Sword and Gown | Page 3

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 N?tre 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 stern old lady told her once that such condonation of offenses was unprincipled and immoral. It may be so, but I can not think the example