Chapter III: Part 3

Lord Verney sprang to his feet. The words, the impatient raps penetrated to his dizzy brain with sudden conviction.

"Heavens!" cried he, and glanced at the clock, and made a leap for the door.

"And will you go," said the stranger, "without having seen my face?"

He ran back to her and then back to the door again, distracted, as you may see a puppy dog between two calls. Finally he came back to the lady with a new and manly dignity upon him.

"I must go," he said. "Would you show yourself as kind as you seem, madam, remove your mask that I may see you before I go."

Outside Captain Spicer was dancing a sort of hornpipe of impotent impatience, and filling the air with shrill strange oaths.

Mistress Bellairs put the lean swarthy boy very composedly on one side by the merest touch of her hand, then she went over to the door, unlocked it and admitted Captain Spicer, green and sweating.

"I am coming, Spicer," cried Lord Verney desperately, and made a plunge for his hat and cloak, murmuring as he passed the lady: "Oh cruel!"

Kitty Bellairs nibbled her little finger and looked at the clock.

"It will not take you, you know," said she, "more than five minutes to drive down to the Bathwick ferry, therefore if you start in three you will still have twenty-six to spare. My Lord Verney, will you give me those three minutes?"

Lord Verney flung aside hat and cloak again, his face glowing with a dark flush.

"Oh," cried he, like a school-boy, "for God's sake, Spicer, wait outside."

"Nay," said Mistress Kitty, smiling to herself under her mask, "nay, I have need of Captain Spicer."

Lord Verney's face fell,

"Come hither," said she, and took him crestfallen by the hand and brought him to the table, where lay the writing materials he had been using but a little while ago. "Here," said she, "is a sheet of paper. Sit down, my Lord, and write, write," she said, and tapped his shoulder; "write, sir--thus:--

/# 'Lord Verney begs to inform Sir Joseph Standish that he understands the grounds of the quarrel between them to lie in a gross misconception of Lord Verney's feelings for Lady Standish.' #/

"Write, write!" She leaned over him, dictating.

Half spell-bound, yet protesting incoherently, he began to cover the page with his awkward scrawl.

"Quick," said she. "(Child, how do you spell quarrel?) Never mind, on with you:--

/# 'Lord Verney begs to assure Sir Jasper that, so far from presuming to entertain any unlawful sentiments for Lady Standish, he has never addressed more than three words to her or as many glances at her in his-life; that his whole heart is given to another lady, the only woman he has ever loved and ever will love.'" #/

The pen nearly dropped from Lord Verney's fingers. He started and turned round on his chair to graze in amaze into the countenance of his mysterious visitor, and again was at once attracted and foiled by her mask.

"Surely you would not contradict a lady?" she whispered in his ear; "haste, we have but one minute more. Here, give me the pen, I will finish." She snapped the quill from his hand, her curls touched his cheek as she bent forward over him to the page. Swiftly her little hand flew:--

/# "If upon this explanation Sir Jasper does not see his way to retract all the offensive observations he made to Lord Verney, Lord Verney will be ready to meet him as arranged without an instant's delay. The truth of all these statements is guaranteed by the woman Lord Verney loves." #/

She seized the sheet and folded it.

"Now, Captain Spicer," said she, "take your coach and hie you to Sir Jasper's house, and if you bring back an answer before the clock strikes, I will let you take off my mask, and that will save you from dying of curiosity and, also, give you something to tattle about for the next month. Oh, you will find Sir Jasper," she said; "he is a seasoned hand, and does not, like your virgin duellist, make it a point of honour to bring his high valour to the rendezvous twenty minutes before the time."

Within his meagre body Captain Spicer carried the soul of a flunkey. He would have given worlds to rebel, but could not.

"So long as it is not a put-off," said he. "Not even for a fair one's smile could I barter a friend's honour."

Kitty held the letter aloft tantalizingly and looked at the clock.

"If you won't be the bearer," said she, "I will send it by the chairman, and then you will never know what is in it. Moreover," said she, and smiled archly, "if Sir Jasper apologises to Lord Verney, which, upon receipt of this letter, I make no doubt he will, you can take his place, you know, and will not be done out of a gallant meeting."

"Of course, ha, of course!" cried Spicer with a yellow smile.

Laughing, Mistress Kitty closed the door behind his retreating figure.

"Now," said she.

"Oh, what have you done, what have you made me do?" cried Harry Verney in a sudden agony.

"Hush," said Mistress Kitty. "Did I not tell you your honour was safe with me? Do you not believe me?" said she meltingly. "Ah, Verney!" She put her hand to her head, and at her touch the mask fell.

He looked at her face, blushing and quivering upon him, and once more fell on his knee at her feet.

"Oh, tell me your name!" cried he, pleadingly.

"Why, Lord Verney," she said, "how ungallant!" She smiled and looked bewitchingly beautiful; looked serious and reproachful, and he fell beyond his depths in rapture.

"Why, you know me, you know me well," said she, "am I not Mistress Bellairs, Kitty Bellairs--am I not, Kitty?"

"No, no," cried he, "I never knew you till this hour, madam, Mistress Bellairs Kitty! I see you," he cried, "for the first time! Oh, God, be kind to me, for I love her!"

"And yet," she whispered archly, "they say that love is blind."

Upon this he kissed her as he had kissed her beneath the mask; and if anything could have been sweeter than the first kiss it was the second.

Ah, love, how easy an art to learn, how hard to unlearn!

While Harry Verney thus forgot the whole world, his first duel, and the code of honour. Sir Jasper sat inditing an answer to his communication:--

/# "Sir Jasper Standish has received my Lord Verney's explanation in the spirit in which it is offered. He is quite ready to acknowledge that he has acted entirely under a misapprehension, and begs Lord Verney to receive his unreserved apologies and the expression of his admiration for Lord Verney's gallant and gentlemanly behaviour, together with his congratulations to him and the unknown lady upon their enviable situation." #/

Captain Spicer did not offer to supply his principal's place in the field. Indeed, he displayed to Sir Jasper, who received him with the most gloomy courtesy, the extreme suppleness of his spine, and pressed his unrivalled snuff upon him with a fluttering and ingratiating air.

