Lancaster took a couple of turns up and down the room, and then seated himself in a chair at the opposite side of the table. “Enough about my friend Yorke,” he said; “between your analysis and mine, he has grown too big for his share in the story. What I intended was to bring him into relations with a woman who should be a match for him: and this Marquise Desmoines, as I conceive her, will answer the purpose as well as another. Even while yet a girl at school, she had, as Marion’s anecdote showed, the instinct of woman’s power and conquest. She had already divided the human race into male and female, and had appraised the weapons available on her side. She had perceived that the weak point of woman is the heart, and was resolved to fence her own with triple steel. To marry a rich foreign nobleman of more than thrice her age was precisely her affair. She would have the world before her, as well as at her feet. She was—I imagine her to have been—beautiful, dimpled, luxurious, skeptical, and witty. She was energetic by nature, selfish by philosophy, clever and worldly-wise by training. She could appreciate you like a friend, rally you like a critic, flatter and wheedle you like a mistress. She would caress you one moment, scoff at you the next, and put you in the wrong be your argument what it might. She could speak in double meaning, startle you, deceive you, and forgive you. She was fond of intrigue for its own sake, fertile in resources and expedients; she was willful and wayward from calculation, and dangerous at all times. She was indolently despotic, fond of playing with her sensations, and amusing herself with her passions. She was the heroine of a hundred perilous anecdotes, which showed rather the audacity of genius than commonplace impropriety. She could say with grace and charm things that no other woman could say at all. She could assume a fatal innocence and simplicity; and to have seen her blush was an unforgettable experience in a man’s life. Physical exercise, especially dancing and riding, were indispensable to her; her toilets, baths, clothes, and equipment were ideals of luxury. She was superstitious, because she believed in no religion; indifferent to inflicting suffering, because never suffering herself; but she loved the pleasure of pleasing, was kindly in disposition, mindful of benefits as well as of injuries; and in her loftier moods she could be royally or savagely generous, as well as fiercely implacable. She had a lawyer’s head for business; was a better companion for men than for women; was even capable of genuine friendship, and could give sound and honest advice: and it was at such times that the real power and maturity of her understanding were revealed. That is the sort of woman that the plot of my story requires her to have been. When Yorke met her, she was the Circe of a distinguished company of noblemen, authors, actors, artists, abbés, soldiers, wits, and humorists; all of whom, by her magic, she could cause to assume the forms of turkey-cocks, magpies, poodles, monkeys, hogs, puppies, parrots, boa-constrictors, and other animals, according to their several dispositions. But Yorke was the Ulysses upon whom her spells had only so much effect as to incline him to spend most of his time in her company.”
Here Lancaster paused, and drank off the remains of his tumbler of brandy and water.
“Well?” said Mr. Grant, moving the bottle toward him.
“No more, thank you,” said Lancaster.
“You are not going to leave your drama just as the curtain is ready to go up?”
“I have come to the end of my invention.”
“Ah! I should scarce have thought you had begun upon it, as yet,” returned the other dryly.
Lancaster made no reply. At last Mr. Grant said, “Unless my genealogical inferences are at fault, you and Sir Francis Bendibow should be of kin.”
“It is one of the impertinences of human society,” said Lancaster, with a twitching of his eyebrows, “that whatever filibuster happens to marry the sister of your father has a right to call you nephew. It might as reasonably be decreed that because I happen to cut the throat of some hook-nosed old money-lender, his women and children would have the right to style themselves my cousins and aunts. That law might, to be sure, prove a beneficial one, for it would do more than hanging to put a stop to murder. But the other law makes marriage a nuisance, and one of these days the nephews will arise and compel its repeal at the sword’s point. Meanwhile I remain the baronet’s nephew and your humble servant.”
“You would abolish all but blood-relatives then?” said Mr. Grant, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and interlacing his fingers.