Under Two Flags

  Produced by Dagny; John Bickers

  UNDER TWO FLAGS

  by Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

  TO COLONEL POULETT CAMERON whose family has given so many brilliantsoldiers to the armies of France and England and made the battle-fieldsof Europe ring with "The War-Cry of Lochiel" this story of a soldier'slife is dedicated in sincere friendship.

  AVIS AU LECTEUR.

  This Story was originally written for a military periodical. It has beenfortunate enough to receive much commendation from military men, andfor them it is now specially issued in its present form. For the generalpublic it may be as well to add that, where translations are appended tothe French phrases, those translations usually follow the idiomatic andparticular meaning attached to these expressions in the argot of theArmy of Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such wordsor sentences in ordinary grammatical parlance.

  OUIDA.

  UNDER TWO FLAGS.

  CHAPTER I.

  "BEAUTY OF THE BRIGADES."

  "I don't say but what he's difficult to please with his Tops," said Mr.Rake, factotum to the Hon. Bertie Cecil, of the 1st Life Guards, withthat article of hunting toggery suspended in his right hand ashe paused, before going upstairs, to deliver his opinions withcharacteristic weight and vivacity to the stud-groom, "he is uncommonparticular about 'em; and if his leathers aint as white as snow he'llnever touch 'em, tho' as soon as the pack come nigh him at Royallieu,the leathers might just as well never have been cleaned, them houndsjump about him so; old Champion's at his saddle before you can sayDavy Jones. Tops are trials, I aint denying that, specially when you'vejacks, and moccasins, and moor boots, and Russia-leather crickets, andturf backs, and Hythe boots, and waterproofs, and all manner of varnishthings for dress, that none of the boys will do right unless you lookafter 'em yourself. But is it likely that he should know what a worry aTop's complexion is, and how hard it is to come right with all the FastBrown polishing in the world? How should he guess what a piece of workit is to get 'em all of a color, and how like they are to come mottled,and how a'most sure they'll ten to one go off dark just as they'regrowing yellow, and put you to shame, let you do what you will to make'em cut a shine over the country? How should he know? I don't complainof that; bless you, he never thinks. It's 'do this, Rake,' 'do that';and he never remembers 'tisn't done by magic. But he's a true gentleman,Mr. Cecil; never grudge a guinea, or a fiver to you; never out of tempereither, always have a kind word for you if you want, thoro'bred everyinch of him; see him bring down a rocketer, or lift his horse over theBroad Water! He's a gentleman--not like your snobs that have nothingsound about 'em but their cash, and swept out their shops before theybought their fine feathers!--and I'll be d----d if I care what I do forhim."

  With which peroration to his born enemy the stud-groom, with whom hewaged a perpetual and most lively feud, Rake flourished the tops thathad been under discussion, and triumphant, as he invariably was, ranup the back stairs of his master's lodgings in Piccadilly, opposite theGreen Park, and with a rap on the panels entered his master's bedroom.

