Here in the Mall there was gaiety enough and to spare. A crowd of fine people that sometimes thickened to a mob, hustled by the cits and starveling poets who came to stare at them. Yet, since St. James’s Park was fashion’s favourite promenade, Lady Fareham affected it, and took a turn or two nearly every evening, alighting from her chair at one gate and returning to it at another, on her way to rout or dance. She took Angela with her; and De Malfort and Sir Denzil were generally in attendance upon them, Denzil’s devotion stopping at nothing except a proposal of marriage, for which he had not mustered courage in a friendship that had lasted half a year. “Because there was one so favoured as Endymion, am I to hope for the moon to come down and give herself to me?” he said one day, when Lady Fareham rebuked him for his reticence. “I know your sister does not love me; yet I hang on, hoping that love will come suddenly, like the coming of spring, which is ever a surprise. And even if I am never to win her, it is happiness to see her and to talk with her. I will not spoil my chance by rashness; I will not hazard banishment from her dear company.” “She is lucky in such an admirer,” sighed Hyacinth. “A silent, respectful passion is the rarest thing nowadays. Well, you deserve to conquer, Denzil; and if my sister were not of the coldest nature I ever met in woman she would have returned your passion ages ago, when you were so much in her company at Chilton.” “I can afford to wait as long as the Greeks waited before Troy,” said Denzil; “and I will be as constant as they were. If I cannot be her lover I can be her friend, and her protector.” “Protector! Nay, surely she needs no protector out-of-doors, when she has Fareham and me within!” “Beauty has always need of defenders.” “Not such beauty as Angela’s. In the first place, her charms are of no dazzling order; and in the second, she has a coldness of temper and an old-fashioned wisdom which would safeguard her amidst the rabble rout of Comus.” “There I believe you are right, Lady Fareham. Temptation could not touch her. Sin, even the subtlest, could not so disguise itself that her purity would not take alarm. Yes; she is like Milton’s lady. The tempter could not touch the freedom of her mind. Sinful love would wither at a look from those pure eyes.” He turned away suddenly and walked to the window. “Denzil! Why, what is the matter? You are weeping!” “Forgive me!” he said, recovering himself. “Indeed, I am not ashamed of a tributary tear to virtue and beauty like your sister’s.” “Dear friend, I shall not be happy till I call you brother.” She gave him both her hands, and he bent down to kiss them. “I swear you are losing all your Anabaptist stiffness,” she said, laughingly. “You will be ruffling it in Covent Garden with Buckhurst and his crew before long.” CHAPTER XIII. THE SAGE OF SAYES COURT.