All this little chit-chat was a thing got up by Linton, while stationing himself in a position to watch Cashel and Lady Kilgoff, who sat, at a chess-table, in an adjoining room. It needed not Linton's eagle glance to perceive that neither was attentive to the game, but that they were engaged in deep and earnest conversation. Lady Kilgoff's back was towards him, but Roland's face he could see clearly, and watch the signs of anger and impatience it displayed.
“A little more noise and confusion here,” thought Linton, “and they 'll forget that they 're not a hundred miles away;” and, acting on this, he set about arranging the company in various groups; and while he disposed a circle of very fast-talking old ladies, to discuss rank and privileges in one corner, he employed some others in devising a character quadrille, over which Mrs. White was to preside; and then, seating a young lady at the piano,—one of those determined performers who run a steeple-chase through waltz, polka, and mazurka, for hours uninterruptedly,—he saw that he had manufactured a very pretty chaos “off-hand.”
While hurrying hither and thither, directing, instructing, and advising every one, he contrived also, as it were by mere accident, to draw across the doorway of the boudoir the heavy velvet curtain that performed the function of a door. The company were far too busied in their various occupations to remark this; far less was it perceived by Lady Kilgoff or Roland. Nobody knew better than Linton how to perform the part of fly-wheel to that complicated engine called society; he could regulate its pace to whatever speed he pleased; and upon this occasion he pushed the velocity to the utmost; and, by dint of that miraculous magnetism by which men of warm imagination and quick fancy inspire their less susceptible neighbors, he spread the contagion of his own merry humor, and converted the drawing-room into a scene of almost riotous gayety.
“They want no more leadership now,” said he, and slipped from the room and hastened towards the library, where sat Lord Kilgoff, surrounded by folios of Grotius and Puffendorf,—less, indeed, for perusal and study than as if inhaling the spirit of diplomatic craft from their presence.
“Nay, my Lord, this is too much,” said he, entering with a smile; “some relaxation is really necessary. Pray come and dissipate a little with us in the drawing-room.”
“Don't lose my place, however,” said he, smiling far more graciously than his wont. “I was just considering that assertion of Grotius, wherein be lays it down that 'a river is always objectionable as a national boundary.' I dissent completely from the doctrine. A river has all the significance of a natural frontier. It is the line of demarcation drawn from the commencement of the world between different tracts, and at once suggests separation.”
“Very true, my Lord; I see your observation in all its justice. A river, in the natural world, is like the distinguishing symbol of rank in the social, and should ever be a barrier against unwarrantable intrusion.”
Lord Kilgoff smiled, tapped his snuff-box, and nodded, as though to say, “Continue.” Linton understood the hint in this wise, and went on,—
“And yet, my Lord, there is reason to fear that, with individuals as with nations, these demarcations are losing their prestige. What people call enlightenment and progress, nowadays, is the mere negation of these principles.”
“Every age has thrown some absurd theory to the surface, sir,” said Lord Kilgoff, proudly; “Southcotians, Mormons, and Radicals among the rest. But truth, sir, has always the ascendency in the long run. Facts cannot be sneered down; and the Pyrenees and the English peerage are facts, Mr. Linton,—and similar facts, too!”