So bright and clever.

I was sure you'd like him, Edith.' Captain Willis here came up and said, a shade more jovially than he had spoken at dinner, with his laugh: 'Well, you know, Mrs Ottley, what I always say is--live and let live and let it go at that; what?
But they never _do_, you know! They won't--and there it is!' Edith now did a thing she had never done in her life before and which was entirely unlike her.

She tried her utmost to retain the group round her, and to hold their attention.

For a reason of which she was hardly conscious, she wanted Aylmer Ross to see her surrounded.

The minister from the place with a name like Ruritania was so immensely bowled over that he was already murmuring in a low voice (almost a hiss, as they say in melodrama): 'Vous etes chez vous, quand?
Dites un mot, un mot seulement, et je me precipiterai a vos pieds_,' while at the same time, in her other ear, Lord Rye was explaining (to her pretended intense interest) how he could play the whole of _Elektra, The Chocolate Soldier_ and _Nightbirds_ by ear without a single mistake.