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

She looted 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 before-hand. 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' 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 _distraut_, 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 French man, 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 scantiness of speech in
society, coupled with the look of Minerva's owl, attached himself
to them; while Lady Aubrey, Sir John Headlam, Lord Rupert, and Mr.
Wharncliffe made a noisier and more dashing party at the other end.

'Are you still in your old quarters?' Lady Aubrey asked Sir John
Headlam, turning his old, roguish face upon her. 'That house of Well
Gwynne's, wasn't it, in Meade Street?'

'Oh dear no! We could only get it up to May this year, and then they
made us turn out for the season, for the first time for ten years. There
is a tiresome young heir who has married a wife and wants to live in it.
I could have left a train of gunpowder and a slow match behind, I was so
cross!'

'Ah,--"Reculer pour mieux _f