nd sent me round a note to say that she was giving a dinner-party that evening, and one of her guests had failed her.
4
71. /Td>
It was the kind of party which makes you wonder why the hostess has troubled to bid her guests, and why the guests have troubled to come.
7
72. /Td>
The Stricklands "Owed" dinners to a number of persons,
whom they took no interest in, and so had asked them;
these persons had accepted. /Td>
4
73. /Td>
There was a K.C. and his wife, a Government official and his wife, Mrs. Strickland's sister and her husband, Colonel MacAndrew, and the wife of a Member of Parliament. /Td>
1а, 1а
74. /Td>
The respectability of the party was portentous.
1а
75. /Td>
The women were too nice to be well dressed, and too sure of their position to be amusing. /Td>
20б
76. /Td>
There was about all of them an air of well-satisfied prosperity.
4, 11
77. /Td>
They talked of the political situation and of golf, of their children and the latest play, of the pictures at the Royal Academy, of the weather and their plans for the holidays.
20б
78. /Td>
Strickland shut the door behind her, and, moving to the other end of the table, took his place between the K.C. and the Government official. /Td>
1а
79. /Td>
The K.C. told us of a case he was engaged in, and the Colonel talked about polo.
20б
80. /Td>
He was a man of forty, not good-looking, and yet not ugly, for his features were rather good; but they were all a little larger than life-size, and the effect was ungainly.
11
81. /Td>
He was probably a worthy member of society, a good
husband and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason to waste one's time over him.
4
82. /Td>
They were even more attractive than their photographs had suggested, and she was right to be proud of them.
12
83. /Td>
I was perhaps a little lonely, and it was with a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant family life of which I ha d had a glimpse. /Td>
1а, 20б
84. /Td>
They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course - the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome, manly fellow, obviously a soldier; and at last, prosperous in their dignified retirement, beloved by their descendants, after a happy,
not unuseful life, in the fullness of their age they would
sink into the grave. /Td>
11, 1б, 4
85. /Td>
It reminds you of a placid rivulet, meandering smoothly through green pastures and shaded by pleasant trees, till at last it falls into the vasty sea; but the sea is so calm, so silent, so indifferent, that you are troubled suddenly by a vague uneasiness.
20б
86. /Td>
On reading over what I have written of the Stricklands, I am conscious that they must seem shadowy. /Td>
20б
87. /Td>
As they stand they are like the figures in an old tapestry;
they do not separate themselves from the background, and at a distance seem to lose their pattern, so that you have little but a pleasing piece of colour. /Td>
5
88. /Td>
There was just that shadowiness about them which you find in people whose lives are part of the social оrganism, so that they exist in it and by it only.
4
89. /Td>
A pleasant, hospitable woman...
