^,^.. 
 
 ■frf****-*** >■ •«*»=*«*- ^•fflfc&f-.
 
 
 LI B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 
 D374fr 
 v.l
 
 NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for 
 each Lost Book is $50.00. 
 
 The person charging this material is responsible for 
 its return to the library from which it was withdrawn 
 on or before the Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underiining of books are reasons for discipli- 
 nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. 
 To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 L161— O-1096
 
 ■i^ 
 
 li^^ 
 
 7
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 OUIDA'S NOVELS. 
 
 Uniform Edition, cro^uji ^vo. cloth extra, ^s. each. 
 
 HELD IN BONDAGE. 
 
 STRATHMORE. 
 
 CHANDOS : A Novel. 
 
 UNDER TWO FLAGS. 
 
 IDALIA : A Romance. 
 
 TRICOTRIN. 
 
 CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE. 
 
 PUCK : His Vicissitudes, Adventures, «S:c. 
 
 FOLLE FARINE. 
 
 A DOG OF FLANDERS. 
 
 PASCAREL : Only a Story. 
 
 TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES. 
 
 SIGNA. 
 
 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 ARIADNE. 
 
 CHATTO ^- WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W.
 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 A STORY 
 By O U I D a 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'puck' 'aKIADN^' 'SIGNA' ETC. 
 
 ' Si I'emploi de la Comedie est de corriger les vices, je ne vois pas 
 par quelle raison il y en aura de privilegies ' Moliere 
 
 JN THREE VOLUMES— VOL. /. 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1878 
 
 [ T/te right of translation is reserved]
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET
 
 
 A PEOPOS, 
 
 A FROG that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that 
 bore a lamp. 
 
 ' Why do you do that 1 ' said the glowworm. 
 
 * Why do you shine 1 ' said the frog.
 
 AVANT-PEOPOS. 
 
 When Zeus, half in sport and half in cruelty, made 
 man, young Hermes, who, as all Olympus knew, was 
 for ever at some piece of mischief, insisted on med- 
 dling with his father's work, and got leave to fashion 
 the human ear out of a shell that he chanced to 
 have by him, across which he stretched a fine cob- 
 web that he stole from Ai-achne. But he hollowed 
 and twisted the shell in such a fashion that it would 
 turn back all sounds except very loud blasts that 
 Falsehood should blow on a brazen honi, whilst the 
 impenetrable web would keep out all such whispers 
 as Truth could send up from the depths of her 
 well. 
 
 Hennes chuckled as he rounded the curves of his 
 ear, and fastened it on to the newly-made Human 
 Creature.
 
 AVANT-PROPOS. 
 
 ? 
 
 ' So shall these mortals always hear and believe 
 the thing that is not/ he said to himself in glee — 
 knowing that the box he would give to Pandora 
 would not bear more confused and complex woes to 
 the hapless earth than this gift of an ear to man. 
 
 But he forgot himself so far that, though two ears 
 were wanted, he only made one. 
 
 Apollo, passing that way, marked the blunder, 
 and resolved to avenge the theft of his milk-white 
 herds which had led him such a weary chase through 
 Tempe. 
 
 Apollo took a pearl of the sea and hollowed it, 
 and strung across it a silver string from his own lyre, 
 and with it gave to man one ear by which the voice 
 of Truth should reach the brain. 
 
 ' You have spoilt all my sport,' said the boy 
 Hermes, angry and weeping. 
 
 ' Nay,' said the elder brother, with a smile. ' Be 
 comforted. The brazen trumpets will be sure to 
 drown the whisper from the well, and ten thousand 
 mortals to one, be sure, will always turn by choice 
 our ear instead of mine.'
 
 FEIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 'It is a pull, sister,' said the elder Miss Moiia, 
 of Craig Moira, to the younger. 
 
 'It is a pullj sister. But we promised 
 Archie.' 
 
 'We promised Archie, and I'm wishful to 
 see how she gets on wi' the man that sold 
 carpets.' 
 
 So the carriage, bearing the Misses Moira, 
 of Craig Moira, their plaids, pugs, ear-trumpets, 
 and courier, continued its course across the 
 Eoman Campagna, and up the steep and wooded 
 roads that led to the old Castle of Fiordelisa. 
 
 TOL. I. B
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The Misses Moira, of Moira, lived on their 
 own lands in Caithness, were veiy rich, very ugly, 
 very eccentric, spoke with a strong native accent, 
 and delivered their opinions uncalled for ; two 
 of their sister's children were respectively the 
 Duchess of Forfar, and the Marquis of Fin gal ; 
 the younger was the echo of the elder — both 
 wore spectacles, both were deaf; and neither ever 
 forgot that the Moiras, of Craig Moira, had the 
 right to sit before their sovereign, and were allied 
 with half the bluest blood and highest names in 
 Grreat Britain. 
 
 They were now about to call on one of their 
 connections, and gazed anxiously through their 
 spectacles for the Castle of Fiordelisa, where she 
 dwelt. Fiordelisa came at last in sight, a grey, 
 rambling, and ancient pile, set amidst cypress 
 and ilex woods, with its gardens straying down 
 into its farm-lands in Italian fashion, covering 
 hills and plains with corn and vine and olive. 
 
 'A braw place this, but ill-kept,' said the 
 elder Miss Moira, as they entered a dark 
 avenue of ancient oaks, ' and has the idolatrous 
 emblems even at the very gates.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 She shut her eyes not to see the Pieta let 
 into the wall under the woods, and kept them 
 shut lest she should see any more such signs. 
 They had been brought into the land of such 
 mummeries under protest by the dangerous ill- 
 ness of a beloved sister, mother of her young 
 Grrace of Forfar, at Xaples, and the sister being 
 restored to health, they were hastening away 
 from the scene of abominations, only pausing a 
 few days in Rome because the younger of them 
 was somewhat of an invalid, and unequal to 
 rapid travelling. 
 
 The sudden stoppage of the carriage made 
 the elder Miss Moira open her eyes. They had 
 arrived at the entrance door of Fiordelisa. 
 
 Between the centre columns of a beautiful 
 loggia, built by Bramante, there was standing 
 a handsome, black-browed woman, a little in 
 advance of two gentlemen, who stood one on 
 each side of her, awaiting the arrival of the 
 guests. 
 
 She was the Lady Joan Challoner. 
 
 With ardour and cordial eagerness of welcome 
 
 £ 2
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 she rushed down the stone steps and darted to 
 the carriage. 
 
 ' Oh, dearest Miss Moira, how kind of you ! 
 And dear Miss Elizabeth, too. How sorry I 
 am not to be in Rome ! We go down for 
 good the day after to-morrow. If I had only 
 known you were coming there, of course I should 
 have gone in last week. Let me present them to 
 you — Mr. Challoner ; Prince loris. Come ir, 
 pray, out of the sun. Yes, even in November it 
 is oppressively warm. You must be overladen 
 with all those plaids. Robert lo ' 
 
 ' Enchante de I'honneur de vous voir, mes- 
 dames,' murmured a tail, graceful, dark-eyed 
 person, with a sweet smile and a low bow, coming 
 forward on to the first step, and offering his arm 
 to the old gentlewoman. 
 
 ' Hoot toot, man ! Canna ye speak yer own 
 tongue ? ' said the elder Miss Moira sharply, 
 accepting the arm of her host, as she thought, 
 and entering the house with him, whilst her 
 sister followed with their hostess, who was talking 
 eagerly into her ear- trumpet ; the other gentle- 
 man, who had a Scotch face and a German
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 manner, and looked like a fusion between a 
 Leipzig philologist and an American senator, 
 made a feeble attempt to offer his arm as well, 
 but liesitated, not seeing very well how to do it, 
 and halted midway, making believe to hold back 
 a barking Clumber spaniel. 
 
 The whole party passed into the loggia, and 
 thence into the first great apartment opening out 
 from it, where some twenty other people, English 
 and American residents of Eome, had been 
 gathered to do honour to the Misses Moira, of 
 Moira, and were taking tea, eating grapes, and 
 looking at pictures and china. Seated, the two 
 ladies looked round the noble tapestried guest- 
 chamber with some bewilderment and some vague 
 displeasure. 
 
 ' So ye're Joan Perth -Douglas that was ? ' 
 said the elder Miss Moira, bringing her spec- 
 tacles to bear on her hostess. ' Ye were a slip of 
 twelve when- we saw ye last — twenty years ago, 
 aye, twenty years and more. Will ye tell me 
 why your good husband talks French to us ? ' 
 
 ' Allow me, madam,' murmured the gentle- 
 man, who looked like a Leipzig philologist and
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 an American senator, offering to relieve her of 
 her plaids. 
 
 ' Don't be officious, man ! ' said Miss Moira, 
 sharply. ' My sister's no richt in the lungs, and 
 your master's house is draughty.' 
 The gentleman shrank back. 
 ' I never saw a Scot so dark as your good 
 husband, Joan,' pursued the elder Miss Moira, 
 adhering to her original thoughts, sternly fasten- 
 ing her glasses upon the graceful and dark-eyed 
 personage, who murmured a soft and perplexed 
 « Plait-il, Madame ? ' 
 
 ' Have you lived among Papists till you've 
 forgot every word of the tongue you were born 
 to, sir ? ' asked Miss Moira of him, believing that 
 she was addressing a fellow-count rj^man. 
 
 'You must be inconvenienced by all those 
 
 plaids, madam. Do allow me ' commenced 
 
 in a kind of despair the other person who had 
 been scouted. 
 
 ' Canna ye wait till ye're spoke to ! ' said the 
 lady, turning on him in wrath at the interference. 
 * Canna ye teach your servants better ways, 
 Leddy Joan, than to gird at a body like that ?
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 7 
 
 A very brown man for a Scot, your husband, 
 though extraordinary well-favoured. How comes 
 it he canna talk his own tongue ? ' 
 
 'That is not my husband,' said the Lady 
 Joan hurriedly, wdth a flush rising on her face 
 and a laugh to her eyes. ' You are mistaken, 
 dear Miss Moira. I introduce people so badly ; 
 this is only loris, a friend, you know. My 
 husband, Mr. Challoner, you've been taking for 
 a servant, and scolding about your plaids.' 
 
 The well-bred twenty people who were taking 
 tea at Fiordelisa were not so perfectly well-bred 
 that they could help a little titter as they 
 listened. 
 
 'Prut-tut!' cried the elder Miss Moira, 
 with her head higher in the air, being a person 
 who never recognised her own errors, let them be 
 made manifest as they might. ' This man re- 
 ceived us, certainly he received us, at the door 
 (I am correct, sister ?). Certainly he received us, 
 Leddy Joan. If you be master here,' she de- 
 manded with sudden vigour of the gentleman 
 whom she was informed was Mr. Challoner, as he 
 returned with a cup of tea and a cream-jug — ' if
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 you be master here, why don't you behave like 
 it ? Are you master, eh ? ' 
 
 Mr. Challouer, conscious of the twenty well- 
 bred people and the irrepressible ill-bred titter, 
 begged Miss Moira to tell him if she took much 
 sugar or little. 
 
 « I can sugar for myself ! ' said that lady with 
 asperity. ' So you are Leddy Joan's husband, 
 are you? You don't seem to conduct yourself 
 like it. But I thought the other was very dark 
 for a Scot.' 
 
 ' Do you take cream, madam ? ' murmured 
 Mr. Challoner, bending his back stifSy over the 
 silver jug, whilst Miss Moira stared with stony 
 gaze at the coronets and coats of arms on the 
 chairs. 
 
 ' Whose quarterings are those ? ' she demanded. 
 ' They're none known north o' Tweed, nor north 
 o' Thames either for that matter ; the shape o' 
 the shield ' 
 
 ' Dear Miss Moira, allow me ,' said the 
 
 Lady Joan, avoiding heraldry by bringing up a 
 small division of the twenty well-bred people for 
 presentation. But Miss Moira was not to be so
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 liglitly diverted from her purpose. Having bent 
 her liead as many times as politeness required, 
 she retained her grasp on Mr. Challoner, and re- 
 turned to her original investigations. ' A fine 
 place,' she resumed, letting her spectacles rove 
 from the timber roof to the mosaic floor ; ' a fine 
 place ; is it your own ? ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner murmured inarticulately, and 
 stooped for the sugar-tongs. 
 
 ' Bought it ? ' said Miss Moira sharply. 
 
 ' No — not precisely.' 
 
 « Hired it ? ' 
 
 ' Not exactly. That is, at least ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner shifted his eyeglass, and, being 
 an exact man, paused to find an exact word. 
 
 ' Oh, my gude soul, then if ye've na bought 
 it and na hired it, it's na yours at all, and what 
 for be ye speering to ask us into it ? ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner wondered to himself why an 
 unkind Providence would move old maiden ladies 
 from their own safe ingle-nooks by grey Atlantic 
 shores, and muttered something of ' a friend, an 
 old friend.' 
 
 ' Oh, it's the dark man's, is it ? He don't
 
 10 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 look old,' said Miss Moira, ' and you and your 
 good leddy live in it out of friendship. Is that 
 the custom in this papistical country, pray, sir ? ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner murmured that he tli ought it 
 was the custom — ' the houses were so large, the 
 nobility were so poor ' ^ 
 
 ' And has he a good lady ? What does she 
 say to it ? Certainly, Leddy Joan asked us out 
 here as to her oiun place. Quite clearly — her 
 own place. I am correct, sister ? ' 
 
 ' Quite correct, sister. Her own place.' 
 
 ' loris is not married,' said Mr. Challoner, 
 wondering if he could drop the sugar-tongs again 
 without too much awkwardness. 'He is a good 
 fellow. We are very much attached to him. Will 
 you like to see my greenhouses ? I am curious 
 in the Nymphceas — cyanea — ccerulea — rubra.^ 
 
 ' A pond-lily's a puir feckless taste for a man,' 
 said Miss Moira severely. ' Archie asked us to 
 come and see his daughter, and so we came. But 
 certainly when she wrote to us she said her " own 
 place" — most distinctly her own place.' 
 
 ' Oh, she has got into the habit of calling it 
 so ; she lias done so much for it '
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 11 
 
 ' But if it be the young man's ' 
 
 Lady Joan Challoner begged at that moment 
 to prej^ient to Miss Moira an Anglican clergy- 
 man. 
 
 The Anglican clergyman disposed of, Miss 
 Moira, of Craig Moira, returned to the charge. 
 
 'Eh, but it must be a perilous experiment — 
 twa masters under one roof.' 
 
 ' Eh, it must, indeed,' murmured the younger 
 Miss Moira. ' Mony voices make muckle strife.' 
 
 ' Ay, they do. Tell me now, do you twa good 
 gentlemen never fash one another ? ' 
 
 ' Never,' said Mr. Challoner cordially, but his 
 cold light eyes fell as he spoke. 
 
 'Then ye're just no human, sir,' said Miss 
 ]Moira with emphasis ; ' and Joan Perth-Douglas 
 liad always a sharp tongue of her own. Perth- 
 Douglas women never were easy to live with. 
 You seem a quiet body yourself, but still ' 
 
 ' Let me show you my wife's fowls. The 
 fame of the poultry of Craig Moira ' com- 
 menced Mr. Challoner. 
 
 ' Still, I think you're no wise, and so 1*11 tell 
 Archie,' continued Miss Moira, not to l)e moved
 
 12 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 even by praise of her poultry-yard. ' It's a queer 
 way of living, and certainly she said her own 
 place, '' her own place," and ye'll no take offence 
 for I always speak my mind, but that Papist's a 
 deal too bonny to look at, and Leddy Joan's a 
 young woman still.' 
 
 ' My dear madam ! I have not tlie most dis- 
 tant idea of your meaning ' 
 
 ' Then ye're just a fule, sir,' said Miss Moira 
 sharply. 
 
 'Will you look at my wife's poultry? She 
 has some spangled bantams that ' 
 
 ' Eh ? Joan Perth-Douglas has taken to cocks 
 and hens and bubbly-jocks, has she ? Weel, 
 there's no accounting for conversions. Perth- 
 Douglas women were always a handful. I've 
 known three generations of them, and they 
 always were masterful. Dear douce Archie 
 never daured say his soul was his own. Yes, I'll 
 come and see your chicks and stove plants. But 
 how can they be yours if the place is the 
 Papist's ? ' 
 
 ' It was a tumble-down old barrack. \Ye have 
 spent a good deal on it. One is always glad to
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 13 
 
 do good to a friend,' murmured Mr. Challoner, 
 a little vaguely, offering his arm to bis tor- 
 mentor. 
 
 ' Humph I ' said the elder Miss Moira witli a 
 sniff. 
 
 ' We are quite farmers here, you know/ Mr. 
 Challoner continued, leading the way through 
 courts and chambers to the open air. ' The 
 whole thing had gone to rack and ruin w^hen we 
 took it in hand. Italians are so improvident, 
 and the national habits are so wasteful. Bat my 
 wife's energy is wonderful ; whatever she under- 
 takes prospers ' 
 
 ' Humph I ' said the elder Miss Moira once 
 more. ' And the handsome Papist, is he grateful 
 to ye for her energy ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, don't talk about gratitude. There is no 
 question of that I We are always glad to be of 
 use to our friends, and loris is an excellent 
 fellow. Ask Lord Archie.' 
 
 Lord Archie was an idol of Craig Moira, and 
 his word was law there. Miss Moira w^as softened 
 by it, and her suspicions were mollified. She 
 consented to be conducted through the green-
 
 14 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 houses, praised the bantams, and only sniffed a 
 little as she j^assed the open door of the castle 
 chapel, where some peasants were going in for 
 vespers. She returned in a more amiable frame 
 of mind to her sister and her sofa, and relented 
 enough to take a fresh cup of tea and some fruit, 
 which was handed her with exquisite grace by the 
 Prince loris. Miss Moira's eyes through their 
 spectacles followed the Prince loris to the other 
 end of the large reception-room. 
 
 ' He's an elegant-made man and a taking- 
 one,' she said to her host ; ' and I think ye're no 
 wise to live in the same house with him. Oh, 
 ye've no need to glower and look glum : an old 
 body like me can tell truth without fashin' any- 
 body, and ye know that we and Archie's people 
 have foregathered all our lives, and it never 
 was hid from us that Joan Perth-Douglas was 
 masterful, and had her cantrips. Lord, man ! 
 Do ye think they'd have wedded her to a mere 
 decent body like you, if she hadn't been a hand- 
 ful ? Not they ; they're proud-stomached, and 
 ye sold carpets and the like in Bagdad.' 
 
 'Keally, madam ' Mr. Challoner shifted
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 15 
 
 his eyeglass, and felt that this kind of amiability 
 was worse to bear than the previous antagonism. 
 
 ' Hoot ! it's no sort of use giving yourself 
 bobberies with us. We know all about you,' said 
 Miss Moira pleasantly. ' Your forebears were 
 decent folks, dwellers on my cousin Allandale's 
 lands on the Border for mony a generation, pious 
 canny bodies, but sma' traders all. I mind well 
 when I was a bit lassie, and staying at Allan- 
 dale's, buying tapes and pins and what not, at 
 your grandmother's little shop. She sold snuff 
 and letter papers, and had the post, and sold 
 stamps as weel — twa bawbee stamps they were 
 in those days. Ye mind it too, don't ye, 
 sister ? ' 
 
 ' Eicht well, sister. She sold sweeties too.' 
 
 ' Lord, man, it's sma' blame to ye. Yoiu' 
 folk were all decent folk in the Cheviots, and 
 true believers. But I'll not deny that when ye 
 stuck up on your countin' house stool so high that 
 ye mated with Archie's daughter, we did set our 
 necks stiff, and ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner threw down a piece of majolica. 
 It belonged to the house, and would cost him
 
 16 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 nothing, and the crash of the falling vase spared 
 him more recollections of Allandale. 
 
 ' Sister, we must be going. The sun's well- 
 nigh down,' said the elder Miss Moira, when tlie 
 majolica was picked up. ' Now, sir, take an old 
 woman's word, and don't disremember that your 
 good leddy's a Perth-Douglas, and Perth-Douglas 
 women are always like bucking fillies ; and the 
 Papist's got a face o' grace and a pretty way with 
 him. Oh, you may get on your high horse as ye 
 like ! Sense is sense. Still, I'm glad to see 
 ye have such a trust in your wife, and it speaks 
 well for ye both, and shows she's given over her 
 cantrips ; and I'm sorry I fashed ye about your 
 grandame, but there's nothing to be ashamed of, 
 nothing at all. She was a good clean religious 
 body, and I'm not one to look down on ye because 
 ye are not what we are, though I'm free to own 
 when they married Joan to ye we quarrelled with 
 Archie, as far as anybody ever can quarrel with 
 him, the fair sweet-spoken soul ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner, conscious of a sudden silence 
 that had fallen on the twenty well-bred people 
 scattered about, behind and around him, in which
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 17 
 
 the voice of his torturer fell horribly loud and 
 distinct, wished that the mosaic floor would open 
 as the gulf for Cur tins. 
 
 ' Joan's a fine-featured woman,' pursued Miss 
 Moira, rising in all her plaids, ' but she's a Perth- 
 Douglas, and she's got a wild eye. You mind 
 my word when I'm gone. Look after her well 
 with the Papist. And now, gude day, and 
 many thanks to ye, Leddy Joan. I'm mighty 
 glad to see ye've taken to such a sober thing 
 as tillin' land and fattin' fowls, and I hope ye'U 
 keep steady at it ; and, yes, to be sure, I'll re- 
 member ye to my niece Forfar, though she's 
 never seen ye, and I doubt if she's ever heard o' 
 ye, and ye're scarce cousin to her, as ye're 
 sayin' — it's very far away, indeed ; one of your 
 forebears in the last century married the then 
 duke's seventh daughter, and they were Archie's 
 father's great grandfather's cousins-german — still 
 it counts, oh yes, it counts, and I'll give her your 
 love for certain; and so I'll bid ye fareweel, 
 and many thanks to ye, and we'll return it in 
 kind whenever ye come north again. And I 
 suppose ye don't travel with the Papist, but ye 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 can explain to him that we'd be glad to see him 
 in Caithness, for it might be the saving of his 
 soul if he came in reach of the true doctrine, and 
 our minister would weary the Lord for him night 
 and day, for he is a personable man and a cour- 
 teous, and it is sad to think he will burn in the 
 life everlasting.' 
 
 ' Mille remerciments, Mesdames, et a revoir,' 
 murmured the Prince loris, vaguely gathering 
 that they were wishing him well, and offering 
 them a bouquet of autumnal heliotrope and 
 Louise de Savoie roses. 
 
 The Miss Moiras accepted the flowers, and 
 drove away in state, pugs, plaids, ear-trumpets, 
 courier, and all, on their return jom-ney towards 
 Rome. 
 
 ' There is a deal in manner, sister,' said the 
 elder Miss Moira, as she smelt the heliotrope. 
 
 ' There is, sister. What were ye meaning ? ' 
 
 ' That the Papist has a manner, and that the 
 carpet man hasn't,' replied the elder Miss Moira. 
 ' Let us hope that Leddy Joan canna see the 
 difference, and has steadied down. But I have 
 my doubts, sister.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 19 
 
 ' And ye do well to have your doubts, sister. 
 Ye were ever very sharp o' sight.' 
 
 The elder Miss Moira sniffed with scorn the 
 bland air of the Koman twilight. 
 
 ' It needs but half an eye, Elizabeth, to see 
 that a Perth-Douglas woman loves her cantrips, 
 and that the Papist is a deal bonnier to look at 
 than the person that sold carpets. But she was 
 very civil, and her gude man seems a well-mean- 
 ing douce body, and she's steadied down ; I shall 
 say so everywhere ; she's steadied down, and we 
 must do all we can for her, sister. She is Archie's 
 daughter.' 
 
 ' She is Archie's daughter, sister.' 
 
 The elder Miss Moira would have changed 
 her amicable intentions if she could have seen 
 her hostess dancing a war-dance in the loggia, 
 and snapping her fingers after the vanishing 
 carriage. 
 
 ' The hateful old cats ! ' cried the Lady Joan, 
 'I thought they'd never go I Wretched old 
 women ! Why didn't you stop their tongues, 
 Robert ? And what an ass you were, lo, receiv- 
 ing them like that. Of course they couldn't help 
 c 2
 
 20 FHIEyBSBIP. 
 
 finding out the house was yours, and old idiots 
 like those will never understand ' 
 
 ' They were good harmless people,' said the 
 Prince loris, in his own tongue, a little timidly, 
 standing under the arch of his loggia, and watch- 
 ing the sunset. 
 
 'Stuff! They are the most horrid old har- 
 ridans in existence. But every old hag seems 
 good to you. I do believe you see good in every- 
 body ! The idea, too, of wasting those roses on 
 'em ! Eoses sell for half a franc apiece now. And 
 giving them yom-self, too I They've been boring 
 Mr. Challoner to death about what you are here, 
 and whose the house is. But you're always 
 doing something ridiculous. Only remember this. 
 Give your head away with the roses next time, if 
 you like, only all I insist is — don't compromise 
 me ! ' 
 
 The Prince loris was silent. He leaned 
 against a column of the loggia, and watched the 
 sun go down behind the hills. 
 
 Lady Joan Challoner and her husband went 
 within to the twenty well-bred people, and busied 
 themselves pleasantly with them, and gave parting
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 21 
 
 smiles and Muscat grapes to some, and retained a 
 few to dinner. 
 
 MeanwMle, the j\Iiss Moiras rolled onward 
 to Eome through the descending mists of evening, 
 and nodding amidst their cushions, fell asleep, 
 until roused by the cessation of all movement, 
 and a voice they knew, they were startled to find 
 that the carriage was entering the gates of Eome. 
 A gentleman, old, bent, feeble, smiled and 
 nodded, came up and shook hands, as the horses 
 were stopped for a moment by the pressure of 
 traffic. This gentleman was Lord George Scrope- 
 Stair, an old acquaintance and a privileged 
 person. 
 
 ' You have been to see Pope Joan ? ' he said, 
 with a little laugh. ' Did you like Fiordelisa ? ' 
 and he nodded and laughed again. ' Ah ! yes, we 
 always call her Pope Joan ; I do, at least, when 
 my daughters don't hear me ; Pope Joan keeps 
 the keys of both heaven and earth and ousts Peter 
 out of his own palace, you know I Only my little 
 joke ; don't tell the girls. Good night.' 
 
 And the old man, who had been once a dandy 
 and a beau in days when George the Fourth was
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 King, walked onward in the twilight, chuckling 
 feebly. 
 
 ' Pope Joan I ' echoed Miss Moira of Moira, as 
 their carriage rolled over the stones. ' Sister, I 
 wish we had not gone to the place ! ' 
 
 ' So do I, sister,' said the echo. 
 
 They went peacefully home to their hotel and 
 dined, with misgivings weighing on their souls ; 
 and then being tired slept again until the elder 
 Miss Moira awoke from a blissful doze with a 
 start. 
 
 ' I wonder whose the place really is, sister ? ' 
 she mumbled as she yawned. 
 
 ^ I wonder, sister,' said the echo.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 It ^Ya3 sunset on tlie Pincio on the first day of 
 December. Beyond St. Peter's there was that 
 sky of purple and of gold which always seems so 
 much more marvellous here than it does any- 
 where else ; that roseleaf warmth and soft trans- 
 parency of flame-like colour which those who have 
 looked on it never will forget so long as their 
 lives shall last on earth. 
 
 Below, loud, cracked, discordant bells were 
 chiming one against another; near at hand a 
 military band was playing very fast and very much 
 out of tune, waltzes of Strauss's ; a monk, the 
 worse for wine, was screaming homilies from a 
 bench, and guards were vainly striving to arrest
 
 24 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 him amidst the laughter of the crowd ; but 
 nothing spoiled the grandeur of the scene, or 
 could destroy the sublime calmness of the de- 
 clining day, as the broken green lines of the 
 hills grew black against the burning scarlet of 
 the clouds, and the vast expanse of roofs and 
 spires, cupolas and towers, obelisks and gardens, 
 ruins and palaces, colossal temples and desolate 
 marshes, that is all called Rome, stretched away 
 wide and vague and solemn as a desert ; with a 
 sun, nearly as red and rayless as the desert's, 
 hanging above the cross on the great dome. 
 
 It was four o'clock ; and there was the cus- 
 tomary crowd of fashionable idlers, fretting horses, 
 emblazoned carriages, sauntering dandies, hand- 
 some artists, tired invalids, black-robed priests and 
 scarlet-clad janitors, cuirassed soldiers and curly- 
 headed children, violet-gowned seminarists and 
 purple-gowned scholars, and, first and foremost, 
 fashionable ladies chattering at the top of their 
 voices about the first fox-hunt of the year, the 
 first court ball, the new arrivals, and the Pope's 
 state of health. 
 
 The sun was going down in majesty behind
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the round domes raised to lay the restless soul 
 of Nero ; but up here on the hill nobody scarcely 
 looked at it, but idling and laughing and talking 
 people turned their backs to the west, to hear the 
 music better, and kept looking instead at one 
 woman as she passed, and murmured to each 
 other in a little flutter : ' Dear me ! There is 
 Etoile, and the Coronis I ' and then reassured each 
 other, and said, ' Yes, indeed — oh yes, really — 
 that is Etoile with the Coronis ! ' in a certain 
 tone of disappointment because she was only 
 like any other well-dressed woman after all, and 
 hiunanity considers that when genius comes forth 
 in the flesh the touch of the coal from the altar 
 should have left some visible stigmata on the lips 
 it has burned, as, of course anybody knows, it 
 invariably leaves some smirch upon the character. 
 
 Humanity feels that genius ought to wear a 
 livery, as Jews and loose women wore yellow in 
 the old golden days of distinction. 
 
 ' They don't even paint ! ' said one lady, and 
 felt herself aggrieved. 
 
 Nevertheless the lady and all the rest of the 
 crowd continued to look.
 
 26 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Dorotea Coronis, they had all of them seen 
 many scores of times tlirough their opera-glasses 
 at Covent Grarden, the Grand Opera, and tlie 
 theatre at Baden ; but Etoile they had hardly 
 any of them ever seen, and tliey stared hard with 
 all the admirable impudence of a well-born mob. 
 
 ' They don't seem to see us! ' said the aggrieved 
 lady who had wondered they did not paint. 
 
 ' Look deuced proud,' muttered an English- 
 man who had lifted his hat eagerly, and put it on 
 sulkily, being unnoticed. 
 
 The carriage swept by again, and ])oth the 
 women in it looked at the sunset, and not at the 
 crowd. The crowd began to feel neglected, and 
 to grow ill-natured. Sovereigns took tlie trouble 
 to bow: why could not these two whose only 
 royalty was that of art ? 
 
 ' Who is Etoile ? ' said the crowd. 
 
 ' An enigma without an Qj^dijDus,' said one of 
 its items, wlio thought himself a wit. 
 
 ' There is no enigma at all, except in your 
 imaginations,' said another item, who was old and 
 grave, which was a foolish remark, no doubt, be- 
 cause an enigma that is purely imaginary must
 
 FRIEXDSHIF. 27 
 
 be of necessity the most puzzling of all, since it 
 follows as a matter of com'se that nobody ever 
 can solve it. 
 
 The carriage paused, and its occupants bought 
 Parma violets. The crowd was disposed to think 
 there must be some motive for the action, as it 
 eyed dubiously the boarhound trotting behind 
 the carriage, and would fain have believed that 
 his tongue hanging out meant a mystery, and 
 that he broke a commandment in wagging his 
 tail. 
 
 It is one of the privileges of celebrity that 
 the person celebrated can never wash his hands 
 or open an umbrella without being accredited 
 ^Yith some occult reason for his proceedings. 
 
 ' Is it really Etoile ? ' said the crowd. Grene- 
 ralJy speaking people were disposed to believe 
 that she was not herself, but somebody else. 
 
 She did not see them. She had a sad habit 
 of not seeing those who surrounded her. "When, 
 recalled to a sense of her negligence, she begged 
 the pardon of others for having overlooked them, 
 she was not readily forgiven. People would 
 rather be insulted than be unperceived.
 
 28 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Her equipage, with its long-tailed Roman 
 horses, went the round of the Pincio, past 
 the cactus and aloes, the water clock and the 
 kiosques for toys, the music-stands and the 
 garden chairs and the various other embellish- 
 ments placed here, where Augustus mused, and 
 Caesar and Pompeius supped. 
 
 She gazed at the lovely light, rosy as blown 
 pomegranate leaves, with little puffs of golden 
 cloud upon it, light as a cherub's curls. 
 
 ' How matchless it is ! ' she said, with a sigh. 
 
 ' It is Rome,' said Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 And for them both, the crowd ceased to exist. 
 They only saw the slow-descending sun. 
 
 To be wise in this world one should always be 
 blind to the sunset, but never to the people that 
 bow. The sun, neglected, will not freckle us 
 any more than if we had penned him a thousand 
 sonnets as the lord of light. A man or a woman, 
 slighted, will burn us brown all over with blis- 
 tering spots of censure indelible as stains of 
 iodine, and deep as wounds of vitriol. 
 
 ' Is it really Etoile ? ' said the crowd eagerly, 
 and scarcely looked at the brilliant Gitana-like
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 29 
 
 loveliness of her companion, the great Coronis, 
 because it was familiar, but tmrned and stared with 
 all the stony-hearted inquisitiveness of Society at 
 the little they could see of the one whom they 
 called Etoile, which was indeed only a heap of 
 silver-fox furs, a pile of violets, a knot of old 
 Flemish lace, and dreaming serious eyes that 
 watched the sunset. 
 
 She herself scarcely saw that any crowd was 
 there. This kind of oblivion was usually her 
 deadliest sin, and she was unconscious that she 
 sinned, which made it very much worse. People 
 blew their bubbles, or threw their stones about 
 her, and she never heeded either, though indeed, 
 the stones came so thickly sometimes that she 
 ought in common gratitude to have been flattered : 
 calumny is the homage of our contemporaries, as 
 some South Sea Islanders spit on those they 
 honour. 
 
 Popularity has been defined as the privilege 
 of being cheered by the kind of people you 
 would never allow to bow to you. 
 
 Fame may be said to be the privilege of 
 being slandered at once by the people who
 
 30 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 do bow to yon, as well as by the people who 
 do not. 
 
 'Who is she?' said the crowd on the Pincio 
 
 Nobody there knew at all. So everybody 
 averred they knew for certain. Nobody's story 
 agreed with anybody else's, but that did not 
 matter at all. The world, like Joseph's father, 
 gives the favourite a coat of many colours which 
 the brethren rend. 
 
 ' She says herself — ' hinted the old grave 
 idler, member of many clubs, but nobody wanted 
 to hear what she said herself. Pas si bete ! Of 
 course she told a story well and laid on the 
 right colom's ; nobody had talents like hers for 
 nothing. 
 
 The old idler got no listeners, and went away 
 pensively to lean on the parapet. He was so far 
 in the minority as to believe what she said her- 
 self; which was quite simple and comparatively 
 uneventful, and, therefore, evidently improbable. 
 If she had said she had new lovers every night, 
 and killed them in a back garden every morning, 
 like the Jewess of the French Eegency, people 
 might have believed : there would have been
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 31 
 
 nothing staggeringly and audaciously impossible 
 about that. 
 
 The crowd on the Pincio, when the whisper of 
 her name had first run through it, had been alive 
 with admiration and cordiality ; but the crowd 
 felt that it had had cold water thrown on its 
 enthusiasm, and so began to hiss, as fire under 
 cold water always does. 
 
 ' Very clever, indeed,' said the crowd. ' Oh, 
 yes, no doubt. Oh, wonderful, quite wonderful, 
 every one knew that ; but who was she ? Ah ! 
 nobody could tell. Oh yes, indeed, it was quite 
 well known. She was a beggar's brat found on 
 a doorstep ; she was a cardinal's daughter ; she 
 was a princess's petite faiite ; she was a Eoth- 
 schild's mistress ; she was a Cabinet Minister's 
 craze ; she was poor De Morny's daughter ; she 
 had been a slave in Circassia ; she had been 
 a serf in White Eussia; she had been found 
 frozen, with a tambourine in her hand, outside 
 the gates at Vincennes ; her father was at the 
 galleys, her mother kept an inn. Xo, they 
 were both Imperial spies and very rich ; no, 
 they were both dead ; no, nobody ever said that.
 
 82 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 they said this. The poor Emperor knew, beyond 
 doubt ; and the secret had died with him. She 
 was quite out of society, she was in the highest 
 society; she was not received anywhere, she was 
 received everywhere. Oh, that was not true, 
 but this was. Well, the less said the better.' 
 
 When the world has decided that the less 
 said the better, it always proceeds directly to 
 say everything in the uttermost abundance that 
 it can possibly think of, and it did so on the 
 Pincio this day at sunset, and asked a variety 
 of questions as well. 
 
 ' Why had she come ? ' 
 
 ' Was she going to remain ? ' 
 
 ' Would she go out at all ? ' 
 
 ' Would she receive ? ' 
 
 ' Would she be received ? ' 
 
 ' Would she go the legations ? ' 
 
 ' Were those Eussian furs ? ' 
 
 ' Was that dress Worth's ? ' 
 
 ' Why did she stop her horses there, with her 
 back to everybody, where she couldn't hear a 
 note of the music?' 
 
 So they cliattered in much excitement, gazing
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 33 
 
 at her through their eyeglasses, or from under 
 their parasols. 
 
 Nobody there happened to know anything, 
 except that she had come to Rome from Paris, 
 by Nice and Genoa, the previous night ; but 
 there was a general feeling that there was 
 probably something wrong. 
 
 Why did she turn the back of her carriage to 
 them and buy Parma violets ? 
 
 In a little while, as the sun grew into a 
 solemn red ball behind the purple dome, and the 
 shadows became longer, the throng began to go 
 down the great winding stairways towards the 
 square below, where the waters fell from the 
 marble mouths, and the grave sphinxes were 
 couched beneath the drooping boughs. 
 
 A lady, wrapped in sealskin, with a sealskin 
 hat set well over her brows, began to move also 
 with the two persons who formed her escort. 
 The trio was composed of Lady Joan Challoner, 
 and her husband and the Prince loris. 
 
 ' Is that Etoile ? ' said the Lady Joan eagerly, 
 as the carriage dashed past them, and she caught, 
 the name spoken by some bystanders. 
 
 VOL. T. D
 
 34 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 * Is that reely Etoile, now ? Do tell,' said 
 a fashionable American of her acquaintance 
 joining her, by name Mrs. Henry V. Clams. 
 
 ' They say so. I've never seen her myself,' 
 answered Lady Joan. ' lo, and I, and Mr. Chal- 
 loner have just been to call on her. but she was 
 out. She has brought me letters.' 
 
 ' Reely, now ! How interestin' ! ' said the 
 fashionable American. ' Well, it's a very elegant 
 turn-out, now, aren't it ? My word ! ' 
 
 ' You can get anything you like to pay for in 
 Eome,' said the Lady Joan with much contempt — 
 she herself was on foot . ' I must be civil to her. 
 Voightel begs me to be so, and my father too; 
 I must have her to dinner. Will you come, 
 Mrs. Clams ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, thanks, now ; that's reel kind ! ' said 
 Mrs. Henry Y. Clams. 'I'm dyin' to see her, 
 dyin', and I've got a bet in N'York about the 
 way she wears her hair. But they do say she's 
 so rude, you know ; Cyrus C. Butterfield — as works 
 the Saratoga press, you know — wrote to ask her to 
 send him every particular of her life from her 
 baptism upwards, and would you believe it ? — her
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 36 
 
 secretary — a female, I believe — sent him back his 
 own letter ! There I ' 
 
 The Lady Joan laughed shortly. 
 
 ' I should say Cyrus C. Butterfield's inquiries 
 would be particularly inconvenient to her! I 
 wonder why on earth she has come to Eome ! ' 
 
 ' Is there anything strange in coming to 
 Eome ? ' said the Prince loris in his soft Eoman 
 tongue. 
 
 ' No, of course no ; what silly things you say I 
 Only, of course she's got some motive. She's with 
 Coronis too.' 
 
 ' The loveliest woman in Europe,' said Mr. 
 Challoner with solemnity and unction. 
 
 ' Wretched creature,' said the Lady Joan. 
 
 ' My word, now, what she's up to ? ' inquired 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams with lively interest. 
 ' Why, she's Duchesse Santorin, aren't she ? ' 
 
 ' And the Duke is going to divorce her.' 
 
 ' My ! You don't say so ! ' 
 
 ' Santorin is very thankless : she has paid his 
 debts again and again,' murmured the Prince 
 loris. 
 
 'Oh, everybody that sings is an angel to 
 
 D 2
 
 86 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 you, lo ! ' said Lady Joan, with some irrita- 
 tion. 
 
 ' If she's paid his debts, he's paid by the 
 nose ! Everybody knows what these professional 
 women always are. I daresay Etoile herself is 
 no better.' 
 
 'My dear love,' said Mr. Challoner with 
 serious reproof, ' surely you forget. Would your 
 father ever ' 
 
 ' My father's an ass where a petticoat's con- 
 cerned, and he'd swear it had all the virtues in- 
 side it if it had only taken his fancy. He makes 
 a great fuss about her ; Voightel, too, who be- 
 lieves in nobody, believes in her. It's so queer ! 
 I suppose she's only sharper than most people.' 
 
 ' I never heard a word ' began the Prince 
 
 loris. 
 
 ' Stuff,' said the Lady Joan, ' there are heaps 
 of stories — hideous stories. And there's no smoke 
 without fire, that's certain. What day shall we 
 ask her to dinner ? ' 
 
 'Well, now, I did read years ago, in our 
 country, that she lived with a stoker as she'd 
 taken a fancy to in the Lyons cars once,' said
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 37 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams reflectively, searching into 
 recesses of her memory. 
 
 Mr. Challoner and the Prince loris laughed 
 outright. 
 
 ' I never heard of the stoker, but I daresay 
 there are things quite as fishy,' said the Lady 
 Joan. ' What night shall we fix ? Will the sixth 
 suit you, Mrs. Clams ? ' 
 
 They sauntered on by the stone balustrades 
 with the scattered groups, who were all making 
 for the Corso, or walking under the Tempietto, 
 Babuino-way, and who were all more or less 
 talking of Etoile and of Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 The groups seldom said anything that was 
 amiable of either, still less seldom anything that 
 w^as true. But to be thus spoken of at all consti- 
 tutes what the world calls Fame, and ever since 
 the days of Horace the world has wondered that 
 the objects of it are not more grateful for the 
 distinction of detraction. 
 
 ' Why do you spit ? ' says the glow-worm. 
 
 ' Why do you shine ? ' says the frog.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 At the entrance of the Corso, Mr. Challoner 
 recollected an appointment with a friend ; his 
 wife and the Prince loris strolled on down the 
 Corso together. 
 
 It was the hour when the street was at its 
 fullest and prettiest ; the irregular casements 
 were half-lighted, half-dark ; the painted and 
 gilded signs swung in the shadows ; lamps hung 
 above balconies draped with red ; in a church 
 doorway white priests were chanting with torches 
 flickering ; at the corners stood great baskets of 
 violets and camellias, rose and white ; knots of 
 piffe^^ari droned the wild, sad monotones of the 
 music of the hills ; at a quick march a file of
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 39 
 
 bersar/lieri, with tlieir plumes streaming, were 
 coming up the narrow way as up a mountain 
 pass ; horses were trampling, drums were beating 
 loud. 
 
 ' I wonder how you will like Etoile, lo ; you 
 always do like queer people I' said the Lady Joan, 
 as they moved down into that picturesque chaos 
 and luminous mingling of the night and day. 
 
 Her companion answered with gallant grace, 
 ' Whatever she is, she will be only for me — la 
 terza incommoda I ' 
 
 The Lady Joan laughed, well pleased, as she 
 pushed her way through the lively and laughing 
 crowds do^vn to the Palazzo di Venezia. In an 
 angle near the Eipresa dei Barberi, where two 
 streets crossed one another in that jDopulous and 
 convenient locality, there was a small house 
 squeezed between two grim palaces, and known 
 as the Casa Challoner to the society and the 
 tradespeople of Eome. 
 
 The Lady Joan climbed the stone stairs of 
 the Casa Challoner with agility, and her com- 
 panion followed with the accustomed matter-of- 
 course air of a man who returns home.
 
 4 3 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The house was dusky, there was only one 
 lamp lighted in the anteroom, but she pushed 
 her way safely into a little chamber heavy with 
 tlie smell of Turkish tobacco, and hung with 
 Turkish stuffs, and fitted with Turkish couches. 
 
 On one of the divans the Prince loris cast 
 himself a little wearily. 
 
 The Lady Joan lit a cigarette, stuck it be- 
 tween her teeth, cast aside her sealskins, and 
 began to look over a pile of letters. 
 
 ' I wish she hadn't come, bother her,' she 
 muttered, ' Here's pages more eulogy from that 
 old Tartar, Voightel. She seems to be perfection. 
 I hate perfect people.' 
 
 The Prince loris stretched himself out, and 
 closed his eyes ; his friend continued her exami- 
 nation of her correspondence. There was ten 
 minutes' silence, only broken by the ticking of a 
 Flemish chime-clock. 
 
 At the end of ten minutes Lady Joan looked 
 up impatiently. 
 
 ' Don'^lie there, lo, doing nothing ; tell me 
 what we've got for next week, that I may settle 
 this dinner.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 4] 
 
 He sighed, raised himself, and took out a set 
 of tablets from his pocket. 
 
 ' You have the English bishop and bishopess 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 ' " Bishopess ! " Well, go on.' 
 
 ' The Echeance soiree on the 3rd.' 
 
 ' Can't miss that. Well ? ' 
 
 'You take more English to the Opera on 
 the 4th.' 
 
 ' Ajpres ? ' 
 
 * Fifth, masked ball at the Greek Legation ? ' 
 
 ' Sixth, Saturday ? ' 
 
 ' Two teas — names English that I cannot pro- 
 nounce.' 
 
 'We'll throw over the teas. Sixth will do. 
 Gret some cards, and fill 'em up.' 
 
 He obeyed, and went to a little wi'iting-table. 
 
 'She's a sensational creatm^e to have,' con- 
 tinued his friend ; ' it's best to have her seen 
 here first, before anybody else takes the cream 
 off it. Whom shall we ask ? Clever people 
 they must be, and people that go in for that 
 sort of thing. Ask Lady Cardiff ; she won't mind 
 if Etoile does startle the proprieties.'
 
 42 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 He filled in the card obediently; and she 
 dictated some dozen other names to him, leaning 
 over his shoulder as he wrote. 
 
 ' Xow fill in Etoile's,' she said. ' I'll send 
 a little note with it, too, to be civil. Tliat old 
 beast Voightel and papa make such a fuss ' 
 
 ' I cannot put — Etoile on the card ? ' 
 
 ' Of course not. You must put Comtesse 
 d'Avesnes. Did ever you hear such rubbish I 
 And papa and Voightel believe in her, title 
 and all.' 
 
 ' Why should they not ? ' said the writer, as 
 he slid the cards into their envelopes. 
 
 The Lady Joan thrust her tongue in her 
 cheek, and jumped a step of the hornpipe. 
 
 * As much countess as the cat ! Now do 
 draw that triptych that old Norwich wants so — 
 make haste. We dine at seven, you know, be- 
 cause of the theatre. Send Anselmo with the notes 
 to-morrow morning. Etoile's you might leave to- 
 night. She's on j-our way home. I'll write her 
 note now.' 
 
 She crossed over to her bureau, and wrote a 
 pretty epistle, which ended :
 
 FEIEyDSHIP. 48 
 
 ' Pray kindly waive ceremony, and come to 
 us on Saturday ; my dear father and so many of 
 our common friends have spoken so much of you 
 that I cannot even think of you as a stranger, and 
 my husband will be as glad as I to have the honour 
 of receiving Etoile in our Eoman home.' 
 
 Then she wrote another, which began : 
 
 'Dearest Voightel, — The hint of a wish of 
 yours is a delight and a command to me ; you 
 know how I love and honour all genius, &c. &c.' 
 
 Then she scampered through half-a-dozen 
 more letters, with the pen of a ready writer ; 
 jumped up and crossed over to where her friend 
 sat, sketching by the light of a reading-lamp, 
 and ran her fingers through his soft dark hair. 
 
 ' How slow you are. lo ! You've only drawn 
 one wing yet, and I've written fifteen letters.' 
 
 That night the Prince loris, after escorting 
 the Lady Joan to and from the broad fun of the 
 Valle Theatre, walked through the white Eoman 
 moonlight, to his own little ancient palace in the 
 street of the Ripetta, and pausing, as he went, at 
 the Hotel de Eussie, left the Lady Joan's note 
 there for the Comtesse d'Avesnes.
 
 4i 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' Etoile ; it is a pretty name,' he thought to 
 himself ; ' whose star is she beside her own ? A 
 great artist, all the world knows ; what else may 
 she be, I wonder ? ' 
 
 Now, to wonder about any woman was a 
 liberty and a luxury forbidden to him. 
 
 The key of his very thoughts hung to the 
 girdle of the Lady Joan as she moved, and lay 
 under the pillow of the Lady Joan as she slept — 
 or she believed it did, which satisfied her quite 
 as well
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 Who was Etoile ? 
 
 The world in general said it as often as the 
 crowd on the Pincio. 
 
 They never attended to what she said herself. 
 Nobody wants facts. Facts are hardly more 
 amusing than mathematics. Unless, indeed, they 
 are the kind of facts that you can only just 
 whisper under your breath. And of this kind of 
 facts — the only kind that can in any way be 
 diverting to others — the life of the great Belgian 
 artist remained conspicuously, absurdly, incon- 
 sistently, and inconsiderately barren. 
 
 The world supplied the deficiency. 
 
 The world supplies you with history as our
 
 46 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 great tailor supplies us with dresses : he sur- 
 veys our face and figure and selects for us 
 what is appropriate. The world cuts out its 
 gossip on the same judicious lines — whether 
 you like what is given you is of no moment 
 either to Worth or the world : you have got to 
 wear it. 
 
 Be thankful that you are Somebody. Neither 
 Worth nor the world would trouble themselves 
 to fit you if you were not. 
 
 In the morning Society that had been on the 
 Pincio read in its papers that Etoile was in Rome 
 on account of her health. Physicians had advised 
 perfect repose and a warmer winter than Paris 
 or Brussels can offer. Society read the paragraph, 
 and putting down the papers wondered what the 
 paragraph was meant to cover. Something, of 
 course. Heaps of things, probably. Health in- 
 deed ! What rubbish ! Wasn't it a sculptor ? 
 .... No ; money ! . . . . Ah, money ? . . . . 
 Oh, indeed, much worse than that ! . . . . Exile 
 was ordered, quite ordered from the Elysee. 
 You understand ? Everybody whispered, nodded, 
 seemed to understand, because nobody did under-
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 47 
 
 stand in the least ; and nobody, of course, could 
 endure to look so ignorant. 
 
 When a name is on the public mouth the 
 public nostril likes to smell a foulness in it. 
 It likes to think that Byron committed incest ; 
 that Milton was a brute ; that Raffaelle's vices 
 killed him ; that Pascal was mad ; that Lamar- 
 tine lived and died a pauper, that Scipio took 
 the treasury moneys; that Thucydides and Phi- 
 dias stole ; that Heloise and H\^atia were but 
 loose women after all — so the gamut runs over 
 twice a thousand years ; and Rousseau is at heart 
 the favourite of the world because he was such a 
 beast, with all his talent. 
 
 When the world is driven to tears and prayers 
 by Schiller it hugs itself to remember that he 
 coidd not write a line without the smell of rotten 
 apples near, and that when he died there was 
 not enough money in his desk to pay his burial. 
 They make him smaller, closer, less divine : the 
 apples and the pauper's coffin. 
 
 Etoile kept no rotten apples by her, and the 
 world sniffed in vain. 
 
 Had she worn men's clothes, travelled with
 
 48 FBIENDSHIP. 
 
 a married duke, and had a caprice for a drunken 
 painter, no doubt the world would have better 
 understood her genius. As it was it felt ex- 
 asperated, and thought her ostentatious. 
 
 After all, the innocence of a woman is no 
 amusement whatever to anybody. It only gives 
 nothing to be said about her. In any case, when- 
 ever the woman is celebrated, the world will not 
 put up with nothing. It cuts out the garment 
 of her history to its own fancy. It is like the 
 great tailor : it knows better than she does what 
 she ought to wear. 
 
 Etoile rose and strolled through the courts and 
 galleries of the Vatican, unconscious, or indiffer- 
 ent, of the babble that went on concerning her. 
 
 Society saw her servant and the big dog, Tsar, 
 sitting outside with the Swiss Gruard. It was 
 almost inclined to think there must be something 
 wrong with a Cardinal. What a nasty savage- 
 looking creature that dog was ! 
 
 At noon she went back to her hotel, found 
 a few cards awaiting her, and at two o'clock was 
 seen to be driving with the Princess Vera von 
 Regonwalde, an ambassadress and a wit.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 49 
 
 Princess von Eegonwalde, or Princess Vera, as 
 her friends called her by her pretty girlish title, 
 Avas an Austrian by birth, and the wife of a 
 Minister of another great Power, not Austrian. 
 She was one of the loveliest women that ever 
 brightened a court ; she had a face like the 
 Cenci, a walk like a young Diana's, a smile like 
 a child's, a grace like a flower's, eyes like a 
 fawn's, fancies like a poet's, and a form that 
 Titian would have given to Venus. She had 
 beautiful children, that clung round her in Cor- 
 reggio-like groups ; and she always looked like 
 a picture, whether shining in velvet and cloth of 
 gold in a throne-room, or straying in a linen dress 
 through starlit myrtles on Italian hills. Princess 
 Vera was a great social power ; and when Society 
 saw Etoile in her carriage it began to think that 
 probably after all the paragraph was quite true ; 
 it began to recollect that it had always heard 
 that this great artist's limgs were not very strong. 
 And what a beautiful dog was the boarhound ! 
 Dear fellow, what was his name ? 
 
 Mrs. Hemy V. Clams, on the contrary, as 
 she saw the Eegonwalde carriage sweep by, said 
 
 YOL. I. B
 
 60 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 that it was right-down preposterous, and she 
 didn't care who heard her. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams had passed the years 
 of her youth in a Far West sawmill, in sewing- 
 bees, washing-bees, blackberrying, and chapel- 
 going, in the middle of a clearing, a good five 
 hundred miles from any township ; and she had, 
 now that youth was fled from her, bloomed into 
 an elegante in Europe, thanks to marvellous 
 dishes, unlimited open house, politic lovers, and 
 her husband's dollars, which were many. 
 
 Still, as an elegante^ Mrs. Henry V. Clams 
 never felt quite sure of her footing, and the night 
 before, on the Pincio, at the sight of Etoile in 
 dusky olive-hued velvet, entirely unornamented, 
 she had had an uneasy conviction that she her- 
 self had too many buttons, too many colours, too 
 many fringes, and had a bonnet too much like 
 a firework, and that her Paris deity had been 
 faithless to her and had arrayed her in raiment 
 only fit for the ' half-world,' and the feeling 
 rankled in her and made her say, ' Preposte- 
 rous ! ' snappishly, though she was a good- 
 natured woman in the main.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 61 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams' countrywomen are re- 
 ceived at all the Courts of Europe with no better 
 qualification, very often, than that nobody does 
 know where they come from ; and, did any ill- 
 judged inquisitor seek to know, his investigations 
 would very often lead him into many unsavoury 
 dens of the Bowery and drinking-shops of 
 « Frisco,' into the shanty of many a ticket-of- 
 leave man and the pawnshop of many a Grer- 
 man Jew. 
 
