CHAKDOS.
IT
any good. Trevenna felt at liberty to tease them just
as he liked. A restriction was too often put on his
merry malicious mousing by a prudential recollection
¦v»f the social status of his mice, and of the use they might
be to him in nibbling a way for him into patrician pan-
tries. Ylere the mice were very poor: so he tracked
Lady Chesterton and her sister to a garden-party, and
ate his pine-apple in most admirably feigned careless-
ness arrd unconsciousness close to the two ladies under
a Lebanon cedar. He knew the consternation he
should scatter through society by his news.
X don't see Mr. Chandos here this morning," said
Lady Chesterton, turning to him with a bland smile,
condescending to be civil because she was curious.
She was also a little uneasy; otherwise, be sure, she
would, never have had recourse to that " vulgar little
toady," as her ladyship designated the acute outsider.
" No, he isn't here," assented Trevenna, indifferently.
He had now put this handsome empress butterfly on
the point of his pin, and went leisurely about it.
"He is well, 1 hope?" she pursued.
Trevenna shrugged his shoulders. " Never was ill in
his life, that 1 know of: perfect constitution."
"What a rude, insufferable bear!" thought the un-
happy butterfly; but she was still more uneasy than
ever, and had no recourse so good as the bear; so she
resumed her inquiries. " Do you know where he is to-
day? I have something to tell him about Rose Berri
china."
" Your ladyship must send it by post, then." And
Trevenna laughed to himself as he saw the first irre-
pressible writhe of his victim on the pin.
" Bv post !   Has he left town?"
Trevenna looked at his watch.
-" By this time he is midway across to L'Orient. He
has taken his yacht to go down south and eastward."
"Soearly!" Trained and icy woman of the world
though she was, she could not repress the pallor that
blanched her lip, the anxiety that loomed in her hand-
some eyes. The Queen of Lilies stood near. Hearing
also, she was silent and very pale.
"Well. Ascot was late," answered Trevenna, cheer-
fully. " He generally does stay for Goodwood, to be
sure; but, you see, he has had so many London seasons,
and there's such hard running made on him, I think he
gets sick of it."
This thrust the pins in cruelly, indeed, through the
delicate wings of the brilliant butterflies. " That coarse
horror !" thought Lady Chesterton, with a shiver of dis-
gusted wrath ; but her heart was very heavy, and she
had to conceal her chagrin as best she might with all
the gay garden-groups fluttering around her and view-
ing her impaled. "Will he be away long?" she asked
of her tormentor.
"Oh, dear, yes," said Trevenna, carelessly. "Gone
to his summer-palace on the Bosphorus; takes the.
Morea and the Levant on the way. Poetic man, vou
know! likes that sort of thing; loves Greece; enjWs
Corfu. I hate 'em both. Snakes and old stones in the
one; rocks, rags, and bad ragouts in the other. ' Ruins
and scenery,' they tell you. I like stucco and panto-
mime scenes. Besides, they always fry so villainously
in those hot places ; glad to get away from the fire, per-
haps. When anybody talks of the Acropolis and the
Alhambra, I always smell oil and garlic and feel myself
starving in memory on a melon."
He glanced at his butterflies as he chattered, and saw-
that the pin was entering their souls like iron. He thrust
it down a little deeper as Lady Chesterton asked, with
a voice that, despite herself, could not be careless:
" Mr. Chandos will be long before he returns, then, I
suppose?"
"Won't come back till next spring," assented Tre-
venna. "He'll winter in Paris; always does, as you
know. Delicious hotel that is of his, by the way, in the
Champs Elysées. Clarencieux isn't likely to see any-
thing of him."
Which was the unkindest cut of all, seeing that Tre-
venna knew very well that the baroness had persuaded
her husband to take a little estate near Clarencieux for
two years' shooting, on purpose that the Queen of Lilies
might, conquer in the country if she failed in the town.
The husband had grumbled because he could ill afford
it. He was terribly poor; but he had been persuaded
into it by the assurance from his wife of Chandos admi-
ration of his fair sister-in-law; and now Chandos was
not going to Clarencieux !
"I've paid you off, my lady," thought Trevenna, fin-
ishing his ice. " You've found what it is to call me ' a
vulgar little wretch who lives nobody knows where.' "
Not that Trevenna had any particular dislike to these
two women, beyond his general dislike to all and any
members of the aristocratic order; butas the boy feels
no dislike to the cockchafer he spins on a string, but
finds amusement in its pain, and therefore sticks a
crooked pin through its poor humming body and puts it
to pain accordingly, so Trevenna felt and did with all
humanity.
