Still there was something that she needed. What was it? Companionship? More than that. Affection, a centre to her life; someone who needed her, someone to whom she was of more importance than anyone else in the world. Even a dog....
She was forty-six. Without being plain she was too slight, too hard-drawn, too masculine, above all too old to be attractive to men. An old maid of forty-six. She faced the truth. She gave little dinner-parties, and felt more lonely than ever. Even it seemed there was nobody who wanted to make her a confidante. People wanted her money, but herself not at all. She was not good conversationally. She said sharp sarcastic things that frightened people. People did not want the truth; they wanted things to be wrapped up first, as her mother and sister had wanted them years ago.
She was a failure socially, in spite of her money. She could not be genial, and yet her heart ached for love.
At this moment Mr. Edmund Lapsley appeared. Lizzie met him at a party given by Mrs. Philip Mark in Bryanston Square. Mrs. Mark was an old friend of Rachel's, a kindly and clever woman with an ambitious husband who would never get very far.
Her parties were always formed by a strange mixture dictated first by her kind heart and second her desire to have people in her house who might possibly help her husband. Edmund Lapsley originated in the former of these impulses. He was not much to look at—long, lanky, with a high bony head, a prominent Roman nose and large, cracking fingers. He was shabbily dressed, awkward in his manner, and apprehensive. It was his eyes that first attracted Lizzie's attention. They were beautiful large brown eyes, with the expression of a lost and lonely dog seated deep in their pupils. He sat with Lizzie in a corner of the crowded drawing-room to arrange his long legs so that they should not be in the way, cracked his long fingers together and endeavoured to be interested in the people whom Lizzie pointed out to him.
"That's Henry Trenchard," Lizzie said, "that wild-looking boy with the untidy hair.... He's very clever. Going to be our great novelist.... That's his sister, Millie. Mrs. Mark's sister, too. Isn't she pretty? She's the loveliest of the family. That stout clergyman is a Trenchard cousin. They all hang together in the most wonderful way, you know. His wife ran away and never came back again. I don't think I wonder; he looks heavy...." And so on.
Lizzie wondered to herself why she bothered. It was not her habit to gossip, and Mr. Lapsley was obviously not at all interested.
"I beg your pardon," she said; "you don't want to know who these people are."
"No," he said in a strange, sudden, desperate whisper. "I don't. I lost my wife only three months ago. I'm trying to go out into the world again. I can't. It doesn't do any good." He gripped his knee with one of his large bony hands.