Page:Hichens - The Green Carnation.djvu/90

82 almost the only modern word. I hear it everywhere like a sort of refrain."

"I cannot tell you. I am too old. Ask Lord Reggie. He would tell you anything."

The last words were spoken with slow intention.

"What do you mean?" said Lady Locke hastily.

"Here we are at the post-office. Would it not be the proper thing to do to get some stamps? No? Then let us stop at the linen-draper's. I feel a strong desire to buy some village frilling. And there are some deliciously coarse-looking pocket-handkerchiefs in the window, about a yard square. I must get a dozen of those."

At lunch that day Lord Reggie announced that he had composed a beautiful anthem on the words—

"Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks."

"They sound exactly like something of Esme's," he said, "but really they are taken from the 'Song of Solomon.' I had no idea that the Bible was so intensely artistic. There are passages in the Book of Job that I should not be ashamed to have written."

"You remind me of a certain lady writer