He was aware of suffering a little disappointment in Mrs. Westangle's
entire failure to mention Miss Shirley, though he was aware that his
disappointment was altogether unreasonable, and he more reasonably
decided that if she knew anything of his arrival, or the form of it, she
had too much of the making of a grande dame to be recognizant of it. He
did not know from her whether she had meant to send for him at the
station or not, or whether she had sent her carriage back for him when he
did not arrive in it at first. Nothing was left in her manner of such
slight specialization as she had thrown into it when, at the Macroyds',
she asked him down to her house party; she seemed, if there were any
difference, to have acquired an additional ignorance of who and what he
was, though she twittered and flittered up close to his elbow, after his
impersonal welcome, and asked him if she might introduce him to the young
lady who was pouring tea for her, and who, after the brief drama
necessary for possessing him of a cup of it, appeared to have no more use
for him than Mrs. Westangle herself had. There were more young men than
young women in the room, but he imagined the usual superabundance of
girlhood temporarily absent for repair of the fatigues of the journey.
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