Would he sit silent, uninspiring and uninspired?
Or would unholy and untimely inspirations seize him?
Would he scatter to the winds all conversational conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity?
What would he say to Mrs.Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect?
Was there anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial charm?
Would he see that Mr.Eliott's density was only a mask?
Would the Gardners bore him?
And would he like Miss Proctor?
And if he didn't, would he show it, and how?
His mere manners would, she knew, be irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour.

He impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but immeasurably capricious.
The event surprised her.
For the first five minutes or so, it seemed that Mrs.Eliott and her dinner were doomed to failure; so terrible a cloud had fallen on her, and on her husband, and on every guest.

Never had the poor priestess appeared so abstract an essence, so dream-driven and so forlorn.

Never had Mr.
Eliott worn his mask to so extinguishing a purpose.

Never had Miss Proctor been so obtrusively superior, Mrs.Gardner so silent, Dr.Gardner so vague.