Sword and Gown | Page 3

unsatisfactory and illogical excuse?
Fanny Molyneux did; she was the best-natured little woman alive, and
wise, too, in her generation, for she never brought matters to a crisis, or

measured her strength against the "heavy-weight."
Indeed, they got on together extremely well. Whenever Keene
happened to be with them--which was not often--she gave up the
management of Harry's Foreign Affairs to him, reserving to herself the
control of the Home Department, and, between the two, they ruled their
vassal right royally. After some months' acquaintance they became the
greatest friends; on Royston's side it was one of the few quite pure and
unselfish feelings he had ever cherished toward one of her sex not
nearly akin to him in blood. He always seemed to look on her as a very
nice, but rather spoiled child, to be humored and petted to any amount,
but very seldom to be reasoned with or gravely consulted. Considering
her numerous fascinations, and the little practice he had had in the
paternal or fraternal line, he really did it remarkably well: be it
understood, it was only en petite comité that all this went on; in general
society his manner was strictly formal and deferential. It provoked her
though, sometimes, and one day she ventured to say, "I wish you would
learn to treat me like a grown-up woman!" Royston's eyes darkened
strangely; and one glance flashed out of the gloom that made her shrink
away from him then, and blush painfully when she thought of it
afterward alone. He was frowning, too, as he answered, in a voice
unusually harsh and constrained, "It seems to me we go on very well as
it is. But women never will leave well alone." She did not like to
analyze his answer or her own feelings too closely, so she tried to
persuade herself it was a very rude speech, and that she ought to be
offended at it. There was a coolness between those two for some days,
amounting to distant courtesy. But the dignified style did not suit ma
mignonne (as Harry delighted to call her) at all, and was, indeed, a
lamentable failure; it made her look as if she had been trying on one of
her great-grandmother's short-waisted dresses; so they soon fell back
into their old ways, and, like the model prince and princess, "lived very
happily ever afterward."
CHAPTER II.
Keene had spent some time with the Molyneuxs during the autumn and
winter, and had conducted himself so far with perfect propriety,

certainly keeping Harry straighter than he would have gone alone; for
he was, unluckily, of a convivial turn of mind wholly incompatible
with delicate health and a frail constitution. Being a favorite with the
world in general, he felt bound, I suppose, to reciprocate, so, albeit
strictly enjoined to keep the earliest hours, he would sit up till dawn if
any one encouraged him, and then come home, perfectly sober perhaps,
but staggering from mere weakness. He did not care for deep drinking
in the least, but the number of magnums he had assisted in flooring,
when on a regimen of "three glasses of sherry," would have made a
double row of nails round the coffin of a larger man. Nature, however,
being a Dame, won't stand being slighted, or having her admonitions
disregarded, and the way she asserted herself on the morrow was
retributive in the extreme. Harry was always so very ill after one of
those nights "upon the war-path." On such occasions, his feelings,
without being quite remorseful, were beautifully and curiously penitent;
they manifested themselves chiefly by an extraordinary ebullition of
the domestic affections. "Bring me my children" (he had two tiny ones),
he would cry on waking, just as another man would call for brandy and
soda; and, strange to say, the presence of those innocents seemed to
have a similarly invigorating and refreshing effect: during all that day
he would make pilgrimages to their cribs, and gaze upon them sleeping
with the reverence of an old dévote kneeling before the shrine of her
most efficacious saint. Then he would go forth, and return with a
present for his wife, bearing an exact proportion in value to the extent
and duration of the past misdemeanor; so that her jewel-case and
writing-table soon became as prettily suggestive as the votive chapel of
Nôtre Dame des Dunes. Very unnecessary were these peace-offerings;
for that dear little woman never dreamt of "hitting him when he was
down," or taking any other low advantage of his weakness. She would
make his breakfast beamingly, at all untimely hours, and otherwise pet
and caress him, so that he might have been a knight returning wounded
from some Holy War, instead of a discomfited scalp-hunter, bearing
still evident traces of the "war-paint." A