The girls sang to the old man at his express desire, and Hetton noticed with a feeling of secret indignation that the antiquated Broadwood grand had been replaced by a magnificent Erard.
The place seemed changed. Lord Pit Town appreciated with mingled pleasure and astonishment the brightening influence of the ladies' presence; the party, if not gay, was at least cheerful; the little leaven had leavened the whole lump. They broke up early, satisfied with themselves and with each other. But Hetton's equanimity was again disturbed in the morning when his lordship actually proposed to drive Mrs. Haggard and her cousin in the park. He retired in disgust to his own quarters, where he consoled himself by the inspection of his betting book and the reading of his trainer's last report. Haggard, of the Home Office, in his own room, with two packs of cards, worked out historical games of whist and studied the _coups_ of Lachapelle and the other great masters. Dr. Wolff walked aimlessly up and down the new galleries, and stopping before Bab Chudleigh's portrait, soliloquized, as is the manner of his race, "Ah, lovely English woman, you are but a bainted bortrait, but all men admired you because they could not help it; if all they say be true, Madame Jezebel, you were as bad a woman as lived in your bad old days. Gott in Himmel! but you are very like the leetel Warrender lady. God forbid the leetel lady shall have a heart like yours. No, I wrong that innocent English _mädchen_. But you are both _wunderschön_. Hein!" And then the doctor continued his perambulations, and in his dreamy way, he pondered on Lucy's seraphic smile, and on her wealth of golden hair. "Such things are not for me," he thought. "I must go on loving the baintings and the bortraits to the end of the chapter," and then he sat down to write a business letter about Fra Filippo Lippi to old Mr. Creeps. Justice Haggard and his son wandered about the home farm; the father criticized the piggeries, while the son smoked a big cigar and thought of nothing at all.
"Gad! Reginald," said the old man, "there's one thing I can't understand. Pit Town, who looks after most things, neglects these poor beasts in a most shameful way; if ever I came into the title I should make it my first business to pull down the whole range of buildings," here he indicated the piggeries in an indignant manner; "they are a disgrace to the place, sir; the sight of them offends me."