Chandos Author:Ouida Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: not weigh you more entirely by what you are worth to her than will nine-tenths of the delicate high-born ladies to buy whom you must barter your freedom. Ther... more »e is no sort of difference in their speculations for remunerative surrender: there is only a difference in their price. CHAPTER VI. "the Many Years Op Pain That Taught Me Art." When his guests had left, and all the costumes that hf.d glittered through his salons had dispersed, some half-dozen men, his most especial friends, remained, among them Cos Grenvil and the Due de Neuilly, with his cousin, Prince Philippe d'Orvale, and in a cabinet de peinture, hung chiefly with French pictures of the eighteenth century, while the Cirpissians brought them wines and liqueurs, sat down to Trente et Quarante, half of them taking the bank and half the table. It was a customary termination of Chandos' parties, and was at least an admirable stimulant for sweeping away too lingering memories of beauty that might have appeared there. "Ah that we had a Crockford's! They have left us no choice but to play in our own houses or to go among Greeks and blackguards; as if they could suppress our gaming any more than they can suppress our breathing, or had any more right to interfere with it!" cried Chandos, as an almond-eyed girl from the Deccan poured him out Bome iced hock. "You give us a very good substitute for Crockford's, (hough, mon cher Ernest," said D'Orvale. " I am disposed to regret nothing when I am once within this little painted chamber, except, perhaps, that your Hebes are a little bit too distracting." " I think your Highness is not given to regretting any detriment from that sort of cause any more than I am," laughed Chandos, while he sat down to the table and slaked his gold with the lavishness that was in...« less