The Venetians by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

It was summer-time in London; the butterfly season, in which the metropolis of the world puts on such a splendour of gaiety and luxury that it is hard to remember the fog and damp and dreariness of a long winter; hard to believe that this stately West End London can ever be otherwise than beautiful. Are not her hotels palaces, and her parks paradises of foliage and flowers, fashion and beauty -- with only an occasional incursion from the Processional Proletariat? Country cousins seeing the great city in this joyous season may be excused for thinking that life in London is always delectable; and, bored to death in their country quarters in the dull depth of an agricultural winter, or suffering under the discomforts of a ten-mile journey behind a pair of "boilers," on a snow-bound road, to a third-rate ball, may not unnaturally envy the children of the city their January and February dances, and dinners, and theatres, all, as these rustics imagine, within a quarter of an hour's drive.

Eve Vansittart thoroughly enjoyed the pleasures of a London season; the jaunts and excitements by day; Hurlingham, Sandown, Ascot, Henley, Lord's, Barn Elms; the ever-delightful morning ride, the evening drive in the Park, with its smiling flower-beds, ablaze with gaudy colour that rivalled the scarlet plumes and shining breast-plates flashing past now and again between the close ranks of carriages. Yes, London was brilliant, vivid, noisy, full of startling sights and sounds by day; and by night a city of enchantment, where one might wander from house to house to mingle in a mob of more or less beautiful women, and beautiful gowns, and diamonds that took one's breath away by their magnificence. A city of fairyland, with awnings over stately doorways, and gardens and balconies aglitter with coloured lamps; and gorgeous reception-rooms where one heard all that there is of the most exquisite in modern music -- violin and 'cello, tenor and soprano -- the stars of opera and concert-hall, breathing their finer strains for the delight of these choicer assemblies.