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 a party have been ill-mixed. Mr. Wharton had not even heard of the new 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 his 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 racecourse 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 hot 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.