"For ever, dearest."
"O, what a sigh was there! I protest you are the dismallest lover I ever heard of!"
CHAPTER XII.
"AND THE LAST PANG SHALL TEAR THEE FROM HIS HEART."
It was supper-time, and Lavendale sat at the head of his table, with Lady Polwhele on his right hand and Lady Judith on his left, in a room brilliant with the light of multitudinous wax candles and the blaze of a huge wood fire. It was a spacious apartment, with five long sash-windows opening on to a terrace with a marble balustrade, and two flights of steps leading to the lower level of the Italian garden—the prettiest summer room in the house, and by no means to be despised as a winter apartment when lighted and warmed as it was to-night.
Durnford and Irene had done everything to create an atmosphere of brightness and gaiety throughout the house, most of all in this room where the midnight hour was to be passed. They had summoned a little band of fiddlers and pipers from Kingston, and these, stationed in the hall, were to enliven the feast from time to time with their homely, merry, old English tunes. The table was loaded with the usual substantial fare; but Irene's light hands had assisted the housekeeper in decorating the board with holly-berries and greenery, and such winter flowers as the gardener could find for her in an age when the first hothouse ever built in England was yet a novelty. The shining scarlet berries, the rich red and purple and gold of the Bristol china, the silver tankards and silver-gilt bowls shining under the light of the candles or reflecting the flame of the fire, produced a dazzling effect.
"Why, this is truly cheerful!" cried Lady Polwhele; "and though I over-eat myself at dinner, and have been cursedly cross with my cards all the evening, I long to put a knife into that turkey."
"Will your ladyship operate upon the bird?" said Durnford, placing the dish in front of the Dowager, who was a famous carver: "it will be a kind of divine honours for him, and rank him at once among the celestials."
Lady Polwhele squared her elbows, tucked up her ruffles, and proceeded to dissect the turkey with the calm dexterity of a great surgeon.