People poured in.  The rooms began to swarm.  There was a warm odor of kid gloves, scent-bags, and heliotrope.  There was an incessant fluttering of fans and bobbing of heads.  One hundred gentlemen said, “How warm it is!” One hundred ladies of the highest fashion answered, “Very.”  Fifty young men, who all wore coats, collars, and waistcoats that seemed to have been made in the lump, and all after the same pattern, stood speechless about the rooms, wondering what under heaven to do with their hands.  Fifty older married men, who had solved that problem, folded their hands behind their backs, and beamed vaguely about, nodding their heads whenever they recognized any other head, and saying, “Good-evening,” and then, after a little more beaming, “How are yer?” Waiters pushed about with trays covered with little glasses of lemonade and port-sangaree, which offered favorable openings to the unemployed young men and the married gentlemen, who crowded along with a glass in each hand, frightening all the ladies and begging every body’s pardon.

All the Knickerbocker jewels glittered about the rooms.  Mrs. Bleecker Van Kraut carried not less than thirty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds upon her person—­at least that was Mrs. Orry’s deliberate conclusion after a careful estimate.  Mrs. Dagon, when she heard what Mrs. Orry said, merely exclaimed, “Fiddle!  Anastatia Orry can tell the price of lutestring a yard because Winslow Orry failed in that business, but she knows as much of diamonds as an elephant of good manners.”

The Van Kraut property had been bowing about the drawing-rooms of New York for a year or two, watched with palpitating hearts and longing eyes.  Until that was disposed of, nothing else could win a glance.  There were several single hundreds of thousands openly walking about the same rooms, but while they were received very politely, they were made to feel that two millions were in presence and unappropriated, and they fell humbly back.

Fanny Newt, upon her debut in society, had contemplated the capture of the Van Kraut property; but the very vigor with which she conducted the campaign had frightened the poor gentleman who was the present member for that property, in society, so that he shivered and withdrew on the dizzy verge of a declaration; and when he subsequently encountered Lucy Slumb, she was immediately invested with the family jewels.

“Heaven save me from a smart woman!” prayed Bleecker Van Kraut; and Heaven heard and kindly granted his prayer.

Presently, while the hot hum went on, and laces, silks, satins, brocades, muslins, and broadcloth intermingled and changed places, so that Arthur Merlin, whom Lawrence Newt had brought, declared the ball looked like a shot silk or a salmon’s belly—­upon overhearing which, Mrs. Bleecker Van Kraut, who was passing with Mr. Moultrie, looked unspeakable things—­the quick eyes of Fanny Newt encountered the restless orbs of Mrs. Dinks.