conversation that I ever heard. She would ask questions that could not be answered 'in russet yeas and honest kersey noes.'"
"I should have feigned deafness," I say, laughing. "She could not shout at you!"
There is a little pause while he helps himself to vol-au-vent, and I look round the room at the dark oak, at the massive sideboard, on which is carved the date 1690. How small and insignificant that date makes me feel, and how evanescent a thing life is. For how many generations has not that sideboard held food and drink? for how many more will it not hold the same? Just as those dead and gone Luttrells, looking out from the canvas on the walls, once sat here, jocund and happy, so will others fill up our places who are sitting here to-night, and these sober pictures will look down on them as benignly as they are looking on us. Stately old houses certainly lessen one's sense of self-importance. It is impossible, in the face of the stored traditions and memories of many hundred years, not to feel that these things remain and we go.
I glance round the table. Mrs. Fleming is steadily laying the foundation for a fourth chin. Mrs. Lister is boring Fane to a pitch that almost brings tears into his eyes. He makes no secret of hating old women, and every night he is bound to take one in for his sins. Lord St. John is gazing at Alice, who is placidly eating her dinner; every one of us Adairs has fine appetites, and are not ashamed of them. Miss Lister is worrying Captain Brabazon who is trying with secret wrath, I am certain, to eat his dinner. The other sister looks sulky; apparently her squire is better skilled in the art of repelling unwelcome advances than the other poor captain.
Ah, me! I wonder why it should be that when lovers do not come to look for Chloe, Chloe should invariably go to look for them!
