“Tush!” broke in the cracked voice of a withered old dame, “your news is old.  Not only hath the so-called fever vanished but my lord himself hath followed it.”

“Gone!” The cry was echoed by twenty voices; twenty embroidery-frames fell from forty arrested hands, while nine-and-thirty dismayed eyes fixed themselves upon the maliciously-amused countenance of the speaker.  Only one, belonging to the Lady Beauregarde, who squinted slightly, remained as though unmoved by the general commotion.

“Moreover,” continued the old dame, “report saith that with him went his leman, who, having some art in necromancy, transformed her beauty to the semblance of a witch and provided her own dowry by the sale, to certain addle-pated wenches, of charms for which her lover himself prepared the market.”

“But—­his fever?” an impetuous voice broke in.

“Cozening, no doubt.  Of course the tale may be but idle babble; still, if true, one would admit that such credulous fools got no more than they deserved.”

She ceased, well satisfied.  “I fancy,” observed the Lady Yolande coldly, “that I hear our lords returning.”  And in the eloquent silence a score of fair young minds slowly assimilated the profound truth (as fresh to-day as eight hundred years ago) that Satan finds some mischief still for the impecunious demobilised.

* * * * *

TO JESSIE

    ("one of the Zoo’s most popular elephants,” now deceased).

  Jessie of the melting eye,
    Wreathed trunk and horny tegum-
  Ent, whom I have joyed to ply
  With the fugitive mince-pie
    And the seasonable legume,
  Youth has left me; fortune too
    Flounts my efforts to annex it;
  Still, I occupy the view,
  Bored but loath to leave, while you
    Make the inevitable exit.

  Ne’er again for blissful rides
    Shall our shouting offspring clamber
  Up your broad and beetling sides;
  Ne’er again, when eventide’s
    Coming turns the skies to amber
  And the fluting blackbirds call,
    Poised above a bale of fodder
  In your well-appointed stall
  Will you muse upon it all,
    Patient introspective plodder.

  Once, an anxious mother’s care,
    Day by day you roamed the jungle,
  Felt the sunshine, sniffed the air;
  Life, methinks, was passing fair;
    But of that no mortal tongue’ll
  Tell.  Perhaps you never thought
    If it bored you or enraptured
  Till the wily hunter caught
  You and all your friends and brought
    Home to England, bound and captured.

  Jessie, fairest of your race,
    Now you’re gone and few will miss you;
  There will come to take your place
  Creatures less replete with grace;
    Elephants of grosser tissue
  Will intrigue the public sight;
    That, old girl, ’s the common attitude. 
  Still, these few poor lines I write
  May preserve your memory bright,
    Since the pen is dipped in gratitude.