Our Lady of Darkness — Bernard Capes

From two till four o'clock on any summer afternoon during the penultimate decade of the last century, the Right Honourable Gustavus Hilary George, third Viscount Murk, Baron Brindle and Knight of the Stews, with orders of demerit innumerable—and, over his quarterings, that bar-sinister which would appear to be designed for emphasis of the fact that the word rank has a double meaning—might be seen (in emulation of a more notable belswagger) ogling the ladies from the verandah of his house in Cavendish Square. That this, his lordship's daily habit, was rather the expression of an ineradicable self-complacency than its own justification by results, the appearance of the withered old applejohn himself gave testimony. For here, in truth, was a very doyen of dandy-cocks—a last infirmity of fribbles—a macaroni with a cuticle so hardened by the paint and powder of near fourscore years as to be impervious to the shafts of ridicule.