leisurely on.

From the wet and muddy overshoes had been delivered
two slight and well-appointed feet, however,
shining in pliable and unexceptionable jet. With a
second look, and the foul-weather toggery laid aside,
the humbled footman saw that he had been in error,
and that, hack-cab and dirty overshoes to the contrary
notwithstanding, the economising guest of “my lord”
would appear, on the other side of the drawing-room
door, only at home on “velvet of three pile”—an elegant
of undepreciable water!

“Shall I announce you, sir?” respectfully inquired
the servant.

“If Lord Aymar has come up from the dinner table—yes!
If the ladies are alone—no!”

“Coffee has just gone in to the ladies, sir!”

“Then I'll find my own way!”

Lady Aymar was jamming the projecting diamond
of a bracelet through and through the thick white
leaf of an Egyptian kala, lost apparently in an eclipse
of revery—possibly in a swoon of slumberous digestion.
By the drawing-room light, in her negligent
posture, she looked of a ripeness of beauty not yet
sapped by one autumnal minute—plump, drowsy, and
voluptuous. She looked up as the door opened.

“Spiridion!”

“Sappho!”

“Don't be silly!—how are you, Count Pallardos?
And how like a ghost you come in, unannounced!
Suppose I had been tying my shoe, or anything?”

“Is your ladyship quite well?”

“I will take coffee and wake up to tell you! Was
I asleep when you opened the door? They were all
so dull at dinner. Ah me! stupid or agreeable, we
grow old all the same! How am I looking, Spiridion?”

“Ravishingly! Where is Lady Angelica?”

“Give me another lump of sugar! La! don't you
take coffee?”

“There are but two cups, and this was meant for
a lip of more celestial earth—has she been gone
long?”

The door opened, and the rustling dress of Lady
Angelica Aymar made music in the room. Oh, how
gloriously beautiful she was, and how changed was
Count Spiridion Pallardos by her coming in! A
minute before so inconsequent, so careless and complimentary—now
so timid, so deferential, so almost
awkward in every motion!

The name of “Greek count” has been for a long
time, in Europe, the synonym for “adventurer”—a
worse pendant to a man's name, in high life at least,
than “pirate” or “robber.” Not that a man is peculiar
who is trying to make the most out of society and
would prefer an heiress to a governess, but that it is a
disgrace to be so labelled! An adventurer is the same
as any other gentleman who is not rich, only without
a mask.

Count Pallardos was lately arrived from Constantinople,
and was recognised and received by Lord Aymar
as the son of a reduced Greek noble who had been
the dragoman to the English embassy when his lordship
was ambassador to the Porte. With a promptness
a little singular in one whose patronage was so
difficult to secure, Lord Aymar had immediately procured,
for the son of his old dependant, a small employment
as translator in the Foreign office, and with
its most limited stipend for his means, the young
count had commenced his experience of English life.
His acquaintance with the ladies of Lord Aymar's
family was two stages in advance of this, however.
Lady Aymar remembered him well as the beautiful
child of the lovely Countess Pallardos, the playfellow
of her daughter Angelica on the shore of the Bosphorus;
and on his first arrival in England, hearing
that the family of his patron was on the coast for sea-bathing,
Spiridion had prepared to report himself first
to the female portion of it. Away from society in a
retired cottage ornée upon the seashore, they had received
him with no hinderance to their appreciation or
hospitality; and he had thus been subjected, by accident,
to a month's unshared intoxication with the
beauty of the Lady Angelica. The arrival of the
young Greek had been made known to Lord Aymar
by his lady's letters, and the situation had been procured
for him; but Pallardos had seen his lordship
but once, and this was his first visit to the town establishment
of the family.

The butler came in with a petit verre of Curaçoa
for Miladi, and was not surprised, as the footmen
would have been, to see Lady Angelica on her knee,
and Count Pallardos imprisoning a japonica in the
knot a la Grecque of that head of Heaven's most
heavenly moulding. Brother and sister, Cupid and
Psyche, could not have been grouped with a more
playful familiarity.

