Gaston was not
a charitable talker--few really clever talkers are--but he saw
through everyone with the uttermost ease and summed them up in a
sharp incisive way, which had at least the merit of being clever.
Madame Midas liked to hear him talk, and seeing what humbugs the
people who surrounded her were, and how well she knew their motives
in courting her for her wealth, it is not to be wondered at that she
should have been amused at having all their little weaknesses laid
bare and classified by such a master of satire as Vandeloup. So they
sat and watched the comedy and the unconscious actors playing their
parts, and felt that the air was filled with heavy sensuous perfume,
and the lights were garish, and that there was wanting entirely that
keen cool atmosphere which Mallock calls 'the ozone of
respectability'.
Vandeloup had prospered in his little venture in the mining market,
for, true to the prediction of Mr Barraclough--who, by the way, was
very much astonished at the sudden demand for shares by Polglaze,
and vainly pumped that reticent individual to find out what he was
up to--the Magpie Reef shares ran up rapidly. A telegram was
published from the manager stating a rich reef had been struck.
Specimens of the very richest kind were displayed in Melbourne, and
the confiding public suddenly woke to the fact that a golden tide
was flowing past their doors.
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