University of Virginia Library

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.