At that same hour, Beatrice, burying her face on her pillow, turned from the loathsome day, and could have prayed for death. At that same hour, Giulio Franzini Count di Peschiera, dismissing some gaunt, haggard Italians, with whom he had been in close conference, sallied forth to reconnoitre the house that contained Violante. At that same hour, Baron Levy was seated before his desk, casting up a deadly array of figures, headed "Account with the Right Hon. Audley Egerton, M.P., _Dr._ and _Cr._"--title-deeds strewed around him, and Frank Hazeldean's post-obit peeping out fresh from the elder parchments. At that same hour, Audley Egerton had just concluded a letter from the chairman of his committee in the city he represented, which letter informed him he had not a chance of being re-elected. And the lines of his face were as composed as usual, and his foot rested as firm on the grim iron box; but his hand was pressed to his heart, and his eye was on the clock; and his voice muttered--"Dr. F---- should be here!" And at that hour Harley L'Estrange, who the previous night had charmed courtly crowds with his gay humor, was pacing to and fro the room in his hotel with restless strides and many a heavy sigh;--and Leonard was standing by the fountain in his garden, and watching the wintry sunbeams that sparkled athwart the spray;--and Violante was leaning on Helen's shoulder, and trying archly, yet innocently, to lead Helen to talk of Leonard;--and Helen was gazing steadfastly on the floor and answering but by monosyllables;--and Randal Leslie was walking down to his office for the last time, and reading, as he passed across the Green Park, a letter from _home_, from his sister; and then, suddenly crumpling the letter in his thin, pale hand, he looked up, beheld in the distance the spires of the great national Abbey; and recalling the words of our hero Nelson, he muttered--"Victory _and_ Westminster, but _not_ the Abbey!" And Randal Leslie felt that, within the last few days, he had made a vast stride in his ambition;--his grasp on the old Leslie lands--Frank Hazeldean betrothed, and possibly disinherited--and Dick Avenel, in the back-ground, opening, against the hated Lansmere interest, that same seat in Parliament which had first welcomed into public life Randal's rained patron. "But some must laugh, and some must weep; Thus runs the world away!" BOOK XI.--INITIAL CHAPTER.