I could not help being struck by the languid gaze with which he turned his eyes upon her as she bent over him. There was vacancy in his aspect, and dreamy stupor.

‘Are we late from chapel?’ said she. ‘Bromley’s last prayer seemed interminably long.’

‘Rather, I should think,’ was the Viscount’s answer. ‘Rather, a trifle or so – late, you said? O ah! to be sure. I have been sitting with you two hours, have I not Louisa? – just dusk when I walked up the valley – late! certainly –’

This not particularly intelligible reply was given in the tone and with the manner of a man just startled from a heavy slumber, and yet the noble Viscount had evidently been wide awake when we entered the room. Having delivered the speech above mentioned, he ceased to notice the Marchioness, and relapsed as if involuntarily into his former position and look.

‘Won’t you take some supper?’ she inquired.

No answer. She repeated the question.

‘G—d, no,’ he said hastily, as if annoyed at interruption, his countenance at the same time wearing a rapt expression, as if every faculty were spell-bound in some absorbing train of thought. The Marchioness turned from him with a grimace. She nodded at me and whispered,

‘Learned men now and then have very strange vagaries.’

Not at all discomposed by his strange conduct, she proceeded quietly to remove her bonnet, shawl and boa; and having thrown them over the back of a sofa, she passed her fingers through her hair, and shaking aside the loose ringlets into which it was thus parted, turned towards the mirror a face by no means youthful, by no means blooming, by no means regularly beautiful – but which yet had been able, by the aid of that long chiselled nose, those soft and sleepy eyes, and that bland smile always hovering round the deceitful lips, to captivate the greatest man of his age.

‘Come,’ she said, gliding towards the table. ‘Take a sandwich, Charles, and give me a wing of that chicken. We can amuse each other till Macara thinks proper to come round and behave like a sensible Christian.’

I did not, reader, ask what was the matter with Macara, for I had a very good guess myself as to the cause and origin of that profound fit of meditation in which his lordship now sat entranced. I fell forthwith to the discussion of the sandwiches and chicken, which the Marchioness dispensed to me with liberal hand. She also sat, and, as we sipped wine together, her soft eyes looking over the brim of the glass expressed far more easy enjoyment of the good things given her for her use than perplexing concern for the singular quandary in which her cher ami sat speechless and motionless by the hearth. Meantime, the ecstatic smiles which had, every now and then, kindled Macara’s eye and passed like sunshine over his countenance began to recur with fainter effect and at longer intervals. The almost sensual look of intense gratification and absorption gave place to an air of fatigue. Our voices seemed recalling him to recollection. He stirred in his seat, then rose, and with an uncertain step began to pace the room. His eye – heavy still, and filmy – caught mine.

‘Ho! is that you?’ he said in a peculiar voice, which scarcely seemed under the speaker’s command. ‘Hardly knew you were in the room – and Louisa too I declare! Well, I must have been adipose. And what has Bromley said tonight? You were at chapel, somebody told me a while since – at least I think so, but it may be all fancy! I daresay you’ll think me in an extraordinary mood to-night, but I’ll explain directly – as soon as I get sufficiently collected.’

With an unsteady hand he poured out a goblet of water, drank part, and, dipping his fingers in, cooled with the remainder his forehead and temples. ‘My head throbs,’ said he. ‘I must not try this experiment often.’ As he spoke, his hand shook so convulsively that he could hardly replace the glass on the table. Smiling grimly at this evidence of abused nerves, he continued,

‘Really, Townshend! Only mark that! And what do you think it is occasioned by?’

‘Intoxication,’ I said concisely. ‘And that of a very heathen kind. You were far better take to dry spirits at once, Macara, than do as you do.’

‘Upon my conscience,’ replied the Viscount, sitting down and striking the table with that same shaking hand. ‘I do believe, Townshend, you are in the right. I begin to find that this system of mine, rational as I thought it, is fraught with the most irresistible temptation.’

Really, reader, it is difficult to deal with a man like Macara, who has candour at will to screen even his weakest points from attack. However infamous may be the position in which he is surprised, he turns round without a blush, and instead of defending himself, by denying that matters are as appearances would warrant you to suppose, usually admits all the disgrace of his situation, and begins with metaphysical profundity to detail all the motives and secret springs of action which brought matters to the state in which you found them. According to this system of tactics the Viscount proceeded with his self-accusation.

‘It was a fine evening, as you know,’ said he, ‘and I thought I would take a stroll up the valley, just to alleviate those low spirits which had been oppressing me all day. Townshend, I dare say you do not know what it is to look at an unclouded sun, at pleasant fields and young woods crowding green and bright to the edge of a river, and from these fair objects to be unable to derive any feeling but such as is tinged with sadness.