SYLVIA
SCARLETT
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BOOKS BY
COMPTON MACKENZIE
SYLVIA SCARLETT
PLASHERS MEAD
——
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
[ESTABLISHED 1817]
THE EARLY LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF
SYLVIA SCARLETT
By COMPTON MACKENZIE 
Author of “PLASHERS MEAD” “SINISTER STREET” “CARNIVAL” ETC.
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
SYLVIA SCARLETT
Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
| PRELUDE, CHAPTER: I,II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV |
PRELUDE
Prelude
AT six o’clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday in the year 1847, theHonorable Charles Cunningham sat sipping his coffee in the restaurant ofthe Vendanges de Bourgogne. He was somewhat fatigued by the exertionsthat as “lion” of the moment he had felt bound to make, exertions thathad included a display of English eccentricity and had culminated in acotillion at a noble house in the Faubourg St.-Germain, the daughter ofwhich had been assigned to him by Parisian gossip as his future wife.Marriage, however, did not present itself to his contemplation as anurgent duty; and he sipped his coffee, reassured by the example of hisbrother Saxby, who, with the responsibility of a family succession,remained a bachelor. In any case, the notion of marrying a French girlwas preposterous; he was not to be flattered into an unsuitable allianceby compliments upon his French. Certainly he spoke French uncommonlywell, devilishly well for an Englishman, he told himself; and he strokedhis whiskers in complacent meditation.
Charles Cunningham had arrived at the Vendanges de Bourgogne to watchthat rowdy climax of Carnival, the descente de la Courtille. And nowthrough the raw air they were coming down from Belleville, all sorts ofrevelers in masks and motley and rags. The noise of tin trumpets and toydrums, of catcalls and cocoricots, of laughter and cheers and whistling,came nearer. Presently the road ou