THE INTERPRETER (continued 9)

Though the Baron was upwards of six feet, and broad in proportion--though he had distinguished himself more than once before the enemy, and was covered with orders of merit and decorations for bravery--nay, though he was the actual head of the six hundred thousand heroes who constituted the Austrian army, he quailed before that little shrivelled old woman, with her mouth full of black teeth, and her hair dressed à l'Impératrice.

We profane not the mysteries of Hymen--"Caudle" is a name of no exclusive nationality. We leave the Baron, not without a shudder, to the salutary discipline of his excellent monitress.

CHAPTER XLI

WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

We must follow Monsieur Stein, for that worthy has got something to do; nay, he generally has his hands full, and cannot, indeed, be accused of eating the bread of idleness. It is a strange system of government, that of the Austrian empire; and is, we believe, found to answer as badly as might be expected from its organisation. The State takes so paternal an interest in the sayings and doings of its children, as to judge it expedient to support a whole staff of officials, whose sole duty it is to keep the Government informed respecting the habits, actions, everyday life, and secret thoughts and opinions of the general public. Nor do these myrmidons, whose number exceeds belief, and who add seriously to the national expenditure, fail to earn their pay with praiseworthy diligence. In all societies, in all places of pleasure or business, where half-a-dozen people may chance to congregate, there will be an agent of police, always in plain clothes, and generally the least conspicuous person in the throng. The members of this corps are, as may be supposed, chosen for their general intelligence and aptitude, are usually well-informed, agreeable men, likely to lead strangers into conversation, and excellent linguists. As an instance of their ubiquity, I may mention an incident that occurred within my own knowledge to an officer in the British service, when at Vienna, during the war. That officer was dining in the salon of an hotel, and there were present, besides his own party, consisting of Englishmen, and one Hungarian much disaffected to the Government, only two other strangers, sitting quite at the farther extremity of the room, and apparently out of ear-shot. The conversation at my friend's table was, moreover, carried on in English, and turned upon the arrest of a certain Colonel Türr by the Austrian authorities at Bucharest, a few days previously.

This Colonel Türr, be it known, was a Hungarian who had deserted from the Austrian service, and entering that of her Majesty Queen Victoria, had been employed in some commissariat capacity in Wallachia, and taken prisoner at Bucharest by the very regiment to which he had previously belonged. The question was much vexed and agitated at the time, as to the Austrian right over a deserter on a neutral soil, and Colonel Türr became for the nonce an unconscious hero. The officer to whom I have alluded, having listened attentively to the pros and cons of the case, as set forth by his friends, dismissed the subject with military brevity, in these words:--"If you say he deserted his regiment before an enemy, I don't care what countryman he is, or in whose service, the sooner they hang him the better!" This ill-advised remark, be it observed, was made sotto voce, and in his own language. His surprise may be imagined when, on perusing the Government papers the following morning, he read the whole conversation, translated into magniloquent German, and detailed at length as being the expressed opinion of the British army and the British public on the case of Colonel Türr.

I am happy to be able to observe, en passant, that the latter gentleman was not hanged at all, but escaped, after a deal of diplomatic correspondence, with a six weeks' imprisonment in the fortress of Comorn, and has since been seen taking his pleasure in London and elsewhere.

To return to Monsieur Stein. It is evening, and those who have permission from the police to give a party, have lighted their lamps and prepared their saloons for those receptions in which the well-bred of all nations, and particularly the ladies, take so incomprehensible a delight. At Vienna, every house must be closed at ten o'clock; and those who wish to give balls or evening parties must obtain a direct permission to do so, emanating from the Emperor himself. So when they do go out, they make the most of it, and seem to enjoy the pleasure with an additional zest for the prohibition to which it is subject.

Let us follow Monsieur Stein into that brilliantly-lighted room, through which he edges his way so unobtrusively, and where, amongst rustling toilettes, crisp and fresh from the dressmaker, and various uniforms on the fine persons of the Austrian aristocracy, his own modest attire passes unobserved. This is no bourgeois gathering, no assemblage of the middle rank, tainted by mercantile enterprise, or disgraced by talent, which presumes to rise superior to blood. No such thing; they are all the "haute volée" here, the "crème de la crème," as they themselves call it in their bad French and their conventional jargon. Probably Monsieur Stein is the only man in the room that cannot count at least sixteen quarterings--no such easy matter to many a member of our own House of Peers; and truth to tell, the Austrian aristocracy are a personable, fine-looking race as you shall wish to see. Even the eye of our imperturbable police-agent lights up with a ray of what in any other eye would be admiration, at the scene which presents itself as he enters. The rooms are spacious, lofty, and magnificently furnished in the massive, costly style that accords so well with visitors in full dress. The floors are beautifully inlaid and polished; as bright, and nearly as slippery, as ice. The walls are covered with the chef d'oeuvres of the old masters, and even the dome-like ceilings are decorated with mythological frescoes, such as would convert an enthusiast to paganism at once. Long mirrors fill up the interstices between the panellings, and reflect many a stalwart gallant, and many a "lady bright and fair." There is no dancing, it is merely a "reception"; and amongst the throng of beauties congregated in that assembly, impassible Monsieur Stein cannot but admit that the most captivating of them all is Princess Vocqsal.

So thinks the War-Minister, who, forgetful of accounts and responsibilities, regardless even of the threatening glances darted at him from the other end of the room by his excellent wife, is leaning over the back of the Princess's seat, and whispering, in broad Viennese German, a variety of those soft platitudes which gentlemen of three-score are apt to fancy will do them as good service at that age as they did thirty years ago. The Baron is painfully agreeable, and she is listening, with a sweet smile and a pleasant expression of countenance, assumed for very sufficient reasons. In the first place, she owes him a good turn for the information acquired this morning, and the Princess always pays her debts when it costs her nothing; in the second, she wishes, for motives of her own, to strengthen her influence with the Court party as much as possible; and lastly, she enjoys by this means the innocent pleasure of making two people unhappy--viz. Madame la Baronne, who is fool enough to be jealous of her fat old husband; and one other watching her from the doorway, with a pale, eager face, and an expression of restless, gnawing anxiety, which it is painful to behold.

Victor de Rohan, what are you doing here, like a moth fluttering round a candle? wasting your time, and breaking your heart for a woman that is not worth one throb of its generous life-blood; that cannot appreciate your devotion, or even spare your feelings? Why are you not at Edeldorf, where you have left her sad and lonely, one tear on whose eyelash is worth a thousand of the false smiles so freely dealt by that heartless, artificial, worn woman of the world? For shame, Victor! for shame! And yet, as our friend the Turk says, "Kismet! It is destiny!"

He is dressed in a gorgeous Hussar uniform, his own national costume, and right well does its close fit and appropriate splendour become the stately beauty of the young Count de Rohan. At his side hangs the very sword that flashed so keenly by the waters of the Danube, forward in the headlong charge of old Iskender Bey. On its blade is engraved the Princess's name; she knows it as well as he does, yet ten to one she will pretend to forget all about it, should he allude to the subject to-night. Ah! the blade is as bright as it was in those merry campaigning days, but Victor's face has lost for ever the lightsome expression of youth; the lines of passion and self-reproach are stamped upon his brow, and hollowed round his lip, and he has passed at one stride from boyhood to middle age.

He makes a forced movement, as though to speak to her, but his button is held by a jocose old gentleman, whose raptures must find vent on the engrossing topic of Marie Taglioni's graceful activity; and he has to weather the whole person and draperies of a voluminous German dowager ere he can escape from his tormentor. In the meantime Monsieur Stein has been presented to the Princess, and she allows him to lead her into the tea-room, for a cup of that convenient beverage which continental nations persist in considering as possessed of medicinal virtue.

"I have the unhappiness to have escaped Madame's recollection," observed the police-agent, as he placed a chair for the Princess in a corner secure from interruption, and handed her cup; "it is now my good fortune to be able to restore something that she has lost," and he looked at her with those keen grey eyes, as though to read her very soul, while he gave her the letter which had been placed in his pocket-book by faithless Jeannette. "If she cares for him," thought Monsieur Stein, "she will surely show it now, and I need take no further trouble with her. If not, she is the very woman I want, for the fool is madly in love with her, and upon my word it is not surprising!"

Monsieur Stein looked at women with hypercritical fastidiousness, but, as he himself boasted, at the same time, quite "en philosophe."

The Princess, however, was a match for the police-agent; she never winced, or moved a muscle of her beautiful countenance. With a polite "Excuse me," she read the letter through from beginning to end, and turning quietly round inquired, "How came you by this, Monsieur?"

Unless it leads to a revoke, a lie counts for nothing with a police-agent, so he answered at once, "Sent to my bureau from the office, in consequence of an informality in the post-mark."

"You have read it?" pursued the Princess, still calm and unmoved.

"On my honour, no!" answered he, with his hand on his heart, and a low bow.

She would have made the better spy of the two, for she could read even his impassible face, and she knew as well as he did himself that he had, so she quietly returned him the letter, of which she judged, and rightly, that he had kept a copy; and laying her gloved hand on his sleeve, observed, with an air of bewitching candour--"After that affair at Comorn, you and I can have no secrets from each other, Monsieur. Tell me frankly what it is that your employers require, and the price they are willing to pay for my co-operation."

