aid, and almost sighed. "Eh, well!
_le vin est tire, et il faut le boire_."

"My adorable aunt! Let us put it a thought less dumpishly; and render
thanks because our pottage smokes upon the table, and we are blessed
with excellent appetites."

"So that in a month we will be back again in the playhouses and Hyde
Park and Mulberry Garden, or nodding to each other in the New
Exchange,--you with your debts paid, and I with my L500----?" She
paused to pat the staghound's head. "Lord Remon came this afternoon,"
said Lady Drogheda, and with averted eyes.

"I do not approve of Remon," he announced. "Nay, madam, even a Siren
ought to spare her kin and show some mercy toward the more
stagnant-blooded fish."

And Lady Drogheda shrugged. "He is very wealthy, and I am lamentably
poor. One must not seek noon at fourteen o'clock or clamor for better
bread than was ever made from wheat."

Mr. Wycherley laughed, after a pregnant silence.

"By heavens, madam, you are in the right! So I shall walk no more in
Figgis Wood, for its old magic breeds too many day-dreams. Besides, we
have been serious for half-an-hour. Now, then, let us discuss
theology, dear aunt, or millinery, or metaphysics, or the King's new
statue at Windsor, or, if you will, the last Spring Garden scandal. Or
let us count the leaves upon this tree; and afterward I will enumerate
my reasons for believing yonder crescent moon to be the paring of the
Angel Gabriel's left thumb-nail."

She was a woman of eloquent silences when there was any need of them;
and thus the fop and the coquette traversed the remainder of that
solemn wood without any further speech. Modish people would have
esteemed them unwontedly glum.

Wycherley discovered in a while the absence of his sleeve-links, and
was properly vexed by the loss of these not unhandsome trinkets, the
gifts of Lady Castlemaine in the old days when Mr. Wycherley was the
King's successful rival for her favors. But Wycherley knew the tide
filled Teviot Bay and wondering fishes were at liberty to muzzle the
toys, by this, and merely shrugged at his mishap, midcourse in toilet.

Mr. Wycherley, upon mature deliberation, wore the green suit with
yellow ribbons, since there was a ball that night in honor of his
nearing marriage, and a confluence of gentry to attend it. Miss Vining
and he walked through a minuet to some applause; the two were heartily
acclaimed a striking couple, and congratulations beat about