  A Guardsman at home is always, if anything, rather more luxuriouslyaccommodated than a young Duchess, and Bertie Cecil was never behind hisfellows in anything; besides, he was one of the cracks of the Household,and women sent him pretty things enough to fill the Palais Royal. Thedressing-table was littered with Bohemian glass and gold-stopperedbottles, and all the perfumes of Araby represented by Breidenback andRimmel. The dressing-case was of silver, with the name studded on thelid in turquoises; the brushes, bootjack, boot-trees, whip-stands, wereof ivory and tortoiseshell; a couple of tiger skins were on thehearth with a retriever and blue greyhound in possession; above themantel-piece were crossed swords in all the varieties of gilt, gold,silver, ivory, aluminum, chiseled and embossed hilts; and on the wallswere a few perfect French pictures, with the portraits of a greyhounddrawn by Landseer, of a steeple-chaser by Harry Hall, one or two ofHerring's hunters, and two or three fair women in crayons. The hangingsof the room were silken and rose-colored, and a delicious confusionprevailed through it pell-mell; box-spurs, hunting-stirrups, cartridgecases, curb-chains, muzzle-loaders, hunting flasks, and white gauntlets,being mixed up with Paris novels, pink notes, point-lace ties,bracelets, and bouquets to be dispatched to various destinations, andvelvet and silk bags for banknotes, cigars, or vesuvians, embroidered byfeminine fingers and as useless as those pretty fingers themselves.On the softest of sofas, half dressed, and having half an hour beforesplashed like a waterdog out of the bath, as big as a small pond, inthe dressing-chamber beyond was the Hon. Bertie himself, second son ofViscount Royallieu, known generally in the Brigades as "Beauty." Theappellative, gained at Eton, was in no way undeserved; when the smokecleared away that was circling round him out of a great meerschaumbowl, it showed a face of as much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman's;handsome, thoroughbred, languid, nonchalant, with a certain latentrecklessness under the impressive calm of habit, and a singular softnessgiven to the large, dark hazel eyes by the unusual length of the lashesover them. His features were exceedingly fair--fair as the fairestgirl's; his hair was of the softest, silkiest, brightest chestnut; hismouth very beautifully shaped; on the whole, with a certain gentle,mournful love-me look that his eyes had with them, it was no wonder thatgreat ladies and gay lionnes alike gave him the palm as the handsomestman in all the Household Regiments--not even excepting that splendidgolden-haired Colossus, his oldest friend and closest comrade, known as"the Seraph."

  He looked at the new tops that Rake swung in his hand, and shook hishead.

  "Better, Rake; but not right yet. Can't you get that tawny color in thetiger's skin there? You go so much to brown."

  Rake shook his head in turn, as he set down the incorrigible tops besidesix pairs of their fellows, and six times six of every other sort ofboots that the covert side, the heather, the flat, or the sweet shadyside of "Pall Mall" ever knew.

  "Do my best, sir; but Polish don't come nigh Nature, Mr. Cecil."

  "Goes beyond it, the ladies say; and to do them justice they favorit much the most," laughed Cecil to himself, floating fresh clouds ofTurkish about him. "Willon up?"

  "Yes, sir. Come in this minute for orders."

  "How'd Forest King stand the train?"

  "Bright as a bird, sir; he never mind nothing. Mother o' Pearl sheworreted a little, he says; she always do, along of the engine noise,but the King walked in and out just as if the station were his ownstable-yard."

  "He gave them gruel and chilled water after the shaking before he letthem go to their corn?"

  "He says he did, sir."

  Rake would by no means take upon himself to warrant the veracity ofhis sworn foe, the stud-groom; unremitting feud was between them; Rakeconsidered that he knew more about horses than any other man living, andthe other functionary proportionately resented back his knowledge andhis interference, as utterly out of place in a body-servant.

  "Tell him I'll look in at the stable after duty and see the screws areall right; and that he's to be ready to go down with them by my trainto-morrow--noon, you know. Send that note there, and the bracelets, toSt. John's Wood: and that white bouquet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid Willonget some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving mouths, and some of Wood'sdouble mouths and Nelson gags; we want new ones. Mind that lever-snapbreech-loader comes home in time. Look in at the Commission stables,and if you see a likely black charger as good as Black Douglas, tell me.Write about the stud fox-terrier, and buy the blue Dandy Dinmont; LadyGuinevere wants him. I'll take him down with me, but first put me intoharness, Rake; it's getting late."

  Murmuring which multiplicity of directions, for Rake to catch as hecould, in the softest and sleepiest of tones, Bertie Cecil drank aglass of Curacoa, put his tall, lit
he limbs indolently off his sofa, andsurrendered himself to the martyrdom of cuirass and gorget, standing sixfeet one without his spurred jacks, but light-built and full of grace asa deer, or his weight would not have been what it was in gentleman-riderraces from the Hunt steeple-chase at La Marche to the Grand National inthe Shires.