 But it is a question that Mrs. Henry V. 
 Clams and her countrywomen are very fond of 
 asking ; and indeed, ajorojyos of their own 
 countrywomen, they will always tell you with 
 the utmost frankness that Mrs. Ulysses B. Wash- 
 ington once sold hot potatoes, and Mrs. Heloise 
 W. Dobbs shot her first husband in St. Louis, 
 and Miss Anastasia B. Spyrle, betrothed to Prince 
 Volterra, danced in tights throughout the States ; 
 or any other biographical trifle of the sort, with 
 an impartiality scorning national bias. 
 
 ' Nobody can't say where she came from,' 
 said Mrs. Henry V. Clams, drawiug herself out 
 a glass of Curapoa from a little barrel of 
 
 E 2 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 ILLINOIS LiBRAf
 
 62 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Baccarat glass in her own drawing-room. It was 
 her day to receive. 
 
 ' Nobody can't say where she came from,' 
 reiterated Mrs. Henry V. Clams with a kind of 
 triumph. 
 
 ' Who wants to know where artists come 
 from ? I don't,' said Lady Joan Challoner, with 
 a fine sentiment worthy of a great patron of the 
 arts, which she was. 
 
 * When they stick to being artists, of course 
 not,' said Mrs. Henry V. Clams. 'You don't 
 see 'em then, and have no call to speak to 'em ; 
 but to think as Princess Vera, who, I'm sure, 
 looks as if angels and empresses weren't good 
 enough to black her shoes ' 
 
 ' Princess Vera's art-mad,' said the Lady Joan. 
 ' I love art myself, as you know, but still there 
 are bounds to everything. Well, anyhow / must 
 know her, so I'm glad Princess Vera will keep 
 me in countenance. lo, we ought to be going. 
 What are you looking at there? Oh, a photo- 
 graph of Etoile.' 
 
 The Prince loris laid aside an album marked 
 CeUbrites, with a backward glance at the page
 
 FRIEyDSIIIP. 
 
 he had opened it at, where he saw a mere profile 
 like a white cameo on a dark ground, and the 
 letters ' Etoile ' underneath it. 
 
 ' Can one buy those portraits, madame ? ' he 
 asked of his hostess as he hastened to follow the 
 Lady Joan. 
 
 ' Why, my ! yes. That one's five francs. I 
 think it's one of G-oupil's,' said Mrs. Henry V. 
 Clams. ' But it isn't much to look at ; that 
 one of Judic's, now, or Croisette's ' 
 
 But it was not Judic or Croisette that was in 
 his fancy. 
 
 ' Come along ; take Spit,' said the Lady Joan 
 sharply, and threw a small blue Skye dog into 
 his arms as they descended the broad Aubusson- 
 covered staircase of the American's magnificent 
 abode. 
 
 ' That woman upstairs was quite right : it is 
 preposterous,' she continued. ' But I thought 
 I wouldn't say so, as we must know her now. 
 Where are my furs ? Take care.' 
 
 The Prince loris, when in the streets, took ad- 
 vantage of a moment when the Lady Joan was 
 engrossed in a shop in the Condotti cheapening
 
 54 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 a piece of china to go across to Sulcipi's and 
 order a photograph from Goupil's to be got for 
 him. 
 
 Tlie shopman answered with alacrity that he 
 had one alread3^ ' In fact, we have several, 
 Excellence. She is here, you know, and that 
 always creates a demand,' he said, dropping his 
 voice. 
 
 loris bought the portrait, and slipped it 
 inside his sable-lined coat. 
 
 ' Where have you been, lo ? I missed you a 
 moment ago,' said the Lady Joan angrily, having 
 failed to cheapen the china, and feeling cross 
 accordingly. 
 
 ' I went to look if it rained. I was afraid 
 you would get wet,' he answered simply, and 
 restored the serenity to her brows by buying 
 the bowl for her. 
 
 It was a really charming piece of old Nankin. 
 
 ' Etoile ! ' He said the word again to himself 
 as he left his friend in her anteroom, happy with 
 her bowl, and went to his own house to dress for 
 dinner. The name had a fascination for him. 
 He looked at the photograph by the light of the
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 55 
 
 lamps as he walked, and when he reached his own 
 house put it away in a secret drawer. He had 
 here and there a secret drawer of which the Lady 
 Joan did not possess the secret. 
 
 The subject of his thoughts, and of the por- 
 trait, had been called Etoile as long as she could 
 remember ; the peasant folks calling her so be- 
 cause in her childhood she ran so fast, and her 
 long fair hair streamed after her so far, that she 
 looked like a shooting star as she flew by them 
 in the summer nights in green Ardennes. 
 
 To the world in general the name seemed 
 strange, suspicious, uncomfortable, indicative of 
 that string of asterisks on a page which replaces 
 what is too shocking to be printed. But to her 
 it had all the old familiar charm of a sound that 
 bears all childhood in it. 
 
 The first thing that she could remember was 
 a sunny village in the woods on the banks of the 
 bright Meuse water, in the heart of that sweet 
 green country of Jaques and Rosalind which, for 
 some things, has no equal upon earth. 
 
 Few places on the earth are lovelier than the 
 province through which the bright Meuse wan-
 
 56 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ders, and the first memories of Etoile were of its 
 glancing waters, its wooded hills, its rich grass- 
 meadows, its noble forest trees, its gabled houses, 
 grey and black with time, its broad yellow roads, 
 leading westward to France and eastward to the 
 Khine. There are a breadth, a graciousness, 
 a fresh and fragrant verdure in all this country 
 not to be surpassed in charm ; it is unworn and 
 unspoilt ; and although under its leafy woods the 
 wheel of the gambler turns, and by its limpid 
 springs the tired hypochondriac drinks, still there 
 is much of it that neither gambler nor hypochon- 
 driac ever sees, and that is solitary as Suabian 
 or Pennine Alp, and radiant with a brightness 
 all its own. 
 
 The beautiful rapid river, foaming by mill and 
 weir ; and the hayfields, with their grand elms and 
 walnuts ; and the high hills where the pines grew, 
 and the one little sunny paved street, with the 
 village fountain at the end, where the women 
 gossiped and the big-belled horses drank — these 
 were the first things on which the eyes of Etoile 
 had opened, and made the first pictures that her 
 mind remembered. A brown-frocked monk, a
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 57 
 
 grey-frocked nun, a cowherd with his cattle, a 
 wagon with its team, a group of women with 
 their burden of linen going to the washing-places 
 in the river — these were all that passed up and 
 down the hilly road between the double row of 
 tall bird-filled aspens ; the little place was sunny, 
 sleepy, very still, but it was lovely, bosomed deep 
 in fragrant woods, and watered by the Mouse. 
 
 And then what a world of wonders lay 
 around ! — the primroses, the blue jays, the 
 leaping trout, the passing boats, the foxes that 
 stole out almost familiarly, the squirrel swinging 
 in the nut thickets of the hills, the charcoal- 
 burners coming down rough and black to tell 
 tales of the bears and wolves high up above, 
 the great Flemish cart-horses walking solemnly 
 in state caparison outward on the highroads 
 to France or Prussia, the red lurid glow far 
 away in the evening sky, which told where the 
 iron-blasters of stern, fierce Liege were at 
 work — these were wonders enough for a thou- 
 sand years, or at least for a young child to think 
 them so. 
 
 Etoile thought so, and her childhood went by
 
 68 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 like a fairy tale told by a soft voice on a summer 
 day. 
 
 The house she lived in was very old, and had 
 those charming conceits, those rich shadows, that 
 depth of shade, that play of light, that variety, 
 and that character which seem given to a dwell- 
 ing-place in ages when men asked nothing better 
 of their Grod than to live where their fathers had 
 lived, and leave the old rooftree to their children's 
 children. 
 
 The thing built yesterday, is a caravanserai : 
 I lodge in it to-day, and you to-morrow ; in an 
 old house only can be made a home, where the 
 blessings of the dead have rested and the me- 
 mories of perfect faiths and lofty passions still 
 abide. 
 
 This house stood in a green old shady garden, 
 and at the end of the garden the trees hung over 
 the beautiful river. Etoile used to think that in 
 just such a garden must have passed the long 
 slumbers of the Sleeping Beauty. All happy 
 childhood is like an April morning, but hers was 
 beyond most children's happy by reason of its 
 simplicity, its unclouded peace, and the fair, gay.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 59 
 
 shapeless dreams that were with it always like 
 light golden clouds about the sun. 
 
 There were sadness and mystery near, but 
 neither were allowed to touch her. She only 
 knew peace and joy. If she had been told that 
 she had dropped from the stars on a midsummer 
 night she would have believed it quite easily : no 
 healthy child's life will ever wonder whence it 
 comes or whither it drifts. It is enough for it 
 that it is. 
 
 This is the one felicity that the innocence of 
 infancy and the trance of passion share in com- 
 mon. The immediate moment is the heaven alike 
 of the child and of the lover. 
 
 She was very happy always in this, her green 
 birth-country, by the river-side. 
 
 But she was never happier than when she 
 went out of the sweet summer sunshine, from 
 the murmur of the street fountain, and from 
 the smell of the blossoming orchards into the 
 quiet dusky den that was her study, and bent her 
 curls over the ponderous tomes and the intricate 
 exercises with which her tutors delighted in try- 
 ing her patience and her powers.
 
 GO FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Out of doors she was the merest child, happy 
 in all a child's pleasure of new-born days and 
 new-found berries, and new-made cakes, of the 
 old swing in the sycamore, and the first swallow, 
 that showed summer, and the promise of a long 
 day in the woods to bring home violets, or any 
 other of the many simple things which made her 
 childhood beautiful. 
 
 She knew the whereabouts of every rare wild 
 flower ; she knew every bird that haunted the 
 woods or the streams ; she was friends with all 
 the peasant folk, and would find their stray sheep 
 for them and tame the dogs they were afraid of; 
 she loved the wind and the wild weather as she 
 loved the heat that uncurled the carnation-buds, 
 and the still moonshine when the nightingales 
 sang in the orchards ; she was not dismayed if 
 evening fell as she ran alone down a lone hill- 
 side, or if she bore down through the swift 
 wild rain like a little white boat through a 
 surging sea; she had the love of nature of a 
 Grerman and the unconsciousness that she loved 
 it of a Greek. 
 
 ' Til es folle^ said her old teacher to her
 
 FUIENDSHIP. 61 
 
 because she laughed and cried for joy to see 
 the first primrose break out of the bleak brown 
 earth, and kneeled down and kissed the flower, 
 and told it how glad the birds would be, and 
 would not to have saved her life have taken it 
 away from its shelter of green leaves. ' Tii es 
 folle^ said the old teacher — it is what the world 
 always says to the poet. 
 
 In the forests on the Meuse river there 
 lived an old man who did not tell her she was 
 foolish. He was a German, who had been a 
 noted artist in his day, until paralysis of his 
 right arm by some accident had put an end to 
 his career and his hopes of fame. He was sad 
 and alone ; was harsh of temper and taciturn ; 
 but he took a fancy to this child who was always 
 out of doors trying to learn the secrets of the 
 clouds' movements and the waters' hues, and he 
 guided aright her passionate instincts towards 
 the arts. By the time she was fifteen she had 
 created things that the old master thought more 
 marvellous than he would confess to her. She 
 painted all the day in the open air, on the 
 hills and by the torrents ; she studied all the
 
 62 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 evenings and half the night. She was perfectly 
 liappy. 
 
 There was another world, of course, where 
 the hay-wagons went and the barges down tlie 
 river ; but she wanted no other. 
 
 Now and then there would come to the black- 
 and-white house on the river a person for whom 
 the ways of the house were changed, and who 
 was always whispered of in words of awe by 
 the village people. He would kiss her care- 
 lessly, bid her do a problem or write a poem, 
 stay a few days, and go. She was told that he 
 was her father — the Count Eaoul d'Avesnes. 
 
 In the old fighting days the Counts d'Avesnes 
 had been a fierce and mighty race, reigning in 
 lofty regions of the wild Ardennes, Catholics 
 always, and warriors rather than courtiers. 
 Little by little, in strife and conspiracy, and 
 internecine wars, they had lost their lands and 
 greatness, imtil little save their traditions were 
 left in modern times. This, their sole living 
 representative, was a man of many ambitions, of 
 no achievement. A political gamester, a political 
 conspirator, his life was spent in the treacherous
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 63 
 
 seas of political intrigue, and he at the last 
 perished in their whirlpool. Little was known of 
 him — by his daughter almost nothing. He had 
 broken his wife's heart and spent her money. 
 His own death was mysterious, like his life. He 
 passed away and made no sign. 
 
 There is so much mystery in this world, 
 only people who lead humdrum lives will not 
 believe it. 
 
 It is a great misfortune to be born to a 
 romantic history. The humdrum always think 
 that you are lying. In real truth romance is 
 common in life, commoner, perhaps, than the 
 commonplace. But the commonplace always 
 looks more natural. 
 
 In nature there are millions of gorgeous hues 
 to a scarcity of neutral tints ; yet the pictures 
 that are painted in sombre semi-tones and have 
 no one positive colour in them are always pro- 
 nounced the nearest to nature. When a painter 
 sets his palette, he dares not approach the gold of 
 the sunset and dawn or the flame of the pome- 
 granate and poppy. Etoile's short story had this 
 gold and red in it, and so no one believed in it
 
 64 fri:endship. 
 
 any more than they do in the life-likeness of 
 Turner's Hesperides. 
 
 She, a happy and thoughtful child, lived in 
 the little Ardennes village with her mother's 
 mother, and her two old servants, and knew 
 nothing of all this heritage of wonder and of 
 woe. Occasionally the wonderful person who was 
 called her father came and brought a wonderful 
 breath of the outer air with him. That was all 
 she knew. 
 
 One day his shadow passed for the last time 
 up the sunny street between the aisles of aspen 
 and was seen no more there ever after, and his 
 letters ceased, and silence fell upon his fate ; and 
 in time they came to know that he was dead and 
 she was the last that lived of the once famous 
 race of the Counts d'Avesnes. 
 
 It scarcely seemed strange to her — she had 
 always known so little. 
 
 He had been a black bead in the golden 
 rosary of her happy childhood ; she barely missed 
 it when it dropped. 
 
 In after-years people would never believe that 
 Etoile, beyond the fact of the patrician name she
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 65 
 
 bore, had known so little ; they forgot how com- 
 pletely natural and matter-of-course the strangest 
 circumstances seem to one who has been rocked 
 in them, as it were, in a cradle from birth up- 
 ward. 
 
 Her father had come and gone, come and 
 gone, as comets do. He ceased to come ; it did 
 not seem strange. 
 
 She studied in the big books, and strayed 
 about in the chesnut woods and orchards, and 
 lived in her own fancies more than in anything 
 around her. Vague desires would ofttimes touch 
 her, as she used to stand on the brow of the 
 reaped fields, and watch the sun go down, red 
 and beautiful against the dusky masses of the 
 far-off woods. But they were desires whose wings 
 were still folded ; like those of fledgling birds, 
 that flutter a little way through the green leaves, 
 and then are frightened at their dreams of flight. 
 
 For the rest, her grandmother and the old 
 servants took all care of things bodily and tem- 
 poral. Etoile was free to think and dream and 
 study. 
 
 The treasures of scholarship are sweet to all 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 FRIENDSIIir. 
 
 who open them. But they are perhaps sweetest 
 of all to a girl that has been led both by habit 
 and by nature to seek them. 
 
 The soul of a girl whilst passions sleep, de- 
 sires are unknown, and self-consciousness lies un- 
 awakened, can lose itself in the impersonal as no 
 male student can. The mightiness and beauty 
 of past ages become wonderful and all-sufficient 
 to it, as they can never do to a youth beset by 
 the stinging hres of impending manhood. The 
 very element of faith and of imagination, hereafter 
 its weakness, becomes the strength of the girl- 
 scholar. The very abandonment of self, which 
 later on will fling lier to Sappho's death, or 
 mure her in the cell of Heloise, will make her 
 find a cloudless and all-absorbing happiness in 
 the meditations of great minds, in the myths of 
 heroic ages, in the delicate intricacies of lan- 
 guage, and in the immeasureable majesties of 
 thought. The evil inseparable from all know- 
 ledge will pass by her unfelt ; the greatness only 
 attainable by knowledge will lend her perfect 
 and abiding joys. 
 
 Whilst they were only scholars be sure that
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 67 
 
 Sappho and Heloise were calmer and more glad 
 than any other women ; it was when they looked 
 up from the written page to the human face that 
 their woes surpassed all others' — because beyond 
 all others' was their loss. 
 
 A year after the tidings of the Comte 
 d'Avesnes' death had come to the Ardennes, her 
 grandmother, reflecting that at her death the 
 child would be solitary, with a slender patrimony 
 and a name whose past nobility was of no present 
 use, resolved to sacrifice her own peace and move 
 to a great city. 
 
 They went to Paris, leaving the green Mouse 
 waters and those bright woodland villages that 
 lie out of the beaten track and are so still and 
 fresh and charming. Etoile sobbed bitterly: 
 yet she was full of ecstatic wonder and hope. 
 She forgot that thousands have had such hope 
 before her, and had only perished miserably 
 in the vast press of life. If youth did not thus 
 forget, maturity would have no fame to record. 
 
 They made their home in a nook of old 
 Paris within sight of the trees of the Luxem- 
 bourg. A tumult of great ideas and vague 
 
 F 2
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ambitions was in the mind of the child who 
 had studied more than many men, and had the 
 poetry of many nations all alive within her. 
 
 In the city of pleasure Etoile uninterruptedly 
 pursued both art and study. Friends they had 
 but few ; those few were of the proud impoverished 
 families of a nobility that had nothing left ex- 
 cept its traditions of honour ; and such as these 
 thought the pursuit of art a degradation. 
 
 One day Etoile, however, made a friend of 
 her own. Chances brought her across the path 
 of an old man whose name was very glorious to 
 her : a great master whose genius had been nur- 
 tured amidst the mighty storms of the First 
 Empire. The old man looked long in silence 
 at her, the harsh lines of his face softening and 
 changing ; then he turned to her and uncovered 
 his w^hite head. 
 
 'My sun has long set,' be said; 'I rejoice to 
 see yours rise.' 
 
 The word of David Istrion was still a law in 
 Paris and all the worlds of art. He kept her 
 secret and sent her first picture to the Salon 
 himself.
 
 FBIENDSHIP, 69 
 
 'One of my pupils ' was all he would say when 
 questioned as to the painter. 
 
 The picture was only the study of a gleaner 
 returning by sunset over naked fields ; but it had 
 an instant and unquestioned success. It was 
 followed by greater and stronger works signed 
 ' Etoile.' 
 
 The pictures were for some few years always 
 thought to be the creations of a man, were treated 
 as such ; and when the rumour was first current 
 that the painter was a woman — a girl — the great 
 world of Paris laughed aloud in derision and utter 
 disbelief. 
 
 Their force, their depth of tone, their anato- 
 mical accuracy, and above all their profound 
 melancholy, made it impossible — so they said. 
 
 Nevertheless the world, which has lived to see 
 many impossible things pass into the limbo of 
 incontestable facts, lived to see this pass also. 
 
 ' It is time they should know the truth,' said 
 David Istrion, and told it. Etoile regretted that 
 it should be told : to the pure ambitions of the 
 true artist creation is paradise, but the praise of 
 the crowd seems profanity.
 
 70 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 But David Istrion had not had his own way 
 unresisted for two-thirds of a century to consider 
 such a trifle as anyone's personal desires. 
 
 He made tlie truth known ; and within a 
 year or two, she sprang at once into the fierce 
 light that beats upon a throne — the contested 
 and bitterly begrudged throne of genius. 
 
 David Istrion lived long enough to see her 
 triumphs — not long enough to protect her from 
 the dark shadows that slink in the path of all 
 triumphs. Etoile became a name on the tongues 
 of all Paris, and so on all the tongues of the 
 world. She had a fame as great and as pure as 
 is possible in this age, when fame is too often 
 awarded by the mere screams of the vulgar. To 
 her house, in the Paris winters, came many of 
 the greatest men of her time. She influenced 
 them much more than they influenced her. She 
 had a life that was brilliant and rich in all 
 fruits of the intellect. 
 
 As recreations of her leisure she wrote a 
 comedy in verse which had a tumultuous success 
 on a great stage, and some poems were printed in 
 great reviews, all signed ' Etoile.' ' Slie has all
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 71 
 
 the talents,' said the world angrily. If she had 
 only had all the vices too the world would no^, 
 perhaps, have minded so much. 
 
 Unfortunately for her reputation, no one could 
 find out that she had as much as one vice. Few 
 women could boast of being her friend, but no 
 man could boast of being her lover. 
 
 Ten years now had gone by since she left the 
 Meuse river; they had been ten years of bril- 
 liancy if not of happiness. G-enius is seldom 
 happy — except in its dreams or the first hours 
 of its love. 
 
 With a woman, the vulgarity that lies in 
 public adulation is apt to nauseate ; at least if 
 she be so little of a woman that she is not vain, 
 and so much of one that she cares for privacy. 
 For the fame of our age is not glory but noto- 
 riety ; and notoriety is to a woman like the bull 
 to Pasiphae — whilst it caresses it crushes. 
 
 Fame brought Etoile its sweet and bitter 
 fruits together. 
 
 ' That is Etoile,' said everyone when she 
 passed by. People who creep by in obscurity 
 think this notice from mankind must be paradise.
 
 72 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 All at once she grew tired of the brilliant 
 success that surrounded her; it seemed tame, 
 stupid, a twice-told tale. ' Oh ! old world, have 
 you nothing better ? ' she said thanklessly to the 
 world which had been too prodigal of its laurels 
 to her. 
 
 She lost zest in it all. A cough settled on 
 her lungs. When her physicians bade her rest 
 and go to Italy she was glad. 
 
 They said she had caught cold from working 
 in clay. She had had that desire to create some- 
 thing excellent in sculpture which comes to most 
 true painters; but her malady was not due to 
 cold or clay ; it was rather the fatal revenge en- 
 tailed on any mortal who has exiled the passions 
 and the afiections, and who will sicken for them 
 unconsciously ; the most splendid structure of 
 the intellect will always have this danger at its 
 base.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 On the night when the Prince loris took the 
 little three-cornered note of his friend to the 
 Comtesse d'Avesnes the note was carried upstairs 
 to a large salon on the first floor, of which the 
 windows were standing open, giving to view the 
 masses of trees on the Pincio and the Medici 
 gardens and the brilliant stars of a winter's night. 
 The naked and tawdry splendour of an hotel 
 apartment was redeemed by masses of flowers that 
 the present occupants of it had brought there — 
 pale violets, snowy camellias, and early narcissi, 
 born under glass, and showing their tender heads 
 coyly, as if cold. 
 
 Against one of the open casements leaned
 
 74 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Etoile, -vNTapped in her furs — for the night was 
 chilly — looking at the stars of Orion, which had 
 arisen above the dark lines of the ilex trees, and 
 listening to the fall of the fountain water in the 
 square below. 
 
 She was fair of skin, and in form slender and 
 supple, from living much out of doors and taking 
 much exercise in the saddle and on foot; she 
 had bright-hued hair that was lifted a little from 
 her forehead, and eyes like the eyes of the boyish 
 portrait of Shelley ; her velvet skirts fell to her 
 feet in the simple undulating folds that Leonardo 
 da Vinci loved to draw. People were vaguely 
 disappointed when they saw her ; they would 
 have liked her better in a man's coat, with her 
 hair cut short, and generally odd and untidy- 
 looking. An artist that you might by accident 
 mistake for a duchess is annoying. 
 
 ' What are you thinking of, Etoile ? ' said 
 her companion, who was that wonderfully beau- 
 tiful woman, brilliant as a pomegranate flower or 
 a sapphire, who was at once Dorotea Coronis and 
 the wife of the Due de Santorin. 
 
 ' I believe I was thinking of Actea.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 75 
 
 From the hotel she could see the dark masses 
 of the trees on the Pincio, and the round dome 
 of the church raised to lay the unholy spirit of 
 Nero to rest. 
 
 ' Poor Actea ! The slave-girl redeems the age 
 she lived in — ' 
 
 ' Rich Actea I happy Actea I ' said Dorotea 
 Coronis, with a sigh. ' Her beast was god to her. 
 She never saw him as he was. No doubt she 
 thought him too a great artist and a perfect 
 poet. Love is blind.' 
 
 ' Not the highest love, surely.' 
 
 ' What do you know about it ? You love 
 nothing but your art.' 
 
 ' That is Voightel's complaint.' 
 
 ' Yoightel is quite right. Why have you 
 never cared for any man, Etoile ? ' 
 
 ' Cared ? Men are so admirable as friends ; 
 when they speak of warmer things than friend- 
 ship they weary or they revolt me ; I lose 
 my regard for them and my patience with 
 them. It is hard to give a reason for these 
 things.' 
 
 ' You are fortunate to be so cold.'
 
 76 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' Is it coldness ? And is it fortunate ? I am 
 not so certain.' 
 
 ' Whatever it is, it makes you many foes. 
 You seem to say to men, " You are too stupid to 
 succeed," and to women, " 1 am stronger than 
 
 you." ' 
 
 ' I do not mean to say anything of the kind. 
 It is true most people tire me. There is so little 
 profundity in them, and one reads them so 
 soon. A new acquaintance is like a new novel : 
 you open it with expectation, but what you find 
 there seldom makes you care to take it off the 
 shelf a second time.' 
 
 ' I am glad I am an old friend.' 
 
 Etoile smiled. 
 
 ' Oh ! old fnends are our Homers and Horaces, 
 our Shakespeares and Molieres : we cannot read 
 them too often, and we find something in them 
 to suit all our moods. Why will you go away 
 from me, dear Dorotea ? ' 
 
 The Duchesse Santorin laughed a little 
 wearily. 
 
 ' My dear ! when M. le Due must have two 
 hundred thousand francs as his New Year's
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 77 
 
 etrennes ! You forget I am not my own mis- 
 tress, and the Petersbm'g engagement was signed 
 this time last year,' 
 
 ' I would give him no more. Surely your 
 marriage contract protects you a little ? ' 
 
 ' Entirely. But only so can I purchase his 
 absence. He has outraged me in every kind of 
 way, but he has not lost his legal rights. He 
 never struck me before witnesses ; and though he 
 had mistresses all over Europe he did not bring 
 one under the same roof with me. You see he is 
 blameless.' 
 
 The lovely dark face of the great Spanish 
 singer grew weary and full of scorn; she rose 
 and walked to and fro the room restlessly. 
 
 ' I wish you were not going to Eussia,' said 
 her friend, in a low tone, leaving the open window. 
 
 The Ducliesse Santorin looked up quickly and 
 paused in her rapid and passionate walk. 
 
 'You tliink I shall meet Fedor. You mis- 
 take. He has left the Imperial Guard and had 
 himself ordered to the Caucasus by my wish. 
 He is there, and he will be there all winter.' 
 
 ' But who will believe that ? '
 
 78 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' It does not matter what is believed. It 
 matters what is.' 
 
 ' To om-selves and the God we hope for — yes.' 
 
 ' And what else matters ? When we are " in 
 the light that beats upon a throne " we are at 
 once condemned unheard — for Envy and Medio- 
 crity sit on the judgment-seat, and whenever did 
 they wait for truth ? ' 
 
 In brave old Cordova, twenty years before, a 
 tiny child with some gitana blood in her had 
 danced the zaronga with twinkling feet whenever 
 a Castanet clicked or a tambourine sounded — a 
 child so beautiful that when her father, a picador, 
 lay dying in the sand of the bull-ring he kissed 
 her on the eyes and said, ' Though I go where I 
 shall see the faces of the children of God, there 
 will be no face so fair amongst them as my 
 Dorotea's.' 
 
 She was only five years old then, but she 
 never afterwards forgot the circle of sand, the 
 stream of blood, the sea of faces, the great dead 
 bull, the dying man whose last breath was a kiss 
 to her. 
 
 His brethren of the tribe, unasked, took the
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 79 
 
 burden of her, shared between them the cost of 
 her small wants, and housed her safely with good 
 women, and even had her well taught by a priest; 
 or taught, at least, as much as it is ever thought 
 a Spanish girl can want to know apart from 
 her lore of fan and rosary. The little Dorotea 
 danced in every jpatio where the guitar was 
 sounding, and sang in every church where the 
 litanies were chaunting — a wild, gay, most lovely 
 child ; proud, too — so proud that the Cordovans 
 would say to one another that perhaps the fables 
 were true which had given to the picador the 
 blood of an old kingly stock. 
 
 When she was growing a little out of child- 
 hood some one travelling through Cordova 
 chanced to see and hear her sing. 
 
 The traveller was an old Jew whose errand in 
 life was to find great singers for great theatres. 
 He was an honest man and virtuous, though he 
 loved money. He persuaded her protectors to 
 sell him the little Dorotea. He took her away 
 with him, and dealt gently with her, training her 
 wonderful powers aright, and letting her know 
 and hear nothing to her hurt. At sixteen she
 
 80 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 sang in Italy, at seventeen in Paris. She had 
 one of the purest voices that had been ever heard 
 upon the stage, and her marvellous beauty and 
 brilliancy made her fame even more tlian her 
 voice. Dorotea Coronis was one of the wonders 
 of the world. She had reached as great heights of 
 perfection as any singer can, and every note that 
 fell from her lovely lips brought a shower of gold. 
 
 Amongst her comitless lovers came the Due 
 de Santorin, Pair de France, with his heart and 
 his couronne in his hand, to lay at her feet. P'or 
 it was well known that, to be won, she must be 
 wooed, with due honour. After some reluctance 
 and long refusal she became his wife. His passion 
 for herself was hot but brief; his passion for her 
 golden harvests lasted. 
 
 The pride in her which the people of Cordova 
 had seen in the baby dancing the zaronga in tlieir 
 courts and gardens made the dignity and ancient- 
 ness of his name allure her. She had no love for 
 him, but neither had she any dislike. Those 
 about her urged and persuaded her. 
 
 ' I do not care for you, but you never shall be 
 ashamed of me,' she said to him.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 81 
 
 He swore gratitude and devotion. He did 
 not keep his word, but she kept hers. 
 
 She had now been Duchesse de Santorin for 
 some years, singing in all the cities of Europe 
 to supply his demands, and with a right to a 
 tabouret at the Court of France whenever Court 
 of France there might be. The contrast some- 
 times made her laugh as she had used to laugh 
 above her tambourine in the i^atios of old 
 Cordova, only not with the same mirth. For 
 five years they had been virtually separated, 
 l.hough still nominally of good accord. She had 
 Icept her word to him — she had been faithful. 
 But of course the world did not think so. 
 
 Men were in love with her wherever her 
 beautiful gazelle-like eyes rested, wheiever her 
 pure lark-like voice penetrated. The world knew 
 very well that some of these — oh, yes, of course 
 — and the world was inclined to pity the Due de 
 Santorin. 
 
 ' She was a gitaiia, you know, a gipsy ; a 
 little bare-legged, brazen thing, telling fortunes 
 and rolling in the mud,' said the world femi- 
 nine, jealous of that sovereign grace and that 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 incomparable art which Heaven had given to 
 Dorotea Coronis. 
 
 Meanwhile there were many who loved and 
 honoured her, and amongst them was Etoile. 
 
 They had become friends at the house of a 
 famous Minister one night in Paris, after a re- 
 presentation of the ' Flauto Magico,' and their 
 friendship had endured. 
 
 ' But the Caucasus,' said Etoile this evening, 
 ' the Caucasus is not so very far that men cannot 
 come back from it. Are you sure that Count 
 Souroff ' 
 
 ' Will do what I wish him ? Yes.' 
 
 ' No ; I meant rather you of your own 
 strength. When you are in his own country, 
 when you know him amidst a half-savage people, 
 in sickness and peril, wounded even, perhaps ; — 
 can you be sure that you will not yourself recall 
 him?' 
 
 * Yes, I am sure. Because my resolve is for 
 his sake, not my own. Listen, Etoile.' 
 
 She paused in her feverish movements to and 
 fro the great chamber and stood before her 
 friend.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 83 
 
 ' A woman who thinks for herself is weak, but 
 the woman who thinks for another is strong. I 
 will not let Fedor Som'off be my lover because I 
 adore him with all my heart, all my soul, all my 
 life. I am a Spanish woman if I am anything ; 
 I have fire, not water, in my veins ; I have no 
 duties towards my husband, because he has in- 
 sulted me, robbed me, outraged me, beaten me, 
 and told me a hundred times a year that I am 
 only his bank, which he honours only too much 
 by plunging his hand into it to seize its gold ; 
 only his mechanical nightingale, of which he 
 keeps the key, with the title to wind it up and 
 set it singing when he wills ; or break it if it 
 fail to sing. And yet — yet I will not be wliat 
 they say I am to the man whom I worship, and 
 who thinks holy the very stones or sand that feel 
 my feet, and gives to me the noblest, tenderest, 
 most loyal love that was ever given to a woman 
 for her joy and pain. I will not — for his 
 sake ' 
 
 ' For his ? ' 
 
 ' For his. You have seen him so little, else 
 you would know why without asking. In the 
 
 Cx 2
 
 84 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 first place, Santorin would shoot him dead, 
 Santorin is base, but not so base as to sink to 
 the cocii content of the modern world; — and 
 Fedor would let Santorin shoot him. That would 
 be what he would call only just. But this is the 
 least thing. Fedor would gladly die so to pur- 
 chase one hour with me. What would be far 
 worse for him would be to live. What man is 
 more wretched on earth than the bond slave of 
 another man's wife ? Fedor is young ; he has a 
 great name, he comes of a great family, who adore 
 him ; he is a fearless and devoted soldier. I will 
 not ruin him — I will not. He would break his 
 career for me ; he would incur exile, confisca- 
 tion, even the shame of a deserter for me ; yes, 
 and adore me the more because I doomed him to 
 them. I will not take his sacrifice. My love, 
 my love I — he is but mortal. He will not love 
 for ever thus ; not when love is but another name 
 for disappointment. Men are not like us. In 
 time he will forget me ; he will be free ; be will 
 be happy.' 
 
 She ceased suddenly ; a convulsion of violent 
 weeping passed through her ; she threw herself
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 85 
 
 prostrate on a couch and buried her beautiful 
 head in her hands. 
 
 Etoile looked at her with tears in her own 
 eyes ; she forbore to speak ; she knew that all the 
 passionate, proud, and vehement nature of Dorotea 
 Coronis was centred in this great passion, whose 
 temptations it yet had strength to resist. 
 
 The windows were open and the stars shone 
 in the dark ; the sound of the fountains below 
 came on the silence with the dull rumbling of the 
 night traffic of Rome ; the air was sweet and 
 heavy with the smell of forced heliotrope with 
 which they had filled a large bowl on a marble 
 table. 
 
 'To love like that!' thought Etoile. 'It 
 must be worth even all that pain.' 
 
 And for the first time in her life she felt 
 solitary. 
 
 At that moment the servant brought her the 
 note from the Casa Challoner and a bouquet of 
 white flowers, lilies of the valley and narcissi, 
 which the Prince loris had purchased in the 
 flower- shop of the Via Condotti as he passed in 
 the moonlight, and sent up with his own card, on
 
 86 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 one of those unthinking impulses which some- 
 times imperilled all his prudence. 
 
 ' What sweet lilies ! ' said Etoile, and forsook 
 the stars for them, bending her face over their 
 fragrance. Flowers were her earliest loves, and 
 had never been displaced in her affections. Then 
 she opened the Lady Joan's letter. 
 
 A few evenings before, in Paris, Voightel, 
 shrewdest, keenest, and most merciless of wits 
 and men, had been with her to bid her farewell. 
 
 ' Go and see Archie's daughter, since he wishes 
 it ; go and see my Lady Joan,' had said the great 
 Voightel — traveller, philologist, past-master in 
 all sciences and all tongues, standing on her 
 hearth, and glowering through his green spec- 
 tacles, and his grizzled beard, till he looked like 
 a magnified and cynical tom-cat. ' I have often 
 talked to Joan of you. What is she like ? Not 
 a whit like Archie, but a liandsome woman, and 
 a clever woman in her way, which is not your 
 way. Merimee calls her his petroleuse. It is 
 inexact. Petvoleuses burn with no idea of ulti- 
 mate booty : she would never waste her oil so. 
 Cleopatra crossed with Dame du Comptoir were
 
 FRIESUSHIP. 87 
 
 nearer, I think. I admire her very much. I 
 always know she i.s lying, and yet I am always 
 pleased when she lies to please me. How 
 contemptible ! But all men are weak. I am 
 inclined to respect women who live every hour 
 of their lives. She does. You do not. You 
 dream too much ever to live very vividly, unless 
 you ever fall in love. I do so wish you would. 
 It would make you so many friends. Men 
 dislike a woman who will not be wooed. Believe 
 that, my disdainful Etoile, who will be wooed 
 by nobody. When a woman is '' kind " to 
 various men, each favoured mortal is bound, in 
 honour, to arm cajj-ti-pie and swear she never 
 was " kind " to anybody. Whereas, when she 
 repulses and rebuffs them all round as you do, 
 her lovers become her enemies, and will be more 
 than human if they do not take her character 
 away, out of the sincerity of their conviction that 
 somebody must have been beforehand with them. 
 Reasoning by analogy, I have very little doubt 
 that Faustina was a wife of remarkable purity, 
 and St. Agnes and Agatha very little better thhu 
 they should ha^e been. Go and see our dear
 
 88 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Joan. She is a faggot of contradictions ; extra- 
 ordinarily ignorant, but naturally intelligent; 
 audacious, yet timid ; a bully, but a coward ; full 
 of hot passions, but with cold fits of prudence. 
 Had she your talent the world would have heard 
 of her. As it is, she only enjoys herself. Per- 
 haps the better part. Fame is a cone of smoke. 
 Enjoyment is a loaf of sugar. I am not sure 
 what she is doing in Rome, but I am quite sm'e 
 she is in mischief, and quite sure she is making 
 money. When the moon on the Forum has filled 
 your brain with schwdrmerei, go and see Joan. 
 She is an admirable tonic for all poets. She will 
 be the Prose of Rome for you. You will want 
 prose there.'
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 At eight o'clock on the sixth of December, 
 Etoile, Comtesse d'Avesnes, went up the many 
 stairs of the Casa Challoner, to see for the first 
 time the woman who was to be to her the Prose 
 of Eome. 
 
 She herself was tired, and had little colour ; 
 she wore no jewels, and had only a knot of pale 
 yellow tea-roses at her breast ; her dress trailed 
 softly, it was made up of black Chantilly laces 
 and pale maize hues, and the deftest hands of Paris 
 had cast the easy and simple gi'ace of it together. 
 
 She went carelessly, indifferently, wondering 
 if she should like these people as much as she 
 liked Lord Archie ; went to her fate as everyone
 
 90 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 does, unwitting that in the commonplace passage 
 of the hours Destiny was striking. 
 
 As she entered the anteroom, and laid aside 
 her furs, she heard a voice singing a ritornello of 
 the Roman populace, to the deep dulcet chords of 
 a mandoline. 
 
 As her name was announced the voice ceased, 
 and from between two curtains of Oriental silk, 
 that shaded the inner doorway, there advanced, 
 with outstretched hands, the singer, clad in black 
 velvet, with a little collar of diamond stars at her 
 throat, v>'hich sparkled as she moved. She had a 
 classic head, fitly shaped for a bust of Athene, an 
 Egyptian profile, brilliant eyes, green by day, 
 black by night, thick eyebrows, and a cordial 
 smile, that showed very white and even teeth. 
 
 ' How charmed I am ! At last we meet ! 
 How many many times I have tried to see you in 
 Paris and Brussels ! ' cried the Lady Joan, with 
 eager welcome, and with honest warmth. 
 
 ' Your father's daughter can be nothing but 
 my friend,' answered her new acquaintance, witli 
 sincerity. 
 
 Lady Joan, her guitar still in one hand, led
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 91 
 
 her g-uest witli animated and eager compliment to 
 the hearth ; pushed a low chair nearer the wood 
 fire, said some pretty words of her own father, 
 and of their dear old Voightel, asked after other 
 friends they had in common, spoke of the weather, 
 and then, as by a mere careless after- thought, or 
 accident, turned suddenly and presented a person 
 who had all the while been standing close by, 
 erect, calm, and unnoticed, like a lord in waiting 
 beside a throne. 
 
 ' Prince loris — the Comtesse d'Avesnes. 
 loris is a great friend of my husband's, his 
 dearest friend, indeed. Oh, of course, he has 
 heard of you. Who has not ? Only, of course, 
 too, he knows you best as Etoile. We all do 
 that. It is such a charming name ! ' 
 
 The Prince loris looked like a picture, and 
 bowed like a courtier, and, leaning his arm on the 
 mantelshelf, began to speak graceful nothings, in 
 his melodious voice. 
 
 At that moment there entered, a little hur- 
 riedly, like an actor not on the stage in time for 
 his cue, the gentleman with the Scotch face and 
 the German maunei', whom Lady Joan, with a
 
 92 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 little frown on her darkling brows, presented as 
 Mr. Clialloner. 
 
 Mr. Clialloner, the excellence of whose 
 coimtenance was its unalterability under all 
 circumstances whatever, stared through his eye- 
 glass, bent himself stiffly, and in solemn phrase 
 assured his guest of the supreme honour that he 
 felt she had done to his threshold. 
 
 Immediately upon him there followed another 
 of his guests, Mrs. Henry V. Clams, gorgeous in 
 a gown that imprisoned her so tightly that it 
 only permitted of the garb of a circus rider 
 underneath it, and weighty with a perfect Grol- 
 conda of rubies. 
 
 ' No stones on her ! — my word, and she must 
 have got lots ! ' reflected Mrs. Henry V. Clams, 
 staring at the tea-roses of Etoile, and settling in 
 her own mind that artists were the most disap- 
 pointin' people to look at, except princes, that 
 ever she saw. 
 
 She was accompanied by the Marquis de 
 Fontebranda, a Piedmontese about the Court, a 
 fair, graceful, and good-looking man, who had 
 trained her in the way she should go, and still
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 93 
 
 suffered many things from her love of colours 
 and her need of dictionaries. Her husband had 
 been invited, of course, but it was understood 
 everywhere that he never came anywhere ; he 
 had always a cold, or letters in from X'York. 
 Fontebranda had trained him as well. 
 
 The other guests arrived — an English Chief 
 Justice, famous for his wit; a lady known to 
 all Europe as the Marchioness of Cardiff, some 
 Italians, some Eussians ; finally, a mature pet of 
 the Lady Joan's, a white-haired and cosmopolitan 
 Englishman, by name Silverly Bell, who was a 
 most popular person at all the English tea-parties 
 of the Continent, for nobody sugared your tea 
 more prettily, or told you nastier stories of your 
 neighbours more sweetly. 
 
 Dinner announced, Fontebranda was allotted 
 to Etoile, Mr. Challoner offered his arm to Lady 
 Cardiff, and the hostess went in with Mr. 
 Challoner's dearest friend. 
 
 ' What do you think of her, lo ? ' she mur- 
 mured in his ear. 
 
 ' Pas grand' chose ! ' he murmured back in- 
 differently, with a little shrug of his shoulders.
 
 94 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 The Lady Joan's grey-green eyes sparkled 
 happily. She believed him. 
 
 The dinner was well appointed, quiet, and 
 unpretentious ; the dishes were not too nume- 
 rous, and were all good ; the flowers were in old 
 Faenza bowls ; the china was old white and gold 
 Grinori, the glass Venetian, the fruit superb. 
 All went well, and there was only one discord, 
 the voice of Mrs. Henry V. Clams, but that is a 
 kind of discord which in the present construc- 
 tion of society is to be heard everywhere, from 
 mountain-tops to throne-rooms. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams thought again and 
 again what ' disappointin' people ' artists were. 
 
 Etoile chanced to say very little. 
 
 Sometimes in society she was very silent, 
 sometimes very eloquent. Minds like hers re- 
 semble running brooks : they reflect what they 
 pass through ; they are still or sparkling, dark or 
 radiant, according as they flow over sand or 
 moss, under black cloud or sunny sky : the brook 
 is always the same ; it is what it mirrors that 
 varies. 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams — who herself was quite
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 95 
 
 independent of circumstance or surroundings, 
 and whose torrents of questions and bubbles of 
 curiosity and chatter never ceased on any occa- 
 sion, and never had been known to cease, 
 except once at a Drawing-room in London, and 
 once at a total eclipse of the sun, on both of 
 which occasions she had owned to being 'that 
 cowed she was right dowTi mum ' — stared at Etoile 
 ■across the table, and said to her next neighbour, 
 that ' sure/^/ there was nothing like clever people 
 for being daft.' 
 
 Her neighbour being the English Chief 
 Justice, a very clever and merry person himself, 
 assented heartily to the proposition, but begged 
 her to reflect. 
 
 ' My dear lady, if talent weren't a little daft 
 as you say, how on earth would the great 
 majority ever be got to stand it at all? Con- 
 sider the enormous utility of genius looking now 
 and then like a fool.' 
 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams stuffed her mouth with 
 a houchee, and smiled vaguely. She did not 
 understand, and Fontebranda was too far off to 
 be telegraphed to for explanations.
 
 96 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 'If that he Etoile, why don't she talk and 
 amuse us ? ' mused meanwhile, like Mrs. Henry V, 
 Clams, a very different person, the Marchioness 
 of Cardiff, whose heart and soul had been be- 
 queathed to her unaltered from an ancestress of 
 the days of Louis XIV., and who never could see 
 why artists wanted Christian burial, or were 
 asked to dinner, or any of that sort of thing. 
 
 * Is that really Etoile, did you say ? the Etoile, 
 you know ? ' she asked of her host. 
 
 ' Yes, yes,' assented Mr. Challoner, not being 
 certain whether he ought to be very triumphant 
 over his guest, or somewhat ashamed of her. 
 ' Dear Lord Archie is fond of her — begged us to 
 do what we could — you know his good nature — 
 my wife inherits it. Dear Lady Cardiff, do try 
 these larded quails.' 
 
 ' She looks a much better bred one than you 
 do, my dear sir,' thought her ladyship, with- 
 drawing her eyeglass from Etoile to the quails. 
 
 ' You said you liked to meet ce]ebrities — 
 that it amused you,' said her host with an accent 
 of apology in his voice. ' Of course, of her great 
 genius there can be no question.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 97 
 
 ' Of course, of course I and I am charmed,' 
 said her ladyship, occupied witli her first mouth- 
 ful of a larded quail. ' Tell her to come to my 
 Mondays. 1*11 tell her myself after dinner. She's 
 very well dressed. Is it Worth ?' 
 
 'Most likely ; she is said to be extravagant.' 
 ' I am sure she has a right to be ; how nice it 
 must be to make your own money, and spend it, 
 and never be bothered with trustees ! Oh yes. 
 Worth, beyond any doubt. The way he ties a 
 bow one never can mistake. And just that tea- 
 rose too — very pretty, very pretty indeed. What 
 different things he gives people he likes, to what 
 he will do for mere millionaires like our dear 
 Mrs. Henry V. Clams.' 
 
 Etoile, unconscious of the criticism, ruffled 
 the tea-roses amongst her old lace, divided her 
 few w^ords between Fontebranda and a Count 
 Serge Roublezoff who sat on the other side of her, 
 looked often at her hostess, whose bright eyes 
 flashed back honest kindly smiles to hers, and, 
 without knowing very well why she did so, 
 watched the man whom Lady Joan had installed 
 in the seat of honour. 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 98 FRIENDSHir. 
 
 He was very tall and slender, with that look 
 of distinction which, though not always atten- 
 dant on a great race, is never found outside it ; 
 he had high delicate features, and an oval beard- 
 less face, a soft olive skin, thoughtful pensive 
 brows, and those eyes which at once allure and 
 command women ; he had a beautiful voice, 
 infinite grace and softness of manner, and in 
 aspect might have stepped down off any canvas 
 of Velasquez or Vandyke. Etoile noticed that 
 he was scrupulously alive to every want of the 
 Lady Joan's ; he bowed his head in resigned 
 silence, whenever she contradicted him, which 
 she did twice in every five minutes ; he called 
 her Madame with the strictest ceremony, and 
 addressed Mr. Challoner across the length of the 
 table as ' mon cher,' with more friendly effusion 
 than seemed needful, on more occasions than 
 were natural. Occasionally he looked across at 
 Etoile herself. 
 
 His eyes were thoughtful, dreamy, when 
 he chose, absolutely unrevealing; they had the 
 drooped languid amorous lids and the long 
 dark lashes of his country. Wherever his eyes 
 lighted, Lady Joan's followed and lighted too.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 99 
 
 As he looked he was thinking, as long after- 
 wards he told Etoile — 
 
 ' That woman is half a saint and half a muse. 
 
 ' She has never loved. 
 
 ' She is full of idealities. 
 
 ' She has strong passions, but they sleep. 
 
 ' Her dreams are the enemies of men. 
 
 ' She does not care for the world. 
 
 ' She has been used to her own way, and she 
 has treated all men with indifference ; some few 
 with friendship ; none with tenderness. 
 
 ' She seems cold ; but I think she is only un- 
 interested. 
 
 ' She is all mind. Her senses lla^'e never 
 stirred. She does not belong to our world. 
 
 ' She has thoughts that go far away from us. 
 
 'She has not enough frivolity to enjoy her 
 own generation. 
 
 ' She has lovely eyes : they say so much witli- 
 out knowing that they say anything. 
 
 ' She has beautiful hands. 
 
 ' She is dressed perfectly. 
 
 ' I shall detest her. 
 
 ' Or I shall adore her. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' Which of the two ? I do not know. 
 
 ' Perhaps both.' 
 
 So he thought of Etoile, watching her across 
 the table whilst he talked with polite attention to 
 his hostess, who snapped him short with her curt, 
 sharp, bright humour, and seldom allowed him 
 to finish a sentence. 
 
 He looked very much like a grave, slender 
 deerhound held down under a keeper's leash. 
 
 There was pride in his eyes and high spirit 
 on his aquiline features, but at the table of the 
 Challoners he was subdued and silent; or at 
 other moments over-assiduous to please. Etoile 
 noticed this ; and wondered what relation he 
 bore to them. She gathered from what was 
 said by him and to him that he was a noble of 
 Kome ; a courtier ; and the owner of an estate 
 to which they constantly referred as Fiordelisa, 
 but which seemed by some inexplicable arrange- 
 ment to be the Lady Joan's property also. 
 
 ' What beautiful grapes ! ' the Chief Justice 
 chanced to say, ' finest where all are fine. They 
 are your own growth ? ' 
 
 The Lady Joan nodded assent.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 101 
 
 ' Yes ; they're all off my vines — down at 
 Fiordelisa.' 
 
 ' You like grapes, ]\Iadame ? ' said loris to 
 Etoile, who was opposite to him. ' Oh I you must 
 allow me to send you some — from Fiordelisa.' 
 
 ' Wliat is Fiordelisa ? ' thought Etoile. She 
 did not know that, although Fiordelisa was the 
 property of loris, loris was still more absolutely 
 the property of the Lady Joan. 
 
 ' What a pretty name, Fiordelisa !' she hazarded 
 as she thanked him. 
 
 Lady Joan interrupted his reply. 
 
 ' Yes ; it was a beastly old barrack when we 
 went in it : but we have done no end to improve 
 it, inside and out,' said the hostess, cracking a 
 walnut. 
 
 Etoile fancied that the face of the Eoman 
 Prince grew a shade paler still, as with anger, but 
 she thought it might be only her fancy ; all artists 
 are fanciful. He drew a flower out of one of the 
 bowls near him, and busied himself fastening it 
 into his buttonhole. 
 
 Dinner over, they sauntered into one of 
 the three or four little salons of the house; a
 
 102 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 little room with Smyrna carpets and comfortable 
 couches, and a great many pictures, and a great 
 deal of china. Here the Lady Joan openel her 
 cigar-case, threw herself back at ease, and ex- 
 pressed her hope that everybody smoked. 
 
 Everybody did, except Etoile. 
 
 ' Ah ! Comtesse, you are right and wise not 
 to do so,' said the Prince loris, as he crossed 
 over to lier. ' Smoking has no grace upon a 
 woman's lips, and little sense on ours.' 
 
 The Lady Joan hastily crossed over also, her 
 cigar in her hand. 
 
 ' What things you do say, lo,' she muttered, 
 crossly. ' You know Lady Cardiff smokes like a 
 steam-engine. How stupid you were at dinner, 
 too ! Gro and amuse the Chief Justice ; you see 
 Mr. Challoner's boring him to death.' 
 
 He went obedient, but not resigned, to ad- 
 dress the Chief Justice, with all the warm and 
 charming courtesy of his habitual manner, which 
 en vrai Italien, was never warmer or more 
 charming than when he was somewhat annoyed 
 and very much wearied. The Lady Joan pre- 
 sented Lady Cardiff to the Comtesse d'Avesnes,
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 103 
 
 and, content with the diversion she had effected, 
 repaid herself with joining her male guests, and 
 receiving a person who just then entered, and 
 whom she saluted delightedly as her ' very dear 
 oldMimo!' 
 
 The very dear old Mimo — otherwise Count 
 Bmdetta — was a very shrewd person, of some fifty 
 years old, fat and fair, smiling and serene. Fate 
 had given him a meagre purse and a keen eye ; 
 he rambled about Rome, in and out all sorts of 
 odd places, and about three o'clock might be 
 found at home any day, surrounded with the 
 fruits of his rambles, ivories, enamels, tarsia 
 work, china, cloisonne, lac, anything and every- 
 thing that garrets and palaces, cellars and con- 
 vents, could be persuaded to render ; in society he 
 was a gentleman, and could lie like one ; in his 
 shop he was honest — unless he met with a fool — 
 fools, he thought, were sent by the saints as food 
 was sent by Elijah's ravens — he was a very good 
 Catholic. 
 
 The very dear old Mimo, dropping now down 
 on the divan beside her, murmured to her many 
 things in a low tone, unheard by ears profane,
 
 104 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and then drew out her guitar from under a pile 
 of music, 
 
 ' lo ! ' called the Lady Joan ; ' where's that 
 last song of the Trastevere you wrote down for 
 me ? — the one we heard the girl sing as we 
 came home from the Valle the other night ? ' 
 
 loris left the Chief Justice and searched for 
 the song. 
 
