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Updated: September 28, 2025
On a table, in the centre of the chamber, stood a branched silver candlestick, throwing down the glow of half a dozen wax-lights upon a paper apparently ready for the Lieutenant-Governor's signature. Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one of the window curtains, which fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen the white drapery of a lady's robe.
The glare of wax-lights, the well-furnished saloons, the glitter of uniforms, and the blaze of plumed and jewelled dames, with the clang of military music, was a species of enchanted atmosphere which, breathing for the first time, rarely fails to intoxicate. Never before had I seen so much beauty.
Instead of all this, on entering a common French carpeted room, he perceived, on an ordinary little French sofa, the sovereign crosslegged, and alone; two small sofas, half-a-dozen chairs, and several wax-lights, were all the ornaments of this very plain saloon. But the Sultan was diamonded all over, and fully made amends for the plainness of his reception-room.
Wax-lights, guttering down in gilded chandeliers, poured their mellow radiance round in multiplied profusion for mirrors made them infinite; crimson and gold were the rich prevailing tints in that wide and warm banqueting-room; gayly-coloured pictures, set in frames that Roger fancied massive gold, hung upon the walls at intervals; a wagon-load of silver was piled upon the sideboard; there blazed in the burnished grate such a fire as poverty might imagine on a frozen winter's night, but never can have thawed its blood beside: fruits, and wines, and costly glass were scattered in prodigal disorder on the board just now deserted of its noisy guests, who had crowded round a certain green table, where cards and heaps of sovereigns appeared to be mingled in a mass.
The air of elegance and cheerful comfort that pervaded these apartments, so unusual in this land, the bright blaze of the fire, evert the pleasant wax-lights, all combined to deprive the moment of that feeling of gloom and exhaustion which attends an arrival at a strange place at a late hour, and Henrietta looked around her, and almost fancied she was once more at Ducie.
Not a sound greeted his entrance into that dismal room, wherein four funeral-looking wax-lights were burning at each corner of a square table. Even so had the lights burned in the room where Rachel's mother once lay head. The banker thought of this, as between those flaring lights he saw the pale, wan figure on the sofa, that seemed as rigid, as motionless, and as white as a corpse.
So saying, and without any further provocation, he upset the croupier, chair and all, with one sudden jerk upon the floor, and giving a tremendous kick to the casette, sent all the five-franc pieces flying over him; he then jumped upon the table, and brandishing his black-thorn through the ormolu lustre, scattered the wax-lights on all sides, accompanying the exploit by a yell that would have called up all Connemara at midnight, if it had only been heard there; in an instant, the gens d'armes, always sufficiently near to be called in if required, came pouring into the room, and supposing the whole affair had been a preconcerted thing to obtain possession of the money in the bank, commenced capturing different members of the company who appeared, by enjoying the confusion, to be favouring and assisting it.
By one of those fortunate accidents which happen only to pretty women, it was a moment when all her beauties shone with peculiar lustre, due perhaps to the wax-lights, to the charming simplicity of her dress, to the ineffable atmosphere of elegance that surrounded her.
She had once been remarkably beautiful; and to-night the effect of the soft wax-lights, and her very becoming dress, half restored her youthful freshness and comeliness. No one would have supposed her to be forty-eight years old.
She would like to put in a plea before the eloquence of which Cicero and Demosthenes, Beecher and Sumner, should pale like wax-lights before the sun, for the new fashion said to be obtaining in New York, that the soirée shall give place to the matinée, at which the guests shall assemble at four o'clock in the afternoon, and are expected to go home at seven or eight.
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