"Died, I suppose, of a broken heart. He was too insignificant to make any mark upon history."
"Well, I am quite ready to believe Mr. Topsparkle to be a double-dyed scoundrel—and yet I am going to sit at his table and sleep under his roof. That is what good company means nowadays. Nobody asks any searching questions about a host's character. If his wines and his cook are faultless, and his wife is handsome, every one is satisfied: and on this occasion Mr. Topsparkle's company is to be exceptionally distinguished. Swift is to be there, the Irish patriot and ecclesiastical Jack Pudding, who is just now puffed with importance at the success of his queer hook about giants, pigmies, and what not; and there is a talk of Voltaire, the young French wit, who has been twice beaten for his bon-mots, and twice a prisoner in the Bastille, and who is in England only because France is too hot to hold him. There is a promise of Bolingbroke, too, and a hint of my queer kinswoman, Lady Mary, who made such a figure the other night at the Prince's ball. We shall doubtless make a strange medley, and I would not be out of the fun for anything in this world, even though in his hot youth Mr. Topsparkle may have played the character of Othello with a phial of poison instead of a bolster. After all, Vincenti, jealousy is a noble passion, and a man may have worse motives for murder."
The old man made no answer, and as supper was announced at this moment, the conversation ended.
There was something in Lavendale's manner which told of a mind ill at ease, perchance even of a remorseful conscience; but he had the air of a man who defied Fate, and who meant to be happy in his own way.
To the belated peasant tramping homeward beside the lessor Avon, Ringwood Abbey in the December gloaming must have looked as like an enchanted palace as it is possible for any earthly habitation ever to look. Provided always that the peasant had heard of fairyland and its wonderful castles, which shine suddenly out upon wandering princes, luminous with multitudinous windows, and joyous with the buzz and clatter of an army of servants and a court of fine ladies and gentlemen. Ringwood Abbey was all ablaze with wax candles, and reflected its Gothic casements in yonder sedgy stream until it seemed to outshine the stars in the cold clear winter sky. This earthly illumination was so much nearer than the stars, and to the agricultural labourer tramping homeward after a day at the plough-tail was suggestive of pleasanter thoughts than were inspired by yonder cold and distant lights of heaven. Ringwood Abbey meant broken victuals in abundance, and money flung about recklessly by the Squire and his London guests. It meant horse and hound, and all the concomitants of a big hunting-stable. It meant custom for every little tradesman in the village, and charities on a large scale to the poor. It meant beauty and splendour and stateliness and music to gladden the eye and the ear. It meant bribery at elections, largesse at all times and seasons. It meant all that a large country house, carried on with a noble disregard of cost, can ever mean to the surrounding neighbourhood. Needless, therefore, to add that in this little corner of Hampshire, beside the lesser Avon, Mr. Topsparkle was a very popular gentleman, and Lady Judith a queen among women, a goddess to be worshipped by all who came but to the outermost edge of her enchanted circle.
It was the cheery eventide after a five-o'clock dinner. They dined late at this season on account of the hunting-men, and even then there were some eager sportsmen who would rather miss their dinner than draw bridle before the doom of Reynard; and these came in ravenous to the ten-o'clock supper, full of their adventures over heath and through stream, and a most intolerable nuisance to the non-hunting people.
My Lord Bolingbroke, lolling at ease yonder in a carved oak armchair, coquetting with Lady Judith, had once been the keenest of sportsmen, and was fond of hunting still, but not quite so reluctant to miss a day's sport as he had been a few years ago.
"Do you remember our wolf-hunt at La Source, the winter you were with us, Arouet?" he asked, following up a conversation half in French and half in English, in which he and Lady Judith, a young gentleman standing in front of the fireplace, and Lord Lavendale had been engaged for the last quarter of an hour. "I had some very fine hounds that Lord Gore sent me, and I was curious to see whether they would attack a wolf boldly, or sneak off as soon as he stood at bay. 'Twas a stirring business for men, horses, and hounds; but, after all, I think there is nothing better than a genuine British fox-hunt."
"In France we study the picturesque and romantic in sport," said the tall slim gentleman lounging in front of the wide mediæval fireplace, whom Bolingbroke addressed sometimes familiarly as Arouet, and anon by his newly assumed name of Voltaire. "You English seem only to regard the practical—so many miles ridden over, so many foxes slaughtered, so many pheasants shot. With you the chase is a matter of statistics; with us it is a royal ceremony, diversion for kings and courtiers. Our hunting-parties are as stately and picturesque under Louis as they were under Charlemagne. Ours is the poetry of the chase, yours the prose."
"True, my dear Voltaire, but for horseflesh and pedigree hounds we are as far your superiors as you excel us in gold-lace coats and jewelled hunting-knives, or in the noise and fuss of your curée; while for hard riding—well, you hunt for the most part in a country that scarcely admits of fine horsemanship."