It was possible that Mr.
Dagworthy would stop to speak, for she had become, in a measure, acquainted with him in the preceding spring.

She was at home then for a few weeks before her departure for London, and the Baxendales, who had always shown her much kindness, invited her to an evening party, at which Dagworthy was present.

He had chatted with her on that occasion.
Yes, he was going to speak.

He was a man of five-and-thirty, robust, rather florid, with eyes which it was not disagreeable to meet, though they gazed with embarrassing persistency, and a mouth which he would have done well to leave under the natural shelter of a moustache; it was at once hard and sensual.

The clean-shaving of his face gave his appearance a youthfulness to which his tone of speech did not correspond.
'How do you do, Miss Hood?
Come once more into our part of the world, then?
You have been in London, I hear.' It was the tone of a man long accustomed to have his own way in life, and not overmuch troubled with delicacies of feeling.