“Oh, yes; certainly; I am the most vulgar of all wretches in that respect. I do love to set people eating and drinking.—Mr. Supplehouse, I am delighted to see you; but do tell me—” and then she whispered with great energy into the ear of Mr. Supplehouse, and Mr. Supplehouse again whispered into her ear. “You think he will, then?” said Miss Dunstable.
Mr. Supplehouse assented; he did think so; but he had no warrant for stating the circumstance as a fact. And then he passed on, hardly looking at Mrs. Harold Smith as he passed.
“What a hang-dog countenance he has,” said that lady.
“Ah! you’re prejudiced, my dear, and no wonder; as for myself I always liked Supplehouse. He means mischief; but then mischief is his trade, and he does not conceal it. If I were a politician I should as soon think of being angry with Mr. Supplehouse for turning against me as I am now with a pin for pricking me. It’s my own awkwardness, and I ought to have known how to use the pin more craftily.”
“But you must detest a man who professes to stand by his party, and then does his best to ruin it.”
“So many have done that, my dear; and with much more success than Mr. Supplehouse! All is fair in love and war,—why not add politics to the list? If we could only agree to do that, it would save us from such a deal of heartburning, and would make none of us a bit the worse.”
Miss Dunstable’s rooms, large as they were—“a noble suite of rooms certainly, though perhaps a little too—too—too scattered, we will say, eh, bishop?”—were now nearly full, and would have been inconveniently crowded, were it not that many who came only remained for half-an-hour or so. Space, however, had been kept for the dancers—much to Mrs. Proudie’s consternation. Not that she disapproved of dancing in London, as a rule; but she was indignant that the laws of a conversazione, as re-established by herself in the fashionable world, should be so violently infringed.
“Conversaziones will come to mean nothing,” she said to the bishop, putting great stress on the latter word, “nothing at all, if they are to be treated in this way.”
“No, they won’t; nothing in the least,” said the bishop.
“Dancing may be very well in its place,” said Mrs. Proudie.