Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/191

Rh Mr Southey, while their mamma slumbered a little on the sofa. No; the centre of eager talk and enjoyment was the steward's room, where Mr Scales, house-steward and head-butler, a man most solicitous about his boots, wristbands, the roll of his whiskers, and other attributes of a gentleman, distributed cigars, cognac, and whisky, to various colleagues and guests who were discussing, with that freedom of conjecture which is one of our inalienable privileges as Britons, the probable amount of Harold Transome's fortune, concerning which fame had already been busy long enough to have acquired vast magnifying power.

The chief part in this scene was undoubtedly Mr Christian's, although he had hitherto been comparatively silent; but he occupied two chairs with so much grace, throwing his right leg over the seat of the second, and resting his right hand on the back; he held his cigar and displayed a splendid seal-ring with such becoming nonchalance, and had his grey hair arranged with so much taste, that experienced eyes would at once have seen even the great Scales himself to be but a secondary character.

"Why," said Mr Crowder, an old respectable tenant, though much in arrear as to his rent, who