Page:Gissing - The Emancipated, vol. I, 1890.djvu/79

Rh herself observed by strangers. The remaining persons were an English family, a mother and three daughters, their name Denver. These ladies were no less a source of contemptuous astonishment to Mrs. Bradshaw than the shameless Germans, for reasons which will be manifest when I have described the family.

Mrs. Denyer was florid, vivacious, and of a certain size. She had seen much of the world, and prided herself on cosmopolitanism; the one thing with which she could not dispense was intellectual society. This would be her second winter at Naples, but she gave her acquaintances to understand that Italy was by no means the country of her choice; she preferred the northern latitudes, because there the intellectual atmosphere was more bracing. But for her daughters' sake she abode here: "You know, my girls adore Italy."

Of these young ladies, the two elder—Barbara and Madeline were their seductive names—had good looks. Barbara, perhaps