[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D. W. ]

THE TALE OF CHLOEAN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF BEAU BEAMISH

By George Meredith

 'Fair Chloe, we toasted of old, As the Queen of our festival meeting; Now Chloe is lifeless and cold; You must go to the grave for her greeting. Her beauty and talents were framed To enkindle the proudest to win her; Then let not the mem'ry be blamed Of the purest that e'er was a sinner!'

 Captain Chanter's Collection. 

CHAPTER I

A proper tenderness for the Peerage will continue to pass current theillustrious gentleman who was inflamed by Cupid's darts to espouse themilkmaid, or dairymaid, under his ballad title of Duke of Dewlap: nor wasit the smallest of the services rendered him by Beau Beamish, that heclapped the name upon her rustic Grace, the young duchess, the very firstday of her arrival at the Wells. This happy inspiration of a wit neverfailing at a pinch has rescued one of our princeliest houses from theassaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter anddisfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms; insomuch that the ballad, to which weare indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the ducalpair, speaks of Dewlap in good faith

 O the ninth Duke of Dewlap I am, Susie dear!

without a hint of a domino title. So likewise the pictorial historian ismerry over 'Dewlap alliances' in his description of the society of thatperiod. He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau. Writers of pretension would seem to have an animus against individuals ofthe character of Mr. Beamish. They will treat of the habits and mannersof highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the people tocolour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing remark uponour domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we may suppose. The ballad of 'The Duke and the Dairymaid, ' ascribed with questionableauthority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, wasonce popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon anorder of composition that 'tempted every bouncing country lass to sidlean eye in a blowsy cheek' in expectation of a coronet for her pains--anda wet ditch as the result! We may doubt it to have been such an occasionof mischief. But that mischief may have been done by it to a nobility-loving people, even to the love of our nobility among the people, must begranted; and for the particular reason, that the hero of the balladbehaved so handsomely. We perceive a susceptibility to adulteration intheir worship at the sight of one of their number, a young maid, suddenlysnatched up to the gaping heights of Luxury and Fashion through sheergood looks. Remembering that they are accustomed to a totally reverseeffect from that possession, it is very perceptible how a breach in theirreverence may come of the change. 

Otherwise the ballad is innocent; certainly it is innocent in design. A fresher national song of a beautiful incident of our country life hasnever been written. The sentiments are natural, the imagery is apt andredolent of the soil, the music of the verse appeals to the dullest ear. It has no smell of the lamp, nothing foreign and far-fetched about it, but is just what it pretends to be, the carol of the native bird. Asample will show, for the ballad is much too long to be given entire:

 Sweet Susie she tripped on a shiny May morn, As blithe as the lark from the green-springing corn, When, hard by a stile, 'twas her luck to behold A wonderful gentleman covered with gold!

 There was gold on his breeches and gold on his coat, His shirt-frill was grand as a fifty-pound note; The diamonds glittered all up him so bright, She thought him the Milky Way clothing a Sprite!

 'Fear not, pretty maiden, ' he said with a smile; 'And, pray, let me help you in crossing the stile. She bobbed him a curtsey so lovely and smart, It shot like an arrow and fixed in his heart. 

 As light as a robin she hopped to the stone, But fast was her hand in the gentleman's own; And guess how she stared, nor her senses could trust, When this creamy gentleman knelt in the dust!

With a rhapsody upon her beauty, he informs her of his rank, fora flourish to the proposal of honourable and immediate marriage. He cannot wait. This is the fatal condition of his love: apparentlya characteristic of amorous dukes. We read them in the signs extendedto us. The minds of these august and solitary men have not yet beensounded; they are too distant. Standing upon their lofty pinnacles, they are as legible to the rabble below as a line of cuneiform writingin a page of old copybook roundhand. By their deeds we know them, asheathendom knows of its gods; and it is repeatedly on record that themoment they have taken fire they must wed, though the lady's finger becircled with nothing closer fitting than a ring of the bed-curtain. Vainly, as becomes a candid country lass, blue-eyed Susan tells him thatshe is but a poor dairymaid. He has been a student of women at Courts, in which furnace the sex becomes a transparency, so he recounts to herthe catalogue of material advantages he has to offer. Finally, after hisassurances that she is to be married by the parson, really by the parson, and a real parson--

 Sweet Susie is off for her parents' consent, And long must the old folk debate what it meant. She left them the eve of that happy May morn, To shine like the blossom that hangs from the thorn!

Apart from its historical value, the ballad is an example to poets of ourday, who fly to mythological Greece, or a fanciful and morbidmediaevalism, or--save the mark!--abstract ideas, for themes of song, ofwhat may be done to make our English life poetically interesting, if theywould but pluck the treasures presented them by the wayside; and Naturebeing now as then the passport to popularity, they have themselves tothank for their little hold on the heart of the people. A living nativeduke is worth fifty Phoebus Apollos to Englishmen, and a buxom young lassof the fields mounting from a pair of pails to the estate of duchess, a more romantic object than troops of your visionary Yseults andGuineveres. 

CHAPTER II

A certain time after the marriage, his Grace alighted at the Wells, and did himself the honour to call on Mr. Beamish. Addressing thatgentleman, to whom he was no stranger, he communicated the purport of hisvisit. 

'Sir, and my very good friend, ' he said, 'first let me beg you to abatethe severity of your countenance, for if I am here in breach of yourprohibition, I shall presently depart in compliance with it. I couldindeed deplore the loss of the passion for play of which you effectuallycured me. I was then armed against a crueller, that allows of nointerval for a man to make his vow to recover!'

'The disease which is all crisis, I apprehend, ' Mr. Beamish remarked. 

'Which, sir, when it takes hold of dry wood, burns to the last splinter. It is now'--the duke fetched a tender groan--'three years ago that I hada caprice to marry a grandchild!'

'Of Adam's, ' Mr. Beamish said cheerfully. 'There was no legitimate barto the union. '

'Unhappily none. Yet you are not to suppose I regret it. A mostadmirable creature, Mr. Beamish, a real divinity! And the better known, the more adored. There is the misfortune. At my season of life, whenthe greater and the minor organs are in a conspiracy to tell me I ammortal, the passion of love must be welcomed as a calamity, though onewould not be free of it for the renewal of youth. You are to understand, that with a little awakening taste for dissipation, she is the mostinnocent of angels. Hitherto we have lived . . . To her it has been anew world. But she is beginning to find it a narrow one. No, no, she isnot tired of my society. Very far from that. But in her present stationan inclination for such gatherings as you have here, for example, is likea desire to take the air: and the healthy habits of my duchess have notaccustomed her to be immured. And in fine, devote ourselves as we will, a term approaches when the enthusiasm for serving as your wife'splayfellow all day, running round tables and flying along corridorsbefore a knotted handkerchief, is mightily relaxed. Yet the dread ofa separation from her has kept me at these pastimes for a considerableperiod beyond my relish of them. Not that I acknowledge fatigue. Ihave, it seems, a taste for reflection; I am now much disposed to readand meditate, which cannot be done without repose. I settle myself, andI receive a worsted ball in my face, and I am expected to return it. Icomply; and then you would say a nursery in arms. It would else be thedeplorable spectacle of a beautiful young woman yawning. '

'Earthquake and saltpetre threaten us less terribly, ' said Mr. Beamish. 

'In fine, she has extracted a promise that 'this summer she shall visitthe Wells for a month, and I fear I cannot break my pledge of my word; Ifear I cannot. '

'Very certainly I would not, ' said Mr. Beamish. 

The duke heaved a sigh. 'There are reasons, family reasons, why mycompany and protection must be denied to her here. I have no wish . . . Indeed my name, for the present, until such time as she shall have foundher feet . . . And there is ever a penalty to pay for that. Ah, Mr. Beamish, pictures are ours, when we have bought them and hung them up;but who insures us possession of a beautiful work of Nature? I havelatterly betaken me to reflect much and seriously. I am tempted to sidewith the Divines in the sermons I have read; the flesh is the habitationof a rebellious devil. '

'To whom we object in proportion as we ourselves become quit of him, ' Mr. Beamish acquiesced. 

'But this mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure, is one ofthe wonders. It does not pall on them; they are insatiate. '

'There is the cataract, and there is the cliff. Potentate to potentate, duke--so long as you are on my territory, be it understood. Upon my wayto a place of worship once, I passed a Puritan, who was complaining of abutterfly that fluttered prettily abroad in desecration of the Day ofRest. "Friend, " said I to him, "conclusively you prove to me that youare not a butterfly. " Surly did no more than favour me with the anathemaof his countenance. '

'Cousin Beamish, my complaint of these young people is, that they misstheir pleasure in pursuing it. I have lectured my duchess--'

'Ha!'

'Foolish, I own, ' said the duke. 'But suppose, now, you had caught yourbutterfly, and you could neither let it go nor consent to follow itsvagaries. That poses you. '

'Young people, ' said Mr. Beamish, 'come under my observation in this poorrealm of mine--young and old. I find them prodigiously alike in theirlove of pleasure, differing mainly in their capacity to satisfy it. That is no uncommon observation. The young, have an edge which they aredesirous of blunting; the old contrariwise. The cry of the young forpleasure is actually--I have studied their language--a cry for burdens. Curious! And the old ones cry for having too many on their shoulders:which is not astonishing. Between them they make an agreeable concertboth to charm the ears and guide the steps of the philosopher, whosewisdom it is to avoid their tracks. '

'Good. But I have asked you for practical advice, and you give me anessay. '

'For the reason, duke, that you propose a case that suggests hanging. You mention two things impossible to be done. The alternative is, agarter and the bedpost. When we have come upon crossways, and we candecide neither to take the right hand nor the left, neither forward norback, the index of the board which would direct us points to itself, andemphatically says, Gallows. '

'Beamish, I am distracted. If I refuse her the visit, I foreseedissensions, tears, games at ball, romps, not one day of rest remainingto me. I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively. If I allowit, so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this mustsuffer some corruption. You should know that the station I took her fromwas . . . It was modest. She was absolutely a buttercup of thefields. She has had various masters. She dances . . . She dancesprettily, I could say bewitchingly. And so she is now for airing heraccomplishments: such are women!'

'Have you heard of Chloe?' said Mr. Beamish. 'There you have an exampleof a young lady uncorrupted by this place--of which I would only remarkthat it is best unvisited, but better tasted than longed for. '

'Chloe? A lady who squandered her fortune to redeem some ill-requitingrascal: I remember to have heard of her. She is here still? And ruined, of course?'

'In purse. '

'That cannot be without the loss of reputation. '

'Chloe's champion will grant that she is exposed to the evils ofimprovidence. The more brightly shine her native purity, her goodnessof heart, her trustfulness. She is a lady whose exaltation glows in herabasement. '

'She has, I see, preserved her comeliness, ' observed the duke, with asmile. 

'Despite the flying of the roses, which had not her heart's patience. 'Tis now the lily that reigns. So, then, Chloe shall be attached to theduchess during her stay, and unless the devil himself should interfere, I guarantee her Grace against any worse harm than experience; and that, 'Mr. Beamish added, as the duke raised his arms at the fearful word, 'thatshall be mild. Play she will; she is sure to play. Put it down at athousand. We map her out a course of permissible follies, and she playsto lose the thousand by degrees, with as telling an effect upon aconnubial conscience as we can produce. '

'A thousand, ' said the duke, 'will be cheap indeed. I think now I havehad a description of this fair Chloe, and from an enthusiast; a brune?elegantly mannered and of a good landed family; though she has thoughtproper to conceal her name. And that will be our difficulty, cousinBeamish. '

'She was, under my dominion, Miss Martinsward, ' Mr. Beamish pursued. 'She came here very young, and at once her suitors were legion. In theway of women, she chose the worst among them; and for the fellow Caseldyshe sacrificed the fortune she had inherited of a maternal uncle. Torelease him from prison, she paid all his debts; a mountain of bills, with the lawyers piled above--Pelion upon Ossa, to quote our poets. Infact, obeying the dictates of a soul steeped in generosity, she committedthe indiscretion to strip herself, scandalizing propriety. This wasimmediately on her coming of age; and it was the death-blow to herrelations with her family. Since then, honoured even by rakes, she haslived impoverished at the Wells. I dubbed her Chloe, and man or womandisrespectful to Chloe packs. From being the victim of her generousdisposition, I could not save her; I can protect her from the shafts ofmalice. '

'She has no passion for play?' inquired the duke. 

'She nourishes a passion for the man for whom she bled, to the exclusionof the other passions. She lives, and I believe I may say that it is themotive of her rising and dressing daily, in expectation of his advent. '

'He may be dead. '

'The dog is alive. And he has not ceased to be Handsome Caseldy, theysay. Between ourselves, duke, there is matter to break her heart. Hehas been the Count Caseldy of Continental gaming tables, and he isrecently Sir Martin Caseldy, settled on the estate she made him free totake up intact on his father's decease. '

'Pah! a villain!'

'With a blacker brand upon him every morning that he looks forth acrosshis property, and leaves her to languish! She still--I say it to theredemption of our sex--has offers. Her incomparable attractions of mindand person exercise the natural empire of beauty. But she will none ofthem. I call her the Fair Suicide. She has died for love; and she is aghost, a good ghost, and a pleasing ghost, but an apparition, a taper. 

