Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/236

 in which everything else would have it? "They won't, however, be at dinner, the few people she expects; they come round afterwards, from their respective hotels; and Sir Luke Strett and his niece, the principal ones, will have arrived in London but an hour or two ago. It's for him she has wanted to do something—just, this evening, to begin. We shall see more of him, because she likes him; and I'm so glad—she'll be glad too—that you're to see him." The good lady, in connection with it, was urgent, was almost unnaturally bright. "So I greatly hope!" But her hope fairly lost itself in the wide light of her cheer.

He considered a little this appearance, while she let him, he thought, into still more knowledge than she uttered. "What is it you hope?"

"Well, that you'll stay on."

"Do you mean after dinner?" She meant, he seemed to feel, so much that he could scarce tell where it ended or began.

"Oh that, of course. Why, we're to have music—beautiful instruments and songs; and not Tasso declaimed as in the guide-books either. She has arranged it—or at least I have. That is Eugenio has. Besides, you're in the picture."

"Oh I!" said Densher almost with the gravity of a real protest.

"You'll be the grand young man who surpasses the others and holds up his head and the wine-cup. What we hope," Mrs. Stringham pursued, "is that 226