There was a ghostly presence as of dinners long since digested, of table-talk that had lost its actuality.

This hint of the supernatural perhaps had something to do with the fact that his imagination took a flight and that he remained in his chair a long time beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed; doing nothing, not even reading the evening paper.

I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the fact that he thought at these moments of Isabel.

To think of Isabel could only be for him an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and profiting little to any one.

His cousin had not yet seemed to him so charming as during these days spent in sounding, tourist-fashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element.