“You will find Ascot far more amusing.”
“Let me warn you,” said Lucian to Alice, “that my cousin’s pet caprice is to affect a distaste for art, to which she is passionately devoted; and for literature, in which she is profoundly read.”
“Cousin Lucian,” said Lydia, “should you ever be cut off from your politics, and disappointed in your ambition, you will have an opportunity of living upon art and literature. Then I shall respect your opinion of their satisfactoriness as a staff of life. As yet you have only tried them as a sauce.”
“Discontented, as usual,” said Lucian.
“Your one idea respecting me, as usual,” replied Lydia, patiently, as they entered the station.
The train, consisting of three carriages and a van, was waiting at the platform. The engine was humming subduedly, and the driver and fireman were leaning out; the latter, a young man, eagerly watching two gentlemen who were standing before the first-class carriage, and the driver sharing his curiosity in an elderly, preoccupied manner. One of the persons thus observed was a slight, fair-haired man of about twenty-five, in the afternoon costume of a metropolitan dandy. Lydia knew the other the moment she came upon the platform as the Hermes of the day before, modernized by a straw hat, a canary-colored scarf, and a suit of a minute black-and-white chess-board pattern, with a crimson silk handkerchief overflowing the breast pocket of the coat. His hands were unencumbered by stick or umbrella; he carried himself smartly, balancing himself so accurately that he seemed to have no weight; and his expression was self-satisfied and good-humored. But—! Lydia felt that there was a “but” somewhere—that he must be something more than a handsome, powerful, and light-hearted young man.
“There is Lord Worthington,” she said, indicating the slight gentleman. “Surely that cannot be his invalid friend with him?”
“That is the man that lives at the Warren,” said Alice. “I know his appearance.”
“Which is certainly not suggestive of a valetudinarian,” remarked Lucian, looking hard at the stranger.
They had now come close to the two, and could hear Lord Worthington, as he prepared to enter the carriage, saying, “Take care of yourself, like a good fellow, won’t you? Remember! if it lasts a second over the fifteen minutes, I shall drop five hundred pounds.”