"Soup?" says Mr. Osborne, clutching the ladle, fixing his eyes on her,
in a sepulchral tone; and having helped her and the rest, did not speak
for a while.
"Take Miss Sedley's plate away," at last he said. "She can't eat the
soup--no more can I. It's beastly. Take away the soup, Hicks, and
to-morrow turn the cook out of the house, Jane."
Having concluded his observations upon the soup, Mr. Osborne made a few
curt remarks respecting the fish, also of a savage and satirical
tendency, and cursed Billingsgate with an emphasis quite worthy of the
place. Then he lapsed into silence, and swallowed sundry glasses of
wine, looking more and more terrible, till a brisk knock at the door
told of George's arrival when everybody began to rally.
"He could not come before. General Daguilet had kept him waiting at
the Horse Guards. Never mind soup or fish. Give him anything--he
didn't care what. Capital mutton--capital everything." His good humour
contrasted with his father's severity; and he rattled on unceasingly
during dinner, to the delight of all--of one especially, who need not
be mentioned.
As soon as the young ladies had discussed the orange and the glass of
wine which formed the ordinary conclusion of the dismal banquets at Mr.
Osborne's house, the signal to make sail for the drawing-room was
given, and they all arose and departed. Amelia hoped George would soon
join them there. She began playing some of his favourite waltzes (then
newly imported) at the great carved-legged, leather-cased grand piano
in the drawing-room overhead. This little artifice did not bring him.
He was deaf to the waltzes; they grew fainter and fainter; the
discomfited performer left the huge instrument presently; and though
her three friends performed some of the loudest and most brilliant new
pieces of their repertoire, she did not hear a single note, but sate
thinking, and boding evil. Old Osborne's scowl, terrific always, had
never before looked so deadly to her. His eyes followed her out of the
room, as if she had been guilty of something. When they brought her
coffee, she started as though it were a cup of poison which Mr. Hicks,
the butler, wished to propose to her. What mystery was there lurking?
Oh, those women! They nurse and cuddle their presentiments, and make
darlings of their ugliest thoughts, as they do of their deformed
children.
The gloom on the paternal countenance had also impressed George Osborne
with anxiety. With such eyebrows, and a look so decidedly bilious, how
was he to extract that money from the governor, of which George was
consumedly in want? He began praising his father's wine. That was
generally a successful means of cajoling the old gentleman.
"We never got such Madeira in the West Indies, sir, as yours. Colonel
Heavytop took off three bottles of that you sent me down, under his
belt the other day."