inquired Captain Langford, who
still remained beside Dr. Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his
impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be
secured from further inconvenience by his confinement."

"His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the doctor--"a youth of no
birth or fortune, or other advantages save the mind and soul that
nature gave him; and, being secretary to our colonial agent in London,
it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved
her, and her scorn has driven him mad."

"He was mad so to aspire," observed the English officer.

"It may be so," said Dr. Clarke, frowning as he spoke; "but I tell
you, sir, I could wellnigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if
no signal humiliation overtake this lady who now treads so haughtily
into yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies
of our common nature, which envelops all human souls; see if that
nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring
her level with the lowest."

"Never!" cried Captain Langford, indignantly--"neither in life nor
when they lay her with her ancestors."

Not many days afterward the governor gave a ball in honor of Lady
Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal gentry of the colony received
invitations, which were distributed to their residences far and near
by messengers on horseback bearing missives sealed with all the
formality of official despatches. In obedience to the summons, there
was a general gathering of rank, wealth and beauty, and the wide door
of the province-house had seldom given admittance to more numerous and
honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's ball. Without
much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle might even be termed
splendid, for, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies shone
in rich silks and satins outspread over wide-projecting hoops, and the
gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery laid unsparingly upon the
purple or scarlet or sky-blue velvet which was the material of their
coats and waistcoats. The latter article of dress was of great
importance, since it enveloped the wearer's body nearly to the knees
and was perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole year's income
in golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste of the present day--a
taste symbolic of a deep change in the whole system of society--would
look upon almost any of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous, although
that evening the gu