Page 144 (1/2)

But when the youth had murmured that it was hot, and passed, she

relapsed into her attitude of hopeless expectation, into her patient,

sourish s their faces, watched their daughters, and in

their eyes could be read all the story of those daughters' fortunes As

for themselves, to sit hour after hour, dead tired, silent, or talking

spasirls were having a

good tilected and passed by! Ah! they smiled,

but their eyes stabbed like the eyes of an offended swan; they longed to

pluck young Gathercole by the slack of his dandified breeches, and drag

hihters--the jackanapes!

And all the cruelties and hardness of life, its pathos and unequal

chances, its conceit, self-forgetfulness, and patience, were presented

on the battle-field of this Kensington ball-room

Here and there, too, lovers--not lovers like Francie's, a peculiar

breed, but siht each other

by flying glances, sought to ain dancing together, struck soht in