Hilda lived alone, attended by a very pretty
and competent French servant who answered
the door and brought in the tea. Alexander
arrived early, and some twenty-odd people
dropped in during the course of the afternoon.
Hugh MacConnell came with his sister,
and stood about, managing his tea-cup
awkwardly and watching every one out of his
deep-set, faded eyes. He seemed to have
made a resolute effort at tidiness of attire,
and his sister, a robust, florid woman with a
splendid joviality about her, kept eyeing his
freshly creased clothes apprehensively. It was
not very long, indeed, before his coat hung
with a discouraged sag from his gaunt shoulders
and his hair and beard were rumpled as
if he had been out in a gale. His dry humor
went under a cloud of absent-minded kindliness
which, Mainhall explained, always overtook
him here. He was never so witty or so
sharp here as elsewhere, and Alexander
thought he behaved as if he were an elderly
relative come in to a young girl's party.
The editor of a monthly review came
with his wife, and Lady Kildare, the Irish
philanthropist, brought her young nephew,
Robert Owen, who had come up from Oxford,
and who was visibly excited and gratified
by his first introduction to Miss Burgoyne.
Hilda was very nice to him, and he sat on
the edge of his chair, flushed with his
conversational efforts and moving his chin
about nervously over his high collar.
Sarah Frost, the novelist, came with her husband,
a very genial and placid old scholar who had
become slightly deranged upon the subject of
the fourth dimension.
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