The action spread feminine curves to her lover's eyes. He was
a man.
Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an order
for port--two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her.
Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon.
Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For an instant she was sunset.
"Medicinal," she murmured.
"Forgive me, Madam. A glass, certainly. 'Twill warm us for
worshipping."
The wine appeared, seemed to blink owlishly through the facets of
its decanter, like some hoary captive dragged forth into light after
years of subterraneous darkness--something querulous in the sudden
liberation of it. Or say that it gleamed benignant from its tray,
steady-borne by the hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility
pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the
Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us;
as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in
the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up the
veins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to a
cosset. We go to Port, mark you!
Sir Rebus sipped with an affectionate twirl of thumb at the glass's
stem. He said "One scents the cobwebs.
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