"Mohun knew the count's family. Some of them, maiden aunts I suppose, were devotees of the first order: these came in person, or sent their pet priests, to argue with him on his unchristian habits of sullen solitude. The men of his old set came too, to laugh him out of the horrors. Saint and sinner got the same answer--a shake of the head, a curse, a threat if he were not left alone, growled out between deep draughts of strong Moldavian wine. They went, and were wise; for his pistols lay always beside him--in case his servants offended him, or if he should take a sudden fancy to suicide--and the shaking finger could have pulled a trigger still. "After a little he left Vienna, shut himself up in his castle, and would see no one. "In England they would have tried at the '_de lunatico_' statute; but his next of kin left him in peace, biding their time as patiently as they could. They had not to wait long; in four years a good constitution broke up, suddenly at last, and the count exchanged stupor for a sleep with his fathers, without benefit of clergy. Perhaps they would not have given him absolution, for he died certainly not in charity with all men." "I don't know," Mrs. Bellasys objected, with a timid obstinacy; "I can not argue with you; but I am sure it was very wrong." I struck in to the meek little woman's rescue. "That's right, Mrs. Bellasys, don't let him put you down with the high hand; it's always his way when truth is against him; but I never knew him break down a stubborn fact yet." Guy turned upon me directly. "Frank, I have often remarked in you, with pain, quite a feminine propensity to theorize. Women _will_ do it. My dear Mrs. Bellasys, don't look so dreadfully like an accusing angel about to bring me to book; you know I am a hopeless heretic. They get up a sort of _Memoria Technica_ in early youth, and it clings to them all their life through. If they go astray, they never cease proclaiming aloud that 'they know it's very wrong;' though eminently unpractical, they think it due to themselves to pet certain abstract truths (circumstances don't affect them in the least), like that priestess of Cotytto, who said to the magistrate, through her tears, 'I may have been unfortunate, but I've always been respectable!' Sometimes principle gets the pull over passion, but, in such a case, regrets come as often afterward as remorse does in the reverse. I was reading a French story the other day--" He checked himself with a laugh. "Bah! I am in the prosaic vein, it seems, anecdoting like the old knave of clubs." "Will you go on?" Flora said, leaning over toward him, her eyes glittering in the firelight.