“There’s papa,” said Emily, jumping up from her seat.
Mrs. Dick looked at Lopez, and saw at a glance that for a moment his courage had failed him. But he recovered himself quickly. “Hadn’t you better keep your seat, my dear?” he said to his wife. “The servants will attend to Mr. Wharton, and I will go to him presently.”
“Oh, no,” said Emily, who by this time was almost at the door.
“You didn’t expect him—did you?” asked Dick Roby.
“Nobody knew when he was coming. I think he told Emily that he might be here any day.”
“He’s the most uncertain man alive,” said Mrs. Dick, who was a good deal scared by the arrival, though determined to hold up her head and exhibit no fear.
“I suppose the old gentleman will come in and have some dinner,” whispered Captain Gunner to his neighbour Mrs. Leslie.
“Not if he knows I’m here,” replied Mrs. Leslie, tittering. “He thinks that I am—oh, something a great deal worse than I can tell you.”
“Is he given to be cross?” asked Lady Eustace, also affecting to whisper.
“Never saw him in my life,” answered the Major, “but I shouldn’t wonder if he was. Old gentlemen generally are cross. Gout, and that kind of thing, you know.”
For a minute or two the servants stopped their ministrations, and things were very uncomfortable; but Lopez, as soon as he had recovered himself, directed Mr. Sugarscraps’ men to proceed with the banquet. “We can eat our dinner, I suppose, though my father-in-law has come back,” he said. “I wish my wife was not so fussy, though that is a kind of thing, Lady Eustace, that one has to expect from young wives.” The banquet did go on, but the feeling was general that a misfortune had come upon them, and that something dreadful might possibly happen.
Emily, when she rushed out, met her father in the hall, and ran into his arms. “Oh, papa!” she exclaimed.
“What’s all this about?” he asked, and as he spoke he passed on through the hall to his own room at the back of the house. There were of course many evidences on all sides of the party—the strange servants, the dishes going in and out, the clatter of glasses, and the smell of viands. “You’ve got a dinner-party,” he said. “Had you not better go back to your friends?”
“No, papa.”
“What is the matter, Emily? You are unhappy.”
“Oh, so unhappy!”
“What is it all about? Who are they? Whose doing is it—yours or his? What makes you unhappy?”
He was now seated in his armchair, and she threw herself on her knees at his feet. “He would have them. You mustn’t be angry with me. You won’t be angry with me;—will you?”
He put his hand upon her head, and stroked her hair. “Why should I be angry with you because your husband has asked friends to dinner?” She was so unlike her usual self that he knew not what to make of it. It had not been her nature to kneel and to ask for pardon, or to be timid and submissive. “What is it, Emily, that makes you like this?”
“He shouldn’t have had the people.”
“Well;—granted. But it does not signify much. Is your aunt Harriet there?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t be very bad, then.”
“Mrs. Leslie is there, and Lady Eustace—and two men I don’t like.”
“Is Everett here?”
“No;—he wouldn’t have Everett.”
“Oughtn’t you to go to them?”
“Don’t make me go. I should only cry. I have been crying all day, and the whole of yesterday.” Then she buried her face upon his knees, and sobbed as though she would break her heart.
He couldn’t at all understand it. Though he distrusted his son-in-law, and certainly did not love him, he had not as yet learned to hold him in aversion. When the connection was once made he had determined to make the best of it, and had declared to himself that as far as manners went the man was well enough. He had not as yet seen the inside of the man, as it had been the sad fate of the poor wife to see him. It had never occurred to him that his daughter’s love had failed her, or that she could already be repenting what she had done. And now, when she was weeping at his feet and deploring the sin of the dinner-party—which, after all, was a trifling sin—he could not comprehend the feelings which were actuating her. “I suppose your aunt Harriet made up the party,” he said.
“He did it.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes;—he did it. He wrote to the women in my name when I refused.” Then Mr. Wharton began to perceive that there had been a quarrel. “I told him Mrs. Leslie oughtn’t to come here.”
“I don’t love Mrs. Leslie—nor, for the matter of that, Lady Eustace. But they won’t hurt the house, my dear.”
“And he has had the dinner sent in from a shop.”
“Why couldn’t he let Mrs. Williams do it?” As he said this, the tone of his voice became for the first time angry.
“Cook has gone away. She wouldn’t stand it. And Mrs. Williams is very angry. And Barker wouldn’t wait at table.”
“What’s the meaning of it all?”
“He would have it so. Oh, papa, you don’t know what I’ve undergone. I wish—I wish we had not come here. It would have been better anywhere else.”
“What would have been better, dear?”
“Everything. Whether we lived or died, it would have been better. Why should
