They waited about twenty minutes, and then slowly drove up to the doorway, where the eager faces of the crowd made a hedge on each side. Difficult to believe that this entrance hall, luminous with lamps and bright flowers, was the same which gave admittance to such prosaic beings as town-clerks and vestrymen, justices of the peace and policemen. Edgar and Gerald were both hovering near the doorway, waiting for the South Hill party: Edgar, at the risk of being accused of deserting his mother, whom he had established in a comfortable corner of the ball-room, and then incontinently left to her own reflections, or to such conversation as she might be able to find among sundry other dowagers arrived at the same wall-flower stage of existence. ‘I thought you were never coming,’ said Edgar, offering Daphne his arm, and in a manner appropriating her. ‘I thought we were going to spend the evening in the street,’ answered Daphne. Gerald gave his arm to Madoline; Sir Vernon followed with his sister, whose high-heeled Louis Quinze shoes matched her gown to perfection, but were not adapted for locomotion. Happily she was a light and active figure, and managed to trip up the broad oak stairs somehow; though she felt as if her feet had been replaced by the primitive style of wooden leg, the mere dot-and-go-one drumstick, with which the Chelsea pensioner used to be accommodated before the days of elaborate mechanical arrangements in cork and metal. The ball-room was already crowded, the South Hill party having arrived late, by special desire of Aunt Rhoda, who strongly objected to be among those early comers who roam about empty halls dejectedly, taking the chill off the atmosphere for the late arrivals. Dancing was in full swing, and the assembly in the big ball-room made a blaze of colour against the delicate French-gray walls; the pink of the fox-hunters, and the uniforms of the officers from Warwick and Coventry, showing vividly amongst the pale and airy drapery of their partners. There were more than two hundred in the room already, Edgar told Daphne, as he pointed out the more striking features of the scene. ‘I daresay there’ll be nearer three hundred before midnight,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a grand affair. Only once in two years, you see: people save themselves up for it. A lot of fellows in pink, aren’t they?’ ‘Yes. Why didn’t you wear a scarlet coat? It’s much prettier than black.’ ‘Do you really think so? If I’d known—’ faltered Edgar. ‘But I felt sure you would have laughed at me if I’d sported the swallow-tail I wear at hunt dinners sometimes.’ ‘I daresay I should,’ Daphne answered coolly; ‘but you’d have looked ever so much nicer all the same.’