OHAKDOS.
21
and his own struck him with a force that left him with-
out his usual weapons. Chandos saw in this nothing
beyond the reaction of a sudden and pleasurable sur-
prise; he laid his hand kindly on the other's shoulder.
" Thank me by showing them in the House what my
friend can prove himself! And, Trevenna, look here:
do not think that because you are returned through my
influence you are for a moment expected to represent
my opinions. The borough is a quiet, colorless little
place, that will ask you no questions provided you
adequately attend to its sea-coast interests; you may
do anything else that you like. I hear that you have
lately been lecturing, or something, in the Norththat
you have been expressing views totally different from
those you near ill my set. Now understand, once for
all, I wish you to enter public life entirely unshackled.
Choose your party, or remain an independent member:
act precisely as you deem most true and most wise.
After living among us, I am not afraid you will join the
Ultras in pulling our houses down over our heads and
in parcelling our estates into building allotments; but,
whatever you genuinely believe, let that be what you
advocate in the House, as though neither I nor Claren-
cieux existed."
With these words he went out, to spare his presence
to the man whom he had just assisted to the fruitage of
his most hopeless ambition.
Trevenna stood still and silent, struck mute for the
instant with the blaze of his rising fortunes, and moved
for one fleeting second with a heavy sense of treacher-
ous shame. "Damnation!" he said, in his teeth: "for
five minutes I almost forgot to hate him !"
Half in shadow, half in sunlight, in the noontide of
the day, sat the Queen of Lilies.
A cluster of tall copper beeches stood out before a
deep dark screen of crag, and waved and tossed to
gether in grand confusion, and wild as they had been
in the days of the Druids, only broken here and there
by the rush of some tumbling torrent. Under the
beeches was a broken wishing-well, its stones covered
with ivy, its brink overgrown with heaths and maiden-
hair and countless violets. Here, some ten miles
beyond Clarencieux, in this lonely forest-land of her
brother-in-law's shooting-place, Lady Valencia sat in
solitude, with the falling of the waters only mingled
with the thrill of a nightingale's evening note poured
out on the hush of the noon. In her most sovereign
moments she had never looked so lovely as now, in lie
complete negligence, abandonment, almost dejection,
Of her attitude. She leaned against the stone coping
(if the well, one arm resting on it, so that her hand,
half unconsciously, played now and then with the
|;reen coils of leaves and grasses falling in the water;
Iter head drooped slightly; there was sadness, almost
melancholy, in the musing shadow of her liquid eyes
A volume of "Lucrce" lay at her feet; a water-
spaniel waited near, wistfully watching for her notice.
The melody of bird or river had no music on her ear:
she was thinking very wearily.
Thusshe all insensible of his gazeChandos saw her.
He paused, checked his horse as he rode through a
bridle-path hidden in foliage, wavered an instant, then
flung the rein to his servant, bade him ride on, and
went backward, through the entangled meshes of the
leaves, towards the ruined wishing-well.
His step made no echo on the moss; unseen he noted
the weariness of languor in the dreaming repose, the
musing pain, that darkened the eyes that gazed down
absently ou the purple wealth of the violet buds.
"Doesshe regret me?" he thought; and at sight of
that living beauty which haunted him through Eastern
cities and Italian air, the old. soft, wayward, unresisted
passion which had so ofl en ruled him, yet never reigned
more utterly than it was near reigning now, woke in
all its force. He thought neither of penalty nor of con-
sequence, of wisdom nor of future; he thought alone
of her.
The movement of his hand as he put aside the red
fold of the copper-beech leaves and the light spring
uds of the young ivy coils caught her ear; she lifted
her eyes and met the eloquence of his. She rose, with
something almost hurried and tremulous in the dignity
of her serene grace ; her face flushed, her glance had a
light in it he had never seen there; sudden surprise
changed the calm of her grand and delicate beauty to
a new warmth and hesitation that lent a still fairer life.
In that instant, as he saw her under the burnished
gold of the arching sunlit leaves, he could not doubt
but that she loved him.
" You have returned ?" The words were low and un-
studied, as though in the surprise of his presence there
her proud tranquillity broke down.
"Ah! forgive,me that I ever wandered away. For-
getfulness did not go with me."
He scarcely thought, he never measured what he
said ; he thought only of her loveliness, there in the
shadows of the spring-time leafage; and the loveliness
of women had always done with him what it would.
He bent nearer to her, looking down into her eyes with
a gaze that made them droop, and made her heart beat
with a swift, uncertain throb, a vague gleam of hope.
