There was a Ceres and a Diana, a Vestal Virgin, an
Athlete, and an Antinous, now brought into strange companionship under
the windows of this ugly English house. Chipped and blackened as they
were, and, to begin with, of a mere decorative importance, they still
breathed into the English evening a note of Italy or Greece, of things
lovely and immortal. The lamps in the sitting-rooms streamed out through
the widely opened windows upon the terrace, checkering the marble
figures, which now emerged sharply in the light, and now withdrew in the
gloom; while at one point they shone plainly upon an empty pedestal
before which the Dean and his companion paused.
The Dean looked at the inscription. "What a pity! This once held a
statue of Hebe holding a torch. It was struck by lightning fifty years
ago."
"Lady Kitty might stand for her to-night," said Edith Manley.
For Kitty, the capricious, had appeared at dinner in a
quasi-Greek
dress, white, soft, and flowing, without an ornament. The Dean
acquiesced, but rather sadly.
"I wish she had the bloom of Hebe! My dear Lady Edith, our hostess looks
ill!"
"Does she? I can't tell--I admire her so!" said the woman beside him,
upon whose charming eyes some fairy had breathed kindness and optimism
from her cradle.
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