"Delicious country!" said de Cazalet, who talked remarkably good English, with just the faintest Hibernian accent. "I have ridden over every inch of it. Ah, Mrs. Tregonell, that is the soil for poetry and adventure; a land of extinct volcanoes. If Byron had known the shores of the Amazon, he would have struck a deeper note of passion than any that was ever inspired by the Dardanelles or the Bosphorus. Sad that so grand a spirit should have pined in the prison-house of a worn-out world."
"I have always understood that Byron got some rather strong poetry out of Switzerland and Italy," murmured Mr. FitzJesse, meekly.
"Weak and thin to what he might have written had he known the Pampas," said the Baron.
"You have done the Pampas?" said Mr. FitzJesse.
"I have lived amongst wild horses, and wilder humanity, for months at a stretch."
"And you have published a volume of—verses?"
"Another of my youthful follies. But I do not place myself upon a level with Byron."
"I should if I were you," said Mr. FitzJesse. "It would be an original idea—and in an age marked by a total exhaustion of brain-power, an original idea is a pearl of price."
"What kind of dogs did you see in your travels?" asked Emily St. Aubyn, a well-grown upstanding young woman, in a severe tailor-gown of undyed homespun.
"Two or three very fine breeds of mongrels."