“Did he?  How about the Bishop of Southminster?”

“He did not mention him.  My acquaintance with Mrs. Loftus is of the slightest,” added Hugh, interrogatively, looking at his graceful, animated hostess.

“I imagined you knew her fairly well, as you are staying here.”

“No.  She asked me rather late in the day.  I fancy I was a ‘fill up.’  I accepted in the hope, rather a vague one, that I might meet you here.”

To Rachel’s surprise her heart actually paid Hugh the compliment of beating a shade faster than its wont.  She looked straight in front of her, and her absent eyes fell on Mr. Tristram sitting opposite, talking somewhat sulkily to Miss Barker.  Rachel looked steadily at him.

Mr. Tristram had been handsome once, and four years had altered him but little in that respect.  He had not yet grown stout, but it was evident that Nature had that injury in reserve for him.  To grow stout is not necessarily to look common, but if there is an element of inherent commonness in man or woman, a very little additional surface will make it manifest, as an enlarged photograph magnifies its own defects.  The “little more and how much it is” had come upon the unhappy Tristram, once the slimmest of the slim.  Life had evidently not gone too well with him.  Self-pity and the harassed look which comes of annoyance with trifles had set their mark upon him.  His art had not taken possession of him.  “High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone.”  But they sometimes faint also in bachelor lodgings.  The whole effect of the man was second-rate, mentally, morally, socially.  He seemed exactly on a par with the second-rate friends with whom Sybell loved to surround herself.  Hugh and Dick were taking their revenge on the rival who blocked their way.  Whatever their faults might be, they were gentlemen, and Mr. Tristram was only “a perfect gentleman.”  Rachel had not known the difference when she was young.  She saw it now.

“I trust, Miss West,” said the deep voice of Mr. Harvey, revolving himself and his solitaire slowly towards her, that I have your sympathy in the great cause to which I have dedicated myself, the emancipation of woman.”

“I thought the new woman had effected her own emancipation,” said Rachel.

Mr. Harvey paid no more attention to her remark than any one with a theory to propound which must be delivered to the world as a whole.

“I venture to think,” he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to a stand-still upon her, “that though I accept in all reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in The Princess, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that respect.  I hold”—­in a voice calculated to impress the whole table—­“that woman is man’s superior, and that she degrades herself when she endeavors to place herself on an equality with him.”

There was a momentary silence, like that which travellers tell us succeeds the roar of the lion in his primeval forest, silencing even the twitter of the birds.