place of deferred hopes and the place of poisoned tongues, and the place in which to suck the last sweet drop in an enemy’s cup of trembling.  It was the haunt of laughter and of fevered wit and of rivalry in all things, and here the heaviest of heart was not unlike to be the lightest of wit.  The spirit of party never left its walls, and Ambition was its chamberlain.  The envied and the envious walked there, and there hung the sword of Damocles and the invisible balances.  Here, in one corner, might lord it one on whom Fortune broadly smiled, while around him buzzed the gilded parasites, and here, ten feet away, his rival felt the knife turn in his heart.  To-morrow—­to-morrow’s old trick of legerdemain! there the knife, here the smiling face, and for the cloud of sycophants mere change of venue.  It was a land of air-castles and rainbow gold, a fool’s paradise and the garden where grew most thickly the apples of Sodom.  In it were caged all greed, all extravagance, all jealousies; hopes, fears, passions that may be born of and destroy the soul of man; and within it also flamed splendid folly and fealty to some fixed star, and courage past disputing, and clear love of God and country.  Yonder glass of fashion and mould of form had stood knee-deep in an Irish bog keeping through a winter’s night a pack of savages at bay; this jester at a noble’s elbow knew when to speak in earnest; and this, a suitor with no present in his hand, so lightly esteemed as scarce to seem an actor in the pageant, might to-night take his pen and give to after-time a priceless gift.  Soldiers, idle gallants, gentlemen and officers of the court; men of law and men of affairs; churchmen, poets, foreigners, spendthrifts, gulls, satellites, and kinsmen of great lords; the wise, the foolish, the noble and the base—­up and down moved the restless, brilliant throng.  Some excitement was toward, for the great room buzzed with talk.  The courtiers drew together in groups, and it seemed that a man’s name was being bandied to and fro, dark shuttlecock to this painted throng.  Damans Sedley, entering the antechamber by a small side door, swam into the ken of a number of eager players gathered around a gentleman of flushed countenance, who, with much swiftness and dexterity, was wreaking old grudges upon the shuttlecock.  One of the audience trod upon the player’s toe; each courtier bowed until his sword stood out a straight line of steel; the maid of honor curtsied, waved her fan, let her handkerchief fall to the floor.  To seize the piece of lawn all entered the lists, for the lady was very beautiful, and of a seductive, fine, and subtle charm; a favorite also of the Queen, who, Narcissus-like, saw only her own beauty, and believed that Sir Mortimer Ferne’s veiled divinity was rather to be found on Olympus than upon the plains beneath.  In sheer loveliness, with lips like a pomegranate flower, mobile face of clear pallor, and beneath level brows eyes whose color it was hard to guess at and whose depths were past all sounding, Mistress Damaris Sedley held her small head high and went her graceful way, moving as one enchanted over the thorny floor of the court.  She had great charm.  Once it had been said beneath a royal commissioner’s breath that here in this portionless girl was a twin sorceress to the Queen who dwelt at Tutbury.