She found herself at the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _debutante_ on his other side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to him through the whole of dinner.

The girl was not pretty, but she was fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits, her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of everything--clothes, food, amusements, lovers.

Doris on her side made valiant efforts with the schoolboy.

She liked boys, and prided herself on getting on with them.

But this specimen had no conversation--at any rate for the female sex--and apparently only an appetite.