Mr. Cutbill only arrived as they took their places, and slunk into a seat beside Jack, whom, of all the company, he judged would be the person he could feel most at ease with.
“What a fop!” whispered Jack, with a glance at the peer.
“Is n't he an old humbug?” muttered Cutbill. “Do you know how he managed to appear in so short a time? We stopped two hours at a little inn on the road while he made his toilette; and the whole get-up—paint and padding and all—was done then. The great fur pelisse, in which he made his entrance into the drawing-room, removed, he was in full dinner-dress underneath. He's the best actor living.”
“Have you known him long?”
“Oh, yes! I know all of them,” said he, with a little gesture of his hand: “that is, they take devilish good care to know me.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Jack, in the tone which seemed to ask for some explanation.
“You see, here's how it is,” said Cutbill, as he bent over his plate and talked in a tone cautiously subdued: “All those swells—especially that generation yonder—are pretty nigh aground. They have been living for forty or fifty years at something like five times their income; and if it had n't been for this sudden rush of prosperity in England, caused by railroads, mines, quarries, or the like, these fellows would have been swept clean away. He 's watching me now. I 'll go on by-and-by. Have you any good hunting down here, Colonel Bramleigh?” asked he of the host, who sat half hid by a massive centrepiece.
“You 'll have to ask my sons what it's like; and I take it they 'll give you a mount too.”
“With pleasure, Mr. Cutbill,” cried Augustus. “If we have no frost, we'll show you some sport on Monday next.”
“Delighted,—I like hunting of all things.”