A Ballroom Repentance

Chapter I. The Doll Tribe, Generally

"A PAIR of portmanteaus and a shabby violin case." Lake Leman sleeps five hundred feet below ; a plain of sapphire, lit up by gleams of emerald, by fit ful opal shafts, that melt, Jura-ward, into the crystal line air depths of sunset. In the middle distance a solitary lateen sail cleaves the blue. The opposite Savoy mountains, though August does but wane, are powdered with fresh-fallen snow. The swallows, already thinking of Africa, are trying their wings in figures-of-eight overhead. Oleanders, magnolias, and standard roses make sweet the garden of a certain Grand Hotel Scherer that towers among chestnut avenues and sweeps of vineyard, high above Clarens. And the voice of Mrs. Scipio Leonidas P. Briggs breaks the stillness. A pleasant voice, despite its sing-song drawl, a voice suggestive of hammock-swinging, negro flyflappers, starlit flirtations, and every insidious mix ture of ice and alcohol that it has entered into the heart of South American man to concoct.

" My word, yes ! That was about the figure of Mr. and Miss Dormer's luggage. A pair of portmanteaus and a shabby violin case. My maid watched them as they rode round from the cars. I surmise their dresses are innocent of Worth or la Ferriere. I surmise their dresses just came out of some London dry goods store. I spent a week in London, last spring," goes on Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, mournfully, " and the fog so affected my dyspepsia I never got round to see the Parks but once. That once was enough. My dear, there wasn't a well toiletted woman there, except, of course, some of our people from home and a few Parisians. A gentleman friend of mine from New York State remarked to me, ' The aboriginal ladies we see around us do not dress. They clothe themselves. And as for their beauty — I just guess,' he observed, ' they look strong.

Solidly built up of beef and beer. Calculated to ride fox chasing, and to resist the vicissitudes of wind and rain. Climate,' my friend added, ' is not a word for this longitude. You get a deal of mixed weather, mostly bad, in England. Climate there is none.' " Mrs. Colonel Scipio Leonidas P. Briggs — I love to register the lady's full title, although she, herself, will not unfrequently drop the final monosyllable — is a native of South Carolina, and despite her fragile looks is interviewing Europe with a will and thoroughness that might put the whole strong-minded sisterhood of Britain to the blush. The Colonel— so Mrs. Scipio Leonidas confesses when she has occasion to speak of her absent lord — is having a beautiful time over the other side. O my, yes ! a lovely time. He is quite an unselfish man, this accommodating Colonel ; a pattern husband.

They both hold emancipated ideas of the domesticities, Mrs. Scipio will tell you, within five minutes of your introduction to her. The Colonel don't want her to cross back till she has swallowed all the different waters of the Continent. It's the state of her gastric organs that's her trouble, and none of the physicians in Europe can fix her up. Homburg, Carlsbad, Vichy, she has tried them all. Her life has been spent going round the mineral baths two years and more, and she is right down fagged and finished, in consequence. My dear, yes ! just look at her. And Mrs. Leonidas will languidly extend a taper diamonded slip of a hand for your inspection. What is she ? Don't deceive her. She is a sallow, dyspeptic bundle of nerves, now, isn't she ? She is a fine-featured, colourless invalid, of two or three and thirty, with large, restless, over-brilliant eyes, the foot (inadvertently, she shows it often) of a child, and the grace ... of a South American.

What simile could be found to express as much? An invalid, more than half imaginary, precariously existing on a regimen of French novels, rich dishes, and mineral waters. A creature of the great Doll tribe, unquestion ably ; dressed, jewelled, satin-slippered, here among Swiss mountains, as she was last spring in Paris, or will be next winter at Naples or Florence ; and still, a doll with a brain. In England we have dolls enow. Wax dolls, wooden dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls that open and shut their eyes, that speak, sing, dance ; some, even, that kneel. The doll with a brain is of foreign manufacture, chiefly American or French. Mrs. Scipio Leonidas has mixed in the vividest circles of Boston and New York, is brimful of advanced social theories, somewhat crude and garish, it may be, if you sift them finely ; knows Italy like a guide-book, and is as well versed in recent Paris gossip of Church, senate, salon, and greenroom, as a genuine Parisian.

