When it dropped with a harsh little click, the hostess, unable to restrain herself, rushed into desperate conversation with Mr.Mayhew, giving vent to incoherencies in the course of the first act of the meal which did but confirm her neighbor--a grim uncommunicative person--in his own devotion to a policy of silence.

Meanwhile the vicar was grappling on very unequal terms with Mrs.Seaton.

Mrs.Leyburn had fallen to young Elsmere.

Catherine Leyburn was paired off with Mr.
Baker, Agnes with Mr.Mayhew's awkward son--a tongue-tied youth, lately an unattached student at Oxford, but now relegated, owing to an invincible antipathy to Greek verbs, to his native air, till some opening into the great world should be discovered for him.
Rose was on Robert Elsmere's right.

Agnes had coaxed her into a white dress as being the least startling garment she possessed, and she was like a Stothard picture with her high waist, her blue sash ribbon, her slender neck and brilliant head.