glantine, honeysuckle, foxglove, all the sweet hedge
flowers of midsummer, made a central mass of colour and brightness
against the subdued and even sombre tones of walls and curtains. The
room was old, the furniture old. Nothing had been altered since the time
of Sir George's great grandfather; and the whirligig of time had just
now made the old things precious. Yes, those chairs and tables and
sideboards and bookcases and wine-coolers against which Georgie's soul
had revolted in the early years of her wedded life were now things of
beauty, and Georgie's friends envied her the possession of indisputable
Chippendale furniture.

Mr. Mostyn, a distinguished owner of race-horses, with his pretty wife,
made up the party. The gentleman was full of his entries for Liverpool
and Chester, and discoursed mysteriously with Sir George and the horsey
bachelors all supper time. The lady had lately taken up science as a new
form of excitement, not incompatible with frocks, bonnets, Hurlingham,
the Ranelagh, and Sandown. She raved about Huxley and Tyndall, and was
perpetually coming down upon her friends with awful facts about the sun,
and startling propositions about latent heat, or spontaneous generation.
She knew all about gases, and would hardly accept a glass of water
without explaining what it was made of. Drawn by Mr. Smithson for
Lesbia's amusement, the scientific matron was undoubtedly 'good fun.'
The racing men were full of talk. Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank raved about
the play they had just been seeing, and praised Delaunay with an
enthusiasm which was calculated to make the rest of mankind burst with
envy.

'Do you know you are making me positively wretched by your talk about
that man?' said Colonel Delville, one of Sir George's racing friends,
and an ancient adorer of the fair Georgie's. 'No, I tell you there was
never anything offered higher than five to four on the mare,'
interjectionally, to Sir George. 'There was a day when I thought I was
your idea of an attractive man. Yes, George, a clear case of roping,'
again interjectionally. 'And to hear you raving about this play-acting
fellow--it is too humiliating.'

Lady Kirkbank simpered, and then sighed.

'We are getting old together,' she murmured. 'I have come to an age when
one can only admire the charm of manner in the abstract--the Beautiful
for the sake of the Beautiful. I think if I were lying in my grave, the
music of Delaunay's voice would thrill me, under six f