When he returned to Pierrepoint Street he found the mysterious stranger already in her sedan, Lord Verney leaning through the window thereof, engaged in an earnest whispering conversation. Captain Spicer jocularly pulled him back by the coat-tails and inserted his own foolish face instead. The lady was masked and cloaked as he had left her.

"Madam, I have done your errand," said he. "It was," said he, "a matter of difficult negotiation, requiring--ahem--requiring such tact as I think I may call my own. Sir Jasper was vastly incensed, one might as well have tried to reason with a bull. 'But gad, sir,' said I, 'would I, I, Captain Spicer, come with this message if it were not in accordance with the strictest rule of honourable etiquette?' That floored him, madam----"

Here Mistress Kitty snatched the letter flickering in his gesticulating hand with scant ceremony, turned her shoulder upon him, read it and handed it out to Lord Verney, who had lost no time in coming round to the other window.

"Now," said she, "bid the man take me to the Pump Room." She leaned her head out and Lord Verney put his close to hers, and there followed another conclave.

"Madam, madam, I demand the fulfilment of your promise!" from the other side came Captain Spicer's clamouring thin voice.--"Verney, my good fellow, I must request you to retire, there is a compact between this lady and me----"

"A compact?" said the mask turning her head.

"Oh, madam, the vision of that entrancing countenance!"

He strove to unfasten the chair door, when:

"What?" cried she, "and rob you of all the charm of uncertainty and all the joy of guessing and all the spice of being able to take away the character of every lady in Bath. Oh," she said, "I hope I have been better taught my duty to my neighbour!" Out went her head again to Lord Verney; there was another whisper, a silver laugh. "On men!" she cried.

Lord Verney skipped round and in his turn dragged the discomfited Captain out of the window and restrained him by main force from running after the retreating chairman and their fair burden.

SCENE X

Lord Markham was a person of indefinite appearance, indefinite age and indefinite manners. He wore an ill-fitting wig, but he had a high reputation as a man of honour. He sat beside Sir Jasper on the front seat, while on the back sat Tom Stafford; and the curricle sped cheerily along through the up-and-down Bath streets out into the country budding with green, down, down the hill, to Hammer's Fields by the winding Avon. Sir Jasper's face bespoke great dissatisfaction with life at large, and with his own existence in particular. Tom Stafford was beginning to feel slightly bored.

"'Tis an early spring," said Lord Markham, in the well-meant endeavour to beguile away the heavy minutes and distract his principal's mind. "'Tis very mild weather for the time of year; and the lambs are forward."

"Ugh!" said Sir Jasper.

"Speak not to him of lambs," whispered Stafford; "do not you see he is all for blood and thunder?"

Then he added maliciously; "There is but one animal in the whole fauna that Sir Jasper takes an interest in at present; and that's not easy, it seems, to find in these purlieus, though we know it does haunt them: 'tis the red dear!" He chuckled, vastly delighted with the conceit.

"Let us hope we shall not have rain," said Lord Markham; "these clouds are menacing."

"Nay, they will hold up for half-an-hour. Enough to serve our purpose," growled Sir Jasper, and tipped the horses with the lash so that they spurned the slope.

"But we shall get wet returning," pleaded the well-meaning Earl, "I said so all along; 'twould have been better to have gone in a coach."

"I vow," cried Sir Jasper with a sudden burst of spleen, "I vow that I have it in my heart to wish that Villiers' ball may speed so well that I may feel neither rain nor shine, coming home again. Home again," said he with a withering smile; "blast it, a pretty home mine is!"

"And a pretty cheerful fellow you are to bring out to a merry meeting," quoth Stafford from the back, "and a nice pair of fools you and the Colonel be, plague on you both! And when you are shot, 'twill be a fine satisfaction to think that your wife can console herself with the owner of the red curl, eh? What are you going to fight old Villiers about, I should like to know?"

"You do know," growled Sir Jasper, then he exploded. "You goad me, sir; do _I_ want to fight Villiers? Is not this business the merest fooling; sheer waste of time when the real fellow--villain!--has eluded me?" His hold on the reins tightened, he laid on the whip, and the curricle swayed as the horses leaped and plunged.

"Really," said Lord Markham, "I wish I had come in a coach."

And: "Hold on," cried Stafford, "hold on, Jasper; we don't all want to leave our bones in this business."

There came a pause in the conversation. They bowled alone a more level road with the wind humming in their ears, and the rhythmic trot of the greys beating a tune. Then Stafford remarked vaguely:

"I have a notion there will be no duel to-day at Hammer's Fields, Jasper, that you will be able to return with undiminished vigour to the hunt of the unknown culprit."

"How now," cried Sir Jasper fiercely, "have you heard from Villiers? Are they all rats now-a-days? Verney first, then that Spicer, then the Colonel! No, no, the fellow was mad with me, sir; and--gad!--the offence was mine!"

"Nevertheless," said Stafford unmoved, "I happen to know that Colonel Villiers' man was sent in all haste for his physician, Sir George Waters, at such an unconscionable hour this morning that Sir George despatched the apothecary in his stead, and the apothecary found our fire-eating Colonel roaring in a fit of the most violent gout 'tis possible to imagine. So violent, indeed, that poor Mr. Wigginbotham was soundly beat by the Colonel for not being Sir George. Villiers' foot is as large as a pumpkin, old Foulks tells me; I had it all from Foulks over a glass of water in the Pump Room this morning, and zooks, sir, his false teeth rattled in his head as he tried to describe to me the awful language Colonel Villiers was using. He's to be Villiers' second, you know, but he swore 'twas impossible, rank impossible, for any man to put such a foot to the ground."