  "As if Parliament couldn't meet without dragging us through the dust!The idiots write about 'the swells in the Guards,' as if we had all funand no work, and knew nothing of the rough of the Service. I should liketo learn what they call sitting motionless in your saddle through halfa day, while a London mob goes mad round you, and lost dogs snap at yourcharger's nose, and dirty little beggars squeeze against your legs, andthe sun broils you, or the fog soaks you, and you sit sentinel over agingerbread coach till you're deaf with the noise, and blind with thedust, and sick with the crowd, and half dead for want of sodas andbrandies, and from going a whole morning without one cigarette! Notto mention the inevitable apple-woman who invariably entangles herselfbetween your horse's legs, and the certainty of your riding downsomebody and having a summons about it the next day! If all that isn'tthe rough of the Service, I should like to know what is. Why the hottestday in the batteries, or the sharpest rush into Ghoorkhas or Bhoteahs,would be light work, compared!" murmured Cecil with the most plaintivepity for the hardships of life in the Household, while Rake, with therapid proficiency of long habit, braced, and buckled and buttoned,knotted the sash with the knack of professional genius, girt on thebrightest of all glittering polished silver steel "Cut-and-Thrusts,"with its rich gild mountings, and contemplated with flatteringself-complacency leathers white as snow, jacks brilliant as blackvarnish could make them, and silver spurs of glittering radiance, untilhis master stood full harnessed, at length, as gallant a Life Guardsmanas ever did duty at the Palace by making love to the handsomestlady-in-waiting.

  "To sit wedged in with one's troop for five hours, and in a drizzle too!Houses oughtn't to meet until the day's fine; I'm sure they are inno hurry," said Cecil to himself, as he pocketed a dainty, filmyhandkerchief, all perfume, point, and embroidery, with the interlaced B.C., and the crest on the corner, while he looked hopelessly out of thewindow. He was perfectly happy, drenched to the skin on the moors aftera royal, or in a fast thing with the Melton men from Thorpe Trusselsto Ranksborough; but three drops of rain when on duty were a totallydifferent matter, to be resented with any amount of dandy's lamentationsand epicurean diatribes.

  "Ah, young one, how are you? Is the day very bad?" he asked with languidwistfulness as the door opened.

  But indifferent and weary--on account of the weather--as the tone was,his eyes rested with a kindly, cordial light on the newcomer, a youngfellow of scarcely twenty, like himself in feature, though much smallerand slighter in build; a graceful boy enough, with no fault in his face,except a certain weakness in the mouth, just shadowed only, as yet, withdown.

  A celebrity, the Zu-Zu, the last coryphee whom Bertie had translatedfrom a sphere of garret bread-and-cheese to a sphere of villa champagneand chicken (and who, of course, in proportion to the previous scarcityof her bread-and-cheese, grew immediately intolerant of any wine lessthan 90s the dozen), said the Cecil cared for nothing longer than afortnight, unless it was his horse, Forest King. It was very ungratefulin the Zu-Zu, since he cared for her at the least a whole quarter,paying for his fidelity at the tune of a hundred a month; and, also,it was not true, for, besides Forest King, he loved his young brotherBerkeley--which, however, she neither knew nor guessed.

  "Beastly!" replied the young gentleman, in reference to the weather,which was indeed pretty tolerable for an English morning in February. "Isay, Bertie--are you in a hurry?"

  "The very deuce of a hurry, little one; why?" Bertie never was in ahurry, however, and he said this as lazily as possible, shaking thewhite horsehair over his helmet, and drawing in deep draughts of TurkishLatakia previous to parting with his pipe for the whole of four or fivehours.

