The company assented conventionally, and every one smiled violently on every one, to the amusement of Lady Canvey. "If this was the Palace of Truth," she announced, "there would be trouble." "But the mellowing influence of the time----" "Just so, Duke. But some people are like certain pears, they won't mellow--they only become sleepy. And that reminds me," she added, looking round for Joan. "I'll go to bed soon." "Not on Christmas Eve," urged the Duke, bending over her chair. "We intend to keep Yule-tide as our ancestors did--snap-dragon, the mummers, the Christmas-tree, the carol-singers, and the ghost-stories." "Not one of them clever enough to tell a real ghost story," snapped Lady Canvey, cynically examining faces old and young, made up and natural. "Oh, I know a lovely, lovely tale," said Miss Jaffray, who was gowned girlishly in white, trimmed oddly with ivy, and who looked like a ruin. "That will last till to-morrow morning," chimed in her brother, seeing an opportunity of being nasty; "snap-dragon is more fun. Eh, Lady Frith--you used to enjoy that once." "I do so now--dear snap-dragon," said the Marchioness, who was sentimental and adored her tall lean husband; "but the Christmas-tree--oh, that is too sweet. Bunny and I met for the first time under a Christmas-tree, and he fell in love with me. Didn't you, Bunny?" It was rather hard on Lord Frith that he should be addressed by this most inappropriate name. He was as stiff as a Spaniard, sad in his looks, and spoke little. Although eminently well-bred, and clever in a political way, he was not a genial personage. In this he differed from his father, for the Duke was stout and kindly looking, beaming with good-humour, and quite the style of host who would have figured in Sir Roger de Coverley's time. Report said that he had been much too gay in his youth, and that the late Duchess had put up with a great deal. Lady Canvey could have related stories about the Duke likely to be much more entertaining than the proposed ghost-tales. But she was fond of her host, who, like herself, was a link with the remote past, and never told stories out of school. When she and the Duke got together, they wagged their old heads over dead and done-with scandals, and lamented these days of vulgar and blatant sin. But whatever their pasts may have been, they were an ideal couple in the way of venerable looks and sweet old age. Quite a Philemon and Baucis of modern times.