What tho' the giver be kinde and fair,
they have no charme for me.

The wreathe whose brightest budde is gone
is not ye wreathe I'de prise:
I'de pluck another, and so passe on,
with unregardfull eyes.

And so the heart whose sweet resorte
an hundred rivalls share
May yielde a moment's passing sporte,
but Love's an alyen there."

"He is unpolite, my sister," cried Marguerite, laughing. "But that is
only because he is sore. The wounded bird has moulted a feather in his
empty nest."

"All the same, he is flown," answered Mdme. de Maufant, gravely.

"_N'importe_," answered the damsel. "Leave him to me. I can whistle him
back when I want him--if I ever do."

Leaving the ladies to the discussion of the topic thus set afoot, let us
turn to the more prosaic combinations of the rougher, if not harder,
sex. _Majora canamus!_

About four miles south-east of the manor-house, the old Castle of Gorey
arose out of the sea, almost as if it grew there, a part of the granite
crag. A survival of the rude warfare of Plantagenet times, it bore--as
it still does--the self assertive name of "Mont Orgueil," and boasted