“They’re only lieutenant-colonels, are they, my love?” inquired Lady Lombard doubtingly.
“Oh! my dear Lady Lombard, surely you must recollect he has been a full colonel, by purchase, these five years, vice Rawbone Featherbed, who sold out and married an heiress—at least,” murmured Innocence, remembering herself, or rather her part, “she was said to be very rich; but of course it must have been a love-match. I cannot believe people are so—so horrid as to marry from any other motive.”
“Well, then, we’d better ask the Dackerels. Miss Arundel, my love, will you request the pleasure of Colonel and Mrs. Dackerel’s company—with one R, my dear—at seven o’clock. That shy son with the long legs, I suppose we need not ask him, my dear?”
“He’s lately come into a large Yorkshire property from an uncle on the mother’s side and has taken the surname of Dace, and perhaps, as he’s so shy, he might feel hurt at not being asked. I feel such sympathy with shyness, you know; besides, somebody said he was an author,” rejoined Susanna, dropping her eyelids and looking as unconscious and disinterested as if John Dace Dackerel Dace, Esq., barrister-at-law, still depended upon that ghost of nothing, his professional income, instead of the rent-roll of the manor of Roachpool, in the West Riding.
“If they come they’ll make—let me see,” mused Lady Lombard; “what did I say the Fitzsimmons’s were? Yes, twelve; well, then, they’ll make fifteen, and the table only holds three more, and that tiresome Mr. De Grandeville hasn’t sent an answer yet, and I shall be so disappointed if he does not come, for he knows everybody and moves in such high society, and is such a tall, noble, military-looking creature.”
This eulogium recalling, probably by contrast (seeing that the lamented Brahmin had been remarkably small of his age all through his boyhood, and never outgrown it afterwards), sad recollections of the fair Susanna’s killed and wounded, produced a little embroidered handkerchief which just held the two tears its owner felt called upon to shed on such occasions. The memory of the victim had, however, been so often before embalmed by pearly drops in her presence that Lady Lombard had grown rather callous on the subject, and she abruptly invaded the sanctity of grief by exclaiming—
“It lies between the Lombard Browns and the Horace Hiccirys, my dear. The Hiccirys live in better style, I know: Mrs. Hicciry was to have been presented at Court last year, only little Curatius chose to be born instead—the most lovely child! But the Lombard Browns are godsons, at least he is, of poor dear Sir Pinchbeck’s, and they’ve not dined here this season.”
“I think, dear Lady Lombard, if I might venture to advise, the Horace Hiccirys would do best. Mrs. General Gudgeon would get on so well with Mrs. Hicciry, I’m sure; and I’m afraid Mrs. Dackerel,—you know she’s very clever, writes poetry, those sweet things in the Bijou—all clever people are sarcastic, you know,—I’m afraid Mrs. Dackerel might laugh at poor dear Mr. Lombard Brown’s little eccentricity about his H’s.”
“Ah, yes, that’s true,” returned Lady Lombard; “yes, I forgot his H’s.”
“As he probably does himself,” whispered Mrs. Arundel aside to Rose.