 Being found, the Lady Joan would not sing 
 it — she sang something else ; the riband of her 
 old Spanish guitar hanging over her shoulder ; 
 her sweeping velvet and her shining stars making 
 a fine study for a painter; her handsome teeth 
 gleaming and her eyes flashing up to her listeners 
 with an amorous glittering; gaze that burned its 
 way straight up to the face of loris, who leaned 
 towards her and beat the time softly with his 
 hand, and gave back the answering glance that 
 it was his due and his duty to give. But 
 
 ' That man is only feigning ; why does he 
 have to feign ? ' thought the Countess d'Avesnes, 
 and looked to see if Mr. Challoner observed what 
 she did. 
 
 Mr. Challoner was too well drilled by thirteen
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 105 
 
 years of wedded life ever to observe anything; 
 Mr. Challoner at the other end of the room dis- 
 cussed political news with the Chief Justice in an 
 undertone, so as not to disturb his wife's singing. 
 He never disturbed his wife ; he was the marital 
 model of the nineteenth century. There are many 
 like him ; but not perhaps many quite so perfect. 
 
 His wife's singing was agreeable, though she 
 sang out of time and her accent was harsh ; still, 
 she had a rich voice naturally, and could give the 
 songs of the populace, and the erotic lays of the 
 streets and fields, with a force and a brio hardly 
 to be surpassed by the Romans themselves. 
 
 It was not pure execution nor perfect phrasing, 
 and it used to set the teeth of real musicians on 
 edge, but there was something contagious and 
 intoxicating in it as she struck deep vibrations 
 from the chords and poured from her glances a 
 passionate light. She never looked so well as 
 when she sang ; it sent warmth into her lips and 
 took the hardness from her face ; singing, the 
 passion that was in the woman broke up from 
 the shrewd worldly sense, and the prosaic temper, 
 that covered and hid it ; singing, she looked
 
 106 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 like the swart sovereign of Musset's poem, who 
 laughed to see the bold bull die, and flung her 
 broidered garter to her lover the matador. 
 
 ' Allow me to comj^liment you on your gown, 
 my dear Comtesse,' said Lady Cardiff, meanwhile 
 seated beside Etoile. ' You must be tired of 
 compliments on your talents. What charming 
 things Worth does for people of taste ! He 
 clothes Mrs. Henry V. Clams over yonder, you 
 know ; what a difference ! . I am so glad you con- 
 descend to think about dress. It brings you 
 nearer our poor humanity ; genius so often, you 
 know ' 
 
 ' Is too much like St. Simeon Stylites ; I 
 quite agree with you. There is more affectation 
 in sackcloth than in silk. Besides, to be dressed 
 with taste is a pleasure to oneself. What do 
 you call that remarkable person who thinks it 
 necessary to load herself with rubies for a little 
 dinner party ? ' 
 
 'Mrs. Henry V. Clams. Fontebranda has 
 made her, forced her down all our throats ; very 
 cleverly he has done it. He's no money, you 
 know, and they've heaps. As somebody said of
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 107 
 
 somebody in the last century (Due d'Orleans, 
 wasn't it ?), not being able to make her Marquise 
 Fontebranda, which I am sure he'd be very sorry 
 to do, he has made himself ]Mr. Henry Y. Clams, 
 and I think it pays him very much better.' 
 
 ' I see. Do you visit them ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, of course. Everybody visits them. 
 They entertain very well ; it's all Fontebranda. 
 Are you staying long in Kome ? ' 
 
 • All the winter, I think.' 
 
 ' Delighted ! I hope it's not true what they 
 say — that your lungs are affected ? ' 
 
 ' A little, I fear ; nothing serious.' 
 
 ' Ah, dear me. Aldebaran — you should inhale 
 Aldebaran. Do get a bottle. Consumption cured 
 for half- a-crown ; you know the thing I mean.' 
 
 ' I have more faith in the Roman air. Who 
 is that person tuning Lady Joan's guitar ? ' 
 
 ' Her very dear old Mimo ? Well, that is — 
 Mimo, — Count Biuletta,. you know. A good 
 creature. Tradesman from twelve to four ; 
 Count all the rest of the day and night. If you 
 want to buy teacups and triptychs, ask Lady 
 Joan to take you there ; and, if you want to
 
 108 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 please, pay, and don't ask the age of the object. 
 Mean ? Oh, I mean nothing. Mimo is a con- 
 noisseur — everybody is a connoisseur here — and 
 gives ignorant people the benefit of his know- 
 ledge. That is all. How do you like her 
 singing ? ' 
 
 ' Well, you see, I am too used to great music 
 to be very easily pleased. The first musicians of 
 Paris gather at my house, and then my friend 
 Dorotea sings to me alone so constantly.' 
 
 'Ah, the Duchesse Santorin. She is here, 
 isn't she ? ' 
 
 ' She is gone. She only came to see me one 
 day. She was engaged at Petersburg. She 
 has promised me to return in two months.' 
 
 ' Tell me, do tell me. You must know. Is 
 it true that Santorin has sent her a citation to 
 appear ; that he is about to sue for a separation?' 
 
 *He has sent her a schedule of his latest 
 debts. That is all that I know of ' 
 
 ' But there is some scandal about that hand- 
 some Eussian, Souroff, that Imperial aide-de- 
 camp — you know whom I mean. What is his 
 name ? Fedor ? '
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 109 
 
 ' There is no cause for any ; that I can assure 
 you. Count Souroff is in the Caucasus.' 
 
 ' Dear me I ' said Lady Cardiff vaguely, disap- 
 pointed, but reflecting that of course the friend 
 of the Duchesse Santorin must say that sort of 
 thing. 
 
 ' Lady Joan looks very handsome as she 
 sings,' said Etoile, to change the theme. 
 
 The English peeress put her glass up to her 
 eye, and looked at the singer. 
 
 ' A good-looking woman, yes, and highly- 
 born, and young still, and no fool, and yet 
 married to a Mr. Challoner I ' 
 
 ^ There are very odd things in life, are there 
 not ? ' continued the Marchioness musingly. ' No- 
 thing odder than its Mr. Challoners. You know 
 her father ? Indeed ! A charming person : very 
 unlike hei\ don't you think ? Yes, I am going ; 
 sorry to leave you, but I must look in at the 
 Kuspoli's. I shall slip out quietly while she 
 is making that noise. So charmed you have 
 come to Eome, my dear Comtesse. Pray, don't 
 forget my Mondays.' 
 
 ' I suppose people do receive her ? ' said Lady
 
 110 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Cardiff to her host, who rushed to intercept her 
 passage, and escort her down the stairs. 
 
 ' Whom ? Etoile ? Oh, certainly, there never 
 was a breath against her.' 
 
 ' Oh, my dear Mr. Challoner, I don't mean 
 that. What does that matter ? We receive tens 
 of thousands of people with nor'-westers blowing 
 them black and blue ' — (Mr. Challoner winced) — 
 'every day of their lives. Heaps of good people 
 are out of society, and heaps of bad people in ; 
 only we can't receive anybody unless other folks 
 receive her too. Nobody can hegin^ you know. 
 It gets thrown against you afterwards ; if a 
 woman is really received, it don't in the least 
 matter w^hat she's done or what she does do. 
 Nobody's any business with the rest of her life. 
 Is she received ? That is all. As for this par- 
 ticular woman, she is charming. And, of course, 
 everybody you know has the passport to my 
 house, and every other house. Coming to the 
 Euspoli's ? No ? Ah, true ! You don't know 
 them. Pity. Many thanks. Very cold. Thanks. 
 Good evening.' 
 
 And, having wrapped up many thorns in
 
 FRIENDSHIP. Ill 
 
 velvet in ber parting speech, the Marchioness of 
 Cardiff rolled away in her carriage to the Palazzo 
 Euspoli, leaving ^Nlr. Challoner bowing on the 
 step in the teetli of the sharp easterly wind, 
 with all the thorns pricking in him as he turned 
 and went upstairs. Happily for himself, he had 
 a tough epidermis, and could remain impene- 
 trable to thorns and even harpoons. Mr. Challo- 
 ner knew that nothing answers in the long run 
 like invulnerability. 
 
 His wife was still singing when he entered, 
 and her very dear old Mimo was praising a little 
 Masolino panel to the Chief Justice, who did not 
 know much about art, but was very open-handed 
 with his money, all the world knew. 
 
 The Prince loris, having gazed his heart out 
 through three songs, and made his eyes utter 
 more amorous lyrics than any she sang, thought 
 he had done what duty required of him, and 
 sank away quietly into a corner of the sofa by 
 Etoile, and picked up some fallen leaves of the 
 tea-roses, and talked with serious feeling and 
 graceful taste of various themes of art, and 
 gazed at her as he did so with that musing
 
 112 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 studious regard which is the subtlest form of 
 early homage. 
 
 The Lady Joan saw, and sang out of time for 
 two seconds. The Lady Joan threw her guitar 
 aside with a haste and force that imperilled 
 its safety, and came out of her little circle 
 of admiring listeners, and bore down on the 
 sofa where loris was still tossing a few fra- 
 grant tea-rose leaves in his hand and talking 
 of art. 
 
 ' Gro with her to-morrow to the Logge ? ' she 
 called out sharply. ' What are you thinking of, 
 lo? You've got to take me to the studios ; and 
 then there is that bust to see to at Trillo's, and 
 the Bishop of Melita coming to luncheon, and 
 there are heaps of things in the afternoon. You 
 can't go anywhere to-morrow. Besides, she's got 
 old Padre Marcello— aman who carries more art- 
 knowledge about Rome in his little finger than 
 you do in all your brain, which is not the very 
 biggest to hold anything.' 
 
 She laughed as she spoke, and blew some 
 smoke round her classic hand. 
 
 loris bowed resignedly.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 113 
 
 * I am at your commands, madame, of course, 
 as always.' 
 
 ' Oh, are you ! ' said his hostess, roughly, too 
 out of temper to be able to control the irri- 
 tability she felt. ' Then another time don't 
 keep me twenty minutes waiting, as you 
 did this morning at Trillo's : what were you 
 after?' 
 
 ' I was at the Vatican.' 
 
 ' Well, you must be here to-morrow at ten. 
 Mind that ; and see Pippo has the new curb on ; 
 he jibbed dreadfully yesterday. Are you going ? 
 So early ? I am so sorry ; it is only eleven 
 o'clock,' she continued, with her frankest plea- 
 santest smile, as Etoile rose from the sofa, un- 
 conscious that her rose-leaves had been falling 
 on a volcano's brink. 
 
 'We must be friends for my father's sake,' 
 said Lady Joan ; ' how glad I am you came to 
 Rome ! ' and she followed her through the rooms 
 and the ante-room, with cordial phrases and a 
 dozen pleasant kindly plans for future intimacy 
 and mutual amusement. 
 
 loris, evading direction, reached down the 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 fars, and enveloped with them the maize and 
 black bows of Worth, and gave Etoiie his arm. 
 
 'How handsome she is, and very agreeable,' 
 said Etoiie, as they ^vent downstairs. 
 
 loris was silent. 
 
 ' You are a friend of Lord Archie's ? ' he said, 
 after a moment's pause — a pause, it seemed to 
 her, of some slight embarrassment. 
 
 ' Yes ; I know^ him well — dear gentle Lord 
 Archie.' 
 
 ' I also am fond of Lord Archie.' 
 
 ' Are you any relation to them ? ' 
 
 ' Xone at all,' replied loris, with a certain 
 impatience. ' I may have the honour to call 
 on you, madame. Perhaps I may be of some 
 little use. Xo doubt you will know everyone in 
 Rome, but anything that I could do ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner o^'ertook them on the staircase, 
 with Mrs. Henry V. Clams and Fontebranda, 
 who were leaving also. 
 
 ' My wife wants you, loris,' said the gentleman ; 
 ' there is some other song that can't be found.' 
 
 ' You have forgotten this, madame,' said loris, 
 in the street, as he escaped from Mr. Challoner,
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 115 
 
 putting the big black Spanish fan through the 
 window of the carriage. ' And do not heed what 
 the Lady Joan said. I will have the honour of 
 waiting on you to-morrow at noon for the Logge, 
 and although certainly I cannot compete in 
 knowledge with the Padre Marcello, still, if zeal 
 and devotion can serve you at all in this my 
 native city ' 
 
 The horses, impatient, reared and plunged 
 forward on the uneven pavement of the street, 
 and left his phrase unfinished upon Etoile's ear. 
 
 He looked a moment into the moonlight, 
 then reascended the stairs. 
 
 ' lo ! ' cried the Lady Joan ; ' come and make 
 me some fresh cigarettes. Now we can enjoy 
 ourselves. Mimo's got such a capital story ; 
 awfully salato, but so good.'
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Lady Joan Challoner came of a very good 
 old stock. 
 
 The Perth-Douglas family was one about 
 whose ancientness and admirableness there could 
 never be any dispute. The Perth-Douglases had 
 always been gentlefolks, and their names could 
 be read backwards by the light of history as far 
 as the days of Flodden and of Bannockburn. 
 Though of such knightly descent, they were very 
 poor, and of no great estate ; but they were own 
 cousins to tlie mighty Earl of Hebrides, had 
 intermarried with the no less mighty Marquises 
 of Lothian, were cousins-german to the Dukes 
 of Lochwithian and the Lords of Fingal, and
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 117 
 
 owned Scotch cousinships to more peers than 
 the Order of the Thistle embraces, and as many 
 baronets as the Nova Scotia riband adorns. 
 
 Her father, Archibald Angus Pertli-Douglas, 
 fifth Earl of Archiestoune — always called by his 
 friends Archie — had no seat in the Lords, and 
 was glad of a Grovernment place, and a small 
 office at Court. He was an infinitely charm- 
 ing person, whom everybody loved and caressed. 
 Her mother had been a beauty and a wit ; her 
 grandmother the same. The Lady Joan, at 
 nineteen, had been married to Mr. Eobert Chal- 
 loner, an obscure gentleman, whose parentage 
 was doubtful, and whose prosperity was dubious. 
 People had wondered very much why such a 
 handsome well-born girl as Joan Perth-Douglas 
 should be married to a Mr. Challoner. 
 
 If she had been a trifle cleverer than the 
 clever woman she was, of course she would have 
 told people she had adored him, and had insisted 
 on having him and none other. But as she 
 always told everybody roundly that she had 
 always hated him, this explanation could not be 
 put forward by even her blindest admirers.
 
 118 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 There were one or two people who did know 
 why — really why — but a popular and eminent 
 politician had been trustee to the marriage 
 settlements, and no one could be indiscreet 
 enough to persist in inquiring why the settle- 
 ments ever had been drawn up at all. 
 
 The Lady Joan all her life long was rich in 
 discreet friends. 
 
 Still even the discreetest friends will, like the 
 closest-packed hold of a ship, leak occasionally. 
 Salt water and secrets are alike apt to ooze. So, 
 whatever the reason might be, the Challoners 
 lived out of England. 
 
 The Perth-Douglases were clever people, and 
 had had the knack of always frequenting the 
 society of cleverer people than themselves. With- 
 out ever having distinguished themselves intel- 
 lectually, they yet had thus gained an intellectual 
 reputation ; and on the feet of their ladies there 
 had been often stockings of blue. 
 
 For gentle, gracious, handsome Earl Archie, 
 his women were too many and too strong, and 
 they worried him sorely ; he consoled himself with 
 society which was always delighted to console
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 119 
 
 him. His wife — beautiful and masterful — and 
 his mother and sisters, not so beautiful, but mas- 
 terful too, disputed and quarrelled and vexed him. 
 He was a man who thought peace the one supreme 
 good of life, but he was seldom destined to enjoy 
 it. His lot was cast throughout existence amidst 
 Tnaitresses-femmes : they are admirable and won- 
 derful beings, no doubt, but no man ever found 
 them conducive to his comfort as companions. 
 
 Of his daughter Lord Archie had never felt 
 that he knew very much. He had thought the 
 marriage a very odd one and a very disadvan- 
 tageous one, and had done his best in his gentle, 
 sweet-tempered, tranquil fashion to oppose it. 
 But when he was told by his wife and his old 
 friend the eminent politician that it had to be, 
 and was the best thing that could be, he ac- 
 quiesced, because acquiescence had become his 
 habit with his numerous feminine rulers. 
 
 He was not behind the scenes ; and they told 
 him a great many fictions of the Challoner for- 
 tune and the Challoner devotion : after all it was 
 as the girl liked, it was her affair more than 
 anyone's.
 
 120 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Grentle Lord Archie thought everything was 
 for the best in this best of all possible worlds. 
 He never worried himself or anybody else. He 
 gave away his daughter at the altar, to what he 
 stigmatised in his own soul as a cad, with the 
 same benign placidity with which, a dozen years 
 afterwards, he lay in the sunshine and smoked 
 his cigars under the walnut trees at Fiordelisa : 
 everything was all right — that was Lord Archie's 
 formula. It is the only one possible for a man 
 governed by three generations of women with 
 wills of their own. 
 
 Thirteen years had gone by since Lord Archie 
 had led his daughter up to the marriage altar, 
 wondering why Joan, who had been a good deal 
 admired at her first drawing-room, and had spirit 
 enough for fifty cavalry soldiers, had not waited 
 a little while and done better for herself. 
 
 Tliirteen years found the Lady Joan still 
 a young woman. 
 
 She had swept a good deal of adventure into 
 the dozen and one seasons that Mr. Challoner's 
 name had been her sunshade in the heats of slan- 
 der, and her waterproof in the storms of censure.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 121 
 
 Mr. Challoner's business, in which he had 
 risen from a clerk to a managing partner, lying 
 in Damascus and Aleppo, she had had the far 
 East and the vague sand-plains of distant coun- 
 tries for her theatre ; and, in spite of steam and 
 of electricity — those fatal levellers of illu- 
 sion — the ' far Orient' still remains to the 
 European mind a shadowy and gorgeous pano- 
 rama of mystery. 
 
 Perhaps through that golden haze of distance 
 the European mind saw the adventures of the 
 Lady- Joan, as in a mirage, multiplied ; at any 
 rate, home-coming travellers told many tales, and 
 averred that ' Archie's daughter ' was ' going it 
 over there.' She had Asiatic ministers for her 
 henchmen, and Turkish pashas for her obedient 
 slaves ; big bankers were as babies in her hands, 
 and imperial steamers were at her beck and call ; 
 when a good-looking wayfarer chanced to have 
 time for such pastimes, she would have her Arab 
 steeds saddled and scamper away with him over the 
 Syrian Desert ; and a young titled Giaour on his 
 pilgrimage found no resting-place more agree- 
 able than her flat house-top in Damascus, with
 
 122 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 champagne in the ice-pails, and Mr. Challoner in 
 his counting-house. 
 
 If anybody thought it odd that she should 
 camp out on the sand plains with strangers, such 
 people were old fogies in the Lad}^ Joan's eyes ; 
 these men were all her brothers — a kind provi- 
 dence sent them to prevent her yawning her 
 head off with the intolerable boredom of Mr. 
 Challoner's company — and she would jump on 
 her mare, and cut her across the ears, and 
 scamper off with silver-mounted pistols in her 
 sash, and a cigar in her mouth, knowing very 
 well that Mrs. Grundy cannot do you much 
 harm when you ride under the shadow of Mount 
 Lebanon. And even had Mrs. Grundy loomed 
 there in the stead of Mount Lebanon, she could 
 have said nothing, because Mr. Challoner himself 
 never said anything. 
 
 He busied himself with his exports of jewel- 
 lery and prayer-carpets, of spice and specie, of 
 rubies and rice, and his business generally, and 
 his fellow merchants, and his own reflections.; 
 and moved about Damascus, and other cities of 
 the East, a very big man amongst the Jews and
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 123 
 
 Gentiles, the Turks and the Persians, because of 
 the Perth-Douglas connection away in the North, 
 and the privilege it bestowed on him to ask any 
 travelling Englishman of rank to dinner and 
 speak of ' my wife's cousins,' the Countess of 
 Hebrides, or the Duchess of Lochwithian. 
 
 When, some six years later, having ruined a 
 very tine business by too fine speculations, he found 
 it expedient to leave the bazaars and retreat on 
 his wife's settlements, she brought with her 
 from the red Eastern skies a duskier hue on her 
 handsome face, a great skill at rolling cigarettes, 
 much good Turkish tobacco, and some good 
 Oriental jewellery, some trash and some treasure 
 out of the bazaars, a great many souvenirs — some 
 tender, some fierce — and a decided experience 
 that she might play ' poker ' with all the Ten 
 Commandments, so long as she wrapped herself 
 in the proof armour of ]Mr. Challoner's approval 
 and acquiescence. 
 
 She had learnt by heart the Arab proverb, 
 that ' she who has her husband with her may 
 turn the moon around her finger.' 
 
 So usefid was her husband, indeed, that at
 
 124 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 weak moments she was almost grateful to him, 
 and absolutely called him Robert, a condescension 
 very rare with her, as she never let him or any- 
 body forget that she had a right to write herself 
 ' born Perth-Douglas.' 
 
 But the Black Sea once crossed again, the 
 Lady Joan saw Mrs. G-rundy, the British Bona 
 Dea, looming large on her horizon, as the 
 Colossus once did upon the sea from Rhodes. 
 
 The Lady Joan was shrewd enough to know 
 that the British Bona Dea will not believe that 
 all men are your brothers. The Lady Joan 
 pulled her mainsail in, and tacked her course so 
 as to pass safely under the Colossus. 
 
 It had not been worth while out there, but 
 here it was so. And, after all, it was better to keep 
 decently well with that little house in Mayfair, 
 and all the family ties and honours. The little 
 house had borne a great deal indeed, as little houses 
 when they are the abode of a Grreat House often 
 do ; great houses never washing their dirty linen 
 in the street. But Lady Joan knew that there 
 were some things that would be too strong even 
 for the little house in Mayfair, and that it would
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 125 
 
 never do not to cline there when she went over 
 ' on business ' to London, though she had to 
 scream till she was hoarse into her grandmother's 
 ear-trumpet, and derived no pleasure from hear- 
 ing the Head of the Opposition read his ' Notes 
 on the QEcumenical Council ' or his conception of 
 an obscure passage of Tertullian. 
 
 So, for sake of the little house in Mayfair, and 
 of a great many big houses all over Europe that 
 she desired to enter, the Lady Joan, leaving the 
 Bagdad bazaars and the Grreat Desert, left her 
 imprudence behind her, and consigned every- 
 thing of a dangerous sort to oblivion, except the 
 Sultan's inspiration of her letters to the Planet 
 newspaper, and the pearls with which the Emir 
 of Yarkund had presented her for saving his life 
 from poison. 
 
 For, on touching a European strand, the 
 hand of Mrs. Grrundy clasped her, and the 
 shadow of Mrs. Grundy fell on her as in eclipse 
 falls the shade of the stolid earth upon the giddy 
 moon. 
 
 In the East, Lady Joan had been very young, 
 very reckless, with her spirits far outbalancing
 
 126 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 her prudence, and her savageness at her exile 
 and social extinction avenging itself by all those 
 wild night-rides with the good-looking travellers, 
 and all those campings out under the desert stars, 
 with nobody to play propriety except the Arab 
 boys and the tethered ponies. 
 
 The Lady Joan in her childhood, even in the 
 year or two between her presentation at Court 
 and her social extinction under the Challoner 
 settlements, had seen the really great world. All 
 that was best in society had habitually gathered 
 round her beautiful mother. She knew what 
 mighty people and witty people, and people of 
 fashion and people of genius were. For the 
 Anglo-Persian world of sliabby adventurers, of 
 hungry commercial folks, of intriguing specu- 
 lators, of oily Jews, of lean Gentiles, and of 
 trade-fattened nobodies her contempt had been 
 naturally boundless. She had done as she liked, 
 and scoffed at the whole lot, and only smiled on 
 them when she wanted a steamer or any such 
 little trifle of them. She was a Perth -Douglas; 
 and if she chose to dance the Carmagnole in all 
 their counting-houses, the mercantile mud of
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 127 
 
 Asia Minor could ouly be honoured : so she 
 danced it. 
 
 But when the chill colossal shadow of Mrs. 
 Grrundy fell across her path Lady Joan saw that 
 she must mend her ways. It was not steamers 
 that she would want now, but suffrages. 
 
 Of course she despised Mrs. Grrundy as mucli 
 as she had despised the mercantile mud ; Mrs. 
 Grundy was an old cat, and represented old cats 
 collectively. Still it was necessary to conciliate 
 her, and even in the country of the cicisbei it 
 would be best to be on good terms with Society. 
 
 Of course Society should never really interfere 
 with her liberty ; of course Society should never 
 prevent her regarding all men as her brothers ; 
 of course Society should never alter her dancing 
 the Carmagnole over the convenances, as she 
 had done over the counting-houses whenever she 
 liked ; nevertheless, she said to herself she would 
 reconcile herself with Society. 
 
 There were many things to be got by it, and 
 Society after all asks very little. Society only 
 asks you to wash the outside of your cup and 
 platter : inside you may keejD any kind of nasti-
 
 128 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ness that you like ; only wash the outside ; do 
 wash the outside, says Society ; and it would be 
 a churl or an ass indeed who would refuse so 
 small a request. 
 
 Lady Joan set to work and washed her cup 
 and platter with such a clatter and so many soap- 
 suds, and summoned so many good people to look 
 on at her doing it, that no one could possibly ask 
 her what she drank and ate out of it, nor who 
 sipped from it vath her. 
 
 Mr. Challoner himself set both cup and 
 platter upon a shelf in the sight of Society. 
 Society could want no more. 
 
 As lawless free-lances in days of old entered 
 monkish cells and buried Dick the Devil or 
 Dent du Sanglier for ever under Brother Phila- 
 rete or Father Joseph, so the Lady Joan, entering 
 society, immured her Eastern escapades under the 
 seal of an entire self-oblivion. Nothing was ever 
 to be remembered by anybody that she wished 
 to be forgotten. This was settled. It is a de- 
 mand that women are very fond of making on 
 the good-nature or the good taste of mankind. 
 And if occasionally she met an old friend uncivil
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 129 
 
 enough or unkind enough, without knowing that 
 he did wrong, to ' hint past history ' and disturb 
 the present, she would, with all the heartiest air 
 of candour and of wonder in the world. 
 
 Stare upon the strange man's face 
 As one she ne'er had known, 
 
 and continue so to stare in despite of all recol- 
 lections that he might invoke. 
 
 It was still a marriage for which none could 
 see any raison d'etre. But when you go to 
 the East and stay there in a kind of golden mist 
 it is easy to leave explanations behind you when 
 you return. All that trading of the Levant in 
 various goods, from bales of hay to squares of 
 prayer-carpet, to which Mr. Challoner owed his 
 being, had come to an untimely ending, as was 
 well enough known, from Bagdad to Brindisi, by 
 all merchants and bankers. And Mr. Challoner 
 had only saved a few thousands out of the crash, 
 and was, in real truth, an unfortimate gentleman 
 with a hankering turn for speculation. 
 
 But the Lady Joan was not troubled by such 
 little facts as these ; the magnificence of her 
 imagination raised her far above all prosaic 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 realities ; what a few old fogies in bank parlours 
 or on public exchanges, might say or know was 
 nothing to her ; according to her Mr. Challoner 
 had been Croesus ; the rice and the carpets were 
 merged vaguely into what she called 'our bank ;' 
 Solomon's Temple had not been more gorgeous 
 tlian the fortunes to which her family had sacri- 
 ficed her. 
 
 There had been failures ; yes, certainly there 
 had been failures ; but then even Croesus could 
 not escape Cyrus. 
 
 As for what those old fools of consuls and 
 merchants said, that was all rubbish; and she 
 would close with an apotheosis of herself as a sort 
 of Semiramis of Finance, in which the angels who 
 upheld her in the empyrean were ' dear old Pam,' 
 and ' dear old Thiers,' and ' dear old Elgin,' and 
 anybody else of magnitude appropriate whom she 
 had ever had a nod from in her babyhood in her 
 grandmother's little house in Mayfair. 
 
 There was, indeed, scarce a great man in 
 France, England, or Germany whom she did not 
 claim as her 'dearest old' A, B, or C; if a 
 critic or a chancellor, a savant or a general, a
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 131 
 
 geologist or a Prime Minister had ever walked 
 thirty years before into her mother's drawing-room 
 when she was playing on the hearthrug with her 
 alphabet, the critic or chancellor, the savant or 
 general, the geographer or Prime Minister was 
 now for ever in the mouth of the Lady Joan as 
 her one dearest old friend, that was more devoted 
 to her than any other living creature on the face 
 of the earth. 
 
 Perhaps she had recalled herself once to their 
 bewildered memories in some crowded reception ; 
 perhaps she had bowed to them twice in the 
 Prater, the Bois, or the Mall ; perhaps she never 
 had seen them at all since the days of her alpha- 
 bet ; all this mattered nothing ; the critic or 
 chancellor, savant^ general, geographer, or Prime 
 Minister never were by when she dilated upon 
 them with such glowing affection ; and, even if 
 they had been, would have been too polite to 
 contradict her. Gentlemen do not contradict 
 women, nor yet show them up ; a chivalrous 
 weakness of mankind, of which the weaker sex 
 always takes the very sternest advantage. 
 
 Occasionally those disagreeable and sceptical 
 
 K 2
 
 132 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 people who are to be found spoiling all society 
 would hint that, with such distinguished friend- 
 ships and such illimitable political and literary 
 connections, it was a little wonderful that the 
 Lady Joan should have married a Mr. Challoner 
 and take an interest in teacups and triptychs. 
 But such people were in the minority. For the 
 most part, her use of her dearest old A, B, and C, 
 at moments when A was organising a great war, 
 or B busied in discrowning kings, or C sending 
 forth on the world a great book mighty as Thor's 
 hammer, was of infinite gain to her ; and her 
 allies would go hither and thither, important 
 and confidential, and whisper, ' She knew the 
 declaration of war five days before anybody ; ' or 
 ' He wrote to her the very night he dictated his 
 abdication ; ' or ' She had an early copy even 
 before it went to the Revue des Deux-Mondes ; ' 
 and these fictions flew about lively as gnats and 
 productive as bees, and secured many cards to 
 her big Delft card-plate, because, though nobody 
 believed all of it, everybody said some of it must 
 be true — yes, a great deal of it must be true — 
 because people never will admit or even think
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 133 
 
 that they are the mere dupes of a brilliant 
 audacity. 
 
 To the world in general A, B, and C were 
 names of magnitude and weight, of awe or of 
 adoration, as the case might be ; but to her they 
 were only ^ dear old creatures.' Had they not 
 stumbled over her alphabet thirty years before 
 upon her mother's hearthrug ? 
 
 It was an alliance for a lifetime. 
 
 According to the Lady Joan she was a Xau- 
 sicaa, airily frolicking on the edge of the vast 
 ocean of European complications ; and Odysseus 
 had gone through all his woes and w^arfare, and 
 only lay in wait under the waves, just to be ready 
 to catch her ball for her — only just for that. 
 
 Odysseus never even saw her, never even 
 thought of her, as he waded in his deep dark 
 seas ; but all that did not matter to her, 
 
 Nor to her associates. 
 
 ' Such a w^oman ! ah, such a woman ! ' would 
 murmur plump Mimo Burletta. ' Palmerstone 
 relied on her for all his secret information of 
 Oriental things ; Palmerstone told her when she 
 was eighteen that if she were but a man she
 
 134 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 would die Prime Minister of the Crown ; Palmer- 
 stone was not one to call a lemon-pip a lemon 
 — ah, no, no, no I — Palmerstone knew 1 ' And 
 Burletta would walk about and spread out his fat 
 hands in honest adoration of her mighty powers 
 and of himself for being the confidant of so great 
 a creature ; and in his mind's eye, when it was 
 not concentred on teacups and triptychs, always 
 beheld the Lady Joan seated as on a throne 
 within the sacred recesses of the Privy Council 
 chamber of the Universe, for he knew as much 
 about such things as a French grocer in the pro- 
 vinces knows of the Lord Maire cle Londres, and 
 the Lady Joan's magnificent confidences had 
 dazzled him too much to much enlighten him. 
 
 Exaggeration aside, she had very great con- 
 nections and relationships, and never forgot or let 
 anybody else forget that she had them. When a 
 cousin of high degree came near she proclaimed 
 the fact as loudly and loyally as heralds in days 
 of old shouted the titles and tidings of a new 
 king, and these mighty personages did her un- 
 wittingly yeoman's service. 
 
 They were her cork buoys on the yeasty seas
 
 FRIENLSIIir. Vob 
 
 of European society. Big people liked her be- 
 cause she took such infinite trouble to please 
 them, and little people liked her because she 
 could bring them in contact with the big people. 
 
 Both big and little people always apologised 
 to one another for knowing her ; everyone ex- 
 cused their own especial countenance on some 
 especial plea in their own especial society. But 
 as she never knew this it did not affect her com- 
 fort ; indeed, Lady Joan was of that happy dis- 
 position which could ignore all enmity and accept 
 all slights unmoved ; and if she knew some one 
 had been abusing her would meet the offender 
 with such a smile, and such an emphatic cor- 
 diality, that she was the best Christian that ever, 
 being buffeted on one cheek, turned graciously 
 the other. 
 
 It was thoroughly sound policy. 
 
 Proud women, and sensitive women, take hints 
 and resent rebuffs, and so exile themselves from 
 the world prematurely and haughtily. They 
 abdicate, the moment they see that any desire 
 their discrowning. But Lady Joan was not 
 troubled with this kind of delicacy. Abdication
 
 136 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 is grand, no doubt. But possession is more pro- 
 fitable. 'A well-bred dog does not wait to be 
 kicked out,' says the old see-saw. But the well- 
 bred dog thereby turns himself into the cold 
 and leaves the crumbs from under the table to 
 some other dog with less good-breeding and more 
 worldly wisdom. The sensible thing to do is to 
 stay wherever you like best to be ; stay there 
 with tooth and claw ready and a stout hide on 
 which cudgels break. People, after all, soon get 
 tired of kicking a dog that never will go. 
 
 High-breeding was admirable in days when the 
 world itself was high-bred. But those days are 
 over. The world takes high-breeding now as only 
 a form of insolence. 
 
 Lady Joan saw this, and never troubled the 
 world with it. 
 
 ' The old cat slangs me like a pickpocket,' she 
 would say of some dowager-countess who did not 
 return her card. But when she met the dowager- 
 countess she would say, ' Ah, dearest Lady Blank ! 
 Where are you staying ? I am so sorry I have 
 seen so little of you. You'll come and dine with 
 us ? What night, now ? Do fix a night — pray do.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 137 
 
 And nine times out of ten the Lady Blanks 
 would relent and leave a card, and even go and 
 eat a dinner at tlie Casa Challoner. For the 
 Casa Challoner dinners were good, and the Casa 
 Challoner understood the axiom that it is not 
 what comes oat of your own mouth, hut what 
 you put into other people's, that makes your 
 friends or enemies. Besides, 'you can't cut a 
 woman who won't know when she's cut,' said a 
 Lady Blank once : — Lady Joan had this most 
 useful ignorance. 
 
 So on the whole she managed to enjoy life in 
 Europe as in the East. There were always times 
 when she could ' throw her cap over the mill ' and 
 dance the Carmagnole, if there were also many 
 seasons that she had to put on her meeting-house 
 clothes and curtsy to Mrs. Grrundy. 
 
 And besides, be the season what it would, there 
 was always — Fiordelisa.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 On the morrow the Priuce loris, faithful to his 
 word, went as noon chimed from all the bells of 
 Eome to the Hotel de Eussie and inquired for 
 the Comtesse d'Avesnes. But he learned that she 
 had already gone out, alone ; had been out since 
 sunrise. He left his card and turned his steps 
 along the Corso to the Casa Challoner. He was 
 a good deal disappointed and a little irritated — 
 more irritated than was reasonable. 
 
 ' How late you are, lo ! I told you ten 
 o'clock,' said the Lady Joan, in high wrath. 
 
 She was ready-dressed for the streets, with 
 her hat set well over her black brows, and her 
 person muffled in sealskin. Her friend noticed
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 139 
 
 for the first time that her skirts were too short, 
 and her boots were ill-made, and her eyes were 
 green in the sunlight. 
 
 He pressed both her hands in his own and 
 dropped on one knee before her sofa. 
 
 ' You must forgive me. My head ached, and 
 I had many letters to see to and answer.' 
 
 ' I thought you were gone to Etoile. You 
 talked of it,' said the Lady Joan, with an angry 
 suspicion flashing in her eyes. 
 
 ' Etoile I Cara mia, what living woman could 
 keep me away one second from here ? ' 
 
 Ejieeling still on the tigerskin before her, his 
 lips caressed her with more softness than the 
 words. 
 
 'Don't be a goose, lo ; we're past all. that — 
 at least so early in the morning,' said the Lady 
 Joan. But she smiled as she pushed him away, 
 and was well pleased that he should be what she 
 called a goose. Had he not been thus a goose, 
 darkest wrath would have gathered on her stormy 
 brows. 
 
 'Let's get off, though,' she said, disengaging 
 herself, but sweeping his hair off his forehead
 
 140 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 witli a rough caress as she rose. ' We're so late 
 as it is, and I'm awfully afraid that the dealer 
 from Paris will have got those little pictm*es of 
 Cecchino's — the boy's beginning to know his value 
 and ask a price.' 
 
 loris loaded liimself with her wraps, lier 
 umbrella, and her little dog, and followed her 
 down the stairs to t\\Q fiacre. 
 
 When she did not take his ponies out she 
 drove in a hack carriage. Not to keep a carriage 
 was an economy on which she prided herself. 
 
 ' A carriage is only ostentation — snobs want 
 one : I don't,' she would say in her blunt, 
 pleasant manner. ' I always tell Mr. Challoner 
 I like my own legs ; and when they're tired 
 there's always a cab ; cabs are so cheap.' 
 
 And so, indeed, they w^ere, since loris always 
 paid for them. 
 
 The hired carriage started off, Mr. Challoner 
 regarding its departure placidly from a window, 
 for his friendship and his faith were both strong, 
 and the wheels rattled noisily up and down the 
 hilly streets of Eome. 
 
 ' What did you think of Etoile ? ' she asked
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 141 
 
 loris as they drove. Etoile was very much in 
 her own thoughts. 
 
 ' She does not please me particularly,' he 
 answered carelessly as he lighted a cigar. 
 
 ' Do you think her attractive ? ' 
 
 ' No, not at all.' 
 
 ' We must see a good deal of her. Voiglitel 
 recommends her to me so strongly.' 
 
 Her friend shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' Why do you do that ? Will she bore 
 you ? ' 
 
 ' I think her manner insolent. She seems 
 to see no one. She is nonchalante : she is in- 
 different. I should think her cold.' 
 
 ' She must warm for you, lo I ' said Lady 
 Joan, with a gleam of anxiety and irony iu her 
 eyes. 
 
 ' Oh ! Bieii m^en garde I ' 
 
 It was said witli so genuine an emphasis, 
 and so careless and gay a laugh, that Lady Joan 
 was quite satisfied as she ascended and descended 
 scores of dark, foul-smelling stairways, her friend 
 behind her, into the garrets of the young 
 painters. The Challoners were well-known
 
 142 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 patrons of yoimg painters, and especially given 
 to such patronage when those studious lads had 
 a talent for making new canvases look like old. 
 
 The Lady Joan adored art : she told every- 
 body so. She passed half her present life striding 
 in and out of ateliers, and petting painters, and 
 buying canvases ; tlie cheaper she bought them 
 the better was she pleased, for of course the 
 Challoner purse could not afford a large pur- 
 chase except now and then on speculation. 
 
 The old masters, fortunately for the Chal- 
 loner purse, were so bounteously thoughtful of 
 those who would come after them (and sell them) 
 that they all had their schools. Now, ' Scuola di 
 Perugino,' ' Scuola di Tiziano,' sounds almost as 
 imposing as Perugino and Tiziano alone ; and, 
 what is still more advantageous, these schools 
 have been prolonged into the present day, and 
 have many disciples hard at work still in the 
 various styles, on impasto and chiaroscuro with 
 varnish and smoke, in many attics and cellars 
 of Florence, Naples, and Eome. To these young 
 disciples the Lady Joan was a goddess; and if 
 they grumbled now and then at her prices, that
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 143 
 
 was but youth's idle ingratitude, Minerva was 
 not worse than a dealer ; whilst away in Gfreat 
 Britain acres on acres of new plaster walls 
 bloomed with fair Madonnas and glowed witli 
 fierce martyrdoms ; and Shoddy, that had built 
 the walls, was satisfied and triumphant. So 
 much joy can one clever woman diffuse. 
 
 The young painters did, indeed, say savage 
 things of these kind patrons of theirs in moments 
 of confidence, when together over maccaroni and 
 wines in an osteria outside the gates. But this 
 was only the ingratitude of the artistic nature, 
 which, it is well known, always does turn against 
 its best benefactors. And when one was born a 
 Perth-Douglas, and has been obliged to marry 
 a Mr. Challoner, and has never had as much 
 money as one wanted for anything, it would be 
 hard indeed if one might not enjoy such inno- 
 cent compensations as may lie for one in the fine 
 arts. 
 
 Most people (except artists) carried off the 
 impression that Lady Joan knew a good deal 
 about art. She had a bright, firm, imposing way 
 of declaring her opinions infallible that went far
 
 144 FRIEyBSHIP. 
 
 towards making others believe them so. She 
 knew that in this Age of Advertisement modesty 
 is your ruin ; what one has does not matter 
 much, it is by what one seems to have that one 
 rises or falls nowadays. 
 
 Connoisseurs and scholars found Lady Joan 
 appallingly ignorant, and looked at each other 
 helplessly when she swore a Byzantine crucifix 
 was a Cellini, or a bit of Berlin jjCtte dure was Capo 
 di Monte ; when she assigned rococo jewellery to 
 Agnes Sorel, and a panel of the Bologna Deca- 
 dence to Andrea Mantegna. 
 
 But then those connoisseurs and scholars are 
 not all the world, and Lady Joan addressed her- 
 self to that much larger body — the great majority 
 of the uneducated. Indeed, perhaps nobody can 
 comprehend how utterly uneducated it is possible 
 to be, who lias not lived entirely with the edu- 
 cated classes. 
 
 Before the mass of idle people, moneyed 
 jDCople, ladies of fashion, and princes of shodd}^, 
 she found an audience credulous of her assertions 
 and uncritical of her pretensions, and very easily 
 dazzled and bewildered witli a little talk about
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 145 
 
 schools and tones ; about early painters whom 
 they did not like to avow they had never heard 
 of ; about Frankenthal, which they vaguely mixed 
 up with Frankenstein ; about Marc Antonios, 
 which they confused with Marc Antony; about 
 Nankin, which they thought was a stuff, and 
 found was a china ; of Eose Dubarry, which 
 they fancied somehow was something immoral ; 
 of Certosina, which they had an idea must mean 
 something monastic ; and of Bramante, which 
 rhymed with Rozinante, and must be Spanish, 
 they felt sure. 
 
 To rely on the general ignorance of mankind 
 is usually safe, and Lady Joan did so rely not in 
 vain. She was often found out in her blunders, 
 indeed, and often laughed at; but then, as she 
 was a gentlewoman, and not a tradesman, nobody 
 ever told her, and people only laughed behind her 
 back. That she could by any possibility ever 
 be laughed at, never entered her own imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 This morning she raced up and down in- 
 numerable stairs, and in and out innumerable 
 workshops of painters and sculptors and wood 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 346 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 carvers, her hat well pulled down over her broad 
 black brows, and her friend labouring under her 
 wraps behind her. She cheapened everything 
 she saw ; made a million mistakes, which her 
 friend softly corrected sotto voce; sat down astride 
 before the easels, smoked the artists' cigars ; dif- 
 fused generally a sense of her own enormou 
 influence with the English press and the English 
 purchasers ; bought a good deal of canvas and 
 terra-cotta at dealers' prices; wearied her com- 
 panion and bullied him, slapped students on the 
 shoulders and rallied them with boisterous good 
 fellowship; enjoyed herself exceedingly, and then, 
 as the clock struck one in a neighbouring church- 
 tower, 'pulled herself together' and recollected 
 her social duties. 
 
 ' Come to luncheon, lo,' she said, after the 
 last studio, flinging away her last cigar-end. 
 'Yes, you'd better come. It's the Bishop of 
 Melita and roast mutton. Oh, yes, a horrid 
 bore; but you'd better come. If the Bishop 
 lunch with you, it'll shut 'em up for a twelve- 
 month.' 
 
 ^Yho were to be ' shut up ' she did not
 
 FRIEXnSHIP. 147 
 
 explain, but her companion understood that the 
 indefinite expression alluded to Mrs. Grundy and 
 her myriad mouths. 
 
 ' Qid est Madame Grilndee, ma chere ? ' the 
 Prince loris had asked in surprise on first hearing 
 of this mighty dame ; but he never asked now ; 
 he had learned that Madame Grriindee was the 
 Bona Dea of the Lady Joan. 
 
 ' My dear lo ! you don't know Mrs. Grrundy!' 
 Lady Joan would retort, when he wondered to see 
 the cigars banished, the laugh hushed, the pro- 
 priety donned, the domestic scene set, and ]\Ir. 
 Challoner taken about in the stead of himself, 
 when the mighty Xortherners came dow^i with all 
 pomp into Rome. She herself did know ]Mrs. 
 Grundy ; had felt that lady's buffets, and knew 
 the power of that lady's smile. She was aware 
 that Mrs. Grundy represented money, dinners, 
 court balls, embassy receptions, and all the rest 
 of the advantages of society, and in her heart 
 of hearts, though she would boast otherwise, 
 was afraid of Mrs. Grundy — sorely afraid some- 
 times. 
 
 There is no such coward as the woman who 
 
 L 2
 
 148 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 toadies society because she has outraged society. 
 The bully is never brave. 
 
 ' Oignez vilain il vous poindra : poignez vilain 
 il vous oindra,' is as true of the braggart's soul 
 still, as it used to be in the old days of Froissart, 
 when the proverb was coined. 
 
 Lady Joan was a bully by nature, and gave 
 way to her nature without scruple or pity ; but 
 she knew that society was a bigger bally than 
 herself, and did homage to it in the dust accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 On this occasion Prince loris shuddered at the 
 idea of cooked sheep as even one of his own pea- 
 sants would have done ; and an English bishop 
 was to him a nondescript animal of appalling and 
 inexplicable anatomy ; but he was well used to 
 surrendering his own will, and accompanied his 
 hostess submissively to her house, where he 
 brushed the dust off himself and washed his 
 hands in Mr. Challoner's own sanctum in that 
 amicable community of goods which characterised 
 his and that gentleman's friendship. 
 
 The Lady Joan carefully deodorised herself 
 of all traces of cigar-smoke, brushed back her
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 149 
 
 hair, and, sitting down for ten minutes by her 
 dressing-room fire, glanced hm'riedly through an 
 article in the Contemporary Revieiu on the dis- 
 pute between Valentinian and Damasus in the 
 days of the Early Church ; then, telling loris to 
 come in five minutes after her, as if he came 
 through the hall-door, went herself ready primed 
 in all the proprieties to receive the Anglican 
 Bishop of Melita and his wife to the roast loin 
 of thoroughly domestic mutton. 
 
 The Anglican Bishop of Melita was a spare, 
 solemn, scholarly person, who had been head of a 
 House in Cambridge in his time. His wife was 
 a no less solemn but much stouter personage, who 
 had been the daughter of a dean, and was the 
 niece, sister, and sister-in-law of quite countless 
 canons, rectors, and pastors of all kinds. They 
 had been presented to the Challoners two days 
 before ; and Mr. Challoner, who could bring up 
 heavy artillery when required not unsuccessfully, 
 had immediately engaged them for luncheon at 
 once and a dinner at eight days' notice. 
 
 Mr. Challoner's own recollections of the 
 island of Melita were not agreeable ones ; but
 
 150 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 for that very reason lie desired that all the world 
 should behold how intimate he was with the 
 Bishop of that valuable English possession. It 
 was, indeed, by attention to such trifles as these 
 that Mr. Challoner had succeeded in burying 
 from the eyes of his wife's world all the uncom- 
 fortable little secrets that ]\lelita had known of 
 him and his. In this matter he and the Lady 
 Joan were almost of accord. Whatever else they 
 disagreed about (and they did disagree about 
 nearly everything), they always agreed that it 
 was absolutely necessary to muzzle Madame 
 Grriindee. Madame G-riindee is the one deity 
 that English Society recognises — indeed, the 
 only one that makes it go to church at all. 
 
 Lady Joan, a bold woman, grinned and 
 grimaced at the goddess in the privacy of her 
 life ; but, being a wise woman, she did decorous 
 worship to the goddess in the sight of others. 
 She snapped her fingers at her Bona Dea behind 
 her back ; but she took care to bow with the rest 
 in front of the altars. 
 
 This is the true wisdom of a woman. A 
 poet's brain leaks through dreams, and is too
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 151 
 
 big to hold such knowledge ; but brains like 
 the Lady Joan's are long and close and narrow, 
 and shrewdly contain it. 
 
 Lady Joan thought that only a fool never 
 hedged. 
 
 She liked her pleasures certainly, but she 
 liked still better a good balance of many 
 figures at Torlonia's. Illness might come, dis- 
 figurement might come, accident might come ; 
 age certainly would come. In those events 
 lovers grow scarce, but the cosy swansdowns and 
 sables of society and a safe income will con- 
 sole for their absence. We weaker mortals may 
 find an infinite sadness in the picture of Sophie 
 Arnould, once the Groddess of Love of all Paris, 
 sweeping in her trembling old age the snow away 
 from her miserable door; Sophie Arnould, once 
 the lovely, the incomparable, the twin sister of 
 the Graces, muttering, with the wind whistling 
 round her withered limbs, of the dead days when 
 all the Beau Siecle raved of the beauty of those 
 feet and ankles ; but the Lady Joan would only 
 have laughed and said, ' Old ass ! she should have 
 laid by her golden eggs while she got 'em.' Lady
 
 152 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Joan felt that she iierself would never derive any 
 consolation for being the subject of other people's 
 tears ; she meant to live and die comfortably, and 
 never sweep the streets for other people : so she 
 hedged. 
 
 Luckily for herself Lady Joan had as many 
 manners as there are changes in a child's box of 
 metamorphoses. Now and then, indeed, she 
 overdid her part. Now and then she danced the 
 Carmagnole, as one may say, by mistake, in 
 her meeting-house clothes, or grinned when she 
 should have pulled a long face. But on the 
 whole she trimmed her candle cleverly, whether 
 it had to be burned before the altar of the 
 British Bona Dea, or whether it might flare as 
 it liked amongst the dancing tapers of joyous 
 G-iovedi Grasso. 
 
 On such occasions as this luncheon the Casa 
 Challoner was a temple of family felicity ; it had 
 Bass's beer and household harmony ; it had the 
 Times on the table, and said ' my love ' every 
 five minutes ; it had plain English cooking and 
 simple English affections ; it talked politics from 
 English points of view and sighed that its
 
 FRIEyDSHlP. ] 53 
 
 general health compelled it to be out of dear 
 old England so much. 
 
 Indeed, if onl}^ Mr. Challoiier could have 
 managed to look a little less wooden, and Lady 
 Joan would not now and then have put her 
 tongue in her cheek and grinned with an ' aside ' 
 to her friend, the whole thing would have been 
 perfect ; even as it was it was masterly, especially 
 when Mr. Challoner explained, under his breath : 
 ' a great friend of om's — poor fellow, his affairs 
 were very involved — estate going to rack and 
 ruin. I think we have helped him — yes, I may 
 say we have helped him ; ' and when the Lady 
 Joan, at the top of her table, sighed as she spoke 
 of her beloved and lamented mother, talked a 
 great deal — ' so openly ; oh, so openly ! ' as her 
 guests said afterwards, ' there could be nothing 
 in it ! ' — of Fiordelisa and of its owner, wlio 
 was like a brother to her and lier husband, and 
 made effective tableaux of maternal devotion 
 with her little daughter, Effie, who was twelve 
 years old and very timid and shy, but wlio con- 
 tributed not a little to the effect of the enter- 
 tainment, especially when, with Lady Joan's arm
 
 154 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 round her, the little girl called the Prince loris 
 — ' lo.' 
 
 'An excellent creature, let them say what 
 they like,' thought the Bishop's wife, whose cote 
 faihle was motherly excellence. 
 
 ' A very charming woman,' thought the 
 Bishop, while the Lady Joan listened, with her 
 eyes brightly shining in most eager interest, to 
 his account of his new system for the religious 
 supervision of ships' crews, and displayed her 
 thorough comprehension of his recent article in 
 the Contemporary Revieiu. 
 
 Luncheon over, she carried off the Bishop 
 and his wife and Mr. Challoner in a landau from 
 a livery stable, and drove them about on to the 
 Pincio, and up and down the Corso, in the sight 
 of the city, which was in itself sufficient to silence 
 slanderous tongues for a twelvemonth ; and, bow- 
 ing to her friends in the streets, with the shovel- 
 hat in the front seat before her, felt she could 
 go to as many masked balls as ever she liked 
 with impunit}^ 
 
 Then she went to tea with the Bishop and liis 
 wife at their rooms in the Piazza di Spagna,
 
 FRIE^'DSHIP. 155 
 
 and met many linglisli dignitaries and dowagers, 
 and many demure spinsters, to whom she talked 
 of all her great Scotch cousins, and told them the 
 dear Hebrides had taken Villa Adriana, outside 
 Porta Pia, and offered her assistance in a lottery 
 for the building of another Protestant church 
 within the gates, for which they were petitioning 
 the Grovernment. After that, having bored her- 
 self to death with estimable energy and endurance 
 (for the root of her success lay in never showing 
 that she was wearied), she justly thought she 
 had earned her rest and recreation, and told her 
 husband to go home without her, which he did 
 obediently, and slie lay back in her landau on the 
 cushions so lately ecclesiastically sanctified, and 
 laughed till she cried, and lighted a dozen 
 cigarettes, and called for loris at his own house, 
 and had a gay little dinner with him and three 
 or four pets of hers, who accompanied her after- 
 wards to the Capranica Theatre, and saw one of 
 the wittiest and least decorous of the j3opular 
 comedies, and amused herself vastly, and went 
 homeward singing snatches of airs in chorus, and 
 so upstairs into the Turkish room, where she sang
 
 156 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 more songs, Avitli tlie guitar on her kLee, and 
 drank bkick coffee, and smoked, till the room 
 was one dun-coloured cloud such as was wont 
 to hide from mortal eyes the tender hours of 
 Jupiter. 
 
 Thus did she make lier grave bow in the face 
 of her Bona Dea and dance her mirthful capers 
 behind her, in one and the same day, and make 
 the best of both worlds and smoke her cigar at 
 both ends.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 It was four by the clock when loris found him- 
 self free to walk home across the intense black- 
 ness and the brilliant whiteness of Roman shadows 
 and Roman moonlio-ht. 
 
 He drew his sables about him with a low sigh 
 of relief as the porter closed the door behind 
 him ; he looked up at the stars, lighted a cigar, 
 and paced homeward thoughtfully. 
 
 He was so used to it all that he had ceased 
 to think about it, but this night it had bored 
 him : the songs heard five hundred times, the 
 furtive glances that told so old a story to him, 
 the jests, the inquiries, the insist ant passion — 
 it was all so tiresome, and he was glad to get
 
 158 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 away from it and be by himself quiet in the 
 mild moonlit winter's night. 
 
