“So you are signalled out for her slights. What could you wish more? I’d rather be the one scorned by a woman than the fifty favoured. ’Tis to stand alone in her estimation, and be thought of always for yourself. She’s jealous, take my word. These coquetries you speak of are but retorts on you in kind. Be thankful that she thinks you worth them. It works, Phil--believe me, it works.” “Do you really think so?” “I’m sure of it.” “Come, visit us this night, and make sureness surer.” Hamilton feigned to reflect. “To-night? Why, the truth is----” Chesterfield, breaking into a chuckle, nudged him roguishly. “Hey-hey! I see: an assignation. Well, another night.” “Nay; to prove you’re wrong, I’ll come.” It so happened that, passing along a corridor that afternoon, Hamilton encountered the Duke of York, who took his arm and held him in friendly talk as he paced the matting with him up and down. His Royal Highness was in a suit of plain black, which became his sombre visage very well, and wore no ornament but the “George” suspended from his neck by a blue ribbon. “I know your love for music, Geordie,” says he. “What is this new saraband that all seem suddenly crazed about?” Hamilton told him. It was by the Signor Francesco Corbetti, that famous master of the guitar, who had lately come from Paris to Whitehall, and with such good result for himself that the King, who loved his art, had actually appointed him a groom of the Queen’s privy chamber, with a princely salary, in order that he might attach him permanently to the Court. “’Tis nothing else, both morning and noon,” said the young man, with a groan: “till, for my very love of music, I could throttle these mutilators of it with their own guitar strings. Not a doting coxcomb or lang’rous amourette but murders the ‘jealous-pated swain’ six times a day. I wish he were rotten. Is it not strange how vanity will never learn that to sing the nightingale’s song is not necessarily to sing the nightingale!” The Duke smiled tolerantly. “Are they all such bunglers?” said he. “I have heard of some reputed to handle their instruments well.” “Arran is one,” said Hamilton, “and there is another accomplished performer among them--your Royal Highness’s self. But, for the rest, it is not that I object to their twanging to their hearts’ content; it is that they must all do it to the same tune. This saraband is indeed a ravishing air--as Corbetti plays it; but watered nectar was never to my taste. God forbid I should quarrel with a vogue his Majesty started, or curse to hear this discordant plucking of strings come wailing eternally like the wind through a hundred keyholes; all I ask is an occasional change in the theme.” “You think, nevertheless, the air itself beautiful?” “O! it is. Your Royal Highness should hear it.” “What did you remark of Lord Arran, Geordie?” “Why, he knows and plays it, after Corbetti, the best of all.”