"Good Heaven, you speak of her with the utmost familiarity! Did you know her?"

There was a pause before the old man answered. He turned over the pages of the book he had been reading when Lavendale entered, and seemed for the moment as if he had forgotten the subject of their conversation.

"Did you know that unhappy girl?" Lavendale asked eagerly.

"I knew something of her people," answered Vincenti, without looking up.

"They belonged to the trading cla.s.s of Venice, but had n.o.ble blood in their veins. The father was a jeweller and something of an artist. The girl's disappearance made a scandal in Venice. She had but just left her convent school. It was not known where the seducer had taken her. A near relative followed them--tracked them to Paris--followed them from Paris to London--in time to see a coffin carried out of the house in Soho Square, and to hear dark hints of poison. He stayed in London for nearly a year; wore out his heart in useless efforts to discover any proof of the crime which was suspected by more than one, most of all by an apothecary who was called in to see the dying girl; tried to get an order for the exhumation of the body, but in vain. He was a foreigner, and poor; Mr. Topsparkle was an Englishman of large fortune. The government scented a Jacobite Jesuit in the Italian, or at any rate pretended to think him dangerous, and he had notice to leave the country. He left, but not before Topsparkle had fled from the blast of scandal. His attempt to become a senator confounded him. Slander had slept until the Brentford election."

"Yes, that chimes in with Philter's account," answered Lavendale. "Do you know what became of the girl's father?"

Vincenti shrugged his shoulders.

"Died, I suppose, of a broken heart. He was too insignificant to make any mark upon history."

"Well, I am quite ready to believe Mr. Topsparkle to be a double-dyed scoundrel--and yet I am going to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. That is what good company means nowadays. n.o.body asks any searching questions about a host's character. If his wines and his cook are faultless, and his wife is handsome, every one is satisfied: and on this occasion Mr. Topsparkle's company is to be exceptionally distinguished. Swift is to be there, the Irish patriot and ecclesiastical Jack Pudding, who is just now puffed with importance at the success of his queer hook about giants, pigmies, and what not; and there is a talk of Voltaire, the young French wit, who has been twice beaten for his _bon-mots_, and twice a prisoner in the Bastille, and who is in England only because France is too hot to hold him. There is a promise of Bolingbroke, too, and a hint of my queer kinswoman, Lady Mary, who made such a figure the other night at the Prince's ball. We shall doubtless make a strange medley, and I would not be out of the fun for anything in this world, even though in his hot youth Mr. Topsparkle may have played the character of Oth.e.l.lo with a phial of poison instead of a bolster. After all, Vincenti, jealousy is a n.o.ble pa.s.sion, and a man may have worse motives for murder."

The old man made no answer, and as supper was announced at this moment, the conversation ended.

There was something in Lavendale's manner which told of a mind ill at ease, perchance even of a remorseful conscience; but he had the air of a man who defied Fate, and who meant to be happy in his own way.

To the belated peasant tramping homeward beside the lessor Avon, Ringwood Abbey in the December gloaming must have looked as like an enchanted palace as it is possible for any earthly habitation ever to look. Provided always that the peasant had heard of fairyland and its wonderful castles, which shine suddenly out upon wandering princes, luminous with mult.i.tudinous windows, and joyous with the buzz and clatter of an army of servants and a court of fine ladies and gentlemen.

Ringwood Abbey was all ablaze with wax candles, and reflected its Gothic cas.e.m.e.nts in yonder sedgy stream until it seemed to outshine the stars in the cold clear winter sky. This earthly illumination was so much nearer than the stars, and to the agricultural labourer tramping homeward after a day at the plough-tail was suggestive of pleasanter thoughts than were inspired by yonder cold and distant lights of heaven.

