Unfortunately, for she was rather heavy in company, Judge Crowborough was obliged by custom to bring her to dinner; and she came willingly, inspired less by sociability than by the virtuous instinct which animated her being.

Mr.
Fowler had taken her in to dinner, and while she lent an inert attention to Billy's jests, he talked across Gabriella to Judge Crowborough, who was eating his soup with the complete absorption of a man to whom the smallest of his appetities is sacred.

It was a grievance of Mrs.
Fowler's that her husband would never, as she said, "pay any attention to women," and in order to feel assured of even so much as a cheerful noise at his end of the table, she was obliged to place within hearing distance of him somebody who could talk fluently, if not eloquently, of the stock market.
To Gabriella's surprise, her father-in-law, who had appeared inert and listless at breakfast, became, in the stimulating presence of the judge, not only awake, but mildly animated.

She had felt before the charm in his scholarly face, with its look of detached spirituality so strangely out of keeping with the calling he pursued; and she recognized now the quality of controlled force which had enabled him to hold his own in the financial whirlpool of his country.

Had the girl known more of life, she would have understood that in the American business world there were hundreds of such men winning their way and leaving their mark at that moment of history--men whose natures were redeemed from grossness by the peculiar idealism they infused into their material battles.