Revelry had taken the place of
staid propriety. Glasses clinked like a chime of bells, voices ran
up into the higher keys, and the loud musical laugh of girls mingled
gaily with the deeper tones of their male companions. Young maidens
with glasses of sparkling champagne or rich brown and amber sherry
in their hands were calling young men and boys to drink with them,
and showing a freedom and abandon of manner that marked the degree
of their exhilaration. Wine does not act in one way on the brain of
a young man and in another way on the brain of a young woman. Girls
of eighteen or twenty will become as wild and free and forgetful of
propriety as young men of the same age if you bring them together at
a feast and give them wine freely.
We do not exaggerate the scene in Mr. Birtwell's supper-room, but
rather subdue the picture. As Whitford drew nigh the supper-room the
sounds of boisterous mirth struck on his ears and stirred him like
the rattle of a drum. The heaviness went out of his limbs, his pulse
beat more quickly, he felt a new life in his veins. As he passed in
his name was called in a gay voice that he did not at first
recognize, and at the same moment a handsome young girl with flushed
face and sparkling eyes came hastily toward him, and drawing her
hand in his arm, said, in a loud familiar tone:
"You shall be my knight, Sir Ellis."
And she almost dragged him down the room to where half a dozen girls
and young men were having a wordy contest about something.
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