g politics, discussing, whenever
they met, the affairs of the nation, for no senator was more earnest and
interested in his vocation than Percy Hamilton, but certainly on this
night there was no thoughtful gravity of a senator imprinted on his
brow; he was looking and laughing at the childish efforts of the little
Lord Manvers, eldest child of the Earl of Delmont, then in his seventh
year, to emulate the ease and dignity of his cousins, Lord Lyle and
Herbert and Allan Myrvin, some two or three years older than himself,
who, from being rather more often at Oakwood, considered themselves
quite lords of the soil and masters of the ceremonies, during the
present night at least. The Ladies Mary and Gertrude Lyle, distinguished
by the perfect simplicity of their dress, had each twined an arm in that
of the gentle, retiring Caroline Myrvin, and tried to draw her from her
young mother's side, where, somewhat abashed at the number that night
assembled in her grandfather's hall, she seemed determined to remain,
while a younger sister frolicked about the room, making friends with
all, in such wild exuberance of spirits, that Mrs. Myrvin's gentle voice
was more than once raised in playful reproach to reduce her to order,
while her husband and Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton seemed to take delight in
her movements of elasticity and joy. The Countess St. Eval, as majestic
and fascinating in womanhood as her early youth had promised, one moment
watched with a proud yet softly flashing eye the graceful movements of
her son, and the next, was conversing eagerly and gaily with her brother
Percy and the young Earl of Delmont, who were standing near her; seven
years had wrought but little change in him, whom till now we have only
known by the simple designation of Edward Fortescue. Manhood, in his
prime, had rather increased than lessened the extreme beauty of his face
and form; few gazed on him once but turned to gaze again, and the little
smiling cherub of five years, whose soft, round arms were twined round
Miss Fortescue's neck, the Lady Ellen Fortescue, promised fair to
inherit all her father's beauty and peculiar grace, and endeared her to
her young mother's heart with an increased warmth of love, while the
dark flashing eyes of Lord Manvers and his glossy, flowing, ebon curls
rendered him, Edward declared, the perfect likeness of his mother, and
therefore he was the father's pet. Round Mr. Hamilton were grouped, in
attitudes which an artist mig