Between these
two apparently dissimilar motives there was a connection, not visible on
the surface, which was now to assert itself.

Of the five guests, two were middle-aged gentlemen belonging to that
large, but indistinct, division of the human family whom the hand of
Nature has painted in unobtrusive neutral tint. They had absorbed the
ideas of their time with such receptive capacity as they possessed;
and they occupied much the same place in society which the chorus in an
opera occupies on the stage. They echoed the prevalent sentiment of the
moment; and they gave the solo-talker time to fetch his breath.

The three remaining guests were on the right side of thirty. All
profoundly versed in horse-racing, in athletic sports, in pipes, beer,
billiards, and betting. All profoundly ignorant of every thing else
under the sun. All gentlemen by birth, and all marked as such by the
stamp of "a University education." They may be personally described as
faint reflections of Geoffrey; and they may be numerically distinguished
(in the absence of all other distinction) as One, Two, and Three.

Sir Patrick laid the newspaper on the table and placed himself in one of
the comfortable arm-chairs. He was instantly assailed, in his domestic
capacity, by his irrepressible sister-in-law. Lady Lundie dispatched
Blanche to him with the list of her guests at the dinner. "For your
uncle's approval, my dear, as head of the family."

While Sir Patrick was looking over the list, and while Arnold was making
his way to Blanche, at the back of her uncle's chair, One, Two, and
Three--with the Chorus in attendance on them--descended in a body on
Geoffrey, at the other end of the room, and appealed in rapid succession
to his superior authority, as follows:

"I say, Delamayn. We want You. Here is Sir Patrick running a regular
Muck at us. Calls us aboriginal Britons. Tells us we ain't educated.
Doubts if we could read, write, and cipher, if he tried us. Swears he's
sick of fellows showing their arms and legs, and seeing which fellow's
hardest, and who's got three belts of muscle across his wind, and who
hasn't, and the like of that. Says a most infernal thing of a chap.
Says--because a chap likes a healthy out-of-door life, and trains for
rowing and running, and the rest of it, and don't see his way to stewing
over his books--_therefore_ he's safe to commit all the crimes in the
calendar, murder included. Saw your name down in the newspaper for th