  "Because I am in a hole--no end of a hole--and I thought you'd help me,"murmured the boy, half penitently, half caressingly; he was very girlishin his face and his ways. On which confession Rake retired into thebathroom; he could hear just as well there, and a sense of decorum madehim withdraw, though his presence would have been wholly forgotten bythem. In something the same spirit as the French countess accounted forher employing her valet to bring her her chocolate in bed--"Est ce quevous appelez cette chose-la un homme?"--Bertie had, on occasion, sowholly regarded servants as necessary furniture that he had gonethrough a love scene, with that handsome coquette Lady Regalia,totally oblivious of the presence of the groom of the chambers, andthe possibility of that person's appearance in the witness-box of theDivorce Court. It was in no way his passion that blinded him--he didnot put the steam on like that, and never went in for any disturbingemotion--it was simply habit, and forgetfulness that those functionarieswere not born mute, deaf, and sightless.

  He tossed some essence over his hands, and drew on his gauntlets.

  "What's up Berk?"

  The boy hung his head, and played a little uneasily with an ormoluterrier-pot, upsetting half the tobacco in it; he was trained to hisbrother's nonchalant, impenetrable school, and used to his brother'sset; a cool, listless, reckless, thoroughbred, and impassive set, whosefirst canon was that you must lose your last thousand in the worldwithout giving a sign that you winced, and must win half a millionwithout showing that you were gratified; but he had something of girlishweakness in his nature, and a reserve in his temperament that was withdifficulty conquered.

  Bertie looked at him, and laid his hand gently on the young one'sshoulder.

  "Come, my boy; out with it! It's nothing very bad, I'll be bound!"

  "I want some more money; a couple of ponies," said the boy a littlehuskily; he did not meet his brother's eyes that were looking straightdown on him.

  Cecil gave a long, low whistle, and drew a meditative whiff from hismeerschaum.

  "Tres cher, you're always wanting money. So am I. So is everybody. Thenormal state of man is to want money. Two ponies. What's it for?"

  "I lost it at chicken-hazard last night. Poulteney lent it me, and Itold him I would send it him in the morning. The ponies were gone beforeI thought of it, Bertie, and I haven't a notion where to get them to payhim again."

  "Heavy stakes, young one, for you," murmured Cecil, while his handdropped from the boy's shoulder, and a shadow of gravity passed over hisface; money was very scarce with himself. Berkeley gave him a hurried,appealing glance. He was used to shift all his anxieties on to hiselder brother, and to be helped by him under any difficulty. Cecil neverallotted two seconds' thought to his own embarrassments, but he wouldmultiply them tenfold by taking other people's on him as well, with anunremitting and thoughtless good nature.

  "I couldn't help it," pleaded the lad, with coaxing and almost piteousapology. "I backed Grosvenor's play, and you know he's always the mostwonderful luck in the world. I couldn't tell he'd go a crowner and havesuch cards as he had. How shall I get the money, Bertie? I daren'task the governor; and besides I told Poulteney he should have it thismorning. What do you think if I sold the mare? But then I couldn't sellher in a minute----"

  Cecil laughed a little, but his eyes, as they rested on the lad's young,fair, womanish face, were very gentle under the long shade of theirlashes.

  "Sell the mare! Nonsense! How should anybody live without a hack? Ican pull you through, I dare say. Ah! by George, there's the quarterschiming. I shall be too late, as I live."

  Not hurried still, however; even by that near prospect, he sauntered tohis dressing-table, took up one of the pretty velvet and gold-filigreedabsurdities, and shook out all the banknotes there were in it. Therewere fives and tens enough to count up 45 pounds. He reached overand caught up a five from a little heap lying loose on a novel of DuTerrail's, and tossed the whole across the room to the boy.

  "There you are, young one! But don't borrow of any but your own peopleagain, Berk. We don't do that. N
o, no!--no thanks! Shut up all that. Ifever you get in a hole, I'll take you out if I can. Good-by--will yougo to the Lords? Better not--nothing to see, and still less to hear. Allstale. That's the only comfort for us--we are outside!" he said, withsomething that almost approached hurry in the utterance; so great washis terror of anything approaching a scene, and so eager was he toescape his brother's gratitude. The boy had taken the notes withdelighted thanks indeed, but with that tranquil and unprotestingreadiness with which spoiled childishness or unhesitating selfishnessaccepts gifts and sacrifices from another's generosity, which havebeen so general that they have ceased to have magnitude. As his brotherpassed him, however, he caught his hand a second, and looked up with amist before his eyes, and a flush half of shame, half of gratitude, onhis face.

