"Yes, when it is ready."
"Perhaps the opening of the Palace will be, for all of us, the beginning of a new happiness."
"You speak in a parable."
"No," she said, "I speak in sober earnestness. Now let me go. Remember what I say; the opening of the Palace may be, if you will—for all of us——"
"For you and me?"
"For—yes—for you—and for me. Good-night."
CHAPTER XLV. LADY DAVENANT'S DINNER-PARTY.
Lady Davenant had now been in full enjoyment of her title in Portman Square, where one enjoys such things more thoroughly than on Stepney Green, for four or five weeks. She at first enjoyed it so much that she thought of nothing but the mere pleasure of the greatness. She felt an uplifting of heart every time she walked up and down the stately stairs; another every time she sat at the well-furnished dinner table; and another whenever she looked about her in the drawing-room. She wrote copious letters to her friend Aurelia Tucker during these days. She explained with fulness of detail, and in terms calculated to make that lady expire of envy, the splendor of her position; and for at least five weeks she felt as if the hospitality of Miss Messenger actually brought with it a complete recognition of her claim. Her husband, not so sanguine as herself, knew very well that the time would come when the Case would have to be taken up again and sent in to the proper quarter for examination. Meantime he was resigned, and even happy. Three square meals a day, each of them abundant, each a masterpiece of art, were enough to satisfy that remarkable twist which, as her ladyship was persuaded, one knows not on what grounds, had always been a distinguishing mark of the Davenants. Familiarity speedily reconciled him to the presence of the footmen; he found in the library a most delightful chair in which he could sleep all the morning; and it pleased him to be driven through the streets in a luxurious carriage under soft, warm furs, in which one can take the air and get a splendid appetite without fatigue.
They were seen about a great deal. It was a part of Angela's design that they should, when the time came for going back again, seem to themselves to have formed a part of the best society in London. Therefore she gave instructions to her maid that her visitors were to go to all the public places, the theatres, concerts, exhibitions, and places of amusement. The little American lady knew so little what she ought to see and whither she ought to go, that she fell back on Campion for advice and help. It was Campion who suggested a theatre in the evening, the Exhibition of Old Masters or the Grosvenor Gallery in the morning, and Regent Street in the afternoon; it was Campion who pointed out the recognized superiority of Westminster Abbey, considered as a place of worship for a lady of exalted rank, over a chapel up a back street, of the Baptist persuasion, to which at her own home Lady Davenant had belonged. It was Campion who went with her and showed her the shops, and taught her the delightful art of spending her money—the money "lent" her by Miss Messenger—in the manner becoming to a peeress. She was so clever and sharp, that she caught at every hint dropped by the lady's-maid; she reformed her husband's ideas of evening-dress; she humored his weaknesses; she let him keep his eyes wide open at a farce or a ballet on the understanding that at a concert or a sermon he might blamelessly sleep through it; she even began to acquire rudimentary ideas on the principles of art.