Chapter 17
A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the servatory at Selby Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood oable lit up the delicate a and hammered silver of the service at which the duchess residing. Her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying ba a silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narbh, pretending to listen to the dukes description of the last Braziliale that he had added to his colle. Three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. The house-party sisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on the day.
"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the table and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea."
"But I dont want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoihe duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."
"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine spe of Robinsoniana, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely o things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with as. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be pelled to use o is the only thing he is fit for."
"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.
"His name is Prince Paradox," said Dorian.
"I reize him in a flash," exclaimed the duchess.
"I wont hear of it," laughed Lord Henry, sinking into a chair. "From a label there is no escape! I refuse the title."
"Royalties may not abdicate," fell as a warning from pretty lips.
"You wish me to defend my throhen?"
"Yes.
"I give the truths of to-morrow."
"I prefer the mistakes of to-day," she answered.
"You disarm me, Gladys," he cried, catg the wilfulness of her mood.
"Of your shield, Harry, not of your spear."
"I ilt against beauty," he said, with a wave of his hand.
"That is your error, Harry, believe me. You value beauty far too much."
"How you say that? I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But oher hand, no one is more ready than I am to aowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly."
"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?" cried the duchess. "What bees of your simile about the orchid?"
"Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues, Gladys. You, as a good Tory, must not ue them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made land what she is."
"You dont like your try, then?" she asked.
"I live in it."
"That you may sure it the better."
"Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?" he inquired.