The State Ball is worth seeing after all, though the Beranger girls had said that it was exactly on the same pattern as its predecessors, and that Her Gracious Majesty was not going to shed the light of her august presence to make it any different.
Seldom within four walls has more beauty been gathered than to-night. Of course everyone admires the Princess most, but of feminine loveliness there is every possible variety to suit every possible taste.
There is also a good deal of the feminine element which is not lovely. But, as if to atone for Dame Nature’s shortcomings, it is generally expensively dressed.
Zai soon has cause to forget or despise Fanchette’s soothing doctrine of the fitness of things, and to feel that her pale blue faille and white illusion, garnished with water lilies, are chiefly remarkable for their fresh simplicity, as she views the superb silks and satins and laces that do honour to Royalty.
She dances away with half-a-dozen of the Household Brigade, with the Duke of Shortland, Lord Walsingham, and several Belgravian habitués, and then she walks through the room with Percy Rayne.
He is quite as good as a catalogue in a ball-room. Ever since he was a small boy Fate has hung him about the Court of St. James’. He has the names of the upper current, and all the social celebrities, on the tips of his well-shaped nails, and faces he never forgets. Added to these, he has all the fashionable gossip on his tongue, for in the interludes of “business” at the F.O., as well as at the other “O’s,” they enjoy a dish of scandal as much as the softer sex do.
He points out the Beauties now to Zai, who, in spite of her heart-broken condition, regards them with admiring interest.
“There!” he says, “is an American, Mrs. Washington Ulysses Trotter, called the Destroying Angel, because she kills everyone dead, from Princes downward, by a glance of her beautiful eyes; but, unfortunately for her, her triumphal car will be probably stopped in its career. The Yankees are going out of fashion, you know. Royalty has decreed it. For Royalty, like common flesh, is liable to get bothered with being run after and accosted as if it were Jack or Tom or Harry. But Mrs. Washington Ulysses Trotter does not mind much. She knows her little outing at Buckingham Palace is quite enough to get her the entrée into all the Fifth Avenue houses. She will talk about the Prince—
“Oh my, isn’t he elegant, and so chatty! I felt just like talking to Cyrus Hercules Hopkins—that’s my cousin down Chicago way, you know. And the Princess! well, certainly, she isn’t proud! It was just like being at home in our English basement brown stone house, Maddison Avenue—at Buckingham Palace!”
Zai laughs, and he rattles on.