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So Lucy had sat down in a subdued state of mind, and was handed tea by a servant, while the Danbys Colonel Danby, after his smoke in the dog-cart, following close on the heels of his wife and daughter mixed with the group round the tea-table, and much chatter, combined with a free use of Christian names, liberal petting of Lady Driffield's Pomeranian, and an account by Miss Danby of an accident to herself in the hunting-field, filled up a half-hour which to one person, at least, had the qualities of a nightmare.
'Well, then, suppose you don't say it, replied David, after a pause. 'If you'll try and believe it, Lucy, I don't want to go to Lord Driffield's simply and solely because I am sure we should neither of us enjoy it. Lady Driffield is a stuck-up sort of person, who only cares about her own set and relations.
She seemed to be asking him to help her out of the mire, and as one does not go into society to be benevolent but to be amused, by the time the first entree was well in he had edged his chair round, and was in animated talk with pretty little Lady Alice Findlay, the daughter of the hook-nosed Lord-Lieutenant of the county, who was seated at Lady Driffield's right hand.
But just as he was about to launch a reply more congruous with his gout and his contempt for 'Driffield's low-life friends' than with the amenities of ordinary society, and while Lady Venetia was slowly and severely studying David through her eyeglass, Lord Driffield threw himself into the breach with a nervous story of some favourite 'man' of his own, and the storm blew over.
A young man bowed to Lucy, looked at her for a moment, then, pulling his fair moustache, turned away to speak to Miss Danby, who, in the absence of more stimulating suitors for her smiles, was graciously pleased to bestow a few of them on Lord Driffield's new agent. 'Whom are we waiting for? said Miss Danby, looking round her, and slightly glancing at Lucy. 'Only the Dean, I believe, said Mr.
I believe you think I should disgrace myself I should put my knife in my mouth, or something, if you took me to Lord Driffield's. I can behave myself perfectly, thank you. And Lucy looked at her husband in a perfect storm of temper and resentment.
He had a splendid physique, and at this moment of his youth he strained it to the utmost. He grudged the time for sleep and meals, and on Saturday afternoons, the early-closing day of Manchester, he would go out to country sales, or lay plans for seeing the few considerable libraries Lord Driffield's among them which the neighbouring districts possessed.
There was almost nothing he did not know, except how to make a book for himself. He was so learned that he had, so to speak, worked through to an extreme modesty. His friends, however, found nothing in life so misleading as Lord Driffield's diffidence. At the same time Providence had laid upon him a vast family estate, and an aristocratic wife, married in his extreme youth to please his father.
Ever since that whimsical scholar had first taken kindly notice of the boy-tradesman, there had been a growing friendship between the two; and of late years Lord Driffield's interest in David's development and career had become particularly warm and cordial.
Yet probably the two worlds have their analogues in every religion; and what the individual has to learn in these days at once of outward debate and of unifying social aspiration, is "to dissent no longer with the heat of a narrow antipathy, but with the quiet of a large sympathy." A few days after Lord Driffield's warm invitation to Mr. and Mrs.
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