She smiled gratefully, but as she did so her eyes wandered to the other side of the room, where Ralph, on his knees before Aurelia, was fastening a diamond star in her dress.

Diamonds, rubies, and emeralds flashed in her hair, and on her white neck and arms.

Ralph was fixing the last ornament onto her shoulder with wire off a champagne bottle, there being no clasp to hold it in its place.

I saw Evelyn turn away again, and Charles, who was watching her, suddenly went off to the fire, and began to complain of the cold, and of the thinness of his silk stockings.
The elder lady--"the heavy mother," as Charles irreverently called her--now arrived; the orchestra, which was giving a final flourish, was begged in a hoarse whisper to keep going a few minutes longer; eyes were applied to the hole in the curtain, and then, every one being assembled, it was felt by all that the awful moment had come at last.

A more miserable-looking set of people I never saw.