She could not resist the temptation of trying her powers, even on Monsieur Stein; and he, although a police-agent, was obliged to succumb to that low, sweet voice, and the pleading glance by which it was accompanied. A little less calmly than was his wont, and with almost a flush upon his brow, he began--

"You are still desirous of that appointment we spoke of yesterday for the Prince?"

"Ma foi, I am," she answered, with a merry smile; "without it we shall be ruined, for we are indeed overwhelmed with debt."

"You also wish for the earliest intelligence possessed by the Government as to the issues of peace and war?"

"Of course I do, my dear Monsieur Stein; how else can I speculate to advantage?"

"And you would have the attainder taken off your cousin's estates in the Banat in your favour?"

The Princess's eyes glistened, and a deep flush overspread her face. This was more than she had ever dared to hope for. This would raise her to affluence, nay, to splendour, once again. No price would be too great to pay for this end, and she told Monsieur Stein so, although she kept down her raptures and stilled her beating heart the while.

"All this, Princess, I can obtain for you," said he; "all this has been promised me, and I have got it in writing. In less than a month the Government will have redeemed its pledge, and in return you shall do us one little favour."

"C'est un trahison, n'est ce pas?" she asked quickly, but without any appearance of shame or anger; "I know it by the price you offer. Well, I am not scrupulous--say on."

"Scarcely that," he replied, evidently emboldened by her coolness; "only a slight exertion of feminine influence, of which no woman on earth has so much at command as yourself. Listen, Princess; in three words I will tell you all. Count de Rohan loves you passionately--madly. You know it yourself;--forgive my freedom; between you and me there must be no secrets. You can do what you will with him."--(He did not see her blush, for she had turned away to put down her cup.)--"He will refuse you nothing. This is your task:--there is another conspiracy hatching against the Government; its plot is not yet ripe, but it numbers in its ranks some of the first men in Hungary. Your compatriots are very stanch; even I can get no certain information. Several of the disaffected are yet unknown to me. Young Count de Rohan has a list of their names; that list I trust to you to obtain. Say, Princess, is it a bargain?"

She was fitting her glove accurately to her taper fingers.

"And the man that you were good enough to say adores me so devotedly, Monsieur," she observed, without lifting her eyes to his face, "what will you do with him? shoot him as you did his cousin in 1848?"

"He shall have a free pardon," replied the police-agent, "and permission to reside on his lands. He is not anxious to leave the vicinity of the Waldenberg, I believe," he added mischievously.

"Soit," responded the Princess, as she rose to put an end to the interview. "Now, if you will hand me my bouquet we will go into the other room."

As he bowed and left her, Monsieur Stein felt a certain uncomfortable misgiving that he had been guilty of some oversight in his game. In vain he played it all again in his own head, move for move, and check for check; he could not detect where the fault lay, and yet his fine instinct told him that somewhere or another he had made a mistake. "It is all that woman's impassible face," he concluded at last, in his mental soliloquy, "that forbids me to retrieve a blunder or detect an advantage. And what a beautiful face it is!" he added almost aloud, as for an instant the official was absorbed in the man.

In the meantime Victor was getting very restless, very uncomfortable, and, not to mince matters, very cross.

No sooner had the Princess returned to the large salon than he stalked across the room, twirling his moustaches with an air of unconcealed annoyance, and asked her abruptly, "How she came to know that ill-looking Monsieur Stein, and why he had been flirting with her for the last half-hour in the tea-room?"

"That gentleman in plain clothes?" answered she, with an air of utter unconsciousness and perfect good-humour; "that is one of my ancient friends, Monsieur le Comte; shall I present him to you?"

This was another refined method of tormenting her lovers. The Princess had one answer to all jealous inquiries as to those whom she favoured with her notice--"Un de mes anciens amis," was a vague and general description, calculated to give no very definite or satisfactory information to a rival.

"Have a care, Madame," whispered Victor angrily; "you will make some of your ancient friends into your deadliest enemies if you try them so far."

She looked lovingly up at him, and he softened at once.

"Now it is you that are unkind, Victor," she said in a low soft voice, every tone of which thrilled to the young Count's heart. "Why will you persist in quarrelling with me? I, who came here this very evening to see you and to do you a kindness?"

"Did you know I should be in Vienna so soon?" he exclaimed eagerly. "Did you receive my letter?"

"I did, indeed," she replied, with a covert smile, as she thought of the mode in which that missive had reached her, and she almost laughed outright (for the Princess had a keen sense of the ludicrous) at the strange impersonation made by Monsieur Stein of Cupid's postman; "but, Victor," she added, with another beaming look, "I go away to-morrow. Very early in the morning I must leave Vienna."

He turned paler than before, and bit his lip. "So I might as well have stayed at home," he exclaimed in a voice of bitter annoyance and pique, none the less bitter that it had to be toned down to the concert pitch of good society. "Was it to see you for five minutes here in a crowd that I travelled up so eagerly and in such haste? To make my bow, I suppose, like the merest acquaintance, and receive my congé. Pardon, Madame la Princesse, I need not receive it twice. I wish you good-evening; I am going now!"

She, too, became a shade paler, but preserved the immovable good-humour on which she piqued herself, as she made him a polite bow, and turned round to speak to the Russian Minister, who, covered with orders, at that moment came up to offer his obeisance to the well-known Princess Vocqsal. Had he not constant advices from his intriguing Court to devote much of his spare time to this fascinating lady? And had she not once in her life baffled all the wiles of St. Petersburg, and stood untempted by its bribes? Ill-natured people affirmed that another Power paid a higher price, which accounted satisfactorily for the lady's patriotism, but the Autocrat's Minister had his secret orders notwithstanding.

And now she is deep in a lively argument, in which polished sarcasm and brilliant repartee are bandied from lip to lip, each pointed phrase eliciting a something better still from the Princess's soft mouth, till her audience--diplomatists of many years' standing, warriors shrewd in council and dauntless in the field, grey ambassadors and beardless attachés--hang enraptured on her accents, and watch her looks with an unaccountable fascination; whilst Victor de Rohan, hurt, moody, and discontented, stalks fiercely to the doorway and mutters to himself, "Is it for this I have given up home, friends, honour, and self-respect? To be a mere puppet in the hands of a coquette, a woman's plaything, and not even a favourite plaything, after all!"

Ladies have a peculiar gift which is enjoyed by no other members of the creation whatsoever. We allude to that extraordinary property by which, without any exertion of the visual organs, they can discern clearly all that is going on above, below, around, and behind them. If a man wants to see a thing he requires to look at it. Not so with the other sex. Their subtler instinct enables them to detect that which must be made palpable to our grosser senses. How else could Princess Vocqsal, whose back was turned to him, and who was occupied in conversation with the élite of Austrian diplomatic society, arrive at the certainty that Victor was not gone, as he had threatened--that he still lingered unwillingly about the doorway, and now hailed as deliverers those prosy acquaintances from whom, in the early part of the evening, he had been so impatient to escape?

And yet he despised himself for his want of manhood and resolution the while; and yet he reproached himself with his slavish submission and unworthy cowardice; and yet he lingered on in hopes of one more glance from her eye, one more pressure from her soft gloved hand. He had parted with her in anger before, and too well he knew the bitter wretchedness of the subsequent hours; he had not fortitude enough, he dared not face such an ordeal again.

So she knew he was not going yet; and, confident in her own powers, pleased with her position, and proud of her conquests, she sparkled on.

"That's a clever woman," said an English attaché to his friend, as they listened in the circle of her admirers.

And the friend, who was a little of a satirist, a little of a philosopher, a little of a poet, and yet, strange to say, a thorough man of the world, replied--

"Too clever by half, my boy, or I'm very much mistaken. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred are natural-born angels, but the hundredth is a devil incarnate, and that's her number, Charlie, you may take my word for it!"

And now a strange movement rises in that crowded assembly. A buzz of voices is heard--lower, but more marked than the ordinary hum of conversation. Something seems to have happened. A lady has fainted, or an apoplectic general been taken suddenly ill, or a candelabrum has fallen, and the magnificent hotel is even now on fire? None of these casualties, however, have occurred. Voices rise higher in question and reply. "Is it true?"--"I can't believe it!"--"They knew nothing of it to-day on the Bourse."--"Another stock-jobbing report."--"Immense loss on both sides." These are the disjointed sentences that reach the ear, mingled with such terms as the Malakhoff--the Redan--the north side--General Pelissier, etc. etc. English and French diplomatists exchange curious glances, and at length rumour takes a definite form, and it is boldly asserted that intelligence has that day arrived of the fall of Sebastopol.

Tongues are loosened now. Surmise and speculation are rife upon future events. Men speak as they wish, and notwithstanding the presence of Monsieur Stein and several other secret agents of police, many a bold opinion is hazarded as to the intentions of the Government and the issues of the great contest. Princess Vocqsal scarcely breathes while she listens. If, indeed, this should lead to peace, her large investments will realise golden profits. She feels all the palpitating excitement of the gambler, yet does the hue not deepen on her cheek, nor the lustre kindle brighter in her eye. Monsieur Stein, who alone knows her secrets, as it is his business to know the secrets of every one, feels his very soul stirred within him at such noble self-command.

