Two weeks later, Dr. Jekyll gives a small dinner party, for which, we gather, he is well known, for the narrator refers to it as being "one of his pleasant dinners." Five or six of Dr. Jekyll's old cronies are invited, and among them is Mr. Utterson. As usual, the food is superb, the wine good, and Utterson manages to be the last guest to leave.
Utterson has often been one of the last guests to leave Jekyll's dinner parties, so Jekyll thinks nothing of Utterson's lingering behind. In fact, Jekyll is pleased, for he likes Utterson very much. Often, after his guests have departed, he and Utterson have sat and talked together, quietly relaxing after the noisy chatter of the dinner party.
Tonight, as they sit beside a crackling fire, Jekyll, a large man of perhaps fifty, warmly smiles at Utterson, and the lawyer answers Jekyll's smile with a question. He asks Jekyll about his will.
At this point, the narrator speaks to us directly; he says that "a close observer" might have detected that the topic was "distasteful" to Jekyll, but that Jekyll very carefully controlled his reactions to Utterson's question. Assuming a feigned, light-hearted and rather condescending tone, Jekyll chides Utterson for being so concerned about the will. He compares Utterson's anxiety to Dr. Lanyon's "hide-bound" stuffiness. Now, we realize that Dr. Lanyon did not reveal to Utterson his real reason for being so disappointed in Jekyll. Jekyll, however, unknowingly reveals more to us — and to Utterson — about Dr. Lanyon's distaste for Jekyll's scientific interests, interests which Dr. Lanyon told Jekyll were "scientific heresies."
Jekyll says that he still likes Lanyon, but that as a scientist, Dr. Lanyon is limited — too old-fashioned and conservative, too much of a "hide-bound pedant." Then Jekyll becomes more emotional. Dr. Lanyon, he says, is "an ignorant, blatant pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon."