The duke fidgeted, and expressed a hope to hear that she was not ofmelancholy conversation; and again, that the subject of her discoursewas not confined to love and lovers, happy or unhappy. He wished hisduchess, he said, to be entertained upon gayer topics: love being a themehe desired to reserve to himself. 'This month!' he said, prognosticallyshaking and moaning. 'I would this month were over, and that we werewell purged of it. '

Mr. Beamish reassured him. The wit and sprightliness of Chloe were sofamous as to be considered medical, he affirmed; she was besieged forher company; she composed and sang impromptu verses, she played harp andharpsichord divinely, and touched the guitar, and danced, danced like thesilvery moon on the waters of the mill pool. He concluded by saying thatshe was both humane and wise, humble-minded and amusing, virtuous yet nota Tartar; the best of companions for her Grace the young duchess. Moreover, he boldly engaged to carry the duchess through the term of hervisit under a name that should be as good as a masquerade for concealinghis Grace's, while giving her all the honours due to her rank. 

'You strictly interpret my wishes, ' said the duke; 'all honours, theforemost place, and my wrath upon man or woman gainsaying them!'

'Mine! if you please, duke, ' said Mr. Beamish. 

'A thousand pardons! I leave it to you, cousin. I could not be in saferhands. I am heartily bounders to you. Chloe, then. By the way, she hasa decent respect for age?'

'She is reverentially inclined. '

'Not that. She is, I would ask, no wanton prattler of the charms andadvantages of youth?'

'She has a young adorer that I have dubbed Alonzo, whom she scarcenotices. '

'Nothing could be better. Alonzo: h'm! A faithful swain?'

'Life is his tree, upon which unceasingly he carves his mistress'sinitials. '

'She should not be too cruel. I recollect myself formerly: I was . . . Young men will, when long slighted, transfer their affections, and bewarmer to the second flame than to the first. I put you on your guard. He follows her much? These lovers' paintings and puffings in theneighbourhood of the most innocent of women are contagious. '

'Her Grace will be running home all the sooner. '

'Or off!--may she forgive me! I am like a King John's Jew, forced tolend his treasure without security. What a world is ours! Nothing, Beamish, nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted! Catch aprize, and you will find you are at war with your species. You have tobe on the defensive from that moment. There is no such thing aspeaceable procession on earth. Let it be a beautiful young woman!--Ah!'

Mr. Beamish replied bracingly, 'The champion wrestler challenges allcomers while he wears the belt. '

The duke dejectedly assented. 'True; or he is challenged, say. Is thereany tale we could tell her of this Alonzo? You could deport him for themonth, my dear Beamish. '

'I commit no injustice unless with sufficient reason. It is an estimableyouth, as shown by his devotion to a peerless woman. To endow her withhis name and fortune is his only thought. '

'I perceive; an excellent young fellow! I have an incipient liking forthis young Alonzo. You must not permit my duchess to laugh at him. Encourage her rather to advance his suit. The silliness of a young manwill be no bad spectacle. Chloe, then. You have set my mind at rest, Beamish, and it is but another obligation added to the heap; so, if I donot speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have mebankrupt. '

The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referredto the date of her Grace's coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was toreceive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and comfort;the duke perpetually observing, 'But I leave it all to you, Beamish, 'when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects, even to thespecification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the apothecary, who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite nature of theirsupplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with whom she was to makeher purchases. For the duke had a recollection of giddy shops, and ofgiddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for a day that a certaingreat nobleman came to victory with a jealously guarded dame beautiful asVenus. 'I would have challenged the goddess!' he cried, and subsidedfrom his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind instrument. 'So thereyou see the prudence of a choice of shops. But I leave it to you, Beamish. ' Similarly the great military commander, having done whatsoevera careful prevision may suggest to insure him victory, casts himself uponProvidence, with the hope of propitiating the unanticipated and darklypossible. 

CHAPTER III

The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet andgreen, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day tomeet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct herin state to the Wells. Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel withregard to her prospective duties. He was this day the consummate beau, suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his externalgrandeur. 'Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere youdistinguish a chariot, ' he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hillof long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges, and crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on acompanion height directly facing them, at a remove of about three-quarters of a mile. Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly raisedhis hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry track:'It sweats the eye to see!'

Presently Chloe said, 'Now a dust blows. Something approaches. Now Idiscern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!'

Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded. 

Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderlynotes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead ofsweetness. 

'You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!' said the wincing beau. 'Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised. I have had themout in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of theirnative cacophony. But they love it, as they love bacon and beans. Themusical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite fornoise, and for that they are gluttons. '

'It will be pleasant to hear in the distance, ' Chloe replied. 

'Ay, the extremer the distance, the pleasanter to hear. Are theyadvancing?'

'They stop. There is a cavalier at the window. Now he doffs his hat. '

'Sweepingly?'

Chloe described a semicircle in the grand manner. 

The beau's eyebrows rose. 'Powers divine !' he muttered. 'She is letloose from hand to hand, and midway comes a cavalier. We did not counton the hawks. So I have to deal with a cavalier! It signifies, my dearChloe, that I must incontinently affect the passion if I am to be hismatch: nothing less. '

'He has flown, ' said Chloe. 

'Whom she encounters after meeting me, I care not, ' quoth the beau, snapping a finger. 'But there has been an interval for damage with alady innocent as Eve. Is she advancing?'

'The chariot is trotting down the hill. He has ridden back. She has noattendant horseman. '

'They were dismissed at my injunction ten miles off particularly to thebenefit of the cavaliering horde, it would appear. In the case of awoman, Chloe, one blink of the eyelids is an omission of watchfulness. '

'That is an axiom fit for the harem of the Grand Signior. '

'The Grand Signior might give us profitable lessons for dealing with thesex. '

'Distrust us, and it is a declaration of war!'

'Trust you, and the stopper is out of the smelling-bottle. '

'Mr. Beamish, we are women, but we have souls. '

'The pip in the apple whose ruddy cheek allures little Tommy to rob theorchard is as good a preservative. '

'You admit that men are our enemies?'

'I maintain that they carry the banner of virtue. '

'Oh, Mr. Beamish, I shall expire. '

'I forbid it in my lifetime, Chloe, for I wish to die believing in onewoman. '

'No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters!'

'Then fly to a hermitage; for all flattery is at somebody's expense, child. 'Tis an essence-extract of humanity! To live on it, in thefashion of some people, is bad--it is downright cannibal. But we maysprinkle our handkerchiefs with it, and we should, if we would caress ournoses with an air. Society, my Chloe, is a recommencement upon an upperlevel of the savage system; we must have our sacrifices. As, forinstance, what say you of myself beside our booted bumpkin squires?'

'Hundreds of them, Mr. Beamish !'

'That is a holocaust of squires reduced to make an incense for me, thoughyou have not performed Druid rites and packed them in gigantic osierribs. Be philosophical, but accept your personal dues. Grant us ourstoo. I have a serious intention to preserve this young duchess, and Iexpect my task to be severe. I carry the banner aforesaid; verily andpenitentially I do. It is an error of the vulgar to suppose that all isdragon in the dragon's jaws. '

'Men are his fangs and claws. '

'Ay, but the passion for his fiery breath is in woman. She will take herleap and have her jump, will and will! And at the point where she willand she won't, the dragon gulps and down she goes! However, the businessis to keep our buttercup duchess from that same point. Is she near?'

'I can see her, ' said Chloe. 

Beau Beamish requested a sketch of her, and Chloe began: 'She isravishing. '

Upon which he commented, 'Every woman is ravishing at forty paces, andstill more so in imagination. '

'Beautiful auburn hair, and a dazzling red and white complexion, set in ablue coif. '

'Her eyes?'

'Melting blue. '

''Tis an English witch!' exclaimed the beau, and he compassionatelyinvoked her absent lord. 

Chloe's optics were no longer tasked to discern the fair lady'slineaments, for the chariot windows came flush with those of the beau onthe broad plateau of the hill. His coach door was opened. He satupright, levelling his privileged stare at Duchess Susan until sheblushed. 

'Ay, madam, ' quoth he, 'I am not the first. '

'La, sir!' said she; 'who are you?'

The beau deliberately raised his hat and bowed. 'He, madam, of whoseapproach the gentleman who took his leave of you on yonder elevationinformed you. '

She looked artlessly over her shoulder, and at the beau alighting fromhis carriage. 'A gentleman?'

'On horseback. '

The duchess popped her head through the window on an impulse to measurethe distance between the two hills. 

'Never!' she cried. 

'Why, madam, did he deliver no message to announce me?' said the beau, ruffling. 

'Goodness gracious! You must be Mr. Beamish, ' she replied. 

He laid his hat on his bosom, and invited her to quit her carriage for aseat beside him. She stipulated, 'If you are really Mr. Beamish?' Hefrowned, and raised his head to convince her; but she would not beimpressed, and he applied to Chloe to establish his identity. HearingChloe's name, the duchess called out, 'Oh! there, now, that's enough, forChloe's my maid here, and I know she's a lady born, and we're going to befriends. Hand me to Chloe. And you are Chloe?' she said, after a frankstride from step to step of the carriages. 'And don't mind being mymaid? You do look a nice, kind creature. And I see you're a lady born;I know in a minute. You're dark, I'm fair; we shall suit. And tell me--hush!--what dreadful long eyes he has! I shall ask you presently whatyou think of me. I was never at the Wells before. Dear me! the coachhas turned. How far off shall we hear the bells to say I'm coming? Iknow I'm to have bells. Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish! I must have a chatterwith a woman, and I'm in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and men Isee to talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke'spalace--though they're old ones, that's true--but a woman who's a lady, and kind enough to be my maid, I haven't met yet since I had the right towear a coronet. There, I'll hold Chloe's hand, and that'll do. Youwould tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now, wouldn't you? As for talkative, that's a sign with me of my likingpeople. I really don't know what to say to my duke sometimes. I sit andthink it so funny to be having a duke instead of a husband. You're off!'

The duchess laughed at Chloe's laughter. Chloe excused herself, but wasinformed by her mistress that it was what she liked. 

'For the first two years, ' she resumed, 'I could hardly speak a syllable. I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing andcurling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody. Now I'm quite athome, for I've plenty of courage--except about death, and I'm worse aboutdeath than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk's "lawks!" in herround eyes and mouth for an egg. I wonder why that is? But isn't deathhorrible? And skeletons!' The duchess shuddered. 

'It depends upon the skeleton, ' said Beau Beamish, who had joined theconversation. 'Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she wouldprecipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh. Ihave, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with theinterview. '

'Your own skeleton, sir!' said the duchess wonderingly and appalled. 

'Unmistakably mine. I will call you to witness by an account of him. '

Duchess Susan gaped, and, 'Oh, don't!' she cried out; but added, 'It 'sbroad day, and I've got some one to sleep anigh me after dark'; withwhich she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter foralarm. 

'I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night, 'said the beau, 'along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that oneof us should yield the 'pas;' and, I must confess it, we are all soamazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place ofhim. For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the firstglance repulsive. I took him for anybody's skeleton, Death's ensign, with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinarysplay feet--in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which manis built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments he is haunted. Ihad, to be frank, been dancing on a supper with certain of our choicestWits and Beauties. It is a recipe for conjuring apparitions. Now, then, thinks I, my fine fellow, I will bounce you; and without a salutation Ipressed forward. Madam, I give you my word, he behaved to the full pitchas I myself should have done under similar circumstances. Retiring uponan inclination of his structure, he draws up and fetches me a bow of theexact middle nick between dignity and service. I advance, he withdraws, and again the bow, devoid of obsequiousness, majestically condescending. These, thinks I, be royal manners. I could have taken him for the SableKing in person, stripped of his mantle. On my soul, he put me to theblush. '

'And is that all?' asked the duchess, relieving herself with a sigh. 

'Why, madam, ' quoth the beau, 'do you not see that he could have beennone other than mine own, who could comport himself with that grand airand gracefulness when wounded by his closest relative? Upon his openingmy door for me, and accepting the 'pas, ' which I now right heartilyaccorded him, I recognized at once both him and the reproof he haddesignedly dealt me--or the wine supper I had danced on, perhaps I shouldsay' and I protest that by such a display of supreme good breeding hemanaged to convey the highest compliment ever received by man, namely theassurance, that after the withering away of this mortal garb, I shallstill be noted for urbanity and elegancy. Nay, and more, immortally, without the slip I was guilty of when I carried the bag of wine. '

Duchess Susan fanned herself to assist her digestion of the anecdote. 

'Well, it's not so frightful a story, and I know you are the great Mr. Beamish;' she said. 

He questioned her whether the gentleman had signalled him to her on thehill. 

'What can he mean about a gentleman?' she turned to Chloe. 'My duke toldme you would meet me, sir. And you are to protect me. And if anythinghappens, it is to be your fault. '

'Entirely, ' said the beau. 'I shall therefore maintain a vigilantguard. '

'Except leaving me free. Oof! I've been boxed up so long. I declare, Chloe, I feel like a best dress out for a holiday, and a bit afraid ofspoiling. I'm a real child, more than I was when my duke married me. I seemed to go in and grow up again, after I was raised to fortune. Andnobody to tell of it! Fancy that! For you can't talk to old gentlemenabout what's going on in your heart. '

'How of young gentlemen?' she was asked by the beau. 

And she replied, 'They find it out. '

'Not if you do not assist them, ' said he. 

Duchess Susan let her eyelids and her underlie half drop, as she lookedat him with the simple shyness of one of nature's thoughts in her head atpeep on the pastures of the world. The melting blue eyes and the cherrylip made an exceedingly quickening picture. 'Now, I wonder if that istrue?' she transferred her slyness to speech. 

'Beware the middle-aged!' he exclaimed. 

She appealed to Chloe. 'And I'm sure they're the nicest. '

Chloe agreed that they were. 

The duchess measured Chloe and the beau together, with a mind swift inapprehending all that it hungered for. 

