‘I am glad you are pleased, and I am glad you think it successful; but, you know, I am no judge, for this is my first ball!’ ‘Ah! to be sure; and yet it seems impossible,’ he continued, in a tone of murmuring admiration. ‘Oh! I have been at little dances at my sisters’; half behind the door,’ she added, with a slight smile. ‘But to-night I am present at a scene of which I have only read.’ ‘And how do you like balls?’ said Lothair. ‘I think I shall like them very much,’ said Lady Corisande; ‘but to-night, I will confess, I am a little nervous.’ ‘You do not look so.’ ‘I am glad of that.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Is it not a sign of weakness?’ ‘Can feeling be weakness?’ ‘Feeling without sufficient cause is, I should think.’ And then, and in a tone of some archness, she said, ‘And how do you like balls?’ ‘Well, I like them amazingly,’ said Lothair. ‘They seem to me to have every quality which can render an entertainment agreeable: music, light, flowers, beautiful faces, graceful forms, and occasionally charming conversation.’ ‘Yes; and that never lingers,’ said Lady Corisande, ‘for see, I am wanted.’ When they were again undisturbed, Lothair regretted the absence of Bertram, who was kept at the House. ‘It is a great disappointment,’ said Lady Corisande; ‘but he will yet arrive, though late. I should be most unhappy though, if he were absent from his post on such an occasion I am sure if he were here I could not dance.’ ‘You are a most ardent politician,’ said Lothair. ‘Oh! I do not care in the least about common politics, parties and office and all that; I neither regard nor understand them,’ replied Lady Corisande. ‘But when wicked men try to destroy the country, then I like my family to be in the front.’ As the destruction of the country meditated this night by wicked men was some change in the status of the Church of England, which Monsignore Catesby in the morning had suggested to Lothair as both just and expedient and highly conciliatory, Lothair did not pursue the theme, for he had a greater degree of tact than usually falls to the lot of the ingenuous. The bright moments flew on. Suddenly there was a mysterious silence in the hall, followed by a kind of suppressed stir. Everyone seemed to be speaking with bated breath, or, if moving, walking on tiptoe. It was the supper hour? Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart. Royalty, followed, by the imperial presence of ambassadors, and escorted by a group of dazzling duchesses and paladins of high degree, was ushered with courteous pomp by the host and hostess into a choice saloon, hung with rose-coloured tapestry and illumined by chandeliers of crystal, where they were served from gold plate. But the thousand less favoured were not badly off, when they found themselves in the more capacious chambers, into which they rushed with an eagerness hardly in keeping with the splendid nonchalance of the preceding hours.