"None for me, Eugene, none for me," Mr. Trevor said, surveying Mary's small supply, not uncomplacently, and helping himself to a potatoe. "Never eat meat at this time, you know, and at any time but with a poor relish. Youth, and health, and spirits, make the best sauces. Eh, Miss Seaham?" in answer to Mary's glance of pitying concern.
"The best to be had here, at any rate," laughed the younger Trevor to his companion, as he impatiently pushed away the cruet-stand, from which he had vainly been attempting to extract, for his own use, some remnant of its exhausted contents, "have them replenished immediately I beg," he added, addressing his servant. "Olivia, pray renew your acquaintance with your favourite old sherry; it will be many a long day before that is exhausted. Has Miss Seaham any? Ah, yes!"—with a smile across the table, which cleared away the momentary cloud that had passed over his countenance, and he proceeded to pour himself out a glass, and several others in succession, though his appetite, in other respects, appeared not much better than his father's.
Mrs. de Burgh and Eugene seemed to keep up a brisk and animated conversation, yet it was easy to perceive that they were not inattentive also to the progress of their opposite neighbours, and that Eugene's eye was continually directed towards Mary, with earnest solicitude as to her comfort and entertainment; whilst the complacent smile occasionally exchanged between him and his cousin, demonstrated their sense of the satisfactory progress she seemed to be making in the good graces of her host. For Mr. Trevor appeared in no way uninfected by the peculiar charm Mary had cast around the son. Her quiet, gentle manners, appeared to soothe him and set his mind at ease, whilst at the same time, the intelligent interest and animation in which she entered into all he said, flattered and pleased him.
"You must send Miss Seaham some more mutton; you helped her to only enough to feed a sparrow, you should make allowance for her long drive," he called out quite reproachfully to his son, as Mary's plate was about to be removed by the servant.
"I shall be happy to send Miss Seaham as much as she can possibly eat," said Eugene demurely, "but," he added, as Mary begged to decline a second supply, "I fancy she will prefer a slice of that cake I see on the side table."
"Cake! is there any cake?" exclaimed the old gentleman, looking round in doubtful search of this reported, and as it would have seemed, unexpected and unusual adjunct to his table.
"Oh, of course," Eugene replied, smiling; "all young ladies like cake, and Marryott knows that too well not to have supplied Miss Seaham with one to-day."
"But Marryott," said the old man, somewhat sharply, "did not know till this morning that we were to have ladies to luncheon. You did not tell her till this morning. Eh? How, then, could she have had one made in time?"
"Well then, Marryott is a prophetess, for, at any rate, here is a cake, and a capital one too," the son added, with a little quick impatience in his tone, though at the same time losing none of the respectful consideration, ever peculiarly observable in his manner towards his eccentric old father.
"Formerly, they used to make me cakes and all sort of good things to take to school when I was a boy; why, I wonder, are these, as well as many other good things, now denied me?" Eugene continued, laughing.