nd three days over," Wycherley retorted, "since
you suggested your respected brother-in-law was ready to pay my debts
in full, upon condition I retaliated by making your adorable niece
Mistress Wycherley. Well, I stand to-day indebted to him for an
advance of L1500 and am no more afraid of bailiffs. We have performed
a very creditable stroke of business; and the day after to-morrow you
will have fairly earned your L500 for arranging the marriage. Faith,
and in earnest of this, I already begin to view you through appropriate
lenses as undoubtedly the most desirable aunt in the universe."

Nor was there any unconscionable stretching of the phrase. Through the
quiet forest, untouched as yet by any fidgeting culture, and much as it
was when John Lackland wooed Hawisa under, its venerable oaks, old even
then, the little widow moved like a light flame. She was clothed
throughout in scarlet, after her high-hearted style of dress, and
carried a tall staff of ebony; and the gold head of it was farther from
the dead leaves than was her mischievous countenance. The big
staghound lounged beside her. She pleased the eye, at least, did this
heartless, merry and selfish Olivia, whom Wycherley had so ruthlessly
depicted in his _Plain Dealer_. To the last detail Wycherley found
her, as he phrased it, "_mignonne et piquante_," and he told her so.

Lady Drogheda observed, "Fiddle-de-dee!" Lady Drogheda continued:
"Yes, I am a fool, of course, but then I still remember Bessington, and
the boy that went mad there----"

"Because of a surfeit of those dreams 'such as the poets know when they
are young.' Sweet chuck, beat not the bones of the buried; when he
breathed he was a likely lad," Mr. Wycherley declared, with signal
gravity.

"Oh, la, la!" she flouted him. "Well, in any event you were the first
gentleman in England to wear a neckcloth of Flanders lace."

"And you were the first person of quality to eat cheesecakes in Spring
Garden," he not half so mirthfully retorted. "So we have not entirely
failed in life, it may be, after all."

She made of him a quite irrelevant demand: "D'ye fancy Esau was
contented, William?"

"I fancy he was fond of pottage, madam; and that, as I remember, he got
his pottage. Come, now, a tangible bowl of pottage, piping hot, is not
to be despised in such a hazardous world as ours is."

She was silent for a lengthy while. "Lord, Lord, how musty all that
brave, sweet nonsense seems!" she s