BACK AT BRYNGELLY

Geoffrey and Mr. Granger reached Bolton Street about six o’clock.  The drawing-room was still full of callers.  Lady Honoria’s young men mustered in great force in those days.  They were very inoffensive young men and Geoffrey had no particular objection to them.  Only he found it difficult to remember all their names.  When Geoffrey entered the drawing-room there were no fewer than five of them, to say nothing of two stray ladies, all superbly dressed and sitting metaphorically at Honoria’s very pretty feet.  Otherwise their contributions to the general store of amusement did not amount to much, for her ladyship did most of the talking.

Geoffrey introduced Mr. Granger, whom Honoria could not at first remember.  Nor did she receive the announcement that he was going to dine and stay the night with any particular enthusiasm.  The young men melted away at Geoffrey’s advent like mists before a rising sun.  He greeted them civilly enough, but with him they had nothing in common.  To tell the truth they were a little afraid of him.  This man with his dark handsome face sealed with the stamp of intellect, his powerful-looking form (ill dressed, according to their standard) and his great and growing reputation, was a person with whom they had no sympathy, and who, they felt, had no sympathy with them.  We talk as though there is one heaven and one hell for all of us, but here must be some mistake.  An impassable gulf yawns between the different classes of mankind.  What has such a man as Geoffrey to do with the feeble male and female butterflies of a London drawing-room?  There is only one link between them:  they live on the same planet.

When the fine young men and the two stray ladies had melted away, Geoffrey took Mr. Granger up to his room.  Coming downstairs again he found Lady Honoria waiting for him in the study.

“Is that individual really going to dine and sleep here?” she asked.

“Certainly, Honoria, and he has brought no dress clothes,” he answered.

“Really, Geoffrey, it is too bad of you,” said the lady with some pardonable irritation.  “Why do you bring people to dinner in this promiscuous way?  It will quite upset the table.  Just fancy asking an old Welsh clergyman to dine, who has not the slightest pretensions to being a gentleman, when one has the Prime Minister and a Bishop coming—­and a clergyman without dress clothes too.  What has he come for?”

“He came to see me on business, and as to the people coming to dinner, if they don’t like it they can grumble when they go home.  By the way, Honoria, I am going down to Wales for a day or two to-morrow.  I want a change.”

“Indeed!  Going to see the lovely Beatrice, I suppose.  You had better be careful, Geoffrey.  That girl will get you into a mess, and if she does there are plenty of people who are ready to make an example of you.  You have enemies enough, I can tell you.  I am not jealous, it is not in my line, but you are too intimate with that girl, and you will be sorry for it one day.”