"My love! my love!" he murmured, thinking no more
of the cost and issue of his words than he had
thought when he had murmured such against the warm
cheek of some young Eastern odalisque, or gazing into
the lustre of Southern eyes under the Spanish stars, or
by the shores of Procida, " we mustnot part again !"
The music of his voice stole upon her ear, charming
and lulling her into its own trance of passion; the deep
warmth of a hot flush stole over all her beauty, intensi-
fying every delicate hue, like the warmth from the
noon through the crimson leaves; and as he drew her
into his embrace, with his kiss he bartered his peace,
his honor, and his future; for it, in that hour of her
power, he would have thought the world well lost. The
violets blossoming, dew-laden, at their feetflower of
the poets, and crown of child-Protus' golden hair-
were not more sweet than that first birth and utterance
cf love.
CHAPTER VII.
Before a fire (for she fancied or liked to say she was
chilly, in those late April days that were wellnigh as
warm as summer) Lady Chesterton lay sulkily reclining
in her little boudoir, a little green-panelled chamber,
chiefly noticeable for its collection of one of her pas-
sionscurious china Rose Berri, Henri Deux, and
every sort of faence that time had ennobled and rarity
endeared. She was very sullen, very grave, very
moody. She was bitter as gall in her own soul. The
distant cousin she hated, because he had inherited her
father's title, had been left a fortune that would enable
him to raise the Ivors peerage to its old glories, whilst
iier husband was so heavily in debt that the narrowest
continental economy would not better him. This house
that they had taken on their hands so vainly, with its
shootings that had entailed so much expense, had
served them no purpose. Lord Clydesmore was hope-
less to attract again after his first repulse; other men
were coy of her beautiful sistera marquis's daughter,
and portionless. She herself loved show, wealth, mag-
nificence, all the exclusivism of greatness in its great-
est; and she was literally poorer than one of the game-
keeper's wives out in the park yonderpoorer, for the
keeper's wife could accept her poverty, and the peer-
ess had to go to court as a lady-in-waiting, and to
rack her brains afterwards to stave off the milliner
who sent her court-dresses.
" 1 wish I were one of those wretched women in the
cottages in the woodsl" she thought. "They have to
bake, and to scrub, and to slap their dirty children,
and to pinch and screw, and live on pork and potatoes;
but they are better off than I: they have nothing to
keep up !"
It was a bitter truth, and she felt its bitterness to the
utmost, where she sat, curled in the velvets and silks
and luxury, that those she envied would have, so envied
" my lady " could they have looked on her in her
solitude. She turned her head slowly as the door
opened, glanced up with half-closed eyes, then re-
turned to the moody contemplation of the fire. She
had been a very miserable companion, a very gloomy
tyrant, to her sister during this winter, when'they had
been mewed in leafless woods for nothing, with no
dinner-party nearer than fifteen miles, hearing of
that "odious man Trevenna's " men-parties at Claren-
cieux, and hopeless of ever seeing its lost lord return.
Nor had the month or so of the town-season much im-
proved her temper, now that she was back again for the
recess.
Lady Valencia came up in silence till she stood before
the fire; her black laces swept round her over a white
morning dress (she wore that floating dead white as no
other could), and there had caught across it, in unno-
ticed ornament, one of the long ivy-coils, with leaves of
darkest, buds of lightest green.
" What a draught you bring in with you!" shivered
Lady Chesterton, peevishly. " Good gracious! you are
dressed as if it were summer. Take care, pray; you
brush Drage's hair the wrong way !"
Moving her skirts from the little lion-dog, Lady Va-
lencia stood silent still. Her sister looked up at her and
wondered. The brilliance of the spring-tide seemed
to have lingered on the Queen of Lilies ; there was a new
look upon her face.
" What has happened?" asked the peeress, sharply.
She looked down on the baroness with a certain
haughty contempt. She owed her sister many a goad-
ing irritation, many a sneering taunt.
"Your sacrifice at Forest Hill has not been in vain,"
she said, calmly detaching the green ivy-spras- from her
drpss
Lady Chesterton started up in her chair, her black
eyes all vivid animation.
" Valencia I you do not mean that Chandos-----"
"Yes," said the Lily Queen, serenely still; but she
turned her head with the lofty supremacy of a victori-
ous queen; a proud triumph flashed in the elvet
depths of her eyes; every line of her form, every curve
of her lips, expressed conquest; "yes, wehave won. I
shall be mistress of Clarencieux!"
