At this moment, however, her temper was under perfect
control and indeed she was rather enjoying herself.
She rose, pushed away her chair with a backward kick to give room for
her ample hoops, and curtseying low to the company marched out of the
room without so much as a glance at her rival who was on the verge of
hysterics.
Mistress Salisbury entered the ball-room, now tenanted by the dregs of
the company most of them more or less stupefied or excited, according to
their temperaments, by drink. In one corner was a young man whose richly
embroidered silk coat of a pale lavender was streaked with wine, whose
ruffles were torn and whose wig was awry. To him was talking in a thick
growling bass a man arrayed in a costume hardly befitting a ball-room,
unless indeed he wore it as a fancy dress. But his evil face, dark,
dirty, and inflamed by deep potations, the line of an old scar extending
from the corner of his mouth almost to his ear showing white against the
purple of his bloated cheek forbade this supposition.
Captain Jeremy Rofflash in point of fact was very drunk. He had for the
last three or four hours been industriously engaged in getting rid of
some of the guineas of the old gentleman from Bath, in a boozing ken in
Whitefriars. Seasoned toper as he was he could carry his liquor without
it interfering with his head. About the effect on his legs he was not
quite so sure and at that moment his body was swaying ominously, but
thanks to his clutching a high backed chair he maintained his
equilibrium fairly well.
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