wife the better for me."

"It is a gift, this domesticity," said Count Victor, not without an
inward twinge at the picture. "Some of us have it, some of us have not,
and no trying hard for content with one's own wife and early suppers
will avail unless one is born to it like the trick of the Sonnet. I
have been watching our good friend, your lawyer's wife, distracted over
the--over the--_balourdise_ of her husband as a dancer: he dances like a
bootmaker's sign, if you can imagine that, and I dare not approach them
till her very natural indignation has simmered down."

The Chamberlain looked across, the hall distastefully and found Mrs.
Petullo's eyes on him. She shrugged, for his perception alone, a white
shoulder in a manner that was eloquent of many things.

"To the devil!" he muttered, yet essayed at the smile of good friendship
which was now to be their currency, and a poor exchange for the old
gold.

"Surely Monsieur MacTaggart dances?" said the Count; "I see a score of
ladies here who would give their garters for the privilege."

"My dancing days are over," said Sim MacTaggart, but merely as one
who repeats a formula; his eyes were roving among the women. The dark
green-and-blue tartan of the house well became him: he wore diced hose
of silk and a knife on the calf of his leg; his plaid swung from a stud
at the shoulder, and fell in voluminous and graceful folds behind him.
His eyes roved among the women, and now and then he lifted the whitest
of hands and rubbed his shaven chin.

Count Victor was a little amused at the vanity of this village hero. And
then there happened what more deeply impressed him with wonder at the
contrarieties of character here represented, for the hero brimmed with
sentimental tears!

They were caused by so simple a thing as a savage strain of music from
the Duke's piper, who strutted in the gallery fingering a melody in an
interval of the dance--a melody full of wearisome iterations in the ears
of the foreigner, who could gain nothing of fancy from the same save
that the low notes sobbed. When the piece was calling in the hall,
ringing stormily to the roof, shaking the banners, silencing the guests,
the Duke's Chamberlain laughed with some confusion in a pretence that he
was undisturbed.

"An air with a story, perhaps?" asked Count Victor.

"They are all stories," answered this odd person, so responsive to the
yell of guttural reeds. "In that they are like our old friend Balhal