he train, he began to consider where and how he could
most conveniently dress for the dance. The train would certainly
be half-an-hour late; half-an-hour would be spent in getting to the
town-hall, and that was the utmost delay tolerable if he would secure
the hand of Paula for one spin, or be more than a mere dummy behind
the earlier arrivals. He looked for an empty compartment at the next
stoppage, and finding the one next his own unoccupied, he entered it and
changed his raiment for that in his portmanteau during the ensuing run
of twenty miles.

Thus prepared he awaited the Markton platform, which was reached as
the clock struck twelve. Somerset called a fly and drove at once to the
town-hall.

The borough natives had ascended to their upper floors, and were putting
out their candles one by one as he passed along the streets; but
the lively strains that proceeded from the central edifice revealed
distinctly enough what was going on among the temporary visitors from
the neighbouring manors. The doors were opened for him, and entering
the vestibule lined with flags, flowers, evergreens, and escutcheons, he
stood looking into the furnace of gaiety beyond.

It was some time before he could gather his impressions of the scene,
so perplexing were the lights, the motions, the toilets, the full-dress
uniforms of officers and the harmonies of sound. Yet light, sound, and
movement were not so much the essence of that giddy scene as an intense
aim at obliviousness in the beings composing it. For two or three hours
at least those whirling young people meant not to know that they were
mortal. 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