Gilles de Retz enjoyed the physical convulsions of his
victims; Trevenna, as became a more humoristic tem-
per and a more refined age, enjoyed seeing the mental
¦ contortions of his.
And yet the fellow had his good points—some very
good points indeed. He had indomitable energy, perse-
verance, industry, patience, self-denial—the. greatest
virtues in the Carlylese school, which deifies Work.
Perhaps it would have been well if both Trevenna and
that School had alike considered more the worth and
meaning of the purpose, before they gave an apotheosis
to the fact, of labor.
The Lily Queen and her sister drove homeward in
perfect silence from the garden-parts'-, where society
was lamenting with its softest sighs the loss of its idol
and leader—a loss that was much more a blow to the
season than if the court had gone into seclusion: the
true Royalty of society is Fashion. There was a dead
silence between them till they reached the pretty little
violet-and-gold boudoir on the top of the staircase that
was specially dedicated to the use of Lady Valencia.
Then the baroness unclasped her diamond aigrette, and
flung off her Chantilly laces with an impetuous, pas-
sionate bitterness in the action, and looked a world of
scom orrt of her black eyes on to her fair sister.
" I told you so, Valencia! I knew you would, never
win him."
The Queen of Lilies answered nothing, but stood
there in her still and matchless grace, a slight flush of
proud, restrained pain only passing over her face.
"I told you I knew it was utterly useless," went on
Lady Chesterton with woman's favorite reproach—
"fe l'avait bien dit." "Courted, sought, nattered,
worshipped as he is, do you suppose he would surren-
der his 11 berty and marry ?   Ridiculous !, I told y onthe
Princess Louise d'Alve is actually dying of love for
him: they would give him to her to-morrow. She is as
beautiful as you are, though you think nobody can be;
and Chandos cares for her no more than he cares for
that tabouret at your feet. No more he does for you.
No more he ever did for anybody, unless it were that
infamous little French countess who has nothing in the
world but her eyes and her figure. I told you you could
never touch him!"
Still the Queen of Lilies said nothing. With a haughty
but admirable self-command, she held her peace under
the lash of her sister's words. Great ladies do not
always take their high breeding home with them to the
privacy of their own boudoirs; and the baroness,
though daughter to the Marquis of Ivors, was poor,
disappointed, and bitterly at feud with all creation,
because she had not been born a man to hold the Ivors
title.
" And there is that place near Clarencieux hired for
nothing!" her ladyship bewailed, with tears of mortifi-
cation in her eyes. "I am sure I hate the country. I
would fifty times rather have gone to Baden or some-
where abroad ; and we shall be obliged to go and live
there. Chess won't let the money be wasted; he made
such a fuss about ever taking it. We might meet
Chandos at Paris, of course, if we were like anybody
else; but we haven't income enough to live in any style
there, and go to the Tuileries and all that, as you must
do if you're in Paris at all. WTe shall be moped down
at that wretched place in the country all winter for
nothing. I am positive you might have done better if
you had tried. You might have made him say some-
thing serious, the night before last, at the court ball.
He certainly admired you—admired you very greatly!"
The baroness stopped, for lack of breath, reckless
that her last charge against her sister totally nullified
her first statements—no one ever stays to be consistent
in anger—and paused in fiery wrath and scorn, sway-
ing her parasol to and fro in impatient bitterness.
The Lily Queen lifted her drooped lids.
"I regret you should be put to any inconvenience
through me," she said, coldly. "You will allow that /
never suggested we should go near Clarencieux. I
never approved of the appearance it would inevitably
bear."
"That is all the gratitude I receive !" cried her sister,
with considerable passion, the greater because she was
conscious that her own manoeuvres for the brilliant
owner of Clarencieux had gone beyond what her sister
deemed delicate or wise. I suppose you will say that
it was I who suggested you should wear the Lucrèce
dress at his tency ball."
" As it was," said the Lady Valencia, calmly.
"Indeedl Oh, very well!" cried her sister, with the
laugh that with women denotes the last climax of pas-
sion. " Die unmarried and penniless, Valencia, if you
choose; it is no matter to me! Only remember you
have not fifty pounds a year of your own, and my mil-
liner's bills come already to more than my husband
will pay without recourse to his Jews; I shall add yours
to them no more after this."
With that last shaft home the peeress flashed from
the room in a storm of fluttering lace and fiery wrath.
The Queen of Lilies stood silent and motionless some
moments more, then she went almost mechanically to
the door, closed it, slipped its bolt, and, sinking down
on one of the couches, dropped her proud head on her
hands and sobbed as bitter tears as any woman ever
shed.
