“You shall, Dr. John. In some cases, you are a lavish, generous man: you are a worshipper ever ready with the votive offering should Père Silas ever convert you , you will give him abundance of alms for his poor, you will supply his altar with tapers, and the shrine of your favourite saint you will do your best to enrich: Ginevra, Dr. John⁠—”

“Hush!” said he, “don’t go on.”

“Hush, I will not : and go on I will : Ginevra has had her hands filled from your hands more times than I can count. You have sought for her the costliest flowers; you have busied your brain in devising gifts the most delicate: such, one would have thought, as only a woman could have imagined; and in addition, Miss Fanshawe owns a set of ornaments, to purchase which your generosity must have verged on extravagance.”

The modesty Ginevra herself had never evinced in this matter, now flushed all over the face of her admirer.

“Nonsense!” he said, destructively snipping a skein of silk with my scissors. “I offered them to please myself: I felt she did me a favour in accepting them.”