At eleven o'clock the fête was at its height, veritably dazzling. The lights, the flowers, made it a fairy scene. It was a phantasmagoria of heads, bare shoulders, black coats, diamonds, shimmering satins, and priceless lace; and, permeating the whole, a perfume as of hot-house flowers. All the types of society were to be recognised in the throng--the diplomatists, with their eternal smile and irreproachably cut clothes; the aristocracy, with its frigid bored look, occasionally smiling, as if by mechanism; the City by its biblical noses; the Stock Exchange by those cold, metallic, careworn men, aged before their time by the wrinkles that money preoccupations plough on their foreheads; literature by men bright and interested in everything around them, cheerily provoking ripples of laughter among the women, and recounting their best anecdotes among the men. The fine arts were represented by a few noble-looking heads rising out of Shakespeare collars. On all sides were exquisite toilettes, setting off forms of dazzling fairness and admirable poise--a complete representative crowd of that calm, proud, haughty British nation, full of dignity, robust health, and self-confidence; a nation that holds in its hands the destinies of half the earth. Lorimer and de Lussac met in a corner of the drawing-room. "What a reception!" said de Lussac. "All London is rubbing shoulders here, in order to have a look at the man who has invented the famous shell." "And his wife," added Lorimer. "And his wife," repeated de Lussac. "I never saw her looking so lovely. Raphael might have drawn the oval of her face, Murillo her eyes, Titian her hair, Rubens her shoulders." "And a modern English painter the sadness of her brow," said Lorimer. "Doesn't she look bored, poor woman?" "That puts the finishing touch, and helps to make her superb--ideal. A calm, cold, sad face is the one _mieux portée_ in England. It is almost _de rigueur_. Nothing is such bad form as to appear to enjoy life. She is quite _à la mode_." "_A la mort_," said Lorimer. "My dear fellow, I'll tell you what it is, such parties as this give me shivers down the back. Your countrywoman, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, was right when she said, 'The English amuse themselves as the French bore themselves.'" "Then why do you come here, old fellow?" "Oh, I! Why, I come as a doctor. I am deeply interested in a special case. I am studying and following carefully the progress of a malady. I am here diagnosing." "And your patient is" ... "Our worthy host," said Lorimer. "How do you find him to-day?" "The disease is taking its course; he will get over it; but the cure will take time." Lorimer fixed his eyeglass in his eye, and surveyed the crowd.