The dinner having pursued its appointed course (always excepting the case of the omelet), the head servant who had waited at table was graciously invited to rest, after his labors, in the housekeeper’s room.  Having additionally conciliated him by means of a glass of rare liqueur, Miss Notman, still feeling her grievance as acutely as ever, ventured to inquire, in the first place, if the gentlefolks upstairs had enjoyed their dinner.  So far the report was, on the whole, favorable.  But the conversation was described as occasionally flagging.  The burden of the talk had been mainly borne by my lord and my lady, Mr. Romayne and Miss Eyrecourt contributing but little to the social enjoyment of the evening.  Receiving this information without much appearance of interest, the housekeeper put another question, to which, judging by her manner, she attached a certain importance.  She wished to know if the oyster-omelet (accompanying the cheese) had been received as a welcome dish, and treated with a just recognition of its merits.  The answer to this was decidedly in the negative.  Mr. Romayne and Miss Eyrecourt had declined to taste it.  My lord had tried it, and had left it on his plate.  My lady alone had really eaten her share of the misplaced dish.  Having stated this apparently trivial circumstance, the head servant was surprised by the effect which it produced on the housekeeper.  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, with an appearance of unutterable enjoyment.  That night there was one supremely happy woman in London.  And her name was Miss Notman.

Ascending from the housekeeper’s room to the drawing-room, it is to be further reported that music was tried, as a means of getting through the time, in the absence of general conversation.  Lady Loring sat down at the piano, and played as admirably as usual.  At the other end of the room Romayne and Stella were together, listening to the music.  Lord Loring, walking backward and forward, with a restlessness which was far from being characteristic of him in his after-dinner hours, was stopped when he reached the neighborhood of the piano by a private signal from his wife.

“What are you walking about for?” Lady Loring asked in a whisper, without interrupting her musical performance.

“I’m not quite easy, my dear.”

“Turn over the music.  Indigestion?”

“Good heavens, Adelaide, what a question!”

“Well, what is it, then?”

Lord Loring looked toward Stella and her companion.  “They don’t seem to get on together as well as I had hoped,” he said.

“I should think not—­when you are walking about and disturbing them!  Sit down there behind me.”

“What am I to do?”

“Am I not playing?  Listen to me.”

“My dear, I don’t understand modern German music.”

“Then read the evening paper.”

The evening paper had its attractions.  Lord Loring took his wife’s advice.