Flora Bellasys was there too, in all the insolence of beauty, defying
criticism, and challenging the admiration that was lavished on her. I
should like to describe her dress; but I know how dangerous it is for
the uninitiate to venture within the verge of those awful mysteries over
which, as hierophants, Devy and Maradon-Carson preside. Conscious of my
sex, I retire. Have we not read of Actaeon?
Still I may say that I have an impression of her being surrounded by a
sort of cloud of pale blue _tulle_, over which bouquets of geranium were
scattered here and there; and I remember perfectly a certain serpent of
scarlet velvet and diamonds flashing amid the rolls and braids of her
dark shining tresses.
The evening began with private theatricals, which were most successful.
There was a _soubrette_--provoking enough to have set all the
parti-colored world by the ears--who traced her descent from a vavasor
of Duke William the Norman, and an attorney's clerk, who had evidently
mistaken his profession when he took a commission in the Coldstreams.
Soon after the ball which followed had begun, Livingstone arrived. He
had been dining at the mess of his old regiment. I never remember seeing
him what is called the worse for liquor.
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