on Duke at most angles. Square chin, cleft centrally, gave
her throat the look of a tower with a gun protrudent at top. She was
dressed for church evidently, but seemed no slave to Time. Her bonnet
was pushed well back from her head, and she was fingering the ribbons.
One saw she was a woman. She inspired deference.

"Forefinger for Shepherd's Crook" was what Mrs. Cryptic-Sparkler had
said of Sir Rebus. It shall stand at that.

"You have Prayer Book?" he queried.

She nodded. Juno catches the connubial trick.

"Hymns?"

"Ancient and Modern."

"I may share with you?"

"I know by heart. Parrots sing."

"Philomel carols," he bent to her.

"Complaints spoil a festival."

He waved hand to the door. "Lady, your father has started."

"He knows the adage. Copy-books instil it."

"Inexorable truth in it."

"We may dodge the scythe."

"To be choked with the sands?"

She flashed a smile. "I would not," he said, "that my Euphemia were
late for the Absolution."

She cast eyes to the carpet. He caught them at the rebound.

"It snows," she murmured, swimming to the window.

"A flake, no more. The season claims it."

"I have thin boots."

"Another pair?"

"My maid buttons. She is at church."

"My fingers?"

"Ten on each."

"Five," he corrected.

"Buttons."

"I beg your pardon."

She saw opportunity. She swam to the bell-rope and grasped it for a
tinkle. The action spread feminine curves to her lover's eyes. He was
a man.

Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an order
for port--two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her.
Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon.
Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For an instant she was sunset.

"Medicinal," she murmured.

"Forgive me, Madam. A glass, certainly. 'Twill warm us for
worshipping."

The wine appeared, seemed to blink owlishly through the facets of
its decanter, like some hoary captive dragged forth into light after
years of subterraneous darkness--something querulous in the sudden
liberation of it. Or say that it gleamed benignant from its tray,
steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility
pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the
Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us;
as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in
the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up