nd his smile; Lord St. George replied to his observations by
a monosyllable; and the Duke of Haverfield, for the first time in his
life, asserted the prerogative which his rank gave him of setting the
example,--his grace did not reply to Lord Borodaile at all. In truth,
every one present was seriously displeased. All civilized societies
have a paramount interest in repressing the rude. Nevertheless, Lord
Borodaile bore the brunt of his unpopularity with a steadiness and
unembarrassed composure worthy of a better cause; and finding, at last,
a companion disposed to be loquacious in the person of Sir Christopher
Findlater (whose good heart, though its first impulse resented more
violently than that of any heart present the discourtesy of the
viscount, yet soon warmed to the desagremens of his situation, and
hastened to adopt its favourite maxim of forgive and forget), Lord
Borodaile sat the meeting out; and if he did not leave the latest, he
was at least not the first to follow Clarence: "L'orgueil ou donne le
courage, ou il y supplee." ["Pride either gives courage or supplies the
place of it."]

Meanwhile Linden had returned to his solitary home. He hastened to
his room, locked the door, flung himself on his sofa, and burst into a
violent and almost feminine paroxysm of tears. This fit lasted for
more than an hour; and when Clarence at length stilled the indignant
swellings of his heart, and rose from his supine position, he started,
as his eye fell upon the opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted
seemed the forced and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a
hurried step; with arms now folded on his bosom, now wildly tossed from
him; and the hand so firmly clenched that the very bones seemed working
through the skin; with a brow now fierce, now only dejected; and a
complexion which one while burnt as with the crimson flush of a fever,
and at another was wan and colourless, like his whose cheek a spectre
has blanched,--Clarence paced his apartment, the victim not only of
shame,--the bitterest of tortures to a young and high mind,--but of
other contending feelings, which alternately exasperated and palsied his
wrath, and gave to his resolves at one moment an almost savage ferocity
and at the next an almost cowardly vacillation.

The clock had just struck the hour of twelve when a knock at the door
announced a visitor. Steps were heard on the stairs and presently a
tap at Clarence's room-door. He unlocked it and the