She bent lower, doubting if she could
have read aright.
"Brig.-General and Mrs. Frayling."--Two smaller cards, also bearing the
General's name, ranged with two others bearing that of "The Rev. Marshall
Wace." A written inscription, in the corner of each, notified a leading
hotel in Stourmouth as the habitat of their respective owners.
This little discovery affected Damaris to a singular extent. She had
small enough wish for Henrietta Frayling's society at this juncture;
still less for that of her attendant singer-reciter-parson. Yet their
names, and the train of recollections evoked by these, made for the
normal, the average, and, in so far, had on her a wholesome effect. For
Henrietta, of once adored and now somewhat tarnished memory--soulless,
finished, and exquisitely artificial to her finger-tips, beguiling others
yet never herself beguiled beyond the limits of a flawless
respectability--was wonderfully at odds with high tragedies of
dissolution. How had the house received such a guest? How put up with her
intrusion? But wasn't the house, perhaps, itself at a disadvantage, its
sting drawn in presence of such invincible materialism? For how impress a
creature at once so light and so pachydermatous? The position lent itself
to rather mordant comedy.
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