For a moment he thinks that were he capable of human weaknesses he could love that woman; and in pure admiration, as one who would fain prove still further a beautiful piece of mechanism, he steps up to the Princess, and informs her that "Now, indeed, doubt is at an end, for reliable intelligence has arrived that Sebastopol has fallen!"

"Sebastopol has fallen," she repeats with her silver laugh; "then the war has at last really begun!"

Her audience applaud once more. "Ma foi, ce n'est pas mal," says the French Minister, and Monsieur Stein is on the verge of adoration; but there is by this time a general move towards the door: carriages are being called, and it is time to go away, the departure of the guests being somewhat accelerated by the important news which has just been made public. Victor is still lingering on the staircase. Many a bright eye looks wistfully on his handsome form, many a soft heart would willingly waken an interest in the charming young Count de Rohan, but the Hungarian has caught the malady in its deadliest form--the "love fever," as his own poets term it, is wasting his heart to the core, and for him, alas! there is but one woman on earth, and she is coming downstairs at this moment, attended by the best-dressed and best-looking attaché of the French Legation.

Somewhat to this young gentleman's disgust, she sends him to look for her carriage, and taking Victor's arm, which he is too proud to offer, she bids him lead her to the cloak-room, and shawl her as he used to do with such tender care.

He relents at once. What is there in this woman that she can thus turn and twist him at her will? She likes him best thus--when he is haughty and rebellious, and she fears that at last she may have driven him too far and have lost him altogether; the uncertainty creates an interest and excitement, which is pleasure akin to pain, but it is so delightful to win him back again,--such a triumph to own him and tyrannise over him once more! It is at moments of reconciliation such as these that the Princess vindicates her woman-nature, and becomes a very woman to the heart.

"You are angry with me, Victor," she whispers, leaning heavily on his arm, and looking downwards as she speaks; "angry with me, and without a cause. You would not listen to me an hour ago, you were so cross and impatient. Will you listen to me now?"

The tears were standing in the strong man's eyes. "Speak on," he said; "you do with me what you like, I could listen to you for ever."

"You were irritated because I told you I was about to leave Vienna. You have avoided me the whole evening, and left me to be bored and annoyed by that wearisome tribe of diplomatists, with their flat witticisms and their eternal politics. Why did you not stay to hear me out? Victor, it is true I go to-morrow, but I go to the Waldenberg."

How changed his face was now; his eye sparkled and his whole countenance lightened up. He looked like a different man. He could only press the arm that clung to his own; he could not speak.

"Will you continue to bouder me?" proceeded the Princess in a playful, half-malicious tone; "or will you forgive me and be friends for that which is, after all, your own fault? Oh, you men! how hasty and violent you are; it is lucky we are so patient and so good-tempered. The Waldenberg is not so very far from Edeldorf. You might ask me there for your jour de fête. I have not forgotten it, you see. Not a word more, Count de Rohan; I must leave you now. Here is my carriage. Adieu,--no, not adieu, mon ami, au revoir!"

Why was it such a different world to Victor from what it had been ten short minutes ago, from what it would assuredly be the next time they met, and her caprice and coquetterie were again exhibited to drive him wild? Was it worth all these days of uncertainty and anxious longing; all these fits of jealousy and agonies of self-reproach; to be deliriously happy every now and then for a short ten minutes? Was any woman on earth worthy of all that Victor de Rohan sacrificed for the indulgence of his guilty love? Probably not, but it would have been hard to convince him. He was not as wise as Solomon; yet Solomon, with all his wisdom, seems to have delivered himself up a willing captive to disgrace and bondage--fettered by a pair of white arms--held by a thread of silken hair. Oh, vanity of vanities! "this is also vanity and vexation of spirit."

CHAPTER XLII

"TOO LATE"

For a wounded campaigner on crutches, or a wasted convalescent slowly recovering from an attack of Crimean fever, there are few better places for the re-establishment of health than the hotel at Therapia. It is refreshing to hear the ripple of the Bosphorus not ten feet distant from one's bedroom window; it is life itself to inhale the invigorating breeze that sweeps down, unchecked and uncontaminated, from the Black Sea; it is inspiriting to gaze upon the gorgeous beauty of the Asiatic coast, another continent not a mile away. And then the smaller accessories of comfortable apartments, good dinners, civilised luxuries, and European society, form no unwelcome contrast to the Crimean tent, the soldier's rations, and the wearisome routine of daily and hourly duty.

But a few days after the taking of Sebastopol, I was once more in Turkey. Ropsley, the man of iron nerves and strong will--the man whom danger had spared, and sickness had hitherto passed by, was struck down by fever--that wasting, paralysing disease so common to our countrymen in an Eastern climate--and was so reduced and helpless as to be utterly incapable of moving without assistance. He had many friends, for Ropsley was popular in his regiment and respected throughout the army; but none were so thoroughly disengaged as I; it seemed as if I could now be of little use in any capacity, and to my lot it fell to place my old school-fellow on board ship, and accompany him to Therapia, en route for England on sick leave.

My own affairs, too, required that I should revisit Somersetshire before long. The wreck of my father's property, well nursed and taken care of by a prudent man of business, had increased to no contemptible provision for a nameless child. If I chose to return to England, I should find myself a landed proprietor of no inconsiderable means, should be enabled to assume a position such as many a man now fighting his way in the world would esteem the acme of human felicity, and for me it would be but dust and ashes! What cared I for broad acres, local influence, good investments, and county respectability--all the outward show and empty shadows for which people are so apt to sacrifice the real blessings of life? What was it to me that I might look round from my own dining-room on my own domain, with my own tenants waiting to see me in the hall? An empty heart can have no possessions; a broken spirit is but a beggar in the midst of wealth, whilst the whole universe, with all its glories, belongs alone to him who is at peace with himself. I often think how many a man there is who lives out his three-score years and ten, and never knows what real life is, after all. A boyhood passed in vain aspirations--a manhood spent in struggling for the impossible--an old age wasted in futile repinings, such is the use made by how many of our fellow-creatures of that glorious streak of light which we call existence, that intervenes between the eternity which hath been, and the eternity which shall be? Oh! to lie down and rest, and look back upon the day's hard labour, and feel that something has been wrought--that something has been won! and so to sleep--happy here--happy for evermore. Well, on some natures happiness smiles even here on earth--God forbid it should be otherwise!--and some must content themselves with duty instead. Who knows which shall have the best of it when all is over? For me, it was plain at this period that I must do my devoir, and leave all to Time, the great restorer in the moral, as he is the great destroyer in the physical, world. The years of excitement (none know how strong) that I had lately passed, followed by a listless, hopeless inactivity, had produced a reaction on my spirits which it was necessary to conquer and shake off. I resolved to return to England, to set my house in order--to do all the good in my power, and first of all, strenuously to commence with that which lay nearest my hand, although it was but the humble task of nursing my old school-fellow through an attack of low fever.

My patient possessed one of those strong and yet elastic natures which even sickness seems unable thoroughly to subdue. The Ropsley on a couch of suffering and lassitude, was the same Ropsley that confronted the enemy's fire so coolly in the Crimea, and sneered at the follies of his friends so sarcastically in St. James's street. Ill as he was, and utterly prostrated in body, he was clear-headed and ready-witted as ever. With the help of a wretchedly bad grammar, he was rapidly picking up Turkish, by no means an easy language for a beginner; and, taking advantage of my society, was actually entering upon the rudiments of Hungarian, a tongue which it is next to impossible for any one to acquire who has not spoken it, as I had done, in earliest childhood. He was good-humoured and patient, too, far more than I should have expected, and was never anxious or irritable, save about his letters. I have seen him, however, turn away from a negative to the eager inquiry "Any letters for me?" with an expression of heart-sick longing that it pained me to witness on that usually haughty and somewhat sneering countenance.

But it came at last. Not many mornings after our arrival at Therapia there was a letter for Ropsley, which seemed to afford him unconcealed satisfaction, and from that day the Guardsman mended rapidly, and began to talk of getting up and packing his things, and starting westward once more.

So it came to pass that, with the help of his servant, I got him out of bed and dressed him, and laid him on the sofa at the open window, where he could see the light caïques dancing gaily on the waters, and the restless sea-fowl flitting eternally to and fro, and could hear the shouts of the Turkish boatmen, adjuring each other, very unnecessarily, not to be too hasty; and the discordant cries of the Greek population scolding, and cheating, and vociferating on the quay.

We talked of Hungary. I loved to talk of it now, for was it not her country of whom I must think no more? And Ropsley's manner was kinder, and his voice softer, than I had ever thought it before. Poor fellow! he was weak with his illness, perhaps, yet hitherto I had remarked no alteration in his cold, impassible demeanour.

At last he took my hand, and in a hollow voice he said--"Vere, you have returned me good for evil. You have behaved to me like a brother. Vere, I believe you really are a Christian!"

