Mr. Marlboro' was a slight man, hardly to be called tall. He wore black, of course, the coat fastened on the breast and letting out just a glimpse of ruffled linen and glancing jewel below, while the lofty brow, set in its fair curling hair, and the peaked beard curling and waving about the throat, gave him the appearance of a Vandyck stepped from the frame. He had the further peculiarity of eyes, dark hazel eyes, that would have glowed like fever, if they were not perpetually wrapped in dream. There was a certain air of careful breeding about him, different from Earl St. George Erne's high-bred bearing, inasmuch as he insisted upon his pedigree and St. George forgot his. Too fiery a Southerner to seek the advantages of Northern colleges, he had educated himself in England, and had contracted while at Oxford the habit of eating opium. Returning home at his majority, and remaining long enough to establish his own ideas, which were peculiarly despotic, upon his property,--through many subsequent travels, tasting in each an experience of all the folly and madness the great capitals of the world afford, through all his life, indeed, this habit was the only thing Marlboro' had not mastered. One other thing, albeit, there was, of which Marlboro' was the slave, and that was the Marlboro' temper. Eloise returned his salutation cordially, and with a certain naughty pleasure, since Mr. St. George was looking on, and since that person, constituting himself her grim guardian, had in a manner warned her of the other. Then she displayed her pretty little ink-stained hands, and ran away. Mr. Marlboro' looked after her, and then turned to survey St. George. "Who would not be the Abelard to such an Eloise?" he said. There was no answer. St. George was filling a pipe, and whistling the while a melancholy old tune. "I'll tell you what, St. George"---- Here he paused, and thrummed on the book in time to the tune. "You were about to impart some information?" "Has your little nun taken the black veil?" "It is no nun of my shriving." "Are you King Ahasuerus himself, to have lived so long in the house with Miss Changarnier, may I ask, and to have thrown no handkerchief?" "There is some confusion in your rhetoric. But it is not I who am tyrant,--it is she who stands for that;--I am only Mordecai the Jew sitting in the king's gate. As so many Jews do to-day," muttered St. George,--"ay, and on their thrones, too. I am afraid we are neither of us very well up in our Biblical history. She is the Grand Unapproachable." "_Tant mieux._ My way is all the clearer." "Your way to what?" "To the altar!" "Yes, you should have married long ago, Marlboro'," said Mr. St. George, the pipe being lighted, the face looming out of azure wreaths, and the heels taking an altitude. "I came home," said Marlboro', "to marry Eloise Changarnier." "That is exactly what I intend to do myself." "You!"