May I offer you some refreshment after your journey ?" In these terms and in the smoothest of voices, Miss Pink opened the interview.
Mr.Troy made a polite reply, and added a few strictly conventional remarks on the beauty of the neighborhood.

Not even a lawyer could sit in Miss Pink's presence, and hear Miss Pink's conversation, without feeling himself called upon (in the nursery phrase) to "be on his best behavior".
"It is extremely kind of you, Mr.Troy, to favor me with this visit," Miss Pink resumed.

"I am well aware that the time of professional gentlemen is of especial value to them; and I will therefore ask you to excuse me if I proceed abruptly to the subject on which I desire to consult your experience." Here the lady modestly smoothed out her dress over her knees, and the lawyer made a bow.

Miss Pink's highly-trained conversation had perhaps one fault--it was not, strictly speaking, conversation at all.

In its effect on her hearers it rather resembled the contents of a fluently conventional letter, read aloud.
"The circumstances under which my niece Isabel has left Lady Lydiard's house," Miss Pink proceeded, "are so indescribably painful--I will go further, I will say so deeply humiliating--that I have forbidden her to refer to them again in my presence, or to mention them in the future to any living creature besides myself.