liged to you to listen to me a moment. I
wish to tell you my reasons for what, I dare say, seems strange to you,
my continued intimacy with--"

But I was not permitted to end my sentence; he divined what I was about
to say, and stopped me, with a cold, wearied air.

"I understand; but I prefer not to hear them. I have no desire to
interfere with your actions, and less to be troubled with your motives.
Of course, you choose your friendships as you please. All I beg is, that
you obey the wish I expressed the other day, and intrude the subject no
more upon me."

And he bade me good morning, urged his mare into a sharp canter, and
turned down St. James's Street. How little those in the crowd, who
looked at him as he rode by, pointing him out to the women with them as
Viscount Earlscourt, the most eloquent debater in the Lords, the
celebrated foreign minister, author, and diplomatist, guessed that a
woman's name could touch and sting him as nothing else could do, and
that under the calm and glittering upper-current of his life ran a dark,
slender, unnoticed thread that had power to poison all the rest! Those
women, mon ami!--if we _do_ satirize them a little bit now and then, are
we doing any more than taking a very mild revenge? Don't they make fools
of the very best and wisest of us, play the deuce with Caesar as with
Catullus, and make Achilles soft as Amphimachus?

The next morning I met Beatrice at a concert at the Marchioness of
Pursang's. Lady Pursang would not have been, vous concevez, on the
visiting list of Lady Mechlin, as she was one of the creme de la creme,
but she had met Beatrice the winter before at Pau, had been very
delighted with her, and now continued the acquaintance in town. I
happened to sit next our little Pythoness, who looked better, I think,
that morning, than ever I saw her, though her face was set into that
disdainful sadness which had become its habitual expression. She liked
my society, and sought it, no doubt, because I was the only link between
her and her lost past; and she was talking with me more animatedly than
usual, thanking me for having got her admittance to the Lords that
night, during a pause in the concert, when Earlscourt entered the room,
and took the seat reserved for him, which was not far from ours. Music
was one of his passions, the only delassement, indeed, he ever gave
himself now; but to-day, though ostensibly he listened to Alboni and
Arabella Goddard, Halle and Vieu