s dull! It is a big room, and the fire
had only just been lit. The furniture is colourless and ugly, and,
although it is all comfortable and correct, there are no books about,
except "Romola" and "Middlemarch" and some Carlyle and John Stuart
Mill, and I did not feel that I could do with any of that just then. So
there I sat twiddling my thumbs for more than an hour, and Agnes did
make such a noise, opening and shutting drawers, but at last I
remembered a box of caramels in my dressing-bag, and it was better
after that.

[Sidenote: _A Dull Hour_]

Agnes had put out my white cashmere for tea, and at five I started to
find my way to the blue drawing-room. The bannisters are so broad and
slippery--the very things for sliding on. I feel as if I should start
down them one day, just to astonish Adeline, only I promised you I
would be good. Well, when I got to the drawing-room, the party--about
twelve--had assembled. The old Earl had been wheeled in from his rooms:
he wears a black velvet skull-cap and a stock but he has a splendid
and distinguished old face. If I were he, I would not have such a dull
daughter-in-law to live with me as Lady Carriston is, even if my son
was dead. The boy, Charlie Carriston, was there too; he does look a
goose. He is like those pictures in the _Punch_ that I was looking at,
where the family is so old that their chins and foreheads have gone. He
is awfully afraid of his mother. There were two or three elderly
pepper-and-salt men, and that Trench cousin, who is a very High Church
curate (you know Aunt Mary told us about him), and there are a Sir
Samuel and Lady Garnons, with an old maid daughter, and Adeline's
German governess, who has stayed on as companion, and helped to pour
out the tea.

[Sidenote: _A Modern Grandison_]

The conversation was subdued; about politics and Cabinet Ministers, and
pheasants and foxes, and things of that kind, and no one said anything
that meant anything else, as they did at Nazeby, or were witty like
they were at Tournelle, and the German governess said "Ach" to
everything, and Lady Garnons and Miss Garnons knitted all the time,
which gave their voices the sound of "one-two-three" when they spoke,
although they did not really count. No one had on tea-gowns--just a
Sunday sort of clothes. I don't know how we should have got through tea
if the coffee-cream cakes had not been so good. The old Earl called me
to him when he had finished, and talked so beautifully to