"Well, and if the poor boy is hard hit," she meditated, "a grand passion is a necessary phase in a young man's development, and the more hopeless the better. But the _bourgeois_ mind cannot grasp the beauty of an ideal devotion, of the unselfish homage a gallant youth gladly pays to one in every way hopelessly above him. A Boundrish can vulgarize even that poetic passion. How very lucky that the object of the poor lad's devotion happens to be a staid and sensible matron old enough to give motherly advice and young enough to be sympathetic," she reflected complacently, while she went slowly back to the house and dressed for _table d'hôte_. She was still pursuing this current of reflection while she went downstairs in her simple semi-toilet, adorned no longer by tributary flowers, and sank upon the least hard-hearted of the drawing-room easy-chairs. "Oh, I say, Mrs. Allonby!" cried Miss Boundrish, bursting into the half-lighted, empty room with her usual grace and charm, and punctuating her remarks with gurgles, "I'm jolly glad you're safe, so far. That Bontemps girl is going for you the minute she sees you. There has been the most awful row downstairs about you. Best double-lock your door to-night, and be careful to eat nothing that has not been tasted by somebody else." "My _dear_ Miss Boundrish," she replied gently, observing that no one else was in the room; "you are young, and your imagination is vivid; _do_ you think it quite wise to mix yourself up with the people of the house?" But Dorris was not to be crushed; she only gurgled scornfully, and would have made some pert retort, had not the thin man, who, after all, had been lounging unseen in a shadowed corner, suddenly glided to the piano, struck some full bass chords and begun to improvise in a pleasant fashion he had at times: when the room was empty and he felt moved to confide his thoughts and dreams to the spirit in the instrument. Then Ermengarde, ruffled and inwardly raging, but grateful for Mr. Welbourne's paternal care, took a seat touching the piano, and was silent; the man with the ascetic face came in and stood like a statue behind the player; the room slowly filled; but Mr. Welbourne, contrary to custom, played on, as if something within him must find expression in music, even when a buzz of talk hummed through the room and lights were turned up, until dinner. Chapter XIII The Publisher's Parcel Though conjectures as to the manner in which poor Agatha Somers had become possessed of the necklace disturbed Ermengarde's sleep, and the glow of the sapphires coloured all her thoughts of her, she was obliged to take the creature to her heart; there was in her something so lovable and so pathetic, especially that appeal in her eyes--so she confided to Mr. Welbourne, who smiled and seemed gratified by this view of their mutual friend, though he said little.