the drawing-room, set down and left, under Lady
Rythdale's wing. Eleanor felt her position much more conspicuous than
agreeable. The old baroness turned and surveyed her; went on with the
conversation pending, then turned and surveyed her again; looked her
well over; finally gave Eleanor some worsted to hold for her, which she
wound; nor would she accept any substitute offered by the gentlemen for
her promised daughter-in-law's pretty hands and arms. Worse and worse.
Eleanor saw herself now not only a mark for people's eyes, but put in
an attitude as it were to be looked at. She bore it bravely; with
steady outward calmness and grace, though her cheeks remonstrated. No
movement of Eleanor's did that. She played worsted reel with admirable
good sense and skill, wisely keeping her own eyes on the business in
hand, till it was finished; and Lady Rythdale winding up the last end
of the ball, bestowed a pat of her hand, half commendation and half
raillery, upon Eleanor's red cheek; as if it had been a child's. That
was a little hard to bear; Eleanor felt for a moment as if she could
have burst into tears. She would have left her place if she had dared;
but she was in a corner of a sofa by Lady Rythdale, and nobody else
near; and she felt shy. She could use her eyes now upon the company.

Lady Rythdale was busied in conversation with one or two elderly
ladies, of stately presence like herself, who were, as Eleanor
gathered, friends of long date, staying at the Priory. They did not
invite curiosity. She saw her mother with Mrs. Wycherly, the rector's
sister, in another group, conversing with Dr. Cairnes and a gentleman
unknown. Mr. Powle had found congeniality in a second stranger. Mr.
Carlisle, far off in a window, one of those beautiful deep large
windows, was very much engaged with some ladies and gentlemen likewise
strange to Eleanor. Nobody was occupied with her; and from her sofa
corner she went to musing. The room and its treasures she had time to
look at quietly; she had leisure to notice how fine it was in
proportions and adornments, and what luxurious abundance of everything
that wealth buys and cultivation takes pleasure in, had space to abound
without the seeming of multiplicity. The house was as stately within as
on the outside. The magnificence was new to Eleanor, and drove her
somehow to musings of a very opposite character. Perhaps her unallayed
spirit of opposition might have been with other causes at the botto