Page:Chandos, Ouida volume 1.djvu/24

14 mutual compliment, to go through all the old routine with well-trained faces, befitting the arena.

It was April. The last carriages had rolled out by the Corner, the last hacks paced out of the Ride, the last sunlight was fading ; epicures were reflecting on their club-dinners, beauties were studying the contents of their jewel-boxes, the one enjoying a matelote, the other a conquest, in dreamy anticipation ; chandeliers were being lit for political receptions, where it would be a three hours’ campaign to crush up the stairs ; and members, waiting to go in on Supply, were improving their minds by discussing a new dancer’s ankles, and the extraordinary scratching of Lord of the Isles for the Guineas. The West, in a word, was beginning its Business, which is Pleasure; while the East laid aside its Pleasure, which is Business; and it was near eight o’clock on a spring night in London.

Half a hundred entertainments waited for his selection ; all the loveliest women, of mondes proper and improper, were calculating their chances of securing his preference; every sort of intellectual or material pleasure waited for him as utterly as they ever waited for Sulla when the rose-wreaths were on his hair, and Quintus Roscius ready with his ripest wit; and for him, as truly as for Sulla, "Felix" might have described him as the darling of the gods; yet, alone in his house in Park-lane, a man lay in idleness and ease, indolently smoking a narghilé from a great silver basin of rose-water. A stray sunbeam