s.

I looked around me. Guy Johnson, red in the face, was bending too
closely beside his neighbor, Betty Austin. Colonel Claus talked loudly
across the table to Captain McDonald, and swore fashionable oaths which
the gaunt captain echoed obsequiously. Claire Putnam coquetted with her
paddle-stick fan, defending her roses from Sir George Covert, while Sir
John Johnson stared at them in cold disapproval; and I saw Magdalen
Brant, chin propped on her clasped hands, close her eyes and breathe
deeply while the wine burned her face, setting torches aflame in either
cheek. Later, when I spoke to her, she laughed pitifully, saying that
her ears hummed like bee-hives. Then she said that she meant to go, but
made no movement; and presently her dark eyes closed again, and I saw
the fever pulse beating in her neck.

Some one had overturned a silver basin full of flowers, and a servant,
sopping up the water, had brushed Walter Butler so that he flew into a
passion and flung a glass at the terrified black, which set Sir Lupus
laughing till he choked, but which enraged me that he should so conduct
in the presence of his host's daughter.

Yet if Sir Lupus could not only overlook it, but laugh at it, I, certes,
had no right to rebuke what to me seemed a gross insult.

Toasts flew fast now, and there was a punch in a silver bowl as large as
a bushel--and spirits, too, which was strange, seeing that the ladies
remained at table.

Then Captain Campbell would have all to drink the Royal Greens, standing
on chairs, one foot on the table, which appeared to be his regiment's
mess custom, and we did so, the ladies laughing and protesting, but
finally planting their dainty shoes on the edge of the table; and
Magdalen Brant nigh fell off her chair--for lack of balance, as Sir
George Covert protested, one foot alone being too small to sustain her.

"That Cinderella compliment at our expense!" cried Betty Austin, but Sir
Lupus cried: "Silence all, and keep one foot on the table!" And a little
black slave lad, scarce more than a babe, appeared, dressed in a
lynx-skin, bearing a basket of pretty boxes woven out of scented grass
and embroidered with silk flowers.

At every corner he laid a box, all exclaiming and wondering what the
surprise might be, until the little black, arching his back, fetched a
yowl like a lynx and ran out on all fours.

"The gentlemen will open the boxes! Ladies, keep one foot on the table!"
bawled Sir Lupus. We bent