“Yes; I bought it at Verona. Its companion, yonder, was a present from the Archduke Stephen, in recognition, as he was gracious enough to call it, of some counsels I had given the Government engineers about drainage in Hungary. Despotic governments, as we like to term them, have this merit, at least,—they confer acts of munificent generosity.”
The Secretary muttered an assent, and looked confused.
“I reaped a perfect harvest of crosses and decorations,” continued Dunn, “during my tour. I have got cordons from countries I should be puzzled to point out on the map, and am a noble in almost every land of Europe but my own.”
“Ours is the solitary one where the distinction is not a mere title,” said the other, “and, consequently, there are graver considerations about conferring it than if it were a mere act of courtesy.”
“Where power is already acquired there is often good policy in legitimatizing it,” said Dunn, gravely. “They say that even the Church of Rome knows how to affiliate a heresy.—Well, Clowes, what is it?” asked he of the butler, who stood awaiting a favorable moment to address him. He now drew nigh, and whispered some words in his ear.
“But you said I was engaged—that I had company with me?” said Dunn, in reply.
“Yes, sir, but she persisted in saying that if I brought up her name you would certainly see her, were it but for a moment This is her card.”
“Miss Kellett,” said Dunn to himself. “Very well. Show her into the study, I will come down.—It is the daughter of that unfortunate gentleman we were speaking of awhile ago,” said he, showing the card. “I suppose some new disaster has befallen him. Will you excuse me for a moment?”
As Dunn slowly descended the stairs, a very strange conflict was at work within him. From his very boyhood there had possessed him a stern sentiment of vengeance against the Kellett family. It was the daily lesson his father repeated to him. It grew with his years, and vague and unmeaning as it appeared, it had the force of an instinct. His own memory failed him as to all the circumstances of an early insult, but enough remained to make him know that he had been ignominiously treated and expelled from the house. In the great career of his life, with absorbing cares and high interests around him, he had little time for such memories, but in moments of solitude or of depression the thought would come up, and a sense of vindictive pleasure fill him, as he remembered, in the stern words of his father, where was he, and where were they? In the protection he had that very day assumed to throw over Kellett in the Court, there was the sentiment of an insolent triumph; and here was again the daughter of the once proud man supplicating an interview with him.
These were his thoughts as he entered the room where Sybella Kellett was standing near the fire. She had taken off her bonnet, and as her long hair fell down, and her dripping clothes clung to her, the picture of poverty and destitution her appearance conveyed revolted against the sentiment which had so lately filled him, and it was in a voice of gentle meaning he asked her to be seated.