Mrs. Roby had a husband, but Mr. Roby had not been asked to dine in the Square on this occasion. Mrs. Roby dined in the Square very often, but Mr. Roby very seldom,—not probably above once a year, on some special occasion. He and Mr. Wharton had married sisters, but they were quite unlike in character and had never become friends. Mrs. Wharton had been nearly twenty years younger than her husband; Mrs. Roby had been six or seven years younger than her sister; and Mr. Roby was a year or two younger than his wife. The two men therefore belonged to different periods of life, Mr. Roby at the present time being a florid youth of forty. He had a moderate fortune, inherited from his mother, of which he was sufficiently careful; but he loved races, and read sporting papers; he was addicted to hunting and billiards; he shot pigeons, and,—so Mr. Wharton had declared calumniously more than once to an intimate friend,—had not an H in his vocabulary. The poor man did drop an aspirate now and again; but he knew his defect and strove hard, and with fair average success, to overcome it. But Mr. Wharton did not love him, and they were not friends. Perhaps neither did Mrs. Roby love him very ardently. She was at any rate almost always willing to leave her own house to come to the Square, and on such occasions Mr. Roby was always willing to dine at the Nimrod, the club which it delighted him to frequent.
Mr. Wharton, on entering his own house, met his son on the staircase. "Do you dine at home to-day, Everett?"
"Well, sir; no, sir. I don't think I do. I think I half promised to dine with a fellow at the club."
"Don't you think you'd make things meet more easily about the end of the year if you dined oftener here, where you have nothing to pay, and less frequently at the club, where you pay for everything?"
"But what I should save you would lose, sir. That's the way I look at it."
"Then I advise you to look at it the other way, and leave me to take care of myself. Come in here, I want to speak to you." Everett followed his father into a dingy back parlour, which was fitted up with book shelves and was generally called the study, but which was gloomy and comfortless because it was seldom used. "I have had your friend Lopez with me at my chambers to-day. I don't like your friend Lopez."
"I am sorry for that, sir."
"He is a man as to whom I should wish to have a good deal of evidence before I would trust him to be what he seems to be. I dare say he's clever."
"I think he's more than clever."
"I dare say;—and well instructed in some respects."