“Mrs. Gladwell stands in the gallery, looking down on the gay scene. She sees a laughing company, a knot of some seven or eight, pass into the hall. The men wear their hair long and are dressed in colours, and in their midst moves Diana Sackville. She wears her hair over cushions, and pearls are threaded through the soft mass. She paces through the gavotte with head held high, poised like a flower, with laughing lips and gleeful eyes, her step light as thistledown; and though the violins are sounding their slender music, through it all the onlooker hears another melody—
“‘Silver and gold will be stolen away
Dance over my lady lea;
Silver and gold will be stolen away
With a gay lady.’”
Miss Hippesley’s voice ceased, and Clare sat thinking. Still was she seeing in imagination that bright throng.
“But Diana shall speak for herself; this is a letter written by her to her father.” And Miss Hippesley opened as she spoke a broad paper. Though the ink was brown, you might readily see the tails of the g’s and d’s were all turned cheerfully, with a kink in them.
“‘My dear Father,—I have spent a week with a friend of yours at Edmomsbury, and been very much entertained there. Lord and Lady Buckingham have been obliging enough to give a ball on purpose for me at St. Woolstans, where I danced in great spirits, being now mighty well and able to enjoy, as usual, all amusements.
“‘We had a good deal of company at Edmomsbury, and dear whist finished every evening. I had the long-wished-for happiness of driving a little cabriolet myself every morning, and am grown an excellent coachman.