'No—I'm afraid—'
'Ah!—my friends tell me in Rome that the book cannot be really appreciated except at a second or third reading—'
Mrs. Burgoyne looked up in dismay, as a shower of gravel descended on the tea-table. Manisty has just beckoned in haste to his great Newfoundland who was lying stretched on the gravel path, and the dog bounding towards him, seemed to have brought the path with him.
Mr. Bellasis impatiently shook some fragments of gravel from his coat, and resumed:—
'I have just got a batch of the first reviews. Really criticism has become an absurdity! Did you look at the "Sentinel"?'
Mrs. Burgoyne hesitated.
'Yes—I saw there was something about the style—'
'The style!'—Mr. Bellasis threw himself back in his chair and laughed loud—'Why the style is done with a magnifying-glass!—There's not a phrase,—not a word that I don't stand by.'
'Mr. Bellasis'—said the courteous voice of the ambassador—'are you going by this train?'
The great man held out his watch.