“Dear little rose-bud of a woman!” she mused, “How glad I am that she is happy!  And how delightful it is to see the pride she takes in Aubrey Leigh!—­how she studies his books, and pores over his statistics and theories!  I really believe she knows them all by heart!  And what wonderful schemes she is building up in her mind for the people in whom he is so interested!  What a sensation she will make if she intends to work with her husband as thoroughly and devotedly as her ideas imply!  Her marriage will be an immense disappointment to certain persons I could name!” and she smiled, “Dear Sylvie!  With all her goodness, and grace and beauty, her name will sound more obnoxious at the Vatican than even the name of Gys Grandit!”

She had lifted a cluster of lilies from a vase to regroup them, and as her thoughts turned in this direction she bent her eyes upon their large white blooms meditatively, and a faint rose flush warmed her cheeks.

“Ce sont des fleurs etranges, Et traitresses, avec leurs airs de sceptres d’anges, De thyrses lumineux pour doigts de seraphins, Leurs parfums sont trop forts, tout ensemble, et trop fins.”

“It is strange,” she thought, “that I should have corresponded so many months with ‘Gys Grandit’ through my admiration for his books—­ and that he should turn out to be the son of poor Abbe Vergniaud!  Cyrillon!  It is a pretty name!  And since we met—­since that terrible scene in the church in Paris,—­since he knew who I was, he has not written.  And, and for his poor father’s death . . .  I suppose he thought it was sufficient to telegraph the news of the death to my uncle.  But I am sorry he does not write to me any more!—­I valued his letters—­they were such brilliant essays on all the movements and politics of the time.  It was just a little secret of mine;—­it was pleasant to think I was in correspondence with such a genius.  However, he has had so much to think of since then . . .”  She set the lilies in their vase again, inhaling their delicious odour as she did so.

“The flowers of the saints and martyrs!” she said, “I do not wonder that the artists chose them for that purpose; they are so white-and pure-and passionless . . .”

A slight crash disturbed her self-communion, and she hastened to see what had fallen.  It was a small clay figure of “Eros",—­a copy of a statuette found in the ruins of Pompeii.  The nail supporting its bracket had given way.  Angela had been rather fond of this little work of art, and as she knelt to pick up the fragments she was more vexed at the accident than she cared to own.  She looked wistfully at the pretty moulded broken limbs of the little god as she put them all in a heap together.

“What a pity!” she murmured, “I am not at all superstitious, yet I wish anything in the room had come to grief rather than this!  It is not a good omen!”

She moved across the floor again and stood for a moment inert, one hand resting lightly on the amber silk draperies which veiled her picture.