Beatrice Boville and Other Stories

is out, I vow I'll never touch a card in the next!" exclaimed one of sev

n's Bench; the poor devils losing in the long run much oftener and more recklessly than the ri

found favor in her eyes. His age was between thirty and thirty-five, his figure with grace and strength combined, his features nobly and delicately cut, his head, like Cannin

clock began the Silver Chimes that rang out the Old Year; the twelfth stroke sounded, th

oaming bumper of Chambertin. "What shall I wish you? The richest wife in the kingdom, a cabal that will break all the ban

one down at Melton last season: 'My dear Waldemar, I am sorry to hear of your sad accident; but all things are ordered for the best, and I trust that in your present hours of solitude your thought

he Blues. "Apropos of Pharisees, have you heard that old Cash is going to build a chapel-of-ease in Belgravia, to endow that young owl Gus wit

so hard-hearted as to leave her to St. C

hin's troop. "Not the sangue puro, you'd say; rather sallied with

yself, though my dear friends would insinuate that I was sold already to a gentleman who never quits

en done in the brightest parvenu or, would scarcely look well b

Bevan. "Nonsense, Waldemar; throw her over, a

briefly. "By the way, I suppose yo

visit him, but really his Lafitte's so good--I'm sorry you will leave us, Wald

them drinking hard, laughing loud, and telling grivois tales before they sat down to play in all its delirious delight, h

s generally attributed to him more diablerie than divinity. But of late, unluckily, his father had been much dominated over by Waldemar's three sisters, ladies of a chill and High Church turn of mind, and by his brother, who in early life had been a prize boy and a sap, and received severe buffetings from his junior at football; and now, being much the more conventional and unimpeachable of the two, took his revenge by carrying many tales to the old Count of his wilder son-tales to which Falkenstein gave strong foundation. For he was restless and reckless, strikingly original, and, above the common herd, too impatient to take any meddling with his affairs, and too proud to explain where he was mi

any gone before it, weighed heavily on his thoughts. Scenes and deeds of his life, that he would willingly

and crowded dens around him. The past was past, ineffaceable, and relentless; the future lay hid in the unborn days, and Falkenstein, his pipe out, his

onsumed by all England generally. But Cashranger's soul soared above the snobisms of malt and jack, and à la Jourdain, of bourgeois celebrity, he would have let any Dorante of the beau monde fleece him through thick and thin, and, en effet, gave dinners and drums unnumbered to men and women, who, like Godolphin,

el, it is for-for myself,"

ou mistook me; I said I'd dine her

n intended illegitimate use of the twitch to Mistletoe, that sweet little chestnut who stood favorite for the Oaks. He soon paid his devoir to madame, who wasn't quite accustomed even yet to all this grandeur after her early struggles on half-pay, and to her eldest daughter, the Bella aforesaid, a showy, flaunting girl with a peony color, and went on through the rooms seeking Harry, stopping, however, for a word to every pretty woman he knew; for though he began to find his game grow stale, he and the beau sexe have a mutual a

where some artistes were singing Traviata airs. "You don't care for this row, do

I'll thank you. I didn

aw since I was a boy, and bewitched by Léontine Fay. Sit down." Bevan went on, as they entered a room fitted up like a

as well as Déja

Can you tell

the stage. "Come as a sort of companion to the beloved Bella; dan

s her

ahore. I remember him, a big fellow, fourteen stone, pounded Bully Batson once at Moseley, and there wasn't such another hard hitter among the fancy as Bully. When he departed this life, of course his daughter was left

engaging study enough, being full of grace and vivacity, with animated features, mobile eyebrows, dark-blue eyes, and c

at Egerton. Pretty little soft voice she has. I do like a pretty voice fo

iled Falkenstein. "Pity you hav

," growled Forester. "I've seen you

morning light-faded and colorless on their artifi

I vow I won't introduce you. You'll begin satirisin

don't I let you alone, Forester?" la

pecially with the aroma of her sparkling proverbs hanging about her; and Falkenstein got his introduction, and consigning Godolphin and Mistletoe to futurity, waltzed with her, and found her dancing as full of grace and lightness as an Andalusian's or Arlésienne's. Falkenstein cared little enough for the saltatory art, but this waltz

s there anybody worth pointing out? There ought to be, i

un. All of them created by art, from the young ladies who owe their roses and lilies to Breidenbach, to the ci-devant jeunes hommes, who buy their figures in Bond Street and their faces from Isidore. All of them actors-and pretty good actors, too-from that

laug

. I should like to se

ve it; there are two glasses to

said Valérie, with a quick glance at him; "

smi

as you say, grow dark and dim with the smoke of society. But you ask me abo

ook he

last two years I have been vegetating among

ou like th

t eight, drive at two, dinner at five, prayers at ten. Can't you fancy the dreary diurnal round, with a pursy old rector or two, and three or four high-dried county princesses a

s?" asked Falkenstein,

d at the r

rode everything I came near, but the rough-riding was condemned as unfeminine, and any French book, were it even the 'Génie du Christianisme,' or

ton dogmatique," laughed Falkenstein. "But

sed to enjoy myself, but I was a child then. The officers were very kind to me-gentlemen always are much more so than ladies"-("Pour cause,"

those proverbs," sa

hed, and

ave not forgotten all I saw with the old Tenth. But come,

dmiration for La Bruyère's periods, however well turned or justly pointed? but those whom the caps did not fit probably enjoyed them as you and I do. All satirists,

Monte Cristo, your pleasure is to 'usurper les vices que

say rather that I 'prêche loyalement l'égoisme,'" laughed Falkenstein. "Upon my word, we are talking very seri

alérie, playing with the flowers round her. "And I

tion of all your ideals and desires, which, to the imaginative author of the

d too, an

Aladdin's lamp. Did you see

remembrance of what he had lost wat

ie, "but I got away from it, for I like to be alo

s bright. Mine are not so; I don't wa

of a friend, and I like to be alone in its last hour. I wonder," she continued, suddenl

laughed, n

do you look astonished Miss L'Estrange; one is the destination of e

on my birthday. Oh, how tiresome!" cried Valérie,

laim

ntirely. I promised to wa

aged her for the next, and sauntered through the room on her other side. He waltzed a good deal with her, paying her that sort of attention which Falkenstein knew how to make the softest and subtlest homage

that wonderful little L'Estrange as charming a companion as actress? You ough

taining and frank: she'll tell you anything. Poor child! she can't be over-comfortable in Cash's house. She's a lady by instinct; that odious ostentation and snobbish toad

station. She'll soon find means to worry littil Valérie. Women have a great spice

them finish so when they can; the rich ones marry for a title, and the poor ones for a home," said the

ms of your author and actr

so much romance. You and I have done with all that, Tom. Confound it, I never