They were rounding the corner of Hammer's Fields as he spoke, and Stafford's eyes roaming over the green expanse of grass rested upon the little group drawn up towards the entrance gate.

"Unless," he went on, "the Colonel comes upon crutches. No, zounds! ha, ha! Jasper I will always love you, man, for the capital jokes you have provided of late. Strike me ugly if the old fellow has not come--_in a bath-chair_!"

"Really," said Lord Markham, "this is very irregular. I have never before been privy to a duel where one of the combatants fought in a chair. And I am not sure that I can undertake the responsibility of concluding arrangements in such circumstances."

"Blasted nonsense!" said Sir Jasper with all his former urbanity of demeanour. He flung the reins to his man as he spoke, and clambered down from the curricle. Stafford had gone before him to the gate and was now stamping from one foot to another in exquisite enjoyment of the situation.

"(Ha, ha, ha!) Hello! Morning, Colonel, sorry to see you this way! (Ha, ha!) Have you brought another bath-chair for our man? Oh come, yes. 'Twon't be fair if he do not sit in a bath-chair too! Say, Foulks, you wheel one chair, I'll wheel the other, and we will run them one at the other and let them fire as soon as they please. Gad, what a joke!"

Colonel Villiers turned upon his volatile friend a countenance the colour of which presented some resemblance to a well-defined bruise on the third day; it was yellow and green with pain where it was not purple with fury.

"Mr. Stafford, sir, these jokes, sir, are vastly out of place. (Curse this foot!) Mr. Foulks, have the kindness to explain.... Major Topham, explain to these gentlemen that I have come out to fight, sir, and that fight I will, by the living jingo!" He struck the arm of the chair in his fury, gave his suffering foot a nasty jar and burst into a howl of rage and agony.

"Stap me," said Stafford, "I'd as soon fight an old bear! Whisper, Foulks, is he going to shoot in his cage--beg pardon, I mean his chair?"

"Such is his intention," said Mr. Foulks, grinning nervously as he spoke, and showing the set of fine Bond Street ivory already referred to by Mr. Stafford. "But it strikes me it is somewhat irregular."

"Somewhat irregular?" ejaculated Lord Markham; "it is altogether irregular. I decline to have anything to say to it."

Sir Jasper remained standing, gloomily looking at the ground and driving his gold-headed malacca into the soft mud as if all his attention were directed to the making of a row of little tunnels.

"What is the difficulty, what is the difficulty?" bellowed Colonel Villiers. "You wheel me into position, and you mark the paces, eight paces, Foulks, not a foot more, and you give me my pistol. What is the difficulty--hang me, hang you all, I say! What _is_ the difficulty?"

"The combatants will not be equal," suggested Major Topham. "I told Villiers that I will gladly take his place."

"No no, no!" screamed the old man turning round, and then, "Oh," cried he, and screwed up his face. And then the gout had him with such fury that he gripped the arms of his chair and flung back his head, displaying a ghastly countenance.

"I remember," champed old Foulks, "the dear Duke of Darlington insisted upon fighting Basil Verney (that's Verney's father, you know) with his left arm in splints, but as my Lord Marquis of Cranbroke, his Grace's second, remarked to me at the time----"

"Oh, spare us the Marquis!" interrupted Stafford brutally. "Let us keep to the business on hand, if you please. The whole thing is absurd, monstrous! Look here, Jasper, look here, Colonel, you two cannot fight to-day. How could you be equally matched even if we got another bath-chair for Jasper. We cannot give him the gout, man, and 'twould be too dashed unfair. Gad, Colonel you would shoot too well or too ill, 'twon't do! Come, come, gentlemen, let us make a good business out of a bad one. Why should you fight at all? Here's Jasper willing to apologise. (Yes you are, Jasper, hold your tongue and be sensible for once; you pulled off his wig, you know. Gad, it was not pretty behaviour, not at all pretty!) But then, Colonel, did not he think you had cut him out with his wife, and was not that a compliment? The neatest compliment you'll ever have this side the grave! He was jealous of you, Colonel; faith, I don't know another man in Bath that would do you so much honour, now-a-days."

"Oh, take me out of this," cried the Colonel, suddenly giving way to the physical anguish that he had been struggling against so valiantly. "Zounds, I will fight you all some day! Take me out of this. Where is that brimstone idiot, my servant? Take me out of this, you devils!"

Between them they wheeled his chair into the road and his screams and curses as he was lifted into the coach were terrible to hear.

"Lord, if he could but call out the gout!" cried Stafford. "Look at him, gentlemen! Ha, he has got his footman by the periwig! Oh, 'tis as good as a play, he is laying it on to the fellow like a Trojan! Why, the poor devil has escaped, but his wig is in the Colonel's hands. Ha, ha, he has sent it flying out of the coach! Off they go; what a voice the old boy has got, he is trumpeting like the elephant at the fair! Well, Jasper, what did I say? No duel to-day."

"Do not make so sure of that," said Sir Jasper. He was moving towards the curricle as he spoke, and turned a sinister face over his shoulder to his friend.

"Oh," cried the latter, and fell back upon Markham, "the fellow's look would turn a churn-full of cream! No, I will not drive back with ye, thankye, Sir Jasper; I will walk. Devil take it," said Stafford, "I don't mind a little jealousy in reason myself; but if I were to drive home in that company, I'd have no appetite for dinner. Come, gentlemen, 'tis a lovely day, let us walk."

So Sir Jasper rolled home alone, and, as his coachman observed a little later as he helped to unharness the sweating horses, "drove them cruel!"

SCENE XI

Lady Standish was one of those clinging beings who seem morally and physically to be always seeking a prop. Before adversity she was prostrate, and when his lordship the Bishop of Bath and Wells was ushered into her sitting-room, half-an-hour after Sir Jasper's departure for Hammer's Fields, he found the poor lady stretched all her length upon the sofa, her head buried in the cushions.

