These things had happened some fifty years ago.
"They ought not to have died," she thought.

"However, they did--and we selfish old creatures go on." The tears came to her eyes; she felt a genuine regret for them, a kind of respect for their youth and beauty, and a kind of shame for herself; but the tears did not fall; and she opened one of those innumerable novels which she used to pronounce good or bad, or pretty middling, or really wonderful.

"I can't think how people come to imagine such things," she would say, taking off her spectacles and looking up with the old faded eyes, that were becoming ringed with white.
Just behind the stuffed leopard Mr.Elliot was playing chess with Mr.
Pepper.

He was being defeated, naturally, for Mr.Pepper scarcely took his eyes off the board, and Mr.Elliot kept leaning back in his chair and throwing out remarks to a gentleman who had only arrived the night before, a tall handsome man, with a head resembling the head of an intellectual ram.

After a few remarks of a general nature had passed, they were discovering that they knew some of the same people, as indeed had been obvious from their appearance directly they saw each other.
"Ah yes, old Truefit," said Mr.Elliot.