But handsome Lord George was only one of many wooers whom her charms had enslaved. There were others equally ardent, if less favoured; and among them none other than the Marquess of Titchfield, Lord George's elder brother, and the future "eccentric Duke" of Portland, often referred to as "The Wizard of Welbeck." The Marquess and his younger brother had never been on the best of terms. They had little in common; and when they found themselves rival suitors for the smiles of the same maiden this incompatibility gave place to a bitter estrangement. It was not, however, until Lord George discovered that the Marquess was more intimate with his ladylove than he should be, that their mutual relations became strained to a dangerous degree. It is said that the brothers quarrelled fiercely whenever they met, and that Lord George, whose temper was violent, frequently struck his brother, who was no physical match for him. One day, so the story goes, their constant squabbles reached a climax. After a fiercer quarrel than usual Lord George struck his brother and rival repeatedly, until the latter, roused to fury, struck back and landed a heavy blow on his brother's chest, over the heart. Lord George's heart was diseased, and the blow proved fatal. This, then, is said to be the true explanation of the tragedy of that September day in 1848; of that "spasm of the heart" which, according to the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother, however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could be more natural than that the fratricide should thus shut himself from the world in sorrow and remorse? CHAPTER XIII THE WICKED BARON The British Peerage, like most other human flocks, has had many black sheep within its fold; but few of them have been blacker than Charles, fifth Baron Mohun of Okehampton, who shocked the world by his violence and licentiousness a couple of centuries ago. Charles Mohun had in his veins the blood of centuries of gallant men and fair women, from Sir William de Mohun, who fought so bravely for the Conqueror on the field of Hastings, to his father, the fourth Lord of Okehampton, who took to wife a daughter of the first Earl of Anglesey, a man who won fame in his day by his statesmanship and his pen. But there was also in his veins a black strain which branded the Mohun 'scutcheon with the stigma of eternal shame.