e Lady Yolande Sangazure (whom we have met before) was aware
of a crimson flood mounting swiftly to her exquisite temples. Strange to
add, the same phenomenon might have been observed in a score of damosels
belonging to the best families in the district. The hall seemed suffused in
a ruddy glow that was certainly not reflected from the exiguous pile of
post-Crusading fuel smouldering on the great hearth.

"Tush!" broke in the cracked voice of a withered old dame, "your news is
old. Not only hath the so-called fever vanished but my lord himself hath
followed it."

"Gone!" The cry was echoed by twenty voices; twenty embroidery-frames fell
from forty arrested hands, while nine-and-thirty dismayed eyes fixed
themselves upon the maliciously-amused countenance of the speaker. Only
one, belonging to the Lady Beauregarde, who squinted slightly, remained as
though unmoved by the general commotion.

"Moreover," continued the old dame, "report saith that with him went his
leman, who, having some art in necromancy, transformed her beauty to the
semblance of a witch and provided her own dowry by the sale, to certain
addle-pated wenches, of charms for which her lover himself prepared the
market."

"But--his fever?" an impetuous voice broke in.

"Cozening, no doubt. Of course the tale may be but idle babble; still, if
true, one would admit that such credulous fools got no more than they
deserved."

She ceased, well satisfied. "I fancy," observed the Lady Yolande coldly,
"that I hear our lords returning." And in the eloquent silence a score of
fair young minds slowly assimilated the profound truth (as fresh to-day as
eight hundred years ago) that Satan finds some mischief still for the
impecunious demobilised.

* * * * *

TO JESSIE

(_"one of the Zoo's most popular elephants," now deceased_).

Jessie of the melting eye,
Wreathed trunk and horny tegum-
Ent, whom I have joyed to ply
With the fugitive mince-pie
And the seasonable legume,
Youth has left me; fortune too
Flounts my efforts to annex it;
Still, I occupy the view,
Bored but loath to leave, while you
Make the inevitable exit.

Ne'er again for blissful rides
Shall our shouting offspring clamber
Up your broad and beetling sides;
Ne'er again, when eventide's
Coming turns the skies to amber
And the fluting blackbirds call,
Poised above a bale of fodder
In your well-appointed st