Upon this Lucy, who though she had been so painfully bashful during her meeting with Mr. Clifford, felt no overpowering diffidence in the presence of so much greater a person, replied laughingly, and the earl rejoined by a second compliment. Conversation was now no longer an effort; and Mauleverer, the most consummate of epicures, whom even royalty trembled to ask without preparation, on being invited by the unconscious squire to partake of the family dinner, eagerly accepted the invitation. It was long since the knightly walls of Warlock had been honoured by the presence of a guest so courtly. The good squire heaped his plate with a profusion of boiled beef; and while the poor earl was contemplating in dismay the Alps upon Alps which he was expected to devour, the gray-headed butler, anxious to serve him with alacrity, whipped away the overloaded plate, and presently returned it, yet more astoundingly surcharged with an additional world of a composition of stony colour and sudorific aspect, which, after examining in mute attention for some moments, and carefully removing as well as he was able to the extreme edge of his plate, the earl discovered to be suet pudding.
“You eat nothing, my lord,” cried the squire; “let me give you—this is more underdone;” holding between blade and fork in middle air abhorrent fragment of scarlet, shaking its gory locks,—“another slice.”
Swift at the word dropped upon Mauleverer's plate the harpy finger and ruthless thumb of the gray-headed butler. “Not a morsel more,” cried the earl, struggling with the murderous domestic. “My dear sir, excuse me; I assure you I have never ate such a dinner before,—never!”
“Nay, now!” quoth the squire, expostulating, “you really (and this air is so keen that your lordship should indulge your appetite, if you follow the physician's advice) eat nothing!”
Again Mauleverer was at fault.
“The physicians are right, Mr. Brandon,” said he, “very right, and I am forced to live abstemiously; indeed I do not know whether, if I were to exceed at your hospitable table, and attack all that you would bestow upon me, I should ever recover it. You would have to seek a new lieutenant for your charming county, and on the tomb of the last Mauleverer the hypocritical and unrelated heir would inscribe, 'Died of the visitation of Beef, John, Earl, etc.'”
Plain as the meaning of this speech might have seemed to others, the squire only laughed at the effeminate appetite of the speaker, and inclined to think him an excellent fellow for jesting so good-humouredly on his own physical infirmity. But Lucy had the tact of her sex, and, taking pity on the earl's calamitous situation, though she certainly never guessed at its extent, entered with so much grace and ease into the conversation which he sought to establish between them, that Mauleverer's gentleman, who had hitherto been pushed aside by the zeal of the gray-headed butler, found an opportunity, when the squire was laughing and the butler staring, to steal away the overburdened plate unsuspected and unseen.
In spite, however, of these evils of board and lodgement, Mauleverer was exceedingly well pleased with his visit; nor did he terminate it till the shades of night had begun to close, and the distance from his own residence conspired with experience to remind him that it was possible for a highwayman's audacity to attack the equipage even of Lord Mauleverer. He then reluctantly re-entered his carriage, and, bidding the postilions drive as fast as possible, wrapped himself in his roquelaire, and divided his thoughts between Lucy Brandon and the homard au gratin with which he proposed to console him self immediately on his return home. However, Fate, which mocks our most cherished hopes, ordained that on arriving at Mauleverer Park the owner should be suddenly afflicted with a loss of appetite, a coldness in the limbs, a pain in the chest, and various other ungracious symptoms of portending malady. Lord Mauleverer went straight to bed; he remained there for some days, and when he recovered his physicians ordered him to Bath. The Whig Methodists, who hated him, ascribed his illness to Providence; and his lordship was firmly of opinion that it should be ascribed to the beef and pudding. However this be, there was an end, for the present, to the hopes of young ladies of forty, and to the intended festivities at Mauleverer Park.
“Good heavens!” said the earl, as his carriage wheels turned from his gates, “what a loss to country tradesmen may be occasioned by a piece of underdone beef, especially if it be boiled!”
About a fortnight had elapsed since Mauleverer's meteoric visit to Warlock House, when the squire received from his brother the following epistle:—