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114 TO THE LIGHTHOUSEthere. Mrs Ramsay, who had been uneasy, waitingfor Paul and Minta to come in, and unable, she felt,to settle to things, now felt her uneasiness changedto expectation. For now they must come, and LilyBriscoe, trying to analyse the cause of the suddenexhilaration, compared it with that moment on thetennis lawn, when solidity suddenly vanished, andsuch vast spaces lay between them; and now the sameeffect was got by the many candles in the sparelyfurnished room, and the uncurtained windows, andthe bright mask-like look of faces seen by candle-light. Some weight was taken off them; anythingmight happen, she felt. They must come now, MrsRamsay thought, looking at the door, and at thatinstant, Minta Doyle, Paul Rayley, and a maidcarrying a great dish in her hands came in together.They were awfully late; they were horribly late,Minta said, as they found their way to different endsof the table.

‘I lost my brooch—my grandmother’s brooch,'said Minta with a sound of lamentation in her voice,and a suffusion in her large brown eyes, lookingdown, looking up, as she sat by Mr Ramsay, whichroused his chivalry so that he bantered her.

How could she be such a goose, he asked, as toscramble about the rocks in jewels?

She was by way of being terrified of him—he wasso fearfully clever, and the first night when she hadsat by him, and he talked about George Eliot, shehad been really frightened, for she had left the thirdvolume of Middlemarch in the train and she neverknew what happened in the end; but afterwards shegot on perfectly, and made herself out even more