d Carey, as I told you this morning."

Geoffrey sat down on the sofa by her and looked about the room.

"I do not see the great professional beauty in this room, Miss Windsor,"
he said, after he had finished his inspection of the people present, who
seemed plunged in the depths of that gloom which always hangs over a
party before a dinner.

Richard Lincoln, who had been touched by her Grace's melancholy, stood
talking to her. In the opposite corner of the room sat Mr. James
Sydney, the celebrated wit, his pasty face wearing an air of settled
melancholy, while he gazed vacantly at a curious old Turner, which
glowed like an American sunset against the stamped-leather hangings of
the room.

"Poor fellow, he looks like the clown before he is painted," whispered
Miss Windsor.

Mr. Prouty, the _Saturday Reviewer_, sat on a "conversazione" with Lady
Carringford, a commonplace, faded-out-looking woman of forty, with
bleached hair. She did not seem much pleased by the conversation of the
journalist, and looked furtively across the room as if to hint that she
ought to be relieved, but Herr Diddlej and Sydney did not see her
signals of distress.

Lord Carringford, her husband, a tall, keen-faced man with blue-black
side-whiskers and a furtive eye, was talking with Mr. Windsor, and
though he saw his wife's signals, of course, did not pay any attention
to them. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in rusty clerical garb, smiled
benignly at the whole company.

"Mrs. Oswald Carey is far too clever to stay in the glare of a great
room like this," said Miss Windsor to Geoffrey. "She is one of those
women who seek a corner and quiet and flourish there--not, however,
alone. She is in the smaller room beyond, with Colonel Featherstone, who
must have nearly pulled his great mustaches out by this time. You know
how he twirls and twitches them when he thinks he is being quite
irresistible, just as you are doing now, Lord Brompton."

Geoffrey dropped his hand from his mustache impatiently.

"Ah, you are always chaffing me, Miss Windsor," he pleaded.

"I knew very well what you were thinking, sir. That you could cut
Colonel Featherstone out in no time. Now, were you not?"

"Not at all. I was thinking of you. Were not my languishing glances
turned toward you?"

"Yes, but the languish was all for Mrs. Oswald, and not for me. But it
is time to go to dinner now, Lord Brompton. You are permitted to disturb
the _tete-a-tete_ and Mrs. Carey's