osite
nature of their supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with
whom she was to make her purchases. For the duke had a recollection of
giddy shops, and of giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for
a day that a certain great nobleman came to victory with a jealously
guarded dame beautiful as Venus. 'I would have challenged the goddess!'
he cried, and subsided from his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind
instrument. 'So there you see the prudence of a choice of shops. But
I leave it to you, Beamish.' Similarly the great military commander,
having done whatsoever a careful prevision may suggest to insure him
victory, casts himself upon Providence, with the hope of propitiating
the unanticipated and darkly possible.

CHAPTER III

The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and
green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to
meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct
her in state to the Wells. Chloe sat beside him, receiving counsel with
regard to her prospective duties. He was this day the consummate beau,
suave, but monarchical, and his manner of speech partook of his
external grandeur. 'Spy me the horizon, and apprise me if somewhere you
distinguish a chariot,' he said, as they drew up on the rise of a hill
of long descent, where the dusty roadway sank between its brown hedges,
and crawled mounting from dry rush-spotted hollows to corn fields on
a companion height directly facing them, at a remove of about
three-quarters of a mile. Chloe looked forth, while the beau passingly
raised his hat for coolness, and murmured, with a glance down the sultry
track: 'It sweats the eye to see!'

Presently Chloe said, 'Now a dust blows. Something approaches. Now I
discern horses, now a vehicle; and it is a chariot!'

Orders were issued to the outriders for horns to be sounded.

Both Chloe and Beau Beamish wrinkled their foreheads at the disorderly
notes of triple horns, whose pealing made an acid in the air instead of
sweetness.

'You would say, kennel dogs that bay the moon!' said the wincing beau.
'Yet, as you know, these fellows have been exercised. I have had them
out in a meadow for hours, baked and drenched, to get them rid of their
native cacophony. But they love it, as they love bacon and beans. The
musical taste of our people is in the stage of the primitive appetite
for noise, and for that they are gluttons.'

'It