rse, for
whom Worth is supposed to make marvellous combinations of rose and gold,
of amber and violet, of deep orange and black, and of a wondrous yellow
like that of the daffodil, which no one dares to wear but herself. Mrs.
Wentworth Curzon is the momentary goddess of Lawrence Hamilton; and Lord
Iona, as far as he has ever opened his handsome mouth to say anything
"serious," has sworn himself the slave of Madame de Caillac. Sir
Adolphus has spread the aegis of his semi-paternal affection over the
light little head of that extravagant little beauty, Lady Dawlish;
whilst Hugo Mountjoy is similarly protected by the prescient wisdom and
the rare experience of his kindest of friends, Lady Arthur Audley.

Sir Hugo and several other gilded youths there present are all exact
patterns of one another, the typical young Englishman of the last years
of this curious century; the masher pure and simple; close-shaven,
close-cropped, faultlessly clothed, small of person, small of features,
stiff, pale, insignificant, polite, supercilious, indifferent;
occasionally amusing, but never by any chance original; much concerned
as to health, climate, and their own nerves; often talking of their
physicians, and flitting southward before cold weather like swallows,
though they have nothing whatever definite the matter with them.

These young men are all convinced that England is on the brink of ruin,
and they talk of it in the same tone with which they say that their
cigarette is out, or the wind is in the east. The Throne, the Church,
the Lords, and the Thirty-Nine Articles are all going down pell-mell
next week, and it is very shocking; nevertheless, there is no reason why
they should not be studious of their digestions and very anxious about
the parting of their hair.

It never occurs to them that they and their father's battue-shooting,
pigeon-shooting, absenteeism, clubism, and general preference for every
country except their own, may have had something to do with bringing
about this impending cataclysm. That all the grand old houses standing
empty, or let to strangers, among the rich Herefordshire pastures, the
green Warwickshire woods, the red Devon uplands, the wild Westmoreland
fells, may have also something to do with it, never occurs to them. That
while they are flirting at Aix, wintering at Pau, throwing comfits at
Rome, losing on the red at Monaco, touring in California, or yawning in
Berlin, the demagogue's agents are whisper