Stella assured her that the
party would be small, and would be sure to comprise none but really
interesting people. It was so, in fact. Two men whom, on arriving,
they found in the drawing-room Adela knew by fame, and the next to
enter was a lady whose singing she had heard with rapture at a
concert on the evening before. She was talking with this lady when a
new announcement fell upon her ear, a name which caused her to start
and gaze towards the door. Impossible for her to guard against this
display of emotion; the name she heard so distinctly seemed an
unreal utterance, a fancy of her brain, or else it belonged to
another than the one she knew. But there was no such illusion; he
whom she saw enter was assuredly Hubert Eldon.
A few hot seconds only seemed to intervene before she was called
upon to acknowledge him, for Mrs. Boscobel was presenting him to
her.
'I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Mutimer before,' Hubert
said as soon as he saw that Adela in voice and look recognised their
acquaintance.
Mrs. Boscobel was evidently surprised. She herself had met Hubert at
the house of an artist in Rome more than a year ago, but the details
of his life were unknown to her. Subsequently, in London, she
happened once to get on the subject of Socialism with him, and told
him, as an interesting story, what she heard from the Westlakes
about Richard Mutimer.
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