Fair young girls were there, unveiling to the libidinous eye, at Fashion’s bidding, charms of which they should have been chary to the moon. Faded belles throwing out bait at which nobody even nibbled. Married men groaned, looked at their watches, and leaning back in their seats, computed the rise and fall of stocks; married women gazed anxiously around to see if their laces, diamonds, or cashmeres were eclipsed by their neighbors’. Every body was bored to death, stifled by the heat, blinded, by the gas, and scientifically inappreciative of the music, but every body willing to endure ten times as much, rather than not be “in the fashion.” The moon, to be sure, silvered the pretty fountain in the park, close by, and the cool, sweet evening breeze played through the blossoming trees; but the “working people” were stretched upon its benches; the poor man’s child laid his soft cheek to the cool grass; the ragged little urchin, escaping from the stifled air of the noisome lane, threw up his brimless hat in the gravel walk. The parks were plebeian, opera boxes were beyond the reach of “the vulgar.” But look! Now the audience show signs of animation. All is astir. See, the ballet! A fleecy cloud sails in, enveloping “Susy.” Susy, the favorite pro tem.--Susy, with her jetty locks, creamy skin, and dimpled shoulders. Susy, with her pretty ankles and rounded waist. Susy, with her jeweled arms and rose-banded hair. Susy, with her rounded bosom and twinkling feet. Young men and old men level their glasses in breathless admiration, as Susy languishingly twirls, and tip-toes, and pirouettes. Young girls, who have long since ceased blushing at such exhibitions, wish, for the nonce, that _they_ were Susy, as bouquets and diamond rings are thrown upon the stage. Tom Shaw’s eyes sparkle, and relieving his enthusiasm by some expressive expletives, he leaves Jack for a behind-the-scene _tête-à-tête_ with the _danseuse_. CHAPTER XI. “Day dawned--within a curtained room, Filled to faintness with perfume, A lady lay at point of doom. Morn broke--an infant saw the light, But for the lady, fair and bright, She slumbered in undreaming night.”