He sat there for half an hour under a flawless sky of stars watching the people come and go in the light of the electric lamps, and appreciating the gowns and jewels of the women with the eye of a connoisseur; and then into this starlit quiet there came suddenly a flash of vivid life.

A girl in a soft, clinging frock of white satin darted swiftly from the rooms and flung herself nervously upon a bench.
She could not, to Ricardo's thinking, be more than twenty years of age.
She was certainly quite young.

The supple slenderness of her figure proved it, and he had moreover caught a glimpse, as she rushed out, of a fresh and very pretty face; but he had lost sight of it now.

For the girl wore a big black satin hat with a broad brim, from which a couple of white ostrich feathers curved over at the back, and in the shadow of that hat her face was masked.

All that he could see was a pair of long diamond eardrops, which sparkled and trembled as she moved her head--and that she did constantly.