The beautiful and socially popular Duchess de la Santoisie sat her at brilliantly appointed dinner-table, and flashed her bright eyes comprehensively round the board,--her party was complete. She had secured twenty of the best-known men and women of letters in all London, and yet she was not quite satisfied with the result attained. One dark, splendid face on her right hand had taken the lustre out of all the rest,--one quiet, courteous smile on a mouth haughty, yet sweet, had somehow or other made the entertainment of little worth in her own estimation.
She was very fair to look upon, very witty, very worldly-wise,--but for once her beauty seemed to herself defective and powerless to charm, while the graceful cloak of social hypocrisy she was always accustomed to wear would not adapt itself to her manner tonight so well as usual. The author of "Nourhalma" the successful poet whose acquaintance she had very eagerly sought to make, was not at all the kind of man she had expected,--and now, when he was beside her as her guest, she did not quite know what to do with him.
She had met plenty of poets, so called, before,--and had, for the most part, found them insignificant looking men with an enormous opinion of themselves, and a suave, condescending contempt for all others of their craft; but this being,--this stately, kingly creature with the noble head, and far-gazing, luminous eyes,--this man, whose every gesture was graceful, whose demeanor was more royal than that of many a crowned monarch,--whose voice had such a singular soft thrill of music in its tone,--he was a personage for whom she had not been prepared,--and in whose presence she felt curiously embarrassed and almost ill at ease. And she was not the only one present who experienced these odd sensations. Alwyn's appearance, when, with his friend Villiers, he had first entered the Duchess's drawing-room that evening, and had there been introduced to his hostess, had been a sort of revelation to the languid, fashionable guests assembled; sudden quick whispers were exchanged--surprised glances,--how unlike he was to the general type of the nervous, fagged, dyspeptic "literary" man!
And now that every one was seated at dinner, the same impression remained on all,--an impression that was to some disagreeable and humiliating, and that yet could not be got over,--namely, that this "poet," whom, in a way, the Duchess and her friends had intended to patronize, was distinctly superior to them all. Nature, as though proud of her handiwork, proclaimed him as such, --while he, quite unconscious of the effect he produced, wondered why this bevy of human beings, most of whom were more or less distinguished in the world of art and literature, had so little to say for themselves.