ll nigh two
o'clock."

"Oh, I know him," muttered Beecher, and passed on. When he reached
his dressing-room, he found the table covered with a mass of letters
addressed to Lord Viscount Lackington, and scrawled over with postmarks;
but a card, with the following few words, more strongly engaged his
attention: "It's all right, you are the Viscount--C. D."

A deep groan burst from Beecher as he dropped the card and sank heavily
into a seat. A long, long time slipped over ere he could open the letters
and examine their contents. They were almost all from lawyers and men of
business, explanation of formalities to be gone through, legal details
to be completed, with here and there respectful entreaties to be
continued in this or that agency. A very bulky one was entirely occupied
with a narrative of the menaced suit on the title, and a list of
the papers which would be hereafter required for the defence. It was
vexatious to be told of a rebellion ere he had yet seated himself on the
throne; and so he tossed the ungracious document to the end of the room,
his mood the very reverse of that he had so long pictured to himself it
might be.

"I suppose it's all great luck!" muttered he to himself; "but up to this
I see no end of difficulty and trouble."

CHAPTER XXVI. UNPLEASANT EXPLANATIONS

Beecher had scarcely dropped off to sleep when he was awoke by a heavy,
firm tread in the room; he started up, and saw it was Davis.

"How is the noble Viscount?" said Grog, drawing a chair and seating
himself. "I came over here post haste when I got the news."

"Have you told her?" asked Beecher, eagerly.

"Told her! I should think I have. Was it not for the pleasure of that
moment that I came here,--here, where they could arrest me this instant
and send me off to the fortress of Rastadt? I shot an Austrian officer
in the garrison there four years ago."

"I heard of it," groaned Beecher, from the utmost depth of his heart "So
that she knows it all?"

"She knows that you are a peer of England, and that she is a peeress."

Beecher looked at the man as he spoke, and never before did he appear
to him so insufferably insolent and vulgar. Traits which he had in part
forgotten or overlooked now came out in full force, and he saw him in
all the breadth of his coarseness. As if he had read what was passing in
Beecher's mind, Davis stared fully at him, resolute and defiant.

"I suppose," resumed Grog, "it was a pleasure you had res