"I hope so," I replied quietly, for what had I but that?

"Yes," he resumed, "but I don't mean conventionally, because your godfathers and godmothers at your baptism said you were--I mean really. I don't believe there is a particle of humbug about you. Can you forgive your enemies?"

"I have already told you so," I answered; "don't you remember that night in the trenches? besides, Ropsley, I shall never consider you my enemy."

"That is exactly what cuts me to the heart," he replied, flushing up over his wan, wasted face. "I have injured you more deeply than any one on earth, and I have received nothing but kindness in return. Often and often I have longed to tell you all--how I had wronged you, and how I had repented, but my pride forbade me till to-day. It is dreadful to think that I might have died, and never confessed to you how hard and how unfeeling I have been. Listen to me, and then forgive me if you can. Oh, Vere, Vere! had it not been for me and my selfishness, you might have married Constance Beverley!"

I felt I was trembling all over; I covered my face with my hands and turned away, but I bade him go on.

"Her father was never averse to you from the first. He liked you, Vere, personally, and still more for the sake of your father, his old friend. There was but one objection. I need not dwell upon it; and even that he could have got over, for he was most anxious to see his daughter married, and to one with whom he could have made his own terms. He was an unscrupulous man, Sir Harry, and dreadfully pressed for money. When in that predicament people will do things that at other times they would be ashamed of, as I know too well. And the girl too, Vere, she loved you--I am sure of it--she loved you, poor girl, with all her heart and soul."

I looked him straight in the face--"Not a word of her, Ropsley, as you are a gentleman!" I said. Oh, the agony of that moment! and yet it was not all pain.

"Well," he proceeded, "Sir Harry consulted me about the match. You know how intimate we were, you know what confidence he had in my judgment. If I had been generous and honourable, if I had been such a man as you, Vere, how much happier we should all be now; but no, I had my own ends in view, and I determined to work out my own purpose, without looking to the right or left, without turning aside for friend or foe. Besides, I hardly knew you then, Vere. I did not appreciate your good qualities. I did not know your courage, and constancy, and patience, and kindliness. I did not know yours was just the clinging, womanly nature, that would never get over the crushing of its best affections--and I know it now too well. Oh, Vere, you never can forgive me! And yet," he added, musingly, more to himself than to me,--"and yet, even had I known all this, had you been my own brother, I fear my nature was then so hard, so pitiless, so uncompromising, that I should have gone straight on towards my aim, and blasted your happiness without scruple or remorse. Remorse," and the old look came over him, the old sneering look, that wreathed those handsome features in the wicked smile of a fallen angel--"if a man means to repent of what he has done, he had better not do it. My maxim has always been, 'never look back,'--'vestigia, nulla retrorsum'--and yet to-day I cannot help retracing, ay, and bitterly regretting, the past.

"I have told you I had my own ends in view. I wished to marry the heiress myself. Not that I loved her, Vere--do not be angry with me for the confession--I never loved her the least in the world. She was far too placid, too conventional, too like other girls, to make the slightest impression on me. My ideal of a woman is, a bold, strong nature, a keen intellect, a daring mind, and a dazzling beauty that others must fall down and worship. I never was one of your sentimentalists. A violet may be a very pretty flower, and smell very sweet, but I like a camellia best, and all the better because you require a hothouse to raise it in. But, if I did not care for Miss Beverley, I cared a good deal for Beverley Manor, and I resolved that, come what might, Beverley Manor should one day be mine. The young lady I looked upon as an encumbrance that must necessarily accompany the estate. You know how intimate I became with her father, you know the trust he reposed in me, and the habit into which he fell, of doing nothing without my advice. That trust, I now acknowledge to you, I abused shamefully; of that habit I took advantage, solely to further my own ends, totally irrespective of my friend. He confided to me in very early days his intention of marrying his daughter to the son of his old friend. He talked it over with me as a scheme on which he had set his heart, and, above all, insisted on the advantage to himself of making, as he called it, his own terms with you about settlements, etc. I have already told you he was involved in difficulties, from which his daughter's marriage could alone free him, with the consent of her husband. I need not enter into particulars. I have the deeds and law papers at my fingers' ends, for I like to understand a business thoroughly if I embark on it at all, but it is no question of such matters now. Well, Vere, at first I was too prudent to object overtly to the plan. Sir Harry, as you know, was an obstinate, wilful man, and such a course would have been the one of all others most calculated to wed him more firmly than ever to his original intention; but I weighed the matter carefully with him day by day, now bringing forward arguments in favour of it, now starting objections, till I had insensibly accustomed him to consider it by no means as a settled affair. Then I tried all my powers upon the young lady, and there, I confess to you freely, Vere, I was completely foiled. She never liked me even as an acquaintance, and she took no pains to conceal her aversion. How angry she used to make me sometimes!--I hated her so, that I longed to make her mine, if it were only to humble her, as much as if I had loved her with all my heart and soul. Many a time I used to grind my teeth and mutter to myself, 'Ah! my fair enemy, I shall live to make you rue this treatment;' and I swore a great oath that, come what might, she should never belong to Vere Egerton. I even tried to create an interest in her mind for Victor de Rohan, but the girl was as true as steel. I have been accustomed to read characters all my life, women's as well as men's, it is part of my profession;" and Ropsley laughed once more his bitter laugh; "and many a trifling incident showed me that Constance Beverley cared for nobody on earth but you. This only made me more determined not to be beat; and little by little, with hints here and whispers there, assisted by your own strange, solitary habits, and the history of your poor father's life and death, I persuaded Sir Harry that there was madness in your family, and that you had inherited the curse. From the day on which he became convinced of this, I felt I had won my race. No power on earth would then have induced him to let you marry his daughter, and the excuse that he made you on that memorable afternoon, when you had so gallantly rescued her from death, was but a gentlemanlike way of getting out of his difficulty about telling you the real truth. Vere, that girl's courage is wonderful. She came down to dinner that night with the air of an empress, but with a face like marble, and a dull, stony look in her eyes that made even me almost rue what I had done. She kept her room for a fortnight afterwards, and I cannot help feeling she has never looked as bright since.

"When you went away I acknowledge I thought the field was my own. In consideration of my almost ruining myself to preserve him from shame, Sir Harry promised me his daughter if I could win her consent, and you may depend upon it I tried hard to do so. It was all in vain; the girl hated me more and more, and when we all met so unexpectedly in Vienna, I saw that my chance of Beverley Manor was indeed a hopeless one. Sir Harry, too, was getting very infirm. Had he died before his daughter's marriage, his bills for the money I had lent him were not worth the stamps on which they were drawn. My only chance was her speedy union with some one rich enough to make the necessary sacrifices, and again I picked out Victor de Rohan as the man. We all thought then you were engaged to his sister Valèrie."

Ropsley blushed scarlet as he mentioned that name.

"And it was not my part to conceal the surmise from Miss Beverley. 'She was so glad, she was so thankful,' she said, 'she was so happy, for Vere's sake'; and a month afterwards she was Countess de Rohan, with the handsomest husband and the finest place in Hungary. It was a mariage de convenance, I fear, on both sides. I know now, what I allow I did not dream of then, that Victor himself was the victim of an unfortunate attachment at the time, and that he married the beautiful Miss Beverley out of pique. Sir Harry died, as you know, within three months. I have saved myself from ruin, and I have destroyed the happiness on earth of three people that never did me the slightest harm. Vere, I do not deserve to be forgiven, I do not deserve ever to rise again from this couch; and yet there is one for whose sake I would fain get well--one whom I must see yet again before I die."

He burst into tears as he spoke. Good heaven! this man was mortal after all--an erring, sinful mortal, like the rest of us, with broken pride, heartfelt repentance, thrilling hopes and fears. Another bruised reed, though he had stood so defiant and erect, confronting the whirlwind and the thunderbolt, but shivered up, and cowering at the whisper of the "still small voice." Poor fellow! poor Ropsley! I pitied him from my heart, while he hid his face in his hands, and the big tears forced themselves through his wasted fingers; freely I forgave him, and freely I told him so.

After a time he became more composed, and then, as if ashamed of his weakness, assumed once more the cold satirical manner, half sarcasm, half pleasantry, which has become the conventional disguise of the world in which such men as Ropsley delight to live. Little by little he confided to me the rise and progress of his attachment to Valèrie--at which I had already partly guessed--acknowledged how, for a long time, he had imagined that I was again a favoured rival, destined ever to stand in his way; how my sudden departure from Vienna and her incomprehensible indifference to that hasty retreat had led him to believe that she had entertained nothing but a girl's passing inclination for her brother's comrade; and how, before he reached his regiment in the Crimea, she had promised to be his on the conclusion of the war. "I never cared for any other woman on earth," said Ropsley, once more relapsing into the broken accents of real, deep feeling. "I never reflected till I knew her, what a life mine has been. God forgive me, Vere; if we had met earlier, I should have been a different man. I have received a letter from her to-day. I shall be well enough to move by the end of the week. Vere, I must go through Hungary, and stop at Edeldorf on my way to England!"

