k-haired beauty; presented Hamil to
his hostess, and left him planted, to exchange impulsive amenities with
little Mrs. Ascott.

Mrs. Tom O'Hara, a delicate living Gainsborough in black and white, was
probably the handsomest woman in the South. She dressed with that
perfection of simplicity which only a few can afford; she wore only a
single jewel at a time, but the gem was always matchless.

Warm-hearted, generous, and restless, she loved the character of Lady
Bountiful; and, naively convinced of her own unassailable supremacy,
played very picturesquely the role of graciousness and patronage to the
tenants of her great estates and of her social and intellectual world
alike. Hence, although she went where many of her less fashionable
guests might not have been asked to go, she herself paid self-confident
homage to intellect as she understood it, and in her own house her
entourage was as mixed as her notions of a "salon" permitted.

She was gracious to Hamil on account of his aunt, his profession, and
himself. Also her instinct was to be nice to everybody. As hostess she
had but a moment to accord him, but during that moment she contrived to
speak reassuringly of the Suydam genealogy, the art of landscape
architecture, and impart a little special knowledge from her
inexhaustible reserve, informing him that the name of her villa, Tsa-na
Lah-ni, was Seminole, and meant "Yellow Butterfly." And then she passed
him sweetly along into a crush of bright-eyed young things who attempted
to pour tea into him and be agreeable in various artless ways; and
presently he found himself in a back-water where fashion and intellect
were conscientiously doing their best to mix. But the mixture was a thin
solution--thinner than Swizzles and Caravan, and the experience of the
very young girl beside him who talked herself out in thirty seconds from
pure nervousness and remained eternally grateful to him for giving her a
kindly opportunity to escape to cover among the feather-brained and
frivolous.

Then, close to him, a girl spoke of the "purple perfume of petunias,"
and a man used the phrases, "body politic," and "the gaiety of
nations."

So he knew he was among the elect, redundant, and truly precious. A
chinless young man turned to him and said:

"There is nobody to-day who writes as Bernard Haw writes."

"Does anybody want to?" asked Hamil pleasantly.

"You mean that this is an age of trumpery romance?" demanded a heavy
gentleman