The bodice is long-waisted; the stomacher thickly embroidered in pearls; the Vandyke corsage is low in front, with a high ruffle behind, and the whole makes a beau-ideal of the old time Maestros; ropes of glistening pearls go round the slim throat and are wreathed in the chestnut hair. The dress of Blanche of Navarre is marvellously becoming, and would be becoming to a plain woman. What, then, must it be to this daughter of Belgravia, to whom Nature has been lavish in seductive tints?--this girl with a beauty so very fair that “If to her share some human errors fall, Look in her face and you’ll forget them all,” and who is very proud of herself, as she thinks that Carlton Conway will be at Caryllon House to-night, and will see how “nice” she looks. Let us own that a woman must be composed of very strange materials who does not feel that it is charming to be young and pretty, considering that youth and beauty are the recognised weapons for slaughtering men’s hearts. Lady Beranger has always a fancy for “her own party” when she goes to a ball, and on this occasion the dinner in Belgrave Square has three additions to the family circle--Mr. Stubbs, Archibald Hamilton, and Percy Rayne--a connection of Lord Beranger’s--a clerk in the Foreign Office, good-looking, harum-scarum, a pauper, and a detrimental. Lord Delaval was asked, of course, but had another engagement. When all her brood is gathered together, Lady Beranger, in silver _moire_, with the Beranger diamonds (but no! not the Beranger diamonds, for they are under safe lock and key and surveillance of one of the many Attenboroughs--but the duplicates in finished Parisian paste, which are quite as lovely and costly to the uninitiated eye), steps into the family landau. They are late, and the crush of the room is uncomfortable beyond description, like all London crushes. But great as it is, Zai makes a decided sensation as she wades through the crowd on Percy Bayne’s arm. Gabrielle is a Spanish gipsy; Trixy, Fair Rosamond; Baby, with her pink and white skin, golden hair, and white short draperies showered with rosebuds--a delicious piece of “Dresden”--but Zai to-night put every one into the shade. There is the usual quantum of sea-nymphs and flower-girls, characters from history and characters from fiction, of piquant costumes and of costumes which are chiefly remarkable for being _bizarre_. As she and Percy Rayne fall into the line which just now is promenading the long room in the interludes of dancing, the Foreign Office clerk is conscious of that pleasant thrill of complacency--a sort of moral and even physical inflation--which a man feels when escorting a woman whose beauty glorifies her escort.