A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every other
chair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn's
attention, so different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition,
poised, like a woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like
the sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seat
would fill. Purity and conquest, power and welcome, seemed to abide
within it, like the empty throne in Parliament.
Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. It
started so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressed
his lips to the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, and
whispered aloud, with feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, was
pure!"
He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, he
guessed at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore or
envious interpretation.
"Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wine
and beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was the
Irish tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the
banished princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, and
they paid him in a distant office in Accomac, where they might never
see him and his bills again, and there they let him steal most of the
revenue, and, of course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty.
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