“Very gratifying intelligence, I must say. Did you hear that, my Lord?”
“Yes, I heard it, and I have placed it in my mind in the same category as her Crimean news.”
“Can she inform us when we are to get away?” asked her Ladyship.
“She mentioned to-morrow evening as the time, my Lady,” said the doctor, calmly.
A faint laugh of derisive meaning was Lady Lackington's only reply; and the doctor gravely remarked: “There is more in these things than we like to credit; perhaps our very sense of inferiority in presence of such prediction is a bar to our belief. We do not willingly lend ourselves to a theory which at once excludes us from the elect of prophecy.”
“Could she tell us who'll win the Derby?” said Spicer, joining the colloquy. But a glance from her Ladyship at once recalled him from the indiscreet familiarity.
“Do you think she could pronounce whose is the arrival that makes such a clatter outside?” said Lord Lackington, as a tremendous chorus of whip-cracking announced the advent of something very important; and the doctor hurried off to receive the visitor. Already a large travelling-carriage, drawn by eight horses, and followed by a “fourgon” with four, had drawn up before the great entrance, and a courier, gold-banded and whiskered, and carrying a most imposingly swollen money-bag, was ringing stoutly for admittance. When Dr. Lanfranchi had exchanged a few words with the courier, he approached the window of the carriage, and, bowing courteously, proceeded to welcome the traveller.
“Your apartments have been ready since the sixteenth, sir; and we hoped each day to have seen you arrive.”
“Have your visitors all gone?” asked the stranger, in a low quiet tone.
“No, sir; the fine weather has induced many to prolong their stay. We have the Princess Labanoff, Lord Lackington, the Countess Grembinski, the Duke of Terra di Monte, the Lady Grace—”