The barge wore a much more festive aspect under her ladyship’s management than when used by his lordship for a daylight voyage like the trip to Deptford. Satin coverlets and tapestry curtains had been brought from Lady Fareham’s own apartments, to be flung with studied carelessness over benches and tabourets. Her ladyship’s singing-boys and musicians were grouped picturesquely under a silken canopy in the bows, and a row of lanterns hung on chains festooned from stem to stern, pretty gew-gaws, that had no illuminating power under that all-potent moon, but which glittered with coloured light like jewels, and twinkled and trembled in the summer air. A table in the stern was spread with a light collation, which gave an excuse for the display of parcel-gilt cups, silver tankards, and Venetian wine-flasks. A miniature fountain played perfumed waters in the midst of this splendour; and it amused the ladies to pull off their long gloves, dip them in the scented water, and flap them in the faces of their beaux. The distance was only too short, since Lady Fareham’s friends declared the voyage was by far the pleasanter part of the entertainment. Denzil, among others, was of this opinion, for it was his good fortune to have secured the seat next Angela, and to be able to interest her by his account of the buildings they passed, whose historical associations were much better known to him than to most young men of his epoch. He had sat at the feet of a man who scoffed at Pope and King, and hated Episcopacy, but who revered all that was noble and excellent in England’s past. “Flams, mere flams!” cried Hyacinth, acknowledging the praises bestowed on her barge; “but if you like clary wine better than skimmed milk you had best drink a brimmer or two before you leave the barge, since ’tis odds you’ll get nothing but syllabubs and gingerbread from Lady Sarah.” “A substantial supper might frighten away the ghost, who doubtless parted with sensual propensities when she died,” said De Malfort. “How do we watch for her? In a severe silence, as if we were at church?” “Aw would keep silence for a week o’ Sawbaths gin Aw was sure o’ seeing a bogle,” said Lady Euphemia Dubbin, a Scotch marquess’s daughter, who had married a wealthy cit, and made it the chief endeavour of her life to ignore her husband and keep him at a distance. She hated the man only a little less than his plebeian name, which she had not succeeded in persuading him to change, because, forsooth, there had been Dubbins in Mark Lane for many generations. All previous Dubbins had lived over their warehouses and offices; but her ladyship had brought Thomas Dubbin from Mark Lane to my Lord Bedford’s Piazza in the Convent Garden, where he endured the tedium of existence in a fine new house in which he was afraid of his fine new servants, and never had anything to eat that he liked, his gastronomic taste being for dishes the very names of which were intolerable to persons of quality.