He would never have thought of inviting a 'parson' but for Mrs.Waltham's suggestion.

After all, it it mattered little whether Adela came to the luncheon or not.

He had desired her presence because he wished her to see him as an entertainer of guests such as the Westlakes, whom she would perceive to be people of refinement; it occurred to him, too, that such an occasion might aid his snit by exciting her ambition; for he was anything but confident of immediate success with Adela, especially since recent conversations with Mrs.Waltham.But in any case she would attend the afternoon ceremony, when his glory would be proclaimed.
Mrs.Waltham was anxiously meditative of plans for bringing Adela to regard her Socialist wooer with more favourable eyes.

She, too, had hopes that Mutimer's fame in the mouths of men might prove an attraction, yet she suspected a strength of principle in Adela which might well render all such hopes vain.

And she thought it only too likely, though observation gave her no actual assurance of this, that the girl still thought of Hubert Eldon in a way to render it doubly hard for any other man to make an impression upon her.