“I say, Charley, cast your eye up the course a minute; the heavyweight’s making play with the favourite at a killing pace. I’d bet long odds he pops and she says ‘Done’ before the meeting’s over; so if that don’t suit your book, Charley, my boy, the sooner you hedge on the double event the better.”
The music-room at Broadhurst was a spacious apartment, with a coved ceiling and deep bay windows hung with rich crimson damask curtains, and containing ottomans of the same material in the recesses. On one of these Leicester flung himself, and half hidden by the voluminous folds of the drapery, sketched out a gloomy future, in which he depicted himself quarrelling with De Grandeville, shooting him in a consequent duel, and residing ever after in the least desirable part of the backwoods of America, a prey to remorse, without cigars, and cut off from kid gloves and pale ale in the flower of his youth. Occupied with these dreary thoughts, he scarcely noticed the entrance of various seceders from the supper-table; nor was it until the sound of the pianoforte aroused his attention that he perceived the room to be tenanted by some twenty or thirty people scattered in small coteries throughout the apartment. At the moment when he became alive to external impressions Miss Singleton was about to favour the company with a song, having secured a mild young man to turn over the music, who knew not life and believed in her to the fullest extent with a touching simplicity. Before this interesting performance could commence, however, sundry preliminary arrangements analogous to the nautical ceremony of “clearing for action” appeared indispensable. First, a necessity existed for taking off her gloves, which was not accomplished without much rounding of arms, display of rings, and rattling of bracelets, one of which, in particular, would catch in everything, and was so incorrigible that it was forced to be unclasped in disgrace and committed to the custody of the mild young man, who blushed at it and held it as if it were alive. Then Miss Singleton drew up her head, elongated her neck to a giraffe-like extent, raised her eyes, simpered, cast them down again, glanced out of their corners at the “mild one” till he trembled in his polished boots and jingled the wicked bracelet like a baby’s rattle in the excess of his agitation, and finally commenced her song by an energetic appeal to her mother (who had been dead and buried for the last fifteen years) to “wake her early” on the ensuing first of May. Just as she was assuring the company that “she had been wild and wayward, but she was not wayward now,” a couple entered the room, and apparently wishing not to disturb the melody, seated themselves on a sofa in a retired corner which chanced to be nearly opposite to the recess of which Leicester had taken possession; thus, although the whole length of the music-room intervened, he could (himself unseen) catch occasional glimpses of this sofa as the ever-changing groups of loungers formed and dispersed themselves.