My Lady Castlemaine, seated between Etheredge and Rochester,
played in silence, with lips tight-set and brooding eyes. She had
lost, it is true, some L1500 that night; yet, a prodigal
gamester, and one who came easily by money, she had been known to
lose ten times that sum and yet preserve her smile. The source of
her ill-humour was not the game. She played recklessly, her
attention wandering; those handsome, brooding eyes of hers were
intent upon watching what went on at the other end of the long
room. There, at a smaller table, sat Miss Stewart, half a dozen
gallants hovering near her, engaged upon a game of cards of a
vastly different sort. Miss Stewart did not gamble. The only
purpose she could find for cards was to build castles; and
here she was building one with the assistance of her gallants,
and under the superintendence of his Grace of Buckingham, who
was as skilled in this as in other equally unstable forms of
architecture.

Apart, over by the fire, in a great chair of gilt leather,
lounged the King, languidly observing this smaller party, a
faint, indolent smile o n his swarthy, saturnine countenance.
Absently, with one hand he stroked a little spaniel that was
curled in his lap. A black boy in a gorgeous, plumed turban and a
long, crimson surcoat arabesqued in gold--there were three or
four such attendants about the room--proffered him a cup of
posses on a golden salver.

The King rose, thrust aside the little blackamoor, and with his
spaniel under his arm, sauntered across to Miss Stewart's table.
Soon he found himself alone with her--the others having removed