"Dear me," said his lordship, and paused. He was a tall, portly, handsome gentleman with sleek countenance, full eye, and well-defined waistcoat. Could human weakness have touched him, he would have felt a pride in those legs which so roundly filled the silk stockings. But that human weakness could ever affect the Bishop of Bath and Wells was a thing that dignitary (and he gave his Maker thanks for it) felt to be utterly inconceivable.

"Lady Standish," said the Bishop; then he waved his hand to the curious servants. "Leave us, leave us, friends," said he.

Lady Standish reared herself with a sort of desperate heart-sickness into a sitting posture and turned her head to look dully upon her visitor.

"You come too late," she said; "my lord. Sir Jasper has gone to this most disastrous meeting."

"My dear Lady Standish," said Dr. Thurlow, "my dear child," he took a chair and drew it to the sofa, and then lifted her slight languid hand and held it between his two plump palms. "My dear Lady Standish," pursued he in a purring, soothing tone. If he did not know how to deal with an afflicted soul (especially if that afflicted soul happened to belong to the aristocracy and in preference inhabited a young female body), who did? "I came upon the very moment I received your letter. I might perhaps have instantly done something to help in this matter, had you been more explicit, but there was a slight incoherence ... very natural!" Here he patted her hand gently. "A slight incoherence which required explanations. Now tell me--I gather that your worthy husband has set forth upon an affair of honour, eh? Shall we say a duel?"

Lady Standish gave a moaning assent.

"Some trifling quarrel. Hot-headed young men! It is very reprehensible, but we must not be too hard on young blood. Young blood is hot! Well, well, trust in a merciful Providence, my dear Lady Standish. You know, not a sparrow falls, not a hair of our heads, that is not counted. Was the, ah--quarrel about cards, or some such social trifle?"

"It was about me," said the afflicted wife in a strangled voice.

"About you, my dear lady!" The clasp of the plump hand grew, if possible, a trifle closer, almost tender. Lady Standish was cold and miserable, this warm touch conveyed somehow a vague feeling of strength and comfort.

"About me," she repeated, and her lip trembled.

"Ah, is it so? And with whom does Sir Jasper fight?"

"With Colonel Villiers," said she, and shot a glance of full misery into the benign large-featured face bending over her.

"Colonel Villiers," repeated the Bishop in tones of the blankest astonishment. "Not--eh, not--er, old Colonel Villiers?"

"Oh, my lord," cried Lady Standish, "I am the most miserable and the most innocent of women!"

"My dear madam," cried the Bishop, "I never for an instant doubted the latter." His hold upon her hand relaxed, and she withdrew it to push away the tears that now began to gather thick and fast on her eyelashes. The Bishop wondered how it was he had never noticed before what a very pretty woman Lady Standish was, what charming eyes she had, and what quite unusually long eyelashes. It was something of a revelation to him too, to see so fair and fine a skin in these days of rouge and powder.

"And yet," sobbed Lady Standish, "'tis my fault too, for I have been very wrong, very foolish! Oh, my lord, if my husband is hurt, I cannot deny 'tis I shall bear the guilt of it."

"Come, tell me all about it," said the Bishop, and edged from his chair to her side on the sofa, and re-possessed himself of her hand. She let it lie in his; she was very confiding. "We are all foolish," said Dr. Thurlow, "we are all, alas, prone to sin." He spoke in the plural to give her confidence, not that such a remark could apply to any Bishop of Bath and Wells.

"Oh, I have been very foolish," repeated the lady. "I thought, my lord, I fancied that my husband's affection for me was waning."

"Impossible!" cried his lordship. But he felt slightly bewildered.

"And so, acting upon inconsiderate advice, I--I pretended--only pretended indeed, my lord--that I cared for someone else, and Sir Jasper got jealous and so he has been calling everybody out thinking that he has a rival."

"Nevertheless," said the Bishop, "he has no rival. Do I understand you correctly, my dear child? These suspicions of his are unfounded? Colonel Villiers?"

"Colonel Villiers," cried she, "that old stupid red-nosed wretch! No, my lord, indeed, there is no one. My husband has my whole heart!" She caught her breath and looked up at him with candid eyes swimming in the most attractive tears. "Colonel Villiers!" cried she. "Oh, how can you think such a thing of me? But my husband will not believe me; indeed, indeed, indeed I am innocent! He was jealous of Lord Verney too, and last night fought Mr. O'Hara."

The Bishop smiled to himself with the most benign indulgence. His was a soul overflowing with charity, but it was chiefly when dealing with the foibles of a pretty woman that he appreciated to the full what a truly inspired ordinance that of charity is.

"My dear child, if I may call you so, knowing your worthy mother so well, you must not grieve like this. Let me feel that you look upon me as a friend. Let me wipe away these tears. Why, you are trembling! Shall we not have more trust in the ruling of a merciful Heaven? Now I am confident that Sir Jasper will be restored to you uninjured or with but a trifling injury. And if I may so advise, do not seek, my dear Lady Standish, in the future to provoke his jealousy in this manner; do not openly do anything which will arouse those evil passions of anger and vengeance in him!"

"Oh, indeed, indeed," she cried, and placed her other little hand timidly upon the comforting clasp of the Bishop's, "indeed I never will again!"

"And remember that in me you have a true friend, my dear Lady Standish. Allow me to call myself your friend."

Here there came a sound of flying wheels and frantic hoofs without, and the door-bell was pealed and the knocker plied so that the summons echoed and re-echoed through the house.

"Oh, God!" screamed Lady Standish springing to her feet, "they have returned! Oh, heavens, what has happened? If he is hurt I cannot bear it, I cannot--I cannot!" She clasped her head wildly and swayed as if she would have fallen. What could a Christian do, a gentleman and a shepherd of souls, but catch her lest she fall? Half mad with terror she turned and clung to him as she would have clung to the nearest support.

