ive a
large tray arrived on the stomach of a footman, and Swithin was greatly
surprised to see a whole pheasant placed at his disposal.

Having breakfasted at eight that morning, and having been much in the
open air afterwards, the Adonis-astronomer's appetite assumed grand
proportions. How much of that pheasant he might consistently eat without
hurting his dear patroness Lady Constantine's feelings, when he could
readily eat it all, was a problem in which the reasonableness of a larger
and larger quantity argued itself inversely as a smaller and smaller
quantity remained. When, at length, he had finally decided on a terminal
point in the body of the bird, the door was gently opened.

'Oh, you have not finished?' came to him over his shoulder, in a
considerate voice.

'O yes, thank you, Lady Constantine,' he said, jumping up.

'Why did you prefer to lunch in this awkward, dusty place?'

'I thought--it would be better,' said Swithin simply.

'There is fruit in the other room, if you like to come. But perhaps you
would rather not?'

'O yes, I should much like to,' said Swithin, walking over his napkin,
and following her as she led the way to the adjoining apartment.

Here, while she asked him what he had been reading, he modestly ventured
on an apple, in whose flavour he recognized the familiar taste of old
friends robbed from her husband's orchards in his childhood, long before
Lady Constantine's advent on the scene. She supposed he had confined his
search to his own sublime subject, astronomy?

Swithin suddenly became older to the eye, as his thoughts reverted to the
topic thus reintroduced. 'Yes,' he informed her. 'I seldom read any
other subject. In these days the secret of productive study is to avoid
well.'

'Did you find any good treatises?'

'None. The theories in your books are almost as obsolete as the
Ptolemaic System. Only fancy, that magnificent Cyclopaedia,
leather-bound, and stamped, and gilt, and wide margined, and bearing the
blazon of your house in magnificent colours, says that the twinkling of
the stars is probably caused by heavenly bodies passing in front of them
in their revolutions.'

'And is it not so? That was what I learned when I was a girl.'

The modern Eudoxus now rose above the embarrassing horizon of Lady
Constantine's great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring
footman. He became quite natural, all his self-consciousness fled, and
his eye spoke into her