Had Chandos been there in that moment, he would
have seen it were better for him that he should lie in
his grave than that she should be so.
CHAPTER VIII.
Chandos, as it was, could scarcely have said that the
same triumph remained with him.
Waking to calmer reflection and recollection as he
rode homeward, the price that he must pay for the
words he had uttered, for the caress he had given, on
an impulse of passion stronger than himself, stole to
his thoughts with a chill. For marriage he had an
utter distasteof his liberty a surpassing love; the
slightest bondage was unendurable to him. He had
never had anything to consult except his own free will;
and inconstancy in taste, in pursuit, in amusement,
and in residence had become his habit, if it were not
his nature. To endure control, to have to tell his plans
ere he followed them, not to go where caprice took
him, unasked and unshackled, to have any companion
with him through custom instead of inclination, or to
have the same with him long together, all that some
men take naturally, to him would have been intolera-
ble slavery. It may be hence imagined that nothing
could be more repugnant or less suited to him than
marriage ; and the thought of what he had done on the
spur of an irresistible beauty and a vainly-resisted love
weighed on him curiously as he rode through the aisles
of pines and over the vast undulating sward of the out-
lying lands, with the sound of the sea from the dis-
tance, and in the sunny air the winged dwellers of the
beach, the delicate tern, the rare hen-harrier, the ring-
plover, and the mallard, flying above the wild thyme
and the still moor-pools. His life had not a shadow:
why had he not left it as it was? He loved herhe
loved her with a great passion that, through her
beauty, swayed him like a reed; and yet a strange
weariness, a strange depression, came upon him as he
swept over the wild wolds. He felt as though he had
surrendered up his future into bondage.
As he turned his horse into the home-woods, leaving
the purple moorlands that were the sea-shcre appanage
of Clarencieux at a cross-road, one of his own hunters
was spurred after him.   Trevenna came up with him.
" How you do ride!" cried Trevenna, himself a good
. ' you
but cautious horseman, not caring very much for the
saddle. " You will break your neck, surely, some day.
How you took that gate ! By the way, if you were to
do such a thing, who is your heir? There is no other
Chandos."
"The estates would go to the Castlemaine family: I
have no nearer relatives," answered Chandos, a little
wearily. Now, of all other times, he'could have wished
the incessant chatter of his Chicot far away.
"Ah, but you'll marry some time or other, of course."
Chandos gave a gesture of impatience: the word
grated terribly on his ear. Trevenna glanced at him,
and knew what he wanted. Through his reconnoitrer-
glass he had seen the wishing-well, and the two who
had stood beneath the copper beeches, and he wished
to learn how far the affair had gone. The impatient
gesture told him. He had studied every impulse and
minutest trait of Chandos' character, till he couldguage
his feeling and his meaning to the slightest shade.
"The ladies were upbraiding you lotwHy for your de-
sertion, when I left the house. They had sauntered
down out of their rooms to ride and drive, and were in-
dignant not to have their host en proie." he went on.
carelessly; he knew his companion too well to press
the other subject. " As for me, I have beeii meditating
on my coming greatness. Really, have you thought
well of it, Chandos? Your friends will say you have
put an adventurer in the House."
"They will not say so to me; and if they do to you,
you can give them more than they send. Besides, you
will have good company; did not they say so of
Canning?"
"Then you are really resolved on lifting me to St.
Stephen's?"
"Assuredly."
" Upon my word, monseigneur, you make one tlmvk
of Timon's
I could deal kingdoms to my friends,
And ne'er be weai v !"
"Timon! You choose me an ominous parallel.
Would you all be ' feast-won, fast-lost?' "
" The deuce !   I dare say we should."
The answer was rough, but it was true as far as it
went. There were times when Trevenna could not
quite help being truthful. Lying invariably will become
as weary work, sometimes, as telling truth becomes
to most people: and there was a cynical candor in the
fellow not always to be broken into training.
" would trust you sooner not to be, Trevenna, for
the frankness of that admission," said Chandos, right
in his deduction, even if he should be wrong in this
present installe. "Look at that glimpse of sea through
the pines;   how wonderful in color!"
The deep blue of the sea-line glistened to violet be-
yond the dark-green boughs and the russet shafts
of the pine-stems. The woods of the deer-forest
stretched in rolling masses upward and inland ; and
beyond, tinged with the brightest light, stood the mag-
nificent pile of the castle.   Trevenna looked.
" Yes. very pretty."
