They apparently felt that they had fulfilled their whole duty by simply
being there; and while the list of people present at one of Mrs.
Frostwinch's evenings made those who were not there sigh with envy at
thought of the delights they had missed, the reality was far from being
as charming as their fancy.

"I wish somebody would bring Amanda Welsh Sampson here," murmured
Arthur in his wife's ear, as the Fentons made their way toward their
hostess. "It would be too delicious to see how she'd stir things up,
and how shocked the old tabby dowagers would be."

But there were some social topics which were too serious to Edith to be
jested upon.

"Mrs. Sampson!" she returned, with an expression of being really
shocked. "That dreadful creature!"

The rooms were well filled; the clatter of innumerable tongues speaking
English with that resonant dryness which reminds one of nothing else so
much as of the clack of a negro minstrel's clappers indefinitely
reduplicated, rang in the ears with confusing steadiness. An hour was
spent in fragmentary conversations, which somehow were always
interrupted at the instant the interesting point was reached. The men
bestirred themselves with more or less alacrity, making their way about
the room with a conscientious determination to speak to everybody whom
duty called upon them to address, or more selfishly devoting themselves
to finding out and chatting with the pretty girls. Fenton found time
for the latter method while being far too politic to neglect the
former. He was chatting in a corner with Ethel Mott, when Fred Rangely,
whose successful novel had made him vastly the fashion that winter,