Egidia smiled sweetly at her now and then, as a mother might at a promising débutante daughter. She herself was feeling it an effort to sustain her own reputation for brilliancy and repartee. Her spirits were so leaden; she had received such a shock. She could think of nothing but the painter’s affairs, and the crushing blow that was so soon to fall on him. Edmund Rivers, a very Galahad of stainless life, a knight sans peur and sans reproche! The social fall of such is always the severer, since the eager hounds of envy are so glad of an excuse to worry a name that has heretofore stood high. What though the aspersion was so utterly false, it would be cast all the same; the mud would be flung, and some of it would stick. And she who would lay down her life to save him a moment’s annoyance must endure to look on the little enemy of his peace, sitting opposite her, careless, irresponsible, drinking in flattery and champagne, flashing her bright eyes about, and waving the little fluttering hands that held the future of a man worth twenty such as she, in the might of his art and intellect! However, that Phœbe Elles should thoroughly enjoy her dinner party was necessary for the furtherance of a plan of action that Egidia had conceived--one of the many plans that she had conceived. The better pleased Mrs. Elles was, the better would the particular plan work, but though Egidia was an authoress, she was human, and presently found herself actually avoiding her guest’s laughing eyes. Looking round at her own neighbour, she noticed the mesmeric eyes of Dr. André fixed on her guest, and knew that he had singled her out for his particular line of experiment. Egidia was “apt now at all sorts of treasons and stratagems,” and a new idea shot through her brain. She was no believer in hypnotism, except in its extraordinary power over a certain kind of silly woman, in the way of suggestion. She turned round to Dr. André. “I see you are considering the little lady who was the occasion of my wild appeal to you to come and dine in a hurry. Do you think she would be a good subject for hypnotic suggestion?” “No.” “Too clever?” “She could never succeed in making her mind a blank, I fancy. She thinks all the time--nothing particularly worth thinking, I daresay. Still, she is so pretty, I should like to try. She is not a London woman?” “How do you know that?” “Oh, she is beautifully dressed. It isn’t that,” he said smiling. “The dress may be Paris, but the soul is Newcastle.” Egidia started. “You are really a wonderful man, Dr. André, or else you have the luck of coincidences!” He smiled, with the fatuity of the occultist.