said that Mrs. Talboys' eye never glanced more brightly after a
glass of champagne, but I am inclined to think that on this occasion
it may have done so. O'Brien enacted Ganymede, and was, perhaps,
more liberal than other latter-day Ganymedes, to whose services Mrs.
Talboys had been accustomed. Let it not, however, be suspected by
any one that she exceeded the limits of a discreet joyousness. By
no means! The generous wine penetrated, perhaps, to some inner
cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words,
which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing
in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an
anchorite or to a vestal. A word or two she said or sung about the
flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her
converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women;
of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden time that was to
come.

She called a toast and drank to the hopes of the latter historians
of the nineteenth century. Then it was that she bade O'Brien "Fill
high the bowl with Samian wine." The Irishman took her at her word,
and she raised the bumper, and waved it over her head before she put
it to her lips. I am bound to declare that she did not spill a
drop. "The true 'Falernian grape,'" she said, as she deposited the
empty beaker on the grass beneath her elbow. Viler champagne I do
not think I ever swallowed; but it was the theory of the wine, not
its palpable body present there, as it were, in the flesh, which
inspired her. There was really something grand about her on that
occasion, and her enthusiasm almost amounted to reality.

Mackinnon was amused, and encouraged her, as, I must confess, did I
also. Mrs. Mackinnon made useless little signs to her husband,