Everyone admitted that only a woman of the social capacity--some people called it genius--of Mrs. Linton could accomplish such a feat as the bringing into the same room two persons who had given unmistakable evidence of possessing a conscience apiece--the woman who had sacrificed the man for conscience' sake, and the man who had sacrificed the woman under the same influence. It was a social triumph, beyond doubt.
People talked in whispers of conscience, the advantages and the disadvantages of its possession, and the consensus of opinion was of its being quite appropriate in regard to a clergyman, and that it was not altogether out of place on the part of a spinster, provided that she had counteracting virtues; but, on the whole, it was perhaps wiser to leave the conscience with the Nonconformists.
Phyllis did not see George Holland until she had got halfway up the first of Mrs. Linton's rooms. She did not hear her friend Ella say to someone, in a low voice of apprehension:
"For Heaven's sake, keep them apart! They are just the sort of people to greet each other quite cordially; and if they do, no one here will believe that their engagement is off. People here don't understand how a delicate conscience works."
That was what Ella murmured to a man who had been invited in order that he might make himself generally useful. She gave him his instructions too late, however. Before she had quite completed her greeting of Phyllis, Mr. Holland was beside them.
He had not forced himself forward with any measure of persistency; no one seemed to notice any movement on his part until he had shaken hands with Phyllis, and was chatting with her and Mrs. Linton quite pleasantly--much too pleasantly for a man with a conscience, someone said later in the afternoon; but that was someone who wanted to talk to Phyllis himself.
People watched her when she suffered herself to be gradually withdrawn from the center of the room to a seat that chanced to be vacant, just behind the open door of the conservatory. Could it be possible, they asked one another, that she had indeed given his dismissal to Mr. Holland the previous week? Why, they were chatting together as pleasantly as they had ever chatted. Had not the people who talked so glibly of conscience and its mysterious operations spoken a little too soon? Or had the quarrel been patched up? If so, which of the two had got rid of the conscience that had brought about the original rupture?
These questions were answered at divers places by divers persons, all the time that George Holland and Phyllis Ayrton remained side by side at the entrance to the conservatory, at the further end of which a vocal quartette party sang delightfully--delightfully; sufficiently loud to enable all the guests who wanted to talk to do so without inconvenience, and at the same time not so loud as to become obtrusive. It is so seldom that a quartette party manage to hit this happy medium, people said. They generally sing as if they fancy that people come together to hear them, not remembering that the legitimate object of music at an At Home is to act as an accompaniment to the conversation.
When Phyllis was leaving the house half an hour later, a man was just entering the first drawing room--a man with a face burnt to the color of an old mezzotint.
He looked at her for a moment as he passed her, for her face had suddenly lighted up, as such a face as hers does upon occasions.
The man could scarcely fail to perceive that she knew his name was Herbert Courtland.
But then he was accustomed to be recognized by women as well as men in every part of Europe, since he had returned from New Guinea with the tail feathers of the meteor-bird, which were now being made into a fan for Mrs. Linton.
