“Quite impossible!” exclaimed St. Barbe, and turning round, he pointed to the legion of invitations before him. “You see, the world is at my feet. I remember that fellow Seymour Hicks taking me to his rooms to show me a card he had from a countess. What would he say to this?” “Well, but you cannot be engaged to dinner every day,” said Endymion; “and you really may choose any day you like.” “Well, there are not many dinners among them, to be sure,” said St. Barbe. “Small and earlies. How I hate a ‘small and early’! Shown into a room where you meet a select few who have been asked to dinner, and who are chewing the cud like a herd of kine, and you are expected to tumble before them to assist their digestion! Faugh! No, sir; we only dine out now, and we think twice, I can tell you, before we accept even an invitation to dinner. Who’s your friend?” “Well, my friend is Lord Montfort.” “You do not mean to say that! And he is an admirer of mine?” “An enthusiastic admirer.” “I will dine with Lord Montfort. There is no one who appreciates so completely and so highly the old nobility of England as myself. They are a real aristocracy. None of the pinchbeck pedigrees and ormolu titles of the continent. Lord Montfort is, I think, an earl. A splendid title, earl! an English earl; count goes for nothing. The Earl of Montfort! An enthusiastic admirer of mine! The aristocracy of England, especially the old aristocracy, are highly cultivated. Sympathy from such a class is to be valued. I care for no other--I have always despised the million of vulgar. They have come to me, not I to them, and I have always told them the truth about themselves, that they are a race of snobs, and they rather like being told so. And now for your day?” “Why not this day if you be free? I will call for you about eight, and take you in my brougham to Montfort House.” “You have got a brougham! Well, I suppose so, being a member of parliament, though I know a good many members of parliament who have not got broughams. But your family, I remember, married into the swells. I do not grudge it you. You were always a good comrade to me. I never knew a man more free from envy than you, Ferrars, and envy is an odious vice. There are people I know, who, when they hear I have dined with the Earl of Montfort, will invent all sorts of stories against me, and send them to what they call the journals of society.” “Well, then, it shall be to-day,” said Endymion, rising. “It shall be to-day, and to tell the truth, I was thinking this morning where I should dine to-day. What I miss here are the cafes. Now in Paris you can dine every day exactly as it suits your means and mood. You may dine for a couple of francs in a quiet, unknown street, and very well; or you may dine for a couple of napoleons in a flaming saloon, with windows opening on a crowded boulevard. London is deficient in dining capability.” “You should belong to a club. Do you not?”