Mrs. Barton's first thought was to get Olive partners. Milord and Lord Rosshill were sent hither and thither, and with such good result that the whole evening the beauty was beset with A.D.C.'s. But the Marquis had danced three times with Violet Scully, and Mrs. Barton vented her anger on poor Alice. The girl knew no one, nor was there time to introduce her to men. She was consequently sent off with Milord to see where the Marquis was hiding; and she was commissioned to tell her sister to answer thus when Lord Kilcarney asked for another dance: 'I am engaged, _cher marquis_, but for you, of course, I shall have to throw some poor fellow over.' Mrs. Barton did not know how to play a waiting game. Her tactics were always to grapple with the enemy. She was a Hannibal: she risked all to gain all. Mrs. Scully, on the contrary, watched the combat from afar--as Moltke did the German lines when they advanced upon Paris. The Bartons were not invited to the next private dance, which was annoying, and after long conjecturing as to the enemy that had served them this trick, they resigned themselves to the inevitable, and began to look forward to the State ball given on the following Monday. As they mounted the stairway Mrs. Barton said: 'You know we turn to the left this time and enter Patrick's Hall by this end; the other entrance is blocked up by the daïs--only the three and four season girls stand about the pillars. There they are drawn up in battle array.' 'I declare Olive Barton is here!' whispered the redoubtable Bertha; 'this doesn't look as if the beaux were coming forward in their hundreds. It is said that Lord Kilcarney has given her up for Violet Scully.' 'I'm not a bit surprised,' said the girl in red; 'and, now I think of it, all the beauties come to the same end. I'll just give her a couple more Castle seasons. It is that that will pull the fine feathers out of her.' St. Patrick's Hall was now a huge democratic crush. All the little sharp glances of the 'private dances,' 'What, you here!' were dispensed with as useless, for all were within their rights in being at the ball. They pushed, laughed, danced. They met as they would have met in Rotten Row, and they took their amusement with the impartiality of pleasure-seekers jigging and drinking in a marketplace on fair-day. On either side of the Hall there were ascending benches; these were filled with chaperons and _débutantes_, and over their heads the white-painted, gold-listed walls were hung with garlands of evergreen oak interwoven with the celebrated silver shields, the property of the Cowper family, and in front of the curtains hanging about the daïs, the maroon legs of His Excellency, and the teeth and diamonds of Her Excellency, were seen passing to and fro, and up and down to the music of oblivion that Liddell dispensed with a flowing arm. 'Now aren't the Castle balls very nice?' said Bertha; 'and how are you amusing yourself?'