Anyone sensitive to pervading mental currents in gatherings of
this sort would have found the relief of concentration and directness
only near the buffet that ran along one side of the room, where the
natural instinct played, without impediment, upon soup and sandwiches.
They did not look much at Hilda, even on the arm of her liveried priest.
She was a strange vessel, sailing in from beyond their ken, and her
pilot was almost as novel, yet they were incurious. Their interests were
not in any way diffused: they had one straight line and it led upward,
pausing at the personalities clerked above them, with an ultimate point
in the head of a department. The Head of the Department was the only
person unaware, when addressed, of a travelling eye in search over his
shoulder of somebody with whom it would be more advantageous to
converse. Yet there were a few people apparently not altogether
indifferent to the presence of Miss Howe. She saw them here and there,
and when Arnold said, "It must seem odd to you, but I know hardly
anybody here. We attempt no social duties," she singled out this one and
that, whom Alicia had asked to meet her, and mentioned them to him with
a warm pleasure in implying one of the advantages of belonging to the
world rather than to the cloister.
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