  "What a trump you are!--how good you are, Bertie!"

  Cecil laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

  "First time I ever heard it, my dear boy," he answered, as he loungeddown the staircase, his chains clashing and jingling; while, pressinghis helmet on to his forehead and pulling the chin scale over hismustaches, he sauntered out into the street where his charger waswaiting.

  "The deuce!" he thought, as he settled himself in his stirrups, whilethe raw morning wind tossed his white plume hither and thither. "Inever remembered!--I don't believe I've left myself money enough totake Willon and Rake and the cattle down to the Shires to-morrow. If Ishouldn't have kept enough to take my own ticket with!--that would beno end of a sell. On my word I don't know how much there's left on thedressing-table. Well! I can't help it; Poulteney had to be paid; I can'thave Berk's name show in anything that looks shady."

  The 50 pounds had been the last remnant of a bill, done under greatdifficulties with a sagacious Jew, and Cecil had no more certainty ofpossessing any more money until next pay-day should come round than hehad of possessing the moon; lack of ready money, moreover, is a seriousinconvenience when you belong to clubs where "pounds and fives" are thelowest points, and live with men who take the odds on most events inthousands; but the thing was done; he would not have undone it at theboy's loss, if he could; and Cecil, who never was worried by the loss ofthe most stupendous "crusher," and who made it a rule never to think ofdisagreeable inevitabilities two minutes together, shook his charger'sbridle and cantered down Piccadilly toward the barracks, while BlackDouglas reared, curveted, made as if he would kick, and finally ended by"passaging" down half the length of the road, to the imminent peril ofall passers-by, and looking eminently glossy, handsome, stalwart, andfoam-flecked, while he thus expressed his disapprobation of forming partof the escort from Palace to Parliament.

  "Home Secretary should see about it; it's abominable! If we must comeamong them, they ought to be made a little odoriferous first. A coupleof fire-engines now, playing on them continuously with rose-water andbouquet d'Ess for an hour before we come up, might do a little good.I'll get some men to speak about it in the house; call it 'Bill forthe Purifying of the Unwashed, and Prevention of their Suffocating HerMajesty's Brigades,'" murmured Cecil to the Earl of Broceliande, nexthim, as they sat down in their saddles with the rest of the "FirstLife," in front of St. Stephen's, with a hazy fog steaming round them,and a London mob crushing against their chargers' flanks, while BlackDouglas stood like a rock, though a butcher's tray was pressed againsthis withers, a mongrel was snapping at his hocks, and the inevitableapple-woman, of Cecil's prophetic horror, was wildly plunging betweenhis legs, as the hydra-headed rushed down in insane, headlong haste tostare at, and crush on to, that superb body of Guards.

  "I would give a kingdom for a soda and brandy. Bah! ye gods! What asmell of fish and fustian," signed Bertie, with a yawn of utter faminefor want of something to drink and something to smoke, were it only aglass of brown sherry and a little papelito, while he glanced downat the snow-white and jet-black masterpieces of Rake's genius, allsmirched, and splashed, and smeared.

  He had given fifty pounds away, and scarcely knew whether he should haveenough to take his ticket next day into the Shires, and he owed fiftyhundred without having the slightest grounds for supposing he shouldever be able to pay it, and he cared no more about either of thesethings than he cared about the Zu-Zu's throwing the half-guineapeaches into the river after a Richmond dinner, in the effort to hitdragon-flies with them; but to be half a day without a cigarette, and tohave a disagreeable odor of apples and corduroys wafted up to him, was acalamity that made him insupportably depressed and unhappy.

