The dinner hour was at hand, and they went in. Very much to the surprise of both, Mr. Cattacomb was in the drawing-room with Miss Blake. Lucy had neither heard nor seen him: but the acacia tree was out of sight of the front entrance.
"I have been telling Mr. Cattacomb--he came to me in the heat, on business of St. Jerome's--that you will be charitable enough to give him some dinner," said Miss Blake, introducing Mr. Cattacomb to Sir Karl in form--for it was the first time he had met that reverend man. Of course Karl could only return a civil answer; but he had not been at all anxious for the acquaintanceship of Mr. Cattacomb, and was determined not to treat him precisely as though he had been an invited guest.
"I think you may perhaps prefer to take in your friend Miss Blake, as Lady Andinnian is a stranger to you," he said, when Hewitt announced dinner. "We are not on ceremony now."
And Sir Karl caught his wife's hand within his. "I was not going to leave you to him, Lucy," he whispered.
So they went parading in to dinner arm-in-arm, this estranged man and wife, brushing past Hewitt and the tall new footman, who wore powdered hair.
"It is just as though he did care for me!" thought Lucy, glancing at her husband as he placed her in her seat at the table's head.
Mr. Cattacomb and Miss Blake, seated opposite each other, talked a great deal, Karl scarcely at all. When alone, the dinners at the Court were simply served, Sir Karl carving. He was attentive to his impromptu guest, and sent him of the best: but he thought he had never in all his life been in company with so affected and vain a man as that belauded clergyman. Once, with the fish before him, Karl fell into a reverie. He woke up with a start, looking about him like a man bewildered.
"Some more fish, Lucy, my darling?"
Lucy's plate had gone away long before. They all saw that he had been, so to speak, unconscious of what he said. He rallied then; and did not lose himself again.
Dinner over, Mr. Cattacomb, making an apology, hurried away for some slight service at St. Jerome's, Miss Blake accompanying him as a matter of course. Lucy disappeared: and Karl, thus abandoned, went to his smoking-room. Not to smoke; but to muse upon the acute angles of his position--as he was too much given to do. Karl Andinnian was as a man in a net: as things looked at present, there seemed to be no chance of freedom from it, no hope of it at present or in the future. And his ill-fated brother again! The past night he, Karl, had dreamt one of those ugly dreams. He thought he saw Adam fleeing from his pursuers; a number of them, and they all looked like warders of Portland Prison. Panting, crying, Adam rushed in, seized hold of Karl, and begged him, as he valued salvation hereafter, to hide and save him. But the warders burst in and surrounded them. Poor Karl woke up as usual in fright and agony. This dream had been recurring to his mind all day: it was very vivid now in the silent evening hour after sunset.