She would have pursued the pleasing theme had she not been directed togaze below upon the towers and roofs of the Wells, shining sleepily in asiesta of afternoon Summer sunlight. 

With a spread of her silken robe, she touched the edifice of her hair, murmuring to Chloe, 'I can't abide that powder. You shall see me walk ina hoop. I can. I've done it to slow music till my duke clapped hands. I'm nothing sitting to what I am on my feet. That's because I haven'tgot fine language yet. I shall. It seems to come last. So, there 'sthe place. And whereabouts do all the great people meet and prommy--?'

'They promenade where you see the trees, madam, ' said Chloe. 

'And where is it where the ladies sit and eat jam tarts with whippedcream on 'em, while the gentlemen stand and pay compliments?'

Chloe said it was at a shop near the pump room. 

Duchess Susan looked out over the house-tops, beyond the dusty hedges. 

'Oh, and that powder!' she cried. 'I hate to be out of the fashion and aspectacle. But I do love my own hair, and I have such a lot, and I likethe colour, and so does my duke. Only, don't let me be fingered at. Ifonce I begin to blush before people, my courage is gone; my singinginside me is choked; and I've a real lark going on in me all day long, rain or sunshine--hush, all about love and amusement. '

Chloe smiled, and Duchess Susan said, 'Just like a bird, for I don't knowwhat it is. '

She looked for Chloe to say that she did. 

At the moment a pair of mounted squires rode up, and the coach stopped, while Beau Beamish gave orders for the church bells to be set ringing, and the band to meet and precede his equipage at the head of the bathavenue: 'in honour of the arrival of her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap. '

He delivered these words loudly to his men, and turned an effulgent gazeupon the duchess, so that for a minute she was fascinated and did notconsult her hearing; but presently she fell into an uneasiness; the signsincreased, she bit her lip, and after breathing short once or twice, 'Wasit meaning me, Mr. Beamish?' she said. 

'You, madam, are the person whom we 'delight to honour, ' he replied. 

'Duchess of what?' she screwed uneasy features to hear. 

'Duchess of Dewlap, ' said he. 

'It's not my title, sir. '

'It is your title on my territory, madam. '

She made her pretty nose and upper lip ugly with a sneer of 'Dew--! Andenter that town before all those people as Duchess of . . . Oh, no, Iwon't; I just won't! Call back those men now, please; now, if youplease. Pray, Mr. Beamish! You'll offend me, sir. I'm not going to bea mock. You'll offend my duke, sir. He'd die rather than have myfeelings hurt. Here's all my pleasure spoilt. I won't and I sha'n'tenter the town as duchess of that stupid name, so call 'em back, call 'emback this instant. I know who I am and what I am, and I know what's dueto me, I do. '

Beau Beamish rejoined, 'I too. Chloe will tell you I am lord here. '

'Then I'll go home, I will. I won't be laughed at for a great ladyninny. I'm a real lady of high rank, and such I'll appear. What 's aDuchess of Dewlap? One might as well be Duchess of Cowstail, Duchess ofMopsend. And those people! But I won't be that. I won't be playedwith. I see them staring! No, I can make up my mind, and I beg you tocall back your men, or I'll go back home. ' She muttered, 'Be made fun of--made a fool of!'

'Your Grace's chariot is behind, ' said the beau. 

His despotic coolness provoked her to an outcry and weeping: sherepeated, 'Dewlap! Dewlap!' in sobs; she shook her shoulders and hid herface. 

'You are proud of your title, are you, madam?' said he. 

'I am. ' She came out of her hands to answer him proudly. 'That I am!'she meant for a stronger affirmation. 

'Then mark me, ' he said impressively; 'I am your duke's friend, and youare under my charge here. I am your guardian and you are my ward, andyou can enter the town only on the condition of obedience to me. Now, mark me, madam; no one can rob you of your real name and title savingyourself. But you are entering a place where you will encounter athousand temptations to tarnish, and haply forfeit it. Be warned donothing that will. '

'Then I'm to have my own title?' said she, clearing up. 

'For the month of your visit you are Duchess of Dewlap. '

'I say I sha'n't!'

'You shall. '

'Never, sir!'

'I command it. '

She flung herself forward, with a wail, upon Chloe's bosom. 'Can't youdo something for me?' she whimpered. 

'It is impossible to move Mr. Beamish, ' Chloe said. 

Out of a pause, composed of sobs and sighs, the duchess let loose in abroken voice: 'Then I 'm sure I think--I think I'd rather have met--havemet his skeleton!'

Her sincerity was equal to wit. 

Beau Beamish shouted. He cordially applauded her, and in the genuinekindness of an admiration that surprised him, he permitted himself theliberty of taking and saluting her fingers. She fancied there wasanother chance for her, but he frowned at the mention of it. 

Upon these proceedings the exhilarating sound of the band was heard;simultaneously a festival peal of bells burst forth; and an admonishmentof the necessity for concealing her chagrin and exhibiting both stationand a countenance to the people, combined with the excitement of thenew scenes and the marching music to banish the acuter sense ofdisappointment from Duchess Susan's mind; so she very soon held herselferect, and wore a face open to every wonder, impressionable as the bluelake-surface, crisped here and there by fitful breezes against a levelsun. 

CHAPTER IV

It was an axiom with Mr. Beamish, our first, if not our onlyphilosophical beau and a gentleman of some thoughtfulness, that thesocial English require tyrannical government as much as the political areable to dispense with it: and this he explained by an exposition of thecharacter of a race possessed of the eminent virtue of individual self-assertion, which causes them to insist on good elbowroom wherever theygather together. Society, however, not being tolerable where thesmoothness of intercourse is disturbed by a perpetual punching of sides, the merits of the free citizen in them become their demerits when afraternal circle is established, and they who have shown an example ofcivilization too notable in one sphere to call for eulogy, are often tobe seen elbowing on the ragged edge of barbarism in the other. They musttherefore be reduced to accept laws not of their own making, and of anextreme rigidity. 

Here too is a further peril; for the gallant spirits distinguishing themin the state of independence may (he foresaw the melancholy experience ofa later age) abandon them utterly in subjection, and the gloriousboisterousness befitting the village green forsake them even in theirhaunts of liberal association, should they once be thoroughly tamed byauthority. Our 'merrie England' will then be long-faced England, anEngland of fallen chaps, like a boar's head, bearing for speech a lemonin the mouth: good to feast on, mayhap; not with!

Mr. Beamish would actually seem to have foreseen the danger of atransition that he could watch over only in his time; and, as he said, 'I go, as I came, on a flash'; he had neither ancestry nor descendants:he was a genius, he knew himself a solitary, therefore, in spite of hisefforts to create his like. Within his district he did effect something, enough to give him fame as one of the princely fathers of our domesticcivilization, though we now appear to have lost by it more than formerlywe gained. The chasing of the natural is ever fraught with dubioushazards. If it gallops back, according to the proverb, it will do so atthe charge: commonly it gallops off, quite off; and then for any kind ofanimation our precarious dependence is upon brains: we have to live onour wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land, and cannot beremitted in entail. 

Rightly or wrongly (there are differences of opinion about it) Mr. Beamish repressed the chthonic natural with a rod of iron beneath hisrule. The hoyden and the bumpkin had no peace until they had givenpublic imitations of the lady and the gentleman; nor were the lady andthe gentleman privileged to be what he called 'free flags. ' He could becharitable to the passion, but he bellowed the very word itself (hauledup smoking from the brimstone lake) against them that pretended to beshamelessly guilty of the peccadilloes of gallantry. His famous accostof a lady threatening to sink, and already performing like a vessel inthat situation: 'So, madam, I hear you are preparing to enrol yourself inthe very ancient order?' . . . (he named it) was a piece of insolencethat involved him in some discord with the lady's husband and 'the rascalsteward, ' as he chose to term the third party in these affairs: yet it isreputed to have saved the lady. 

Furthermore, he attacked the vulgarity of persons of quality, and he hastold a fashionable dame who was indulging herself in a marked sneer ofdisdain, not improving to her features, 'that he would be pleased to haveher assurance it was her face she presented to mankind': a thing--thanksperhaps to him chiefly--no longer possible of utterance. One of the sexasking him why he addressed his persecutions particularly to women:'Because I fight your battles, ' says he, 'and I find you in the ranks ofthe enemy. ' He treated them as traitors. 

He was nevertheless well supported by a sex that compensates for dislikeof its friend before a certain age by a cordial recognition of him whenit has touched the period. A phalanx of great dames gave him the terrorsof Olympus for all except the natively audacious, the truculent and theinsufferably obtuse; and from the midst of them he launched decree andbolt to good effect: not, of course, without receiving return missiles, and not without subsequent question whether the work of that man wasbeneficial to the country, who indeed tamed the bumpkin squire and hisbrood, but at the cost of their animal spirits and their gift of speech;viz. By making petrifactions of them. In the surgical operation oftracheotomy, a successful treatment of the patient hangs, we believe, onthe promptness and skill of the introduction of the artificial windpipe;and it may be that our unhappy countrymen when cut off from the source oftheir breath were not neatly handled; or else that there is a physicalopposition in them to anything artificial, and it must be nature ornothing. The dispute shall be left where it stands. 

Now, to venture upon parading a beautiful young Duchess of Dewlap, withan odour of the shepherdess about her notwithstanding her acquired art ofstepping conformably in a hoop, and to demand full homage of respect fora lady bearing such a title, who had the intoxicating attractions of theruddy orchard apple on the tree next the roadside wall, when the owner isabsent, was bold in Mr. Beamish, passing temerity; nor would even he haveattempted it had he not been assured of the support of his phalanx ofgreat ladies. They indeed, after being taken into the secret, hadstipulated that first they must have an inspection of the transformeddairymaid; and the review was not unfavourable. Duchess Susan came outof it more scatheless than her duke. She was tongue-tied, and hertutored walking and really admirable stature helped her to appease, thecritics of her sex; by whom her too readily blushful innocence waspraised, with a reserve, expressed in the remark, that she was amonstrous fine toy for a duke's second childhood, and should never havebeen let fly from his nursery. Her milliner was approved. The duke wasa notorious connoisseur of female charms, and would see, of course, tothe decorous adornment of her person by the best of modistes. Hersmiling was pretty, her eyes were soft; she might turn out good, if wellguarded for a time; but these merits of the woman are not those of thegreat lady, and her title was too strong a beam on her character to giveit a fair chance with her critics. They one and all recommended powderfor her hair and cheeks. That odour of the shepherdess could beexorcised by no other means, they declared. Her blushing was indecent. 

Truly the critics of the foeman sex behaved in a way to cause the blushesto swarm rosy as the troops of young Loves round Cytherea in her sea-birth, when, some soaring, and sinking some, they flutter like herloosened zone, and breast the air thick as flower petals on the summer'sbreath, weaving her net for the world. Duchess Susan might protest herinability to keep her blushes down; that the wrong was done by theinsolent eyes, and not by her artless cheeks. Ay, but nature, if we areto tame these men, must be swathed and concealed, partly stifled, absolutely stifled upon occasion. The natural woman does not move a footwithout striking earth to conjure up the horrid apparition of the naturalman, who is not as she, but a cannibal savage. To be the light whichleads, it is her business to don the misty vesture of an idea, that shemay dwell as an idea in men's minds, very dim, very powerful, butabstruse, unseizable. Much wisdom was imparted to her on the subject, and she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the remainder, willingto show entire docility as far as her intelligence consented to be awake. She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly tinged innocence of theamorousness of themselves when beautiful young women who have not beencaught for schooling in infancy deem it a defilement to be made toappear other than the blessed nature has made them, which has made thembeautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be worshipped. The lecturesof the great ladies and Chloe's counsels failed to persuade her to usethe powder puff-ball. Perhaps too, as timidity quitted her, she enjoyedher distinctiveness in their midst. 

But the distinctiveness of a Duchess of Dewlap with the hair and cheeksof our native fields, was fraught with troubles outrunning Mr. Beamish'scalculations. He had perceived that she would be attractive; he had notreckoned on the homogeneousness of her particular English charms. Abeauty in red, white, and blue is our goddess Venus with the apple ofParis in her hand; and after two visits to the Pump Room, and onepromenade in the walks about the Assembly House, she had as completelydivided the ordinary guests of the Wells into male and female in opinionas her mother Nature had done in it sex. And the men would not besilenced; they had gazed on their divinest, and it was for the womento succumb to that unwholesome state, so full of thunder. Knights andsquires, military and rural, threw up their allegiance right and leftto devote themselves to this robust new vision, and in their peculiarmanner, with a general View-halloo, and Yoicks, Tally-ho, and away we go, pelt ahead! Unexampled as it is in England for Beauty to kindle theardours of the scent of the fox, Duchess Susan did more--she turned allher followers into hounds; they were madmen: within a very few days ofher entrance bets raged about her, and there were brawls, jolly flings ather character in the form of lusty encomium, givings of the lie, and uponone occasion a knock-down blow in public, as though the place had neverknown the polishing touch of Mr. Beamish. 

He was thrown into great perplexity by that blow. Discountenancing theduel as much as he could, an affair of the sword was nevertheless moretolerable than the brutal fist: and of all men to be guilty of it, whowould have anticipated the young Alonzo, Chloe's quiet, modest lover!He it was. The case came before Mr. Beamish for his decision; he hadto pronounce an impartial judgement, and for some time, during theexamination of evidence, he suffered, as he assures us in his Memoirs, aroyal agony. To have to strike with the glaive of Justice them whom theymost esteem, is the greatest affliction known to kings. He would havedone it: he deserved to reign. Happily the evidence against thegentleman who was tumbled, Mr. Ralph Shepster, excused Mr. AugustusCamwell, otherwise Alonzo, for dealing with him promptly to shut hismouth. 

