Her father--for Dudley Venner was her father--looked like a man of
culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one
whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. He saluted hardly
anybody except his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to
look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural
enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak
of the dark girl's that brought him there, for he had the air of a shy
and sad-hearted recluse.
It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner to the party.
Hardly anybody seemed to know her, and she seemed not at all disposed
to make acquaintances. Here and there was one of the older girls from
the Institute, but she appeared to have nothing in common with them.
Even in the school-room, it may be remembered, she sat apart by her own
choice, and now in the midst of the crowd she made a circle of
isolation round herself. Drawing her arm out of her father's, she stood
against the wall, and looked, with a strange, cold glitter in her eyes,
at the crowd which moved and babbled before her.
The old Doctor came up to her by-and-by.
"Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you here.
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