“He does all he can, poor old gentleman; but Mrs. Grandison is so absurdly vain about Carlo’s good looks, and the fine friends he goes about with, that she can’t see any danger. Lord Edgar Wildgrave and that Sir Harry Falconer who was here last year (you know they do say that Josie broke her heart about Lord Edgar, and that makes her so reckless). But I know his father is very uneasy about him, and well he may be. I’m afraid Ned bids fair to follow in his brother’s footsteps. Thanks—I will take an olive.”
“What a wretched state of things!” groaned Mr. Stamford, almost audibly. “I must hope, for the sake of my friend’s family, that matters may be exaggerated.”
“I wish they are, with all my heart,” said the candid friend. “They always have such delicious fruit here, haven’t they? I must say they do things well at Chatsworth House. I always enjoy a dinner here. I see Mrs. Grandison making a move. Thanks!”
And so Miss Crewitt followed the retreating file of ladies that, headed by Mrs. Grandison’s stately form, quitted the dining-room, leaving Mr. Stamford much disordered with the unpleasant nature of the ideas which he had perforce absorbed with his dinner. He could not forgive his late neighbour for introducing them into his system.
“Confounded, venomous, ungrateful cat!” he said in his righteous wrath. “How she enjoyed every mouthful of her dinner, pouring out malice and all uncharitableness the while! Serves Mrs. Grandison right, all the same. If she’d picked me out a nice girl, or a good motherly dame, I should not have heard all this scandal about her household. But what a frightful pity it seems! I must talk to Grandison about it.”
At this stage Mr. Stamford was aroused by his host’s voice. “Why, Harold, old man, where have you got to? Close up, now the women are gone. Bring your chair next to Carlo.”
He walked up as desired, the other guests having concentrated themselves in position nearer the head of the table, and found himself next to the heir of the house, Mr. Carlo Grandison. That young gentleman, whom he had observed during dinner talking with earnestness to a lady no longer young, but still handsome and interesting, in spite of Miss Crewitt’s acidulated denial of the fact, did not trouble himself to be over agreeable to his father’s old friend.
He devoted himself, however, with considerable assiduity to the decanters as they passed, and drank more wine in half an hour than Mr. Stamford had ever known Hubert to consume in a month.
He did talk after a while, but his conversation was mainly about the last Melbourne Cup, upon which he admitted that he had wagered heavily, and “dropped in for,” to use his own expression, “a beastly facer.”
“Was not that imprudent?” asked Mr. Stamford, as he looked sadly at the young man’s flushed face. “Don’t you think it a pity to lose more than you can afford?”