Dr. Gardner looked at Mrs. Gardner and their eyes brightened, as Majendie continued to unfold the amazing resources of Sir Rigley.  He breathed on the ex-member like a god, and played with him like a juggler; he tossed him into the air and kept him there, a radiant, unsubstantial thing.  The ex-member disported himself before Mrs. Eliott’s dinner-party as he had never disported himself in Parliament.  Majendie had given him a career, endowed him with glorious attributes.  The ex-member, as a topic, developed capacities unsuspected in him before.  The others followed his flight breathless, afraid to touch him lest he should break and disappear under their hands.

By the time Majendie had done with him, the ex-member had entered on a joyous immortality in Scale.

And in the middle of it all Anne laughed.

Miss Proctor was the first to recover from the surprise of it.  She leaned across the table with a liberal and vivid smile, opulent in appreciation.

“Well, Mr. Majendie, Sir Rigley ought to be grateful to you.  If ever there was a dull subject dead and buried, it was he, poor man.  And now the difficulty will be to forget him.”

“I don’t think,” said Majendie gravely, “I shall forget him myself in a hurry.”

Oh no, he never would forget Sir Rigley.  He didn’t want to forget him.  He would be grateful to him as long as he lived.  He had made Anne laugh.  A girl’s laugh, young and deliciously uncontrollable, springing from the immortal heart of joy.

It was the first time he had heard her laugh so.  He didn’t know she could do it.  The hope of hearing her do it again would give him something to live for.  He would win her yet if he could make her laugh.

Anne was more surprised than anybody, at him and at herself.  It was a revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift.  She was only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on lectures and on books.  She had not thought of Walter as clever.  She had only thought of him as good.  That one quality of goodness had swallowed up the rest.

Miss Proctor took possession of her where she sat in the drawing-room, as it were amid the scattered fragments of the ex-member (he still, among the ladies, emitted a feeble radiance).  Miss Proctor had always approved of Anne.  If Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not in the least provincial.  She was something by herself, superior and rare.  A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her husband’s admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her.

“My dear,” said Miss Proctor, “I congratulate you.  He’s brilliant, he’s charming, he’s unique.  Why didn’t we know of him before?  Where has he been hiding his talents all this time?”

(A talent that had not bloomed in Thurston Square was a talent pitiably wasted.)

Anne smiled a blanched, perfunctory smile.  Ah, where had he been hiding himself, indeed?