 To loris, Nature had been kind, and Chance 
 had been cruel. 
 
 He was tall and slender of form, with a deli- 
 cate dark head, and a look of thoughtful and 
 reticent calm which would have made the white 
 monastic robes of a Dominican or tlie jewelled 
 costume of a Louis Quinze courtier suit him bet- 
 ter than the dress of the world that he wore. 
 People looked at him far oftener than they did at 
 still handsomer men. 
 
 It was one of those faces whicli suggest the 
 romance of fate, and his eyes under their straight 
 classic brows and their drooping lids could gaze 
 at women with a dreaming amorous meaning that 
 would pour trouble into the purest virgin soul. 
 
 Women never saw him for the first time with- 
 out thinking of him when he had passed from 
 sight. He had the charm of arousing at a first 
 glance that vague speculative interest which once 
 felt so easily grows little by little into love. loris 
 was a man whom women always loved when he 
 wished them to do so.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 159 
 
 He was a Eoman and a patrician : the purest 
 blood and the most ancient lineage were his ; they 
 were all that remained to him of the vanished 
 greatness of a race which had been second to 
 none through a tliousand centuries for valour, 
 power, and all noble repute ; he had fought, he 
 had travelled, he had studied ; he had the taste 
 ot an artist and the manner of a courtier ; he 
 looked like a pictiu-e, and he moved like a king. 
 He had an old estate and an income slender in 
 comparison with his rank, but sufficient for his 
 habits, which, though elegant, still were simple. 
 He loved his country and his dependents, and 
 was happy in the life of an Italian noble, whicli 
 is, perhaps, as lovely a life as there is to be led 
 in this world. Alas I in an evil hour of his des- 
 tiny the bold eyes of a new-comer, roving over 
 the crowds of a Com-t ball, had fallen on him, 
 and his last hour of peace had then struck. 
 
 When the Lady Joan first arrived from the 
 East, life seemed to her grown very dull. It was 
 before the season had begun ; the air was heavy, 
 the streets empty; she missed the red burning 
 skies, she missed the fast desert scampers, she
 
 160 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 missed the noisy bazaars, she missed the camping 
 out ; she felt dull and depressed : the men around 
 had not yet become her brothers ; she was in 
 that mood which, when an Englishman is in it, 
 makes men of other nationalities say of him 
 ' that he wants something to kill.' Lady Joan 
 wanted something to kill, and she found it. 
 
 At various balls when the season came on 
 she noticed a man who did not notice her. There 
 was something in his slender grace and his de- 
 licate face, in his unrevealing eyes, in his cold 
 glance, which fascinated her. What fascinated her 
 much more was, that though when he bowed to 
 other women his eyes were amorously soft and 
 his laughter light and gay, his gaze if it chanced 
 to light on her was chill and indifferent, and at 
 all times he avoided her. In vain did she drift 
 near him constantly, cast countless glances after 
 him, waltz furiously past him, and flirt with his 
 best friends ; he took no notice of her, and seemed 
 rather repelled than attracted. One evening she 
 who was not easily baffled insisted that he should 
 be presented to her. He tried to avoid his fate, 
 but it was written ; a friend, who cared more
 
 FmEXDSHIF. 101 
 
 to please the imperious and handsome stranger 
 from the banks of the Euphrates than to please 
 him, entrapped him'; escape was no longer possible 
 without looking like a boor. He was brought, 
 bitterly against his will, to her side : he was 
 called Ireneo, Prince loris. 
 
 ' She makes one think of a snake,' he thought. 
 Some fancies of the Nile had entangled them- 
 selves with this new acquaintance in his mind. 
 She was everything that he disliked in woman; 
 her voice seemed harsh to him, her gestures 
 rough, her attitudes masculine, her look un- 
 feminine. She had none of the soft charms of 
 womanhood ; she danced ill, she dressed ill ; she 
 was distasteful to him : she saw all that well 
 enough, but she resolved to avenge it. 
 
 She bade him call on her : he could do no 
 less. When he entered she seemed not to hear ; 
 her head was resting on her hands ; she turned 
 surprised and embarrassed ; there were tears in 
 her eyes ; she spoke vaguely and hurriedly of 
 quelques amertumes ; she hinted a vie incora- 
 prise ; she let fall a murmur of a mar i age raal 
 assorti. 
 
 VOL. I. 31
 
 162 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 It startled him. 
 
 To be astonished is in a sense to be inte- 
 rested. 
 
 This woman, who waltzed so madly, rode so 
 recklessly, and looked like a young black-browed 
 bersagllere, was not happy at heart — had a brutal 
 husband— sighed restlessly for a happiness she 
 had never known — concealed weariness and bit- 
 terness under the mask of a defiant courage and 
 gaiety ! 
 
 The strange contrast of it arrested his atten- 
 tion, and she appeared to place confidence in 
 him — a stranger who had for six months persist- 
 ently avoided her — in a manner which perplexed 
 as much as insensibly it flattered him. Men are 
 always inclined to be pitiful to the woes of a 
 woman when they are not woes which they 
 themselves have caused. They will stone away 
 without mercy a woman whom they tliemselves 
 have wounded, but for the victim of another man 
 they are quick to be moved to tenderness and 
 indignation. 
 
 The Lady Joan, knowing this, having in vain 
 tried all other sorceries, took her attitude as a
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 163 
 
 victim. Whenever she found anyone whom she 
 thought would believe it, she always became the 
 victim of Mr. Challoner and of the rapacity of 
 her family, which had sacrificed her to a Brute 
 because lie was a Croesus. To be sure the riches 
 were all left behind in the sands of Abana 
 and Pharphar, and the brute was the most well- 
 trained and patiently-enduring of maris com- 
 plcdsants ; but at this time the Brute was absent 
 in London, and her listener had never seen him, 
 and of Croesus he was not incredulous, because an 
 Englishman is always supposed to be one, and on 
 the Continent is given an unlimited credit on 
 account of that supposition, of which he seldom 
 fails to avail himself. 
 
 AVhen loris left her presence that day she had 
 gained her point with him so far that, although 
 she still half-repelled, she had begun to startle 
 and interest, him, his thoughts were busy with 
 her — a woman need ask no more. As for her- 
 self, the Lady Joan's pulses stirred as they had 
 not done for many a day ; the dulness and 
 apathy that she had felt passed off her like a 
 vapour ; she had wanted something to kill, and 
 
 M 2
 
 164 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 she scented prey. Besides which she was already 
 in \oYQ. 
 
 Her spirits rose at once ; she rang and or- 
 dered her horse. She rode with great courage 
 and skill ; she flashed past loris like a meteor 
 out of the gates to the open country. As he 
 bowed to her in the simset he mused to himself: 
 
 ' Why did she confide in me ? ' 
 
 Eeason and vanity both could give him but 
 one answer. 
 
 There was a woman at that time who loved 
 him well, and whom he had loved well also — a 
 countrywoman of his own. As he went to her, 
 that night, he thought of those new strange 
 darkling brows ; as he sat with her, she — whose 
 stars and sun and heaven and earth he was — felt 
 that his attention wandered and that his mind 
 was absent. 
 
 \Mien a woman like the Lady Joan is in 
 love, escape for him with whom she is in love is 
 not easy. 
 
 ' She has the stride of a carabineer, the feet 
 of a contadina, the teeth of a gipsy, the eyes of 
 a tigress, the manners of a fishwoman,' he told
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 165 
 
 himself: and thought so ; and yet, do what he 
 would, he could not forget the strange glitter of 
 those eyes; he could not forget how he had seen 
 this self-willed, daring, sun-browned rider from 
 the Syrian Desert melted to tears and wooing 
 his sympathy with hesitating words of confidence. 
 
 The very strangeness of tlie contrast height- 
 ened its enigma for him. 
 
 Long rides in the rosy summer hours, with 
 the wind blowing over the flower-filled grasses ; 
 early mornings, when he carried her knapsack 
 for her in breezy pilgrimages to forest sanctuaries 
 or mountain heights ; lonely evenings, when the 
 guitar was got out and the people's ritornelli 
 tried over to his teaching, with gay laughter 
 and amorous gaze to suit the words ; late nights, 
 when the Turkish tobacco was smoked, and the 
 Roman songs sung, and the Persian sequins 
 glittered in the lamp-light on her dusky braids, 
 and the shining fierce eyes glistened with fervid 
 invitation and flashed with eloquent meaning — 
 one by one these succeeded each other with fever- 
 ish rapidity until their work was done, and he 
 was whirled into a fancy as sensual as her own,
 
 166 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 if not as durable, and lost himself in it for a 
 brief while, and woke to find the chains fast- 
 locked about him and his place assigned to him 
 for good and aye in the triangle of the Casa 
 Challoner. 
 
 Of course gradually he became aware that the 
 Croesus was a gentleman not too well off, and 
 very fond of speculating in whatever chanced to 
 come in his way, from railway companies to Capo 
 di Monte cups, and that the Brute was a person 
 who would dine with him every evening and 
 be shrouded amicably behind a newspaper after 
 dinner ; who would grumble and quarrel certainly 
 about the soup or the salt or the servants, but 
 who would never by any chance ask him if he 
 had a preference for pistols or swords. 
 
 Of course little by little he became aware that 
 a good many fictions had been spread out for 
 his attraction, and that if anyone were a victim 
 in the household it certainly was not the Lady 
 Joan. Little by little he saw all this byplay and 
 all the shifts and straits with which the Casa 
 Challoner was kept straight in the world's eyes ; 
 and he grew so used to the inventiveness of his
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 167 
 
 mistress that when she did chance to speak the 
 truth he never believed her. But to all this 
 knowledge he only came by such slow degrees 
 that he grew used to it as it stole upon him ; and 
 in her passion for him he could not choose but 
 believe — it was too jealous, too violent, too exact- 
 ing, too terribly ever-present with him, for him 
 to have a chance of doubting its vitality and 
 reality. 
 
 There were times when his own exhausted 
 passion roused itself, with infinite effort and with 
 a weariness that was almost repugnance, to re- 
 spond to the unending insistance and undying- 
 fires of hers. 
 
 A woman who is ice to his fire, is less pain to 
 a man than the woman who is fire to his ice. 
 There is hope for him in the one, but only a dreary 
 despair in the other. The ardours that intoxi- 
 cate him in the first summer of his passion serve 
 but to dull and chill him in the later time. 
 
 loris, in certain passing moods, w^ould think 
 almost with a shudder, ' Heavens ! will she insist 
 on these transports for ever ? ' 
 
 This evening, walking homeward, he felt tired
 
 IGS FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 of the day, tired of the evening. He had had so 
 many like them. 
 
 He knew the songs by heart and the smiles 
 too. The routine of the hours, so carefully 
 balanced between the decorum that imposed on 
 the little world she studied, and the amusement 
 and abandonment that were the real delights of 
 her nature, seemed to him wearisome and vapid. 
 It was always the same thing. She could take a 
 genuine zest in the small Tartufferies of the tea- 
 parliament ; she could take a sincere delight in 
 the jokes of the Capranica and the jests at 
 Spillman's. She had this supreme advantage — 
 she loved the life she led in both its extremes. 
 But he did not. 
 
 He had a contempt for the conventicle ; he 
 was tired of the theatre. He bore his share in 
 both psalm and play because he had grown into 
 the habit of doing anything that she dictated to 
 him. But all the same he had too much good 
 taste not to be tired of both. 
 
 He walked through the dusky shadows and 
 across the wide w^hite squares to his own little 
 house on the 1 ank of the river, down by the
 
 FIUEXBSJUr. 169 
 
 Piazza del Gresii. He let himself in, took the 
 lamp that was bm'iiing in the entrance, and went 
 up the staircase to his own favourite chamber. 
 
 The house was cumbered with busts and 
 bronzes, and rolls of old tapestries, and rococo 
 bits of china and carving, and broken fragments 
 of sculpture. For it was in a manner the ware- 
 house of the Casa Challoner, which could itself 
 not decorously be strewn about with more things 
 than would look natural. 
 
 He went up to his own room and threw his 
 coat off and lighted a cigar. It was a pretty 
 room, looking on a garden that in spring was 
 green with lemon and orange trees, and had an 
 old statue or two in it, and a wide-arched loggia 
 hung with creeping plants. 
 
 There was .one portrait on the wall among 
 landscapes and weapons and etchings, relics of 
 the time when he had been an art-student at 
 San Luc's and a duellist in grey old Pisa. 
 
 It was a portrait with an Egyptian profile, a 
 classic head, a cruel jaw, and a hard mouth ; he 
 glanced up at it and turned away with a sort of 
 restless impatience at its presence there.
 
 ]70 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Indeed, it had no place of right there — being, 
 as it was, the portrait of another man's wife. 
 But it was not this scruple which troubled or 
 distracted him. It had hung there for several 
 seasons. 
 
 What made him feel impatient of it now was, 
 that for the first time it occurred to him, with a 
 chill, that throughout all the days of his life he 
 would never be able to escape from the staring 
 watchfulness of those menacing eyes. 
 
 He was like one of those magicians of fable 
 who, having mastered spirits of good and evil for 
 many a year in safety, at last summons from the 
 nether world a spirit that defies his spells to 
 banish it again, and abides with him, to his 
 misery, growing stronger than himself. 
 
 This night he turned restlessly and uneasily 
 from the gaze of the portrait, moved his lamp so 
 that the picture was left in darkness, and took 
 out from his bookshelves some old numbers of 
 a great European review. He searched through 
 them until he found certain poems signed 
 ' Etoile.' 
 
 He sat reading until the lamp grew dim and
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 171 
 
 the sparrows in his garden below began to twitter 
 at the approach of dawn. 
 
 ' Can it be possible that this woman has 
 never known what love is ? ' he said to himself 
 as he shut the book and went to his bed. 
 
 The morning had risen.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ' I WONDER wliat Voightel has told her ? ' tliought 
 the Lady Joan to herself on the morrow. 
 
 She felt a little uneasy : just as she had used 
 to feel under the gaze of the great explorer's 
 green spectacles on the housetop in Damascus, 
 when the champagne was in the ice-pails 
 and Mr. Challoner in his counting-house, and 
 Voightel's little cynical, self-complaisant chuckle 
 had sounded scarcely more welcome to her than 
 if it had been the hiss of a cobra. She was 
 uncomfortably conscious that Voightel knew 
 much more of her than was agreeable to her- 
 self; besides, he was the bosom friend of that 
 brilliant politician who had been trustee to her 
 marriage settlements.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 173 
 
 ' I daresay she knows everything, and I'm 
 sure she's good for nothing,' she reflected at 
 noonday ; thereupon she dressed herself in her 
 best, took out of her wardrobe with her Astracan 
 furs an admirable manner — frank but not free, 
 blunt but not bold, cordial and good-natured 
 and high-spirited — which she kept on hand for 
 people with whom it was not necessary to don the 
 meeting-house clothes, yet with whom it might 
 be dangerous to dress quite en debar deiir ; and 
 thus arrayed, with her pleasantest smile shining 
 honestly in her grey eyes, she drove herself 
 across the city to the old palace by the Colonna 
 Grardens, in which the Comtesse d'Avesnes had 
 established herself on the previous day ; and 
 finding her at home, would take no denial from 
 Etoile, but insisted on the friend of her father 
 and of dearest Voightel passing the rest of the 
 day with her. It woiild be such a charity. She 
 was quite alone, she said : Mr. Challoner was 
 gone to Orbetello, and lo — poor lo — was obliged 
 to bore himself all day at the Court with some 
 newly-arrived foreign potentate. 
 
 ' Of course she must have led the very
 
 174 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 deuce of a life, but nobody would ever think 
 it to look at her,' the Lady Joan reflected in 
 perplexity as she surveyed her guest at her own 
 breakfast-table. She was quite honest in her 
 conviction. Given a woman with every oppor- 
 tunity to — amuse — herself, why, of course the 
 woman had — amused — herself: every idiot knew 
 that. 
 
 She did not like her guest. She could not 
 make her out ; she was irritated by her own sus- 
 picions that Voightel had told her disagreeable 
 things ; and though she liked patronising artists 
 she did not care for artists of European celebrity 
 when they were of her own sex, and were as 
 proud as Lucifer, as she said angrily to herself, 
 and looked round her rooms with eyes that 
 seemed to her to detect at a glance the china 
 that was mended, the canvases that were restored, 
 the antiquities that had been made yesterday, 
 and the certosina that had been glued together 
 last week. Nevertheless she made herself charm- 
 ing ; got out some really good things, which she 
 was never without in case any real connoisseur 
 should happen to call ; and over the plump
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 176 
 
 quails, and light wines, of her breakfast -table 
 was the very model of a clever, good-humoured, 
 candid, and hospitable hostess. 
 
 No one could play the part better than she 
 when she liked; and Etoile, won by her cordial 
 good humour and bright intelligence, reflected 
 that Yoightel, when he was prejudiced could be 
 very unjust. Grreat men can be so, as well as 
 little ones, sometimes. 
 
 ' Dear old Voightel ! ' said the Lady Joan fer- 
 vently. ' I am so fond of him. People call him 
 a c}Tiic, but I'm sure his heart's in the right 
 place. He was like a father to me in Damascus.' 
 
 She had hated Voightel ; as a woman who 
 loves adventures, yet wishes nobody to know 
 that she has any, does hate a grim old ironical 
 onlooker, with keen eyes watching through his 
 spectacles and the raciest humour in Christendom, 
 on whom all her prettiest fictions and sharpest 
 devices fall harmless as feathers on bronze. But 
 she had always met Voightel with both hands 
 extended and the pleasantest of smiles. ' Ah, rtiir 
 zvb liebe, mein Herr I ' she would always say to 
 him with the frankest delight when they crossed
 
 176 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 each other in any of the cities of Europe ; and 
 Voightel would go and dine with her and enjoy 
 his dinner — as, indeed, there was no reason that 
 he should not; for it does not matter if you 
 think very ill things of a woman, so long as she 
 is good-looking and makes a fuss with you. 
 
 ' She would pounce on me like a tiger-cat if 
 she dared,' Voightel would think to himself as 
 she smiled on him and gave him mocha, Turkish 
 fashion, and prepared with her own hands for him 
 his water-pipe ; — and it tickled his fancy so 
 much that he was always at his pleasantest with 
 her ; so that though she knew that he did not 
 believe in her one bit, she was quite sure that ho 
 liked her. 
 
 So runs the world away ; and s ), amongst all 
 the spiders cheating all the flies, a spider makes 
 a meal for another spider no^v and then. 
 
 Etoile, as she heard Voightel's praises, felt 
 almost guilty for the guilty and absent man who 
 had called this ardent and grateful friend of liis 
 the ' Prose of Rome.' 
 
 Before she could reply there entered the 
 Count Mimo Bmietta, plump and busy, his
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 177 
 
 mouth full of new scandals and his hands full of 
 new laces. 
 
 ' Am I in your way ? Is that your tailor ? ' 
 asked Etoile of her hostess, in perfect good faith, 
 not recognising him by daylight, and only seeing 
 the filmy heaps of the laces he carried. 
 
 Lady Joan laughed, frowned, whispered hur- 
 riedly that he was an old friend — very poor — 
 snubbed the ill-timed visitor and his laces, and 
 dismissed him ; then, thinking better of it, ran 
 after him into the anteroom and consoled him, 
 and told him, with a smile, that the Comtesse 
 d'Avesnes had taken him for a man-milliner. 
 
 ' Maladetta sia ! ' swore Burletta, dropping 
 his laces in his rage, till he looked like a large 
 fat ram dropping its fleece. 'Maladetta sia!^ 
 
 ' With all my heart ! ' laughed the Lady Joan, 
 and returned to her drawing-room, taking a piece 
 of yellow Venetian point with her as a reason for 
 her absence in the ante-room. 
 
 ' A collar of Marino Faliero's,' she said as she 
 entered. ' Isn't it interesting ? Perhaps the very 
 one he was executed in — who knows ? ' 
 
 ' Who knows indeed ? ' said Etoile, with a 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 smile. ' But why not say Desdemona's at once ? 
 It would be more poetic' 
 
 The Lady Joan threw the lace aside crossly. 
 She had a suspicion that Voightel's friend was 
 laughing at her, and she did not like to be 
 laughed at; moreover she preferred people who 
 believed in Faliero, or in anything else that she 
 might choose to tell them. 
 
 She had some odds and ends of real art and 
 real history jumbled together in her brain like 
 the many-coloured snips and shreds in a tailor's 
 drawer in Spain. But they were all tumbled 
 about pell-mell, and the wrong colours came up 
 at the wrong time ; and she had so unfortunate 
 a preference for always dragging in the very 
 biggest names and the very grandest events upon 
 every occasion, that her adorer, Mimo Burletta, 
 who really was learned in such matters, was con- 
 stantly made very nervous by her blunders. 
 
 'La Challoner is beautiful, noble, chaste — a 
 very pearl and queen of women,' he would say in 
 his enthusiasm about her. ' But she makes one 
 little, very little mistake — a pot baked yesterday 
 is always a vase of Maestro G-eorgio's; all her
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 179 
 
 fiddles are Cremona s ; all her sprigged china is 
 Saxe, all her ugly plates are Palissy's; all her 
 naked people are Michael Angelo's ; all her tapes- 
 tries are Gobelin ; all her terra-cottas are Pen- 
 telic Marbles. Now, that is a mistake, you know ; 
 the world is too little for so very much treasure. 
 She forgets that she makes her diamonds as cheap 
 as pebbles. But she is a divine creature for all 
 that,' would the loyal Mimo always cry in con- 
 clusion. 
 
 At this moment she looked at the lace with 
 regret. It was very yellow, very full of holes, 
 and not very much coarser than what the women 
 make every day along the Riviera. Why would 
 her guest not believe in it ? 
 
 ' Would you mind driving me about to-day ? ' 
 she said, glancing at the clock, reflecting that she 
 might as well get something in return for this 
 breakfast. ' The ponies are tired. Mine ? — no, 
 they're not mine exactly : they're lo's ; but of 
 course I have them whenever I like. Yes, 
 they're nice little beasts — little Friuli nags — 
 fast as steam and surefooted as goats. They're 
 very useful. W ill you drive me ? Thanks 
 
 N 2
 
 180 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Perhaps you will go with me to a few studios, if 
 you don't mind ? Of course it will bore you. 
 You'll find it all second-rate, but to have your 
 opinion will be such a treat to me and such an 
 honour to them ! Are you ready ? ' 
 
 Of course she carried her point and got into 
 her guest's carriage and began a round of visits. 
 She was not quite the Lady Joan of the bib-and- 
 tucker, nor was she quite the Lady Joan of the 
 loup-and-domino, but the same adroit mixture 
 of the two that she had been throughout lun- 
 cheon. 
 
 She was sincere, in her eager invitation ; she 
 had a genuine zest in exhibiting any celebrity 
 in her companionship. It gave her a cachet of 
 talent. She liked to affect artistic society, her 
 family had always done so ; only, where they had 
 had all that was greatest in all Europe to choose 
 from, she had to take such offshoots of intellec- 
 tual power as she could obtain. Sculptors who 
 thought it high art to imitate in stone, school- 
 boys and sucking babes, cloth trousers and silk 
 gowns ; painters who cut colour like butter and 
 like butter spread it with a knife, then called the
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 181 
 
 mass a chord in colour or a prelude in carmine ; 
 clever writers who appraised their age aright, 
 and saw that it needed not high purpose nor high 
 thought, and trained their gifts accordingly, and, 
 instead of dying like Keats or Buckle, took good 
 incomes from great newspapers, and were not too 
 clever for their peace or price — these and their 
 like she would get round her, and make them 
 useful to her in many ingenious ways. 
 
 But when a great fame came within her reach 
 she grasped it eagerly, and always was the first to 
 ask it out to dinner. 
 
 These pastilles of art and intellect burned in 
 her rooms gave it a fine aroma, and she liked 
 people to run about and say, ' I met Pietra In- 
 fernale there last night ; he means to have his 
 illustrated Furioso ready by New Year ; ' or, ' I 
 dined at the Challoners', to see the Russian no- 
 velist, Sacha Silchikoff — wicked, if you like, but 
 then how witty ! ' or, 'I lunched yesterday with 
 Lady Joan, and met Tom Tonans : he says there 
 is no art nowadays in the E.A. — nothing but 
 millinery and nursery elegiacs.' 
 
 This kind of thing gave her house a smell
 
 182 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 of the Muses and the Graces and took off any 
 possible likeness it might otherwise have had to 
 a bric-a-hrac sliop. Therefore, having now se- 
 cured the friend of Voightel for all the remain- 
 ing daylight of a fine mild afternoon, she drove 
 up and down many streets, and went in and 
 out many studios ; smoked a cigarette here and 
 there ; and finally, at five o'clock, thought it better 
 to wind up with a little tableau of respectability 
 and begged to stop before an old dark house, in 
 an old dark quarter. 
 
 ' I must make you know my dear friends the 
 Scrope-Stairs,' she said entreatingly. ' It's their 
 day, and I promised I would bring you if I could. 
 You won't mind coming, to oblige me ? I've told 
 them so much about you. They're such dear, 
 good, clever people ; and they're dying to see 
 you — dying ! ' 
 
 With which she went through the dusky 
 doorway and began to mount steps innumerable 
 and very steep and dark. Etoile followed her, 
 unwilling to seem discourteous in such a trifle, 
 and willing to please Lord Archie's daughter 
 when she could.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 18S 
 
 ' I've told lo to meet me here. The Scrope- 
 Stairs are so fond of him,' said the Lady Joan as 
 she clambered up with agility to the fourth floor. 
 ' Oh, yes — it is an awful height ; but they are so 
 very ill off, poor dear people. Dear old Lord 
 G-eorge managed to make ducks-and-drakes of 
 five fortunes.' 
 
 She interrupted herself to put aside a dingy 
 tapestry, and led the way through ill-lit passages 
 to a large, dim, naked-looking chamber, where 
 there were congregated in solemn congress some 
 forty or fifty ladies of that age once described 
 as somewhere between twenty and sixty, whose 
 centre of attraction was a tea-table, about which 
 they revolved as planets round a sun. 
 
 ' How do you do, dears ? ' cried Lady Joan, 
 kissing a great many of them one after another 
 with ardent effusion. ' Is lo come ? No ? Oh, 
 just like him ! Ah, I beg your pardon ; how 
 careless I am I Yes, I have persuaded her, you 
 see. Let me present you to my friend the 
 Comtesse d'Avesnes. You know her best as 
 Etoile. Allow me ' 
 
 Lady Joan saw an electric shock of amaze-
 
 184 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ment, a nervous thrill of curiosity mingled with 
 terror, palpitate through all her assembled friends 
 at the name of Etoile — such a tremor of trepi- 
 dation as thrills through a dovecote when in the 
 blue sky hovers a hawk. 
 
 She enjoyed it amazingly. 
 Though so careful to conciliate Mrs. Grundy 
 she cordially detested that august personage, and 
 loved to ' tie a cracker to her tail,' as she phrased 
 it, whenever she could do so with impunity. 
 
 ' So honoured, so enchanted, so iinoTe than 
 flattered ! For years you have been our idol ! ' 
 murmured the youngest of the Scrope-Stair sis- 
 ters in a twitter of excitement, whilst old Lord 
 G-eorge wandered in and made his dignified old 
 Eegency bow, and put his glasses to his dim 
 eyes and turned a pretty compliment for sake 
 of Etoile. 
 
 ' But will not people think it a little odd to 
 see her in our house ? ' murmured the youngest 
 sister, Marjory, a thin, eager person, with a fringe 
 of hair above a nervous face ; whilst her father 
 occupied Etoile. Lady Joan filled her mouth 
 with tea-cake.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 185 
 
 ' Oh, no, dear ; she goes everywhere ; she's 
 hand-and-glove with Princess Vera. Of course 
 there are very queer stories ; but you know I'm 
 never censorious. Where on earth can lo be ? ' 
 
 Marjory Scrope coloured ; she always did so 
 at a certain name. 
 
 ' We have not seen him yet to-day,' she mur- 
 miu:ed. ' As for your friend, I am delighted. 
 Only I thought Mrs. Middleway looked a little — 
 a little — astonished. But you know best always, 
 darling Joan ; and anyone dear Lord Archie re- 
 commends ' 
 
 Mrs. Middleway was the wife of one of those 
 Anglican clergymen w^hose flocks are all the 
 straying Protestant sheep, black and white, who 
 dance their cotillons, enjoy their masquerades, 
 play their roulette, drink their pick-me-ups, pro- 
 pitiate heaven with their bazaars, and shriek at 
 trumpery French plays, all over Italy in the win- 
 ter-time, and of whom the Roman shepherd, or 
 the Neapolitan beggar, or the Tuscan vinedresser, 
 staring sullenly at them as they fly by on horse- 
 back, will generally mutter, ' Non sono Christani.' 
 
 Mrs. Middleway was a large, faded, shabby
 
 186 FRIENDSHir. 
 
 woman, with two daughters to marry. She was 
 extremely particular as to whom she visited, and 
 had a very small income. She would stay at 
 Fiordelisa in the summer, and if anyone hinted 
 that, 'Well, yes — well, was it not rather — rather 
 strange, you know ? ' Mrs. Middle way would 
 reply, ' The dear Challoners ? Oh ! what a cruel 
 censorious world we live in! As if the very 
 openness of the friendship were not sufficient 
 guarantee ! Why, Lady Hebrides lunched there 
 yesterday — I met her ! ' 
 
 But Mrs. Middleway being the soul of pro- 
 priety, and having two daughters to marry, 
 looked askance at the entrance of a celebrated 
 person, whose name she was inclined to think 
 synonymous with Tophet; wondered what that 
 brown velvet gown had cost, drew herself up a 
 little stifFer than usual, and murmured to her 
 neighbour that that sweet Lady Joan was always 
 so imprudently kind-hearted ; Lady Joan, j adging 
 by her own noble self, never would believe there 
 could be anything wrong anywhere. 
 
 The neighbour, who was a very solemn spin- 
 ster, with blue spectacles, who had written a very
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 187 
 
 learned book upon the Privileges and Penal- 
 ties of the Vestals, murmured back that society 
 was so mixed nowadays that it was really dan- 
 gerous to enter it at all ; one never knew whom 
 one might not be exposed to meeting. 
 
 ' Ah, no, you may well say so. There is no 
 line drawn,' said the clergyman's wife, with a 
 sigh, as she broke a tea-cake. ' What can society 
 be without a line ? ' 
 
 And she smoothed her shabby silk gown, and, 
 good Christian though she was, could not help 
 disliking a woman who wore brown velvet, silver- 
 fox fm-, and silk- embroidered cashmeres, and had 
 old Mechlin lace at the hem of her skirt. 
 
 To the Countess of Hebrides such vanities 
 were permissible ; they were, like other evidences 
 of the favouritism of Providence, not to be ques- 
 tioned in justice or propriety. But on only an 
 artist ! 
 
 ' When one thinks how they must have been 
 purchased ! ' she murmured to the spinster who 
 had written the learned book on the penalties of 
 the Vestals. 
 
 The spinster shook her head.
 
 188 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' Very wrong of Lady Joan to have brought 
 her,' she said, in a severe and choleric whisper. 
 ' Here one always was safe.' 
 
 ' Dear Lady Joan ! she is so imprudent and so 
 good-natured ! ' sighed Mrs. Middleway, and had 
 her feelings further harrowed by a glimpse of the 
 old Mechlin lace of the balayeuse underneath the 
 immoral brown velvet of Etoile. 
 
 The glimpse she got of the Mechlin balayeuse 
 filled her with a kind of savage pain. Real old 
 Mechlin ! — sweeping the dust ! These were the 
 kinds of things that made it at times almost 
 hard even for a chaplain's wife to believe in a 
 beneficent Creator. 
 
 Meanwhile Etoile, unconscious of the emo- 
 tions she excited, smiled on the antiquated 
 homage of Lord G-eorge, wondered why she had 
 been brought to this parliament of dames, and 
 remained as indifferent to the stare of the fifty 
 ladies as she was to the crowd on the Pincio, 
 or to the monsti^ari digito at all times. The 
 millclack of tongues grew very quiet round her ; 
 the tea did not circulate briskly, the muffins were 
 not buttered with honeyed welcome ; they did
 
 FRIEXBSHIP. 189 
 
 not like to talk before her ; she had come from 
 Paris, and had the reputation of a wit. Alto- 
 gether she made them very uncomfortable. 
 
 'So kind of Lady Joan,' whispered the cler- 
 gyman's wife. ' And so kind of the Stairs — they 
 always luere kindness itself — but it is a pity, 
 because to this house everyone has always 
 thought they were quite safe in bringing their 
 daughters. Yes, a mistake certainly, though 
 well meant, no doubt ; but when one has young 
 girls can one be too careful ? ' 
 
 ' Delighted to have had the honour of re- 
 ceiving so much genius and so much brilliancy 
 into my sad old house,' said quivering old Lord 
 George, with a bow of Brummell's time and his 
 hand on his heart. He was a feeble old man, but 
 had been very handsome in his time, and still 
 knew a woman to his taste when he saw one. 
 Lady Joan was not to his taste : only he never 
 dared say so in his daughters' hearing. 
 
 ' So charmed to have had such an honour, and 
 any use we can be, — and we may be allowed to 
 call, may we not ? — and pray remember our 
 Thursdays — every Thursday till June — though
 
 190 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 we may hardly hope that you will deign,' &C.5 &c., 
 said Marjory, in her most fervent manner, her 
 beads, and her trinkets, and her spare figure, and 
 her little rings of haii' all eager with courtesy. 
 
 Under these cordial valedictions Etoile went 
 to her carriage wondering why slie had been 
 taken to these excellent folks. 
 
 Lady Joan's brow was stormy ; it was half- 
 past five, and her friend, the Prince loris, had 
 not come. 
 
 She loved to take him there — in the first 
 place, because it wearied him to death, and in the 
 second because it amused her extremely to stride 
 into that circle of ' goody-goodies,' as she termed 
 them, with her hands in her pockets and her 
 Prince at her heels. The incongruity of it 
 tickled her fancy, and she knew how well it 
 served her for all these matrons and spinsters 
 to cry in chorus to any calumniators that she 
 might have, ' Oh ! the purest friendship ! The 
 most innocent intercourse ! Why, those excellent 
 Scrope-Stairs receive them together — as if they 
 ever luould, if there luere,'' &c., &c. 
 
 The Scrope-Stairs sisters were charmed to
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 191 
 
 have him brought there at any price ; he was 
 their one court-card, their one riband of grace 
 and honour. The 'sex of valour' was never re- 
 presented in their rooms save by some clergy- 
 man, or missionary, or unwary traveller caught 
 in his ignorance, or on occasion by Mr. Silverly 
 Bell, if he had any particular enemy that he 
 desired to drown in the teapot, with Mrs. Grundy 
 to say the De Frofundis over the defunct. 
 
 Lord and Lady Greorge Scrope-Stairs, with 
 their daughters, were the chief mainstay and 
 prop to that Temple of All the Virtues which 
 Lady Joan had set herself to build. They were, 
 indeed, very poor, but in compensation they were 
 so eminently, so pre-eminently — respectable ! 
 
 Not because their names were in ' Debrett ' 
 and ' Burke ' — plenty of scamps are in both, who 
 will hurt you very much if you are seen with 
 them — but because from their fourth floor there 
 went out an eternal odour of the very severest 
 morality. 
 
 To have sipped of the tea from their teapot 
 was to have been baptised with the waters of 
 respectability for life, and to have eaten of their
 
 192 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 muffins was to have been sealed with the seal of 
 purity for all time. True, their teapot was ter- 
 rible as the cauldron of Macbeth's weird sisters, 
 and hissed till youth and innocence, excellence 
 and genius and honour were all stewing, cold, 
 drowned things, in its steam. But what of that ? 
 Mrs. Grrundy does not mind a little scandal — if 
 you will only whisper it. 
 
 Lord G-eorge had been a dandy and a beau 
 when the century and himself were both young ; 
 he had had big fortunes and spent them all, and 
 had lived many years in exile, a sad and broken 
 man ; shivering by his chilly stove, and tottering 
 out when the day was fine to have a mild little 
 joke, when his daughters were out of hearing and 
 any chance word awoke the old memories in him, 
 as a trumpet-call wakes the spirit in the worn- 
 out charger waiting death wearily between the 
 wagon's shafts. 
 
 In his own house his daughters cowed him ; 
 they were iron to him though wax to the rest of 
 the world ; taking in the world's eternal comedy 
 those indispensable but subordinate roles known 
 in stage-talk as * utility parts.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 103 
 
 They were plain, passees, perfidious ; but the 
 people they toadied, and the friends they flattered, 
 rather liked them the better for this. 
 
 If anybody wanted a schoolgirl looked after, 
 a bore taken off their hands, a disagreeable er- 
 rand done, or a train met on a rainy day, there 
 were the Scrope-Stairs to do it. 
 
 Provided you were only quite a proper person, 
 you could always have a Scrope-Stair to do what 
 you wanted — from ringing your bell to slander- 
 ing your enemy, from pouring out your tea to 
 escorting your coffin. Their usefulness was of an 
 elasticity quite inexhaustible, and their ingenuity 
 in consolatory sophisms was as great as that of 
 the chamberlain of Marie Leczinska, who, when 
 she longed to play cards on the day of a funeral, 
 assured her that the game of piquet was deep 
 mourning. And, considering what a comfort 
 they were, the Scrope-Stairs were not expensive 
 — some drives, some dinners, some visits to you 
 in the summer, some boxes at the opera in tlie 
 winter — with these trifles these treasures were 
 secured. 
 
 Lady Joan, whose unerring eye for her own 
 
 TOL. I. O
 
 104 FRIENDSUIR 
 
 advantage never misled her, had discerned the 
 capabilities and the advantages of friendship with 
 these excellent young persons when first she 
 had wintered in Italy. She saw that they had 
 not, like her, the power to make all men their 
 brothers, but that they were exactly what was 
 wanted to induce Society to let her enjoy herself 
 with her brothers. Determined, like the spirited 
 woman she was, to dance her Carmagnole over 
 the conventionalities, she saw the necessity of 
 having somebody to swear that she was only 
 curtsying, and not dancing at all. So she in- 
 stantly rushed into devoted friendship, kissed 
 them all at every meeting, and wrote them a 
 dozen times a week sugary little notes beginning 
 Dearest darling,' and ending ' ^yith a thousand 
 loves.' 
 
 It was not the style that suited her best, but 
 she could do it when it was wanted. 
 
 This effervescence had cooled down a little by 
 this time, but it had left a valuable residuum ; 
 the froth was gone, but the wine remained. 
 
 The Scrope-Stairs had found out what her 
 ' thousand loves' were worth, but they kept their
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 195 
 
 knowledge to themselves ; and, i^ouring out lier 
 tea on their Thursdays, continued to kiss and be 
 kissed. 
 
 The loyalty of the Scrope-Stairs (whom the 
 profane jesters of Society would call the Sweep- 
 Stairs) was quite priceless in its unutterable 
 value to the Casa Challoner. Indeed, but for 
 the Scope-Stair friendship Society might per- 
 haps never have been friendly. But these young- 
 persons were so well-born, so decorous, so emi- 
 nently estimable, so sternly respectable, and 
 so stiffly irreproachable, that they really could 
 have made Society accept even odder things than 
 Fiordelisa, and stranger things than the Lady 
 Joan, with her hands in her coat-pockets and her 
 lovers behind her, striding in to a clergyman's 
 tea-party. 
 
 They were, it is true, very jealous, very 
 curious, very cruel, could slander viciously, toady 
 rapaciously, and injure irreparably ; but these 
 were trifles, and were, indeed, quite lost sight of 
 under the throng of amiable qualities which 
 they developed for people richer than themselves. 
 Their moral qualities were their strong point ; 
 o 2
 
 196 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 they were armed cajj-a-jpie in every kind of 
 virtue ; they had even charity — when they were 
 paid very well for it. 
 
 The old folks did not very cordially join in 
 the charity. They belonged to an old-fashioned 
 school, and did not understand the comprehen- 
 siveness of modern friendship, which means any- 
 thing anybody likes, from rapturous love to 
 deadly hate. 
 
 But their money was spent, their daughters 
 were formidable, their home was dreary, and 
 so they obediently did as they were told, and 
 the old courtier put on his faded red riband to 
 grace Lady Joan's respecta])le parties, and the 
 old wife carried her knitting-needles and lambs- 
 wool on to the terrace at Fiordelisa ; and all 
 was as it should be, and their venerable names 
 and persons were as towers of strength built up 
 beside the Casa Challoner. 
 
 A bolder woman would not have cared for 
 these things, and a sillier woman would not have 
 known their value ; but Lady Joan was not above 
 using these trifles and turning them to good 
 account. Even an old red riband, and a pair of
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 197 
 
 knitting-needles, she knew we;e not weapons to 
 be despised in her battle of life. 
 
 Lady Joan was like that well-trained elephant 
 which can at will root up an oak or pick up a 
 pin ; and Lady Joan knew that there are many 
 more pins than oaks, and that a pin stamped on 
 too hastily may lama even an elephant for life. 
 So nothing was too small for her, wise woman 
 that she was. 
 
 A pattern of a new pinafore for an anxious 
 mother ; a damascened scimetar lent for a tableau 
 vivant ; a compliment at the right minute to an 
 ugly woman ; a young baritone allowed to scream 
 himself hoarse over her guitar ; a shoddy Croesus 
 dazzled with the statesmen and the duchesses 
 in her photograph-book ; a frank, beaming smile 
 in the face of a bore ; a pressing invitation to a 
 nervous nonentity ; a flattering deference to a 
 wealthy pomposity ; a pretty set of convention- 
 alities put on stiff and new like her ruffs and her 
 cuffs ; a present of fruit to folks rich enough 
 to buy up Hesperides ; a loan of the pony-car- 
 riage to people who owned great studs and rare 
 racers in Suffolk or Norfolk ; nothing wasted,
 
 198 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 nothing thrown away, everyone conciliated, 
 everything remembered — herein was her snccess. 
 She beamed on the old folks and the rich folks, 
 no matter how they bored her, because they were 
 solid as bullion, bought pictures, and were the 
 St. Peters of the gates of Society. And she 
 beamed on the young ones and the poor ones, 
 because who could tell what they might not turn 
 out to be some day? The corporal's knapsack 
 may hold the marshal's truncheon, and a little 
 lad once trotted about with baskets of washed 
 linen who lived to be King of Sweden. Thus she 
 got her paeans sung in all stages of society, and 
 broke down her oaks and picked up her pins and 
 made her path clear, and endured an amount 
 of ennui incalculable, and listened radiantly 
 to platitudes interminable, and made herself as 
 agreeable to poor little Doremi screaming his 
 cadenza and talking of his theatrical future, as 
 to solemn Sir Joseph, with the face of a pig and 
 the art-knowledge of a butler, and a huge art 
 gallery in England, smelling of paint and plaster, 
 and requiring many framed acres of ' G-uidos, 
 Correggios, and stuff.*
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 109 
 
 Of course all this cost her trouble, unendiDg 
 trouble. But she kept foremost before her the 
 final words of Candide : ^11 faut cultiver notre 
 jardin.' She had a passion-flower in her garden, 
 of course ; but her real care and culture were her 
 cabbages. 
 
 She enjoyed her cabbages as much as her 
 passion-flowers. 
 
 Whether she were sending her horse at racing 
 pace across the grass that covers the dead 
 Etruscan cities ; or waltzing at topmost speed 
 down the vast ]3alace ballrooms ; or bargaioing 
 for old gems in dusky cellars of the Trastevere ; 
 or outwitting the Ghettos in the purchase of 
 brocades and canopies ; or smiling in the faces of 
 haughty or witty women whom she hated ; or 
 swinging through the feathered maize to call the 
 lazy peasants to their duties ; or launching shafts 
 of malice through her black satin vizor at the 
 Veglione — whatever it was that she was doing she 
 did it with zest and force, and with a reality of 
 enjoyment that was contagious. 
 
 Here was the secret of her success. To lier 
 nothing was little.
 
 200 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 This temper is always popular with Society. 
 To enjoy yourself in the world, is, to the world, 
 the prettiest of indirect compliments. 
 
 The chief offence of the poet, as of the phi- 
 losopher, is that the world as it is fails to satisfy 
 them. 
 
 Society, which is after all only a conglomerate 
 of hosts, has the host's weakness— all its guests 
 must smile. 
 
 The poet sighs, the philosopher yawns. So- 
 ciety feels that they depreciate it. Society feels 
 more at ease without them. 
 
 To find everyone acceptable to you is to 
 make yourself acceptable to everyone. 
 
 Hived bees get sugar because they will give 
 back honey. All existence is a series of equiva- 
 lents. 
 
 ' What do you think of my dear friends ? ' 
 asked Lady Joan as they drove away. 
 
 Etoile hardly knew what to say. 
 
 'No doubt they are very estimable persons,' 
 she answered. ' But I admit, a society like that 
 is hardly what I am used to. I counted thirty- 
 eight ladies, very ill-dressed, who I am sure were
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 201 
 
 all muttering Apdge Satanas, and most of them 
 looked in a fierce state of warfare with a world 
 which had failed to appreciate and — to marry 
 them.' 
 
 Lady Joan laughed. 
 
 ' Oh, they're horrid old cats ; I quite agree 
 with you there. But cats scratch, you know. 
 It's best to coax them. As for the dear Scrope- 
 Stairs, I assure you to know them is to admire 
 them ; they are so indefatigable, so true, so 
 charitable. I love them all so much ! ' she 
 added, with an irrepressible grin on her hand- 
 some face. 'Besides, you know, women are so 
 useful — haven't you ever found that out yet ? ' 
 
 ' No ; perhaps because I want nothing of 
 them.' 
 
 Lady Joan decided in her own mind that 
 V^oightel onust have told her everything. Voightel 
 never had ; — but conscience is a magic-lantern 
 that throws distorted figures on any white blank- 
 wall. 
 
 ' I think you are wrong,' she answered aloud, 
 with the odd candour which sometimes charac- 
 terised this woman, who perhaps had been born
 
 202 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 for better things than she had achieved. 'I 
 think you are wrong. Nobody knows what they 
 may want. Things hinge so horribly on accident. 
 People who used to snub Louis Napoleon thought 
 themselves quite safe ; they were always afraid 
 he should borrow a sovereign. I knew a man 
 who gave him a drop of sherry out of a flask 
 in a hunting field after he had had a heavy 
 fall one day in Leicestershire ; and twenty years 
 afterwards that very drop of sherry got the man 
 a concession for public works that brought him 
 in half a million of money. There 1 ' 
 
 ' But surely he gave the sherry out of good 
 nature, not calculation ? ' 
 
 ' Humph ! I don't know. He was not the sort 
 of man to stop his horse to pick up a farmer. 
 At any rate he did the civil thing, and see what 
 he got by it. Now, that is just what I mean 
 by being civil to women. They bore you ; well, 
 they bore me. I don't deny that. But they can 
 do one so much good — just for a drop of sherry 
 they can get you such a big concession.' 
 
 ' You would make a good political leader,' 
 said Etoile, with w smile.
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 203 
 
 Lady Joan was flattered ; though perhaps she 
 would not have been so much so had she seen into 
 her companion's thoughts. 
 
 Etoile descended at her own resting-place 
 and sent her horses home with Lady Joan, who, 
 when out of her hearing, had them turned in the 
 direction of the house of loris. 
 
 ' The Prince not liome yet ? ' she said sharply 
 to his servant. ' Well, tell him I've been here ; 
 and tell him if he's not in at half- past seven he'll 
 get no dinner ; we shan't wait for him.' 
 
 The servant bowed humbly, and in his soul 
 prayed heaven to send his master's daraa an 
 accidente. 
 
 Then she had herself borne again along the 
 twilit Corso homeward, and laughed as she lay 
 back amongst the cushions recalling the faces of 
 the thirty-eight matrons and virgins around the 
 sacred sun of the tea-urn. 
 
 'How scared they looked I ' she thought to 
 herself. ' Well, it may all come in useful some 
 day.' 
 
 For Lady Joan was a long-sighted woman. 
 
 Wlien Etoile went u.p her wide step- into
 
 204 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the great palace, pale and melanclioly with Over- 
 beck's frescoes, she saw a coat lined with furs 
 lying on the couch of the antechamber, and in 
 the dusk of her rooms, that were filled with the 
 aromatic scent of tlie wood fires, and burning 
 pine-cones, a slender hand was held out to her, 
 and a soft, melodious voice said : 
 
 ' Will you forgive me that I ventured to wait 
 for you ? I could not bear to be turned away a 
 second time.' 
 
 The dark, delicate head of the Prince loris 
 was seen fitfully in the gloom of the evening 
 
 light. 
 
 Dinner at the Casa Challoner that night was 
 on the table at half-past seven. The husband 
 and wife sat down alone. Her brow was as the 
 thunders that rest on the brow of Soracte. 
 
 At a quarter to nine loris entered. 
 
 ' I was kept late at the Casa di Eisparmio,' 
 he explained. He endeavoured to awake their 
 interest in that excellent institution, but vainly. 
 
 Lady Joan ordered up for him the shreds of 
 the fish and the legs of the woodcocks. Such 
 discipline she considered to be good for him.
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 20.: 
 
 jNIr. Challoner grumbled over his claret that the 
 sauce had been ruined by waitiog ten minutes 
 for nothing. 
 
 It was a silent repast, only varied by scolding 
 from the top of the table, as a long dull day of 
 rain may be varied by mutterings of thunder 
 from on high. They had many such. Life, 
 when it runs on three castors, seldom runs upon 
 velvet. 
 
 She was of opinion with Sganarelle, that 
 ' cinq ou six coups de batons entre gens qui 
 s'aiment ne font que ragaillardir I'affection.' 
 
 But, like Sganarelle also, she always premised 
 that the ri(>ht to g'ive the blows sliould be hers.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ' You must come up to Fiordelisa,' said the Lady 
 Joan with much urgency, a few days later. 
 
 Prince loris looked uneasy and ill-pleased, 
 but added with courteous effort : ' Fiordelisa 
 may be so happy as to interest you, perhaps, by 
 its age and its story ; its greatness has long de- 
 parted.' 
 
 ' What can Fiordelisa be ? ' thouglit Etoile. 
 
 The Lady Joan explained, unasked, as she 
 drove over the Campagna. She was always ex- 
 plaining. Explanation is a blunder usually : who- 
 ever explains is, by self-implication, in error; 
 but she was a mistress of the art, and found it 
 answer witli most people.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 207 
 
 She lived in a state of perpetual apology. The 
 meeting-house clothes were a standing apology 
 for the cakes and ale. 
 
 It half-amused Etoile as she began to perceive 
 it, and half-disgusted her. To a woman who was 
 utterly indifferent to what the world said of her 
 at any time, this struggle in another to combine 
 self-indulgence with self-justification seemed the 
 drollest of anomalies. 
 
 ' Why not be Messalina, if it please her ; or 
 why not be St. Cecilia, if she liked it ? ' thought 
 Etoile. 'But why pass her life trimming up 
 wrong as right, in sipping brandy and declaring 
 it is cold tea ? ' 
 
 But that was the mistake of a careless and 
 contemptuous temper; Lady Joan knew better. 
 She knew that it was much wiser to pass off your 
 cognac as souchong, and that you may take as 
 much brandy as ever you like, if only you can 
 convince everybody else it is tea. 
 
 When Theodore Hook wanted to get drunk, 
 not to scandalise the club he was in, he called 
 for lemonade — the waiters knew what to bring 
 him.
 
 208 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Lady Joan called for cold tea so loudly that 
 she might have been heard from the banks of 
 Tiber to her own old hunting grounds by Abana 
 and Pharphar. Those who waited on her knew 
 what to bring her. Meanwhile that overgrown 
 club, Society, was quite sure it -was only tea. 
 
 Society will believe anything rather than ever 
 believe that Itself can be duped. 
 
 If you have only assurance enough to rely 
 implicitly on this, there is hardly anything you 
 cannot induce it to accept. 
 
 Her society, having once decided to believe 
 that Lady Joan only drank cold tea, were ready 
 to go to the scaffold in a body rather than admit 
 that she even knew the colour of brandy. 
 
 Her society was limited, indeed ; but then it 
 was the club she was in — the only one that mat- 
 tered to her : all her dear passers-by that wanted 
 teacups and triptychs, and all her small gentili- 
 ties and freeborn republicans that asked her to 
 dinners and dances. 
 
 Besides, her brandy would not have tasted 
 half so good if she had not had the fun of per- 
 suading everybody else it was tea. There is an
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 209 
 
 indescribable delightfulness to a certain order of 
 minds in smuggling. 
 
 She now proceeded to explain elaborately : 
 Fiordelisa was loris' old castle, but they lived 
 there ; it helped him a little. lo was so poor ; 
 lo was so weak ; they were so fond of him — poor 
 lo I without her eye over him and Mr. Challoner's 
 counsel he would be ruined to-morrow. Yes, of 
 course, it did aid him very much, their living 
 there ; and they had done no end of good to the 
 place. Such a wretched old barn as it had been 
 when they had gone there first of all I Xobody 
 could imagine the trouble she took I But then 
 when she went in for anything she always did do 
 it thoroughly ; not like lo — poor lo !— -who would 
 never have a centime off the estate if she did 
 not get it for him. How she slaved over those 
 silkworms, for instance I such beastly-smelling 
 things as they were ; and she scarcely stirred out 
 of the house for three months, she had to watch 
 them so ; but then she made three hundred 
 pounds nearly by the raw silk in the year ; and 
 only think what three hundred pounds meant to 
 poor lo ! Thus she discoursed, whipping the 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ponies. She was so used to making the discourse 
 that it ran off her tongue like her raw silk off the 
 reels of the winder. More or less varied, ac- 
 cording to her auditors, it did duty to a thou- 
 sand listeners in the twelvemonth's time, and 
 induced Mrs. G-rundy to submit to Fiordelisa, 
 and even sometimes to visit there. 
 
 ' The place was quite poverty-stricken when 
 we came,' she said, with a cut of the whip to the 
 pony Pippo. ' When we knew him first he was 
 on the brink of ruin ; we pulled him straight. 
 Through extravagance ? — oh, no, weakness. lo's 
 as weak as water — give his head away if he'd got 
 nothing else to give. Just like St. Martin and 
 his cloak. He is like a child about business, too ; 
 a baby would wind him round its finger ; he can't 
 say no. If it wasn't for me he'd maintain all the 
 ague-shaking souls of the Agro Eomano, I'm sure 
 he would.' 
 
 '- Is he duly grateful to you ? ' — Etoile, lying 
 back in the carriage, began to pity the absent 
 man vaguely. 
 
 Lady Joan shot a glance at her. 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know,' she muttered, a little
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 211 
 
 sullenly. 'He knows he couldn't keep straight 
 without 7716, if you mean that. We've spent a 
 great deal on the place too ; but then we've got 
 very fond of it. I've made three new vignas 
 this year; got my vines out from Portugal. I 
 grubbed up an old garden and planted it with 
 Xeres. I shall make sherry in three summers 
 more.' 
 
 ' And if your friend ever marry ? ' said Etoile, 
 with the indifference she felt, only hazarding a 
 natural conjecture. 
 
