f the time, and described the
peasant costumes in Marken and Walcheren. And Mr. Blenker, with a fine
appreciation of Sir Isaac's watchful temperament and his own magnetism,
spoke to her three times and never looked at her once all through the
entertainment.

A few weeks later they went to dinner at the Chartersons', and then she
gave a dinner, which was arranged very skilfully by Sir Isaac and
Snagsby and the cook-housekeeper, with a little outside help, and then
came a big party reception at Lady Barleypound's, a multitudinous
miscellaneous assembly in which the obviously wealthy rubbed shoulders
with the obviously virtuous and the not quite so obviously clever. It
was a great orgy of standing about and seeing the various Blenkers and
the Cramptons and the Weston Massinghays and the Daytons and Mrs.
Millingham with her quivering lorgnette and her last tame genius and
Lewis, and indeed all the Tapirs and Tadpoles of Liberalism, being
tremendously active and influential and important throughout the
evening. The house struck Ellen as being very splendid, the great
staircase particularly so, and never before had she seen a great
multitude of people in evening dress. Lady Barleypound in the golden
parlour at the head of the stairs shook hands automatically, lest it
would seem in some amiable dream, Mrs. Blapton and a daughter rustled
across the gathering in a hasty vindictive manner and vanished, and a
number of handsome, glittering, dark-eyed, splendidly dressed women kept
together in groups and were tremendously but occultly amused. The
various Blenkers seemed everywhere, Horatio in particular with his large
fluent person and his luminous tenor was like a shop-walker taking
customers to the departments: one felt he was weaving all these
immiscibles together into one great wise Liberal purpose, and that he
deserved quite wonderful things from the party; he even introduced five
or six people to Lady Harman, looking sternly over her head and
restraining his charm as he did so on account of Sir Isaac's feelings.
The people he brought up to her were not very interesting people, she
thought, but then that was perhaps due to her own dreadful ignorance of
politics.

Lady Harman ceased even to dip into the vortex of London society after
March, and in June she went with her mother and a skilled nurse to that
beautiful furnished house Sir Isaac had found near Torquay, in
preparation for the birth of their first little daughter.