"What have you been doing, Lavendale?" asked Durnford. "Is this the way you treat your guests?" "The ladies were out of humour at having to take their tea without your lordship," said Irene. "And if it had not been for the most exquisite game at hide and seek, we should have all had the vapours," protested Lady Polwhele; "but we have had mighty fun in your corridors and closets, Lavendale, and I think we must have routed all your family ghosts, and given a good scare to your antique Jacobite rats. Of course you have no parvenu Hanoverians behind your respectable wainscots? We have not left a corner unexplored in our revelry." "It was a scurvy trick in your lordship to desert us so long," said Mrs. Asterley, "and I would have you look after Lady Judith, who is flirting with Lord Bolingbroke in the saloon." "O, his French wife will take care there is no mischief done," said Asterley; "but indeed, Lavendale, you must join us at basset. We can have no fun without you." "I am coming," said Lavendale, following them out into the hall. Durnford looked at him uneasily when they came into the light. "What were you doing, Jack, in that dark room?" he asked. "Had you fallen asleep?" "No, I was brooding; brooding over my joy. Should a man not sit and nurse his happiness as well as his grief?" "You have had a swooning fit, Jack. You are as pale as death." "Well, I was near swooning with excess of joy; but 'tis over, and now I am ready for a riotous night. I will play you as deep, drink you as deep as in our wickedest days. There shall be no mirth too wild for me." He went to the saloon, where his mistress was sitting at the harpsichord playing to Lady Bolingbroke, while the statesman stood with his back to the fireplace in a thoughtful attitude. There were no signs of levity here, at any rate. Judith sprang up at his entrance, and went over to him. "Why have you abandoned us so long?" she asked complainingly. "It was cruel of you to leave me to myself all this time." "Could I leave you in sweeter company? But indeed, dearest, I have not stayed away for pleasure. I was busy." "You have no right to be busy when I am in your house. All labours should cease but the labour of pleasing me," this with the spoiled beauty's air; and then, becoming all at once earnest and womanly as she saw the change in his countenance, "but you have not been busy. You have been ill, fainting. You are as white as chalk. O Lavendale, what has happened?" "Nothing in this world, sweet, to vex you. I rode too hard t'other day for the pleasure of keeping near you, and I am no Nimrod, like Walpole and his great rival yonder. The hunting tired me." "You must be in bad health to be so easily tired." "Easily, quotha! Why, 'twas a thirty-mile run, and a fourteen-mile ride home! 'Tis only a goddess who can make light of such a day. But are you going to play basset? and will you have me for your partner?" "My partner in all things till death."