box just before the Jewel Song; and when, again as
usual, she rose at the end of the third act, drew her
opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared,
New York knew that meant that half an hour
later the ball would begin.

The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were
proud to show to foreigners, especially on the night of
the annual ball. The Beauforts had been among the
first people in New York to own their own red velvet
carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own
footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it
with the supper and the ball-room chairs. They had
also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take
their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to
the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the
aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have
said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids
who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when
they left home.

Then the house had been boldly planned with a
ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow
passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses') one
marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-
rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or),
seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in
the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a
conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their
costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.