ook upon; and when he found himself gazing at the wondrous face of
storm, with its great stag's eyes, he knew that the mere sight waked in
him the old tumult and that it did not lose its first strange,
unexplained power. And once sitting studying the picture, his thought
uttered itself aloud, his voice curiously breaking upon the stillness
of the room.

"It is," he said, "as if that first hour a deep chord of music had been
struck--a stormy minor chord--and each time I hear of her or see her
the same chord is struck loud again, and never varies by a note. I
swear there is a question in her eyes--and I--I could answer it. Yet,
for my soul's sake, I must keep away."

He knew honour itself demanded this of him, for the stories which came
to his ears were each wilder and more fantastic than the other, and
sometimes spoke strange evil of her--of her violent temper, of her
wicked tongue, of her outraging of all customs and decencies, but,
almost incredible as it seemed, none had yet proved that her high
spirit and proud heart had been subjugated and she made victim by a
conqueror. 'Twas this which was talked of at the clubs and
coffee-houses, where her name was known by those frequenting them.

"She would be like a hare let loose to be hounded to her death by every
pack in the county," my Lord Twemlow had said the night he talked of
her at Dunstan's Wolde, and every man agreed with him and waited for
the outburst of a scandal, and made bets as to when it would break
forth. There were those among the successful heart-breakers whose
vanity was piqued by the existence of so invincible and fantastical a
female creature, and though my lord Duke did not hear of it, their
worlds being far apart, the male beauty and rake, Sir John Oxon, was
among them, his fretted pride being so well known among his
fellow-beaux that 'twas their habit to make a joke of it and taunt him
with their witticisms.

"She is too big a devil," they said, "to care a fig for any man. She
would laugh in the face of the mightiest lady-killer in London, and
flout him as if he were a mercer's apprentice or a plough-boy. He does
not live who could trap her."

With most of them, the noble sport of chasing women was their most
exalted pastime. They were like hunters on the chase of birds, the man
who brought down the rarest creature of the wildest spirit and the
brightest plumage was the man who was a hero for a day at least.

The winter my lord Duke of Marlbor