‘I am sure, when I was at the ardent age,’ said the mistress of the house, in a tone of pleasantly agreeing with every one, particularly those who were diametrically opposed to each other, ’I could no more have printed such emotions and made them public than I—­could have helped privately feeling them.’

’I wonder if she has gone through half she says?  If so, what an experience!’

‘O no—­not at all likely,’ said Mr. Neigh.  ’It is as risky to calculate people’s ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their way of living.’

‘She is as true to nature as fashion is false,’ said the painter, in his warmth becoming scarcely complimentary, as sometimes happens with young persons.  ’I don’t think that she has written a word more than what every woman would deny feeling in a society where no woman says what she means or does what she says.  And can any praise be greater than that?’

‘Ha-ha!  Capital!’

‘All her verses seem to me,’ said a rather stupid person, ’to be simply—­

   “Tral’-la-la-lal’-la-la-la’,
   Tral’-la-la-lal’-la-la-lu’,
   Tral’-la-la-lal’-la-la-lalla’,
   Tral’-la-la-lu’.”

When you take away the music there is nothing left.  Yet she is plainly a woman of great culture.’

’Have you seen what the London Light says about them—­one of the finest things I have ever read in the way of admiration?’ continued Ladywell, paying no attention to the previous speaker.  He lingered for a reply, and then impulsively quoted several lines from the periodical he had named, without aid or hesitation.  ‘Good, is it not?’ added Ladywell.

They assented, but in such an unqualified manner that half as much readiness would have meant more.  But Ladywell, though not experienced enough to be quite free from enthusiasm, was too experienced to mind indifference for more than a minute or two.  When the ladies had withdrawn, the young man went on—­

’Colonel Staff said a funny thing to me yesterday about these very poems.  He asked me if I knew her, and—­’

’Her?  Why, he knows that it is a lady all the time, and we were only just now doubting whether the sex of the writer could be really what it seems.  Shame, Ladywell!’ said his friend Neigh.

‘Ah, Mr. Ladywell,’ said another, ’now we have found you out.  You know her!’

‘Now—­I say—­ha-ha!’ continued the painter, with a face expressing that he had not at all tried to be found out as the man possessing incomparably superior knowledge of the poetess.  ’I beg pardon really, but don’t press me on the matter.  Upon my word the secret is not my own.  As I was saying, the Colonel said, “Do you know her?”—­but you don’t care to hear?’

‘We shall be delighted!’

’So the Colonel said, “Do you know her?” adding, in a most comic way, “Between U. and E., Ladywell, I believe there is a close affinity”—­meaning me, you know, by U. Just like the Colonel—­ha-ha-ha!’