Dinner is her weakness, dress her passion. She is of an organization so sensitive that the neighbourhood of a cat, the odour of certain flowers, will cause her to faint. And she has been known to travel from Biar ritz to Madrid in the dogdays in order to be present at a bullfight. " Yes, a pair of portmanteaus and a shabby violin case." So the lady resumes, for the benefit of such loungers as are drinking after-dinner coffee in the hotel garden. " And Mrs. Dormer, one of your aristocrats, no doubt, a duke's daughter, or baronet's widow, or earl's second cousin, does not condescend to show in the public parlours." It is a boast of Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs that she cares not enough for lineage to distinguish one English title from the other. Yet, I suspect, if she should cross his path, the society ofa living duke, or baronet, or even of an earl's second cousin, would not be distasteful to her.

" Surely you can furnish us with chapter and verse out of the Peerage, Mrs. Skelton. Who are the owners of the portmanteaus and violin case that they should give themselves airs when they travel round these lakes ? " " Dormer . . . Dormer," repeats the personage addressed as Mrs. Skelton. " Dian, my love, have we not heard that name before ? yes — I recollect ! " And the speaker draws a wisp of red shawl virtuously around her thin, angular shoulders. " It will be found, no doubt, that this misguided young Farintyre, whom everybody pities, is in attendance on them. Miss Joyce Dormer's latest victim." " And future husband ? " asks Mrs. Scipio Leo nidas, with awakening interest. "Ah, that is a very different matter. I knew the Dormers last winter, in Nice — by sight, only. In my position, my dear Mrs. Scipio, no gentleman of the party, it is an actual duty to weed one's travelling acquaintance, to keep clear, if possible, of scandal.

My girls, you see, are so unsophisticated ! Pansy and Dian, until we came abroad, never mixed in any but the best circles of Cathedral society, and our giddy little Aurora, of course, was still in the schoolroom." A young English lad, tall, bronzed, Oxford-suited, stands, enjoying his after-dinner cigarette, and the view of lake and mountain, at some paces distant from these ladies. At the touching reference to our little Aurora's giddiness, a smile, somewhat doubtful in its import, hovers around the corners of his lips. " Miss Aurora Skelton is not exactly what in our American circles we should call a Bud. I should judge Miss Aurora to be near upon my own time of life ? " The tone of Mrs. Scipio Leonidas Briggs is friendly. She smiles like one who makes an amiable, but somewhat rose-coloured concession to human weakness.

Yet does her voice imply a query. Aurora's mamma, too wary a veteran to be pro voked to battle on so dangerous a field as age, changes the subject deftly. She is a sharp, chirruping, altogether terrible, little old woman, this Mrs. Skelton ; an old woman, dressed in the extreme of youthful mode, yet, withal, so patched, so powdered, so wizened, so shrivelled, she looks as though she must fall to pieces at a touch. For a short half-hour you might judge her, by reason of her frivolity, to be harmless. Mention her in any of the Riviera pensions that are her winter haunts, if you would know the depth of emotion her name is capable of inspiring in the breast of unwedded and unguarded man ! Persistent and metallic is Mrs. Skelton's voice ; mirthless her jerky laughter. In lieu of honest gray hairs, a small pink cap is perched on the summit of her head.

Her hollow cheeks are rouged ; her smile is fixed upon the very newest principles and warranted ; a smile glistening, adamantine, as the longest established firm in Hanover Square can supply. She is a very libel on old age; a sermon — not in stones, but paste, and whose text is the rottenness and vanity of all human desire ! Around her, in sallow greens, brickdust crimsons, and dull golds, are grouped a trio of elderly girls, each in an attitude, her daughters. " My children are not handsome, according to rule," the Veteran will allow, ingenuously. " As regards feature, indeed, they take after the Preben dary's family rather than my own." This absent, never-appearing Prebendary is a somewhat dark sub ject, brought forward only when the best Cathedral society fails of effect, as a garnish to Mrs. Skelton's tallest talk.

