On the evening appointed there was a vast beautiful throng, moving
through halls as beautiful and more vast; there was the witchery of
soft lights and softer sounds, of odours and colours that enchant the
senses; there were banks of flowers, each of whose tiny blossoms
yielded its dying breath to make the world sweeter for an hour, and
among them, under the starry lights, in warm human veins, flowed a
thousand streams; very blue, not so blue, and even common crimson. But
all flowed faster than usual, perhaps the better to warm the lovely
bare shoulders and arms, or to paint the sweet cheeks above them in
the vivid hues of glad, intense young life. Intermingled with the
costly robes and flashing gems on the ideal figures of fair women,
gleamed the brilliant uniforms of brave men. "A thousand hearts beat
happily"--with one exception. This was in the possession of the second
daughter of a duke. She was even then remarkable for her beauty and
for a certain imperious, condescending grace. The gay throng of which
she was a part was no more to her than so many buttercups and daisies;
and these sumptuous apartments, so far as they concerned her, might
have been a series of green meadows.
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