CHAPTER VIII.

THE RIDOTTO.

The 'ridotto,' the Italian word then fashionable for an entertainment of music and dancing, at the huge old red-brick villa of the Heer van Otterbeck, Minister of State, in the vicinity of the Hague, was one of the gayest affairs of the season.

The Prince of Orange (whose son afterwards became King of the Netherlands) was not present, but all the rank, the wealth, and beauty of the Hague were represented; and among those present were many officers of the Scots Brigade, including the Earl of Drumlanrig, General Dundas, in after years the captor of the Cape of Good Hope; and there too was the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere, John Home, then the celebrated author of the nearly forgotten tragedy of 'Douglas.'

A band of the Dutch Guards furnished music on the lawn, and there dancing was in progress in the bright sunshine of the summer afternoon; and, in the fashion of the time, many of the guests were arrayed in what they deemed the costume of Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses.

People danced early in the evenings of the eighteenth century, and were abed about the time their descendants now begin to dress for a ball. Ices were unknown; no wine was dispensed, but the liveried servants of the Heervan Otterbeck regaled his guests on coffee, green tea, orange tea, and many kinds of cakes and confectionery in the intervals of the dancing, in which Dolores (all innocent and unaware of the plots in progress against her peace, even her honour and liberty--one of them born of avarice, wounded vanity, and foiled desire) indulged joyously and with all her heart.

For the information of the ladies of the present day we shall detail the dress worn by Dolores on that evening as described in the _Hague Gazette_, and they may imagine how charming she looked:

'Her body and train were silver tissue, with a broad silver fringe; her petticoat was white satin covered with the richest crape, embroidered with silver, fastened up with bunches of silver roses, tassels, and cords. Her pocket-holes were blonde, her stockings were blue, clocked with silver, and her hair was twisted and plaited in the most beautiful manner around a diamond comb.'

Seated under a tree, flushed with a recent dance, she was alternately playing with her fan and silver pomander ball, with a crowd of admirers about her, and looking alike pure and bright, with 'a skin as though she had been dieted on milk and roses.'

'No wonder it is, perhaps, that Lewie loves me,' thought the girl, as she looked at the reflection of her own sweet face in a little bit of oval mirror in the back of her huge Dutch fan; 'I _am_ pretty!'

She might have said 'lovely,' and more than lovely; and then she smiled consciously at her own vanity.

Under the genial influence of her surroundings the heart of the girl was full of happiness, and had but one regret that Lewie Baronald was not there. Yet, she thought, 'to-morrow I shall see him--to-morrow be with my darling, who at this moment is thinking of me.'

And amid the brilliance of the scene, so rich in the variety of colour and costume, the strains of the music and beauty of the old Dutch pleasure-grounds, she almost longed to be alone, with the grass, the birds, the insects, and the flowers--alone in the sweet summer evening with the perfume of the roses, the jasmine, and the glorious honeysuckle around her.

On one hand, about a mile distant, was the Hague, with all its Gothic spires and pointed gables; on the other spread the landscape so usual in that country of cheese and butter--church-towers and wind-mills, bright farmhouses, long rows of willow-trees, their green foliage ruffling up white in the passing breeze; the grassy dykes and embankments, a long continuity of horizontal lines, which seemed so tame and insipid to the mountaineers of the Scots Brigade, and to all but the Dutch themselves.

Among the groups around her, Dolores, as usual now, heard the growing political quarrel between Great Britain and Holland openly and freely discussed, together with the consequent and too probable departure of the Scots Brigade from the latter for ever. That seemed almost a settled thing--a certainty, if the quarrel became an open one, and the probabilities wrung the girl's affectionate heart.

How would all this affect her lover and herself? Alas! she knew not that the doom of the former for foreign service was nearly a fixed thing now! And she was fated to receive her first mental shock that evening, all unwittingly, from the Earl of Drumlanrig, who drew near her, and with the stately manner of the time lifted his hat with one hand, and with the other touched her hand as he bowed over it.

The golden light of the setting sun fell full upon her hair, flecking its bronze with glorious tints, and giving her beauty a brilliance that, to the Earl's appreciative eye, was very striking.

'You look like one of Watteau's beauties, waiting to hear herself addressed in the language of Love,' said the old peer, smiling.

'Love has three languages, my lord,' observed Dolores.

'Three?'

'The pen, the tongue, and the eyes.'

'True; but I am too old to use any of these now,' said the Earl, shaking his powdered head.

'The evening is a lovely one,' observed Dolores, after a pause.

'And the landscape yonder, as it stretches away towards Delft, is wonderfully steeped in sunshine; and but for its flatness----' the Earl paused.

'Your Scottish eyes cannot forgive that,' said Dolores laughing, as she recalled some of Lewie Baronald's complaints on the same subject; 'but people cannot live on scenery.'

'So the great Samuel Johnson has written.'

'Who is he?' asked Dolores.

'A great lexicographer--a wonderful English savant--who believes in a ghost in London, yet discredited the late earthquake at Lisbon. I think I have seen you at the Vyverberg with Lewis Baronald of my battalion; he has the honour of being known to you.'

'He visits us,' replied Dolores, the flower-like tints of her sweet face growing brighter as the Earl spoke.

'He is a fine and handsome fellow, young Baronald; but it is strange that he should wish to quit the Hague when it possesses such peculiar attractions,' said the Earl markedly, and with a courteous bow.

'Quit the Hague!' repeated Dolores, as if she had not heard him aright.

'I do not know whether the desire to do so, has any connection with his uncle's scheme for the recapture or restitution to Holland of the Island of Goree, off the coast of Senegal, in defiance of the old Treaty of Nimeguen, which gave it to France, a scheme which will win him the favour of their Mightinesses; but young Baronald's name was sent, through me this morning, to the Director-General of Infantry, for instant foreign service.'

'Foreign service!' whispered Dolores, in an almost breathless voice, while her white throat gave a sharp nervous gasp, and her long lashes drooped over her beautiful eyes. 'Surely, my lord, this must be some mistake. Lewie--he had no desire to leave Holland, in any way--he dreaded nothing so much as the departure of the Brigade to Britain; and this--this----'

'No mistake, I assure you,' interrupted the Earl, all unaware of the astonishment he was exciting and the pain he was inflicting, and both of which he must have perceived had not the Heer van Otterbeck, fortunately for Dolores, approached at that moment, and tapping and proffering his Sèvres china snuff-box, 'buttonholed' him on the inevitable subjects, the quarrel between Britain and Holland, Paul Jones in the Texel, and Commodore Fielding's conduct in firing on the Dutch fleet in the Channel, which the Commodore did with hearty goodwill.

But for Dolores, the charms of the ridotto had vanished now; and in sore perturbation of spirit and anxiety of heart, she bade her host and hostess a hurried farewell, summoned her sedan, and took her departure homeward.

The lights, the music--the music of Lulli; the _minuet de la cour_, and the gaiety of the ridotto, faded away behind her as the heiress took the somewhat lonely road that led to the villa of her mother.

She was escorted to her sedan by an officer of the Brigade, a friend of Lewie's, who, as he closed the roof of it over her, thought that she looked like--as he vowed to some others--'a lovely queen in wax-work done up in a glass-case.'