"Have courage," he purred into the little ear; "I am with you, dear child, have courage."

So they stood, she clasping the Bishop and the Bishop clasping her, patting her shoulder, whispering in her ear, when Sir Jasper burst in upon them.

It was his voice that drove them apart, yet it was neither loud nor fierce, it was only blightingly sarcastic.

"So!" said he.

What was it Stafford had said: "There's the Bishop of Bath and Wells. He's red, as red as a lobster, from top to toe! They have a way, these divines." Oh, Stafford knew doubtless: all Bath knew! Sir Jasper cursed horribly in his heart, but aloud only said: "So!"

Lady Standish flew half across the room to him with a joyful cry, but was arrested midway by his attitude, his look. The Bishop said "Ahem," and "ahem" again, and then said he:

"I rejoice, I rejoice, Sir Jasper, to see you return unscathed. Lady Standish has been greatly distressed."

"And you," said Sir Jasper, drily, "have been consoling her."

"To the best of my poor power," said the Bishop, and felt, he knew not why (if indeed it were possible for him to feel that way!) a shade uncomfortable.

Sir Jasper closed the door and bowed.

"I think," said he, "I ought to crave pardon for this intrusion."

"Oh Jasper!" cried my lady.

Her husband turned towards her for a second. She wilted beneath his eye and sank into a chair.

"Oh, Sir Jasper," said she, floundering. "The Bishop has been very kind. I have been so unhappy about you."

"I see," said Sir Jasper, "that his lordship has been very kind. His lordship, as I said, has been administering consolation."

Here all at once his stoniness gave way. He walked towards the Bishop and bent a ghastly face close to the florid uneasily smiling countenance.

"My Lord," said Sir Jasper, "your cloth will not protect you."

"Sir!" ejaculated the divine.

"Your cloth will not protect you!" repeated Sir Jasper in that voice of strenuous composure that seems to tremble on a shriek. "Oh, shepherd, _you_!"

"Sir!" cried the Bishop, "do you mean to insinuate----"

"I insinuate nothing," cried the other and sneered. "So madam," he turned again to his wife, "this is your choice, eh? You were always a pious woman, were you not? You would like to have the approval of the Church upon your acts, would you not?" Indescribable was the sarcasm upon his lip.

"Really," said the Bishop, "I am seriously annoyed." He looked reproachfully at Lady Standish. "Madam," said he, "I came to you, as you know, in pure charity, in unsuspecting friendship. I was not prepared for this."

"Ha, ha," said Sir Jasper with a hideous laugh. "No, sir, I have no doubt you were not prepared for this. Pure, ha--unsuspecting--this is pleasant! Be silent, madam, these groans, these crocodile tears have no effect upon me. Come, my Lord Bishop, your sanctimonious airs cannot take me in. Have I not read your letter? Oh, you have got a very fine head of hair, but I know ... _there is a curl missing_! Ha, Julia, you should take better care of your love-tokens."

"I vow," said Dr. Thurlow, majestically, "that your behaviour, your words are quite beyond my poor comprehension.--Madam, I pity you from my heart!--Sir Jasper, sir," folding his arms fiercely, "your servant. I wish you good-morning." He strode to the door, his fine legs quivering with indignation beneath their purple silk meshes.

"No!" said Sir Jasper, and seized him roughly by the skirts. "No, you do not escape me thus!"

"How now!" cried the Bishop, the veins on his forehead swelling, and the nostrils of his handsome Roman nose dilating. "Would you lay hands upon the Lord's anointed? Let go my coat, Sir Jasper!"

He struck at Sir Jasper's retaining hand with his own plump fist clenched in a fashion suggestive of pulpit eloquence.

"Ha! you would, would you?" exclaimed Sir Jasper, and leaped at the Episcopal throat.

The next instant, to his intense astonishment, Sir Jasper found himself in an iron grip; lifted into the air with an ease against which all his resistance was as that of a puppet; shaken till his teeth rattled, and deposited on the flat of his back upon the floor.

"Oh, help, help, help!" screamed Lady Standish.

"Really," said the Bishop, "I don't know when I have been so insulted in my life. 'Tis the whole Church, sir, the Church of England, the State itself, that you have assaulted in my person!"

He stood glaring down on the prostrate foe, breathing heavy rebuke through his high dignified nose.

"You have committed blasphemy, simony, sacrilege, rank sacrilege," thundered Dr. Thurlow.

Sir Jasper gathered himself together like a panther, and sprang to his feet; like a panther, too, he took two or three stealthy steps and, half crouching, measured the muscular Bishop with bloodshot eyes, selecting the most vulnerable portion of anatomy. He panted and foamed. The air was thick with flying powder.

Lady Standish flung herself between them.

"In mercy, my lord," she cried, "leave us--leave us!"

Here the door opened and butler and delighted footmen burst into the room.

The Bishop turned slowly. The grace of his vocation prevailed over the mere man.

"May heaven pardon you," he said. "May Heaven pardon you, sir, and help you to chasten this gross violence of temper. And you, madam," said he, turning witheringly upon the unfortunate and long-suffering lady, "may you learn womanly decorum and circumspection!"

"You shall hear from me again," growled Sir Jasper, murderously--"Toombs," cried he to the butler with a snarl, "show the Bishop the door!"

The Bishop smiled. He wheeled upon them all a stately back, and with short deliberate steps withdrew, taking his cane from the footman with a glassy look that petrified Thomas, and refusing Mr. Toombs' proffered ministrations as he might have waved aside a cup of poison. "_Vade retro Satanas_," he seemed to say; and so departed, leaving his pastoral curse voicelessly behind him.

SCENE XII

"How beautiful you are!" said Lord Verney.

He was sitting on a stool at Mrs. Bellairs' feet. She had abandoned to him one plump taper-fingered hand. The gay little parlour of the Queen Square house was full of sunshine and of the screeching ecstasy of Mistress Kitty's canary bird.