This Shepster, a raw young squire, 'reeking, ' Beau Beamish writes of him, 'one half of the soil, and t' other half of the town, ' had involved Chloein his familiar remarks upon the Duchess of Dewlap; and the personalrespect entertained by Mr. Beamish for Chloe so strongly approvedAlonzo's championship of her, that in giving judgement he laid stress onyoung Alonzo's passion for Chloe, to prove at once the disinterestednessof the assailant, and the judicial nature of the sentence: which was, that Mr. Ralph Shepster should undergo banishment, and had the right todemand reparation. The latter part of this decree assisted in effectingthe execution of the former. Shepster declined cold steel, calling itmurder, and was effusive of nature's logic on the subject

'Because a man comes and knocks me down, I'm to go up to him and ask himto run me through!'

His shake of the head signified that he was not such a noodle. Volubleand prolific of illustration, as is no one so much as a son of natureinspired to speak her words of wisdom, he defied the mandate, and refusedhimself satisfaction, until in the strangest manner possible flights ofwhite feathers beset him, and he became a mark for persecution too tryingfor the friendship of his friends. He fled, repeating his tale, that hehad seen 'Beamish's Duchess, ' and Chloe attending her, at an assignationin the South Grove, where a gentleman, unknown to the Wells, presentedhimself to the adventurous ladies, and they walked together--a taleending with nods. 

Shepster's banishment was one of those victories of justice upon whichmankind might be congratulated if they left no commotion behind. But, as when a boy has been horsed before his comrades, dread may visit them, yet is there likewise devilry in the school; and everywhere over eartha summary punishment that does not sweep the place clear is likely toinfect whom it leaves remaining. The great law-givers, Lycurgus, Draco, Solon, Beamish, sorrowfully acknowledge that they have had recourse toinfernal agents, after they have thus purified their circle of anoffender. Doctors confess to the same of their physic. The expellingagency has next to be expelled, and it is a subtle poison, affecting ourspirits. Duchess Susan had now the incense of a victim to heighten hercharms; like the treasure-laden Spanish galleon for whom, on her voyagehome from South American waters, our enterprising light-craft privateerslay in wait, she had the double attraction of being desirable and anenemy. To watch above her conscientiously was a harassing business. 

Mr. Beamish sent for Chloe, and she came to him at once. Her look wascurious; he studied it while they conversed. So looks one who iswatching the sure flight of an arrow, or the happy combinations of anintrigue. Saying, 'I am no inquisitor, child, ' he ventured upon two orthree modest inquisitions with regard to her mistress. The title he haddisguised Duchess Susan in, he confessed to rueing as the principal causeof the agitation of his principality. 'She is courted, ' he said, 'lesslike a citadel waving a flag than a hostelry where the demand is forsitting room and a tankard! These be our manners. Yet, I must own, aDuchess of Dewlap is a provocation, and my exclusive desire to protectthe name of my lord stands corrected by the perils environing his lady. She is other than I supposed her; she is, we will hope, an excellent goodcreature, but too attractive for most and drawbridge and the customarydefences to be neglected. 

Chloe met his interrogatory with a ready report of the young duchess'sinnocence and good nature that pacified Mr. Beamish. 

'And you?' said he. 

She smiled for answer. 

That smile was not the common smile; it was one of an eager exultingness, producing as he gazed the twitch of an inquisitive reflection of it onhis lips. Such a smile bids us guess and quickens us to guess, warns uswe burn and speeds our burning, and so, like an angel wafting us to someheaven-feasting promontory, lifts us out of ourselves to see in theuniverse of colour what the mouth has but pallid speech to tell. That isthe very heart's language; the years are in a look, as mount and vale ofthe dark land spring up in lightning. 

He checked himself: he scarce dared to say it. 

She nodded. 

'You have seen the man, Chloe?'

Her smiling broke up in the hard lines of an ecstasy neighbouring pain. 'He has come; he is here; he is faithful; he has not forgotten me. I wasright. I knew! I knew!'

'Caseldy has come?'

'He has come. Do not ask. To have him! to see him! Mr. Beamish, he ishere. '

'At last!'

'Cruel!'

'Well, Caseldy has come, then! But now, friend Chloe, you should be madeaware that the man--'

She stopped her ears. As she did so, Mr. Beamish observed a thick silkenskein dangling from one hand. Part of it was plaited, and at the upperend there was a knot. It resembled the commencement of her manufactoryof a whip: she swayed it to and fro, allowing him to catch and lift thethreads on his fingers for the purpose of examining her work. There wasno special compliment to pay, so he dropped it without remark. 

Their faces had expressed her wish to hear nothing from him of Caseldyand his submission to say nothing. Her happiness was too big; sheappeared to beg to lie down with it on her bosom, in the manner of anoutworn, young mother who has now first received her infant in her armsfrom the nurse. 

CHAPTER V

Humouring Chloe with his usual considerateness, Mr. Beamish forbore tocast a shadow on her new-born joy, and even within himself to doubt thesecurity of its foundation. Caseldy's return to the Wells was at leastsome assurance of his constancy, seeing that here they appointed to meetwhen he and Chloe last parted. All might be well, though it wasunexplained why he had not presented himself earlier. To the lightestinquiry Chloe's reply was a shiver of happiness. 

Moreover, Mr. Beamish calculated that Caseldy would be a serviceable allyin commanding a proper respect for her Grace the Duchess of Dewlap. Sohe betook himself cheerfully to Caseldy's lodgings to deliver a messageof welcome, meeting, on his way thither, Mr. Augustus Camwell, with whomhe had a short conversation, greatly to his admiration of the enamouredyoung gentleman's goodness and self-compression in speaking of Caseldyand Chloe's better fortune. Mr. Camwell seemed hurried. 

Caseldy was not at home, and Mr. Beamish proceeded to the lodgings of theduchess. Chloe had found her absent. The two consulted. Mr. Beamishput on a serious air, until Chloe mentioned the pastrycook's shop, forDuchess Susan had a sweet tooth; she loved a visit to the pastrycook's, whose jam tarts were dearer to her than his more famous hot mutton pies. The pastry cook informed Mr. Beamish that her Grace had been in his shop, earlier than usual, as it happened, and accompanied by a foreign-lookinggentleman wearing moustachois. Her Grace, the pastrycook said, hadpartaken of several tarts, in common with the gentleman, who complimentedhim upon his excelling the Continental confectioner. Mr. Beamish glancedat Chloe. He pursued his researches down at the Pump Room, while shelooked round the ladies' coffee house. Encountering again, they walkedback to the duchess's lodgings, where a band stood playing in the road, by order of her Grace; but the duchess was away, and had not been seensince her morning's departure. 

'What sort of character would you give mistress Susan of Dewlap, fromyour personal acquaintance with it?' said Mr. Beamish to Chloe, as theystepped from the door. 

Chloe mused and said, 'I would add "good" to the unkindest comparison youcould find for her. '

'But accepting the comparison!' Mr. Beamish nodded, and revolved upon thecircumstance of their being very much in nature's hands with DuchessSusan, of whom it might be said that her character was good, yet all themore alive to the temptations besetting the Spring season. He alliedChloe's adjective to a number of epithets equally applicable to natureand to women, according to current ideas, concluding: 'Count, they callyour Caseldy at his lodgings. "The Count he is out for an airing. " Heis counted out. Ah! you will make him drop that "Count" when he takesyou from here. '

'Do not speak of the time beyond the month, ' said Chloe, so urgently on arapid breath as to cause Mr. Beamish to cast an inquiring look at her. 

She answered it, 'Is not one month of brightness as much as we can askfor?'

The beau clapped his elbows complacently to his sides in philosophicalconcord with her sentiment. 

In the afternoon, on the parade, they were joined by Mr. Camwell, amonggroups of fashionable ladies and their escorts, pacing serenely, bymedical prescription, for an appetite. As he did not comment on theabsence of the duchess, Mr. Beamish alluded to it; whereupon he wasinformed that she was about the meadows, and had been there for somehours. 

'Not unguarded, ' he replied to Mr. Beamish. 

'Aha!' quoth the latter; 'we have an Argus!' and as the duchess was noton the heights, and the sun's rays were mild in cloud, he agreed to hisyoung friend's proposal that they should advance to meet her. Chloewalked with them, but her face was disdainful; at the stiles she gave herhand to Mr. Beamish; she did not address a word to Mr. Camwell, and heknew the reason. Nevertheless he maintained his air of soldierlyresignation to the performance of duty, and held his head like agentleman unable to conceive the ignominy of having played spy. Chloe shrank from him. 

Duchess Susan was distinguished coming across a broad uncut meadow, tirra-lirraing beneath a lark, Caseldy in attendance on her. She stoppedshort and spoke to him; then came forward, crying ingenuously. 'Oh, Mr. Beamish, isn't this just what you wanted me to do?'

'No, madam, ' said he, 'you had my injunctions to the contrary. '

'La!' she exclaimed, 'I thought I was to run about in the fields now andthen to preserve my simplicity. I know I was told so, and who told me!'

Mr. Beamish bowed effusively to the introduction of Caseldy, whosefingers he touched in sign of the renewal of acquaintance, and with alaugh addressed the duchess:

'Madam, you remind me of a tale of my infancy. I had a juvenile comradeof the tenderest age, by name Tommy Plumston, and he enjoyed theprivilege of intimacy with a component urchin yclept Jimmy Clungeon, withwhich adventurous roamer, in defiance of his mother's interdict againsthis leaving the house for a minute during her absence from home, hedeparted on a tour of the district, resulting, perhaps as a consequenceof its completeness, in this, that at a distance computed at four milesfrom the maternal mansion, he perceived his beloved mama with sufficientclearness to feel sure that she likewise had seen him. Tommy consultedwith Jimmy, and then he sprang forward on a run to his frowning mama, anddelivered himself in these artless words, which I repeat as they wereuttered, to give you the flavour of the innocent babe: he said, "I frinkI frought I hear you call me, ma! and Jimmy Clungeon, he frought he frinkso too!" So, you see, the pair of them were under the impression thatthey were doing right. There is a delicate distinction in the tenses ofeach frinking where the other frought, enough in itself to stampsincerity upon the statement. '

Caseldy said, 'The veracity of a boy possessing a friend named Clungeonis beyond contest. '

Duchess Susan opened her eyes. 'Four miles from home! And what did hismother do to him?'

'Tommy's mama, ' said Mr. Beamish, and with the resplendent licence of theperiod which continued still upon tolerable terms with nature under thecompromise of decorous 'Oh-fie!' flatly declared the thing she did. 

'I fancy, sir, that I caught sight of your figure on the hill yonderabout an hour or so earlier, ' said Caseldy to Mr. Camwell. 

'If it was at the time when you were issuing from that wood, sir, yoursurmise is correct, ' said the young gentleman. 

'You are long-sighted, sir!'

'I am, sir. '

'And so am I. '

'And I, ' said Chloe. 

'Our Chloe will distinguish you accurately at a mile, and has done it, 'observed Mr. Beamish. 

'One guesses tiptoe on a suspicion, and if one is wrong it passes, and ifone is right it is a miracle, ' she said, and raised her voice on a songto quit the subject. 

'Ay, ay, Chloe; so then you had a suspicion, you rogue, the day we hadthe pleasure of meeting the duchess, had you?' Mr. Beamish persisted. 

Duchess Susan interposed. 'Such a pretty song! and you to stop her, sir!'

Caseldy took up the air. 

'Oh, you two together!' she cried. 'I do love hearing music in thefields; it is heavenly. Bands in the town and voices in the greenfields, I say! Couldn't you join Chloe, Mr .... Count, sir, before wecome among the people, here where it 's all so nice and still. Music!and my heart does begin so to pit-a-pat. Do you sing, Mr. Alonzo?'

'Poorly, ' the young gentleman replied. 

'But the Count can sing, and Chloe's a real angel when she sings; andwon't you, dear?' she implored Chloe, to whom Caseldy addressed a preludewith a bow and a flourish of the hand. 

Chloe's voice flew forth. Caseldy's rich masculine matched it. The songwas gay; he snapped his finger at intervals in foreign style, singingbig-chested, with full notes and a fine abandonment, and the quickestsusceptibility to his fair companion's cunning modulations, and an eyefor Duchess Susan's rapture. 

Mr. Beamish and Mr. Camwell applauded them. 

'I never can tell what to say when I'm brimming'; the duchess let fall asigh. 'And he can play the flute, Mr. Beamish. He promised me he wouldgo into the orchestra and play a bit at one of your nice eveningdelicious concerts, and that will be nice--Oh!'

'He promised you, madam, did he so?' said the beau. 'Was it on your wayto the Wells that he promised you?'

'On my way to the Wells!' she exclaimed softly. 'Why, how could anybodypromise me a thing before ever he saw me? I call that a strange thing toask a person. No, to-day, while we were promenading; and I should hearhim sing, he said. He does admire his Chloe so. Why, no wonder, is it, now? She can do everything; knit, sew, sing, dance--and talk! She'snever uneasy for a word. She makes whole scenes of things go round you, like a picture peep-show, I tell her. And always cheerful. She hasn't aminute of grumps; and I'm sometimes a dish of stale milk fit only forpigs. 

With your late hours here, I'm sure I want tickling in the morning, andChloe carols me one of her songs, and I say, "There's my bird!"'

Mr. Beamish added, 'And you will remember she has a heart. '

'I should think so!' said the duchess. 

