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there was something wrong with your hat. This evidence of greatness produced such an immediate impression on the ladies that a shudder of awe ran through them when Mrs. Roby, as their hostess led the great personage into the dining-room, turned back to whisper to the others: "What a brute she is!" The hour about the table did not tend to revise this verdict. It was passed by Osric Dane in the silent deglutition of Mrs. Ballinger's menu, and by the members of the club in the emission of tentative platitudes which their guest seemed to swallow as perfunctorily as the successive courses of the luncheon. Mrs. Ballinger's reluctance to fix a topic had thrown the club into a mental disarray which increased with the return to the drawing-room, where the actual business of dis- cussion was to open. Each lady waited for the other to speak; and there was a general shock of disappointment when their hostess opened the conversation by the pain- fully commonplace enquiry: "Is this your first visit to Hill- bridge?" Even Mrs. Leveret was conscious that this was a bad be- ginning; and a vague impulse of deprecation made Miss Glyde interject: "It is a very small place indeed." Mrs. Plinth bristled. "We have a great many representa- tive people," she said, in the tone of one who speaks for her order. Osric Dane turned to her. "What do they rep- resent?" she asked. Mrs. Plinth's constitutional dislike to being questioned was intensified by her sense of unpreparedness; and her HYLAND