sure of
being able to say the proper thing."

"I quite agree with you," Mrs. Ballinger anxiously assented; "but--"

And at that instant, heralded by the fluttered parlour-maid, Osric Dane
appeared upon the threshold.

Mrs. Leveret told her sister afterward that she had known at a glance
what was coming. She saw that Osric Dane was not going to meet them
half way. That distinguished personage had indeed entered with an air of
compulsion not calculated to promote the easy exercise of hospitality.
She looked as though she were about to be photographed for a new edition
of her books.

The desire to propitiate a divinity is generally in inverse ratio to its
responsiveness, and the sense of discouragement produced by Osric Dane's
entrance visibly increased the Lunch Club's eagerness to please her. Any
lingering idea that she might consider herself under an obligation to
her entertainers was at once dispelled by her manner: as Mrs. Leveret
said afterward to her sister, she had a way of looking at you that made
you feel as if there was something wrong with your hat. This evidence
of greatness produced such an immediate impression on the ladies that a
shudder of awe ran through them when Mrs. Roby, as their hostess led
the great personage into the dining-room, turned back to whisper to the
others: "What a brute she is!"

The hour about the table did not tend to correct this verdict. It was
passed by Osric Dane in the silent deglutition of Mrs. Ballinger's menu,
and by the members of the Club in the emission of tentative platitudes
which their guest seemed to swallow as perfunctorily as the successive
courses of the luncheon.

Mrs. Ballinger's deplorable delay in fixing a topic had thrown the
Club into a mental disarray which increased with the return to the
drawing-room, where the actual business of discussion was to open. Each
lady waited for the other to speak; and there was a general shock
of disappointment when their hostess opened the conversation by the
painfully commonplace inquiry: "Is this your first visit to Hillbridge?"

Even Mrs. Leveret was conscious that this was a bad beginning; and a
vague impulse of deprecation made Miss Glyde interject: "It is a very
small place indeed."

Mrs. Plinth bristled. "We have a great many representative people," she
said, in the tone of one who speaks for her order.

Osric Dane turned to her thoughtfully. "What do they represent?" she
asked.

Mrs. Plinth's constitutional