* * * *

The dinner under the loggia went gaily. Not many courses; much fruit; a
shimmer of tea-roses before the guests; and the scent of roses blowing in
from the garden outside.

Victoria had Delorme on her right, and Lydia sat next the great man.
Tatham could only glance at her from afar. On his right, he had his
cousin, Lady Barbara, whom he cordially disliked. Her yearly visit,
always fixed and announced by herself, was a time of trial both for him
and his mother, but they endured it out of a sentimental and probably
mistaken belief that the late Lord Tatham had--in her youth--borne her a
cousinly affection. Lady Barbara was a committee-woman, indefatigable,
and indiscriminate. She lived and gloried in a chronic state of overwork,
for which no one but herself saw the necessity. Her conversation about it
only confirmed the frivolous persons whom she tried to convert to "social
service," in their frivolity. After a quarter of an hour's conversation
with her, Tatham was generally dumb, and as nearly rude as his
temperament allowed. While, as to his own small efforts, his cottages,
County Council, and the rest, no blandishments would have drawn from him
a word about them; although, like many of us, Lady Barbara would gladly
have purchased leave to talk about her own achievements by a strictly
moderate amount of listening to other people's.

On his other side sat a very different person--the sweet-faced lady,
whose boy of fourteen sitting opposite kept up with her through dinner a
shy telegraphy of eye and smile. They were evidently alone in the world,
and everything to each other. She was a widow--a Mrs. Edward Manisty,
whose husband, a brilliant but selfish man of letters, had died some four
years before this date. His wife had never found out that he was selfish;
her love had haloed him; though she had plenty of character of her own.
She herself was an American, a New Englander by birth, carrying with her
still the perfume of a quiet life begun among the hills of Vermont, and
in sight of the Adirondacks; a life fundamentally Puritan and based on
Puritan ideals; yet softened and expanded by the modern forces of art,
travel, and books. Lucy Manisty had attracted her husband, when he, a
weary cosmopolitan, had met her first in Rome, by just this touch of
something austerely sweet, like the scent of lavender or dewy grass; and
she had it still--mingled with a kind humour--in her middle years, which