Shortly after midnight our own little company broke up, loath to
leave the charming spectacle. The guests departed with the greatest
reluctance, having given Dawson a half-sovereign for waiting up to
lock the door. Mrs. Beresford said that it seemed unendurable to
leave matters in such an unfinished condition, and her son promised
to come very early next morning for the latest bulletins.

"I leave all the romances in your hands," he whispered to me; "do
let them turn out happily, do!"

Salemina also retired to her virtuous couch, remembering that she
was to visit infant schools with a great educational dignitary on
the morrow.

Francesca and I turned the gas entirely out, although we had been
sitting all the evening in a kind of twilight, and slipping on our
dressing-gowns sat again at the window for a farewell peep into the
past, present, and future of the 'Brighthelmston set.'

At midnight the dowager duchess arrived. She must at least have
been a dowager duchess, and if there is anything greater, within the
bounds of a reasonable imagination, she was that. Long streamers of
black tulle floated from a diamond soup-tureen which surmounted her
hair. Narrow puffings of white traversed her black velvet gown in
all directions, making her look somewhat like a railway map, and a
diamond fan-chain defined, or attempted to define, what was in its
nature neither definable nor confinable, to wit, her waist, or what
had been, in early youth, her waist.