"Get away!" Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair.
"I'll have none of it, I tell you! It's death! It's fifty times worse
than that beastly compound Christmas pudding! What fool has been doing
this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me! It's an insult."

"You are not compelled to eat any before dinner," said Adrian, pointing
the corner of the table after him, "but your share you must take, and
appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about the marriage
cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits. Maidens, I
hear, first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams
therefrom--said to be of a lighter class, taken that way. It's a capital
cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped to make it--you have indeed!
So here it is."

The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it, and flung
himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: "There!... My appetite's gone for
to-day!"

"Then shall I tell Richard that you won't touch a morsel of his cake?"
said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and looking at his
uncle.

"Richard?"

"Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion since you've been
in town. He's married, you know. Married this morning at Kensington
parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty
to. Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight, a
very delectable place for a month's residence. I have to announce to you