  Well, why not? It is the trifles of life that are its bores, after all.Most men can meet ruin calmly, for instance, or laugh when they lie in aditch with their own knee-joint and their hunter's spine broken over thedouble post and rails: it is the mud that has choked up your horn justwhen you wanted to rally the pack; it's the whip who carries you offto a division just when you've sat down to your turbot; it's the tenseconds by which you miss the train; it's the dust that gets in youreyes as you go down to Epsom; it's the pretty little rose note that wentby accident to your house instead of your club, and raised a storm frommadame; it's the dog that always will run wild into the birds; it's thecook who always will season the white soup wrong--it is these that arethe bores of life, and that try the temper of your philosophy.

  An acquaintance of mine told me the other day of having lost heavy sumsthrough a swindler, with as placid an indifference as if he had lost atoothpick; but he swore like a trooper because a thief had stolen thesteel-mounted hoof of a dead pet hunter.

  "Insufferable!" murmured Cecil, hiding another yawn behind his gauntlet;"the Line's nothing half so bad as this; one day in a London mob beatsa year's campaigning; what's charging a pah to charging an oyster-stall,or a parapet of fascines to a bristling row of umbrellas?"

  Which question as to the relative hardships of the two Arms was aquestion of military interest never answered, as Cecil scattered theumbrellas right and left, and dashed from the Houses of Parliamentfull trot with the rest of the escort on the return to the Palace; theafternoon sun breaking out with a brightened gleam from the clouds,and flashing off the drawn swords, the streaming plumes, the glitteringbreastplates, the gold embroideries, and the fretting chargers.

  But a mere sun-gleam just when the thing was over, and the escort waspacing back to Hyde Park barracks, could not console Cecil for fog,wind, mud, oyster-vendors, bad odors, and the uproar and riff-raff ofthe streets; specially when his throat was as dry as a lime-kiln,and his longing for the sight of a cheroot approaching desperation.Unlimited sodas, three pipes smoked silently over Delphine Demirep'slast novel, a bath well dashed with eau de cologne, and some glasses ofAnisette after the fatigue-duty of unharnessing, restored him a little;but he was still weary and depressed into gentler languor than everthrough all the courses at a dinner party at the Austrian Embassy,and did not recover his dejection at a reception of the Duchess ofLydiard-Tregoze, where the prettiest French Countess of her time askedhim if anything was the matter.

  "Yes!" said Bertie with a sigh, and a profound melancholy in what thewoman called his handsome Spanish eyes, "I have had a great misfortune;we have been on duty all day!"

  He did not thoroughly recover tone, light and careless though his temperwas, till the Zu-Zu, in her diamond-edition of a villa, prescribed Cremede Bouzy and Parfait Amour in succession, with a considerable amountof pine-apple ice at three o'clock in the morning, which restorativeprescription succeeded.

  Indeed, it took something as tremendous as divorce from all forms ofsmoking for five hours to make an impression on Bertie. He had the mostserene insouciance that ever a man was blessed with; in worry he did notbelieve--he never let it come near him; and beyond a little difficultysometimes in separating too many entangled rose-chins caught round himat the same time, and the annoyance of a miscalculation on the flat, orthe ridge-and-furrow, when a Maldon or Danebury favorite came nowhere,or his book was wrong for the Grand National, Cecil had no cares of anysort or description.

