"It's a melancholy fact," philosophized the young dandy Viscount Darnley, squinting through the brandy in his raised glass, "life ain't what it used to be." He turned his whole body and eyed the faces of his companions. His head would not move without taking his torso with it, imprisoned as it was between the high points of his starched collar.

"Darnley's right for once!" The haughty voice belonged to Sir Wilfred Denning, a satin-clad exquisite, who threw down his cards on the table and yawned delicately behind a white, well-manicured hand. The same hand patted his fair curls to make sure that no hair had strayed from the careful coiffure during the exertions of the game he had just played, and lost. "One wonders if any of us will be left at the end of another five years."

Rufus Smythe, at the other side of the card table, checked the folds of his neckcloth, smoothed white lace over the backs of his hands, and gathered together the guineas and vouchers he had just won. He tried to feign indifference, as if the winnings would not be the first hard cash to line his pockets for several weeks.

"Poor Hanley," he commented. "One wonders which one of us will be the next to go."

"Poor" Hanley was slumped in the depths of a leather chair drawn close to a dying log fire. He sighed pitifully, not removing his eyes from the blaze. "Mama insisted," he said plaintively.

"A life sentence, Hanley," Sir Wilfred reminded him. "She wouldn't take no for an answer," Hanley explained. "Then Papa took her part. Ganged up on me."

"I say, old fellow, that wasn't too sporting, you know. Gad, it's too bad when a fellow's father throws in the chips with his mama on a subject like this." The speaker, Lord Rowland Horton, a small, vivacious man, made his way from a sideboard, where he had been replenishing some empty glasses, and handed one to his luckless friend.