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Excerpt: …and begged to recommend the pound-cake, from his own personal experience. “Go with Mr. Ingleby,” said Minnie, authoritatively. “I put Miss Maxfield under your charge, Ingleby, and shall hold you responsible for her being properly attended to in the tea-room.” The lad, colouring with pleasure, led off the unresisting Rhoda. All her force of will, all her courage, seemed to have been expended in the effort of greeting Algernon. She simply obeyed Miss Bodkin with listless docility. But, on reaching the tea-room, she was conscious that her friend had done wisely and kindly in sending her away, for there were but two persons there. One was Mr. Dockett, who was as inveterate a tea-drinker as Doctor Johnson; and the other was the Reverend Peter Warlock, hovering hungrily near the cake-basket. Neither of these gentlemen took any special notice of her, and she was able to sit quiet and unobserved. Her cavalier conscientiously endeavoured to fulfil Miss Minnie’s injunctions, but was greatly disappointed by the indifference which Rhoda manifested to the pound-cake. However, he endeavoured to make up for her shortcomings by devouring such a quantity of that confection himself as startled even Dr. Bodkin’s old footman, accustomed to the appetites of many a generation of school-boys. But all this time where was the bride? The party was given especially in her honour, and to omit her from any description of it would be an unpardonable solecism. The Honourable Mrs. Algernon Ancram Errington sat on a sofa in the principal drawing-room, with a discontented expression of countenance, superciliously surveying the company through her eye-glass, and asking where Algernon was, if he were absent from her side for five minutes. Castalia was looking in better health than when we first had the honour of making her acquaintance. She had grown a trifle stouter