"I don't know. Everybody does."
Peter was beginning to enjoy himself. Lady Mary smiled into his frank eyes, liking the direct way in which they looked at her.
They paused as Haversham came in to dinner. His empty chair always stood at the head of the table. Sometimes he was unable at the last moment to come down, but he never allowed anyone to wait or to inquire.
Peter looked at him with interest. He was yet at the prime, but grey and frail. His features were proud and delicate, his voice gravely penetrating. He was too far from Peter for his conversation to be heard, but he talked with lit face and a frequent smile. Sometimes, however, he fell silent, and Peter thought he detected the strained inward look of one struggling with physical pain.
"You don't know Uncle Eustace?" said Lady Mary, following Peter's look.
"Not yet."
"He will do you good."
"Antony was telling me about him on the way down."
They talked through dinner of indifferent things. The accent of conscious culture which Peter now cordially hated was missing. Yet the talk was alive—happily vivid and agreeable. No one seemed anxious to make an effort or to press home a conviction. Nor was Peter aware of words anxiously picked. He was unable yet to name his impression. He only knew that he talked more frankly of small things than he had talked before.
He noticed in a series of pleasant discoveries how beautiful was the setting of their talk. Lord Haversham had at Highbury brought the art of fine living to perfection. He had filled the place with costly things, without anywhere suggesting unreasonable luxury. Highbury Towers grew upon the visitor. Even as a guest began to wonder why he never seemed to have dined so well and been less brutally aware of it, he perceived that the glass he fingered was lovely and rare, that it consonantly set off the china bowl which neighboured it, and the ancient candlesticks to left and right. Haversham had always held that true luxury was not insistent, and he was never so disappointed as when his guest broke into a compliment of a particular object. Had it perfectly agreed, fitting its environment, the mood of the conversation, the temperament of the party for which it was designed, it would, he urged, have passed unnoticed. It would have made its effect without directly speaking.