"How beautiful you are!" said he; it was for the fourth time within the half-hour. Conversation between them had languished somehow.

Kitty Bellairs flung a sidelong wistful look upon her lover's countenance. His eyes, gazing upwards upon her, devoured her beauty with the self-same expression that she had found so entrancing earlier in the day. "Deep wells of passion," she had told herself then. Now a chill shade of misgiving crept upon her.

"His eyes are like a calf's," she said to herself suddenly.

* * * * *

"How beautiful----" thus he began to murmur once again, when his mistress's little hand, twitching impatiently from his grasp, surprised him into silence.

"Oh dear! a calf in very truth," thought she. "Baah--baa ooh.... What can I have seen in him? 'Twas a sudden pastoral yearning....!"

"May I not hold your hand?" said he, shifting himself to his silken knees and pressing against her.

Yet he was a pretty boy and there was a charm undoubted in the freshness of this innocence and youth awakening to the first glimmer of man's passion.

"Delightful task----" she quoted under her breath, and once more vouchsafed him, with a sweep like the poise of a dove, her gentle hand.

As it lay in his brown fingers, she contemplated it with artistic satisfaction and played her little digits up and down, admiring the shape and colour of the nails, the delicate dimples at the knuckles. But Lord Verney's great boy's paw engulfed them all too quickly, and his brown eyes never wavered from their devout contemplation of her countenance.

"How----"

Mistress Kitty sprang to her feet.

"I vow," she cried, "'tis my hour for the waters, and I had clean forgot them!"

She called upon her maid:

"Lydia, child, my hat!--Lord Verney, if it please you, sir, your arm as far as the Pump Room." ("At least," she thought to herself, "all Bath shall know of my latest conquest")

She tied her hat ribbons under her chin.

"How like you the mode?" said she. And, charmed into smiles again by the rosy vision under the black plumes, she flashed round upon him from the mirror. "Is it not, perhaps, a thought fly-away? Yet 'tis the latest. What says my Verney?"

The poor youth vainly endeavoured to discriminate and criticise.

"It is indeed a very fine hat," said he ... "and there seem to be a vast number of feathers upon it." He hesitated, stammered. "Oh, what care I for modes! 'Tis you, you----"

"What are you staring at, girl?" cried Mistress Bellairs sharply, to her Abigail. "Out with you!"

"Well, my Verney?" said she. "Mercy, how you look, man! Is anything wrong with my face?"

She tilted that lovely little piece of perishable bloom innocently towards him as she spoke. And the kiss she had read in his eyes landed with unprecedented success upon her lips.

"Why, who knows?" thought she, with a little satisfied smile, as she straightened her modish hat. "There may be stuff in the lad, after all!"

She took his arm. Dazed by his own audacity, he suffered her to lead him from the room. They jostled together down the narrow stairs.

"How beautiful you are!" said he; and kissed her again as they reached the sombre dark-panelled vestibule.

"Fie!" said she with a shade of testiness and pushed him back, as her little black page ran to open the door.

The kiss, like his talk, lacked any heightening of tone--and what of a lover's kiss that shows no new ardour, what of a vow of love that has no new colour, no fresh imagery? But the trees in Queen Square were lightly leafed with pale, golden-green. The sunshine was white-gold, the breeze fresh and laughing; the old grey town was decked as with garlands of Young Love.

"He is but new to it," she argued against her fleeting doubts, "and he is, sure, the prettiest youth in all Bath."

Love and Spring danced in Mistress Kitty's light heart and light heels as she tripped forth. And Love and Spring gathered and strove and sought outlet in Verney's soul as inevitably, and irresistibly, and almost as unconsciously as the sap in the young shoots that swayed under the caress of the breeze and amorously unfurled themselves to the sunlight.

* * * * *

The Pump Room was cool and dim after the grey stone street upon which the young year's sunshine beat as fierce as its youth knew how. The water droned its little song as it welled up, faintly steaming.

"Listen to it," quoth Mistress Kitty. "How innocent it sounds, how dear it looks!"

With a smile she took the glass transferred to her by Verney, and: "Ugh!" said she, "how monstrous horrid it tastes, to be sure! 'Tis, I fear," she said, again casting a glance of some anxiety at her new lover's countenance, "a symbol of life."

"Yet," said he, "these waters are said to be vastly wholesome."

"Wholesome!" cried Mistress Kitty, sipping again, and again curling her nose upwards and the corners of her lips downwards, in an irresistibly fascinating grimace. "Wholesome, my lord! Heaven defend us! And what is that but the last drop to complete their odiousness! Wholesome, sir? I would have you know 'tis not for wholesomeness I drink." She put down her glass, undiminished save by the value of a bird's draught. "Do I look like a woman who needs to drink waters for 'wholesomeness?'"

"Indeed, no," floundered he in his bewildered way.

"There are social obligations," said she, sententiously. "A widow, sir, alone and unprotected, _must_ conform to common usage. And then I have another reason, one of pure sentiment."

She cocked her head and fixed her mocking eye upon him.

"My poor Bellairs," said she, "how oft has it not been my pleasure and my duty to fill such a glass as this and convey it to his lips? In his last years, poor angel, he had quite lost the use of his limbs!"

Lord Verney had no answer appropriate to these tender reminiscences; and Mistress Kitty, having, it seemed, sufficiently conformed to the usage of Bath, as well as sacrificed to the manes of the departed, turned briskly round, and, leaning against a pilaster, began to survey the room.

"La! how empty!" quoth she. "'Tis your fault if I am so late, my lord. Nobody, I swear, but that Flyte woman, your odious Spicer, sir--ha, and old General Tilney. Verily, I believe these dreadful springs have the power of keeping such mummies in life long after their proper limit. 'Tis hardly fair on the rest of the world. Why, the poor thing has scarce a sense or a wit left, and yet it walks! Heaven preserve us! why, it runs!" she cried suddenly with a little chirp, as the unfortunate veteran of Dettingen, escaping from the guiding hands of his chairman, started for the door with the uncontrolled trot of semi-paralytic senility.

