"It is a difficult art!" she said--"I am afraid it will take a life-time to complete my training, even with my 'master.'"

And a smile still lingered in her eyes, giving them a witch-like glamour, when I kissed her again and bade her good-night.

"You will tell Prince Rimanez the news?" she said.

"If you wish it."

"Of course I wish it. Tell him at once. I should like him to know."

I went down the stairs,--she leaned over the bal.u.s.trade looking after me.

"Good-night Geoffrey!" she called softly.

"Good-night Sibyl!"

"Be sure you tell Prince Rimanez!"

Her white figure disappeared; and I walked out of the house in a chaotic state of mind, divided between pride, ecstasy and pain,--the engaged husband of an earl's daughter,--the lover of a woman who had declared herself incapable of love and dest.i.tute of faith.

XVIII

Looking back through the s.p.a.ce of only three years to this particular period of my life, I can remember distinctly the singular expression of Lucio's face when I told him that Sibyl Elton had accepted me. His sudden smile gave a light to his eyes that I had never seen in them before,--a brilliant yet sinister glow, strangely suggestive of some inwardly suppressed wrath and scorn. While I spoke he was, to my vexation, toying with that uncanny favourite of his, the 'mummy-insect,'--and it annoyed me beyond measure to see the repulsive pertinacity with which the glittering bat-like creature clung to his hand.

"Women are all alike,"--he said with a hard laugh, when he had heard my news,--"Few of them have moral force enough to resist that temptation of a rich marriage."

I was irritated at this.

"It is scarcely fair of you to judge everything by the money-standard,"--I said,--then, after a little pause I added what in my own heart I knew to be a lie,--"She,--Sibyl,--loves me for myself alone."

His glance flashed over me like lightning.

"Oh!--sets the wind in that quarter! Why then, my dear Geoffrey, I congratulate you more heartily than ever. To conquer the affections of one of the proudest girls in England, and win her love so completely as to be sure she would marry you even if you had not a sou to bless yourself with--this is a victory indeed!--and one of which you may well be proud. Again and yet again I congratulate you!"

Tossing the horrible thing he called his 'sprite' off to fly on one of its slow humming circuits round the room, he shook my hand fervently, still smiling,--and I,--feeling instinctively that he was as fully aware of the truth as I was, namely, that had I been a poor author with nothing but what I could earn by my brains, the Lady Sibyl Elton would never have looked at me, much less agreed to marry me,--kept silence lest I should openly betray the reality of my position.

"You see"--he went on, with a cheerful relentlessness--"I was not aware that any old-world romance graced the disposition of one so apparently impa.s.sive as your beautiful fiancee. To love for love's sake only, is becoming really an obsolete virtue. I thought Lady Sibyl was an essentially modern woman, conscious of her position, and the necessity there was for holding that position proudly before the world at all costs,--and that the pretty pastoral sentiments of poetical Phyllises and Amandas had no place in her nature. I was wrong, it seems; and for once I have been mistaken in the fair s.e.x!" Here he stretched out his hand to the 'sprite,' that now came winging its way back, and settled at once on its usual resting-place; "My friend, I a.s.sure you, if you have won a true woman's true love, you have a far greater fortune than your millions,--a treasure that none can afford to despise."

His voice softened,--his eyes grew dreamy and less scornful,--and I looked at him in some astonishment.

"Why Lucio, I thought you hated women?"

"So I do!" he replied quickly--"But do not forget why I hate them! It is because they have all the world's possibilities of good in their hands, and the majority of them deliberately turn these possibilities to evil.

Men are influenced entirely by women, though few of them will own it,--through women they are lifted to heaven or driven to h.e.l.l. The latter is the favourite course, and the one almost universally adopted."

His brow darkened, and the lines round his proud mouth grew hard and stern. I watched him for a moment,--then with sudden irrelevance I said--

"Put that abominable 'sprite' of yours away, will you? I hate to see you with it!"

"What, my poor Egyptian princess!" he exclaimed with a laugh--"Why so cruel to her Geoffrey? If you had lived in her day, you might have been one of her lovers! She was no doubt a charming person,--I find her charming still! However, to oblige you--" and here, placing the insect in its crystal receptacle he carried it away to the other end of the room. Then, returning towards me slowly, he said--"Who knows what the 'sprite' suffered as a woman, Geoffrey! Perhaps she made a rich marriage, and repented it! At anyrate I am sure she is much happier in her present condition!"

"I have no sympathy with such a ghastly fancy,"--I said abruptly--"I only know that _she_ or _it_ is a perfectly loathsome object to me."

