He had not condescended to any further disguise than a crimson damask domino, which he flung off as he entered, revealing a suit of tawny velvet embroidered with gold thread, with ruffles and cravat of finest Malines lace, his small pinched features almost overshadowed by the fulness of his somewhat old-fashioned periwig. He saluted the company with an air of being enraptured at seeing them, which was de rigueur in that age of compliment and all-pervading artificiality.
"I vow it is our divine Lady Polwhele, looking at least a decade younger than when these eyes last beheld her."
"Why, you foolish Topsparkle, 'twas but t'other day we met and quarrelled for a china monster—a green dragon with a hollow stomach for burning pastilles—at the auction-room over the way."
"Ah, but that was by daylight, and a woman's beauty when she has once passed thirty is too delicate and evanescent for sunshine and open air. Buxom wenches of twenty may endure the glare and the breeze: it only makes them a trifle more blowsy; but for the refined, the intellectual, the ethereal loveliness of womanhood, there must be chastened light and gorgeous surroundings. This room becomes you as her rainbow and her peacocks become Juno, or as the sea-foam sets off Aphrodite."
"Flatterer!" sighed her ladyship, tapping him playfully with her fan; "you were always incorrigible. I have not forgotten the wicked things you said to me seven years ago, when we met in Venice. Come, prince of lies, show me your last new picture; you are always adding gems to your collection."
"Nay, I have forsworn painting, and live only for music. I bought a little dulcimer t'other day which belonged to good Queen Bess. Come and look at it."
Lady Polwhele followed him into the picture-gallery, which had been brilliantly lighted in the expectation of droppers-in after the masquerade. And now came more setting down of chairs, swearing at chairmen, quarrelling of link-boys, and loud ringing at the hall-bell, and some of the most modish people in London came sauntering in to sip Lady Judith's chocolate or Mr. Topsparkle's Tokay. The rooms were almost full before Lord Lavendale left; and amidst that coming and going of guests, and idle compliments and idle laughter, he had found himself several times in close converse with Judith, they two, as they had often been before, alone amidst the babble of the crowd.
She congratulated him with a prettily serious air, almost maternal, or at least sisterly, upon his approaching marriage. She told him that he had chosen wisely in selecting so lovely a girl, with a fortune large enough to pay off his mortgages and start him afresh in life.
"I protest there is nothing settled," he said. "What you have heard is but the town gossip—words without meaning. I have said not a word to the lady. I grant you that her father has been monstrously civil to me, that he is rich while I am poor, and that our estates join. Upon my honour there is no more than this."
"0, but you have only to speak and to win. I have set my heart upon seeing your fortune mended. I have been poor myself, and know how hard it is for a patrician to be penniless. I shall ask Harpagon and his daughter to Ringwood. He is an odious miser, they tell me."