“Poor darling!  No wonder you’re done up!  Ought you to demonstrate?  Ah! here’s the champagne!”

“I take it merely as medicine,” said Mrs. Harriet.

At this moment, Mr. Brummich, flushed with assiduity, burst into the circle with a goblet of beaded wine in either hand.  There was a moment of solemn silence while Mrs. Harriet and the great Towle condescended to the Pommery.  It was broken only by a loud gulp from the hysterical-looking girl who was, it seemed, nervously affected by an imitative spasm, and who suddenly began to swallow nothing with extreme persistence and violence.

“Look at that poor misguided soul!” ejaculated Mrs. Harriet, with her lips to the Pommery.  “She fancies she’s drinking!”

The poor, misguided soul, yielded again to her distraught imagination, amid the pitiful ejaculations of the entire company, with the exception of one mundane, young man who, suddenly assailed by the wild fancy that he wasn’t drinking, crept furtively to the Moorish rook, and was no more seen.

“Give her a cushion!” continued Mrs. Harriet, authoritatively.

“Mr. Brummich!” said Mrs. Bridgeman.

Mr. Brummich ran, and returned with a cushion.

“Sit down, poor thing!  Sit at my feet!” said Mrs. Harriet, giving the hysterical-looking girl a healing push.

The girl subsided in a piteous heap, and Mrs. Harriet, who had by this time taken all her medicine, leant over her and inquired,—­

“Where d’you feel it?”

The girl put her hands to her head.

“Here,” she said feebly.  “It’s like fire running over me and drums beating.”

“Fire and drums!” announced Mrs. Harriet to the staring assembly.  “That’s what she’s got, poor soul!”

Ejaculations of sympathy and horror made themselves heard.

“Drums!  How shocking!” cried Mrs. Bridgeman.  “Can you cure even drums, Harriet, my own?”

“Give me ten minutes, Catherine!  I ask but that!”

And, so saying, Mrs. Harriet planted her fat hands upon the head of the young patient, closed her eyes and began to breathe very hard.

Silence now fell upon the people, who said not a word, but who could not prevent themselves from rustling as they pressed about this exhibition of a latter-day apostle.  The Prophet and Lady Enid were close to the armchair, and the Prophet, who had never before been present at any such ceremony—­it was accompanied by the twenty guitars, now tearing out the serenade, “From the bull-ring I come to thee!”—­was so interested that he completely forgot Mr. and Madame Sagittarius, and lost for the moment all memory of Sir Tiglath.  The silly life engrossed him.  He had no eyes for anyone but Mrs. Harriet, who, as she leaned forward in the chair with closed eyes, looked like a determined middle-aged man about to offer up the thin girl on the footstool as a burnt sacrifice.

“You’re better now, poor thing,” said Mrs. Harriet, after five minutes has elapsed.  “You’re feeling much better?”