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"We watched you playing cards, but we never knew that we were being watched." "It was like a thing in a play," Rachel added. "And Hirst couldn't describe you," said Hewet. It was certainly odd to have seen Helen and to find nothing to say about her. Hughling Elliot put up his eyeglass and grasped the situation.
In the ballroom, meanwhile, the dancers were being formed into squares for the lancers. Arthur and Rachel, Susan and Hewet, Miss Allan and Hughling Elliot found themselves together. Miss Allan looked at her watch. "Half-past one," she stated. "And I have to despatch Alexander Pope to-morrow." "Pope!" snorted Mr. Elliot. "Who reads Pope, I should like to know?
"I believe that Hughling really doesn't mind," said Mrs. Elliot. "But then he has his work." "Women without children can do so much for the children of others," observed Mrs. Thornbury gently. "I sketch a great deal," said Mrs. Elliot, "but that isn't really an occupation. It's so disconcerting to find girls just beginning doing better than one does oneself! And nature's difficult very difficult!"
"At the age of eighty, Mr. Joshua Harris of Eeles Park, Brondesbury, has had a son," said Hirst. ". . . The famished animal, which had been noticed by workmen for some days, was rescued, but by Jove! it bit the man's hand to pieces!" "Wild with hunger, I suppose," commented Miss Allan. "You're all neglecting the chief advantage of being abroad," said Mr. Hughling Elliot, who had joined the group.
Brought thus to a standstill for a moment, Arthur and Susan congratulated Hughling Elliot upon his convalescence, he was down, cadaverous enough, for the first time, and Mr. Perrott took occasion to say a few words in private to Evelyn. "Would there be any chance of seeing you this afternoon, about three-thirty say? I shall be in the garden, by the fountain."
John Hirst, in order apparently to win a sixpence which lay upon the table; while Mr. Hughling Elliot imposed silence upon his section of the audience by his fascinating anecdote of Lord Curzon and the undergraduate's bicycle. Mrs. Thornbury was trying to remember the name of a man who might have been another Garibaldi, and had written a book which they ought to read; and Mr.
She told them that for some days Hughling Elliot had been ill, and the only doctor available was the brother of the proprietor, or so the proprietor said, whose right to the title of doctor was not above suspicion. "I know how wretched it is to be ill in a hotel," Mrs. Thornbury remarked, once more leading the way with Rachel to the garden.
You could draw circles round the whole lot of them, and they'd never stray outside." "Mr. Hughling Elliot, Mrs. Hughling Elliot, Miss Allan, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury one circle," Hirst continued. "Miss Warrington, Mr. Arthur Venning, Mr. Perrott, Evelyn M. another circle; then there are a whole lot of natives; finally ourselves." "Are we all alone in our circle?" asked Hewet.
Hirst was a dreadful young man, and that although he had such an air of being clever he probably wasn't as clever as Arthur, in the ways that really matter. "Wasn't it Wilde who discovered the fact that nature makes no allowance for hip-bones?" enquired Hughling Elliot.
Suddenly, in the strange way in which some words detach themselves from the rest, they heard him say quite distinctly: "All you want is practice, Miss Warrington; courage and practice one's no good without the other." "Hughling Elliot! Of course!" Helen exclaimed. She ducked her head immediately, for at the sound of his name he looked up.
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