'm very tired to-night," she remarked in her thick voice. "I've had a
hard afternoon."

"Poor darling!" cried Mrs. Bridgeman. "Fetch a glass of champagne for
Mrs. Harriet somebody. Oh, would you, Mr. Brummich?"

Mr. Brummich, a gentleman with a remarkably foolish, ascetic face and
a feebly-wandering sandy beard, was just about to hasten religiously
towards the Moorish nook when the great Towle happened, by accident, to
groan. Mrs. Bridgeman, started and smiled.

"Oh, and a glass of champagne for Mr. Towle, too, dear Mr. Brummich!"

"Certainly, Mrs. Bridgeman!" said dear Mr. Brummich, hurrying off with
the demeanour of the head of an Embassy entrusted with some important
mission to a foreign Court.

"Were you at work this afternoon, Harriet, beloved?" inquired Mrs.
Bridgeman of Mrs. Browne, who was leaning back in the armchair with her
eyes closed and in an attitude of severe prostration.

"Yes."

"Which was it, lovebird? Hysteric Henry?"

"No, he's cured."

Cries of joy resounded from those gathered about the chair.

"Hysteric Henry's cured!"

"Henry's better!"

"The poor man with the ball in his throat's been saved!"

"How wonderful you are, Harriet, sweet!" cried Mrs. Bridgeman. "But,
then which was it?"

"The madwoman at Brussels. I've been thinking about her for two hours
this afternoon, with only a cup of tea between."

"Poor darling! No wonder you're done up! Ought you to demonstrate? Ah!
here's the champagne!"

"I take it merely as medicine," said Mrs. Harriet.

At this moment, Mr. Brummich, flushed with assiduity, burst into the
circle with a goblet of beaded wine in either hand. There was a moment
of solemn silence while Mrs. Harriet and the great Towle condescended
to the Pommery. It was broken only by a loud gulp from the
hysterical-looking girl who was, it seemed, nervously affected by an
imitative spasm, and who suddenly began to swallow nothing with extreme
persistence and violence.

"Look at that poor misguided soul!" ejaculated Mrs. Harriet, with her
lips to the Pommery. "She fancies she's drinking!"

The poor, misguided soul, yielded again to her distraught imagination,
amid the pitiful ejaculations of the entire company, with the exception
of one mundane, young man who, suddenly assailed by the wild fancy that
he wasn't drinking, crept furtively to the Moorish rook, and was no more
seen.

"Give her a cushion!" continued Mrs. Harriet, authoritatively.

"Mr. Brummich!" said Mr