“Why, it appeared to me that they were up all night.”
“They broke up at four, sir, and except two gentlemen that are gone over to Westport on business, but to be back for dinner, they're all mounted to-day.”
“And what is the dinner-hour, Linwood?”
“Six, sir, to the minute.”
“And it's now only eleven,” said Forester to himself, with a wearied sigh; “how am I to get through the rest of the day? Are the ladies in the drawing-room, Linwood?”
“Ladies! no, sir; there are no ladies in the house as I hear of.”
“So much the better, then,” thought his master; “passive endurance is better any day than active boredom, and with all respect for Lady Eleanor and her daughter, I 'd rather believe them such as Lionel paints them, than have the less flattering impression nearer acquaintance would as certainly leave behind it.”
“The old butler wishes to know if you will breakfast in the library, sir?” asked Linwood.
“Yes, that will do admirably; delighted I am to hear there is such a thing here,” muttered he; for already he had suffered the disappointment the host's appearance had caused him to tinge all his thoughts with bitterness, and make him regard his visit as an act of purgatorial endurance.
In a large and well-furnished library, with a projecting window offering a view over the entire of Clue Bay, Forester found a small breakfast-table laid beside the fireplace. From the aspect of comfort in everything around, to the elegance of the little service of Dresden, with its accompaniment of ancient silver, the most fastidious critic would not have withheld his praise, and the young Englishman fell into a puzzled revery how so much of taste for the refinements of daily life could consort with the strange specimen of society he had witnessed the preceding evening. The book-shelves, too, in all their later acquisitions, exhibited judgment in the works selected, and as Forester ran his eye over the titles, he was more than ever at fault to reconcile such readings with such habits. On the tables lay scattered the latest of those political pamphlets which the great contested question of the day evoked, many of them ably and powerfully written, and abounding in strong sarcasm; of these, the greater number were attacks on the meditated Union; some of them, too, bore pencil-marks and annotations, from which Forester collected that the Knight's party leanings were by no means to the Government side of the question.