She admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you applied it to Parliamentary debates. At her own dinner table its success was usually triumphantly vindicated.
“Who else is to be there?” Francesca asked, with some pardonable misgiving.
“Courtenay Youghal. He’ll probably sit next to you, so you’d better think out a lot of annihilating remarks in readiness. And Elaine de Frey.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of her. Who is she?”
“Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort of way, and almost indecently rich.”
“Marry her” was the advice which sprang to Francesca’s lips, but she choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perception of the fact that words are sometimes given to us to defeat our purposes.
“Caroline has probably marked her down for Toby or one of the grand-nephews,” she said, carelessly; “a little money would be rather useful in that quarter, I imagine.”
Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity that she wanted to see.
An advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible course for him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that he would seriously entertain it; yet there was just a chance that if he got as far as the flirtation stage with an attractive (and attracted) girl who was also an heiress, the sheer perversity of his nature might carry him on to more definite courtship, if only from the desire to thrust other more genuinely enamoured suitors into the background. It was a forlorn hope; so forlorn that the idea even crossed her mind of throwing herself on the mercy of her bête noire, Courtenay Youghal, and trying to enlist the influence which he seemed to possess over Comus for the purpose of furthering her hurriedly conceived project. Anyhow, the dinner promised to be more interesting than she had originally anticipated.
Lady Caroline was a professed Socialist in politics, chiefly, it was believed, because she was thus enabled to disagree with most of the Liberals and Conservatives, and all the Socialists of the day. She did not permit her Socialism, however, to penetrate below stairs; her cook and butler had every encouragement to be Individualists. Francesca, who was a keen and intelligent food critic, harboured no misgivings as to her hostess’s kitchen and cellar departments; some of the human side-dishes at the feast gave her more ground for uneasiness. Courtenay Youghal, for instance, would probably be brilliantly silent; her brother Henry would almost certainly be the reverse.