“I only wish he would come!” she flashed imperiously. “One would think we were a lot of New England witch-hunters! There is nothing more ridiculous than society in one of its seven-year fits of morality. Scandals are around us every day, but we pay no heed till the spasm of outraged virtue takes us. Then we pick out some one by mere caprice, hiss him, cut him—make him a whipping-boy to be lashed from our doors. When we are satisfied, we give our drastic virtue chloroform and put it to sleep for another seven years!”
Hobhouse smiled grimly at the gleam in her hazel eyes as she passed on to the lower room where the quadrille was to have its final rehearsal. Lady Jersey’s was a despotic rule. She was as famous for her diplomacy as for her Sunday parties. More than one debate had been postponed in Parliament to avoid a conflict with one of her dinners. Gordon, he reflected, could have no more powerful ally.
He ascended to the ball-room, where the tableaux were oozing patiently on with transient gushes of approbation: “Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,” with Lady Heathcote as the queen; “Tamerlane the Great,” posed by a giant officer of the foot-guards in a suit of chain-mail,—and subjects drawn from heathen mythology.
The last number, a monologue, was unnamed, but word had gone forth that the performer was to be Lady Caroline Lamb.
Slowly the curtain was drawn aside and a breath of applause stirred as Lady Caroline was revealed, in complete Greek costume, with short blue skirt and round jacket, its bodice cut square and low and its sleeves white from elbow to wrist. In that congress of beauties, decked in the stilted conventions of Mayfair modistes, the attire had a touch of the barbaric which suited its wearer’s type—a touch accentuated by the jade beads about her throat and the dagger thrust through her girdle.
The fiddles of the orchestra had begun to play, as prelude, the music of the Greek love-song Gordon had written, long ago made popular in London drawing-rooms, and “Maid-of-Athens!” was echoed here and there from the floor.
The figure on the stage swept a slow glance about her, her cheeks dark and red from some under-excitement. She waved her hand, and from the wings came a procession of tiny pages dressed as imps, all in red.
A murmur of wonder broke from the crowd. Lady Caroline’s vagaries were well-known and her wayward devisings were never without sensation.
“What foolery of Caro’s can this be?” queried Brummell to Petersham as the first page set up a tripod and the second placed upon it a huge metal salver.
The whole room was rustling, for it was clear, from the open surprise of the committee, that this was a feature not on the program. Those in the rear even stood on chairs while the scarlet-hued imps grouped about the tripod in a half-circle open toward the audience.