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. They were all, she could see, possessed, crushed down by their
consciousness of Majendie and his monstrous past.

Into this circle, thus stupefied by his presence, Majendie burst with the
courage of unconsciousness.

Mr. Eliott had started a topic, the conduct of Sir Rigley Barker, the
ex-member for Scale. A heavy ball of conversation began to roll slowly up
and down the table, between Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. Majendie snatched
at it deftly as it passed him, caught it, turned it in his hands till it
grew golden under his touch. Mr. Eliott thought there wasn't much in poor
Sir Rigley.