"Pale, my lord," whispered the butler; "you paid three hundred a butt for it—from the small bin."
"Good—uncork some of the Moselle."
In the calm, inscrutable face, and tutored bearing of Louisa Loftus, no one could have read the deep secret we had just shared in—the reconciliation of two ardent and anxious hearts—the bond of love and trust renewed; but this strange power of veiling all agitation at times is incident alike to birth and training, and to the local influences of these in the present time, when in modern society the human face is too often a mere mask which conceals every emotion, exhibiting a calm exterior, however at variance with the mind or disposition of the person; thus, though her pride and self-esteem had been recently stung to madness, and her heart had been crushed within her, now, under the revulsion incident to a great joy, and reunion with me, Louisa was able to wreathe her sweet face with a quiet and well-bred smile, while she listened to the senile gabble of my Lord Slubber.
Great emotions, like those excited by the affair of Agnes Auriol, seldom can remain long, and must subside; Louisa was quite subdued, and sunk in softness and love to-night. She was all that I could desire—my own Louisa.
The gentlemen soon joined the ladies in the drawing-room, and I drew at once near Louisa, who was again seated on the same ottoman with Cora. Lady Chillingham was idling in an easy-chair, half asleep, near the fire, with her feet placed on the velvet fender-stool, and a silky lapdog on her knee; but she roused herself on the approach of Lord Slubber to whisper one of his old-fashioned compliments, coined in the age when gallantry was a study.
"And you think the cavalry will not go through France?" said Louisa, taking up, after a time, the thread of some of her former remarks, while Cora fixed her tender and beautiful eyes kindly on my face.
"It is extremely doubtful," said I.
"And why so, Newton?" asked Cora.
"Because, cousin, it is feared that the red coats will not be popular in France; and then there are the Scots Greys, who are literally covered with trophies of Waterloo;[*] they especially would prove a very unpalatable spectacle to the men of the Second Empire."
[*] This circumstance delayed for a time the appearance of the Greys in the ranks of the allied army. They departed from Nottingham in July, 1854, with their band playing "Scots wha hae," &c.