Wait till after dinner, and you may hear more than I can tell you now.

There may be news from the station between this and then." The dinner was a wearisome ordeal to at least two other persons present besides Blanche.

Arnold, sitting opposite to Geoffrey, without exchanging a word with him, felt the altered relations between his former friend and himself very painfully.

Sir Patrick, missing the skilled hand of Hester Dethridge in every dish that was offered to him, marked the dinner among the wasted opportunities of his life, and resented his sister-in-law's flow of spirits as something simply inhuman under present circumstances.

Blanche followed Lady Lundie into the drawing-room in a state of burning impatience for the rising of the gentlemen from their wine.