"A dairy? Oh yes."
"Do you remember what it is called?"
Zuleika knit her brows.
He helped her out. "It is called 'Her Grace's'."
"Oh, of course!" said Zuleika.
"Do you know why it is called so?"
"Well, let's see . . . I know you told me."
"Did I? I think not. I will tell you now . . . That cool out-house dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. My great-great-grandfather, when he was a very old man, married en troisièmes noces a dairy-maid on the Tankerton estate. Meg Speedwell was her name. He had seen her walking across a field, not many months after the interment of his second Duchess, Maria, that great and gifted lady. I know not whether it was that her bonny mien fanned in him some embers of his youth, or that he was loth to be outdone in gracious eccentricity by his crony the Duke of Dewlap, who himself had just taken a bride from a dairy. (You have read Meredith's account of that affair? No? You should.) Whether it was veritable love or mere modishness that formed my ancestor's resolve, presently the bells were ringing out, and the oldest elm in the park was being felled, in Meg Speedwell's honour, and the children were strewing daisies on which Meg Speedwell trod, a proud young hoyden of a bride, with her head in the air and her heart in the seventh heaven. The
