, and her balls the pest of
society. She was not in the least satisfied. And how is Gerard?'

'Why, we really have been very uneasy about him,' said Lady Marney, 'but
the last bulletin,' she added, with a smile, 'announces a tooth.'

'Next year you must give him a pony, and let him ride with my Harry;
I mean my little Harry, Harry of Monmouth I call him; he is so like a
portrait Mr. Coningsby has of his grandfather, the same debauched look.'

'Your dinner is served, sir!'

Sidonia offered his hand to Lady Marney; Edith was attended by Tancred.
A door at the end of the room opened into a marble corridor, which led
to the dining-room, decorated in the same style as the library. It was
a suite of apartments which Sidonia used for an intimate circle like the
present.

CHAPTER XX.

_A Modern Troubadour_

THEY seated themselves at a round table, on which everything seemed
brilliant and sparkling; nothing heavy, nothing oppressive. There
was scarcely anything that Sidonia disliked so much as a small table,
groaning, as it is aptly termed, with plate. He shrunk from great masses
of gold and silver; gigantic groups, colossal shields, and mobs of
tankards and flagons; and never used them except on great occasions,
when the banquet assumes an Egyptian character, and becomes too vast
for refinement. At present, the dinner was served on Sevres porcelain of
Rose du Barri, raised on airy golden stands of arabesque workmanship;
a mule bore your panniers of salt, or a sea-nymph proffered it you on
a shell just fresh from the ocean, or you found it in a bird's nest; by
every guest a different pattern. In the centre of the table, mounted on
a pedestal, was a group of pages in Dresden china. Nothing could be
more gay than their bright cloaks and flowing plumes, more elaborately
exquisite than their laced shirts and rosettes, or more fantastically
saucy than their pretty affected faces, as each, with extended arm, held
a light to a guest. The room was otherwise illumined from the sides.

The guests had scarcely seated themselves when the two absent ones
arrived.

'Well, you did not divide, Vavasour,' said Lord Henry.

'Did I not?' said Vavasour; 'and nearly beat the Government. You are a
pretty fellow!'

'I was paired.'

'With some one who could not stay. Your brother, Mrs. Coningsby, behaved
like a man, sacrificed his dinner, and made a capital speech.'

'Oh! Oswald, did he speak? Did you speak, Harry?'

'No; I