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My Novel — Volume 09 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
page 74 of 108 (68%)
The viands were exquisite; the wine came from the cellars of deceased
archbishops and ambassadors. The company was select; the party did not
exceed eight. Four were the eldest sons of peers (from a baron to a
duke); one was a professed wit, never to be got without a month's notice,
and, where a /parvenu/ was host, a certainty of green peas and peaches--
out of season; the sixth, to Randal's astonishment, was Mr. Richard
Avenel; himself and the baron made up the complement.

The eldest sons recognized each other with a meaning smile; the most
juvenile of them, indeed (it was his first year in London), had the grace
to blush and look sheepish. The others were more hardened; but they all
united in regarding with surprise both Randal and Dick Avenel. The
former was known to most of them personally, and to all, by repute, as a
grave, clever, promising young man, rather prudent than lavish, and never
suspected to have got into a scrape. What the deuce did he do there?
Mr. Avenel puzzled them yet more. A middle-aged man, said to be in
business, whom they had observed "about town" (for he had a noticeable
face and figure),--that is, seen riding in the Park, or lounging in the
pit at the opera, but never set eyes on at a recognized club, or in the
coteries of their "set;" a man whose wife gave horrid third-rate parties,
that took up half a column in the "Morning Post" with a list of "The
Company Present," in which a sprinkling of dowagers fading out of
fashion, and a foreign title or two, made the darkness of the obscurer
names doubly dark. Why this man should be asked to meet them, by Baron
Levy, too--a decided tuft-hunter and would-be exclusive--called all their
faculties into exercise. The wit, who, being the son of a small
tradesman, but in the very best society, gave himself far greater airs
than the young lords, impertinently solved the mystery. "Depend on it,"
whispered he to Spendquick,--"depend on it the man is the X. Y. of the
'Times' who offers to lend any sum of money from L10 to half-a-million.
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