Read "The Sentence of the Court" by Fred M. White online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A stream of men and women in evening dress was pouring into the great pink and gold dining-room. It was the place to dine at in London just then, the last word in luxury--until some new capitalist should come along with something still more sinfully extravagant.
Herepath's lips curled scornfully as he saw the flashing jewels, the expensive dresses, and the fleet of gleaming cars that came purring gently up to the pavement. What those people wasted in a year would keep a hundred families in comfort and happiness. There was not one of them who would have lent him a sovereign to protect him from starvation, and yet he had something hidden in the back of his mind that would have meant a fortune to half of them.