She tapped my fingers with her fan.
"Don't make speeches, sir. What a grand old place this is, isn't it?"
We were to dance in the armour gallery, and the whole party were making their way there now. The magnificent staircase, bordered with massive black oak balustrades, up which we were passing, descended into the middle of the hall, and was supported by solid black marble pillars; and the corridor, which ran at right angles to it, was lighted by stained-glass windows, in front of each of which armoured knights were grimly keeping watch. One corridor led into another, all of noble dimensions, with high oriel windows, and lined by a silent ghostly guard of steel-clad warriors and polished marble statues. A strange contrast they seemed to the gay laughing procession of girls, in their low-necked dinner dresses and flashing diamonds, and men in their mess jackets and evening coats. Maud alone, moving with the slow, stately grace of a princess of former days, seemed in keeping with our surroundings.
Soon the sound of violins reached us, and, pushing aside the heavy curtains, we descended two steps and stood in the armour gallery. Maud's imagination and many nimble fingers had been busy here, and at first I scarcely knew the place. Fairy lights with various coloured shades hung from the mailed gloves of many generations of Devereux, and the black oak floor was shining with a polish beyond its own. But no fairy lights or bracketed candles could dispel the gloom which hung about the long lofty gallery, with its vaulted roof black with age, and its panelled walls hung with the martial trophies of every age and every land. And yet it was a gloom which seemed in keeping with the place, and no one found it oppressive.
I danced with Lady Olive, and then, as we stood talking in the shade of one of my armoured forefathers, Captain Hasleton came up and claimed her, and I was left alone. Nearly opposite me was Maud, standing like an exquisite picture in the softened light of one of the stained-glass windows. But I did not go to her at once. Several men were talking to her, and she was answering them with the languid air of one who finds it hard to be amused, and her blue eyes more than once travelled past them and looked into mine indifferently, but still with a meaning in them. At last I crossed the room and stood before her.
"You promised me a waltz, I think, Miss Devereux. Will not this one do?"
She hesitated for a moment, and then she laid her hand on my coat-sleeve, and we moved away. Without a word I passed my arm around her waist, and we floated slowly up the room. It was one of Waldteufel's wild, sad waltzes, now bursting into a loud flood of music, now dying away into a few faint melodious chords. For many years afterwards I never heard it played without longing to rush away into solitude and recall those few minutes of exquisite happiness in that strange, dimly-lit ball-room.
All things come to an end, and so did that waltz. Maud promised me the next but one, and was led away by Lord Annerley, and, to while away the time, I took a lamp from a bracket on the wall, and, pushing aside the heavy curtains, stepped into the picture gallery to look at my father's portrait.
It was not the first time by many that I had done so, for when I had been shown over the court soon after my arrival my first visit had been here. Bitterly indignant had I felt when, after I had looked for long in vain for my father's picture, I had found it—with its face turned against the wall. I had turned it round again during a moment or two when Groves, the portly house-steward, had been otherwise engaged, and since then it had not been disturbed, for Sir Francis no longer made this his favourite lounging-place; indeed, he seldom came here at all.
The sound of the music and of voices—some fresh ones I fancied—came to me in a faint, indistinct hum through the drawn curtains, and for a while I forgot all about them. I seemed in another world, amongst these long rows of my frowning ancestors, beruffed ladies in quilted gowns and dresses of strange device, armed knights, and beaux of a later and more peaceful age with perukes, knee-breeches, and snuff-boxes. But though I walked the whole length of the gallery, and glanced leisurely at all of them, it was my father's picture at which I lingered longest, and before which I was standing absorbed when the drawing of the curtain and the sound of voices and feet entering the gallery made me start round and very nearly drop the candle which I held in my hand.