d'Estrees' first
husband, Lord Blackwater. The floor was held by a plentiful collection
of seats, neither too easy nor too stiff; arranged by one who understood
to perfection the physical conditions at least which should surround the
"great art" of conversation. At this moment every seat was full. A sea
of black coats overflowed on the farther side, into the staircase
landing, where through the open door several standing groups could be
seen; and in the inner room, where they sat, there was but little space
between its margin and themselves. It was a remarkable sight; and in his
past visits to the house Ashe had often said to himself that the
elements of which it was made up were still more remarkable. Ministers
and Opposition; ambassadors, travellers, journalists; the men of fashion
and the men of reform; here a French republican official, and beyond
him, perhaps, a man whose ancestors were already of the most ancient
<i>noblesse</i> in Saint-Simon's day; artists, great and small, men of
letters good and indifferent; all these had been among the guests of
Madame d'Estrees, brought to the house, each of them, for some quality's
sake, some power of keeping up the social game.

But now, as he looked at the room, not to please himself but to obey
Lady Kitty, Ashe became aware of a new impression. The crowd was no
less, numerically, than he had seen it in the early winter; but it
seemed to him less distinguished, made up of coarser and commoner items.
He caught the face of a shady financier long since banished from Lady
Tranmore's parties; beyond him a red-faced colonel, conspicuous alike
for doubtful money-matters and matrimonial trouble; and in a farther
corner the sallow profile of a writer whose books were apt to rouse even
the man of the world to a healthy and contemptuous disgust. Surely these
persons had never been there of old; he could not remember one of them.

He looked again, more closely. Was it fancy, or was the gathering itself
aware of the change which had passed over it? As a whole, it was
certainly noisier than of old; the shouting and laughter were incessant.
But within the general uproar certain groups had separated from other
groups, and were talking with a studied quiet. Most of the habitue's
were still there; but they held themselves apart from their neighbors.
Were the old intimacy and solidarity beginning to break up?--and with
them the peculiar charm of these "evenings," a charm which had so far