Mr. Osborne paused in his conversation with Mrs. Dennison to bow his acknowledgments.
“But Lady Ellington fishes too,” he said. “We shall get into terrible confusion now.”
“Ah, you must find another name for her,” said Lady Dover. “Is it not a beautiful fish, Lady Ellington? The flesh is so firm. Dover says it could not have been up from the sea more than a day or two.”
Mr. Osborne resumed his talk with Mrs. Dennison, whom he was questioning about the churches in Florence. Otherwise there was a moment’s pause round the table, which was unfortunate, as she just then referred to the Catholic churches, meaning the Roman Catholic churches. She corrected her error, however, on seeing the questioning look in his face, and the general conversation was resumed.
“Yes, the sunset was one sheet of intolerable glory,” said Seymour Dennison to his hostess, “and how little one expected that this rain was coming. What a wet drive Lady Ellington must have had.”
“I did not see the sunset,” said she. “I returned to write a few letters. You must describe it to us, Mr. Dennison, not in words but in colours. The sunsets here this year have been quite remarkable. They have been so very varied; no two alike, so far as I have seen.”
Seymour Dennison was always in character as the poetical interpreter of Nature. His words, in fact, were generally as highly coloured as his canvases.
“And yet perhaps the finest sunsets one ever sees are at Hyde Park Corner,” he said. “Is it not a wonderful thing how Nature takes the foul smoke of our cities, and by that alchemy of light transmutes them into those unimaginable spectacles which even the eye, much less the hand, cannot fully grasp and realise? Light! Where would the world be without light?”
Lord Ellington had a moment’s spasmodic desire to answer “In the dark,” but he checked it. It was as well he did.
“That dying cry of Goethe’s is so wonderful, is it not?” said Lady Angela, turning to Harold Aintree, and picking up this thread. “‘More light, more light,’ you know.”