As I walked out to inhale the evening breeze and indulge my own thoughts in solitude by the margin of the peaceful Bosphorus, I felt almost stunned, like a man who has sustained a severe fall, or one who wakes suddenly from an astounding dream. And yet I might have guessed long ago at the purport of Ropsley's late revelations. Diffident as I was of my own merits, there had been times when my heart told me, with a voice there was no disputing, that I was beloved by Constance Beverley; and now it was with something like a feeling of relief and exhilaration that I recalled the assurance of that fact from one himself so interested and so difficult to deceive as Ropsley. "And she loved me all along," I thought, with a thrill of pleasure, sadly dashed with pain. "She was true and pure, as I always thought her; and even now, though she is wedded to another, though she never can be mine on earth, perhaps--" And here I stopped, for the cold, sickening impossibility chilled me to the marrow, and an insurmountable barrier seemed to rise up around me and hem me in on every side. It was sin to love her, it was sin to think of her now. Oh! misery! misery! and yet I would give my life to see her once more! So my good angel whispered in my ear, "You must never look on her again; for the rest of your time you must tread the weary path alone, and learn to be kindly, and pure, and holy for her sake." And self muttered, "Where would be the harm of seeing her just once again?--of satisfying yourself with your own eyes that she is happy?--of learning at once to be indifferent to her presence? You must go home. Edeldorf lies in your direct road to England; you cannot abandon Ropsley in his present state, with no one to nurse and take care of him. Victor is your oldest friend, he would be hurt if you did not pay him a visit. It would be more courageous to face the Countess at once, and get it over." And I listened now to one and now to the other, and the struggle raged and tore within me the while I paced sadly up and down "by the side of the sounding sea."

"Egerton! how goes it? Let me present to you my friends," exclaimed a voice I recognised on the instant, as, with lowered head and dreamy vision, I walked right into the centre of a particularly smart party, and was "brought up," as the sailors say, "all standing," by a white silk parasol and a mass of flounces that almost took my breath away. When you most require solitude, it generally happens that you find yourself forced into society, and with all my regard for our ci-devant usher, I never met Manners, now a jolly Colonel of Bashi-Bazouks, with so little gratification as at this moment. I am bound to admit, however, that on his side all was cordiality and delight. Dressed out to the utmost magnificence of his gorgeous uniform, spurs clanking, and sabretasche jingling, his person stouter, his beard more exuberant, his face more florid and prosperous than ever, surrounded, too, by a bevy of ladies of French extraction and Pera manners, the "soldier of fortune," for such he might fairly be called, was indeed in his glory. With many flourishes and compliments in bad French, I was presented successively to Mesdemoiselles Philippine, and Josephine, and Seraphine, all dark-eyed, black-haired, sallow-faced, but by no means bad-looking, young ladies, all apparently bent upon the capture and destruction of anything and everything that came within range of their artillery, and all apparently belonging equally to my warlike and fortunate friend. He then took me by the arm, and dropping behind the three graces aforesaid, informed me, in tones of repressed exultation, how his fortune was made at last, how he now commanded (the dearest object of his ambition) a regiment of actual cavalry, and how he was on the eve of marriage with one of the young ladies in front of us, with a dowry of a hundred thousand francs, who loved him to distraction, and was willing to accompany him to Shumla, there to take the lead in society, and help him to civilise his regiment of Bashi-Bazouks.

"I always told you I was fit for something, Egerton," said Lieutenant-Colonel Manners, with a glow of exultation on his simple face; "and I have made my own way at last, in despite of all obstacles. It's pluck, sir, that makes the man! pluck and muscle," doubling his arm as he spoke, in the old Everdon manner. "I have done it at last, and you'll see, my dear Egerton, I shall live to be a general."

"I hope from my heart you may," was my reply, as I bade him "farewell," and congratulated him on his position, his good fortune, and his bride; though I never made out exactly whether it was Mademoiselle Josephine, or Philippine, or Seraphine who was to enjoy the unspeakable felicity of becoming Mrs. Colonel Manners.

CHAPTER XLIII

"THE SKELETON"

It is one of the conventional grievances of the world to mourn ever the mutability of human affairs, the ever-recurring changes incidental to that short span of existence here which we are pleased to term Life, as if the scenes and characters with which we are familiar were always being mingled and shifted with the rapidity and confusion of a pantomime. It has often struck me that the circumstances which encircle us do not by any means change with such extraordinary rapidity and facility--that, like a French road, with its mile after mile of level fertility and unvarying poplars, our path is sometimes for years together undiversified by any great variety of incident, any glimpse of romance; and that the same people, the same habits, the same pleasures, and the same annoyances seem destined to surround and hem us in from the cradle to the grave. Which is the most numerous class, those who fear their lot may change, or those who hope it will? Can we make this change for ourselves? Are we the slaves of circumstances, or is not that the opportunity of the strong which is the destiny of the weak? Surely it must be so--surely the stout heart that struggles on must win at last--surely man is a free agent; and he who fails, fails not because his task is impossible, but that he himself is faint and weak and infatuated enough to hope that he alone will be an exception to the common lot, and achieve the prize without the labour, Sine pulvere palma.

The old castle at Edeldorf, at least, is but little changed from what I recollect it in my quiet boyhood, when with my dear father I first entered its lofty halls and made acquaintance with the beautiful blue-eyed child that now sits at the end of that table, a grown-up, handsome man. Yes, once more I am at Edeldorf. Despite all my scruples, despite all the struggles between my worse and better self, I could not resist the temptation of seeing her in her stately home; of satisfying myself with my own eyes that she was happy, and of bidding her a long and last farewell. Oh! I thirsted to see her just once again, only to see her, and then to go away and meet her never, never more. Therefore Ropsley and I journeyed through Bulgaria and up the Danube, and arrived late at Edeldorf, and were cordially welcomed by Victor, and dressed, and came down to dinner, and so I saw her.

She was altered, too; so much altered, and yet it was the well-known face, her face still; but there were lines on the white forehead I remembered once so smooth and fair, and the eyes were sunk and the cheek pale and fallen; when she smiled, too, the beautiful lips parted as sweetly as their wont, but the nether one quivered as though it were more used to weeping than laughing, and the smile vanished quickly, and left a deeper shadow as it faded. She was not happy. I was sure she was not happy, and shall I confess it? the certainty was not to me a feeling of unmixed pain. I would have given every drop of blood in my body to make her so, and yet I could not grieve as I felt I ought to grieve, that it was otherwise.

Perhaps one of the greatest trials imposed on us by the artificial state of society in which we live, is the mask of iron that it forces us to wear for the concealment of all the deeper and stronger feelings of our nature. There we sit in that magnificent hall, hung around with horn of stag and tusk of boar, and all the trophies of the chase, waited on by Hungarian retainers in their gorgeous hussar uniforms, before a table heaped to profusion with the good things that minister to the gratification of the palate, and conversing upon those light and frivolous topics beyond which it is treason to venture, while the hearts probably of every one of us are far, far distant in some region of pain unknown and unguessed by all save the secret sufferers, who hide away their hoarded sorrows under an exterior of flippant levity, and affect to ignore their neighbour's wounds as completely as they veil their own. What care Ropsley or Valèrie whether perdrix aux champignons is or is not a better thing than dindon aux truffes? They are dying to be alone with each other once more--she, all anxiety to hear of his campaign and his illness; he, restless and preoccupied till he can tell her of his plans and prospects, and the arrangements that must be concluded before he can make her his own. Both, for want of a better grievance, somewhat disgusted that the order of precedence in going to dinner has placed them opposite each other, instead of side by side. And yet Valèrie, who sits by me, seems well pleased to meet her old friend once more; if I had ever thought she really cared for me, I should be undeceived now, when I mark the joyous frankness of her manner, the happy blush that comes and goes upon her cheek, and the restless glances that ever and anon she casts at her lover's handsome face through the epergne of flowers and fruit that divides them. No, they think as little of the ball of conversation which we jugglers toss about to each other, and jingle and play with and despise, as does the pale stately Countess herself, with her dark eyes and her dreamy look apparently gazing far into another world. She is not watching Victor, she seems scarcely aware of his presence: and yet many a young wife as beautiful, as high-spirited, and as lately married, would sit uneasily at the top of her own table, would frown, and fret, and chafe to see her handsome husband so preoccupied by another as is the Count by the fair guest on his right hand--who but wicked Princess Vocqsal?

That lady has, according to custom, surrounded herself by a system of fortification wherewith, as it were, she seems metaphorically to set the world at defiance: a challenge which, to do her justice, the Princess is ever ready to offer, the antagonist not always willing to accept. She delights in being the object of small attentions, so she invariably requires a footstool, an extra cushion or two, and a flask of eau de Cologne, in addition to her bouquet, her fan, her gloves, her pocket-handkerchief, and such necessary articles of female superfluity. With these outworks and fences within which to retire on the failure of an attack, it is easy to carry out a system of aggressive warfare; and whether it is the presence of his wife that makes the amusement particularly exciting, or whether Count de Rohan has made himself to-day peculiarly agreeable, or whether it is possible, though this contingency is extremely unlikely, that the Prince has told her not, certainly Madame la Princesse is taking unusual pains, and that most unnecessarily, to bring Victor into more than common subjection to her fascinations.

