the springs, walks and rides in lanes, high sand-lanes; Nataly loves
them; Fredi worships the old roots of trees: she calls them the faces of
those weedy sandy lanes. And the two dear souls on their own estate,
Fenellan! And their poultry, cows, cream. And a certain influence one
has in the country socially. I make my stand on a home--not empty
punctilio.'

Mr. Fenellan repeated, in a pause, 'Punctilio,' and not emphatically.

'Don't bawl the word,' said Mr. Radnor, at the drum of whose ears it rang
and sang. 'Here in the City the woman's harmless; and here,' he struck
his breast. 'But she can shoot and hit another through me. Ah, the
witch!--poor wretch! poor soul! Only, she's malignant. I could swear!
But Colney 's right for once in something he says about oaths--"dropping
empty buckets," or something.'

'"Empty buckets to haul up impotent demons, whom we have to pay as
heavily as the ready devil himself,"' Mr. Fenellan supplied the phrase.
'Only, the moment old Colney moralizes, he's what the critics call
sententious. We've all a parlous lot too much pulpit in us.'

'Come, Fenellan, I don't think . . .'

'Oh, yes, but it's true of me too.'

'You reserve it for your enemies.'

'I 'd like to distract it a bit from the biggest of 'em.' He pointed
finger at the region of the heart.