A LADY AND GENTLEMAN, WHO HUNG FIRE. NATURAL HISTORY, AND ARTIFICIAL CHRONOLOGY. NEITHER WAS TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER. CONFIDENCES ABOUT ANOTHER LADY AND GENTLEMAN, SOME YEARS SINCE. HOW THE FIRST GENTLEMAN FINISHED HIS SECOND CIGAR. DR. LIVINGSTONE AND SEKELETU. MR. NORBURY'S QUORUM. WHY ADRIAN TORRENS WOKE UP, AND WHOSE VOICE PROMISED NOT TO MENTION HIS EYES. FEUDAL BEEF-TEA, AND MRS. BAILEY. AN EARLY VISIT, FROM AN EARL. AN EXPERIMENT THAT DISCLOSED A PAINFUL FACT
It is three weeks later at the Castle; three weeks later, that is, than the story's last sight of it. It is the hottest night we have had this year, says general opinion. Most of the many guests are scattered in the gardens after dinner, enjoying the night-air and the golden moon, which means to climb high in the cirrus-dappled blue in an hour or so. And then it will be a fine moonlight night.
On such a night there is always music somewhere, and this evening someone must be staying indoors to make it, as it comes from the windows of the great drawing-room that opens on the garden. Someone is playing a Beethoven sonata one knows well enough to pretend about with one's fingers, theoretically. Only one can't think which it is. So says Miss Smith-Dickenson, in the Shrubbery, to her companion, who is smoking a Havana large enough to play a tune on if properly perforated. But she wishes Miss Torrens would stop, and let Gwen and the Signore sing some Don Juan. That is Miss Dickenson's way. She always takes exception to this and to that, and wants t'other. It does not strike the Hon. Percival Pellew, the smoker of the big cigar, as a defect in her character, but rather as an indication of its illumination--a set-off to her appearance, which is, of course, at its best in the half-dark of a Shrubbery by moonlight, but is _passée_ for all that. Can't help that, now, can we? But Mr. Pellew can make retrospective concession; she must have told well enough, properly dressed, fifteen years ago. She don't exactly bear the light now, and one can't expect it.
The Hon. Percival complimented himself internally on a greater spirituality, which can overlook such points--mere clay?--and discern a peculiar essence of soul in this lady which, had they met in her more palatable days, might have been not uncongenial to his own. Rather a pity!