here also she felt, rather than perceived, the intrinsic weakness of the
old order?

Beyond Benham, Gideon Vetch, rugged, sanguine, and wearing the wrong tie
with his evening clothes as valiantly as he had worn the rumpled brown
suit in which Stephen had last seen him, was talking in a loud voice to
Miss Maria Berkeley--one of those serene single women arrayed in
dove-colour who belong as appropriately as crewel work or antimacassars
to another century. If Patty was shy and self-conscious, it was evident
that her state of mind was not shared by her father. He was interested
because he was expressing a cherished opinion, and he was talking in an
emphatic tone because he hoped that he might be overheard. When Mrs.
Berkeley drew him away in order to introduce him to Corinna, he resumed
his theme immediately, as if he were addressing a public meeting and had
scarcely noticed that there had been a change in his audience. "Miss
Berkeley was asking me what I thought of the effects of prohibition,"
he explained presently with his smile of unguarded friendliness. How
was it possible to arrest the attention of a man who insisted on talking
of prohibition?

At the table a little later Corinna asked herself the question again,
while she made light conversation for the retired general who had taken
her in--an anecdotal, bewhiskered presence, with the husky voice and the
glazed eyes of successful pomposity. Glancing occasionally at Vetch who
sat on her left, she found that he was describing to Mrs. Berkeley the
best protection against forest fires. As far as Corinna was concerned,
she felt that she might as well have been a view from the window, or the
portrait of Mr. Berkeley's great aunt that hung over the mantelpiece. He
had probably, she reflected, classified her lightly as "another
gray-haired woman," and passed on to Rose Stribling, who bloomed
triumphantly between John Benham and Stephen Culpeper. Vetch was so
different from what Corinna had expected to find him that, in some vague
way, she felt disappointed and absurdly resentful. Had her imagination,
she wondered, prepared her to meet one of the picturesque radicals of
fiction? Had she looked for a middle-aged Felix Holt; and was this why
the Governor's prosaic figure, his fresh-coloured, undistinguished face
and his vehement, spectacular gestures, dispelled immediately the
interest she had felt in the meeting? There were no salient points in
his appearance, nothing that