"The Prince—Richard—here!" exclaimed Greenwood, thrown off his guard.
"Show his Highness up immediately," said the Marquis, in the tone of a man who was surprised but not alarmed at this visit.
"My lord," interrupted Greenwood, speaking in a hurried and thick tone, "I have the most urgent reasons for not meeting the Prince of Montoni—for not even being seen by him. I implore you not to say that I am here—not even to allude to me."
And having uttered this hasty injunction, Greenwood passed into a back drawing-room, which was separated from the front one by folding-doors.
But it was easy to overhear in the former apartment all that was said in the latter.
Scarcely had the Member for Rottenborough thus retreated, when the Prince was ushered into the presence of the Marquis of Holmesford.
Those two personages had never met before; and the moment they thus found themselves face to face, they surveyed each other with rapid but scrutinising glances.
On one side Richard Markham was naturally curious to behold the man,—the monster in human form,—who could have practised so much villany against so much virtue—who, in a word, had destroyed the happiness of the deceased and lamented mother of Katharine.
On the other hand, the Marquis was struck by the handsome and noble appearance of that fine young man, who had raised himself from a sphere comparatively humble to an exalted position—who had led armies to a crowning triumph through the deadly strife of battle—and who was himself the personification of that generous spirit of political freedom which now influences the civilised world from the banks of the Thames to the waters of the Volga.
And, oh! what a contrast was formed in that splendid drawing-room where a great Prince and a wealthy peer now met for the first time:—the one possessing a heart beating with all the generous emotions that can redeem frail humanity from some of the dire consequences of the Primal Fall; the other accustomed to sacrifice all and every thing to his own selfish lusts and degrading debaucheries:—the one endowed with that manly beauty which associates so well with the dignity of high rank and the aristocracy of virtue; the other sinking beneath the infirmities of age and the ravages of dissipation:—the one noble alike by nature and by name; the other noble only by name:—the one carrying his head erect, and well able to meet the glance of every eye that would seek to penetrate into the recesses of his soul; the other conscious of having outraged so many hearts, that he quailed beneath the look of every visitor whose business was not immediately announced:—the one, in a word, the type of all that is great, good, chivalrous, and estimable; the other a representative of a vicious hereditary aristocracy!