She is without contradiction the best-dressed woman in the room; her light gossamer robe, fold upon fold, and flounce upon flounce, floats around her like a drapery of clouds; her gloves fit her to a miracle; her exquisitely-shaped hands and round white arms bear few ornaments, but these are of the rarest and costliest description; her blooming, fresh complexion accords well with those luxuriant masses of soft brown hair escaping here and there from its smooth shining folds in large glossy curls. Her rich red lips are parted with a malicious smile, half playful, half coquettish, that is inexpressibly provoking and attractive; while, although the question as to whether she does really rouge or not is still undecided, her blue eyes seem positively to dance and sparkle in the candle-light. Her voice is low, and soft, and silvery; all she says racy, humorous, full of meaning, and to the point. Poor Victor de Rohan!

He, too, is at first in unusually high spirits; his courteous, well-bred manner is livelier than his wont, but the deferential air with which he responds to his neighbour's gay remarks is dashed by a shade of sarcasm, and I, who know him so well, can detect a tone of bitter irony in his voice, can trace some acute inward pang that ever and anon convulses for a moment his frank, handsome features. I am sure he is ill at ease, and dissatisfied with himself. I observe, too, that, though he scarcely touches the contents of his plate, his glass is filled again and again to the brim, and he quaffs off his wine with the eager feverish thirst of one who seeks to drown reflection and remorse in the Lethean draught. Worst sign of all, and one which never fails to denote mental suffering, his spirits fall in proportion to his potations, and that which in a well-balanced nature "makes glad the heart of man," seems but to clog the wings of Victor's fancy, and to sink him deeper and deeper in despondency. Ere long he becomes pale, silent, almost morose, and the charming Princess has all the conversation to herself.

But one individual in the party attends thoroughly to the business in hand. Without doubt, for the time being he has the best of it. Prince Vocqsal possesses an excellent appetite, a digestion, as he says himself, that, like his conscience, can carry a great weight and be all the better for it; a faultless judgment in wine, and a tendency to enjoy the pleasures of the table, enhanced, if possible, by the occasional fit of gout with which this indulgence must unfortunately be purchased. Fancy-free is the Prince, and troubled neither by memories of the past, misgivings for the present, nor anxieties for the future. Many such passive natures there are--we see them every day. Men who are content to take the world as it is, and, like the ox in his pasture, browse, and bask, and ruminate, and never wish to overleap the boundary that forbids them to wander in the flowery meadow beyond. And yet it may be that these too have once bathed in the forbidden stream, the lava-stream that scorches and sears where it touches; it may be that the heart we deem so hard, so callous, has been welded in the fire, and beaten on the anvil, till it has assumed the consistency of steel. It winced and quivered once, perhaps nearly broke, and now it can bid defiance even to the memory of pain. Who knows? who can tell his neighbour's history, or guess his neighbour's thoughts? who can read the truth, even in the depth of those eyes that look the fondest into his own? Well! there is One that knows all secrets, and He will judge, but not as man judges.

So Prince Vocqsal thinks not of the days that are past, the hearts he has broken, the friends he has lost, the duels he has fought, the money he has squandered, the chances he has thrown away; or, if he does allow his mind to dwell for an instant on such trifles, it is with a sort of dreamy satisfaction at the quantity of enjoyment he has squeezed out of life, tinged with a vague regret that so much of it is over. Why, it was but to-day that, as he dressed for dinner, he apostrophised the grimacing image in his looking-glass,--"Courage, mon gaillard," muttered the Prince, certainly not to his valet, who was tightening his waistbelt, "courage! you are worth a good many of the young ones, still, and your appetite is as good as it was at sixteen."

He is splendid now, though somewhat apoplectic. His wig curls over his magnificent head in hyacinthine luxuriance, his dyed whiskers and moustache blush purple in the candlelight; his neckcloth is tied somewhat too tight, and seems to have forced more than a wholesome quantity of blood into his face and eyes, but its whiteness is dazzling, and the diamond studs beneath it are of extraordinary brilliance; nor does his waistbelt, though it defies repletion, modify in any great degree the goodly outline of the corpulent person it enfolds. Altogether he is a very jolly-looking old gentleman, and the only one of the party that seems for the nonce to be "the right man in the right place."

Constance listens to him with a weary, abstracted air; perhaps she has heard that story about the bear and the waterfall once or twice before, perhaps she does not hear it now, but she bends her head courteously towards him, and looks kindly at him from out of her deep, sad eyes.

"Champagne, if you please," says the Prince, interrupting the thread of his narrative, by holding up his glass to be replenished; "and so, Madame, the bear and I were vis-à-vis at about ten paces apart, and my rifle was empty. The last shot had taken effect through his lungs, and he coughed and held his paw to the pit of his stomach, so like a Christian with a cold, that, even in my very precarious position, I could not help laughing outright. Ten paces is a short distance, Madame, a very short distance, when your antagonist feels himself thoroughly aggrieved, and advances upon you with a red, lurid eye, and a short angry growl. I turned and looked behind me for a run--I was always a good runner," remarks the Prince, with a downward glance of satisfaction, the absurdity of which, I am pained to see, does not even call a smile to his listener's pale face--"but it was no question of running here, for the waterfall was leaping and foaming forty feet deep below, and the trees were so thick on either side, that escape by a flank movement was impossible. It was the very spot, Victor, where I killed the woodcocks right and left the morning you disappointed me so shamefully, and left me to have all the sport to myself."--Victor bows courteously, drinks her husband's health, and glances at the Princess with a bitter smile.--"The very spot where I hope you will place me to-morrow at your grand chasse. Peste! 'tis strange how passionately fond I still am of the chase. Well, Madame, indecision is not usually my weakness, but before I could make up my mind what to do, the bear was upon me. In an instant he embraced me with his huge hairy arms, and I felt his hot breath against my very face. My rifle was broken short off by the stock, and I heard my watch crack in my waistcoat pocket. I thought it was my ribs. I have seen your wrestlers in England, Madame, and I have once assisted in your country at an exhibition of 'The Box' but such an encounter as I now had to sustain was more terrible than anything I ever witnessed fought out fairly between man and man. Fortunately a ball through the back part of the head, and another through the lungs, had somewhat diminished the natural force of my adversary, or I must have succumbed; and by a great exertion of strength on my part, I managed to liberate one hand and make a grasp for my hunting-knife. Horror! it had fallen from the sheath, but by the mercy of Heaven and the blessing of St. Hubert, it had caught in my boot, and I never felt before how dear life was as when I touched the buckhorn handle of my last friend; three, four times in succession I buried the long keen blade in the bear's side; at each thrust he gave a quick, convulsive sob, but he strained me tighter and tighter to his body, till I thought my very blood-vessels would burst with the fearful pressure. At last we fell, and rolled over and over towards the waterfall. In the hasty glance I had previously cast behind me, I had remarked a dead fir-tree that stood within a yard or so of the precipice; I remember the thought had darted through my mind, that if I could reach it I might be safe, and the reflection as instantaneously followed, that a bear was a better climber than a Hungarian. Never shall I forget my sensations when, in our last revolution, I caught a glimpse of that naked tree. I shut my eyes then, for I knew it was all over, but I gave him one more stab, and a hearty one, with my hunting-knife. Splash! we reached the water together, and went down like a couple of stones, down, down to the very bottom, but fortunately it was the deepest part of the pool, and we unclosed our embrace the instant we touched the surface--the bear, I believe, was dead before he got there, and I thought myself fortunate in being able to swim ashore, whilst the brown body of my late antagonist went tumbling and whirling down the foaming torrent below. I recovered his skin, Madame, to make a cover for my arm-chair, but I have never been fond of water since. Give me a glass of Tokay, if you please."

"And did you sustain no further harm from your encounter?" asked Constance, rousing herself from her abstraction with an effort, and bending politely towards the Prince, who was drinking his Tokay with immense satisfaction.

"Only the marks of his claws on my shoulder," replied he, smacking his lips after his draught. "I have got them there to this day. Is it not so, Rose?" he added, appealing to his wife with a hearty laugh.

She turned her head away without condescending to notice him. Victor bit his lip with a gesture of impatience, and the Countess, rising slowly and gracefully, gave her hand to the Prince to lead her back to the drawing-room, whither we all followed in the same order as that in which we had proceeded to dinner.

"Do you not feel like a wounded man once more?" observed Valèrie, gaily, to me, as I stood, coffee-cup in hand, with my back to the fireplace, like a true Englishman. "Is it not all exactly as you left it? the easiest arm-chair and my eternal embroidery-frame, and your own sofa where you used to lie so wonderfully patient, and look out of window at the sunset. Constance has established herself there now, and considers it her peculiar property. Oh, Vere (I shall always call you Vere), is she not charming? I am so fond of her!"

Slow torture! but never mind, it is but for to-night--this experiment must never be repeated. Go on, Countess Valèrie, happy, unconscious executioner.

