e would have been thrown away,
and the thing would have been a failure; and there were circumstances
connected with the present assembly which made Miss Dunstable very
anxious that she should not fail. That the two great ones of the
earth were Tom Towers of the _Jupiter_, and the Duke of Omnium, need
hardly be expressed in words. And now, at this very moment, as Lady
Lufton was making her civil speeches to young Gresham, apparently in
no hurry to move on, and while Miss Dunstable was endeavouring to
whisper something into the doctor's ear, which would make him feel
himself at home in this new world, a sound was heard which made that
lady know that half her wish had at any rate been granted to her. A
sound was heard--but only by her own and one other attentive pair of
ears. Mrs. Harold Smith had also caught the name, and knew that the
duke was approaching. There was great glory and triumph in this; but
why had his grace come at so unchancy a moment? Miss Dunstable had
been fully aware of the impropriety of bringing Lady Lufton and the
Duke of Omnium into the same house at the same time; but when she had
asked Lady Lufton, she had been led to believe that there was no hope
of obtaining the duke; and then, when that hope had dawned upon her,
she had comforted herself with the reflection that the two suns,
though they might for some few minutes be in the same hemisphere,
could hardly be expected to clash, or come across each other's
orbits. Her rooms were large and would be crowded; the duke would
probably do little more than walk through them once, and Lady Lufton
would certainly be surrounded by persons of her own class. Thus Miss
Dunstable had comforted herself. But now all things were going wrong,
and Lady Lufton would find herself in close contiguity to the nearest
representative of Satanic agency, which, according to her ideas, was
allowed to walk this nether English world of ours. Would she scream?
or indignantly retreat out of the house?--or would she proudly raise
her head, and with outstretched hand and audible voice, boldly defy
the devil and all his works? In thinking of these things as the duke
approached Miss Dunstable almost lost her presence of mind. But Mrs.
Harold Smith did not lose hers. "So here at last is the duke," she
said, in a tone intended to catch the express attention of Lady
Lufton.
Mrs. Smith had calculated that there might still be time for her
ladyship to pass on and avoid the interview. Bu
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