ws among the cloud-rents and lightning in the
chasms:--which image may be accounted for by the fact that when a girl
she had in adoration kissed the feet of Napoleon, the giant of the later
ghosts of history.

It was a princely compliment. She received it curtseying, and disarmed
the intended irony. In reply, she called him "Great Britain." I regret to
say that he stood less proudly for his nation. Indeed, he flushed. He
remembered articles girding at the policy of peace at any price, and half
felt that Mrs. Lovell had meant to crown him with a Quaker's hat. His
title fell speedily into disuse; but, "Yes, France," and "No, France,"
continued, his effort being to fix the epithet to frivolous allusions,
from which her ingenuity rescued it honourably.

Had she ever been in love? He asked her the question. She stabbed him
with so straightforward an affirmative that he could not conceal the
wound.

"Have I not been married?" she said.

He began to experience the fretful craving to see the antecedents of the
torturing woman spread out before him. He conceived a passion for her
girlhood. He begged for portraits of her as a girl. She showed him the
portrait of Harry Lovell in a locket. He held the locket between his
fingers. Dead Harry was kept very warm. Could brains ever touch her
emotions as bravery had done?

"Where are the brains I boast of?" he groaned, in the midst of these
sensational extravagances.

The lull of action was soon to be disturbed. A letter was brought to him.

He opened it and read--

"Mr. Edward Blancove,--When you rode by me under Fairly Park, I did
not know you. I can give you a medical certificate that since then
I have been in the doctor's hands. I know you now. I call upon you
to meet me, with what weapons you like best, to prove that you are
not a midnight assassin. The place shall be where you choose to
appoint. If you decline I will make you publicly acknowledge what
you have done. If you answer, that I am not a gentleman and you are
one, I say that you have attacked me in the dark, when I was on
horseback, and you are now my equal, if I like to think so. You
will not talk about the law after that night. The man you employed
I may punish or I may leave, though he struck the blow. But I will
meet you. To-morrow, a friend of mine, who is a major in the army,
will be down here, and will call on you from me; or on any friend of
yours you are pleased