Can't be pleasant, you know, to get a man like that in the family.

Look after your spoons--that kind of thing." Meanwhile Marcella was standing beside Miss Raeburn, at the head of the long ball-room, and doing her best to behave prettily.

One after another she bowed to, or shook hands with, half the magnates of the county--the men in pink, the women in the new London dresses, for which this brilliant and long-expected ball had given so welcome an excuse.
They knew little or nothing of her, except that she was clearly good-looking, that she was that fellow Dick Boyce's daughter and was reported to be "odd." Some, mostly men, who said their conventional few words to her, felt an amused admiration for the skill and rapidity with which she had captured the _parti_ of the county; some, mostly women, were already jealous of her.

A few of the older people here and there, both men and women--but after all they shook hands like the rest!--knew perfectly well that the girl must be going through an ordeal, were touched by the signs of thought and storm in the face, and looked back at her with kind eyes.
But of these last Marcella realised nothing.

What she was saying to herself was that, if they knew little of her, she knew a great deal of many of them.