"Hush, mamma," she replied, shutting her fan sharply; "confidences are unusual in you; and as for he you speak of, his appearance is quite enough to make one grow old."
Whether the countess would have checked this unseemly remark, which I could not help overhearing with joy, I know not, for at that moment the roar of the dinner-gong was heard in the vestibule, and my uncle, Sir Nigel, looking hale, hearty, and ruddy, with his silver hair all shining and waving, entered, and shook hands with all, but with none so warmly as me. He wore a dark grey riding-coat, top-boots, and white corded breeches, a costume for which he apologized to the countess, and then turned again to me.
"Egad, Newton, glad to see you, my dear boy—in uniform, too—how well the fellow looks in his sash and epaulettes! Your pardon for being so late, Lady Chillingham; but I rode over to the barracks, thinking to accompany Newton here. How glad Willie, my old keeper's son, was to see me! Returning, I lost my way among a network of green lanes and hedgerows; but as your Kent here is as flat as a billiard-table, when compared with Fife and Kinross, the slopes of the Lomonds, and the Saline hills, I rode straight for Chillingham, rushing my horse at hedges, sunk fences, and everything that came in its way, in defiance of threats against trespassers, and so forth, and I am here!"
"Coming as became the master of the Fife hounds, eh, Sir Nigel?" said the countess; "but now I shall take your arm."
The earl led Cora, Slubber gave his arm to Lady Louisa; and I thought of honest Chaucer's "January and May," as I brought up the rear, solus, playing with the tassels of my sash, and gnawing my moustache, as we marched through a double line of liveried servants to the dining-room, where I contrived to seat myself on her other side.
There was an air of propriety about old Slubber, which, though it made Louisa laugh, was intensely provoking to me, who had to keep my conventional distance. However, I could cross a country with her when riding to hounds, and claim her lithe waist for a waltz when occasion offered; thank heaven! our senile Anglo-Norman was beyond these, and a few other things now; and she gave me many a bright and intelligent glance from under her long black eyelashes, which were almost curled at the tips—recognitions of which his self-satisfied lordship was in blissful ignorance.
I had the engagement ring to restore; but in the meantime our conversation was confined to dinner-table twaddle, and as the dinner was served up à la Russe, and all the carving done aside, even its courtesies were abolished: so we confabulated with much hollow earnestness on the prevalent rumour that all the cavalry, light and heavy, were to march through France to Marseilles, the last batch of novels from Mudie's, the race meetings, the future Derby, and other topics equally far from our hearts; and then we had to laugh at old Lord Slubber, when he perpetrated the joke that every small wit did at that time.
"Turkey, my lord?" said a servant.
"Thanks—a slice—just what Nicholas wants."
"And what you, Newton, and other fellows, must prevent him from getting, eh?" said Sir Nigel.