Messages, and hasty informal lightly-pencilled notes, too, would frequently reach her; such as: “I shall be pouring out cocoa after dinner in bed. Bring your biscuits and join me!” ... or a rat-a-tat from a round-eyed page and: “The Countess’ comp’ts and she’d take it a Favour if you can make a ‘Station’ with her in chapel later on,” or: “The Marchioness will be birched to-morrow, and _not_ to-day.” O, the charm, the flavour of the religious world! Where match it for interest or variety! An emotion approaching sympathy had arisen, perhaps a trifle incongruously, between the injured girl and the Countess Yvorra, and before long, to the amusement of the sceptical element of the Court, the Countess and her Confessor, Father Nostradamus, might often be observed in her society. “I need a cage-companion, Father, for my little bird,” the Countess one evening said, as they were ambling, all the three of them before Office up and down the perfectly tended paths: “ought it to be of the same species and sex, or does it matter? For as I said to myself just now (while listening to a thrush), _All_ birds are His creatures.” The priest discreetly coughed. “Your question requires reflection,” he said: “What is the bird?” “A hen canary!--and with a voice, Father! Talk of soul!!” “H--m ... a thrush and a canary, I would not myself advise.” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi tittered. “Why not let it go?” she asked, turning her eyes towards the window-panes of the palace, that glanced like rows of beaten-gold in the evening sun. “A hawk might peck it!” the Countess returned, looking up as if for one, into a sky as imaginative, and as dazzling as Shelley poetry. “Even the Court,” Father Nostradamus ejaculated wryly, “will peck at times.” The Countess’ shoulder-blades stiffened. “After over thirty years,” she said, “I find Court-life _pathetic_....” “Pathetic?” “Tragically pathetic....” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi considered wistfully the wayward outline of the hills. “I would like to escape from it all for a while,” she said, “and travel.” “I must hunt you out a pamphlet, by and by, dear child, on the ‘Dangers of Wanderlust.’” “The Great Wall of China and the Bay of Naples! It seems so frightful never to have seen them!” “I have never seen the Great Wall, either,” the Countess said, “and I don’t suppose, my dear, I ever shall; though I once did spend a fortnight in Italy.” “Tell me about it.” The Countess became reminiscent.