He could
describe the jewels which bound the hair of the Queen of Bohemia, and he
had seen the hood in which Anne of Austria ensnared the aspiring heart
of the Duke of Buckingham; beside, he led off the dance with matchless
grace, and to their native hornpipe enabled them to add the travelled
accomplishments of the galliard and saraband. What a concentration of
agreeable qualities! It must be owing to the invincible pressure of
secret uneasiness, and not to a suspicion of the cordiality with which
his entertainers welcomed him, if Evellin ever passed a day in solitude.
Yet he came into society with the air of one who sought it as a
temporary relief from anxiety, rather than as a source of real
enjoyment. A visible dissatisfaction, constraint, and unsubdued aversion
to the present, arising from regret at the past, sometimes interrupted
his graceful courtesy, and oftener made him indifferent to the passing
scene, or unconscious of it. This humour increased whenever he received
a dispatch from London, and at one time the mortification which his
letters excited, threw him into such a mental agony, that the cottagers
with whom he lodged, recurring to what was then deemed a specific for
troubled minds, called in the aid of Dr.
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