ESCUE!
XL. CLARE'S DIARY
XLI. AUSTIN RETURNS
XLII. NATURE SPEAKS
XLIII. AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
XLIV. THE LAST SCENE
XLV. LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH

CHAPTER I

Some years ago a book was published under the title of "The Pilgrim's
Scrip." It consisted of a selection of original aphorisms by an
anonymous gentleman, who in this bashful manner gave a bruised heart to
the world.

He made no pretension to novelty. "Our new thoughts have thrilled
dead bosoms," he wrote; by which avowal it may be seen that youth had
manifestly gone from him, since he had ceased to be jealous of the
ancients. There was a half-sigh floating through his pages for those
days of intellectual coxcombry, when ideas come to us affecting the
embraces of virgins, and swear to us they are ours alone, and no one
else have they ever visited: and we believe them.

For an example of his ideas of the sex he said:

"I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man."

Some excitement was produced in the bosoms of ladies by so monstrous a
scorn of them.

One adventurous person betook herself to the Heralds' College, and there
ascertained that a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves, which stood on the
title-page of the book, formed the crest of Sir Austin Absworthy Bearne
Feverel, Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a certain Western county folding
Thames: a man of wealth and honour, and a somewhat lamentable history.

The outline of the baronet's story was by no means new. He had a wife,
and he had a friend. His marriage was for love; his wife was a beauty;
his friend was a sort of poet. His wife had his whole heart, and his
friend all his confidence. When he selected Denzil Somers from among his
college chums, it was not on account of any similarity of disposition
between them, but from his intense worship of genius, which made him
overlook the absence of principle in his associate for the sake of such
brilliant promise. Denzil had a small patrimony to lead off with, and
that he dissipated before he left college; thenceforth he was dependent
upon his admirer, with whom he lived, filling a nominal post of
bailiff to the estates, and launching forth verse of some satiric and
sentimental quality; for being inclined to vice, and occasionally, and
in a quiet way, practising it, he was of course a sentimentalist and
a satirist, entitled to lash the Age and complain of human nature. His
earlier poems,