'I should think it is.I gave 100s for it before the war.His lordship's got a fit of the gout coming, I suppose.'
But Sir Damask was engaged with his neighbour Lady Eustace.'Of all things I should so like to see a pigeon match,' said Lady Eustace.'I have heard about them all my life.Only I suppose it isn't quite proper for a lady.'
'Oh, dear, yes.'
'The darling little pigeons! They do sometimes escape, don't they? I hope they escape sometimes.I'll go any day you'll make up a party,--if Lady Monogram will join us.' Sir Damask said that he would arrange it, making up his mind, however, at the same time, that this last stipulation, if insisted on, would make the thing impracticable.
Roby the ministerialist, sitting at the end of the table between his sister-in-law and Mrs Happerton, was very confidential respecting the Government and parliamentary affairs in general.
'Yes, indeed;--of course it's a coalition, but I don't see why we shouldn't go on very well.As to the Duke, I've always had the greatest possible respect for him.The truth is, there's nothing special to be done at the present moment, and there's no reason why we shouldn't agree and divide the good things between us.The Duke has got some craze of his own about decimal coinage.He'll amuse himself with that; but it won't come to anything, and it won't hurt us.'
'Isn't the Duchess giving a great many parties?' asked Mrs Happerton.
'Well;---yes.That kind of thing used to be done in old Lady Brock's time, and the Duchess is repeating it.There's no end to their money, you know.But it's rather a bore for the persons who have to go.' The ministerial Roby knew well how he would make his sister-in-law's mouth water by such an allusion, as this to the great privilege of entering the Prime Minister's mansion in Carlton Terrace.
'I suppose you in the Government are always asked.'
'We are expected to go too, and are watched pretty close.Lady Glen, as we used to call her, has the eyes of Argus.And of course we who used to be on the other side are especially bound to pay her observance.'
'Don't you like the Duchess?' asked Mrs Happerton.
'Oh yes;--I like her very well.She's mad, you know,--mad as a hatter;--and no one can ever guess what freak may come next.
One always feels that she'll do something sooner or later that will startle all the world.'
'There was a queer story once,--wasn't there?' asked Mrs Dick.
'I never quite believed that,' said Roby.'It was something about some lover she had before she was married.She went off to Switzerland.But the Duke,--he was Mr Palliser then,--followed her very soon and it all came right.'
'When ladies are going to be duchesses, things do come right, don't they?'said Mrs Happerton.
On the other side of Mrs Happerton was Mr Wharton, quite unable to talk to his right-hand neighbour, the Secretary's wife.The elder Mrs Roby had not, indeed, much to say for herself, and he during the whole dinner was in misery.He had resolved that there should be no intimacy of any kind between his daughter and Ferdinand Lopez,--nothing more than the merest acquaintance, and there they were, talking together before his very eyes, with more evident signs of understanding each other than were exhibited by any other two persons at the table.And yet he had no just ground of complaint against either of them.If people dine together at the same house, it may of course happen that they shall sit next to each other.And if people sit next to each other at dinner, it is expected that they shall talk.Nobody could accuse Emily of flirting; but then she was a girl who under no circumstances would condescend to flirt.But she had declared boldly to her father that she loved this man, and there she was in close conversation with him! Would it not be better for him to give up any further trouble, and let her marry the man? She would certainly do so sooner or later.
When the ladies went upstairs that misery was over for a time, but Mr Wharton was still not happy.Dick came round and took his wife's chair so that he sat between the lord and his brother.
Lopez and Happerton fell into City conversation, and Sir Damask tried to amuse himself with Mr Wharton.But the task was hopeless,--as it always is when the elements of the party have been ill-mixed.Mr Wharton had not even heard of the Aldershot coach which Sir Damask had just started with Colonel Buskin and Sir Alfonso Blackbird.And when Sir Damask declared that he drove the coach up and down twice a week himself, Mr Wharton at any rate affected to believe that such a thing was impossible.
Then when Sir Damask gave him the opinion as to the cause of the failure of a certain horse at Northampton, Mr Wharton gave him no encouragement whatever.'I never was at a race-course in my life,' said the barrister.After that Sir Damask drank his wine in silence.
'You remember that claret, my lord?' said Dick, thinking that some little compensation was due to him for what had been said about the champagne.
But Lord Mongrober's dinner had not yet had the effect of mollifying the man sufficiently for Dick's purposes.'Oh, yes.
I remember the wine.You call it '57, don't you?'
'And it is '57;--'57, Leoville.'
'Very likely,--very likely.If it hadn't been heated before the fire--'
'It hasn't been near the fire,' said Dick.
'Or put into a decanter--'
'Nothing of the kind.'
'Or treated after some other damnable fashion, it would be very good wine, I dare say.'
'You are hard to please, my lord, to-day,' said Dick, who was put beyond his bearing.