Among the watchers, and listening to the group as he watched, stood Sir John Oxon.  He stood with a graceful air and watched her steadily, and there was a gleam of pleasure in his glance.

“He has followed and gazed at her so for the last half-hour,” said Mistress Lovely.  “Were I the Duke of Osmonde I would command him to choose some other lady to dog with his eyes.  Now the minuet is ending I would wager he will follow her to her seat and hang about her.”

And this indeed he did when the music ceased, but ’twas done with a more easy, confident air than had been observed in him for some time past.  He did not merely loiter in her vicinity, but when the circle thinned about her he made his way through it and calmly joined her.

“Does he pay her compliments?” said Lord Charles, who looked on at a distance.  “Faith, if he does, she does not greatly condescend to him.  I should be frozen by a beauty who, while I strove to melt her, did not deign to turn her eyes.  Ah, she has turned them now.  What has he said?  It must have been fire and flame to move her.  What’s this—­what’s this?”

He started forward, as all the company did—­for her ladyship of Dunstanwolde had risen to her full height with a strange movement and, standing a moment swaying, had fallen at Sir John Oxon’s feet, white in a death-like swoon.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Sir John Rides out of Town

Tom Tantillion had not appeared at the ball, having otherwise entertained himself for the evening, but at an hour when most festivities were at an end and people were returning from them, rolling through the streets in their coaches, the young man was sitting at a corner table in Cribb’s Coffee-House surrounded by glasses and jolly companions and clouds of tobacco-smoke.

One of these companions had been to the ball and left it early, and had fallen to talking of great personages he had seen there, and describing the beauties who had shone the brightest, among them speaking of my Lady Dunstanwolde and the swoon which had so amazed those who had seen it.

“I was within ten feet of her,” says he, “and watching her as a man always does when he is near enough.  Jack Oxon stood behind her, and was speaking low over her shoulder, but she seeming to take little note of him and looking straight before her.  And of a sudden she stands upright, her black eyes wide open as if some sound had startled her, and the next minute falls like a woman dropping dead, and lies among her white and silver like one carven out of stone.  One who knows her well—­old Sir Chris Crowell—­says she hath never fallen in a swoon before since she was born.  Gad! ’twas a strange sight—­’twas so sudden.”  He had just finished speaking, and was filling his glass again, when a man strode into the room in such haste that all turned to glance at him.

He was in riding-dress, and was flushed and excited, and smiling as if to himself.