“Spiridion!”—said Lady Aymar—“I shall call you
Spiridion till the men come up—how are you lodged,
my dear! Have you a bath in your dressing-room?”

“Pitcher and bowl of the purest crockery, my dear
lady! May I venture to draw this braid a little closer,
Angelica—to correct the line of this raven mass on
your cheek? It robs us now of a rose-leaf's breadth
at least—flat burglary, my sweet friend!”

But the Lady Angelica sprang to her feet, for a
voice was heard of some one ascending from the
dining-room. She flung herself into a dormeuse,
Spiridion twirled his two fingers at the fire, as if bodily
warmth was the uppermost necessity of the moment,
and enter Lord Aymar, followed by a great statesman,
a famous poet, one sprig of unsurpassed nobility, and
one wealthy dandy commoner.

Lord Aymar nodded to his protegé, but the gentlemen
grouped themselves, for a moment, around a silver
easel, upon which stood a Correggio, a late purchase
of which his lordship had been discoursing, and in
that minute or two the name and quality of the stranger
were communicated to the party—probably, for
they took their coffee without further consciousness
of his presence.

The statesman paired off to a corner with his host
to talk politics, the poet took the punctured flower
from the lap of Lady Aymar, and commenced mending,
with patent wax wafers, from the ormolu desk
near by, the holes in the white leaves; and the two ineffables
lingered a moment longer over their Curaçoa.

Pallardos drew a chair within conversation-reach of
Lady Angelica, and commenced an unskilful discussion
of the opera of the night before. He felt angry,
insulted, unseated from his self-possession, yet he
could not have told why. The two young men lounged
leisurely across the room, and the careless Lord Frederick
drew his chair partly between Pallardos and
Lady Angelica, while Mr. Townley Manners reclined
upon an ottoman behind her and brought his lips
within whisper-shot of her ear, and, with ease and unforced
nonsense, not audible nor intended to be audible
to the “Greek adventurer,” they inevitably engrossed
the noble beauty.

The blood of Count Spiridion ran round his heart
like a snake coiled to strike. He turned to a portfolio
of drawings for a cover to self-control and self-communing,
for he felt that he had need of summoning
his keenest and coldest judgment, his boldest and
wariest courage of conduct and endurance, to submit
to, and outnerve and overmaster, his humiliating position.
He was under a roof of which he well knew
that the pride and joy of it, the fair Lady Angelica,
the daughter of the proud earl, had given him her
heart. He well knew that he had needed reserve and
management to avoid becoming too much the favorite
of the lady mistress of that mansion; yet, in it, he had
been twice insulted grossly, cuttingly, but in both
cases unresentably—once by unpunishable menials,
of whom he could not even complain without exposing
and degrading himself, and once by the supercilious
competitors for the heart he knew was his own—
and they too, unpunishable!

At this moment, at a sign from Lady Aymar, her
lord swung open the door of a conservatory to give
the room air, and the long mirror, set in the panel,
showed to Spiridion his own pale and lowering features.
He thanked Heaven for the chance! To see
himself once more was what he bitterly needed!—to
see whether his head had shrunk between his shoulders—whether
his back was crouched—whether his
eyes and lips had lost their fearlessness and pride! He

had feared so—felt so! He almost wondered that he
did not look like a dependant and a slave! But oh,
no! The large mirror showed the grouped figures
of the drawing-room, his own the noblest among them
by nature's undeniable confession! His clear, statuary
outline of features—the finely-cut arches of his
lips—the bold, calm darkness of his passionate eyes—
his graceful and high-born mien,—all apparent enough
to his own eye when seen in the contrast of that mirrored
picture—he was not changed!—not a slave—not
metamorphosed by that hour's humiliation! He
clenched his right hand, once, till the nails were driven
through his glove into the clammy palm, and then
rose with a soft smile on his features, like the remainder
of a look of pleasure.

“I have found,” said he, in a composed and musical
tone, “I have found what we were looking for, Lady
Angelica!”