" But they are the delight of artists, each in her different genre. ' The Miss Skeltons are more than beautiful,' the great Thoreau said to me when we were last in London. ' The Miss Skeltons are deliciously, quaintly picturesque ! ' " So to the great Thoreau's charge, perhaps, may be set down the golds, greens, and crimsons of which we have spoken. The eldest, Pansy, is florid, stout, short, and in her thirtieth year. Pansy dresses in chintz, with flame coloured " housewife " pinafores, wears her hair in a tangle above a pair of beetling brows, knits socks for the poor, even between the courses of a table d'hote dinner, and is ofttimes put warmly forward by the Veteran, in the absence of the younger sisters, or in the neighbourhood of curates, as a Home Treasure. The second, Diana, is tall, acidulated, intellectual ; a Diana, with a greenish complexion, a tip-tilted nose, improvised eyebrows, and the least excellent voice that ever issued from a woman's lips.

She represents the genius of the group : is seldom without a Cam bridge text-book in her hands, talks about Greek particles and the Differential Calculus, affects the First Republic as regards her flow of drapery, and in feature is said, by her relatives, to resemble Charlotte Cord ay. Aurora, aged twenty-six, is peony-cheeked, laughing, indiscreet ; the hoyden, the irrepressible, gushing, spoilt child of the family. On the present occasion Aurora wears a short white frock, a sash, and very brilliantly-coloured stockings. Her sleeves are tied, baby-fashion, on her shoulders with crimson knots ; buttercups and daisies, in a wreath, are twined amidst her dishevelled locks. " The cottage maid of Words worth, who had a rustic woodland air," so Diana will whisper to you in sisterly confidence, " is thought by painters to be well embodied in our little wild Aurora."

" Yes, if we were at our own place at home, the naughty child would be in the schoolroom still," runs on Mrs. Skelton archly ; " but we manage, Di and I between us, to coax her sometimes to her lessons. Aurora is sadly backward at her French verbs, — you are not a mother, Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, you know nothing about these minor worries, — and her arith metic still falls short of the mark. On the other hand, her proficiency in music is beyond her years. Rora, my sweetest, don't you see that Mr. Longmore is hoping for his after-dinner song ! " To other eyes than those of maternal affection it might look as though Mr. Longmore were hoping for nothing ; with so unexpectant an air does the young Oxonian enjoy his after-dinner smoke. " Not brought down your notes ? Now, Rora, that is only shyness, and, indeed, after the sums your poor papa and I have spent on your music, you ought to be able to sing without a book at all.

Don't you remember the bishop's daughters in our charming Auchester circle ? No, it was before your introduction into society. Pansy and Dian will recollect them. How quite too delightfully they were able to give us song after song without notes ! On one occasion, when we were dining at his Lordship's, I can recall Mr. Archdeacon Prettyman observing " " I know it would bore Mr. Longmore into fits to have to listen," interrupts Aurora, rolling her black eyes deprecatingly in the young Oxonian's direction. " Mr. Longmore knows my songs by heart from beginning to end. He has told me so, often. And then the men are such horrid inconstant creatures ! ' One foot on shore, and one ' Don't listen, Mr. Longmore, I won't allow you to listen, of course we are not talking of you — they care for nothing but change and novelty.

I declare I'll never sing to please a man again while I live. I vowed so only last night, didn't I, Di ? " Mr. Longmore, at this pathetic declaration, throws away the end of his cigarette, and crosses the terrace. He glances down, as admiringly as he may, at the peony-cheeks and shoulder-knots, the brilliant stock ings, the dishevelled locks, the withered daisies and buttercups of poor Aurora. " You don't want me to repeat what I have so often said — that it gives me pleasure to hear you sing, Miss Skelton ? " A certain tenderness is in his voice, or his hearer thinks so. Aurora Skelton bridles, hangs down her head, then moves away towards the salon window. The girl is really prettyish, despite the exceeding vulgarity that comes to her by education and inheri tance ; has, at least, the negative charm of being fresher, fairer than her sisters.

She has also fallen in love, of any easy kind, with the good-looking under graduate, who, during the past fortnight, has been vainly endeavouring to " read " in the Grand Hotel Scherer ! And Hugh Longmore is weak enough to feel flattered. The young fellow, in very truth, has over-high ideals of womanly grace and refinement. Aurora Skelton, educated partly on the pavement of an English cathedral town, and partly in the public rooms of foreign hotels, is a flirt in the fullest accep tation of that most odious word. As well ask grapes from thistles as look for modest feminine charm in the daughter of such a mother ! From her maiden bovver on the second floor, Aurora casts down eye shots at young Longmore, while her hair is still en papilotte of a morning. She intercepts him on his way to breakfast, pursues him from terrace to terrace, breaks in upon his morning's reading in the remoter corners of the gardens, informs him, half a note flat, during the afternoon hours that she is " weary," " alone," " fading away," or " owre young to marry ; " and she jars upon every finer sense the lad possesses, at all times.

