“Miss Fanshawe,” he said, “has a companion with her⁠—a lady of rank. I happen to know Lady Sara by sight; her noble mother has called me in professionally. She is a proud girl, but not in the least insolent, and I doubt whether Ginevra will have gained ground in her estimation by making a butt of her neighbours.”

“What neighbours?”

“Merely myself and my mother. As to me it is all very natural: nothing, I suppose, can be fairer game than the young bourgeois doctor; but my mother! I never saw her ridiculed before. Do you know, the curling lip, and sarcastically levelled glass thus directed, gave me a most curious sensation?”

“Think nothing of it, Dr. John; it is not worth while. If Ginevra were in a giddy mood, as she is eminently tonight, she would make no scruple of laughing at that mild, pensive Queen, or that melancholy King. She is not actuated by malevolence, but sheer, heedless folly. To a featherbrained schoolgirl nothing is sacred.”

“But you forget; I have not been accustomed to look on Miss Fanshawe in the light of a featherbrained schoolgirl. Was she not my divinity⁠—the angel of my career?”

“Hem! There was your mistake.”

“To speak the honest truth, without any false rant or assumed romance, there actually was a moment, six months ago, when I thought her divine. Do you remember our conversation about the presents? I was not quite open with you in discussing that subject; the warmth with which you took it up amused me. By way of having the full benefit of your lights, I allowed you to think me more in the dark than I really was. It was that test of the presents which first proved Ginevra mortal. Still her beauty retained its fascination; three days⁠—three hours ago, I was very much her slave. As she passed me tonight, triumphant in beauty, my emotions did her homage; but for one luckless sneer, I should yet be the humblest of her servants. She might have scoffed at me , and, while wounding, she would not soon have alienated me through myself, she could not in ten years have done what, in a moment, she has done through my mother.”