as goaded to fury.
"Why, you impudent, brazen-faced Drury Lane trull! A month at Bridewell
would do you good, you----"
Her ladyship's vocabulary of abuse was pretty extensive but it was cut
short. A dice box with the ivories inside flew across the table hurled
with the full strength of a vigorous shapely arm. This was Sally
Salisbury's retort. A corner of a dice cut the lady's lip and a drop of
blood trickled on to her chin.
Beyond herself with rage, Lady Anastasia seized a wine glass--a somewhat
dangerous projectile, for the wine glasses of the time were large and
thick and heavy--and would have dashed it at her antagonist but one of
the players, a man, grasped her wrist and held it.
"Let her ladyship have her chance. She's entitled to it. A duel at a
masquerade between two women of fashion! Why, it'll be the talk of the
town for a whole week," and Sally Salisbury laughed derisively.
But so vulgar a _fracas_ was not to the taste of Lady Anastasia's
friends, besides which the attendants were alarmed and ran to prevent
further disturbance. They abstained, however, from interfering with
Sally Salisbury. Her ungovernable temper and her fear of nothing were
well known. If she once let herself go there was no telling where she
would stop. At this moment, however, her temper was under perfect
control and indeed she was rather enjoying herself.
She rose, pushed away her chair with a backward kick to give room for
her ample hoops, and curtseying low to the company marched out of the
room without so much as a glance at her rival who was on the verge of
hysterics.
Mistress Salisbury entered the ball-room, now tenanted by the dregs of
the company most of them more or less stupefied or excited, according to
their temperaments, by drink. In one corner was a young man whose richly
embroidered silk coat of a pale lavender was streaked with wine, whose
ruffles were torn and whose wig was awry. To him was talking in a thick
growling bass a man arrayed in a costume hardly befitting a ball-room,
unless indeed he wore it as a fancy dress. But his evil face, dark,
dirty, and inflamed by deep potations, the line of an old scar extending
from the corner of his mouth almost to his ear showing white against the
purple of his bloated cheek forbade this supposition.
Captain Jeremy Rofflash in point of fact was very drunk. He had for the
last three or four hours been industriously engaged in getting rid of
some of the guineas of t
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