Excerpt from The Wicked Marquis<br><br>The judge's decision was, without doubt, calami tous, he confessed gloomily.<br><br>The Marquis turned in at the Savoy courtyard with the air of an habitué.<br><br>I am in need of a brief rest and some refreshment, he said. You will accompany me, if you please, Mr. Wadham.<br><br>The lawyer acquiesced and felt somehow that he had become the tail end of a procession, the Marquis's entrance and progress through the grillroom towards the smoking-room bar was marked by much deference on the part of porters, cloak-room attendants and waiters, a deference acknowledged in the barest possible fashion, yet in a manner which his satellite decided to make a study of. They reached a retired corner of the smoking room, where the Marquis subsided into the only vacant easy chair, ordered for himself a glass of dry sherry, and left his companion to select his own refreshment and pay for both.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.