practical person was to shrug his shoulders and enjoy the joke.
This was not a little enhanced by the newspaper reports, which
described Raffles as a handsome youth, and his unwilling
accomplice as an older man of blackguardly appearance and low
type.

"Hits us both off rather neatly, Bunny," said he. "But what
none of them do justice to is my dear cup. Look at it; only
look at it, man! Was ever anything so rich and yet so chaste?
St. Agnes must have had a pretty bad time, but it would be
almost worth it to go down to posterity in such enamel upon such
gold. And then the history of the thing. Do you realize that
it's five hundred years old and has belonged to Henry the
Eighth and to Elizabeth among others? Bunny, when you have me
cremated, you can put my ashes in yonder cup, and lay us in the
deep-delved earth together!"

"And meanwhile?"

"It is the joy of my heart, the light of my life, the delight of
mine eye."

"And suppose other eyes catch sight of it?"

"They never must; they never shall."

Raffles would have been too absurd had he not been thoroughly
alive to his own absurdity; there was nevertheless an underlying
sincerity in his appreciation of any and every form of beauty,
which all his nonsense could not conceal. And his infatuation