“How came that brute there?” he exclaimed to the servants, who officiously crowded around him with proffers of assistance, which were impatiently rejected by their master. “How came that brute there?” he angrily repeated, looking indignantly at the animal which had drawn Dr. Bardon’s humble conveyance, and which was now quietly feeding in the luxuriant pasture of the park.
“Please you, my lord, visitors to see her ladyship came in that chaise,” replied a footman, scarcely able to suppress a smile.
“Visitors!” said the earl sharply; “the milliner or the dressmaker, I suppose. Tell Mills at the lodge never again to suffer such a thing to enter the gate;” and without troubling himself with further investigation, the nobleman entered into his house. As he did so, he turned to his butler—“Let covers be laid for three,” he said, in a tone of command; “and give the housekeeper notice that the Duke of Montleroy is likely to be here at luncheon.”
“Covers are laid already for four, by her ladyship’s order,” said the butler.
“Indeed! what guests are expected?” asked the earl.
“The lady and gentleman, my lord, who came in the chaise, and who are now in the drawing-room,” was the reply.
The earl stalked into the library in a state, not only of high irritation and annoyance, but also of considerable perplexity. Annabella had never before appeared to him so utterly regardless of his wishes and feelings, so completely destitute of a sense of what was due to her position. To invite low people—for such, he thought, that her guests assuredly must be—to share her meal, to be introduced to her husband, it was an offence scarcely to be forgiven! And what was to be done on the present occasion? Dashleigh had, on that morning, casually met and invited a duke! It would be impossible to insult a man of his quality by making him sit at the same table with such canaille! The idea of such a breach of etiquette was abhorrent to the feelings of the aristocrat, and yet, how was the reality to be avoided? Annabella had invited her own friends, and the earl was too much of a gentleman to be willing to commit any decided breach of courtesy towards his wife’s guests, even though they might have come in a donkey conveyance.
We talk of the petty miseries of pride; to Dashleigh the misery was not petty. It was with feelings of serious annoyance that he rang his library bell, and bade the servant who answered it request his lady to speak with the earl directly.
The message was carried to Annabella while she was pursuing with the doctor a playful argument on some literary question.
“Is the earl aware that I am engaged with guests?” asked the incautious countess.