sat waiting for some
time, holding my restive horse as best I might, but there coming no
cessation in the music, I dismounted, and seeing one of Madam
Cavendish's black men, gave him the bridle to hold, and went up to
the house and entered, though not in my plum-coloured velvet, and,
indeed, being not only in my ordinary clothes, but somewhat splashed
with mire from my mad gallop through the woods. But I judged rightly
that in so much of a crowd I should pass unnoticed both as to myself
and my apparel. I stood in the great room near the door and watched
the dance, and 'twas as brilliant a scene as ever I had seen
anywhere even in England. The musicians in the gallery were sawing
away for their lives on violins, and working breathlessly at the
hautboys, and all that gay company of Virginia's best, spinning
about in a country dance of old England. Such a brave show of velvet
coats, and breeches, and flowered brocade waistcoats, and powdered
wigs, and feathers, and laces, and ribbons, and rich flaunts of
petticoats revealing in the whirl of the dance clocked hose on
slender ankles, and high-heeled satin shoes, would have done no
discredit to the court. But of them all, Mistress Mary Cavendish was
the belle and the star. She was dancing with my Lord Estes when I
entered, and such a goodly couple they were, that I heard many an
exclamation of delight from the spectators, who stood thickly about
the walls, the windows even being filled with faces of black and
white servants. My Lord Estes was a handsome dark man, handsomer and
older than Sir Humphrey Hyde, who, though dancing with the
governor's daughter Cate, had, I could see, a rueful eye of
watchfulness toward Mary Cavendish. As he and Cate Culpeper swung
past me, Sir Humphrey's eyes fell on my face and he gave a start and
blush, and presently, when the dance was over and his partner
seated, came up to me with hand extended, as if I had been the
noblest guest there. "Harry, Harry," he whispered eagerly, "she hath
danced with me three times to-night, and hath promised again, and
Harry, saw you ever any one so beautiful as she in that blue dress?"

I answered truthfully that I never had. Sir Humphrey, in his blue
velvet suit with the silver buttons, with his rosy face and powdered
wig, was one to look at twice and yet again, and I regarded him as
always, with that liking for him and that fury of jealousy.

I looked at him and loved him as I might have loved my son, with