ame an understood
matter that people were expected to go into a long room in order to eat
and drink. Mauleverer, now alive to the duties of his situation,
and feeling exceedingly angry with Lucy, was more reconciled than he
otherwise might have been to the etiquette which obliged him to select
for the object of his hospitable cares an old dowager duchess instead of
the beauty of the fete; but he took care to point out to the squire the
places appointed for himself and daughter, which were, though at some
distance from the earl, under the providence of his vigilant survey.

While Mauleverer was deifying the dowager duchess, and refreshing
his spirits with a chicken and a medicinal glass of madeira, the
conversation near Lucy turned, to her infinite dismay, upon Clifford.
Some one had seen him in the grounds, booted and in a riding undress
(in that day people seldom rode and danced in the same conformation of
coat); and as Mauleverer was a precise person about those little matters
of etiquette, this negligence of Clifford's made quite a subject of
discussion. By degrees the conversation changed into the old inquiry as
to who this Captain Clifford was; and just as it had reached that point,
it reached also the gently deafened ears of Lord Mauleverer.

"Pray, my lord," said the old duchess, "since he is one of your guests,
you, who know who and what every one is, can possibly inform us of the
real family of this beautiful Mr. Clifford?"

"One of my guests, did you say?" answered Mauleverer, irritated greatly
beyond his usual quietness of manner. "Really, your grace does me wrong.
He may be a guest of my valet, but he assuredly is not mine; and should
I encounter him, I shall leave it to my valet to give him his conge as
well as his invitation!"

Mauleverer, heightening his voice as he observed athwart the table
an alternate paleness and flush upon Lucy's face, which stung all the
angrier passions, generally torpid in him, into venom, looked round, on
concluding, with a haughty and sarcastic air. So loud had been his tone,
so pointed the insult, and so dead the silence at the table while
he spoke, that every one felt the affront must be carried at once to
Clifford's hearing, should he be in the room. And after Mauleverer had
ceased, there was a universal nervous and indistinct expectation of
an answer and a scene; all was still, and it soon became certain that
Clifford was not in the apartment. When Mr. Shrewd had fully c