Fighting the air Author:Florence Marryat 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: 27 CHAPTER III. Lady Flitters' ' At Home.' LADY FLITTERS was a popular authoress . that is to say, the number of three volume novels that Lady Flitters ... more »had written and published during the last ten years would have filled a respectably-sized bookcase. But whether Lady Flitters made much money by the offspring of her brain was a question that lay between her publishers and herself. She said she did. She -was always confiding to her most intimate friends the enormous sum she liad received for her last novel, and the tempting offers she had been compelled to refuse. ' Speculator was dying, positively dying, to get a. novel from me this season. He would have given anything for it; told me to name my own price; but I couldn't oblige him. I have two in hand already, beside my Australian correspondence ; and one cannot accomplish. miracles. But I never saw any one so disappointed as poor Speculator. He will be at my " At Home " tomorrow evening. Do come.' It was a good-natured peculiarity of Lady Flitters that she asked every one she encountered to her ' At Homes,' without for a moment taking into consideration his character, status in society or capability for adding to the amusement of the evening. All she cared for was quantity—,to have her rooms filled with the buzz of conversation, to see her guests packed so closely that they could hardly stir, and to persuade one or two well-known professionals to sing, play, or recite ; this constituted, in her opinion, a successful soiree. The gatherings at her house in consequence, if not always enjoyable, were sometimes very amusing. Those who were at daggers-drawn would jostle each other in the crowd,—a matron of unimpeachable virtue and the sternest propriety would find herself wedged in between an actress and a divorcee;. ...« less