k, they resigned themselves to the inevitable, and began
to look forward to the State ball given on the following Monday.

As they mounted the stairway Mrs. Barton said:

'You know we turn to the left this time and enter Patrick's Hall by this
end; the other entrance is blocked up by the dais--only the three and
four season girls stand about the pillars. There they are drawn up in
battle array.'

'I declare Olive Barton is here!' whispered the redoubtable Bertha;
'this doesn't look as if the beaux were coming forward in their
hundreds. It is said that Lord Kilcarney has given her up for Violet
Scully.'

'I'm not a bit surprised,' said the girl in red; 'and, now I think of
it, all the beauties come to the same end. I'll just give her a couple
more Castle seasons. It is that that will pull the fine feathers out of
her.'

St. Patrick's Hall was now a huge democratic crush. All the little sharp
glances of the 'private dances,' 'What, you here!' were dispensed with
as useless, for all were within their rights in being at the ball. They
pushed, laughed, danced. They met as they would have met in Rotten Row,
and they took their amusement with the impartiality of pleasure-seekers
jigging and drinking in a marketplace on fair-day. On either side of the
Hall there were ascending benches; these were filled with chaperons and
_debutantes_, and over their heads the white-painted, gold-listed walls
were hung with garlands of evergreen oak interwoven with the celebrated
silver shields, the property of the Cowper family, and in front of the
curtains hanging about the dais, the maroon legs of His Excellency, and
the teeth and diamonds of Her Excellency, were seen passing to and fro,
and up and down to the music of oblivion that Liddell dispensed with a
flowing arm.

'Now aren't the Castle balls very nice?' said Bertha; 'and how are you
amusing yourself?'

'Oh, very much indeed,' replied the poor _debutante_ who had not even a
brother to take her for a walk down the room or to the buffet for an
ice.

'And is it true, Bertha,' asks the fierce aunt--'you know all the
news--that Mr. Jones has been transferred to another ship and has gone
off to the Cape?'

'Yes, yes,' replied the girl; 'a nice end to her beau; and after
dinnering him up the whole summer, too.'

Alice shuddered. What were they but snowflakes born to shine for a
moment and then to fade, to die, to disappear, to become part of the
black, the foul-smelling slough