"Because of a surfeit of those dreams 'such as the poets know when they are young.' Sweet chuck, beat not the bones of the buried; when he breathed he was a likely lad," Mr. Wycherley declared, with signal gravity. "Oh, la, la!" she flouted him. "Well, in any event you were the first gentleman in England to wear a neckcloth of Flanders lace." "And you were the first person of quality to eat cheesecakes in Spring Garden," he not half so mirthfully retorted. "So we have not entirely failed in life, it may be, after all." She made of him a quite irrelevant demand: "D'ye fancy Esau was contented, William?" "I fancy he was fond of pottage, madam; and that, as I remember, he got his pottage. Come, now, a tangible bowl of pottage, piping hot, is not to be despised in such a hazardous world as ours is." She was silent for a lengthy while. "Lord, Lord, how musty all that brave, sweet nonsense seems!" she said, and almost sighed. "Eh, well! _le vin est tiré, et il faut le boire_." "My adorable aunt! Let us put it a thought less dumpishly; and render thanks because our pottage smokes upon the table, and we are blessed with excellent appetites." "So that in a month we will be back again in the playhouses and Hyde Park and Mulberry Garden, or nodding to each other in the New Exchange,--you with your debts paid, and I with my L500----?" She paused to pat the staghound's head. "Lord Remon came this afternoon," said Lady Drogheda, and with averted eyes. "I do not approve of Remon," he announced. "Nay, madam, even a Siren ought to spare her kin and show some mercy toward the more stagnant-blooded fish." And Lady Drogheda shrugged. "He is very wealthy, and I am lamentably poor. One must not seek noon at fourteen o'clock or clamor for better bread than was ever made from wheat." Mr. Wycherley laughed, after a pregnant silence. "By heavens, madam, you are in the right! So I shall walk no more in Figgis Wood, for its old magic breeds too many day-dreams. Besides, we have been serious for half-an-hour. Now, then, let us discuss theology, dear aunt, or millinery, or metaphysics, or the King's new statue at Windsor, or, if you will, the last Spring Garden scandal. Or let us count the leaves upon this tree; and afterward I will enumerate my reasons for believing yonder crescent moon to be the paring of the Angel Gabriel's left thumb-nail." She was a woman of eloquent silences when there was any need of them; and thus the fop and the coquette traversed the remainder of that solemn wood without any further speech. Modish people would have esteemed them unwontedly glum.