8
CHANDOS.
some of the best clarets of Beau Sire's master to be
brought for his own drinking, and took his luncheon in
solitude off some of the masterpieces of that culinary
*hef, M. Dubosc. He offered Beau Sire the dog's
favorite bonne boutdie, the liver-wing of a pheasant;
but Beau Sire showed his teeth, and refused to touch it
-with a superb canine scorn.
" You've mo fe discrimination than your master, O you
"Lavater amon? retrievers!      You know his foes: he
doesn't," laughed Trevenna, while he finished his lunch- j absence to retain her hold on him. The world, like a
eon with the finer appreciation of Dubosc's talent, and | kaleidoscope, was always turning its most seductive
of the oily perfections of the hock and the maraschino, i pictures towards him. How was it possible that his
because of his previous asceticism over a mutton-chop, j gaze could linger long and faithfully on one?
for the first time he thrust such a remembrance away.
"Bagatelle!" he thought, as he threw himself back
among his carriage-cushions and drove to Flora de
l'Orme's. " Let me keep to beauty that I can win at no
cost but a set of emeralds or a toy-villa: the payment
for hers would be far too dear.   Heloïse was right."
Chandos was a man for whom too varied amuse-
ments waited, and by whom too rich and intoxicating
a life was hourly led, for one woman to be able in
" You are safe for the Cup, Ernest?" said his Grace
of Castlemaine, as they encountered each other in the
press of the reception-room at the palace. The duke
was a very old man, but he was as superb a gentleman
as any in Europe, a gallant soldier, a splendid noble
still, with his hon-iike mane of silken, silver hair and
his blue and flashing eyes, as he stood now in his field-
marshal's uuiform, with the Garter ribbon crossing his
chest, and stars and orders innumerable on his heart,
above the scars of breast-wounds gained at Vittoria
and in many a cavalry-charge in Spain.
"Safe? Oh, yes. There is nothing in any of the
establishments to be looked at beside Galahad," an-
swered Chandos, between whom and the duke there
was always a sincere and cordial affection. They were
alike in many things.
"No: at least it must be kept very dark if there be.
By the way, there was a man—a thorough scamp, but
a very good judge of a horse—offering very widely at
Tattersall's to-day on a chestnut, Diadem. I know
the fellow: he got into difficulties years ago, at the
time of the White Duchess scandal: she was carted
out stiff as a stake on the St. Léger morning, and it
was always suspected he poisoned her; but he would
know what he was about, and he offered long odds on
this chestnut."
"Diadem?" repeated Chandos, whoseeyes were glanc-
ing over the many-colored sea about him, of feathers,
jewels, floating trains, military orders, and heavy
epaulets, to seek out the Queen of Lilies—"Diadem?
You mean an outsider, entered by a Yorkshire man?
My dear duke, he is the most wretched animal, I hear.
Trevenna tells me he could not win in a Consolation
scramble."
" Humph ! may-be. Y'ou never scarcely go to the
Corner yourself?"
"Very rarely. I like to keep up the honor of the
Clarencieux establishment; but of all abominations the
slang of the stable is the most tedious. Trevenna man-
ages ali that for me, you know."
"Yes, I know. Clever fellow, very clever; but I
never liked him.   Nothing but an adventurer."
Chandos laughed as he moved to pierce his way to-
wards the young Duchess of Fitz-Eden, a beautiful
brunette, with whom, rightly or wrongly, society had
entangled his name in a very tender friendship.
" For shame, duke ! You' should not use that word.
It is the last resource of mediocrity when it can find
nothing worse to cast against excellence."
" Believe in people, my dear Chandos ; believe in them !
You will And it so profitable !" murmured his Grace, as
the press of the crowd swept them asunder, and Chan-
dos, joining the young duchess, while bows, smiles, and
morning greetings recognized him on all sides from the
courtly mob, passed on with her into the presence-
chamber.
From the Guardsmen, who, to their own discomfiture,
had formed the escort, and were drawn up with their
troop outside to catch but fugitive glimpses of fair faces
as the carriages passed, to the ministers in the Throne-
room, whose thoughts were usually too prosaically bent
on questrons of supply or votes of want of confidence
to turn much to these vanities, there was one predomi-
nant and heightened expectation—the sight of the
Queen of Lilies. Rumor had long floated from Rome
of her extraordinary loveliness; poets had sung it
sculptors immortalized it, and artists adored it there
The golden Southern sun had ripened it to its richest
there, and it came now to adorn the court. It drifted
across the thoughts of Chandos, to the detriment of
much of the beauty that was about him, and he waited
for it impatiently where he stood among the circle of
princes, peers, and statesmen about the throne. His
loves had been countless, always successful, never
embittered, intensely impassioned while they lasted
swiftly awakened, and often as rapidly inconstant The
very facility with which his vows were heard made
them as easily broken: he loved passionately, but he
loved so many. The eyes that he had last looked orr
were always the stars that guided him. A woman
would very likely have told him that he had never really
loved: he would have told her that he had loved a
thousand times. And he would have been more right
than she. Love is no more eternal than the roses but
like the roses, it renews with every summer sun in as
fair a fragrance as it bloomed before.
Women only rebel against this truth because their
season of the roses—their youth—is so short.
One after one they passed before him, the beauties of
the year; none attracted him very much. He had
been so fully sated by all riat was most dazzling and
seductive in feminine lo- eliness for so many years
that, wdiile still impressionable, he was, as they called
him, fastidious. He looked almost eagerly 'for the
presentation of the Queen of Lilies.
At last the delicate wh ite robes swept by him ; thrown
•ut from the maze of gorgeous color, of gleaming gold
of diamonds and sapphires, of purples fit for Titian, of
rubies fit for Rubens, of azure, of scarlet, of amber
filling the chamber, like a cameo from the deep hues
of an illuminated background, the Athenian-like fair-
ness of her face glanced once more on his sight- she
was close to him as she swept towards the throne
" She is fit, herself, for the throne of the Cœsars," he
thought, as he followed the slow, soft movements of
her imperial grace. Once again their eyes met; she
saw him where he stood among the royal and titled
groups about the dais, and a slight flush rose over her
brow—a flush that, if it betrayed her, was hidden as
she bowed her proud young head before her sovereign
yet not hidden so soon but that he caught it.
" Passionless 1 They must wrong her; theV have not
known how to stir her heart," he thought, as he fol-
lowed her with his glance still as she passed onward
and out of the Throne-room; and through the rest of
the gorgeous and tedious ceremony Chandos let his
thoughts dwell on those deep, gazelle eyes and those
sott sdent lips, musing how easy and how beguiling
a task it would be to teach the one the "looks that
Burn and woo from the other their first and lingering
3   Her remembrance haunted him in the palace :
' Brilliant affair! More like a,fête à la Régence than
anything else. How the money goes! The cost of one
of those nights would buy me a seat in the House,"
thought Trevenna that evening, as he passed up the
staircase of Park Lane.
The dinners and suppers of the Richmond villa in all
their gayety and extravagance, were not more famous
with Anonyma and her sisterhood than the entertain-
ments to the aristocratic worlds with which Chandos
in Paris and Naples revived all the splendor of both
Regencies, and outshone in his own houses the gather-
ings of imperial courts, were celebrated in that crème
de la crème which alone were summoned to them. The
fêtes that he gave abroad he gave in England,
startling society with their novelty and their mag-
nificence. Chandos showed that the art of pleas-
ure was not dead. To-night all that was highest
in both the French and English aristocracies came
to a costume-ball that was also at pleasure a
masked-ball, and professedly in imitation of the Vegli-
one of Florentine carnivals. Trevenna paused a
moment near the entrance of the reception-rooms,
where he could see both the constantly increasing
throng that ascended the stairs and the long perspective
of the chambers beyond, that ended in the dark palm-
groups, the masses of tropic flowers, and the columns
and sheets of glancing water foaming in the light of
the winter-garden in the distance. Masked himself,
and dressed simply in a dark violet domino, he looked
down through the pageant of color, fused into one rich
glow by the lustre that streamed from a hundred
chandeliers, from a thousand points of illumination,
till his eyes found and rested on Chandos, who, with
the famed Clarencieux diamonds glittering at every
point of his costume, as Edward the Fourth, stood far
off in an inner drawing-room receiving his guests as
they arrived,
"Ah, my White Rose!" said Trevenna to himself,
" How the women love you, and how the world loves
you, and how lightly you wear your crown! Edward
himself had not brighter gold in his hair, nor fairer
loves to his fancy. Well, you have some Plantagenet
blood, they say, in that sangre azul of your gentle-
men's veins, and the Plantagenets were always dazzling
and—doomed."
With which historical reminiscence drifting through
his thoughts, Trevenna drew himself a little back,
farther into the shelter of an alcove filled with broad-
leaved Mexican plants, and studied the scene at his
leisure, his eyes recurring every now and then with
persistent contemplation to the distant form of his
friend and host, where the diamonds of Clarencieux,
that had glittered at may a Stewart and Bourbon
gathering, sparkled with every movement of Chandos,
as he bowed to a prince, greeted an ambassador, or
smiled on a. beauty. There was a certain savage envy
and a certain luscious satisfaction mingled together in
the contemplation.
