Then he paced up and down his long room. His imagination was on fire. He could see Katherine—he dwelt on the name "Katherine"—in the baboon embrace of old John Townly—loathsome picture!
Yes, of course, she would adorn any position, and Dullinglea was only a very moderate house. He could see her tall, slender, graceful figure sweeping in rich velvets through much larger rooms than it contained. Such rooms, for example, as these, his own at Valfreyne!
She would sit to-night between young Westonborough and old Barchester, but in a place where a gap in the flowers would give him, the host, a continuous view of her.
Then he went off to dress, in a fiery mood!
Katherine, meanwhile, had been looking over "Eothen," and noting the marked passages, which she found to be the same mutual favourites they had discovered that night at Gerard's.
Had her host underlined them since then, or were they marked before? Then she peeped at "Abelard and Héloise" and turned over all the leaves. None of them had any pencillings, but her eye caught this sensible paragraph, and it stiffened her jaded spirit, and made her feel more calm:
"'How void of reason are men,' said Seneca, 'to make distant evils present by reflection, and to take pains before death to lose all the comfort of life.'"
She was here at a splendid party as a guest like everyone else, and she must enjoy it and forget anything but the pleasure of the moment. But oh! if the Duke would only talk to her!
She wore the new white frock and looked quite beautiful, and some of the lilies of the valley shone in her belt.
Lady Garribardine was extremely pleased with her appearance and patted her arm.