'I am _so_ tired of it,' she said to Merton. 'Fancy being more and more
anxious for country house invitations. Fancy an artist's feelings, when
she knows she has not been a success. And then when the woman of the
house detests you! She often does. And when they ask you to give your
imitation of So-and-so, and forget that his niece is in the room! Do you
know what they would have called people like me a hundred years ago? Toad-
eaters! There is one of us in an old novel I read a bit of once. She
goes about, an old maid, to houses. Once she arrived in a snow storm and
a hearse. Am I to come to that? I keep learning new drawing-room
tricks. And when you fall ill, as I did at Eckford, and you can't leave,
and you think they are tired to death of you! Oh, it is I who am tired,
and time passes, and one grows old. I am a hag!'

Merton said 'what he ought to have said,' and what, indeed, was true. He
was afraid she would tell him what she owed her dress-makers. Therefore
he steered the talk round to sport, then to the Highlands, then to
Knoydart, then to Alastair Macdonald of Craigiecorrichan, and then Merton
knew, by a tone in the voice, a drop of the eyelashes, that Miss
Maskelyne was--vaccinated. Prophylactic measures had been taken: this
agent ran no risk of infection. There was Alastair.

Merton turned to Miss Willoughby, on his left. She was tall, dark,
handsome, but a little faded, and not plump: few of the faces round the
table were plump and well liking. Miss Willoughby, in fact, dwelt in one
room, in Bloomsbury, and dined on cocoa and bread and butter. These were
for her the rewards of the Higher Education. She lived by copying
crabbed manuscripts.

'Do you ever go up to Oxford now?' said Merton.