'A heart, madam!'

'Why, what else?'

Nothing other, the beau, by his aspect, was constrained to admit. 

He appeared puzzled by this daughter of nature in a coronet; and more onher remarking, 'You know about her heart, Mr. Beamish. '

He acquiesced, for of course he knew of her life-long devotion toCaseldy; but there was archness in her tone. However, he did not expecta woman of her education to have the tone perfectly concordant with thecircumstances. Speaking tentatively of Caseldy's handsome face andfigure, he was pleased to hear the duchess say, 'So I tell Chloe. '

'Well, ' said he, 'we must consider them united; they are one. '

Duchess Susan replied, 'That's what I tell him; she will do anything youwish. '

He repeated these words with an interjection, and decided in his mindthat they were merely silly. She was a real shepherdess by birth andnature, requiring a strong guard over her attractions on account of hersimplicity; such was his reading of the problem; he had conceived it atthe first sight of her, and always recurred to it under the influence ofher artless eyes, though his theories upon men and women were astute, andthat cavalier perceived by long-sighted Chloe at Duchess Susan's coachwindow perturbed him at whiles. Habitually to be anticipating thesimpleton in a particular person is the sure way of being sometimes thedupe, as he would not have been the last to warn a neophyte; but abstractwisdom is in need of an unappeased suspicion of much keenness of edge, ifwe would have it alive to cope with artless eyes and our prepossessedfancy of their artlessness. 

'You talk of Chloe to him?' he said. 

She answered. 'Yes, that I do. And he does love her! I like to hearhim. He is one of the gentlemen who don't make me feel timid with them. '

She received a short lecture on the virtues of timidity in preserving thesex from danger; after which, considering that the lady who does not feeltimid with a particular cavalier has had no sentiment awakened, herelinquished his place to Mr. Camwell, and proceeded to administer theprobe to Caseldy. 

That gentleman was communicatively candid. Chloe had left him, and herelated how, summoned home to England and compelled to settle a disputethreatening a lawsuit, he had regretfully to abstain from visiting theWells for a season, not because of any fear of the attractions of play--he had subdued the frailty of the desire to play--but because he deemedit due to his Chloe to bring her an untroubled face, and he wished firstto be the better of the serious annoyances besetting him. For somesimilar reason he had not written; he wished to feast on her surprise. 'And I had my reward, ' he said, as if he had been the person principallyto suffer through that abstinence. 'I found--I may say it to you, Mr. Beamish love in her eyes. Divine by nature, she is one of the immortals, both in appearance and in steadfastness. '

They referred to Duchess Susan. Caseldy reluctantly owned that it wouldbe an unkindness to remove Chloe from attendance on her during the shortremaining term of her stay at the Wells; and so he had not proposed it, he said, for the duchess was a child, an innocent, not stupid by anymeans; but, of course, her transplanting from an inferior to an exaltedposition put her under disadvantages. 

Mr. Beamish spoke of the difficulties of his post as guardian, and alsoof the strange cavalier seen at her carriage window by Chloe. 

Caseldy smiled and said, 'If there was one--and Chloe is rather long--sighted--we can hardly expect her to confess it. '

'Why not, sir, if she be this piece of innocence?' Mr. Beamish was led toinquire. 

'She fears you, sir, ' Caseldy answered. 'You have inspired her with anextraordinary fear of you. '

'I have?' said the beau: it had been his endeavour to inspire it, and heswelled somewhat, rather with relief at the thought of his possessing apower to control his delicate charge, than with our vanity; yet would itbe audacious to say that there was not a dose of the latter. He was avery human man; and he had, as we have seen, his ideas of the effect ofthe impression of fear upon the hearts of women. Something, in any case, caused him to forget the cavalier. 

They were drawn to the three preceding them, by a lively dissensionbetween Chloe and Mr. Camwell. 

Duchess Susan explained it in her blunt style: 'She wants him to go awayhome, and he says he will, if she'll give him that double skein of silkshe swings about, and she says she won't, let him ask as long as hepleases; so he says he sha'n't go, and I'm sure I don't see why heshould; and she says he may stay, but he sha'n't have her necklace, shecalls it. So Mr. Camwell snatches, and Chloe fires up. Gracious, can'tshe frown!--at him. She never frowns at anybody but him. '

Caseldy attempted persuasion on Mr. Camwell's behalf. With his mouth atChloe's ear, he said, 'Give it; let the poor fellow have his memento;despatch him with it. '

'I can hear! and that is really kind, ' exclaimed Duchess Susan. 

'Rather a missy-missy schoolgirl sort of necklace, ' Mr. Beamish observed;'but he might have it, without the dismissal, for I cannot consent tolose Alonzo. No, madam, ' he nodded at the duchess. 

Caseldy continued his whisper: 'You can't think of wearing a thing likethat about your neck?'

'Indeed, ' said Chloe, 'I think of it. '

'Why, what fashion have you over here?'

'It is not yet a fashion, ' she said. 

'A silken circlet will not well become any precious pendant that I knowof. '

'A bag of dust is not a very precious pendant, ' she said. 

'Oh, a memento mori!' cried he. 

And she answered, 'Yes. '

He rallied her for her superstition, pursuing, 'Surely, my love, 'tis acheap riddance of a pestilent, intrusive jaloux. Whip it into his handsfor a mittimus. '

'Does his presence distress you?' she asked. 

'I will own that to be always having the fellow dogging us, with hisdejected leer, is not agreeable. He watches us now, because my lips areclose by your cheek. He should be absent; he is one too many. Speed himon his voyage with the souvenir he asks for. '

'I keep it for a journey of my own, which I may have to take, ' saidChloe. 

'With me?'

'You will follow; you cannot help following me, Caseldy. '

He speculated on her front. She was tenderly smiling. 'You are happy, Chloe?'

'I have never known such happiness, ' she said. The brilliancy of hereyes confirmed it. 

He glanced over at Duchess Susan, who was like a sunflower in the sun. His glance lingered a moment. Her abundant and glowing young charms werethe richest fascination an eye like his could dwell on. 'That is right, 'said he. 'We will be perfectly happy till the month ends. And after it?But get us rid of Monsieur le Jeune; toss him that trifle; I spare himthat. 'Twill be bliss to him, at the cost of a bit of silk thread to us. Besides, if we keep him to cure him of his passion here, might it not be--these boys veer suddenly, like the winds of Albion, from one fairobject to t' other--at the cost of the precious and simple lady you areguarding? I merely hint. These two affect one another, as though itcould be. She speaks of him. It shall be as you please, but a triflelike that, my Chloe, to be rid of a green eye!'

'You much wish him gone?' she said. 

He shrugged. 'The fellow is in our way. '

'You think him a little perilous for my innocent lady?'

'Candidly, I do. '

She stretched the half-plaited silken rope in her two hands to try thestrength of it, made a second knot, and consigned it to her pocket. 

At once she wore her liveliest playfellow air, in which character no onewas so enchanting as Chloe could be, for she became the comrade of menwithout forfeit of her station among sage sweet ladies, and was like awell-mannered sparkling boy, to whom his admiring seniors have given thelead in sallies, whims, and fights; but pleasanter than a boy, the softhues of her sex toned her frolic spirit; she seemed her sex's deputy, totell the coarser where they could meet, as on a bridge above the torrentseparating them, gaily for interchange of the best of either, unfired anduntempted by fire, yet with all the elements which make fire burn toanimate their hearts. 

'Lucky the man who wins for himself that life-long cordial!' Mr. Beamishsaid to Duchess Susan. 

She had small comprehension of metaphorical phrases, but she was quick atreading faces; and comparing the enthusiasm on the face of the beau withCaseldy's look of troubled wonderment and regret, she pitied the loverconscious of not having the larger share of his mistress's affections. When presently he looked at her, the tender-hearted woman could havecried for very compassion, so sensible did he show himself of Chloe'spreference of the other. 

CHAPTER VI

That evening Duchess Susan played at the Pharaoh table and lost eighthundred pounds, through desperation at the loss of twenty. Afterencouraging her to proceed to this extremity, Caseldy checked her. Hewas conducting her out of the Play room when a couple of young squires ofthe Shepster order, and primed with wine, intercepted her to presenttheir condolences, which they performed with exaggerated gestures, intended for broad mimicry of the courtliness imported from theContinent, and a very dulcet harping on the popular variations of herChristian name, not forgetting her singular title, 'my lovely, lovelyDewlap!'

She was excited and stunned by her immediate experience in the transferof money, and she said, 'I 'm sure I don't know what you want. '

'Yes!' cried they, striking their bosoms as guitars, and attempting theposture of the thrummer on the instrument; 'she knows. She does know. Handsome Susie knows what we want. ' And one ejaculated, mellifluously, 'Oh!' and the other 'Ah!' in flagrant derision of the foreign ways theyproduced in boorish burlesque--a self-consolatory and a common trick ofthe boor. 

Caseldy was behind. He pushed forward and bowed to them. 'Sirs, willyou mention to me what you want?'

He said it with a look that meant steel. It cooled them sufficiently tolet him place the duchess under the protectorship of Mr. Beamish, thenentering from another room with Chloe; whereupon the pair of rustic bucksretired to reinvigorate their valiant blood. 

Mr. Beamish had seen that there was cause for gratitude to Caseldy, towhom he said, 'She has lost?' and he seemed satisfied on hearing theamount of the loss, and commissioned Caseldy to escort the ladies totheir lodgings at once, observing, 'Adieu, Count!'

'You will find my foreign title of use to you here, after a bout or two, 'was the reply. 

'No bouts, if possibly to be avoided; though I perceive how the flavourof your countship may spread a wholesome alarm among our rurals, who willreadily have at you with fists, but relish not the tricky cold weapon. '

Mr. Beamish haughtily bowed the duchess away. 

Caseldy seized the opportunity while handing her into her sedan to say, 'We will try the fortune-teller for a lucky day to have our revenge. '

She answered: 'Oh, don't talk to me about playing again ever; I'm nigh ona clean pocket, and never knew such a sinful place as this. I feel I'vetumbled into a ditch. And there's Mr. Beamish, all top when he bows tome. You're keeping Chloe waiting, sir. '

'Where was she while we were at the table?'

'Sure she was with Mr. Beamish. '

'Ah!' he groaned. 

'The poor soul is in despair over her losses to-night, ' he turned fromthe boxed-up duchess to remark to Chloe. 'Give her a comfortable cry anda few moral maxims. '

'I will, ' she said. 'You love me, Caseldy?'

'Love you? I? Your own? What assurance would you have?'

'None, dear friend. '

Here was a woman easily deceived. 

In the hearts of certain men, owing to an intellectual contempt of easydupes, compunction in deceiving is diminished by the lightness of theirtask; and that soft confidence which will often, if but passingly, bidbetrayers reconsider the charms of the fair soul they are abandoning, commends these armoured knights to pursue with redoubled earnest thefruitful ways of treachery. Their feelings are warm for their prey, moreover; and choosing to judge their victim by the present warmth oftheir feelings, they can at will be hurt, even to being scandalized, by acoldness that does not waken one suspicion of them. Jealousy would havea chance of arresting, for it is not impossible to tease them back toavowed allegiance; but sheer indifference also has a stronger hold onthem than a, dull, blind trustfulness. They hate the burden it imposes;the blind aspect is only touching enough to remind them of the burden, and they hate if for that, and for the enormous presumption of the beliefthat they are everlastingly bound to such an imbecile. She walks aboutwith her eyes shut, expecting not to stumble, and when she does, am I toblame? The injured man asks it in the course of his reasoning. 

He recurs to his victim's merits, but only compassionately, and thecompassion is chilled by the thought that she may in the end start acrosshis path to thwart him. Thereat he is drawn to think of the prize shemay rob him of; and when one woman is an obstacle, the other shinesdesirable as life beyond death; he must have her; he sees her in the hueof his desire for her, and the obstacle in that of his repulsion. Cruelty is no more than the man's effort to win the wished object. 

She should not leave it to his imagination to conceive that in the endthe blind may awaken to thwart him. Better for her to cast him hence, or let him know that she will do battle to keep him. But the pride of alove that has hardened in the faithfulness of love cannot always be wiseon trial. 

Caseldy walked considerably in the rear of the couple of chairs. He sawon his way what was coming. His two young squires were posted at DuchessSusan's door when she arrived, and he received a blow from one of them inclearing a way for her. She plucked at his hand. 'Have they hurt you?'she asked. 

'Think of me to-night thanking them and heaven for this, my darling, ' hereplied, with a pressure that lit the flying moment to kindle the afterhours. 

Chloe had taken help of one of her bearers to jump out. She stretched afinger at the unruly intruders, crying sternly, 'There is blood on you--come not nigh me!' The loftiest harangue would not have been so cunningto touch their wits. They stared at one another in the clear moonlight. Which of them had blood on him? As they had not been for blood, but forrough fun, and something to boast of next day, they gesticulatedaccording to the first instructions of the dancing master, by way ofgallantry, and were out of Caseldy's path when he placed himself at hisliege lady's service. 'Take no notice of them, dear, ' she said. 

'No, no, ' said he; and 'What is it?' and his hoarse accent and shakingclasp of her arm sickened her to the sensation of approaching death. 

Upstairs Duchess Susan made a show of embracing her. Both weretrembling. The duchess ascribed her condition to those dreadful men. 'What makes them be at me so?' she said. 

And Chloe said, 'Because you are beautiful. '

'Am I?'

'You are. '

'I am?'

