An Ideal Husband A Play

Excerpt

[The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests.  At the top of the staircase stands lady chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age.  She receives the guests as they come up.  Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large eighteenth-century French tapestry—representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher—that is stretched on the staircase wall.  On the right is the entrance to the music-room.  The sound of a string quartette is faintly heard.  The entrance on the left leads to other reception-rooms.  mrs. marchmont and lady basildon, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa.  They are types of exquisite fragility.  Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm.  Watteau would have loved to paint them.]