Excerpt from The Marriage of TheodoraThe rosy dusk of a June evening lay upon great London town. The trees in Hyde Park loomed large in the soft, still twilight, and the Serpentine, dark and quiet, reflected the stars that stole into the purple sky. The noises of traffic had ceased, and the laughter, the lights, and the gaiety of the evening had not yet begun. Nearly every house in the wide and spacious Queen's Gate was illuminated. The balconies and windows were masses of pink and white blooms, whose delicate odour made the summer night fragrant.Three great houses, in a row, however, showed no signs of festivity. On the drawing-room balcony of the middle one, Castlemaine House, Lady Susan Battle, tall, broad and oracular, was laying down the law and the prophets to her brother, the Earl of Castlemaine, and the heir presumptive, Lord Fermor."I protest," cried Lady Susan wrathfully, arranging her satin draperies of a violent red, "the next thing I expect to hear is that some American has taken Buckingham Palace for the season and converted Westminster Abbey into his private chapel. What do you think that good-looking, painted Jezebel, Flora Bellenden, told me to-day?About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.