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

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

The wife is dead. Dead, too, long years ago, the Lothario! The world