"I think not," said Astra, coolly. "Mr. Arling is pretty well used to my ways, by this time. We were speaking," she continued, "of that ineffable combination of snow and sunshine, lily and rose, saint and angel, known among mortals by the name of Carice Bergan. Can you even imagine being on familiar terms with her? Or would you if you could? Does she not seem fitter for a pedestal or a shrine,—some place a little above, or remote from, life's ordinary round?"
"She does, indeed," replied Bergan, earnestly. "There is a half-unearthly purity about her, that keeps even one's thoughts at a reverent distance. Snow and sunshine!—yes, she has something of both, a kind of soft, white chill, interfused with a rich brightness, half-golden, half roseate;—but it is impossible to put the idea into words!"
And Bergan turned, musingly, toward his office door.
Astra looked after him, for a moment, and then glanced smilingly at her mother.
"Fortunately, there are such things as household divinities," said she.
"Eh?" said Mrs. Lyte, wonderingly.
But Astra did not explain.
XIII.
DINNER-TABLE TALK.
Late wisdom is apt to taste of the flower of folly whence it is distilled. So, at least, thought Mrs. Bergan, when, months afterward, she looked back upon her dinner-party, and seemed to see in it the beginning of trouble. But it is probable that nothing which she could have done, or left undone, would have availed to alter the natural, irresistible course of events. At the most, she may have hastened its current a little. Her dinner-party only furnished a convenient point of meeting for lives inevitably tending toward each other, for influences long converging, and certain to meet at last, in clash or harmony. Without it, there must needs have been a swift birth of friendship between Carice and Astra, at their next meeting; which meeting could not have been much longer deferred. Without it, Doctor Remy would assiduously have spun his web for self-advantage, fastening his threads indifferently to whatever or whomsoever seemed to promise the best support, and quickly unfastening them whenever a prop failed him. Without it, the hearts of Bergan and Carice would sooner or later have inclined toward each other, by reason of an instinct truer and surer than maternal foresight or forestalling.