His wife broke into a ringing laugh.
"James, you are incorrigible," says she,
"There is Miss Burthwaite," says he.
"Impossible," says I. "I have met her. She says nothing but 'O La!' and 'Well, there!' and shakes her curls, and giggles."
"Her vocabulary is limited," he allowed "But there's the widow at Portinscale."
"She swears," I objected.
"Only when she's coursing," he corrected. "But, no matter, there's——"
"Nay," said I, interrupting his list. "This is no time, I take it, for a man to think of marrying. For who knows but what the country may be ablaze from sea to sea before we are three months older."
With that a sudden silence fell upon as all, and I sat inwardly cursing myself for the heedlessness which had prompted so inopportune a saying. Looking back upon that evening now, it seems to me as though all the disaster with which that year of 1715 was heavy, and near its time, for her, for him—ay, and for me, too, projected its shadow over our heads. I looked into their faces, grown at once grave and predestinate; the shadow was there, a cloud upon their brows, a veil across the brightness of their eyes. And then very solemnly my Lord Derwentwater rose from his chair, and lifted up his glass. The light from candle and lamp flashed upon the goblet, turning the wine to a ruby fire.
"The King!" he said simply, without passion, without heat. But the simplicity had in it something august. We also rose to our feet.