I danced constantly, danced myself tired, holding warm at my heart this one thought: that in the morning Ned would read of my triumphs and be proud of them, and rejoice because she about whom the whole city is talking thinks only of him.
My partner in the march was "Hughy" Bellmer, as the General calls him; I begin to know him well. He's harmless, with his drawl and his round pink face that shines with admiration. Deliciously he patronized the ball.
"Aw, Miss Winship," he said, "too large, too public. People prefer to dawnce in their own houses."—The ball was at the Waldorf-Astoria.—"The smaller a dawnce is, the greater it is, don't ye see."
"But aren't any great people here?" I asked demurely. "I am just a country mouse, and I've really counted on seeing one or two great people, Mr. Bellmer—besides you, of course."
"The Charity Ball is—aw, y'know, Miss Winship, an institution," he explained, fairly strutting in his complacency at my deference; "and as an institution, not as a Society event, ye understand, it is patronized by the most prominent ladies in the city."
"How good of them!" I cried, laughing.
He was so funny! But he was useful, too; he knew about everybody.
Some of the women I shall remember—Mrs. Sloane Schuyler, leader of the smallest and most exclusive of Society's many sets—a handsome woman with well-arched eyebrows; and Mrs. Fredericks, of the same group; sallow, with great black eyes, talking with tremendous animation; and Mrs. Terry—of the newly rich; Mr. Bellmer's aunt; dumpy, diamonded and disagreeable-looking.
"But where are the famous beauties?" I asked eagerly. "Won't they dance, even for charity, except in their own houses?"
Some of them were there; tall, pale, stylish girls, or women whose darkened eyes and faces mealy with powder told of a bitter fight with time. Why, I haven't seen a woman whom I thought beautiful since—since I became so.