fever.

CHAPTER XXVI. AN UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE DUPE AND HIS VICTIM

So, then, we meet at last.--Harold.

As the rooms began to fill with company, costumed in every variety
that taste, fancy, or absurdity could devise, many were surprised that
neither was there a host to bid them welcome, nor was there any lady
to perform the accustomed honors of reception. The nature of the
entertainment, to a certain extent, took off from the awkwardness of
this want. In a masquerade, people either go to assume a part, or to be
amused by the representation of others, and are less dependent on the
attentions of the master or mistress of the house; so that, however
struck at first by the singularity of a _fete_ without the presence of
the giver, pleasure, ministered to by its thousand appliances, overcame
this feeling, and few ever thought more of him beneath whose roof they
were assembled.

The rooms were splendid in their decoration, lighted _a giomo_, and
ornamented with flowers of the very rarest kind. The music consisted of
a celebrated orchestra and a regimental band, who played alternately;
the guests, several hundred in number, were all attired in fancy
costumes, in which every age and nation found its type; while characters
from well-known fictions abounded, many of them admirably sustained, and
dressed with a pomp and splendor that told the wealth of the wearers.

It was truly a brilliant scene; brilliant as beauty, and the glitter
of gems, and waving of plumes, and splendor of dress could make it.
The magic impulse of pleasure communicated by the crash of music;
the brilliant glare of wax-lights; the throng; the voices; the very
atmosphere, tremulous with sounds of joy,--seemed to urge on all there
to give themselves up to enjoyment. There was a boundless, lavish air,
too, in all the arrangements. Servants in gorgeous liveries served
refreshments of the most exquisite kind; little children, dressed as
pages, distributed bouquets, bound round with lace of Valenciennes or
Brussels, and occasionally fastened by strings of garnets or pearls;
a _jet d'eau_ of rose-water cooled the air of the conservatory, and
diffused its delicious freshness through the atmosphere. There was
something princely in the scale of the hospitality; and from every
tongue words of praise and wonder dropped at each moment.

Even Lady Janet, whose enthusiasm seldom rose much above the zero,
confessed that it was a magnificent _fete_,