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I saw them melt with passionate eagerness as for one brief moment they followed Guy's retreating figure and averted face. Half of Mohun's warning became superfluous after that. I was in no danger of being deceived by "Miss Bellasys taking things pleasantly." Yet, as time wore on, the idea forced itself on me more and more that Livingstone's choice was in some respects a mistake.
Maurice, after trying all other means to move her in vain, resorted to the expedient of a brain fever. When his wife and mother saw him very near his end, they sent for Fernande as a last resource. They ought to have preferred death to dishonor, of course; but, my dear Mrs. Bellasys, they were not strong-minded. What would you have? There are women and women.
Two of them, Arlington and Clifford, were Catholics in heart like the king; and in January 1669 they were summoned with the Duke of York and two Catholic nobles, Lords Bellasys and Arundell, to a conference in which Charles, after pledging them to secrecy, declared himself a Catholic and asked their counsel as to the means of establishing the Catholic religion in his realm.
But in pursuing these aims he threw himself from that moment wholly on the plot. He fanned the popular panic by accepting without question some fresh depositions in which Oates charged five Catholic peers with part in the Jesuit conspiracy. Two of these five, Lords Arundell and Bellasys, had in fact taken part in the preliminary conference which led to the Treaty of Dover.
On the hall steps stood Flora Bellasys Penthesilea in a wide-awake and plume; a dozen men were round her, striving emulously for a word or a smile, and she held her own gallantly with them all. She was waiting patiently till Guy had lighted an obstinate cigar, and was ready to mount her. He understood putting her up better than any one else, she said.
"For God's sake don't murder me!" he gasped out; "I I gave it to Miss Bellasys." "Of course you did," Mohun said, coolly; "I knew it all along. Now get up, and write that down." He spurned away the fallen man as he spoke till he rolled over and over on the floor. There is nothing which disconcerts a nature long used to obey like a sudden brutal coup de main.
"Speak for yourself," Miss Bellasys said; "I consider that a very rude observation." "Pardon me," retorted Guy; "I seldom say rude things never intentionally. I don't know which is in worst taste, that, or paying point-blank compliments. Without being mathematical, you may have heard that the line of beauty is a curve." Flora laughed. "It is difficult to catch you.
Livingstone smiled, complacently I thought, as if some one had praised one of his favorite hunters, but did not pursue the subject. When I came down before dinner he was talking to a lady in dark blue silk, with black lace over it, a wreath curiously plaited of natural ivy in her hair. I guessed her at once to be Flora Bellasys.
The young and pretty Duchess of Buckingham, Countess of Coventry, made a fool of herself for love of the handsome Thomas Bellasys, Viscount Falconberg, who was sixty-seven. People quoted the famous verses of Corneille, the septuagenarian, to a girl of twenty "Marquise, si mon visage." Women, too, had their successes in the autumn of life. Witness Ninon and Marion. Such were the models of the day.
Guy took Miss Bellasys in to dinner, and I found myself placed on her other side. I had been introduced to her ten minutes before, but had little opportunity for "improving the occasion," as the Nonconformists have it, for she never once deigned a look in my direction.
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