and bankers, where nature had laid on a smooth wash and experience had not interfered.  They were all gay and enthusiastic as Miss Howe entered; they loafed forward, broad shirt-fronts lustrous, fat hands in financial pockets, with their admiration, and Fillimore put out his cigarette.  Hilda came down among them from the summit of her achievement, clasping their various hands.  They were all personally responsible for her success, she made them feel that, and they expanded in the conviction.  She moved in a kind of tide of infectious vitality, subtly drawing from every human flavour in the room the power to hold and show something akin to it in herself, a fugitive assimilation floating in the lamplight with the odour of the flowers and the soup, to be extinguished with the occasion.  They looked at her up and down the table with an odd smiling attraction; they told each other that she was in great form.  Mr. Fillimore was of the opinion that she couldn’t be outclassed at the Lyceum, and Mr. Hagge responded with vivacity that there were few places where she wouldn’t stretch the winner’s neck.  The feast was not, after all, one of great bounty, Mr. Stanhope justly holding that the opportunity, the little gathering, was the thing, and it was not long before the moment of celebration arrived for which the gentlemen of the Stock Exchange, to judge from their undrained glasses, seemed to be reserving themselves.  There certainly had been one tin of pate, and it circulated at that end; on the other hand, the ladies had all the fondants.  So that when Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope rose with the sentiment of the evening, he found satisfaction, if not repletion, in the regards turned upon him.

Llewellyn got up with modest importance, and ran a hand through his yellow hair, not dramatically, but with the effect of collecting his ideas.  He leaned a little forward; he was extremely, happily conspicuous.  The attention of the two lines of faces seemed to overcome him, for an instant, with dizzy pleasure; Hilda’s beside him was bent a little, waiting.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Stanhope, looking with precision up and down the table to be still more inclusive, “we have met together to-night in honour of a lady who has given this city more pleasure in the exercise of her profession than can be said of any single performer during the last twenty years.  Cast your eye back over the theatrical record of Calcutta for that space of time, and you yourselves will admit that there has been nobody that could be said to have come within a mile of her shadow, if I may use the language of metaphor. [Applause, led by Mr. Fillimore.] I would ask you to remember, at the same time, that this pleasure has been of a superior class.  I freely admit that this is a great satisfaction to me personally.  Far be it from me to put myself forward on this auspicious occasion, but, ladies and gentlemen, if I have one ambition more than another, it is to promote the noble cause of the unfettered