Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds,
talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing
immoderately at everything that was said to her. It was certainly a
wonderful medley of people. Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to
violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent
sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout prima-
donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal
Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time
the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses. In fact, it
was one of Lady Windermere's best nights, and the Princess stayed
till nearly half-past eleven.

As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-
gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly
explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso
from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley. She
looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large
blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair. Or pur
they were--not that pale straw colour that nowadays usurps the
gracious name of gold, but such gold as is woven into sunbeams or
hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the
frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner.
She was a curious psychological study. Early in life she had
discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence
as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of
them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a
personality. She had more than once changed her husband; indeed,
Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never
changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal
about her. She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that