the stately marchioness honoured him with her most gracious smile.
Formal presentations to the rest of the guests were interchanged; and it
was not till the circle was fully gone through that Maltravers perceived,
seated by himself in a corner, to which he had shrunk on the entrance of
Maltravers, a gray-haired solitary man,--it was Lord Saxingham! The last
time they had met was in the death-chamber of Florence; and the old man
forgot for the moment the anticipated dukedom, and the dreamed-of
premiership, and his heart flew back to the grave of his only child!
They saluted each other, and shook hands in silence. And Vargrave--whose
eye was on them--Vargrave, whose arts had made that old man childless,
felt not a pang of remorse! Living ever in the future, Vargrave almost
seemed to have lost his memory. He knew not what regret was. It is a
condition of life with men thoroughly worldly that they never look
behind!

The signal was given: in due order the party were marshalled into the
great hall,--a spacious and lofty chamber, which had received its last
alteration from the hand of Inigo Jones; though the massive ceiling, with
its antique and grotesque masques, betrayed a much earlier date, and
contrasted with the Corinthian pilasters that adorned the walls, and
supported the music-gallery, from which waved the flags of modern warfare
and its mimicries,--the eagle of Napoleon, a token of the services of
Lord Raby's brother (a distinguished cavalry officer in command at
Waterloo), in juxtaposition with a much gayer and more glittering banner,
emblematic of the martial fame of Lord Raby himself, as Colonel of the
B-----shire volunteers!

The music pealed from the gallery, the plate glittered on the board; the
ladies wore diamonds, and the gentlemen who had them wore stars. It was
a very fine sight, that banquet!--such as became the festive day of a