Then came in one of his lordships chaplains, who saluted the monsignore
with reverence, and immediately afterward a beautiful young lady, his
niece, Clare Arundel.

The family were living in a convenient suite of small rooms on the
ground-floor, called the winter-rooms so dinner was announced by the
doors of an adjoining chamber being thrown open, and there they saw, in
the midst of a chamber hung with green silk and adorned with some fine
cabinet-pictures, a small round table, bright and glowing.

It was a lively dinner. Lord St. Jerome loved conversation, though he
never conversed. "There must be an audience," he would say, "and I am
the audience." The partner of his life, whom he never ceased admiring,
had originally fascinated him by her conversational talents; and, even
if Nature had not impelled her, Lady St. Jerome was too wise a woman to
relinquish the spell. The monsignore could always, when necessary,
sparkle with anecdote or blaze with repartee; and all the chaplains, who
abounded in this house, were men of bright abilities, not merely men of
reading, but of the world, learned in the world's ways, and trained to
govern mankind by versatility of their sympathies. It was a dinner
where there could not be two conversations going on, and where even the
silent take their share in the talk by their sympathy.

And among the silent, as silent even as Lord St. Jerome, was Miss
Arundel; and yet her large violet eyes, darker even than her dark-brown
hair, and gleaming with intelligence, and her rich face mantling with
emotion, proved she was not insensible to the witty passages and the
bright and interesting narratives that were sparkling and flowing about
her.