Ringwood Abbey meant broken victuals in abundance, and money flung about recklessly by the Squire and his London guests. It meant horse and hound, and all the concomitants of a big hunting-stable. It meant custom for every little tradesman in the village, and charities on a large scale to the poor. It meant beauty and splendour and stateliness and music to gladden the eye and the ear. It meant bribery at elections, largesse at all times and seasons. It meant all that a large country house, carried on with a n.o.ble disregard of cost, can ever mean to the surrounding neighbourhood. Needless, therefore, to add that in this little corner of Hampshire, beside the lesser Avon, Mr. Topsparkle was a very popular gentleman, and Lady Judith a queen among women, a G.o.ddess to be worshipped by all who came but to the outermost edge of her enchanted circle.

It was the cheery eventide after a five-o'clock dinner. They dined late at this season on account of the hunting-men, and even then there were some eager sportsmen who would rather miss their dinner than draw bridle before the doom of Reynard; and these came in ravenous to the ten-o'clock supper, full of their adventures over heath and through stream, and a most intolerable nuisance to the non-hunting people.

My Lord Bolingbroke, lolling at ease yonder in a carved oak armchair, coquetting with Lady Judith, had once been the keenest of sportsmen, and was fond of hunting still, but not quite so reluctant to miss a day's sport as he had been a few years ago.

"Do you remember our wolf-hunt at La Source, the winter you were with us, Arouet?" he asked, following up a conversation half in French and half in English, in which he and Lady Judith, a young gentleman standing in front of the fireplace, and Lord Lavendale had been engaged for the last quarter of an hour. "I had some very fine hounds that Lord Gore sent me, and I was curious to see whether they would attack a wolf boldly, or sneak off as soon as he stood at bay. 'Twas a stirring business for men, horses, and hounds; but, after all, I think there is nothing better than a genuine British fox-hunt."

"In France we study the picturesque and romantic in sport," said the tall slim gentleman lounging in front of the wide mediaeval fireplace, whom Bolingbroke addressed sometimes familiarly as Arouet, and anon by his newly a.s.sumed name of Voltaire. "You English seem only to regard the practical--so many miles ridden over, so many foxes slaughtered, so many pheasants shot. With you the chase is a matter of statistics; with us it is a royal ceremony, diversion for kings and courtiers. Our hunting-parties are as stately and picturesque under Louis as they were under Charlemagne. Ours is the poetry of the chase, yours the prose."

"True, my dear Voltaire, but for horseflesh and pedigree hounds we are as far your superiors as you excel us in gold-lace coats and jewelled hunting-knives, or in the noise and fuss of your _curee_; while for hard riding--well, you hunt for the most part in a country that scarcely admits of fine horsemanship."

"It is one of our misfortunes not to be a nation of centaurs, my lord,"

answered Voltaire lightly and in English, which he spoke admirably, although he dropped into his own language occasionally. "I envy you English gentlemen your superb capacity for outdoor sports and your n.o.ble independence of intellectual amus.e.m.e.nts. Of course I except your lordship from the category of average Englishmen, who devote their days to killing birds and beasts, and their evenings to the study of blood and murder tragedies by their favourite Shakespeare."

"0, don't be too hard upon our st.u.r.dy British taste, my dear friend. We read Shakespeare occasionally, I admit, but we very seldom act his plays. That pretty foolish comedy, _As You Like It_, has never been represented since the author's death; and I protest there are some love-making scenes in it that would not disgrace Dryden or Wycherley."

"Do you know, Monsieur de Voltaire, that I delight in Shakespeare?" said Lady Judith, who sat on a sofa by the fire, fanning herself with a superb listlessness, and leaning down now and then to caress her favourite pug.

"From the moment Lady Judith admires him he is sacred," said the Frenchman gaily; "but you must confess that there is a crudeness about his tragedies, an extravagance of blood and wounds and sudden death, which can hardly stand comparison with such calm and polished compositions as _Phedre_ or _Le Cid_."

"I place Shakespeare infinitely higher than Racine or Corneille, and I consider his tragedies sublime," replied Judith, with the air of a woman who has the privilege of being positive even when she is talking nonsense.