 The Lady Joan's eyes flashed as steel does in 
 the rays of the sun. 
 
 ' Marry ! ' She drew her breath and set her 
 teeth, but in another moment she smiled. 
 
 ' All, yes, I do so wish he would, if he married 
 properly. But, you see, poor lo — well, he's very 
 silly about me; thinks there's nobody like me, 
 and all that. But it's all nonsense. I'm always 
 telling him not to be a goose.' 
 
 ' He lives in hopes of Mr. Challoner's eutha- 
 nasia ? And yet he lets Mr. Challoner plant his 
 vines ? ' 
 
 ' Bother you ! How much has Voightel told 
 
 p 2
 
 212 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 you ? ' thought the Lady Joan, with wrath in her 
 soul ; but she laughed and grinned pleasantly. 
 She had a trick of grinning, but then she had 
 very handsome teeth to show. 
 
 ' Mr. Challoner die I My dear, he'll live for 
 ever ! I believe he was cut out of a tree of 
 lignum-vitse. I'm sure he looks as if he had 
 been. By the bye, he wanted to come to-day 
 but some telegrams came in and kept him — 
 heaven be praised for all its mercies ! We get 
 rid of him in the summer, you know. He goes 
 to the German baths somewhere or other with 
 Jittle Effie; and Efl&e's Swiss governess. Have 
 you seen that Swiss girl ? Horrid little upstart ; 
 I believe she came out of a cafe-chantant at 
 Vevey. Mr. Challoner chose her. Of course 
 Effie's taught to disobey one, and lie, and be rude 
 in all kinds of ways that she can. Oh, my dear 
 you don't know half the troubles / have to put 
 up with.' 
 
 ' And people think Mr. Challoner such an ex- 
 cellent man ! I suppose you did also once ? ' 
 
 ' I — I always thought him the most odious 
 cad in the whole universe. I've never changed
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 213 
 
 about that^^ responded his wife, with one of those 
 sudden bursts of temper and truthfulness which 
 occasionally upset all her best plans and tallest 
 card-house of conventionalities ; then, conscious 
 of a slip of the tongue, she coloured, and was 
 glad that Pippo took to pulling. 
 
 'lo's very unhappy about you,' she said 
 suddenly. ' He declares you don't like him — is 
 it true ? ' 
 
 ' Xot at all ; he has beautifid manners. I 
 think him an admirable laquais de place.^ 
 
 Lady Joan screamed with laughter, well 
 pleased. 
 
 ' AYon't I tell him that ! Poor lo ! I sup- 
 pose you wonder to see him about om- house so 
 much ; but, you see, he's very useful to us and 
 we're useful to him, and he's all alone at home, 
 and so ' 
 
 ' I do not wonder at all.' 
 
 Lady Joan was silent. She was revolving in 
 her mind whether it was worth while to try and 
 impose the fiction of friendship on a woman who 
 lived in Paris and who knew Voightel. There 
 were persons before whom Lady Joan threw off
 
 2U FlilEXDSHIP. 
 
 her meeting-house clothes and danced her Car- 
 magnole in all the frank and boisterous abandon- 
 ment natural to her. She wondered whether it 
 would be safe to do it here. Etoile made her 
 uneasy ; she could not tell what manner of 
 woman this great artist was. 
 
 A grave, studious, contemptuous contempla- 
 tion that seemed to gaze at her from the eyes of 
 her new acquaintance worried her, and made her 
 feel unsafe and uncertain. Like all cowards, she 
 was occasionally nervous. Etoile made her so. 
 She desired to conciliate her : but she did not 
 know how to do it. She desired to blind her, 
 but she had a restless feeling that it would not be 
 safe to do so. 
 
 All the weapons with which she was accus- 
 tomed to fence with most people, and all the ruffs 
 and farthingales with which she arrayed herself 
 to please the meeting-house and Mrs. Grundy, 
 seemed all of a sudden blunt and useless, coarse 
 and foolish. She could not take them up and 
 put them on with the fortunate mixtm'e of 
 swagger and propriety common to her. 
 
 ' I wish she had never come near me,' she
 
 FIIIEND>^HIP. 215 
 
 thought with a useless irritation, as she turned 
 the ponies up the rough grassy road which led to 
 Fiordelisa on this balmy and sunny morning of 
 earliest winter ; and she said aloud : 
 
 ' I sent lo up after breakfast ; he'll have 
 everything ready, unless, indeed, he's given the 
 luncheon to the dogs and the wine to a pack of 
 beggars - -which would be very like him,' she 
 added, with a laugh that w^as not easy or good- 
 tempered, as she rattled the ponies up the sloping- 
 way between the reddening maples and the leaf- 
 less vines. 
 
 loris came out of the wide-arched doorway 
 to meet them as the ponies — his ponies — were 
 pulled up before the entrance. He wore a black 
 velvet dress ; he had a broad-leafed felt hat in 
 his hand ; he had a red ribbon round his throat, 
 and a hound at his side. He looked like an old 
 Velasquez picture as the sun fell on his face and 
 the depth of the shadow of the door was still 
 behind him in the background. 
 
 ' Take my furs, lo. Oh, how stupid you are I 
 cried the Lady Joan. ' Do you know what the 
 Comtesse d'Avesnes says of you ? She says —
 
 21G FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 (now, mind that basket !) — she says she tliinks 
 you are an admirable laquais de place I ' 
 
 loris reddened mider his delicate dark skin, 
 but bowed low. 
 
 ' I am giad that the Comtesse d'Avesnes can 
 think that I have even so much small merit as 
 that in me,' he answered, lifting eyes of soft 
 reproach. His eyes obeyed his will and uttered 
 what he wanted for him more eloquently than 
 most men's tongues will do. 
 
 ' M. le Prince,' said Etoile, with a smile, as 
 she gave him her hand, ' when I see you mounted 
 higher in the social scale, I will accredit you 
 with it. At present — mind that basket ! ' 
 
 loris gave an impatient gesture, and Lady 
 Joan laughed, not altogether well pleased at the 
 imitation of her tones and her order. 
 
 'How he will hate her!' thought the Lady 
 Joan, consoling herself with the reflection as they 
 strolled through the house on to the terrace, with 
 the dusky wooded hills and the heights of Eocca 
 di Papa behind them, and, before them, beyond 
 the now leafless vineyards and the gai'dens golden 
 with orange fruit and bright with Bengal roses.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 217 
 
 the width of the green Campagna, with the sun 
 shining on the far yellow streak that was Tiber, 
 and the purple cloud which they knew was Eome, 
 dusky with her many roofs and ruins. 
 
 But for once Lady Joan was mistaken : loris 
 was rather inclined to hate himself. 
 
 ' Do I indeed look such a fool to her ? ' he 
 thought constantly as they went through the 
 house, showing her the various old pictures, and 
 marbles, and tapestries, and Etruscan treasm'es 
 found in the soil without. The old castle had 
 lost much of its whilom magnificence, but it was 
 very ancient, and had a noble and honourable 
 melancholy in it which ill-accorded with the 
 Lady Joan's cigar-boxes and ulsters, crewel work 
 and caricatures, coats of new paint, and panes of 
 crude glass ; it looked profaned and disturbed, 
 and had that air of resentment at its own pro- 
 fanation which ancient places do seem to wear 
 under sacrilege, as though they were sentient 
 things. 
 
 They lunched in the dining hall, where Lady 
 Joan had arranged all her china, pottery, por- 
 celain, and the rest on shelves, to be handy for
 
 218 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the eye and purse of that much- suffering and 
 largely-spending class of society, ' the people 
 passing through Eome.' 
 
 loris sat at the bottom of ]iis table, but Mr. 
 Challoner's wife sat at the top, and gave all the 
 orders of the day, and chattered throughout the 
 meal of her wines and her peasants, her fowls and 
 her fruits. There was a portrait of the dead 
 mother of loris on one of the walls. Etoile 
 wondered that he left it there. 
 
 ' Is Fiordelisa really yours ? ' she said sud- 
 denly to him when the Lady Joan had for a 
 moment left them, her voice alone being heard 
 from afar off in violent altercation with the 
 henwife, who had let the last score of fowls be 
 sold too cheap in the market. 
 
 ' Fiordelisa ! ' he echoed in surprise. ' Yes, 
 certainly — it has been in my family twelve 
 centuries.' 
 
 ' Mr. Challoner has a lease of it, I suppose ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, no ; I would never let it.' 
 
 ' You lend it to them, then ? ' 
 
 ' Lady Joan does me the honour to like to 
 use it — yes.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 219 
 
 ' And do your people like to be scolded ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, that is nothing ; they do not mind.' 
 
 ' But what right has she to scold them ? 
 Because she scolds you ; is that it ? ' 
 
 ' Because she scolds everybody and every- 
 thing. Some women do,' said loris, with a 
 shrug of his shoulders. 
 
 Etoile smiled, and the smile made him rest- 
 less. It was only amusement, but he thought it 
 contempt. 
 
 From the other side of the tall cypress hedge 
 the voice of Lady Joan came in strong anger, 
 high above the cackle of poultry and the shrill 
 outcries of the peasants. In another moment 
 she appeared in sight, a mangled mass of feathers 
 dangling from one hand and a hunting-whip in 
 the other. 
 
 ' Why will you let that beastly dog loose ? ' 
 she said to loris. 'He has killed two of my 
 best Brahmas. I bought them only last week — 
 forty francs a pair, and such layers ! I have told 
 them if I catch him loose again I'll hang him.' 
 
 loris looked up with a flush on his face. 
 ' You have never beaten Imperator again ? '
 
 220 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' Haven't I ? — within an inch of his life. He 
 won't forget killing the Brahmas. What did you 
 let him loose for ? I told you he never was to be 
 loose — great clumsy brute, breaking the plants 
 to pieces.' 
 
 'Cara Joanna! It is impossible to keep a 
 dog always chained.' 
 
 'Don't keep him at all, then. I shall hang 
 him if I catch him loose, that's all. I have 
 just told Pietro so, and he's sobbing like a baby, 
 and Mariannina screaming ! — I should think you 
 heard them here. Break Imperator's heart ? 
 Eubbish ! Break his bones, if you like. I shall 
 if he kills my poultry. You are such an idiot, 
 lo, about that dog.' 
 
 And she went back as she came. 
 
 ' "Will you forgive my leaving you a second ? 
 I must look at the dog,' said loris hurriedly, 
 with the colour still in his cheeks. 
 
 'I will come and see him too,' Etoile 
 answered him. 'But why do you let him be 
 beaten ? She can have no right to do that.' 
 
 loris gave one of those gestures with which an 
 Italian says, better than by all words, that what
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 221 
 
 the gods will he must suffer, and their fiat is 
 stronger than he. 
 
 They found the hound in his kennel, and he 
 crept out timidly, and shivering still, with pain 
 as with fear, and fawned upon his master. loris 
 caressed him, kissed him, called him endearing 
 words, and did his best to comfort him. 
 
 ' But why not have sooner protected him ? ' 
 thought Etoile, watching the mutual affection of 
 the man and the animal, and making friends 
 with the hound herself, whilst loris called to his 
 land-steward : 
 
 ' Tista, will you see to this ? Take care that 
 when the Signora is here Imperatoris kept always 
 in kennel. Of course he is to be loose at all 
 other times ; and if he kill or break anything, do 
 you replace it, and keep it out of the accounts. I 
 will pay you for it apart. Only take care that 
 the Signora does not see him free, and that she 
 never hears it if he hunts anything. You 
 understand ? ' 
 
 ' I understand his Excellency. But in the 
 summer ? ' 
 
 ' There are months before that,' said loris
 
 222 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 impatiently ; and, turning to Etoile, he excused 
 himself for giving orders before her, and asked 
 her to come round with him to see from another 
 point of view where Rocca di Papa hung above in 
 the fir-woods. 
 
 ' Will you not let Imperator loose to come 
 with us ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' I could not do that. She would not like 
 it.' 
 
 ' Is the dog hers, then ? ' 
 
 'No, mine.' 
 
 ' And you cannot do as you like with your 
 own?' 
 
 He was silent. 
 
 ' I heard all your orders to your bailiff,' she 
 pursued. ' Forgive me ; but, instead of all that 
 complicated arrangement with him about the 
 dog, would it not be straight er and simpler just 
 to say to Lady Joan that you do not allow him to 
 be beaten, and that you always wish him to be 
 free ? If she be only a guest, how can you ob- 
 ject?' 
 
 loris sighed impatiently. 
 
 ' Oh, that would not do with her. You
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 223 
 
 scarcely comprehend. She is so used to have 
 her own way — I could not displease her.' 
 
 ' Poor Imperator ! And yet you seem fond 
 of him.' 
 
 ' Imperator only bears what I do.' 
 
 lie muttered the words low, as if they escaped 
 from him against his will, as they reached the 
 little j)ath that wound up into the hills amongst 
 the myrtle-bushes, and the tufts of tramarina, 
 and the wild growth of oleander which made the 
 mountain-side a blaze of rose-colour in the days 
 of June. 
 
 ' \^^lat is the secret of Fiordelisa ? ' Etoile 
 wondered, as the ladies of Craig Moira had 
 wondered before her. 
 
 Fiordelisa was the Lady Joan's fee-simple of 
 loris. Had he never let her within the walls of 
 Fiordelisa, Liberty would not have outspread its 
 wings and fled away from him. 
 
 Fiordelisa, crowning its hillside amidst cy- 
 press woods and olive gToves warm in the light 
 of the western sun, and facing the opal and 
 amethyst lines of the mountains — Fiordelisa was 
 the last bead of a long chaplet of noble strong-
 
 224 FBIENDSHIP. 
 
 holds once belonging to the great Princes of 
 loris. 
 
 WTien Lady Joan had been seven months in 
 Eome, still languid from the heats of the East, 
 the summer in the city alarmed her. She 
 averred that she would die of malaria, and that 
 her lord was such a churl he would never give 
 her the means to get a breath of fresher air. 
 
 The churl had but recently joined her, and 
 could be represented in any colours she chose ; 
 and she, and the churl also, had breakfasted and 
 lunched several times at that sunny solitary 
 palace standing empty on the fair hillside, and 
 the lust of desire for it had entered into her soul. 
 Therefore she wept, she went into hysterics; she 
 had even a week's fever. 
 
 loris laid the keys of Fiordelisa at her feet. 
 What less could he do ? 
 
 She affected reluctance ; suggested danger 
 from the wrath of the churl ; but in the end 
 relented and accepted. 
 
 It was but a dreary old place, said its master, 
 and he sent up from the city all the modern 
 necessities of daily life; had its mighty old
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 225 
 
 chambers swept out, the wild garden put a little 
 in order; sent his horses up there, and welcomed 
 the wife of ^Ir. Challoner to a villeggiatura. 
 
 Figuratively, he had put handcuffs on his 
 own wrists. 
 
 ' Wiat a madman I ' thought 'Mr. Challoner 
 when he heard of the arrangement ; but aloud he 
 said merely, ' You are very good. Will it not bore 
 you ? Xo ? I fear, indeed, my wife is not strong 
 enough for travel. It is most unfortunate.' 
 
 For Mr. Challoner of the unchanging coun- 
 tenance always bore himself to loris as he had 
 done to his wife's friends in the East, with the 
 grave face and the ceremonious manner with 
 which one Roman augur of old addressed another 
 augur in public. 
 
 Mr. Challoner was like Mrs. Siddons : he 
 never left off the stage face and the stage tone 
 even if he were only buying a yard of huckaback 
 and inquiring if it would wash. 
 
 ' Go to the castle,' he said to his wife ; ' go 
 to the castle, since you wish it, btit take some 
 good girl or other with you. Mind that.' 
 
 And having thus made di:o pruvision for th.e 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 safety of appearances, he departed for the baths 
 in Grermany, leaving his wife on the hillside — to 
 recover her health. 
 
 People all wondered at the husband's com- 
 placency. They would not have wondered if they 
 had been able to see into his recollections. Every- 
 thing is comparative. Fiordelisa, as compared 
 with Orontes and Euphrates, Abana and Phar- 
 phar, seemed to Mr. Challoner propriety itself. 
 He himself wondered very much at loris. But 
 this is a bad compliment that husbands will 
 always pay their wives. 
 
 Lady Joan's eyes sparkled as she crossed the 
 threshold. Here was an occupation of territory 
 that meant (to her far-seeing eyes at least) an 
 annexation for life. Like Prussia and Russia, she 
 only wanted to get her foot once across the frontier, 
 and the soil was hers for ever and aye. Once in- 
 stalled in Fiordelisa, who should live, bold enough, 
 or shrewd enough, ever to turn her out of it ? 
 
 There are some women so happily constituted 
 that they consider that for the gifts of themselves 
 all the treasures of earth would be scarcely 
 recompense enough.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 227 
 
 Lady Joan was one of these. 
 
 When he surrendered Fiordelisa he had sur- 
 rendered his future into her hands. 
 
 He had not known it. But she had. 
 
 To dislodge a tenant unwilling to go is at all 
 times difficult ; the tiles must be taken off ere 
 even law can aid. But a woman like the Lady 
 Joan would sit still, bareheaded and fast-rooted, 
 under the open skies till the tiles were put on 
 again, and defy heaven and earth and all their 
 elements to move her. 
 
 Possession is nine points of the law ; and with 
 nine points it would have been odd indeed if 
 Lady Joan should not have managed, by hook or 
 by crook, to obtain the tenth. 
 
 loris, with that touch of simplicity that a 
 man's finest astuteness is always mingled with, 
 imagined that he only lent Fiordelisa for a sum- 
 mer or two. Lady Joan laughed to herself to 
 think how easily she had drawn away this trump 
 card from him. 
 
 ' Gret me out ! ' she thought to herself. ' Xot 
 when I'm once let in.' 
 
 A great statesman being once a^ked what was 
 Q 2
 
 228 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the surest method of success, replied, ' Immove- 
 ability.' 
 
 Lady Joan understood the wisdom of the 
 saying. When she installed herself at Fiorde- 
 lisa gaily as one who only bivouacs for a mid- 
 summer picnic, she hung her cashmere upon the 
 first peg she saw in the hall. 
 
 ' There is my fee-simple for life,' she thought. 
 
 What can any man do against a woman who, 
 long ere a hint be given her, has resolved that 
 she never will take one ? 
 
 loris, who thought of his country as Musset 
 did — " Que les soleils de Juin font Uamour 
 joassager "— in the midsummer months looked 
 forward to a romance bright and brief as the 
 life of the fireflies amongst the corn ; a mid- 
 summer madness befitting the months when the 
 oleander burns on the world like fire, and the 
 nightingales sing under flowering myrtles. But 
 Lady Joan knew better. 
 
 The castle was ancient, honourable, majestic : 
 like an old greybeard who has lived long enough 
 to see his children and friends all die before 
 him. These old places, grand with the art and
 
 FRlEyDSHIP. 229 
 
 architecture of a statelier and freer time than 
 ours, touch strangely poets, artists, thinkers — 
 asses, as the Lady Joan would have said. 
 
 Its antiquity could not ' scare ' her, nor its 
 sanctity silence her. 
 
 She entered on its possession with the zeal of 
 an encamping gipsy and the ruthlessness of an 
 army of occupation. 
 
 She drew on a big pair of untanned boots, 
 strode over the lands, marked the waste there 
 was, and said to herself that she would soon alter 
 all that. Before the summer was gone she had 
 installed herself mistress there ; before the winter 
 had come she had taught its master that she 
 meant to be mistress and master both. When 
 next the springtime came round she did not 
 consult his pleasure, or feel any necessity for 
 hysterics ; she took for granted that she should 
 go to Fiordelisa. 
 
 She did go. This time Mr. Challoner ac- 
 companied her, and took with him some packets 
 of English seeds and the model of a kitchen- 
 boiler. 
 
 The family installed itself at Fiordelisa
 
 230 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 audaciously as Tchiganes, sagaciously as Prus- 
 sians. They cut walks, levelled trees, made 
 the garden a fair imitation of the gravelled 
 parallelograms of South Kensington, closed in 
 the loggia with doors of coloured glass as nearly 
 like a railway station as they could manage to 
 make them ; asked out English and Americans 
 to dinner and breakfast, and began to interest 
 themselves in breeding pigs and chickens. 
 
 ' We've done so much for the old place ! ' 
 said the Lady Joan, working a chair-cover, while 
 her husband brought up Tegetmeier on Poultry. 
 
 ' L\iudace, Vaudace, toujours de Vaudace^ 
 was her motto ; and it is wonderful how very 
 far one may manage to go by a diligent ad- 
 herence to it in the world, as in war. 
 
 Five years and more had now passed by since 
 that first midsummer day when she had gone 
 up as an occupant to Fiordelisa, and had 
 tm-ned out all the old pottery, and tapestries, 
 and artistic lumber it was full of, with the 
 zeal and zest of a victorious trooper ransacking 
 a wine-cellar ; and by this time the Lady Joan 
 honestly considered herself the legitimate occu-
 
 FBIENDSHIP. 231 
 
 pant of it, and would have looked on the estab- 
 lishment of any more lawful mistress there as 
 an invasion of her rights as grave as an Irish 
 peasant regards a writ of evictment to be. 
 
 She had stuck her staff in the ground at 
 P'iordelisa, and never henceforth discoursed of 
 it but as hers. When obliged to acknowledge 
 the fact of its master's presence and possession 
 she would allude to ' poor lo ' airily,- as though 
 he could not have afforded a dinner unless they 
 had been there to give him one. 
 
 She set the china that she meant to sell on 
 the shelves, spread the carpets he paid for on the 
 floors, and then talked of how much she had done 
 for him ; invited people under his roof, and got 
 credit for ' such hospitality'; gave away his fruits, 
 and eggs, and flowers, and wines, and was cited 
 as ' so generous ' ; and, further, amused herself 
 throughout the spring with having out there 
 to dine and to sleep every good-looking man 
 who lingered in Rome and was glad to come and 
 smoke under the stars in the old grey cortile. 
 
 Fiction is a greyhound and Truth is a snail. 
 She set Fiction flying over the course. She had,
 
 232 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 indeed, once ordered out from England at her own 
 expense two peach-trees and a Berkshire pig. It 
 was all she ever had done ; but, as everybody 
 ate a peach and tasted the ham, and heard what 
 she had done, everybody took all the rest for 
 granted. 
 
 ' I do so love my bees, and my beasts, and my 
 pigs, and my poultry 1 ' she herself would echo 
 gushingly to the goody-goodies, to whom she was 
 careful to appear as a kind of Harriet Martineau 
 with a model farm of four (thousand) acres that 
 was always, sleeping or waking, upon her mind. 
 
 'I am sure, most laudable,' said the goody 
 goodies, quite impressed with the spectacle of a 
 person born a Perth- Douglas absorbing herself in 
 bees, and beasts, and pigs, and poultry. Higher 
 society, less reverent and more cUhonnaire, 
 laughed till it cried. But, whether leaving ad- 
 miration or ridicule behind her, to Fiordelisa she 
 went when the April narcissus was in bloom. She 
 conceived a kind of passion for the place, it was 
 so useful to her. 
 
 That dual character in her, which Voightel 
 had chuckled over, had full luxury of expansion
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 233 
 
 both ways at Fiordelisa ; all the various and 
 opposing passions of her nature found vent 
 therein at Fiordelisa — she could be Cleopatra 
 at sunset and a huckster at sunrise. 
 
 With a guitar on her knee and amorous eyes 
 shining under the passion-flowers in the court by 
 moonlight, one side of her temperament had its 
 sport and play ; with her skirts tucked about 
 her knees, a memorandum-book in her hand, 
 and a fierce vigilance in every one of her search- 
 ing glances, striding through granaries, wine- 
 cellars, and cattle-stalls ; pursuing missing cen- 
 times through columns of figures, and making 
 the bailiff wretched for a lost franc, the other 
 side of her had its fullest and sweetest sway also. 
 
 To be sure, she never reflected that one view of 
 her might spoil the other to the person by whose 
 permission she was there ; she never reflected 
 that the prosaic God of Business might take 
 Love by the shoulders and turn him out of doors. 
 
 If Antony had seen Cleopatra squabbling 
 for a coin over a basket of fish or a basket of 
 dates, he might probably have recovered his 
 senses and avoided xVctium.
 
 234 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 But she did not think of this. 
 
 She had become so used to loris, and so 
 certain of her dominion over him, that she had 
 altogether ceased to preserve for him those graces 
 of appearance which the woman who is truly 
 wise never neglects before the man whose passion 
 she desires to keep alive. 
 
 Familiarity breeds contempt in the lover, as 
 in the servant. 
 
 Lady Joan's vanity made her too forgetful 
 of one supreme truth — that the longest absence 
 is less perilous to love than the terrible trials 
 of incessant proximity. 
 
 She forgot that love likes to preserve its 
 illusions, and that it will bear better all the 
 sharpest deprivations in the world than it will 
 the cruel tests of an unlovely and unveiled 
 intercourse. 
 
 She had committed the greatest error of all : 
 she had let him be disenchanted by familiarity. 
 Passion will pardon rage, will survive absence, 
 will forgive infidelity, will even thrive on out- 
 rage, and will often condone a crime ; but when 
 it dies of familiarity it is dead for ever and aye.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 235 
 
 The Lady Joan in her Oriental jewellery and 
 her Asiatic dresses was a woman for Velasquez 
 to paint, and most men to admire, and some 
 to sigh for with ardour and desire. But the 
 Lady Joan with thick untanned leather boots 
 on, hair pulled tight from her face, and a grey 
 skirt tucked up about her legs, or astride upon 
 a donkey in a waterproof in muddy weather, 
 couuting the artichokes and tomatoes before 
 they went to market — Lady Joan w^as not a 
 woman to adore or to portray ; and loris, 
 artist as Nature had made him, and lover as 
 he was expected to be, opening his window 
 in the lovely rosy dawn and looking down 
 on her thus occupied, would sigh and wonder 
 whatever he had seen — why ever he had 
 sacrificed himself ; — and so, tired, and nerveless, 
 and discontented, and afraid to show his dis- 
 content, he would go down his staircase and 
 into the radiant balmy morning that itself out- 
 shone all the dreams of all the poets, and would 
 hear her delighted voice ring out, ' Seven robins 
 and a nightingale shot before breakfast, lo ! 
 What do you think of that ? ' and dared not say
 
 '23G FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 what he thought of it, but had to smile and 
 praise her skill, and look at the little pretty 
 ruffled blood-stained heap of feathers; and sub- 
 mit to have the hand that was black with the 
 cartridges passed through his arm to draw him 
 into the loggia, where the morning meal was 
 spread ; and had to take his coff"ee and fruit 
 seasoned with stories of how Nannia had been 
 caught sneaking off with a stolen cabbage, and 
 how Pepe had been detected filling his pockets 
 with green peas as he had weighed them ; and 
 all the while to himself watched dre.rlly the 
 silver threads that the light found out in his 
 mistress's hair, and wondered wliy she dressed 
 so shabbily because she was in the country, and 
 thought how large her hand looked as it plunged 
 amongst the strawberries, and felt vaguely that 
 this was not the companion fitting to that old 
 sunlit, air-swept, flower-scented loggia, with the 
 roses round its columns, and beyond its arches 
 the wide blue hills. 
 
 But she did not dream of this ; she dug and 
 planted, and bought and sold, and planned and 
 bargained ; she kept a sharp eye on the weights
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 237 
 
 and measures, she ran up model styes and breed- 
 ing-pens ; she got up at five to count the potatoes 
 and melons, the cherries and cabbages that went 
 to the market ; she rode his horses, and ordered 
 his bailififs, and strode about in grey linen and 
 big boots, and did on the whole most admirably 
 — for herself. 
 
 Xo doubt if he had overheard her explaining 
 to her English and Americans how all this was 
 done only out of charity, to help ' poor lo,' it 
 would all have speedily come to an end. But 
 then he never did hear — except just what was 
 meant for his ear. 
 
 He had an uncomfortable feeling that it was 
 all disagreeable, and tedious, and noisy ; and he 
 prized the affection of his peasants and farmers, 
 and their irritation under the new reign op- 
 pressed and saddened him. In his remembrance 
 there might have been a great deal of waste, but 
 there was a great deal of feudal affection. In 
 other years at his annual visits there had been 
 only smiles, laughter, music, rejoicing; now there 
 were often rebellion, discontent, imprecations, 
 and sullen silence.
 
 238 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Of course, however, she, like all other great 
 improvers, was not to be daunted by such a 
 trivial thing as poor folks' devotion and mere 
 clinging to old landmarks. She brought her new 
 brooms and swept away with them vigorously ; 
 and if the brooms caught at such old trumpery 
 tapestries as custom, tradition, and loyalty, and 
 pulled them down in fragments, so much the 
 better, she thought ; she cared for no old rubbish 
 — that wouldn't sell again. 
 
 He sighed and let her sweep on. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Challoner was always careful 
 to set the seal of his presence, with his flower 
 seeds and his kitchen boilers, on the private life of 
 Fiordelisa, and at the beginning of each summer 
 was always to be duly met with by any passing 
 visitors gravely contemplating his wife's poultry- 
 pens or solemnly watering his own stove-plants, 
 and in his pursuit of those innocent occupations 
 would always find some occasion to say, in an 
 abstracted manner, leaning over a model pig- 
 stye, ' Yes, yes, we have done a good deal 
 for the place ; my wife is never so happy as 
 when she is doing good ; yes, we brought over
 
 FEIEXDSHIP. 239 
 
 those Berkshires. Xothing like English breed, 
 nothing.' 
 
 Society thought Mr. Challoner very amiable 
 and strangely blind. 
 
 Mr. Challoner suffered neither from amiability 
 nor blindness. He quarrelled incessantly with his 
 wife about everything else, little and large ; but 
 he never quarrelled about loris. 
 
 What could a blade of steel in a wintry 
 dawn have given ^Ir. Challoner of vengeance 
 comparable to that which he smiled grimly 
 over as he saw another man, daily and hourly, 
 bullied, ridiculed, stormed at, ordered about, 
 driven to account for every absent hour, 
 and deprived of every vestige of a will of his 
 own ? 
 
 ]Mr. Challoner was like the Dauphin who kept 
 tlie luxury of a whipping-boy. 
 
 Vengeance I — 
 
 N'allons pas chercher a faire une querelle 
 Pour im affront qui n'est que pure bagatelle ! 
 
 There was no one living on earth to whom 
 Mr. Challoner owed so much comfort as he did to
 
 240 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 loris. And, indeed, he would say, with quite a 
 cordial ring in his voice, ' loris ? Oh, a very good 
 fellow — the best friend we have ! ' 
 
 A quiet, excellent woman, who was his 
 father's widow and no relation to him, but whom 
 he called his 'mother,' because it is always so 
 respectable to have a mother, would occasionally, 
 on visiting at the Casa Challoner, observe with 
 disquietude the Lady Joan disporting herself in a 
 break full of masks on Giovedi Grasso, or going 
 out shooting, with her gun, and her hessians, and 
 her Roman nobles ; and on such occasions old 
 Mrs. Challoner would murmur to the master of 
 the establishment, ' Puir laddie ! it's a great 
 name and a braw house to have married into, and 
 that there's no denying ; but I'm thinking, my 
 poor Robert, that you have paid a muckle price 
 for the gentility.' 
 
 ' Joan has high spirits ; it is merely liigh 
 spirits,' Mr. Challoner would return with an 
 austerity that closed the discussion. 
 
 For Mr. Challoner never told anybody what 
 price he had paid, whether muckle or mickle. 
 He had never given any living soul the right to
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 241 
 
 say that he was other than a most contented 
 husband. 
 
 He had made his bargain with his eyes open, 
 and the bargain had been that he was to keep 
 his eyes shut. And he fulfilled it loyally. 
 
 Now and then he winced — now and then he 
 smiled. But it was only to himself. Lady 
 Joan, who quarrelled with him to his face, and 
 railed at him behind his back, could not resist a 
 sort of admiration for his impassibility. ' The 
 creature might be cut out of wood ! ' she said 
 often. Xow, a wooden husband is the most con- 
 venient of all lay figures. 
 
 This winter afternoon the real master of 
 Fiordelisa, with his guest, strolled upward by 
 the hill-paths bordered with aloe and cactus, and 
 shaded with cereus and cistus, towards the yet 
 higher lands of Fiordelisa, where the stone-pines 
 reigned alone with the tall lilac heather at their 
 feet. 
 
 He strove to understand, to interest, and to 
 amuse Etoile, and he succeeded. He had at 
 command graceful thoughts and picturesque 
 diction; he loved art, and had studied it pro- 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 foimdly. He had been irritated, because this 
 stranger, herself eminent in the world's sight, 
 seemed to think him a slave without power or 
 purpose, and the unlikeness of her to any other 
 woman that he had ever known stung him to 
 interest and moved him to exertion. 
 
 loris, like many men before him, had sunk 
 into an existence in which his mind had no 
 share. 
 
 It was as nearly brainless as a naturally in- 
 telligeilt man's life can ever be. 
 
 To obey all his ruler's desires ; to attend to 
 the thousand and one trivialities that she daily 
 imposed ; to see that what she ordered was done, 
 and what she wanted found ; to follow her hither 
 and thither ; to avert the tempest of her temper 
 by prevision of her wishes, and to be careful 
 that his servants, his horses, his house, his pa- 
 tience, his presence, his endurance, his exertions 
 were all ready to the moment that she might call 
 on them — all this made his day one incessant 
 and joyless routine of obedience. He woke in 
 the morning with the dreary round before him, 
 and he lay down at night seeing nothing better
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 243 
 
 for the morrow, or for fifty hundred other mor- 
 rows, if he lived long enough to have them dawn 
 on him. Such a life killed his intelligence. 
 The pure impersonal efforts of the mind may be 
 heightened by a great joy and may be deepened 
 by a great sorrow ; but a life of perpetual tri- 
 viality, yet of perpetual conflict — a life, in a 
 word, which has been condensed into the one 
 common comprehensive word of ivorvy — does so 
 irritate and yet benumb the faculties that all 
 intellectual effort dies out under it. It had been 
 so with him. 
 
 Lady Joan was no fool ; but she was one of 
 those women who lower all they touch more than 
 many fools. 
 
 No delicate thought could live under one of 
 her loud laughs ; no impersonal discussion could 
 survive her boisterous personalities. Art itself 
 looked ridiculous beside her pretentious patron- 
 age of it and mercenary traffic in it. And the 
 obliquity of her mental vision seemed to com- 
 municate itself to those about her till in her 
 presence a praying angel of Mino da Fiesole's 
 soilless marble looked no better than a squat 
 
 K 2
 
 244 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 bonze from a Chinese temple. As there are 
 women who exalt all that comes in contact with 
 them, so did she lower ail things. 
 
 It was not her fault. Nature had made 
 her so. 
 
 But the effect on the mind of loris had been 
 that of smoke on painting : it had dulled all the 
 colour and obscured all the lines. 
 
 A certain lassitude crossed by a certain irri- 
 tation had grown on him ; and the scholarship 
 of his early youth, and the proficiency of art 
 which had distinguished him at one time, had 
 died down into silence and obscurity. 
 
 They were not needed for the wrangles of the 
 house he frequented, and the scenes of barter 
 that he was called upon to assist at in antiquity 
 shops. 
 
 With Etoile they awoke. For the man who 
 is a scholar by culture will never altogether lose 
 delight in it, and the temper that is born with 
 the poetic element in it will never absolutely fail 
 to answer to the right touch. It becomes like 
 a harp whose silver strings are covered with dust, 
 entangled, jarred, and mute ; but are still silver,
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 245 
 
 and still keep song in them when they are struck 
 aright. 
 
 Not such a song, indeed, as when the chords 
 first were strung, for time and wrong usage have 
 done much to mar them ; but still a Fong — a 
 song sadder than tears sometimes. 
 
 The hill-paths were steep and the way long, 
 but it seemed to have been short to them both, 
 when at last they reached the pine-wood, where 
 Kocca di Papa was visible. High above hung 
 the little grey tower on the rock where Juno once 
 stood to watch how the battle went ; at least, we 
 believe so, if we hearken to Virgil; and if we will 
 not believe Virgil what right have we in Rome 
 at all ? 
 
 The sun was bright on the Volscian hills, and 
 the snow on the line of the Leonessa and on the 
 heights of the Sabine mountains glow^ed like an 
 opal in the light. The low lands looked dusky 
 and bronze-hued from clouds that hung above 
 them, and a purple cloud shrouded the wild dark 
 mountain of Soracte and floated midway between 
 earth and heaven — far, far away was a glancing 
 line that showed where the sea was beating on
 
 246 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the sad sands by Ostia; and aloft, white and 
 stern as an Alp, rose Monte Gennaro, who wraps 
 his mantle of frost around him till the maize is 
 tall in the plains, and the girls are singing 
 amongst the poppies. And in the centre of it 
 all was Rome, with the cross of St. Peter's clear 
 against the light, and all the vast cloud-world 
 around it. 
 
 There is no view on the earth like this from 
 one of the heights of the mountains of Rome. 
 
 Etoile looked and was silent. The great tears 
 gathered in her eyes, but did not fall. 
 
 He watched her. 
 
 ' You feel things too much,' he said softly. 
 
 She had forgotten him ; and she looked up 
 with the surprise of a sleeper awakened from a 
 dream. 
 
 ' Oh, no, I think not,' she answered him. ' I 
 pity those to whom the world is not so beautiful 
 as it is to me.' 
 
 ' And yet there are tears in your eyes.' 
 
 ' Are there ? I cannot tell 3^ou — you, who 
 have always lived here, cannot know, I think — all 
 that one feels in looking so on Rome. One seems
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 247 
 
 to see as Grod sees — all the hosts of the dead 
 arise.' 
 
 He was silent. The words moved him. He 
 bowed his head and stood in silence, like one who 
 will not break in upon a woman at prayer. 
 
 At that moment his name echoed shrilly on 
 the clear air. He started and listened. 
 
 ' Forgive me,' he said quickly. ' She is call- 
 ing us. In a little while it will be dark.' 
 
 ' Where on earth have you been ? ' said the 
 Lady Joan, with her face black as a lowering 
 thundercloud as it loomed upon them through 
 the lines of the tall polished laurel trees. 'Where 
 on earth have you been, lo ? The idea of climb- 
 ing up here ! and without me I I asked for you 
 everywhere. The coffee is cold, and ^^is. ,sii^l 
 have it pitch-dark to drive home ; and there is 
 that young idiot's opera to-night. What could 
 you be doing up here all this time ? ' 
 
 ' We have consoled Imperator ; and we have 
 trodden in the steps of Juno,' Etoile made answ^er 
 for him ; and she looked Lady Joan straight in 
 the eyes as she spoke. 
 
 There was something in the look of contempt
 
 248 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 and of challenge : she herself was unconscious of 
 it, but the other was alive to it» 
 
 ' If she dare to cross me here ! ' thought Lady 
 Joan ; and her brow darkened in storm and her 
 eyes glittered till they were green as an angry 
 cat's. She was sullen and silent as they descended 
 to the house and drank the coffee which was 
 awaiting them in the square stone court. 
 
 Fiordelisa was the apple of her eye. 
 
 It was not, perhaps, very dignified work — 
 squabbling with peasantry, counting potatoes 
 and beans, ousting old folks from little terri- 
 torial rights, keeping a sharp eye on the olive- 
 presses and the wine-tubs, and hunting up 
 the Cochin China eggs out of the straw and 
 thatch. 
 
 But what would you ? 
 
 John Vatices, Emperor here in Eome, gave 
 his wife a costly crown of emeralds and dia- 
 monds that was bought with the proceeds of 
 his poultry, and why should not the hens of 
 Fiordelisa lay rings of sapphire and earrings of 
 turquoises ? 
 
 Lady Joan pulled on her thick driving-gloves
 
 FRIENDSHIP, 249 
 
 with a jerk before the coffee was fairly drunk, 
 loris and Etoile were talking gaily and laughing 
 together. 
 
 ' I am sorry to hurry you,' she said coldly. 
 ' But the moment the sun goes dowm the nights 
 are so bitter. And lo has a fancy, you know, for 
 us to hear the new opera. A boy, who lived in 
 a dirty little poking towTi of the Maremma has 
 dreamt that he is Mozart and Eossini combined, 
 and lo devoutly believes in him. lo's geese are 
 all swans.' 
 
 ' A more amiable optimism, at any rate, than 
 the common one which swears there are no swans 
 at all — only a few ducks in a pond,' said Etoile, 
 taking her coffee from him. 
 
 She smiled at him as she spoke. Almost 
 insensibly she felt drawn into defending him 
 against these persistent mockeries, which had so 
 little wit or wisdom in them. 
 
 ' Perhaps we are only ducks,' she added. 
 ' But we are always grateful to anybody who will 
 believe in our snowy plumage, and who will vow 
 for us that our stagnant little pond of vanity is 
 a lake in which the mountains of the world are
 
 250 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 mirrored. Who is this yonng composer come out 
 of the Maremma ? ' 
 
 ' A boy of great genius,' said loris ; ' very 
 young — only twenty-two. He has had no educa- 
 tion, except a year in Bologna ; but he has, with 
 many faults, many excellences. This is his first 
 opera. It is on the theme of Persephone. Parts 
 of it are very fine ; and I think the choral ren- 
 derings ' 
 
 ^ It is hideous rubbish,' said Lady Joan, 
 roughly. ^ Just singsong out of Verdi and 
 Grounod, and the "infernal" part of it all bor- 
 rowed wholesale out of " Lohengrin " — growl, 
 growl, growl — bang, bang, bang — that's all. 
 Besides, it's been done in OrpMe aux Enfers.'^ 
 
 ' That is not quite the same thing,' said loris, 
 with an involuntary smile. 
 
 ' The same story,' said Lady Joan confidently, 
 turning to Etoile. * The opera's stuff. But the 
 boy happened to get hold of lo last year ; and lo 
 thinks he knows counterpoint and all that ; and 
 so he's flattered, and believes in the trash, and 
 uses all his influence to get the opera put on the 
 stage of the Apollo. I daresay, if tlie truth were
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 251 
 
 known, the dresses and things have come out of 
 his own pocket. If he'd only a crust he'd give 
 it to the first creature that squealed out for it. 
 Oh, you know you would, lo, if I didn't keep you 
 straight. G-ive me a cigar. Xo, there's no time 
 for more coffee. See they put those grapes in ; 
 I want them for the Bishop of Melita. And 
 they're to kill that sheep for me to-morrow. 
 Mind Tista don't forget. And they'd better 
 shoot a few hares and send me them with the 
 mutton in the morning ; there's that big dinner 
 we have to-morrovv, and Marjory wants one to jug 
 for her father. And mind you tell the man to 
 get that fence done by Monday ; and if the black- 
 smith don't come and put the padlocks on those 
 gates directly I won't pay him one farthing — not 
 one farthing I ' 
 
 'If I didn't see to the things le never would,' 
 she explained as she took the reins of the ponies. 
 ' He'd let people dawdle on for ever, and pay 'em 
 just the same for doing nothing. They know I 
 won't stand that nonsense. I've had all the 
 gates put up and padlocked : the whole land used 
 to lie open.'
 
 252 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' The people here must he very fond of 3'0ii,' 
 said Etoile. 
 
 Lady Joan did not feel the satire. 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know. They ought to be. I 
 physic 'em when they're ill. Sucli wry faces they 
 pull ! Of course I'm very kind to 'em all ; hut 
 first of all one must make a thing pay — in lo's 
 interests, you know.' 
 
 ' And you are of opinion with Zoroaster that to 
 reap the earth with profit is of more merit than 
 to repeat — or win — ten thousand prayers ? ' 
 
 ' I am rather of Plutarch's,' said loris, joining 
 them, and stroking his ponies. 
 
 ' Was Plutarch an ass, then ? ' asked the Lady 
 Joan \Adth supreme scorn. 
 
 ' You would have thought him so ; he could 
 never bring himself to sell in its old age the 
 ox which in its youth had served him faithfully. 
 Voila tout.' 
 
 ' That is just the sort of sentimental stuff to 
 please you. The ox would make very good beef,' 
 retorted the Lady Joan. * Mind ! my sables are 
 over the wheel.' 
 
 She cut the ponies sharply over their heads
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 253 
 
 with the whip and started them off full gallop 
 down the rugged slope, leaving their master to 
 spring up behind as best he might. The ponies 
 were his own : spirited little cobs from Friuli, 
 with jingling silver bells, and swinging foxes' 
 tails hung at their ears ; but no sort of possession 
 was he allowed to enjoy of them. 
 
 ' I want Grrillo and Pippo to-day,' he would 
 say of a morning ; and his groom would answer, 
 ' I am very sorry. Excellence, but the Signora has 
 ordered them.' loris had to shrug his shoulders 
 and see his ponies depart to the Casa Challoner. 
 Why did he never rebel ? He began to ask it 
 of himself, leaning with his arms on the front 
 seat of the carriage, looking at the profile of 
 Etoile before him in the twilight. 
 
 ' I do so wish you would come to the theatre 
 to-night. Do change your mind. There are 
 only the Plinlimmons at dinner — bores, I know ; 
 but we should cut it short with the Opera,' urged 
 Lady Joan as she stopped the ponies to set her 
 guest down in the Quirinal Square, and pressed 
 an invitation which she knew was quite safe, 
 since she had chanced to hear that Etoile would
 
 254 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 pass that evening with the Princess Vera, who 
 had ' two or three people ' — i.e., about two or 
 three hundred. 
 
 ' The idea of her going to Princess Vera's I ' 
 she muttered as she drove away. ' Preposte- 
 rous ! ' 
 
 ' Wliy that ? ' said loris, lighting a cigar, 
 as the ponies dashed down the street of Four 
 Fountains. 
 
 ' Good gracious, lo ! can you want to ask ? 
 But Princess Vera will know any artistic trash 
 that takes her fancy — rude as she can be to 
 every respectable person.' 
 
 And she slashed Pippo across the ears again. 
 She herself was among the respectable per- 
 sons whom the Princess Vera treated with a 
 calm ignorance of their existence very exaspe- 
 rating. 
 
 The ponies rattled up the steep stones to 
 her house; and her husband, who was just then 
 going in at the door, stopped, aided loris to 
 unload her furs, and lioped they had had a 
 pleasant day at Fiordelisa. 
 
 'Are you disposed to let Lady Norwich
 
 FHIEyDSHIP. 255 
 
 have your turquoises?' asked Mr. Challoner, ten 
 minutes later, following liis wife into the privacy 
 of her own room. 
 
 ' Yes, she may have 'em. I only bought them 
 to sell again.' 
 
 ' I thought of saying two thousand francs ? ' 
 
 'Yes — that w^on't be bad. I gave eight 
 hundred ; but then the woman was hard-up at 
 Hombm:g, you remember, and glad to let 'em 
 go cheap. I grudge 'em to that old cat. Mind, 
 she thinks we brought 'em from Persia, and 
 had 'em polished in Vienna.' 
 
 ' You'll never do better with them : I think 
 it is a very good price.' 
 
 ' Tolerable. And they don't suit me. Blue's 
 for blondes. Besides, they're nasty uncertain 
 things : one never knows they won't change 
 colour. What about the Urbiro jar ? ' 
 
 ' I got it. It is genuine. An incomparable 
 ])it. You always make horrible mistakes, but 
 you did not blunder there. The fellow had no 
 idea of the value of it. I bought it like a 
 common bit of kitchen pottery.' 
 
 ' Yes, I know — the man kept his sugar in it.'
 
 256 FRIENDSHIR 
 
 ^By the way, old O'Grlennamaddy wants an 
 antique altar-screen.' 
 
 'Very well. We haven't one; but Mimo shall 
 draw one, and little Faello can carve it. It can 
 be ready in twenty days. O'Grlen is a goose — 
 he'd take anything.' 
 
 ' Yes. But people are not all geese that 
 will go to visit him. Eemember that. You 
 had best show him good things.' 
 
 'Don't you preach. I know O'Glen as I do 
 my alphabet. He used to give me burnt-almonds 
 when I was a baby. I say — mind you go your- 
 self about that little Pieta to that man in 
 Trastevere. lo was going, but I wouldn't let 
 him ; he never beats the people down ; and he 
 talks some rubbish about the man's wife being ill 
 with the ague — as if that had anything to do 
 with it I That's just like lo. He bought a little 
 plate of Grubbio ware yesterday ; the woman that 
 owned it asked him fifteen francs, and he went 
 and gave her seventy — seventy ! — just because 
 the thing was worth it — so he said ; but I believe 
 it was only because she was crying about her 
 landlord pressing for rent. That's just like lo
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 257 
 
 — cry a little, and his hand goes in his pocket in 
 a second.' 
 
 Mr. Challoner smiled grimly. 
 
 His wife was very fond of airing her con- 
 tempt for her friend's weaknesses before him. 
 Not that there was the slightest occasion to do 
 so. Mr. Challoner had left all remnants of jea- 
 lousy long buried in the delta of Orontes and 
 Euphrates, of Abana and Pharphar. And be- 
 sides, there was such perfect confidence between 
 his wife and himself that there was never any 
 need for explanations. 
 
 ' I have boundless trust in her,' he would 
 say austerely with injured dignity if some old 
 friend, too officious, ventured to hint that Lady 
 Joan was a little — a little — perhaps a little too 
 original. And, like all people who have bound- 
 less trust, he would shut his eyes when bidden. 
 
 This kind of business-conference was a closer 
 tie between them than any the marriage-altar 
 could forge, and at discussions of this sort they 
 were always good friends, finding each other's 
 views and principles often identical. Indeed, so 
 sound were his wife's ideas about business that 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Mr. Challoner could use his pet phrase with 
 perfect veracity when .speakiug of her. 
 
 ' You'll come to the Opera to-night ? ' asked 
 the Lady Joan now. 
 
 ' Xo— no.' 
 
 ' Oh, you'd better. The Norwiches will be 
 there, and that old cat Plinlimmon is coming 
 with us. They'll all talk if you don't.' 
 
 'Very well,' said Mr. Challoner : he was 
 always resigned to self-sacrifice for the public 
 good. 'You told them at Fiordelisa that I 
 should bring Lord Norwich up to shoot on 
 Monday ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. Mind, though ; Norwich thinks we've 
 bought the place. You'd better make a party 
 and take up a cold lunclieon. Echeance will go, 
 and Plunkett, and Grualdro Malestrina, and per- 
 haps some of the attaches would if you asked 'em, 
 though I hate all that Chcmcellerie lot — stiff 
 as pokers ! By the })ye, since we put up the 
 trespass-boards all round, the game's in much 
 better order. lo protests, and says the people 
 will knife him for it some day, because they've 
 always netted the hares and birds as they wanted
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 259 
 
 them ; but that's all rubbish, I think. Anyhow, 
 they shan't get a head of game if I can help it. 
 There's such heaps of partridges ! I shall have 
 'em trapped for market when we've had the pick 
 of the shooting. I wish you'd write to England 
 about those pigs ; and tell 'em to send out some 
 pink kidney potatoes for planting — the Early 
 Emilys are the best. lo settled that bill for the 
 last, and never struck the wharf-duties off it, 
 though I told him the shipper ought to pay 
 them ; but he's always so careless about money. 
 That's the door-bell, isn't it ?— that horrid Plin- 
 limmon woman — she's got-up like a parrot, green 
 and red and yellow and blue, I dare say. What 
 a nuisance it is to have to do the polite ! Go 
 in and say all sorts of things to her while I 
 dress.' 
 
 Mr. Challoner went in, obedient, and welcomed 
 the Plinlimmons, who were very rich people, 
 who had made a vast fortune by a new kind of 
 candle, warranted never to melt or to splutter, 
 and fulfilling its warranty nobly. He apologised 
 for his wife's tardy appearance, and quite affected 
 the Plinlimmons, who were simple, sentimental 
 
 S2
 
 260 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 folks, oppressed with the extent of their own 
 wealth and their own ignorance, by the tender 
 manner in which he regretted his wife's impru- 
 dence in being out so late in the cold, thereby 
 endangering her lungs and his happiness — but 
 she was so wilful, and so fond of art, and 
 so charitable— and she had been visiting a 
 poor painter, who had been laid up with 
 fever, &c., &c., &c. 
 
 From painters to painting is a natural tran- 
 sition, and led naturally to the sight of some 
 landscapes which were on sale for a charity, 
 and which the Plinlimmons fell in love with, 
 and begged might be sent to them at the Hotel 
 Constantia; and so the time was whiled away 
 until the Lady Joan entered, radiant in amber, 
 and black lace, and Etruscan ornaments, and 
 greeted her dearest Mrs. Plinlimmon with that 
 cordial and honest warmth which was her greatest 
 attraction to shy women and timid men. 
 
 Then there entered silently without announce- 
 ment one whom Mr. Challoner presented to the 
 good Monmouthshire folks aloud as ' our valued 
 friend — the Prince loris,' and, with a sotto voce
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 261 
 
 whisper, ' A Spanish duke as well as a Roman 
 prince — a godson of the Pope's.' 
 
 And the valued friend bowed with a calm, 
 ceremonious grace not common in Monmouth- 
 shire, and said some courteous phrases in French^ 
 and then fell back and gazed at Mrs. Plinlimmon 
 in her gorgeous attire with grave amazement, and 
 murmured to himself, ' Dio inio I Dio mio ! ' 
 
 ' You must be very civil to 'em ; they're 
 awfully rich — made pots of money by candles,' 
 whispered Lady Joan in his ear as she bade him 
 fasten her bracelet. 
 
 He had learned what people who were rich 
 meant in the Casa Challoner, and was silent. 
 
 He was ordered to give his arm to the 
 Plinlimmon daughter, who had red hair, and was 
 dressed in green ; and he failed to comprehend 
 a word of her French, and wished those stupid, 
 ill-dressed islanders would not come to bore him ; 
 and felt more tired all through the dinner than 
 he had ever done in all his life. 
 
 ' How absent you are, lo ! ' said Lady Joan 
 sharply as the Fiordelisa woodcocks went round. 
 
 'loris is thinking of Mademoiselle Etoile,'
 
 262 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 said Mr. Challoner, with a grim smile. ' You 
 have often heard of Mademoiselle Etoile, no 
 doubt, jNIrs. Plinlimmon ? ' 
 
 And they discussed Mademoiselle Etoile with 
 asperity, as became people at whose table she had 
 dined six nights before. 
 
 loris sat silent, with a flush on his face. 
 Lady Joan looked at him from time to time 
 with suspicion — it was not possible that he was 
 really thinking about anything but herself? 
 
 ' What is the matter with you to-night ? ' 
 she muttered roughly as she rose to go to the 
 Opera. 
 
 loris shrugged his shoulders. 
 ' Oh, met chhve ! when you weigh me to the 
 earth with a red-haired demoiselle, with teeth 
 like a wild boar's and the bones of a giantess ! ' 
 
 Lady Joan laughed and told him to hold 
 his tongue ; they were as rich as Croesus. Then, 
 quite satisfied, she let him fold her cashmeres 
 about her and take her to the carriage. 
 
 A very vain woman is always so easily lulled 
 into contentment. 
 
