'Seeds of Corruption' was the next picture, and showed us a young and beautiful girl in her early teens, lying on a luxurious couch _en deshabille_, with a novel in her hand, of which the title was plainly seen by all;--a novel well-known to everyone present, and the work of a much-praised living author. Round her, on the floor, and cast carelessly on a chair at her side, were other novels of the same 'sexual' type,--all their titles turned towards us, and the names of their authors equally made manifest. "What a daring idea!" said a lady in the seat immediately behind me--"I wonder if any of those authors are present!" "If they are they won't mind!" replied the man next to her with a smothered laugh--"Those sort of writers would merely take it as a first-class advertisement!" Sibyl looked at the tableau with a pale face and wistful eyes. "That is a _true_ picture!" she said under her breath--"Geoffrey, it is painfully true!" I made no answer,--I thought I knew to what she alluded; but alas!--I did not know how deeply the 'seeds of corruption' had been sown in her own nature, or what a harvest they would bring forth. The curtain closed,--to open again almost immediately on "His Latest Purchase." Here we were shown the interior of a luxurious modern drawing-room, where about eight or ten men were assembled, in fashionable evening-dress. They had evidently just risen from a card-table,--and one of them, a dissipated looking brute, with a wicked smile of mingled satire and triumph on his face was pointing to his 'purchase,'--a beautiful woman. She was clad in glistening white like a bride,--but she was bound, as prisoners are bound, to an upright column, on which the grinning head of a marble Silenus leered above her. Her hands were tied tightly together,--with chains of diamonds; her waist was bound,--with thick ropes of pearls;--a wide collar of rubies encircled her throat;--and from bosom to feet she was netted about and tied,--with strings of gold and gems. Her head was flung back defiantly with an assumption of pride and scorn,--her eyes alone expressed shame, self-contempt, and despair at her bondage. The man who owned this white slave was represented, by his attitude, as cataloguing and appraising her 'points' for the approval and applause of his comrades, whose faces variously and powerfully expressed the differing emotions of lust, cruelty, envy, callousness, derision, and selfishness, more admirably than the most gifted painter could imagine. "A capital type of most fashionable marriages!" I heard some-one say. "Rather!" another voice replied--"The orthodox 'happy couple' to the life!"