“Oh, I never go into raptures I don’t feel,” said Amanda. “I don’t care twopence for Switzerland; I hate mountains; I would rather go to Margate any day—that is, if nothing better were to be had,” she added, remembering that Margate was hardly consistent with the splendour of her pretensions—“Don’t ask me about places as if I was a guide book. I like people, and talk, and to see new faces, and the play, and all that’s going on.”
“Very pleasant,” said Sir Timothy, “and very good taste, and I quite agree with you. I have promised Lady Doul and myself the pleasure of the play to-morrow.”
“The play—to-morrow!” cried Amanda, putting out her hand with an air of horror—“The play! At this time of the year? You must be out of your senses——”
Here Brownlow made his appearance at the door, and the party went in to dinner.
“You did not tell us that Mrs. Frederick was a beauty,” said Sir Timothy in Mrs. Eastwood’s ear, “and so completely one of the beau monde. You said Mrs. Frederick surely? Not a title? Ah, now you set my mind at rest. I was rather afraid to hazard a name. Allow me to congratulate you on such a charming daughter-in-law.”
“Yes—she is very handsome,” said poor Mrs. Eastwood.
“Handsome! a divinity, my dear madam, quite a divinity!” cried the old man. For half the dinner through Mrs. Eastwood was silent, wondering whether her old acquaintance had become imbecile in the climate of Barbadoes; or if he was venturing to joke at Mrs. Frederick’s expense. It was difficult to solve this question, for old Sir Timothy set up a lively flirtation with the beauty, who was placed at her mother-in-law’s other hand. All through the course of dinner, during which banquet Mrs. Eastwood lost much of her accustomed good-humoured ease, the old man went on. Was he drawing out Amanda’s folly? or was he dazzled by her beauty with the usual incomprehensible weakness of men? Mr. Vane, who sat between Mrs. Eastwood and Amanda, added this to his many attractions, that he was not dazzled by her; and he, too, was somewhat silent, finding little to say in the crossfire which the others kept up. As for Frederick, he sat gloomy and grand at the foot of the table between Lady Doul and his sister, and was not conversational. Lady Doul had a pleasant little chattering tongue, and told him she remembered him as a baby, and congratulated him on his beautiful wife.
“Mrs. Frederick seems to have been a great deal in society,” the old lady said, with a keen glance at him, which belied the simplicity of her question. And Frederick, with the consciousness of Nelly’s eye upon him, did not know how to respond.
“Oh, ah,” he said, giving a tacit assent, and wondering all the time what she was really thinking, and why that muff, Molyneux, was not there. If it was a mere quarrel between Nelly and her lover, or even if Molyneux had declared off, Frederick would not have disturbed himself much on the subject; but he could not but recollect that Molyneux had been absent the last time he and his wife had dined at The Elms. If he were to behave badly to Nelly it would be bad, no doubt; but to give himself airs with Frederick was a still more dreadful offence. “Confound his impudence,” he muttered between his teeth.
As for the other members of the party, Innocent was very passive, and Mr. Parchemin, with his spectacles pushed back upon his forehead, ate his dinner with serious devotion, and troubled himself about nothing which might be going on.