LXII THE IVORY TOWER OF ORDHAM

Bridgminster’s manners are almost as famous as his diplomatic gifts and achievements. They are, indeed, so perfect, that many—notably the women that have tried to marry him—aver that he is composed wholly of charm and brain; that his heart, if ever he had one, is buried in the American grave of his young wife, whom he had the terrible misfortune to lose so soon after his romantic marriage. That dramatic finale of his youthful happiness occurred not so long since but that people still gossip about it, recall his desperate flight to the Continent immediately after the funeral of the divine Mabel, where he affected the company to tears by his manifest woe. No one was surprised to hear of his illness—brain fever?—in one of the British Legations—Munich? Rome? Constantinople? He has such a vast connection, and details will slip from the best of memories.

When quite well again, however, he threw himself into work with an ardour! In the course of three or four years, between those gifts the good Lord had showered upon him, an industry at which his family has not ceased to marvel, and the influence he was able to command, his advancement in the diplomatic service was uncommonly rapid. He has gone on rising ever since, not alone in the service, but in the estimation of Europe, whose attention he has challenged more than once, and in a manner which assures him a place in history.

Princess Nachmeister died quite satisfied with him.

No man in Europe is more gay, more brilliant, more constantly in society. He looks, say those so fond of discussing him, like a man whose heart is just twenty-five, and theorize that its normal action was arrested at that age by the loss of his sweet young wife—a marvel of beauty, and elegance, and cleverness, and grace!—and when the heart never grows old—well, we all know what happens.

So is Mabel avenged.

But the room in The Temple is Ordham’s still.

The End