“Oh, you almost killed me with laughter. I had to hold on by the crutch of my saddle to save myself from falling into the pond.”
“And I hear you made a sketch of me.”
“Have you not seen it? I declare I thought I had shown it to you; but I will after dinner if I can find it.”
The dinner was announced at this moment, and they proceeded to the dining-room.
“Taste is everything,” said Cutbill, as he unfolded his napkin, and surveyed the table, decked out with fruit and flowers with a degree of artistic elegance that appealed even to him. “Taste is everything. I declare to you that Howell and James would pay fifty pounds down just for that urn as it stands there. How you twined those lilies around it in that way is quite beyond me.”
As the dinner went on, he was in ecstasy with everything.
“Don't part with your cook, even after they make a bishop of you,” said he. “I don't know the French name of that dish, but I believe it's a stewed hare. Might I send my plate twice?”
“Mr. Cutbill saw the Bramleighs at Como, Julia,” said L'Estrange, to take him, if possible, off the subject of the entertainment.
“I did, indeed. I met them at that very hotel that was once Queen Caroline's house. There they were diverting themselves,—boating and going about just as if the world had gone all right with them; and Bramleigh told me one morning that he had cashed the last check for fifty pounds.”
“And is he really determined to touch nothing of his property till the law assures him that his right is undeniable?”