“Oh, I beg of you—­take all I have,” he responded, with effusion.  “But—­but how—?”

“Toss,” she commanded tersely.

So he tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river; and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the wing.

“Thank you very much,” she laughed, with a little bow.

Then she crumbled the bread, and began to sprinkle the ground with it; and in an instant she was the centre of a cloud of birds.  Peter was at liberty to watch her, to admire the swift grace of her motions, their suggestion of delicate strength, of joy in things physical, and the lithe elasticity of her figure, against the background of satiny lawn, and the further vistas of lofty sunlit trees.  She was dressed in white, as always—­a frock of I know not what supple fabric, that looked as if you might have passed it through your ring, and fell in multitudes of small soft creases.  Two big red roses drooped from her bodice.  She wore a garden-hat, of white straw, with a big daring rose-red bow, under which the dense meshes of her hair, warmly dark, dimly bright, shimmered in a blur of brownish gold.

“What vigour, what verve, what health,” thought Peter, watching her, “what—­lean, fresh, fragrant health!” And he had, no doubt, his emotions.

She bestowed her bread crumbs on the birds; but she was able, somehow, to discriminate mightily in favour of the goldfinches.  She would make a diversion, the semblance of a fling, with her empty right hand; and the too-greedy sparrows would dart off, avid, on that false lead.  Whereupon, quickly, stealthily, she would rain a little shower of crumbs, from her left hand, on the grass beside her, to a confiding group of finches assembled there.  And if ever a sparrow ventured to intrude his ruffianly black beak into this sacred quarter, she would manage, with a kind of restrained ferocity, to “shoo” him away, without thereby frightening the finches.

And all the while her eyes laughed; and there was colour in her cheeks; and there was the forceful, graceful action of her body.

When the bread was finished, she clapped her hands together gently, to dust the last mites from them, and looked over at Peter, and smiled significantly.

“Yes,” he acknowledged, “you outwitted them very skilfully.  You, at any rate, have no need of a dragon.”

“Oh, in default of a dragon, one can do dragon’s work oneself,” she answered lightly.  “Or, rather, one can make oneself an instrument of justice.”

“All the same, I should call it uncommonly hard luck to be born a sparrow—­within your jurisdiction,” he said.

“It is not an affair of luck,” said she.  “One is born a sparrow—­within my jurisdiction—­for one’s sins in a former state.—­No, you little dovelings”—­she turned to a pair of finches on the greensward near her, who were lingering, and gazing up into her face with hungry, expectant eyes—­“I have no more.  I have given you my all.”  And she stretched out her open hands, palms downwards, to convince them.