In the smoking-room or at the supper-table he crushed
conversation flat as a steam-roller crushes a road. He was quite
irresistible. Trite anecdotes were sandwiched between aphorisms of the
copybook; and whether anecdote or aphorism, all was delivered with the
air of a man surprised by his own profundity. If you waited long enough,
you had no longer the will power to run away, you sat caught in a web of
sheer dulness. Only those, however, who did not know him waited long
enough; the rest of his fellow-members at his appearance straightway
rose and fled.
It happened, therefore, that within half an hour of his entrance to his
club, he usually had one large corner of the room entirely to himself;
and that particular corner up to the moment of his entrance had been the
most frequented. For he made it a rule to choose the largest group as
his audience. He was sitting in this solitary state one afternoon early
in October, when the waiter approached him and handed to him a card.
Captain Willoughby took it with alacrity, for he desired company, and
his acquaintances had all left the club to fulfil the most pressing and
imperative engagements. But as he read the card his countenance fell.
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