Whatever Mrs. Barton’s faults may have been, she did her duty, as she conceived it, by her daughter; and during the long dinner, through the leaves of the flowering-plants, she watched her Olive anxiously.  A hundred and twenty people were present.  Mothers and eligible daughters, judges, lords, police-officers, earls, poor-law inspectors, countesses, and Castle officials.  Around the great white-painted, gold-listed walls the table, in the form of a horseshoe, was spread.  In the soothing light of the shaded lamps the white glitter of the piled-up silver danced over the talking faces, and descended in silvery waves into the bosoms of the women.  Salmon and purple-coloured liveries passed quickly; and in the fragrance of soup and the flavours of sherry, in the lascivious pleasing of the waltz tunes that Liddell’s band poured from a top gallery, the goodly company of time-servers, panders, and others forgot their fears of the Land League and the doom that was now waxing to fulness.

To the girls the dinner seemed interminable, but at the ‘private dance’ afterwards those who were known in official circles, or were fortunate enough to meet their friends, amused themselves.  It took place in the Throne-Room.  As the guests arrived they scanned each other narrowly.  People who had known each other from childhood upwards, as they met on the landing, affected a look of surprise:  ’Oh, so you are here?  I wonder how you got your invitation?  Well, I suppose you are better than I took you to be!’ Acquaintances saluted each other more cordially than was their wont:  he or she who had dined at the Castle took his or her place at once among the elite; he or she who had come to dance was henceforth considered worthy of a bow in Grafton Street.  For Dublin is a city without a conviction, without an opinion.  Things are right and wrong according to the dictum of the nearest official.  If it be not absolutely ill-bred to say you think this, or are inclined to take such or such a view, it is certainly more advisable to say that the Attorney-General thinks so, or that on one occasion you heard the State Steward, the Chamberlain, or any other equally distinguished underling, express this or that opinion.  Castle tape is worn in time of mourning and in the time of feasting.  Every gig-man in the Kildare Street wears it in his buttonhole, and the ladies of Merrion Square are found to be gartered with it.

Mrs. Barton’s first thought was to get Olive partners.  Milord and Lord Rosshill were sent hither and thither, and with such good result that the whole evening the beauty was beset with A.D.C.’s.  But the Marquis had danced three times with Violet Scully, and Mrs. Barton vented her anger on poor Alice.  The girl knew no one, nor was there time to introduce her to men.  She was consequently sent off with Milord to see where the Marquis was hiding; and she was commissioned to tell her sister to answer thus when Lord Kilcarney asked for another dance:  ’I am engaged, cher marquis, but for you, of course, I shall have to throw some poor fellow over.’  Mrs. Barton did not know how to play a waiting game.  Her tactics were always to grapple with the enemy.  She was a Hannibal:  she risked all to gain all.  Mrs. Scully, on the contrary, watched the combat from afar—­as Moltke did the German lines when they advanced upon Paris.