--AND OBSERVATION WILL EVERYWHERE FIND, INDISPENSABLE TO THE HAPPINESS OF
WOMAN, A VISITING ACQUAINTANCE.

Lionel knew that Mrs. Haughton would that day need more than usual
forewarning of a visit from Mr. Darrell. For the evening of that day
Mrs. Haughton proposed "to give a party." When Mrs. Haughton gave a
party, it was a serious affair. A notable and bustling housewife, she
attended herself to each preparatory detail. It was to assist at this
party that Lionel had resigned Lady Dulcett's concert. The young man,
reluctantly acquiescing in the arrangements by which Alban Morley had
engaged him a lodging of his own, seldom or never let a day pass without
gratifying his mother's proud heart by an hour or two spent in Gloucester
Place, often to the forfeiture of a pleasant ride, or other tempting
excursion, with gay comrades. Difficult in London life, and at the full
of its season, to devote an hour or two to visits, apart from the track
chalked out by one's very mode of existence--difficult to cut off an hour
so as not to cut up a day. And Mrs. Haughton was exacting-nice in her
choice as to the exact slice in the day. She took the prime of the
joint. She liked her neighbours to see the handsome, elegant young man
dismount from his charger or descend from his cabriolet, just at the
witching hour when Gloucester Place was fullest. Did he go to a levee,
he must be sure to come to her before he changed his dress, that she and
Gloucester Place might admire him in uniform. Was he going to dine at
some very great house, he must take her in his way (though no street
could be more out of his way), that she might be enabled to say in the
parties to which she herself repaired "There is a great dinner at Lord
So-and-so's to-day; my son called on me before he went there. If he had
been disengaged, I should have asked permission to bring him here."