him at her right, in the place that would naturally be accorded to Rodney Temple, the scholarly director of the Department of Ceramics in the Harvard Gallery of Fine Arts, made it look as if she considered Davenant a total stranger.  In the few conventionally gracious words she addressed to him, her manner was that of the hostess who receives a good many people in the course of a year toward the chance guest she had never seen before and expects never to see again.

“Twice round the world since you were last in Boston?  How interesting!” Then, as if she had said enough for courtesy, she continued across the lights and flowers to Mrs. Fane:  “Drusilla, did you know Colonel Ashley had declined that post at Gibraltar?  I’m so glad.  I should hate the Gib.”

“The Gib wouldn’t hate you,” Mrs. Fane assured her.  “You’d have a heavenly time there.  Rupert Ashley is deep in the graces of old Bannockburn, who’s in command.  He’s not a bad old sort, old Ban isn’t, though he’s a bit of a martinet.  Lady Ban is awful—­a bounder in petticoats.  She looks like that.”

Drusilla pulled down the corners of a large, mobile mouth, so as to simulate Lady Bannockburn’s expression, in a way that drew a laugh from every one at the table but the host.  Henry Guion remained serious, not from natural gravity, but from inattention.  He was obviously not in a mood for joking, nor apparently for eating, since he had scarcely tasted his soup and was now only playing with the fish.  As this corroborated what Mrs. Temple had more than once asserted to her husband during the past few weeks, that “Henry Guion had something on his mind,” she endeavored to exchange a glance with him, but he was too frankly enjoying the exercise of his daughter’s mimetic gift to be otherwise observant.

“And what does Colonel Ashley look like, Drucie?” he asked, glancing slyly at Miss Guion.

“Like that,” Mrs. Fane said, instantly.  Straightening the corners of her mouth and squaring her shoulders, she fixed her eyes into a stare of severity, and stroked horizontally an imaginary mustache, keeping the play up till her lips quivered.

“It is like him,” Miss Guion laughed.

“Is he as stiff as all that?” the professor inquired.

“Not stiff,” Miss Guion explained, “only dignified.”

“Dignified!” Drusilla cried.  “I should think so.  He’s just like Olivia herself.  It’s perfectly absurd that those two should marry.  Apart, they’re a pair of splendid specimens; united, they’ll be too much of a good thing.  They’re both so well supplied with the same set of virtues that when they look at each other it’ll be like seeing their own faces in a convex mirror.  It’ll be simply awful.”