one
Lady Helen Varley, of whom more presently. Lady Charlotte was the sister
of the Duke of Sedbergh, one of the greatest of dukes, and the sister
also of Lady Helen's mother, Lady Wanless. Lady Wanless had died
prematurely, and her two younger children, Helen and Hugh Flaxman,
creatures both of them of unusually fine and fiery quality, had owed a
good deal to their aunt. There were family alliances between the
Sedberghs and the Wendovers, and Lady Charlotte made a point of keeping
up with the squire. She adored cynics and people who said piquant
things, and it amused her to make her large tyrannous hand felt by the
squire's timid, crack-brained, ridiculous little sister.

As to Dr. Meyrick, he was tall and gaunt as Don Quixote. His gray hair
made a ragged fringe round his straight-backed head; he wore an
old-fashioned neck-cloth; his long body had a perpetual stoop, as though
of deference, and his spectacled look of mild attentiveness had nothing
in common with that medical self-assurance with which we are all
nowadays so familiar. Robert noticed presently that when he addressed
Mrs. Darcy he said 'Ma'am,' making no bones at all about it; and his
manner generally was the manner of one to whom class distinctions were
the profoundest reality, and no burden at all on a naturally humble
temper. Dr. Baker, of Whindale, accustomed to trouncing Mrs. Seaton,
would have thought him a poor creature.

When dinner was announced, Robert found himself assigned to Mrs. Darcy;
the squire took Lady Charlotte. Catherine fell to Mr. Bickerton, Rose to
Mr. Wynnstay, and the rest found their way in as best they could.
Catherine seeing the distribution was happy for a moment, till she found
that if Rose was covered on her right she was exposed to the full fire
of the enemy on her left, in other words that Langham was placed between
her and Dr. Meyrick.

'Are your spirits damped at all by this magnificence?' Langham said to
his neighbour as they sat down. The table was entirely covered with
Japanese lilies, save for the splendid silver candelabra from which the
light flashed, first on to the faces of the guests, and then on to those
of the family portraits, hung thickly round the room. A roof embossed
with gilded Tudor roses on a ground of black oak hung above them; a
rose-water dish in which the Merry Monarch had once dipped his hands,
and which bore a record of the fact in the inscription on its sides,
stood before them; and the servant