"Doctor," said Mrs. Haveril, as he led her down the stairs, "I wish I could go and sit in a corner."
"Why? You are trembling! What is the matter?"
"I feel as if I was in a dream. It is the sight of these two young men. One is the young man I saw at the theatre—the young man I told you of—so like my husband; the other is like him, too, but differently. I am haunted to-night with my husband's face."
"It is imagination. You have been thinking too much about certain things. Their name is the same as your husband's. Probably he, too, if you knew, was a distant cousin."
"It's not imagination; it is the fact."
"I am sorry you are so disturbed; but, above all, do not agitate yourself," he whispered, as they entered the dining-room.
"I will keep up, doctor; but it's dreadful to sit with two living images of your first husband."
From the ordinary point of view, the dinner was not so great a success as some of those given at this house. The conversation flagged. Yet, below the surface, everybody was interested. Humphrey took in Molly, but Dick sat on the other side of her, and told her stories about his last tramp; Humphrey, therefore, became sulky, and absorbed wine in quantities. Alice gazed at the two young men—her husband's eyes, her husband's mouth, her husband's voice, her husband's hair, in both of them—both like unto her first husband, yet both unlike; they were also like unto each other, yet unlike. She heard nothing that was said; she listened to the voice, she saw the eyes, and she was back again, after all those years, with that vagrant man, that vagabond in morals, as well as in ways, the man who so cruelly used her, the comedian and stroller.
The doctor also watched the two young men. They had, to begin with, many points of resemblance; they were alike, however, as brothers who often differ in disposition as much as strangers. The elder of the two—the doctor considered Mrs. Haveril—took after his mother, and was serious, at least. He thought of Lady Woodroffe's remarks about him: "Selfish." Yes; there was a way of eating his food and absorbing his wine that betokened a selfish pleasure in the food above the delights of society and conversation. He did not converse; he sat glum. "Ill-conditioned and bad-tempered," Lady Woodroffe said. The selfishness, and probably the bad temper, he inherited from the father. From his education he obtained, of course, the air of superiority, which, like the Order of the Garter, has nothing to do with intellect or achievement, or distinction. From his education also his features had probably acquired a certain manner which we call aristocratic.
He kept his guest in something like good temper by asking his opinion, pointedly, as if he valued his judgment, on the champagne. He had little talks with him on vintages and years and brands, in which the young man was as wide as most youths at the club where champagne flows. And he asked Sir Humphrey's opinion on the plats, and let the others feel that his opinion carried weight, so that his guest forgot something of Molly's perverseness in listening to her neighbour's stories, and of the intolerable nuisance of sitting down to dinner with such a company.