[Illustration: "She caught sight of Dick.">[
Yes. Had he not known Lady Bearwarden so well, he thought it would have been quite possible for him to have mistaken this beautiful young lady for that faithless peeress. The likeness was extraordinary, ridiculous. Not that he felt the least inclined to laugh. The features were absolutely the same, and a certain backward gesture of the head, a certain trick of the mouth and chin were identical with the manner of Lady Bearwarden, in those merry days that seemed so long ago now, when she had been Maud Bruce. Only Miss Algernon's face had a softness, a kindly trustful expression he never remembered on the other, and her large pleading eyes seemed as if they could neither kindle with anger nor harden to freezing glances of scorn.
As for the Fairy Queen, he looked from the picture to its original, and felt constrained to admit that, wondrously beautiful as he had thought its likeness on canvas, the face before him was infinitely superior to the painter's fairest and most cherished work.
Dick went away of course almost immediately, though sorely against his will. Contrary to her wont, Miss Algernon, who was rather a mimic and full of fun, neither imitated the gestures nor ridiculed the bearing of this chance visitor. "She had not observed him much," she said, when taxed by Simon with this unusual forbearance. This was false. But "she might know him again, perhaps, if they met." This, I imagine, was true.
And Dick, wending his way back to his hotel buried in thought, passed without recognising it the spot where he met Lady Bearwarden one short hour ago. He was pondering, no doubt, on the face he had just seen--on its truth, its purity, its fresh innocent mirth, its dazzling beauty, more, perhaps, than on its extraordinary likeness to hers who had brought him the one great misfortune of his life.
CHAPTER XIX
AN INCUBUS
It is not to be supposed that any gentleman can see a lady in the streets of London and remain himself unseen. In the human as in meaner races the female organ of perception is quicker, keener, and more accurate than the male. Therefore it is that a man bowing in Pall Mall or Piccadilly to some divinity in an open carriage, and failing to receive any return for his salute, sinks at once into a false position of awkwardness and discomfiture, il a manqué son coup, and his face assumes incontinently the expression of one who has missed a woodcock in the open, and has no second barrel with which to redeem his shot. As Dick saw Lady Bearwarden in Oxford Street, we may be sure that Lady Bearwarden also saw Dick. Nor was her ladyship best pleased with the activity he displayed in avoiding her carriage and escaping from her society. If Mr. Stanmore had been the most successful Lovelace who ever devoted himself to the least remunerative of pursuits, instead of a loyal, kindhearted, unassuming gentleman, he could hardly have chosen a line of conduct so calculated to keep alive some spark of interest in Maud's breast as that which he unconsciously adopted. It is one thing to dismiss a lover because suited with a superior article (as some ladies send away five-foot-ten of footman when six-foot comes to look after the place), and another to lose a vassal for good, like an unreclaimed hawk, heedless of the lure, clear of the jesses, and checking, perhaps, at every kind of prey in wilful wanton flight, down-wind towards the sea.
There is but one chance for a man worsted in these duels à l'outrance, which are fought out with such merciless animosity. It is to bind up his wounds as best he may, and take himself off to die or get well in secret. Presently the conqueror finds that a battle only has been won, and not a territory gained. After the flush of combat comes a reaction. The triumph seems somewhat tame, ungraced by presence of the captive. Curiosity wakes up, pity puts in its pleading word, a certain jealous instinct of appropriation is aroused. Where is he? What has become of him? I wonder if he ever thinks of me now! Poor fellow! I shouldn't wish to be forgotten altogether, as if we had never met; and though I didn't want him to like me, I never meant that he was to care for anybody else. Such are the thoughts that chase each other through the female heart when deprived of sovereignty in the remotest particular; and it was very much in this way that Lady Bearwarden, sitting alone in her boudoir, speculated on the present doings and sentiments of the man who had loved her so well and had given her up so unwillingly, yet with never a word of reproach, never a look nor action that could add to her remorse or make her task more painful.