There were, first, a brusque-mannered but uncommonly handsome Lady ---- ----. If there's a lord, or plain mister ---- ----, I don't know, but certainly he's not _en evidence_. Lady ---- ---- is an authoress on the woman question and on marriage, and is generally given to the most forward of "advanced" opinions and ideas. Ronayne insultingly says they won't harm me, for I should never get a notion of what they really are--a speech which I treated with the oblivious contempt it deserved, though inwardly tickled at the lucky shot; for it's quite true that, attracted by her great beauty--the most singular combination you can fancy--boldly cut features, softened by babyish roundness of curves, and enchanting dimples, not a wrinkle or crow-foot to be traced, an infantine complexion, all transparent and softly pink, and this grownup baby's face surmounted by a mass of crisp-waved, snowy, but glitteringly snowy hair!--I hovered around her for awhile during the evening, and could make nothing whatsoever of the oracular sentences she let fall. With her her son, a man of twenty-six to thirty, priggish, argumentative, contrary-minded--altogether the most cub-like young Briton I have lately encountered. Next, a widow with two daughters--the mother what, of all things, but a Plymouth sister!--given to hospital and prison work, tract distribution, and mothers' meetings--a tall, spare, gentle-faced woman, dressed with almost Quakerish simplicity. And run over and away with by her daughters, no question--two monstrous girls of thirty, if a day; real grenadiers, nearly six feet high; one painfully thin and large-eyed, the other as stout as tall, and both overpowering in spirits and flippant or cynic smartness of talk. One, the thin one, whom I liked best, amused me during the evening by telling me how she got rid of bores--young, feeble little society men, brief of stature and of wit. "I endure the little creature as long as I can, and when he has buzzed all his little buzzes about the weather, and subjects suited to his size, there comes a pause--a long pause, for I don't help him. Then, if he is too young to know that he should take himself off, and he begins desperately upon some other threadbare topic, then I act. I am seated on a low lounge or ottoman; I begin to rise as if I caught sight of some one I knew at a distance; and I rise, rise, slowly, slowly, but up, up, up I go, till sometimes I stand on tiptoe, or on a hassock, my long skirts hiding all that, and the little man, who has watched me first idly, then curiously, gradually gets horror-struck, and finally bursts desperately away, absolutely tongue-tied with fright." "And no wonder!" I couldn't help saying, for she had mounted and mounted as she described the scene, until there really was something supernatural and alarming in the slim, white-draped length of lady, and the height from which the big blue eyes in their hollow orbits shone down upon me.