completed the very Italianate appearance of that Cornish demesne.

Sir Oliver took his ease in his dining-room considering all this as it
was displayed before him in the mellowing September sunshine, and found
it all very good to see, and life very good to live. Now no man has ever
been known so to find life without some immediate cause, other than that
of his environment, for his optimism. Sir Oliver had several causes.
The first of these--although it was one which he may have been far from
suspecting--was his equipment of youth, wealth, and good digestion; the
second was that he had achieved honour and renown both upon the Spanish
Main and in the late harrying of the Invincible Armada--or, more
aptly perhaps might it be said, in the harrying of the late Invincible
Armada--and that he had received in that the twenty-fifth year of his
life the honour of knighthood from the Virgin Queen; the third and last
contributor to his pleasant mood--and I have reserved it for the end as
I account this to be the proper place for the most important factor--was
Dan Cupid who for once seemed compounded entirely of benignity and who
had so contrived matters that Sir Oliver's wooing Of Mistress Rosamund
Godolphin ran an entirely smooth and happy course.

So, then, Sir Oliver sat at his ease in his tall, carved chair, his
doublet untrussed, his long legs stretched before him, a pensive smile
about the firm lips that as yet were darkened by no more than a small
black line of moustachios. (Lord Henry's portrait of him was drawn at
a much later period.) It was noon, and our gentleman had just dined, as
the platters, the broken meats and the half-empty flagon on the board
beside him testified. He pulled thoughtfully at a long pipe--for he had
acquired this newly imported habit of tobacco-drinking--and dreamed of
his mistress, and was properly and gallantly grateful that fortune had
used him so handsomely as to enable him to toss a title and some measure
of renown into his Rosamund's lap.

By nature Sir Oliver was a shrewd fellow ("cunning as twenty devils," is
my Lord Henry's phrase) and he was also a man of some not inconsiderable
learning. Yet neither his natural wit nor his acquired endowments appear
to have taught him that of all the gods that rule the destinies of
mankind there is none more ironic and malicious than that same Dan Cupid
in whose honour, as it were, he was now burning the incense of that pipe
of his. The ancients knew th