'Very beautiful; young and beautiful; beautiful in the bud. You willlearn to excuse them, madam. '

'But, Chloe--' The duchess shut her mouth. Out of a languid reverie, shesighed: 'I suppose I must be! My duke--oh, don't talk of him. Dear man!he's in bed and fast asleep long before this. I wonder how he came tolet me come here. 

I did bother him, I know. Am I very, very beautiful, Chloe, so that mencan't help themselves?'

'Very, madam. '

'There, good-night. I want to be in bed, and I can't kiss you becauseyou keep calling me madam, and freeze me to icicles; but I do love you, Chloe. '

'I am sure you do. '

'I'm quite certain I do. I know I never mean harm. But how are we womenexpected to behave, then? Oh, I'm unhappy, I am. '

'You must abstain from playing. '

'It's that! I've lost my money--I forgot. And I shall have to confessit to my duke, though he warned me. Old men hold their fingers up--so!One finger: and you never forget the sight of it, never. It's a roundfinger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they'relecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders--or, Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up tothe face of a corpse. I declare, it's just like! I feel as if I didn'ta bit mind talking of corpses tonight. And my money's gone, and I don'tmuch mind. I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that----he is adear, kind, good old nobleman, with his funny old finger: "Susan!Susan!" I'm no worse than others. Everybody plays here; everybodysuperior. Why, you have played, Chloe. '

'Never!'

'I've heard you say you played once, and a bigger stake it was, you said, than anybody ever did play. '

'Not money. '

'What then?'

'My life. '

'Goodness--yes! I understand. I understand everything to-night-men too. So you did!--They're not so shamefully wicked, Chloe. Because I can'tsee the wrong of human nature--if we're discreet, I mean. Now and then acountry dance and a game, and home to bed and dreams. There's no harm inthat, I vow. And that's why you stayed at this place. You like it, Chloe?'

'I am used to it. '

'But when you're married to Count Caseldy you'll go?'

'Yes, then. '

She uttered it so joylessly that Duchess Susan added, with intenseaffectionateness, 'You're not obliged to marry him, dear Chloe. '

'Nor he me, madam. '

The duchess caught at her impulsively to kiss her, and said she wouldundress herself, as she wished to be alone. 

From that night she was a creature inflamed. 

CHAPTER VII

The total disappearance of the pair of heroes who had been the latest inthe conspiracy to vex his delicate charge, gave Mr. Beamish a highopinion of Caseldy as an assistant in such an office as he held. Theyhad gone, and nothing more was heard of them. Caseldy confined hisobservations on the subject to the remark that he had employed the bestmeans to be rid of that kind of worthies; and whether their souls hadfled, or only their bodies, was unknown. But the duchess had quietpromenades with Caseldy to guard her, while Mr. Beamish counted theremaining days of her visit with the impatience of a man having cause tocast eye on a clock. For Duchess Susan was not very manageable now; shehad fits of insurgency, and plainly said that her time was short, and shemeant to do as she liked, go where she liked, play when she liked, and bean independent woman--if she was so soon to be taken away and boxed in acastle that was only a bigger sedan. 

Caseldy protested he was as helpless as the beau. He described theannoyance of his incessant running about at her heels in all directionsamusingly, and suggested that she must be beating the district to recoverher 'strange cavalier, ' of whom, or of one that had ridden beside hercarriage half a day on her journey to the Wells, he said she had droppeda sort of hint. He complained of the impossibility of his getting anhour in privacy with his Chloe. 

'And I, accustomed to consult with her, see too little of her, ' said Mr. Beamish. 'I shall presently be seeing nothing, and already I am sensibleof my loss. '

He represented his case to Duchess Susan:--that she was for ever drivingout long distances and taking Chloe from him, when his occupationprecluded his accompanying them; and as Chloe soon was to be lostto him for good, he deeply felt her absence. 

The duchess flung him enigmatical rejoinders: 'You can change all that, Mr. Beamish, if you like, and you know you can. Oh, yes, you can. Butyou like being a butterfly, and when you've made ladies pale you'rehappy: and there they're to stick and wither for you. Never!--I've thatpride. I may be worried, but I'll never sink to green and melancholy fora man. '

She bridled at herself in a mirror, wherein not a sign of paleness wasreflected. 

Mr. Beamish meditated, and he thought it prudent to speak to Caseldymanfully of her childish suspicions, lest she should perchance in likemanner perturb the lover's mind. 

'Oh, make your mind easy, my dear sir, as far as I am concerned, ' saidCaseldy. 'But, to tell you the truth, I think I can interpret her creamyladyship's innuendos a little differently and quite as clearly. For mypart, I prefer the pale to the blowsy, and I stake my right hand onChloe's fidelity. Whatever harm I may have the senseless cruelty--misfortune, I may rather call it--to do that heavenly-minded woman in ourdays to come, none shall say of me that I was ever for an instant guiltyof the baseness of doubting her purity and constancy. And, sir, I willadd that I could perfectly rely also on your honour. '

Mr. Beamish bowed. 'You do but do me justice. But, say, whatinterpretation?'

'She began by fearing you, ' said Caseldy, creating a stare that wasfollowed by a frown. 'She fancies you neglect her. Perhaps she has awoman's suspicion that you do it to try her. '

Mr. Beamish frenetically cited his many occupations. 'How can I be everdancing attendance on her?' Then he said, 'Pooh, ' and tenderly fingeredthe ruffles of his wrist. 'Tush, tush, ' said he, 'no, no: though if itcame to a struggle between us, I might in the interests of my old friend, her lord, whom I have reasons for esteeming, interpose an influence thatwould make the exercise of my authority agreeable. Hitherto I have seenno actual need of it, and I watch keenly. Her eye has been on ColonelPoltermore once or twice his on her. The woman is a rose in June, sir, and I forgive the whole world for looking--and for longing too. But Ihave observed nothing serious. '

'He is of our party to the beacon-head to-morrow, ' said Caseldy. 'Sheinsisted that she would have him; and at least it will grant me furloughfor an hour. '

'Do me the service to report to me, ' said Mr. Beamish. 

In this fashion he engaged Caseldy to supply him with inventions, andprepared himself to swallow them. It was Poltermore and Poltermore, theColonel here, the Colonel there until the chase grew so hot that Mr. Beamish could no longer listen to young Mr. Camwell's fatiguing droneupon his one theme of the double-dealing of Chloe's betrothed. He becameof her way of thinking, and treated the young gentleman almost as coldlyas she. In time he was ready to guess of his own acuteness that the'strange cavalier' could have been no other than Colonel Poltermore. When Caseldy hinted it, Mr. Beamish said, 'I have marked him. ' He added, in highly self-satisfied style, 'With all your foreign training, myfriend, you will learn that we English are not so far behind you in theart of unravelling an intrigue in the dark. ' To which Caseldy replied, that the Continental world had little to teach Mr. Beamish. 

Poor Colonel Poltermore, as he came to be called, was clearly a victim ofthe sudden affability of Duchess Susan. The transformation of a stiffmilitary officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightlyattendant, could not pass without notice. The first effect of herdiscriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to makehim the champion of her claims to breeding. She had it by nature, shewas Nature's great lady, he would protest to the noble dames of thecircle he moved in; and they admitted that she was different in every wayfrom a bourgeoise elevated by marriage to lofty rank: she was not vulgar. But they remained doubtful of the perfect simplicity of a young woman whoworked such changes in men as to render one of the famous conquerors ofthe day her agitated humble servant. By rapid degrees the Colonel hadfallen to that. When not by her side, he was ever marching with sharpstrides, hurrying through rooms and down alleys and groves until he haddiscovered and attached himself to her skirts. And, curiously, theobject of his jealousy was the devoted Alonzo! Mr. Beamish laughed whenhe heard of it. The lady's excitement and giddy mien, however, accusedPoltermore of a stage of success requiring to be combated immediately. There was mention of Duchess Susan's mighty wish to pay a visit to thepopular fortune-teller of the hut on the heath, and Mr. Beamish put hisveto on the expedition. She had obeyed him by abstaining from play oflate, so he fully expected, that his interdict would be obeyed; andbesides the fortune-teller was a rogue of a sham astrologer known to haveforetold to certain tender ladies things they were only too desirous toimagine predestined by an extraordinary indication of the course ofplanets through the zodiac, thus causing them to sin by the example ofcelestial conjunctions--a piece of wanton impiety. The beau took highground in his objections to the adventure. Nevertheless, Duchess Susandid go. She drove to the heath at an early hour of the morning, attendedby Chloe, Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy. They subsequently breakfastedat an inn where gipsy repasts were occasionally served to the fashion, and they were back at the wells as soon as the world was abroad. Theirsurprise then was prodigious when Mr. Beamish, accosting them full inassembly, inquired whether they were satisfied with the report of theirfortunes, and yet more when he positively proved himself acquainted withthe fortunes which had been recounted to each of them in privacy. 

'You, Colonel Poltermore, are to be in luck's way up to the tenthmilestone, --where your chariot will overset and you will be lamed forlife. '

'Not quite so bad, ' said the Colonel cheerfully, he having been informedof much better. 

'And you, Count Caseldy, are to have it all your own way with good luck, after committing a deed of slaughter, with the solitary penalty ofundergoing a visit every night from the corpse. '

'Ghost, ' Caseldy smilingly corrected him. 

'And Chloe would not have her fortune told, because she knew it!'Mr. Beamish cast a paternal glance at her. 'And you, madam, ' he benthis brows on the duchess, 'received the communication that "All for Love"will sink you as it raised you, put you down as it took you up, furnishthe feast to the raven gentleman which belongs of right to the goldeneagle?'

'Nothing of the sort! And I don't believe in any of their stories, 'cried the duchess, with a burning face. 

'You deny it, madam?'

'I do. There was never a word of a raven or an eagle, that I'll swear, now. '

'You deny that there was ever a word of "All for Love"? Speak, madam. '

'Their conjuror's rigmarole!' she murmured, huffing. 'As if I listenedto their nonsense!'

'Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me the lie?' said Mr. Beamish. 

'That's not my title, and you know it, ' she retorted. 

'What's this?' the angry beau sang out. 'What stuff is this you wear?'He towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her morning dress, toreit furiously and swung a length of it round him: and while the duchesspanted and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy of everylady present as well as the championship of the gentlemen, he tossed thelace to the floor and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligibleover the uproar: 'Hear what she does! 'Tis a felony! She wears the stuffwith Betty Worcester's yellow starch on it for mock antique! And let whoelse wears it strip it off before the town shall say we are disgraced--when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at Tyburn yesterdaymorning for murder!'

There were shrieks. 

Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly began to melt; hestood in the centre like a pole unwinding streamers, amid a confusion ofhurrying dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was as that ofthe autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising in November. The troops ofladies were off to bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation oldlace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors and associatesof the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs. Elizabeth Worcester, theirbenefactress of the previous day, now hanged and dangling on thegallows-tree. 

Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace in the morning, werescarcely displeased with the beau for his exposure of them that did. Thegentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious power. The twogentlemen nighest upon violently resenting his brutality to DuchessSusan, led her from the room in company with Chloe. 

'The woman shall fear me to good purpose, ' Mr. Beamish said to himself. 

CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Camwell was in the ante-room as Chloe passed out behind the twoincensed supporters of Duchess Susan. 

'I shall be by the fir-trees on the Mount at eight this evening, ' shesaid. 

'I will be there, ' he replied. 

'Drive Mr. Beamish into the country, that these gentlemen may have timeto cool. '

He promised her it should be done. 

Close on the hour of her appointment, he stood under the fir-trees, admiring the sunset along the western line of hills, and when Chloejoined him he spoke of the beauty of the scene. 

'Though nothing seems more eloquently to say farewell, ' he added, with asinking voice. 

'We could say it now, and be friends, ' she answered. 

'Later than now, you think it unlikely that you could forgive me, Chloe. '

'In truth, sir, you are making it hard for me. '

'I have stayed here to keep watch; for no pleasure of my own, ' said he. 

'Mr. Beamish is an excellent protector of the duchess. '

'Excellent; and he is cleverly taught to suppose she fears him greatly;and when she offends him, he makes a display of his Jupiter's awfulness, with the effect on woman of natural spirit which you have seen, andothers had foreseen, that she is exasperated and grows reckless. Tieanother knot in your string, Chloe. '

She looked away, saying, 'Were you not the cause? You were in collusionwith that charlatan of the heath, who told them their fortunes thismorning. I see far, both in the dark and in the light. '

'But not through a curtain. I was present. '

'Hateful, hateful business of the spy! You have worked a great mischiefMr. Camwell. And how can you reconcile it to, your conscience that youshould play so base a part?'

'I have but performed my duty, dear madam. '

'You pretend that it is your devotion to me! I might be flattered if Isaw not so abject a figure in my service. Now have I but four days of mymonth of happiness remaining, and my request to you is, leave me to enjoythem. I beseech you to go. Very humbly, most earnestly, I beg yourdeparture. Grant it to me, and do not stay to poison my last days here. Leave us to-morrow. I will admit your good intentions. I give you myhand in gratitude. Adieu, Mr. Camwell. '

He took her hand. 'Adieu. I foresee an early separation, and this dearhand is mine while I have it in mine. Adieu. It is a word to berepeated at a parting like ours. We do not blow out our light with onebreath: we let it fade gradually, like yonder sunset. '

'Speak so, ' said she. 

'Ah, Chloe, to give one's life! And it is your happiness I have soughtmore than your favor. '

'I believe it; but I have not liked the means. You leave us to-morrow?'

