"ANONYMA."
Leaning over the side of the drag, and talking to Mabel Grey, are three of the "fastest" young men in England, Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton (since dead), Courtenay, Earl of Devon, and the Duke of Newcastle, brother to Lord Arthur. All three are bankrupt in fortune as well as in morality. Lord Arthur's mother, a daughter of the former Duke of Hamilton, dishonored her husband, and there seems to be a taint in the blood of the young noble, who has been living on his wits for years. He is a languid-looking fellow, and does not look as if he could fall-to and saw a load of wood.
Mabel Grey says to Lord Arthur, with a lisp: "Clinton, do take a bit of chicken and a glass of fizz. No? Well then, take a glass of hock, like a dear good boy. You look awfully cut. What can be the matter with the man?"
Just under the shadow of the wide-spreading beech-tree, where the drag is stationed, an itinerant preacher is about to commence a phillipic against Vice and Crime. He could not have chosen a better location than this, where the ears of these Painted Women may be filled by him with some truths that they seldom seek after.
"ALICE GORDON."
"Alice Gordon," the fair-haired blonde, with the deep blue eyes, condescends to bestow a glance at the preacher, who, now that he is beginning to draw a crowd by his fiery invective, and denunciatory language, directs a look of scorn and pity at the Lost Women in the drag. The crowd, who naturally dislike women of the class of Lais and Aspasia, give encouragement to the squat-figured and harshly-spoken Boanerges. The swells around the drag, who are now joined by Sir Frederick Johnstone, advise the Scarlet Women to tell the coachman to whip up the horses and "dwive the dwag away from that beastly preacher—the howid little boah."