way they hung
together, these two young women. It had been forced upon his perceptions
all the evening, that this fair-haired, beautiful, rather stately Lady
Cressage, and the small, swarthy, round-shouldered daughter of the
house, peering through her pince-nez from under unduly thick black
brows, formed a party of their own. Their politeness toward him had been
as identical in all its little shades of distance and reservation as if
they had been governed from a single brain-centre. It would be unfair
to them to assume from their manner that they disliked him, or were even
unfavourably impressed by him. The finesse of that manner was far too
delicate a thing to call into use such rough characterizations. It was
rather their action as a unit which piqued his interest. He thought he
could see that they united upon a common demeanour toward the American
girl, although of course they knew her much better than they knew
him. It was not even clear to him that there were not traces of this
combination in their tone toward Plowden and the Honourable Balder. The
bond between them had twisted in it strands of social exclusiveness, and
strands of sex sympathy.

He did not analyze all this with much closeness in his thoughts, but the
impressions of it were distinct enough to him. He rather enjoyed
these impressions than otherwise. Women had not often interested him
consecutively to any large degree, either in detail or as a whole. He
had formulated, among other loose general notions of them, however, the
idea that their failure to stand by one another was one of their gravest
weaknesses. This proposition rose suddenly now in his mind, and claimed
his attention. It became apparent to him, all at once, that his opinions
about women would be henceforth invested with a new importance. He had
scarcely before in his life worn evening dress in a domestic circle
which included ladies--certainly never in the presence of such
certificated and hall-marked ladies as these. His future, however,
was to be filled with experiences of this nature. Already, after this
briefest of ventures into the new life, he found fresh conceptions of
the great subject springing up in his thoughts. In this matter of women
sticking together, for example--here before his eyes was one of the
prettiest instances of it imaginable. As he looked again at the two
figures on the sofa, so markedly unlike in outward aspect, yet knit
to each other in such a sisterly bond, he