cooked food being sent into the
house from a shop had never been so much as heard of. Emily, who had
hitherto been regarded in the house as a rather strong-minded young
woman, could only break down and weep. Why, oh why, had she consented
to bring herself and her misery into her father's house? She could
at any rate have prevented that by explaining to her father the
unfitness of such an arrangement.

The "party" came. There was Major Pountney, very fine, rather loud,
very intimate with the host, whom on one occasion he called "Ferdy,
my boy," and very full of abuse of the Duke and Duchess of Omnium.
"And yet she was a good creature when I knew her," said Lady Eustace.
Pountney suggested that the Duchess had not then taken up politics.
"I've got out of her way," said Lady Eustace, "since she did that."
And there was Captain Gunner, who defended the Duchess, but who
acknowledged that the Duke was the "most consumedly stuck-up
cox-comb" then existing. "And the most dishonest," said Lopez, who
had told his new friends nothing about the repayment of the election
expenses. And Dick was there. He liked these little parties, in which
a good deal of wine could be drunk, and at which ladies were not
supposed to be very stiff. The Major and the Captain, and Mrs. Leslie
and Lady Eustace, were such people as he liked,--all within the pale,
but having a piquant relish of fastness and impropriety. Dick was
wont to declare that he hated the world in buckram. Aunt Harriet was
triumphant in a manner which disgusted Emily, and which she thought
to be most disrespectful to her father;--but in truth Aunt Harriet
did not now care very much for Mr. Wharton, preferring the friendship
of Mr. Wharton's son-in-law. Mrs. Leslie came in gorgeous clothes,
which, as she was known to be very poor, and to have attached herself
lately with almost more than feminine affection to Lady Eustace, were
at any rate open to suspicious cavil. In former days Mrs. Leslie had
taken upon herself to say bitter things about Mr. Lopez, which Emily
could now have repeated, to that lady's discomfiture, had such a mode
of revenge suited her disposition. With Mrs. Leslie there was Lady
Eustace, pretty as ever, and sharp and witty, with the old passion
for some excitement, the old proneness to pretend to trust everybody,
and the old incapacity for trusting anybody. Ferdinand Lopez had
lately been at her feet, and had fired her imagination with stories
of the grand things