"Lord Steyne is really too bad," Lady Slingstone said, "but everybody
goes, and of course I shall see that my girls come to no harm." "His
lordship is a man to whom I owe much, everything in life," said the
Right Reverend Doctor Trail, thinking that the Archbishop was rather
shaky, and Mrs. Trail and the young ladies would as soon have missed
going to church as to one of his lordship's parties. "His morals are
bad," said little Lord Southdown to his sister, who meekly
expostulated, having heard terrific legends from her mamma with respect
to the doings at Gaunt House; "but hang it, he's got the best dry
Sillery in Europe!" And as for Sir Pitt Crawley, Bart.--Sir Pitt that
pattern of decorum, Sir Pitt who had led off at missionary meetings--he
never for one moment thought of not going too. "Where you see such
persons as the Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of Slingstone, you may
be pretty sure, Jane," the Baronet would say, "that we cannot be wrong.
The great rank and station of Lord Steyne put him in a position to
command people in our station in life. The Lord Lieutenant of a
County, my dear, is a respectable man. Besides, George Gaunt and I
were intimate in early life; he was my junior when we were attaches at
Pumpernickel together."
In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man--everybody who was
asked, as you the reader (do not say nay) or I the writer hereof would
go if we had an invitation.