hung above, entangled in the tough hedge, and the horses plunged
painfully down the slope. The first to sit up was the little priest,
who scratched his head with a face of foolish wonder. Frank Harrogate
heard him say to himself: "Now why on earth have we fallen just here?"

He blinked at the litter around him, and recovered his own
very clumsy umbrella. Beyond it lay the broad sombrero fallen from
the head of Muscari, and beside it a sealed business letter which,
after a glance at the address, he returned to the elder Harrogate.
On the other side of him the grass partly hid Miss Ethel's sunshade,
and just beyond it lay a curious little glass bottle hardly two inches long.
The priest picked it up; in a quick, unobtrusive manner he uncorked
and sniffed it, and his heavy face turned the colour of clay.

"Heaven deliver us!" he muttered; "it can't be hers!
Has her sorrow come on her already?" He slipped it into his own
waistcoat pocket. "I think I'm justified," he said, "till I know
a little more."

He gazed painfully at the girl, at that moment being raised out of
the flowers by Muscari, who was saying: "We have fallen into heaven;
it is a sign. Mortals climb up and they fall down; but it is only
gods and goddesses who can fall upwards."

And indeed she rose out of the sea of colours so beautiful and
happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion shaken and shifted.
"After all," he thought, "perhaps the poison isn't hers; perhaps it's
one of Muscari's melodramatic tricks."

Muscari set the lady lightly on her feet, made her an absurdly