CHAPTER XXVI

A Dead Rose

Sovereigns and their thrones, statesmen and their intrigues, favourites and their quarrels—­of what moment are they to a man whose heart is on fire and whose whole being resolves itself into but one thought of but one creature?  My lord Duke went to France as he was commanded; he had been before at Versailles and Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, and there were eyes which brightened at the sight of his tall form, and there were men who while they greeted him with courteous bows and professions of flattering welcome exchanged side glances and asked each other momentous questions in private.  He went about his business with discretion and diplomatic skill and found that he had no reason to despair of its accomplishment, but all his thoughts of his errand, though he held his mind steady and could reason clearly on them, seemed to him like the thoughts of a man in a dream who only in his private moments awakened to the reality of existence.

“’Twas Fate again,” he said, “Fate! who has always seemed to stalk in between!  If I had gone to her on that ‘to-morrow,’ I should have poured forth my soul and hers would have answered me.  But there shall be another to-morrow, and I swear it shall come soon.”

There was but a few hours’ journey by land, and the English Channel, between himself and London, and there was much passing to and fro; and though the French Court had stories enough of its own, new ones were always welcome, English gossip being thought to have a special heavy quaintness, droll indeed.  The Court of Louis found much entertainment in the Court of Anne, and the frivolities or romances of beauties who ate beef and drank beer and wore, ’twas said, the coquettish commode founded on lovely Fontange’s lace handkerchief, as if it were a nightcap.

“But they have a handsome big creature there now, who is amazing,” they said with interest at this time.  “She was brought up as a boy at the chateau of her father, and can fight with swords like a man, but is as beautiful as the day and seven feet tall.  It would be a pleasure to see her.  She is at present a widow with an immense fortune, and all the gentlemen fight duels over her.”

Both masculine and feminine members of the Court were much pleased with this lady and found her more interesting and exciting than any of her sister beauties.  Naturally many unfounded anecdotes of her were current, and it was said that she fought duels herself.  It was not long before it was whispered that the handsome Englishman Monsieur le Duc d’Osmonde, the red blonde giant with the great calm eyes, was one of the two chief pretendants to this picturesque lady’s favour.  Thus, as was inevitable, my lord Duke heard all the rumours from the English capital in one form or another.  Some of them were bitter things for him to hear, for all of them more or less touched upon Sir John Oxon, who seemed to follow her from playhouse to assembly and to dog her very footsteps, while all the world looked on wondering, since her ladyship treated him with such unrelenting coldness and disdain.