"I will talk to the wretch to-night," said Lavendale; "yes, this very night. It is Lady Judith's assembly, by the bye, and all the world will be in Soho Square."
"You can scarcely enter upon such a discussion at a party," said Herrick.
"O, but I will make an opportunity; Topsparkle shall take me to his private rooms. I am on fire till I tell that ancient reprobate my mind about him."
"And if he should challenge you?"
"As he challenged Churchill? Why, in that case I shall refuse like Churchill, and tell him that I only fight with gentlemen. But he will not challenge me. He will be too much afraid of my revelations when I tell him how Fétis has confessed to a murder committed at his master's instigation."
Each side in politics and all shades of opinions were to be found at Mr. Topsparkle's town house, as they were at Ringwood Abbey. Statecraft was represented by Walpole, who dropped in for a quarter of an hour, and who looked daggers at his sometime friend and ally, Mr. Pulteney; by Carteret and Bolingbroke; while literature had its representatives in Voltaire, whose epic poem, La Henriade, had been already tasted in private readings by the élite among his subscribers, although not to be published till next March; in Congreve and Gay; in the Scotch parson's son, Thomson, whose poem Winter was being read and admired by everybody; and in that scapegrace Savage, whom Queen Caroline protected and whom Lady Judith courted out of aggravation to respectable people. All the modish beauties were there, from the fair daughters and granddaughters of the house of Marlborough to Mrs. Pulteney, secure in unbounded influence over her husband and several other slaves, reckless of his reputation and of her own, and insolent in the consciousness of superior charms. It was a strange medley gathering; but Lady Judith never seemed more in her element than in a social pot-pourri of this kind. She looked gorgeous in amber and gold brocade and the famous Topsparkle diamonds, the necklace which Caroline had worn at her coronation, a string of single brilliants as large as small hazel nuts, of perfect shape and purest water. A cloud of ostrich feathers about her head and neck softened the glare of her gems and the gaudy colouring of her gown. She looked like a portrait by Velasquez, fresh from the painter's easel, in all the brilliancy of colour newly laid on.
Lord Lavendale she received with her easiest air. He found her surrounded by a circle of beaux and politicians, ambassadors and poets, keeping them all in conversation, alert and ready with answer and repartee at every turn of their talk.
The latest ridiculous anecdote about the King had put everybody into a good humour.
"You must take your fill of laughter and have done with it," said Lady Judith, "for I expect to hear my trumpeters strike up Handel's march at any moment, to do honour to our conquering hero's arrival. Their Majesties promised they would look in upon me after the opera."