At a cross-table, behind a huge candelabra, shedding a refulgent light on her features, and in front of a sideboard piled with rich plate and burnished trenchers, till she seemed literally enshrined in gold, sat the Queen, with the most distinguished of her nobility on either hand. Her face was radiant with animation, for pomp and pleasure were not without their charms to her impressible nature; and her manner, as her guests could not but observe, combined inimitably the cordiality of the hostess with the dignity of the sovereign. Her Maries were placed at the adjoining tables, and more fortunate than their mistress, had at least the chance of sitting next those individuals in whose conversation they took especial pleasure. These lotteries, however, are very apt to turn up an unreasonable proportion of blanks, and while Mary Carmichael could not even see where Walter Maxwell was supping, and Mistress Beton, to her dismay, found herself placed three seats off from the English Ambassador, Mary Hamilton alone saw the seat next her occupied by the person whose society she liked best in the world, and none but herself knew how she trembled when her cup was filled by the poet Chastelâr.
Is it not always so? We take incalculable pains to prepare for our festivities; how anxious we are that they should go off well; how engrossed is the butler with his plate-basket and his ice-pail; how concerned the host that my lord’s venison should not be overdone. Every plait must be laid to a hair’s-breadth in the glistening tresses of the lady of the house. Two mirrors satisfy her, at last, that folds and flounces and flowers are still adjusted to a nicety, but still there weighs on her mind the list of precedence, and the probable contingency that the most important guest may not turn up at all. Perhaps it may come across even her conventional mind that there are games for which it is scarce worth while to purchase such expensive candles, and that a two o’clock dinner with the children is a more agreeable repast, after all. Ay! even at the best, there is a speck on the épergne, an earwig in the flower-basket, a flavour of wormwood in the liquid amber called champagne. Surgit amari over and over again! Perhaps it was not so in that banquet of which the halt and the maimed and the blind were invited to partake. Perhaps there are no insects in a dinner of herbs; no heart-burnings in the crust we share with hunger; no bitter drop in that cup, though it be but cold water, wherewith we pledge celestial charity, and ‘entertain an angel unawares.’
Chastelâr was flushed and preoccupied; thus much was apparent to the eyes that watched him with such eager interest. Ever and anon he glanced uneasily towards the royal table, but ere long something he noticed there seemed to give him intense satisfaction, and filling his goblet to the brim, he devoted himself, like an accomplished gallant, to his fair neighbour. Such is the nature of his sex. A woman always feels a little humbled when she thinks she has been too gracious, even towards a favourite; a man, on the contrary, though his affections may be fixed elsewhere, considers it due to himself to be as captivating as he can. And then they talk of female vanity and female love of admiration.
‘I was sorry for my young knight to-day,’ said Mary Hamilton, not, it must be confessed, very truthfully, and without raising her eyes to her companion’s face. ‘Poor boy! he would have been so pleased to win. I wish he had carried off the prize.’
Chastelâr could not forbear giving her a meaning look.
‘And yet you did not choose him,’ he said. ‘He was given you by the Queen. Did he really carry your good wishes with him, Mistress Hamilton? I marvel his lance could fail; if I had thought that, mine would hardly have been so steady.’
He scarce knew what he was saying. Flushed with success; intoxicated with his own wild happiness; excited as such imaginative natures are by music, lights, wine, and beauty, he was in that reckless mood which drains pleasure eagerly from every cup, and thinks not of to-morrow.
‘You are jesting with me,’ she answered, in a low, trembling voice.
Oh! had he known how these light words of his thrilled to that kind unsuspecting heart, he would have spared her for very pity’s sake.
‘Nay, fair mistress,’ he replied, gaily, ‘I do not jest with you; there are some with whom to break jests is like breaking lances, sharp-pointed ones, too, and ending in a combat à l’outrance. I am afraid of you, Mistress Hamilton.’