This communication fascinated him, and sitting down by the window he began to read the wildest book that ever was written. It was a fantastic history of the four intrigues of a fantastic woman. Her first lover had been a foreign churchman (an avowed ascetic) who had withstood her sieging for nearly a twelvemonth; her second, a poet who had addressed a sequence of amorous sonnets to her under the name of Amaryllis; her third a prince, or rather a king’s bastard; and her fourth a simple country squire. Some years had elapsed between each infatuation, and madam had utilised them in the study of the politer arts. The volume teemed with quotations from the more elegant classic writers, and the literature of the period was not ignored. The ending ran thus:-- ‘It has ever been my belief that love, nay, life itself, should terminate at the moment of excess of bliss. I hold Secrets, use of which teaches me that after a certain time passion may be tasted with the same keen joy as when maidenhood is resigned. But, as the lively L’Estrange declares, “the itch of knowing Secrets is naturally accompanied with another itch of telling them,” I fling aside my pen in fear.’ As he finished reading his brother Villiers entered the room. He was ten years Frambant’s junior, and resembled him only in stature and profile. His skin was olive, his eyes nut-brown, his forehead still free from lines. He leaned over the chair and put a strong arm round his brother’s neck. ‘What is this wondrous book, so quaintly bound?’ he said. ‘By Venus, queen of love, a wagtail’s song!’ Frambant flushed again, and raising the _Apology_ flung it on the fire, where it screamed aloud. ‘It is the work of an impudent woman,’ he replied. ‘To-morrow all town will ring with it. She has dedicated it to me.’ ‘Surely a sin to burn such a treasure! Let me recover it.’ Villiers took the tongs and strove to draw the swollen thing from the flame, but it collapsed into a heap of blackness. The note, however, which Frambant had replaced, lay uncurled in the hearth, and the lad read its message. At that moment one came with word that Sir Benjamin Mast, an old country baronet whom Frambant held in high esteem, lay at the point of death. ‘The water crept higher and higher, and my lady thought you might choose to be with him at the last. The coach waited.’ Frambant hurried downstairs, and was soon with the dying man. Sir Benjamin’s hydropsy had swollen him to an immense size, but his uncowed soul permitted him to laugh and jest with heart till the end. His wife, a pious resigned woman of sixty, shared the vigil. Darkness fell, and the chamber was lighted. Forgetful of all save his friend’s departure he never remarked the passage of time, and not until after midnight when Mast’s eyes were closed in death did his thoughts recur to the _Apology_. He took his seat in the coach with a grim feeling of satisfaction at the imaginary picture of the wanton waiting, and waiting in vain.