"And that reminds me," said Mistress Kitty, "that Sir George is most particular that I should walk five minutes between every glass. Here comes your estimable aunt, Lady Maria, and her ear-trumpet, and the unfortunate Miss Selina. I protest, with that yellow feather she is more like my dear dead Toto than ever.

"Was that your pet name for your husband?" murmured Lord Verney, in a strangled whisper.

"Fie, sir!" cried the widow. "My cockatoo--I referred to my cockatoo." She sighed profoundly. "I loved him," she said.

He looked at her, uncertain to which of the lamented bipeds she referred.

"Selina," cried Lady Maria, in the strident tones of the deaf woman persuaded of her own consequence (the voice of your shy deaf one loses all sound in her terror of being loud)--"Selina, how often must I tell you that you must clip in my glass yourself! Who's that over there? Where are my eyeglasses? Who's that, did you say? Mistress Bellairs? Humph! And who's she got with her in tow now? Who did you say? Louder, child, louder. What makes you mumble so? Who? Verney--Lord Verney? Why, that's my nevvy. Tell him to come to me this minute. Do you hear, Selina, this minute! I won't have him fall into the net of widow Bellairs!"

The cockatoo top-knot nodded vehemently. Poor Miss Selina, agitated between consciousness that the whole Pump Room was echoing to Lady Maria's sentiments and terror of her patroness, took two steps upon her errand, and halted, fluttering. Lord Verney had flushed darkly purple. Mistress Kitty hung with yet more affectionate weight upon his arm and smiled with sweet unconsciousness. For the moment she was as deaf as Lady Maria.

The latter's claw-like hand had now disengaged a long-stemmed eyeglass from her laces.

"'Tis indeed," she pronounced in her commanding bass, "my nevvy Verney with that vile Bellairs!---Nevvy! Here, I say!--Selina, fool, have you gone to sleep?"

An echo, as of titters, began to circle round the Pump Room. The painted face of Lady Flyte was wreathed into a smile of peculiar significance, as she whispered over her glass to her particular friend of the moment, Captain Spicer. This gentleman's pallid visage was illumined with a radiance of gratified spite. His lips were pursed as though upon a plum of superdelicious gossip. He began to whisper and mouthe. Young Squire Greene approached the couple with an eager ear and an innocent noddy face that strove to look vastly wise.

"I assure you," mouthed the Captain. "Was I not there?"

"In his bedroom?" cried Lady Flyte, with a shrill laugh.

Lady Maria's cockatoo crest rose more fiercely. It seemed to Kitty Bellairs as if she heard the old lady's jaws rattle. It was certain that in her wrath she squawked louder than even the late lamented Toto. Then Mistress Kitty, who, to say the truth, began to find the scene a little beyond enjoyment, felt the young arm upon which she leaned stiffen, the young figure beside her rear itself with a new manliness.

"Pray, Mistress Bellairs," said my Lord Verney, he spoke loudly and, to her surprise, with perfect facility, even dignity, "will you allow me to introduce you to my aunt, Lady Maria Prideaux?--Aunt Maria," said he, and his voice rang out finely, imposing a general silence, "let me present Mistress Bellairs. This lady has graciously condescended to accept me as her future husband. I am the happiest and the most honoured of men."

The last sentence he cried out still more emphatically than the rest, and then repeated it with his eye on Kitty's suddenly flushed cheek, almost in a whisper and with a quiver of strong emotion.

The astounded Mistress Kitty rose from her deep curtesy with a swelling heart.

"The dear lad," she said to herself. "The dear, innocent chivalrous lad!"

There was almost a dimness in her brilliant black eye. Her emotion was of a kind she had never known before: it was almost maternal.

Under stress of sudden genuine emotion, the wit of intrigue in the cleverest woman falls in abeyance. Mistress Bellairs found no word out of the new situation.

Lady Maria's deafness had increased to an alarming extent.

"Gratified, I'm sure," she mumbled, stuck out her dry hand and withdrew it before Mistress Bellairs had time to touch it.

"My future wife," bawled the budding peer, in his aged relative's ear.

It was curious to note how old Lady Maria seemed suddenly to have become. Huddled in herself she nodded vacantly at her nephew.

"Thank ye for asking, child," said she, "but the waters try me a good deal."

Lord Verney attempted another shout in vain.

"So Sir George says," remarked my lady.

"'Tis the very eye of my poor dear Toto," thought Mistress Bellairs.

Lord Verney looked round in despair. Miss Selina thought him monstrous handsome and gallant, and her poor old-maid's heart warmed to the lover in him. She approached Lady Maria and gently lifted her trumpet.

Lady Maria, glad enough of a diversion, applied it to her ear with unwonted affability.

"What is it, my dear? Any sign of the Duchess?"

"Your nephew," said Miss Selina in modest accents, "your nephew, my Lord Verney, wishes to inform you that he is about to contract a matrimonial alliance with the lady he has just introduced to you."

Miss Selina blushed behind the mouthpiece as she made this announcement. Then she cried: "Oh," with an accent of suffering, for Lady Maria had rapped her over the knuckles with the instrument.

"Matrimonial fiddlesticks!" said Lord Verney's aunt. "Selina, you're a perfect fool!--Madam," remarked the wraith of the departed cockatoo, inclining her crest with much dignity towards the blooming Kitty, "I wish you good-morning."

SCENE XIII

There must have been a curious magic in the words, "My future wife," for no sooner had he pronounced them than Lord Verney became several inches taller, a distinct span broader and quite unreasonably older. In fact, from boyhood he had stepped to man's estate. He looked down protectingly at the little woman hanging on his arm. The seriousness of responsibility settled upon his brow.