He raised the large portfolio from the print-stand,
and setting it open on his knee, directly between Lord
Frederick and Lady Angelica, cut off that nobleman's
communication with her ladyship very effectually,
while he pointed out a view of the Acropolis at Athens.
Her ladyship was still expressing her admiration of the
drawing, when Spiridion turned to the astonished gentleman
at her ear.

“Perhaps, sir,” said he, “in a lady's service, I may
venture to dispossess you of that ottoman! Will you
be kind enough to rise?”

With a stare of astonishment, the elegant Mr.
Townley Manners reluctantly complied; and Spiridion,
drawing the ottoman in front of Lady Angelica,
set the broad portfolio upon it, and seating himself at
her feet upon the outer edge, commenced a detailed
account of the antiquities of the grand capitol. The
lady listened with an amused look of mischief in her
eye, Lord Frederick walked once around her chair
humming an air very rudely, Mr. Manners attempted
in vain to call Lady Angelica to look at something
wonderful in the conservatory, and Spiridion's triumph
was complete. He laid aside the portfolio after a moment
or two, drew the ottoman back to its advantageous
position, and, self-assured and at his ease, engrossed
fully and agreeably the attention of his heart's mistress.

Half an hour elapsed. Lord Aymar took a kind
of dismission attitude before the fire, and the guests
one and all took their leave. They were all cloaking
together in the entry, when his lordship leaned over
the bannister.

“Have you your chariot, Lord Frederick?” he
asked.

“Yes—it's at the door now!”

“Lady Aymar suggests that perhaps you'll set down
Count Pallardos, on your way!”

“Why—ah, certainly, certainly!” replied Lord
Frederick, with some hesitation.

“My thanks to Lady Aymar,” said Spiridion very
quietly, “but say to her ladyship that I am provided
with overshoes and umbrella! Shall I offer your lordship
half of the latter?” added he in another key,
leaning with cool mock-earnestness toward Lord
Frederick, who only stared a reply as he passed out to
his chariot.

And marvelling who would undergo such humiliations
and such antagonism as had been his lot that
evening, for anything else than the love of a Lady
Angelica, Count Spiridion stepped forth into the rain
to grope his way to his obscure lodgings in Parliament
street.

2. CHAPTER II.
SHOWING A GENTLEMAN'S NEED OF A HORSE.

It was the hour when the sun in heaven is supposed
to be least promiscuous—the hour when the
five hundred fashionables of London West-End receive
his visit in the open air, to the entire exclusion
(it is presumed) of the remaining population of the
globe. The cabs and jarveys, the vehicles of the despised
public, rolled past the forbidden gate of Hyde
park, and the echo stationed in the arched portal announced
the coroneted carriages as they nicely nibbled
the pleased gravel in passing under. A plebeian or
two stood outside to get a look at the superior beings
whose daily list of company to dine is the news most
carefully furnished to the instructed public. The
birds (having “fine feathers”) flew over the iron railing
unchallenged by the gate-keeper. Four o'clock
went up to Heaven's gate with the souls of those who
had died since three, and with the hour's report of the
world's sins and good deeds; and at the same moment
a chariot rolled into the park, holding between its
claret panels the embellished flesh and blood of Lady
Aymar and her incomparable daughter.

A group of gay men on horseback stood at the bend
of “Rotten Row,” watching the comers-in; and within
the inner railing of the park, among the promenaders
on foot, was distinguishable the slight figure of Count
Pallardos, pacing to and fro with step somewhat irregular.
As Lady Aymar's chariot went by, he bowed
with a frank and ready smile, but the smile was quickly
banished by a flushed cheek and lowering brow, for,
from the group of mounted dandies, dashed out Lord
Frederick Beauchief, upon a horse of unparalleled
beauty, and with a short gallop took and kept his place
close at the chariot window.

