The crowd was not so dense as at most London parties, and the temperature consequently something below that of a vapor-bath or of the Piombi, but the generality of the guests were either amusing, or pretty, or otherwise eligible.  To be sure, it was rather an expedition and a question of passports to get down there, but the drive home through the cool dewy morning made you amends.

Constance Brandon was present.  I never saw her look so lovely as on this, her last appearance on the world’s stage.  No one could have guessed that, five hours later, the light was to die in her eyes and the color in her cheeks, never to return to either again till she shall wake on the Resurrection morning.

Flora Bellasys was there too, in all the insolence of beauty, defying criticism, and challenging the admiration that was lavished on her.  I should like to describe her dress; but I know how dangerous it is for the uninitiate to venture within the verge of those awful mysteries over which, as hierophants, Devy and Maradon-Carson preside.  Conscious of my sex, I retire.  Have we not read of Actaeon?

Still I may say that I have an impression of her being surrounded by a sort of cloud of pale blue tulle, over which bouquets of geranium were scattered here and there; and I remember perfectly a certain serpent of scarlet velvet and diamonds flashing amid the rolls and braids of her dark shining tresses.

The evening began with private theatricals, which were most successful.  There was a soubrette—­provoking enough to have set all the parti-colored world by the ears—­who traced her descent from a vavasor of Duke William the Norman, and an attorney’s clerk, who had evidently mistaken his profession when he took a commission in the Coldstreams.

Soon after the ball which followed had begun, Livingstone arrived.  He had been dining at the mess of his old regiment.  I never remember seeing him what is called the worse for liquor.  His head was marble under the influence of wine and of yet stronger compounds; but the instant I met his eyes, I guessed from their unusual brilliancy, and from the slight additional flush on his brown cheeks, that the wassail had been deep.

He paused for a moment to say a word or two to me, and I noticed that the first person whom his glance lighted on was, not his betrothed, but Flora Bellasys.  The latter was resting after her first polka, with her usual staff of admirers round her.  Guy watched the circle paying their homage, and I heard him mutter to himself the formula of the Roman arena—­Morituri te salutant.  Then he passed on; and, after retaining Constance for her first disengaged turn, he began talking to a lady, whom I have not noticed yet, but who merits to be sketched hastily.