There were a greater number of fat and elderly gentlemen than Mildred would have expected, taking part in the dance, or circulating about the room with all or more than the vivacity of youth. How happy!--how supremely blest!--seems that rotund and bald-headed sire, who, standing on the edge of the dais, now forsaken by their Majesties, surveys the whole assembly, and invites the whole assembly to return the compliment. How beautifully the bland sympathy he feels for others mingles with and swells his sense of self-importance! How he dominates the whole scene! How fondly patronises! And then his smile!--why, his heart is dancing with them all; it is beating time to twice two hundred feet. An old friend approaches him--he is happy too--would shake him by the hand. The hand he gives; but he cannot withdraw his eye from the wide scene before him; he cannot possibly call in and limit his sympathies at that moment to one friend, however old and dear. And he who solicits his hand, he also is looking around him at the same time, courting the felicitations of the crowd, who will not fail to observe that he too is there, and there amongst friends. In the female portion of the assembly there was not so much novelty. Mildred could only remark that there was a large proportion of _brunettes_, and that the glossy black hair was parted on the head and smoothed down on either side with singular neatness and precision. Two only out of this part of the community attracted her particular notice, and they were of the most opposite description. Near to her stood a lady who might have been either thirty, or forty, or fifty, for all that her sharp and lively features betrayed. She wore one of those small round hats, with the feather drooping round it, which formed, we believe, a part of the costume of Louis XV.; and that which drew the notice of Mildred was the strange resemblance she bore, in appearance and manner, to the portraitures which some French memoirs had made familiar to her imagination. As she watched her in conversation with an officer in full regimentals, who stood by her side, her fancy was transported to Versailles or St Cloud. What a caustic pleasantry! What a malicious vivacity! It was impossible to doubt that the repartees which passed between her and her companion were such as to make the ears of the absent tingle. There were some reputations suffering there as the little anecdote was so trippingly narrated. Her physiognomy was redolent of pleasant scandal-- "Tolerably mild, To make a wash she'd hardly stew a child;" but to extract a jest, there was no question she would have distilled half the reputations in the room.