a word with Hortense if you can! Let me but get the king's ear--" And
Radisson laughed with a confidence, methought, nothing on earth could
shake.

Then we were passed from the sentinel doing duty at the gate to the
king's guards, and from the guards to orderlies, and from orderlies to
fellows in royal colours, who led us from an ante-room to that glorious
gallery of art where it pleased the king to take his pleasure that
night.

It was not a state occasion, as Radisson said; but for a moment I think
the glitter in which those jaded voluptuaries burned out their
moth-lives blinded even the clear vision of Pierre Radisson. The great
gallery was thronged with graceful courtiers and stately dowagers and
gaily attired page-boys and fair ladies with a beauty of youth on their
features and the satiety of age in their look. My Lord Preston, I
mind, was costumed in purple velvet with trimming of pearls such as a
girl might wear. Young Blood moved from group to group to show his
white velvets sparkling with diamonds. One of the Sidneys was there
playing at hazard with my Lady Castlemaine for a monstrous pile of gold
on the table, which some onlookers whispered made up three thousand
guineas. As I watched my lady lost; but in spite of that, she coiled
her bare arm around the gold as if to hold the winnings back.

"And indeed," I heard her say, with a pout, "I've a mind to prove your
love! I've a mind not to pay!"

At which young Sidney kisses her finger-tips and bids her pay the debt
in favours; for the way to the king was through the influence of
Castlemaine or Portsmouth or other of the dissolute crew.