He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin and willowy figure, attired in white silk, a _pince-nez_ on the high-pitched nose, and a cool smile.

Unconsciously his back stiffened.

Miss Boyson invariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism.
"I should be glad if you would tell me," he said, with some formality.
"There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced." "Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons ?" The voice was shrill, perhaps malicious.
"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards." "Ah," said Cecilia, "there they are." The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother, still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat, swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own.

Innocent and happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as she did so.
"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly.

"Her father is, I think, a professor." "He was.