Fragments reaching me in my seclusion indicated that the various conversations up and down the long table were animated; and at times some topic proved of such high interest as to engage the comment of the whole company.  This was the case when the age of one of the English king’s grandchildren came in question, but a subject which called for even longer (if less spirited) discourse concerned the shameful lack of standard on the part of citizens of the United States, or, as it was put, with no little exasperation, “What is the trouble with America?” Hereupon brightly gleamed the fat young man whom I had marked for a wit at Les Trois Pigeons; he pictured with inimitable mimicry a western senator lately in France.  This outcast, it appeared, had worn a slouch hat at a garden party and had otherwise betrayed his country to the ridicule of the intelligent.  “But really,” said the fat young man, turning plaintiff in conclusion, “imagine what such things make the English and the French think of us!” And it finally went by consent that the trouble with America was the vulgarity of our tourists.

“A dreadful lot!” Miss Elizabeth cheerfully summed up for them all.  “The miseries I undergo with that class of ‘prominent Amurricans’ who bring letters to my brother!  I remember one awful creature who said, when I came into the room, ’Well, ma’am, I guess you’re the lady of the house, aren’t you?’”

Miss Elizabeth sparkled through the chorus of laughter, but I remembered the “awful creature,” a genial and wise old man of affairs, whose daughter’s portrait George painted.  Miss Elizabeth had missed his point:  the canvasser’s phrase had been intended with humour, and even had it lacked that, it was not without a pretty quaintness.  So I thought, being “left to my own reflections,” which may have partaken of my own special kind of snobbery; at least I regretted the Elizabeth of the morning garden and the early walk along the fringe of the woods.  For she at my side to-night was another lady.

The banquet was drawing to a close when she leaned toward me and spoke in an undertone.  As this was the first sign, in so protracted a period, that I might ever again establish relations with the world of men, it came upon me like a Friday’s footprint, and in the moment of shock I did not catch what she said.

“Anne Elliott, yonder, is asking you a question,” she repeated, nodding at a very pretty gal down and across the table from me.  Miss Anne Elliott’s attractive voice had previously enabled me to recognise her as the young woman who had threatened to serenade Les Trois Pigeons.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, addressing her, and at the sound my obscurity was illuminated, about half of the company turning to look at me with wide-eyed surprise. (I spoke in an ordinary tone, it may need to be explained, and there is nothing remarkable about my voice).

“I hear you’re at Les Trois Pigeons,” said Miss Elliott.