Lady Betty sat looking down reflectively, tapping her foot on the gravel path.
“It may be so,” she said thoughtfully; “your brain is growing keen, Alice, from crossing swords with mine!” and she laughed, for she was an April creature with swift-changing moods. She rose, throwing out her hands with a pretty gesture, as though she threw care to the winds.
“O Donough Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, art worthy all these heart beats of mine?” she cried, and laughed as gayly as a child. “I tell thee, Alice, he has not seen me for years, not since I was eleven, and he pictures me with a turned-up nose and freckles and red hair, and is half frightened to death at the thought of his English bride.”
“Your hair was never red, my lady,” said Alice soberly.
“Pshaw, child, he has forgotten, poor lad!” laughed Lady Betty, herself again; “he may think my nose red, too!”
CHAPTER III
LADY BETTY AND HER FATHER
IT was after sundown and the light was dim in the great gallery of Althorpe. Candles were set in silver sconces at intervals down its whole length of over a hundred feet, but between lay soft shadows, and the pictured faces of many famous men and women, of sovereigns of England, statesmen, soldiers, and court beauties, looked down from the walls on either hand. Holbein and Van Dyke and Lely had wrought upon these canvases. Here was the famous Duchess of Cleveland, painted by Lely, and the Countess of Grammont, and yonder was Lady Portsmouth and Nell Gwynne herself; and in this strange company, the fair, sweet, coquettish face of Betty Clancarty, lovely as any of the court beauties and far more lovable and true.