 She ridiculed every note of the 'Persephone'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 263 
 
 all the way through it, because it amused her to 
 do so, and because she had begrudged the money 
 he had spent in helping the boy-composer of it. 
 But loris, sitting in the shadow, scarcely heard 
 her. He was thinking of the sunset on the hill 
 under Eocca di Papa. 
 
 He was glad when the tedious evening drew 
 to its close and left him free. 
 
 Meantime the Plinlimmons went to their 
 hotel, enchanted with having met a live Italian 
 Prince, and such attention from so charming a 
 household, and when the}^ should depart to be 
 in time for the assembling of Parliament (Plin- 
 limmon being member for a borough), would tell 
 everybody that the Casa Challoner was the most 
 delightful house in Eome. To shy people the 
 Lady Joan's ardent cordiality was unspeakably 
 precious, and to ignorant people her extensive 
 artistic allusions were unspeakably imposing ; 
 besides, she was really a Perth-Douglas. To ner- 
 vous persons who have made candles such a 
 union of rank and good-nature as she presented 
 was altogether irresistible. 
 
 ' Yes, yes ; they were chosen for us by a friend
 
 264 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 of ours, Lady Joan Challoner ; she'd just got the 
 like for her own cousin, the Countess of Hebrides,' 
 Mrs. Plinlimmon would say before many objects 
 of Italian art in her London reception rooms ; 
 and would feel happy and glorious in the posses- 
 sion alike of high art and high acquaintances. 
 Such general felicity could a clever woman diffuse 
 only by smiling and selling a few trifles. 
 
 The Lady Joan was catholic in her sympathies 
 in society, and obeyed the mandate of Edward 
 the Third to his ladyelove — 
 
 Bid her he free and general as the sun, 
 
 Who smiles upon the basest weed that grows 
 
 As lovingly as on the fragrant rose. 
 
 For the Lady Joan never forgot that there are 
 weeds by which an attentive gatherer has before 
 this discovered a vein of gold in common soil, or 
 found a fortune in a pool of borax. 
 
 Lady Joan knew that after all it is Vinfini- 
 onent petit that is infinitely great. 
 
 A woman like Etoile will be blind to this. 
 She will be touched instantly by pain ; she will 
 be moved to quick charity ; she will be capable 
 of strong deed and deep thought ; she will
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 265 
 
 answer trust or appeal as a golden harp the 
 player's touch ; but the small things of life will 
 pass by her — what is antipathetic to her she will 
 offend by unconscious neglect, what is distasteful 
 to her she will turn hostile by careless disdain ; 
 she will go through the world doing good where 
 she can, cleaving to what seems to her to be 
 truth, and seeking unwittingly only what responds 
 to her own temperament ; so the world is set 
 thick with foes for her, as the path of the jungle 
 with snakes. 
 
 Lady Joan was a proud woman in her own odd 
 fashion, and it hurt her pride bitterly sometimes 
 to do so much homage to the Infiniment Petit ; 
 but she did do it, and she secured the suffrages of 
 all the little people who wanted to look great, of 
 all the frogs who wanted to be bulls, of all the 
 geese who wanted to be swans, of all the free and 
 enlightened republicans who flew to a title as a 
 moth to a light, of all the small gentilities who 
 were nobodies in their own counties at home, but 
 abroad gave themselves airs, and had quite a num- 
 ber of figures to their bank balance — in francs. 
 
 It hurt her pride sorely, yet she did it ; and,
 
 266 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 like everybody who is wise in his own generation, 
 she reaped her reward in kind. 
 
 When the Norwiches dined there on the next 
 night. Lady Joan was different in character. The 
 Norwich people were great, solemn, stupid, and 
 of vast influence. He was a marquis of long- 
 descent, she the daughter and sister of a duke ; 
 they were very fussy, very pompous, very proud. 
 Lady Joan dressed herself in rigid black velvet, 
 and only wore a string of pearls ; she was very 
 quiet, looked classic and handsome ; talked of her 
 child, showed only really good things, set loris at 
 the far end of the table, and spoke, if at all, dis- 
 tantly of Fiordelisa as ' a place we go to in the 
 summer. Mr. Challoner likes farming.' 
 
 For the Norwiches, and such persons as the 
 Norwiches generally, Lady Joan was as much of 
 a gentlewoman as she could be — nervous a little, 
 a little abrupt, too anxious for approval, and too 
 careful to conciliate, but otherwise quite irre- 
 proachable. 
 
 The Norwiches and such people as the Nor- 
 wiches, going home, would say : ' That daughter 
 of Archie's lives at Rome. Oh, yes, we dined
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 267 
 
 with them ; oh, yes, grown a very agreeable 
 woman too — quite quiet ; a good mother, and 
 seems to agree with that person she married very 
 well. Oh, of course we dined there. One must 
 always stand up for a Perth-Douglas.' 
 
 Now and then, indeed — for no human mind 
 is so godlike that it can altogether foresee and 
 prevent every accident — the Norwich people, 
 or the people of whom Lord and Lady Norwich 
 were types, were startled by coming suddenly 
 across Lady Joan, without her bib-and-tucker, 
 tete-a-tete with lor is at some marble table in 
 a Paris cafe, or some green bench at an open- 
 air concert at Spa, when business had obliged 
 her to travel, and she had mingled business 
 with pleasure : the real Lady Joan without 
 meeting-house clothes on; the real Lady Joan 
 who was Cleopatra by moonlight up at Fiordelisa ; 
 the real Lady Joan who came home from mas- 
 querades at iive in the morning ; the real Lady 
 Joan who sang and smoked, with a dozen men 
 about her, half the night ; and this real Lady Joan 
 would startle the Norwiches and other decorous 
 personages a little unpleasantly and give them a
 
 L>G8 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 sudden sensation as of sea-sickness. But she 
 would wliip on her bib-and-tucker very lightly 
 and quickly, and would explain : ' I'm on my 
 way to join Mr. Clialloner, and he don't like me 
 to travel alone ; so he sent loris to meet me. lo 
 only loses my money and gets the wrong labels 
 stuck on my boxes ; and of course 1 could 
 travel by myself from here to San Francisco, 
 but Mr. Challoner is always so fidgetty.' 
 
 So she would adjust bib-and-tucker before 
 the cafe mirror ; and the Norwiches, or the type 
 of persons they represented, would be satisfied, 
 and say to each other, ' You see her husband 
 knows it ; there can't be anything in it,' and so 
 would go and see her in the winter, though they 
 had had that awkward view of her eating her 
 sorbet with the handsome Italian beside her, 
 smoking his cigarette — a situation which would 
 have ruined any woman of less resources and her 
 ready invention. But in truth the Lady Joan 
 was Protean, and slipped in and out of a dozen 
 various skins as easily as a lizard slips out of its 
 tail. 
 
 ' "Why do the great ladies go to see our
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 2G9 
 
 Prince's dama ? ' said many a good Eoman 
 matron of them all standing at one of the foun- 
 tains in the wall to gossip with her neighbours 
 as the carriages swept by to the Casa Challoner. 
 
 They did not understand it. 
 
 They were not aware of the golden rules of 
 good society. 
 
 Paolotto, the baker, had a handsome wife, w^ho 
 betrayed him for Franco, the Swiss Guard, with 
 the fair curls, on duty at the Pope's Palace yonder, 
 and Paolotto's wife set out at nightfall once too 
 often ; and Paolotto following, fell upon fair Franco 
 with a knife, and slew the Swiss ere he had time 
 to point his halberd. That they could under- 
 stand. That was Eoman and righteous — ^just as 
 much so as if it had been the other way, and it 
 had been the Swiss who, by God's grace, had killed 
 the baker. Anything, so that it was man to mau, 
 and good steel used about it. 
 
 But then they are barbarians still in old 
 Trastevere. 
 
 If Paolotto had been trained in good society 
 he would have only smiled on Franco of the yellow 
 curls, and asked him to speak fair some upper
 
 270 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 scullion, so as to get the Paolotto loaves ordered 
 and taken for the Vatican kitchen, and so have 
 warmed his oven if his heart were cold, and 
 made his loaves of li^-hter weight, having the 
 Papal patronage and blessing. Poor Paolotto 
 drew his knife instead ; and as he went through 
 the streets between the Gruards to pay his penalty, 
 Lady Cardiff, who was passing by, looked at him 
 and asked what he had done ; and hearing, smiled 
 and said, 'Vengeance is out of date, like flour, 
 my poor fellovv. We have ground bones, and 
 Friendship.'
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 ' It's lasted some years, but I don't think they 
 can be very well suited,' said Lady Cardiff, 
 watching through her eyeglass the forms of loris 
 and Mr. Challoner's wife pass away down the 
 vista of her own numerous rooms, after a visit 
 of ceremony on her day. ' I don't think they 
 can be very well suited ; he looks like Eomance, 
 and she like the Money Market. The Eros he 
 would choose would be a soft, tender god of 
 silence and shadow ; and hers is a noisy little 
 Advertising Agent, with handbills and a paste- 
 pot. Very bad form, by the way, to afficher pub- 
 licly like that.' 
 
 Etoile, who had become somewhat intimate
 
 272 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 with this merciless speaker, and who had just 
 then entered, reddened a little. 
 
 ' You dine often with her. Lady Cardiff I ' 
 
 ' What a tragical tone of reproach ! No, my 
 dear Comtesse, I don't dine there often. Far 
 from it. I find it too expensive to have to buy 
 a pan or a platter, or some ugly magot or other 
 every time after dinner — it would come cheaper 
 at Spillman's. She amuses me though. Clever 
 woman — knows how to suit herself to her society, 
 and never knows when she has a rebuff. How 
 useful that is ! ' 
 
 ' Surely she never suffers one ? ' said Etoile. 
 ' Everyone appears to like her.' A sentiment of 
 loyalty to her absent old friend, and to the woman 
 whose hand she took in friendship, moved her to 
 a defence with which her convictions did not go. 
 
 Lady Cardiff smiled and dropped her eye- 
 glass. 
 
 ' Oh, of course people like her. She'll bore her- 
 self to death. There's no more popular quality. 
 Besides, she has such a tower of strength in that 
 excellent husband of hers. Of all lay figures there 
 is none on earth so useful as a wooden husband.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 273 
 
 You should get a wooden husband, my dear, if 
 you want to be left in peace. It is like a com- 
 fortable slipper or your dressing-gown after a 
 ball. It is like springs to your carriage. It is 
 like a clever maid who never makes mistakes 
 with your notes or comes without coughing dis- 
 creetly through your dressing-room. It is like 
 tea, cigarettes, postage-stamps, foot-warmers, 
 eiderdown counterpanes — anything that smooths 
 life, in fact. Young women do not think enough 
 of this. An easy-going husband is the one iu- 
 dispensable comfort of life. He is like a set of 
 sables to you. You may never want to put them 
 on ; still, if the north wind do blow — and one 
 can never tell — how handy they are I You pop 
 into them in a second, and no cold wind can find 
 you out, my dear. Couldn't find you out, if your 
 shift were in rags underneath I Without your 
 husband's countenance, you have scenes. With 
 scenes, you have scandal. ^Yith scandal, you come 
 to a suit. With a suit, you most likely lose your 
 settlements. And without your settlements, 
 where are you in society ? With a husband Like 
 that wooden creature Mr. Challoner, you are 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 safe. You need never think about him in any- 
 way. His mere existence suffices. He will 
 always be at the bottom of your table and the 
 head of your visiting-cards. That is enough. 
 He will represent Kespectability for you, without 
 your being at the trouble to represent Kespecta- 
 bility for yourself. Respectability is a thing of 
 which the shadow is more agreeable than the 
 substance. Happily for us, society only requires 
 the shadow.' 
 
 With which Lady Cardiff, wittiest of women 
 by heritage, as her grandmother had frightened 
 Fox and almost awed Sydney Smith, crossed the 
 room and lighted a fresh cigarette. 
 
 ' And love,' said Etoile, ' where does that 
 come in your arrangements?' 
 
 ' Olives and sweetmeats, my love,' said Lady 
 Cardiff. ' I am talking of soup and fish and the 
 roti — and of the man who pays for them. 
 Young women don't think enough of the roti. 
 They fall in love with some handsome ass who 
 makes court to them after the style of French 
 feuilletons, and they believe life will be always 
 moonlight and kisses. Once married, he spends
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 all their money, damns them a dozen times a 
 day, and keeps his smiles for other houses, while 
 ten to one he is as jealous as a Turk to boot. 
 Moonlight and kisses are excellent in their way, 
 but they should come afterivards. They are 
 only olives and sweetmeats. You can't dine on 
 them. Those pretty trifles are for Paolo and 
 Francesca, not for Mr. and Mrs. Eimini. I am 
 very immoral? My dear Comtesse, I am only 
 practical. An easy husband, who never asks 
 questions or cares where your letters go — ah ! you 
 must have been married to a Lord Cardiff, as 
 I have been, to know the blessing of that. Vs'ith 
 an easy husband you have all the amusement of 
 doing wrong and all the credit of doing right.' 
 
 ' In this case, indeed,' she went on, ' it is that 
 poor loris who pays for the roti as well as the 
 bonbons, which is hardly fair. But that does not 
 matter a bit to Society — Society will always go 
 to dinner so long as the husband sits at the end 
 of the table. Disgraceful ? Oh, well, perhaps ; 
 but if the husband like it we have no business 
 to say so. Of course Belisarius knew Antonina 
 once danced in nothing but a zone, and had 
 
 T 2
 
 276 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 always had a weakness for big biceps ; but if 
 Belisarius liked to make-believe that Antonina 
 was a piece of ice incarnated, Byzantium was 
 bound to make-believe so too, and to know 
 nothing about the zone and the biceps. You do 
 not see it ? Of course not, because you are a 
 great artist and do not trouble your head to 
 understand Society. You live on Olympus. We 
 are mere mortals.' 
 
 ' That is severe. Lady Cardiff.' 
 
 ' No, my dear. It must be a great thing to 
 have Cloudland to resort to if Society turn one 
 out of doors ; but to poor ordinary humanity, 
 that has no heaven beyond the card-basket, 
 Society has a weight that you people who are 
 poets never can be brought to comprehend. I 
 believe that you really are all happier if your 
 card'basket is quite empty, because nobody ever 
 disturbs your dreams by ringing at your door- 
 bell.' 
 
 The Marchioness of Cardiff loved to call her- 
 self an old woman. But she had kept three 
 things of youth in her — a fair skin, a frank 
 laugh, and a fresh heart. She was a woman of
 
 FRIENDSHIP. Til 
 
 the world to the tips of her fingers ; she had liad 
 a life of storm and a life of pleasure ; she turned 
 night into day ; she thought no romance worth 
 reading save Balzac's and Fielding's ; she did 
 not mind how wicked you were if only you 
 never were dull. She was majestic and still hand- 
 some, and looked like an empress when she put 
 on her diamonds and sailed down a salon. On 
 the other hand, she would laugh till she cried ; 
 she would do an enormity of good and always 
 conceal it ; she honoured unworldliness, when she 
 saw it, though she regarded it as a kind of mag- 
 nificent dementia ; and, with all her sharpness of 
 sight, the veriest impostor that ever whined of 
 his misery could woo tears to her eyes and money 
 from her pm'se. She always wintered in Eome, 
 and never lived with Lord Cardiff. He and she 
 were both people who were delightful to every- 
 body else, but not to each other. She was a Tory 
 of the old school and a Legitimist of the first 
 water ; she believed in Divine right, and never 
 could see why the Reform Bill had been neces- 
 sary. Nevertheless, Voltaire was her prophet, 
 and Rochefoucauld her breviary ; and though she
 
 27S FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 saw no salvation outside the Almanack de Gotha, 
 her quick wit almost drove her at times near 
 the wind of Democracy. Anomalies are always 
 amusing, and Lady Cardiff was one of the most 
 amusing women in Europe. 
 
 ' Smoke. Why don't you smoke ? ' she said 
 to Etoile. 'You make me think of Talleyrand 
 and whist. What a miserable old age you pre- 
 pare for yourself! You look grave, ma chere 
 Comtesse. What are you thinking about ? ' 
 
 ' Pardon me. I was thinking of my friend 
 Dorotea. She is blameless, and the world is 
 cruel to her. Yet in these women you talk of 
 the same world makes a jest of dishonour. Why ? 
 It is unjust and capricious.' 
 
 ' When was the world ever anything hut un- 
 just and capricious ? ' said Lady Cardiff. ' Still, 
 do you mean to tell me, really honestly, scms 
 phrases, that the Duchesse Santorin is faithful 
 to that brute and spendthrift?' 
 
 ' Entirely faithful ; entirely blameless — yes.' 
 
 ' Dear me ! ' 
 
 Lady Cardiff was so amazed that she walked 
 the whole length of her room and back again.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 279 
 
 It was late in the day, and her visitors and cour- 
 tiers had all departed ; she and Etoile ^Yere 
 alone. 
 
 ' It is no use, you know/ she said at last ; 
 ' nobody'll ever believe it.' 
 
 ' Dorotea's actions are not shaped by what 
 people believe.' 
 
 * Dear me I ' said Lady Cardiff once more. 
 
 ' When one gets amongst these kind of people 
 one is all adrift,' she thought to herself. ' They 
 have such extraordinary ideas.' 
 
 'But there was great scandal about Fedor 
 Sourofif. You can't deny that,' she said aloud. 
 
 " Count Souroff has a great and loyal love 
 for her — yes. But he obeys her. He is in the 
 Caucasus, tryiDg to lose his life, and failing, 
 of course, as all do who wish to lose it.' 
 
 ^ How very uncomfoi-table ! ' said Lady Cardiff. 
 ' Then everybody was wrong, and she don't care 
 for him ? ' 
 
 ' That is a question I can have no right to 
 reply to, I think.' 
 
 ' You mean she does ? Then she'll call him 
 back from the Caucasus, my dear ; and goodness
 
 280 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 knows why she sent him there. You believe 
 her, and I believe you, but nobody else would. 
 Nobody ! ' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, nobody, nobody ! You know everybody 
 says the worst they can now. They won't let her 
 sing at Court in England this season.' 
 
 « And yet ' 
 
 ' And yet our dear Lady Joan can go to 
 Court. Oh, yes ; and Mrs. Henry V. Clams too, 
 and ten hundred others like them. You don't 
 seem to understand. Your friend may have Count 
 Souroff killed and buried in the Caucasus. It 
 won't make any difference. Society has made up 
 its mind.' 
 
 ' And why ? What has she done, except be 
 innocent ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, dear, dear ! what has that to do with it ? ' 
 said Lady Cardiff, vexed as by the obtuseness of a 
 little child to understand the alphabet, and think- 
 ing to herself, ' One can't tell her it's because 
 the woman is an artist — she's an artist herself.' 
 
 'It seems to me the main question,' said 
 Etoile as she rose and gathered up her furs.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 281 
 
 ' That is because you live in Cloudland, as 
 I tell you,' said Lady Cardiff. ' Who cares what 
 Joan Challoner is or is not ? She has got a well- 
 trained husband, and we have to receive her, 
 though we grin behind her back. Who cares 
 what your beautiful friend is or is not ? She has 
 got a bad name, and she will be hanged for it, 
 like the poor proverbial dog that had one. You 
 seem to me, my dear Comtesse Etoile, to take 
 life far too terribly seriously. To your poetic 
 temper it is a vast romance, beautiful and 
 terrible, like a tragedy of ^schylus. You 
 stand amidst it entranced, like a child by the 
 beauty and awe of a tempest. And all the while 
 the worldly-wise, to whom the tempest is only a 
 matter of the machineries of a theatre — of 
 painted clouds, electric lights, and sheets of 
 copper — the worldly-wise govern the storm as 
 they choose and leave you in it defenceless and 
 lonely as old Lear. To put your heart into life 
 is the most fatal of errors ; it is to give a hostage 
 to your enemies whom you can only ransom at 
 the price of your ruin. But what is the use of 
 talking ? To you, life will be always Alastor and
 
 282 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Epipsychidion, and to us, it will always be a 
 Treatise on Whist. That's all I ' 
 
 ' A Treatise on Whist ! No ! It is some- 
 thing much worse. It is a Book of the Bastile, 
 with all entered as criminal in it, who cannot be 
 bought off by bribe or intrigue, by a rogue's 
 stratagem or a courtezan's vice ! ' 
 
 Lady Cardiff laughed and wrapped the furs 
 about her guest with a kindly touch. 
 
 ' The world is only a big Harpagon, and you 
 and such as you are Maitre Jacques. " Puisque 
 vous Vavez voulu!^'' you say, — and call him 
 frankly to his face, " Avare, ladre, vilain,fesse- 
 mathieu ! " and Harpagon answers you with a 
 big stick and cries, " Apprenez a parler ! " Poor 
 Maitre Jacques ! I never read of him without 
 thinking what a type he is of Grenius. No offence 
 to you, my dear. He'd the wit to see he would 
 never be pardoned for telling the truth, and yet 
 he told it 1 The perfect type of genius.' 
 
 Etoile went home thoughtful, and with a 
 vague sense of trouble upon her. 
 
 She had taken as a residence part of an old 
 palace, entered from the Montecavallo, but with
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 283 
 
 all its great windows looking into the Rospi- 
 gliosi gardens. The rooms were immense, vaulted, 
 noble in form and proportioD, with frescoes that 
 were beautiful with the gorgeous fancies of some 
 nameless artist of the days of the Carracci. Here 
 she installed herself for the winter at her ease, 
 and here she felt as if she had already dwelt for 
 twenty years. Of one great chamber, with deep 
 embrasured casements, she made her favourite 
 apartment, half-studio, half-salon ; and filling 
 the embrasures with palms, and ferns, and 
 flowers, and burning oak logs and dried rosemary 
 on the wide hearth, and getting about her the 
 picturesque litter of old bronzes and old brocades, 
 of casts, and sketches, and books, made tranquilly 
 her home in Eome. 
 
 She missed the strong intellectual life that 
 had surrounded her in Paris, the keen and witty 
 discussion, the versatile talents, the brilliant 
 paradoxes, the trenchant logic of that section of 
 the world by which she had been surrounded ; but 
 in return she felt a dreamy and charming repose, 
 a sense of peace and exhilaration both in one ; 
 thought was lulled and basked only in the imme-
 
 28i FlilEhDSIIlP 
 
 morial treasures of the past ; strife seemed far 
 away, and the mere sense of physical life seemed 
 enough. 
 
 She regretted that she had not come un- 
 known to all the motley winter world that ever 
 and again broke the charm of this spell which 
 falls on every artist and every poet entering 
 Eome. She thrust it away as often as she could, 
 but she had celebrity, and it had curiosity, and 
 it buzzed about her and would not be gainsaid. 
 She would fain have shut lierself alone in her 
 frescced rooms when she was not amongst the 
 marbles of Vatican or Capitol, or beneath the 
 ilexes of Borghese and Pamfili. But it is not 
 easy to escape from the world of ordinary men 
 and women, or to escape publicity, when you 
 have a public name; and people were eager to 
 visit Etoile and say that they had seen her at 
 home, with her olive velvet skirts, and her old 
 Flemish laces, and her background of palms, and 
 her great dog on her hearth, and on her easel 
 some sketch half-covered with some relic of gold 
 brocade. 
 
 ' As they must come some time, let them all
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 285 
 
 come together, and not spoil the week,' she said, 
 with a shrug of her shoulders, and named Sun- 
 days for her martyrdom. 
 
 ' I will not come on Sundays,' murmured 
 loris as he heard her say it. 
 
 Etoile smiled. ' Oh, yes, you will — if your 
 sovereign-mistress order you to accompany her.' 
 
 ' Plait-il ? ' said loris, with a look of innocent 
 unconsciousness; then added, in a low tone, ' You 
 are pleased to be cruel.' 
 
 The Casa Challoner itself received on a 
 Wednesday, making on that day a solemn re- 
 ligious sacrifice to the Bona Dea. It was spe- 
 cially swept and garnished, morally as well as 
 actually ; the pipes and cigars were locked up, 
 the too-suggestive statuettes put out of sight ; 
 the good-looking slaves all banished ; and little 
 Effie, prettily dressed, was prominently petted by 
 her mother ; Mr. Challoner was as cordial and 
 communicative as nature would permit him to 
 become, and Lady Joan was as full of proper 
 sentiments and domestic interests as if she were 
 a penny paper or a shilling periodical. In her 
 bevy of English dowagers, American damsels.
 
 283 FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 and Scotch cousins, amidst the bankers and 
 consuls' and merchants' wives, the small gentili- 
 ties and the free-born republicans. Lady Joan 
 was sublime : she would have been worthy the 
 burin of Balzac and the crowquill of Thackeray. 
 
 loris was usually banished from these Wed- 
 nesdays, but Lady Joan would generally speak 
 of him once in five minutes. ' lo's gone to get 
 me some camellias,' or ' lo's gone to look at some 
 pictures.' Or she would turn over the photo- 
 graph album before Mrs. G-rundy and say, ' Yes, 
 that's lo — you met him here last week. Hand- 
 some ? Well, we don't think him quite that, 
 but we're very fond of him, poor fellow.' 
 
 And Mrs. Grundy would go away quite sa- 
 tisfied, and take her daughter on the following 
 Wednesday ; for Mrs. Grundy will suppose any- 
 thing rather than it were possible for anybody 
 to deceive herself. 
 
 ' Showed me the man's likeness openly, her 
 husband standing by and the dear Bishop,' Mrs. 
 Grundy would say afterwards. ' Of course there's 
 nothing in it — nothing! Do you suppose she 
 would show me his photograph if there were ?
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 287 
 
 It is the purest friendship — the most perfect 
 kindness.' 
 
 All the bankers', and consuls', and merchants' 
 wives, all the small gentilities, and the free-born 
 republicans, who did not go to the Sundays on 
 Montecavallo, used to compare her admirable 
 Wednesdays, with the teapot and the small talk, 
 to those iniquitous Sabbath-days. 
 
 ' They say you can't see across the rooms for 
 the smoke at the Comtesse Etoile's — there are 
 all kinds of liqueurs — anybody plays and sings 
 that likes. The Prince of Scheldt sung heaps 
 of cafe-chantant and guard-room songs last 
 Sunday, and imitated Teresa and then cats on 
 the roofs — oh ! scandalous, quite scandalous ! 
 They say ' 
 
 And being shut out from the Sundays, they 
 would go and take the tea and muffins on a 
 Wednesday, and feel what a blessing it was to 
 move only in irreproachable society. 
 
 ' Yes, I don't go on the Sundays either ; at 
 least, I go very seldom,' said Lady Joan, and let 
 a shade of regret on her frank face hint the rest. 
 
 'The Etoile Sundays are delightful,' said
 
 288 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Lady Cardiff, who did go, and was reassured that 
 she had done quite right in going by meeting 
 Princess Vera in the doorway, and another 
 ambassadress a little further on. 'I like her 
 very much — I like her immensely; though she 
 never does seem to see that Somebody is Any- 
 body, and was contemptuous, actually conteonp- 
 tuous, to the Prince of Scheldt; while she was 
 everything that was amiable to some horrid 
 little snuffy creature, eighty years old, who 
 happened to have all Beethoven and Schumann 
 at his fingers' ends. Yes, I like her. She seems 
 to look over one, through one, past one ; and 
 that isn't comfortable or complimentary ; but 
 she pleases me. She isn't a bit like anybody else. 
 She makes me think of Sappho and St. Dorothea. 
 What are you laughing at, pray ? ' 
 
 loris, despite his protest, did come now and 
 then on the Sundays, but he came alone and 
 rarely. 
 
 To Etoile he said : ' You have said I am 
 a slave ; I will not exhibit myself with my chains 
 on to the merciless raillery of your eyes, and — I 
 do not care to come when others monopolise you.'
 
 FRIEXDSHIP. 289 
 
 To Lady Joan he said : ^ Ah, ma chere, you 
 know I am afraid of " celebrities." Leave me 
 in peace. I see lier too often as it is in your 
 house for my tranquillity.' 
 
 That ^Yas no lie ; but his hearer did not 
 understand it in its true sense, and was pleased 
 and satisfied. 
 
 ' lo won't go near her if you drag him with 
 ropes,' she said to her watchdog, ^Marjory Scrope. 
 
 The watchdog, with a keener and sharper 
 flaire, had already smelt danger. 
 
 And once, twice, thrice the watchdog going 
 to copy the Rospigiiosi Aurora, on an order of 
 Lord Fingal's, saw a tall and slender form that 
 she knew, pass the palace-gate of Etoile in bright 
 mornings at noontide. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ' Bought it for eight hundred francs, and can 
 sell it, my dear madam, for a hundred thousand, 
 honour bright I ' the O'Grlenamaddy, an Irish 
 member of Parliament, was calling out in highest 
 glee in the Lady Joan's morning-room. ' Two 
 men scrubbin' the dirt off all day long, and two 
 dozen sheets of waddin' used already — it's almost 
 clane — and it's a real great picture ! What 
 school, madam ? Oh, it's not a picture of a 
 school at all — it's a " Salutation to the Virgin," 
 madam, twelve feet by twenty. Who by ? Ah, 
 now, that I'm not shure of, but it's a very old 
 master. Cara — Cara — Caradoggia, I'll be thinkin'. 
 Count Burletta says I'd get a hundred thousand
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 291 
 
 to-morrow for it aisy ; but I'll not be selling it. 
 I'll send it home to the ould place. It's a 
 wonderful place, madam, is Eome, for pickin' 
 up treasures in the dirt, and I cannot be 
 grateftd enough to ye for having put me in the 
 way of doin' it. AVitli a little ready money, and 
 a little knowledge, it's wonderful what a fortune 
 one may make. Not that I'm wantin' one ; but 
 when one has child ern there's never too much 
 broth in the old pot — is there, now? Onh' eight 
 hundred francs my picture I — think o' that ! Say, 
 countin' cleanin', and the waddin', a thousand all 
 told. And lyin' without a piurchaser ever since 
 the conquest of Italy by Bonaparte; and such a 
 mass of soot and dust, that if your good husband 
 hadn't pointed out the value of it to me I'd have 
 taken it for a chimney-board and nothin' better. 
 Indeed I would. What a thing it is to be clever ! 
 And didn't ye say yeVl take me to a new shop 
 to-morrow mornin' that ye know of? — that is, 
 I mane, an old shop. I love an antique bronze, 
 madam, better than any thin' in the world — 
 mighty old, ye know, madam, and green as grass, 
 with plenty of pattern on it.' 
 
 V 2
 
 292 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 'You mean patina,' said the Lady Joan, 
 repressing a smile. ' Dear O'Glen, of course I 
 shall be only too delighted to take you anywhere 
 or serve you in any way ; and about the picture 
 I'm enchanted. Such a find as that don't occur 
 once in a dozen years; and if Mr. Challoner 
 hadn't been so fond of you he would never 
 have let you run off with it. I'll come and see 
 it to-morrow, and bring lo. And now you must 
 stop for luncheon. I've got some real Southdown 
 thyme-fed meat for you ; I sent over for the breed 
 myself. They'd such wretched, long-legged, flesh- 
 less beasts at Fiordelisa when I went there first I 
 Noiv our mutton fetches far and away the first 
 price in the market ; indeed, Spillman buys it 
 up always.' 
 
 ' What a treasure of a woman ye are ! * 
 sighed the O'Grlenamaddy. ' Ye know every- 
 thing, from antiquity to mutton ! Quite amazin' ! 
 Ah, sir, ye've drawn a prize indeed in your 
 marryin' ; and few prizes it is that there are ! ' 
 
 Mr. Challoner bowed — gratified. 
 
 The O'Glenamaddy could not stop for the 
 mutton, being very busy, and post-haste on his,
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 293 
 
 way lack for the opening of the Dublin season ; 
 and the Lady Joan was not ill-pleased that he 
 could not. The O'Grlenamaddy was a delightful 
 person, of a childlike faith and an elastic purse, 
 but she had had enough of him. Moreover, she 
 expected Etoile to luncheon, having organised a 
 party to the Grotto of Egeria, and she would 
 not have cared for her to hear of the Salutation 
 to the Virgin and the sheets of wadding. 
 
 She herself was in high spirits, having re- 
 ceived a rather chillily-worded invitation for 
 herself and husband, and their friend the 
 Prince loris, to go up and breakfast with her 
 mighty cousins the Hebrides, who had just come 
 to their big villa outside by the Porta Pia. But 
 she did not mind its being chilly ; it would 
 serve her purpose as well as if it were warm. A 
 single invitation to breakfast or dinner at the 
 Countess of Hebrides' always filled Mrs. G-rundy's 
 mouth with sweetmeats and silence safely for the 
 season. True, neither the Earl nor the Countess 
 of Hebrides liked her, and asked her as little and 
 as coldly as possible to their house. But what 
 of that ?
 
 294 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Lady Joan floated herself by means of lier 
 big relations as swimmers in a storm by air-belts. 
 Cousins very near to her might come to study 
 art in Kome ; but if they studied it in humble 
 dwellings, and had no taste or figure for Society, 
 their relationship was sternly rejected at the Casa 
 Challoner. But when cousins removed twice a 
 hundred times, as Scotch cousins can be, came 
 with pretty handles to their names, and cousins 
 at the great hotels, the hospitality of the Casa 
 Challoner was truly Highland in its lavishness, 
 and a series of excellent dinner-parties proclaimed 
 the new ai rival and the near relationship to the 
 city. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the cordial good un- 
 derstanding of Mr. Challoner and his wife at 
 such times as tliese. They walked togetlier, 
 drove together, never spoke without a smile, and 
 called each other ' my love ' and ' my dear ' with 
 the most excellent reciprocity. 
 
 The Countess of Hebrides, who had always 
 wondered at the odd marriag-e ' Archie's dauo-hter ' 
 had made, was obliged to concede that the tnesal- 
 liance had turned out better than might have
 
 FRIEyUSHIP. 295 
 
 been feared, and that the hnsband seemed a good 
 creature ; and so let the good creature make 
 purchases for her in Etruscan jewellery, and 
 Castellan! necklaces, and Eoman antiquities, and 
 modern Fortunys and Tito Contis. 
 
 The mighty Hebrides never stayed very long 
 at a time ; but these great people are like the 
 sun, and leave a trail of glory behind them long 
 after they have passed out of sight. 
 
 The afterglow of them rested on the Casa 
 Challoner and gilded it like the Ark of the 
 Covenant in the sight of all the artists and 
 journalists, and hric-a-hrac collectors, and trans- 
 atlantic wayfarers who made the sum of their 
 daily society, and who drifted perpetually in and 
 out of their hospitable chambers, and who in 
 return defended everywhere the Challoner repu- 
 tation with as much ardour and perhaps as little 
 discretion as they defended a doubtful Gruercino 
 that they wanted to sell, or an antique Pausanias, 
 of which everything was modern except the right 
 ear. 
 
 The English society of Winter Cities is motley. 
 There are two parts to it : the small fish that
 
 296 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 always live in the foreign water, and the bigger 
 fish that only float through it. The fish that 
 live in the water, who for the most part have 
 mould on their backs of some ' story ' or another, 
 and cannot well live in their o^vn native streams, 
 vie with each other for the big fish that only 
 come to tarry for a season, with all the glory of 
 diamond-bright scales upon them, and all their 
 signet-marks as monarch s of the deep. When a 
 big fish arrives, the little fish all rush to catch the 
 shadow of his glory ; and there are no bigger fish 
 anywhere than these salmon from north of Tweed 
 with which the Lady Joan claimed kinship. 
 
 And it was her mighty skill in catching these 
 big fish that kept herself in smooth waters. 
 
 Mrs. Macscrip, the banker's wife, whose father 
 had driven a wheelbarrow and wielded an auc- 
 tioneer's hammer in New York, would not quarrel 
 with a woman who could ask her to luncheon with 
 that very great lady the Countess of Hebrides. 
 Mrs. Middleway, the evangelical pastor's better 
 half, could only eagerly return calls that brought 
 her into the same chambers with that really noble 
 and Christian gentleman, Lord Fingal ; and all the
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 297 
 
 rest of the little people who were the niouth- 
 pieces of that irresistible potentate Mrs. Grundy 
 would not be either cold or censorious on 
 anyone who could call half the Peerage 'my 
 cousins.' 
 
 Lady Joan pleased Mrs. Grundy, and most 
 other women, for many reasons. 
 
 First of all, she was indisputably a lady in 
 her own right and a Perth-Douglas ; and besides, 
 there was that floating impression that she had 
 something to hide, and something to fear, which 
 enabled them to feel above her level. Water 
 may like to find its own level, but women do 
 not. Again, she took extreme trouble to con- 
 ciliate her own sex. She was morbidly anxious 
 about their estimate of her ; her braggadocio 
 often veiled a quaking pulse. For women she 
 hung her Christmas-tree with pretty trifles; for 
 women she bought tickets at charity balls, and 
 gave them lavishly away to large families of 
 marriageable daughters ; for women she gave her 
 carefully calculated dinners when a duke's eldest 
 son or a rich unmarried commoner was jiassing 
 through Eome; for women, indeed, she would
 
 298 FRIENDSIUr. 
 
 even go so far as to find amongst all her roha 
 a few lengths of real old Venetian lace, or a 
 genuine rococo locket, and let some happy fair 
 one go off Avith it really at a bargain. And all 
 this study and self-sacrifice brought her in a rich 
 harvest. 
 
 P^or any harvest is rich to us that is the one 
 of our desire ; and the light of Lady Joan's eyes 
 was her own face reflected in a Louis Quinze 
 mirror at some great banker's ball, and her own 
 name inscribed on the books of some hotel where 
 some royal princess was staying ; her own Delft 
 card-plate filled with polished pasteboard, and 
 her own little drawing-room packed with persons 
 wlio were Personages. 
 
 Throughout Society tliere is everywhere to 
 be met with a large class of well-born joeople 
 who want perpetual amusement and cannot pay 
 for it. They are the offshoots of the nobilities 
 of nations, the flowers that are next the rose ; 
 the fringes of the purples ; the crumb of 1 he 
 cake. They are nicely mannered, frothily edu- 
 cated, have tastes wider than their purses, are 
 utterly useless, and like to be amused from one
 
 FETFNDSHIP. 299 
 
 year's end to the other without its costing them 
 gTeatl3\ They like to use other people's car- 
 riages, to have other people's opera-boxes, to 
 dine out constantly, to get innumerable pleasant- 
 nesses witliout having their pride hurt by any 
 approach to patronage ; because they are gentle- 
 folks — always gentlefolks — only they like life to 
 be a merry-go-round on other people's horses. 
 
 It is a large class, and a gay one, and an 
 amiable one, and a very grateful one — so long- 
 as you are able to entertain it. When the day 
 comes that you cannot do so it will forget you 
 — that is all. 
 
 It will not be bitter about you : it has not 
 mind enough for that ; it will only forget you. 
 It is always enjoying itself. 
 
 It is a class which abounds in all cities of 
 pleasure ; and its suffrages are to be bought. 
 What pleases it, it will praise ; and these praises 
 are like little puffs of south wind : they will send 
 up a monster balloon like a soap-bubble, if only 
 there be but enougli of them. 
 
 The Lady Joan, who had been born amongst 
 the purples, but had been forced to live amongst
 
 300 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 its fringes, courted this numerous class, and 
 succeeded with it. 
 
 ' I took lo to my dear Hebrides ; they're so 
 fond of him ! " she would be able to say for a twelve- 
 month ; so she thought to herself now, receiving 
 the Hebrides invitation ; and in her mind's eye 
 she could see all tlie bankers', and consuls', and 
 merchants' wives, all the little gentilities, and all 
 the freeborn Americans, running about, and say- 
 ing with unctuous lij^s, ' She took him to the 
 Hebrides' ! How can there be anything in it ? ' 
 
 And if ever Lady Joan blessed Providence 
 she blessed it for Scotch cousinship. 
 
 At this moment, however, she put aside both 
 the great Hebrides, and the Salutation to the 
 Virgin, and arrayed herself in the character she 
 always wore for Voightel's friend. 
 
 She wore many characters, according to her 
 spectators. For the great Scotch cousins she 
 was a very happy and virtuous wife ; ill-placed, 
 indeed, in a social position unworthy of her, but 
 with qualities that would have graced a duchess's 
 coronet. To the world in general she was a 
 much-enduring and much-forgiving martyr ; a
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 301 
 
 sacrifice made by her faniily to the golden calf, and 
 heroically pressing the knife of sacrifice meekly 
 to her bosom. To a chosen few she was an ad- 
 venturous, devil-may-care, high-spirited creature, 
 who threw her cap over the mill and didn't care 
 who saw it in the air. To herself she was a 
 combination of fine mind and fearless nature, 
 a sort of Madame Tallien dashed with the virile 
 vigour of a Lady of Lathom. 
 
 But even the chosen few never saw her as she 
 actually was, and it may certainly be averred 
 that she herself never did. She thought she had 
 a will of iron, a brain of steel, a dauntless 
 courage, and a matchless wit. She never dreamed 
 that she was after all only a terrible coward at 
 heart, disguised in a fine swagger like Pistol's, 
 having neither the force in her to defy society 
 nor the force in her to deny her passions. 
 
 At this moment she arrayed herself in the 
 part that she always thought most appropriate 
 for receiving a person who knew Voightel and 
 lived in Paris, and did her best to seem to 
 Etoile a clever, brilliant woman of the world, 
 with honest outspokenness of tongue and fearless
 
 302 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 utterances of advanced thought, yet one that 
 never affected to be altogether above the mun- 
 dane amusements of a pleasant society that 
 adored her as one of its leaders. 
 
 ' So delighted to see you ; so kind of you to 
 come I ' she cried, with that cordiality of wel- 
 come which looked so real when she did not 
 upset it with a bit of rudeness or bad temper. 
 ' You are always with Princess Vera, aren't you ? 
 How can you condescend to such small folks as 
 we are ? But I'm charmed that you do. Will a 
 feminine Velasquez like yourself deign to help 
 me in a most important question ? Look here 
 at all these old plates. lo's brought them for 
 me to pick out a costume for tlie Clams' fancy 
 ball. What do you say to this — or this ? They're 
 all very stiff, but that style rather suits me, I 
 think, and I've lots of brocade doing nothing. 
 Don't you think this one, if it were made of 
 ruby velvet, and the stomacher sewn with seed- 
 pearls? I bought a lot the other day. And 
 the ruff will be becoming. And I've heaps of 
 old Venetian prints. lo says these plates aren't 
 correct. He's some old family portrait he wants
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 303 
 
 me to dress like. You know he's such a fidget 
 about historical accurac}". He made himself 
 wretched the other night because my Louis 
 Treize costume had eighteenth century buttons 
 on it and lace only fifty years old. He said I 
 was a dancing anachronism. Good gracious ! 
 here he is — come to luncheon, actually— a thing 
 he never does. That's because you're here ! My 
 dear lo, can't you throw your coat down without 
 breaking those tulips all to pieces ? ' 
 
 The fallen petals of the tulips made her 
 eyes darken angrily. Why did he come to 
 luncheon when he was not ordered ? Of course 
 when ordered he had to come, no matter how 
 inconvenient to himself; but any sign of an 
 independent will in him was a glimpse of that 
 cloven hoof of rebellion which she had believed 
 that she had crushed under for ever. 
 
 When lie rebelled she always made him 
 ridiculous. Before he could speak she tossed 
 him the costume drawings. 
 
 ' Here, Comtesse Etoile has chosen this dress 
 for me,' she called to him. ' Take a pencil and 
 write out what the stuff and all ought to be on
 
 a04 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 the margin, and then Mariannina can follow 
 your notes. Have you been to the Palmiro sale ? 
 I hope to goodness you didn't let that Capo di 
 Monte slip through your iingers. Has Davis's 
 agent got it ? Oh, good heavens, lo, what a 
 fool you are ! I knew how it would be if I 
 didn't go myself! Mr. Challoner '11 be furious. 
 There'll be no peace for a week. It's always 
 so when you do anything alone.' 
 
 ' Ma chere, the person from London ' 
 
 began loris. But she never indulged him by 
 hearing his explanations. 
 
 ' Nonsense. Of course Davis's agent got it if 
 you weren't quick enough. Don't talk rubbish. 
 You know well enough I'd told you to get it 
 at any price — any price. It will fetch hundreds 
 in Pall Mall. All the rest of the Palmiro 
 things were trash, but that was worth any money. 
 But it's always so when you go alone. Have 
 you had those grapes and woodcocks sent up 
 to the Hebrides ? Did you send to Fiordelisa 
 for the camellias for to-night ? And have you 
 told 'em to blister Pippo ? Oh, you'll be going 
 to the stable to sit with him. What do you
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 305 
 
 think he did do ? ' she piu'sued, turning to Etoile. 
 ' When his old mare was blistered last summer he 
 stayed with her all day long, because he thought 
 she felt the pain less if he stroked her ! I be- 
 lieve he'll want to give the hares and foxes 
 anaesthetics before we shoot 'em next ! There 
 he was all day long in the mare's stall, reading 
 Gfiusti and stroking her neck. He wore mourn- 
 inf; when the old beast died.' 
 
 ' Oh ! — carissima mia I ' 
 
 ' Oh, you know you did, or you wanted to, 
 if I hadn't laughed at you. Now, write those 
 notes clear, so that Mariannina can read 'em. 
 Ruby velvet, and just a touch here and there of 
 gold. I want to use up tliat larae cVovo we got 
 in the G-hetto. The stomacher isn't cut right ? 
 Well, draw it the shape it should be. Shall it 
 be sewn with seed-pearls or Turkish sequins? 
 Oh, pearls, I think. We bought all those ropes 
 of 'em the other day, and I may as well wear 
 'em before ' 
 
 ' Before we sell them again,' she was going 
 to say ; but instead, as Etoile was there, sub- 
 stituted a less telltale phrase. 
 
 YOL. I. X
 
 306 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 'Before I get sick of the sight of them, 
 lying about in that dish. One does get sick 
 of pearls so soon. Now, diamonds never pall 
 on you. They seem always changing. When 
 a fairy sends me anything for my birthday, I 
 wish she'd always send me diamonds.' 
 
 loris sighed. He knew what that meant. 
 And diamonds cost money, and he was not rich. 
 He sketched the Venetian costume obediently 
 in silence. Lady Joan walked over to him and 
 rested one hand on his shoulder, and with the 
 other stroked back the dark hair of his head 
 as it was bent over the drawing. 
 
 All the while she looked at Etoile fur- 
 tively, as though by the action slie would say, 
 ' Take care what you do. This is mine.' 
 
 loris moved under her touch a little petu- 
 lantly. He went on drawing without response. 
 
 Etoile looked at him through dreaming eyes ; 
 that delicate aquiline profile against the high 
 crimson lights of the wall-hangings had a fascina- 
 tion for her as for ail artists. For the moment 
 she felt a sense of disgust to see those strong, 
 firm, sinewy hands clasped on his shoulder like
 
 FltlEXUSHIP. 307 
 
 a band that holds, and holds, for ever. She rose 
 and turned from the sight, and went to a little 
 Albano hanging near. 
 
 loris threw his pencil away broken. 
 
 ' It is of no use drawing on that wretched 
 paper,' he said, displacing the hand that was on 
 his shoulder by a quick and, as it seemed, acci- 
 dental manoeuvre. ' I will send you the costiune 
 later. It will be much easier to copy at once 
 that Venetian portrait I told you of; you shall 
 have it by to-morrow morning.' 
 
 'Luncheon is ready,' said the Lady Joan 
 curtly, and she went in without ceremony to her 
 dining-room, where she scolded her little girl for 
 having put on silk when she ought to have put on 
 merino, and did a battle-royal with her husband 
 about the disputed frock. Of course she did not 
 care a rush about the frock, but the fierce dispu- 
 tation did her good. The child was brought up on 
 very simple principles. What her father ordered 
 her mother forbade, and what her mother com- 
 manded her father refused. The child had quickly 
 learned how to get all she wanted by the mere 
 process of pitting them one against each other.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' Mamma will let me have it, because papa 
 can't bear me to,' she would say to her little 
 companions, with questionable grammar but the 
 imquestionable principles proper to a young 
 daughter of a house whose foundation-stone was 
 the Triangle of Dumas. 
 
 All through luncheon Lady Joan descanted 
 on the extravagance of the offending frock and 
 the injury done to her by the loss of the Capo di 
 Monte to Davis. 
 
 She was a woman whose passions, like the 
 fires in Vesuvius, threw up much smoke and 
 many stones. 
 
 loris talked of literatm-e and art, ate only a 
 few of his own grapes, and for once disregarded 
 his hostess. 
 
 Mr. Challoner, who always listened and 
 watched impassive as Fate and as immutable, 
 commenting on all things, and interfering in 
 none, like the Chorus to a Grreek play — Mr. 
 Challoner thought to himself that his own ven- 
 geance was dawning. 
 
 But after all Mr. Challoner was a man of the 
 world. Things were better for him as they were.
 
 FRIENDSHIP, 309 
 
 Peace is a calmer thing than revenge — especially 
 when peace means that some one else is worried in- 
 stead of yourself, and revenge means that you will 
 be left all alone to bear the beating of the storm. 
 
 Mr. Challoner, as a student of human nature 
 and a mere mortal man, could not but enjoy the 
 prevision that loris was drifting unconsciously 
 away into love elsewhere. But Mr. Challoner, as 
 a niari complaisant and a philosopher, knew that 
 this drifting away would be a fatal blow to his 
 own rest and tranquillity. 
 
 Solomon thought a dinner of herbs with 
 quietness better than a stalled ox and conten- 
 tion ; but modern men and women, who have no 
 fancy for herbs in these days, unless mixed with 
 sherry and soles by an excellent cook, contrive by 
 these tacit and amicable arrangements to obtain 
 both the ox and the quietness. 
 
 Compromise is the note of the present cen- 
 tury and the choice of all wise men. Arbitra- 
 tion instead of arms ; damages instead of ven- 
 geance ; give-and-take instead of cut-and-thrust ; 
 universal doubt and polite suspicion instead of 
 frank faith or stout denial. Compromise every-
 
 310 FRIENDSIlir. 
 
 where, caretaking, timorous, shrewd, dubious, 
 apprehensive, wise : compromise is the supreme 
 art of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Mr. Challoner and his wife studied this great 
 theory to perfection ; and it was only because 
 they, like the greatest of mortals, were human 
 that they sometimes forgot its rule so far as to 
 quarrel about their shares of a picture's profits or 
 fling their respective secrets at each other's head. 
 This was very seldom ; and besides, what did it 
 matter ? It was only when nobody else was there. 
 
 ' You think me very insincere ? ' murmured 
 loris to Etoile, a quarter of an hour later. 
 
 ' Insincere ? What have I said ? ' 
 
 ' In words nothing. Your eyes say it.' 
 
 'My eyes are very ill-bred then.' 
 
 ' Nay, tell me the truth.' 
 
 ' Well, I should think you were very frank 
 by nature, but are somewhat false from habit.' 
 
 ' And what makes you suppose that ?' 
 
 ' How can I tell ? Artists, 5^ou see, are like 
 dogs : they go by instinct, and draw deductions 
 without being aware of it. We are unreasonable 
 animals, not fit for drawing-rooms.'
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 311 
 
 'But what should make you imagine me 
 insincere ? ' 
 
 She hiughed at his persistency. 
 
 ' Wei], do you not always call your friend 
 " raa chere " when I only am with you both, 
 and most ceremoniously " Madame " when other 
 people are by ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, that is only friendship. You must not 
 infer more than they mean from such little slips 
 of the tongue.' 
 
 ' I infer just what they do mean — no more.' 
 
 loris smiled. A man cannot help smiling 
 when one woman talks to him of his position 
 with another. It is not vanity ; it is recollection 
 and anticipation combined. 
 
 ' You are very mischievous, madame,' he 
 answered airily. ' Perhaps one does learn to 
 lie in the world. Society has made falsehood 
 its axle-tree, and cannot well turn round with- 
 out it. But I do not think I ever should lie to 
 you.' 
 
 ' Why ? What is there about me ? I am 
 not like your old stone Bocca della Verita, to 
 bite the hand off all false speakers.'
 
 312 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ' No, you are something much better,' he said 
 abruptly. ' You are one of those women who 
 shame men into truth.' 
 
 His eyes dwelt on her with earnestness, with 
 warmth, with a passing sadness. He touched her 
 hand with that hesitating timidity, which in him 
 was as successful with women as audacity. His 
 fingers closed on hers one moment with a sort 
 of supplication in the gentleness of the action. 
 
 They were standing in the anteroom of the 
 Casa Challoner. Lady Joan came through the 
 oriental curtain dividing the rooms ; and saw. 
 
 Her brows contracted, but she gave no other 
 sign of anger. 
 
 ' Are you people ready ? ' she cried, in her 
 cordial and ringing voice ; she had planned a 
 drive to show her guest the Caffarella. ' My 
 dear Comtesse, have you got enough on ? You 
 know it grows awfully cold at twilight. I was 
 afraid Mr. Challoner would insist on our having 
 his company ; but the dear Dean has carried him 
 off to the English schools. Heaven be praised 
 for all its small mercies. You'd never forofet it 
 if you heard him prose about Numa. " Numa
 
 FRIENDSHIP. ■ 313 
 
 never existed at all." Well, settle it so and have 
 done with it, I say. But not a bit of it; he'.l 
 preach on for three hours and a half to prove that 
 Numa was moonshine. As if anybody could prove 
 a negation ! Call for Eccelino. We'll take liim 
 up at the Circle, I promised him ; and the other 
 men rode on before. Take heaps of cigars, lo. 
 How could you lose that Capo di Monte to-day ? 
 It makes me so savage. You are like a baby in 
 some things. I do believe if it Avasn't for me 
 you'd be ruined to-morrow, and have to sit on 
 the Spanish Steps to get halfpence. Let's be off, 
 or we shall have all the daylight gone.' 
 
 And Lady Joan showed herself solicitous as 
 she got into the carriage that her guest should be 
 protected by scarfs and furs against the hard 
 wind blowing from the Appenines, with all the 
 frank and pleasant cordiality that a wise woman 
 displays w^hen she has a grudge to pay off — by- 
 and-by. 
 
 Lady Joan laughed and talked her brightest 
 as they rolled along ; and when she chose she 
 could be very agreeable in a cheerful and offhand 
 fashion, which won her much admiration amongst
 
 314 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 that large proportion of society which thinks 
 good spirits a pretty compliment to itself. She 
 had seen a great deal of men and manners ; she 
 had seen most cities and some few courts ; she 
 read hmnan nature well, though narrowly ; she 
 could tell a tale with point and humour, espe- 
 pecially when it had in it a flavour of broad 
 mirth. Within herself she was deeply incensed 
 at what she had seen and heard. But then she 
 reasoned, lo could only have been making game 
 of that stuck-up adventuress : he disliked Etoile ; 
 he had always said so. So she was very amiable 
 to Etoile as they drove to the Gfrotto of Egeria, 
 and did not chastise her lover more severely than 
 by bestowing all her smiles on Eccelino di Sestri, 
 a good-looking courtier, who had adored herself 
 dans le temps. 
 
 ' lo's my friend, of course, just as Eccelino 
 is,' she would say in her most candid manner. It 
 was a distinguishing feature of Lady Joan's ad- 
 ministrative capabilities that she could keep 
 men together without their quarrelling about her. 
 Perhaps the reason was that she let each of them 
 think that she cheated for him all the others ; or
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 315 
 
 perhaps the reason was that the love she inspired 
 was not of the strongest kind. 
 
