Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER VIII. A KETTLEDRUM AT LADY Lady Jane Ives was always to be found in Portman Square at five, but to-day she had sent out cards, so that au hour later the lofty, gaunt rooms, with their faded crimson carpets, their flowery chintzes, and their many mirrors, were dotted with little groups. Lady Jane disliked new fashions in her house, and the general effect, in an over- luxurious age, was somewhat cheerless. The stiff, hard Guardis on the walls, in which tin gondoliers were propelling iron gondolas on a leaden lagoon, with a background of grey zinc palaces, were but faintly visible by the tentative light of the circle of candles in the quivering lustre chandelier. Between the starched lace curtains stood monster Chinese vases, swollen like vases seen in an uneasy dream. The buhl cabinets had chilly marble tops; the rosewood tables held vast photograph albums. Lady Jane had arranged therooms on her marriage some forty years ago, and it had not occurred to her to change them. Parliament had just opened; people were back in town. Here and there a man's black coat was visible. There was a subdued murmur of talk. People were slipping out quietly under cover of someone else's arrival, dropping the perfunctory smile which they had exhibited for ten minntes under the lustre chandelier, as they made their way quickly out into the portico, where a small army of grooms, with faces as drab and unemotional as their overcoats, hung about the steps. " I've just come from the Ambassador of all the Russias," drawled a pretty woman to Lady Jane, as she stood, in the swaggering attitude which she affected on entering a drawing-room, just at the door. " My dear, you shouldn't encourage thosebarbarians," declared her hostess, "it's so shockingly radical to approve of foreign tyrann...
