" The tears came to her eyes; she felt a
genuine regret for them, a kind of respect for their youth and beauty,
and a kind of shame for herself; but the tears did not fall; and she
opened one of those innumerable novels which she used to pronounce good
or bad, or pretty middling, or really wonderful. "I can't think how
people come to imagine such things," she would say, taking off her
spectacles and looking up with the old faded eyes, that were becoming
ringed with white.
Just behind the stuffed leopard Mr. Elliot was playing chess with Mr.
Pepper. He was being defeated, naturally, for Mr. Pepper scarcely took
his eyes off the board, and Mr. Elliot kept leaning back in his chair
and throwing out remarks to a gentleman who had only arrived the night
before, a tall handsome man, with a head resembling the head of an
intellectual ram. After a few remarks of a general nature had passed,
they were discovering that they knew some of the same people, as indeed
had been obvious from their appearance directly they saw each other.
"Ah yes, old Truefit," said Mr. Elliot. "He has a son at Oxford. I've
often stayed with them. It's a lovely old Jacobean house. Some exquisite
Greuzes--one or two Dutch pictures which the old boy kept in the
cellars. Then there were stacks upon stacks of prints. Oh, the dirt in
that house! He was a miser, you know.
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