’Adieu.  Livia’s “arch-plotter” will weigh the letter he reads to the smallest fraction of a fraction before he moves a step.

’I could leave it and come to it again and add and add.  I foresee in Livia’s mind a dread of the aforesaid “arch,” and an interdict.  So the letter must be closed, sealed and into the box, with the hand I still call mine, though I should doubt my right if it were contested fervently.  I am singing the waltz.

’Adieu,
’Ever and beyond it,
’Your obedient Queen,
’Henrietta.

’P.S.-My Lord Tyrant has departed—­as on other occasions.  The prisoner of his word is sure to take his airing before he presents himself to redeem it.  His valet is left to pay bills, fortunately for Livia.  She entrusted her purse yesterday to a man picked up on the road by my lord, that he might play for her.  Captain Abrane assured her he had a star, and Mr. Potts thought him a rush compere, an adept of those dreadful gambling tables.  Why will she continue to play!  The purse was returned to her, without so much as a piece of silver in it; the man has flown.  Sir M. Corby says, he is a man whose hands betray him—­or did to Sir M.; expects to see him one day on the wrong side of the criminal bar.  He struck me as not being worse than absurd.  He was, in any case, an unfit companion, and our C. would help to rescue the Eccentric from such complicating associates.  I see worlds of good she may do.  Happily, he is no slave of the vice of gambling; so she would not suffer that anxiety.  I wish it could be subjoined, that he has no malicious pleasure in misleading others.  Livia is inconsolable over her pet, young Lord Cressett, whom he yesterday induced to “try his luck”—­with the result.  We leave, if bills are paid, in two days.  Captain Abrane and Mr. Potts left this afternoon; just enough to carry them home.  Papa and your blissful sister out driving.  Riette within her four walls and signing herself,

‘Theprisoner of chillon.’

CHAPTER XIII

AN IRRUPTION.  OF MISTRESS GOSSIP IN BREACH OF THE CONVENTION

‘It is a dark land,’ Carinthia said, on seeing our Island’s lowered clouds in swift motion, without a break of their folds, above the sheer white cliffs.

—­She said it, we know.  That poor child Carinthia Jane, when first she beheld Old England’s shores, tossing in the packet-boat on a wild Channel sea, did say it and think it, for it is in the family that she did; and no wonder that she should, the day being showery from the bed of the sun, after a frosty three days, at the close of autumn.  We used to have an eye of our own for English weather before printed Meteorological Observations and Forecasts undertook to supplant the shepherd and the poacher, and the pilot with his worn brown leather telescope tucked beneath his arm.  All three would have told you, that the end of a three days’ frost in the late season of the year and the early, is likely to draw the warm winds from the Atlantic over Cornish Land’s End and Lizard.