se gala grandeur is but homeliness in Sunday
array, it would sound all very fine."

"Ginevra saw you, I think?"

"So do I think so. I have had my eye on her several times since you
withdrew yours; and I have had the honour of witnessing a little
spectacle which you were spared."

I did not ask what; I waited voluntary information, which was presently
given.

"Miss Fanshawe," he said, "has a companion with her--a lady of rank. I
happen to know Lady Sara by sight; her noble mother has called me in
professionally. She is a proud girl, but not in the least insolent, and
I doubt whether Ginevra will have gained ground in her estimation by
making a butt of her neighbours."

"What neighbours?"

"Merely myself and my mother. As to me it is all very natural: nothing,
I suppose, can be fairer game than the young bourgeois doctor; but my
mother! I never saw her ridiculed before. Do you know, the curling lip,
and sarcastically levelled glass thus directed, gave me a most curious
sensation?"

"Think nothing of it, Dr. John: it is not worth while. If Ginevra were
in a giddy mood, as she is eminently to-night, she would make no
scruple of laughing at that mild, pensive Queen, or that melancholy
King. She is not actuated by malevolence, but sheer, heedless folly. To
a feather-brained school-girl nothing is sacred."

"But you forget: I have not been accustomed to look on Miss Fanshawe in
the light of a feather-brained school-girl. Was she not my
divinity--the angel of my career?"

"Hem! There was your mistake."

"To speak the honest truth, without any false rant or assumed romance,
there actually was a moment, six months ago, when I thought her divine.
Do you remember our conversation about the presents? I was not quite
open with you in discussing that subject: the warmth with which you
took it up amused me. By way of having the full benefit of your lights,
I allowed you to think me more in the dark than I really was. It was
that test of the presents which first proved Ginevra mortal. Still her
beauty retained its fascination: three days--three hours ago, I was
very much her slave. As she passed me to-night, triumphant in beauty,
my emotions did her homage; but for one luckless sneer, I should yet be
the humblest of her servants. She might have scoffed at _me_, and,
while wounding, she would not soon have alienated me: through myself,
she could not in ten years have done what, in a moment, she has done
through my mother."