"
So, serenely and with the most ingenuous confidence, did the
daughter of the absent King Otho make disposition of the hour's
events. Amory leaned forward and feverishly polished his pince-nez.
"What do you think of that?" he put it, beneath his breath, "what
_do_ you think of that?"
St. George, watching that little figure--so adorably, almost
pathetically little in its corner of the great throne--knew that he
had not counted upon her in vain. Over there on the raised seats
Mrs. Medora Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham were looking on
matters as helplessly as they would look at a thunder-storm or a
circus procession, and they were taking things quite as seriously.
But Olivia, in spite of the tragedy that the hour held for her, was
giving the moment its exact value, guiltless of the feminine
immorality of panic. To give a moment its due without that panic,
is, St. George knew, a kind of genius, like creating beauty, and
divining another's meaning, and redeeming the spirit of a thing from
its actuality.
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