"Your ladyship is in unusual spirits to-night," he said, after a few words of greeting.
"Yes, I am full of contentment. I met some friends of yours at the playhouse last night, that pretty Mrs. Bosworth and your fidus Achates, Mr. Durnford, and I was told all about their runaway marriage. 'Tis the prettiest thing I have heard of for ages, an heiress to renounce all her expectations for the lover of her choice. I saw how the land lay when they were together at Ringwood. But I am forgetting to congratulate you upon your success as an orator. Lord Carteret told me just now that you have astonished your own party and scared the Opposition, that you spoke better than Lord Scarborough, and that you are reckoned as a new element of strength in Walpole's forces."
"I shall be proud to be the ally of so great a man."
"What, you admire him as heartily as ever? You are not afraid of his overweening ambition? Lord Townshend has been moaning about the palace this modern Sejanus has built at Houghton, and which almost dwarfs the splendour of poor Townshend's own place, which he had hitherto considered the metropolis of Norfolk. Every stone that augments the grandeur of Houghton is a stone of offence to Townshend."
"He will have to swallow them, as Saturn swallowed the substitutes for his children," retorted Lavendale lightly; "Walpole's power has not yet attained its zenith."
"Do you play?" asked Lady Judith with a wave of her fan towards the crowded card-room.
Lavendale accepted the gesture as his dismissal.
At this moment the trumpets began to blare the stirring march from Judas Maccabeus, and the hero of Oudenarde came strutting up the steps, between the flare and flash of torches held by two rows of powdered footmen.
"You may strut, dapper George, but 'twill all be in vain;
We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you, that reign,"
muttered Bolingbroke, looking between the heads of the crowd, with scornful lip and angry eye, full of hatred for the dynasty that had shown him such scanty favour. "What a vulgar little beast it is, to call itself royal!—royal, forsooth! a twopenny German Elector transmogrified into King of Great Britain and Ireland! If ever this country was ripe for a republic, for a millennium of statesmen and warriors, 'twas when good old Anne shuffled off this mortal coil. Yet such a nation of sheep are we that we must needs import a royal family from Hanover rather than be governed by native talent!"