‘He can make no excuse for downright falsehood.’

‘Hem!’ quoth Gilbert.  ’You wouldn’t have him done into drinking old Bowles’s surgery champagne.’

‘One comfort is that he wont get any dinner,’ said Albinia, vindictively.  ‘I hope he’ll be ravenously hungry.’

‘He may not come after all,’ said Gilbert; and Albinia, laying hold of that hope, had nearly forgotten the threatened disaster, as her party appeared by instalments, and Winifred owned to her that Sophy had grown better-looking than could have been expected.  Her eyes had brightened, the cloudy brown of her cheeks was enlivened, she held herself better, and the less childish dress was much to her advantage.  But above all, the moody look of suffering was gone, and her face had something of the grave sweetness and regular beauty of that of her father.

‘Seventeen,’ said Mrs. Ferrars; ’by the time she is seventy, she may be a remarkably handsome woman!’

The tea-drinking was in lively operation, when after a thundering knock, Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy was ushered in, with the air of a prince honouring the banquet of his vassals, saying, ’I told Kendal I should presume on your hospitality, I beg you will make no difference on my account.’

Of which gracious permission Albinia was resolved to avail herself.  She left all the insincerity to her husband, and would by no means allow grandmamma to abdicate the warm corner.  She suspected that he wanted an introduction to Mrs. Nugent, and was resolved to defeat this object, unless he should condescend to make the request, so she was well satisfied to see him wedged in between papa and Sophy, while a prodigious quantity of Irish talk was going on between Mrs. Nugent and Mr. O’More, with contributions of satire from Mr. Ferrars which kept every one laughing except little Nora Nugent and Mary Ferrars, who were deep in the preliminaries of an eternal friendship, and held the ends of each other’s crackers like a pair of doves.  Lucy, however, was ill at ease at the obscurity which shrouded the illustrious guest, and in her anxiety, gave so little attention to her two neighbours, that Willie Ferrars, affronted at some neglect, exclaimed, ’Why, Lucy, what makes you screw your eyes about so! you can’t attend to any one.’

‘It is because Polly Silly is there,’ shouted Master Maurice from his throne beside his mamma.

To the infinite relief of the half-choked Albinia, little Mary Ferrars, with whom her cousin had been carrying on a direful warfare all day, fitted on the cap, shook her head gravely at him, and after an appealing look of indignation, first at his mamma, then at her own, was overheard confiding to Nora Nugent that Maurice was a very naughty boy—­she was sorry to say, a regular spoilt child.

‘But how should you hinder Miss Kendal from attending?’

’I’ll tell you, darling.  Poor Lucy! she is very fond of me, and I dare say she wanted me to sit next to her, but you know she will have me for three days, and I have you only this one evening.  I’ll go and speak to her after tea, when we go into the drawing-room, and then she wont mind.’