第28章

'You forget that all you are saying is against my father and my family, Miss Cassewary.'

'I dare say it was different when your father was a young man. And your father, too, was not very long since, at the head of a government which contained many Conservatives. I don't look upon your father as a Radical, though perhaps I should not be justified in calling him a Conservative.'

'Well; certainly not, I think.'

'But now it is necessary that all noblemen in England should rally to the defence of their order.' Miss Cassewary was a great politician, and was one of those who are always foreseeing the ruin of their country. 'My dear, I will go up and take my bonnet off. Perhaps you will have tea when I come down.'

'Don't you go,' said Lady Mabel, when Silverbridge got up to take his departure.

'I always do when tea comes.'

'But you are going to dine here?'

'Not that I know of. In the first place, nobody has asked me. In the second place, I am engaged. Thirdly, I don't care about having to talk politics to Miss Cass; and fourthly, I hate family dinners on Sunday.'

'In the first place, I ask you. Secondly, I know you are going to dine with Frank Tregear, at the club. Thirdly, I want you to talk to me, and not to Miss Cass. And, fourthly, you are an uncivil young,--young,--young,--I should say cub, if I dared, to tell me that you don't like dining with me any day of the week.'

'Of course you know what I mean is, that I don't like troubling your father.'

'Leave that to me. I shall tell him you are coming, and Frank too.

Of course you can bring him. Then he can talk to me when papa goes down to his club, and you can arrange your politics with Miss Cass.' So it was settled, and at eight o'clock Lord Silverbridge reappeared in Belgrave Square with Frank Tregear.

Earl Grex was a nobleman of a very ancient family, the Grexes having held the parish of Grex, in Yorkshire, from some time long prior to the Conquest. In saying all this, I am, I know, allowing the horse to appear wholesale;--but I find that he cannot be kept out. I may as well go on to say that the present Earl was better known at Newmarket and the Beaufort,--where he spent a large part of his life in playing whist,--than in the House of Lords. He was a grey-haired, handsome, worn-out old man, who through a long life of pleasure had greatly impaired a fortune, which, for an earl, had never been magnificent, and who now strove hard, but not always successfully, to remedy that evil by gambling. As he could no longer eat and drink as he used to do, and as he cared no longer for the light that lies in a lady's eye, there was not much left to him but cards and racing. Nevertheless he was a handsome old man, of polished manners, when he chose to use them; a staunch Conservative and much regarded by his party, for whom in his early life he had done some work in the House of Commons.

'Silverbridge is all very well,' he had said; 'but I don't see why that young Tregear is to dine here every night of his life.'

'This is the second time since he has been up in town. Papa.'

'He was here last week, I know.'

'Silverbridge wouldn't come without him.'

'That's d-d nonsense,' said the Earl. Miss Cassewary gave a start,--not, we may presume, because she was shocked, for she could not be much shocked, having heard the same word from the same lips very often; but she thought it right always to enter a protest.

Then the two young men were announced.

Frank Tregear, having been known by the family as a boy, was Frank to all of them,--as was Lady Mabel, Mabel to him, somewhat to the disgust of the father and not altogether with the approbation of Miss Cass. But Lady Mabel had declared that she would not be guilty of the folly of changing old habits. Silverbridge, being Silverbridge to all his own people, hardly seemed to have a Christian name;--his godfathers and godmothers had indeed called him Plantagenet;--but having only become acquainted with the family since his Oxford days he was Lord Silverbridge to Lady Mabel. Lady Mabel had not as yet become Mabel to him, but, as by her very intimate friends she was called Mab, had allowed herself to be addressed by him as Lady Mab. There was thus between them all considerable intimacy.

'I'm deuced glad to hear it,' said the Earl when dinner was announced. For although he could not eat much, Lord Grex was always impatient when the time of eating was at hand. Then he walked down alone. Lord Silverbridge followed with his daughter, and Frank Tregear gave his arm to Miss Cassewary. 'If that woman can't clear her soup better than that, she might as well go to the d-,' said the Earl;--upon which remark no one in the company made any observation. As there were two men-servants in the room when it was made the cook probably had the advantage of it. It may be almost unnecessary to add that though the Earl had polished manners for certain occasions he would sometimes throw them off in the bosom of his own family.

'My Lord,' said Miss Cassewary--she always called him 'My Lord'--'Lord Silverbridge is going to stand for the Duke's borough in the conservative interest.'

'I didn't know the Duke had a borough.'

'He had one till he thought it proper to give it up,' said the son, taking his father's part.