Pallardos watched them till the turn of the ring took
them from his sight. The fitness of the group—the
evident suitableness of Lord Frederick's position at
that chariot window, filled him with a jealousy he could
no longer stifle. The contest was all unequal, it was
too palpable to deny. He, himself, whatever his person
or qualities, was, when on foot, in the place allotted
to him by his fortunes—not only unnoticed by the
contagious admiration of the crowd, but unable even
to obey his mistress, though beckoned by her smile to
follow her! That superb animal, the very type of
pride and beauty, arching his glossy neck and tossing
his spirited head before the eyes of Lady Angelica,
was one of those unanalyzed, undisputed vouchers for
the owner's superiority, which make wealth the devil's
gift—irresistible but by the penetrating and cold judgment
of superior beings. How should a woman, born
with the susceptible weaknesses of her sex, most impressible
by that which is most showy and beautiful—
how should she be expected to reason coldly and with
philosophic discrimination on this subject?—how separate
from Lord Frederick, the mere man, his subservient
accompaniments of wealth, attendance, homage
from others, and infatuated presumption in himself?
Nay—what presumption in Spiridion Pallardos (so
he felt, with his teeth set together in despair, as he
walked rapidly along)—to suppose that he could contend
successfully against this and a thousand such advantages
and opportunities, with only his unpriced,
unproved love to offer her, with a hand of poverty!
His heart ran drowningly over with the bitterness of
conviction!

After a few steps, Pallardos turned back with an in
stinctive though inexplicable desire to hasten the pang
of once more meeting them as they came round the
ring of the park. Coming toward him, was one of the
honorable officials of Downing street, with whom he
had been thrown in contact, a conceited and well-born
diner-out, mounted on a handsome cob, but
with his servant behind him on a blood hunter.
Mr. Dallinger was walking his horse slowly along the
fence, and, as he came opposite Pallardos, he drew
rein.

“Count!” said he, in that patronising tone which is
tossed over the head of the patronised like a swan's

neck over the worm about to be gobbled, “a—a—a—
do you know Spanish?”

“Yes. Why?”

“A—a—I've a job for you! You know Moreno,
the Spanish secretary—well, his wife—she will persist
in disguising her billet-doux in that stilted language,
and—you know what I want—suppose you come and
breakfast with me to-morrow morning?”

Pallardos was mentally crowding his contemptuous
refusal into the smallest phrase that could convey repulse
to insolence, when the high-stepping and foam-spattered
forelegs of Lady Aymar's bays appeared under
the drooping branch of the tree beyond him. The
next instant, Lord Frederick's easily-carried head
danced into sight—a smile of perfect self-satisfaction
on his face, and his magnificent horse, excited by the
constant check, prancing at his proudest. At the moment
they passed, Dallinger's groom, attempting to
restrain the impatience of the spirited hunter he was
upon, drew the curb a little too violently, and the man
was thrown. The sight of the empty saddle sent a
thought through the brain of Pallardos like a shaft.

“May I take a little of the nonsense out of that
horse for you?” said he quickly, springing over the
railing, and seizing the rein, to which the man still
held, while the frighted horse backed and reared
toward his master.

“A—a—yes, if you like!”

Pallardos sprang into the saddle, loosened the rein
and leaned forward, and with three or four powerful
bounds, the horse was at the other window of the
chariot. Away, with the bursted trammels of heart
and brain, went all thoughts of the horse's owner, and
all design, if any had flashed on his mind, of time or
place for restoring him. Bred in a half-civilized country,
where the bold hand was often paramount to law,
the Greek had no habit of mind likely to recognise in
a moment of passion even stronger barriers of propriety
than he was now violating; and, to control his
countenance and his tongue, and summon his resources
for an apparently careless and smiling contest of
attraction with his untroubled rival, was work enough
for the whole mind and memory, as well as for all the
nerve and spirit of the excited Greek. He laid his
hand on the chariot window, and thinking no more of
the horse he was subduing than the air he breathed,
broke up his powerful gallop to a pace that suited him,
and played the lover to the best of his coolness and
ability.

“We saw you walking just now, and were lamenting
that you were not on horseback,” said Lady Aymar,
“for it is a sweet evening, and we thought of
driving out for a stroll in old Sir John Chasteney's
grounds at Bayswater. Will you come, Spiridion?
Tell White to drive there!”

