CHAPTER III.
Mr.Putney Giles's was Lothaw's first grand dinner-party.

Yet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon.

The conversation was peculiar and singularly interesting.
"Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer ?" said Mrs.Putney Giles to her companion.
"I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal lines," replied Lothaw.
"I should say it was a matter of latitude," observed a loud talkative man opposite.

He was an Oxford Professor with a taste for satire, and had made himself very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, by speaking disparagingly of a former well-known Chancellor of the Exchequer,--a great statesman and brilliant novelist,--whom he feared and hated.
Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the females it absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill.

His Eminence, the Cardinal, was announced.