"No, you shall not dance. You are not strong enough for their robust country dances, and a minuet is too slow and solemn, though you and I excel in the figure. The other butterflies shall dance, and you and I will look on like king and queen. But let them finish their supper first; and we must have some toasts, political, friendly, sentimental. We will drink to the King over the water out of compliment to Bolingbroke. We will drink George and Caroline because they are good honest souls, and our very intimate friends. We will drink to anybody and everybody, were it only for the sake of drinking."
"My lovely Bacchanalian," he murmured tenderly, "even vice is beautiful when you inspire it."
"O, 'tis hardly a vice to drown the dying year in good wine. I'm sure, could old Father Time have a voice in the matter he would like to die like Clarence in a butt of Malmsey," laughed Judith, holding out her glass to be filled. She had neither eaten nor drunk until this moment, and now her lips scarce touched the brim of her glass: she sat looking at Lavendale, counting the moments as she watched him.
The toasting began presently. Lord Bolingbroke rose, and in a speech full of veiled meaning proposed the King, waving his glass lightly over a great silver dish of rose-water which the butler had placed in front of him. Some drank and some refused, while everybody laughed.
"Your lordship might see the inside of the Tower for that pretty oration, were one of us minded to turn traitor," said Asterley, as he set down his empty glass.
"I am not afraid," answered Bolingbroke. "I have a good many friends capable of playing Judas, but not one whose word would be taken without confirmatory evidence."
"As you are in the house of a man who owes title and estate to a staunch adherence to Whig principles in the person of his ancestors, I think you should drink to her Majesty Queen Caroline, who is a much better King than her husband," said Lavendale.
"O, to Caroline by all means," cried Bolingbroke; "Caroline is a capital fellow." And the Queen's health was drunk upstanding, with three times three.
Then came the toast of Woman, Wit, and Beauty, coupled with the name of Lady Judith Topsparkle, in a brilliant speech from Bolingbroke, who had swallowed as much champagne as would have made a lesser man dead-drunk, but who was only pleasantly elevated, a more vivid brightness in his flashing eyes, a more commanding air in his fine and somewhat portly person. He spoke for twenty minutes at a stretch, and the company all hung upon his words with delight—could have listened to that gay spontaneous eloquence for an hour.
"Woman, wit, beauty, and the highest exemplar of all three, Lady Judith Topsparkle," cried Asterley, standing upon his chair, and waving his glass above his head.