Lord Frederick kept his place, and with its double
escort, the equipage of the Aymars sped on its way to
Bayswater. Spiridion was the handsomer man, and
the more graceful rider, and, without forcing the difficult
part of keeping up a conversation with those
within the chariot, he soon found his uneasiness displaced
by a glow of hope and happiness; for Lady
Angelica, leaning far back in her seat, and completely
hidden from Lord Frederick, kept her eyes watchfully
and steadily upon the opposite side where rode her less
confident lover. The evening was of summer's softest
and richest glory, breezy and fragrant; and as the sun
grew golden, the party alighted at the gates of Chasteney
park—in tune for love, it must needs be, if ever
conspiring smiles in nature could compel accord in
human affections.

Ah, happy Spiridion Pallardos! The Lady Angelica
called him to disengage her dress from the step
of the carriage, and her arm was in his when he arose,
placed there as confidingly as a bride's, and with a
gentle pressure that was half love and half mischief—
for she quite comprehended that Lord Frederick's
ride to Bayswater was not for the pleasure of a twilight
stroll through Chasteney park with her mother! That
mother, fortunately, was no duenna. She had pretensions
of her own to admiration, and she was only
particular as to the quantity. Her daughter's division
with her of the homage of their male acquaintances,
was an evil she indolently submitted to, but she was
pleased in proportion as it was not obtruded upon her
notice. As Pallardos and the Lady Angelica turned
into one of the winding alleys of the grounds, Lady
Aymar bent her large eyes very fixedly upon another,
and where such beautiful eyes went before, her small
feet were very sure to follow. The twilight threw its
first blur over the embowering foliage as the parties
lost sight of each other, and, of the pair who are the
hero and heroine of this story, it can only be disclosed
that they found a heaven (embalmed, for their particular
use, in the golden dusk of that evening's twilight),
and returned to the park gate in the latest minute
before dark, sworn lovers, let come what would!
But meantime, the happy man's horse had disappeared,
as well he might have been expected to do, his
bridle having been thrown over a bush by the engrossed
Pallardos, when called upon to assist Lady
Angelica from her carriage, and milord's groom and
miladi's footman having no sovereign reasons for securing
him. Lord Frederick laughed till the count
accepted the offer of Lady Aymar to take him home,
bodkin-wise, between herself and her daughter; and for
the happiness of being close pressed to the loving side
of the Lady Angelica for one hour more, Pallardos
would willingly have lost a thousand horses—his own
or the honorable Mr. Dallinger's. And, by the way,
of Mr. Dallinger and his wrath, and his horseless
groom, Spiridion began now to have a thought or two
of an uncomfortable pertinacity of intrusion.

3. CHAPTER III.
SHOWING WHAT MAKES A HORSE-STEALER A GENTLEMAN.

It was the first day of September, and most of the
gold threads were drawn from the tangled and vari-colored
woof of London society. “The season” was
over. Two gentlemen stood in the window of Crockford's,
one a Jew barrister (kersey enough for more
russet company by birth and character, but admitted
to the society of “costly stuff” for the equivalent he
gave as a purveyor of scandal), and the other a commoner,
whose wealth and fashion gave him the privilege
of out-staying the season in town, without publishing
in the Morning Post a better reason than inclination
for so unnatural a procedure.

Count Spiridion Pallardos was seen to stroll slowly
up St. James street, on the opposite side.

“Look there, Abrams!” said Mr. Townley Manners,
“there's the Greek who was taken up at one
time by the Aymars. I thought he was transported.”

“No! he still goes to the Aymars, though he is
`in Coventry' everywhere else. Dallinger had him
arrested—for horse-stealing, wasn't it? The officer
nabbed him as he was handing Lady Angelica out of
her carriage in Berkeley square. I remember hearing
of it two months ago. What a chop-fallen blackguard
it looks!”

“Blackguard! Come, come, man!—give the devil
his due!” deprecated the more liberal commoner;
“may be it's from not having seen a gentleman for the
last week, but, hang me if I don't think that same
horse-stealer turning the corner is as crack-looking a
man as I ever saw from this window. What's o'clock!”

“Half-past four,” replied the scandal-monger, swallowing,

with a bland smile, what there was to swallow
in Manners's two-edged remark, and turning suddenly
on his heel.

