It goes to a sickening namby-pamby waltz tune, and for months nothing else was sung and hummed in Blackpool and other popular centres.’

This time Clovis’s self-control broke down badly.

‘Please excuse me,’ he gurgled, ‘but I can’t help it when I remember the awful solemnity of that article of yours that you so kindly read us last night, on the Coptic Church in its relation to early Christian worship.’

Septimus groaned.

‘You see how it would be,’ he said; ‘as soon as people knew me to be the author of that miserable sentimental twaddle, all respect for the serious labours of my life would be gone. I dare say I know more about memorial brasses than any one living, in fact I hope one day to publish a monograph on the subject, but I should be pointed out everywhere as the man whose ditties were in the mouths of nigger minstrels along the entire coast-line of our Island home. Can you wonder that I positively hate Florrie all the time that I’m trying to grind out sugar-coated rhapsodies about her?’

‘Why not give free play to your emotions, and be brutally abusive? An uncomplimentary refrain would have an instant success as a novelty if you were sufficiently outspoken.’

‘I’ve never thought of that,’ said Septimus, ‘and I’m afraid I couldn’t break away from the habit of fulsome adulation and suddenly change my style.’

‘You needn’t change your style in the least,’ said Clovis; ‘merely reverse the sentiment and keep to the inane phraseology of the thing. If you’ll do the body of the song I’ll knock off the refrain, which is the thing that principally matters, I believe. I shall charge half-shares in the royalties, and throw in my silence as to your guilty secret. In the eyes of the world you shall still be the man who has devoted his life to the study of transepts and Byzantine ritual; only sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when the wind howls drearily down the chimney and the rain beats against the windows, I shall think of you as the author of “Cora with the lips of coral.” Of course, if in sheer gratitude at my silence you like to take me for a much-needed holiday to the Adriatic or somewhere equally interesting, paying all expenses, I shouldn’t dream of refusing.’

Later in the afternoon Clovis found his aunt and Mrs Riversedge indulging in gentle exercise in the Jacobean garden.

‘I’ve spoken to Mr Brope about F.,’ he announced.

‘How splendid of you! What did he say?’ came in a quick chorus from the two ladies.

‘He was quite frank and straightforward with me when he saw that I knew his secret,’ said Clovis, ‘and it seems that his intentions were quite serious, if slightly unsuitable. I tried to show him the impracticability of the course that he was following. He said he wanted to be understood, and he seemed to think that Florinda would excel in that requirement, but I pointed out that there were probably dozens of delicately nurtured, pure-hearted young English girls who would be capable of understanding him, while Florinda was the only person in the world who understood my aunt’s hair. That rather weighed with him, for he’s not really a selfish animal, if you take him in the right way, and when I appealed to the memory of his happy childish days, spent amid the daisied fields of Leighton Buzzard (I suppose daisies do grow there), he was obviously affected. Anyhow, he gave me his word that he would put Florinda absolutely out of his mind, and he has agreed to go for a short trip abroad as the best distraction for his thoughts. I am going with him as far as Ragusa. If my aunt should wish to give me a really nice scarf-pin (to be chosen by myself), as a small recognition of the very considerable service I had done her, I shouldn’t dream of refusing. I’m not one of those who think that because one is abroad one can go about dressed anyhow.’