"What, that refined and delicate Roman story, for instance--_t.i.tus Andronicus_, and Lavinia with her bleeding stumps, and the profligate blackamoor?"

"0, we give you Lavinia and her stumps," cried Bolingbroke, laughing.

"We repudiate _t.i.tus Andronicus_. It is the work of an earlier playwright, to which Shakespeare only gave a few fine touches; and those flashes of genius have made the whole play pa.s.s for inspired."

"0, if you are going to repudiate everything coa.r.s.e and brutal which pa.s.ses for Shakespeare, and claim only the finer touches for his, you may succeed in establishing him as a great poet. Would that we might all be judged as leniently by future critics! What say you, Mr. Topsparkle?

You are a man of cosmopolitan tastes, and have doubtless compared your native playwrights with those of other nations, from aeschylus downwards."

"I care not a jot for the whole ma.s.s of English literature," answered Topsparkle, snapping his taper fingers with an airy gesture; "and as for Shakespeare, I have never soiled my fingers by turning his pages. My mental stamina is not robust enough to cope with his monstrosities."

"And yet you revel in foreign coa.r.s.eness; you devour Boccaccio and Rabelais," said his wife, with a scornful glance at the pinched painted face and frail figure airing itself before the wide old hearth, set off by a gray and silver brocade suit with scarlet shoulder-knots.

"Ah, my dear Judith, no woman can appreciate the grace of Boccaccio nor the wit of Rabelais. Your s.e.x is seldom delicately critical. A butcher brute, like Shakespeare, pleases you because he conjures up scenes of blood and murder which your imagination can easily realise; but the niceties of wit are beyond your comprehension."

"I would rather have written the _Rape of the Lock_ than all Shakespeare's plays and poems to boot. 'Tis the best mock-heroic poem that ever was written," said Voltaire, pleased to compliment Lord Bolingbroke by praising his friend. To the exile, the favour of the Lord of Dawley was not altogether unimportant, and Arouet had been on a footing of friendship with Bolingbroke and his wife for some years, a favoured guest at his lordship's chateau near Orleans. He had sat at Bolingbroke's feet, and imbibed his opinions.

The _Henriade_ was still awaiting publication, and Francis Arouet had an eye to his subscription-list; a man at all times supple and adroit, ever able to make the best of every situation, dexterous alike as wit and poet, courtier, lover, speculator, flushed with the small social successes of his brilliant youth, secure in the friendship of royal d.u.c.h.esses and _roue_ princes, accepted in a society far above his birth, envied and hated by the malignant few--witness M. de Rohan's brutal retaliation--but petted and caressed by the many. Who could wonder that such a man, accustomed to float easily on the very crest of the wave, should be quite at home at Ringwood Abbey, oppressed neither by Bolingbroke's intellectual superiority nor by Lady Judith's insolent beauty?

"Nothing can excel perfection," answered Bolingbroke blandly. "My little friend's poem is an Y entire and perfect chrysolite; but it is perfection in miniature. I hope to see Pope excel on a larger scale and with a loftier theme. He is capable of writing a great philosophical poem, which shall place him above Lucretius."

"Hang up philosophy! I only care for Pope when he is personal," said Lady Judith. "He is like that other small creature, the adder, only of consequence when he stings."

"One would suppose he had stung you," retorted her husband.

"No, I have not yet been a.s.sailed in print. My time is to come, I suppose. But last summer, when all the world was at Twit'nam, there was not a day pa.s.sed that I did not hear of some venomous shaft which Poet Pug had let fly at one of my friends. No doubt he is just as spiteful about me, only one's friends don't repeat such things to one's face."

"Not to such a face as yours, madam," said the Frenchman. "Malevolence itself must yield to the magic of incomparable charms."

