their toy
terriers.

Mrs. Delarayne's dining-room was filling rapidly. A buzz of
conversation, accompanied by the shuffling of the latest arrivals' feet,
began to pervade the large room, and necks were craned in tense
expectation of celebrities.

The philocanine Palmer was entrusted with the care of the legion of lap
dogs out in the garden,--for the religious meeting could not admit even
the most docile pet animal; and the sound of their spiteful yappings
could be heard through the open windows at the back of the room.

"You know, my dear," said Lady Muriel Bellington, who had brought her
Mexican hairless, "of course he is very, very naughty. And it's very
tiresome. But they are so minute, one couldn't beat them. It would be
really too too!"

Lady fflote, already purple with the heat, went almost black at the
suggestion of beating the Mexican hairless.

"Beat them!" she ejaculated. "Oh that would be very wrong. Oh no, you
couldn't bully them. Better far let them tyrannise over you. I should
never forgive myself."

In another part of the room Sir Lionel Borridge was leaning across Mrs.
Gerald Tribe, the delicate and emaciated wife of the Incandescent Gerald
Tribe, to address a word to Miss Mallowcoid.

"I think it possible, you know," he said very gravely, and looking the
image of the most unconquerable woe, "that I may be able to give our
minister certain mathematical facts, which I feel convinced are all in
support of the doctrine of the Inner Light. I was working at them with
my daughter last night,--the results are simply astounding--astounding,
that's the only word."

Miss Mallowcoid ejaculated, "Really! Really!" in a hushed, awed voice,
and then quickly proceeded to communicate the thrilling intelligence to
her right hand neighbour, who marvelled as reverently and as inaudibly
as she had done.

Sir Joseph, feeling a little bewildered, was asking Guy Tyrrell a
string of questions which this young man was quite unqualified to
answer, and both looked and felt extremely uncomfortable.

Lord Henry, who was seated in the second row from the front, between
Denis Malster and St. Maur, glanced round at the crowd behind him, and
frowned darkly.

"I think, you know, Lord Henry," said Denis Malster, noticing the young
nobleman's expression of angry scorn, "you do not allow sufficiently for
the fact that all of us have a subconscious inkling of the supernatural
behind phenomena, and these attempts on the part of