Chapter 1

It was Lady Windermere's last reception before Easter, and Bentinck
House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had
come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the
pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the
picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe, a heavy
Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds,
talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing
immoderately at everything that was said to her. It was certainly a
wonderful medley of people. Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to
violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent
sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout prima-
donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal
Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time
the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses. In fact, it
was one of Lady Windermere's best nights, and the Princess stayed
till nearly half-past eleven.

As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-
gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly
explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso
from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley. She
looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large
blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair. Or pur
they were--not that pale straw colour that nowadays usurps the
gracious name of gold, but such gold as is woven into sunbeams or
hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the
frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner.
She was a curious psychological study. Early in life she had
discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence
as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of
them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a
personality. She had more than once changed her husband; indeed,
Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never
changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal
about her. She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that
inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of remaining
young.

Suddenly she looked eagerly round the room, and said, in her clear
contralto voice, 'Where is my cheiromantist?'

'Your what, Gladys?' exclaimed the Duchess, giving an involuntary
start.

'My cheiromantist, Duchess; I can't live without him at present.'

'Dear Gladys! you are always so original,' murmured the Duchess,
trying to remember what a cheiromantist really was, and hoping it
was not the same as a cheiropodist.

'He comes to see my