The Bartons were not invited to the next private dance, which was annoying, and after long conjecturing as to the enemy that had served them this trick, they resigned themselves to the inevitable, and began to look forward to the State ball given on the following Monday.

As they mounted the stairway Mrs. Barton said: 

’You know we turn to the left this time and enter Patrick’s Hall by this end; the other entrance is blocked up by the dais—­only the three and four season girls stand about the pillars.  There they are drawn up in battle array.’

‘I declare Olive Barton is here!’ whispered the redoubtable Bertha; ’this doesn’t look as if the beaux were coming forward in their hundreds.  It is said that Lord Kilcarney has given her up for Violet Scully.’

‘I’m not a bit surprised,’ said the girl in red; ’and, now I think of it, all the beauties come to the same end.  I’ll just give her a couple more Castle seasons.  It is that that will pull the fine feathers out of her.’

St. Patrick’s Hall was now a huge democratic crush.  All the little sharp glances of the ‘private dances,’ ‘What, you here!’ were dispensed with as useless, for all were within their rights in being at the ball.  They pushed, laughed, danced.  They met as they would have met in Rotten Row, and they took their amusement with the impartiality of pleasure-seekers jigging and drinking in a marketplace on fair-day.  On either side of the Hall there were ascending benches; these were filled with chaperons and debutantes, and over their heads the white-painted, gold-listed walls were hung with garlands of evergreen oak interwoven with the celebrated silver shields, the property of the Cowper family, and in front of the curtains hanging about the dais, the maroon legs of His Excellency, and the teeth and diamonds of Her Excellency, were seen passing to and fro, and up and down to the music of oblivion that Liddell dispensed with a flowing arm.

‘Now aren’t the Castle balls very nice?’ said Bertha; ’and how are you amusing yourself?’

‘Oh, very much indeed,’ replied the poor debutante who had not even a brother to take her for a walk down the room or to the buffet for an ice.

‘And is it true, Bertha,’ asks the fierce aunt—­’you know all the news—­that Mr. Jones has been transferred to another ship and has gone off to the Cape?’

‘Yes, yes,’ replied the girl; ’a nice end to her beau; and after dinnering him up the whole summer, too.’

Alice shuddered.  What were they but snowflakes born to shine for a moment and then to fade, to die, to disappear, to become part of the black, the foul-smelling slough of mud below?  The drama in muslin was again unfolded, and she could read each act; and there was a ‘curtain’ at the end of each.  The first was made of young, hopeful faces, the second of arid solicitation, the third of the bitter, malignant tongues of Bertha Duffy and her friend.  She had begun to experience the worst horrors of a Castle ball.  She was sick of pity for those around her, and her lofty spirit resented the insult that was being offered to her sex.