  True, the Royallieu Peerage, one of the most ancient and almost one oft
he most impoverished in the kingdom, could ill afford to maintain itssons in the expensive career on which it had launched them, andthe chief there was to spare usually went between the eldest son, aSecretary of Legation in that costly and charming City of Vienna, andthe young one, Berkeley, through the old Viscount's partiality; so that,had Bertie ever gone so far as to study his actual position, he wouldhave probably confessed that it was, to say the least, awkward; but thenhe never did this, certainly never did it thoroughly. Sometimes hefelt himself near the wind when settling-day came, or the Jews appearedutterly impracticable; but, as a rule, things had always trimmedsomehow, and though his debts were considerable, and he was literally aspenniless as a man can be to stay in the Guards at all, he had never inany shape realized the want of money. He might not be able to raise aguinea to go toward that long-standing account, his army tailor's bill,and post obits had long ago forestalled the few hundred a year that,under his mother's settlements, would come to him at the Viscount'sdeath; but Cecil had never known in his life what it was not to have afirst-rate stud, not to live as luxuriously as a duke, not to order thecostliest dinners at the clubs, and be among the first to lead all thesplendid entertainments and extravagances of the Household; he had neverbeen without his Highland shooting, his Baden gaming, his prize-winningschooner among the R. V. Y. Squadron, his September battues, hisPytchley hunting, his pretty expensive Zu-Zus and other toys, his dragfor Epsom and his trap and hack for the Park, his crowd of engagementsthrough the season, and his bevy of fair leaders of the fashion tosmile on him, and shower their invitation-cards on him, like a rain ofrose-leaves, as one of the "best men."

  "Best," that is, in the sense of fashion, flirting, waltzing, andgeneral social distinction; in no other sense, for the newest ofdebutantes knew well that "Beauty," though the most perfect of flirts,would never be "serious," and had nothing to be serious with; onwhich understanding he was allowed by the sex to have the run of theirboudoirs and drawing-rooms, much as if he were a little lion-dog; theycounted him quite "safe." He made love to the married women, to besure; but he was quite certain not to run away with the marriageabledaughters.

  Hence, Bertie had never felt the want of all that is bought by andrepresents money, and imbibed a vague, indistinct impression thatall these things that made life pleasant came by Nature, and werethe natural inheritance and concomitants of anybody born in a decentstation, and endowed with a tolerable tact; such a matter-of-factdifficulty as not having gold enough to pay for his own and his stud'stransit to the Shires had very rarely stared him in the face, andwhen it did he trusted to chance to lift him safely over such a social"yawner," and rarely trusted in vain.

  According to all the canons of his Order he was never excited, neverdisappointed, never exhilarated, never disturbed; and also, of course,never by any chance embarrassed. "Votre imperturbabilite," as the Princede Ligne used to designate La Grande Catherine, would have been anadmirable designation for Cecil; he was imperturbable under everything;even when an heiress, with feet as colossal as her fortune, made him aproposal of marriage, and he had to retreat from all the offered honorsand threatened horrors, he courteously, but steadily declined them. Norin more interesting adventures was he less happy in his coolness.When my Lord Regalia, who never knew when he was not wanted, came ininopportunely in a very tender scene of the young Guardsman's (thenbut a Cornet) with his handsome Countess, Cecil lifted his long lasheslazily, turning to him a face of the most plait-il? and innocentdemureness--or consummate impudence, whichever you like. "We're playingSolitaire. Interesting game. Queer fix, though, the ball's in that'sleft all alone in the middle, don't you think?" Lord Regalia felt hisown similarity to the "ball in a fix" too keenly to appreciate theinteresting character of the amusement, or the coolness of the chiefperformer in it; but "Beauty's Solitaire" became a synonym thenceforthamong the Household to typify any very tender passages "sotto quartr'occhi."

  This made his reputation on the town; the ladies called it very wicked,but were charmed by the Richelieu-like impudence all the same, andpetted the sinner; and from then till now he had held his own with them;dashing through life very fast, as became the first riding man in theBrigades, but enjoying it very fully, smoothly, and softly; liking theworld and being liked by it.

  To be sure, in the background there was always that ogre of money, andthe beast had a knack of growing bigger and darker every year; butthen, on the other hand, Cecil never looked at him--never thought abouthim--knew, too, that he stood just as much behind the chairs of men whomthe world accredited as millionaires, and whenever the ogre gave him acold grip, that there was for the moment no escaping, washed away thetouch of it in a warm, fresh draft of pleasure.