Allanby's death are
told in a few pages--the guilty pair, Vavasor and Amelia, flee to
Paris, and we are introduced to this faithful picture of Parisian
vice:--
"The infirmity of Amelia's health served at least to release her from
those forced efforts of gaiety which had recoiled so heavily on her
feelings. Her day for vivacity was gone.--In an atmosphere whose
buoyancy is exhausted, the feather falls as heavily as the plummet.
"But instead of commiserating the languor and feebleness extending
from the physical to the moral existence of the invalid, Vavasor only
made her dulness an excuse for flying to the relief of society more
congenial with his own tendency to vice and folly. Lady Emlyn who
in London was the leader of a coterie devoted to the excitements of
high-play,--a coterie that felt privileged to inveigh with horror
against 'gambling,' because its members ventured their thousands
on games where cunning tempers the fortuities of chance,--on the
manoeuvres of ecarte and whist instead of the dare-all risks of
hazard and rouge-et-noir,--had now removed her card-table from
Grosvenor-square to a splendid hotel in the Rue Rivoli; where she had
the honour of assembling, twice a week, a larger proportion of the
idle and licentious of the exclusive caste, than could be found in any
other suite of drawing-rooms in civilized Europe.
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