, as he took a high step or two, and then paused again,
with his burnished breast swaying a little from side to side.

"He invites you to a dance," went on Mr. James gravely, "a pavane."

Miss Corbet sat down again.

"I dare not dance a pavane," she said, "with a real peacock."

"Surely," said Mr. James, with a courtier's air, "you are too pitiful for
him, and too pitiless for us."

"I dare not," she said again, "for he never ceases to practise."

"In hopes," said Mr. James, "that one day you will dance it with him."

And then the two went off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the
wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable
by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an assault of
arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more
importance than the actual thrusts received. The two old ladies
embroidered on in silence, but their eyes twinkled, and little wrinkles
flickered about the corners of their lips. But poor Isabel sat
bewildered. It was so elaborate, so empty; she had almost said, so wicked
to take the solemn gift of speech and make it dance this wild fandango;
and as absurdity climbed and capered in a shower of sparks and gleams on
the shoulders of absurdity, and was itself surmounted; and the names of
heathen gods and nymphs and demi-gods and loose-living classical women
whisked across the stage, and were tossed higher and higher, until the
whole mad erection blazed up and went out in a shower of stars and gems
of allusions and phrases, like a flight of rockets, bright and
bewildering at the moment, but leaving a barren darkness and dazzled eyes
behind--the poor little Puritan country child almost cried with
perplexity and annoyance. If the two talkers had looked at one another
and burst into laughter at the end, she would have understood it to be a
joke, though, to her mind, but a poor one. But when they had ended, and
Mary Corbet had risen and then swept down to the ground in a great silent
curtsey, and Mr. James, the grave, sensible gentleman, had solemnly bowed
with his hand on his heart, and his heels together like a Monsieur, and
then she had rustled off in her peacock dress to the house, with her
muslin wings bulging behind her; and no one had laughed or reproved or
explained; it was almost too much, and she looked across to Lady Maxwell
with an appeal in her eyes.

Mr. James saw it and his face relaxed.

"You must not ta