Mr. Boscobel. Mrs.
Boscobel made much of them, and insisted on Adela's coming to dine with her. An
evening was appointed. Adela felt reproofs of conscience, remembering the excuse
she had offered to Alice, but in this case it was impossible to decline. 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. Hubert admitted knowledge of the
facts, and made the remark about the valley of Wanley which Mrs. Boscobel
repeated at Exmouth, but he revealed nothing more. Having no marriageable
daughter, Mrs. Boscobel was under no necessity of searching into his
antecedents. He was one of ten or a dozen young men of possible future whom she
liked to have about her.
    Hubert seated himself by Adela, and there was a moment of inevitable
silence.
    »I saw you as soon as I got into the room,« he said, in the desperate
necessity for speech of some kind. »I thought I must have been mistaken; I was
so unprepared to meet you here.«
    Adela replied that she was staying with Mrs. Westlake.
    »I don't know her,« said Hubert, »and am very anxious