The floor was polished and strewn with splendid rugs; far-off India, Turkey, Italy, France, and Holland had contributed rugs and tapestries, paintings, beautiful bric-a-brac and statuary to decorate the famous gallery of the Spencers, where Anne of Denmark, Queen of James the First, and the young Prince Charles, the future royal martyr, saw the Masque of Ben Jonson. Here, too, came doubtless King Charles the First, he who created Henry Spencer Earl of Sunderland; here, also, reigned the daughter of the Sidneys, Dorothy, Countess of Sunderland, the heroine of Waller’s verses and the grandmother of Lady Betty. A gallery full of memories, where royalty and beauty smiled dimly from the great canvases, and every footstep woke an echo of the past.
At that sunset hour the place was quiet save for the cawing of the rooks under the eaves, for they haunted every corner of the house and congregated in the long avenues that enfiladed the park; yet even the sound of bird consultations did not disturb the revery of the man who slowly paced up and down the gallery—a man past middle age with an inscrutable face, his head a little bowed as he walked, his hands behind his back, his dress a long gown of black velvet, ruffles of lace at the throat and over the slender white hands—a strange man, self-possessed, complacent, smooth, infinitely winning of address, and one of the most unscrupulous politicians and time-servers of that time-serving age when William the Third knew not where to look among his English counsellors for steady faith, when it was no uncommon thing for a man to swear allegiance both at Westminster and Saint Germain, and to be an apostate besides. Even in that age of falsehood and double dealing, Robert, second Earl of Sunderland, excelled his fellows; but if he excelled them in falsehood, so did he also in discernment, in the power to read men, and to win them by his polished and smooth address, the charm of a personality that had won even upon the cold astuteness of the king himself.
Whatever his thoughts were now, Lord Sunderland’s face was placid, his perfect mask of serenity immutable, as he walked to and fro, now and then pausing to look critically at a fine picture, or to take counsel with himself, and he looked up with a calm smile when the door at the farther end of the gallery opened and the graceful figure of Lady Betty came swiftly toward him. He admired his daughter deeply, but subtle as he was he did not understand her. His standard of womanhood was different, and he had no ennobling example in his wife; she had been false to him and he had known it, and had used the services of her lover to smooth his own way with William of Orange, while he himself was vowing fealty to James the Second and walking barefoot, taper in hand, to the chapel royal to be admitted into the Roman communion—a communion he renounced as easily at a convenient season. This daughter who had grown up unlike either parent in simplicity and retirement, this beautiful, spirited, pure-souled creature he did not understand, but he admired her, and after his own fashion he loved her. On the other hand, Lady Betty understood him in many ways more thoroughly than he dreamed; she had a woman’s intuitions, and she did not reverence him; his subtlety, his falsehood, his smooth affability did not deceive her; she looked at him with clear eyes, and knew him better than the wise and watchful sovereign whom he served. But she was his daughter and she inherited all his charm of manner, his smooth tongue, his easy address, and he saw it and always smiled upon her.
She came up to him now with a sparkle in her eyes which portended more than he imagined.
“Are you better, sir?” she asked, with solicitude; “your absence from table disturbed me. Was it illness or politics?”
“Both, Betty,” replied the earl smiling; “but you missed me not, you had a younger and a better man in Spencer.”
“Faith, sir, I would rather have a worse one,” retorted Lady Betty, with a shrug, “such piety and virtue are too much, they overwhelm me. ’Tis a pity that good men are so often bores!”
Sunderland smiled, amusement twinkling in his deep-set eyes.
“I have often found them so, Betty,” he admitted; “but Charles is a worthy youth, my dear, and his advice, though often somewhat tedious and long winded, is weighty and merits consideration.”
“It may be so,” replied the countess, with an arch smile; “but upon my soul, sir, he was so long and loud in braying it at me that I fell to looking at his ears, expecting to see them start up on either side of his head and grow long and pointed. He is tedious!” and her ladyship yawned.