ed 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. Stephen knew their names and their
dignities. He received what she said with suitably impressed eyebrow and
nods of considerate assent. Hilda carried him along, as it were, in
their direction. She was full that night of a triumphant sense of her
own vitality, her success and value as a human unit. There was that in
her blood which assured her of a welcome; it had logic in it, with the
basis of her rarity, her force, her distinction among other women. She
pressed forward to human fellowship with a smile on her lips, as a
delightful matter of course, going toward the people who were not
indifferent to the fact that she was there, who could not be entirely,
since they had some sort of knowledge of her.

In no case did they ignore her, but they were so cheerfully engaged in
conversation that they were usually quite oblivious of her. She
encountered this animated absorption two or three times, then, turning,
she found that the absorbed ones had changed their places--were no
longer in her path. One lady put herself at a safe distance and then
bowed with much cordiality. It was extraordinary in a group of five how
many glistening backs would be presented, quite without offence, to her
approach. Mrs. Winstick had hidden behind the Superintendent of Stamps
and Stationery, to whom she was explaining, between spoonfuls of
strawberry ice her terrible situation. And from the lips of another
lady, whose face she knew, she heard after she had passed, "Don't you
think it's rather an _omnium gatherum_?"