But Aurora has bold black eyes, a pair of ruddy lips, white teeth, and a dimple in her left cheek. She has also a mother And Longmore, unguarded by sister, cousin, or friend, is in greater peril than he suspects. Refined, fastidious youths, fresh from the cloisters, of taste the most conservative, have ere this been seen to form lifelong alliance with coarseness, possibly through chivalrous inaptitude at repulsion ; possibly through some mysterious physical affinity hard to understand. The rosemary, we know, will not live with the laurel, nor the laurel with the vine, nor the cabbage with the olive. Yet does garlic planted in the neigh bourhood of the rose supply the flower with a richer fragrance ? " If Mr. Longmore wishes for his song, Aurora, run for your notes at once. . . . That dear girl's diffidence must positively be got over," whispers Mrs. Skelton into Longmore's ear when Aurora has obedi ently tripped away.

" You cannot think what it costs her, Mr. Longmore, even to sing before you. ' I know Mr. Longmore is a finished critic,' the child will often declare to her sisters. ' Such exquisite classic taste, such knowledge, such culture ! If I could only feel sure of his approval ! ' " " Of my approval — madam," stammers Longmore, looking wretched. " In my singing days I was in the light and comic style," cries the Veteran, skittishly tapping the young man's arm with her fan. " Indeed, there are some who still care to hear me in ' Misthress Malone.' But Aurora is all for the pathetic. You know, Mr. Long more, I am quite a believer in community of soul, and I must say you seem to have the same tastes in everything. . . . Ah, Rora, my dear," the young lady at this moment peeping forth from the salon window, a music book under her arm, " be sure you give Mr. Longmore something good and serious — ' The Lost Chord,' say, to lead off with."

And Aurora gives it him ; out of time from first to last, and thumping a heated accompaniment, every third bar of which contains at least one wrong note. But Longmore, although a passionate keen lover of music, is not a stern judge to-night. The critical faculty, at two-and-twenty, is apt to be partial when a showy girl, more than half in love with oneself, heaves palpitating sighs and flings upward melting glances through her eyelashes as she sings. " The Lost Chord " (how often do Aurora's hearers wish that chord had been lost indeed!) is ruthlessly murdered. Then follows a massacre of Schubert's "Ave Maria" and of the "Serenade" of Gounod. Happily, there are states of mind in which a man can be distinctly possessed by two sets of impressions at once. Leaning over Aurora's shoulder, patiently turning the pages of her book and enduring alike her wrong notes and her ogles, Hugh Longmore catches a reflected glimpse of Leman in an opposite mirror ; can imagine himself on the lake's blue breast half a dozen miles away, the dip of the sculls, the light lap of the waves, the trickle of mountain rivulets for music ; his pipe, his Æschylus, and the delicious sense of being alone and unbored for companionship.

By the time they return to the terrace the sun has sunk over Jura's purple crest ; Venus shines tremu lously in his wake ; the light-forsaken mountains have gone from amber to crimson, from crimson to ashen gray. Already a few faint points of light stud the deep vault of heaven. '"The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,'" quotes Mrs. Skelton, playfully. " I don't know how the young ones feel, Mrs. Scipio Leonidas, but to me the air strikes chilly. Pansy, Dian, my loves, why not take a last turn round the gardens while you have still light? Coax some flowers out of Monsieur Scherer, if you can find him, for to-night's ball." Thus craftily does the Veteran ever dispose of her contingent forces. Pansy and Diana have had, or have not had, each her day ; they must leave Aurora an open field when Aurora's star chances to be in the ascendant.

" As for you two delinquents," she cries, kissing the tips of her fingers with gruesome gaiety to Long- Thc Doll Tribe, Generally. 15 more and his companion, " I do not doubt you have some mischief still to plot together. Aurora, sweetest child, be steady ! Don't let your spirits run away with you. I am sure Mr. Longmore would like a description of that last Auchester Festival and the delightful county people you and your sisters met at the Palace." Aurora replies by a burst of discordant Skelton laughter ; and Longmore, with nerves absolutely set on edge by the sound, gives a moral shiver. Hopeful sensation for a man on the brink of folly ; impossible sensation for a man on the brink of love ! " Ma does go on so about that dull old Auchester. As if I cared a fig for square-toed canons and musty bishops' palaces."

