The little concert lasted for something less than an hour, with intervals of light music, dances and marches, between the singing. Boats passed and repassed. Strange voices joined in a refrain now and then, and the sisters stood at the open window enthralled by the charm of the music and the scene. London lay in ruins yonder to the east, and Sir Matthew Hale and other judges were sitting at Clifford’s Inn to decide questions of title and boundary, and the obligation to rebuild; but here in this western London there were long ranges of lighted windows shining through the wintry mists, wherries passing up and down with lanterns at their prows, an air of life and gaiety hanging over that river which had carried so many a noble victim to his doom yonder, where the four towers stood black against the starlit greyness, unscathed by fire, and untouched by time. The last notes of a good-night song dwindled and died, to the accompaniment of dipping oars, as the boat moved slowly along the tideway, and lost itself among other boats—jovial cits going eastward, from an afternoon at the King’s theatre, modish gallants voyaging westward from play-house or tavern, some going home to domesticity, others intent upon pleasure and intrigue, as the darkness came down, and the hour for supper and deeper drinking drew near. And who would have thought, watching the lighted windows of palace and tavern, hearing those joyous sounds of glee or catch trolled by voices that reeked of wine—who would have thought of the dead-cart, and the unnumbered dead lying in the pest pits yonder, or the city in ruins, or the King enslaved to a foreign power, and pledged to a hated Church? London, gay, splendid, and prosperous, the queen-city of the world as she seemed to those who loved her—could rise glorious from the ashes of a fire unparalleled in modern history, and to Charles and Wren it might be given to realise a boast which in Augustus had been little more than an imperial phrase. CHAPTER XIX. DIDO. The armed neutrality between man and wife continued, and the domestic sky at Fareham House was dark and depressing. Lady Fareham, who had hitherto been remarkable for a girlish amiability of speech which went well with her girlish beauty, became now the height of the mode for acidity and slander. The worst of the evil speakers on her ladyship’s visiting-day flavoured the China tea with no bitterer allusions than those that fell from the rosy lips of the hostess. And, for the colouring of those lips, which once owed their vermeil tint only to nature, Lady Fareham was now dependent upon Mrs. Lewin, as well as for the carnation of cheeks that looked pallid and sunken in the glass which reflected the sad mourning face.