“What else but a strong spirit,” he replied half disingenuously, “could have triumphed, as you have done, over a lifelong death?” “Death?” She opened her eyes wide. “Death? But I've lived every hour of my life, and it has been utterly happy.” “The strong spirit, dear,” said Herold. “Great High Favourite dear, what else could you say?” She laughed, but the tenderness in her eyes absolved the laugh and the feminine speech from coquetry. “I might talk to you as John Knox did to Mary, Queen of Scots.” Just as life had been translated to the hapless Miss Kilmansegg of the Golden Leg into terms of gold, so had it been translated to Stella into terms of beauty. History had been translated, accordingly, into terms of romance. She had heard, indeed, of Mary Stuart, but as a being of legendary and unnaughty loveliness. At the stem image of the grave Calvinist she shrank. “John Knox was a horrid, croaking raven,” she emphatically declared, “and nobody could possibly talk like that nowadays.” Herold laughed and turned the conversation into lighter channels. The Unwritten Law prevailed over his instinctive impulse to warn her against the deceptive glamour of the world. Then the hour struck for an item in the invalid's routine, and the nurse came in, and Stella was wheeled back to her high chamber. Many days of her convalescence after this were marked with red stones. There was the first day when, carried down-stairs, she presided from her high couch at a dinner-party given in her honour, the guests being John Risca and Walter Herold, Wratislaw and the nurse, Dr. Ransome and his wife, and the gnomeheaded and spectacled Cassilis. It was a merry party, and towards the end of dinner, when the port went round, Stella's own maid coached for the part, at a sign from Sir Oliver who commanded silence, spoke in a falsetto voice sticking in a nervous throat the familiar words: “Miss Stella's compliments, and would the gentlemen take a glass of wine with her.” And they all rose and drank and made a great noise, and the tears rolled down John Risca's cheeks and fell upon his bulging shirt-front, and Sir Oliver blew his nose loudly and made a speech.