Oldmeadow could not associate Barney with ambitions, either social or political, nor, he was bound to say, as he looked round the dinner-table, where Adrienne sat at one end with Lord Lumley and Barney at the other with Lady Lumley, could one infer from its disparate and irrelevant elements any such ambitions in Adrienne. He had taken Mrs. Aldesey down and had felt her at moments to be almost too resourceful, her air of graceful skill in keeping the ball rolling seeming too much to emphasize its tendency to drop. Without Mrs. Aldesey, without Meg--vividly engaged at one corner with a fair young American--without himself, for he had aided and abetted Lydia to the best of his ability, the dinner would have been a dull one and he was not sure that even their enterprise had redeemed it. Adrienne had not any air of fearing dullness or of being in need of assistance. Oldmeadow saw that the blue ribbon was frequently unrolled and that, as always, it made a silence in which it could be watched. Lord Lumley, his handsome, official head bent in an attitude of chivalrous devotion, watched earnestly, and the fair young American paused in the midst of whatever he might be saying to Meg to take almost reverent note; but Oldmeadow fancied more than once that he caught startled eyes fixed upon it, especially when there emerged a lustrous loop of quotation:--
"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break,--"
The silence for that had been so general that even Barney, far away, and protected by Mrs. Aldesey, was aware of it.
"How wonderfully he _wears_, doesn't he, dear old Browning," said Mrs. Aldesey, and in the glance that Barney cast upon her was an oddly mingled gratitude and worry. The fair young American, he was very fair and had clear, charming eyes, finished the verse in a low voice to Meg and Meg looked at him affectionately the while. He was evidently one of Adrienne's appurtenances.
It was a dull dinner. Pretty, festive Mrs. Pope and young Mr. Haviland, reputed to be a wit and one of Meg's young men as Mrs. Pope was one of Barney's young women, would not with any eagerness again attend a board where the hostess quoted Browning and didn't know better than to send you down, the first with a stern young socialist who sat silent for the most part and frowned when addressed, and the second with a jocular, middle-aged lady from California, the mother, Oldmeadow gathered, of the clear-eyed youth, from whose ample bosom Mr. Haviland's subtle arrows glanced aside leaving him helplessly exposed to the stout bludgeonings of her humour. Adrienne paused once or twice in her conversation to smile approval upon her compatriot and to draw Lord Lumley's attention to her special brand of merriment, good Lord Lumley adjusting his glasses obediently to take it in.