"Good Heavens! you speak as if it were the trans-
formation-scene of a ballet!"
"I like a ballet a good deal better. Clouds of trans-
parent skirts are better than clouds of transparent
mists.   You are very fond of this place, Ernest !"
" It were odd if I were not. I can fancy how it was
deadlier to the last marquis than to sever from friend
or mistress, when he had to look his last on Claren-
Trevenna smiled, and flicked his horse thoughtfully
between the ears, as they rode on in silence.
" Thou gives! so long, Timon, I fear me
Thou wilt give thyself away in paper, shortly,"
ran the thread of his musings.
Trevenna's momentary pang of conscience in the
morning had been particularly short-lived. It had died
with the next look upward to the face of the last mar-
quis.                                                                                 a
At that moment, entering on the clearer spaces of
the Home Park, where four avenues of gigantic limes
crossed and met each other, one of the most singular
beauties of Clarencieux, they encountered another rid-
ing-party escorting a little pony-carriage drawn by four
perfect piebalds, and containing Madame de la Vivarol
and a Russian princess. Among the escort were the
Royal Duc de Neuilly, and another due, not royal, but
a European notoriety all the samePhilippe Francois,
Duc d'Orvle. Phillippe d'Orvle was a character-
Europe was given to saying, too, a very bad character.
Chief of one of the great feudal races of France, now
growing fewer and fewer with every generation, he was,
so to speak, born in the purples, and had lived in them
up to the time when he was now some fifty j ears of age.
Exceedingly handsome, he still preserved his dbon-
naire graces. Excessively talented, he could on occa-
sion outwit a Metternich, a Talleyrand, or a Palmer
ston. Extremely pooular, he was the prince of bon-
vivants. With all this, Philippe d'Orvle had achieved
a reputation too closely allied to that of his namesake
of D'Orlans not to be considered a thorough-going
reprobate, and to care infinitely less for succeeding in
the field of state affairs and political triumphs than
for succeeding in dancing a new Spanish cachucha, in
brewing a new liqueur-punch at his soupers  huis clos,
in dazzling Paris with some mad freak of exuberant
nonsense, and in leading the Demi-Monde in all its
wildest extravagances. He had a good deal in him of
the mad-cap mixture that was in the character of the
Emperor Maximilian, and, like him, scouted courts,
titles, states, and dignities for some reckless piece of
devil-may-care. He might have been anything he
chose: but he, duke and peer of France, decorated with
half fhe orders of Europe, descendant of nobles who
I had been cousins of Valois and nephews of Bourbon
! and Medici, did not choose to be anything except the
: chief of the Free Lances and the sovereign patron of
i singers and ballet-dancers.
I    Certes, he enjoyed himself, and looked on at his gay
! world unsated out of his careless eyes; but his family
thought him mad, and had, indeed, tried to restrain
him from the control of his vast properties, till Due
Philippe, suddenly taking it into his head to show them
he was sane, went to Vienna, and conducted a delicate
i imbroglio so matchless for France that it was impos-
; sible to support the charge any longer, though, having
so vindicated his sanity, he returned directly to his own
courses, and was found at breakfast next day with
three actresses, from the Varits, an inimitable buffo-
singer from the Caf Alcazar, a posture-dancer off the
pavement of the Palais Royal, in whom he declared he
had discovered a relative, and a Pifferaro's monkey
i seated solemnly in state in one of the velvet chairs,
' munching truffles and praslins, amidst the chorus of
Rossini's Papatacci, sung by the whole party and led
j by D'Orvle himself.
!    A man who will set do,vn a Barbary ape at Ins table,
: Europe, of course, will pronounce out of his senses: yet
i a more finished gentleman than Due Philippe never
bowed before a throne; and while Europe in a mass
pronounced him the most   hideous amalgamation of
vices, two or three who knew him well, among whom
j was Chandos, steadily upheld that there, was not an
I ounce of real evil in this bearded bon enfant.
j    John Trevenna, as far as dissipation went, was e per-
fectly irreproachable character, and had not really a
I vice that could be put down at his score; Philippe
d'Orvle was a very reproachable one, and had, be-
yond doubt, a good many:  yet perhaps both Guido
Lulli and Beau Sire were in the right when they shrank
from the keen blue eyes of the one, and came up with-
out fear, sure of a kindly word, under the sunny gaze
of the other.
The next night there were, as commonly when the
house was filled, theatricals at Clarencieux. The same
Paris troupe which had gone to Constantinople were
down here for the recess, reinforced by a new actress
I