, the eclat of
dishonour! To elope? Oh, no, too wary for that, but to be gazed at and
talked of as the fair Mrs. Darrell, to whom the Lovelace of London was
so fondly devoted. Walk in, haughty son of the Dare-all. Darest thou ask
who has just left thy house? Darest thou ask what and whence is the note
that sly hand has secreted? Darest thou?--perhaps yes: what then? canst
thou lock up thy wife? canst thou poniard the Lovelace? Lock up the air!
poniard all whose light word in St. James's can bring into fashion the
matron of Bloomsbury! Go, lawyer, go, study briefs, and be parchment.

Agonies, agonies, shot again through Guy Darrell's breast as he looked
on that large, most respectable house, and remembered his hourly
campaign against disgrace! He has triumphed. Death fights for him: on
the very brink of the last scandal, a cold, caught at some Vipont's
ball, became fever; and so from that door the Black Horses bore away
the Bloomsbury Dame, ere she was yet--the fashion! Happy in grief the
widower who may, with confiding hand, ransack the lost wife's harmless
desk, sure that no thought concealed from him in life will rise accusing
from the treasured papers. But that pale proud mourner, hurrying the eye
over sweet-scented billets; compelled, in very justice to the dead, to
convince himself that the mother of his children was corrupt only
at heart,--that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,--and,
wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the
flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in his
own keeping) had been fluttering to and fro in the charge of a vain
treacherous fool,--envy you that mourner? No! not even in his release.
Memory is not nailed down in the velvet coffin; and to great loyal
natures less bitter is the memory of the lost when hallowed by tender
sadness than when coupled with scorn and shame.

The wife is dead. Dead, too, long years ago, the Lothario! The world has
forgotten them; they fade out of this very record when ye turn the page;
no influence, no bearing have they on such future events as may mark
what yet rests of life to Guy Darrell. But as he there stands and gazes
into space, the two forms are before his eye as distinct as if living
still. Slowly, slowly he gazes them down: the false smiles flicker away
from their feeble lineaments; woe and terror on their aspects,--they
sink, they shrivel, they dissolve!

CHAPTER V.

The wreck