Pallardos slowly took his way along Picadilly, and
was presently in Berkeley square, at the door of the
Aymars. The porter admitted him without question,
and he mounted, unannounced, to the drawing-room.
The ladies sat by the window, looking out upon the
garden.

“Is it you, Spiridion?” said Lady Aymar, “I had
hoped you would not come to-day!”

“Oh, mamma!” appealed Lady Angelica.

“Welcome all other days of the year, my dear
Pallardos—warmly welcome of course”—continued
Lady Aymar, “but—to-day—oh God! you have no
idea what the first of September is—to us—to my
husband!”

Lady Aymar covered her face with her hands, and
the tears streamed through her fingers.

“Pardon me,” said Pallardos—“pardon me, my
dear lady, but I am here by the earl's invitation, to
dine at six.”

Lady Aymar sprang from her seat in astonishment.

“By the earl's invitation, did you say? Angelica,
what can that mean? Was it by note, Count Pallardos?”

“By note,” he replied.

“I am amazed!” she said, “truly amazed! Does
he mean to have a confidant for his family secret? Is
his insanity on one point affecting his reason on all?
What shall we do, Angelica?”

“We may surely confide in Spiridion, whatever the
meaning of it, or the result”—gently murmured Lady
Angelica.

“We may—we may!” said Lady Aymar. “Prepare
him for it as you will. I pray Heaven to help me
through with this day without upsetting my own
reason. I shall meet you at dinner, Spiridion.”

With her hands twisted together in a convulsive
knot, Lady Aymar slowly and musingly passed into
the conservatory on her way to her own room, leaving
to themselves two lovers who had much to talk of
beside dwelling upon a mystery which, even to Lady
Angelica, who knew most of it, was wholly inexplicable.
Yet it was partially explained by the trembling
girl—explained as a case of monomania, and with the
brevity of a disagreeable subject, but listened to by
her lover with a different feeling—a conviction as of a
verified dream, and a vagne, inexplicable terror which
he could neither reason down nor account for. But
the lovers must be left to themselves, by the reader as
well as by Lady Aymar; and meantime, till the dinner
hour, when our story begins again, we may glance at
a note which was received, and replied to, by Lord
Aymar in the library below.

It seemed like the first day after a death, in the
house of Lord Aymar. An unaccountable hush prevailed
through the servants' offices; the gray-headed
old butler crept noiselessly about, making his preparations
for dinner, and the doors, that were opened
and shut, betrayed the careful touch of apprehension.
With penetrating and glassy clearness, the kitchen
clock, seldom heard above stairs, resounded through
the house, striking six.

In the same neglected attire which she had worn in
the morning, Lady Aymar re-entered the drawing-room.
The lids were drawn up around her large eyes
with a look of unresisting distress, and she walked
with relaxed steps, and had, altogether, an air absent
and full of dread. The interrupted lovers ceased
talking as she approached, but she did not remark the
silence, and walked, errandless, from corner to corner.

The butler announced dinner.

“May I give your ladyship an arm?” asked Pallardos.

“Oh God! is it dinner-time already!” she exclaimed
with a voice of terror. “Williams! is Lord Aymar
below?”

“In the dining-room miladi.”

She took Spiridion's arm, and they descended the
stairs. As they approached the dining-room, her arm
trembled so violently in his that he turned to her with
the fear that she was about to fall. He did not speak.
A vague dread, which was more than he had caught
from her looks—a something unaccountably heavy at
his own heart—made his voice cling to his throat.
He bowed to Lord Aymar.

His noble host stood leaning upon the mantel-piece,
pale, but seeming less stern and cold than suffering
and nerved to bear pain.

“I am glad to see you, my dear count!” he said,
giving him his hand with an affectionateness that he
had never before manifested. “Are you quite well?”
he added, scrutinizing his features closely with the
question—“for, like myself, you seem to have grown
pale upon this—September dulness.”

“I am commonly less well in this month than in
any other,” said Pallardos, “and—now I think of it—
I had forgotten that I arose this morning with a
depression of spirits as singular as it was unendurable.
I forgot it, when I received your lordship's note, in
the happiness the day was to bring me.”

