University of Virginia Library

THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE.

1. CHAPTER I.
SHOWING THE HUMILIATION 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 side-walk!”

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 impertubable 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
or “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 dependent, 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 Mynners 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 dependent 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—
it 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
Mynners 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. Mynners 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 group 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
plebian 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 gatekeeper.
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 instinctive
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 billets-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 affrighted 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 Mynners, “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 Mynners's two-edged
remark, and turning suddenly on his heel.

Pallardos slowly took his way along Piccadilly, 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 it 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 verfied dream, and a vague, 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 grey-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 absent
air and seemed 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 dullness.”

“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 depressior 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 outery, “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.

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

Is the story told? I think so!