Page:Lesbia Newman - Dalton - 1889.djvu/31



after the occurrences of the previous chapter our four of Dulham vicarage were invited to a large garden party at the country seat of the Marquis of Humnoddie, a few miles distant. The Ruddymere people, like other county families of the neighbourhood, often drove over on a Sunday to hear Mr Bristley’s afternoon lectures, which were always on subjects suited to a cultivated audience. This common point of interest led to a genuine friendship, among the privileges of which Lady Humnoddie, who treated most matters as a joke, reckoned that of chaffing Lesbia about her advanced ideas.

Among the guests was a first cousin of the marchioness, Mr Athelstan Lockstable, a young man who, though not exactly silly, had a curious habit in society, that of dropping the thread of a remark he was in course of uttering, and so losing the bearings of the conversation around him, whilst he ransacked his memory, by the aid of expletives, to find the dropped thread, which he then suddenly sprang upon the company at the very moment most malapropos, regardless of the personality and the prejudices of anyone whom he could button-hole for the purpose, and overwhelm with a fresh batch of expletives expressive of his satisfaction at having caught his lost idea.