t very clever
talk, made her feel strange beyond description.

She stood near a group of palms under the arch of the staircase,
watching the faces all about her, longing one minute to be at home,
curled up with a book on her shabby, comfortable window-seat, and the
next, that she might be drawn into the centre of all that bubbling,
companionable enjoyment. Now she caught a glimpse of Alma, who was
standing near the door of the dancing-room, bantering and coquetting
with a little cluster of youths who had gathered about her, heaven
knows where from or how, like flies about a jar of new honey; it was
plainly Alma's natural environment, in which she revelled like a joyous
young fish in a sunny pool.

"So that pretty little creature is George Prescott's daughter?" The
question, spoken in a rather deep and penetrating voice, carried
clearly to Nancy's ears, and she turned. At a little distance from
her, seated on a small couch, sat Mrs. Porterbridge, a lean woman with
a tight-lipped, aquiline face, and painfully thin neck and arms, and
the old lady who had put the question. A quite remarkable-looking old
lady, Nancy thought, enormously fat, dressed in purple velvet, her
huge, dimpled arms and shoulders billowing, out of it, like the whipped
cream on top of some titanic confection. Two small, plump, tapering
hands clasped a handsome feather fan against her almost perpendicular
lap. Two generous chins completely obliterated any outward evidences
of neck, so that her head seemed to have been set upon her shoulders
with the naive simplicity of a dough-man's; yet for all this, one
glance at her keen, intelligent face, with its sleepy, twinkling eyes
and humorous, witty mouth, was enough to assure one that, whoever she
might be, she was not an ordinary old lady by any means. One guessed
at once that she had seen much of the world in her sixty-five or
seventy years, that she had enjoyed every moment of the entertainment,
and that while she probably required everyone else to respect public
opinion, she felt comfortably privileged to disregard it herself
whenever she pleased. She had been busily discussing everyone who
attracted her attention, disdaining to lower her sonorous voice or to
conceal in any way the fact that she was gossiping briskly. Young and
old alike hastened up to her to pay their respects, and it was evident
from their manner of eager deference that she was a rather important
old person, whose keen and fe