Lifting her champagne glass, Olga sipped the amber bubbles from its brim, and slightly bent her head in acknowledgment.

“Thanks.  I disclaim any doubt of the accuracy of his pedigree from the monad, through the ape, up to the present erudite philosopher; but I humbly crave permission to assert a far different lineage for myself.  Pray, Doctor, train your battery now upon Mr. Palma, and since he assails you with Greg, minus quotation marks, require him to avow his real sentiments concerning that sentence in ’De Profundis’:  ’That purely political conception of religion which regards the Ten Commandments as a sort of ‘cheap defence’ of property and life, God Almighty as an ubiquitous and unpaid Policeman, and Hell as a self-supporting jail, a penal settlement at the Antipodes!’”

Prudent Mrs. Palma rose at that moment, and the party left the dining-room.

Mrs. St. Clare called Regina to her sofa, to make some inquiries about the Cantata, and when the latter was released, he saw that both Mr. Chesley and Mr. Palma were absent.

A half-hour elapsed, during which Olga continued to annoy the learned small man with her irreverent flippancy, and Mrs. Carew seemed to fascinate the two gentlemen who hovered about her like eager moths around a lamp.  Then the host and Congressman came in together, and Regina saw her guardian cross the room, and murmur something to his fair client, who smilingly assented.

Mr. Chesley looked at the widow, and at Olga, and his eyes came back, and dwelt upon the young girl who stood leaning against Mrs. Palma’s chair.

Her dress was a pearl white alpaca, with no trimming, save tulle ruchings at throat and wrists, and a few violets fastened in the cameo Psyche that constituted her brooch.

Pure, pale, almost sad, she looked in that brilliant drawing-room like some fragile snowdrop, astray in a bed of gorgeous peonies and poppies.

Lifting her eyes to her host, as he leaned over the back of her sofa, Mrs. Carew said: 

“Miss Orme poses almost faultlessly; she has evidently studied all the rules of the art.  Quite pretty too; and her hair has a peculiar gloss that reminds one of the pounded peach-stones with which Van Dyck glazed his pictures.”

The fingers of the hand that hung at his side clenched suddenly, but adjusting his glasses more firmly he said very quietly: 

“My ward is not quite herself this evening, and is really too unwell to be downstairs; but appeared at dinner in honour of your presence, and in deference to my wishes.  Shall I ring for your wrappings?  The carriage is waiting.”

“When I have kissed my cherub good-night, I shall be ready.”

He gave her his arm to the foot of the stairs, and returning, announced his regret that Mrs. Carew was pledged to show herself at a party, to which he had promised to escort her.  Whereupon the other ladies remembered that they also had promised to be present.