“The solitary poetical composition of our family,” said Fordham, “chiefly memorable, I fear, for the continuation it elicited.”

“Would that I lived in days of yore,
When outlaws bold were rife,
The days of dagger and of bowl,
Of dungeon and of strife. 
Oh! for the days when forks were not,
On skewers came the meat;
When from one trencher ate three foes: 
Oh! but those times were sweet! 
When hooded hawks sat overhead,
And underfoot was straw
Where hounds and beggars fought for bones
Alternately to gnaw.”

“That was Jock’s, I believe.  How furious it did make us.  Good old Sydney, she has lived in her romance ever since.”

“Wisely or unwisely.”

“Can it be unwisely, when it is so pure and bright as hers, and gives such a zest to common things?”

“Glamour sometimes is perplexing.”

“Do you know, Duke, I would sometimes give worlds to think of things as I used in those old times.”

“You a world-wearied veteran!”

“Don’t laugh at me.  It was when Bobus was at home.  His common sense made all we used to care for seem so silly, that I have never been able to get back my old way of looking at things.”

“I am afraid glamour once dispelled does not return.  Yet, after all, truth is the greater.  And I am sure that poor Bobus never loosened my Infanta’s hold on the real truth.”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking down; “he or his books made me afraid to think about it, and like to laugh at some things-—no, I never did before you.  You hushed me on the very borders of that kind of flippancy, and so you don’t guess how horrid I am, or have been, for you have made things true and real to me again.”

“‘Fancy may die, but Faith is there,’” said Fordham.  “I think you will never shut your eyes to those realities again,” he added, gently.  “It is there that we shall still meet.  And my Infanta will make me one promise.”

“I would promise you any thing.”

“Never knowingly to read those sneering books,” he said, laying his hand on hers.  “Current literature is so full of poisoned shafts that it may not be possible entirely to avoid them; and there may sometimes be need to face out a serious argument, but you will promise me never to take up that scoffing style of literature for mere amusement?”

“Never, Duke, I promise,” she said.  “I shall always see your face, and feel your hand forbidding me.”

Then as he leant back, half in thankfulness, half in weariness, she went on looking over the book, and read a preface, new to her.