“Truthful answers, dear Lady Betty,” Alice replied earnestly, apparently much troubled, “save when I answered not at all.”
“You did not answer!” exclaimed her mistress, in surprise, “and wherefore?”
“Because she asked me what you said to me of—of my Lord Clancarty,” stammered Alice, “and, madam, that I will not tell!”
Betty laughed and blushed, and suddenly she kissed the girl.
CHAPTER VII
AT THE RACES
THERE was no finer race-course in the country in those days than the long heath at Newmarket, and there for years the court of England kept festival. Charles the Second came there, with a train of gay and dissolute courtiers and fair, frail women; there too came the more solemn James with much the same following, if a more decorous manner prevailed, and there came that silent, collected, small man, whose body so little expressed his soul,—one of the greatest men of his time,—William the Third.
The king came to his summer palace, and the great lords kept up their state about him. Euston was famed for the balls of my Lord Arlington in the days of Charles the Second, and times were little changed in that respect. In contrast to the courtly splendor, the heath was fringed with an encampment as gay and varied as any gypsy gathering. Here were people of all conditions: gypsies, in fact, in their gay raiment, telling fortunes on the edge of the throng, strolling players, dancing bears and merry Andrews, and the farmers’ families come as to a festival to see the stream of fashion. For here were all the great; even the cockpit at noon was surrounded by stars and ribbons, and there were hunting and hawking and riding. There too were the long gowns and black caps of the University dons, so well received by William, mingling with the motley throng. The world, melted down into this little space, throbbed and bubbled like a cauldron filled and boiling over, and never paused except for the sermon on a Sunday.