The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THER MYSTERIES OF THE COURT. 31 a dear brother in the good work, who was lying {| Angelique knew full well: she was consequently at that extremity which was but the passport to ‘aware that the young gentleman had nevor as yet the realm of eternal bliss. ; seen her—and hence the game which she was Scarcely had Madame Angelique completed her | about to play. transaction with Mr. White Choker, when the “Well, old lady,” he said, on entering the Hon. Augustus Softly was announced. This young | boudoir—for he thought it mighty fine to adopt a gentleman had just entered hie twenty-first year, | familiar manner with Madame Angelique; and we and would inherit on attaining his majority a for- | should incidentally remark that he spoke with the tune of sixty thousand poands, if he had not’ languid dissipated air and with the drawing-room already anticipated it by bills and bonda to the | drawl which are best approved amongst sill tune of nearly one-half. He had recently obtained | .young men in fashionable life—“ well, old lady, &@ commission in the Guards; and on being eman- | what on earth could have made you send to drag cipated from the apron strings of his fashionable | me out of my comfortable bed at such an unseemly mamma, he had resolved to see a little of “ life.” | hour in the morning p” It was however chiefly at night-time that he took; “ Yes, it is unseemly,” exclaimed Madame An- his survey of what he termed “life:” for inas- | gelique, “I admit it. Only four in the afternoon much as he was never in bed until three or four '—1in the morning, I mean! But then you see, o'clock in the morning, he slept till it was time ! you fashionable young gentlemen turn night into to turn out fur parade—after which he drank so | day, and day into night———Oh! it is positively copiously of bottled stout and cherry-brandy at | shocking, you naughty fellows!” lunch, “just to give a tone to his stomach,” | ‘“ Why, there’s really nothing going on in the that he was usually constrained to go to bed | day-time,” said Mr. Softly, with an air of satioty again in order to asleep off the effects of so | and disgust. “Iam sick of bowing to the same much liquor and rise refreshed for dinner-time. | beauties in the Park—sick of lounging up Re- Then his stomach required a new “tone;” and if | gent Street; and as for morning- calls —why, we a couple of bottles of champagne, with other | of the Guards, you know, never pay them !” vinous fluids, were capable of affording such tone, = Ah! I repeat, you gentlemen of the Guards the Hon. Augustus Softly certainly adopted the are such terrible fellows!” said Madame Ange- panacea for procuring it. Turning out “to see lique, with a deprecating look: “you are enough life” at ten o'clock at night, he had the advantage | to turn the heads of all the sweet creatures— of the gas-lamps to show him how to break police- | ravish their hearts ——” men’s heads ; or else he dropped into some fashion-; ‘‘ Well, I flatter myself,” drawled out Mr. able gambling house, where there was light suffi- | Softly, leaning affectedly back in his chair and cient for the black-legs and sharpers there to pil- | caressing his beardless chin with an air of languid lage him most unmercifully, though apparently | listlessness, “we of the Guards are rather over- not light enough to show the young gentleman | powering in our way.” himself that he was thus fleeced. “You may well say that, my dear Mr. Softly: In personal appearance the Hon. Augustus | for if you only knew why I took the liberty of Softly was short and thin —- totally beardless, | asking you to favour me with a call this after- though he adopfed every known method of in- | noon——morning, I mean 7 ducing a monstache to make its appearance | “Some precious wickedness, I’ll be bound !”— against ite own inclination; and his air was alto- | and Mr. Softly condescended to give forth a slight | gether so boyish that ho did not look above seven- | laugh, which corresponded amazingly well with teon. He had tolerably regular features, of an | his drawing-room drawl. aristocratic cast; but the expression of his coun-| ‘ Wickedness indeod, you naughty pgood-for- tenance was insipid and vacant, even to stolidity. | nothing fellow!” responded the wily woman, Frivolous-minded and shallow-pated, with all the shaking her finger at her intended victim. “ Here follies of a boy, he rather aped than was en- | is the sweetest, loveliest, young French girl, who dowed with the manners of a man. His idea | bas only been in keeping with the Duke of March- of “life” seemed to consist in hurrying him- | mont for two months, at the rate of a hundred self on to rack and ruin as fest as ever he | guineas a week—and who has left him—positively could—raising money at exorbitant interest— | and actually left his Grace, all through you !” plunging into debt—lavishing his gold upon pre- “Through me, old lady?” said Augustus, run- tended friends, who flattered him to his face and | ning his fingers through his ligp light hair, which laughed at him behind his back—playing the | hung in what are called rat’s tails over his ears. spendthrift amongst the diseolute and the de- | ‘ What the devil do you mean?” ° praved—thinking it one of the finest things to; “I mean that she wont to see the Guards drop a few hundreds at the gaming-table, and the ' parade the other day; and she came running off to finest thing of all to let my Lord Swindlehurst ,me—for I am her milliner, you must know—to palm off on him for five hundred guineas a horse | ask if I could tell her who was that duck of a that would be dear at fifty. Such was Lieutenant ' young officer? And then she described you !” Softly’s idea of “life ;” and this was the young' “ How delicious! —positively delicious !” said Mr. gentleman who, having received Madame An- : Softly, chuckling and rubbing his hands. gelique’s third billet, now came to answer it in! ‘“I knew whom she meant in a moment,” con- person. | tinued Madame Angelique; “ because when she We must observe that the Hon. Augustus ' said that she alluded tp the handsomest, the gen- Softly had only visited the milliner’s establishment , teelest, and yet the most military-looking of all the on two formér occasions; and each of those times | young officers, I was perfectly well aware whom Mademoiselle Armantine, the French girl, was | sho was speaking of: and when I told her that I absent for some reason or another. This Madame | had the honour of your acquaintance, she nearly COMicooOolkxs.conrn