“Oh, give your rotten ball!” said Her Highness sleepily.
III
The red carpet stretched from the doors of the great house in the walled garden to the broad pavement where South Street meets North Street and Grosvenor Square is but a step in the right direction; and up the red carpet walked the flower of England’s quality and fashion and the loftiest dignitaries of the Church and Press. Came, too, all the circumstance of diplomacy and the first among the burgesses. Decorations were worn. Art and literature were represented only by a painter with a beard who had forgotten to wear a tie, a young reporter with a boil on his neck, and a rugged novelist with a large circulation who liked hunting. Came, too, all the first actors of the day, talking about themselves to each other and thinking about each other to themselves. All the most intelligent young ladies of Society were present, murmuring hoarsely to each other: “One really cannot understand how one can come to a party when one might be reading a book by Maurice Baring.” Footlight favourites by Royal Appointment. Astorias and his band of the Loyalty Club were engaged to play. The reception given to the honourable company in every way accorded with the ancient dignity of the Grand Duchy of Valeria. The guests passed between two lines of the Hussars of Death or Honour, brilliant in white uniforms with crimson facings, epaulettes of gold and cloaks of black gabardine lined with ermine, under the command of Baron Hugo von Müsselsaroffsir. Champagne by G. H. Mumm.
Not among the last to arrive was my lord Viscount Quorn, a young nobleman whose handsome looks and plausible address were fated to be as a snare and a delusion to those who were not immediately informed as to his disordered temperament and irregular habits. Yet, although many a pretty young lady had lived to regret with burning tears the confidence she had been persuaded to misplace in that young gallant’s code of chivalry, not a man in England could be found to impugn my lord’s honour; for was he not renowned from Ranelagh to Meadowbrook for his incomparable agility, did not Australian cricketers wince at the mere mention of the name of Quorn, and did any soldier present on the high occasion we tell of wear pinned across his breast braver emblems of gallantry in war?
With him to the Duke’s ball came his boon companion, Mr. Woodhouse Adams, a gentleman whose claim to the regard of his familiars was based solidly on the fact that he knew a horse when he saw one; yet so great was his reserve that what he knew when he did not see a horse was a secret which Mr. Woodhouse Adams jealously guarded from even his most intimate friends. On this occasion, however, as they walked up the red carpet to the open doors of the house in the walled garden, Mr. Woodhouse Adams appeared to be unable to control a particular indignation, and presently spoke to the following effect:
“If you ask my opinion, Condor, I think you are putting your jaws into the lion’s head.”
“I gather,” said Lord Quorn, whose nickname took the peculiar form of Condor for reasons which are quite foreign to this story, “that you mean I am putting my head into the lion’s jaws. It may be so. But I tell you, Charles, that I am in love with this girl. At last, I am in love. And I am not going to miss the most slender chance of seeing her again—not to speak of my desire to take this unrivalled opportunity of paying my respects to her father with a view to a matrimonial entanglement.”
“You’re not going to do that!” incredulously cried his friend.
“Almost at once,” said Lord Quorn.
“Gentlemen’s Cloak-Room on the left,” said a Hussar of Death or Honour.