And Mr. O'Boyneville, on his way to a big house in Bloomsbury, where he ate his hurried meals and took his brief night's rest, and which was popularly supposed to be his home, abandoned himself to musings of quite a different fashion. "If ever I were to marry," he thought--"and Heaven knows it's a remote contingency--I would marry such a woman as Lady Cecil Chudleigh." Many men have pronounced such resolutions as this, and have lived to ally themselves to the most vulgar opposite of their chosen ideal; but then Laurence O'Boyneville was a man with whom will was power. CHAPTER VIII. THE DOWAGER'S LITTLE DINNER. Lady Cecil was both surprised and annoyed when the dowager announced Mr. O'Boyneville as one of the guests at her next little dinner. "How could you ask that dreadful man, auntie?" she said. "Because the dreadful man is a very distinguished person--in the law; and as Mr. Horley, the Indian judge, dines with us next Wednesday, I thought I could not do better than ask this Irish barrister. I know those lawyer people like to meet one another; though goodness knows, with salmon at half-a-crown a pound, and ducklings at eight shillings a pair, I ought not to involve myself in the expense of dinner parties." Cecil shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly as she seated herself at her piano after this little discussion. It mattered so little to her who came to her aunt's dinner parties. Imagine the indifference of Lucy Ashton as to the guests who partook of the Lord Keeper's ponderous banquets during that dreary interval in which Ravenswood was away. But poor Cecil obeyed her aunt's orders, and did battle with the poulterer for a reduction in the price of his ducklings, and went through all manner of intricate calculations as to the difference between the expense of lobster cutlets and fricandeau, or oyster patties and chicken rissoles. "I think Spickson makes his lobster cutlets smaller than ever this year," said Mrs. MacClaverhouse, as she looked over the confectioner's list of made-dishes; "and as to his fricandeaus, I am always on tenter hooks for fear they shouldn't go decently round the table, and I can't get that man Peters to calculate his spoonfuls; and if he's weak enough to let people help themselves there's sure to be unfairness about the truffles; though what any one can admire in truffles is one of the mysteries I have never been able to fathom. As to dessert, Cecil, I shall take the carriage into the City to-morrow morning, and get what I want; for I've no notion of paying eightpence apiece in Covent Garden for peaches that I can get in Thames Street for threepence."