True to their words, at the end of October, Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke, and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers and Sir Griffin Tewett, arrived at Portray Castle. And for a couple of days there was a visitor whom Lizzie was very glad to welcome, but of whose good nature on the occasion Mr. Camperdown thought very ill indeed. This was John Eustace. His sister-inlaw wrote to him in very pressing language; and as — so he said to Mr. Camperdown — he did not wish to seem to quarrel with his brother’s widow as long as such seeming might be avoided, he accepted the invitation. If there was to be a lawsuit about the diamonds, that must be Mr. Camperdown’s affair. Lizzie had never entertained her friends in style before. She had had a few people to dine with her in London and once or twice had received company on an evening. But in all her London doings there had been the trepidation of fear, to be accounted for by her youth and widowhood; and it was at Portray — her own house at Portray — that it would best become her to exercise hospitality. She had bided her time even there, but now she meant to show her friends that she had got a house of her own.

She wrote even to her husband’s uncle, the bishop, asking him down to Portray. He could not come, but sent an affectionate answer, and thanked her for thinking of him. Many people she asked who, she felt sure, would not come, and one or two of them accepted her invitation. John Eustace promised to be with her for two days. When Frank had left her, going out of her presence in the manner that has been described, she actually wrote to him, begging him to join her party. This was her note:

“Come to me, just for a week,” she said, “when my people are here, so that I may not seem to be deserted. Sit at the bottom of my table, and be to me as a brother might. I shall expect you to do so much for me.” To this he replied that he would come during the first week in November.

And she got a clergyman down from London — the Rev. Joseph Emilius, of whom it was said that he was born a Jew in Hungary, and that his name in his own country had been Mealyus. At the present time he was among the most eloquent of London preachers, and was reputed by some to have reached such a standard of pulpit oratory as to have had no equal within the memory of living hearers. In regard to his reading it was acknowledged that no one since Mrs. Siddons had touched him. But he did not get on very well with any particular bishop, and there was doubt in the minds of some people whether there was or was not any — Mrs. Emilius. He had come up quite suddenly within the last season, and had made church-going quite a pleasant occupation to Lizzie Eustace.

On the last day of October Mr. Emilius and Mr. John Eustace came, each alone. Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke came over with post-horses from Ayr, as also did Lord George and Sir Griffin about an hour after them. Frank was not yet expected. He had promised to name a day, and had not yet named it.

“Varra weel, varra weel,” Gowran had said when he was told of what was about to occur, and was desired to make preparations necessary in regard to the outside plenishing of the house; “nae doot she’ll do with her ain what pleases her ainself. The mair ye poor out, the less there’ll be left in. Mr. Jo-ohn coming? I’ll be glad then to see Mr. Jo-ohn. Oo, ay; aits; there’ll be aits eneuch. And anither coo! You’ll want twa ither coos. I’ll see to the coos.” And Andy Gowran, in spite of the internecine warfare which existed between him and his mistress, did see to the hay, and the cows, and the oats, and the extra servants that were wanted inside and outside the house. There was enmity between him and Lady Eustace, and he didn’t care who knew it; but he took her wages and he did her work.

Mrs. Carbuncle was a wonderful woman. She was the wife of a man with whom she was very rarely seen, whom nobody knew, who was something in the City, but somebody who never succeeded in making money; and yet she went everywhere. She had at least the reputation of going everywhere, and did go to a great many places. Carbuncle had no money — so it was said; and she had none. She was the daughter of a man who had gone to New York and had failed there. Of her own parentage no more was known. She had a small house in one of the very small May Fair streets, to which she was wont to invite her friends for five o’clock tea. Other receptions she never attempted. During the London seasons she always kept a carriage, and during the winters she always had hunters. Who paid for them no one knew or cared. Her dress was always perfect, as far as fit and performance went. As to approving Mrs. Carbuncle’s manner of dress — that was a question of taste. Audacity may, perhaps, be said to have been the ruling principle of her toilet; not the audacity of indecency, which, let the satirists say what they may, is not efficacious in England, but audacity in colour, audacity in design, and audacity in construction. She would ride in the park in a black and yellow habit, and appear at the opera in white velvet without a speck of colour. Though certainly turned thirty, and probably nearer to forty, she would wear her jet-black hair streaming down her back, and when June came would drive about London in a straw hat. But yet it was always admitted that she was well dressed. And then would arise that question, Who paid the bills?

Mrs. Carbuncle was certainly a handsome woman. She was full-faced, with bold eyes, rather far apart, perfect black eyebrows, a well-formed broad nose, thick lips, and regular teeth. Her chin was round and short, with perhaps a little bearing towards a double chin. But though her face was plump and round, there was a power in it, and a look of command, of which it was perhaps difficult to say in what features was the seat. But in truth the mind will lend a tone to every feature, and it was the desire of Mrs. Carbuncle’s heart to command. But perhaps the wonder of her face was its complexion. People said, before they knew her, that, as a matter of course, she had been made beautiful forever. But, though that too brilliant colour was almost always there, covering the cheeks but never touching the forehead or the neck, it would at certain moments shift, change, and even depart. When she was angry, it would vanish for a moment and then return intensified. There was no chemistry on Mrs. Carbuncle’s cheek; and yet it was a tint so brilliant and so little transparent as almost to justify a conviction that it could not be genuine. There were those who declared that nothing in the way of complexion so beautiful as that of Mrs. Carbuncle’s had been seen on the face of any other woman in this age, and there were others who called her an exaggerated milkmaid. She was tall, too, and had learned so to walk as though half the world belonged to her.

Her niece, Miss Roanoke, was a lady of the same stamp, and of similar beauty, with those additions and also with those drawbacks which belong to youth. She looked as though she were four-and-twenty, but in truth she was no more than eighteen. When seen beside her aunt, she seemed to be no more than half the elder lady’s size; and yet her proportions were not insignificant. She, too, was tall, and was as one used to command, and walked as though she were a young Juno. Her hair was very dark — almost black — and very plentiful. Her eyes were large and bright, though too bold for a girl so young. Her nose and mouth were exactly as her aunt’s, but her chin was somewhat longer, so as to divest her face of that plump roundness which perhaps took something from the majesty of Mrs. Carbuncle’s appearance. Miss Roanoke’s complexion was certainly marvellous. No one thought that she had been made beautiful forever, for the colour would go and come and shift and change with every word and every thought; but still it was there, as deep on her cheeks as on her aunt’s, though somewhat more transparent, and with more delicacy of tint as the bright hues faded away and became merged in the almost marble whiteness of her skin. With Mrs. Carbuncle there was no merging and fading. The red and white bordered one another on her cheek without any merging, as they do on a flag.

Lucinda Roanoke was undoubtedly a very handsome woman. It probably never occurred to man or woman to say that she was lovely. She had sat for her portrait ............