"Well,--some 'transmigrated' souls _are_ loathsome objects to look at;"--he declared imperturbably--"When they are deprived of their respectable two-legged fleshly covering, it is extraordinary what a change the inexorable law of Nature makes in them!"

"What nonsense you talk, Lucio!" I said impatiently--"How can you know anything about it!"

A sudden shadow pa.s.sed over his face, giving it a strange pallor and impenetrability.

"Have you forgotten"--he said in deliberately measured accents--"that your friend John Carrington, when he wrote that letter of introduction I brought from him to you, told you in it, that in all matters scientific I was an 'absolute master?' In these 'matters scientific' you have not tested my skill,--yet you ask--'how can I know?' I answer that I do know--many things of which you are ignorant. Do not presume too much on your own intellectual capability my friend,--lest I prove it naught!--lest I demonstrate to you, beyond all possibility of consoling doubt, that the shreds and strippings of that change you call death, are only so many embryos of new life which you _must_ live, whether you will or no!"

Somewhat abashed by his words and still more by his manner, I said--

"Pardon me!--I spoke in haste of course,--but you know my theories--"

"Most thoroughly!" and he laughed, with an immediate resumption of his old manner--"'Every man his own theory' is the fashionable motto of the hour. Each little biped tells you that he has his 'own idea' of G.o.d, and equally 'his own' idea of the Devil. It is very droll! But let us return to the theme of love. I feel I have not congratulated you half enough,--for surely Fortune favours you singularly. Out of the teeming ma.s.s of vain and frivolous femininity, you have secured a unique example of beauty, truth and purity,--a woman, who apart from all self-interest and worldly advantage, weds you, with five millions, for yourself alone!

The prettiest poem in the world could be made out of such an exquisitely innocent maiden type! You are one of the luckiest men alive; in fact, you have nothing more to wish for!"

I did not contradict him, though in my own mind I felt that the circ.u.mstances of my engagement left much to be desired. I, who scoffed at religion, wished it had formed part of the character of my future wife,--I, who sneered at sentiment, craved for some expression of it in the woman whose beauty attracted my desires. However I determinedly smothered all the premonitions of my own conscience, and accepted what each day of my idle and useless life brought me without considering future consequences.

The papers soon had the news that "a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Sibyl, only daughter of the Earl of Elton, and Geoffrey Tempest, the famous millionaire." Not 'famous author' mark you!--though I was still being loudly 'boomed.' Morgeson, my publisher, could offer me no consolation as to my chances of winning and keeping a steady future fame. The Tenth Edition of my book was announced, but we had not actually disposed of more than two thousand copies, including a One-Volume issue which had been hastily thrust on the market. And the work I had so mercilessly and maliciously slated,--'Differences' by Mavis Clare was in its thirtieth thousand! I commented on this with some anger to Morgeson, who was virtuously aggrieved at my complaint.

"Dear me, Mr Tempest, you are not the only writer who has been 'boomed'

by the press and who nevertheless does not sell,"--he exclaimed--"No one can account for the caprices of the public; they are entirely beyond the most cautious publisher's control or calculation. Miss Clare is a sore subject to many authors besides yourself,--she always 'takes' and no one can help it. I sympathize with you in the matter heartily, but I am not to blame. At any rate the reviewers are all with you,--their praise has been almost unanimous. Now Mavis Clare's 'Differences,' though to my thinking a very brilliant and powerful book, has been literally cut to pieces whenever it has been noticed at all,--and yet the public go for her and don't go for you. It isn't my fault. You see people have got Compulsory Education now, and I'm afraid they begin to mistrust criticism, preferring to form their own independent opinions; if this is so, of course it will be a terrible thing, because the most carefully organized clique in the world will be powerless. Everything has been done for you that can be done, Mr Tempest,--I am sure I regret as much as yourself that the result has not been all you expected or desired.

Many authors would not care so much for the public approval; the applause of cultured journalism such as you have obtained, would be more than sufficient for them."

I laughed bitterly. 'The applause of cultured journalism!' I thought I knew something of the way in which such applause was won. Almost I began to hate my millions,--golden trash that could only secure me the insincere flattery of fair-weather friends,--and that could not give me fame,--such fame as has sometimes been grasped in a moment by a starving and neglected genius, who in the very arms of death, succeeds in mastering the world. One day in a fit of disappointment and petulance I said to Lucio--

"You have not kept all your promises, my friend!--you told me you could give me fame!"

He looked at me curiously.

"Did I? Well,--and are you not famous?"

"No. I am merely notorious," I retorted.

He smiled.

"The word fame, my good Geoffrey, traced to its origin means 'a breath'--the breath of popular adulation. You have that--for your wealth."

"But not for my work!"

"You have the praise of the reviewers!"

"What is that worth!"