He is to come by the last train, I believe. You may
depend Lady Geraldine would not be here if there were any chance of his
arriving in the middle of the day. She will keep him up to collar, you
maybe sure. I shouldn't like to be engaged to a woman armed with the
experience of a decade of London seasons. It must be tight work!"
A shrill bell, pealing gaily through the wood, summoned them to luncheon;
a fairy banquet spread upon the grass under a charmed circle of beeches;
chicken-pies and lobster-salads, mayonaise of salmon and daintily-glazed
cutlets in paper frills, inexhaustible treasure of pound-cake and
strawberries and cream, with a pyramid of hothouse pines and peaches in
the centre of the turf-spread banquet. And for the wines, there were no
effervescent compounds from the laboratory of the wine-chemist--Lady
Laura's guests were not thirsty cockneys, requiring to be refreshed by
"fizz"--but delicate amber-tinted vintages of the Rhineland, which seemed
too ethereal to intoxicate, and yet were dangerous. And for the more
thirsty souls there were curiously compounded "cups:" hock and seltzer;
claret and soda-water, fortified with curacoa and flavoured artistically
with burrage or sliced pine-apple.
The banquet was a merry one; and it was nearly four o'clock when the ladies
had done trifling with strawberries and cream, and the gentlemen had
suspended their homage to the Rhineland.
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