There was an incessant fluttering of fans and bobbing of heads.

One hundred gentlemen said, "How warm it is!" One hundred ladies of the highest fashion answered, "Very." Fifty young men, who all wore coats, collars, and waistcoats that seemed to have been made in the lump, and all after the same pattern, stood speechless about the rooms, wondering what under heaven to do with their hands.

Fifty older married men, who had solved that problem, folded their hands behind their backs, and beamed vaguely about, nodding their heads whenever they recognized any other head, and saying, "Good-evening," and then, after a little more beaming, "How are yer ?" Waiters pushed about with trays covered with little glasses of lemonade and port-sangaree, which offered favorable openings to the unemployed young men and the married gentlemen, who crowded along with a glass in each hand, frightening all the ladies and begging every body's pardon.
All the Knickerbocker jewels glittered about the rooms.

Mrs.Bleecker Van Kraut carried not less than thirty thousand dollars' worth of diamonds upon her person--at least that was Mrs.Orry's deliberate conclusion after a careful estimate.

Mrs.Dagon, when she heard what Mrs.Orry said, merely exclaimed, "Fiddle! Anastatia Orry can tell the price of lutestring a yard because Winslow Orry failed in that business, but she knows as much of diamonds as an elephant of good manners." The Van Kraut property had been bowing about the drawing-rooms of New York for a year or two, watched with palpitating hearts and longing eyes.
Until that was disposed of, nothing else could win a glance.