Mademoiselle Chassediane vowed that her own dress was ravishing.  She went attired as a boudoir-shepherdess or demurely-coquettish Sevres-china Ninette, such of whom Louis Quinze would chuck the chin down the deadly introductory walks of Versailles.  The reason of her desiring to go was the fatal sin of curiosity, and, therefore, her sex’s burden, not hers.  Jorian was a Mousquetaire, with plumes and ruffles prodigious, and a hen’s heart beneath his cock’s feathers.  ’Pourtant j’y allai.  I saw your great ladies, how they carry themselves when they would amuse themselves, and, mon Dieu!  Paris has done its utmost to grace their persons, and the length of their robes did the part of Providence in bestowing height upon them, parceque, vous savez, Monsieur, c’est extraordinaire comme ils ont les jambes courtes, ces Anglaises!’ Our aristocracy, however, was not so bad in that respect as our bourgeoisie; yet it was easy to perceive that our female aristocracy, though they could ride, had never been drilled to walk:  ’de belles femmes, oui; seulement, tenez, je n’admire ni les yeux de vache, ni de souris, ni mime ceux de verre comme ornement feminin.  Avec de l’embonpoint elles font de l’effet, mais maigre il n’y a aucune illusion possible.’

This vindictive critic smarted, with cause, at the recollection of her walk out of her rooms.  Jorian’s audacity or infatuation quitted him immediately after he had gratified her whim.  The stout Mousquetaire placed her in a corner, and enveloped her there, declaring that her petition had been that she might come to see, not to be seen,—­as if, she cried out tearfully, the two wishes must not necessarily exist together, like the masculine and the feminine in this world!  Prince Hal, acting the most profligate period of his career, espied her behind the Mousquetaire’s moustache, and did not fail to make much of his discovery.  In a perilous moment for the reputation of the Ball, my father handed him over to Gascoigne, and conducted Jenny in a leisurely walk on his arm out of the rooms.

‘Il est comme les Romains,’ she said:  ’he never despairs of himself.  It is a Jupiter!  If he must punish you he confers a dignity in doing it.  Now I comprehend, that with such women as these grandes dames Anglaises I should have done him harm but for his greatness of soul.’

Some harm, I fancied, must have been done, in spite of his boast to the contrary.  He had to be in London every other night, and there were tales current of intrigues against him which had their sources from very lofty regions.  But in Chippenden he threw off London, just as lightly as in London he discarded Chippenden.  No symptom of personal discouragement, or of fatigue, was betrayed in his face.  I spoke once of that paragraph purporting to emanate from Prince Ernest.

‘It may,’ he said.  ‘Business!  Richie.’