'It seems to me that to-morrow is the term. '

Her face clouded. 'That tells me a very uncertain promise. '

'You looked forth to a month of happiness--meaning a month of delusion. The delusion expires to-night. You will awaken to see your end of it inthe morning. You have never looked beyond the month since the day of hisarrival. '

'Let him not be named, I supplicate you. '

'Then you consent that another shall be sacrificed for you to enjoy yourstate of deception an hour longer?'

'I am not deceived, sir. I wish for peace, and crave it, and that is allI would have. '

'And you make her your peace-offering, whom you have engaged to serve!Too surely your eyes have been open as well as mine. Knot by knot--I have watched you--where is it?--you have marked the points in thatsilken string where the confirmation of a just suspicion was too strongfor you. '

'I did it, and still I continued merry?' She subsided from herscornfulness on an involuntary 'Ah!' that was a shudder. 

'You acted Light Heart, madam, and too well to hoodwink me. Meanwhileyou allowed that mischief to proceed, rather than have your crazy lullabydisturbed. '

'Indeed, Mr. Camwell, you presume. '

'The time, and my knowledge of what it is fraught with, demand it andexcuse it. You and I, my dear and one only love on earth, stand outsideof ordinary rules. We are between life and death. '

'We are so always. '

'Listen further to the preacher: We have them close on us, with thequestion, Which it shall be to-morrow. You are for sleeping on, but Isay no; nor shall that iniquity of double treachery be committed becauseof your desire to be rocked in a cradle. Hear me out. The drug you haveswallowed to cheat yourself will not bear the shock awaiting you tomorrowwith the first light. Hear these birds! When next they sing, you willbe broad awake, and of me, and the worship and service I would havededicated to you, I do not . . . It is a spectral sunset of a day thatwas never to be!--awake, and looking on what? Back from a monstrousvillainy to the forlorn wretch who winked at it with knots in a string. Count them then, and where will be your answer to heaven? I begged it ofyou, to save you from those blows of remorse; yes, terrible!'

'Oh, no!'

'Terrible, I say!'

'You are mistaken, Mr. Camwell. It is my soother. I tell my beads onit. '

'See how a persistent residence in this place has made a Pagan of thepurest soul among us! Had you . . . But that day was not to lightenme! More adorable in your errors that you are than others by theirvirtues, you have sinned through excess of the qualities men prize. Oh, you have a boundless generosity, unhappily enwound with a pride as great. There is your fault, that is the cause of your misery. Too generous!too proud! You have trusted, and you will not cease to trust; you havevowed yourself to love, never to remonstrate, never to seem to doubt;it is too much your religion, rare verily. But bethink you of thatinexperienced and most silly good creature who is on the rapids to herdestruction. Is she not--you will cry it aloud to-morrow--your victim?You hear it within you now. '

'Friend, my dear, true friend, ' Chloe said in her deeper voice of melody, 'set your mind at ease about to-morrow and her. Her safety is assured. I stake my life on it. She shall not be a victim. At the worst she willbut have learnt a lesson. So, then, adieu! The West hangs like agarland of unwatered flowers, neglected by the mistress they adorned. Remember the scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe wished youthe happiness it was out of her power to bestow, because she was ofanother world, with her history written out to the last red streak beforeever you knew her. Adieu; this time adieu for good!

Mr. Camwell stood in her path. 'Blind eyes, if you like, ' he said, 'butyou shall not hear blind language. I forfeit the poor consideration forme that I have treasured; hate me; better hated by you than shun my duty!Your duchess is away at the first dawn this next morning; it has come tothat. I speak with full knowledge. Question her. '

Chloe threw a faltering scorn of him into her voice, as much as herheart's sharp throbs would allow. 'I question you, sir, how you came tothis full knowledge you boast of?'

'I have it; let that suffice. Nay, I will be particular; his coach isordered for the time I name to you; her maid is already at a station onthe road of the flight. '

'You have their servants in your pay?'

'For the mine--the countermine. We must grub dirt to match deceivers. You, madam, have chosen to be delicate to excess, and have thrown it uponme to be gross, and if you please, abominable, in my means of defendingyou. It is not too late for you to save the lady, nor too late to bringhim to the sense of honour. '

'I cannot think Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable. '

'Poor Colonel Poltermore! The office he is made to fill is an old one. Are you not ashamed, Chloe?'

'I have listened too long, ' she replied. 

'Then, if it is your pleasure, depart. '

He made way for her. She passed him. Taking two hurried steps in thegloom of the twilight, she stopped, held at her heart, and painfullyturning to him, threw her arms out, and let herself be seized and kissed. 

On his asking pardon of her, which his long habit of respect forced himto do in the thick of rapture and repetitions, she said, 'You rob noone. '

'Oh, ' he cried, 'there is a reward, then, for faithful love. But am Ithe man I was a minute back? I have you; I embrace you; and I doubt thatI am I. Or is it Chloe's ghost?'

'She has died and visits you. '

'And will again?'

Chloe could not speak for languor. 

The intensity of the happiness she gave by resting mutely where she was, charmed her senses. But so long had the frost been on them that theirawakening to warmth was haunted by speculations on the sweet taste ofthis reward of faithfulness to him, and the strange taste of her ownunfaithfulness to her. And reflecting on the cold act of speculationwhile strong arm and glowing mouth were pressing her, she thought hersenses might really be dead, and she a ghost visiting the good youth forhis comfort. So feel ghosts, she thought, and what we call happiness inlove is a match between ecstasy and compliance. Another thought flewthrough her like a mortal shot: 'Not so with those two! with them it willbe ecstasy meeting ecstasy; they will take and give happiness in equalportions. ' A pang of jealousy traversed her frame. She made theshrewdness of it help to nerve her fervour in a last strain of him to herbosom, and gently releasing herself, she said, 'No one is robbed. Andnow, dear friend, promise me that you will not disturb Mr. Beamish. '

'Chloe, ' said he, 'have you bribed me?'

'I do not wish him to be troubled. '

'The duchess, I have told you--'

'I know. But you have Chloe's word that she will watch over theduchess and die to save her. It is an oath. You have heard of somearrangements. I say they shall lead to nothing: it shall not take place. Indeed, my friend, I am awake; I see as much as you see. And those. . . After being where I have been, can you suppose I have a regret? But sheis my dear and peculiar charge, and if she runs a risk, trust to me thatthere shall be no catastrophe; I swear it; so, now, adieu. We sup incompany to-night. They will be expecting some of Chloe's verses, and shemust sing to herself for a few minutes to stir the bed her songs takewing from; therefore, we will part, and for her sake avoid her; do not bepresent at our table, or in the room, or anywhere there. Yes, you rob noone, ' she said, in a voice that curled through him deliciously bywavering; but I think I may blush at recollections, and I would ratherhave you absent. Adieu! I will not ask for obedience from you beyondto-night. Your word?'

He gave it in a stupor of felicity, and she fled. 

CHAPTER IX

Chloe drew the silken string from her bosom, as she descended the dimpathway through the furies, and set her fingers travelling along it forthe number of the knots. 'I have no right to be living, ' she said. Seven was the number; seven years she had awaited her lover's return; shecounted her age and completed it in sevens. Fatalism had sustained herduring her lover's absence; it had fast hold of her now. Thereby had shebeen enabled to say, 'He will come'; and saying, 'He has come, ' her touchrested on the first knot in the string. She had no power to displace herfingers, and the cause of the tying of the knot stood across her brainmarked in dull red characters, legible neither to her eye nor to herunderstanding, but a reviving of the hour that brought it on her spiritwith human distinctness, except of the light of day: she had a sense ofhaving forfeited light, and seeing perhaps more clearly. Everythingassured her that she saw more clearly than others; she saw too when itwas good to cease to live. 

Hers was the unhappy lot of one gifted with poet-imagination to throbwith the woman supplanting her and share the fascination of the man whodeceived. At their first meeting, in her presence, she had seen thatthey were not strangers; she pitied them for speaking falsely, and whenshe vowed to thwart this course of evil it to save a younger creature ofher sex, not in rivalry. She treated them both with a proud generositysurpassing gentleness. All that there was of selfishness in her bosomresolved to the enjoyment of her one month of strongly willed delusion. 

The kiss she had sunk to robbed no one, not even her body's purity, forwhen this knot was tied she consigned herself to her end, and had becomea bag of dust. The other knots in the string pointed to verifications;this first one was a suspicion, and it was the more precious, she felt itto be more a certainty; it had come from the dark world beyond us, whereall is known. Her belief that it had come thence was nourished bytestimony, the space of blackness wherein she had lived since, exhaustingher last vitality in a simulation of infantile happiness, which wasnothing other than the carrying on of her emotion of the moment of sharpsour sweet--such as it may be, the doomed below attain for theirknowledge of joy--when, at the first meeting with her lover, theperception of his treachery to the soul confiding in him, told her shehad lived, and opened out the cherishable kingdom of insensibility to herfor her heritage. 

She made her tragic humility speak thankfully to the wound that slew her. 'Had it not been so, I should not have seen him, ' she said:--Her loverwould not have come to her but for his pursuit of another woman. 

She pardoned him for being attracted by that beautiful transplant of thefields: pardoned her likewise. 'He when I saw him first was as beautifulto me. For him I might have done as much. '

Far away in a lighted hall of the West, her family raised hands ofreproach. They were minute objects, keenly discerned as diminishedfigures cut in steel. Feeling could not be very warm for them, they wereso small, and a sea that had drowned her ran between; and looking thatway she had scarce any warmth of feeling save for a white rhaiadr leapingout of broken cloud through branched rocks, where she had climbed anddreamed when a child. The dream was then of the coloured days to come;now she was more infant in her mind, and she watched the scattered waterbroaden, and tasted the spray, sat there drinking the scene, untroubledby hopes as a lamb, different only from an infant in knowing that she hadthrown off life to travel back to her home and be refreshed. She heardher people talk; they were unending babblers in the waterfall. Truth waswith them, and wisdom. How, then, could she pretend to any right tolive? Already she had no name; she was less living than a tombstone. For who was Chloe? Her family might pass the grave of Chloe withoutweeping, without moralizing. They had foreseen her ruin, they hadforetold it, they noised it in the waters, and on they sped to theplains, telling the world of their prophecy, and making what was untoldas yet a lighter thing to do. 

The lamps in an irregularly dotted line underneath the hill beckoned herto her task of appearing as the gayest of them that draw their breath forthe day and have pulses for the morrow. 

CHAPTER X

At midnight the great supper party to celebrate the reconciliation ofMr. Beamish and Duchess Susan broke up, and beneath a soft fair sky theladies, with their silvery chatter of gratitude for amusement, caughtChloe in their arms to kiss her, rendering it natural for their cavaliersto exclaim that Chloe was blest above mortals. The duchess preferred towalk. Her spirits were excited, and her language smelt of her origin, but the superb fleshly beauty of the woman was aglow, and crying, 'Ideclare I should burst in one of those boxes--just as if you'd stalledme!' she fanned a wind on her face, and sumptuously spread her sphericalskirts, attended by the vanquished and captive Colonel Poltermore, agentleman manifestly bent on insinuating sly slips of speech to serve forhere a pinch of powder, there a match. 'Am I?' she was heard to say. She blew prodigious deep-chested sighs of a coquette that has taken toroaring. 

Presently her voice tossed out: 'As if I would!' These vividilluminations of the Colonel's proceedings were a pasture to the rearwardgroups, composed of two very grand ladies, Caseldy, Mr. Beamish, a lord, and Chloe. 

'You man! Oh!' sprang from the duchess. 'What do I hear? I won'tlisten; I can't, I mustn't, I oughtn't. '

So she said, but her head careened, she gave him her coy reluctant ear, with total abandonment to the seductions of his whispers, and the lordlet fly a peal of laughter. It had been a supper of copious wine, andthe songs which rise from wine. Nature was excused by our midnightnaturalists. 

The two great dames, admonished by the violence of the nobleman'slaughter, laid claim on Mr. Beamish to accompany them at their partingwith Chloe and Duchess Susan. 

In the momentary shuffling of couples incident to adieux among a company, the duchess murmured to Caseldy:

'Have I done it well. '

He praised her for perfection in her acting. 'I am at your door atthree, remember. '

'My heart's in my mouth, ' said she. 

Colonel Poltermore still had the privilege of conducting her the fewfarther steps to her lodgings. 

Caseldy walked beside Chloe, and silently, until he said, 'If I have notyet mentioned the subject--'

'If it is an allusion to money let me not hear it to-night, ' she replied. 

'I can only say that my lawyers have instructions. But my lawyers cannotpay you in gratitude. Do not think me in your hardest review of mymisconduct ungrateful. I have ever esteemed you above all women; I do, and I shall; you are too much above me. I am afraid I am a compositionof bad stuff; I did not win a very particularly good name on theContinent; I begin to know myself, and in comparison with you, dearCatherine----'

'You speak to Chloe, ' she said. 'Catherine is a buried person. She diedwithout pain. She is by this time dust. '

The man heaved his breast. 'Women have not an idea of our temptations. '

'You are excused by me for all your errors, Caseldy. Always rememberthat. '

He sighed profoundly. 'Ay, you have a Christian's heart. '

She answered, 'I have come to the conclusion that it is a Pagan's. '

'As for me, ' he rejoined, 'I am a fatalist. Through life I have seen mydestiny. What is to be, will be; we can do nothing. '

'I have heard of one who expired of a surfeit that he anticipated, nayproclaimed, when indulging in the last desired morsel, ' said Chloe. 

'He was driven to it. '

'From within. '

Caseldy acquiesced; his wits were clouded, and an illustration evencoarser and more grotesque would have won a serious nod and a sigh fromhim. 'Yes, we are moved by other hands!'

