“Good-night, Mr. Ormiston,” she said, and vanished.
CHAPTER VII. THE EARL'S BARGE.
Shocks of joy, they tell me, seldom kill. Of my own knowledge I cannot say, for I have had precious little experience of such shocks in my lifetime, Heaven knows; but in the present instance, I can safely aver, they had no such dismal effect on Ormiston. Nothing earthly could have given that young gentleman a greater shock of joy than the knowledge he was to behold the long hidden face of his idol. That that face was ugly, he did not for an instant believe, or, at least, it never would be ugly to him. With a form so perfect—a form a sylph might have envied—a voice sweeter than the Singing Fountain of Arabia, hands and feet the most perfectly beautiful the sun ever shone on, it was simply a moral and physical impossibility that they could be joined to a repulsive face. There was a remote possibility that it was a little less exquisite than those ravishing items, and that her morbid fancy made her imagine it homely, compared with them, but he knew he never would share in that opinion. It was the reasoning of love, rather than logic; for when love glides smiling in at the door, reason stalks gravely, not to say sulkily, out of the window, and, standing afar off, eyes disdainfully the didos and antics of her late tenement. There was very little reason, therefore, in Ormiston's head and heart, but a great deal of something sweeter, joy—joy that thrilled and vibrated through every nerve within him. Leaning against the portal, in an absurd delirium of delight—for it takes but a trifle to jerk those lovers from the slimiest depths of the Slough of Despond to the topmost peak of the mountain of ecstasy—he uncovered his head that the night-air might cool its feverish throbbings. But the night-air was as hot as his heart; and, almost suffocated by the sultry closeness, he was about to start for a plunge in the river, when the sound of coming footsteps and voices arrested him. He had met with so many odd ad ventures to-night that he stopped now to see who was coming; for on every hand all was silent and forsaken.
Footsteps and voices came closer; two figures took shape in the gloom, and emerged from the darkness into the glimmering lamp light. He recognised them both. One was the Earl of Rochester; the other, his dark-eyed, handsome page—that strange page with the face of the lost lady! The earl was chatting familiarly, and laughing obstreperously at something or other, while the boy merely wore a languid smile, as if anything further in that line were quite beneath his dignity.
“Silence and solitude,” said the earl, with a careless glance around, “I protest, Hubert, this night seems endless. How long is it till midnight?”
“An hour and a half at least, I should fancy,” answered the boy, with a strong foreign accent. “I know it struck ten as we passed St. Paul's.”
“This grand bonfire of our most worshipful Lord Mayor will be a sight worth seeing,” remarked the earl. “When all these piles are lighted, the city will be one sea of fire.”
“A slight foretaste of what most of its inhabitants will behold in another world,” said the page, with a French shrug. “I have heard Lilly's prediction that London is to be purified by fire, like a second Sodom; perhaps it is to be verified to-night.”
“Not unlikely; the dome of St. Paul's would be an excellent place to view the conflagration.”