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He had been right in expecting the party at Mrs Carfry's to be a small one Besides their hostess and her sister, they found, in the long chilly drawing-rooenial Vicar as her husband, a silent lad whoentleman with lively eyes who a French naroup May Archer floated like a sith the sunset on her: she see than her husband had ever seen her; and he perceived that the rosiness and rustlingness were the tokens of an extreme and infantile shyness

"What on earth will they expect me to talk about?" her helpless eyes i apparition was calling forth the same anxiety in their own bosoms But beauty, even when distrustful of itself, awakens confidence in the manly heart; and the Vicar and the French-na to May their desire to put her at her ease

In spite of their best efforts, however, the dinner was a languishing affair Archer noticed that his wife's way of showing herself at her ease with foreigners was to becoly local in her references, so that, though her loveliness was an encouragement to admiration, her conversation was a chill to repartee The Vicar soon abandoned the struggle; but the tutor, who spoke the allantly continued to pour it out to her until the ladies, to the -rooed to hurry away to a , and the shy nepheho appeared to be an invalid, was packed off to bed But Archer and the tutor continued to sit over their wine, and suddenly Archer found hi as he had not done since his last symposium with Ned Winsett The Carfry nephew, it turned out, had been threatened with consumption, and had had to leave Harrow for Switzerland, where he had spent two years in thea bookish youth, he had been entrusted to M Riviere, who had brought hiland, and was to re; and M Riviere added with simplicity that he should then have to look out for another job

It see without one, so varied were his interests and so ly face (May would certainly have called hiave an intense expressiveness; but there was nothing frivolous or cheap in his animation