" The fools that go to see Molière, antl read novels
and satires, while they can look on at Lif e !" thought
Trevenna, who was never weary, of watching that
mingling of comedy and melodrama, though his
genus was rather the loquacious than the meditative
" I can't picture greater fun than to have been a weath-
er-wise philosopher who knew what Vesuvius was going
to do, told nobody anything, but took a stroll through
Pompeii on the last day, while his skiff waited for l.im
in the bay. Fancy seeing the misers clutch their gold
while he knew they'd offer it all for bare life in an
hour; the lovers swear to love for eternity, while he
knew their lips would be cold before night; 'the bakers
put their loves in the oven, while he knew nobody
would ever take them out; the epicures order their
prandmm, while he knew their mouths would be choke
full of ashes; the throngs pour into the circus, laugh-
ing and eager, while he knew they poured into their
grave; the city gay in the sunshine, while he knew
that the lava-flood would swamp it all before sunset.
That would have, been a comedy worth seeing. Well
I can fancy it a little. My graceful Pompeian. who
know nothing but the rose-wreaths of Aglaë and As-
tarte, how will you like the stones and the dust in
your teeth?"
And Trevenna, pausing a moment to enjoy to its
fullest the classical tableau he had called up in his
mind s eye, and looking still at the friend whom he
had alternately apostrophized as Plantagenet and
Pompeian. left Ins alcove and his revery to mingle
with the tilted crowd, in his dark domino and h# close
Venetian mask, casting an epigram here, a scandal
there, a suspicion in this place, a slander in that, blow-
ing away a reputation as lightly as thistle-down, and
sowing a seed of disunion between two lives that
loved, with dexterous whispers under his disguise that
could never be traced, and as amused a malice in the
employment as any Siamese monkey when he swings
himself by his tail from bough to bough to provoke
the crocodiles to exasperation. True, as monkey may
get eaten for his fun, so Trevenna might get found out
tor his pastime; but, to both monkey and man, the
minimum of danger with the maximum of mischief
made a temptation that was irresistible. Trevenna had
been the most mischievous boy that ever tormented
tom-cats; he was now the most mischievous wit that
ever tormented mankind.
He was a moral man; he had novices; he had onlv
one weakness—he hated humanity
"How extravagant you are, Ernest!" said the Duke
of Castlemaine, who had made his appearance for
twenty minutes with his daughter-in-law, the March-
ioness of Deloraine, a beautiful Austrian blonde of two-
and-twenty years, the hostess, to a certain extent, of
Chandos great parties.    "Do you think these people
then/eh?''1                               a11 you throw a,™y on
r "I^!i<Vme\sW<;!1' tfce fairer section do, I hope,"
laughed Chandoa lingering a moment.
The duke gaveiinother little growl to himself as he
brushed a moth off his broad blue ribbon. He too had
had a jeunesse orageuse, and had made Europe ring
with the brilliance of  his extravagances: but Wai?
burne Abbey now was heavily laden with mortgage it) ¦
consequence, and its noble owner sometimes wishe*
that he had played a little less au rio déponilié.
" Ah ! women were always the ruin of your race, and
of  mine: you have  the weakness  from  both  sides,
Ernest.   There was your father-----"
" Who was a deucedly proud man, wasn't he, duke?"
asked Trevenna, with scant ceremony, as he came up)
by Castlemaine's side, without his mask now, and hav-
ing glided into a blue domino, that his gunpowder-
whispers might not be traced to him.
The duke looked down on him from the tower of his
height, scarce bent more than when he was a colonel
of cavalry at Salamanca.
" Proud? Perhaps so, sir. Adventurers thought him
so. He put down impudence wherever he met with it.
It is a pity he is not alive now."
"To put me down? I understand, duke," laughed
Trevenna, impervious to satire, and impenetrable even
to a cut direct, who caught every bullet sent against
him gayly and courageously, and played with it un-
harmed as a conjurer will. (What magie has the con-
jurer? None; but he has one trick more than the
world that he baffled.) " Ah ! I can't let myself be put
down; I'm like a cork or an outrigger; all my safety
lies in my buoyancy. I have no ballast; I must float
as I can. Storms sink ships of the Une, and spare
straws."
" Yes, sir, rubbish floats generally, I believe," said
his Grace, grimly, turning his back on him as he took
out his snuff-box, enamelled by Pettitot and given him
by Charles Dix. Trevenna bowed as low as though the
silver-haired Sabreur had paid him a compliment and
had not turned his back on him.
