Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/185

 calculating, corrupt, she is what her mother has made her—the mother herself being a victim of paralysis and sensuality, a titled, worn-out rouée.

"Madame, we want mothers!" Napoleon once said truly to one who sorrowed over the decadence of French manhood; and to the Countess of Elton might have been applied, with more justice than to the less sinful sisters from whom society sweeps its skirts, the name of wanton.

Tempest loses no time in pursuing what now becomes the main object of his life—marriage with Lady Sibyl Elton, who is quite ready to be wooed. Incidentally, the book contains stirring pictures of the times. There is a visit of Tempest and Rimânez to an aristocratic gambling-house, and Miss Corelli's account of the scene there enacted is but a true description of what is going on constantly "in the West." How often, when the Somerset House records of the wills of deceased men of note are revealed, do people marvel that So-and-so, with his vast income, was able to put by so little!

Very often it is the gaming-table that supplies the reason. For the gambling fever is raging in the world of to-day from peers, statesmen, lawyers, aye, and ministers, to the street-boys who stake their trifles on a race or a game of shove ha'penny. There are book-makers who, as the police records