"I am vastly to blame," replied Topsparkle, shifting his cards to his left hand and offering the right to Lavendale, a pallid attenuated hand, decorated with a choice intaglio and one other ring, a twice-coiled snake with a black diamond in its head, which looked like a gem with a history; "I am stricken with remorse at the idea of my neglect. But his lordship's appearance in London has been meteoric rather than regular, and I have been for the most part in the country."

"The honour of making Mr. Topsparkle's acquaintance is only more precious because it has been deferred," answered Lavendale; and the two gentlemen, after having shaken hands with effusion, acknowledged each other's compliments with stately bows.

Mr. Topsparkle resumed his play, and Lavendale seated himself on the divan beside Lady Judith.

"Shall I attend you to the dancing-room?" he asked.

"No, I am sick to death of the crowd and the heat, and all those fine people," she answered, taking off her mask, and letting him see the loveliness he had once adored. "Did you observe Miss Thornleigh as Iphigenia?" she asked carelessly.

"I beheld an exquisite vision of nakedness, like Eve before the fall, at which all the world was gazing. I thought it was meant for our universal mother!"

"No, it was Iphigenia."

"I stand corrected. Then a scanty drapery of silvery gauze and a fillet round the brow mean Iphigenia. Now can I understand why Diana rejected the young lady by way of holocaust, and subst.i.tuted a hind at the final moment. Such unclothed loveliness must have appalled the modest G.o.ddess."

Lady Judith laughed behind her fan, and shrugged her beautiful shoulders in the loose Turkish robe, which was decency itself in comparison with Miss Thornleigh's audacious transparency of raiment. Everything is a question of degree, and to be half naked in those days was only modish; but there was a boundary-line, and the beautiful Miss Thornleigh was considered to have overstepped it.

They talked of their acquaintance upon that crowded stage yonder, discussed the scandals of the hour, the curious marriages--an elderly lady to her footman, a gentleman of rank to an orange-girl--there had been a pa.s.sion for oranges ever since the days of Nell Gwynne.

"I believe to sell oranges is the only pa.s.sport to a fine gentleman's favour," said Judith. "I almost wish I had begun life with a basket, like the famous Clara, princess of the Court of Requests. I would give much to have inspired such a pa.s.sion in such a man as Henry St. John."

"It is not too late, even without the oranges," answered Lavendale, smiling at her. "If St. John was too easily melted, be sure Bolingbroke is not altogether adamant."

"O, but he has a farm and a French wife, and has turned respectable. The fiery St. John of Queen Anne's time, the hawk that swooped on every dove, is altogether extinct; there is no such person."

"Are there not rivers in Damascus?" asked Lavendale with lowered voice, drawing nearer to her as he spoke. "Are there none who can love as St.

John loved--not wasting that exquisite pa.s.sion upon an inconstant orange-wench, but burning his lamp of life before a higher altar, worshipping, adoring at a purer shrine?"

"Heavens, what rodomontade we are talking!" cried Lady Judith, starting up from her divan, and moving quickly to the door. "The very air of these dances is full of a jargon which even sensible people fall into unawares. Come, why do you not ask my hand for a minuet? I think you and I have danced one ages ago, and that our steps went in decent time."

"Think! Ah, I forgot how short is memory in a lady of fashion."

"O, we have so many caprices to blot the tablet. Now a new singer, and anon a new colour in lutestring, or a new style of headdress, or a new game at cards. Life is a series of transformations. Here is poor d.i.c.k Steele, struck down with paralysis, and gone to end his days in Cheshire, he who was the wittiest man in London when I first knew this town. I heard of his malady only to-night. Life is full of sad changes.

One can hardly remember oneself of a few years ago, much less one's friends. But I swear I should have known your lordship anywhere."

"I am proud to be so far honoured."

They reentered the busy scene at a pause between two dances. Everybody was walking about. The dazzle and glitter of that moving throng showed dimly through an all-pervading cloud of powder and dust, like a tropical haze on a marshy sh.o.r.e; the Babel of voices was bewildering to the ear.

"There goes Peterborough with Anastasia Robinson on his arm. I can swear to the turn of her head, though she has m.u.f.fled herself in sables as a Russian Czarina."

"If she knew what a cook-maid the present Empress of Russia is, the lady would hardly aspire to be mistaken for her."

"O, it is only to make us all sick with envy at the splendour of her sables. His lordship bought them for her in Paris. They are worth a king's ransom. 'Tis said he allows her a hundred guineas a month, but I am sure she must spend three times as much."

"You make me feel as if I were one of the Seven Sleepers," exclaimed Lavendale. "Is not Mrs. Robinson the very pink and pattern of virtue; so chaste and cold a being that even the too tender wooing of Senesino in an opera--mere stage love-making--wounded and offended her?"

"That is perfectly true; but it is no less true that she smiles upon Lord Peterborough. Who could withstand a warrior and a hero? The man who conquered a province with a mere handful of troops must needs be irresistible to a weak woman. She is living at Parson's Green with her mother; but as Peterborough spends most of his life there, people will talk."

"In spite of the mother?"

"In spite of the mother," echoed Judith. "However, it is hinted they are privately married, and there are those among us who still continue to receive Mrs. Robinson under that charitable supposition; ourselves, for instance. Topsparkle is such a fanatic about music that I hardly dare question a soprano's reputation, or hint that a tenor has the air of having sprung from the gutter. At Ringwood Abbey we receive every one who can sing or play to perfection, without reference to character. I myself own to a prejudice in favour of those ladies who are still at their first or second lover, in preference to those who have ruined half the pretty fellows in town. But Bononcini and Handel are the two people who really choose our society. We have our Bononcini set and our Handel set, and are Italian or German as those great masters dictate. But you must come to Ringwood some day and judge for yourself. How do you like my husband?"

