“This is what I call a worldly paradise!” A girl with a face like dear Lady Disdain’s sank into a divan placed near the conservatory; her voice chimed in prettily with the music of a spraying fountain and the soft strains of remote stringed instruments.
“Is it a frivolous conceit?” she continued, laughing up to the man who stood beside her; “or do the soft light of many candles, faint music, radiant women, and courtly men, satisfy your predilections also that such a place is as near heaven as this wicked world approaches?”
“You forget; paradise was occupied by but two. To my notion, nothing can be farther removed from Elysium than a modern drawing-room full of guests.”
“And leaving out the guests?”
“They say imagination can make a paradise of a desert, given the necessary contingencies.”
“A solitude of two who love? Dr. Kemp, methinks you are a romantic.”
“You supplied the romance, Miss Gwynne. My knowledge is of the hard, matter-of-fact sort.”
“Such as bones, I suppose. Still you seem to be interested in the soft-looking piece of humanity over by that cabinet.”
“Yes; his expression is reminiscent of a boy’s definition of a vacuum,—a large space with nothing in it. Who is he?”
“And I thought you not unknown! He is the husband of a brilliant woman, Mrs. Ames, who has written a novel.”
“Clever?”
“Decidedly so; it stands the test of being intoxicating and leaving a bad taste in the mouth,—like dry champagne.”
“Which is not made for women.”
“You mean school-girls. There she is,—that wisp of a creature listening so eagerly to that elegant youth of the terrier breed. No wonder he interests her; he is as full of information in piquant personal history as a family lawyer, and his knowledge is as much public property as a social city directory.”
“You have studied him to advantage. Are you sure you have not stolen a leaf from him?”
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