“You will do nothing of the kind, Mrs. Henriette; for I shall sit in your room till you are sound asleep,” said Priscilla. “Then you will have to sit there all night; and I shall have somebody to talk to.” “I shall not allow you to talk.” “Will you gag me, or put a pillow over my face, like the Blackamoor in the play?” The minx and her governess retired, still disputing, after Angela had been desperately hugged by Henriette, who brimmed over with warmest affection in the midst of her insolence. They were gone, their voices sounding in the stillness on the terrace, and then on the staircase, and through the great empty rooms, where the windows were open to the sultry night, while the host of idle servants caroused in the basement, in a spacious room with a vaulted roof, like a college hall, where they were free to be as noisy or as drunken as they pleased. My lady was out, had taken only her chair, and running footmen, and had sent chairmen and footmen back from Whitehall, with an intimation that they would be wanted no more that night. Angela lingered on the terrace in the sultry summer gloom, watching solitary boats moving to and fro, shadowy as Charon’s. She dreaded the stillness of silent rooms, and to be alone with her own thoughts, which were not of the happiest. Her sister’s relations with De Malfort troubled her, innocent as they doubtless were: innocent as that close friendship of Henrietta of England with her cousin of France, when they two spent the fair midsummer nights roaming in palace gardens, close as lovers, but only fast friends. Malicious tongues had babbled even of that innocent friendship; and there were those who said that if Monsieur behaved liked a brute to his lovely young wife, it was because he had good reason for jealousy of Louis in the past, as well as of De Guiche in the present. These innocent friendships are ever the cause of uneasiness to the lookers-on. It is like seeing children at play on the edge of a cliff. They are too near danger and destruction. Hyacinth, being about as able to carry a secret as to carry an elephant, had betrayed by a hundred indications that a plot of some kind was being hatched between her and De Malfort. And to-night, before going out, she had made too much fuss about so simple a matter as a basset-party at Lady Sarah’s, who had her basset-table every night, and was popularly supposed to keep house upon her winnings, and to have no higher code of honour than De Gramont had when he invited a brother officer to supper on purpose to rook him. Mr. Killigrew’s comedy had been discussed in Angela’s hearing. People who had been deprived of the theatre for over a year were greedy and eager spectators of all the plays produced at Court; but this production was an exceptional event. Killigrew’s wit and impudence and impecuniosity were the talk of the town, and anything written by that audacious jester was sure to be worth hearing.