"All right, Ludlow," said the gentleman in friendly menace. Then he answered Mrs. Westley: "Well, one thing, your hostess respects you more. If you come too early you bring reproach and you meet contempt; reproach that she shouldn't have been ready to receive you, and contempt that you should have supposed her capable of dining at the hour fixed."
It was a Mrs. Rangeley who had launched the first shaft at Ludlow; she now fitted another little arrow to her string, under cover of the laugh that followed Mr. Wetmore's reasons. "I shouldn't object to any one's coming late, unless I were giving the dinner; but what I can't bear is wondering what it was kept them."
Again she had given a touch that reminded the company of their common humanity and their unity of emotion, and the laugh that responded was without any of that reservation or uncertainty which a subtle observer may often detect in the enjoyment of brilliant things said at dinner. But the great charm of the Westley dinners was that people generally did understand each other there. If you made a joke, as Wetmore said, you were not often required to spell it. He celebrated the Westleys as ideal hosts: Mrs. Westley had the youth and beauty befitting a second wife; her social ambition had as yet not developed into the passion for millionaires; she was simply content with painters, like himself and Ludlow, literary men, lawyers, doctors and their several wives.
General Westley was in what Wetmore called the bloom of age. He might be depended upon for the unexpected, like fate. He occasionally did it, he occasionally said it, from the passive hospitality that characterized him.
"I believe I share that impatience of yours, Mrs. Rangeley," he now remarked; "though in the present case I think we ought to leave everything to Mr. Ludlow's conscience."
"Oh, do you think that would be quite safe?" she asked with burlesque seriousness. "Well! If we must!"
Ludlow said, "Why, I think Mrs. Rangeley is right. I would much rather yield to compulsion. I don't mind telling what kept me, if I'm obliged to."
"Oh, I almost hate to have you, now!" Mrs. Rangeley bubbled back. "Your willingness, somehow, makes it awful. You may be going to boast of it!"
"No, no!" Wetmore interposed. "I don't believe it's anything to boast of."
"Now, you see, you must speak," said Mrs. Westley.