"Ah! Verney," quoth Mr. Stafford, flicking a hot brow, as he dashed in out of the sunshine, powdered with white dust from his walk and still bubbling with laughter. "Ah, Verney, playing butterfly in the golden hours while other fellows toil in the sweat of their brow! Jingo! lad, but you've lit on the very rose of the garden.--Mistress Kitty Bellairs, I kiss your hand."

At this Mistress Kitty felt her future lord's arm press her fingers to his ribs, while he straightened his youthful back.

"Mr. Stafford," began he in solemn tones, "this lady----"

But she, knowing what was coming, interrupted ruthlessly.

"And pray, Mr. Stafford," quoth she, cocking her head at him with those birdlike airs and graces that were as natural to her as to any mincing dove--Mistress Kitty being of those that begin by making eyes in their nurses' arms, before they can speak, and end in a modish lace nightcap for the benefit of the doctor--"and whence may you come so late, and thus heated?"

"Whence?" cried Mr. Stafford, and overcome by the humour of his recollections, roused the solemn echoes of the Pump Room by his jovial laugh. "Ah, you may well ask! from the merriest meeting it has ever been my fate to attend. Oh, the face of him in his chair, between his gout and his temper! And fire-eating Jasper all for bullets; and old Foulks' teeth ready to drop out of his head at the indecorousness of it all!--Spicer, man, aha! hold me up.--Oh, madam," cried Mr. Stafford, wiping tears of ecstasy from his eyes and leaning as unceremoniously against Spicer as if the latter's lank figure were a pilaster specially intended for his support--"oh, madam, I could make you laugh had I the breath left for it."

"Indeed," cried Mistress Kitty, plunging in again, as it became evident to her that Lord Verney, with the gentle obstinacy that was part of his character, was once more preparing to make his nuptial statement. "Mr. Stafford, please speak then, for in sooth it seems to me a vastly long time since I have laughed."

"Gad! you actually make me curious," put in Mr. Stafford's prop.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" sighed Mr. Stafford, in a fresh fit, "ha, ha! By the way, Verney, weren't you also to have walked with the jealous husband this morning!--Ah, by the same token, and you too, Spicer? Gad. I'm glad you didn't, for if either of you had put lead in him I'd have missed the best joke of the season. Gad, I may say so. He, he, aha-ha, ho, ho!"

"Mr. Stafford," said my Lord Verney, as solemn as any owl, while Mistress Kitty, caught by the infection of the genial Stafford's mirth, tittered upon his arm, "I have deeper reason than you think of to rejoice that the absurd misunderstanding was cleared up between Sir Jasper and myself. This lady and I----"

"Oh dear, the joke, the joke!" cried Mistress Bellairs, with loud impatience, and stamped her little foot.

"Oh, my fair Bellairs," gasped Mr. Stafford, "had you but been there to share it with me!"

"This lady----" quoth Lord Verney.

"I wish indeed I had been!" cried she. And in very truth she did.

"Mrs. Bellairs," said the determined lover, "has consented to make me the happiest of men."

"Eh?" cried Mr. Stafford, and stopped on the edge of another guffaw.

Mistress Kitty cast down her eyelids. She felt she looked demure and almost bashful, and she hated herself in this character.

Mr. Stafford was one of the thirty-seven lovers of whom the lady had spoken so confidently, and as such was far from realising the solemn meaning of Lord Verney's announcement.

"Ah, madam," cried he reproachfully, "is't not enough to keep me for ever in Hades, must you needs add to my torture by showing me another in Paradise? But, my little Verney," he went on, turning good-naturedly to his young rival, "it is but fair to warn you that you will be wise to pause before getting yourself measured for your halo: the Paradise of this lady's favour is (alack, do I not know it?) of most precarious tenure."

"This lady, sir," said Lord Verney, with rigid lips, "has promised to be my wife."

It was fortunate that Mr. Stafford had a prop: under the shock he staggered. Man of the world as he was, the most guileless astonishment was stamped on his countenance.

Oh, how demure looked Mistress Kitty!

Spicer, a trifle yellow, became effusive in congratulations which were but coldly received by his patron.

"Ah, Kitty," whispered Mr. Stafford in Mistress Bellairs' shell-like ear, "do you like them so tender-green? Why, my dear, the lad's chin is as smooth as your own. What pleasantry is this?"

Kitty scraped her little foot and hung her head. Mistress Kitty coy! And yon poor innocent with his air of proprietorship--'twas a most humorous spectacle!

"I'm sure, Verney," cried Mr. Stafford, "I wish you joy, ha, ha! with all my heart! And you madam, he, he!--forgive me, friends--the thought of Sir Jasper's duel is still too much for me. Ha, ha! Support me, Spicer."

"She'll marry him, she'll marry him," cried Spicer with bilious vindictiveness, looking over his shoulder at the couple, as they moved away.

"Marry him!--never she!" cried Stafford. "Kitty's no fool. Why, man, the little demon wouldn't have _me_! She loves her liberty and her pleasures too well. Did you not see? She could not look up for fear of showing the devilment in her eye. Cheerily, cheerily, my gallant Captain!" cried the spark, and struck the reedy shoulders that had buttressed him, in contemptuous good-natured valediction. "You need not yet cast about for a new greenhorn to subsist upon."

* * * * *

Mistress Kitty, glancing up at her Calf, found, something to her astonishment and further displeasure, a new expression in his eyes. Ardour had been superseded by an unseasonable gravity.

"The creature is a complete menagerie!" she thought to herself, indignantly. "I vow he looks like nothing but an owl in the twilight!"

They wandered together from the Pump Room on to the Abbey Flags, and so, slowly, into the cool and shady Orange Grove; and in a sequestered spot they sat them down on a stone bench.

"When a man," said he, "has been, as I have, brought face to face, within the space of one short morning, with the great events of existence, Death and Love, how hollow and how unworthy do the mock joys and griefs of Society appear to him!"