Colonel Boyce started up. "But no--not at that price. Damme, that would
poison the Prince's own Tokay. Nay, you are too cruel, my lady. I come,
and you desolate the table to receive me. Gad's life, ma'am, our friends
here will be calling me out for my daring to exist."

Lady Waverton was very well pleased. "Sir, you will let me give you a
dish of tea. I warrant the men were already sighing to be rid of us."

"Then I vow they be blind," quoth Colonel Boyce, and opened the door,
from which he came back with a laugh to his glass of port. Over drinking
it he went through all the tricks of the connoisseur and ended with a
cultured ecstasy.

"I see you are a man of the world, Colonel," Hadley sneered.

"A man of many worlds, sir," the Colonel laughed easily.

"I wonder which this is?"

"Why, this is the world of good company and good fellowship--" he smiled
and bowed to Geoffrey--"of sound wine and sound learning."

"Sir, you are very good. But I hope my wine is better than my
scholarship. This is our man of learning," he slapped Harry on the
shoulder. "And Harry counts me a mere trifler, a literary exquisite, an
amateur of elegances."

"If your scholarship has the elegance of your wine, Mr. Waverton, you do
very well. I doubt my Harry is no judge of the graces. He has always been