文档介绍：Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
Lord Arthur Savile's
Crime and Other Stories
by Oscar Wilde
1
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S
CRIME
CHAPTER I
IT was Lady Windermere's last reception before Easter, and Bentinck
House was even more crowded than usual. Six Ministers had
come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the pretty
women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery
stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with
tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of
her voice, and laughing immoderately at everything that was said to her.
It was certainly a wonderful medley of people. Gorgeous peeresses
chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails
with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout
prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal
Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time the
supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses. In fact, it was one
of Lady Windermere's best nights, and the Princess stayed till nearly half-
past eleven.
As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-
gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly explaining
the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso from Hungary, and
began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley. She looked wonderfully
beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes,
and her heavy coils of golden hair. OR PUR they were - not that pale
straw colour that nowadays usurps the gracious name of gold, but such
gold as is woven into sunbeams or hidden in strange amber; and they gave
to her face something of the frame of a saint, with not a little of the
fascination of a sinner. She was a curious psychological study. Early in
life she had discovered the important truth that nothi