inquisitory

Updated: May 16, 2025

He stood motionless for a while; then he approached Mrs. Ansell and said: "Tell me." She drew farther back into her corner of the sofa, waving him to a seat beside her, as though to bring his inquisitory eyes on a level where her own could command them; but he stood where he was, unconscious of her gesture, and merely repeating: "Tell me."

Edith Wharton - The Fruit of the Tree

Modern and commodious itself, it looked from its balcony at serried and mismatched and quaintly-named haunts of old provincial, of sedately passive rather than confidently eager, traffic; but this made, among us, for much harmless inquisitory life while we were fairly assaulted, at home, by the scale and some of the striking notes of our fine modernity.

Henry James - A Small Boy and Others