“Mr. Grey, indeed!” muttered Vivian: “Sir, I never drink anything but brandy.”
“Allow me to give you some champagne, Miss,” resumed Boreall, as he attacked the modest Miss Macdonald: “champagne, you know,” continued he, with a smile of agonising courtesy, “is quite the lady’s wine.”
“Cynthia Courtown,” whispered Vivian with a sepulchral voice, “‘tis all over with me: I have been thinking what would come next. This is too much: I am already dead. Have Boreall arrested; the chain of circumstantial evidence is very strong.”
“Baker!” said Vivian, turning to a servant, “go and inquire if Mr. Stapylton Toad dines at the Castle to-day.”
A flourish of trumpets announced the rise of the Marchioness of Carabas, and in a few minutes the most ornamental portion of the guests had disappeared. The gentlemen made a general “move up,” and Vivian found himself opposite his friend, Mr. Hargrave.
“Ah! Mr. Hargrave, how d’ye do? What do you think of the Secretary’s state paper?”
“A magnificent composition, and quite unanswerable. I was just speaking of it to my friend here, Mr. Metternich Scribe. Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Metternich Scribe.”
“Mr. Metternich Scribe, Mr. Vivian Grey!” and here Mr. Hargrave introduced Vivian to an effeminate-looking, perfumed young man, with a handsome, unmeaning face and very white hands; in short, as dapper a little diplomatist as ever tattled about the Congress of Verona, smirked at Lady Almack’s supper after the Opera, or vowed “that Richmond Terrace was a most convenient situation for official men.”
“We have had it with us some time before the public received it,” said the future under-secretary, with a look at once condescending and conceited.
“Have you?” said Vivian: “well, it does your office credit. It is a singular thing that Canning and Croker are the only official men who can write grammar.”