"Hear me out before you condemn me. In marriage, as in everything else, you must take it out in malt or in meal: don't fancy that you 're going to get love and money too. It's only in novels such luck exists."

"I'm very glad I do not share your sentiments," said Charles, sternly.

"They 're practical, anyway. But now to another point. Here we are, sitting by the fire in all frankness and candor. Answer me fairly two questions: Have you given up the race?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, have you any objection if I enter for the stakes myself?"

"You! Do you mean that you would propose for May Leslie?"

"I do; and, what's more, I don't despair of success, either."

An angry flush rose to Heathcote's face, and for a moment it seemed as if his passion was about to break forth; but he mastered it, and, rising slowly, said: "If I thought such a thing possible, it would very soon cure me of _one_ sorrow." After a pause, he added: "As for _me_, I have no permission to give or to withhold. Go, by all means, and make your offer. I only ask one thing: it is, that you will honestly tell me afterwards how it has been received."

"That I pledge my word to. Where do you stop in Paris?"

"At the Windsor."

"Well, you shall have a despatch from me, or see myself there, by Saturday evening; one or the other I swear to."

"Agreed. I'll not wish you success, for that would be hypocritical, but I 'll wish you well over it!" And with this speech, uttered in a tone of jeering sarcasm, Heathcote said good-bye, and departed.

CHAPTER XXII. THE PUBLIC SERVANT ABROAD.

We scarcely thought that the distinguished public servant, Mr. Ogden, was likely to occupy once more any portion of our readers' attention; and yet it so fell out that this useful personage, being on the Continent getting up his Austria and Northern Italy for the coming session, received a few lines from the Earl of Sommerville, half mandatory, half entreating, asking him to find out the young Marquis of Agincourt, and take him back with him to England.

Now the Earl was a great man, for he was father-in-law of a Cabinet Minister, and related to half the leaders of the party, so that Mr.

Ogden, however little the mission suited his other plans, was fain at once to accept it, and set out in search of his charge.

We need not follow him in his pursuit through Lombardy and the Legations, down to Tuscany and Lucca, which latter city he reached at the close of a cold and dreary day of winter, cheered to him, however, by the certainty that he had at length come up with the object of his chase.

It was a habit with Quackinboss, whenever he sent out Layton's servant on an errand, to leave the house door ajar, that the sick man might not be disturbed by the loud summons of the bell; and so on the evening in question was it found by Mr. Ogden, who, after some gentle admonitions by his knuckles and some preparatory coughs, at last groped his way into the interior, and eventually entered the spacious sitting-room.

Quackinboss had dined, and was seated at his wine beside an ample fireplace, with a blazing wood-fire. An old-fashioned screen sheltered him from the draught of the ill-fitting windows, while a comfortable buffalo rug was stretched under his feet. The Colonel was in his second cigar, and in the drowsy mood of its easy enjoyment, when the harsh accents of Mr. Ogden's voice startled him, by asking, "Can you inform me if Lord Agincourt lives here?"

"You 're a Britisher now, I expect?" said the Colonel, as he slowly puffed out a long volume of smoke, but never moved from his seat.

"My question having the precedence, sir, it will be, perhaps, more regular to answer it first," said Ogden, with a slow pertinacity.

[Illustration: 242]

"Well, I ain't quite sure o' that, stranger." drawled out the other.

"Mine was a sort of an amendment, and so might be put before the original motion."

The remark chimed in well with the humor of one never indisposed to word-fencing, and so he deferred to the suggestion, told his name and his object in coming. "And now, sir," added he, "I hope not to be deemed indiscreet in asking an equal candor from you."

"You ain't a doctor?" asked Quackinboss.

"No, sir; not a physician, at least."

"That's a pity," said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes off his cigar. "Help yourself, stranger; that's claret, t'other's the country wine, and this is cognac,--all three bad o' their kind; but, as they say here to everything, 'Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!'"

"It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir," said Ogden, somewhat pompously, "that I am forced to recall you to my first question."

"Come si fa!" repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in committing to memory.

"Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I ask?"

"I ain't in a witness-box, stranger. I 'm a-sittin' at my own fireside.

I 'm a-smokin' my Virginian, where I 've a right to, and if _you_ choose to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we 'll talk it over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you 've caught the wrong squirrel by the tail, Britisher, you have!"

"I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt resided here?"

"And so you ain't a doctor?" said Quackinboss, pensively.

"No, sir; I have already told you as much."

"Bred to the law, belike?"

"I _have_ studied, sir, but not practised as a lawyer."

"Well, now, I expected you was!" said Quackinboss, with an air of self-satisfaction. "You chaps betray yourselves sooner than any other class in all creation; as Flay Harris says: 'A lawyer is a fellow won't drink out of the bung-hole, but must always be for tapping the cask for himself.' You ain't long in these parts?"

"No, sir; a very short time, indeed," said Ogden, drearily.

"You needn't sigh about it, stranger, though it is main dull in these diggin's! Here's a people that don't understand human natur'. What I mean, sir, is, human natur' means goin' ahead; doin' a somewhat your father and your grandfather never so much as dreamt of. But what are these critturs about? Jest showin' the great things that was done centuries before they was born,--what pictures and statues and monuments their own ancestors could make, and of which they are jest showmen, nothing more!"

"The Arts are Italy's noblest inheritance," said Ogden, sententionsly.

"That ain't my platform, stranger. Civilization never got anything from painters or sculptors. They never taught mankind to be truthful or patient or self-denyin' or charitable. You may look at a bronze Hercules till you 're black in the face, and it will never make you give a cent to a lame cripple. I 'll go further again, stranger, and I 'll say that there ain't anything has thrown so many stumblin'-blocks before pro-gress as what you call the Arts, for there ain't the equal o' them to make people idlers. What's all that loafing about galleries, I ask ye, but the worst of all idling? If you want them sort of emotions, go to the real article, sir. Look at an hospital, that's more life-like than Gerard Dow and his dropsical woman,--ay, and may touch your heart, belike, before you get away."

"Though your conversation interests me much, sir, you will pardon my observing that I feel myself an intruder."

"No, you ain't; I'm jest in a talkin' humor, and I'd rather have _you_ than that Italian crittur, as don't understand me."

"Even the flattery of your observation, sir, cannot make me forget that another object claims my attention."

"For I 've remarked," resumed Quackinboss, as if in continuation of his speech, "that a foreigner that don't know English wearies after a while in listenin', even though you 're tellin' him very interesting things."

"I perceive, sir," said Ogden, rising, "that I have certainly been mistaken in the address. I was told that at the Palazzo Barsotti--"

"Well, you 're jest there; that's what they call this ramshackle old crazy consarn. Their palaces, bein' main like their nobility, would be all the better for a little washin' and smartenin' up."

"You can perhaps, however, inform me where Lord Agio-court _does_ live?"