Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories. Ouida

CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE;

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      OR,

THE STORY OF A BROIDERED SHIELD.

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      Cecil Castlemaine was the beauty of her county and her line, the handsomest of all the handsome women that had graced her race, when she moved, a century and a half ago, down the stately staircase, and through the gilded and tapestried halls of Lilliesford. The Town had run mad after her, and her face levelled politics, and was cited as admiringly by the Whigs at St. James's as by the Tories at the Cocoa-tree, by the beaux and Mohocks at Garraway's as by the alumni at the Grecian, by the wits at Will's as by the fops at Ozinda's.

      Wherever she went, whether to the Haymarket or the Opera, to the 'Change for a fan or the palace for a state ball, to Drury Lane to see Pastoral Philips's dreary dilution of Racine, or to some fair chief of her faction for basset and ombre, she was surrounded by the best men of her time, and hated by Whig beauties with virulent wrath, for she was a Tory to the backbone, indeed a Jacobite at heart; worshipped Bolingbroke, detested Marlborough and Eugene, believed in all the horrors of the programme said to have been plotted by the Whigs for the anniversary show of 1711, and was thought to have prompted the satire on those fair politicians who are disguised as Rosalinda and Nigranilla in the 81st paper of the Spectator.

      Cecil Castlemaine was the greatest beauty of her day, lovelier still at four-and-twenty than she had been at seventeen, unwedded, though the highest coronets in the land had been offered to her; far above the coquetteries and minauderies of her friends, far above imitation of the affectations of "Lady Betty Modley's skuttle," or need of practising the Fan exercise; haughty, peerless, radiant, unwon—nay, more—untouched; for the finest gentleman on the town could not flatter himself that he had ever stirred the slightest trace of interest in her, nor boast, as he stood in the inner circle at the Chocolate-house (unless, indeed, he lied more impudently than Tom Wharton himself), that he had ever been honored by a glance of encouragement from the Earl's daughter. She was too proud to cheapen herself with coquetry, too fastidious to care for her conquests over those who whispered to her through Nicolini's song, vied to have the privilege of carrying her fan, drove past her windows in Soho Square, crowded about her in St. James's Park, paid court even to her little spaniel Indamara, and, to catch but a glimpse of her brocaded train as it swept a ball-room floor, would leave even their play at the Groom Porter's, Mrs. Oldfield in the green-room, a night hunt with Mohun and their brother Mohocks, a circle of wits gathered "within the steam of the coffeepot" at Will's, a dinner at Halifax's, a supper at Bolingbroke's—whatever, according to their several tastes, made their best entertainment and was hardest to quit.

      The highest suitors of the day sought her smile and sued for her hand; men left the Court and the Mall to join the Flanders army before the lines at Bouchain less for loyal love of England than hopeless love of Cecil Castlemaine. Her father vainly urged her not to fling away offers that all the women at St. James's envied her. She was untouched and unwon, and when her friends, the court beauties, the fine ladies, the coquettes of quality, rallied her on her coldness (envying her her conquests), she would smile her slight proud smile and bow her stately head. "Perhaps she was cold; she might be; they were personnable men? Oh yes! she had nothing to say against them. His Grace of Belamour?—A pretty wit, without doubt. Lord Millamont?—Diverting, but a coxcomb. He had beautiful hands; it was a pity he was always thinking of them! Sir Gage Rivers?—As obsequious a lover as the man in the 'Way of the World,' but she had heard he was very boastful and facetious at women over his chocolate at Ozinda's. The Earl of Argent?—A gallant soldier, surely, but whatever he might protest, no mistress would ever rival with him the dice at the Groom Porter's. Lord Philip Bellairs?—A proper gentleman; no fault