"
"What would you have, Eveena? Am I to deal unjustly that I may seem
just? That course steers straight to disaster. And, had you been in
fault, could, I humble you in other eyes?"
"If I feel hurt by any mark of your displeasure, or humbled that it
should be known to my equals in your own household," she replied, "it
is time I were deprived of the privileges that have rendered me so
overweening."
My answer was intercepted by the sound of an electric bell or
miniature gong, and a slip of tafroo fell upon the desk. The first
words were in that vocal character which I had mastered, and came from
Esmo.
"Hysterical folly," he had said. "Mountain air might be fatal; and
clear nights are dangerously cold for more than yourselves."
"What does he mean?" I asked, as I read out a formula more studiously
occult than those of the Pharmacopoeia.
"That I am unpardonably silly, and that you must not dream of going
back to your vessel. The last words, I suppose, warn you how carefully
in such a household you need to guard the secrets of the Starlight."
"Well, and what is this in the stylic writing?"
Eveena glanced over it and coloured painfully, the tears gathering in
her eyes.
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