“_Ciel!_ then do you hear me? What volume of birds or flowers do you prefer to the living birds and flowers out here? What _book_ (pardieu!) of poetry do you like better than the gorgeous pastoral poem spread around us? _Mon Dieu!_ she does not hear me yet! India, I say!” exclaimed the impatient little beauty, throwing in another shower of rose petals. Miss Sutherland, languid and smiling, rose from her recumbent posture, and handed her the volume. “Pope! by all that is solemnly in earnest! Pope’s Essay on Man, by all that is grave, serious and awful! Why, I thought at the very worst it was some Flora’s Annual, or Gems of the Aviary, or some other of the embossed and gilded trifles that litter your rooms. But Pope’s Essay on Man! Why, I should as soon have expected to find you studying a work on tanning and currying!” “Oh, hush, you tease! And tell me what these lines mean. I have been studying them for the last half hour, and can’t make them out.” “_You_ studying! Ha! ha! ha! You doing anything! By the way, I have been trying to discover what office I hold near the person of our Queen. I have just this instant found out that I am thinker in ordinary to her gracious majesty.” “Well, dear Nan, do credit to your post—think me out these lines,” said the beauty, languidly sinking back upon her couch. “But what lines do you mean?” “Oriole, show them to her. Oh, never mind, you don’t know them. Hand me the book, Nan! Here, here are the lines—now make out a meaning for them, if you can: ‘And binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.’” “Well,” said Mrs. Vivian, laughing, “it sounds very like— ‘And tying Adam hand and foot, Bid him get up and walk!’ And it _looks_ as if it might have been written by Uncle Billy Bothsides! Ah, by the way, here he comes. Talk of the evil one, and—you know the rest. Ah, I shall be amused to hear his opinion of the sentiment in question. It is just in his way.”