The other ladies one by one sobbed with affected sympathy, wiping their eyes tenderly, however, lest they might remove the rich colour from their cheeks.

"Mesdames," said Nell, reprovingly, "the memory is sacred. Believe me, very sacred."

She fell apparently once again to weeping bitterly.

"The memory is always sacred--with men," observed Portsmouth, for the benefit of her guests, not excepting the Irish youth. "Nay, tell us the name of the fair one who left you so young. My heart goes out to you, dear Beau."

"Kind hostess," replied Nell, a.s.suming her tenderest tones, "the name of my departed self is--Nell!"

Hart caught the word. The player was standing near, reflecting on the scene and on the honeyed words of the Duke of Buckingham, who was preparing the way that he might use him.

"Nell!" he muttered. "Who spoke that name?"

The hostess too was startled.

"Nell!" she exclaimed, with contending emotions. "Strange! Another cavalier who graces _mon bal masque_ to-night has lost a loved one whose name is Nell. Ah, but she was unworthy of his n.o.ble love."

She spoke pointedly at the masked King, who started perceptibly.

"Yes," he thought; for his conscience smote him, "unworthy--he of her."

"Unworthy, truly, if he dances so soon and his own Nell dead," added Nell, reflectively, but so that all might hear, more especially Charles.

"Perchance Nell too thinks so," thought he, as he restlessly walked away, sighing: "I wish I were with her on the terrace."

"'Sdeath, d.u.c.h.ess," continued Nell abruptly, in a.s.sumed horror at the sudden thought, "the lady's spirit may visit the ball, to the confusion of us all. Such things have been."

"The Nell I mean," said Portsmouth, with a confident smile, "will not venture here, e'en in spirit."

Nell a.s.sumed a baby-innocence of face.

"She has not been bidden, I presume?" she queried.

"The vixen would not stop for asking," declared Portsmouth, almost fiercely.

"Come without asking?" cried Nell, as if she could not believe that there could be such people upon the earth. "How ill-bred! Thine ear, loved one. My Nell revisits the world again at midnight. The rendezvous--St. James's Park."

Hart brushed close enough to the group, in his biting curiosity, to catch her half-whisper to Portsmouth. He at once sought a window and fresh air, chafing with surprise and indignation at what he had overheard.

"St. James's at midnight," he muttered. "'Tis my Nell's abode."

The d.u.c.h.ess herself stood stunned at what appeared to her a possible revelation of great import.

"St. James's!" she thought. "Can he mean Madame Gwyn? No, no!"

The look of suspicion which for an instant had clouded her face changed to one of merriment, under Adair's magic glance.

"And you would desert me for such a fleshless sprite?" she asked.

"Not so," said Nell, with a winning look; "but, when my better-half returns to life, I surely cannot refuse an interview--especially an she come from afar."

Nell's eyes arose with an expression of sadness, while her finger pointed down--ward in the direction of what she deemed the probable abode of her departed "Nell." Her lips twitched in merriment, however, despite her efforts to the contrary; and the hostess fell a-laughing.

"Ladies," she cried, as she appealed to one and all, "is not _le Beau_ a delight--so different from ordinary men?"

"I am not an ordinary man, I a.s.sure you," Nell hastened to declare.

This a.s.sertion was acquiesced in by a buzz of pretty compliments from the entire bevy of ladies. "Positively charming!" exclaimed one. "A perfect love!" said another.

Nell listened resignedly.

"'Sheart," she said, at length, with an air of _ennui_, "I cannot help it. 'Tis all part of being a man, you know."

"Would that all men were like you, _le Beau_!" sighed the hostess, not forgetting to glance at the King, who again sat disconsolate, in the midst of his attendant courtiers, drawn up, as in line of battle, against the wall.

"Heaven help us if they were!" slyly suggested Nell.

Rochester, who had been watching the scene in his mischievous, artistic way, drew from Portsmouth's compliment to Adair another meaning. He was a mixture 'twixt a man of arts and letters and Satan's own--a man after the King's own heart. Turning to the King, with no desire to appease the mischief done, he said, banteringly:

"Egad, there's a rap at you, Sire. France would make you jealous."

The Duke of Buckingham too, though he appeared asleep, had seen it all.

"And succeeds, methinks," he reflected, glancing approvingly in the direction of the Irish youth. "A good ally, i'faith."

Nell, indeed, was using all her arts of fascination to ingratiate herself with the d.u.c.h.ess, and making progress, too.

"Your eyes are glorious, fair hostess," she said, in her most gallant love-tones, "did I not see my rival in them."

She could not, however, look at Portsmouth for laughter, as she thought: "I believe lying goes with the breeches; I never was so proficient before."

The compliment aroused the King's sluggish nature.

"I can endure no more, gallants," cried he, with some pretence of anger, rising abruptly, followed, of course, in each move and grimace by his courtier-apes, in their desire to please. "Are we to be out-done in our own realm by this usurper with a brogue? Ha! The fiddlers! Madame, I claim the honour of this fair hand for the dance."

At the sound of the music, he had stepped gallantly forward, taking the hostess's hand.

"My thanks, gallant masker," replied the d.u.c.h.ess, pretending not to know him for flattery's sake, "but I am--"

To her surprise, she had no opportunity to complete the sentence.

"Engaged! Engaged!" interposed Nell, coming unceremoniously between them, with swaggering a.s.sumption and an eye-shot at the King through the portal of her mask. "Forsooth, some other time, strange sir."

The hostess stood horrified.

"Pardon, Sir Masker," she hastened to explain; "but the dance was pledged--"

"No apologies, d.u.c.h.ess," replied the King, as he turned away, carelessly, with the reflection: "All's one to me at this a.s.semblage."