The room was beating like a heart, and the pulse was regulated by the trembling strings of the most popular quadrille band in Wessex.
But at last his eyes grew settled enough to look critically around.
The room was crowded--too crowded.

Every variety of fair one, beauties primary, secondary, and tertiary, appeared among the personages composing the throng.

There were suns and moons; also pale planets of little account.

Broadly speaking, these daughters of the county fell into two classes: one the pink-faced unsophisticated girls from neighbouring rectories and small country-houses, who knew not town except for an occasional fortnight, and who spent their time from Easter to Lammas Day much as they spent it during the remaining nine months of the year: the other class were the children of the wealthy landowners who migrated each season to the town-house; these were pale and collected, showed less enjoyment in their countenances, and wore in general an approximation to the languid manners of the capital.
A quadrille was in progress, and Somerset scanned each set.

His mind had run so long upon the necklace, that his glance involuntarily sought out that gleaming object rather than the personality of its wearer.