Thus Aurora, dancing with infan tine vivacity, shoulder-knots, buttercup wreath and all, along the terrace. " For my part, I never want to set foot in an English Cathedral town again. Do I look suited for stiff parties, Mr. Longmore, for clerical society, in general, and bishops' breakfasts in particular ? " " You ask me, honestly. I am afraid I must answer : ' no.' " "A place like Auchester did all very well for Dian. Di is so awfully clever. Not a book you mention but she is up in it, and as to the magazines — Di can read eleven serials at once, and keep the eleven different love affairs clear in her head. Pansy, of course, was in her element, because of the curates. I am not clever, as you, Mr. Longmore, must have found out, and with regard to curates " " With regard to curates ? " repeats Longmore, as Aurora Skelton pauses.

The young lady is taken afresh with a fit of laughter, somewhat more hysterically discordant than the last. Bad creature that he is ! What does, what can, Mr. Longmore mean ? Curates, indeed ! He will be asking her opinion of barristers next. A shame, that it is, to chaff her like this, but she, Aurora, knows what he is hinting at. Mr. Long more is to be a barrister himself before very long, is he not ? An alarming depth of meaning is in her voice. Young Longmore glances away towards the valley of the Rhone, away towards the mountains, upon whose topmost peaks the fairy-like pink after-glow has once more shone forth. Abruptly, the thought flashes on him that a train will leave Clarens Station for Aigle at seven thirty-five to-morrow morning. At Aigle a man has only to buckle his knapsack across his shoulder, start for the mountains, and " The one place on earth for me is London," says Aurora, shrewdly translating for herself the expression of the lad's face, and becoming cured of hysterics on the instant.

" We have quite a legal T he Doll Tribe, Generally. 17 connection in London. Aunt Julia, a sister of my papa's, is married to Sir Joseph Sweeting's cousin. The great Q.C, you know." Longmore knows. How often has that apocry phal legal connection been tantalizingly waved, like the matador's red flag, before the embryo barrister's sight ? "And next season I hope to pay Aunt Julia a visit. You will come and see me, won't you, Mr. Longmore, if you are in town ? " " I should be delighted at all times, in all places, to do that, Miss Skelton." "And we can look back to these happy Clarens days," says Aurora, speaking with the stereotyped little glow and little shiver, and punctuating the sentence with sighs. " We shall have grown wiser both of us. We shall wonder, I dare say, how we could ever have been so foolish !

" " We . . . you . . . will have abundant oppor tunity for hearing good music in London," answers Longmore, returning with laudable presence of mind to his muttons. Miss Aurora Skelton glances at the young man sharply. He is still watching the distant valley of the Rhone, and his countenance does not play him traitor. " When I stay with my Aunt Julia I shall be in the very highest musical circles, and T. S. can always run up from Aldershot to take me about to concerts and operas." T. S. is a fond abbreviation of " Thomas Skel ton," the only male hope of the family, and a lieutenant in one of Her Majesty's marching regi ments ; of whom we shall be forced to see more, hereafter. " Hearing the best professionals," proceeds Aurora, " or, if Aunt Julia is generous, a dozen good finishing lessons would give my singing a little of the bravura style, would they not ?

" " Finishing lessons ! " repeats Longmore, his em phasis supplying unintentional irony. " Yes. Just enough to learn a few show songs, you know. Of course I've done with solfeggios. Aurora Skelton manufactures her barbarous Italian plural unblushingly. " What I want is bravura. I had a course from one of the best masters last winter at Nice, and that is what he told me I wanted — bravura." Longmore's eyes are still turned in the direction of the mountains, and he remains silent. The last changeful hues of the day that is dead have paled, re-flushed, "gone pale again. A greenish flame-like lustre shows forth, in inky relief, the angular peaks of Cubli and the Jaman. " La, gracious, if there isn't the moon ! I do so love to see the moon rise." Like Emerson's young The Doll Tribe, Generally. 19 lady, poor Aurora adores poetry, roses, the moon, the sky, and — cavalry officers.

