Among the groups around her, Dolores, as usual now, heard the growing political quarrel between Great Britain and Holland openly and freely discussed, together with the consequent and too probable departure of the Scots Brigade from the latter for ever. That seemed almost a settled thing—a certainty, if the quarrel became an open one, and the probabilities wrung the girl's affectionate heart.
How would all this affect her lover and herself? Alas! she knew not that the doom of the former for foreign service was nearly a fixed thing now! And she was fated to receive her first mental shock that evening, all unwittingly, from the Earl of Drumlanrig, who drew near her, and with the stately manner of the time lifted his hat with one hand, and with the other touched her hand as he bowed over it.
The golden light of the setting sun fell full upon her hair, flecking its bronze with glorious tints, and giving her beauty a brilliance that, to the Earl's appreciative eye, was very striking.
'You look like one of Watteau's beauties, waiting to hear herself addressed in the language of Love,' said the old peer, smiling.
'Love has three languages, my lord,' observed Dolores.
'Three?'
'The pen, the tongue, and the eyes.'
'True; but I am too old to use any of these now,' said the Earl, shaking his powdered head.
'The evening is a lovely one,' observed Dolores, after a pause.
'And the landscape yonder, as it stretches away towards Delft, is wonderfully steeped in sunshine; and but for its flatness——' the Earl paused.