 The carriage went out by the Albano road, 
 under the leafless elm trees, to the silent places 
 where Egeria's altar lies fallen under the green 
 pall of the ivy and the wild waterfed moss. 
 
 The sun was still high, the sky cloudless, and 
 the north wind dropped as they entered tlie 
 valley of the Almo. 
 
 ' No doubt that unhappy Numa, if he ever 
 did exist, must have been awfully bullied by his 
 wife ; I should think she was a scold ; and the 
 length of her tongue made him adore the Muse 
 of Silence as much as I do when Mr. Challoner 
 vouchsafes one of his historical orations,' said 
 Lady Joan, with her bright laugh, as she got out 
 of her carriage, sauntered down into the dell, 
 lighted her cigar, and pitched stones at the fallen 
 statue that lies like a dead thing beneath the 
 arching rock. 
 
 ' All lovers adore that Muse. Numa was only 
 like all of us there,' said the Count di Sestri. 
 
 ' Do they ? I don't know anything about 
 lovers : T only care for friends,' laughed the Lady
 
 316 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Jpan, with her cigarette in her white teeth. She, 
 for her own part, did not adore Silence at any 
 time, and in her own heart considered that it 
 was of no use being made love to at all unless 
 you could publish the triumph of it right and 
 left to your society. She liked to fasten her 
 lover to her skirts as she pinned a signal-ribbon 
 to her domino at the Veglione. She was not a 
 woman to let her Komeo go from her when the 
 lark sang ; on the contrary, she liked all the 
 cocks in the neighbourhood to crow their shrillest 
 and call attention to him on her balcony ; though, 
 of course, she would say to the cocks, like the cat 
 in the Animaux Parlants, ' Je suis une chatte 
 angiaise et je n'ai point d'amants ! ' None of 
 the animals believed the cat, certainly. Still in 
 its way the cry was useful. 
 
 loris went forward and gathered a sprig of 
 broom and a few sprays of maidenhair fern, and 
 gave them to Etoile. 
 
 ' Juvenal would be satisfied, I suppose. He 
 hated the costly marbles and the artificial orna- 
 mentation ; there is little enough left of them 
 now. I am sure you, too, like it best as it is ? '
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 317 
 
 ' Yes, the bubbling brook sings the fittest 
 song for Egeria ; and poor Tatia, too, whose shade 
 must have been so jealous of her. I am sure she 
 never cared for all her mortal rivals in the new 
 city on the hills there, but Egeria must have 
 made her heart ache ; Egeria, who came on 
 the wino-s of the wind as she did herself, and 
 came into her own temple to take his very soul 
 away ' 
 
 'Have you ever loved any one, I wonder?' 
 thought the Lady Joan, turning and looking at 
 her with a sudden thought. 
 
 ' Egeria also forgave even disloyalty,' said 
 loris aloud. ' Xo infidelity changed her. She 
 was faithful to him through death and after it.' 
 
 Etoile smiled. 
 
 'Which is only to say I should think that 
 the nymph was a woman after all.' 
 
 ' How little you know of women ! ' 
 
 ' Don't turn cynic, lo,' cried Lady Joan, 
 flinging her cigar end at the mutilated statue. 
 ' It won't suit you at all. You are naturally 
 a cross between Faust and the young man in the 
 PeaiL de Chagrin; between Eomeo and Eeuben,
 
 318 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 unstable as water, &c. — you know what I mean. 
 You are as credulous as a seal and as soft- 
 hearted as a dog : cynicism is for men who drink 
 brandy, beat their wives, wear long beards, 
 and never wash their hands. Nature made 
 
 you 
 
 But he lost this definition of his character, as 
 he had wandered away after Etoile, who had gone 
 fuither down to where the little stream bubbled 
 up amongst ihQ mosses that bad once been 
 Numa's bed. 
 
 Lady Joan glanced after them, and lit a new 
 cigarette. She knew passion and all its ways too 
 well not to know the meaning of that silent un- 
 conscious irresistible magnetism which draws two 
 unfamiliar lives one to another in the indefinable 
 physical attraction which is the birth of love. 
 But her natural quickness of intelligence was 
 obscured by her overweening vanity. 
 
 ' He is only fooling her,' slie thought witli 
 indifference and amusement. * After all, if he 
 like to do that, let him.' 
 
 If another woman were made to love her 
 lover hopelessly, that would be only so much
 
 FEIEXDSHIP. 319 
 
 additional entertainment for herself. She v>-as so 
 sui'e of him — as sm-e as she was of the ring on 
 her hand, that would stay there for ever unless 
 she threw it aside. 
 
 ' loris seems to admire that new comer,' said 
 the Count Eccelino. 
 
 ' Oh dear, no, he doesn't,' said Lady Joan 
 coolly. ' He rather dislikes her ; thinks her 
 insolent and tete mordee. But I've told him to be 
 agreeable to her. She is a great favourite of 
 Yoightel's. You know dear old Voightel, the 
 cleverest man in all Europe. We were so fond 
 of him lon^ ao-o at Damascus.' 
 
 Of course he was only fooling Etoile, she 
 
 said to herself. o-lancino\ as she lauo-hed with the 
 
 other men about her, at the two figures that had 
 
 strayed away side by side under the shadows of 
 
 the trees along the stream towards the ruins tbat 
 
 tradition allies with the memory of Volumnia 
 
 and Virgilia, and with the great cry from the 
 
 breaking heart of the hero : 
 
 ' I melt; aud am not 
 Of stronger earth than others.' 
 
 Of course he was only fooling Etoile ; he
 
 820 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 disliked lier, so he had said a score of times ; 
 nevertheless that solitary walk displeased her. 
 
 ' Who is she ? I haven't an idea,' she said 
 roughly to another question of Eccelino di 
 Sestri's. ' Of course she's known all the world 
 over for that matter, by name ; but as to where 
 she came from, I should be very sorry to have to 
 answer for that. These kind of people always 
 drop down from the moon, or say they do, to 
 demonstrate that they didn't jump up from the 
 otter.' 
 
 ' Bub she is a Countess d'Avesnes.' 
 ' Yes. That's her name, or she says it is. It 
 sounds very aristocratic ; but I don't much 
 believe myself in aristocracy that has no rela- 
 tions, and travels about with a big dog, and has 
 tlie knowledge of Manon Lescaut, with the 
 innocent airs of Una. Men like that sort of 
 thing ; they believe in naked feet walking over 
 liot ploughshares without a burn. We don't. 
 We're more consistent. We don't look for 
 daisies on dung-heaps. It's rubbish, you know. 
 After all, think what that woman has seen ! 
 I don't say there's any real harm in her ;
 
 FRIENDSHIP, 321 
 
 Voightel would not have sent her to me if there 
 had been, of course : but it's perfectly ridiculous 
 to suppose that she has the white-paper-past 
 that she pretends to have. She's very clever, 
 that everybody knows ; and a very clever woman 
 can't be a very innocent one — when she's an 
 artist, I mean.' 
 
 The Lady Joan concluded with a puff of 
 smoke up into the traceries of the ash-boughs 
 overhead, for she remembered that she always 
 pictured herself to her world as combining in her 
 own person the two excellences which she had 
 just declared to be incapable of co-existence. 
 
 ' Ccdomniez, calomniez I ' said Voltaire ; ' ca- 
 lomniez toujours : qicelque chose restera.^ 
 
 So the Lady Joan was of opinion that if you 
 only lie everlastingly, something of it all will 
 always be believed somewhere. 
 
 If you are only well beforehand with your 
 falsehood all will go upon velvet ; nobody ever 
 listens to a rectification. ' Is it possible ? ' every- 
 body cries with eager zest ; but when they have 
 only to say 'Oh, wasn't it so?' nobody feels any 
 particular interest. It is the first statement that 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 322 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 has the swing and the success; as for explana- 
 tion or retractation — pooh ! — who cares to be 
 bored ? 
 
 She knew very well that what she said was 
 not true. But Lady Joan knew also that a little 
 fiction always came in handy. 
 
 Besides, when loris had wandered away with- 
 out permission along the bend of the water, 
 it was only human nature to fling a stone after 
 his companion. 
 
 Moreover, she was really incredulous that any 
 one with such opportunities for amusement as 
 Etoile had possessed, could have been idiot enough 
 to have led as quiet a life as a rosebush in a nun's 
 lattice window. 
 
 Men might believe it. But she was not to 
 be taken in by any such nonsense. 
 
 Fame to a woman is like the tunica in- 
 Cdndialis of the Latin martyrs, and it is never 
 the fault of other women like the Lady Joan, 
 if the torches of slander do not set it ablaze 
 till the sulphur flames burn up the life within. 
 
 She smiled her sunniest and kindliest, how- 
 ever, when the truants returned from the temple
 
 FRIENDSHIP, 323 
 
 of Fortuna Mutabilis, as the first shadow of 
 sunset fell over the grass. 
 
 ' My dear I are you not afraid of the cold ? ' 
 she said affectionately to Etoile. ' We must be 
 moving, I fear, and leave the ghost of Egeria to 
 salute the moon all alone. You must come back 
 to dinner with us. Oh, yes, you must ! I wish 
 you would go to the masquerade with me ; but 
 you care so little for those things. You don't 
 get half out of life that you might, believe me. 
 However, I suppose in return for all you lose, 
 primroses talk to you, and stones have voices, 
 and all that kind of thing. I've more of the 
 Peter Bell in me. Give me my furs, lo ; and 
 call up the carriage. Oh, of course she'll come to 
 dinner — I won't take any refusal. Mr. Challoner 
 will discourse of nothing but Numa, unless we're 
 strong enough in number to talk him down. Of 
 all the cants, I do think that new cant of proving 
 that nothing ever was, and that nobody ever 
 lived, is the very worst bore that sceptical edu- 
 cation has developed. Five o'clock I Tell them 
 to drive fast. I shall take you home to dinner 
 too, Eccelino ; and I'll give you the cotillon 
 
 Y 2
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 to-morrosv night if you're good at the Mac- 
 scrips.' 
 
 Count Eccelino bowed his ceremonious thanks 
 with an air of ardent gratitude. But he was too 
 used to receive favours of this sort whenever his 
 friend was out of favour to be much flattered by 
 them actually. As a punishment they were also 
 lost upon loris, who, as they drove homeward, 
 was silent, letting his dark eyes brood softly upon 
 the face of Etoile, so that whenever she looked 
 up she met their gaze in the pensive Roman 
 twilight. 
 
 She persisted in not dining with them that 
 night, and went to her own room and sat and 
 dreamed, with her head on her hands, over a fire 
 of oak and pine. 
 
 * That man is not happy,' she thought again 
 and again ; and she seemed always to feel that 
 tender hesitating touch of his fingers, always to 
 see those eloquent and wistful eyes in the even- 
 ing shadows. 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Joan went home and dined, 
 and then * mystified ' herself in loup and domino 
 for that first Veglione of the year.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 325 
 
 She had a passion for masquerades. No 
 scrutiny of marital wrath drew her to heed the 
 secresy of that most dingy and prosaic of all 
 Venusbergs — a haignoir au troisihiie. No weak 
 objections on the part of her lord to any pastimes 
 of friendship drove her, as they drive some ill- 
 used wives, to require the shelter of one of those 
 little close-curtained cloth-hung closets, where the 
 poor god of love is huddled up in a black sacque, 
 and his rosy mouth soiled with champagne-cup. 
 She could go home with her escort at four or five 
 in the morning, and use her latch-key, and Mr. 
 Challoner, like a sensible sleeper, only turned 
 cosily in his bed at the back of the house, and, if 
 he woke at all at the sound of his hall-door's 
 unclosing, only thought what a fool the other 
 man was to have danced attendance through all 
 those hours in the noise and the heat of that 
 dingy festival. 
 
 Lady Joan had no need of masquerades. 
 With her latch-key in her pocket, and her 
 friend's cab at her command, she could come and 
 go, alone or accompanied, in that happy free- 
 dom which is the privilege of a perfect conjugal
 
 32C FRIEXDSRIP. 
 
 comprehension. The cabman knew much more 
 about her than Mr. Challoner. 
 
 But thongh she had no need of them, her soul 
 adored the V^lione. That dance Macabre was 
 the delight of her heart, as the Brumalia of the 
 Roman matron's. 
 
 To mystify herself, or think she did so ; to 
 laugh louder than with due regard to society she 
 ever could elsewhere ; to throw a stone and grin 
 undiscovered and pass on ; to festen strangers with 
 her shining eyes, and jeer at them and leave 
 them : to torment her friends and torture her 
 foes, and sup and smoke and go home in the day- 
 bfeak, when the masks were all reeling up the 
 streets and the carnival songs were greeting the 
 sunrise — ^that was pleasure to the Lady Joan. 
 
 It requited her for a hundred dismal clerical 
 luncheons off cold lamb and lettuce, with chaplains 
 and consuls; it fortified her against a thousand 
 big dinners with her tongue tied, and her ' dear 
 Eobert ' at the bottom of the table. 
 
 loris sighed this evening as he fastened her 
 mask behind her ears and went down with her 
 into the dingy whirlpooL He was so tired of it all.
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 327 
 
 The thin disguises, the stupid jokes, the 
 commonplace intrigues, the coarse pretence of 
 deceiving and of being deceived, the noise, the 
 uproar, the shrill cries, the headlong dances — 
 they had gi'own so tiresome. He had laughed 
 his lightest and waltzed his wildest in other 
 years ; but he was tired of it all — very tired — 
 now as he walked about amongst the scream- 
 ing crowd, and exchanged the vapid phrases of 
 custom, with dominoes that were as well known 
 to him as though he had met them in broad day ; 
 and heard the resonant voice of his empress ring- 
 loud above the music in merciless speech and 
 worn-out jibes ; and lighted her cigarettes, and 
 carried her fan, and got her her claret-cup, and 
 thought how long the night was — the boisterous, 
 empty, joyless, senseless night, through which, all 
 the while, he had to laugh and be ready with 
 answer, and look amused, and turn an airy com- 
 pliment, and join in all the mirth, and never 
 show a yawn, but wait on duty till the kindly sun 
 should rise, and so release him. 
 
 What weariness will men endm*e if only it be 
 not in the name of virtue !
 
 328 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 'A fine long night, Excellence!' said the 
 cabman, with a radiant smile, as loris paid him 
 while the bells of the first mass rung in the 
 dawn. 
 
 ' A terrible long night,' thought his employer, 
 looking up at the blue morning skies. 
 
 The cabman, who, had he ever been cross- 
 questioned by Society, could have rendered the 
 clerical cold lamb for ever a Passover of the past 
 to the Casa Challoner, drove away joyous to get 
 his breakfast and gamble in the sun. loris went 
 upstairs and shut the sun out, and threw himself 
 on his bed. 
 
 ' Grood God ! once I thought this, pleasure ! ' 
 he murmured as his heavy eyelids fell. 
 
 So he had thought this — love. 
 
 END OF THE FIEST VOLUME. 
 
 LOXDOX : PRIXTED V>Y 
 
 8P0TTISW00DE AND CO., NEW-STIIEET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STIIEET
 
 March, •sZ^l. 
 
 Chatto 6^ WINDUS'S 
 
 List of Books, 
 
 IMPORTANT VOLUME OF ETCHINGS. 
 Folio, cloth extra, £i lis. 6d. 
 
 Examples of Conte^nporary Art, 
 
 ETCHINGS from Representative Works by living English and 
 Foreign Artists. Edited, with Critical Notes, by J. Comyxs 
 Carr. 
 ** It ivoiild not he easy to meet with a more sumptuous, and at tJie same tir.te a 
 more tasteful a7td instructive drawing-room, book." — Nonconformist. 
 
 Folio, half- bound boards, India proofs, 2is. 
 
 Williain Blake : 
 
 ETCHINGS from his Works. By William Bell Scott. 
 With descriptive Text. 
 
 " TJie best side of Blake's ivork is given here, and makes a really attractive 
 vohtme. 'which all can enjoy . . . The etching- is of the best kind, inore refitted 
 oftd delicate tlian t lis original ivork." — Saturday Review. 
 
 iVElV VOLUME OF HUNTING SKETCHES, 
 Oblong 4to, half-bound boards, 2is. 
 
 Canters in CrampsJiire. 
 
 By G. Bowers. I. Gallops from Gorseborough. II. Scrambles 
 with Scratch Packs. III. Studies with Stag Hounds.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Square 8vo, cloth, extra gilt, gilt edges, with Coloured Frontispiece 
 and numerous Illustrations, \os, 6d. 
 
 The Art of Beauty. 
 
 By Mrs. H. R. Haweis, Author of " Chaucer for Children. *» 
 With nearly One Hundred Illustrations by the Author, 
 "A 7)iost interesting book, full of valuable hints aitd suggestions. ..,.//' 
 young ladies luould but lend tluir ears for a little to Mrs. Haweis, nve are guite 
 sure tJiat it wouLiresult in their being at once more tasteful, more happy, and more 
 healthy than they now often are, ivith tfieir false hair, high iuels, tight corsets^ and 
 €ver so much else, of the same sort." — Nonconformist. 
 
 Crown 4to, containing 24 Plates beautifully printed in Colours, with 
 descriptive Text, cloth extra, gilt, 6s, j illustrated boards, ^s. 6d. 
 
 ^ sop's Fables 
 
 Translated into Human Nature. By C. H. Bennett. 
 
 " For fun a?id frolic the 7iew version of ^sop's Fables must bear a^vay the 
 palm. There are plenty of grown-up children ivho like to be amused ; ana if this 
 new version of old stories does 7iot amuse them they must be very dullindeed, 
 and iJieir situation one much to be commiserated." — Morning Post. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with 639 Illustrations, *]$. 6^., a New Edition 
 (uniform with "The Englishman's House") of 
 
 A Handbook of Architectttral Styles. 
 
 Translated from the German of A. Rosengarten by W. 
 Collett-Sandars. With 639 Illustrations. 
 
 Crown 8vo, Coloured Frontispiece and Illustrations, cloth gilt, "]$. 6d, 
 
 A History of Advertising, 
 
 From the Earliest Times. Illustrated by Anecdotes, Curious 
 Specimens, and Biographical Notes of Successful Advertisers. 
 By Henry Sampson. 
 
 Crown 8vo, with Portrait and Facsimile, cloth extra, ^s. 6d. 
 
 Artemtis Ward's JVorks: 
 
 The Works of Charles Farrer Browne, better known as 
 Artemus Ward. With Portrait, facsimile of Handwriting, &c, 
 •' The author combines the powers of Thackeray ivith those of Albert Smith. 
 
 The salt is rubbed in with a native hand — one which has the gift of tickling.^' — 
 
 Saturday Review. 
 
 Small 4to, green and gold, 6s. 6d. ; gilt edges, 7J. 6d. 
 
 As Pretty as Seven, 
 
 and other Popular German Stories. Collected by LUDWIG 
 Bechstein. With Additional Tales by the Brothers Grimm, 
 and 100 Illustrations by Richter.
 
 CHATTO &> WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, ^s. 6d. 
 
 A Handbook of London Bankers ; 
 
 With some Account of their Predecessors, the Early Goldsmiths ; 
 together with Lists of Bankers, from 1677 to 1876. By F. G. 
 Hilton Price. 
 
 " An i7iteresting and unpretending little work, which may prove a useftd con- 
 tribution towards the history 0/ a diffictdt subject. . . . Mr. Price's anecdotes 
 
 are entertaining' There is something fasciriating, almost rotnantic, 
 
 in the details given us of Child's Bank. . . . There is a great deal of arnusing 
 reading and some valuable information in this hook.'' — Saturday Review. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, Qj. 
 
 Bards ley's Onr English Snrna^nes : 
 
 Their Sources and Significations. By Charles Wareing 
 Bardsley, M.A. Second Edition, revised throughout, con- 
 siderably enlarged, and partially rewritten. 
 "Mr. Bardsley has faithfzdly consulted the origitial mediceval documents and 
 •works fro7n which tlie origin and development of surnames can alone be satis- 
 factorily traced. He has furnished a valuable contribtition to the literature of 
 surnames, and we hope to hear tnore of him in this field." — Times. 
 
 Demy 8vo, illustrated, \s. each. 
 
 Hc7i7y Blackburn 5 Art Handbooks : 
 
 Acad.:my Notes for iSjJ. 
 
 With 143 Illustrations of the Principal Pictures at Bur- 
 lington House : more than One Hundred being Facsimiles of 
 Sketches drawn by the Artists. 
 * * Academy Notes/c?^ 1875 and 1876 may also be had, price 
 One Shilling each. 
 
 " We at once take an opportunity of offering our thanks, as well as those 
 of all visitors to the Exhibition, to Air. Blackburn for his very carefully 
 executed review of the Acade7)iy pictures, illustrated by some loo woodcut 
 niejnoranda of the pri7icipal pictJi-res, ah>iost half of theiii from thepencils of 
 the painters theviselves. A cfieaper, prettier, or more conveynetit S07tvenir 
 of the Exhibitioft it would be difficult to co)u:eive and wireasonable to 
 expect."— T\^\-ES. 
 
 Pictorial Notes in the National Gallery. 
 
 The British School. With upwards of 100 Illustrations 
 of the principal Pictures at Trafalgar Square ; forming a 
 complete Catalogue of the British Section. 
 
 The Old Masters at Trafalgar Square. 
 
 With numerous Illustrations. \_In the press. 
 
 Pictures at South Kensington. 
 
 With 80 Illustrations of the Raphael Cartoons, the Sheep- 
 shanks Collection, &c. 
 
 Grosvenor No tes, 1878. 
 
 With numerous Illustrations, contributed by the Artists 
 themselves. [/// the press.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, i8j. 
 
 Baker's Clottds in the East: 
 
 Travels and Adventures on the Perso-Turkoman Frontier. By 
 Valentine Baker. With Maps and Illustrations, coloured 
 and plain, from Original Sketches. Second Edition, revised and 
 corrected. 
 " A man -jjIw not only thinks for kintself, hut -who has risked his life in order to 
 gain infortnatio7t. . . . A -most graphic and lively narrative of travels and adven- 
 tures which have nothing of the cottivionplace about them." — I^eds Mercury. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7j. 6d. 
 
 Boccaccio's Decameron ; 
 
 or. Ten Days' Entertainment. Translated into English, with an 
 Introduction by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A. With 
 Portrait, and Stothard's beautiful Copperplates. 
 
 Price One Shilling Monthly, with Four Illustrations. 
 
 Belgravia Magazine. 
 
 That the purpose "with which " BELGRA VIA " was originated Jias been 
 fulfilled, is shown by the popularity that has attended it since its first appear- 
 ance. Aiming, as may be itiferred fro7n its name, at sicpplying the most 
 refined and cultivated section of Lo7idon society with ijitellectual pabulum sidted 
 to its requirements, it sprang at 07ice ittto p7iblic fa7'our, and has si7ice re77iai7ied 
 07ie of tJie most exte7isively read and widely circulated of periodicals, hi passing 
 into 7iezu ha7ids it has experie7iced 710 structnral cha7ige or i7iodification. In- 
 creased e7tergy and i7icreased capital have beeji e7)iployed i7i elevatitig it to the 
 highest sta7tdard of excellefice, but all the features that had won public app7-ecia- 
 tio7t have bec7i retai7ied, a7ul the Magazi7ie still seeks its priticipal support in the 
 ho77ies of Belgravia. As the 7neans through which the writer 7nost readily reaches 
 the heart of the ge7ieral ptiblic, and /« conseq7ce7ice as the most i77iporta7it of aids 
 in the esta.blishnie7it of inorals a7id thefor77iatio7i of character, fictio7i still re7nai7is 
 a pri7icipal featu7-e in the Blagazijie. Two Serial Stories accordi7igly run thro7tgh 
 its pages I S7ipple7ne7ited by sho7-t Stories, Novelettes, a7id narrative or dra7ttatic 
 SketcJies : whilst Essays, Social, Biographical, a7id Hu7norous ; Scie7itific Dis- 
 coveries brought to the level of popidar co7nprehe7tsion, a7id treated witJi a light 
 touch; Poetry, of the highest character ; and records of Adve7iture a7id Travel^ 
 ^orvi the rejnai7ti7tg portio/i of tfie co7ite7its. Especial care is now bestowed 
 7tpon the illustratio7is, of which 710 fewer tha7i four appear i7t each manber. 
 Beyofid the design of illustrati7ig the article they acco7npa?iy, these ai77i at main- 
 taini7ig a position as works of art, both as regards drawing a7id engravi7ig- 
 In short, whatever clai7ns the Magazi7ie before possessed to favotir have 7iow bee7i 
 e7iha7iced, and the Publisliers can but leave the result to a public that has seldom 
 failed to appreciate all ear/iest, persiste7it, a7id well-directed efforts for its a77iuse- 
 me7it a7id benefit. 
 
 V The TIflRTY-FOURTII Volume of BELGRAVIA {which in- 
 cludes the Belgravia Annual), elegantly bound in crimson cloth, full 
 gilt side and back, gilt edges, price ^js. 6d., is now ready. — Handsome 
 Cases for binding the vohcme can be had at is. each. 
 
 Third Edition, crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 6j. 
 
 Bondoir Ballads : 
 
 Vers de Societe. By J. Ashby-Sterry.
 
 CHATTO ^ WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Imperial 4to, cloth extra, gilt and gilt edges, price 2is. per volume. 
 
 Beaiitifttl Pictures by British Artists : 
 
 A Gathering of Favourites from our Picture Galleries. In 2 Series. 
 
 The First Series including Examples by Wilkie, Con- 
 stable, Turner, Mulready, Landseer, Maclise, E. M. 
 Ward, Frith, Sir John Gilbert, Leslie, Ansdell, Marcus 
 Stone, Sir Noel Paton, Faed, Eyre Crowe, Gavin O'Neil, 
 and Madox Brown. 
 
 The Second Series containing Pictures by Armytage, Faed, 
 Goodall, Hemsley, Horsley, Marks, Nicholls, Sir Noel 
 Paton, Pickersgill, G. Smith, Marcus Stone, Solomon, 
 Straight, E. M. Ward, and Warren. 
 
 All engraved on Steel in the highest style of Art. Edited, with 
 Notices of the Artists, by Sydney Armytage, M.A. 
 
 " This book is well got up, aftd good engravings by Jeetis, Lumh Stocks, and 
 others, bring back to us j>ictures of Royal Academy Exhibitions of past years* 
 —Times. 
 
 Crown 8vo, with Photographic Portrait, cloth extra, ^s. 
 
 Blanchard' s (Lajnan) Poems, 
 
 Now first Collected. Edited, with a Life of the Author (includ- 
 ing numerous hitherto unpublished Letters from Lord Lytton, 
 Lamb, Dickens, Robert Browning, and others), by Blan- 
 
 CHARD JeRROLD. 
 "His humorous verse is much of it admirable — sparkling -with genuir^ 
 * esprit,' and as polished and pointed as Praed's." — Scotsman. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Bret Harte 's Select Works, 
 
 in Prose and Poetry, With Introductory Essay by J. M. Bel- 
 lew, Portrait of the Author, and 50' Illustrations. 
 "Not many months before my friend's death, he had sent me two sketches of 
 a you7ig Afnerican writer (Bret Harte), far away in Calif orfiia (' The Out- 
 casts of Poker Flat,' aftd another), ifi which he Itad found such S7ibtle strokes 
 of character as he had not anywhere else in late years discovered ; the inanner 
 reseittbling himself, but the matter fresh to a degree that had szirprised him ; 
 the painti?ig in all respects masterly, and the wild rude thing painted a quite 
 wonderftd reality. I have rarely known him more honestly moved."— Forstr-r's 
 Life of Dickens. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, Js. 6d. 
 
 Brand's Observations on Popular A^iti- 
 
 qiiities, chiefly Illustrating the Origin of our Vulgar Customs, 
 Ceremonies, and Superstitions. With the Additions of Sir 
 Henry Ellis. An entirely New and Revised Edition, with fine 
 full-page Illustrations.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with full.page Portraits, 4^. 6a'. 
 
 Brewster's (Sir David) Martyrs of 
 
 Science. 
 Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Astronomical Plates, 4J. dd. 
 
 Brewster's (Sir David) More Worlds 
 
 than One, the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the 
 Christian. 
 
 Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s. 
 
 Brillat'Savarin 's Gastronomy as a Fine 
 
 Art ; or. The Science of Good Living. A Translation of the 
 *' Physiologic du Gout " of Brillat-Savarin, with an Intro- 
 duction and Explanatory Notes by R. E. ANDERSON, M.A. 
 " We have read it ivith rare enjoyvicnt,jtist as we have delightedly read and 
 re-read quaint old Izaak. Mr. Andcrsofi has done his ivork 0/ tra7islation 
 daintily, with trtte appreciation of the points ift his original ; and altogether, 
 though late, ive ca7inot but believe that this book will be welcomed and much read 
 by wm^ij'."— Nonconformist. 
 
 Demy 8vo, profusely Illustrated in Colours, price 30^-. 
 
 The B^ntish Flora Medica : 
 
 A History of the Medicinal Plants of Great Britain. Illustrated 
 by a Figure of each Plant, coloured by hand. By Benjamin H. 
 Barton, F.L.S., and Thomas Castle, M.D., F.R.S. A New 
 Edition, revised, condensed, and partly re-written, by John R. 
 Jackson, A.L.S., Curator of the Museums of Economic Botany, 
 Royal Gardens, Kew. . 
 
 The Stothard Bunyan.— Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 7j. dd. 
 
 Btmyan 's Pilgrim's Progress, 
 
 Edited by Rev. T, Scott. With 17 beautiful Steel Plates by 
 Stothard, engraved by Goodall ; and numerous "Woodcuts. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Byron 's Letters and yournals. 
 
 With Notices of his Life. By Thomas Moore. A Reprint of 
 
 the Original Edition, newly revised, Complete in One thick Volume, 
 
 with Twelve full-page Plates. 
 
 " We have read this book with the greatest pleasure. Considered merely as a 
 
 composition, it deserves to be classed among the best specimens of English prose 
 
 which our age has produced. . . . The style is agreeable, clear, and ma^tly, 
 
 and when it rises into eloquence, rises without effort or ostentation. It would 
 
 be difficult to name a book which exhibits more kijidness, /ai7-7iess, and modesty.'* 
 
 — Macaulav, in the Edinburgh Review.
 
 CHATTO 6- WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Demy 4to, doth extra, gilt edges, 31J, dd. 
 
 Ca7tova 's PVorks iii Sculpture and Model- 
 ling. 150 Plates, exquisitely engraved in Outline by Moses, and 
 printed on an India tint. \Yith Descriptions by the Countess 
 Albrizzi, a Biographical Memoir by CiCOGNARA, and Por- 
 trait by WORTHINGTON. 
 " The fertility of this master s resoiirces is a}naziftg, and the mammal labour 
 
 expended en his works would have luorn out many an ordinary workfuan. The 
 
 outliiie engravings are finely executed. The descriptive notes are discriminating^ 
 
 and in tJie main exact." — Spectator. 
 
 Two Vols, imperial 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, the Plates beautifully 
 printed in Colours, ^3 3^. 
 
 Catlin's Illustrations of the Mariners, 
 
 Czistoms, and Conditiott of the North American Indians: there- 
 suit of Eight Years of Travel and Adventure among the Wildest 
 and most Remarkable Tribes now existing. Containing 360 
 Coloured Engravings from the Author's original Paintings. 
 
 Small 4to, cloth gilt, v.ith Coloured Illustrations, loj-. 6d. 
 
 Chancer for Childreit : 
 
 A Golden Key. By Mrs. H. R. Haweis. With Eight Coloured 
 Pictures and numerous Woodcuts by the Author. 
 
 " It must not only take a high place among the Christinas and New Year books 
 of this season, hit is also of per inane 7tt valice as an iiitroduction to the study oj 
 Chaticer, ivkose works, in selections of some kind or other, are ?iozv text-books tn 
 every school tJiat aspires to give soitnd instruction in English." — Academy. 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Coloured Illustrations and Maps, 24J-. 
 
 Cope's History of the Rifle Brigade 
 
 (The Prince Consort's Own), formerly the 95th. By Sir WiLLiAii 
 H. Cope, formerly Lieutenant, Rifle Brigade. 
 
 " This latest contribjition to the history of th€ British army is a work of the 
 most varied inforjnation regarding tJie disti'nguished regiment whose life it na7'- 
 rates, afid also of facts interesting to the stjident in military affairs. . . . 
 Great credit is due to Sir \V. Cope for the patietue and labour, extending oz'er 
 many years, which he has giveft to the work. . . , In matty cases well-exe- 
 cuted plans of actions are give ?i.'' — Morning Post. 
 
 ^' Even a bare record of a corps zvhich has so ofte?t been under fire, and has 
 borne a part iti ijnportant engagements all o-ver the world, could not prove 
 otJterwise thajt full of matter acceptable to the military reader." — Athenaeum. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. Two very thick Volumes, 'Js. 6d. each. 
 
 Cruiksha7ik's Comic Alma^iack, 
 
 Complete in Two Series : The First from 1835 to 1843 ; the 
 Second from 1844 to 1853. A Gathering of the Best Humour 
 of Thackeray, Hood, Mayhew, Albert Smith, A'Beck- 
 ETT, Robert Brough, &c. W^ith 2000 Woodcuts and Steel 
 Engravings by Cruikshank, Hine, Landells, &c.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, gilt, 7^-. 6d. 
 
 Colman's H timorous J Forks: 
 
 "Broad Grins," *'My Nightgown and Slippers," and other 
 Humorous Works, Prose and Poetical, of George Colman. 
 With Life by G. B. Buckstone, and Frontispiece by Hogarth. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, gilt, with Portraits, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Creasy' s Memoirs of Eininent Etonians; 
 
 with Notices of the Early History of Eton College. By Sir 
 
 Edward Creasy, Author of "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of 
 
 the World." A New Edition, brought down to the Present 
 
 Time, with 13 Illustrations. 
 
 '^ A tiezv edition of ' Creasy^ s Etonians' will he -duelcotne. The book was a 
 
 favourite a quarter 0/ a century ago, atui it has viaintai7ied its reputation. The 
 
 value of this new edition is enhanced by the fact that Sir Edward Creasy has 
 
 added to it several 7nemoirs of Etonians who have died since the first edition 
 
 appeared. The work is eiiiitiently interesting." — Scotsman. 
 
 To be Completed in Twenty-four Parts, quarto, at 5^-. each, profusely 
 illustrated by Coloured and Plain Plates and Wood Engravings, 
 
 CyclopcEdia of Costume ; 
 
 or, A Dictionary of Dress — Regal, Ecclesiastical, Civil; and Mili- 
 tary — from the Earliest Period in England to the reign of George 
 the Third. Including Notices of Contemporaneous Fashions on 
 the Continent, and preceded by a General History of the Costumes 
 of the Principal Countries of Europe. By J. R. PLANCiifi, 
 Somerset Herald. — A Prospectus will be sent upon application. 
 Part XIX. now ready. 
 **A viost readable and i7iteresting work—ar.d it can scarcely he consulted in 
 vain, wliether the reader is in search for inforviation as to viilitary, courts 
 ecclesiastical, legal, or professional costuitie. . . . All the chromo-lithographs, 
 and viost of the woodctU illustrations — the latter amounting to several thousands 
 — are very elaborately executed ; and the work forms a livre de luxe which renders 
 it equally stdted to the library aiid the ladies' drawing-roo7n." — Times. 
 
 */ Part XIV. contains the Completion of the DICTIONAR V, which, 
 as Vol. I. of the Book, forjns a Complete Work in itself This volume 
 may now be had, handsomely hound in half red morocco, gilt top, price 
 £2) I3-5"* 6^' Cases for binding the vohaiie may also be had, price ^s. each. 
 
 The remaining Parts will be occupied by the GENERAL HIS TOR Y 
 OF THE COSTUMES OF EUROPE, arranged Chronologically. 
 
 Demy Svo, half-bound morocco, lis. 
 
 Dibdi7i's Bibliomaiiia ; 
 
 or, Book-Madness : A Bibliographical Romance. With numerous 
 Illustrations. A New Edition, with a Supplement, including a 
 Key to the Assumed Characters in the Drama.
 
 CHATTO <5r» WIND US, PICCADILLY. 9 
 
 Parts I. to XII. now ready, 2\s. each. 
 
 Cussans' History of Hertfordshire, 
 
 By John E. Cussans. Illustrated with full-page Plates on Copper 
 
 and Stone, and a profusion of small Woodcuts. 
 " Mr. Cnssafis has, froift sources ftot accessible to Chitterbuck, made most 
 valuable additions to the manorial history of the county from the earliest period 
 do-djnwards, cleared 7ip 7natty doubtful poitits, a?id gi-jeti orig^inal details con- 
 cer7iing various subjects untouched or imperfectly treated by tJiat writer. The 
 pedigrees seem toJuivebcen constructedivith great care, and are a valuable addition 
 to t}i£ genealogical history of t/ie county. Ulr. Cussans appears to Jiave done 
 his work cotiscientiously, and to have spared neither titne, labour, 7icr expense to 
 render his volumes worthy ofrajikingin the highest class of County Histories,' 
 — Academy. 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth extra, 12s. 6d. 
 
 Doran's Memories of our Great Towns. 
 
 With Anecdotic Gleanings concerning their Worthies and their 
 Oddities. By Dr. John Doran, F.S.A. 
 
 Second Edition, demy 8vo, cloth gilt, with Illustrations, i8j. 
 
 Dimraven' s The Great Divide: 
 
 A Narrative of Travels in the Upper Yellowstone in the Summer 
 of 1874. By the Earl of Dunraven. With Maps and numerous 
 striking full-page Illustrations by Valentine W. Bromley. 
 
 " There Jias riot for a long time appeared a better book of travel than Lcrrd 
 Dunraven' s '' The Great Divide.' . . . The book is full of clez'er observation, 
 and both narrative a?id illustratio>is are tJwroughly good." — Athenaeum. 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 24J. 
 
 Dodge's (Colonel) The Hnnting Grounds 
 
 of the Great West : A Description of the Plains, Game, and 
 Indians of the Great North American Desert. By Richard 
 Irving Dodge, Lieutenant-Colonel of the United States Army. 
 With an Introduction by William Blackmore ; Map, and 
 numerous Illustrations drawn by Ernest Griset. 
 
 " This magnificent vohujie is otie of the most able a7id tnost interesting works 
 which has ever proceeded from an American peti, while its freshness is equal to 
 that of any sivtilar book. Colonel Dodge Jias cJioscn a subject of which Jie is 
 master, and treated it with a fulness tluit leaves ftothing more to be desired, a?td 
 in a style which is cJianning equally for its picturesqueness arid its purity." 
 — Nonconformist. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 6s. 
 
 Emannel On Diamonds and Precions 
 
 stones : their History, Value, and Properties : v/ith Simple Tests for 
 ascertaining their Reality. By Harry Emanuel, F.R.G.S. 
 With numerous Illustrations, Tinted and Plain.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7^. ^d. 
 
 The Englishman s House : 
 
 A Practical Guide to all interested in Selecting or Building a 
 House, with full Estimates of Cost, Quantities, &c. By C. J. 
 Richardson. Third Edition. With nearly 6cx) Illustrations. 
 
 •»• T/iz's book is intended to supply a long-felt zvant, viz., a plain, non-technical 
 account of every style of house, with the cost and manner of builditig ; it gives 
 every variety, front a "workman's cottage to a noblejtian's palace. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth boards, ds. per Volume ; a few Large Paper 
 copies (only 50 printed), at \2$. per Vol. 
 
 Early English Poets. 
 
 Edited, with Introductions and Annotations, byRev. A.B.Grosart. 
 
 "Mr. Grosari has spent the most lahorioits aftd the tnost enthusiastic care oil 
 ike perfect restoration and preserz'atiofi of the text ; and it is very utilikely that 
 any other edition of tlie poet can ever be called for. . . From Mr. Grosart ive 
 always expect a7id always receive the filial results of most patiefit a7id competent 
 sc/iolarship."—ExhUiHKR. 
 
 I. Fletcher's ( Giles, B.D.) \ Complete Collected Poems. With 
 
 Complete Poems: Christ's Victoria ' Memorial-Introduction and Notes 
 
 in Heaven. Christ's Victorie on fteel Portrait. Index of First 
 
 Earth. Christ's Triumph over Lines, and Glossanallndex, &c. 
 
 Death, and Minor Poems, i Three Vols. 
 
 With Memorial-Introduction and 1 4. Sidney's (Sir PJuUp) 
 
 Notes. One Vol. 
 
 2. Davie s' (Sir John) 
 
 Complete Poetical Works, in- 
 cluding Psalms I. to L. in Verse, 
 and other hitherto Unpublished 
 MSS., for tie first time Col- 
 lected and Edited. With Me- 
 morial-Introduction and Notes. 
 Two Vols. 
 
 3 . Herrick 's (Robert) Hes- 
 
 ferides, Neble Numbers, and 
 
 Complete Poetical Works, in- 
 cluding all those in "Arcadia." 
 With Portrait, Memorial-Intro- 
 duction, Essay on the Poetry of 
 Sidney, and Notes. Three Vols. 
 
 5. Donne's (Dr. John) 
 
 Complete Poetical Works, in- 
 cluding the Satires and various 
 from MSS. With Memorial-In- 
 troduction and Notes. 
 
 [/« the press. 
 
 *** Other volumes are in active preparation. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, ^s. 
 
 Fairholt's Tobacco: 
 
 Its History and Associations ; with an Account of the Plant and 
 its Manufacture, and its Modes of Use in all Ages and Countries. 
 By F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A. A New Edition, with Coloured 
 Frontispiece and upwards of 100 Illustrations by the Author. 
 *' A very pleasant and ifistructive history of tobacco and its associatio7ts, which 
 ve cordially recomme7id alike to the votaries a7id to the eftemies of the much- 
 maligned but certainly not neglected weed. . . . Full of interest and in- 
 fomiatio7i."—V>K\\.\ News.
 
 CHATJO <Sr* WINDUSy PICCADILLY. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 4J. 6^. 
 
 Faraday 's Chemical History of a Candle, 
 
 Lectures delivered to a Juvenile Audience. A New Edition. 
 Edited by W. Crookes, F.C.S. With numerous Illustratio ns. 
 
 Cro\ATi 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 4J. dd. 
 
 Faraday's Various Forces of Nahtre, 
 
 A New Edition. Edited by W. Crookes, F.C.S. With numerous 
 Illustrations. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7^. dd. 
 
 Finger- Ring Lore: 
 
 Historical, Legendary, and Anecdotal. — Earliest Notices; Supersti- 
 tions ; Ring Investiture, Secular and Ecclesiastical ; Betrothal and 
 Wedding Rings ; Ring-tokens ; Memorial and Mortuary Rings ; 
 Posy-Rings; Customs and Incidents in Connection ^vith Rings; 
 Remarkable Rings, &c. By William Jones, F.S. A. With Hun- 
 dreds of Illustrations of Curious Rings of all Ages and Countries. 
 "Enters fully into the whole subject, and gives aft amount of information 
 and gefieral reading in reference thereto which is of very high interest. The 
 book is not only a sort of history of finger-rings, but is a collection of anecdotes 
 in connection with thejn. . . . TJie volume is admirably illustrated, and 
 altogether affords an amount of atnusement and information which is not other- 
 wise easily accessible.''' — Scotsman. 
 
 " One of tliose gossiping books which are as ftdl of arnusement as of instruc- 
 tion." — Athenaeum. 
 
 The Ruskin Grimm. — Square crown Svo, cloth extra, 6j. 6a'.; 
 
 gilt edges, *]$. 6d, 
 
 German Popular Stories, 
 
 Collected by the Brothers Grimm, and Translated by Edgar 
 Taylor. Edited, with an Introduction, by John Ruskin. 
 With 22 Illustrations after the inimitable designs of George 
 Cruikshank. Both Series Complete. 
 
 ** The illustrations of this volutne . . . . are of quite sterling and admirable 
 art, of a class precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales which 
 they illustrate ; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to 
 my ' Elements of Drawing,' were titirivalled in masterfulness of totich since Rem- 
 brandt {in sojne qualities of delineation, uitrivalled even by hint). . . . To make 
 somewhat enlarged copies of them, looking at them through a magnifying glass, 
 and never putting two lines where Cruikshank has ptct only one, wonld be an exer- 
 cise in decision and severe drawing which would leave afterwards little to be learnt 
 in schools." — Extract fro7n Introduction by John Ruskin. 
 
 One Vol. crovni Svo, cloth extra, 9^. 
 
 Gilbert's (JV, S.) Original Plays : 
 
 "A Wicked World," "Charity," "The Palace of Truth," 
 ** Pygmalion," "Trial by Jury," &c. 
 " His workmanship is in its way perfect ; it is very sound, very even, very 
 well sustained, and excellently balanced throttghout," — Observer.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 One Shilling Monthly, Illustrated by Arthur Hopkins. 
 
 The Gentleman's Magazine. 
 
 Edited by Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman. 
 
 In seeking to restore the "GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE " to the fosition 
 tt formerly held, the Publishers do not lose sight oj the changed conditions 
 UTtder which it now appears. While tnaintai^iing an historical continuity which 
 dates hack to the reign of George the Seco7id, there will be no attempt to burden 
 the present with the weight of a distant past, or to adJiere slavishly to traditions 
 the application of which is tinsuited to the altered conditions of society at the 
 present time. It is sought to render the Magazine to the gentleman of to-day 
 wliat in earlier times it proved to the gentleman of a past generation. New 
 features will be ifttroduced to take the place of those which disappear ; in the 
 most important respects, ho7vever, the connecting links bet7vee?t the present and 
 tite past will be closest. Biography and History, which have always formed a 
 coTispicuous portion of the contents, will retai7i the pro77iijience assigned them, 
 and will be treated with the added breadth that sprijigs from increased famili- 
 arity with authorities and tnore exact appreciation of the province of the 
 Biographer and tJie Historian. Scie?tce, which confers iip07i the age special 
 eminence, will have its latest conclusions and forecasts prese7ited in a i7ia7iner 
 which shall bring the77i withi7i the grasp of the general reader. The philo- 
 sophical aspect of Politics, the matters which affect Hnperial i7iterests, will be 
 separated from the rivalries of party , a7id will receive a d^ce share of attention. 
 ArchcEology (under which C077iprehe7isive head may be i7tcluded Ge7iealogy, To- 
 pography, atid other si77iilar Dtaiters), Natural History, Sport a7id Adve7tture, 
 Poetry, Belles Lettres, Art z;j all its vza7iifesiatio7is, will co7istitute a portion 
 ef tJie contents; a7id Essays upon social subjects will, as heretofore, be i7tter- 
 spzrsed. U7ider the head of Table Talk matters of CTtrrent i7t teres t will be 
 discussed, and facts of historic vahte will be preserved. A Work of Fiction by 
 some novelist of highest positio7i will ru7i thro7cgh the pages of the Magazine, 
 and will be illustrated by artists of k7iow7i excelle7ice. With a fill sense of 
 what is involved in their pro7nise, a7id with a fir7n resolutio7i to abide by their 
 pledges, the Publishers U7idertake to spare no exertio7i that is 7iecessary to secure 
 the highest class of co7nributions, to place the Magazi7ie i7i the frst ra7ik oj 
 serials, and to fit it to take its place on the table a7id 07t the shelves of all classes 
 of cultivated E7tglisht7ze7i. 
 
 %* Now ready, the Volume/or July foDECEUBKR, 1877, cloth extra^ 
 price %s. 6d. ; and Cases for bindings;; price is. each. 
 
 Demy 4to, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 2^s.6d. 
 
 Gillray the Caricaturist : 
 
 The Story of his Life and Times, with Anecdotal Descriptions of 
 his Engravings. Edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M. A., F. S. A. 
 With 83 full-page Plates, and numerous Wood Engravings. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with a Map, 3i'. 6d. 
 
 Gold ; 
 
 or. Legal Regulations for the Standard of Gold and Silver 
 Ware in the different Countries of the World. Translated from 
 the German of Studnitz by Mrs. Brewer, and Edited, with 
 additions, by Edwin W. Stree ter. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt and gilt edges, 7j. (id. 
 
 The Golden Treasury of Thonght : 
 
 An Encyclopedia of Quotations from Writers of all Times 
 and Countries. Selected and Edited by Theodore Taylor.
 
 CHATTO 6- WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Square i6mo (Tauchnitz size), cloth extra, 2s. per volume 
 
 The Golden Library : 
 
 Bayard Taylor's Diver- 
 sions of the Eclw Club- 
 
 The Book of Clerical Anec- 
 dotes. 
 Byron's Don Juan. 
 Carlyle (Thomas) on the 
 
 Choice of Books. With a Me- 
 moir, xs. 6d. 
 
 Emerson's Letters and 
 
 Social Aiins. 
 
 Godwin 's( William )L ives 
 
 of the Necromancers. 
 
 Holmes's Autocrat of the 
 
 Breakfast Table. With an In- 
 troduction by G. A. Sala. 
 
 Holmes's Professor at the 
 
 Breakfast Table. 
 
 Hood's Whims and Oddi- 
 ties. Complete. With all the 
 original Illustrations. 
 
 Irving' s ( Washington) 
 
 Tales of a Traveller. 
 
 Irving' s ( Washington) 
 
 Tales of the Alhambra. 
 
 Jesse's (Edzvard) Scenes 
 
 and Occupations of Country Life. 
 
 Lamb's Essays of Elia. 
 
 Both Series Complete in One Vol. 
 
 Leigh Hunt's Essays : A 
 
 Tale for a Chimney Corner, and 
 other Pieces. With Portrait, and 
 Introduction by Edmund Ollier 
 
 Mallory's (Sir Thomas) 
 
 Alort d' Arthur : The Stories of 
 King Arthur and of the Knights 
 of the Round Table. Edited by 
 
 B. MONTGOMERIE RANKING. 
 
 Pascal's Provincial Let- 
 ters. A New Translation, with 
 Historical Introduction and 
 Notes, by T. M'Crie, D.D., 
 LL.D. 
 
 Pope's Complete Poetical 
 
 Works. 
 
 Rochefoucauld 's Maxims 
 
 and Moral Reflections. With 
 Notes, and an Introductory 
 Essay by Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 St. Pierre's Paul and 
 
 Virginia, and the Indian Cot- 
 tage. Edited, with Life, by the 
 Rev. E. Clarke. 
 
 Shelley 's Early Poems 
 
 and Queen Mab, with Essay by 
 Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Shelley's Later Poems : 
 
 Laon and Cythna, &c. 
 
 Shelley's Posthumous 
 
 Poems, the Shelley Papers, &c. 
 
 Shelley's Prose Works y 
 
 including A Refutation of Deism, 
 Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, &c. 
 
 White's Natural History 
 
 of Selborne. Edited, with addi- 
 tions, by Thomas Brown, 
 F.L.S. 
 
 " A series of excellently printed and carefully annotated volwttes, Jiandy in size, 
 and altogetJter attractive." — Bookseller. 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth gilt, (iS. 
 
 Gosse's King Erik : 
 
 A Tragedy. By Edmund W. Gosse. Vignette by W. B. Scott. 
 
 " We have seldom seen so marked an advance iti a second book beyond a first. 
 Its merits are solid and of a very high order."— Ac adkuv.
 
 14 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth gilt, 5^. 
 
 Gosse's On Viol and Flute, 
 
 Second Edition. With a Vignette by W. B. Scott. 
 
 Half-bound, paper boards, 2\s.', or elegantly half-bound crimson 
 morocco, gilt, 25J-. 
 
 The Graphic Portfolio. 
 
 Fifty Engravings from " The Graphic," most carefully printed on 
 the finest plate paper (18 in. by 15 in.) from the Original Engravings. 
 The Drawings are by S. L. Fildes, Helen Paterson, Hubert 
 Herkomer, Sydney Hall, E. J. Gregory, G. D. Leslie, 
 W. Small, G. Du Maurier, Sir John Gilbert, G. J. Pin- 
 well, Charles Green, G. Durand, M. E. Edwards, A. B. 
 Houghton, H. S. Marks, F. W. Lawson, H. Weigall, 
 and others. 
 
 ^* Contains some of the choicest sJ>ect7neKS, both of draiving and -wood-engraving. 
 Admirable in details and exJ>ression, afid engraved with rare delicacy." — Daily 
 News. 
 
 Crovra 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7^. dd. 
 
 Greenwood's Low- Life Deeps: 
 
 An Account of the Strange Fish to be found there ; including 
 *' The Man and Dog Fight," with much additional and con- 
 firmatory evidence; "With a Tally-Man," "A Fallen Star," 
 "The Betting Barber," "A Coal Marriage," &c. By James 
 Greenwood. With Illustrations in tint by Alfred Concanen. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Gree7twood's Wilds of London: 
 
 Descriptive Sketches, from Personal Observations and Experience, 
 of Remarkable Scenes, People, and Places in London. By James 
 Greenwood. With 12 Tinted Illustrations by Alfred Concanen. 
 
 " Mr. fajnes Greenwood f resents himself once more in the character of ' one 
 •whose delight it is to do his humble endeavoitr towards exposing and extirpating 
 social abuses and those hole-and-corner evils which afflict society.' " — Saturday 
 Review. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 4J-. 6d. 
 
 Guyot 's Earth and Man ; 
 
 or. Physical Geography in its Relation to the History of Mankind. 
 With Additions by Professors Agasstz, Pierce, and Gray, 12 
 Maps and Engravings on Steel, some Coloured, and a copious Index.
 
 CHAT TO ^ WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 15 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6i'. 
 
 Hake 's New Syjubols : 
 
 Poems. By Thomas Gordon Hake, 
 
 " The entire book breathes a pure arid erinolling influence, shows "welcome 
 origifiality of idea and illustration, arid yields the higltest proof of imaginative 
 faculty and tnature power of expression." — Athenaeum. 
 
 Medium 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7^. dd. 
 
 Hairs (Mrs. S. C.) Sketches of Irish 
 
 Character. With numerous Illustrations on Steel and Wood by 
 Daniel Maclise, Sir John Gilbert, W. Harvey, and G. 
 Cruikshank. 
 
 " The Irish SketcJies of this lady resemble Miss Mitford's beautiful English 
 Sketches in ' Our Village,' but they are far rnore vigorous and picturesque and 
 bright." — Blackwoov's Magazine. 
 
 Three Vols, royal 4to, cloth boards, £6 6s. 
 
 Historical Portraits ; 
 
 Upwards of 430 Engravings of Rare Prints. Comprising the 
 Collections of Rodd, Richardson, Caulfield, &c. With 
 Descriptive Text to every Plate, giving a brief outline of the most 
 important Historical and Biographical Facts and Dates connected 
 with each Portrait, and references to original Authorities. 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth limp, with Illustrations, 2.s. 6d. 
 
 The House of Life ; 
 
 Human Physiology, with its Applications to the Preservation of 
 Health. For use in Classes, and Popular Reading. With 
 numerous Illustrations. By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller. 
 
 Two Vols, royal Svo, with Coloured Frontispieces, cloth extra, £z 5^. 
 