The conversation meandered on in the same trifling strain, Lavendale silent for the most part, standing in the shadow of the carved oak mantelpiece and casting uneasy glances from time to time towards his hostess, who seemed too much occupied by Lord Bolingbroke to be aware of anybody else's presence, save when she flung some casual speech into the current of idle talk. It was but eight o'clock, and they had dined at five. Seldom did that deep drinker, Henry St. John, leave the table so early. To-night he had not stayed to finish his second bottle of Burgundy ere he joined Lady Judith in the drawing-room, and had given the signal for the breaking up of the party, much to the disappointment of Sir Tilbury Haskell, an honest Hampshire squire, who had heard of Bolingbroke as a four-bottle man, and had hoped to make a night of it in such distinguished company. Mr. Topsparkle had that Continental sobriety which is always offensive to Englishmen, and Voltaire was equally temperate. Sir Tilbury rolled his ponderous carca.s.s to the billiard-room to snore on a sofa until supper-time, when there would be a well-furnished table for the sportsmen and more Champagne and Burgundy.

Bolingbroke was charmed with his hostess. That proud beauty, in its glorious prime of early womanhood, made him for the moment forgetful of his accomplished French wife, who was just then invalided at Bath, where he was to join her in a few days. It was not that he was unfaithful to his wife even in thought, but that his vanity hungered for new conquests. The triumphant Alcibiades of Anne's reign had become the boastful libertine who would fain be credited with new successes in the hour when he feels his seductive power on the wane.

This evening hour found Lord Bolingbroke in his lightest mood, warmed with wine, expansive, happy; but the cold winter daylight had seen him seated at his desk, thoughtful and laborious, writing the first number of the _Craftsman_, a newspaper of which he and William Pulteney were to be joint editors and proprietors, and which was to be launched almost immediately. That n.o.ble brow, now so bland and placid, had but a few hours ago been crowded with eager and vengeful thoughts, and was even at this moment but the smooth mask of an ambition that never slept, of a craft that never ceased from plotting, of a resolute determination to succeed at the expense of every finer feeling and of every loftier scruple. That deep and thrilling voice, which to-night breathed soft nothings into Judith's ear, had but a week ago been insinuating slanders against Walpole into the complacent ear of the King's favourite, her Grace of Kendal, ever a willing listener to the courtier who would weight his arguments with gold.

Lavendale watched yonder handsome profligate with a jealous eye. Yes, Judith listened as if with pleasure to those insidious addresses. The lovely eyes sparkled, the lovely lips smiled.

"She is an arrant coquette," thought Lavendale. "Years have made her charms only more seducing, her manners only more reckless. She may be laughing in her sleeve at yonder middle-aged Lothario; but it pleases her to fool him to the top of his bent--pleases her most, perhaps, to know that I am standing by and suffering d.a.m.nable tortures."

Judith looked up at that moment, almost as if in answer to his thought, and their eyes met.

"I protest you have quite a disconsolate air, Lord Lavendale!" she exclaimed. "What has become of your charmer, and how is it you are not in close attendance upon her? I saw her wander off to the music-room directly after dinner, and I believe your umbra--Mr.

What-d'ye-call-him--went with her. Mr. What-d'ye-call-him is fonder of music than you are."

"My friend Herrick Durnford is in all things, more accomplished than I."

"If he is, you had better keep a closer watch upon your own interests,"

said Judith, shaking her fan at him.

"I have nothing so sordid as interest to consider at Ringwood Abbey. I am here only for pleasure. _Fay ce que vouldras_ is my motto, as it was with the monks of that other abbey we know of."

"And a devilish good motto it is, Lavendale," exclaimed Topsparkle.

"'Fore Gad I have a mind, to get those cheery words hewn on the front of the stone porch, or inscribed on parchment and fastened, on the lintel of the door, in the Jewish fashion."

"You had better not," said Bolingbroke; "your friends might interpret the inscription too literally, and stay here for ever. Try it not upon me, Topsparkle, unless you would have me a fixture. For a man like myself, who is wearied of worldly strife and has renounced ambition, there could be no more tempting cloister than Ringwood Abbey."