"Have you sampled all the people? There is Mr. Fitzallan over there, talking to Lady Waterbury, a musical genius, who sets Shakespeare's sonnets and Heine's ballads deliciously, and sings them delightfully. You can't call him dull." "Not while he is singing--but I have heard all his songs." "Ask him to sing presently, and you will find he has brought a new batch. Then there is Eustace Lyon, the poet." Mrs. Bellenden smiled. "Do you know what they say of him?" she asked. "Who can remember half the things people say of a genius who lays himself out to be talked about?" "People are impertinent enough to say that he invented _me_." "That is to make him equal to Jove, nay, superior, for it was only incarnate wisdom--not surpassing beauty--that came from the brain of the Thunderer." "I believe he did rave about me the year before last, when I set up house in London--went about talking idiotically--called me 'a soothing gem,' and a hundred other ridiculous names." "But you didn't mind? You bear no malice." "No, he and I are always chums. I rather liked being advertised." "Gratis?" "Of course. I treat him rather worse than my butler, but I admire his genius, and I let him sit on the carpet and read his poems to me, before they go to the printer." The poet joined them presently, stalking across the room, a tall, slim figure, with a pale, lank face and long hair. The composer joined the group five minutes afterwards, and Mrs. Bellenden, having appropriated the only interesting men in the party, sank farther back in her deep chair, slowly fanning herself with her large white ostrich fan, and, as it were, withdrawing her beauty from circulation. Other women might affect a little fan, but Kate Bellenden knew the value of a large one, when there is a perfect arm with a hoop of Brazilian diamonds to be displayed. "I am only one of three," Claude said later in the week, when one of the men chaffed him about Mrs. Bellenden's favours. "She is a _tête de linotte_, and at her best in a quartette. One would soon come to the end of one's resources as an amusing person in a _tête-à-tête_."