CHAPTER XVI.
Lady Halifax and her daughter had met Miss Bell several
times at the Cardiffs', in a casual way, before it occurred
to either of them to take any sort of advantage of the
acquaintance. The younger lady had a shivering and
frightened delight in occasionally wading ankle-deep in
unconventionality, but she had-lively recollections, in
connection with the Cardiffs, of having been very nearly
taken off her feet. They had since decided that it was
more discreet to ignore Janet's enthusiasms, which were
sometimes quite impossible in their verdict, and always
improbable. The literary ladies and gentlemen whom the
ghost of the departed Sir William brought more or less
unwillingly to Lady Halifax's drawing-rooms were all of
unexceptionable _cachet_; the Halifaxes were constantly
seeing paragraphs about them in the "Literary Gossip"
department of the _Athenian_, mentioning their state of
health, their retirement from scientific appointments,
or the fact that their most recent work of fiction had
reached its fourth edition. Lady Halifax always read the
_Athenian_, even the publishers' announcements; she liked
to keep "in touch," she said, with the literary activities
of the day, and it gave her a special gratification to
notice the prosperity of her writing friends indicated
in tall figures.
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