added the lady, as if it were the name of a species.

After this Urania became suddenly interested in Schumann, and glided
across the room to see what the music meant.

'That is very sweet,' she murmured, sinking into a seat by Bessie;
'classical, of course?'

'Schumann,' answered Ida, briefly.

'I thought so. It has that delicious vagueness one only finds in German
music--a half-developed meaning--leaving wide horizons of melodious
uncertainty.'

This was a conversational style which Miss Rylance had cultivated since
her entrance into the small world of Kingthorpe, and the larger world of
Cavendish Square, as a grown-up young woman. She had seen a good deal of
a semi-artistic, quasi-literary circle, in which her father was the
medical oracle, attending actresses and singers without any more
substantial guerdon than free admittance to the best theatres on the best
nights; prescribing for newspaper-men and literary lions, who sang his
praises wherever they went.

Urania had fallen at once into all the tricks and manners of the new
school. She had taken to short waists and broad sashes, and a style of
drapery which accentuated the elegant slimness of her figure. She
affected out-of-the-way colours, and quaint combinations--pale pinks and
olive greens, tawny yellow and faded russet--and bought her gowns at a
Japanese warehouse, where limp lengths of flimsy cashmere were mixed in
artistic confusion with sixpenny teapots and paper umbrellas. In a word,