So said her ladyship to her aristocratic friends living in pinched circumstances in the private apartments; and it may or may not have been intended for a hint not to try and borrow money.
“One would like to be charitable and to give largely, but what with one’s household expenses and the horses and carriages, and my month in town in the height of the season, I really sometimes find myself obliged to ask his late lordship’s agent for a few hundreds in advance of the time when the rents are due. But then, you see, one owes so much to one’s position.”
The Honourable Misses Dymcox said one certainly did; Lady Anna Maria Morton, who had been longing for a new silk evening dress for three years, said the same; and, thoroughly feeling it to be a fact, Lady Littletown tried to pay honourably what she owed to society by rigidly living up to the last penny of her fairly handsome income in the pleasant mansion near Hampton Court.
She gave about four dinner-parties in the course of the year, and afterwards received.
This was one of her special parties for a special purpose, and when the last of her fifteen guests had arrived and been looked at through her great gold eyeglass held with the left hand, while the tips of the fingers of the right were given in assurance of her being “so delighted,” her ladyship proceeded to marshal her forces for the procession to the dining-room.
“Here’s what it is to be a lone widow!” she exclaimed playfully. “Moorpark, might I ask you to take the foot of the table?—Miss Marie Riversley.”
Lord Henry had murmured to himself a good deal about being dragged down all the way from Saint James’s Square to Hampton just at a time when his heart told him that he ought to be married, and though terribly dissatisfied with the success which had attended his attentions to Gertrude Millet, his brain was full of her bright, refined features. He, however, now advanced, quite the handsome, stately gentleman, with a pleasant, benevolent look upon his thin face, and at once entered into conversation with the dark beauty to whom he had been introduced.
“Mr Elbraham,” continued Lady Littletown, in a confidential whisper, as she inspected him as if he were for sale, “would you oblige me?—Miss Dymcox’s niece.”
The reputed millionaire started, and a scowl began to dawn in his face, for the name Dymcox brought up the faces of the honourable sisters; but as he was led to dark, glowing, southern-faced Clotilde, the scowl reached no farther than its dawn, and the ruddy sun of his coarse round face rose out of the fog, and beamed its satisfaction upon the handsome girl.
“Oh, I say, Glen, what a shame!” whispered little Dick Millet to his chosen companion, who, consequent upon his being an officer and the friend of dear Lady Millet’s son, had been invited, like his major, to the feast.