The Slaves of Society: A Comedy in Covers — Reading Notes

xcursion had not been wholly unconnected with a bicycle. Further incriminating evidence was supplied by a dark cloth jacket, similar in design to that worn by the steward on board a yacht, but ornamented with a number of oxidized steel buttons of the size of crown pieces, and by a straw hat indistinguishable from those ordinarily worn by undergraduates.

In spite of these evidences of that removal of the barrier between the sexes which is the crowning triumph of our civilization, Lady Victoria was a most attractive girl. She was not quite so youthful as the marchioness, but that could hardly have been expected. At twenty, one is usually a hardened woman of the world; at forty, one begins to be an innocent little thing.

We have hinted that Lady Victoria had just returned from a bicycle ride. It is necessary to add that she had not returned alone.

The companion who had escorted her, not only to the door of the house, but up-stairs, to that of the drawing-room, was a tall, fine-looking man of twenty-eight or thirty, whose whole surface, from his boots to his forehead, gleamed with that excess of physical polish which is the religion of the British soldier. It is not the only religion which demands some intellectual sacrifice on the part of its votaries.

As soon as the two were inside the room, Lady Victoria turned to her companion.

“How can you be so imprudent, Gerald! Do you know my mother is in the next room?”

Captain Mauleverer walked boldly forward, and sat down without waiting to be asked.

“Certainly,” he answered, coolly. “That is the reason why I have come into this room. It was not my aunt whom I wanted to see. You know, we are barely on speaking terms.”

“You needn’t tell me that. I assure you my mother has taken good care to let me know her opinion of you. I warn you plainly that if she comes in and finds you here, I shall abandon you to her.”

Captain Mauleverer tried to look unconcerned.

“I didn’t think you were such a coward as that, Vick,” he remonstrated. “But, after all, I don’t see that I have done anything so very dreadful. She can’t forbid me the house altogether, you know. I’m her own husband’s nephew.”

Lady Victoria smiled with good-natured scorn.

“That’s nothing. You don’t know my mother. She wouldn’t hesitate to forbid her husband the house, if she wanted to. Husbands occupy a very uncertain position in society nowadays; they are only tolerated.”

“Is that a warning for me, I wonder?”

Something in her cousin’s tone, and the look with which he accompanied the question, brought out an impatient frown on Victoria’s face. She walked over to the window, and stood tapping her foot against the floor.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Gerald! You know as well as I do that it is not the slightest use for this sort of thing to go on.”

She kept her back turned on him while she spoke. There was a touch of softness in his voice as he answered:

“It has gone on a long time, Vick, hasn’t it?”

“A great deal too long,” was the reply, spoken with decision. “You know it is perfectly hopeless. You can’t afford me; I have told you so over and over again. Why on earth don’t you go and invest yourself in a pork-butcher’s daughter from Chicago, like everybody else?”

She turned on him with some fierceness as she put the question. The captain looked up at her reproachfully as he exclaimed:

“What a hateful girl you are to talk like that! You know perfectly well that you love me.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Gerald!” was the sharp rebuke. “What has that to do with the question? You know I am for sale, just like the Zulu women. I don’t know exactly how many cows I am worth, but I know I am one of the most expensive girls in London.”

Captain Mauleverer pulled his mustache, gazing at her with ill-concealed admiration.

“Well, anyway, that is no reason why I shouldn’t look in at the shop-window,” he retorted, cheerfully.

It was at this moment that the machine despatched by the marchioness entered the room to summon Victoria to her mother’s presence.

“Is there any one with the marchioness?” she inquired.

The machine believed that Mr. Despencer was with her ladyship.

“Very good; I’ll come.”

As soon as the machine had withdrawn to its subterranean abode, Captain Mauleverer asked, in the tone of a man who really desires information:

“Who on earth _is_ that man?”

Victoria looked blandly surprised.