Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/14

 Regent most arrogantly for 5000 guineas out of which he had cheated him some months before, and went so far as to declare that he would not leave the house till he got it; whereupon His Royal Highness, with that unfailing tact for which he was ever famous, invited him to stay there as a guest, which, in fact, Lord George did, for several months. After this, we can hardly be surprised when we read that he “seldom sat down to the fashionable game of Limbo with less than four, and sometimes with as many as seven aces up his sleeve.” We can only wonder that he was tolerated at all.

At Garble’s, that nightly resort of titled rips and roysterers, he usually spent the early part of his evenings. Round the illuminated garden, with La Gambogi, the dancer, on his arm and a Bacchic retinue at his heels, he would amble leisurely, clad in Georgian costume, which was not then, of course, fancy dress, as it is now. Now and again, in the midst of his noisy talk, he would crack a joke of the period, or break into a sentimental ballad,