'twas hard upon ten in the evening (the captain estimates) when i left lady culcheth's, [footnote: sir henry muskerry's daughter, of whom i have already spoken, and by common consent an estimable lady and a person of fine wit; but my infatuation for lady betty had by this time, after three nights with her, been puffed out; and this fortunate extinction, through the affair of the broken snuffbox, had left me now entirely indifferent to all her raptures, panegyrics, and premeditated artlessnesses.—f. a.] and i protest that at the time there was not a happier man in all tunbridge than francis audaine.
"you haven't the king?" miss allonby was saying, as i made my adieus to the company. "then i play queen, knave, and ace, which gives me the game, lord humphrey."
and afterward she shuffled the cards and flashed across the room a glance whose brilliance shamed the tawdry candles about her, and, as you can readily conceive, roused a prodigious trepidation in my adoring breast.
"dorothy!—o dorothy!" i said over and over again when i had reached the street; and so went homeward with constant repetitions of her dear name.
i suppose it was an idiotic piece of business; but you are to remember that i loved her with an entire heart, and that, as yet, i could scarcely believe the confession of a reciprocal attachment, which i had wrung from her overnight, to the accompaniment of gerald's snoring, had been other than an unusually delectable and audacious dream upon the part of frank audaine.
i found it, then, as i went homeward, a heady joy to ponder on her loveliness. oh, the wonder of her voice, that is a love-song! cried my heart. oh, the candid eyes of her, more beautiful than the june heavens, more blue than the very bluest speedwell-flower! oh, the tilt of her tiny chin, and the incredible gold of her hair, and the quite unbelievable pink-and-white of her little flower-soft face! and, oh, the scrap of crimson that is her mouth.
in a word, my pulses throbbed with a sort of divine insanity, and frank audaine was as much out of his senses as any madman now in bedlam, and as deliriously perturbed as any lover is by ordinary when he meditates upon the object of his affections.
but there was other work than sonneting afoot that night, and shortly i set about it. yet such was my felicity that i went to my nocturnal labors singing. yes, it rang in my ears, somehow, that silly old scotch song, and under my breath i hummed odd snatches of it as i went about the night's business.
sang i:
"ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
king james the seventh had ae daughter,
and he gave her to an oranger.
"ken ye how he requited him?
ken ye how he requited him?
the dog has into england come,
and ta'en the crown in spite of him!
"the rogue he salna keep it lang,
to budge we'll make him fain again;
we'll hang him high upon a tree,
and king james shall hae his ain again!"
