Castlewood himself was startled by that beauty and splendor; he stepped back and gazed at his sister as though he had not been aware before (nor was he very likely) how perfectly lovely she was, and I thought blushed as he embraced her. The Prince could not keep his eyes off her; he quite forgot his menial part, though he had been schooled to it, and a little light portmanteau prepared expressly that he should carry it. He pressed forward before my Lord Viscount. ’Twas lucky the servants’ eyes were busy in other directions, or they must have seen that this was no servant, or at least a very insolent and rude one.
Again Colonel Esmond was obliged to cry out, “Baptiste,” in a loud imperious voice, “have a care to the valise;” at which hint the wilful young man ground his teeth together with something very like a curse between them, and then gave a brief look of anything but pleasure to his Mentor. Being reminded, however, he shouldered the little portmanteau, and carried it up the stair, Esmond preceding him, and a servant with lighted tapers. He flung down his burden sulkily in the bedchamber:—“A Prince that will wear a crown must wear a mask,” says Mr. Esmond in French.
“Ah peste! I see how it is,” says Monsieur Baptiste, continuing the talk in French. “The Great Serious is seriously”—“alarmed for Monsieur Baptiste,” broke in the Colonel. Esmond neither liked the tone with which the Prince spoke of the ladies, nor the eyes with which he regarded them.
The bedchamber and the two rooms adjoining it, the closet and the apartment which was to be called my lord’s parlor, were already lighted and awaiting their occupier; and the collation laid for my lord’s supper. Lord Castlewood and his mother and sister came up the stair a minute afterwards, and, so soon as the domestics had quitted the apartment, Castlewood and Esmond uncovered, and the two ladies went down on their knees before the Prince, who graciously gave a hand to each. He looked his part of Prince much more naturally than that of servant, which he had just been trying, and raised them both with a great deal of nobility, as well as kindness in his air. “Madam,” says he, “my mother will thank your ladyship for your hospitality to her son; for you, madam,” turning to Beatrix, “I cannot bear to see so much beauty in such a posture. You will betray Monsieur Baptiste if you kneel to him; sure ’tis his place rather to kneel to you.”
A light shone out of her eyes; a gleam bright enough to kindle passion in any breast. There were times when this creature was so handsome, that she seemed, as it were, like Venus revealing herself a goddess in a flash of brightness. She appeared so now; radiant, and with eyes bright with a wonderful lustre. A pang, as of rage and jealousy, shot through Esmond’s heart, as he caught the look she gave the Prince; and he clenched his hand involuntarily and looked across to Castlewood, whose eyes answered his alarm-signal, and were also on the alert. The Prince gave his subjects an audience of a few minutes, and then the two ladies and Colonel Esmond quitted the chamber. Lady Castlewood pressed his hand as they descended the stair, and the three went down to the lower rooms, where they waited awhile till the travellers above should be refreshed and ready for their meal.
Esmond looked at Beatrix, blazing with her jewels on her beautiful neck. “I have kept my word,” says he: “And I mine,” says Beatrix, looking down on the diamonds.
“Were I the Mogul Emperor,” says the Colonel, “you should have all that were dug out of Golconda.”
“These are a great deal too good for me,” says Beatrix, dropping her head on her beautiful breast—“so are you all, all!” And when she looked up again, as she did in a moment, and after a sigh, her eyes, as they gazed at her cousin, wore that melancholy and inscrutable look which ’twas always impossible to sound.
When the time came for the supper, of which we were advertised by a knocking overhead, Colonel Esmond and the two ladies went to the upper apartment, where the Prince already was, and by his side the young Viscount, of exactly the same age, shape, and with features not dissimilar, though Frank’s were the handsomer of the two. The Prince sat down and bade the ladies sit. The gentlemen remained standing: there was, indeed, but one more cover laid at the table:—“Which of you will take it?” says he.
“The head of our house,” says Lady Castlewood, taking her son’s hand, and looking towards Colonel Esmond with a bow and a great tremor of the voice; “the Marquis of Esmond will have the honor of serving the King.”
“I shall have the honor of waiting on his Royal Highness,” says Colonel Esmond, filling a cup of wine, and, as the fashion of that day was, he presented it to the King on his knee.
“I drink to my hostess and her family,” says the Prince, with no very well-pleased air; but the cloud passed immediately off his face, and he talked to the ladies in a lively, rattling strain, quite undisturbed by poor Mr. Esmond’s yellow countenance,
