The floor was
crowded with all that was best and noblest in the county; so that a
half-brick, hurled at any given moment, must infallibly have spilt
blue blood. Peers stepped on the toes of knights; honorables bumped
into the spines of baronets. Probably the only titled person in the
whole of the surrounding country who was not playing his part in
the glittering scene was Lord Marshmoreton; who, on discovering
that his private study had been converted into a cloakroom, had
retired to bed with a pipe and a copy of Roses Red and Roses White,
by Emily Ann Mackintosh (Popgood, Crooly & Co.), which he was to
discover--after he was between the sheets, and it was too late to
repair the error--was not, as he had supposed, a treatise on his
favourite hobby, but a novel of stearine sentimentality dealing
with the adventures of a pure young English girl and an artist
named Claude.
George, from the shaded seclusion of a gallery, looked down upon
the brilliant throng with impatience. It seemed to him that he had
been doing this all his life. The novelty of the experience had
long since ceased to divert him. It was all just like the second
act of an old-fashioned musical comedy (Act Two: The Ballroom,
Grantchester Towers: One Week Later)--a resemblance which was
heightened for him by the fact that the band had more than once
played dead and buried melodies of his own composition, of which he
had wearied a full eighteen months back.
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