a young private secretary with
a waxed moustache, six feet of height, and a general air of
superlativeness which demanded and secured attention; a famous
journalist, whose smiling self-repressive look assured you that he
carried with him the secrets of several empires; and one Sir John
Headlam, a little black-haired Jewish-looking man with a limp--an
ex-Colonial Governor, who had made himself accepted in London as an
amusing fellow, but who was at least as much disliked by one half of
society as he was popular with the other.

'Purely for talk, you see, not for show!' said Madame de Netteville to
Robert, with a little smiling nod round her circle as they stood waiting
for the commencement of dinner.

'I shall hardly do my part,' he said with a little sigh. 'I have just
come from a very different scene.'

She looked at him with inquiring eyes.

'A terrible accident in the East End,' he said briefly. 'We won't talk
of it. I only mention it to propitiate you beforehand. Those things are
not forgotten at once.'

She said no more, but, seeing that he was indeed out of heart,
physically and mentally, she showed the most subtle consideration for
him at dinner. M. de Querouelle was made to talk. His hostess wound him
up and set him going, tune after tune. He played them all, and, by dint
of long practice, to perfection, in the French way. A visit of his youth
to the island grave of Chateaubriand; his early memories, as a poetical
aspirant, of the magnificent flatteries by which Victor Hugo made
himself the god of young romantic Paris; his talks with Montalembert in
the days of _L'Avenir_; his memories of Lamennais's sombre figure, of
Maurice de Guerin's feverish ethereal charm; his account of the
opposition _salons_ under the Empire--they had all been elaborated in
the course of years, till every word fitted and each point led to the
next with the 'inevitableness' of true art. Robert, at first silent and
_distrait_, found it impossible after a while not to listen with
interest. He admired the skill, too, of Madame de Netteville's second in
the duet, the finish, the alternate sparkle and melancholy of it; and at
last he too was drawn in, and found himself listened to with great
benevolence by the Frenchman, who had been informed about him, and
regarded him indulgently, as one more curious specimen of English
religious provincialisms. The journalist, Mr. Addlestone, who had won a
European reputation for wisdom by a great s