The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 316: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE LORD AND THE MERCHANT 289 At this moment the door was thrown open, and a domestic in a superb livery announced that dinner was served up. Nothing occurred during the repast which requires special mention; we will therefore suppose the cloth to have been removed, the dessert to be placed upon the table, Lady Anastatia to have retired to the drawing-room, and the brothers-in-law to be left alone together. For some little while Viscount Rushbrook went on drinking, not merely with the air of one who was much attached to wine, but like- wise with that of a person who was priming himself, so to speak, in order to enter upon the subject which, despite his natural self-sufficiency, he had some little difidence in ap- proaching. He was moreover casting about for an oppor- tunity to enter upon it, and this opportunity Sir Frederick Latham did not appear inclined spontaneously to furnish, nor to assist in developing. Indeed, the great merchant seemed as if he had forgotten that part of the viscount’s letter which had alluded to important business; he went on talking on general topics, as if there were no special one to be brought upon the tapis, and to the young nobleman it was with a most provoking indifference that Sir Frederick told him how long this particular wine had been in bottle, and by what a lucky chance he had got possession of that other sort, and how he intended to make such and such improvements in his grounds, and how much his firm hoped to gain from the great foreign loan which they had just con- tracted for and taken. ‘‘ Confound this fellow! ” thought the viscount within him- self, “ he is only doing this to humiliate me. He won’t help me to come to the point; he means me to open the subject deliberately and methodically, without letting me gradually glide into it. This is the cursed pride of purse, which humbles our patrician pride of birth. By Heaven, how I hate him! ” As he mentally made this last ejaculation, Viscount Rush- brook held up a bumper of port toward the brilliant chande- lier suspended overhead, as if it were to examine its colour, but he was really the while eying the merchant askance, and studying his countenance to ascertain whether its expression afforded a hope that the favour he was presently to solicit would be granted. But how inscrutable was that counte- nance, with its calmness, half-cold, half-self-sufficient, and CORNICLOOKS (CO)