would unholy and untimely inspirations seize him?  Would he scatter to the winds all conversational 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.

“Not much in him?” said Majendie.  “How about that immortal speech of his?”

“Immortal—­” echoed Mr. Eliott dubiously.

“Indestructible!  The poor fellow couldn’t end it.  It simply coiled and uncoiled itself and went off, in great loops, into eternity.  It began in all innocence—­naturally, as it was his maiden speech—­when he rose, don’t you know, to propose an amendment.  I take it that speech was so maidenly that it shrank from anything in the nature of a proposal.  It went on in a terrified manner, coyly considering and hesitating—­till it cleared the House.  And he was awfully pleased when we congratulated him on his ‘maidenly reserve.’”

“How did he ever get elected?” said Miss Proctor.

“My dear lady, it was a glorious stroke of the Opposition.  They withdrew their candidate when he contested the election.  Of course, they felt that he’d only got to make a speech and there’d be a dissolution.  You simply saw Parliament melting away before him.  If he’d gone on he’d have worn out the British constitution.”