But under the gay exterior he affected he carried a spirit of most vile unrest. The anger which had prompted his impulse to execute, after all, the business on which he was come, and to deliver his father the letter that was to work his ruin, was all spent. He had cooled, and cool it was idle for him to tell himself that Lord Ostermore, by his heartless allusion to the crime of his early years, had proved himself worthy of nothing but the pit Mr. Caryll had been sent to dig for him. There were moments when he sought to compel himself so to think, to steel himself against all other considerations. But it was idle. The reflection that the task before him was unnatural came ever to revolt him. To gain ease, the most that he could do--and he had the faculty of it developed in a preternatural degree--was to put the business from him for the time, endeavor to forget it. And he had another matter to consider and to plague him--the matter of Hortensia Winthrop. He thought of her a great deal more than was good for his peace of mind, for all that he pretended to a gladness that things were as they were. Each morning that he lounged at the parade in St. James's Park, each evening that he visited the Ring, it was in the hope of catching some glimpse of her among the fashionable women that went abroad to see and to be seen. And on the third morning after his arrival the thing he hoped for came to pass. It had happened that my lady had ordered her carriage that morning, dressed herself with the habitual splendor, which but set off the shortcomings of her lean and angular person, egregiously coiffed, pulvilled and topknotted, and she had sent a message amounting to a command to Mistress Winthrop that she should drive in the park with her. Poor Hortensia, whose one desire was to hide her face from the town's uncharitable sight just then, fearing, indeed, that Rumor's unscrupulous tongue would be as busy about her reputation as her ladyship had represented, attempted to assert herself by refusing to obey the command. It was in vain. Her ladyship dispensed with ambassadors, and went in person to convey her orders to her husband's ward, and to enforce them. “What's this I am told?” quoth she, as she sailed into Hortensia's room. “Do my wishes count for nothing, that you send me pert answers by my woman?” Hortensia rose. She had been sitting by the window, a book in her lap. “Not so, indeed, madam. Not pert, I trust. I am none so well, and I fear the sun.” “'Tis little wonder,” laughed her ladyship; “and I'm glad on't, for it shows ye have a conscience somewhere. But 'tis no matter for that. I am tender for your reputation, mistress, and I'll not have you shunning daylight like the guilty thing ye know yourself to be.” “'Tis false, madam,” said Hortensia, with indignation. “Your ladyship knows it to be false.”