He gave good dinners—too good, it was whispered; too many covers, too many wines, with too much plate, and too many servants.
“It’s a pity,” remarked Lord Carfield to the squire, as they walked home after one of Mr. Bartley’s dinners, “that there is no one to caution these parvenus against overdoing it. Give you my word, Vanley, I felt all the evening as if I were dining at one of those new hotels in London, where they give you twelve courses, served in a gaudy room, all gilt and white paint, and play music at you all the time. I suppose you have twice as much plate? I have some”—the Carfield plate was the boast of that part of Devonshire—“but we never think of making a silversmith’s counter of our dinner-table every time we ask a neighbor to dinner.”
“He means well,” said the squire.
“Just so,” said the old lord. “That makes it all the worse. It’s a hopeless case.”
They were near neighbors, and an intimacy sprang up between Mr. Bartley Bradstone, the millionaire, and the Squire of Hawkwood. The young man would ride over—on a long park horse, which he rode abominably!—to the Grange in the morning, and was often easily persuaded to stop to lunch. Sometimes he would remain to dinner, a servant being sent to The Maples for Mr. Bradstone’s evening clothes. Miss Amelia quite liked him, and the squire, as has been said, was intimate with him; but he made no way with Olivia. From the first moment she had seen him, when her frank eyes had rested upon his restless, shifting ones, she had kept him at a distance, so to speak.
If her father had brought home the village sweep to dinner, she would have treated him courteously and extended a welcome to him; and that is all she did to Bartley Bradstone. While he——! He was as much in love with Olivia Vanley as utterly selfish man can be, and he had sworn to himself that he would have her. Now, Bartley Bradstone, though he was not a gentleman, though he overdressed, gave too elaborate dinners, and made occasional mistakes in etiquette, was both rich and clever. The man who had bought him for a fool would have lost his money. Olivia, who despised him, was wrong in doing so. She should have been on her guard and—feared him. All the while Mr. Sparrow was repeating his story to Mr. Vanley, Bartley Bradstone was talking in an undertone to her.
“It’s just a simple picnic, a rough affair, but I’ll promise you shan’t be bored, Miss Vanley,” he said. “The squire is coming, and he told me—that is, he said I might ask you. I hope you will come. Lord Carfield is coming, and has promised to bring his son, Viscount Granville. Lord Granville arrives at his father’s to-night. You know him—the viscount, I mean?”
“Bertie Granville? Oh, yes. ‘The Cherub,’ as he is called.”
“That’s the man,” said Bartley Bradstone, with a faint flush. He would not have dared to call him “Bertie” or “The Cherub.” “Well, he is coming, and I hope to persuade Miss Amelia, too. But the whole thing will be spoilt if you refuse.”
Olivia looked at him from under her lids—the look which makes a man—that is, if he has a sensitive skin—feel as if he had been struck by a whip. “I don’t quite see how my absence could spoil your picnic, Mr. Bradstone,” she said, coldly.