Fine
Shades and Nice Feelings that Brookfield had realized?

In Arabella's conscience lay a certain reproach of herself for
permitting the "vice of a lower circle" to cling to her--viz., she had
still betrayed a stupid hostility to the Tinleys: she had rejoiced to
see them incapable of mixing with any but their own set, and thus be
stamped publicly for what they were. She had struggled to repress it,
and yet, continually, her wits were in revolt against her judgement.
Perhaps one reason was that Albert Tinley had haunted her steps at an
early part of the day; and Albert--a sickening City young man, "full
of insolence, and half eyeglass," according to Freshfield--had once
ventured to propose for her.

The idea that the Tinleys strove to catch at her skirts made Arabella
spiteful. Up to the threshold of Besworth, Freshfield, Mr. Powys, Tracy,
and Arabella kept the wheel of a dazzling run of small-talk, throwing
intermittent sparks. Laura Tinley would press up, apparently to hear,
but in reality (as all who knew her could see) with the object of being
a rival representative of her sex in this illustrious rare encounter
of divine intelligences. "You are anxious to know?" said Arabella,
hesitatingly.

"To know, dear?" echoed Laura.

"There was, I presumed, something you did not hear." Arabella was half
ashamed of the rudeness to which her antagonism to Laura's vulgarity
forced her.

"Oh! I hear everything," Laura assured her.

"Indeed!" said Arabella. "By the way, who conducts you?" (Laura was on
Edward Burley's arm.) "Oh! will you go to"--such and such an end of the
table. "And if, Lady Gosstre, I may beg of you to do me the service
to go there also," was added aloud; and lower, but quite audibly, "Mr.
Pericles will have music, so there can be no talking." This, with the
soupcon of a demi-shrug; "You will not suffer much" being implied.
Laura said to herself, "I am not a fool." A moment after, Arabella was
admitting in her own mind, as well as Fine Shades could interpret it,
that she was. On entering the dining-hall, she beheld two figures seated
at the point whither Laura was led by her partner. These were Mrs. Chump
and Mr. Pole, with champagne glasses in their hands. Arabella was pushed
on by the inexorable crowd of hungry people behind.

CHAPTER XXXII

Despite the pouring in of the flood of guests about the tables, Mrs.
Chump and Mr. Pole sat apparently unconcerned in their places, and, as
if to show t