Frau Captain Stark alone did not seem to belong in this _milieu_. The choice of a costume, to begin with, had occasioned her deep and anxious thought. She felt that to follow her inclinations and appear at the masquerade in either the guise of a ballet dancer or of a flower girl would too markedly invite criticism. Her fifty years and her towering shape would really have made her too conspicuous in such parts. On the other hand, to show herself as a peddler woman or fishwife would have, so she feared, made her look “too natural.” Having, therefore, discarded these notions, her fancy roved in the realms of the beautiful and fantastic, until it settled down upon a costume which, bespangled and with its garland of rushes, she declared to be that of a “mermaid of middle age.” Nobody was in a condition to contradict her, inasmuch as nobody recollected ever having seen a “middle-aged” mermaid before. She floated, as a matter of fact, in a cloud of pink and sea-green laces. The capacious bosom this cloud concealed from view rolled and heaved quite realistically, thus producing the effect of ocean waves, and her enormous arms were awe-inspiring enough to keep away all evening those in the crowd who had not got their sea-legs,--and that meant practically all the younger officers. At all other times her most dutiful slaves, these young men seemed to have conspired to leave the dreaded chief of the regiment’s nominal chief severely alone. Of course she felt this as an unpardonable offence, and this all the more as the colonel at an early hour was in an irresponsible condition, and hence listened to her violent plaint with stolid equanimity. There was a male trio, too, that claimed some attention. They represented to the life merry, devil-may-care vagabonds, and so well did they act their parts that one would have supposed they had just been picked up on the miry highway outside. They deemed it, of course, strictly within their privileges to get drunk with all due speed,--an endeavor in which they admirably succeeded. From that hour on they became an unmitigated nuisance, not even atoned for by some humor or merry pranks. After midnight they were always seen in a bunch, steadying each other as they lurched along.