I had lost track of the cards, and knew I was losing prodigiously.  But my eyes went back again and again to the group by the doorway, where Dolly was holding court and dispensing justice, and perchance injustice.  The circle increased.  Ribands, generals whose chests were covered with medals of valour, French noblemen, and foreign ambassadors stopped for a word with the Beauty and passed on their way, some smiling, some reflecting, to make room for others.  I overheard from the neighbouring tables a spiteful protest that a young upstart from the colonies should turn Lady Tankerville’s drum into a levee.  My ears tingled as I listened.  But not a feathered parrot in the carping lot of them could deny that Miss Manners had beauty and wit enough to keep them all at bay.  Hers was not an English beauty:  every line of her face and pose of her body proclaimed her of that noble type of Maryland women, distinctly American, over which many Englishmen before and since have lost their heads and hearts.

“Egad!” exclaimed Mr. Storer, who was looking on; “she’s already defeated some of the Treasury Bench, and bless me if she isn’t rating North himself.”

Half the heads in the room were turned toward Miss Manners, who was exchanging jokes with the Prime Minister of Great Britain.  I saw a corpulent man, ludicrously like the King’s pictures, with bulging gray eyes that seemed to take in nothing.  And this was North, upon whose conduct with the King depended the fate of our America.  Good-natured he was, and his laziness was painfully apparent.  He had the reputation of going to sleep standing, like a horse.

“But the Beauty contrives to keep him awake,” said Storer.

“If you stay among us, Mr. Carvel,” said Topham, “she will get you a commissionership for the asking.”

“Look,” cried Lady Di, “there comes Mr. Fox, the precocious, the irresistible.  Were he in the Bible, we should read of him passing the time of day with King Solomon.”

“Or instructing Daniel in the art of lion-taming,” put in Mrs. Meynel.

There was Mr. Fox in truth, and the Beauty’s face lighted up at sight of him.  And presently, when Lord North had made his bow and passed on, he was seen to lead her out of the room, leaving her circle to go to pieces, like an empire without a head.

CHAPTER XXXIII

DRURY LANE

After a night spent in making resolutions, I set out for Arlington Street, my heart beating a march, as it had when I went thither on my arrival in London.  Such was my excitement that I was near to being run over in Piccadilly like many another country gentleman, and roundly cursed by a wagoner for my stupidity.  I had a hollow bigness within me, half of joy, half of pain, that sent me onward with ever increasing steps and a whirling storm of contradictions in my head.  Now it was:  Dolly loved me in spite of all the great men in England.  Why, otherwise, had she