"Gladly; but on two conditions: that you never reveal to anyone this presentation, and that you not tell her that your father was in her father's service."
"I swear it."
The Count once again summoned Gali with the Ring. "Warn Shélobe, and ask her if I have her permission to introduce one of my friends." Gali disappeared, and then returned and made a sign that Shélobe was ready to receive them.
Shélobe waited in her salon, her large and many-crystalled eyes dilated with surprise; never had any man save her master penetrated her domain. From sun and moon and male gaze had she been safe underground, but now that gaze had entered her very boudoir. But she recouped rapidly. After greeting the Count, she turned to Réginard and said, in excellent Sindarin, and with a sweet Haradric accent that made the speech of Daeron as sonorous as that of Grichenacq, "Be welcome, friend, who arrivest with my lord and master. Gali! Two pipes!" (In what follows, we have modified Shélobe's accent somewhat, lest dear reader sue us for ocular malaise.)
Réginard refused the pipe proffered by the exotically fishy slave; but Monte Fato said: "Take, take; Shélobe is almost as civilised as an Annuminasienne: the yavanna is disagreeable to her, for she does not like bad odors; but the tobacco of Gondor, or sweet galenas as it is called by the inhabitants of that clime, is a perfume, you know it well." Réginard accepted; and Gali served coffee to Shélobe and her guests.
