ot a bore; one could represent
anything--birth or wealth, or the conspicuous absence of these
qualities--so long as one also effectively represented one's self.
This was the somewhat democratic form which the old lady's
aristocratic tradition assumed.

It was not, then, without a certain pang of self-reproach that Mary
wondered one evening--it was at the conclusion of one of their most
successful entertainments--that a company so brilliant, so
distinguished, should have left her only with a nervous headache and
a distinct sense of satisfaction that the last guest had gone.

Was she, then, after all an unworthy partaker of the feast which her
aunt had so long and liberally spread for her delectation?

As she sat in her own room, still in her dress of the evening,
before the comfortable fire, which cast vague half-lights into the
dark, spacious corners--she had extinguished the illumination of
candles which her maid had left her, a sort of unconscious tribute
to the economical traditions of her youth--she found herself
considering this question and the side issues it involved very
carefully.

Was it for some flaw in her nature, some lack of subtilty, or inbred
stupidity, that she found the inmates of Parton Street so
uninspiring, had been so little amused?

The dozen who had dined with them to-night--how typical they might
be of the rest!--original and unlike each other as they were, each
having his special distinction, his particular note, were hardly
separable in her mind. They were very cultivated, very subtile, very
cynical. Their talk, which flashed quickest around Lady Garnett, who
was the readiest of them all, could not possibly have been better;
it was like the rapid passes of exquisite fencers with foils. And
they all seemed to have been everywhere, to have read everything,
and at the last to believe in nothing--in themselves and their own
paradoxes least of all. There was nothing in the world which existed
except that one might make of it an elegant joke. And yet of old,
the girl reflected, she had found them stimulating enough; their
limitations, at least, had not seemed to her to weigh seriously
against their qualities, negative though these last might be.

Had it been, then, simply the presence of Mr. Rainham which had
leavened the company, and the personal fascination of his
friendship--indefinable and unobtrusive as that had been--which had
enabled her to adopt for the moment their urbane, impartial