I flicked up my skirts, and went off immediately among the fruit and decanters. My progress was a triumph. The women clapped in artificial enthusiasm, and the men stopped me to kiss my little shoes. And presently down that long lane I saw the duke’s smiling face awaiting me. It was not a temperate face, it is true; its thirty-four years were traced upon it in very crooked hieroglyphics. But then—c’est la dernière touche qu’informe—the royal star of the garter glittering on the apricot coat beneath made everything handsome. By his side sat the lady his duchess, née Luttrell, as brand-new as I to her exaltation. But it was the difference between Hebe and Thais. For all my innocence I felt that, and did not fear her rivalry. I dropped a little curtsey amongst the grapes and melons.
“Monsieur,” I said, “my papa wishes to make you a pretty gift, and sends you his love.”
He applauded, laughing, as did all the table, and lifted me down to his lap.
“What price for the love?” he cried. “See, I return him a dozen kisses.”
He kept me, however, plying me with bonbons, while madam tittered and fanned herself vexedly.
“You will make the little ape sick, Enrico,” she said. “Put her down; for shame!”
“I know where to stop,” I retorted; and “By God, you do!” said the duke, with a great laugh, and held me tight.
I had a thimbleful of liqueur from his hand by and by, which made me think of the duck-stone. I was the little queen of the evening, and a delight to my father and all.
“Faith!” said a merry Irish rapparee, a bit of a courtier captain, “man has been vainly trying to fit woman into the moral scheme ever since she made herself out of his ninth rib, and the fashions out of a fig-leaf; and here, in the eighteenth century Anno Domini, is the result.”
I was carried on to the Steine presently by my father, my little brain whirling. The whole of the Castle Tavern, and every house and shop adjacent, were illuminated; and the lights and crowds of people quite intoxicated me. There were sports enacting on all sides, and I screamed with laughter to see a jingling match, played for a laced coat and hat, in which the jingler, hung with bells, dodged and eluded and dropped between the legs of the blindfolded who sought to capture him. Then there was a foot-race, run by young women for a Holland smock; and I jeered at their self-conscious antics with all my little might, as they went giggling into place, coy and hobbledehoy, and pushed and quarrelled secretly, and stopped the starter to do up their greasy tresses, and then, all but the winner, snivelled over the result, pronouncing it unfair.