Through the war-paint he recognised him.

"Great Heaven!" he cried, "it is--"

"Hush!" whispered Four Hair-Brushes, with a weary smile: "let
Annesley de Vere of the Blues die unnamed. Tell them that I fell in
harness."

He did, indeed. Under his feathered and painted cloak Barry found
that Annesley, ever careful of his figure, ever loyal in love, the
last of the Dandies, yet wore the corset of Madame de Telliere. It
was wet with his life-blood.

"So dies," said Barry, "the last English gentleman."



THACKERAY



"I thought how some people's towering intellects and splendid
cultivated geniuses rise upon simple, beautiful foundations hidden
out of sight." Thus, in his Letters to Mrs. Brookfield, Mr.
Thackeray wrote, after visiting the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral,
with its "charming, harmonious, powerful combination of arches and
shafts, beautiful whichever way you see them developed, like a fine
music." The simile applies to his own character and genius, to his
own and perhaps to that of most great authors, whose works are our
pleasure and comfort in this troublesome world. There are critics