'It is pleasant to think so: and think it of me tomorrow. Will you!'said Chloe. 

He promised it heartily, to induce her to think the same of him. 

Their separation was in no way remarkable. The pretty formalities wereexecuted at the door, and the pair of gentlemen departed. 

'It's quite dark still, ' Duchess Susan said, looking up at the sky, andshe ran upstairs, and sank, complaining of the weakness of her legs, in achair of the ante-chamber of her bedroom, where Chloe slept. Then sheasked the time of the night. She could not suppress her hushed 'Oh!'of heavy throbbing from minute to minute. Suddenly she started off ata quick stride to her own room, saying that it must be sleepiness whichaffected her so. 

Her bedroom had a door to the sitting-room, and thence, as also fromChloe's room, the landing on the stairs was reached, for the room ranparallel with both bed-chambers. She walked in it and threw the windowopen, but closed it immediately; opened and shut the door, and returnedand called for Chloe. She wanted to be read to. Chloe named certaincomposing books. The duchess chose a book of sermons. 'But we're allsuch dreadful sinners, it's better not to bother ourselves late atnight. ' She dismissed that suggestion. Chloe proposed books of poetry. 'Only I don't understand them except about larks, and buttercups, andhayfields, and that's no comfort to a woman burning, ' was the answer. 

'Are you feverish, madam?' said Chloe. And the duchess was sharp on her:'Yes, madam, I am. '

She reproved herself in a change of tone: 'No, Chloe, not feverish, onlythis air of yours here is such an exciting air, as the doctor says; andthey made me drink wine, and I played before supper--Oh! my money; I usedto say I could get more, but now!' she sighed--'but there's better in theworld than money. You know that, don't you, you dear? Tell me. AndI want you to be happy; that you'll find. I do wish we could all be!'She wept, and spoke of requiring a little music to compose her. 

Chloe stretched a hand for her guitar. Duchess Susan listened to somenotes, and cried that it went to her heart and hurt her. 'Everything welike a lot has a fence and a board against trespassers, because of such alot of people in the world, ' she moaned. 'Don't play, put down thatthing, please, dear. You're the cleverest creature anybody has ever met;they all say so. I wish I----Lovely women catch men, and clever womenkeep them: I've heard that said in this wretched place, and it 's a niceprospect for me, next door to a fool! I know I am. '

'The duke adores you, madam. '

'Poor duke! Do let him be--sleeping so woebegone with his mouth so, andthat chin of a baby, like as if he dreamed of a penny whistle. Heshouldn't have let me come here. Talk of Mr. Beamish. How he will missyou, Chloe!'

'He will, ' Chloe said sadly. 

'If you go, dear. '

'I am going. '

'Why should you leave him, Chloe?'

'I must. '

'And there, the thought of it makes you miserable!'

'It does. '

'You needn't, I'm sure. '

Chloe looked at her. 

The duchess turned her head. 'Why can't you be gay, as you were at thesupper-table, Chloe? You're out to him like a flower when the sun jumpsover the hill; you're up like a lark in the dews; as I used to be when Ithought of nothing. Oh, the early morning; and I'm sleepy. What a beastI feel, with my grandeur, and the time in an hour or two for the birds tosing, and me ready to drop. I must go and undress. '

She rushed on Chloe, kissed her hastily, declaring that she was quitedead of fatigue, and dismissed her. 'I don't want help, I can undressmyself. As if Susan Barley couldn't do that for herself! and you mayshut your door, I sha'n't have any frights to-night, I'm so tired out. '

'Another kiss, ' Chloe said tenderly. 

'Yes, take it'--the duchess leaned her cheek--'but I'm so tired I don'tknow what I'm doing. '

'It will not be on your conscience, ' Chloe answered, kissing her warmly. 

Will those words she withdrew, and the duchess closed the door. She rana bolt in it immediately. 

'I'm too tired to know anything I'm doing, ' she said to herself, andstood with shut eyes to hug certain thoughts which set her bosom heaving. 

There was the bed, there was the clock. She had the option of lying downand floating quietly into the day, all peril past. It seemed sweet for aminute. But it soon seemed an old, a worn, an end-of-autumn life, chill, without aim, like a something that was hungry and toothless. The bedproposing innocent sleep repelled her and drove her to the clock. Theclock was awful: the hand at the hour, the finger following the minute, commanded her to stir actively, and drove her to gentle meditations onthe bed. She lay down dressed, after setting her light beside the clock, that she might see it at will, and considering it necessary for the bedto appear to have been lain on. Considering also that she ought to beheard moving about in the process of undressing, she rose from the bedto make sure of her reading of the guilty clock. An hour and twentyminutes! she had no more time than that: and it was not enough for hervarious preparations, though it was true that her maid had packed andtaken a box of the things chiefly needful; but the duchess had to changeher shoes and her dress, and run at bo-peep with the changes of her mind, a sedative preface to any fatal step among women of her complexion, forso they invite indecision to exhaust their scruples, and they let theblood have its way. Having so short a space of time, she thought thematter decided, and with some relief she flung despairing on the bed, andlay down for good with her duke. In a little while her head was at workreviewing him sternly, estimating him not less accurately than the malemoralist charitable to her sex would do. She quitted the bed, with aspring to escape her imagined lord; and as if she had felt him to bethere, she lay down no more. A quiet life like that was flatter to heridea than a handsomely bound big book without any print on the pages, andwithout a picture. Her contemplation of it, contrasted with the lifewaved to her view by the timepiece, set her whole system rageing; sheburned to fly. Providently, nevertheless, she thumped a pillow, andthrew the bedclothes into proper disorder, to inform the world that herlimbs had warmed them, and that all had been impulse with her. She thenproceeded to disrobe, murmuring to herself that she could stop now, andcould stop now, at each stage of the advance to a fresh dressing of herperson, and moralizing on her singular fate, in the mouth of an observer. 'She was shot up suddenly over everybody's head, and suddenly down shewent. ' Susan whispered to herself: 'But it was for love!' Possessed bythe rosiness of love, she finished her business, with an attention toeverything needed that was equal to perfect serenity of mind. Afterwhich there was nothing to do, save to sit humped in a chair, cover herface and count the clock-tickings, that said, Yes--no; do--don't; fly--stay; fly--fly! It seemed to her she heard a moving. Well she mightwith that dreadful heart of hers!

Chloe was asleep, at peace by this time, she thought; and how she enviedChloe! She might be as happy, if she pleased. Why not? But what kindof happiness was it? She likened it to that of the corpse underground, and shrank distastefully. 

Susan stood at her glass to have a look at the creature about whom therewas all this disturbance, and she threw up her arms high for a languid, not unlovely yawn, that closed in blissful shuddering with the sensationof her lover's arms having wormed round her waist and taken her while shewas defenceless. For surely they would. She took a jewelled ring, hisgift, from her purse, and kissed it, and drew it on and off her finger, leaving it on. Now she might wear it without fear of inquiries andvirtuous eyebrows. O heavenly now--if only it were an hour hence; andgoing behind galloping horses!

The clock was at the terrible moment. She hesitated internally andhastened; once her feet stuck fast, and firmly she said, 'No'; but theclock was her lord. The clock was her lover and her lord; and obeyingit, she managed to get into the sitting-room, on the pretext that shemerely wished to see through the front window whether daylight wascoming. 

How well she knew that half-light of the ebb of the wave of darkness. 

Strange enough it was to see it showing houses regaining their solidityof the foregone day, instead of still fields, black hedges, familiarshapes of trees. The houses had no wakefulness, they were but seen tostand, and the light was a revelation of emptiness. Susan's heart wascunning to reproach her duke for the difference of the scene she beheldfrom that of the innocent open-breasted land. Yes, it was dawn in awicked place that she never should have been allowed to visit. But wherewas he whom she looked for? There! The cloaked figure of a man was atthe corner of the street. It was he. Her heart froze; but her limbswere strung to throw off the house, and reach air, breathe, and (as herthoughts ran) swoon, well-protected. To her senses the house was a houseon fire, and crying to her to escape. 

Yet she stepped deliberately, to be sure-footed in a dusky room; shetouched along the wall and came to the door, where a foot-stool nearlytripped her. Here her touch was at fault, for though she knew she mustbe close by the door, she was met by an obstruction unlike wood, and thedoor seemed neither shut nor open. She could not find the handle;something hung over it. Thinking coolly, she fancied the thing must be agown or dressing-gown; it hung heavily. Her fingers were sensible of thetouch of silk; she distinguished a depending bulk, and she felt at itvery carefully and mechanically, saying within herself, in her anxietyto pass it without noise, 'If I should awake poor Chloe, of all people!'Her alarm was that the door might creak. Before any other alarm hadstruck her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth gaped, her throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the effort toswallow it down and get breath kept her from acute speculation while shefelt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh, ready toshriek. Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round whitetop. Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across? An arm too!this was an arm! She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her. Shepulled it to release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a lumpdescended, and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her that adead human body was upon her. 

At a quarter to four o'clock of a midsummer morning, as Mr. Beamishrelates of his last share in the Tale of Chloe, a woman's voice, inpiercing notes of anguish, rang out three shrieks consecutively, whichwere heard by him at the instant of his quitting his front doorstep, in obedience to the summons of young Mr. Camwell, delivered ten minutespreviously, with great urgency, by that gentleman's lacquey. On hisreaching the street of the house inhabited by Duchess Susan, he perceivedmany night-capped heads at windows, and one window of the house inquestion lifted but vacant. His first impression accused the pair ofgentlemen, whom he saw bearing drawn swords in no friendly attitude of anugly brawl that had probably affrighted her Grace, or her personalattendant, a woman capable of screaming, for he was well assured that itcould not have been Chloe, the least likely of her sex to abandon herselfto the use of their weapons either in terror or in jeopardy. Theantagonists were Mr. Camwell and Count Caseldy. On his approaching them, Mr. Camwell sheathed his sword, saying that his work was done. Caseldywas convulsed with wrath, to such a degree as to make the part of anintermediary perilous. There had been passes between them, and Caseldycried aloud that he would have his enemy's blood. The night-watch wasnowhere. Soon, however, certain shopmen and their apprentices assistedMr. Beamish to preserve the peace, despite the fury of Caseldy and theprovocations--'not easy to withstand, ' says the chronicler--offered byhim to young Camwell. The latter said to Mr. Beamish: 'I knew I shouldbe no match, so I sent for you, ' causing his friend astonishment, inasmuch as he was assured of the youth's natural valour. 

Mr. Beamish was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them inequal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for thealarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would haveinclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swungwide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding claspedhands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: 'Oh, she's dead; she's dead, dead!'

Caseldy rushed past her. 

'How, dead! good woman?' Mr. Beamish questioned her most incredulously, half-smiling. 

She answered among her moans: 'Dead by the neck; off the door--Oh!'

Young Camwell pressed his forehead, with a call on his Maker's name. Asthey reached the landing upstairs, Caseldy came out of the sitting-room. 

'Which?' said Camwell to the speaking of his face. 

'She !' said the other. 

'The duchess?' Mr. Beamish exclaimed. 

But Camwell walked into the room. He had nothing to ask after thatreply. 

The figure stretched along the floor was covered with a sheet. The youngman fell at his length beside it, and his face was downward. 

Mr. Beamish relates: 'To this day, when I write at an interval of fifteenyears, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold theshrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by afaithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker thanherself on the descent to perdition. Therein it was beneficently grantedher to be of the service she prayed to be through her death. She died tosave. In a last letter, found upon her pincushion, addressed to me underseal of secrecy toward the parties principally concerned, she anticipatesthe whole confession of the unhappy duchess. Nay, she prophesies: "Theduchess will tell you truly she has had enough of love!" Those actualwords were reiterated to me by the poor lady daily until her lord arrivedto head the funeral procession, and assist in nursing back the shatteredhealth of his wife to a state that should fit her for travelling. To me, at least, she was constant in repeating, "No more of love!" By herbehaviour to her duke, I can judge her to have been sincere. She spokeof feeling Chloe's eyes go through her with every word of hers that sherecollected. Nor was the end of Chloe less effective upon the traitor. He was in the procession to her grave. He spoke to none. There is aline of the verse bearing the superscription, "My Reasons for Dying, "that shows her to have been apprehensive to secure the safety of Mr. Camwell:

 I die because my heart is dead To warn a soul from sin I die: I die that blood may not be shed, etc. 

She feared he would be somewhere on the road to mar the fugitives, andshe knew him, as indeed he knew himself, no match for one trained in theforeign tricks of steel, ready though he was to dispute the traitor'sway. She remembers Mr. Camwell's petition for the knotted silken stringin her request that it shall be cut from her throat and given to him. '

Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe. They are of acharacter to cool emotion. But when we find a man, who is commonly ofthe quickest susceptibility to ridicule as well as to what is befitting, careless of exposure, we may reflect on the truthfulness of feeling bywhich he is drawn to pass his own guard and come forth in his nakedness;something of the poet's tongue may breathe to us through his mortalstammering, even if we have to acknowledge that a quotation would scatterpathos. 

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

All flattery is at somebody's expenseBe philosophical, but accept your personal duesBut I leave it to youDistrust us, and it is a declaration of warHappiness in love is a match between ecstasy and complianceIf I do not speak of paymentIntellectual contempt of easy dupesInvite indecision to exhaust their scruplesIs not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?No flattery for me at the expense of my sistersNothing desirable will you have which is not covetedPrimitive appetite for noiseShe might turn out good, if well guarded for a timeThe alternative is, a garter and the bedpostThey miss their pleasure in pursuing itThis mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasureWits, which are ordinarily less productive than land

[The End]

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