They exactly translated and crystallised her first inexplicable feelings of desperate aversion--almost of terror.
She led Leighton to a little group on the left side of the lawn, composed of the three Professors and the wives and daughters of two of them.

As they approached them, Nitocris became sensible of a curious kind of nervousness.

She did not know that by this commonplace action she was reuniting two links in a long-severed chain of destiny, but she had a dim consciousness that she was going to do something much more important than merely introducing two strangers to each other.

She looked quite anxiously at Brenda, who had turned towards them as they came near, and saw that, just for the fraction of a second, her eyes brightened, and a passing flush deepened the delicate colour in her cheeks.

It was almost like a glance of recognition, and yet she had only heard his name two or three times, and certainly had never seen him before.