It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual relations became strained to a dangerous degree.  It is said that the brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George, whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no physical match for him.  One day, so the story goes, their constant squabbles reached a climax.  After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother’s chest, over the heart.  Lord George’s heart was diseased, and the blow proved fatal.

This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that September day in 1848; of that “spasm of the heart” which, according to the verdict of the coroner’s jury, was the cause of Lord George Bentinck’s death.  If this story is true, much that has been so long mysterious becomes clear.  Lord George’s sudden and tragic death is explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke of Portland’s moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity.  If the death of a brother, however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from the world in sorrow and remorse?

CHAPTER XIII

THE WICKED BARON

The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles, fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago.

Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen.  But there was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun ’scutcheon with the stigma of eternal shame.

From his early youth he exhibited an unbridled temper and a passion for low pursuits.  In an age when loose morals and violence were winked at, he soon won an unenviable notoriety by his excesses in both.  Wine and women, gambling and duelling, were the breath of life to him, and in each indulgence he was infamously supreme.  He was twice arraigned for murder, and in the prime of life he died a murderer.

Such was the fifth Lord Mohun when our story opens, towards the close of his shameless career; and in the first of the disgraceful episodes that marked its close, as in so many others of his career, a beautiful woman figures prominently—­none other than the celebrated Mrs Bracegirdle, the most fascinating actress of her day, whose witcheries made a lover of every man who came under the spell of her charms.