‘Not at all!’ answered Delicia, tranquilly, ‘It is a distinction for the title to have literature attached to it!’ The female acquaintance started violently. ‘Dear me!’ and she tittered; ‘You really—er—excuse me! seem to have a very good opinion of yourself!’ Delicia’s delicate brows drew together in a proud line. ‘You mistake,’ she said; ‘I have no good opinion of myself at all, but I have of Literature. Perhaps you will more clearly understand what I mean if I remind you that there have been several Lord Byrons, but Literature makes it impossible to universally recognise more than one. Literature can add honour to the peerage, but the peerage can never add honour to Literature—not, at any rate, to what _I_ understand as Literature.’ ‘And what is your definition of Literature, Lady Carlyon, may I ask?’ inquired a deferential listener to the conversation. ‘Power!’ replied Delicia, closing her small, white hand slowly and firmly, as though she held the sceptre of an empire in its grasp. ‘The power to make men and women think, hope and achieve; the power to draw tears from the eyes, smiles from the lips of thousands; the power to make tyrants tremble, and unseat false judges in authority; the power to strip hypocrisy of its seeming fair disguise, and to brand liars with their name writ large for all the world to see!’ The female acquaintance got up, disturbed in her mind. She did not like the look of Delicia’s violet eyes which flashed like straight shafts of light deep into the dark recesses of her soul. ‘I must be going,’ she murmured. ‘So sorry! It’s quite delightful to hear you talk, Lady Carlyon, you are so very eloquent!—but I have another call to make—he-he-he!—good afternoon!’ But the Deferential Listener lingered, strangely moved. ‘I wish there were more writers who felt as you do, Lady Carlyon!’ he said gently. ‘I knew you first as Delicia Vaughan, and loved your books—’ ‘I hope you will try and love them still,’ she said simply. ‘There is no difference, I assure you, between Delicia Vaughan and Lady Carlyon; they are, and always will be, the same working woman!’ She gave him her hand in parting; he stooped low, kissed it and went. Left alone with the great dog, Spartan, she sat looking musingly up at the glossy, spreading leaves of the giant palm that towered up to the ceiling from a painted Sèvres vase in the middle of her drawing-room, and almost for the first time in her life a faint shadow of trouble and uneasiness clouded her bright nature.