Gowns of bygone fashions, creased and stained with packing and disuse, toilets of forgotten festivity revised with modern additions; garments in and out of season--a fur-trimmed jacket and a tulle skirt, a velvet robe under a pique sacque; fresh young faces beneath faded head-dresses, and mature and buxom charms in virgin' white.

The small space cleared for the dancers was continually invaded by the lookers-on, who in files of three deep lined the room.
As the master pushed his way to the front, a young girl, who had been standing in the sides of a quadrille, suddenly darted with a nymph-like quickness among the crowd and was for an instant hidden.

Without distinguishing either face or figure, Mr.Ford recognized in the quick, impetuous action a characteristic movement of Cressy's; with an embarrassing instinct that he could not account for, he knew she had seen him, and that, for some inexplicable reason, he was the cause of her sudden disappearance.
But it was only for a moment.

Even while he was vaguely scanning the crowd she reappeared and took her place beside her mystified partner--the fascinating stranger of Johnny's devotion and Rupert's dislike.

She was pale; he had never seen her so beautiful.