"You English people are delightful, when one knows you well, although at first you are so cold and undemonstrative. Now, Constance, though she is so quiet and melancholy-looking, though she never laughs, and rarely smiles, has the energy and the activity of a dozen women when it is a question of doing good. You have no idea of what she is here amongst our own people. They worship the very ground she walks on--they call her 'the good angel of Edeldorf.' But she over-exerts herself; she is not strong: she looks ill, very ill. Vere, do you not think so?"

For the first time since we entered the drawing-room I glanced in the direction of the Countess de Rohan, but her face was turned from me; she was still occupied with Prince Vocqsal, who, old enough to appreciate the value of a good listener, was devoting himself entirely to her amusement. No, I could not see the pale, well-known face, but the light streamed off her jet-black hair, and memory probed me to the quick as its shining masses recalled the wet, heavy locks of one whose life I saved in Beverley Mere.

"Come and play the march in 'The Honijàdy,'" said Ropsley, leading his fiancée gaily off to the pianoforte. "On revient toujours à ses premiers amours, but I really cannot allow you to flirt with Egerton any more," he added, with a smile of such thorough confidence and affection in his promised bride as altered the whole expression of his countenance, and lit it up with a beauty I had never before imagined it to possess.

"Not that," she answered, looking anxiously round, "but 'Cheer, boys! cheer!' as often as you like, now we have got you back again." And they walked away together, a happy, handsome pair as one should wish to see.

I could not have borne it much longer. I gasped for solitude as a man half-stifled gasps for air. With an affectation of leisurely indifference, I strolled into the adjoining billiard-room. I passed close to the Countess, but she never turned her head, so engrossed was she with the conversation of Prince Vocqsal. I walked on through the spacious conservatory. I even stopped to examine an exotic as I passed. At length I reached a balcony in which that structure terminated, and sinking into a chair that stood in one corner, out of sight and interruption, I leaned my forehead against the cold iron railing, and prayed for fortitude and resignation to my lot.

The fresh night air cooled and composed me. A bright moonlight flickered and glistened over the park. The tones of Valèrie's pianoforte, softened by distance, stole sadly, yet soothingly, on my ear. The autumn breeze, hushed to a whisper, seemed to breathe of peace and consolation. I felt that the strength I had asked would be given; that though the fight was not yet over, it would be won at last; that although, alas! the sacrifice was still to be offered, I should have power to make it, and the higher the cost, the holier, the more acceptable it would be. More than once the Devil's sophistry prompted me to repine; more than once I groaned aloud to think that she, too, was sacrificed unworthily, that her happiness, like my own, was lost beyond recall. "Oh," I thought, in the bitterness of my agony, "I could have given her up to one that loved her, I could have rejoiced in her welfare, and forgotten myself in the certainty of her happiness. I could have blessed him thankfully for his care and tenderness towards that transplanted flower, and lived on contented, if not happy, to think that I had not offered up my own broken heart in vain; but to see her neglected and pining--her dignity insulted--her rights trampled on--another, immeasurably her inferior, filling the place in her husband's affections to which she had an undoubted right! Victor! Victor! you were my earliest friend, and yet I can almost curse you from my soul!"

But soon my better nature triumphed; I saw the path of duty plain before me, I determined to follow it, and struggle on, at whatever cost. I had lived for her all my life. I would live for her still. Perhaps when I became an old grey man she would know it; perhaps--never in this life--perhaps she might bless me for it in another; but it should be done! Could I but make a certainty of Victor's liaison with the Princess, could I but obtain a right to speak to him on the subject! I would make him one last appeal that should force him back to his duty. I would, if necessary, tell him the whole truth, and shame him by my own sacrifice into the right path. I felt a giant's strength and a martyr's constancy; once more I leaned my head upon the cold iron rail, and the opportunity that I asked for seemed to come when I least expected it.

In such a mood as I then was, a man takes no note of time; I could not tell how long I had been sitting there in the solemn peaceful night, it might have been minutes, it might have been hours, but at length the click of billiard-balls, which had been hitherto audible in the adjoining apartment, ceased altogether, a man's step and the rustle of a lady's dress were heard in the conservatory, and when they reached within six paces of me, Victor placed a chair for Princess Vocqsal under the spreading branches of a brilliant azalea, and seated himself at her side. She dropped her bracelet on the smooth tesselated floor as she sat down; he picked it up and clasped it on her arm: as he did so I caught a glimpse of his face: he was deadly pale, and as he raised his eyes to hers, their wild mournful appealing glance reminded me of poor Bold's last look when he died licking my hand. The Princess, on the contrary, shone if possible more brilliant than ever; there was a settled flush, as of triumph, on her cheek, and her whole countenance bore an impress of determined, uncompromising resolution, which I had already remarked as no uncommon expression on those lovely features.

My first impulse was to confront them at once, and take my departure; but I have already said I suffered from constitutional shyness to a great degree, and I was unwilling to face even my old friend with such traces of strong emotion as I knew must be visible on my exterior. I was most unwilling to play the eavesdropper. I felt that, as a man of honour, I was inexcusable in not instantly apprising them of my presence; yet some strange, inexplicable fascination that I could not resist, seemed to force me to remain where I was, unnoticed and unsuspected. Ere they had spoken three words I was in possession of the whole truth, that truth which a few minutes earlier I had been so anxious to ascertain. I do not attempt to excuse my conduct, I am aware that it admits of no palliation, that no one can be guilty of an act of espial and still remain a gentleman; but I state the fact as it occurred, and can only offer in extenuation the fever of morbid excitement into which I had worked myself, and my unwavering resolution to save Victor, in spite of his own infatuation, for her sake in whose behalf I did not hesitate thus to sacrifice even my honour.

"Anything but that, Rose, my adored Rose; anything but that," pleaded the Count; and his voice came thick and hoarse, whilst his features worked convulsively with the violence of his feelings. "Think of what I have been to you, think of all my devotion, all my self-denial. You cannot doubt me: it is impossible; you cannot mistrust me now; but, as you have a woman's heart, ask me for anything but that."

She was clasping and unclasping the bracelet he had placed upon her arm, her head drooped over the jewel, but she raised her soft lustrous eyes to his, and with a witching, maddening glance, of which he knew too well the power, murmured--

"Give it me, Victor, dear Victor! you have never refused me anything since I have known you."

"Nor would I now, were it anything that is in my power to give," he burst out hurriedly, and in accents of almost childish impatience; "I tell you, that for your sake I would cast everything to the winds--fortune, friends, home, country, life itself. Drop by drop, you should have the best blood in my body, and I would thank you and bless you for accepting it; but this is more than all, Rose--this is my honour. Could you bear to see me a disgraced and branded man? could you bear to feel that I deserved to have my arms reversed and my name scouted? Could you care for me if it were so? Oh, Rose, you have never loved me if you ask for this!"

"Perhaps you are right," she answered coldly, "perhaps I never did. You have often told me I am very hard-hearted--Victor," she added, after a pause, with a sudden change of manner, and another of those soft fond looks that made such wild work with her victim--"do you think I would ask a man I did not care for to make such a sacrifice? Oh, Victor! you little know a woman's heart--you have cruelly mistaken mine."

The fond eyes filled with tears as she spoke. Victor was doomed. I knew it from that moment. He scarcely made an effort to save himself now.

"And you ask for this as a last proof of my devotion. You are not satisfied yet. It is not enough that I have given you the whole happiness of my life, you must have that life itself as well--nay, even that is too little," he added with bitter emphasis, "I must offer up the unstained honour of the De Rohans in addition to all!"

Another of those speaking, thrilling glances. Oh, the old, old story! Samson and Delilah--Hercules and Omphale--Antony and Cleopatra, on the ruins of an empire--or plain Jack and Gill at the fair. Man's weakness is woman's opportunity, and so the world goes on.

"Victor," she said, "it is for my sake."

The colour mounted in his cheek, and he rose to his feet like a man. The old look I had missed all the evening on his face came back once more, the old look that reminded me of shouting squadrons by the Danube, and a dash to the front with AH Mesrour and brave Iskender Bey. His blood was up, and his lance in rest now, stop him who can!

"So be it," he said, calmly and distinctly, but with his teeth clenched and his nostril dilated, like that of a thorough-bred horse after a gallop. "So be it! and never forget, Rose, in the long dark future, never forget that it was for your sake: and now listen to me. I betray my own and my father's friends, I complete an act of treachery such as is yet unknown in the annals of my country, such as her history shall curse for its baseness till the end of time. I devote to ruin and death a score of the noblest families, a score of the proudest heads in Hungary. I stain my father's shield, I break my own oaths. Life, and honour, and all, I cast away at one throw, and, Rose, it is for your sake!"

She was weeping now--weeping convulsively, with her face buried in her hands; but he heeded it not, and went on--

"All this I am willing to do, Rose, because I love you; but mark the consequence. As surely as I deliver you this list"--he drew a paper from his breast as he spoke--"so surely I proclaim my treachery to the world, so surely I give myself over to the authorities, so surely I march up to the scaffold at the head of that devoted band who were once my friends, and though they think it shame that their blood should soak the same planks as mine, though they turn from me in disgust, even on the verge of another world, so surely will I die amongst them as boldly, as unflinchingly, as the most stainless patriot of them all!"

