Some men in this mess would have tried to set themselves right with the world.  But to give in, even when he was wrong, and had all society against him, was not the way of the Honourable John.  He had kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of assassination, in India.  He kept the Diamond, in flat defiance of public opinion, in England.  There you have the portrait of the man before you, as in a picture:  a character that braved everything; and a face, handsome as it was, that looked possessed by the devil.

We heard different rumours about him from time to time.  Sometimes they said he was given up to smoking opium and collecting old books; sometimes he was reported to be trying strange things in chemistry; sometimes he was seen carousing and amusing himself among the lowest people in the lowest slums of London.  Anyhow, a solitary, vicious, underground life was the life the Colonel led.  Once, and once only, after his return to England, I myself saw him, face to face.

About two years before the time of which I am now writing, and about a year and a half before the time of his death, the Colonel came unexpectedly to my lady’s house in London.  It was the night of Miss Rachel’s birthday, the twenty-first of June; and there was a party in honour of it, as usual.  I received a message from the footman to say that a gentleman wanted to see me.  Going up into the hall, there I found the Colonel, wasted, and worn, and old, and shabby, and as wild and as wicked as ever.

“Go up to my sister,” says he; “and say that I have called to wish my niece many happy returns of the day.”

He had made attempts by letter, more than once already, to be reconciled with my lady, for no other purpose, I am firmly persuaded, than to annoy her.  But this was the first time he had actually come to the house.  I had it on the tip of my tongue to say that my mistress had a party that night.  But the devilish look of him daunted me.  I went up-stairs with his message, and left him, by his own desire, waiting in the hall.  The servants stood staring at him, at a distance, as if he was a walking engine of destruction, loaded with powder and shot, and likely to go off among them at a moment’s notice.

My lady had a dash—­no more—­of the family temper.  “Tell Colonel Herncastle,” she said, when I gave her her brother’s message, “that Miss Verinder is engaged, and that I decline to see him.”  I tried to plead for a civiller answer than that; knowing the Colonel’s constitutional superiority to the restraints which govern gentlemen in general.  Quite useless!  The family temper flashed out at me directly.  “When I want your advice,” says my lady, “you know that I always ask for it.  I don’t ask for it now.”  I went downstairs with the message, of which I took the liberty of presenting a new and amended edition of my own contriving, as follows:  “My lady and Miss Rachel regret that they are engaged, Colonel; and beg to be excused having the honour of seeing you.”