The sheer wonder in Cynthia's face warned him that this brief excursion into the pages of Macaulay had better cease, so he focused his thoughts on the actual representation of the masque in which he had taken part ten years ago at Fairholme. "I must ask you to concede that the lords and ladies, the civic dignitaries and their wives, for whose amusement Milton spread the pinions of his genius, were far better equipped to understand his lyric flights than any similar assemblage that could be collected haphazard in some modern castle. They did not pretend--they knew. Even you, Lady Alice, could frame a neat verse in Latin and cap some pleasant jest with a line from Homer. When Milton dreamed aloud of bathing in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, of inhaling the scents of nard and cassia, 'which the musky wings of the Zepyhr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides,' they followed each turn and swoop of his fancy with an active sense of its truth and beauty. And what a brilliant company! How the red flare of torch and cresset would flicker on the sheen of silk, the luster of velvet, the polished brightness of morion and spear. I think I can see those gallant gentlemen and fine ladies grouped round the players who told of the strange pranks played by the God of Mirth. Perhaps that same fair Alice, who supplied the motive of the masque as well as its leading lady, may be linked with you by stronger ties than those of mere feminine grace----" Cynthia did not blush: she grew white, but shook her head. "You cannot tell," he said. "'Comus' was played in Ludlow only fourteen years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, and I would remind you that we stocked the new nation in the west with some of the bluest blood in Britain. Even in this hall there were Puritans whose ascetic tastes disapproved of Milton's imageries, of children play-acting, of the brave show made by the gentry----" "My mother's people lived in Pennsylvania for generations," she broke in with a strange wistfulness. "I knew it," he cried in triumph. "Tell me the names of the first-nighters at the Milton Theater, Ludlow, on that autumn evening in 1634, and warrant me to find you an authentic ancestor." Cynthia bent a puzzled brow at him. "After this, I shall apply myself to 'Comus' with added comprehension," she said. "But--you take my breath away; have you, then, delved so deep in the mine of English history that you can people 'most every ruined pile in Britain with the men and women of the dead years?" He laughed, and colored a little, with true British confusion at having been caught in an extravagant mood. "There you lay bare the mummer," he said. "What clever fellows actors would be if they grasped the underlying realities of all the fine words they mouth! No; I quote 'Comus' only because on one half-forgotten occasion I played in it." "Where?" The prompt question took him unaware. "At Fairholme," he said. "Is that another castle?"