“My Lord Rochester has a precocious wit which amuses my wife and her sister.”
“And then there is De Malfort—an impertinent, second only to Gramont. He and Lady Fareham are twin stars. I have seldom seen them apart.”
“Since De Malfort has the honour of being somewhat intimate with your ladyship, he has doubtless given you full particulars of his friendship for my wife. I assure you it will bear being talked about. There are no secrets in it.”
“Really; I thought I had heard something about a sedan which took the wrong road after Killigrew’s play. But that was the night before the fire. Good God! my lord, your face darkens as if a man had struck you. Whatever happened before the fire should have been burnt out of our memories by this time.”
“I see his Majesty looking this way, madam, and I have not yet paid my respects to him,” Fareham said, moving away, but a dazzling hand on his sleeve arrested him.
“Oh, your respects will keep; he has Miss Stewart giggling at his elbow. Strange, is it not, that a woman with as much brain as a pigeon can amuse a man who reckons himself both wise and witty?”
“It is not the lady who amuses the gentleman, madam. She has the good sense to pretend that he amuses her.”
“And no more understands a jest than she does Hebrew.”
“She is conscious of pretty teeth and an enchanting smile. Wit or understanding would be superfluous,” answered Fareham, bowing his adieu to the Sultana in chief.
There was a great assembly, with music and dancing, on the Queen’s birthday, to which Lord and Lady Fareham and Mistress Kirkland were invited; and again Angela saw and wondered at the splendid scene, and at this brilliant world, which calamity could not touch. Pestilence had ravaged the city, flames had devoured it—yet here there were only smiling people, gorgeous dress, incomparable jewels. The plague had not touched them, and the fire had not reached them. Such afflictions are for the common herd. Angela promenaded with De Malfort in the spacious banqueting-hall, with its ceiling of such prodigious height that the apotheosis of King James, and all the emblematical figures, triumphal cars, lions, bears and rams, corn-sheaves and baskets of fruit, which filled the panels, might as well have been executed by a sign-painter’s rough-and-ready brush, as by the pencil of the great Fleming.