I was made to feel much at home, and his conversation soon lost its tinge of formality. He looked at me curiously and asked where I was from. When I told him, his eyes brightened, and he wanted to know what the principal society events had been during the winter. He said he had only seen half a dozen papers in five or six months, and had lost all track of what had been going on.
Along one of the shelves at the end of the room were ranged several books on etiquette, and thirty or forty much worn novels, of the variety usually absorbed by very young ladies in hammocks, scattered around the shaded lawns of white flannel summer resorts, where the most intense intellectual occupations are tennis and dancing--books in which are recorded the “dashing devilish beauty of Cyril,” With his “corking and perfectly ripping” ideas, and the bewildering charms of willowy Geraldine, the violet eyed heiress, with the long lashes, her many stunning costumes and clinging gowns. Flashing glances, nonchalantly twirled canes, faintly perfumed stationery, and softly tearful moods adorn the pages.
The limousine of the “Soap King” goes whirling by, which is placed at the service of the duke, when he arrives, incognito, to annex, matrimonially, the anxious millions that await him. The story takes us up wondrously carved staircases, among many palms, and into marble halls, through which faint voluptuous music flows. The walls are lined with long rows of priceless old masters. Modern society novelists have found and given to the world many more Rembrandts and Van Dykes than those two humble toilers at the lower end of the social scale could have painted in a geological era. The duke eventually fails to produce his coronet, and the true love match is off. Cupid disappears through a stained glass casement. Dare Devil Cyril rescues the lovely Geraldine from under a fallen horse, or a purple touring car, and bravely carries her to another; her warm breath touches his cheek, and the wedding chimes come just in time to enable the fair reader to dress for dinner.
Oh, noble Cyril, and bewitching Geraldine!--your names may change on different pages, but ever and anon you flit through the countless cylinders of unnumbered presses. Like the lilies of the field, you toil not, neither do you spin. The triumphs and the failures of a thinking, striving world are not for you; its problems and its tears are not within your charmed circle, but He who marks the sparrow’s fall, may gather even you, with the rest of the created things, if there are other worlds to come.
