It was a great dress parade of society women.  One who wished to play a proper part in it would spend at least ten thousand dollars upon her costumes for the week.  It was necessary to have a different gown for the afternoon and evening of each day; and some, who were adepts at quick changes and were proud of it, would wear three or four a day, and so need a couple of dozen gowns for the show.  And of course there had to be hats and shoes and gloves to match.  There would be robes of priceless fur hung carelessly over the balcony to make a setting; and in the evening there would be pyrotechnical displays of jewels.  Mrs. Virginia Landis wore a pair of simple pearl earrings, which she told the reporters had cost twenty thousand dollars; and there were two women who displayed four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds—­and each of them had hired a detective to hover about in the crowd and keep watch over her!

Nor must one suppose, because the horse was an inconspicuous part of the show, that he was therefore an inexpensive part.  One man was to be seen here driving a four-in-hand of black stallions which had cost forty thousand; there were other men who drove only one horse, and had paid forty thousand for that.  Half a million was a moderate estimate of the cost of the “string” which some would exhibit.  And of course these horses were useless, save for show purposes, and to breed other horses like them.  Many of them never went out of their stables except for exercise upon a track; and the cumbrous and enormous; expensive coaches were never by any possibility used elsewhere—­when they were taken from place to place they seldom went upon their own wheels.

And there were people here who made their chief occupation in life the winning of blue ribbons at these shows.  They kept great country estates especially for the horses, and had private indoor exhibition rings.  Robbie Walling and Chauncey Venable were both such people; in the summer of next year another of the Wallings took a string across the water to teach the horse-show game to Society in London.  He took twenty or thirty horses, under the charge of an expert manager and a dozen assistants; he sent sixteen different kinds of carriages, and two great coaches, and a ton of harness and other stuff.  It required one whole deck of a steamer, and the expedition enabled him to get rid of six hundred thousand dollars.

All through the day, of course, Robbie was down in the ring with his trainers and his competitors, and Montague sat and kept his wife company.  There was a steady stream of visitors, who came to congratulate her upon their successes, and to commiserate with Mrs. Chauncey Venable over the sufferings of the un-happy victim of a notoriety-seeking district attorney.