He hurriedly left the library and went upstairs to the drawing-room.
X
BELGRAVIA
Dora was receiving her guests at the top of the staircase, at the entrance of the large drawing-room. Philip found about thirty people already arrived, and he proceeded to shake hands and distribute words of welcome. At half-past ten it had become difficult to circulate in the rooms; the staircase and hall were crowded, but a stream of carriages still flowed up.
At eleven o'clock the fête was at its height, veritably dazzling. The lights, the flowers, made it a fairy scene. It was a phantasmagoria of heads, bare shoulders, black coats, diamonds, shimmering satins, and priceless lace; and, permeating the whole, a perfume as of hot-house flowers.
All the types of society were to be recognised in the throng—the diplomatists, with their eternal smile and irreproachably cut clothes; the aristocracy, with its frigid bored look, occasionally smiling, as if by mechanism; the City by its biblical noses; the Stock Exchange by those cold, metallic, careworn men, aged before their time by the wrinkles that money preoccupations plough on their foreheads; literature by men bright and interested in everything around them, cheerily provoking ripples of laughter among the women, and recounting their best anecdotes among the men. The fine arts were represented by a few noble-looking heads rising out of Shakespeare collars.
On all sides were exquisite toilettes, setting off forms of dazzling fairness and admirable poise—a complete representative crowd of that calm, proud, haughty British nation, full of dignity, robust health, and self-confidence; a nation that holds in its hands the destinies of half the earth.
Lorimer and de Lussac met in a corner of the drawing-room.
"What a reception!" said de Lussac. "All London is rubbing shoulders here, in order to have a look at the man who has invented the famous shell."