Lopez relieved his wife from all care as to provision for his guests. "I\'ve been to a shop in Wigmore Street," he said, "and everything will be done. They\'ll send in a cook to make the things hot, and your father won\'t have to pay even for a crust of bread."
"Papa doesn\'t mind paying for anything," she said in her indignation.
"It is all very pretty for you to say so, but my experience of him goes just the other way. At any rate there will be nothing to be paid for. Stewam and Sugarscraps will send in everything, if you\'ll only tell the old fogies downstairs not to interfere." Then she made a little request. Might she ask Everett, who was now in town? "I\'ve already got Major Pountney and Captain Gunner," he said. She pleaded that one more would make no difference. "But that\'s just what one more always does. It destroys everything, and turns a pretty little dinner into an awkward feed. We won\'t have him this time. Pountney\'ll take you, and I\'ll take her ladyship. Dick will take Mrs. Leslie, and Gunner will have Aunt Harriet. Dick will sit opposite to me, and the four ladies will sit at the four corners. We shall be very pleasant, but one more would spoil us."
She did speak to the "old fogies" downstairs,—the housekeeper, who had lived with her father since she was a child, and the butler, who had been there still longer, and the cook, who, having been in her place only three years, resigned impetuously within half-an-hour after the advent of Mr. Sugarscraps\' head man. The "fogies" were indignant. The butler expressed his intention of locking himself up in his own peculiar pantry, and the housekeeper took upon herself to tell her young mistress that "Master wouldn\'t like it." Since she had known Mr. Wharton such a thing as cooked food being sent into the house from a shop had never been so much as heard of. Emily, who had hitherto been regarded in the house as a rather strong-minded young woman, could only break down and weep. Why, oh why, had she consented to bring herself and her misery into her father\'s house? She could at any rate have prevented that by explaining to her father the unfitness of such an arrangement.
The "party" came. There was Major Pountney, very fine, rather loud, very intimate with the host, whom on one occasion he called "Ferdy, my boy," and very full of abuse of the Duke and Duchess of Omnium. "And yet she was a good creature when I knew her," said Lady Eustace. Pountney suggested that the Duchess had not then taken up politics. "I\'ve got out of her way," said Lady Eustace, "since she did that." And there was Captain Gunner, who defended the Duchess, but who acknowledged that the Duke was the "most consumedly stuck-up cox-comb" then existing. "And the most dishonest," said Lopez, who had told his new friends nothing about the repayment of the election expenses. And Dick was there. He liked these little parties, in which a good deal of wine could be drunk, and at which ladies were not supposed to be very stiff. The Major and the Captain, and Mrs. Leslie and Lady Eustace, were such people as he liked,—all within the pale, but having a piquant relish of fastness and impropriety. Dick was wont to declare that he hated the world in buckram. Aunt Harriet was triumphant in a manner which disgusted Emily, and which she thought to be most disrespectful to her father;—but in truth Aunt Harriet did not now care very much for Mr. Wharton, preferring the friendship of Mr. Wharton\'s son-in-law. Mrs. Leslie came in gorgeous clothes, which, as she was known to be very poor, and to have attached herself lately with almost more than feminine affection to Lady Eustace, were at any rate open to suspicious cavil. In former days Mrs. Leslie had taken upon herself to say bitter things about Mr. Lopez, which Emily could now have repeated, to that lady\'s discomfiture, had such a mode of revenge suited her disposition. With Mrs. Leslie there was Lady Eustace, pretty as ever, and sharp and witty, with the old passion for some excitement, the old proneness to pretend to trust everybody, and the old incapacity for trusting anybody. Ferdinand Lopez had lately been at her feet, and had fired her imagination with stories of the grand things to be done in trade. Ladies do it? Yes; why not women as well as men? Any one might do it who had money in his pocket and experience to tell him, or to tell her, what to buy and what to sell. And the experience, luckily, might be vicarious. At the present moment half the jewels worn in London were,—if Ferdinand Lopez knew anything about it,—bought from the proceeds of such commerce. Of course there were misfortunes. But these came from a want of that experience which Ferdinand Lopez possessed, and which he was quite willing to place at the service of one whom he admired so thoroughly as he did Lady Eustace. Lady Eustace had been charmed, had seen her way into a new and most delightful life,—but had not yet put any of her money into the hands of Ferdinand Lopez.
I cannot say that the dinner was good. It may be a doubt whether such tradesmen as Messrs. Stewam and Sugarscraps do ever produce good food;—or whether, with all the will in the world to do so, such a result is within their power. It is certain, I think, that the humblest mutton chop is better eating than any "Supreme of chicken after martial manner,"—as I have seen the dish named in a French bill of fare, translated by a French pastrycook for the benefit of his English customers,—when sent in from Messrs. Stewam and Sugarscraps even with their best exertions. Nor can it be said that the wine was good, though Mr. Sugarscraps, when he contracted for the whole entertainment, was eager in his assurance that he procured the very best that London could produce. But the outside look of things was handsome, and there were many dishes, and enough of servants to hand them, and the wines, if not good, were various. Probably Pountney and Gunner did not know good wines. Roby did, but was contented on this occasion to drink them bad. And everything went pleasantly, with perhaps a little too much noise;—everything except the hostess, who was allowed by general consent to be sad and silent;—till there came a loud double-rap at the door.
"There\'s papa," said Emily, jumping up from her seat.
Mrs. Dick looked at Lopez, and saw at a glance that for a moment his courage had failed him. But he recovered himself quickly. "Hadn\'t you better keep your seat, my dear?" he said to his wife. "The servants will attend to Mr. Wharton, and I will go to him presently."
"Oh, no," said Emily, who by this time was almost at the door.
"You didn\'t expect him,—did you?" asked Dick Roby.
"Nobody knew when he was coming. I think he told Emily that he might be here any day."
"He\'s the most uncertain man alive," said Mrs. Dick, who was a good deal scared by the arrival, though determined to hold up her head and exhibit no fear.
"I suppose the old gentleman will come in and have some dinner," whispered Captain Gunner to his neighbour Mrs. Leslie.
"Not if he knows I\'m here," replied Mrs. Leslie, tittering. "He thinks that I am,—oh, something a great deal worse than I can tell you."
"Is he given to be cross?" asked Lady Eustace, also affecting to whisper.
"Never saw him in my life," answered the Major, "but I shouldn\'t wonder if he was. Old gentlemen generally are cross. Gout, and that kind of thing, you know."
For a minute or two the servants stopped their ministrations............