the attendants, with hippocras, syrups, and
comfits, by way of giving appetite for the supper, so that no further
opportunity for private conversation was left to the two lords. While
the count was dressing, the Lord Scales entered with a superb gown,
clasped with jewels, and lined with minever, with which Edward had
commissioned him to present the Bastard. In this robe the Lord Scales
insisted upon enduing his antagonist with his own hands, and the three
knights then repaired to the banquet. At the king's table no male
personage out of the royal family sat, except Lord Rivers--as
Elizabeth's father--and the Count de la Roche, placed between Margaret
and the Duchess of Bedford.

At another table, the great peers of the realm feasted under the
presidence of Anthony Woodville, while, entirely filling one side of the
hall, the ladies of the court held their "mess" (so-called) apart, and
"great and mighty was the eating thereof!"

The banquet ended, the dance began. The admirable "featliness" of the
Count de la Roche, in the pavon, with the Lady Margaret, was rivalled
only by the more majestic grace of Edward and the dainty steps of
Anthony Woodville. But the lightest and happiest heart which beat in
that revel was one in which no scheme and no ambition but those of love
nursed the hope and dreamed the triumph.

Stung by the coldness even more than by the disdain of the Lady
Bonville, and enraged to find that no taunt of his own, however galling,
could ruffle a dignity which was an insult both to memory and to
self-love, Hastings had exerted more than usual, both at the banquet and
in the revel, those general powers of pleasing, which, even in an age
when personal qualifications ranked so high, had yet made him no less
renowned for successes in gallantry than the beautiful and youthful
king. All about this man witnessed to the triumph of mind over the
obstacles that beset it,--his rise without envy, his safety amidst
foes, the happy ease with which he moved through the snares and pits
of everlasting stratagem and universal wile! Him alone the arts of the
Woodvilles could not supplant in Edward's confidence and love; to him
alone dark Gloucester bent his haughty soul; him alone, Warwick, who
had rejected his alliance, and knew the private grudge the rejection
bequeathed,--him alone, among the "new men," Warwick always treated with
generous respect, as a wise patriot and a fearless soldier; and in
the more frivolous scenes