This was asked abruptly, with the lightest, most impertinent air.

"Mr. Topsparkle's courtesy to me just now renders me too much his debtor to be disinterested. I am already a partial critic. But I am told by the indifferent world that he is a most accomplished gentleman."

"Yes, he is very clever. But it is a fantastical kind of cleverness. He plays the organ divinely, knows ever so many modern languages, and writes French almost as well as Monsieur le Voltaire. He has un-Englished himself by his long residence on the Continent, and must be judged by a foreign standard of taste."

"So long as he has succeeded in making you happy--" began Lavendale, in a lowered voice.

"Do I not look happy?" she asked, with smiling lips under the little velvet mask.

"You look gloriously handsome. That radiant surface is too dazzling for me to penetrate deeper. Who could question those lovely lips when they smile, or dare hint that silvery laughter might be artificial? I will believe anything those lips tell me."

"Then you may believe that Mr. Topsparkle is vastly kind, and that he has loaded me with all the luxuries women live for nowadays: lutestring gowns, Brussels lace, diamonds, pug-dogs, black footmen, and a Swiss porter. If he cannot always insure me peace of mind it is the fault of my capriciousness, and not any lack of kindness in him. My bosom is racked at this moment by the thought of the lottery. I may win ten thousand pounds, or draw nothing but blanks. I have wasted a competence in buying up other people's tickets, for I dreamt I won the ten thousand pound prize, and I have been in a fever of expectation from that hour."

"I hope you will not be too much disappointed should the dream prove false: one of those deluding visions by which the Homeric G.o.ds lead their victims into deadly peril."

"If that dream do not come true, I swear I will never sleep again; never more trust myself in the land of lying shadows."

"The company all seem crowding to one spot. Shall we go?"

"Yes, this instant. It is nearly time for the lottery."

She took his arm, leaning on it in her eager haste, and her lovely arm was pressed against his heart, beating pa.s.sionately with all the old fever. It was an unholy fever, for in his heart of hearts he knew that she was not a good woman, that she had deteriorated sorely since their last parting, that wealth and pride of place and the flatteries of a modish mob had perverted all of good that had been left in her nature in those old days when she was Lady Judith Walberton. Her reckless conversation, her air of audacity, which seemed to challenge the rekindling of old fires, shocked even while it captivated him. There was a strange mixture of love and pity in his mind as he gazed upon this beautiful, brilliant, and perhaps lost creature.

The lottery was attended by a maddened crowd, almost reproducing upon a small scale the fever and folly of that famous South Sea scheme, which but six years ago had spread ruin and sorrow over the land, as if it had been some scaly monster come up out of the sea to devour the inhabitants of the earth. The monster's name was Avarice or Cupidity, most fatal among all fiery dragons that feed upon the flesh of men. And now the same foul beast in little was preying upon this modish crowd. There were women who had pledged their diamond earrings to buy tickets; there were sadder sisters who had bartered their honour: and for how many was the agony of disappointment inevitable!

For Lady Judith among others. Her eleven numbers were all blanks. She pushed her way through the mob in a towering pa.s.sion.

"The whole thing is a cheat!" she exclaimed. "I believe the prize-winner goes halves with the proprietor of the lottery. There must be trickery somewhere. Did you see how delighted Lady Mary Montagu was at winning a paltry fifty pounds? That woman is as mean as Shylock or Harpagon, or as wicked old Sarah herself. I had eleven tickets, every one of them, as I thought, a lucky number: one was my age doubled; the other, Topsparkle's multiplied by nine; another had three sevens in it; another, four threes. I had chosen them with the utmost discretion; and to think there was not a winning number among the whole heap! I gave Lady Wharton a ruby ring for her ticket, one of the finest in my jewel-case, the true pigeon's-blood colour, and the creature has jewed me out of that lovely gem for a sc.r.a.p of waste pasteboard. I am provoked beyond measure!"

"But, dear Lady Judith, with inordinate wealth at your command, and with the most indulgent of husbands for your purse-bearer, is it worth your while to gamble?"

"Is any pleasure worth one's while?" she retorted mockingly. "They are all empty; they are all Dead Sea apples that turn to dust and ashes. One may as well take diversion one way as another. Topsparkle thinks he is happy when he has collected a pack of squalling Italians or sourcrout-eating Germans under his roof; and yet they contrive to keep him in a fever, by their bickerings and grumblings and envyings, from the moment of arrival to the moment of departure. Will you help me to find my chair? I suppose there will be some of my men in the vestibule, if they are not all drunk at some low mug-house."

"I will answer for finding you a couple of sober chairmen. You will not wait for Mr. Topsparkle?"

"I would not disturb his game for worlds; for though he pretends I am the only gamester in the family, he has a pa.s.sion for quadrille. He learnt the taste in the south of France, where they play hardly anything else."

They went to the vestibule, where Lady Judith Topsparkle's running footmen were lolling against the wall or lounging about in company with a crowd of other lacqueys, all slightly the worse for twopenny ale, but fairly steady upon their well-fed legs, nevertheless. Lady Judith's liveries of orange and brown were distinguishable by their sombre richness among gaudier suits of blue and silver or peach-blossom and gold.

"My roquelaure," she said to one of her men, a gigantic blackamoor who had served in the Royal Schloss at Berlin, and had been tempted away from his Prussian Majesty's service by larger offers from Mr.

Topsparkle. His startling appearance had fascinated the wealthy Englishman, who was instantly eager to add this exotic grace to his household.

The giant spread a fur-lined cloak over her ladyship's shoulders, a cloak of paduasoy which enveloped the tall form from the throat to the feet.

"Let us go and look for my chair," she exclaimed impatiently. "This vestibule reeks of lamp-oil and black footmen."