It could not be recalled afterwards how, from this harmless exchange, they had come to be listening to passages from the adventurous life of Childe Harold, read crisply by their hostess.  Still less could the ladies later comprehend how some of their number had been guilty of innuendos—­or worse—­against the well-known Bard of Avon.  Yet, so it was.

Miss Caroline herself had refrained from abusing him—­had seemed to have forgotten him, indeed; but, as she read Byron to them, their hearts opened to her—­rushed out, indeed, with a friendly wholeness that demanded something more than mere cordial applause of her favorite poet.  Some intimation of a sympathy with her view of the other poet came to seem not ungraceful.  During one of the reader’s pauses to impress upon them the splendors of the Byronic imagery, and eke its human heart-warmth, good Aunt Delia, with defiant looks about the circle, broke in with:—­

“I shouldn’t wonder if Shakspere has been made too much over.”

Mrs. Keyts stepped loyally into the breach thus effected.

“Westley thinks Shakspere isn’t such an awful good book,” she said, feeling her way, “though it seems to me it has some very interesting and excellent pieces in it.”

“Shakspere is ver-ry uneven,” remarked Mrs. Judge Robinson, in a tone of dignified concession.

“There is always a word to be said on either side of these matters—­there is undeniably room for controversy.”  Thus Mrs. Potts, in her best manner of authority, from the punch-bowl.

“Let the dead rest!” gently murmured Miss Eubanks, from her dreamy corner of the biggest sofa.  Her inflection was archly significant.  One had to suspect that Shakspere, alive and a fair target for dispraise, might have learned something to his advantage if not to his delight.

Miss Caroline was both surprised and gratified.  At the previous meeting she had detected no sign of this concurring sentiment.  She plunged again into Byron with renewed enthusiasm.

The afternoon came to a glorious end, and the ladies departed with many expressions of rejoicing.  They had found Miss Caroline so charming that several of them were torn with fresh pity and brought to the verge of tears when they thought of her furniture.

Marcella Eubanks did cry on the way home and had to put down her green barege veil.  But that was for thinking of poor little Paul Dombey.  She was mourning him as a personal loss.  Also must she have adored the genius of a master who could thus move her from a calm that was constitutional with every known Eubanks.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH THE GAME WAS PLAYED

The next Argus said of Miss Caroline’s afternoon that “the ladies present one and all report a most enjoyable time.”  There was another mysterious paragraph, too, farther down the column of “locals,” which proclaimed that “The immovable body has at last been struck by the irresistible force and has failed to live up to its reputation.  It moved and moved so you could see it move.  Another bubble exploded!  We live in a sensational age.”