ce Brandon was present. I never saw her look so lovely as on
this, her last appearance on the world's stage. No one could have
guessed that, five hours later, the light was to die in her eyes and the
color in her cheeks, never to return to either again till she shall
wake on the Resurrection morning.

Flora Bellasys was there too, in all the insolence of beauty, defying
criticism, and challenging the admiration that was lavished on her. I
should like to describe her dress; but I know how dangerous it is for
the uninitiate to venture within the verge of those awful mysteries over
which, as hierophants, Devy and Maradon-Carson preside. Conscious of my
sex, I retire. Have we not read of Actaeon?

Still I may say that I have an impression of her being surrounded by a
sort of cloud of pale blue _tulle_, over which bouquets of geranium were
scattered here and there; and I remember perfectly a certain serpent of
scarlet velvet and diamonds flashing amid the rolls and braids of her
dark shining tresses.

The evening began with private theatricals, which were most successful.
There was a _soubrette_--provoking enough to have set all the
parti-colored world by the ears--who traced her descent from a vavasor
of Duke William the Norman, and an attorney's clerk, who had evidently
mistaken his profession when he took a commission in the Coldstreams.

Soon after the ball which followed had begun, Livingstone arrived. He
had been dining at the mess of his old regiment. I never remember seeing
him what is called the worse for liquor. His head was marble under the
influence of wine and of yet stronger compounds; but the instant I met
his eyes, I guessed from their unusual brilliancy, and from the slight
additional flush on his brown cheeks, that the wassail had been deep.

He paused for a moment to say a word or two to me, and I noticed that
the first person whom his glance lighted on was, not his betrothed, but
Flora Bellasys. The latter was resting after her first polka, with her
usual staff of admirers round her. Guy watched the circle paying their
homage, and I heard him mutter to himself the formula of the Roman
arena--_Morituri te salutant_. Then he passed on; and, after retaining
Constance for her first disengaged turn, he began talking to a lady,
whom I have not noticed yet, but who merits to be sketched hastily.

Rose Thornton was not clever. She was no longer in her first youth, and
had never been pretty or very attractive