" If we turn sharp round the left corner of the terrace, we shall see her come up over the Dent du Midi to perfection." And turning sharp round the corner of the ter race proves, as chance will have it, the immediate salvation of Hugh Longmore.

Chapter II. Concerning Old Violins

FOR he and his companion are brought within focus of a balcony on the first floor of the Hotel. And across the balcony railing leans a girl whose eyes, even in this half light, see farther than most people's, whose brain is rapid at deduction as a child's, and whose incisive promptness of action might quicken jealousy in the breast of an Alexander or a Bismarck. Across the balcony railing, serenely contempla tive of lake and mountains — yet in the very mood of restless idleness that renders the human heart promptest at meddling in the love affairs of others — leans Joyce Dormer, the younger of the ladies whose violin case and whose exclusiveness — it may be the attendance of whose Latest Victim — have fired so many feminine breasts in the Hotel Scherer with indignant curiosity. A girl in a sad-coloured gown, tall, graceful, fair, and twenty ; a girl slender of throat and limb, with a face on whose sweet outlines the peachy bloom of childhood seems yet to linger, hands so charged with expression it sets you dreaming of fine harmony but to look at them, and a pair of large, admirably lucid blue eyes.

Such, at a glance, is Joyce. She catches sight of Longmore and his com panion, hears a scream or two of Aurora's laughter, a burst of Aurora's mock enthusiasm, then draws hastily back behind a half-closed Venetian shutter and watches them : watches them, not that she may gather facts whereupon to rest a theory, but contra riwise. It is Joyce Dormer's habit to feel ere she thinks, to judge of things, women and men by in stinct, and at first sight. Facts have to fit themselves into her judgments, afterwards, as best they ma)-. " Mr. Farintyre, come hither." Low is her voice and tuneful, yet does a certain slowness of utterance, a suggestion rather than an actual tone of weariness, contrast pathetically with her airy girlish figure, with the blooming summer of her face. A very fat, very blonde young man (of the order of men evidently whose fortune is in their pockets, not their brains) lies dozing on a sofa at some little distance.

He rouses himself after one or two in effectual efforts, rubs his eyes with both very fat, very blonde hands, then rises and, without much lover-like alacrity in his movements, crosses the room to Joyce's side. Quite of the first water must be this young man's tailor, idem, his haberdasher and bootmaker. You think of them all, tailor, haberdasher, and bootmaker, at the earliest moment of your introduction to him. You seem to hear the jingle of his money at every movement. Frankly vacuous are his round, reddish brown eyes, vacuous is the smile by which, no very perceptible jest to the fore, he shows the whiteness of his teeth. His expression is one of heavy good humour, of contentment with the world that affords daily physical enjoyment to Mr. John Farintyre. And he wears ostentatious jewellery.

Miss Dormer's sway can, surely, not be so absolute over him as cur rent gossip alleges. He wears ostentatious jewellery ! " Do you see those two people in the garden ? " says the girl, beneath her breath. " Do not look at me, please — I must tell you, Mr. Farintyre, that you have fallen into a terribly bad habit of doing so, lately. And do not look at the sky above or in the lake below. Try," pronouncing each word, sylla bically, like one who smooths down a hard sentence for a child's comprehension, " to pull your scattered faculties together and to do simply and literally as you are bidden. You see that good-looking English boy, and the — the young person he is talking with on the terrace yonder ? " Joyce's lover, if lover he be, shakes his head and rubs some still lingering mists of sleepiness out of his eyes.

Then, in the perfectly level, flat voice whereby fatigued young gentlemen of the present day give expression to their feelings, he ejaculates : " Longmore of Corpus, by Jove ! With a lady." " Longmore of Corpus, not with a lady," repeats Joyce rather cruelly. " Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Farintyre, that yonder poor lad is a college friend of yours ? " " Friend," observes Mr. Farintyre, " is a strong word. Hugh Longmore and I were in different sets at Oxford " " Of that I am perfectly sure," interrupts Miss Dormer, with emphasis. ■ Believe he may have got introduced to me at some of the college wines— quite a different set of fellows, you see. Lincolnshire rector's son, screwing along on a wretched three hundred a year, reading man, went in for professors' lectures and tea, æsthetic culture — tell me if I've got hold of the jargon right— and all that sort of thing."