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Spruce having also humbly stated that all the peacock's feathers she could find had been summarily cast forth from the Manor through the medium of the parcels' post, Maryllia bade her a kindly good-night. "To-morrow," she said, "we will go all over the house together, and you will explain everything to me. But the first thing to be done is to save those old trees."
"Cleo is all right," said Cicely "She was badly hurt, but Bennett knows how you love her, and he is doing all he can for her. She will never hunt again, I'm afraid!" "Nor shall I!" and Maryllia sighed again, and closed her eyes to hide the tears that welled up in them.
Somehow her tone had changed from kind playfulness to ordinary formality, and her eyes rested upon him with a cool, slightly depreciatory expression. The mare was restless, and pawed the green turf impatiently. "She longs for a gallop;" said Maryllia, patting the fine creature's glossy neck; "Don't you, Cleo? Her name is Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. Isn't she a beauty?"
"Upon my word, a very quaint little comedy!" said a coldly mocking voice behind her "A modern Juliet gazing pathetically after the retiring form of a somewhat elderly clerical Romeo! Let me congratulate you, Miss Maryllia, on your newest and most brilliant achievement, the conquest of a country parson! It is quite worthy of you!" And turning, she confronted Lord Roxmouth.
"Why not now?" queried Maryllia, as she seated herself in another chair next to Cicely's under the cedar boughs, and signed to Walden to do the same. "Why, because I believe that the tea is about to arrive. I saw the majestic Primmins in the distance, wrestling with a table didn't you, Mr. Adderley?"
And so it was with a somewhat heated countenance that Sir Morton endeavoured to allude to a former acquaintance with his hostess at a Foreign Office function. "Oh no, I don't think so," said Maryllia, lazily dropping lumps of sugar into the tea-cups "Do you take sugar? I ought to ask, I know, such a number of men have the gout nowadays, and they take saccharine. I haven't any saccharine, so sorry!
"Why, merely that if one is honest and true, one MUST be crucified. Therefore one is prepared, and there's no need to cry out when the nails are driven in. The Christian 'myth' teaches us what to expect, how to endure, and how at last to triumph!" A lovely light illuminated her face, and Maryllia looked at her very tenderly. Adderley was silent.
"It ought to be, and it is!" declared Maryllia emphatically. "Oh, what a lovely bush of lilac!" And she hastened on a few steps in order to look more closely at the admired blossoms, which were swaying in the light breeze over the top of a thick green hedge "Why, it must be growing in your garden! Yes, it is! of course it is! this is your gate. May I come in?"
He bowed over the little white hand extended to him, and murmured something which was inaudible even to himself, while he despised what he considered his own foolishness, clumsiness and general ineptitude from the bottom of his heart. Maryllia saw his embarrassment, and hastened to relieve him of it. "We have been talking books," she said, lightly "Mr.
Spruce, fumbling distractedly with the tea-things, and putting cream and sugar recklessly into three or four cups without thinking; "There! Really, I don't know what I am a-doin' of do you like cream and sugar, my dear? beggin' your parding Miss Maryllia?"
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