The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel

I

An excellent dinner served by Mistress Sally and her attendant little wenches put everybody into rare good-humour. Madame de Serval -- pale, delicate, with gentle, plaintive voice and eyes that had acquired a pathetically furtive look -- even contrived to smile, her heart warmed by the genuine welcome, the rare gaiety that irradiated this fortunate corner of God's earth. Wars and rumours of war reached it only as an echo of great things that went on in the vast outside world; and though more than one of Dover's gallant sons had perished in one or the other of the Duke of York's unfortunate incursions into Holland, or in one of the numerous naval engagements off the Western shores of France, on the whole, the war, intermittent and desultory, had not yet cast its heavy gloom over the entire country.