“Why not let it go?” she asked, turning her eyes towards the window-panes of the palace, that glanced like rows of beaten-gold in the evening sun.
“A hawk might peck it!” the Countess returned, looking up as if for one, into a sky as imaginative, and as dazzling as Shelley poetry.
“Even the Court,” Father Nostradamus ejaculated wryly, “will peck at times.”
The Countess’ shoulder-blades stiffened.
“After over thirty years,” she said, “I find Court-life pathetic....”
“Pathetic?”
“Tragically pathetic....”
Mademoiselle de Nazianzi considered wistfully the wayward outline of the hills.
“I would like to escape from it all for a while,” she said, “and travel.”
“I must hunt you out a pamphlet, by and by, dear child, on the ‘Dangers of Wanderlust.’”