There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of Ralph's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread.

Mr.
Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her society the bric-a-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fete-champetre, walked round the limited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded responsive--as with a positive passion for argument--to her remarks upon the inner life.
"Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt.

Naturally there's not much going on there when there's such a lot of illness about.

Touchett's very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his father.

The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter with him.