A tall, thin woman is singing very beautifully as the two young men enter, and Mrs. Prior’s slight movement of recognition to her nephew conveys with it a desire that he should not seek her until the song has come to an end. And presently the last quivering note dies away upon the air, and the crowd is once more in motion. Lady H—— is being congratulated on the beauties of her voice by many people, and Mrs. Prior, having done her part, is now able to receive her nephew and Crosby without having to pause and wonder who she is to speak to next. Indeed, Lady H——’s singing has virtually wound up the evening. Few would care to sing after her, and now the rooms are beginning to look deserted. ‘Always a laggard, Paul,’ says his aunt, who, having bidden good-bye to her principal guests, has left the rest to her daughter. ‘But I suppose something of it must be put down to to-night.’ She smiles at Crosby, whom she has known since he was a little boy. ‘You should have been here earlier, you two; she sang even better in the beginning of the evening. It was “Allan Water,” and you know how that would suit her voice. But now that you have come so late, you must stay a little later and have supper with Josephine and me.’ She talks on to them in her cultivated yet somewhat hard voice, rising now and then to say good-bye to someone, until the rooms are quite cleared and her daughter is able to join them. Josephine Prior comes across the polished floor of the music-room to where they are sitting in a curtained recess; she is as tall as her mother, and as fair, and a little harder. Miss Prior is undoubtedly the handsomest girl in Dublin this season (now all but over), and has been for the past two or three. Tall, _distinguée_ and with irreproachable manners, there are very few who can outdo her. She sweeps up to them now, her pretty silken skirts falling gracefully around her, and her mother, rising, motions her into her own seat, that next to Wyndham’s, while she sinks into a chair on Crosby’s left.