Across the moor a sea of shallow mist was rolling; and the trees in the valley, like browsing cattle, stood knee-deep in whiteness, with all the air above them wan from an innumerable rain as of moondust, falling into that white sea.  Then the moon passed behind the lime-tree, so that a great lighted Chinese lantern seemed to hang blue-black from the sky.

Suddenly, jarring and shivering the music, came a sound of hooting.  It swelled, died away, and swelled again.

Miltoun rose.

“That has spoiled my vision,” he said.  “Mrs. Noel, I have something I want to say.”  But looking down at her, sitting so still, with her hands resting on the keys, he was silent in sheer adoration.

A voice from the door ejaculated: 

“Oh! ma’am—­oh! my lord!  They’re devilling a gentleman on the green!”

CHAPTER VI

When the immortal Don set out to ring all the bells of merriment, he was followed by one clown.  Charles Courtier on the other hand had always been accompanied by thousands, who really could not understand the conduct of this man with no commercial sense.  But though he puzzled his contemporaries, they did not exactly laugh at him, because it was reported that he had really killed some men, and loved some women.  They found such a combination irresistible, when coupled with an appearance both vigorous and gallant.  The son of an Oxfordshire clergyman, and mounted on a lost cause, he had been riding through the world ever since he was eighteen, without once getting out of the saddle.  The secret of this endurance lay perhaps in his unconsciousness that he was in the saddle at all.  It was as much his natural seat as office stools to other mortals.  He made no capital out of errantry, his temperament being far too like his red-gold hair, which people compared to flames, consuming all before them.  His vices were patent; too incurable an optimism; an admiration for beauty such as must sometimes have caused him to forget which woman he was most in love with; too thin a skin; too hot a heart; hatred of humbug, and habitual neglect of his own interest.  Unmarried, and with many friends, and many enemies, he kept his body like a sword-blade, and his soul always at white heat.

That one who admitted to having taken part in five wars should be mixing in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so inconsistent as might be supposed; for he had always fought on the losing side, and there seemed to him at the moment no side so losing as that of Peace.  No great politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to make an impression of some kind on an audience.