The last evening light streamed through the painted
panes of her exotic-shrouded window, and, straying
along the bright path of the little, dainty, gorgeously^
colored boudoir, fell across her fair brow and delicate
hands, with their antique rings gleaming on their white-
ness, which were clasped in pain till the glittering
points of the stones cut the skin.
Was it love or vanity that was thus cruelly wounded?
W7as it the broken ambition for which she wept, or the
broken hope of a softer desire? Was it the heart that
was lost, the voice that was silent, the eloquent eyes
that looked on hers no more, that were so bitterly
lamented? or was it the leadership of the fashion, the
stately magnificence of Clarencieux, the prize that all
her sex sought and coveted—the attainted Marquisate
of the Chandos which with any moment might be re-
stored—that were the objects of that mortified and
humilated grief?
Who shall say?
Some love, certes, there was in it.
CHAPTER IV.
If the Lily Queen hoped for remembrance from her
lost lover, she hoped for a wellnigh hopeless thing.
The kaleidoscope of Chandos' life changed so inces-
santly that it was rarely indeed any picture that had
been whirled past him retained the slightest claim on his
memory. He was always seeing one that seemed better
than the last. Partly this was traceable to his own
temperament, but chiefly it was due to the avidity with
whieh all his world catered for him. Now as the yacht
swept on her gay way, there could be nothing more
charming than that voyage through " isles of eternal
summer " and through seas laughing in an endless sun-
light. Pausing when he would, Italian cities on the fair
sea-coast gave him amusement under their aisles of
orange-boughs, blending fruit and blossom till golden
globes and snowy flowers swayed together against the
warm, bright brows of their rich Titian women. Be-
calmed on a sunny, silent noon, he could lie stretched
at ease under the deck-tent, with all the perfumes of
chestnut-woods, and myrtle-slopes, and citron-gardens
wafted to him across the water, while ice-cold wines
sparkled ready to his hand, and light laughter or melo-
dious music whiled the hours away. Landing at his
fancy, he would indolently watch the little gray aziola
fly among the ivy-covered stones of the great Pan's
broken altars, or the fire-flies gleam and glisten above a
contadina's hair while she gathered in her harvest of
the yellow gold of gourds. Sailing at night through
silent, star-lit leagues of sea, he would think a poet's
thoughts in a charmed solitude, while the phosphor-
light glistened under silvery vintage-moons, and the
ceaseless swell of waves murmured through the night.
Or, when lighter fancies took him, under the shade of
leaning walnut-trees and red rocks crowned with Greek
or Roman ruins, where the vessel moored in some nest-
ling bay, he wound the starry cyclamen in women's
silken hair, and listened to their liquid voices laughing
out soft Anacreonic songs over grape-clusters that
might have brought back upon the soil the gay, elastic
feet of banished Dionysus. He was not sated, he was
not wearied; he was what thousands pass from their
cradles to their graves without truly being for an hour:
he was happy. Oh, golden science ! too little thought of.
too quickly abjured by men.   That «rl^rious power of
enjoyment, we trample it under foot as we press through
the world, as the herds seeking herbage trample the
| violets unheeded.
:    The summer months passed swift with Chandos; by
leisurely loitering, the yacht at length wound her pleas-
ant way down to the Bosphorus, and dropped anchor
there opposite his summer-palace above Stamboul—a
fairy-place, with its minarets rising above a wilderness
! of cactus and pomegranate, of roses and myrtle, with
! the boughs of lemon and orange and fig-trees topping
> the marble garden-walls-, and the showers of lofty fottn-
I tains flung cool and fresh under the deep shadows of
; cedar and cypress.     Here,' with a French troop of
\ actors, for the bijou theatre he had some years before
! annexed to the palace—with a score or so of friends
from Florence, Rome, and Naples, brilliant, indolent
Italians, the very people for the place—with sport when
he cared for it, in the wild deer and other large game
of the interior—with as complete a solitude when he
wished, and as utter an absence of every memory of
the world beyond, as though he were a Haflz or Fir-
dousi amidst the Eastern roses of a virgin earth—here
the autumn months passed by, and all the indolent re-
pose and vivid color he loved blended in his life were
mingled to a marvel.
