The band on the platform facing the triple row of seats at the far end began a waltz.  Most of the men were elderly and well preserved.  They danced with the girls.  The half-dozen youths improved their chances by assiduous attentions to the unwieldy dames.  Andrew thought that his princesses danced very badly.  Many of them were taller than the men, and looked about to go head first over the shoulders whose support they seemed to disdain.  The little ones bounded like rubber balls.  The old women formed groups and gossiped.  A number sat about a plethoric lady, whose diamonds made her look like a crystal chandelier.  Chapman informed Webb that she was a duchess.

“You see that fellow over there!” he exclaimed, suddenly, indicating with the point of his lead-pencil a young man with a vulgar, vacuous face and a clumsy assumption of the grand air; “well, he was nobody a year ago,—­a distant connection of the Webbs; but they never recognized his existence until he came into some money.  Then they took him up, and now he’s out of sight.  It’s too bad you didn’t happen to be that kind of Webb.  You look a long sight more of a gentleman than he does.”

“Are any of the Webbs here?” asked Andrew, choking with bitterness.

“There’s the old girl over there.  Regular old ice-chest.”

“Is—­is—­Schuyler Churchill Webb here?”

“He’s just come in.  He is talking to the duchess—­the French one.”

Andrew gazed with dull hatred at the plain amiable-looking young man, whose air of indefinable elegance seemed to reach forth and smite him in the face.  The gulf, which had been a gradually widening rift, seemed suddenly to yawn.

“Well, I must go,” said Chapman.  “I have to get my stuff off, you know.  Will see you in the morning.”

As he left, Miss Leslie renewed her pleasantries, hoping that Andrew would ask her to go down and dance.  She was terribly afraid of the great folk, poor little soul, but she felt that this strong self-reliant young man would protect her.  Andrew excused himself in a few moments, however, and went down-stairs.  He had bought the right to be in the same room with those people, and he would claim it.

The treble row of seats was evidently reserved for strangers; no cottagers were at that end of the room.  They sat about the other three sides with an air of being on their own ground.  Andrew walked resolutely into the room, and took possession of one of the chairs reserved for his kind.  He had only three or four neighbors; most of the tourists had gone up-stairs, and were darkly surveying the scene.  There were no decorations, but the dowagers were a jewelled dado, the girls an animated bed of blossoms.

VII