For a moment she saw passion enough in his eye to satisfy her, but he
soon mastered it, and answered her courteously:

"I am very glad they please you. Shall we go to work at once, for fear
it grow dusk before we get through with it?"

"Can I do anything to help you?" murmured Cos in her ear.

She did not want him, and laughed mischievously. "You can cut some holly
if you like. Begin on those large boughs."

"Better not, Cos," said the Colonel. "You will certainly soil your
hands, and you might chance to scratch them."

"And if you did you would never forgive me, so I will let you off duty.
You may go back to the dormeuse and the 'Lys de la Vallee' if you wish,"
laughed Cecil.

Horace looked sulky, and curled his blond whiskers in dudgeon, while
Cecil, with half a dozen satellites about her, proceeded to work with
vigorous energy, keeping Syd, however, as her head workman; and the
Colonel twisted pillars, nailed up crosses, hung wreaths, and put up
illuminated texts, as if he had been a carpenter all his life, and his
future subsistence entirely depended on his adorning Deerhurst church in
good taste. It was amusing to me to see him, whom the highest London
society, the gayest Paris life bored--who pronounced the most dashing
opera supper and the most vigorous debates alike slow--taking the
deepest interest in decorating a little village church! I question if
Eros did not lurk under the shiny leaves and the scarlet berries of
those holly boughs quite as dangerously as ever he did under the rose
petals consecrated to him.

I had my own affairs to attend to, sitting on the pulpit stairs at
Blanche's feet, twisting the refractory evergreens at her direction; but
I kept an occasional look-out at the Colonel and his dangerous Canadian
for all that. They found time (as we did) for plenty of conversation
over the Christmas decorations, and Cecil talked softly and earnestly
for once without any "mischief." She talked of her father's
embarrassments, her mother's trials, of Mrs. Coverdale, with honest
detestation of that widow's arts and artifices, and of her own tastes,
and ideas, and feelings, showing the Colonel (what she did not show
generally to her numerous worshippers) her heart as well as her mind. As
she knelt on the altar steps, twisting green leaves round the communion
rails, Syd standing beside her, his pale bronze cheek flushed, and his
eyes never left their study of her face as she bent over her work,
loo