There was a moment's silence. Miss Charlotte Fitzroy sighed deeply, and the lace bow on her severely parted hair trembled visibly. Diana Chesney looked up with inquisitive eyes and a little wondering smile. "Sibyl was born at Willowsmere,"--said the Earl presently in rather a husky voice. "A new charm is added to its possession by that knowledge,"--I said gently, bowing to Lady Sibyl as I spoke--"Have you many recollections of the place?" "Indeed, indeed I have!" she answered with a touch of something like passion vibrating in her accents--"There is no corner of the world I love so well! I used to play on the lawns under the old oak-trees, and I always gathered the first violets and primroses that came out on the banks of the Avon. And when the hawthorn was in full flower I used to make believe that the park was fairyland and I the fairy queen----" "As you were and are!" interposed Lucio suddenly. She smiled and her eyes flashed,--then she went on more quietly-- "It was all very foolish, but I loved Willowsmere, and love it still. And I often saw in the fields on the other side of the river which did not belong to the estate, a little girl about my own age, playing all by herself and making long daisy-chains and buttercup balls,--a little girl with long fair curls and a sweet baby face. I wanted to know her and speak to her, but my nurse would never let me because she was supposed to be 'beneath' me." Lady Sibyl's lip curled scornfully at this recollection. "Yet she was well-born; she was the orphan child of a very distinguished scholar and gentleman, and had been adopted by the physician who attended her mother's deathbed, she having no living relatives left to take care of her. And she--that little fair-haired girl,--was Mavis Clare." As this name was uttered, a sort of hush fell on our party as though an 'Angelus' had rung; and Lucio looking across at me with peculiar intentness asked, "Have you never heard of Mavis Clare, Tempest?" I thought a moment before replying. Yes,--I had heard the name,--connected with literature in some dim and distant way, but I could not remember when or how. For I never paid any attention to the names of women who chose to associate themselves with the Arts, as I had the usual masculine notion that all they did, whether in painting, music or writing, must of necessity be trash and unworthy of comment. Women, I loftily considered, were created to amuse men,--not to instruct them.