Mademoiselle Théroigne had presumed a trifle too far on her desirability. At least, consulting her own interest, she should have withheld, one way or the other, from the beast of her ambition that incitement to feed passion with fire. The Viscount Murk lay amongst the glasses on the table, dead of a rushing apoplexy. That is all that it is necessary to say about him. When, later, Ned could somewhat collect his faculties, he recalled dimly how a white face, crowned with a mass of beautiful hair, had seemed to hang staringly--before it suddenly vanished--in the doorway of the fatal room. But, when he came to question Jepps about Mademoiselle Lambertine, he heard that the lady--after returning to her own apartments for a brief while--had quitted the house without sign or message. Yet one other visitor disturbed that night the house of death--the Chevalier d’Eon. She came in a chair from the theatre, and Ned, going forth to her, saw her startled old face twisting with chagrin, as he thought, in the light of the flambeaux. She had heard the news from a link-boy in the square. “I can do nothing by coming in, I suppose?” she said. “Nothing whatever,” answered Ned passionlessly. “He is quite beyond your influence.” BOOK II. CHAPTER I. Edward, Lord Murk--now three years enjoying the viscounty--was established, during the summer of ’92, at “Stowling,” his lordship’s seat near Bury St Edmunds. Since his uncle’s death he had spent the greater part of his time here--perhaps because his associations with the place were less of the disreputable old peer than of the traditions and the _personnel_ that had made it dear to him in his youth. He had sold both the Cavendish Square property and the villa at Putney; and was consequently, no doubt, very meanly equipped with domicile for a gentleman of his position. That, maybe, to him was a term little else than synonymous with “opportunity.” Position at its best enabled him to realise on some ethical speculations of his earlier educational period. His Paris experiences had given to these their final direction; and though he was theoretically as convinced as ever that men should be made virtuous by Act of Parliament, the tablets of his soul, bitten into by the acid of human suffering, were come nowadays to exhibit the expression of a very human sympathy. He gave with a large discriminating nobility; yet, no doubt, he was little popular in the neighbourhood, because in his benefactions he was discerning, and because, in indulging his liberality, he would forego any display of the wealth that he was ever passing on to others. Already for a peer he was poor; and, had he chosen, he might have cited, in favour of his conception of a mechanical morality, the fact that an emotional morality secretly despised in him that poverty by which it profited. But he did not choose. The spirit of philosophy still dwelt in him very sweet and sound.