"My remark at lunch had a purely academic application," he announced; "you seem to put an unnecessarily personal significance into it."
Lady Anne maintained her defensive barrier of silence. The bullfinch lazily filled in the interval with an air from Iphigenie en Tauride . Egbert recognised it immediately, because it was the only air the bullfinch whistled, and he had come to them with the reputation for whistling it. Both Egbert and Lady Anne would have preferred something from The Yeomen of the Guard , which was their favourite opera. In matters artistic they had a similarity of taste. They leaned towards the honest and explicit in art, a picture, for instance, that told its own story, with generous assistance from its title. A riderless warhorse with harness in obvious disarray, stagg
