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The announcement of a visit of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson took the gentlemen to the drawing-room, rather suspecting that something stood in the way of her dinner-party. As it happened, she was lamenting only the loss of one of the jewels of the party: to wit, the great Professor Crooklyn, invited to meet Dr.
The ladies maintained a decided negative, but they knew too much not to feel perplexed, and they betrayed it, though they said: "Dear Lady Busshe! is it credible, in decency?" "Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!" Lady Busshe invoked her great rival appearing among them: "You come most opportunely; we are in a state of inextricable confusion: we are bordering on frenzy. You, and none but you, can help us.
So you intend to have another ride to-day? They do you good. To-morrow we dine with Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, an estimable person indeed, though I do not perfectly understand our accepting. You have not to accuse me of sitting over wine last night, my Clara! I never do it, unless I am appealed to for my judgement upon a wine." "I have come to entreat you to take me away, papa."
Like one resuming his instrument to take up the melody in a concerted piece, he said: "I thought Laetitia Dale had a singularly animated air last night." "Why! " Mrs. Mountstuart mildly gaped. "I want a new description of her. You know, I collect your mottoes and sentences." "It seems to me she is coming three parts out of her shell, and wearing it as a hood for convenience."
Mountstuart, with a sovereign lift and turn of her head, "speaks of a refusal?" "I have it from Mr. Dale," said Lady Busshe. "I had it, I thought, distinctly from Dr. Middleton," said Mr. Dale. "That Willoughby proposed to Laetitia for his cousin Vernon, Doctor Middleton meant," said Miss Eleanor.
"My work was done; I should have been an intruder. Besides I was acting wet jacket with Mrs. Mountstuart to get her to drive off fast, or she might have jumped out in search of her Professor herself." "She says you were lean as a fork, with the wind whistling through the prongs." "You see how easy it is to deceive one who is an artist in phrases.
Finally Vernon is attacked by Willoughby and Mrs. Mountstuart: and here, Willoughby chose to think, was the main difficulty. But the girl has money; she is agreeable; Vernon likes her; she is fond of his "Alps", they have tastes in common, he likes her father, and in the end he besieges her. Will she yield? De Craye is absent.
Mountstuart for something like a matter of twelve hours, calculating that she goes to bed at midnight: and I wouldn't bet on it; such is the energy of ladies of that age!" Willoughby scorned the man who could not conceal a blow, even though he joked over his discomfiture. "Gull!" he muttered. "A bird that's easy to be had, and better for stuffing than for eating," said De Craye.
Lord Salisbury came "to my obsequies" and Gladstone wrote to me. Grant Duff elected to the treasurership. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff has been so good as to amplify this by a note from his own diary.
Mountstuart enumerated in petulant accents as there started across her mind some of Sir Willoughby's attributes for the attraction of the soul of woman. "I suppose you wish me to take you in earnest?" "I appeal to you for help." "What help?" "Persuade him of the folly of pressing me to keep my word." "I will believe you, my dear Middleton, on one condition: your talk of no heart is nonsense.
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