At other dancers they looked with a kind of airy scorn—­they, the light brigade, the heroes of a hundred Kensington ’hops’—­from whom alone could the right manner and smile and step be hoped.

After this the stream came fast; chaperones silting up along the wall facing the entrance, the volatile element swelling the eddy in the larger room.

Men were scarce, and wallflowers wore their peculiar, pathetic expression, a patient, sourish smile which seemed to say:  “Oh, no! don’t mistake me, I know you are not coming up to me.  I can hardly expect that!” And Francie would plead with one of her lovers, or with some callow youth:  “Now, to please me, do let me introduce you to Miss Pink; such a nice girl, really!” and she would bring him up, and say:  “Miss Pink—­Mr. Gathercole.  Can you spare him a dance?” Then Miss Pink, smiling her forced smile, colouring a little, answered:  “Oh!  I think so!” and screening her empty card, wrote on it the name of Gathercole, spelling it passionately in the district that he proposed, about the second extra.

But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient, sourish smile.

Mothers, slowly fanning their faces, watched their daughters, and in their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters’ fortunes.  As for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired, silent, or talking spasmodically—­what did it matter, so long as the girls were having a good time!  But to see them neglected and passed by!  Ah! they smiled, but their eyes stabbed like the eyes of an offended swan; they longed to pluck young Gathercole by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag him to their daughters—­the jackanapes!

And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and unequal chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room.

Here and there, too, lovers—­not lovers like Francie’s, a peculiar breed, but simply lovers—­trembling, blushing, silent, sought each other by flying glances, sought to meet and touch in the mazes of the dance, and now and again dancing together, struck some beholder by the light in their eyes.

Not a second before ten o’clock came the Jameses—­Emily, Rachel, Winifred (Dartie had been left behind, having on a former occasion drunk too much of Roger’s champagne), and Cicely, the youngest, making her debut; behind them, following in a hansom from the paternal mansion where they had dined, Soames and Irene.

All these ladies had shoulder-straps and no tulle—­thus showing at once, by a bolder exposure of flesh, that they came from the more fashionable side of the Park.

Soames, sidling back from the contact of the dancers, took up a position against the wall.  Guarding himself with his pale smile, he stood watching.  Waltz after waltz began and ended, couple after couple brushed by with smiling lips, laughter, and snatches of talk; or with set lips, and eyes searching the throng; or again, with silent, parted lips, and eyes on each other.  And the scent of festivity, the odour of flowers, and hair, of essences that women love, rose suffocatingly in the heat of the summer night.