“Ah, I see,” said Peter, “I see that you’re familiar with the whole disgraceful story.  Yes, Marietta, the unspeakable old Tartar, was all for stuffing him with rosemary and onions.  But he could not bring himself to share her point of view.  He screamed his protest, like a man, in twenty different octaves.  You really should have heard him.  His voice is of a compass, of a timbre, of an expressiveness!  Passive endurance, I fear, is not his forte.  For the sake of peace and silence, I intervened, interceded.  She had her knife at his very throat.  I was not an instant too soon.  So, of course, I ’ve had to adopt him.”

“Of course, poor man,” sympathised the Duchessa.  “It’s a recognised principle that if you save a fellow’s life, you ’re bound to him for the rest of yours.  But—­but won’t you find him rather a burdensome responsibility when he’s grownup?” she reflected.

“—­Que voulez-vous?” reflected Peter.  “Burdensome responsibilities are the appointed accompaniments of man’s pilgrimage.  Why not Francois Villon, as well as another?  And besides, as the world is at present organised, a member of the class vulgarly styled ‘the rich’ can generally manage to shift his responsibilities, when they become too irksome, upon the backs of the poor.  For example—­Marietta!  Marietta!” he called, raising his voice a little, and clapping his hands.

Marietta came.  When she had made her courtesy to the Duchessa, and a polite enquiry as to her Excellency’s health, Peter said, with an indicative nod of the head, “Will you be so good as to remove my responsibility?”

“Il porcellino?” questioned Marietta.

“Ang,” said he.

And when Marietta had borne Francois, struggling and squealing in her arms, from the foreground—­

“There—­you see how it is done,” he remarked.

The Duchessa laughed.

“An object-lesson,” she agreed.  “An object-lesson in—­might n’t one call it the science of Applied Cynicism?”

“Science!” Peter plaintively repudiated the word.  “No, no.  I was rather flattering myself it was an art.”

“Apropos of art—­” said the Duchessa.

She came down two or three steps nearer to the brink of the river.  She produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there, and held up for Peter’s inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.

“Apropos of art, I’ve been reading a novel.  Do you know it?”

Peter glanced at the grey-and-gold binding—­and dissembled the emotion that suddenly swelled big in his heart.

He screwed his eyeglass into his eye, and gave an intent look.

“I can’t make out the title,” he temporised, shaking his head, and letting his eyeglass drop.

On the whole, it was very well acted; and I hope the occult little smile that played about the Duchessa’s lips was a smile of appreciation.

“It has a highly appropriate title,” she said.  “It is called ‘A Man of Words,’ by an author I’ve never happened to hear of before, named Felix Wildmay.”