o
bring back the pledged breeches and coat and linen.

"The tall gentleman with so superb an air," the poor man said, proudly,
trembling with triumphant joy, "is my lord Marquess of Roxholm, and he
is the heir of the ducal house of Osmonde, and promises me patronage."

When they passed out into the street and were on their way to St.
James's Park, Tom Tantillion was in a state of much interested
excitement.

"What shall you do with it, Roxholm?" he asked. "Have it set in a rich
gold frame and hung up on the gallery at Osmonde House--or in the
country? Good Lord! I dare not have carried her to my lodgings if I
could have bought her. She would be too high company for me and keep me
on my best manners too steady. A man dare not play the fool with such a
creature staring at him from the wall. 'Tis only a man who is a hero,
and a stately mannered one, who could stay in the same room with her
without being put out of countenance. Will she rule in the gallery in
town or in the country?"

"She will not be framed or hung, but laid away," answered Roxholm. "I
bought her that no ill-mannered rake or braggart should get her and be
insolent to her in her own despite when she could not strike him to his
knees and box his ears, as she did the Chaplain's--being only a woman
painted on canvas." And he showed his white, strong teeth a little in a
strange smile.

"What!" cried Tom. "You did not buy her for your own pleasure----?"

The Marquess stopped with a sudden movement.

"On my faith!" he exclaimed, "there is the Earl of Dunstanwolde. He
sees us and comes towards us."

_CHAPTER XIII_

"_Your--Grace_!"

"Come with me, Gerald, to Dunstan's Wolde," said my lord, as they sat
together that night in his town-house. "I would have your company if
you will give it me until you rejoin Marlborough. I am lonely in these
days."

His lordship did not look his usual self, seeming, Roxholm thought,
worn and sometimes abstracted. He was most kind and affectionate, and
there was in his manner a paternal tenderness and sympathy which the
young man was deeply touched by. If it had been possible for him to
have spoken to any living being of the singular mental disturbance he
had felt beginning in him of late, he could have confessed it to Lord
Dunstanwolde. But nature had created in him a tendency to silence and
reserve where his own feelings were concerned. As to most human beings
there is a consolation in pouring forth the inne