." His eyes slowly lost their intensity, and he muttered a few concluding words under his breath, looking curiously old and forlorn.
Hughling Elliot, who might have been expected to engage the old gentleman in argument, was absent at the moment.

He now came up holding out a large square of cotton upon which a fine design was printed in pleasant bright colours that made his hand look pale.
"A bargain," he announced, laying it down on the cloth.

"I've just bought it from the big man with the ear-rings.

Fine, isn't it?
It wouldn't suit every one, of course, but it's just the thing--isn't it, Hilda ?--for Mrs.Raymond Parry." "Mrs.Raymond Parry!" cried Helen and Mrs.Thornbury at the same moment.
They looked at each other as though a mist hitherto obscuring their faces had been blown away.
"Ah--you have been to those wonderful parties too ?" Mrs.Elliot asked with interest.
Mrs.Parry's drawing-room, though thousands of miles away, behind a vast curve of water on a tiny piece of earth, came before their eyes.

They who had had no solidity or anchorage before seemed to be attached to it somehow, and at once grown more substantial.