I could make them see that, if I could only get them quietly into a corner." "But they're frightened of me," he added, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, "and I don't seem to know how to tackle them." Those drawing-rooms?
Might not something of the sort be possible?
Not, perhaps, the sumptuous salon of her imagination, thronged with the fair and famous, suitably attired.

Something, perhaps, more homely, more immediately attainable.

Some of the women dressed, perhaps, a little dowdily; not all of them young and beautiful.

The men wise, perhaps, rather than persistently witty; a few of them prosy, maybe a trifle ponderous; but solid and influential.

Mrs.Denton's great empty house in Gower Street?
A central situation and near to the tube.