'I can't understand it; for my part,' said Mrs. Chadwick, 'I don't believe I should be alive if I did not have a drive every day, and I was just looking forward to Scotland to revive me. However, I daresay we shall do tolerably well; there are sure to be some people left in town, and we shall be more thrown together with them than is possible when all the world has to be attended to. It is time to dress now, dear; and will you please make yourself look particularly nice?'
'Why?' asked Eleanor.
'For my sake,' said Fanny. Then stepping to her sister she said, in what she intended to be an arch voice, but what was really a somewhat angular manner, 'Spiridion Pratt is coming to dinner.'
[CHAPTER VI.]
A LITTLE DINNER.
Mrs. Chadwick was in the drawing-room when Eleanor came down, and looked up as her sister entered the room to see whether Eleanor had adopted her suggestion as to her dress. A plain black-silk gown with simple muslin frilling such as Eleanor wore was not much to Mrs. Chadwick's taste, for it was her custom to attire herself in bright colours made in the extremest fashion, and to wear about her head and shoulders so many flowers and trinkets as to make her look like a combination of a florist's shop and a jeweller's window. This was done partly in accordance with her own rather vulgar taste, and partly out of desire to please Mr. Chadwick, who, all generous as he was, liked to see what he called 'his money's worth.' For this reason, though a great patron of art, he never bought specimens of the old masters, arguing that there was 'nothing to look at in them;' never gave still champagne; and on the occasion of his entertainments liked to have as few of the blinds drawn as possible, in order that the outside world might see what was going on. But Mrs. Chadwick, who was in no way jealous of her sister, could not help admitting to herself that she had never seen Eleanor more to advantage; and the gentleman who was sitting by her roused up at once from the somewhat indolent manner in which he had been carrying on conversation and awoke to life. A somewhat romantic-looking gentleman this--rather like a Velasquez portrait--with long dark hair parted in the middle and taken off behind the ears, dark eyes, regular features, peaked beard, and sallow complexion. He wore tiny mosaic studs in his shirt, and a large antique cameo on his little finger; had the finest line of coral links for a watch-chain; and during his talk with Mrs. Chadwick had been engaged in contemplating with great admiration his little feet, which were incased in black-silk socks and shoes with silver buckles. This was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, who rose to greet Miss Irvine, and to express his delight at finding her still in town.
'I was just saying to Mrs. Chadwick,' he murmured, 'that, delighted as I have always been to find myself a guest at this house, I never found it so delightful as now, when it is positively an oasis in this desert of London.'
'We may think ourselves lucky in securing you, Mr. Pratt,' said Eleanor. 'I should have thought that you, who are so essentially a portion of the world, would have been with the world.'
'Where should I go to, my dear Miss Irvine?' said Spiridion plaintively. 'To Goodwood, to sit on the burnt lawn in a broiling sun, with a hundred wretches bawling their wagers in my ears; to Cowes, to sit on the damp deck of a yacht with my knees up to my chin, to have to move perpetually while the men shift their horrible sails, and to get my fingers covered with pitch and tar? That's what the world is doing just now, I believe, and I confess it has no attraction in my eyes.'
'Mrs. Hamblin is still in town, is she not?' asked Mrs. Chadwick, looking fixedly at him.