"I accept your Grace's prophecy. Rubbish floats;
/ shall float. And when I am at the top of the wave,
won't every one call my dirtiest pebbles fine pearls?"
"I think he will float," murmured the duke, passing
outward through the rooms to the noiseless, shut-off,
luxurious chamber dedicated to cards, which had an
altar in Chandos' house as though they w ere its Pen-
ates. " Sort of man to do well anywhere; be a privi-
leged wit in a palace, and chief demagogue in a revo-
lution ; be merry in a bagne, and give a pat answer if
he were tried for his life ; hold his own in a cabinet, and
thrive in the bush. A clever fellow, an audacious fel-
low, a most marvellous, impudent fellow."
" An insufferable fellow ! I wish Chandos would not
give him the run of the house, and the run of the town,
as he does," said my Lord of Morehampton, wending
his way also to the card-rooms. " The man has no
idea of his place."
" I think he has only too good a one ; he imagines it
to be—everywhere. But the fellow will do well. He
plays so admirable a game of whist; leads trumps in
the bold French manner, which has a great deal to be
said for it; has an astonishing recuperative power; if
one play will not serve, changes his attack and defence
with amazing address, and does more with a wretched
hand than half the players in the clubs do with a good
one. A man who can play whist like that could com-
mand a kingdom ; he has learnt to be ready for everv
position and for every emergency. Still, with you, 1
don't like him," said-his Grace, entering the card-room
to devote himself to his favorite science at guinea
points, where, despite his inherent aversion to Tre-
venna, he would have been willing to have had that
inimitable master of the rubber'for a partner.
The duke was quite right, that a man who has trained
his intellect to perfection in whist nas trained it to be
capable of achieving anything that the world could
offer. A campaign does not need more combination;
a cabinet does not require more address; an astrono-
mer-royal does not solve finer problems; a continental
diplomatist does not prove greater.tact. Trevenna had
laid out the time he spent over its green table even more
profitably for the ripening and refining of his intelli-
gence than in the hours he gave to his blue-books; and
the duke's eulogy was but just.
His rooms were nearly full, but Chandos still glanced
every now and then impatiently towards the entrance-
doors that opened in the distance to the staircase.
Eyes that might well claim to be load-stars wooed him
through coquettish Venetian masks, and faces too fair
for that envious disguise met his gaze wherever it
turned. On his ear at that moment was the silvery
ring of La Vivarol's gay raillery, and at his side was
that bright exile of the Tuileries, fluttering her sap-
phire-studded wings as a Fille des Feux, and bewitching
m her coquette's charms as any portrait auxs Amours ¦
of Mignard. Still ever and again his eyes turned to-
wards the entrance as he moved among his guests, and
suddenly a new look glanced into them: they were too
eloquent to women not to be unconsciously and, for
him, dangerously expressive. She who held him cap-
tive at that moment saw that look, and knew it well
She had seen it lighten for her in the forests of Com-
piègne when the summer moon had streamed down,
through the leaves on a royal hunting-party sweeping
through the glades to the mellow music of hunting-
horns, and they had lingered behind while the bridles
dropped on their horses' necks, and only the wooing of
soft words broke the silence as the hoofs sank noise-
lessly m the deep thyme-tangled grasses.
She knew the look of old, and followed it.   It rested '
on the Queen of Lilies.
If that poetic loveliness had been fair in the morning
light, it was far fairer now. By a delicate flattery to
her host, the Lily Queen had chosen as her impersona-
tion the role of his own Lucrèce—a Byzantine Greek:
and her dress, half Eastern, glowed with the brightness,
of Oriental hues, while the snow-white barracan floated
round her like a cloud, and Byzantine jewels gleamed
upon her bosom and her hair-jewels that had seen the
Court of the Comneni and the sack of Dandolo-jewels
that had once, perhaps, been on the proud, false brow
of the Imperial Irene.
Involuntarily Chandos moved slightly forward' invol-
untarily there ran, even through that courtly and im-
passive crowd, an irrepressible, low murmur of admi-
ration. La, Vivarol looked, and did not underrate one
in whom she foresaw her rival.
She arched her pencilled, piquant eyebrows.
Ah, there is your living Lucrèce ! It must be charm-
ing to sketch characters and find them come to life "
Chandos lost the ironic and malicious contempt with,
which jealousy subtilely tipped the tone of the words
as, leaving the countess to tlie homage of the maskers
about her he did for the Queen of Lilies what he had
not done for any other—passed out of the inner draw-
ing-room where he received his guests, and advanced
to meet the impersonation of his Lucrèce
That moment was fatal to him—that moment to,
which she cam» on his sight as startling as thougb