I was the first at Mrs. St. Quinten’s house, and found that lady very full of the magazine. She asked, however, no questions as to my contribution. Of her own she at once spoke to me. “What do you think I have done at last?” she said. In my reply to her question I made some slight allusion to “The New Inmate,” but I don’t think she caught the words. “I have reviewed Bishop Berkeley’s whole Theory on Matter,” said she. What feeling I expressed by my gesture I cannot say, but I think it must have been one of great awe. “And I have done it exhaustively,” she continued; “so that the subject need not be continued. Churchill does not like continuations.” Perhaps it did not signify much. If she were heavy, I at any rate was light. If her work should prove difficult of comprehension, mine was easy. If she spoke only to the wise and old, I had addressed myself to babes and sucklings. I said something as to the contrast, again naming my little story. But she was too full of Bishop Berkeley to heed me. If she had worked as I had worked, of course she was full of Bishop Berkeley. To me, “The New Inmate” at that moment was more than all the bishops. The other men soon came in, clustering together, and our number was complete. Regan whispered to me that Jack Hallam had not written a line. “And you?” I asked. “Oh, I am all right,” said he. “I don’t suppose they’ll let it pass; but that’s their affair;--not mine.” Watt and Smith took their places almost without speaking, and preparation was made for the preliminary feast of the body. The after-feast was a matter of such vital importance to us that we hardly possessed our customary light-hearted elasticity. There was, however, an air of subdued triumph about our “Lydia,”--of triumph subdued by the presence of her cousin. As for myself, I was supremely happy. I said a word to Watt, asking him as to his performance. “I don’t suppose you will like it,” he replied; “but it is at any rate a fair specimen of that which it has been my ambition to produce.” I assured him with enthusiasm that I was thoroughly prepared to approve, and that, too, without carping criticism. “But we must be critics,” he observed. Of Churchill Smith I asked no question.