Already the first notes of the waltz had been shrieked out by the cornet, and Mr. Fred Scully, with May’s red tresses on his shoulder, was about to start, when Mrs. Barton and Olive entered.  Olive, in white silk, so tightly drawn back that every line of her supple thighs, and every plumpness of her superb haunches was seen; and the double garland of geraniums that encircled the tulle veiling seemed like flowers of blood scattered on virgin snow.  Her beauty imposed admiration; and, murmuring assent, the dancers involuntarily drew into lines, and this pale, uncoloured loveliness, her high nose seen, and her silly laugh heard, by the side of her sharp, brown-eyed mother, passed down the room.  Lord Dungory and Lord Rosshill advanced to meet them; a moment after Captain Hibbert and Mr. Burke came up to ask for dances; a waltz was promised to each.  A circling crowd of black-coats instantly absorbed the triumphant picture; the violinist scraped, and the harper twanged intermittently; a band of fox-hunters arrived; girls had been chosen, and in the small space of floor that remained the white skirts and red tail coats passed and repassed, borne along Strauss’s indomitable rhythms.

An hour passed:  perspiration had begun to loosen the work of curling-tongs; dust had thickened the voices, but the joy of exercise was in every head and limb.  A couple would rush off for a cup of tea, or an ice, and then, pale and breathless, return to the fray.  Mrs. Manly was the gayest.  Pushing her children out of her skirts, she called upon May: 

’Now then, May, have you a partner?  We are going to have a real romp—­we are going to have Kitchen Lancers.  I’ll undertake to see everybody through them.’

A select few, by signs, winks, and natural instinct, were drawn towards this convivial circle; but, notwithstanding all her efforts to make herself understood, Mrs. Manly was sadly hampered by the presence of a tub-like old lady who, with a small boy, was seeking a vis-a-vis.

’My dear May, we can’t have her here, we are going to romp; anyone can see that.  Tell her we are going to dance Kitchen Lancers.’

But the old lady could not be made to understand, and it was with difficulty that she was disentangled from the sixteen.  At that moment the appearance of a waiter with a telegram caused the dancers to pause.  Mr. Burke’s name was whispered in front of the messenger; but he who, until that evening, had been Mr. Burke, was now the Marquis of Kilearney.  The smiling mouth drooped to an expression of fear as he tore open the envelope.  One glance was enough; he looked about the room like one dazed.  Then, as his eyes fell upon the vague faces seen looking through the wet November pane, he muttered:  ’Oh! you brutes, you brutes! so you have shot my brother!’

Unchecked, the harper twanged and the fiddler scraped out the tune of their Lancers.  Few really knew what had happened, and the newly-made marquis had to fight his way through women who, in skin-tight dresses, danced with wantoning movements of the hips, and threw themselves into the arms of men, to be, in true kitchen-fashion, whirled round and round with prodigious violence.