"
There was a sound of revelry by night in Mrs. Wallace's villa at
Richmond, and fair women and brave men mustered there strong. Every one
liked those parties. The hostess was young and very charming, while her
husband, a bald, inoffensive, elderly man, was equally eminent in his
own department of the commissariat. His wines were things to dream of in
after years, when, like Curran, "confined to the Port" of a remote
country inn, one sacrifices one's self heroically on the altar of the
landlord for the good of the house.
The crowd was not so dense as at most London parties, and the
temperature consequently something below that of a vapor-bath or of the
_Piombi_, but the generality of the guests were either amusing, or
pretty, or otherwise eligible. To be sure, it was rather an expedition
and a question of passports to get down there, but the drive home
through the cool dewy morning made you amends.
Constance Brandon was present. I never saw her look so lovely as on
this, her last appearance on the world's stage. No one could have
guessed that, five hours later, the light was to die in her eyes and the
color in her cheeks, never to return to either again till she shall
wake on the Resurrection morning.
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