“I should say that if you found some remarks about breaking the bones of your enemy, and have twisted it out of its connection, it would be particularly bad advice to follow.”
“It is nothing of that sort.”
“What is it, then?”
She took out a tortoise-shell dagger just here, and gave her head an absent-minded shake so that her lustrous coil of hair uncoiled itself and fell on her shoulders in a ruddy spiral. It was a sight to induce covetousness, but one couldn’t be envious of Egeria. She charmed one by her lack of consciousness.
“The happy lot
Be his to follow
Those threads through lovely curve and hollow,
And muse a lifetime how they got
Into that wild, mysterious knot,”—
quoted I, as I gave her head an insinuating pat. “Come, Egeria, stand and deliver! What is the Scriptural command, that having first obeyed, you ask my advice about afterwards?”
“Have you a Bible?”
“You might not think it, but I have, and it is here on my table.”
“Then I am going into my room, to lock the door, and call the verse through the keyhole. But you must promise not to say a word to me till to-morrow morning.”
I was not in a position to dictate terms, so I promised. The door closed, the bolt shot into the socket, and Egeria’s voice came so faintly through the keyhole that I had to stoop to catch the words:—