ort and the
curtain, falling on the interrupted scene, hide him for ever from the
audience whom he had made wondering applauding partners in his
counterfeit. The last of his life was to be like the rest of it, with the
same elements of tragedy and of farce, of what attracted and of what
revolted, of the great and the little. It was to be like in another way
too; it was to be lived alone, without any true companion for his soul,
without the love that he had not asked except of one, and, asking of that
one, had not obtained. As the days went on, the fascination of the
spectacle she watched grew on her; it was more poignant now than in the
former time, and it filled all her life. Thus in some sort Alexander
Quisante had his way; his hold on her was not relaxed, his dominion over
her not abrogated, to the end of his life he would be what she told him
he had been--almost everything. When the end came, what would he be? The
question crossed her thoughts, but found no answer; some day it would
fall to be answered. Now she could only watch and wait, half persuaded
that the pretence was no pretence, yet always dreading the summons of
reality to end the play. So the world asked in vain what May Quisante was
thinking of, whether she wanted to kill him, or whether she thought him
above all laws. A puzzle to the world and a puzzle to her friends, she
waited for the falling of the blow which Quisante daily challenged.

Sir Rufus Beaming met Dr. Claud Manton at the Athenaeum and showed him a
newspaper paragraph.

"To address a great meeting at Henstead!" said Manton, raising his brows
and shaping his lips for a whistle. "'From his own and neighbouring
constituencies.'"

"He might just as well take chloroform comfortably by his fireside," said
Sir Rufus. "It would be a little quicker, perhaps, but not a bit more
sure."

And again they washed their hands of the whole affair very solemnly.

CHAPTER XIX.

DEATH DEFIED.

Constantine Blair, no less active and soon little less serene in
opposition than in power, felt himself more than justified in all that he
had ever said about Weston Marchmont when he received an intimation of
Marchmont's intention to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. Yet he was
aghast at this voluntary retirement into the wilderness of private life,
a life without bustle, without gossip, without that sense of being
intimate with the march of affairs a