Mrs. Campian did not appear at luncheon, which was observed but not noticed. Afterward, while Lothair was making some arrangements for the amusement of his guests, and contriving that they should fit in with the chief incident of the day, which was the banquet given to him by the county, and which it was settled the ladies were not to attend, the colonel took him aside and said, “I do not think that Theodora will care to go out today.”

“She is not unwell, I hope?”

“Not exactly—but she has had some news, some news of some friends, which has disturbed her. And, if you will excuse me, I will request your permission not to attend the dinner today, which I had hoped to have had the honor of doing. But I think our plans must be changed a little. I almost think we shall not go to Scotland after all.”

“There is not the slightest necessity for your going to the dinner. You will have plenty to keep you in countenance at home. Lord St. Aldegonde is not going, nor I fancy any of them. I shall take the duke with me and Lord Culloden, and, if you do not go, I shall take Mr. Putney Giles. The lord-lieutenant will meet us there. I am sorry about Mrs. Campian, because I know she is not ever put out by little things. May I not see her in the course of the day? I should be very sorry that the day should pass over without seeing her.”

“Oh! I dare say she will see you in the course of the day, before you go.”

“When she likes. I shall not go out today; I shall keep in my rooms, always at her commands. Between ourselves, I shall not be sorry to have a quiet morning and collect my ideas a little. Speech-making is a new thing for me. I wish you would tell me what to say to the county.”

Lothair had appropriated to the Campians one of the most convenient and complete apartments in the castle. It consisted of four chambers, one of them a saloon which had been fitted up for his mother when she married; a pretty saloon, hung with pale-green silk, and portraits and scenes inlaid by Vanloo and Boucher. It was rather late in the afternoon when Lothair received a message from Theodora in reply to the wish that he had expressed of seeing her.

When he entered the room, she was not seated; her countenance was serious. She advanced, and thanked him for wishing to see her, and regretted she could not receive him at an earlier hour. “I fear it may have inconvenienced you,” she added; “but my mind has been much disturbed, and too agitated for conversation.”

“Even now I may be an intruder?”

“No, it is past; on the contrary, I wish to speak to you; indeed, you are the only person with whom I could speak,” and she sat down.

Her countenance, which was unusually pale when he entered, became flushed. “It is not a subject for the festive hour of your life,” she said, “but I cannot resist my fate.”

“Your fate must always interest me,” murmured Lothair.

“Yes; but my fate is the fate of ages and of nations,” said Theodora, throwing up her head with that tumult of the brow which he had once before noticed. “Amid the tortures of my spirit at this moment, not the least is that there is only one person I can appeal to, and he is one to whom I have no right to make that appeal.”

“If I be that person,” said Lothair, “you have every right, for I am devoted to you.”

“Yes; but it is not personal devotion that is the qualification needed. It is not sympathy with me that would authorize such an appeal. It must be sympathy with a cause, and a cause for which, I fear, you do not—perhaps I should say you cannot—feel.”

“Why?” said Lothair.

“Why should you feel for my fallen country, who are the proudest citizen of the proudest of lands? Why should you feel for its debasing thraldom—you who, in the religious mystification of man, have, at least, the noble privilege of being a Protestant?”

“You speak of Rome?”

“Yes, of the only thought I have, or ever had. I speak of that country which first impressed upon the world a general and enduring form of masculine virtue; the land of liberty, and law, and eloquence, and military genius, now garrisoned by monks, and governed by a doting priest.”

“Everybody must be interested about Rome,” said Lothair. “Rome is the country of the world, and even the doting priest you talk of boasts of two hundred millions of subjects.”

“If he were at Avignon again, I should not care for his boasts,” said Theodora. “I do not grudge him his spiritual subjects; I am content to leave his superstition to Time. Time is no longer slow; his scythe mows quickly in this age. But when his debasing creeds are palmed off on man by the authority of our glorious capitol, and the slavery of the human mind is schemed and carried on in the forum, then, if there be real Roman blood left—and I thank my Creator there is much—it is time for it to mount and move,” and she rose and walked up and down the room.

“You have had news from Rome?” said Lothair.

“I have had news from Rome,” she replied, speaking slowly in a deep voice; and there was a pause.

Then Lothair said: “When you have alluded to these matters before, you never spoke of them in a sanguine spirit.”

“I have seen the ca............