 Hope's Costttme of the Ancients., 
 
 Illustrated in upwards of 320 Outline Engravings, containing Re- 
 presentations of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman Habits and 
 Dresses. 
 
 " TJie substance of tnafiy expensive works, contaitiifig all that may be necessary 
 to give to artists, and even to dratnatic performers and to others engaged in 
 classical representations, an idea of ancient costumes sufficiently a?nple to prevent 
 their offendino in their performarices by gross arid obvious blunders.
 
 i6 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, '^s. dd. 
 
 Hood's (Thomas) Choice Works, 
 
 In Prose and Verse. Including the Cream of the Comic 
 
 Annuals. With Life of the Author, Portrait, and over Two 
 
 Hundred original Illustrations. 
 
 " Not otily does the vohime inchide the better-known poevis hy the author , but 
 
 also what is happily described as ' the Cream of the Comic Annuals' Such delicious 
 
 things as ' Don't you smell Fire ? ' * The Parish Revolution, and ' Huggins and 
 
 Duggins, will tiever want readers. "—Graphic. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Photographic Portrait, ds. 
 
 Hood's (Tom) Poems, Humorous and 
 
 Pathetic, Edited, with a Memoir, by his Sister, Frances Free- 
 ling Broderip. 
 
 " There are many poetns in the vohime which the very best judge might well 
 mistake for his father' s werk." — Standard. 
 
 Square crown 8vo, in a handsome and specially-designed binding, 
 gilt edges, ds. 
 
 Hood's (Tom) From Nowhere to the 
 
 North Pole: A Noah's Arkseological Narrative. With 25 Illus- 
 trations by W. Brunton and E. C. Barnes. 
 
 •* TJie ajnusing letterpress is proficsely ititerspersed with the jingling rhymes 
 which children love and learn so easily. Messrs. Brunt oft- and Barnes do full 
 j'ttstice to the writer's meaning, and a pleasafiter result of the harmonious co- 
 operation of author and artist could not be desired." — Times. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, ']s. 6d. 
 
 Hook's (Theodore) Choice Humorous 
 
 Worhs, including his Ludicrous Adventures, Bons-mots, Puns, 
 and Hoaxes. With a new Life of the Author, Portraits, Fac- 
 similes, and Illustrations. 
 
 Demy Svo, cloth extra, 12s. 6d. 
 
 Hueffer's The Troubadottrs : 
 
 A History of Provencal Life and Literature in the Middle Ages, 
 By Francis Hueffer. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, "js. 
 
 Home's Orion: 
 
 An Epic Poem, in Three Books. By Richard Hengist Horne. 
 
 Tenth Edition. 
 " Orion will be admitted, by every man of gefiius, to be one of the noblest, if not 
 the very noblest, poetical work of the age. Its defects are trivial atid conventional^ 
 its beauties intrinsic and supre^ne" — Edgar Allan Poe.
 
 CHATTO ^ WIND US, PICCADILLY. 17 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, *js. 6d. 
 
 HoweWs The Confiicts of Capital and 
 
 Laboitr. Including Chapters on the History of Guilds ; Trades 
 Unions ; Apprentices ; Technical Education ; Intimidation and 
 Picketing ; Restraints on Trade ; Strikes— their Objects, Aims, and 
 Results ; Trade Councils ; Arbitration ; Co-operation ; Friendly 
 Societies ; the Labour Laws, &c. By George Howell, Author 
 of "A Handy Book of the Labour Laws," late Parliamentary 
 Secretary to the Trades Unions of Great Britain. 
 
 Atlas folio, half morocco, ^gilt, ;^5 <^s. 
 
 The Italian Masters : 
 
 Autotype Facsimiles of Original Drawings in the British Museum. 
 
 With Critical and Descriptive Notes, Biographical and Artistic, 
 
 by J. CoMYNS Carr. 
 " This splendid volume. . . Mr. Carr's choice of examples has heen dictated 
 lyaiide k7io^uledge and fine tact. . . The majority Jiave been reproduced with 
 rejnarkable accuracy. Of the criticism, which accompanies the drawings we have 
 not hitherto spoken, but it is this which gives the book its special value." — Pall 
 Mall Gazette. 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth extra, 6^. 
 
 yetLx d' Esprit, 
 
 Written and Spoken, of the Later Wits and Humourists. Collected 
 and Edited by Henry S. Leigh. 
 
 " This thoroughly conge7tial piece of work . . . Mr. Leigh's claim to praise is 
 threefold: he has performed the duty of taster with care and judgment ' he has 
 restored many stolen or strayed bons-tnots to their rightful owners ; and Jie has 
 exercised his editorial functions delicately and sparingly." — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Two Vols. 8vo, with 52 Illustrations and Maps, cloth extra, gilt, ^4^ 
 
 Josephns's Complete Works, 
 
 Translated by Whiston. Containing both " The Antiquities of 
 the Jews," and *' The Wars of the Jews." 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth, full gilt, gilt edges, with Illustrations, 6j-. ' 
 
 Kavanaghs' Pearl Fou7itain, 
 
 And other Fairy Stories. By Bridget and Julia Kavaxagh. 
 With Thirty Illustrations by J. Moyr Smith. 
 
 " Genuine 7tew fairy stories of the old type, sovie of them, as delightful as the 
 best of Griftmi's ^ German Popular Stoties.' .... For the most part, the 
 dories are downright, thorough-goiftg fairy stories of the most admirable kind. 
 . . . . Mr. Moyr Smith's illustrations, too, are admirable. Look at tliat 
 white rabbit. Anyorte would see at the first glance that he is a rabbit with a 
 mind, and a very uncommon tnind too — that he is a fairy rabbit, and that he is 
 posing as chief adviser to some ofie — ivithcmt reading even a word of the story. 
 Agai7t, 7totice the fairy-like effect of the little picture of the fairy-bird ' Dofi'i- 
 forget-7ite,' fiyi7ig away back i7ito fairy-lafid. A more perfectly dream-like ivi- 
 pression of fairy -I and has hardly beefi given in a7iy illustration of fairy tales 
 vjithin our knowledge." — Spectator.
 
 1 8 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth extra, ^s. 
 
 Lamb 's Poetry for Children, and Prince 
 
 Dorus. Carefully reprinted from unique copies. 
 " The quaint afid delight/itl little book, over the recovery of luhich all the hearts 
 of his lovers are yet warm zuith rejoicing." — Mr. Swinburne, in the Athen^um. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Portraits, 7^. dd. 
 
 Lamb's Complete JVorks, 
 
 In Prose and Verse, reprinted from the Original Editions, with 
 many Pieces hitherto unpublished. Edited, with Notes and In- 
 troduction, by R. H. Shepherd. With Two Portraits and Fac- 
 simile of a page of the " Essay on Roast Pig." 
 
 ** A complete editiofi of Lamb's writings, in prose and verse, has long been 
 wanted, and is now supplied. The editor appears to have taken great pains 
 to bring together Lamb's scattered contributions, and his collection contains a 
 7iumber of pieces which are now reproduced /or the Jirst time sittce their original 
 appearance in various old periodicals." — Saturday Eeview. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with numerous Illustrations, los. 6d. 
 
 Mary & Charles Lamb: 
 
 Their Poems, Letters, and Remains. With Reminiscences and 
 Notes by W. Carew Hazlitt. With Hancock's Portrait of 
 the Essayist, Facsimiles of the Title-pages of the rare First Editions 
 of Lamb's and Coleridge's Works, and numerous Illustrations. 
 *' Very many passtiges will delight those fond of literary trifles; hardly any 
 Portion will fail in interest for lovers of Charles Lamb and his sister. " — Standard. 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth extra, with Maps and Illustrations, iSj. 
 
 Lamont 's Yachting in the Arctic Seas; 
 
 or. Notes of Five Voyages of Sport and Discovery in the Neigh- 
 bourhood of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. By James Lamont, 
 F.R.G.S. With numerous full-page Illustrations by Dr. LiVESAY. 
 
 ** After wading through numberless volumes of icy fiction, concocted narrative, 
 and spurious biography of Arctic voyagers, it is pleasant to meet with a real and 
 genuifie volume. . . He shows much tact ifi reco7inting his adve?itures, and 
 
 they are so interspersed with anecdotes and information as to make thetn anything 
 but wearisome, • . . The book, as a whole, is the most important addition 
 made to our Arctic literature for a lon^ titne." — Athen^um. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 7^. 6d. 
 
 Latter-Day Lyrics : 
 
 Poems of Sentiment and Reflection by Living Writers ; selected 
 and arranged, with Notes, by W. Davenport Adams. With a 
 Note " On some Old French Forms of Verse " by Austin Dobson.
 
 Ufi 
 
 CHATIO cr» WIND US, PICCADILLY. 19 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 80. 6d. 
 
 Lee's More Glhnpses of the IVorld Unseen, 
 
 Edited by the Rev, Frederick George Lee, D.C.L., Vicar of 
 All Saints', Lambeth; Editor of "The Other World; or, 
 
 Glim pses of the Supernatural," &c. 
 
 Crown bvo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, "js. td. 
 
 ife in London ; 
 
 or, The History of Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom. With 
 the whole of Cruikshank's Illustrations, in Colours, after the 
 Originals. 
 
 Small crown 8vo, cloth extra, 4J. 6d. 
 
 Linton 's yoshita Davidson, 
 
 Christian and Communist. By E. Lynn Linton. Sixth Edition, 
 with a New Preface. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, ^s. 6d. 
 
 Longfellow's Complete Prose PVorks, 
 
 Including "Outre Mer," "Hyperion," " Kavanagh," "The 
 Poets and Poetry of Europe," and " Driftwood." With Portrait 
 and. Illustrations by Valentine Bromley. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 7^. 6d. 
 
 Longfellow 's Poetical Works. 
 
 Carefully Reprinted from the Original Editions. With numerous 
 fine Illustrations on Steel and Wood. 
 
 " Mr. Longfellow has for many y tars been the best known and the most read of 
 American poets : and his popularity is of the right kind, and rightly and fairly 
 •won. He has not stooped to catch attention by artifice, nor striven to force it by 
 violence. His works have faced the test of parody and biirlesque (which in tJiese 
 days is almost the common lot of writings of any mark), and have come off un- 
 harmed."— SATvmyfCvfRE^vvE^ 
 
 The Eraser Portraits. — Demy 4to, cloth gilt and gilt edges, with 
 83 characteristic Portraits, 3IJ. 6d. 
 
 Mac Use's Gallery of Llhtstriotis Literary 
 
 Characters. With Notes by Dr. Maginn. Edited, with copious 
 Additional Notes, by William Bates, B.A. 
 
 " One of the most interest i?ig volumes of this year's literature." — TiMKS. 
 " Deserves a place on every drawing-room table, and tnay not unfitly be removed 
 front tke drawing-room to the library." — Spectator. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, is. dd. 
 
 Madre Natura v. The Moloch of Fashion. 
 
 By Luke Limner. With 32 Illustrations by the Author. 
 Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged. 
 ** Agreeably written ajid amzisingly illustrated. Common sense and erudition 
 are brought io bear on the subjects aiscussed in it." — Lancet.
 
 20 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Handsomely printed in facsimile, price 5^. 
 
 Magna Charta. 
 
 An exact Facsimile of the Original Document in the British 
 IMuseum, printed on fine plate paper, nearly 3 feet long by 2 feet 
 wide, with the Arms and Seals of the Barons emblazoned in Gold 
 and Colours. 
 
 *^* A full Translation, with Notes, on a large sheet, 6d. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7^. 61^. 
 
 Maid of Norzuay ( The). 
 
 Translated from the German by Mrs. BiRKBECK. With Pen and 
 Ink Sketches of Norwegian Scenery. 
 
 NEW COPYRIGHT WORK BY MARK TWAIN: 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2.s. 
 
 An Idle Excursion, and other Papers, 
 
 By Mark Twain. 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7^. ^d. 
 
 Mark Twain ' sAdventnresofTomSawyer, 
 
 With One Hundred Illustrations. 
 
 " A book to be read. There is a certain freshness and novelty about it, a Prac- 
 tically romantic cJtarcu:ter, so to speak, which will viake it very attractive." — 
 Spectator. 
 
 *^* Also a Popular Edition, post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2S. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7^. dd, 
 
 Mark Twain 's Choice Works. 
 
 Revised and Corrected throughout by the Author. W^ith Life, 
 Portrait, and numerous Illustrations. 
 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 7.s. 
 
 Mark Twain s Pleasure Trip on the 
 
 Continent of Europe. ("The Innocents Abroad," and "The 
 New Pilgrim's Progress.") 
 
 Two Vols, crown 8vo, cloth extra, i8x. 
 
 Mars ton's (Dr. West land) Dramatic 
 
 and Poetical Works. Collected Library Edition. 
 " T/i^ 'Patrician's Daughter' is an oasis in the desert 0/ vtodern drajnatic 
 literature, a real eviayiation 0/ viijid. We do ?iot recollect any modern ivork in 
 ■which states of tJwtight are so freely developed, except the ' Torquato Tasso ' of 
 Goethe. The play is a work of art iti the same sense that a play of Sophocles is a 
 work of art] it is otie simple idea i7i a state of gradual dez'elopjnent . . . * The 
 Favourite of Fortune' is o?ie of the most iviportant additiofts to the stock of 
 English prose comedy that has been made during the prese7it century." — Times.
 
 CHATTO dr* WIND US, PICCADILLY. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, Zs. 
 
 Marston 's (Philip BJ All in All: 
 
 Poems and Sonnets. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, %s. 
 
 Marston 's (Philip B.) Song Tide, 
 
 And other Poems. Second Edition. 
 
 Handsomely half-bound, India Proofs, royal folio, ;^io ; Large Paper 
 copies, Artists' India Proofs, elephant folio, £20. 
 
 Modern Art : 
 
 A Series of superb Line Engravings, from the Works of Distin- 
 guished Painters of the English and Foreign Schools, selected 
 from Galleries and Private Collections in Great Britain. With 
 descriptive Text by James Dafforne. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, gilt edges, 75-. dd. 
 
 Mttses of May fair : 
 
 Vers de Societe of the Nineteenth Century. Including Selections 
 from Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, Rossetti, Jean 
 Ingelow, Locker, Ingoldsby, Hood, Lytton, C. S. C; 
 Landor, Austin Dobson, &c. Edited by H. C. Pennell. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, ds. , a New and Cheaper Edition of 
 
 The New Republic ; 
 
 or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House. 
 By W. H. Mallock. 
 
 " The great charm of the book lies in the clever and artistic -way the dialogue 
 is managed, afid the diverse and various expedients by which, -whilst the love of 
 tho2ight on every page is kept at a hi^h pitch, it 7iever loses its realistic aspect. 
 . . . It is giving high praise to a work of this sort to say that it absolutely 
 needs to be taken as a whole, and that disjointed extracts here and there zvould 
 entirely fail to convey atiy idea of the artistic unity, tfie carefil and conscientious 
 sequence of what is evidejitly the brilliant outcome of much patient thought and 
 sttidy, . . . Enojigh has now been said to reco)nmend these vohanes to a7ty 
 reader who desires something above the 7(S7tal novel, something rvhich will open 
 up la?ies of thought in his ozvn tnind, and insensibly ititroduce a higher standard 
 into his daily life. . . . Here is novelty indeed, as well as origitiality , and 
 to anyone who can appreciate or understa)id ' The New Jiepublic,' it cannot 
 fail to be a rare treat." — Observer. 
 
 * * The Original Edition, in Txvo Vols, crown Svo, 21s., may also 
 he had. 
 
 Square 8vo, cloth extra, with numerous Illustrations, 9J. 
 
 North Italian Folk. 
 
 By Mrs. Comyns Carr. With Illustrations by Randolph 
 Caldecott.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 MOORE'S HITHERTO UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Frontispiece, <^s. 
 
 Prose and Verse — Htmioroits, Satirical 
 
 and Sentimental— by THOMAS MOORE. In chiding Suppressed 
 Passages from the Memoirs of Lord Byron. Chiefly from the 
 Author's MSS., and all hitherto Inedited and Uncollected. Edited, 
 with Notes, by Richard Herne Shepherd. 
 
 " Hitlierto Thomas Moore has bce7i inosily regarded as one of the lighter xvriters 
 merely — a sentimental poet par excellence, in %vhoin the ' rapture of love arid of 
 luitie ' determined him strictly to certain modes of sympathy a>id of nttera^tce, and 
 these to a large extent of a slightly artificial character. This volume will serve to 
 shoiv him in other, and certainly as attractive, aspects, while, at the same time, 
 eiiabling us to a considerable exteiit to see how faithfully he developed himself 07i 
 the poetical or fanciful side. . . . 77i is is a book which claims, as it ojtght to 
 obtain, various classes of readers, and we trjist that the very Tnixed elejnents of 
 iiLterest in it 7nay not conflict with its obtaifiing the7n. For the lightest reader 
 there is much to e7ijoy ; for the most thoughtful so7iiethi7ig to po/ider over; a7id Hie 
 tha7iks of both are due tcr editor a7id publisher rt/Z/^r."— Nonconformist. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Vignette i'oriiaits, price 6j. per VoL 
 
 The Old Dramatists : 
 
 Ben JoilSOIlS Works. Algernon Charles Swin- 
 
 With-;Notes Critical and Ex ; Sf^.^.^lnJiUVySet" 
 
 planatory, and a Biographical \ -n/r i > nr 7 ^^J""^}' 
 
 Memoir by William Gifford. Marlowe S Wovks. 
 
 Edited by Col. Cunningham. Including his Translations. Edit- 
 
 Three Vols. ed, with Notes and Introduction, 
 
 Chapman's Works. by Col. Cunningham. One Vol. 
 
 Now First Collected. Complete MaSSinger S PlayS. 
 
 in Three Vols. Vol. I. contains From the Text of William 
 
 the Plays complete, including the 
 doubtful ones ; Vol. II. the 
 Poems and Minor Translations, 
 with an Introductory Essa.v by 
 
 Gifford. With the addition of 
 the Tragedy of ' ' Believe as you 
 List." Edited by Col. Cun- 
 ningham. One Vol. 
 
 Fcap. bvo, cloth extra, 6j-. 
 
 O'Shaughnessy's (Arthur) An Epic of 
 
 Women, and other Poems. Second Edition. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, \os. 6d. 
 
 O' Shaiighnessy 's Lays of France. 
 
 (Founded on the " Lays of Marie.") Second Edition. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, cloth extra, 7^. 6^. 
 
 O' Shaughnessy 's Mtisic and Moonlight : 
 
 Poems and Rones. 
 Crown 8vo, illustrated boards, with numerous Plates, is. 6d. 
 
 Old Point Lace, and How to Copy atid 
 
 Imitate It. By Daisy Waterhouse Hawkins. With 17 
 Illustrations by the Author.
 
 CHATTO ^ WIND US, PICCADILLY. 23 
 
 Crown 8vo, carefully printed on creamy paper, and tastefully 
 
 bound in cloth for the Library, price ds. each. 
 
 The Piccadilly Novels: 
 
 popular ^torir^ bg ^z 3Srst ^utl)or^. 
 A 7it07iina. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by Sir J. Gilbert and Alfred Concanen. 
 
 Basil. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert and J. Mahoney. 
 Hide and Seek. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert and J, Mahoney, 
 The Dead Secret. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert and H. Furniss. 
 Quee7i of Hearts. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by Sir J. Gilbert and A. Concanen. 
 My Miscellanies. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 With Steel Portrait, and Illustrations by A, Concanen. 
 
 The Woman in White. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by Sir J. Gilbert and F. A. Fraser. 
 The Mo07ZStone. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by G. Du Maurier and F. A. Fraser. 
 Ma7l and Wife. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by William Small. 
 Poor Miss Fifich. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by G. Du Maurier and Edward Hughes. 
 
 Miss or Mrs. ? By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by S. L. Fildes and Henry Woods. 
 
 The New Magdalen. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by G. Du Maurier and C, S. Rands. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by G. Du Maurier and J. Mahoney. 
 
 The Law and the Lady. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Illustrated by S. L. Fildes and Sydney Hall. 
 
 The Two Destinies. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 %* Also a POPULAR EDITION of WILKIE COLLINS'S 
 NOVELS, post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s. each. 
 Felicia. By m. Betham-Edwards. 
 
 With a Frontispiece by W. Bowles. 
 "^ noble novel. Its teaching; is elevated, its story is symj>athet{c, and tJte kind 
 of feeling- its perusal leaves behind is t/iat more ordinarily derived fro^n music or 
 poetry tJuinfrom prose fiction. Feiv works in moderft fiction stand as high in our 
 estimation as this." — Sunday Times. 
 
 Olympia. By r. e. francillon.
 
 24 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 The Piccadilly ^oy^^i^s— continued. 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thomas Hardy. 
 
 Fated to be Free. By Jean Ingelow. 
 
 The Queen of Connailght. By Harriett jay. 
 
 The Dark Colleen. By Harriett Jay. 
 
 'M novel 7vhich possesses the rare and valuable quality of novelty. . . . The 
 scenery -Mill be strange to viost readers, aiid in r.tany Passages the aspects of Nature 
 are very cleverly described. Moreover, tJie book is a study of a very curious atid 
 interesting state of society. A novel which no 7iovel-reader should 7mss, and -which 
 People wJw generally shun novels may ^«>>'."— Saturday Review. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. By e. Lynn Linton. 
 
 With Frontispiece by G. Du Maurier. 
 " Displays ge?iui7ic humour, as -well as keen social observation Enough graphic 
 Portraiture and witty observation to furnish materials for half-a-dozen novels of 
 the ordinary /ti«^."— Saturday Review. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn Dundas, By E. Lynn Linton. 
 With a Frontispiece by Henry Woods. 
 '* In her narrowness arid her depth, in her boundless loyalty, h^r self forgetting 
 Passion, that exclusiveness of love which is akin to cruelty, and the fierce 
 humility which is vicarious pride. Learn Dundas is a striking figure. In one 
 quality the autJwress lias in some measure surpassed Jierself. —Pall Mall (jAZ. 
 
 TJie Waterdale Neighbours. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 My Enemy's DaugJlter. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 Linley RocJlford. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 The Evil Eye, and other Stories. By Katharine s.macquoid. 
 
 Illustrated by Thomas R. Macquoid and Percy Macquoid. 
 ** Cameos delicately, if not very minutely or vividly, wrought, and quite finished 
 enough to give a pleasurable sense of artistic ease and faculty. A word of cotn- 
 mendation is merited by the illustrations."— Acagkuy. 
 
 Number Seventeen. By Henry Kingsley. 
 
 Oakshott Castle. By Henry Kingsley. 
 
 With a Frontispiece by Shirley Hodson. 
 "A brisk and clear north wind of sentiment — sentiment that braces instead oj 
 enervatirig — blows through all his works, and makes all their readers at once 
 healthier and more glad." —Spkctator. 
 
 Open ! Sesame I By Florence marryat. 
 
 Illustrated by F. A. Eraser. 
 " A story which arouses and sustains the reader's interest to a higher degree 
 than, perhaps, any of its author's former works."— Gkavhic. 
 
 Whiteladies. By Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 With Illustrations by A. HOPKINS and H. Woods. 
 •' A pleasant and readable book, written with practical ease and grace." — Times. 
 
 The Best of Husbands. By James Payn. 
 
 Illustrated by J, Moyr Smith. 
 Fallen Fortunes, By James Payn.
 
 CHATTO ^ WIND US, PICCADILLY, 25 
 
 The Piccadilly Y^ONYAJ^—contmued. 
 
 Halves. By James Payn. 
 
 With a Frontispiece by J. Mahoxey. 
 
 Walter 's Word. By James Payn. 
 
 Illustrated by J. MoYR Smith. 
 
 What lie Cost her. By James Payn. 
 
 " His novels are ahvays commendable in the sense of art. They also possess 
 another distijict clai?n to oitr liki?i^ : the girls in thetn are remarkably charm- 
 i7ig and true to 7iature, as most people, we ielieve, liave tJie good fortune to 
 observe nature represe7ited by girls." — Spectator. 
 
 Her Mother's Darling. By Mrs. j. h. Riddell 
 
 The Way we Live Now. By Anthony Trollope. 
 
 With Illustrations. 
 
 The America7i Senator. By Antpiony Trollope. 
 
 ^^ Mr, Trollope has a true artist's idea of tone, of colour, of hartnony : his 
 pictures are one, and seldom out of drawing; he never strains after ejfect, is 
 fidelity itself in expressing English life, is never guilty of caricature." — 
 Fortnightly Review. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. By t. a. Trollope. 
 
 '^ F71II of life, of i7tterest, of close observation, and sympathy. . . . When 
 Mr. Trollope paints a scene it is sure to be a sce7ie worth pai7iti}ig." — Satur- 
 day Review. 
 
 BoU7ld to the Wheel, By John Saunders. 
 
 Guy Waterman. By John Saunders. 
 
 One Against the World. By John Saunders. 
 
 The Lion in the Path. By John Saunders. 
 
 ** A carefdly written and beatitiful story — a story of good7iess a)id truths 
 which is yet as interesti7ig as though it dealt with the opposite qualities. . . . 
 The author of this really clever story has bee7i at great pai7is to work out all 
 its details with elaborate co7iscie7itiousness, and the result is a very vivid picture 
 of the ways of life afid habits of thought of a htmdred a7id ffty years ago. 
 . . Ceriainly a very i7iteresti7ig book." — Tijies. 
 
 Ready-Money Mortiboy. By W. Besant and James Rice. 
 
 My Little Girl. By W. Besant and James Rice. 
 
 The Case of Mr. Lucraft. By W. Besant and James Rice. 
 
 This Son of Vulcan. By W. Besant and James Rice. 
 
 With Harp and Crown. By W. Besant and James Rice. 
 
 The Golden Butterfly. By W. Besant and James Rice. 
 
 With a Frontispiece by F. S. Walker. 
 " ' The Golden Butterfly ' will certainly add to tJie happiness of tnankind, for 
 defy a7iybody to read it with a glootny cou7ite7ui7tce." — Times.
 
 26 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 NEW NOVEL BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 Two vols. 8vo, cloth extra, Illustrated, 2ij-., the Second Edition of 
 
 Miss Misanthrope, 
 
 By Justin McCarthy, Author of "Dear Lady Disdain," &c. 
 With 12 Illustrations by Arthur Hopkins. 
 
 " /« ' Miss Misanthrope ' Mr. AlcCarthy has added a new and delightful portrait 
 to his gallery of Englishiuomen. . . . It is a novel which may be sipped like 
 cfwice wine ; it is one to linger over a7id pojider ; to be enjoyed like fine, sweet air, 
 or good company, for it is pervaded by a perfiane of honesty a7id humour, of high 
 feeli}ig, of kindly penetratifig humour, of good sense, and wide knowledge of the 
 world, of a mifid richly cultivated and a7nply stored. TJiere is scarcely a page in 
 tJiese volumes in which we do Jiot find so7ne fitie remark or felicitous refiectio7i of 
 piercing, yet gentle a7id i7idulge7it irony." — Daily News. 
 
 MRS. LINTON'S NEW NOVEL. 
 Two Vols. 8vo, cloth extra, Illustrated, 2is., the Second Edition of 
 
 The World Well Lost. 
 
 By E. Lynn Linton, Author of " Patricia Kemball," &c. With 
 12 Illustrations by Henry French and J. Lawson. 
 
 " We are i7icli7ied to think that i7i this novel Mrs. Lyfi7i Li7iio7i has readied a 
 higher artistic mark tha7t in any for7ner one.'' — Nonconformist. 
 
 "7/ Mrs. Linto7i had 7iot already zvo7l a place a77i07ig ourfore7/tost livi7ig 7iovelists, 
 she would have bee7i e7ititled to it by her latest zvork of fiction — a book of singularly 
 high a7id varied 77ier it. T lie story rivets the atte7itio7i of the reader at the outset , 
 atui holds hi77i absorbed U7itil the close." — Scotsman. 
 
 NE W NO VEL BY THE AUTHOR OF "JULIET'S GUARDIAN." 
 Three Vols., crown 8vo, 3U. 6d. 
 
 Deceivers Ever, 
 
 By Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron. 
 
 Crown Svo, red cloth, extra, 5^. each. 
 
 Ouida 's Novels. — U7tifor7n Edition, 
 
 Folk Farine. By Ouida. 
 
 Idalia. By Ouida. 
 
 Chandos. By Ouida, 
 
 Pascarel. By Ouida. 
 
 Puck. By Ouida. 
 
 Dog of Fla?idcrs. By ouida. 
 
 UnderTwo Flags: By OmiiA.\ Strathmore, By Ouida 
 
 Tricotrin. By Ouida. 
 
 Cecil Castlemainis 
 
 Gage. By OuiDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. By Ouida. 
 
 Two Wooden ShoesBy Ouida. 
 
 Signa. By Ouida. 
 
 hi a Winter City. By ouida. 
 Ariadne. By Ouida. 
 
 NEW NOVEL BY MR. JAMES GRANT. 
 Shortly, Three Vols., crown Svo, 31^-. 6^. 
 
 The Lord Hermitage. 
 
 By James Grant, Author of " The Romance of War," &c.
 
 CHATTO ^ WIND US, PICCADILLY, 27 
 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2s. each. 
 
 Cheap Editions of Popular Novels. 
 
 [WiLKiE Collins' Novels may also be had in cloth limp at 2s. 6d. See, 
 too, the Piccadilly 'i^ovs.i.s, /or Library Ediiiofis.'] 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thomas hardy. 
 
 Ready-Money Mortiboy. By Walter Besant and James Rice- 
 The Golden Bntterjly. By Authors of " Ready-Money Mortiboy." 
 This Son of Vulcan. By the Authors of " Ready-Money Mortiboy." 
 My Little Girl. By the Authors of " Ready-Money Mortiboy." 
 
 The Case of Mr. Lncraft. Authors of "Ready-Money Mortiboy.'' 
 With Harp and Crown. Authors of " Ready-Money Mortiboy." 
 The Woman in White. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Antonina. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Basil. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Hide and Seek. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 The Dead Secret. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 The Queen of Hearts, By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 My Miscellanies. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 The Moonstone. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Man and Wife. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Poor Miss Finch, By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Miss or Mrs. ? By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 The New Magdalen, By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 The Frozen Deep, By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 The Law and the Lady. By Wilkie Collins. 
 
 Gaslight and Daylight. By George Augustus Sala. 
 
 The Water dale Neighbours. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 My Enemy s Daughter. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 Linley Rochford. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. By Justin McCarthy. 
 
 A n Idle Excursion. By mark twain. 
 
 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. By mark Twain. 
 
 A Pleasure Trip on the Continent of Europe, m. Twain. 
 Oakshott Castle. By Henry Kingsley. 
 
 Bound to the Wheel, By John Saunders. 
 
 Guy Watennan. By John Saunders. 
 
 Ojie Against the World. By John Saunders. 
 
 The Lion in the Path. By John and Katherine Saunders. 
 Slirly Tim, By the Author of " That Lass o* Lowrie's."
 
 28 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Two Vols. 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, loj. dd. 
 
 Phtt arch's Lives of Illustriotis Men, 
 
 Translated from the Greek, with Notes Critical and Historical, 
 and a Life of Plutarch, by John and William Langhorne. 
 New Edition, with Medallion Portraits. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Portrait and Illustrations, *]s. 6d. 
 
 Poe's Choice Prose and Poetical JVorks. 
 
 With Baudelaire's "Essay." 
 
 " Poe stands as imcch alone amo7ig verse-zvriters as Salvator Rosa among 
 painters." — Spectator. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, Illustrated, 7^. 6d. 
 
 The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 By William F. Gill. With numerous Illustrations and 
 Facsimiles. 
 
 Small 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 3^'. 6d. 
 
 The Prince of A r go lis : 
 
 A Story of the Old Greek Fairy Time. By J. Moyr Smith. 
 With 130 Illustrations by the Author. 
 
 Demy 8vo, cloth extra, \2s. 6d. 
 
 Proctor s Myths and Marvels of Astro- 
 
 nomy. By Richard A. Proctor, Author of "Other Worlds 
 than Ours," &c. 
 
 "Mr. Proctor, luho is luell and luidely known/or his /actilty of popularising the 
 latest results of the science of ivhich lie is a master, has brouo;ht together itt these 
 fascinating chapters a curious collection of fopiilar beliefs concer^ting divifiation by 
 the stars, the influences of the moon, the destination of the comets, the constellatioti 
 figures, and the habitation of other luorlds than ours." — Daily News. 
 
 " The reader ivho begins this charming voliane — a dozen cJiapters to as many 
 instances of errotieous observation or superstitioiis credulity — 7i'ill hardly fail to 
 peruse it to the end" — Graphic. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 5^. 
 
 Promethetis the Fire-Giver : 
 
 An attempted Restoration of the Lost First Part of the Trilogy 
 of ^schylus. 
 
 " AnotJier illustration of that classical revival ivJiich is due in no small degree 
 to the influence of Mr. Sivinburne. . . . Much really fine writing, attd much 
 appreciation of the yEschylean spirit."— tLouE News. 
 
 " IVell written in parts— soft, spirited, ajid vigorous, according to requirement^* 
 
 Illustrated London News.
 
 CHAT TO ^ WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 
 
 CrowTi Svo, cloth extra, with Portrait and Facsimile, I2j. id. 
 
 The Final Reliqices of Father Prout. 
 
 Collected and Edited, from MSS. supplied by the family of the 
 Rev. Francis Mahony, by Blanchard Jerrold. 
 
 In Two Series, small 4to, blue and gold, gilt edges, 6s. each. 
 
 Ptmiana ; 
 
 or, Thoughts Wise and Other- Why's. A Xew Collection of 
 Riddles, Conundrums, Jokes, Sells, &c. In Two Series, each 
 containing-300oof the best Riddles, 10,000 most outrageous Puns, 
 and upwards of Fifty beautifully executed Drav/ings by the Editor, 
 the Hon. Hugh Rowley. Each Series is Complete' in itself. 
 
 "A witty, droll, and most amiisi/ig work, profusely and elegantly ilhcstrated." 
 — Standard. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, gilt, 'js. 6d. 
 
 The Pursutva7tt of Arms ; 
 
 or, Heraldry founded upon Facts. A Popular Guide to the 
 Science of Heraldry. By J. R. Planch^, Esq., Somerset 
 Herald. With Coloured Frontispiece, Plates, and 200 Illustrations. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, 7.?. 6c/. 
 
 Rabelais' Works. 
 
 Faithfully Translated from the French, with variorum Notes, and 
 numerous Characteristic Illustrations by Gustave DoRfi. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth gilt, with numerous Illustrations, and a beautifully 
 executed Chart of the various Spectra, *js. 6d., a New Edition of 
 
 Ra?nbossoji 's Astronomy. 
 
 By J. Rambossox, Laureate of the Institute of France. Trans- 
 lated by C. B. Pitman. Profusely Illustrated. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, 6s. 
 
 Red-Spinner's By Stream and Sea : 
 
 A Book for Wanderers and Anglers. By William Senior 
 (Red-Spinner). 
 
 " Mr. Senior Jias long been known as an interesting and original essayist. He is 
 a keen observer, a confessed lover of^ ' the gentle sJ>ort,' a?id combines with a fine 
 picturesque toitch a quaint and efficient hu7nour. All these qtialities come out in a 
 most attractive manner i7i this delight fill volume. . . . It is pre-etninejitly a 
 bright and breezy hook, full of natztre and odd out-of-tJie-way refere7tces. . . IVe 
 can conceive of no better book for the holiday tour or tite seaside." — Nonconformist. 
 
 " Very delightf-ul reading ; just the sort of book which an angler or a rambler 
 will be glad to have in the side pocket of his jacket. Altogetfier, * By Stream and 
 Sea ' is one of the best books of its kitid which we have come across for jnany a long 
 <:fav."— Oxford University Herald.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Handsomely printed, price 5^. 
 
 The Roll of Battle Abbey ; 
 
 or, A List of the Principal Warriors who came over from Nor- 
 mandy with William the Conqueror, and Settled in this Country, 
 A.D. 1066-7. Printed on fine plate paper, nearly three feet by 
 two, with the principal Arms emblazoned in Gold and Colours. 
 
 In 4to, very handsomely printed, extra gold cloth, 12s. 
 
 The Roll of Caerlaverock. 
 
 The Oldest Heraldic Roll ; including the Original Anglo-Norman 
 Poem, and an English Translation of the MS. in the British 
 Museum. By Thomas Wright, M.A. The Arms emblazoned 
 in Gold and Colours. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, *]$. 6d. 
 
 Memoirs of the Sanson Family : 
 
 Seven Generations of Executioners. By Henri Sanson. Trans- 
 lated from the French, with Introduction, by Camille Barr^re. 
 
 "A faithful translaiio7i of this curio7es work, which ivill certainly repay perusal 
 —ftot on the ground of its being full of horrors, for the original author seems to 
 he rather ashamed of the techttical aspect of his profession, and is comvie?idably 
 reticent as to its details, bnt because it contaifis a lucid account of the most notable 
 causes celebres y>-<?;« t/ie time of Louis XIV. to a period within the memory of 
 persons still living. . . . Cati scarcely fail to be extretnely entertaitiing." — 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, profusely Illustrated, 4J, 6d. each. 
 
 The ''Secret OtW Series. 
 
 The Art of A musing : Magic No Mystery : 
 
 A Collection of Graceful Arts, 
 Games, Tricks, Puzzles, and Cha- 
 rades. By Frank Bellew. 300 
 Illustrations. 
 
 Hanky-Panky : 
 
 Very Easy Tricks, Very Difficult 
 Tricks, White Magic, Sleight of 
 Hand. Edited by W. H. Cre- 
 MER. 200 Illustrations. 
 
 Magician's Own Book : 
 
 Performances with Cups and Balls, 
 Eggs, Hats, Handkerchiefs, &c. 
 All from Actual Experience. 
 Edited by W. H. Cremer. 200 
 Illustrations. 
 
 Tricks with Cards, Dice, Balls, 
 &c., with fully descriptive Direc- 
 tions ; the Art of Secret Writing ; 
 the Training of Performing Ani- 
 mals, &c. With Coloured Fron- 
 tispiece and many Illustrations. 
 
 The Merry Circle : 
 
 A Book of New Intellectual Games 
 and Amusements. By Clara 
 Bellew. Many Illustrations. 
 
 The Secret Out : 
 
 One Thousand Tricks with Cards, 
 and other Recreations ; with En- 
 tertaining Experiments in Draw- 
 ing-room or " White Magic," By 
 W. H. Cremer. 300 Engravings. 
 
 NEW VOLUME OF THE ''SECRET OUT'' SERIES. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with numerous Plates, 4^-. (yd. 
 
 The Pyrotechnist's Treasury ; 
 
 or, Complete Art of Making Fireworks. By Thomas PCent.
 
 CHATTO cr^ WIND US, PICCADILLY. 31 
 
 In reduced facsimile, small 8vo, half Roxburghe, los. 6d. 
 
 The First Folio Shakespeare. 
 
 Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Trage- 
 dies, Published according to the true Originall Copies. London, 
 Printed by Isaac Iaggard and Ed, Blount, 1623. — An exact 
 Reproduction of the extremely rare original, in reduced facsimile 
 by a photographic process — ensuring the strictest accuracy in every 
 detail, A full Prospectus will be sent upon application, 
 
 " To Messrs. CJiatto and Windns belongs the merit of Jiaving done more to 
 facilitate the critical stiidy of tJie te.zt of our great draynatist than all the Shake- 
 speare clubs a7id societies ptit together. A complete facsittiile of the celebrated 
 First Folio edition of 1622 for half a-gtiinea is at once a miracle of cJuapness and 
 enterprise. Beitig in a reduced fortn, the type is necessarily rather dimimitive, 
 but it is as distinct as in a gemdne copy of the original, and ivill befotitid to be as 
 useful and far more Juiftdy to tJie student than tJie latter." — Athen^um. 
 
 Post 8vo, with Illustrations, cloth extra, gilt edges, i8j. 
 
 The Lansdowne Shakespeare. 
 
 Beautifully printed in red and black, in small but very clear tN-pe. 
 With engraved facsimile of Droeshout's Portrait, and 37 beautiful 
 Steel Plates, after Stothard. 
 
 Two Vols, crown 8vo, cloth extra, i8x. 
 
 The School of Shakspere. 
 
 Including "The Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley," 
 with a New Life of Stucley, from Unpublished Sources; "No- 
 body and Somebody," " Histriomastix," "The Prodigal Son," 
 "Jack Drum's Entertainement," "A Warning for Fair Women," 
 with Reprints of the Accounts of the Murder ; and " Faire Em." 
 Edited, with Introductions and Notes, and an Account of Robert 
 Green and his Quarrels with Shakspere, by Richard Simpson, 
 B. A. , Author of ' ' The Philosophy of Shakspere's Sonnets, " ' ' The 
 Life of Campion," &c. With an Introduction by F. J. Furnivall. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, *]s. 6d. 
 
 Signboards : 
 
 Their History. With Anecdotes of Famous Taverns and Re- 
 markable Characters. By Jacob Larwood and John Camden 
 HoTTEN. With nearly 100 Illustrations. 
 " Even ifive were ever so maliciously inclined, we could not pick out all Messrs. 
 
 Larwood and Hottetis plums, because the good thifigs are so numerous as to defy 
 
 the most wholesale depredation." — Times. 
 
 Exquisitely printed in miniature, cloth extra, gilt edges, 2s. 6d. 
 
 The Smoker 's Text-Book. 
 
 By J. Hamer, F.R.S.L.
 
 BOOK'S PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with lo full-page Tinted 
 Illustrations, "js. 6d. 
 
 Sheridan s Complete Works, 
 
 with Life and Anecdotes. Including his Dramatic Writings, 
 printed from the Original Editions, his Works in Prose and 
 Poetry, Translations, Speeches, Jokes, Puns, &c. ; with a Collec- 
 tion of Sheridaniana. 
 " The editor has brought tog-ether within a manageable compass not only the 
 seven plays by ivhich Sherida?i is best known, but a collection also of his poetical, 
 pieces which are less fafitiliar to the public, sketches of 7infi.7iished dramas, selectiotis 
 front his reported witticisms, and extracts from his principal speeches. To these 
 is prefixed a short but well-written 7ne?noir, giving the chief facts in Sheridan's 
 literary and political career ; so that, with this vohinie in his hand, the student 
 tnay consider hiiuself tolerably well furnished with all that is necessary for a 
 general comprehe7is ion of the subject of it."— Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, 6s. 6d. 
 
 The Slang Dictionary : 
 
 Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal. An Entirely New 
 Edition, revised throughout, and considerably Enlarged. 
 " We are glad to see the Slang Dictionary reprinted and enlarged. From a high 
 s-cientific point of view this book is 7tot to be despised. Of coiirse it caiuiot fail to 
 be amusiyig also. It C07itains the very vocabiilary of unrestrained humour, and 
 oddity, and grotesqueness. hi a word, it provides valuable 7naterial both for the 
 student of language and the studeiit of huma7t nature." — Academy. 
 
 Crown 4to, uniform with " Chaucer for Children," with Coloured 
 Illustrations, cloth gilt, \os. 6d. 
 
 Spenser for Children. 
 
 By M. H. TowRY. With Illustrations in Colours by Walter 
 J. Morgan. 
 
 •' hi these transci'ipts the writer has endeavoured to preserve the thoughts and 
 la7iguage of Spenser, while pre senti7tg the tales i7i a si77iple a7id contin7(07is foritt. 
 The work of 07ie of 07ir greatest poets has 7iot bce7i approached in a7i irrevere7tt 
 spirit, 7tor with any intention cf V7dga7-izing his fictions ly relatifig tliem in a 
 fa77tiliar a7id 7nocki7ig ma7i7ier — a style too often supposed to be that most attractive 
 to the yomig." 
 
 Imperial 4to, containing 150 beautifully-finished full-page Engravings 
 and Nine Vignettes, all tinted, and some illuminated in gold and 
 colours, half-morocco, £^ ^s. 
 
 Slot hard's Monumental Effigies of Great 
 
 Britain. With Historical Description and Introduction by John 
 
 Kempe, F. S. a. A New Edition, with a large body of Additional 
 
 Notes by John Hewitt. 
 
 *^* A few Large Paper copies, royal folio, with the arms illuminated 
 
 in gold and colours, and the plates very carefully finished in body-colours, 
 
 heightened with gold in the very finest style, half-morocco, ;i^i5 \^s.
 
 CHATTO &- WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 33 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 9J-. 
 
 Stednian 's Victorian Poets : 
 
 Critical Essays. By Edmund Clarenxe Stedman. 
 
 " We ought to be tkank/td to tJwse ivko do critical "work luitk C07n/>etent skill 
 afid 7inderstafiding; ivith hoftesty of ptirpose, and ivith diligence and thoroughness 
 of execution. A7id Mr. Stedvtan, having chosen to zuork in this line, deserves the 
 t/iattks of English scholars by these gztalities and by something ntore ; . . . . 
 he is faithful, studious, and discerfting." — Saturday Review. 
 
 Large 8vo, half-Roxburghe, with Illustrations, price gs. 
 
 Stow 's Survey of London. 
 
 Edited by \V. J. Thoms, F.S.A. A New Edition, with Copper- 
 plate Illustrations. 
 
 Cro^^^l 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Swiff s Choice Works, 
 
 in Prose and Verse. With jNIemoir, Portrait, and Facsimiles of 
 the Maps in the Original Edition of "Gulliver's Travels." 
 
 " TJie ' Tale of a Tub' is, in my apprehension, the masterpiece of Swift ; 
 certainly Rabelais has tiothifig superior, even in itiventio?t, nor anything so con- 
 densed, so pointed, so full of real meaning, of biting satire , of felicitous attalogy. 
 The ' Battle of the Books ' is such an improvement on tJte siviilar cojnbat in tJie 
 Lutrifi, iJiatiue cati hardly oiv7i it as an imitation." — Hallam. 
 
 " S^vift's reputatio7i as a poet Jias been in a matiner obscured by t^ie greater splen- 
 dour, by the statural force atid inventive genius, of his prose writings ; but, if he 
 /tad never writte>i either the 'Tale of a Tub' or 'Gullivers Travels,' his tiame 
 ■merely as a poet ivotdd have come dow7i to us, and have g07ie down to posterity ^ 
 •with well-ear7ted ho7iours." — Hazlitt. 
 
 Mr, Swinburne's IVorks : 
 
 The Queen Mother and , BothweU: 
 
 Rosamond. Fcap. 8vo, 55. I A Tragedy. Two Vols, crown 
 
 Atala7ita in Calydon. \ ^^"°' ^"^'^f 
 
 A New Edition. Crown 8vo, 6j. ' C^eorge Lliapjnan : 
 
 -,. 1 J ■^^ Essay. Crown 8vo, 71. 
 
 A Trlged;:^- Foap. 8vo, ... Sa,.gs of T^.o Nations. 
 
 ^ -^ r . / Crown Svo, 6s. 
 
 Poems and Ballads. j^^,^,^ ^^,^^ Studies, 
 
 Fcap. Svo. 9^. Crown 8vo. 12.. 
 
 Notes on ''Poems a?id Erechtheus : 
 
 Ballads." 8vo, is. A Tragedy. Crown Svo, 6s. 
 
 William Blake : \ Note of an English Re- 
 
 A Critical Essay. With Facsimile : publican on the Muscovite Cru- 
 Paintings. Demy Svo, i6j-. | sade. Svo, u. 
 
 Songs before Sunrise. ' A Note on Charlotte Bronte, 
 
 Crown Svo, xos. 6d. \ Crown Svo, 6;.
 
 34 
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 MR. SWINBURNE' S NEW WORK. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gj. 
 
 Poems and Ballads. Second Series. 
 
 By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
 
 *^* Also in fcap. 8vo, at same price, uniform with the First 
 
 Series. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, cloth extra, y. 6d. 
 
 Rossettts(lV, MJ Criticism upon Swin- 
 
 btirne's *' Poems and Ballads.*^ 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, ^s. 6d. 
 
 Strutfs Sports and Pastimes of the 
 
 People of England ; including the Rural and Domestic Recrea- 
 tions, May Games, Mummeries, Shows, Processions, Pageants, 
 and Pompous Spectacles, from the Earliest Period to the Present 
 Time. With 140 Illustrations. Edited by William Hone. 
 * * A few Large Paper Copies, with an extra set of Copperplate 
 Illustrations, carefully Coloured by Hand, from the Originals, 50J. 
 
 Medium 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7^. dd. 
 
 Dr. Syntax 's Three Tours, 
 
 in Search of the Picturesque, in Search of Consolation, and in 
 Search of a Wife. With the whole of Rowlandson's droll page 
 Illustrations, in Colours, and Life of the Author by J. C. Hotten. 
 
 Large post 8vo, cloth, full gilt, gilt top, with Illustrations, \2s. 6d. 
 
 Thackeray ana : 
 
 Notes and Anecdotes Illustrated by a profusion of Sketches by 
 William Makepeace Thackeray, depicting Humorous Inci- 
 dents in his School-life, and Favourite Characters in the books of 
 his everyday reading. With Hundreds of Wood Engravings and 
 Five Coloured Plates, from Mr. Thackeray's Original Drawings. 
 "It -would have been a real loss to bibliographical literature had copyright 
 difficulties deprived the general ptcblic of this very amusitig collection. One oj 
 Tliackerays habits, front his schoolboy days, ivas to ornament the margins and 
 blank pages of the books he had in use luith caricature illustration of their 
 cotttents. This gave special value to the sale of his library, and is almost cause 
 for regret that it could not have been preserved ifi its integrity. Thackeray's 
 place t'« literature is eminent enough to have made this an interest to fjtture 
 o-enerations. The anofiy7notis editor has done the best that he coidd to compen- 
 'sate for tae lack of this. It is an admirable addendum, not only to his collected 
 works, but also to any memoir of him tfiat lias been, or that is likely to be, 
 writte n."— British Quarterly Review. ^_ 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges, with Illustrations, p. 6d. 
 
 Thomson' s Seasons and Castle of In- 
 dolence. With a Biographical and Critical Introduction by Allan 
 Cunningham, and over 50 fine Illustrations on Steel and Wood.
 
 CIIATTO 6- WIND US, PICCADILLY. 3$ 
 
 Two Vols, crown 8vo, cloth boards, i8j. ; Large Paper copies 
 (only 50 printed), 36i'. 
 
 Cyril Tourneur's Collected Works, 
 
 Plays and Poems. Edited, with Critical Introduction and Notes, 
 by J. Churton Collins. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Coloured Illustrations, yj. dd. 
 
 y. M. JV, Turner s Life and Correspond- 
 
 ence. Founded upon Letters and Papers furnished by his Friends 
 and fellow Academicians. By Walter Thornbury. A New 
 Edition, considerably Enlarged. With numerous Illustrations 
 in Colours, facsimiled from Turner's original Drawings. 
 
 Taine's History of English Liter attire. 
 
 Translated by Henry Van Laun. Four Vols, small Svo, 30J. 
 ** Also a New and Cheaper Edition, in Two Vols., crown 
 Svo, cloth extra, 15s. 
 
 Small Svo, cloth gilt, with Portrait, 6j. 
 
 Thoreau : His Life and Aims. 
 
 A Study. By H. A. Page, Author of "The Life of Thomas 
 
 De Quincey," &c. 
 Extract from Preface. — '* The naUcre-instinct ut TJwreau 7vns so strong 
 that, as I believe, it may even do somethifig to aid ifi the interpretation of certain 
 phefWfnena of so distant a period as the Aliddle Age. I see a kitid of real likeness 
 between this so-called ' Stoic' of Ajnerica, -with his unaffected love for the slave, his 
 ivoftderful sympathies a7id attractiofis for the lower creatures, his si})tplicitieSy 
 and his liking for tlie lahojir of the hand, and that St. Franxis whose life lias 
 recently been made fresh and real to us by the skilful pen of Mrs. Oliphant. All I 
 claim for Tlioreau is a disinterested attd not a one-sided and prejudiced liearing* 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 7j. 6d. 
 
 Timbs Chibs and Club Life in LoJtdon. 
 
 With Anecdotes of its famous Coffee-houses, Hostelries, and 
 Taverns. By John Times, F.S. A. With numerous Illustrations, 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Timbs' English Ecce^ttrics and Ec- 
 
 centricities : Stories of Wealth and Fashion, Delusions, Impos- 
 tures, and Fanatic Missions, Strange Sights and Sporting Scenes, 
 Eccentric Artists, Theatrical Folks, Men of Letters, &c. By John 
 Timbs, F.S. A. With nearly 50 Illustrations.
 
 36 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY CHATTO ^ W INDUS, 
 One Vol. crown 8vo, cloth extra, 7j. 6^. 
 
 Tom Taylor 's Historical Plays, 
 
 "Clancarty," "Jeanne d' Arc," "'Twixt Axe and Crowm," "The 
 Fool's Revenge," "Arkwright's Wife," "Anne Boleyn," "Plot 
 and Passion." 
 %* The Plays may also be had separately, at is. each. 
 
 Crown 4to, half-Roxburghe, izs. 6d. 
 
 Vagabondiana ; 
 
 or, Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of 
 London ; with Portraits of the most Remarkable, drawn from the 
 Life by John Thomas Smith, late Keeper of the Prints in the 
 British Museum. With Introduction by Francis Douce, and 
 Descriptive Text. With the Woodcuts and the 32 Plates, from 
 the original Coppers. 
 
 Large crown 8vo, cloth antique, with Illustrations, 7^. 6d, 
 
 Walton and Cotton's Complete Angler ; 
 
 or. The Contemplative Man's Recreation : being a Discourse of 
 Rivers, Fishponds, Fish and Fishing, written by Izaak Walton ; 
 and Instructions how to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a clear 
 Stream, by Charles Cotton. With Original Memoirs and 
 Notes by Sir Harris Nicolas, and 61 Copperplate Illustrations. 
 
 Carefully printed on paper to imitate the Original, 22 in. by 14 in., Zf. 
 
 Warrant to Execute Charles /. 
 
 An exact Facsimile of this important Document, with the Fifty- 
 nine Signatures of the Regicides, and corresponding Seals. 
 
 Beautifully printed on paper to imitate the Original MS., price 2.s. 
 
 Warrajit to Execute Mary Q, of Scots. 
 
 An exact Facsimile, including the Signature of Queen Elizabeth, 
 and a Facsimile of the Great Seal. 
 
 Crown 8vo, cloth extra, with Illustrations, 1$. 6d. 
 
 Wright 's Caricature History of the 
 
 Oeors^es. ( Tlie House of Hanover.) With 400 Pictures, Caricatures, 
 Squibs, Broadsides, Window Pictures, &c. By Thomas Wright, 
 Esq., M.A., F.S.A. ^ 
 
 Large post 8vo, cloth extra, gilt, with Illustrations, 1$. 6d. 
 
 Wright 's History of Caricature a7td of 
 
 the Grotesque in Art, Literature, Sculpture, and Painting, from 
 the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By Thomas Wright, 
 M.A., F.S.A. Profusely illustrated by F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A. 
 
 J. OCDEN AND CO.. PRINTERS, I72, ST. JOHN STREET, E.G. 
 
 1-