"No, no," she sobbed out; "never, never; do you think I have no feeling? do you think I have no heart? I have provided for your safety long ago. I have got your free pardon in a written promise, your life and fortune are secure, your share in the discovery will never be made known. Victor, do you think I have not taken care of you?"

Even then his whole countenance softened. This man, whose proud spirit she had so often trampled on, whose kind heart she had so often wounded, from whom she asked so much--ay, so much as his bitterest enemy would have shrunk from taking--was ready and willing to give her all, and to bless the very hand that smote him to the death. He spoke gently and caressingly now. He bent over her chair, and looked down at her with kind, sad eyes.

"Not so," he said, "Rose, not so. I am glad you did not sacrifice me. I like to think you would have saved me if you could; but I cannot accept the terms. To-morrow is my birthday, Rose. It is St. Hubert's day, and I have a grand chasse here, as you know. Many of these devoted gentlemen will be at Edeldorf to-morrow. Give us at least that one day. In twenty-four hours from this time you can forward your information to Vienna; after that, you and I will meet no more on earth. Rose, dear Rose," he murmured, as he placed the paper in her hand, "it is the last present I shall give you--make the most of it."

Why did she meddle with politics, woman as she was in her heart of hearts? What had she to do with Monsieur Stein, and Government intrigues, and a secret police, and all that complicated machinery which is worked by gold alone, and in which the feelings count for nothing? State information might go to other quarters; fortunes be made on the Bourse by other speculators; her husband wait for his appointment till doomsday, and the attainder remain unreversed on the estates in the Banat as long as the Danube flowed downward from its source;--what cared Princess Vocqsal? She looked up, smiling through her tears, like a wet rose in the sunshine. She took the list from his hand; once, twice, she pressed the paper to her lips, then tore it in a thousand fragments, and scattered them abroad over the shining floor of the conservatory, to mingle with the shed blossoms of the azalea, to be swept away with the decayed petals of the camellias, to be whirled hither and thither by the breeze of morning to oblivion, but to rise up between her and him who now stood somewhat aghast by her side, never, never more!

She put her hand almost timidly in his. "Victor," she said, in a soft, low voice, "you have conquered. I am yours now in defiance of all. Oh, Victor, Victor, you do indeed love me!"

He looked startled, scared, almost as if he could not understand her; he shook in every limb, whilst she was composed and even dignified.

"Yes," she said, rising from her chair, "I will trifle with you no longer now. I know what I do; I see the gulf into which I plunge. Misery, ruin, and crime are before me; but I fear nothing. Victor de Rohan! when I leave Edeldorf, I leave it with you, and with you I remain for ever."

They walked out of the conservatory side by side. I do not think they exchanged another word; and I remained stunned, motionless, stupefied, like a man who wakes from some ghastly and bewildering dream.

The striking of the Castle clock roused me to consciousness--to a conviction of the importance of time, and the necessity for immediate action. It was now midnight. Early to-morrow we should all be on the alert for the grand battue on the Waldenberg, for which preparations had been making for several days. I should scarcely have an opportunity of speaking in private to my friend, and the day after it might be too late. No, to-night I must see Victor before he slept: to-night I must warn him from the abyss into which he was about to fall, confess to him the dishonourable act of which I had been guilty, sustain his anger and contempt as I best might, and plead her cause whom I must never see again. More than once--I will not deny it--a rebellious feeling rose in my heart. Why are these things so? Why is she not mine whom I have loved so many dark and lonely years? Why must Victor, after the proof he has given to-night of more than human devotion, never be happy with her for whose sake he did not hesitate to offer up all that was far dearer to him than life? But I had long learnt the true lesson, that "Whatever is, is right"--that Providence sees not with our eyes, nor judges with our judgment; and that we must not presume to question, much less dare to repine. I hurried through the billiard-room towards Victor's apartments; I had then to traverse the drawing-room, and a little snug retreat in which it used to be our custom to finish the evening with a social cigar, and to which, in former days Valèrie was sometimes to be prevailed upon to bring her work. Here I found Ropsley and Prince Vocqsal comfortably established, apparently with no idea of going to bed yet for hours. They had never met till to-day, but seemed to suit each other admirably, all that was ludicrous in the Prince's character and conversation affording a ceaseless fund of amusement to the Guardsman; while the latter's high prowess as a sportsman, and intimate acquaintance with the turf, rendered him an object of great interest and admiration to the enthusiastic Hungarian. Ropsley, with restored health and his ladye-love under the same roof with him, was in the highest spirits, and no wonder.

"Don't run away, Vere," said he, catching me by the arm as I passed behind his chair; "it's quite early yet. Have a quiet weed before turning in." Adding, in an amused whisper, "He's an immense trump, this! That's his third cigar and his fourth tumbler of brandy-and-soda since we came here; and he's telling me now how he once pinked a fellow in the Bois de Boulogne for wearing revolutionary shirt buttons. In English, too, my dear fellow; it's as good as a play."

Even as he spoke I heard a door shut in the passage, and I hurried away, leaving the new acquaintances delighted with each other's society.

In the gallery I met Victor's French valet with a bundle of clothes over his arm, humming an air from a French opera. "Could I see the Count?" "Alas! I was a few seconds too late!" The valet "was in despair--he was desolate--it was impossible. Monsieur had even now retired to the apartments of Madame!" "I must do it to-morrow," thought I; "perhaps I may find an opportunity when the chasse is over." And I went to bed with a heavy, aching heart.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE GIPSY'S DREAM

It is a calm, clear night; a narrow crescent moon, low down on the horizon, scarcely dims the radiance of those myriads of stars which gem the entire sky. It is such a night as would have been chosen by the Chaldean to read his destiny on the glittering page above his head--such a night as compels us perforce to think of other matters than what we shall eat and what we shall drink--as brings startlingly to our minds the unsolved question, Which is Reality--the Material of to-day or the Ideal of to-morrow? Not a cloud obscures the diamond-sprinkled vault above; not a tree, not an undulation, varies the level plain extending far and wide below. Dim and indistinct, its monotonous surface presents a vague idea of boundless space, the vastness of which is enhanced by the silence that reigns around. Not a breath of air is stirring, not a sound is heard save the lazy plash and ripple of the Danube, as it steals away under its low swampy banks, sluggish and unseen. Yet there is life breathing in the midst of this apparent solitude: human hearts beating, with all their hopes and fears, and joys and sorrows, in this isolated spot. Even here beauty pillows her head on the broad chest of strength; infancy nestles to the refuge of a mother's bosom; weary labour lies prone and helpless, with relaxed muscles and limp, powerless limbs; youth dreams of love, and age of youth; and sleep spreads her welcome mantle over the hardy tribe who have chosen this wild waste of Hungary for their lair.

It is long past midnight; their fires have been out for hours; their tents are low and dusky, in colour almost like the plain on which they are pitched; you might ride within twenty yards of it, and never know you were near a gipsy's encampment, for the Zingynie loves to be unobserved and secret in his movements; to wander here and there, with no man's leave and no man's knowledge; to come and go unmarked and untrammelled as the wind that lifts the elf-locks from his brow. So he sleeps equally well under the coarse canvas of a tent or the roof of a clear cold sky; he pays no rent, he owns no master, and he believes that, of all the inhabitants of earth, he alone is free.

And now a figure rises from amongst the low dusky tents, and comes out into the light of the clear starry sky, and looks steadfastly towards the east as if watching for the dawn, and turns a fevered cheek to the soft night air, as yet not fresh and cold enough to promise the approach of day. It is the figure of a woman past the prime of life, nay, verging upon age, but who retains all the majesty and some remains of the beauty which distinguished her in bygone days; who even now owns none of the decay of strength or infirmity of gait which usually accompanies the advance of years, but who looks, as she always did, born to command, and not yet incapable of enforcing obedience to her behests. It is none other than the Zingynie queen who prophesied the future of Victor de Rohan when he was a laughing golden-haired child; whose mind is anxious and ill at ease for the sake of her darling now, and who draws her hood further over her head, binds her crimson handkerchief tighter on her brows, and looks once more with anxious glance towards the sky, as she mutters--

"Three hours to dawn, and then six more till noon; and once, girl, thou wast light-footed and untiring as the deer. Girl!" and she laughs a short, bitter laugh. "Well, no matter--girl, or woman, or aged crone, the heart is always the same; and I will save him--save him, for the sake of the strong arm and the fair, frank face that have been mouldering for years in the grave!"

She is wandering back into the past now. Vivid and real as though it had happened but yesterday, she recalls a scene that took place many a long year ago in the streets of Pesth. She was a young, light-hearted maiden then: the acknowledged beauty of her tribe, the swiftest runner, the most invincible pedestrian to be found of either sex in the bounds of Hungary. Not a little proud was she of both advantages, and it was hard to say on which she plumed herself the most. In those days, as in many others of its unhappy history, that country was seething with internal faction and discontent; and the Zingynies, from their wandering habits, powers of endurance, and immunity from suspicion, were constantly chosen as the bearers of important despatches and the means of communication between distant conspirators, whilst they were themselves kept in utter ignorance of the valuable secrets with which they were entrusted.