"Did I talk well?"
"Yes. Almost too well."
"Too much, you mean. Well, I had to talk, when nobody else did. Besides, I did it for a purpose."
But what his purpose was Majendie did not say.
Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range of her anticipations. She was glad, above all, that Walter had made himself acceptable in Thurston Square. But when she came to think of what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his incomprehensible ease of attitude. She reflected that this must have been the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal. Was it possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that had been stretched to take him in? She felt that it was impossible to exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening. They had met together, as it were, to celebrate Walter's return to the sanctities and proprieties he had offended. He had been formally forgiven and received by the society which (however Fanny Eliott might explain away its action) had most unmistakably cast him out. She had not expected him to part with his indomitable self-possession under the ordeal, but she could have wished that he had borne himself with a little more modesty. He had failed to perceive the redemptive character of the feast, he had turned it into an occasion for profane personal display.
Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party had not saved him; on the contrary, he had saved the dinner-party.
CHAPTER VIII
Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way you looked at them.
Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way, and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously.