Now, I do not say that, in this particular scoundrelism he was bent on, Hamilton went deliberately about it to complicate an issue he ardently desired; only, intrigue in such matters being the recognized process, it never occurred to him, perhaps, that satisfactory conclusions could be reached without. It was a superstition of his time that beef to be tender must be first baited; and certainly the sport added a zest of its own to the subsequent feast. Moreover, the relish in the sport itself owed much of its savour, as always with sport, to the fact that the winner’s gains involved the loser’s losses. To the account of his triumph, if triumph it should be, must be put, not only the corruption of the wife but the fooling of the husband. The humour of that result were enough to vindicate in itself the most tortuous of courses; and the fact that the husband happened to be his connection and confidential friend only added in his eyes a touch of exquisite drollery to the situation. In the process of engineering that situation he tasted all the thrilling delectation of the spy, who, conscious of his sole possession of momentous secrets, plays the apparent tool to this side and the other, himself the master of both and the real arbiter of their destinies. He was walking one afternoon near the Ring in Hyde Park, watching the solemn circumambulation of the coaches about that damned and dusty arena, when a voice hailed him, and he saw Chesterfield’s glum visage protruded from the window of a chariot which had drawn up hard by. “Prithee come in, coz,” said the Earl, “and help a poor foundered wretch to forget himself in livelier company than that of his own thoughts.” Hamilton, with a laugh, acceded, and the two rolled on together. “Is your mood so lugubrious?” asked the rogue. “Why, what a weathercock it is, now pointing hot, now chill, without a devil of a reason that I can see in this temperate climate! But the last time I met you you were all for sultry, and now, to mark your face! I’ve seen a gargoyle, with an icicle hung to its nose, look less dismally frosty.” “Pish!” exclaimed the other testily. “If ’tis to the Corisande you allude, my fire that night was but a flash-in-the-pan.” “A touch of the real sulphur in it, nevertheless, I believe.” “A touch-and-go it was, then. The skit can dance and sing to make a man’s pulses leap--I admit it; but herself soon serves to kill that transitory glamour. She’s her own corrective.” “Well, I say the more the pity.” “Why do you say it? I don’t understand.” He glanced at his companion, a sudden wrath of suspicion in his eyes. “What don’t you understand?” asked Hamilton, bridling, though with an appearance of extreme urbanity, to the other’s tone. “That you should deplore my not burning my fingers in the fire I play with. Did you design that I should when you recommended that hussy to me?” “H’m! In a measure--yes,” drawled Hamilton. “For what reason? Curse it, I say, for what reason?”