"Urn," said Ogden, abstractedly. He recalled the girl's appearance and her little ordeal of having to face a complete stranger at so distressful a juncture. Yet she had borne herself with dignity and composure; nor was he able to deny that she had been as perfectly courteous as her brief appearance permitted. How that he understood, he had less cause for complaint against her brother, and none at all against her.
He dwelt lingeringly on the idea of "a complete stranger." He did not feel that it would have been infinitely more trying to face a curious neighbor. He had begun to idealize the ordeal and the victim of it.
"A penny for your thoughts," he presently heard his companion saying. He came out of his study and looked through the stair-rail at the little throng below. Two gentlemen had just come out of the dining-room.
"I was wondering who they were," he replied, at a venture.
"Who?"
"Those two."
The pair was followed by Walworth, whose pleasure it was to pour libations whenever the gathering of two or three together gave a pretext for that ceremony. One of the two sucked in his upper lip with due caution, and both united in a pretence—decent, but slight and futile—that the ladies knew nothing of these hospitable doings.
"The tall, brown one is Mr. Ingles. Haven't you met him here before?"
She indicated a man of forty, whose face was shaven except for a small pair of snuff-colored whiskers, and whose mouth made a firm, straight, thin line.
"Ingles? Arthur J.?"