"An easy riddle, Jack. Damn the insolent, smooth-spoken knave of hearts, and confound the women! They all drop to a court card."
"Not Mistress Betty Carrington. She looks below the surface."
"Humph! What does she see below thine? An empty gourd with a few madrigals and sonnets, and fine images, conned from the 'Grand Cyrus,' rattling about like dried seeds?"
"Hush, thou green persimmon! the Governor is speaking."
The governor rose with care to his feet. His wig was awry, his cravat of fine mechlin under one ear. Benevolent smiles played like summer lightning across his flushed face. He raised his tankard slowly and with attentive steadiness. "Gentlemen," he said in a high voice, "we have eaten and we have drunken. Dick Verney's wine is as old as the hills and as mellow as sunlight. It groweth late, gentlemen, and some of you have miles to travel, and it takes cool heads to ride the 'planter's pace.' For William Berkeley, gentlemen, Governor of Virginia by the grace of God and his Majesty, King Charles the Second, it takes more than Dick Verney's wine to fluster him. I call a final toast. I drink again to our loving friend and host, the worshipful Colonel Richard Verney, to his beauteous daughter and sister, to his man-servant and his maid-servant, his ox and his ass, and the stranger which is within his gates." He smiled benignly at a reflection of Sir Charles in a distant mirror. "Gentlemen, the devil, you see, can quote scripture. Let the cup go roun' go roun', go roun'."
The toast was drunk with fervor, and the party broke up.
The Governor, with Colonel Ludlow and Captain Laramore, was to sleep at Verney Manor, and Mistress Betty Carrington was left by her father to bear Patricia company for a day or two. One by one the remainder of the company rode or sailed away, those who had an even keel beneath them being in much better case than their brethren on horseback.
When the last sail showed a white speck in the distance, Patricia and Betty came out upon the porch and sat them down, one on either side of the Governor, with whom they were great favorites. Colonel Ludlow and Captain Laramore were at dice at a table within the hall, and Colonel Verney had excused himself in order to hear the evening report from his overseers. Sir Charles Carew, very idle and purposeless-looking, lounged in a great chair, and studied the miniature upon his snuff-box. The Governor, whom the wine had mellowed into a genial softness, a kind of sunset glow, alternately puffed wide rings of smoke into the air, and paid compliments to the young ladies. The evening breeze had sprung up, rustling the leaves of the trees, and bringing with it the sound of the water. In the western sky crimson islets forever shifted shapes in a sea of gold. A rosy light suffused the earth. In it the water turned to the pink of a shell, the marshes became ethereal and far away, earth and sky seemed one. The flashing wings of gull and curlew were like fairy sails faring to and fro.
"If I had wings," said Patricia dreamily, her hands clasped over her knees, "I would fly straight to that highest island of cloud. The one, Betty, that looks like a field of daffodils, with those beautiful peaks rising from it, and the violet light in the hollows. I would set up my standard there, Sir William, and the island should be mine, and I would rule the fairies that must inhabit it, with a rod of iron—as you rule Virginia," she ended with a laugh.
The Governor laughed with her. "You would have no such stiff-necked folk to deal with, my love, as have I."