“I made it a rule never to introduce my lady-friends to one another.  They are so fond of comparing notes.  Novelists try to make us believe that women delight in men’s society.  Rubbish!  They prefer that of their own sex.  But please didn’t refer to the same painful period of my life.”

The priest insisted: 

“Is it true that you gave the plumpest of them to the Sultan of Colambang in exchange for the recipe of some wonderful sauce?  Is it true that you used to be known as the Lightning Lover?  Is it true that you used to say, in your London days, that no season was complete without a ruined home?”

“She exaggerates a good deal, that lady.”

“Is it true that you once got so drunk that you mistook one of those red-coated Chelsea pensioners for a pillar-box and tried to post a letter in his stomach?”

“I’m very short-sighted, Don Francesco.  Besides, all that was in a previous incarnation.  Do come and listen to the music!  May I offer you my arm, Duchess?  I have a surprise for you.”

“You have a surprise for us every year, you bad man,” she said.  “Now do try and see if you can’t get married.  It makes one feel so good.”

Keith had a peculiar habit of vanishing for a day or two to the mainland, and returning with some rare orchid from the hills, a piece of Greek statuary, a new gardener, or something.  Sowing his wild oats, he called it.  During this last visit he had come across the tracks of an almost extinct tribe of gipsies that roamed up and down the glens of those mysterious mountains whose purple summits were visible, on clear days, from his own windows.  After complex and costly negotiations they had allowed themselves to be embarked, for this one night only, in a capacious sailing boat to Nepenthe, in order to pleasure Mr. Keith’s guests.  And here they sat, huddled together in dignified repose and abashed, as it seemed, by the strangeness of their surroundings; a bizarre group stained to an almost negro tint by exposure to sun and winds and rain.

Here they sat—­gnarled old men and sinewy fathers of families, with streaming black hair, golden earrings, hooded cloaks of wood and sandals bound with leathern thongs.  Mothers were there, shapeless bundles of rags, nursing infants at the breast.  The girls were draped in gaudy hues, and ablaze with metal charms and ornaments on forehead and arms and ankles.  They showed their flashing teeth and smiled from time to time in frank wonder, whereas the boys, superbly savage, like young panthers caught in a trap, kept their eyes downcast or threw distrustful, defiant glances round them.  Here they sat in silence, smoking tobacco and taking deep draughts out of a pitcher of milk which was handed round from one to the other.  Occasionally the older people would pick up their instruments—­bagpipes of sheepskin, small drums and gourd-like mandolines—­and draw from them strange dronings, gurglings, thrummings, twangings; soon a group of youngsters would rise gravely from the ground and, without any preconcerted signal, begin to move in a dance—­a formal and intricate measure, such as had never yet been witnessed on Nepenthe.