The lovers exchanged looks, unremarked, apparently,
by either Lord or Lady Aymar, and the conversation
relapsed into the commonplaces of dinner-table
civility. Spiridion observed that the footmen
were excluded, the old butler alone serving them at
table; and that the shutters, of which he got a chance
glimpse between the curtains, were carefully closed.
Once or twice Pallardos roused himself with the
thought that he was ill playing the part of an agreeable
guest, and proposed some question that might
lead to discussion; but the spirits of Lady Angelica
seemed frighted to silence, and Lord and Lady Aymar

were wholly absorbed, or were at least unconscious of
their singular incommunicativeness.

Dinner dragged on slowly—Lady Aymar retarding
every remove with terrified and flurried eagerness.
Pallardos remarked that she did not eat, but she asked
to be helped again from every dish before its removal.
Her fork rattled on the plate with the trembling of her
hand, and, once or twice, an outbreak of hysterical
tears was evidently prevented by a stern word and look
from Lord Aymar.

The butler leaned over to his mistress's ear.

“No—no—no! Not yet—not yet!” she exclaimed,
in a hurried voice, “one minute more!” But the
clock at that instant struck seven, counted by that
table company in breathless silence. Pallardos felt
his heart sink, he knew not why.

Lord Aymar spoke quickly and hoarsely.

“Turn the key, Williams.”

Lady Aymar screamed and covered her face with
her hands.

“Remove the cloth!” he again ordered precipitately.

The butler's hand trembled. He fumbled with the
corner of the cloth a moment, and seemed to want
strength or courage to fulfil his office. With a sudden
effort Lord Aymar seized and threw the cloth to the
other end of the apartment.

“There!” cried he, starting to his feet, and pointing
to the bare table, “there! there!” he repeated,
seizing the hand of Lady Angelica, as she arose terrified
upon her feet. “See you nothing? Do you see
nothing?”

With a look, at her father, of blank inquiry—a look
of pity at her mother, sunk helpless upon the arm of
her chair—a look at Pallardos, who with open mouth,
and eyes starting from their sockets, stood gazing upon
the table, heedless of all present—she answered—
“Nothing—my dear father!—nothing!”

He flung her arm suddenly from his hand.

“I knew it,” said he, with angry emphasis. “Take
her, shameless woman! Take your child, and begone!”

But Pallardos laid his hand upon the earl's arm.

“My lord! my lord!” he said, in a tone of fearful
suppression of outcry, “can we not remove this
hideous object! How it glares at you!—at me!
Why does it look at me! What is it, Lord Aymar?
What brings that ghastly head here? Oh God!
oh God! I have seen it so often!”

“You?—you have seen it?” suddenly asked Lady
Aymar in a whisper. “Is there anything to see? Do
you see the same dreadful sight, Spiridion?” Her
voice rose with the last question to a scream.

Pallardos did not answer. He had forgotten the
presence of them all. He struggled a moment, gasping
and choking for self-control, and then, with a sudden
movement, clutched at the bare table. His empty
hand slowly opened. and his strength sufficed to pass
his finger across the palm. He staggered backward
with an idiotic laugh, and was received in his fall by
the trembling arms of Lady Angelica. A motion
from Lord Aymar conveyed to his faithful servant
that the phantom was vanishing! The door was flung
open and the household summoned.

“Count Pallardos has fainted from the heat of the
room,” said Lord Aymar. “Place him upon my
bed! And—Lady Aymar!—will you step into the
library—I would speak with you a moment!”

There was humility and beseechingness in the last
few words of Lord Aymar, which fell strangely on the
ear of the affrighted and guilty woman. Her mind
had been too fearfully tasked to comprehend the
meaning of that changed tone, but, with a vague
feeling of relief, she staggered through the hall, and
the door of the library closed behind her.

4. CHAPTER IV.

A letter from Lord Aymar to Lady Angelica will
put the story forward a little:—

With one more letter, perhaps, the story will be
sufficiently told.

Is the story told? I think so!