e neighbours, not to say
your tenants, I expect you are sufficiently acquainted with the usages of
polite society to know that a failure on your part to call would be
tantamount to a direct affront. Furthermore, as one of them (Miss Sandus
is, unhappily, still in the Goetterdaemmerung of the Establishment), as
Madame Torrebianca is coming to your house, as your guest, to hear Mass
on Sunday morning, I sincerely hope I need n't tell you that it's simply
_de rigueur_ that you should call before that occasion."

He stood off, and raised his brown-red eyebrows, as who, from an
altitude, speaking _de par le Roi_, should challenge contumacy.

But two could play at the game of eyebrow-raising. Anthony raised his.

"Coming as my guest? Coming as my _guest_? I like that," he exclaimed.
"What have _I_ to do with her coming? If every stranger to whom you
choose to extend the privilege of hearing Mass in the Chapel, is thereby
to be constituted a _guest_,--_my_ guest,--I shall have my hands full
indeed. If she's a guest at all, if she's anybody's guest, she's yours;
You 've created the situation. Don't try to thrust the brunt of it on
me."

Adrian flung back his head, and spoke from a still loftier altitude.

"I believe you are the master of the house?"

"The titular master," Anthony distinguished. "I years ago resigned all
real power into the pink and chubby hands of my mayor of the palace."
And he slightly bowed.

"I disdain to answer your silly quibble over the word _guest_," Adrian
continued, ignoring the rejoinder. "La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca
is a guest. And as master of the house, by your return, you _ex officio_
supersede me in the capacity of host."

"_Ex officio_?" repeated Anthony, considering. "The fashion of adorning
ordinary speech with classical quotations has long since passed from use."

"And therefore,"--Adrian brought his theorem to its conclusion,--"unless
you particularly aspire to seem--and to be--an absolute barbarian, a
bear, a boor, a churl, and a curmudgeon,"--each epithet received an
augmented stress,--"you must call at Craford New Manor with the least
possible delay. As I find myself in rather good form just now, and feel
that I should shine to perhaps exceptional advantage, I suggest that we
call forthwith."

Anthony got up, and sleepily stretched his arms.

"Ah, well," he consented; "since your fond heart is set upon it--there.
It will be an awful fag; but when Dimplechin