Mr. Mostyn, a distinguished owner of race-horses, with his pretty wife, made up the party.  The gentleman was full of his entries for Liverpool and Chester, and discoursed mysteriously with Sir George and the horsey bachelors all supper time.  The lady had lately taken up science as a new form of excitement, not incompatible with frocks, bonnets, Hurlingham, the Ranelagh, and Sandown.  She raved about Huxley and Tyndall, and was perpetually coming down upon her friends with awful facts about the sun, and startling propositions about latent heat, or spontaneous generation.  She knew all about gases, and would hardly accept a glass of water without explaining what it was made of.  Drawn by Mr. Smithson for Lesbia’s amusement, the scientific matron was undoubtedly ‘good fun.’  The racing men were full of talk.  Lesbia and Lady Kirkbank raved about the play they had just been seeing, and praised Delaunay with an enthusiasm which was calculated to make the rest of mankind burst with envy.

’Do you know you are making me positively wretched by your talk about that man?’ said Colonel Delville, one of Sir George’s racing friends, and an ancient adorer of the fair Georgie’s.  ’No, I tell you there was never anything offered higher than five to four on the mare,’ interjectionally, to Sir George.  ’There was a day when I thought I was your idea of an attractive man.  Yes, George, a clear case of roping,’ again interjectionally.  ’And to hear you raving about this play-acting fellow—­it is too humiliating.’

Lady Kirkbank simpered, and then sighed.

‘We are getting old together,’ she murmured.  ’I have come to an age when one can only admire the charm of manner in the abstract—­the Beautiful for the sake of the Beautiful.  I think if I were lying in my grave, the music of Delaunay’s voice would thrill me, under six feet of London clay.  Will no one take any more wine?  No.  Then we may as well go into the next room and begin our little Nap.’

The adjoining room was Sir George’s snuggery; and it was here that the cosy little round games after supper were always played.  Sir George was not a studious person.  He never read, and he never wrote, except an occasional cheque on account, for an importunate tradesman.  His correspondence was conducted by the telegraph or telephone; and the room, therefore, was absorbed neither by books nor writing desks.  It was furnished solely with a view to comfort.  There was a round table in the centre, under a large moderator lamp which gave an exceptionally brilliant light.  A divan covered with dark brown velvet occupied three sides of the room.  A few choice pieces of old blue Oriental ware in the corners enlivened the dark brown walls.  Three or four easy chairs stood about near the broad, old-fashioned fireplace, which had been improved with a modern-antique brass grate and a blue and white tiled hearth.

’There isn’t a room in my house that looks half as comfortable as this den of yours, George,’ said Mr. Smithson, as he seated himself by Lesbia’s side at the card table.