Big, handsome, gloomy Algy nearly fell over with his chair which at the moment he was uneasily balancing on one leg as some perception of what he was in dawned on him.
"I—Oh say now, any of 'em will tell you I've never read a word of him in my life. Never could find the hitch—er—don't you know, between the words and the sense. Quit it, will you, Culpepper, kicking me?"
"'A thing of beauty is a joy forever!'" gayly chanted dependable little Juliette who true to the program was to throw herself and her munitions into breaches as needed.
"'Handsome is as handsome does,'" suddenly observed Bliss, very young and passing bitter, with an obviousness patent to those who understood the evening's coolness between him and Amanthus, "'Beauty is only skin deep.'" Could it be that Bliss had noted the glances of two of the company, Mr. Wingham and Mr. Tate, fixed upon Amanthus even now?
"And yet," it was the first spontaneous contribution to the evening from the Reverend Mr. Wingham, his gaze returning from that retired corner where it had been drawn again and again, "the eternal youth of the beautiful!" Certainly Amanthus did not need vocabulary or repartee in the least!
Adele with new courage, and this time at a signal from Maud, began again: "The Puritan through his great exponent——"
The doorbell rang. Kind conventions! Comme il faut! Had Selina really been congratulating herself in these gratifying terms?
It was Cousin Marcus Bruce; she recognized his voice as Papa let him in.