by witticisms; and I have usually found that it is the rather dull person who appears to be disgusted with his contemporaries because they are not always strikingly original, and to satisfy whom the party at a country house should have included the prophet Isaiah, Plato, Francis Bacon, and Voltaire.  It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities:  naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue.  It is right and meet that there should be an abundant utterance of good sound commonplaces.  Part of an agreeable talker’s charm is that he lets them fall continually with no more than their due emphasis.  Giving a pleasant voice to what we are all well assured of, makes a sort of wholesome air for more special and dubious remark to move in.

Hence it seemed to me far from unbecoming in Felicia that in her first dialogue with Hinze, previously quite a stranger to her, her observations were those of an ordinarily refined and well-educated woman on standard subjects, and might have been printed in a manual of polite topics and creditable opinions.  She had no desire to astonish a man of whom she had heard nothing particular.  It was all the more exasperating to see and hear Hinze’s reception of her well-bred conformities.  Felicia’s acquaintances know her as the suitable wife of a distinguished man, a sensible, vivacious, kindly-disposed woman, helping her husband with graceful apologies written and spoken, and making her receptions agreeable to all comers.  But you would have imagined that Hinze had been prepared by general report to regard this introduction to her as an opportunity comparable to an audience of the Delphic Sibyl.  When she had delivered herself on the changes in Italian travel, on the difficulty of reading Ariosto in these busy times, on the want of equilibrium in French political affairs, and on the pre-eminence of German music, he would know what to think.  Felicia was evidently embarrassed by his reverent wonder, and, in dread lest she should seem to be playing the oracle, became somewhat confused, stumbling on her answers rather than choosing them.  But this made no difference to Hinze’s rapt attention and subdued eagerness of inquiry.  He continued to put large questions, bending his head slightly that his eyes might be a little lifted in awaiting her reply.

“What, may I ask, is your opinion as to the state of Art in England?”

“Oh,” said Felicia, with a light deprecatory laugh, “I think it suffers from two diseases—­bad taste in the patrons and want of inspiration in the artists.”

“That is true indeed,” said Hinze, in an undertone of deep conviction.  “You have put your finger with strict accuracy on the causes of decline.  To a cultivated taste like yours this must be particularly painful.”

“I did not say there was actual decline,” said Felicia, with a touch of brusquerie.  “I don’t set myself up as the great personage whom nothing can please.”