The last notes of a good-night song dwindled and died, to the accompaniment
of dipping oars, as the boat moved slowly along the tideway, and lost
itself among other boats--jovial cits going eastward, from an afternoon at
the King's theatre, modish gallants voyaging westward from play-house or
tavern, some going home to domesticity, others intent upon pleasure and
intrigue, as the darkness came down, and the hour for supper and deeper
drinking drew near. And who would have thought, watching the lighted
windows of palace and tavern, hearing those joyous sounds of glee or catch
trolled by voices that reeked of wine--who would have thought of the
dead-cart, and the unnumbered dead lying in the pest pits yonder, or the
city in ruins, or the King enslaved to a foreign power, and pledged to a
hated Church? London, gay, splendid, and prosperous, the queen-city of the
world as she seemed to those who loved her--could rise glorious from the
ashes of a fire unparalleled in modern history, and to Charles and Wren it
might be given to realise a boast which in Augustus had been little more
than an imperial phrase.
CHAPTER XIX.
DIDO.
The armed neutrality between man and wife continued, and the domestic sky
at Fareham House was dark and depressing.
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