Read "Zuleika Dobson" by Max Beerbohm online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The clock in the Warden's drawing-room had just struck eight, and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that only with a pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table were they comparable. Incomparable quite, the figure and face and vesture of him who ended in them.
The Warden was talking to him, with all the deference of elderly commoner to patrician boy. The other guests -- an Oriel don and his wife -- were listening with earnest smile and submissive droop, at a slight distance. Now and again, to put themselves at their ease, they exchanged in undertone a word or two about the weather.