respectability, just the atmosphere to rouse the wickedness in Luccia.
As we sat together in an upright conversation that sounded like the
rustling of dried leaves in a cemetery, why! Luccia, for all her eighty
years, seemed like a young wild-rose bush filling the tomb-like room
with living light and fragrance. I could see the wickedness in her
surging for an outburst. She was well aware that those respectable
connections of hers had always looked upon her as a sort of "artistic"
black sheep in the family. Presently her opportunity came. As our visit
dragged mournfully towards its end, the butler entered, in pursuance of
the early Victorian ritual on such occasions, bearing a tray on which
was a decanter of sherry, some tiny wine-glasses, and some dry biscuits
of a truly early Victorian dryness. This ghostly hospitality was duly
dispensed, and Luccia, who seldom drinks anything but tea, instead of
sipping her sherry with a lady-like aloofness, drained her glass with a
sudden devil-may-care abandon, and, to the evident amazement even of the
furniture, held it out to be refilled. Such pagan behaviour had never
disgraced that scandalized drawing-room before. And when to her action
she added words, the room absolutely refused to believe its ears. "I
feel," she said, with a deep-down mirth in her eyes which only I could
suspect rather than see, "I feel today as if I should like to go on a
real spree. Do you ever feel that way?"

A palpable shudder passed through the room.

"Cousin Luccia!" cried out the three outraged mummies; the brother with
actual sternness, and the sisters in plain fear. Had their eccentric
cousin really gone out of her mind at last?

"Never feel that way?" she added, delighting in the havoc she was
making. "You should. It's a wonderful feeling."