A youth in blue satin with a fair-haired girl driving him came in an easy first. The other two chariots had collided at the last turn, with some slight damage to the furniture, and to the delight of the spectators. She who had driven the blue boy to victory frisked out joyfully, and performed a _pas seul_ in the middle of the room.
One of the fallen gallants stood rubbing a bruised shin. He was a slim little fop with a weak face that pretended toward impudence, and a name—even Sir Marmaduke Thibthorp—that suited his personality.
The lady whom he had overturned retorted with an unequivocal “Sir!”
My Lord Gore, with the genius of an opportunist, introduced his wit as a fitting climax.
“The gibe may seem overstrained,” he said, flicking a lace ruffle, “but surely the gentleman who claims to have been overweighted is hopelessly under-calved.”
Nor was the joke visible till my lord pointed whimsically to Thibthorp’s very ascetic shanks. Whereat they all laughed, more for the love of ridicule than out of curtesy to my lord’s wit.
Hortense herself sat at one of the windows watching the youngsters at their romps with the air of a laughing philosopher, whose mature age of nine-and-twenty constituted her a fitting confidante either for children or for cynics. She was dressed in some brown stuff that shone with a reddish iridescence. The dress was cut low at the throat, so low as to show the white breadth of her bosom. A chain of pearls was woven to and fro amid the black masses of her hair.
My Lord Gore crossed the room to her and kissed her hand. They were very good friends were my lord and Hortense. Something more tangible than sentimental tendencies had drawn them together. Their worldly ambitions were identical; the petticoat and the periwig were allied in their campaign against the amiable idiosyncrasies of the King.
“Pardon me, but what a public-spirited woman I always find in you.”
He stood beside her chair, looking down at her, and at the lace that filled her bosom.
“I come to enjoy perpetual rejuvenescence, and to learn to live in the sun rather than in a fog of philosophy that gives us little but cold feet and swollen heads.”
She looked up at him and laughed. And Hortense’s laugh had a delightful audacity that rallied the world upon its dulness.