The very inconsistencies of his chars .ter made the
charm of his existence; through them, turn by turn,
he enjoyed the pleasures of all men, of all minds, and
of all temperaments.   He who walks straight along the
beaten road, turning neither to the right nor left, nor
loitering by the way, will reach soonest his destination;
¦ but he enjoys the beauty of the earth the best who,
i having no fixed goal, no pressing end, leaves the high-
way for every fair nook and leafy resting-place that
: allures him, and lingers musing "here   and   hastens
laughing there.   Consistency is excellent, and may be
very noble; butthe Greeksdid noterrwhen theycalleû*
i the wisest man the man who was " versatile." There is
I no such charm as " many-sidedness."
|    Chandos loved the East; he had lived much there,
either at his summer-palace, or deeper in the heart of
it towards Damascus ; he liked, of a summer morning,
! to float down the soft, gray Bosphorus water among
! the fragrant water-weeds, with the silver scales and
prismatic hues of the gliding  fish  shining through
I green swathes of sea-grass or drooped boughs of hang-
; ing gardens;  he liked in the stillness of starry nights,
- when the first call to prayer echoed rrp from the valley
; below as the faint gleam of dawn pierced the distance,
: to sit alone upon the flat palace-roof and let his lonely
thoughts " wander through eternity," as thus upon the
; house-top under the Asian stars, yonder afar in Pales-
! tine, the  great  poet-kings   had thought, gazing on
their Syrian skies, and on the hushed, dark, sleeping
Syrian world, and musing on that valutas vanitatum
I which has pursued all lives from theirs to ours.   He
i loved the East, and he stayed there till the first hiss of
] the winter storms was curling the Marmoran waves
and the first white blinding mists were rushing over
the sea.   Then he left that summer paradise, where
more yet than anywhere he felt " how good is man's
life—the   mere  living," and travelled quickly across
the continent to Pans, and wintered there in all the
utmost brilliance of its ceaseless gayeties.
I    He was one of the idols of Paris; its fashionable world
welcomed him as one of its highest leaders, its artis-
i tic   world   as  one  of its truest friends, its literary
world as one of its choicest chiefs, its feminine world
1 as one of its proudest conquests.   He was never more
at home than in Paris, and Paris, from the Tuileries to
the   atelier,  always delighted to  honor him, always
flocked to his fêtes as the most magnificent since those
of Soubise and Lauraguais, quoted his bon mots, fol-
lowed  his  fashions,   painted  him,   sculptured   him,
courted him, made him its sovereign, and found the
j wit of Rivarol, the beauty of Richelieu, and the grace
of Avaux, revived in   this " bel Anglais aux cheveux
dorés."
In this sparkling whirlpool of his Paris winterthought
had little entrance, remembrance little chance; every
hour had its own amusement, every moment its own
seduction; ennui could not approach, "sad satiety"
could not be known. Yet, despite it all, now and then
upon him, in the glittering follies of a court masque-
rade or the soft shadows of some patrician coquette's
boudoir, as in the star-lit silence of Turkish nights and
under the Asiatic gloom of Lebanon cedars, a certain
impatient depression, a certain vague passionate rest-
lessness, came on him, new to his life, and bitter there.
It came thus, because for the first time he could not
forget at his will, because for the first time a passion
he repulsed pursued him.
CHAPTER V.
The rare red deer herded in the great forests, and
the herons plumed their silver wings in the waters,
down at Clarencieux.    Kestrels wheeled in the sunny
skies, and the proud garfalcon came there.   The soft
owls flitted among the broken arches of the ruined
Lady's Chapel; and teal and mallard crowded in the
deep brown pools that lay so still and cool beneath
the roofing of the leaves.   It was a paradise for all
living things of river, earth and air; and it was beauti-
ful enough for an Eden where it sloped down to the
seas on the southwest coast, in a climate so tempered
that the tall fuchsia-hedges grew wild as honeysuckle
and the myrtles blossomed as though it were Sorrento.
Covering leagues of country, stretching over miles of
tawny beach, of red-ribbed rock, of  glorious deer-
forest, and of heath all golden with the gorse, Claren-
cieux was the great possession of a great house; and
its castle bore the marks of  Cromwell's  petronefs,
gained when the Cavalier-lord of the Stuart times,
Evelyn Chandos, Marquis of Clarencieux, had held it
after Marston Moor till the Ironsides swore in their
teeth that Satan fought there in the guise of that
" Chandos with  the   golden  hair "—the   " beautiful
Belial," as they called him. when, with his long light
locks floating, and his velvet and lace as gay as for a
court-ball, he charged out on them in such fiery fashion
that he. with his troop of eighty (all that lire and
sword  h-.d left him),  drove  six   hundred  steel-clad
besiegers pell-mell, like sheep to the slaughter, down
through his mighty woods and headlong to the sea.
Raised in the days when the mediœval nobles were
Building royallie
Their mansions cirriouslie
With turrets and with towers,
With halls and with bow res.
Hanging about their walles
Clothes of gold and pâlies,
Arras of i icli arraye,
Fresh as flowers of Maye,
Clarencieux, with its tall antique louver, its massive
battlemented toyers, its fretted pinnacles, its superb
¦