The result that one saw from
the outside was chiefly a look of delicate hardness, of tissue a little
frayed, but showing a quality in the process. We may hope that some
unconfessed satisfaction was derivable from her continued reception of
Duff's confidences, her unflinching readiness to consult with him;
granting the analytic turn we may almost suppose it. Starvation is so
monotonous a misery that a gift of personal diagnosis might easily lend
attraction to poisoned food as an alternative, if one may be permitted a
melodramatic simile in a case which Alicia kept conventional enough. She
did not even abate the usual number of Duff's invitations to dinner,
when there was certainly nothing to repay her for regarding him across a
gulf of flowers and silver and a tide of conversation about the season's
paper-chasing except the impoverished complexion which people acquire
who sit much in Bentinck street, desirous and unsatisfied.
It may very well be that she regretted her behaviour in this respect,
for it was effectively after one of these parties that Surgeon-Major
Livingstone, pressing upon his departing guest in the hall the usual
whiskey and soda, found it necessary instead to give him another kind of
support, and to put him immediately and authoritatively to bed.
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