Explore "Stolen Idols" by E. Phillips Oppenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If at times Mr. Endacott seemed a little out of his milieu at Ballaston Hall that evening, Claire, on the other hand, was an instantaneous and gorgeous success. In the Jacobean banquetting hall where she sat at her host's right hand, her fresh, girlish beauty, with its additional charm of a constant and piquant enthusiasm, seemed in exquisite contrast to her majestic but gloomy surroundings; the great, dimly lit room, the stately rows of oil paintings, the cumbersome but magnificent furniture, impressive not because of any intrinsic art of selection, but because it was true to its period and had grown old with the house.
Sir Bertram, whose attentions to the other sex, apart from times of necessity, had become rarer with the years, was, before the evening was over, proving himself not only a courteous, but even a devoted host, and Henry, who voluntarily never addressed a woman at all, actually waited for opportunities to attempt conversation in his old-fashioned, Thackerayan, but courtly fashion. Gregory watched her success with complacent amusement, content with temporary effacement, and resigned himself to the entertainment of her uncle.