'Your Majesty is welcome to my poor castle!' said the young Duke, bowing
with head uncovered to Miss Dacre.
'Nay, we are at the best but captive princesses about to be immured in
that fearful keep; and this is the way you mock us!'
'I am content that you shall be my prisoner.'
'A struggle for freedom!' said Miss Dacre, looking back to Mrs.
Dallington, and she galloped towards the castle.
Lord Mildmay and Lady St. Jerome cantered up, and the rest soon
assembled. Sir Carte came forward, all smiles, with a clerk of the
works bearing a portfolio of plans. A crowd of servants, for the Duke
maintained an establishment at Hauteville, advanced, and the fair
equestrians were dismounted. They shook their habits and their curls,
vowed that riding was your only exercise, and that dust in the earthly
economy was a blunder. And then they entered the castle.
Room after room, gallery after gallery; you know the rest. Shall we
describe the silk hangings and the reverend tapestry, the agate tables
and the tall screens, the china and the armour, the state beds and the
curious cabinets, and the family pictures mixed up so quaintly with
Italian and Flemish art? But we pass from meek Madonnas and seraphic
saints, from gleaming Claudes and Guidos soft as Eve, from Rubens's
satyrs and Albano's boys, and even from those gay and natural medleys,
paintings that cheer the heart, where fruit and flower, with their
brilliant bloom, call to a feast the butterfly and bee; we pass from
these to square-headed ancestors by Holbein, all black velvet and gold
chains; cavaliers, by Vandyke, all lace and spurs, with pointed beards,
that did more execution even than their pointed swords; patriots and
generals, by Kneller, in Blenheim wigs and Steen-kirk cravats, all
robes and armour; scarlet judges that supported ship-money, and purple
bishops, who had not been sent to the Tower.
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