My Lord Preston, I
mind, was costumed in purple velvet with trimming of pearls such as a
girl might wear. Young Blood moved from group to group to show his
white velvets sparkling with diamonds. One of the Sidneys was there
playing at hazard with my Lady Castlemaine for a monstrous pile of gold
on the table, which some onlookers whispered made up three thousand
guineas. As I watched my lady lost; but in spite of that, she coiled
her bare arm around the gold as if to hold the winnings back.
"And indeed," I heard her say, with a pout, "I've a mind to prove your
love! I've a mind not to pay!"
At which young Sidney kisses her finger-tips and bids her pay the debt
in favours; for the way to the king was through the influence of
Castlemaine or Portsmouth or other of the dissolute crew.
Round other tables sat men and women, old and young, playing away
estate and fortune and honour at tick-tack or ombre or basset. One
noble lord was so old that he could not see to game, and must needs
have his valet by to tell him how the dice came up. On the walls hung
the works of Vandyke and Correggio and Raphael and Rubens; but the pure
faces of art's creation looked down on statesmen bending low to the
beck of adventuresses, old men pawning a noble name for the leer of a
Portsmouth, and women vying for the glance of a jaded king.
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