and turned away her head, colouring.
    »Who are those ladies?« said Christian, in a low tone, to Dominic, as if he
had been startled into a sudden wish for this information.
    »They are Meester Jermyn's daughters,« said Dominic, who knew nothing either
of the lawyer's family or of Esther.
    Christian looked puzzled a moment or two, and was silent.
    »O, well - au revoir,« he said, kissing the tips of his fingers, as the
coachman, having had Jermyn's order, began to urge on the horses.
    »Does he see some likeness in the girl?« thought Jermyn, as he turned away.
»I wish I hadn't invited her to come in the carriage, as it happens.«
 

                                   Chapter 20

            »Good earthenware pitchers, sir! - of an excellent quaint pattern
            and sober colour.«
 
The market dinner at the Marquis was in high repute in Treby and its
neighbourhood. The frequenters of this three-and-sixpenny ordinary liked to
allude to it, as men allude to anything which implies that they move in good
society, and habitually converse with those who are in the secret of the highest
affairs. The guests were not only such rural residents as had driven to market,
but some of the most substantial townsmen, who had always assured their wives
that business required this weekly sacrifice of domestic pleasure. The poorer
farmers, who put up at the Ram or the Seven Stars, where there was no fish, felt
their disadvantage, bearing it modestly or bitterly, as the case might be; and
although the Marquis was a Tory house, devoted to Debarry, it was too much to
expect that such tenants of the Transomes as had always been used to dine there,
should consent to eat a worse dinner, and sit with worse company, because they
suddenly found themselves under a Radical landlord, opposed to the political
party known as Sir Maxim's. Hence the recent political divisions had not reduced
the handsome length of the table at the Marquis; and the many gradations of
dignity - from Mr Wace, the brewer, to the rich butcher from Leek Malton, who
always modestly took the lowest seat, though without the reward of being asked
to come up higher - had not been abbreviated by any secessions.
    To-day there was an extra table spread for expected supernumeraries, and it
was at this that Christian took his place with some of the younger farmers, who
had almost a sense of dissipation in talking to a man of his questionable
station and unknown experience. The