oom.

CHAPTER V

The dinner, in the ordering of which the host had expended all his
gastronomical knowledge and much anxiety, seemed long. Orange found
himself opposite the famous portrait of "Edwyn, Lord Reckage of
Almouth," which represents that nobleman elaborately dressed, reclining
on a grassy bank by a spring of water, with a wooded landscape, a
sunrise, and a squire holding two horses in the distance. Robert
studied, and remembered always, every detail of that singular
composition. The warrior's shield, with its motto "_Magica sympathia_,"
his fat white hands, velvet breeches, steel cuirass, and stiff lace
collar remained for days a grotesque image before his mind. He traced,
too, a certain resemblance between Reckage and that ancestor--they both
wore pointed red beards, both were fair of skin, both had a dreaming
violence in their blue eyes.

"You must have some pheasant," said his lordship, at last. "You are
eating nothing. And that Burgundy, you know, is unique of its kind. It
was a present from the Emperor of the French to mamma. Her people were
civil to him when he was regarded as a sort of adventurer. And he never
forgot it. He's a very decent fellow. I dined with him at the
Tuileries--did I mention it?"

Robert replied that he fancied he had heard of the occurrence.

"Well," continued his friend, "I might have enjoyed that experience, but
I was feeling depressed at the time; a lot of the depression went under
the influence of frivolous talk, military music, and champagne. Yet, all
the same, do these things really count for much? I felt just as wretched
afterwards."

The glimpse he had obtained that afternoon of Sara de Treverell--Sara
flushed with agitation, very bright in her glance, exceedingly subtle in
her smile, had stirred a great tenderness he had once felt for that
young lady. The news, too, that she had been chosen as a bride by the
prudent, rich, and most important Duke of Marshire made his lordship
feel that perhaps he had committed a blunder in not having secured her,
during her first season, for himself. He feared that he had lost an
opportunity; and this reflection, while it lowered temporarily his
self-esteem, placed Sara on a dangerous eminence. She would be a
duchess--one of the great duchesses. Little Sara!

"She was looking extraordinarily handsome," he exclaimed. "Of course she
means to take him. But she liked me at one time. I am speaking of Sara
de Treverell. Marshire