The gentlemen distressed her more than the ladies. The latter were often so full of grace and prettiness that their loud talk, shrill laughter, and faulty grammar could not wholly rid them of charm. But the gentlemen had no grace, and slight good looks as an offset to their haphazard manners. Some of them appeared to be quite uneducated; others would blend ignorance with conceit; still others were ungallant and ungracious, and not seldom pompously boastful of their wealth. Mr. Thurston was at first cautious in his answers to Claire's rather searching questions. But by degrees he threw aside restraint; he grew to understand just why he was thus interrogated. He had a slow yet significant mode of talk that was nearly sure of entertaining any listener. Shallow people had called him a cynic, but not a few clever ones had strongly denied this charge. Claire began to look upon him as one who was forever opening doors for her, and showing her glimpses of discovery that either surprised or impressed the gazer. On the evening of Sophia's "sociable" Claire remained in a large chamber that was approached from the second hall of the house, and appointed with that admirable taste which clearly indicated that the Bergemanns had once confided devoutly in their upholsterer, just as they now did in their milliner. She was quite alone; she held a book open in her lap, but was not reading it; her black dress became her charmingly; it seemed to win a richer shade from the chestnut-and-gold of her tresses, and to increase the delightful fragility of her oval, soft-tinted face. The music below stairs kept her thoughts away from her book; it pealed up to her with a dulcet, provocative melody; it made her feel that she would love to go down and join the merry-makers. But this was only a kind of abstract emotion; there was nobody in the bright-lit, flower-decked drawing-rooms whom she would have cared to meet, with the possible exception of Mr. Thurston, although what she then considered his advanced age made him seem more suitable as a companion of less jubilant hours. But it chanced that a knock presently sounded at the half-closed door, and that Mr. Thurston soon afterward presented himself. He sat down beside her. His evening dress had a felicity of cut and fit that gave his naturally stately figure an added distinction, even to the inexperienced eye of Claire. She thought how the white tie at his throat became him--how different he was, in spite of the gray at his temples and the crow's-feet under his hazel eyes, from the younger men clad in similar vesture, whom she had seen pass through the upper hall a little earlier in the evening.