ing."
Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she explaio Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married daughters had e up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay with them every summer after I e from H, but then an old woman like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them up. You dont know what aehey lead down there. It is pure unadulterated try life. They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about. There has not been a sdal in the neighbourhood sihe time of Queen Elizabeth, and sequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You shant sit either of them. You shall sit by me and amuse me."
Dorian murmured a graceful pliment and looked round the room. Yes: it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen before, and the others sisted of Er Harrowden, one of those middle-aged mediocrities so on in London clubs who have no enemies, but are thhly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an overdressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always trying to get herself promised, but was so peculiarly plain that treat disappoi no one would ever believe anything against her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp aian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostesss daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was uhe impression that inordinate joviality atone for aire lack of ideas.
He was rather sorry he had e, till Lady Narbh, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mante