“Oh, Godfrey, don’t you know?” she asked, earnestly.
“Don’t I know what?”
“That peacock’s feathers bring ill luck. It is fatal to take them into a house. They are an evil omen. And father will pick them up when he is strolling about the lawn, and will bring them indoors; though I am always scolding him for his obstinate folly, and always throwing the horrid things away.”
“And this kind of thing has been going on for some years, I suppose?” asked Godfrey, smiling at her intensity.
“Ever since I can remember.”
“And have the peacock’s feathers brought you misfortune?”
She looked at him gravely for a few moments, and then burst into a joyous laugh.
“No, no, no, no,” she said, “Fate has been over kind to me. I have never known sorrow. Fate has given me you. I am the happiest woman in the world—for there can’t be another you, and you are mine. It is like owning the Kohinoor diamond; one knows that one stands alone. Still, all the same, peacock’s feathers are unlucky, and I will not suffer them in your room.”
She picked up the offending feathers, twisted them into a ball, and flung them at the back of the deep old chimney, behind the smouldering logs; and then she produced a chess board, and she and Godfrey began a game with the board on their knees, and played for an hour by firelight.