g man, with a nice face, and a remarkably dismal
expression. He is looking at Rossmoyne. "Sit down, dear boy," he says,
_sotto voce_ and very sadly. "There's too much of you; you should never
stand. You appear to so much better advantage when doubled in two. It
don't _sound_ well, does it? but----"

"But really, when you come to think of it," Mrs. Bohun is saying,
feelingly, "there is very little in the country."

"There is at least the fascinating tulip and lily," says the sad man who
mentioned Desmond's name. "Don't put yourself beyond the pale of art by
saying you had forgotten those aesthetic flowers,--blossoms, I mean.
Don't you yearn when you think of them? _I_ do."

"So glad you are awake at last, Owen!" says Mrs. Bohun.

"That silly craze about tulips," says Mrs. Herrick, contemptuously, "I
have always treated it with scorn. Why could not the art idiots have
chosen some better flower for their lunatic ravings? What can _any_ one
see in a tulip?"

"Sometimes earwigs," says the man called Owen.

"Nonsense! I don't believe even earwigs would care for it. Foolish,
gaudy thing, uplifting its lanky neck as though to outdo its fellows!
There is really nothing in it."

"Like the country," says Owen, meekly, "according to Mrs. Bohun."

"And like Bella Fitzgerald," says that graceless person, with a little
grimace.

"My _dear_ Olga," says Mrs. Herrick, glancing quickly to right and left.
"Do you never _think_?"

"As seldom as ever I can. But why be nervous, Hermia? If any one were to
compare _me_ with a tulip, I should die of--no, not chagrin--_joy_, I
mean, of course. Monica, what are you saying to Owen?"

"I don't think I know who Owen is," says Monica, with a glance at the
gentleman in question, that is half shy, half friendly.

"That argues yourself unknown," says Olga. "He is Master Owen Kelly, of
Kelly's Grove, county Antrim, and the bright and shining light of the
junior bar. They all swear by him in Dublin,--all, that is except the
judges, and they swear _at_ him."

Monica looks at Master Owen Kelly in a faintly puzzled fashion.

"It is all quite true," says that young man, modestly, in a reassuring
tone.

"Now tell us what you were saying to each other," says Olga.

"It was nothing," returns Monica. "We were only talking about this
Egyptian war. But I don't really," nervously, "understand anything about
it."

"You needn't blush for your ignorance on that score," says Mr. Kelly.
"You're in th