Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/68

44 were supplied with drink. When the Count returned to toast their healths, how did it happen that he omitted to chink his glass against that held out to him —Oh so devotedly!— by the Burgomaster's son? The latter experienced a moment of sadness, but recollected immediately the tender look of a few moments before. He left the drinkers, to wander through the rooms and, in his turn, admire the pictures. Although ostensibly engaged in paying court to the buxom Claudie, Henry more than once glanced furtively at the young bugle-player of the Guild. He caught the youth's expression, at once reflective and ecstatic, before Conradin and Frederick, which his sister had just looked at with the interest only of a reader of police-court cases, or celebrated torture-scenes.

With glasses of full measure the Dykgrave had done honour to the rough serenaders. He even seemed to them a trifle tipsy, but this was a matter not at all likely to shock them, for the natives of Smaragdis were deep drinkers like most men of the north.

The company, happy to disport themselves, spread out over the gardens and along the shore, which soon resounded with rough