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.
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