ion on
the floor, with her back against the wall. She looked round quickly,
recognized about half a dozen people, to whom she nodded, but failed to
see Ralph, or, if so, had already forgotten to attach any name to him.
But in a second these heterogeneous elements were all united by the
voice of Mr. Rodney, who suddenly strode up to the table, and began very
rapidly in high-strained tones:

"In undertaking to speak of the Elizabethan use of metaphor in poetry--"

All the different heads swung slightly or steadied themselves into a
position in which they could gaze straight at the speaker's face, and
the same rather solemn expression was visible on all of them. But,
at the same time, even the faces that were most exposed to view, and
therefore most tautly under control, disclosed a sudden impulsive tremor
which, unless directly checked, would have developed into an outburst of
laughter. The first sight of Mr. Rodney was irresistibly ludicrous.
He was very red in the face, whether from the cool November night or
nervousness, and every movement, from the way he wrung his hands to the
way he jerked his head to right and left, as though a vision drew him
now to the door, now to the window, bespoke his horrible discomfort
under the stare of so many eyes. He was scrupulously well dressed, and
a pearl in the center of his tie seemed to give him a touch of
aristocratic opulence. But the rather prominent eyes and the impulsive
stammering manner, which seemed to indicate a torrent of ideas
intermittently pressing for utterance and always checked in their course
by a clutch of nervousness, drew no pity, as in the case of a more
imposing personage, but a desire to laugh, which was, however, entirely
lacking in malice. Mr. Rodney was evidently so painfully conscious of
the oddity of his appearance, and his very redness and the starts to
which his body was liable gave such proof of his own discomfort,
that there was something endearing in this ridiculous susceptibility,
although most people would probably have echoed Denham's private
exclamation, "Fancy marrying a creature like that!"

His paper was carefully written out, but in spite of this precaution
Mr. Rodney managed to turn over two sheets instead of one, to choose the
wrong sentence where two were written together, and to discover his own
handwriting suddenly illegible. When he found himself possessed of a
coherent passage, he shook it at his audience almost aggressively, and