He ate steadily through the dinner, and seemed rather to resent Doris's attempts to distract him from the task.

So that presently Doris found herself reduced to long tracts of silence, when her fan was her only companion, and the watching of other people her only amusement.
Lord and Lady Dunstable faced each other at the sides of the table, which was purposely narrow, so that talk could pass across it.

Lady Dunstable sat between an Ambassador and a Cabinet Minister, but Meadows was almost directly opposite to her, and it seemed to be her chief business to make him the hero of the occasion.

It was she who drew him into political or literary discussion with the Cabinet Minister, so that the neighbours of each stayed their own talk to listen; she who would insist on his repeating "that story you told me at Crosby Ledgers;" who attacked him abruptly--rudely even, as she had done in the country--so that he might defend himself; and when he had slipped into all her traps one after the other, would fall back in her chair with a little satisfied smile.

Doris, silent and forgotten, could not keep her eyes for long from the two distant figures--from this new Arthur, and the sallow-faced, dark-eyed witch who had waved her wand over him.
_Wasn't_ she glad to see her husband courted--valued as he deserved--borne along the growing stream of fame?
What matter, if she could only watch him from the bank ?--and if the impetuous stream were carrying him away from her?
No! She wasn't glad.