"
CHAPTER XIII.
Janet Cardiff, running downstairs to the drawing-room
from the top story of the house in Kensington Square with
the knowledge that a new American girl, who wrote very
clever things about pictures, awaited her there, tried
to remember just what sort of description John Kendal
had given of her visitor. Her recollection was vague as
to detail; she could not anticipate a single point with
certainty, perhaps because she had not paid particular
attention at the time. She had been given a distinct
impression that she might expect to be interested, however,
which accounted for her running downstairs. Nothing
hastened Janet Cardiff's footsteps more than the prospect
of anybody interesting. She and her father declared that
it was their great misfortune to be thoroughly respectable,
it cut them off from so much. It was in particular the
girl's complaint against their life that humanity as they
knew it was rather a neutral-tinted, carefully woven
fabric too largely "machine-made," as she told herself,
with a discontent that the various Fellows of the Royal
Society and members of the Athenaeum Club, with whom the
Cardiffs were in the habit of dining, could hardly have
thought themselves capable of inspiring.
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