and that on the first anniversary of the great day the Hatchards gave a dinner-party in their new house at Mossley Hill, where six guests were present, whose names can be easily supplied, and the bowl, filled with roses, stood in the centre of the table so that all could read the writing thereon; that without any direct allusion to the circumstances, or any violation of good taste, the bowl came into conversation eleven times: once in praise of the roses; once in discussion of the pattern (Queen Anne); once with reference to the pedestal of Irish bog-oak; once in verification of the fact that “honour” was spelt with a “u” (it was Freddie who, with much ingenuity, turned the search-light on honour); and seven times in ways too subtle and fleeting for detection. When the ladies left the room there was a look between the host and his wife as he held the door; and when the other men's cigars were fully lit, Tommy made and finished, with some pauses, a speech which may not sound very eloquent on paper, but which the audience will never forget “There's a text somewhere in the Bible,” he said, pretending that his cigar was not drawing--“which runs something like this, 'saved by faith,' and when I look at that bowl I remember that I... was saved that way; but it wasn't... my faith: it was the faith... of you three men.” THE LAST SACRIFICE I Firelight casts a weird enchantment over an old-fashioned room in the gloaming, and cleanses it from the commonplace. Distant comers are veiled in a shadow full of mystery; heavy curtains conceal unknown persons in their folds; a massive cabinet, full of Eastern curios, is flung into relief, so that one can identify an Indian god, who distinctly grins and mocks with sardonic humour, although in daylight he be a personage of awful solemnity; a large arm-chair, curiously embroidered, grows into the likeness of a stout elderly gentleman of benevolent heart but fierce political prejudices; the flickering flames sketch on the ceiling scenes of past days which can never return; and on a huge mirror the whole interior is reflected as in a phantasmagoria. “It is, I do honestly believe, the dreariest room in Bloomsbury, and one can hardly go farther,” said a young woman, lying at her ease on the white bearskin before the fire; “and yet it has a beauty of its own--sober, of course, but kindly; yes, that is the word, and true. My room at Kensington, that Reggie and his artist friends have been doing up in their best style, as Maples say, does not look prettier to-night, nor your lovely black oak at the Rectory.” “If you had got your will, Frances,” answered a sister some six years older from the couch, “every stick of this furniture would have been sold long ago, and the walls draped in pale green. You are full of sentiment to-night.”