"Yes, I know him. He seems to be very much above the average."
"Oh, very much above the average," was the warm response. "He's a charming fellow, and a thoroughly good fellow, too."
This was the chorus to everything, and there was only one dissentient voice—that of a man who admired Ideala, and was a good soul himself, having gone out of his way to pay her trifling attentions, and even found occasion to do her some small acts of kindness. He began with the rest to praise Lorrimer, but when he saw he was doing so at his own expense, by diverting her attention from himself to his subject, he somewhat lowered his tone.
"Every one seems to like Mr. Lorrimer," Ideala said.
"O yes, he's certainly a nice fellow; but he puts a lot of side on."
"And well he may, being so very good and well-beloved," she answered, smiling.
"So spoilt and conceited, you might say," was the rejoinder; but she felt that there was jealousy in the tone, and only laughed.
"What an interesting face he has," a lady remarked, who was having tea with Ideala, tete-a-tete, one afternoon, and had brought the conversation round to Lorrimer, as seemed inevitable in those days. "He must make a charming portrait."
"Yes, it is a fine face," Ideala answered, dreamily—"a face for a bust in white marble; a face from out of the long ago—not Greek, but Roman —of the time when men were passing from a strong, simple, manly, into a luxuriously effeminate, self-indulgent stage; the face of a man who is midway between the two extremes, and a prey to the desires of both. I wish I had been his mother."
"His mother was a noble woman."