"Hardly; but I am sorry that you do not know who it will be, as you might have told me what to talk about." "Do you always get up your subject beforehand, like Belinda Denzil, out of the _Saturday_ or _Echoes of the Clubs_?" "Oh no! but--" "St. John! St. John!" shouts Sir Thomas, banging a swing-door, behind him, and coming heavy-footed through the hall. "It's Sir Thomas!" says Esther growing suddenly pale: and if she had said, and had had reason to say, "It's the Devil!" she could not have made the communication in a more tragic whisper: then, not waiting for any advice as to her conduct, snatching up her bouquet, she flies as if shot from a crossbow, out of the window and into the garden. * * * * * Was not it Lord Chesterfield who said that the guests at a dinner party should never be less than the Graces or more than the Muses? Kant preferred the Grace number, and had daily two friends, never more, to dine with him. The guests at the Felton banquet greatly exceed the Chesterfieldian limits. Those who have come only to dinner have been bemoaning themselves heavily, as they came along, on the hardship of being forced away from garden and croquet-ground, and obliged to drive three, four, five miles bare-necked and bare-backed--and a woman nowadays in full dress is verily and indeed bare-necked and bare-backed--through the mellow crimson evening. To even these grumblers, however, destiny now appears kinder--now, I say, that the too candid daylight is shut out, that the amber champagne-- "With beaded bubbles winking at the brim--" is creaming gently in every glass, and the _entrées_ are making their savoury rounds. Esther has fallen to the lot of one of the stray men of whom Miss Blessington spoke--a man who, when bidden to dinner, complies with the letter of his invitation, and _dines_ chiefly and firstly; looks upon the lady whom he escorts to the social board as a mere adjunct--an agreeable or disagreeable one, as the case may be, but as merely an adjunct, as the flowers in the vases, or the silver Cupids that uphold the fruit baskets. In the intervals of the courses he has no objection to being amused: it is too much exertion to be very amusing himself, but he is not unwilling to smile and lend an indulgent ear to his companion's prattle, so as that prattle does not infringe upon the succulent programme that he has, by diligent study of the _menu_, laid out for himself.