He might amuse you. He's a great liar." Lucy thought
that she might like Mr. Urquhart.

On those lines the party was arranged: the Blisses because "we owe
them a dinner; and I think the Judge will be amused by Jimmy;" the
Worthingtons--make-weights; but "She's a soft pink woman, like a
Persian kitten."

"Does Mr. Urquhart like that?" Lucy asked, but James, who didn't like
his jokes to be capped, said drily, "I don't know."

Then Lucy's favourite sister Mabel was to be allowed because James
rather liked Corbet. He thought him good style. Now we wanted two
women. One must be Miss Bacchus--"hideous, of course," said James; "a
kind of crime, but very smart." He meant that she mixed with the
aristocracy, which was true, though nobody knew why. The last was to
be Margery Dacre, a very pretty girl. Lucy put her forward, and James
thought her over, gazing out of window. "I like her name," he said--so
Lucy knew that she was admitted.

That was all. The rest was her care, and he washed his mind of it,
very sure that she would see to it. He wished the two men to meet for
a particular reason in a haphazard way, because it was better to drift
Urquhart into a thing than to lead him up to it. Moreover, it was not
at all disagreeable to him that Urquhart, a club and office
acquaintance, should see how comfortably placed he was, how well
appointed with wife and child, with manservant and maidservant and
everything that was his. Urquhart was a rich man, and to know that his
lawyer was rich was no bad thing. It inspired confidence. Now the
particular thing to be done with the two men, Francis Lingen and
Urquhart, was this. Francis Lingen, who might be a baronet some day
and well to do, was at the moment, as at most moments hitherto, very
short of money. Urquhart always had plenty. Macartney's idea was that
he might get Urquhart to fill Francis Lingen's pockets, on terms which
could easily be arranged. There was ample security, of course. Francis
Lingen could have gone to the Jews, or the bank, but if the thing
could be done in a gentlemanly way through one's lawyer, who also
happened to be a gentleman, in one's own set, and so on--well, why
not?

Hence the little dinner, over whose setting forth Lucy puckered her
brows with Mrs. Jenkins, her admirable cook, and wrote many notes on
little slips of paper which she kept for the purpose. She knew quite
well when James was "particular" about a party. He said less than
usual when he was